welcome to new beginnings with karen delk where i am so pleased to have dr aleo brown who is founder of health healing hope habits and should be talking to us about the power of healing and how she came up with this concept so welcome thank you for having me here yeah i'm so i was really looking forward to having you on the show i focus on a variety of topics not so much on health and it was great to learn about your being a physician and going to seminary school and you know what you're developing here so i just couldn't wait to explore what you are you know what you're thinking how you how you approaching this whole health and wellness concept yes as a cardiologist i found that my pick my patients need it more than just the regular prescription and so i decided to do a few things couple of things actually i went to school for integrative medicine that i can learn and how i can integrate other things such as eastern medicine practices herbs and different practices that you can do to help your health and i went to seminary right in the backyard here princeton theological seminary because what i found was that the prescription the medical prescription that's traditional we give is not  holistic we're not treating our spirits and so if we're not treating our spirits we're not treating our whole body and so for me holistic medicine mind body and spirit medicine with the most important thing yeah yeah i love that so did was there i harm moment or something that happened that kind of awakened this in you because going through traditional medicine and to be a cardiologist is a specialist so i'm wondering what triggered that so i found myself actually praying with my christian patients either in the hospital or even in the office and from that i realized that the ones that i was praying with or had a deep spiritual connection were the ones that were more likely to recover quicker from their illnesses i also found that when i was giving different medical prescriptions such as mindfulness relaxation meditation and even prayer those patients were doing better so in any traditional practice thirty percent of patients will get better thirty percent will stay the same and another thirty percent will be worse is that the the rule of thirty percent year and i saw it in my medical practice and i really wanted to make sure that i could get that to fifty percent even just add another additional twenty percent of people getting better living holistically and living a full life i have another concept living d free defray for me means having no disease having no disability and having no dependency and i want to make you better and heart your physical heart and then you're disabled and you can't walk up a flight of stairs but you're living what got a living is that i wanted to make sure that my patients could tap into their spiritual body their mental body and th physical body to obtain true healing i love this really love this in our fast paced high tech more connected but disconnected you know we may sit next to each other we're texting we're not talking the power of dialogue the power of touch you know i feel that that is a part of where your you know what you're talking about kind of the the whole person absolutely so part of the age of habits is what habits are you doing not only from a physical standpoint of exercising thirty minutes or eating the right food but what spiritual habits are you for me are you communing with other believers that are similar to you for me is not all about christianity is also about judaism and islam and and  sikh religion or even hindi they all have different facets where they can commune with one another and up tain those good hormones that are released when you're communing with fellow believers and so part of my prescription may be not only have you pray your fat prayers that day but also have you gone to the mass or have you gone to church every you have fellowship even in your own home the early church fellowship at home with the last time you just had a fellowship at home with fellow believers not necessarily your family or your friends but breaking bread around the table and really thinking about what truly matters well this is so powerful so divinity school how did that come about because i can see and i understand praying with your your patients yes it sounds like you make a true connection you have a great bedside manner but how does that translate to going to divinity school that's the same question my husband so what i will say is that i took my first job  right after training in two thousand and ten and when i got to my job was so excited about it i was in one of the rooms reading  echo and a woman came into the room and she was so excited because she had just gotten her twenty five year pin of working in the hospital and i thought came into my brain i will never be here for twenty five years now i've had all of this training all of these years been looking to do exactly what i was doing and right after that i truly believe i heard in my spirit no you will not be here for twenty five years you have a higher purpose and you will be going to divinity school and i was setting saying to myself what do you mean i've had enough school really tryin g but from that moment on i journey towards going to princeton theological seminary and it took me thirteen years to get there but i did fulfill that calling because i truly believe it was a calling to go and so i don't own lee incorporate spirituality into my medical practice but i am a minister a licensed minister at my church first baptist church of lincoln gardens where i work very i am charge of the women's ministry and we're closely with the ministry as well as global missions i've been a medical missionary to haiti  for about seven years now and all of that work is very important to me so i don't know only just pray for my patients and give them a spiritual prescription that's my healing there but i also work in the church in a committed to religion and teaching people how they can form their spiritual lives and how can they form their spiritual lives so it's all about growing closer to christ or growing closer to god or or deepening your faith in your religion and so one of the things i teach consistently a part of the habits that i teach is meditation slowing down centering yourself and allowing your mind to just get rid of all the junk that we put in it all day and so studies have shown that twenty minutes of meditation every day will reduce your heart rate will reduce your blood pressure and keep you well and so i recommend from a christian perspective meditating on god's word and so growing closer to god and growing closer in your faith whatever it may be means reading your bible studying the word reading your coverage even for your now for yourself and so then that way you could hide the word in your heart so that when you're out there struggling you can have the word to help nourish you when you're out there in joy you could have the scriptures of praise and worship you can really get to know god because you're spending that time with god so meditation is a big part of one in it and one of some of the things that i recommend but also journaling taking the time even a thousand points to just be alone with your thoughts and with god and then other habits that i recommend are really the exercise because even if you're on the treadmill you can put some praise and worship music or and music therapy is good for your soul and so those are the things that i did generally recommend for miss beer to prescription yeah so i can see you know i  know your pastor i mean i don't know him personally but obviously he's highly regarded yes and i can imagine that the parishioners relate to all that you're saying but if i'm coming in and i want to see you as a cardiologist how do you introduce this whole person you know the health habits in the whole if i'm not there how do you make that transition so the name of my practice is designed for wellness because i truly believe when we were designed we were designed for wellness wellness means not only a physical wellness but a mind body spirit wellness so as a patient coming in what i see you for the very first time generally abhisit is at least forty five minutes to an hour and because i want to tap into what your physical complain is but i also want to tap into your mental complaints as well as your spiritual come because they're all interconnected so if you come in with a physical element of chest pain your chest pain main that be related to anything structural within your heart your chest main may be related to the stress and anxiety that you're feeling at work or at home it may be related to depression from things that have been going walley your life for a long period of time and it may be really related to just being overwhelmed with just whatever is on your mind and so we do know that there is something called psychosomatic so your psychological problems  this function within your body but i truly believe there's something called spiritual for mr manic as well if you're spiritually depleted and you've lost all hope you've lost all faith you've lost it all that can also cause somatic problems within your batting and so that's wise important for me to find out what's going on with you from a spiritual as well as a mental problem because nine times out of ten when a forty on those are the things we have to cure and those are the things we have to heal and if we don't heal that you're going to leave out of my office maybe with a prescription to help with your palpitations or to help with your chest pain but i haven't treated the root point you can treat the physical ailment but if the person is returning to a toxic work environment the tasks toxic home environment they're not fortified in their mind their mindset you know it's you i love the word depleted and you're right you're only treating the symptom but not the root cause exactly that's the work yeah so are your patients appreciative of the thorough approach that you have do you have to do a lot of convincing do they get it you know or do  do you know is your avatar already fully aware and they're on board most of them get it ok i would be foolish if i said they all get it because there are patients out there who truly understand and they get it but it still doesn't connect with them so it's just like riding the bike the first time you ride it you might fall off a few times the second time even the same and the third time you may be able to pedal and get there and then you're off to the races but you have to consistently do it even if you haven't written a bike for twenty years when you first get on it you might have to pedal a few times before you get to the end product and so what i what i find with people is that the first few times of this sitting alone and meditating or just really thinking about themselves and tapping in some of them will get on that bike and keep it riding and keep moving and the others will just stop after the first few times and say this isn't working and so yes it does take a bit of convincing it does take a bit of time to get there and it does take a lot of work because you really thinking about you from a different perspective so who right and you're trying to peel the layers off that you can really get into the  inside many of us don't even know who we are because we put that mask owen and is on so deeply that even when we take it off we scare ourselves so it is a it is a lot of work yeah i think by patients who are willing to do the work a very appreciative they see the end result and they like but it is also a continuous thing just as if i lose the thirty pounds today and i'm back in my two piece for the summer if i don't keep up that worked right next summer i'm in that one piece again right that's right that's why we have to think about that with our mental and spiritual selves as well is a daily walk absolutely absolutely i thoroughly understand that so when i'm not doing this for princeton t v i'm an executive coach and the the peeling you know self discovery authenticity and removing the mask is what i do but not from a clinical standpoint and i you know i understand all of what you're what you're talking about and i think that medicine has a lot to learn about your approach how are your colleagues whether they're cardiologist or other general practitioners how do they do how do they engage you in  what you're doing great so i went to the university of arizona under dr andrew wiles program for integrative medicine to two year distance learning fellowship and so from the mental perspective  last of colleagues are getting it this program has been up and running for many years and we're developing fellowships with internal medicine and family medicine training so that they can learn how to integrate other things with in the regular prescription most of integrative medicine and doctors are on california so they are one of the cut out who's going to say countries they're trying to be their own but they're one of the states who are for thinking in terms of our health and so there's much many more physicians on that side of the country who are doing some similar things that i'm doing not necessarily all of the spiritual part now in my fellowship we did learn about spiritual medicine and how it can really help and impact our clients lives but we don't we many of us don't incorporate it on the level that i'm incorporating it and so my colleagues on on the east coast are still a little treading water in the concepts that i give out and i went and spoke with someone just the other day and they're like what are you doing are you given a real prescription well they're all prescription if you come in and you have high blood pressure i'm not going to stop your high blood pressure medicine i'm going to make sure you're taking and consistent and you're doing all of the other things like that and exercise and changing all of those good habits but at the same time i'm going to tell you to slow down because our blood pressure is high because we're stressed out we're running or we're not eating the right things or having too much thought it all works so from that perspective you have to treat your your from the western perspective and that may be medications that are prescription there may be herbal medications that can be beneficial to you they may be slowing down in coming your stress and inside there may be dealing with fill in the  k but we have to have it all as though some some doctors are weary because they want told that you can have it all right but i think that for the doctor who's been out there seeing that their patients are not compliant they're coming back with the same problems they're having their second or third heart attack they're continuing to smoke they're realizing that we've got to do medicine different we've got to be able to help our patients to live longer lives i want them to put me out of business as a physician if i care for my patients i don't want to see or i want to be able to give you a prescription that you can live a health right healing means that healing is out there mass a mysterious thing that we think of in our mind that healing is true and once was we realized that you can get a healing that gives you that hope to keep on get keep on going and changing those habits the habits that we feel are the foundation they laid the foundation for all of us to get to all of that other things the healing the hope all of the habits that my biggest surprise really truly is the fact that more doctors are not saying you're absolutely right that's been my biggest surprise because we see so much noncompliance in this country to be the country that we are and being almost at the bottom tier of medicine and health in the world i would think that more doctors would say we do need to do something better but their western minds have cost him to say we need to do something better but find a new drug or find a new cure or find a new procedure western medicine has its place but we can't be over to the right just says eastern medicine can't be all the way over to the left if we bring all three together we can really start living stronger healthier lives when you look at the countries that have the best health those countries a better lifestyle have better health care in terms of giving it to their their their clients and their their their country and they do different things they take time during the day instead of thirty minutes which we don't get in these days they might give two hours off for people to relax and to go out to the beach yes they live in a better  t climate but if we look at the health of denmark and norway in those places as well they're cold most of the time but their health is even better than ours and so when we when i look at other physicians and they're wary about trying to do medicine differently that's been my biggest surprise because for me is all about the client is all about the patient and getting them to optimal health and it's not always a new pill a new procedure that's going to get them there yeah you know it makes me also think about the overprescription that's been going on in the in the in the u s for sure and some of your integrative you know health practices of meditation exercise reflection would as you said make the person go deeper but it also may reduce the need to treat you know through opioids or other things because people are more in touch with themselves and they're more spiritually centered you know whoever they worship they're more spiritually centered absolutely when we look at the open opioid crisis in this country outside of knowing that this is not something new  we've had a problem with addiction for many many years it's just a different subset of folks are really or actually the entire country is seeing that this is a problem and so if we think about the opioid itself what is it do to its body and its mind it takes you somewhere to either allow you to be something that you aren't to be able to handle the situations that you're in and to have a feeling of happiness all of the time or most of the time at least when you're doing it right and so if we think about that as a quite says then we have to really be reminded of what put that person there what were they seeking now yes there are some people who are addicted to opioids because of a chronic illness absolutely that's been there we know that but the population of people who are just looking to get high to get out of their situation to be removed of their own reality there we have to think about that onion underneath what was the cause and once we can get to that cause we can definitely reduce the oped the desire to be outside of oneself because that's where it starts yeah you know one person may try an opioid but have a great life and say that's fine to just do every now and then  person who gets addicted to it it may just be because they need to get away get away from their own life and the problem is the depression or anxiety or the stress or the things that they can't handle  right that's why we need to dig deeper right now absolutely and you know the practices that you're you're you know you're prescribing like you said it is real medicine people i'm assuming are finding that they have less depression and less anxiety and that they are feeling more hopeful absolutely that's absolutely and i always tell my kyra is this one thing that if you look at some stud some studies have proven that if i give you a little pill or i tell you to go in exercise and you're depressed when you come back to my office in three months those who receive the pill and those who exercised have improved the same way and so that tells me that if i can build on that and give them more help help in strengthening their religious  practices in strengthening their understanding of the situation that they're in through journalling that that much more that much better and there are studies that are out there just trying to even look at stress an of them are coming out positive that adding all of those other avenues to helping your healing makes you even better than just getting the pill or the procedure and going home absolutely i think what you're doing is tremendous i applaud your approach i think it definitely helps because it engages the mind in the body in the spiritual side just as you said so i wish you all the best and you so thank you for appearing thank you so much this is going great and you know i always just want to get the message out mind body spirit we were all designed for well yes absolutely absolutely thank you d leroy brown thank you care and thank you for tuning into new beginnings with karen