Nick Houpt: 0:02

Welcome back to the Life Well Balanced Podcast, where we explore the connection between body, mind, and spirit, and how everyday habits can help us live longer, healthier, and more balanced lives. In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Dana Cooper, founder of Inharmony Functional Medicine and one of Florida's leading experts in gut health and holistic wellness. Dr. Cooper's story takes us from his own battle with chronic acid reflux to studying the healing practices of an indigenous tribe in Costa Rica, and ultimately to building a career dedicated to helping others restore their bodies naturally. This conversation is packed with insights that will completely change the way you think about food, sleep, and even how you breathe. In this episode, we cover why your stomach is at the center of your energy, sleep, and emotional well-being, how hidden sugars and processed foods hijack your body, and what to look for on the label, how intermittent fasting and natural resets can reduce inflammation and extend your lifespan. How deep breathing can activate digestion, balance your nervous system, and improve your brain health, how spiritual grounding, service, and gratitude play a role in whole body healing. This is one of the most transformative episodes we've recorded. Practical, spiritual, and deeply human. So take a breath, open your heart, and settle in. This is the Life Well Balanced Podcast with Dr. Dana Cooper and me, your host, Nick Haup. This episode of the Life Well Balanced Podcast is brought to you by Life Force Healing. If you've ever felt like your body is carrying stress, tension, or old patterns you just can't shake, body coding is a gentle, powerful process that helps identify and release trapped energy, restoring balance to your mind, body, and spirit. Life Force Healing is here to guide you toward realignment, resilience, and renewal. Because when your energy flows freely, you live freely. Learn more at lfhealing.com. We're also sponsored by IV Lux Infusion, a luxury mobile IV hydration service that brings wellness straight to your doorstep. Whether you're recovering from a long weekend, preparing for peak performance, or just need a boost, their licensed medical professionals deliver hydration and nutrients tailored to your body's needs. Think of it as a premium self-care administered safely and comfortably wherever you are. IV Luxinfusion, wellness redefined. Book your session today at IVLuxinfusion.com. And don't forget to use the promo code LIFEWELLBALS. Dr. Dana Cooper. It's good to see you, man. Hey, thanks for inviting me. No, thank you for coming out. I appreciate you making the drive through this stormy weather and everything. And I'm just happy to have you. You're our first person that's going to come on here to talk about really the physical body for the most part and how it operates and what we should be putting into it. Okay. And how we should be treating it and stuff. So I'm very excited about it. But I want to start with acknowledging you because I saw you do a presentation. That's how we met, and it was just in alignment with a lot of the stuff that I've been researching and looking into. And you're a great presenter, and you presented all of the information very well to where anyone could understand it. And I can tell you're a very intelligent human being. And so I want to acknowledge you for getting this message out to people, which is rare for doctors and stuff too, is creating that social media and those videos. So I just want to acknowledge you for putting yourself out there for a good cause and helping people be proactive instead of reactive when it comes to their health.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 4:36

Okay. All right. God is good. I'm happy to do what I'm doing. I love to do what I'm doing. And God willing, I'm going to keep on doing it. So I appreciate that.

Nick Houpt: 4:44

Awesome. Awesome. Well, we start with the who, what, and why. And it's a big question, but we ask a big question for big answers. And so let's start with who inspired you throughout your life to bring you to this moment here? What kind of experiences brought you here to where you are? And why do you do what you do?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 5:10

Okay, all right. That's a good question. I believe for me, I actually started my journey personally. I was having a lot of health challenges at a very early age in my early 20s. My first issue was I had a very bad stomach acid issue, acid reflux. And man, Nick, I was on like three different drugs to manage my acid reflux. It was significant. At 20. In my early 20s. And athlete, otherwise pretty darn healthy person, and just absolutely suffering with acid reflux. And there just wasn't a lot of things that were helping me within the standard allopathic medical model. And so my journey actually started with trying to take care of myself. I would later actually, after undergrad, study in Costa Rica. I actually spent time there studying the habits of the indigenous tribe, the Breberi tribe. In this, what you could call a pilgrimage, I actually started learning a lot about holistic medicine. The person who started to heal and fix my gut was also a chiropractor. I said, What is this chiropractor doing manipulating my gut? I thought it was all musculoskeletal. However, he started teaching me things about how I can work with my stomach and manipulate my hiatal hernia. And actually, that was the first time I that was like the click the light bulb on for me that there's so much that we can do naturally to heal ourselves. And so from there, that's really what motivated me to ask more questions. Not just accept, hey, this is your standard mode of treatment for something. Is there a natural way of approaching this? What more can we do? And so it really started there. That was my why. And when you learn how to do something, Nick, you almost feel responsible for not sharing it with others. You can't unhear the things that you hear in conversation when people are saying, Hey, I'm dealing with this. Well, if you know how to help a person, why wouldn't you? And so that became my why.

Nick Houpt: 7:18

Awesome. I catch myself doing that when I overhear people talking about mindset stuff and it's hard not to shift. Like, hey, by the way, even yesterday I was walking out of Publix, and these two younger, like high school guys were talking about relationships. And we have some my wife and I have a relationship product coming out and everything to help with communication and stuff. And the guy was like, the top thing about a relationship is trust. And I was like, in communication. That's great. I think it's funny. We had a woman on here a couple episodes ago that does energy healing and cleansing, and the person that started the company that she got certified in was a chiropractor too, and it was energy stuff. So that's interesting. You chiropractors are starting to expand your realms a little bit, huh?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 8:07

Largest natural health field in the United States, actually. Really? Yes, we are the largest natural health field. Yeah. I did not know. So you'll find a lot of little areas that we may specialize in, and mine would certainly be gut health. But yeah, we have a lot of different little things that we can help manipulate. Okay.

Nick Houpt: 8:27

I want to talk about gut health, but can you tell us a little more about the indigenous people that you study and what you learned from them?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 8:34

And yeah, sure. In in this time that I got to spend in Telamanca, Costa Rica, I got to there was a couple tribes that I met, but the Breberi tribe really gave me a unique experience because I got to spend a little bit of time with them. Now you have to hike to get to them. So what does this tell you? If you have to hike to get to these folks, that also tells you that they believe so much in their way of life that they will live two hours away from it from ER. So this means that they're fully immersed in what they believe. That's one thing that that caught my attention immediately. Access to get there was not, it was not easy to get there or to leave. And I think that kind of teaches us a lesson in life, too. Whenever you're going to do something, you want to go all in. You want to give it your all and your best. These people, they're all in on their land. They're living off of their plants. They grow all of their own herbs. All of their medicine is in their backyard. And so if it wasn't for traumatic fall or maybe the wrong snake bite, these people live to very long ages. They're actually a blue zone. So where you'll see most of the high density of Cincinnarians in this area. And they're beautiful people. But also, it's not always just what you put in your body, but it's their pace of life. And I think that's something that you can probably uh concur with. Pace of life makes a major difference when you're trying to live well. And so that's something that stood out to me about them. Every blue zone has like their own high antioxidant food. And so for them, it's the cacao bean. So to this day, you'll see me eating and chewing on cacao beans and all those things. And so those are some of the things that I thought really stood out to me about the experience. But it's one of those things that kind of like I said a moment ago, some things you don't unsee, and it's stuck with me thus far for my life in my career.

Nick Houpt: 10:29

You're not the first person to bring up blue zones today. So that's okay. That's funny. We actually I partnered with a nonprofit company, and the CEO is actually in Japan right now in a blue zone with with the people that run the blue zones out there, studying them. Okay some little like conference kind of thing where they get to ask questions and stuff like that. So she's out there right now. So I think that's just awesome. I I if you haven't checked out the Live to 100 Blue Zone documentary, highly recommend it, eye-opening stuff. And it is, I like that it's a way of life, not just the nutrition. And it's that socialization piece, that communication piece, that that purpose. Because what I've seen too is you have places like in Italy that have some blue zones and they're still eating pasta and everything, but it's not the pasta that you're getting.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 11:23

Certainly not our pasta in the United States, yeah.

Nick Houpt: 11:26

So let's talk about, and we might make some people mad here, but let's talk about stuff that's in our food. Okay. What do you see as some of the biggest hindrances of the stuff that we're eating here in the United States?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 11:42

Yeah. So certainly going to be processed food. There's this major emphasis that was put on processed foods, typically during wartime is when you see it. So during the Vietnam War, our country especially made this huge emphasis on processed foods. Why? Processed foods are convenient, they don't cost us as much. We can preserve them for longer periods of time. Something I share that just about everything I say is that we were eating for a period like we were at war and we're still eating that way. We're still eating the MRE, MRE diet. That's what it is. The MREs. We're still eating like that, but we're expecting to get peace in our body. And so for me, when I think of the issues that we have in our food, comes down to some sort of emphasis on convenience. And so that convenience, you can go into anything with that. That's how we've changed the composition of wheat. Gluten's been in wheat since day one. Yeah. We've always had gluten, but we've actually changed the composition of wheat so that there's more gluten or there's distorted gluten. So now how you have all of these gluten sensitivities. And so everything comes down to some sort of model of overemphasis on convenience. And so for me, it's always going to be processed foods, high starchy flours, and sometimes the oils that we consume. If we just got rid of those three things, that can make a major difference. But everything that that I run into has to do with some sort of, hey, I need to get here fast or I need this to last in my cabinet for a couple months, and nothing should.

Nick Houpt: 13:21

And then what I see too is people are like, I try to eat healthy and then my stuff goes bad. And it's you're not going to be able to do it. It could be an expense to a certain person. And it is expensive to eat healthy. And then we've tried to grow our own food and stuff here too, but Florida's just so hard to grow. It's harsh. It's harsh. It's like it's I'm fighting bugs over here, I'm fighting raccoons over there. It's like we had lettuce for a little bit and then it got infested with bugs. And if there's one, let's say three. Okay. If there are three things that you can tell someone listening right now of what they can do to change just a little bit of how they're eating to eat a little bit better, what would three of those things be?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 14:06

That's a good one.

Nick Houpt: 14:07

Okay, so I'm gonna start off with having a plan.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 14:11

Okay. Because if you didn't plan that way, if you did not plan on what you were gonna eat, you're left to the elements.

Nick Houpt: 14:18

That ties in, don't go to the grocery store. So there you go.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 14:21

And that's what they say. They say don't show up to the grocery store if you're starving because you're probably gonna make decisions that you wouldn't make if you weren't starving. Having a plan, I like to recommend for people to meal plan on a couple days out of the week. And so if you do that, then you're a lot likely, a lot more likely to make better health decisions. Another thing within diet, I would say, is in addition to getting rid of processed foods, I would say consider what you're drinking too. Because high fructose corn syrup has been snatched out of some of our drinks, and that's been going on for a long time and it's spiking our blood sugars and things like that. And so I would say also consider you're not gonna beat out water. Anything else that you're drinking is some sort of manipulation. And so you're not gonna beat out water or coconut water and things like that. The next thing that I would consider is my sleep. When we think of sleep, a lot of people don't associate this, but sleep actually is gonna dictate your hunger hormones. If you have a discinesis with sleep, or your sleep is not in sync with sarcadian rhythm, right? Sun going up and down, this is gonna ch change your hunger hormones. You're gonna find yourself being hungry early than you should be, or maybe you lose your appetite when you should have it. And so sleep is one of the most powerful modalities for health. And it's pretty darn cheap, I'd say.

Nick Houpt: 15:48

I didn't know it was tied to your hunger and everything. That's interesting. Yep. So are you hungry all the time now since you have a six-month-ball baby?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 15:56

I no, because I've I've I use another really good modality, another cheap one, fasting. So, fasting, when I put people on a fast, they're surprised because they're thinking, oh, Dr. Cooper wants me to starve. When the truth is, after those first couple days of doing a certain kind of fast, maybe an intermittent fast, the hunger starts to dissipate a little bit. They realize I'm not nearly as hungry as I thought I would be. And uh it's one of those things, too. I don't know if you've ever noticed, the later you eat, the hungrier you'll be in the morning. What you're doing is you're fluctuating insulin and it spikes up and down and up and down. If you get insulin to stay right here, right, then a lot of times you're not nearly as hungry. You're more much more satiated and satisfied. Interesting.

Nick Houpt: 16:42

Yeah. We have a cookbook and we follow this woman's Instagram. She goes by the glucose goddess. Have you seen her? Yeah. We have her cookbook, and we don't follow everything exactly, but like we get the ideas, and we're like, oh, okay, yeah, I like this and that, and I like her stuff. So we've really been looking into that. Have you seen that documentary called The Sugar Film?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 17:05

I haven't seen it. No. Jackie Film.

Nick Houpt: 17:07

The sugar film. F-I-L-M? Yep. Okay. All right. And it's a guy from Australia. He ends up coming to the US, but he doesn't eat sugar or anything. And then for three months, and he's overseen by a handful of doctors, eats just like everyone eats. And he shows how much sugar is in everything. And then in the documentary, too, he says, Instead of eating these things, I'm going to eat the sugar in them. So he'll have a salad and then he'll hold up the dressing and he puts it in in teaspoons and he goes, So this dressing is this many teaspoons. And he starts eating the teaspoons of sugar. And within that two or three month period, he was pre-diabetic from everything he was eating. And it's wild. I don't think people really understand one, the impact that sugar has, and two, that it's in everything pretty much. And you think that, oh, it's a no-sugar thing. And then you look at the other stuff that's in it. It's a sugar supplement, even worse than sugar. Can you talk about sugar and what it does to the body and then what to avoid even with those sugar substitutes and stuff?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 18:21

Yeah, sugar. It's one of those things where it's just like you said, I've got people who come to me and they're like, hey, I drank a zero drink. And nothing is zero. There's always something that's put in its place in order for us to make the consumers want to consume it. And natural sugar, right? You've got natural sugar, and then you have abomination that is the there's 70 different names for things that are going to spike your blood glucose and sugar now. There's 70, and there's another thing on the market every year, and it has a different name. And so you may look on your food label and it may say zero or maybe low sugar or something like that. But when you look in the ingredients, dextrose, maltextrose, right? You see all these little things here. There's a chance that maltodextrose dextrin and dextrose may spike your blood sugar even more than the sugar that would have naturally been in the content. I see that all the time. And so when I do a food label course, that's what I'm talking about. These are the words that you're looking for. This is a trigger word. If you see this, okay, you just need to leave it alone. There are other things like flour. If you see flour or rice flour or syrup, you should think sugar. But there's so much more. There's so many different names. The problem is, sugar is not only a neurotoxin, right? Meaning it's going to actually harm your nervous system and your brain, but actually hijacks your gut microbiome. If you keep feeding your microbiome, your gut sugar, you start growing that candida or yeast. Candida has a mind of its own. So before you know it, it's not you that has the craving, Nick. It's the candida that's lining your gut that has the craving. And so you're like, oh, I'm gonna give up sugar, and then it doesn't feel good. It almost feels like, am I detoxifying? And so there's a lot of different ways that it's hidden and that we're almost hijacked by this relationship we have with sugar. Okay. And it's everywhere, just like what we said. There's a lot of different names for it. But also, sugar is it tightens your arteries. So it actually restricts your blood vessels. So a lot of people who have elevated blood sugar or insulin spikes, they're gonna have elevated blood pressure and they're gonna have early onset dementia. There's just so many things. And so sugar, I won't call it the enemy because I don't think anything really is natively bad, but I do think it's the overconsumption. I think it's the idea that we're trying to hide it from the consumer.

Nick Houpt: 20:53

Let's talk about nutrition and dementia.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 20:56

Yeah.

Nick Houpt: 20:57

I really like that because there's a lot of studies coming out showing that nutrition and dementia are very tied together. And with my background in senior living, it's comes to play in everything. I do. Absolutely does. So can we can you touch on that? On what if I'm someone that is taking care of an elderly parent or grandparent with early stage dementia, dementia, can you educate them on the relationship between nutrition and dementia?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 21:27

Yeah. When it comes to dementia, there are many different kinds of dementia, right? There's a couple different kinds. There's like vascular dementia, there's Alzheimer's dementia, there's different types. When I think of vascular dementia, what I was saying is the arteries start to stiffen. And it's because there's too much sugar or insulin that keeps spiking in the bloodstream. When those arteries start to stiffen, the same thing can happen to your member, it can happen to your blood vessels of your arm. It can happen to your heart, it can happen to your brain. And so you'll have some people who are taking anti-diabetic medications, but they're not actually decreasing the sugar in their diet. And it's still affecting all of those other areas. So their blood glucose may be lower, but they're still depositing sugar at every point of their body. It can happen in the brain. And so if we're talking about vascular dementia, there's 100% a correlation between long-term hypertension, elevated blood sugar, and vascular dementia. So one of the things I would like to do is get sugar in all of her names out of a person's diet. The next thing I want to do is I want to help them to deflame. So if there are certain food items that is defl that's causing inflammation in their body, you have to identify what those things are. A lot of times it's the oils, right? Sunflower oils. It could be different if you have an intolerance to a thing. Certainly. But the standard ones are typically going to be your peanut oil, your seed oils, vegetable oil, not to be confused with real vegetables, your canola oil. So all of these things, they're playing a role. And so if this is in your diet, your chance for dementia is higher, vascular dementia. And that's just one of the dementia. There's many other, and they all have like an area that we can influence in a good and a bad way.

Nick Houpt: 23:18

So what are some ways that you can, when you work with your patients, that you help get that sugar out of their system? Do you just have them cold turkey, no sugar, or is there certain practices that you have them put in place, or what do you do?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 23:32

We've got a couple different systems. I do have a challenge called the Waste Watcher Challenge. And I put people in a group. I give them a diet plan based on their lab work and supplements based on their lab work that we find and a really good thorough evaluation. I may give them a diet plan, but that also means that you've got to help a person cook, right? Just because you say, hey, go eat this, that doesn't mean that it translates to, I know where to find this in Walmart, Publix, Al D, right? And so we create a system with our health coach. I have a health coach associated with my clinic who create a system whereby they check in with them and they make it more practical. Hey, Dr. Cooper said, do this. This is where you can find it. Have you tried this? Have you tried cooking it this way or preparing it this way? And so those are some ways that we make it more practical for people. It's certainly hard to just jump off of a thing. Coming off of the thing, cold turkey is sometimes not incredibly easy. And so people, they do need an early period where they're, hey, I'm backing off of if I ask you to intermittent fast, we're not going to jump straight to 18 hours. Maybe starting off at 15 hours. Hey, just don't eat. Don't wake up and grab a bite in the middle of the night. Okay, we're good there. All right, let's extend it 30 minutes. Okay, all right. In another week, we'll extend it another 30 minutes. And so you want to walk a person through that phase because guess what? When you start cutting that sugar back, not only are you hungry, but your gut bacteria, the nasty gut bacteria, they're all starving too. And then the hanger kicks in. That's yeah, and then you get upset and you ruin your relationships. I'm a hanger monster.

Nick Houpt: 25:12

Yeah, I would come home sometimes and my wife just goes, Let's get you something. Yeah, let's get you. So let's talk about the gut. I know that's an area of expertise for you. And it seems like your clinic is very hands-on, and uh you don't hear that very often. It's really good to hear. And do you want to talk about your clinic a little bit and then the gut, or do you want to talk about the gut, tie in your clinic? Or what do you want to do?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 25:35

Uh so yeah, so my goal, my goal in let's see here. So, my goal right now is to help people to balance their gut. I already told you what my experience was like coming through healthcare and the things that I felt like I needed that I just wasn't getting. My goal is to change that for people. My goal is to get people to balance their gut. And if you've ever heard a person use the term gut, it doesn't have to be associated with the flabby thing that you know mom or dad has here. Your gut health is actually the lining of your intestines and your GIs. I my goal is to help people to optimize their gut. In doing so, people lose inches off of their midsection, people sleep better, they come off of a lot of the drugs that they previously didn't need. Also, when we're talking about the gut, don't know if you know this. 92% of your serotonin we're getting from the lining of our gut. Your serotonin and dopamine doesn't come from the brain, it comes from the gut. So if you find yourself in this spindle of taking these SSRIs, serotonin reuptake drugs, then maybe you're not getting the appropriate serotonin from your gut. So the gut is such a rich place for healing. And I have firsthand experience of how when you change that, if I can change that atmosphere, we turn on your healing, you sleep better, you just live better. And I think you're nicer to each other, too. Yeah, yeah. What's that do for your energy? How does that look? It's huge, right? If your gut is not well, you're not sleeping the well the way that you'd expect. If anybody's ever had Montezuma's revenge and you're just rolling over, you're like, oh my goodness, you've got diarrhea. There's nothing like a bad stomach day. There's some bad days out there, but when your stomach is not in a good place, it wrecks everything. It wrecks your skin, it wrecks your sleep, it wrecks your metabolism. Everything can be related to gut health. And certainly energy is huge because when you fix the gut, you get your energy back, you get your neurotransmitters back. And then you can absorb nutrients more effectively. I have some people who come who've been in my clinic and they lay down on the table, they've got tums falling out of their pocket. Tums. Some providers would just throw caution to the wind. Okay, all right, let me grab that for you. Or maybe they'll pop it in their own mouth. I don't know. Me, Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, you've got Tums falling out of your pocket. What's or what's going on? And they may say, I've got acid reflux. Light flicks on again for me. So if they're taking Tums and they don't have enough stomach acid in their stomach, I know that they cannot have enough iron because you're not going to absorb iron without stomach acid. I know that they're not going to have enough calcium. I know they won't have enough vitamin D or B12. All things that could be related to your energy. So that's why your stomach is so important for me to balance it.

Nick Houpt: 28:35

We watched a cool documentary on gut health too that was just wild. It's just like, man, I you start going down a rabbit hole of health, and then you're just like, now I'll look at stuff and I'm like, I don't think I want to eat that.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 28:50

It could be a scary place because the information that you get is not always consistent. And now information is just you can get some from anywhere.

Nick Houpt: 29:00

The loudest voice there you go.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 29:02

And then people already have a classic distrust with health professionals, oftentimes, because of stigma. And so I do believe a part of the journey is a self-journey, looking in and identifying what are my triggers, doing an elimination diet, all of these. Okay, what is my trigger? And it's not always the same for everybody.

Nick Houpt: 29:22

Yeah.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 29:22

Sugar is though. Sugar is we don't eat too much of it.

Nick Houpt: 29:26

We're yeah. I man, when we cut out sugar, I felt incredible. Yeah. I felt so good. Can you give me three things someone can do, a normal person one working on taking back their health, that they can do to help treat their gut?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 29:45

To help treat the gut? Yeah. Okay, all right. So uh one one of them is gonna surprise you a little bit. One is deep breathing. Yeah, deep breathing actually, and hopefully we get an opportunity to do this a little bit, but deep breathing. Breathing actually will help you to secrete stomach acid to start breaking down your food. Okay, so that's one thing. Another thing that I would say would be fasting. Fasting is the cheapest, most powerful tool that you could use. Anybody can get their hands on it. And what it does is it resets the gut at about 12 hours, 12 to 14 hours is when your gut actually has its master reset from all of the chemicals and the dunk and donuts that we gave it the day before and all that stuff. And then another one is actually a motility. So moving. Moving is huge too. Sometimes I have some patients who, in addition to dietary change and all that good stuff, have some patients who are just too sedentary to influence their stomach to start what's called peristalsis, right? Stomach motion. And so you could be doing all the right things and be sedentary and still have gas, reflux, bloating, and all of these things. And so I'd say these would be three practical things that you can do outside of your diet that you can start doing is moving, deep breathing, especially before a meal, and certainly would be fasting. These are free.

Nick Houpt: 31:14

I've seen some things about fasting starting that there's studies starting to show that fasting can help with cancer and stuff now, too. 100%. You want to talk about that?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 31:25

Yep, absolutely. So you've got a couple different phases of fasting. And what we're talking about, intermittent fasting or time-restricted fasting, what we're saying is we're probably gonna have a period where you can eat within a certain window of time, and then we're gonna have a period where you cannot. When we're talking about intermittent or time restricted fasting in your first 12 to 14 hours, this is your overnight fast, the gut is resetting. Okay. When you go into a let's say about an 18-hour fast, now we're talking about the insulin levels dropping right precipitously. Inflammation dropping precipitously. If we get out to about a 24 to 36 hour fast, you're seeing all of these things. Plus, we're starting to see that autophagy start. And autophagy is when we start getting rid of those cells that are hurting and harming our health. It may be old proteins. A lot of these things are cancerous. And so we start to kill those things off. When we get beyond that point in the three-day zone, autophagy has really set in and we're extending our life. We're doing things like increasing growth factor. So it's a very explosive thing and it's free and cheap.

Nick Houpt: 32:40

So I start fasting and I'll get taller.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 32:43

Okay. The human growth factor would be most useful for your bones and your muscle health. But once those growth plates are closed, oh man. Better luck to our kids.

Nick Houpt: 32:55

Yeah. So I have a guilty question that I want to ask you about myself. I crack a lot. Everything cracks. What is the cause of it? Is it nutrition? Is it inflammation? What causes everything like that?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 33:12

When you say everything, show me some places.

Nick Houpt: 33:14

Fingers, fingers, ankles, shoulders, knees.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 33:18

Old athlete, any kind of sports? What kind of sport?

Nick Houpt: 33:21

Ice hockey. Ice hockey, skateboarding, snowboarding.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 33:23

Cracking herd or anything like that? No, it doesn't hurt. So we're typically, if that's your case, then we're typically the name for it, we call it a cavitation. When there's air leaving a joint space, a space between two joints, it creates this little bubble. And once we shift it a little bit, you'll hear a cracking sound, which sometimes we associate with an adjustment or snapping and things like that. Back in the day, they thought that this was harmful for your health, but we've actually debunked this. This is not bad for your health. If you can do it in your knuckle, it could be done in your spine. Now, I will say you definitely don't want to overmanipulate yourself and I see people doing stuff like that. But you can harm yourself, but if it's not causing pain and you're cracking a knuckle just from a standard motion, you're typically not harming yourself. It's a cavitation or leaving a joint space. Now, sometimes if you're a recovering athlete like I am, you have these ligaments that have been worn out and stretched over time, you have what's called a snapping syndrome. So a space in between two knuckles, that ligament will just snap from one side of the knuckle to the other. And so this is what you hear when you're doing your deep squat. It's what you're doing when you move around your ankles.

Nick Houpt: 34:34

So my ankles do that. And I'm always like, is that bad?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 34:37

Yep. No, it's not bad. You're just having a ligament that's been overstretched in the past, clicking from one side of the knuckle to the other.

Nick Houpt: 34:43

Okay.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 34:44

Yeah, completely normal.

Nick Houpt: 34:46

All right. Sometimes I'm like, I think I might be falling apart here. I think things are falling together as we age. Let's this is a guilty question for Steven. He's on his mission of so much protein. Oh, okay. All righty. So he was telling me about how hard it is to really get the amount of protein that your body requires. Do you have any input on how to get the right amount of protein or other nutrient your body needs to be the healthiest it can be?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 35:17

Yeah. So your body needs protein in just about every chemical reaction. Your body is using some form of protein or an amino acid to build it. I do think we our culture now has over-emphasis on protein itself, not to say they were overproteinized, but really we want to build together the blocks, which are the amino acids. If we can build enough of those blocks together to make the whole protein, then typically this is going to help all of these reactions in the body. There's a school of thought that you would want if you want to maintain muscle mass or gain muscle mass. And I'm okay with this school of thought unless you're 300 pounds, unless you're 250 pounds. I would say that person's probably overprotonizing if they're using that. One thing that I see is we don't diversify our proteins very well or our amino acids. Okay. I'll explain that further. A lot of times, the person who wants to overconsume in protein, we're only getting it from steak or something like that. Sort of red meat. And so my challenge to you or anybody else would be if you spread out your protein throughout the entire day, if you're getting protein at every meal, make sure that you're at least getting a couple different types of amino acids or proteins together, whether it's in eggs. Believe it or not, in ancient and biblical times, they weren't eating meat every day or every meal. Believe it or not, they were getting protein from bread. Doesn't that sound strange? Getting protein from bread. So what does that say about their livelihood? Either our bread just doesn't have what it used to have, or we're over-protonizing. So my focus is certainly getting a good amount of amino acids because that's what your body wants to use and to create proteins.

Nick Houpt: 37:08

Because I'm like learning so much here on everything you're saying to me. I'm like, man, this is good stuff. Let's jump back to the gut, but I want to tie the gut into mental health.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 37:20

Okay.

Nick Houpt: 37:20

What is the correlation there with stress, anxiety, and good or bad?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 37:27

Yep. So the first antidepressant was an antibiotic. Right. It was an antibiotic. They were giving the person an antibiotic, and somehow it actually worked as an antidepressant for that person. And this is when they realize our bacteria, the lining of our gut, plays a role in our mental health. Now, we're not treating people with depression with antibiotics now, but now we have a great understanding and appreciation that the network of bacteriums that you have in your gut and in your environment, if you've ever heard of gut flora, they actually play a major role in your actual mental health. Outside of just overall malaise and not feeling well if your stomach is well, your gut is responsible for the majority of your serotonin, your dopamine. It plays a major role in these neurotransmitters that actually gives you happiness and satisfaction. It also plays a role in your melatonin. And so if you want to sleep well, these are all the reasons why you need proper and healthy gut health.

Nick Houpt: 38:32

And I heard you shouldn't take melatonin to go to bed. Should you? Is that one of those things where it's like you could or no?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 38:42

I'm not really an all-in-nuthing kind of a person. I don't really look at very many things as bad versus good. I would say there are some people who need a little bit of a boost in some of some of their supplements or some of their neurotransmitters. There are some people who need a little bit of a boost. There's a lot of reasons why that may be. There may be people who have nutritional deficiencies for whatever reason. It could be a drug giving them a nutritional deficiency. It could be stress that gives them a nutritional deficiency. It could be our soil, which is apparently depleted in a lot of the macronutrients that we need. And it's not for me to just tell anybody, hey, you shouldn't be taking melatonin. My goal and job is to identify why you don't have enough. And there are some people who do need a temporary supplement. But it is such it is that it's a supplement. It's meant to supplement other good behaviors, a good diet, right? And then hopefully there's a mean to an end. So most supplements that I would recommend, there are some that are relatively long-term. Most of them that I recommend, they should have an expiration. Hey, you shouldn't have to take this your entire life. This is meant to supplement good behaviors while you can get the body produced ball rolling back in the right direction.

Nick Houpt: 39:59

Okay. I like that because I think with uh even a lot of medications, we run into it with our mental health practice too, where people are like, oh, this is what I'm gonna be on for the rest of my my mental health. It's just to get you off the top of the hill. Let let's put a plan in place to have you taking these medications for a little bit to get off of it to get you back to being mentally healthy. So you were talking about breath work for your gut. You want to run us through something that that we should do? You said before we eat? Sure.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 40:31

Or just anytime. Anytime. You so you always I'll tell you what I do. Okay, some of the ways that I have maintained my mental peace and mental health. One of the ways, besides praying and fasting, is deep breathing. Deep breathing is huge for me. There's a couple different benefits that you're going to get from deep breathing. One benefit is you're going to increase nitric oxide, which goes to the brain. If some of us guys and gals, we were getting in the gym in our younger days, we were taking that nose or that nitric oxide, and we said, hey, man, I need this in order to compete in the gym. And the truth is, nitric oxide starts in the nose. In the nose behind the palate is where we start actually stimulating nitric oxide. And so it's going to help get nitric oxide to the blood vessels to open the blood vessels, okay, to decrease blood pressure and relax the body. But also, we're finding that nitric oxide, we mentioned dementia earlier. Nitric oxide has a positive correlation with improving dementia. Nitric oxide has a positive correlation with decreasing vascular dementia. It's called enos. And so there's so many different benefits that we get from using from deep breathing and getting the nitric oxide. But another thing that it does is it's going to help you to, when you deep breathe, it's going to help you to start secreting the gastric juices, the stomach acid that you need to break down food as well. And so you get a lot of benefits from it. What we can do today, we'll do a quick little exercise of deep breathing if you like. Yeah, cool. Let's do it. Okay, great. So for starters, we're going to breathe out of our left nostril. Why our left nostril, you might say.

Nick Houpt: 42:16

Why our left nostril?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 42:17

There it is. So our left nostril is most associated with the right side of our brain, which is most associated with creativity, right? Mental relaxation, emotional intelligence. And so if I breathe out of my left nostril, I'm stimulating that, right? And so I'm going to breathe in through the left nostril for five seconds. Now I'm going to exhale through my mouth for 10 seconds. Were you counting? So why did I breathe out of my mouth? I exhaled through my mouth for twice the amount of time that I inhaled. This has been proven to trigger your parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for rest and digest. So what would I do? What do I do? Three times a day, I take my own prescription of deep breathing. I do a 10 seconds in, I go. Did you know what my notice what my stomach did when I did that? It went out. Yep, it went out. Most people aren't even breathing appropriately. Right? So when you breathe in, when you inhale, you should be making room for your lungs so your lungs can drop and your organs are gonna displace and move forward. This is diaphragmatic breathing the appropriate way. What do we mostly do when we take a deep breath in? Chest breathe. Okay. So what does my breathing exercise look like 10 seconds in? Out through the mouth, 20 seconds. Listener, if you're a person who could not do that, maybe you didn't breathe in completely in those first 10 seconds, so you didn't have enough to exhale for the next 20 seconds. Maybe there's something that's clogging up your nose. Maybe there's some sort of deviated septum and it's hurting your sleep. These are all things that we could easily check on ourselves. This is a pathway that you don't want to mess up. You want this to be your go-to. You want to be able to trust this. If you're in between one meeting to the next meeting, you do what I do, breathe in one way and then out the other way. I do with this for five minutes straight when I'm going from one meeting to the next. And I'm willing to bet you, after you've done this, you feel better, you're a whole lot nicer to people around you, your blood pressure's coming down, you're ready to rest and digest. Okay. And you've actually dilated your blood vessels so that you can relax. This also stimulates your vagus nerve. Heard of vagus nerve stimulation? If we want to take this to the next level, so I've already showed you the nostril that we're going to use. I already showed you how we're going to make room for the lungs and the diaphragm. The next thing we're going to do, we're going to take it to the next level. We'll breathe in five seconds. When I breathe out, I'm going to the same amount of time. And what we've proven we can get three times the amount of nitric oxide just by adding the hum to this activity. If you do this, you will be happier. You'll be nicer. You'll probably have a more life well balanced as well.

Nick Houpt: 45:45

That leads us right into my next question, which is perfect. What does a life well balanced look like to you?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 45:55

It's a moving target, if I'm being honest with you. I think we have this perception that balance is easy, right? But I think balance, I think balancing is an act, meaning you're always in the act of rebalancing. You have different things that happen in life. And I think what happens is we get frustrated when things are not the same as they were, and we're just trying to keep things afloat. And so there's a couple different ways that I would say that I nurture my balance. One thing is I'm always doing something that I love. Everything I don't do a great deal of things that I don't believe in and love. I'm always serving people. I believe that's important. I'm always connecting the people. I believe connecting to people is integral when you want to have happiness. I exercise, I meditate, I spend more money on experience than I do on things. So all of these things are a part of how I'm keeping myself balanced. And when I stay true to those things, I get balance plus happiness.

Nick Houpt: 47:01

Love it. I love it. So for our listeners, where can they find you?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 47:06

Great. I'm glad that they would ask. So there's a couple different ways that you can find us. You could find my clinic, which is a virtual functional medicine practice, at inharmonywellness.com. We do treat and see patients throughout all of Florida. Okay, so you can find us throughout all of Florida, inharmonywellness.com. If you were looking to reach us by way of phone, you can text us gut health at 386-287-2755. You can always text gut health to 386-287-2755, and somebody will respond and they love to help by any way that we can to help you and your family get your gut back in order. We also have a free and waived consultation. So if you call and say, hey, a consultation, somebody will assist you. They'll give you a phone call and they'll let you know exactly what we do and how we can be of service. Awesome.

Nick Houpt: 48:05

I feel like we could go for hours because there's just so many important things that I want to keep asking you and everything. If there is one takeaway that you want listeners to get that we haven't talked about, what would that be?

Dr. Dana Cooper: 48:20

If you haven't noticed on my shirt, it says eat more like Jesus. The actual foundation of all of the principles that I've learned and developed when it comes to balance has been in my faith. We may not have the same belief, all of us, but I can tell you with great certainty that my knowledge, my understanding, my growth as it pertains to balance, I learned all of these things in the Bible. I learned how to manage my relationship with my brothers and sisters. I learned how to fast. I've learned to respect seasons of sowing and to respect the seasons of reaping. I've learned how to be patient. I've learned how to rest and I've learned how to prosper. And so a lot of the practical things that I've learned have been in my faith and has been in the word in the Bible. And if you don't know, the Bible has at least 4,000 years of historical data on how to manage situations, how to manage relationships, and all the things that I've shared. And I would hope that the things that I share would convey that to you today.

Nick Houpt: 49:28

Awesome. So at the end of every episode, we do a speed round. Okay. And it's called balanced or unbalanced. So I'm going to ask you some questions. You're going to say if it's balanced or unbalanced, you can elaborate more on it if you want. If we keep moving, that's fine too. You ready? Balanced or unbalanced. Working out seven days a week.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 49:49

Unbalanced. You can over-work out, you can over-exercise. I see it in your gut health all the time. Over-exercising can give you leaky gut too. Interesting. Yep.

Nick Houpt: 50:01

Balanced or unbalanced. Skipping meals during a busy day. Could be balanced. You're also like, you can skip meals not a busy day. Waking up before sunrise for meditation. Balanced. I didn't even know that you meditated when I put these questions. Balance. Blue light exposure before bed.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 50:23

Oh, unbalanced. Please stop the blue lights. You're tricking your brain into thinking that it's beginning of the day. And it's apparent because your sleep rhythms are thrown off. If your sleep rhythm is thrown off, everything else is. We can attest to that. Yep. Use your blue light screen protectors and cut that on your phone. I don't know what kind of phone you have, but shut those off after sunset.

Nick Houpt: 50:49

Balanced or unbalanced. Coffee as breakfast. Balanced. Right. Listening to your body over your to-do list. Balanced. Resting when your body says stop, even with a packed schedule. Balanced. Micromanaging health data instead of living your life.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 51:13

Unbalanced. Unbalanced.

Nick Houpt: 51:15

I was curious what you were going to say to that one. Gratitude is a daily health practice.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 51:21

Balanced.

Nick Houpt: 51:22

Balanced or unbalanced. Coming on the Life Well Balanced podcast.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 51:27

Balanced. All right. You should come here.

Nick Houpt: 51:30

Let's go. This has been great, man. I truly appreciate you coming out. I'm so happy that you came up and we got to sit down, and I think we should have you come on again so we can just keep going some more. I think there's so much to unpack. Like one hour just doesn't do it justice. I think we just opened the can, if anything. Yeah. So thank you so much. I truly appreciate it.

Dr. Dana Cooper: 51:52

Absolutely.

Nick Houpt: 51:53

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