Nancy Miggins Provides Tips For You to Master Self-Care That Supports Your Best Decision-Making
69: Nancy Miggins Provides Tips For You to Master Self-Care That Supports Your Best Decision-Making
“All you need to do is take action every day to support your body and your body is going to take care of you.” -Nancy Miggins
To take care of yourself is to take care of others. The last thing we want is to fall ill when everybody has already recovered. It’s something everyone must do and gain mastery over. When we are at the negative end of the continuum, we cannot function at an optimum level. Therefore, any decision made while in that state of stress can mean only trouble. Joining us in today’s episode is Dr. Nancy Miggins, a seasoned expert in health and wellness. She provides practical guidance on how to master self-care in 8 simple steps. She also lets us in on some fun facts about detoxification and weight loss. The human physiological makeup is designed to be able to heal itself. Therefore, as the owners of our personage, it is our sheer duty to support it. Join in and “reclaim your power over health”!
Highlights:
03:50 Reclaim Power Over Health Without Narcotics
08:13 How to Shift From Self-Destructive Patterns
17:49 Stress and Disease
21:06 Facilitated Pathway
24:39 How to Break Down Stress
29:37 How to Find Gratitude Amidst Crisis
40:30 Where Does Healing Really Happen?
46:52 8 Daily Practices to Master Health
If you are able to take care of yourself, you are already one step ahead in your journey to recovery. @TFRSolution consults with health expert, Dr. Nancy Miggins on easy, practical steps on self care. #lifestyle #stress #IntrinsicHealing #sleep… Click To Tweet
Resources:
Books
- Mastering the Health Continuum: 8 Daily Practices to Boost Energy, Optimize Health, and Age Gracefully by Nancy Miggins
- The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease by Robert Scaer
- When the Body Says N⊘: Exploring the Stress-Disease Connection by Gabor Maté
Quotes:
- 09:24 “When you’re in your mid-40s or mid-50s… you’re still at the prime of your life, and you should not be heading down the backside of the mountain.” -Nancy Miggins
- 12:47 “Drugs don’t have anything to do with health. They are about disease management.” -Nancy Miggins
- 13:14 “Getting to the root cause and thinking about how your diet and lifestyle choices affect your health on a daily basis. – that’s the key in changing our disease trajectory.” -Nancy Miggins
- 15:56 “It’s when you start to interfere and interrupt the natural process of healing that really starts to build itself sick. Disease doesn’t happen overnight; it’s decades in the making.” -Nancy Miggins
- 18:51 “When stress is high… logic tends to be low.” -Nancy Miggins
- 22:53 “Our body is impacted by what we believe or what we perceive to be true, whether it’s true or not.” -Jeff Jones
- 32:25 “When you’re grateful and you find things to be grateful for… you have this positivity and optimism and hope.” -Nancy Miggins
- 34:39 “No matter what your situation is, there are always things to be grateful for. Because inevitably, there is going to be someone else on the planet that has it worse than you.” -Nancy Miggins
- 40:30 “Just like any other disease process, an outside approach is not going to heal the body or the mind. All of that happens intrinsically within you. And it has to happen there before you’re going to feel any different.” -Nancy Miggins
- 41:12 “Everybody’s a miracle. And that’s not how we treat ourselves. We don’t treat ourselves with the respect that we deserve.” -Nancy Miggins
- 50:42 “All you need to do is take action every day to support your body and your body is going to take care of you.” -Nancy Miggins
About Nancy:
Dr. Nancy Miggins is a double-board certified chiropractic doctor. Her 30 years in the healthcare field speaks so much about her credentials. She has helped numerous individuals, both in private and the business end to reclaim their power over health. Nancy is specifically focused on chronic pain management without the use of narcotics. Her book, Mastering the Health Continuum provides science-based, practical steps to navigate healing and recovery successfully. Today, she is dedicated to providing tools that people could use every day to inspire health and wellness.
Got ideas? Perhaps a future podcast? Schedule time with Jeff here: https://meetme.so/jeffjones
Transcriptions:
Jeff Jones: Welcome everyone, this is Jeff Jones on the podcast Families Navigating Addiction and Recovery. And today, my guest is Dr. Nancy Miggins, and I sought her out specifically as a guest. She’s a Chiropractor, and you may wonder, well, like, why did I want her to be a podcast guest? I’m really excited to have this conversation because I met Nancy through a book that she just completed, and has out, and it’s on Amazon, and it is about something like navigating the health continuum. And she offers numerous, what I would call it, resources for anyone to improve their health. And so oftentimes, family members who have a loved one in the family with addiction, the majority of their focus is on their loved one for obvious reasons, and to the exclusion of focus on themselves, and taking care of themselves. So I’m talking to Nancy today specifically to dive into resources, how a person can take care of themselves. So welcome Nancy.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Thank you.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, you’re welcome. If we could start, and you could just say a little bit more about who you are, so people listening to this have a good sense of who Nancy is behind all the suggestions that will be forthcoming and the ideas, hopefully the inspiring ideas around self care. So yeah, if you could just talk a little bit about who you are.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Okay. I’ve been in healthcare for over 30 years, both in private practice and in the business end of health. And I’ve done everything from chiropractic practice and healthcare to managing clinics that focused on chronic pain management without the use of narcotics. And I saw patterns with people regardless of why they were coming to the various clinics. There were certain patterns and that’s what really inspired me to want it to be able to have more people and do it in a way where people could really reclaim power over their own health and really feel like they really weren’t victim to disease to the healthcare system, to really give tools that people could use every day to inspire health and wellness.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I’d like to ask a little bit more, first, about two different things that I heard you say. And if you could say a little bit more about managing chronic pain without narcotics. And then the other thing that you said that I’m really curious about is, if you could say a little bit more about what those patterns were that you saw.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Okay. So chronic pain management without the use of narcotics, it seems, certainly in the last decade, chronic pain management has really become a household name. And we’ve seen the effects of those opioids on people and families. And the group I was with, we decided we wanted to do things differently, and we had a group of eight clinics, they were integrated practices. So we had MDs, nurse practitioners, chiropractors, naturopath. And we really sought out to get to the source of the pain, and I guess, attack it in that way rather than masking the symptom.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: So we did a variety of treatments ranging from physical therapy type activities and chiropractic to some injection therapy that was non-steroidal. And we also did some Stem Cell Therapy. We use cold lasers for pain management. We were doing some radio frequency ablations, it was a wide, wide variety, and people came to see us, they had peripheral neuropathy, maybe they had postherpetic neuropathy, results of car accidents, or failed spine surgeries, those types of things. And we got some really terrific results. And I think what surprised people was that, there was actually a plan of attack, and everybody’s plan was slightly different because everybody is different. And we would go, okay, here’s our plan, we’d reassess, and maybe we needed to modify or change some things, and then we would do that, that’s just not the typical approach when you go to the doctor. So we had some really, really great results with that, and I was able to see and interact with patients that typically might not have just come to a chiropractic office. And that really deepened my passion, and I think my understanding for the impact that both drug management and pain management, those things that those have on people.
Jeff Jones: Sure. Sounds like you’ve got quite the education.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Yeah, I did some advanced certifications as well. And I’m pretty voracious learner, it’s like I’m always seeking to know more, and understand more, and apply it, and test it, and see how does that work.
Jeff Jones: Sure. Yeah. Yeah. And when you were talking about seeing certain patterns, can you say a little bit about the patterns that you saw Nancy?
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Sure. For the most part, people would come into the clinics and they were fairly deconditioned, probably 20, 30 pounds overweight, they had a less than desirable diet, no real activity level. They were on a handful or two of meds managing their chronic diseases. And maybe they took a couple of supplements or so, but they really didn’t, you know, rarely were they drinking enough water. And I think it was almost that they had lost hope. It was like, okay, I’m succumbing to the idea that this is what my life is going to be. And when you think about somebody who’s maybe in their late 70’s, mid 80’s, you’re going, well, you’ve lived a great life and you’re old. So, yeah, you’re probably gonna feel, not ideal, probably have more aches and pains. But when you’re in your mid 40’s, or mid 50’s, I mean, really you’re still at the prime of your life and you should not be kind of heading down the backside of the mountain.
“When you're in your mid-40s or mid-50s… you're still at the prime of your life, and you should not be heading down the backside of the mountain.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: Yeah, yeah. I see. So can you talk a little bit about the medical model and an alternative approach of what you’re talking about. This may be a broad question and definitely not asking it because I know the answer, and if there’s not an answer, please let me know. But that is, do you have some, just general ideas or suggestions for people to integrate and start to use some of these alternative practices in a world where the medical model is our default and that’s how we’ve been trained, and from the standpoint of insurance, not all the time, but a lot of times what’s paid for is, like pharmaceutical medications as a solution to a situation as opposed to an alternative approach. So can you talk a little bit about how best to balance that? Or is that a fair question at this point?
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Sure. So I really think that there needs to be a paradigm shift. So what great marketing to call it, like our health insurance, health insurance, when it really has nothing to do with health. It’s crisis insurance, it’s catastrophe insurance, and it’s like you want that if you’re in this terrible accident, or if you do have a serious disease process, or cancer, or something like that where it’s going to be thousands, and thousands, and thousands of dollars in care, right?
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: But in reality, stuffy nose, a fever, an upset stomach, that is not what health insurance is designed for. It’s not designed for prevention, it’s not designed for wellness, it is crisis care. And a doctor wants to help people. I mean, it is a very service heartfelt industry, but the framework for which they have to operate does not really support that type of care or relationship with patients.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: It’s like you don’t have time, you know, you maybe have five minutes, seven minutes, you know the documentation that’s required for that five to seven minute appointment is incredibly non productive time, and all it is is justifying the time you spent so that maybe you can be paid for your time. It’s like insurance drives the medical system, and that’s unfortunate because that really has nothing to do with health. And so, I’ve been pretty passionate my whole career about personal responsibility in health, and people not thinking that it’s their doctor’s job, or the insurance company’s job, or big pharma’s job to make sure that they’re healthy. Drugs don’t have anything to do with health, they are about disease management. It’s like, I don’t know if you’ve heard the saying it’s become pretty popular now, ‘A pill for an ill.’.
“Drugs don't have anything to do with health. They are about disease management.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: I haven’t heard that one.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Yeah. It’s like a pill for an ill approach. You know, you go in, here’s my symptoms. Okay, I have a pill for that. Well, why did you have the symptoms? It wasn’t because you were deficient in that medication. So getting to the root cause and really thinking about how your diet and lifestyle choices affect your health on a daily basis, that’s really the key in changing our disease trajectory.
“Getting to the root cause and thinking about how your diet and lifestyle choices affect your health on a daily basis. - that's the key in changing our disease trajectory.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: So I really appreciate what you said. And one of the first things that you were advocating for here in your response was, we need a paradigm shift. And the paradigm shift that I’m hearing, it’s the responsibility of the individual to understand what you’re talking about. It isn’t like I have problem, and I can go to my doctor, and my doctor will help me understand this. Assuming my doctor is like a MD at the urgent care, or the hospital, or something like that. I mean, MDs are trained for crisis and they’re experts at it, but the responsibility of individuals, and I like what you said about, well, it’s called health insurance when in actuality it’s more like crisis insurance. And so, it is a mixed message, the language that we use, and it makes it more confusing for people to navigate their own health, and navigate the impact to themselves.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Well, I think it also creates this sense of entitlement. So, okay, I have this insurance, I’m entitled to get the care that I think that I need and really deserve because I have this insurance. And in reality, that’s not the case. It’s like your insurance has specific guidelines of what they will and won’t cover. And again, it doesn’t have anything to do with making sure that you’re well.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: So what it does is, again, we reinforces this health, or cure, or treatment from the outside rather than going, my body’s fully well-equipped to heal on its own. So when you’re a child and you skin your knee, it’s like almost miraculously overnight, your knee is healing up, right? You didn’t have to do anything. It wasn’t because it’ll heal whether you put Neosporin on it or not. You know what I mean? It’s not the Neosporin that’s healy. I mean, your body is designed to heal itself and it does that every day, day in, day out, without you having to think about it. It’s when you start to interfere and interrupt the natural process of healing that really starts to build itself sick. And disease doesn’t happen overnight, it’s decades in the making.
“It's when you start to interfere and interrupt the natural process of healing that really starts to build itself sick. Disease doesn't happen overnight; it's decades in the making.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: Decades in the making. Yeah, yeah. Oh, my gosh. It just expands the whole picture quite a bit. And for people who have money and can pay for some of the things that they need to take care of their health outside of the crisis insurance, that’s one thing. But then the other thing I hear you saying here is just understanding how making lifestyle improvements regardless of what our income situation is almost, making lifestyle improvements and maintaining them over a significant amount of time will have an impact on our health.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Right. Absolutely.
Jeff Jones: And that’s a very different thought process. It’s a very different approach than just driving myself dealing with all the stressors that come along and trying to hammer him away, and click them off my to do list, and keep my energy up as much as possible to get through everything, every day, over and over again until I eventually wear out, and then I wear out, or my body creates some disease or symptom, and only then I go to someone who can help fix that for me, or help deal with that.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Right. And along the way, typically, I mean, stress is really at the root of all disease and dysfunction. And I think there’s a misconception about stress. I think the majority feels stress is that expectation that you just aren’t quite able to meet, so it’s a function of tasks, right? Where really, your nervous system, your brain and nervous system respond to stress regardless of the source in the same way. So stress might be physical, it could be chemical, or it could be emotional, and it can be real or perceived.
Jeff Jones: Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: So if you are worrying constantly about something, that creates the same response in your body that a poison might, right? Like your nervous system goes into a state of fight or flight. And when stress is high, logic tends to be low, and that’s not a time when you should be making important decisions.
“When stress is high… logic tends to be low.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: And the people who are listening to this, I can’t help but think about family members who are at some stage of supporting their loved one with problematic use, or eventual addiction, or even after someone has achieved some time of being not using, family members oftentimes are like, they’re pretty jumpy.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Okay, when is it? When is it going to happen? Are they going to stay clean and sober, or are they not? It’s like, can we trust that this is real and it’s going to be sustained?
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, with what you’re talking about and with what I know about the stress in families, this, at some point, this stress is ongoing and it’s slowly, slowly, gradually, incrementally builds, and something may happen, and it looks like it’s getting better for a period of time and then it doesn’t, so they’re back into it. I mean, I can’t help thinking about what’s happening inside the body. And following up on what you were saying about the nervous system and what I know, the baseline of the nervous system is when the body is calm, and warm, and relaxed, and it has the best blood flow to the cortex where they can make the best decisions. And with addiction in the family, things get ratcheted up and that baseline goes up and up and up. So there’s a much narrower window of tolerance, meaning, the smallest thing can activate their nervous system to be in overwhelm.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Right. So I call that a facilitated pathway. Yeah. It’s like when you start out, and as you lose resiliency within your nervous system, the amount of stress or stressor required to achieve that overload is less, it becomes less and less because your nervous system, what you focus on, and what is repeated, whether that be behavior thought pattern, that builds a stronger neuronal connection because your body is ultimately trying to maintain a level of efficiency. So it’ll go, Oh, I’ve had this before. Okay, I don’t need to screen this like I did, you know? Oh, this means this. And it takes less and less as you repeat those behaviors. And especially if there’s emotion involved, that makes the wiring a lot stronger and more nerve connections.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. So, from what I’m hearing you talk about, how I’m hearing this, and how I would talk about it is, habitual patterns of what we believe, and then the thoughts that come out of what we believe, then the action or behavior we take, and the feelings that we have about the situation afterwards, oftentimes reinforce those initial beliefs. And it’s that in itself is a cycle that goes over and over again. And what you were alluding to, our body is impacted by what we believe or what we perceive to be true, whether it’s true or not? Am I getting this?
“Our body is impacted by what we believe or what we perceive to be true, whether it's true or not.” -Jeff Jones Click To TweetDr. Nancy Miggins: Yes. Yes.
Jeff Jones: So then for family members who are listening to this, it would be something like an example, maybe someone has gone through a program, and they haven’t been drinking alcohol for 30 days or something, and they stopped off at a bar, and they have a wife at home who’s expecting them to be home at a certain time, they’re not home when they expect, then what the wife does, what goes on in her thinking, oftentimes she’s worried, Oh, my gosh, he stopped off at the bar. Oh, my gosh, he’s going to get drunk, and all that. The 30 days he has or whatever is all going to be ruined and he’s going to be back in that pattern again. I mean, et cetera, et cetera. So I think one of the things that I’m hearing here, I’m kind of wondering, what would family members do who can recognize, yeah, I’m in this pattern somewhere where I have reactions, like immediate reactions that take me down a road of worry and increases stress. How can I recognize that? How can I start to disrupt that and introduce a new cycle of behavior that’s going to improve my health?
Dr. Nancy Miggins: So that’s a really, really good question because a lot of this happens autopilot, and there isn’t any consciousness around it. I guess the action step would be, first, you have to look at yourself. The symptom obviously is the substance abuse, right? And it’s not even necessarily your own symptom, but as far as, even the family unit, that substance abuse, that is the symptom, right? And so, you have to go, and go, okay, my role, my stance, this is what I can do, I can be present, I can kind of control my reaction. I can’t control somebody else’s actions, but I can control how I react, right? I can control that I am doing what I need to to make sure that my stress is in check, that I’m supporting my own body and mind so that I can be my best self. And when I’m my best self, I can take care of other, right? They always say on the airplane, the flight attendants, ‘put your own oxygen mask on first before attempting to help others.’ This is really at the essence of self care. It’s what are you for anyone else if you aren’t your best.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’d really like what you were saying, one, you’re acknowledging this kind of automatic process that happens in the body, like autopilot I think is what you said. And that we have no consciousness about what’s going on around us, or maybe minimal consciousness. And then you were saying, so the very best that we can do is just be aware of our own role, our own body. And I’m kind of thinking, what some examples of that, some that I can think of would be, Oh, I’m shouting back, the volume of my voice has increased. Or I feel this sensation in my body that where I’m about ready to explode inside, or something like that. But any other, just first moment, or first second clues that someone might be able to have to, yeah, I know–
Dr. Nancy Miggins: If you find yourself all of a sudden not doing shallow breaths, you will put yourself into a state of fight or flight. That shallow breathing, rapid shallow breathing, which happens when you’re worried, you’re angry, a lot of emotions drives that. And if you notice that, okay, I’m not breathing. Okay, taking several really deep breaths and slowing it down allows your nervous system to just be like, okay, wait. And then you can have a conscious moment of, okay, am I sad, mad, glad, it’s like what is this about? And stop the pattern, but it requires that mindfulness too, right?
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I really appreciate what you’re saying because, I think that it’s so important, that first moment, that first catching it because once things escalate and go back and forth, it’s like, one activated nervous system kind of triggering and responding to another activated nervous system.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Exactly.
Jeff Jones: And what you’re talking about here, like, why I see this as so important for family members is this is a way out. This is where you can put your focus on things you can actually control. Like Nancy was saying, you can actually control your breathing, and that’s huge. So I’m kinda curious about the book that you wrote, the suggestions that you made in that book, and the specific ones that you see are maybe most applicable to this population. Family members who are struggling with a loved one in some stage of addiction, or the back and forth recovery, relapse recovery kind of stage, or even years later when maybe someone who’s been in recovery for a long time, but the patterns, the relational patterns haven’t changed.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Right? Well, my book is called Mastering the Health Continuum, it has eight daily practices to boost energy, optimize health and age gracefully. And those eight practices, eight daily practices, that was the pattern that I saw with all of the patients that I interacted with. The things that, it was like, okay, I’m telling, like when they say what can I do, what can I do? Those were consistently the things that I was coaching them on. And so, things like proper hydration, breathing, their nutrition movement, sleep stress, environmental like personal care, home toxins, chemicals like heavy metals, those kinds of things, how to clean up their environment, and then gratitude. And that gratitude is huge. And I know when a family is struggling, it’s like the struggle, it’s the thing that consumes everything, right? It’s like every waking moment, every night when you’re not sleeping, it’s just that constant there. And I think it’s hard to find gratitude in those situations. However, if you can, it changes everything.
Jeff Jones: That was going to be my next question. How can people find gratitude in the midst of [inaudible] concern.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: In my book, I talk about how I started to do a gratitude journal would be, everyday, I forced myself to write three things that I was [inaudible] and I struggled. And I said, my daughter, my dog, same thing, it took a while before all of a sudden I was going, Oh, I’m grateful for the sunrise. I’m grateful for that stranger that just opened the door for me. I’m grateful for that random person on the street that complimented me on my smile. As I was grateful for seemingly simple little things, it grew to be, I mean, I’m grateful for so many things, and the positive things really started to outweigh the negative in my life. I mean, it’s a powerful practice, and it’s how your brain works. I mean, you think about the negative, and you think about all the terrible things. That’s how your brain gets wired, you know? And then you’re wired in shame, and negativity, and futility, and apathy where when you’re grateful and you find things to be grateful for, all of a sudden you’ve got this positivity, and optimism, and hope.
“When you're grateful and you find things to be grateful for... you have this positivity and optimism and hope.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: So Nancy, what I hear you saying is that, when I stay myopically focused on what my biggest worry is or what’s not going right around me, that can create a habitual pathway of focusing on what’s not right. And then if I can force myself to even notice what is going well, or what am I thankful for, or what’s around me that I have an appreciation for, even if it’s just the snow falling, or a rose blooming, or some kind of simple thing, but kind of noticing a little bit more of it than what I normally would.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Exactly.
Jeff Jones: And that is pushing, and that may be the wrong word, but it’s me consciously shifting my attention off of what’s not going well and putting it on what is what I have, or what’s in front of me, or what I see. I really appreciate what you’re saying. I mean, one of the things I’m thinking of is, when I was growing up as a kid, I watched my father slowly go blind over about 20 some years, he was an industrial designer. So the visual learning visually, and that was his field of expertise, the fact that I’m not blind, and that didn’t happen for me, t’s like, I sometimes, just the fact of being able to see how much I take that for granted, and that’s just an example.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Exactly.
Jeff Jones: Something I can be grateful for.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Yup. And I think that when you can wrap your head around this idea of, I mean, no matter what your situation is, there are always things to be grateful for, because inevitably, there is going to be someone else on the planet that has it worse than you. I mean, we take for granted water, food, shelter, education, healthcare, all that stuff, and that is not the case throughout the world. And we don’t have to fight every day for a meal, for one meal. We have more non-food available to us than, I mean, some countries, and I think, if you can wrap your head around the idea that there’s always something to be grateful for, there comes a point in time when you realize that you can be grateful for the situation that you’re in. That you find that, it’s almost just like a little thread where it’s like, okay, if I were not in this situation, I would not have become the person I am, or I never would have been able to connect on this level with my family, or it’s like looking beyond what the trauma is and going what positive outcome could happen from that trauma.
“No matter what your situation is, there are always things to be grateful for. Because inevitably, there is going to be someone else on the planet that has it worse than you.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: Yeah. So just listening to you, I have an example. So one of the things that I do when I’m working with families is to create a like two, three, four generation family map. And then what I’ll do is start with the oldest generation and start to identify challenges and strengths, and strengths can be one of the hardest things for people to identify. A lot of times they’re very aware of the challenges that took place in their family, but sometimes it’s really difficult for them to see the strengths. And I’ll be talking to a group of people, a family, and someone will say, Jeff, there were no strengths in my family. And my immediate response is, well wait a minute, I beg to differ here. And one of the reasons why is because you’re here, you’re sitting here, you’re breathing, you’re curious about this. So yeah, one of the hardest things for us is to focus on strengths on what’s going well. And so my sense is, and please let me know if I’m wrong or what I’m missing here, one of the reasons why there’s lists like automatic default of focus on what’s not working or the negative is there some connection with a fight flight, the nervous system. And initially that nervous system was used to, we needed to be aware of threats in the environment to stay alive, and that was necessary. So my sense is there’s been some evolutionary trickle down with the nervous system for it to be very hyper focused on what’s not working here in order for us to live. I mean, what’s your sense, Nancy?
Dr. Nancy Miggins: I think, I mean, it is part of our innate mechanism to have this alert about threats, and stress, and the saber tooth tiger, but if you look at what is presented in our world, a lot of it is negative. It’s negativity, right? News is negative. A lot of the TV shows have, even comedies and whatever. It’s like they’re spoofing on these negative interactions, right? It’s like negativity is probably the biggest influencer, right? Unless you’re living off the grid, I don’t know that you’re immune to it. Immune to all the negative messages. So from a very early age, you are somewhat programmed, and again, you get those facilitated pathways, right? Where you’re like, okay, I’m seeking out to identify the negative because that’s how I’m wired. That’s the consciousness part of when you start to seek out gratitude, it is a challenge because you become aware of how bombarded you are with negative. And it’s like you’re trying to be this one little star of positivity in the whole big black of darkness, right? But it only takes that little flicker of light to brighten up the darkness. So you get enough people that are feeling gratitude and expressing gratitude, and seeking out that optimism and positivity. It doesn’t take much to create an energy shift within a person, within a household, within a family, within a community. It can grow pretty fast.
Jeff Jones: So one of the things that I hear quite often, and that is, so if my loved one, if they just didn’t use, if they just would accept help, if they would just go to meetings, if they would just go to this treatment center, if, if, if kind of thing. If this were to happen, then I would feel better. So I need this thing outside of myself to change, for me to feel better.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Just like any other disease process, an outside in approach is not going to heal the body or the mind. I mean, all of that happens intrinsically within you, and it has to happen there before you’re gonna feel any different. It’s if you’re looking outside, then that means that there’s something missing in you, right? That you’re looking for something on the outside to fill you, or fulfill you, or whatever. And really, it’s like you have everything you need within you. You’re born a miracle. Everybody’s a miracle. And that’s not how we treat ourselves. We don’t treat ourselves with the respect that we deserve.
“Just like any other disease process, an outside approach is not going to heal the body or the mind. All of that happens intrinsically within you. And it has to happen there before you're going to feel any different.” -Nancy Miggins Click To Tweet “Everybody's a miracle. And that's not how we treat ourselves. We don't treat ourselves with the respect that we deserve.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: Yeah, a lot of times we don’t treat ourselves with the respect that we give to others.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Exactly.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my gosh. This is such an important topic here, and this is just the very tip of the iceberg in self care. And in your book, I know there’s a lot more content in your book, and I’m just staying focused on this initial step here. One of the things that I think of Nancy, some of my mentors, a trauma mentor, Bessel van der Kolk called his book, The Body Bears the Burden, Dr. Gabor Maté book, When the Body Says No. Both of those books and they have quite a bit of research about, when we live in a stressful environment for a long period of time, our body is vulnerable to, and vulnerable to a disease symptoms and many kinds of diseases. Actually, I think a lot of them are gut related diseases, gastrointestinal type of issues, but it’s just so fascinating to me how important this is, but it’s not really going to show itself as being important until many, many years later, and it may come out through something totally unrelated to the initial stressor. In this case, we’re talking about addiction in the family and living with that over a good period of time. It’s unfortunate that people aren’t educated about what they have control of now to bring into their life, where to put their focus. A morning ritual may include several different things, or eight things like your book mentions. I’m just struck with this whole thing and I’m sure you’ve thought about this a whole lot because you see it all the time, and you wrote a book to help people. So how much of this, what’s your sense when people, if they were to get some handouts, or read a book, or something, how much can people change what they’ve been doing just from educating themselves, just from knowing that what they’ve been doing before is harmful to their health.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Shifts can happen, and it doesn’t have to be this major overhaul of your life. I take the approach of radical gradualism, take a step, and then take the next step, and then take the next step. And it’s different for everybody depending on where you are, what your history is, what your life is right now. I mean, it may be as simple as drinking more water in a day, and that can have profound effects on your health and on your mindset that then may open up the possibility of doing the next thing.
Jeff Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Wow. Thank you for saying that. I mean, that puts it in a much more realistic and doable perspective. And really, if I just drank more water, or the other thing that I’m thinking about, and I know this is one of your eight practices is good sleep, and just from my own life, I’m so aware that when I don’t sleep well, that has such an impact on me the next day. Can you talk a little bit about sleep, and specifically with this population worried and concerned about a loved one who is in some stage of crisis, or using, or something.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Yes. So sleep is when your body heals and rejuvenate. And so, if you are not getting enough good quality sleep, your body and your brain will deteriorate at a much more rapid pace. And they’ve now declared night shift work, people who work night shift, they are more prone to cancer.
Jeff Jones: Oh, wow.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Because your body isn’t cleaning itself out, and rejuvenating, and having the chance to do all that within the normal circadian rhythm.
Jeff Jones: Right. Yeah.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: And studies now is more isn’t necessarily better. The sweet spot is six and a half to eight hours a night, but that’s not laying in bed worrying. It’s like I was in bed for eight hours, that doesn’t count. I mean, you actually have to sleep.
Jeff Jones: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow. Wow. Well, so I’m wondering, can you summarize with what the eight practices are, and then how someone can learn more about what you’re doing, how they can get your book?
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Sure. So the eight practices, again, the first one is QUENCH, which is all about hydration and why that’s important, and how to have proper hydration hygiene. The second practice is BREATHING, all about oxygen. Why that’s important. I mean, there’s a lot of science in my book, but it relates to creating a, this is why this is important for you, and this is the impact if you aren’t getting enough water or oxygen, right? The third practice is around NUTRITION and PH, pH of your body. And then we go into stress, and how to create more resiliency. SLEEP, proper sleep hygiene. And then MOVEMENT, call it movement rather than exercise because a lot of people have energy around exercise and what that looks like. So titled it movement because it’s like, it doesn’t have to be a structured exercise program. We just have become way to, spending way too much time sitting in front of a computer, or sitting at a desk, or sitting in front of the TV, or sitting in the car. It’s like we just don’t move, and so inspiring more movement. And then PURIFY, which is about toxins, heavy metals, water quality, plastics, phthalate in your personal care products, glyphosate, which is roundup, and the prevalence in food, and our processed food, and food additives, and things like that that really hijack our ability to maintain health. So some strategies on how to reduce that toxic burden, and interesting fun fact around toxic burden is people who experience weight loss resistance. So meaning, I go on a whatever fad diet, I lose weight, and then I gain it back, and maybe a little bit more. So your fat in your body stores and sequesters these toxins. And when you lose weight and you liberate fat, you also liberate the toxins. And if your body is not equipped or in a state of health where it can process those toxins and escort them out of the body, innately your body’s driven to create fat, to sequester the toxins. So it’s like this vicious cycle, right? So that’s something that not a lot of people consider when they go to do a weight loss program or whatever. They’re thinking about, how do I make sure that my body is optimally functioning before I do this so that I get the benefit and the longer lasting results.
Jeff Jones: Right.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: And then the last one is GRATITUDE. And even though that’s the last one, I didn’t order them in any particular order of importance. They are all synergistic. They’re all independent. But that’s just the way I laid it out.
Jeff Jones: Thank you. And just in looking at the list, so when you said it, I took notes, but just looking at the list, there’s probably at least half of them are so simple that anyone could really do them under any conditions.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Yup. And that’s what I was like, okay, I’m not going to talk about supplements. I’m not going to talk about, because we have this silver bullet mentality, right? Oh, it’s going to be this miracle drug, this miracle cure, this miracle, and really, you’re the miracle, and all you need to do is take action every day to support your body and your body’s going to take care of you.
“All you need to do is take action every day to support your body and your body is going to take care of you.” -Nancy Miggins Click To TweetJeff Jones: What a beautiful concise message there. And how can people get ahold of you and learn more, how can they get your book?
Dr. Nancy Miggins: So my book available on Amazon, it’s Mastering the Health Continuum. And there’s also a link on my website, which is drnancymiggins.com, so D-R-N-A-N-C-Y-M-I-G-G-I-N-S.C-O-M, and there’s a link to Amazon there as well. And I also have a free daily practices planner that you can download as well, which kind of helps to position you to plan your day, and plan your practices, and create more consciousness around it.
Jeff Jones: And then do you also have online support, or coaching that you offer?
Dr. Nancy Miggins: So I am preparing to launch an online course after the first of the year. And with that, I will do live Q and A to support the program. But for information on that, the best way is to either follow my Facebook page, Instagram, or get on my newsletter lists so that you’d be kept up to date with details surrounding that.
Jeff Jones: Well, Nancy, thank you very much for your time today. This was a great conversation, and so many very practical things that people can do to improve their health, and things that they have control over in their life that they can do. So thank you very much.
Dr. Nancy Miggins: Thank you for having me.
Jeff Jones: You’re welcome.