The Power of Self-Healing
Dr. Fab Mancini
Jonathan: Hey everyone Jonathan Bailor back with another bonus, Smarter Science of Slim Podcast. Very, very excited about today’s show, were going to have some fun and we’re also going to hit on some pretty amazing topics. We are talking to a pretty amazing guy here. When I first went to his website and started learning a bit about him, I was like okay there is definitely some sizzle here but what about the steak? Is there some steak? And then I started reading more about him and this individual is doing an amazing amount of good in the world.
He is not only an author of a bestselling book, ‘The Power Of Self-Healing’, he’s not only internationally claimed educator and the President of America’s Parker University but he does a lot of philanthropic work, which is just amazing. In fact, he has numerous honors, including Heroes for Humanity, Humanitarian of the Year, CEO of the Year and an induction into a wellness revolutionary’s hall of fames.
So, when you check out this individual, be sure to look deeply at what he’s doing because not only is there some awesome obviously main stream sizzle which we all need so we can get this message out there, but there is some amazing steak there below the surface and really working to heal people from the inside out. In fact, that is the title of his book, ‘The Power Of Self-Healing’. Dr. Fab Mancini welcome to the show brother.
Dr. Mancini: Thank you Jonathan, I am so excited. I’ve been a big fan of yours for a while and just to have the opportunity to have this conversation and really go deep as to, what are the things that people really need to consider doing in order to shift what it is that is not working for them in their lives.
Jonathan: Dr. Fab the key reason I wanted to have you on the show is that you do a great job of getting the message out there. You know what needs to be done to get the mains stream to listen and that is awesome because those are the people who need this right. There’s this 1% of brilliant people, they are people who listen to my show. They already get it, they understand it and they just keep listening because they want to just keep going along that path but there is another 99% of our population that don’t yet understand the hard science behind self-healing. Can you tell us about that?
Dr. Mancini: Well you bring a very good point and last night I was having a conversation with someone and we were discussing the fact that we are not having this conversation at a mass level, so there’s many of us that are actually going through many opportunities to share this message through our websites, through our lectures, through our workshops, through our online courses etc. but the one thing that we are missing is the fact that society is being conditioned to behave in a certain way by the commercials they watch, by the programming on television that they watch, by the radio shows on national and international radio and unfortunately, our message get a little bit lost in that big mass of information that they’re getting.
So, for what I decided to do is begin to use older main, mass levels of communications. I started with books and I have written four books, my first book actually was ‘Chicken Soup For The Chiropractic Soul’, one of the bestselling books of chicken soups of all times and the reason was because I felt I needed to leverage the branding of something that was having a tremendous, phenomenal success in the literary work and the literary world and I knew that as a Chiropractor, we were having a hard time getting this message of, you can heal naturally.
You’ve got to pay attention to your nervous system or perhaps adjustment of your spine is better than a pill or a surgery. It was a huge success and we sold hundreds of thousands of books and we got the message out there and got thousands and thousands of people into holistic care providers, primarily Chiropractors and then I started playing with radio and my last publisher said, why don’t you do a radio show? I started talking about, everything that I am talking about for 23 years but now, with an audience of almost 2.5 million people every week and I am saying to myself, okay.
This is working and then I started getting invited to television. My first television show last year when my book came out was Dr. Phil. He’s been a close friend and a patient for many years and he is like ‘How many people did you reach last year on your speaking tour?’ I said ‘About 80,000’, and he said, ‘Well today, you’re going to reach 14 million people’, in one show. I said to myself, ‘Wow’, and he said ‘That’s the power of television’. So, then I started getting invited to do more television shows and now I’ve been on a many, many shows. So, I think this is a really important message because this information is critical and there’s never been a greater time for people to hear it.
Jonathan: Dr. Fab the thing that gives me so much hope. Not only seeing individuals such as yourself out there making mass change but also we seemed to be at a, let’s call it a wellness renaissance in the sense that I think in the past, the mainstream has been receptive to alternative approaches but some of those alternative approaches were not backed in science. They were a bit more backed in not science, let’s say, but we do have an emergence of hugely powerful science really showing even at the molecular level the body does have the ability to heal itself and for example if you break your leg and you put it in a cast, we’ve known for a long time that the body will heal itself but what you talked about is that can work on much more than just broken bones .
Dr. Mancini: It does and primarily this is, I mean, I’ll summarize it for you. Our biggest challenge right now is chronic illnesses and chronic illnesses are primarily there because of what I call the cause of them and that is life style choices. It’s interesting because traditional medicine is failing miserably, because drugs and surgery are now the answers to 80% of our conditions, which are what we call the chronic illnesses. These are your heart conditions, these are your strokes, these are your diabetes, these are your cancers, these are your arthritis etc. and if you’re listening right now, picture this.
Your body is designed from inside out to have all the systems in place, all the organs in place, all the cells in place to be able to allow you to be healthy, to maintain a level of what we call in science, homeostasis, which is balance in other words. What happens is that we have stressors in our lives, internally and externally and some of our stressors could be what we eat, other stressors could be traumas in our lives, accidents etc.
Other stressors are mental stressors which is the stresses of worrying, anxiety, fear, those things that create changes in chemistry, changes in our bodies, and then of course we have a bigger stressor that I talk about in the book and that’s the science of spirituality. That is that most of us are not feeling connected to anything greater than ourselves, so we feel like an island. Anytime we have stressors that are happening to ourselves or traumas in our lives, we feel like we’re not capable of surpassing it because we feel all alone.
So, with the body is designed to handle all these stressors but on a short term basis, and what’s happening right now is, because of our lifestyle choices, which is primarily what we eat, how much we exercise, what we think whether we’re positive or negative, how much spirituality or how much faith or meditation we do in our lives. Those things done properly can actually be very healing, but when they’re not done properly can be very stressful and what happens is that when your body is in a stressful environment for long period of times, it creates inflammation in the body.
Inflammation is being linked to almost every single condition out there because it’s the body’s natural response to say ‘I’m trying to help you but I’m broken down, I can’t do it long term’. Inflammation short term like when you sprain your ankle, you see that your ankle swells up. Well, that’s because the blood rushes into the area and if you think of the blood being like construction workers that are rushing into an area, they’re repairing the area. They’re going to be working for 6 hours, they’re going to be working for 12 hours maybe 24 hours and they’re supposed to then leave the area once they finish their work. Well, if your ankle is being worked on for months, which is what’s happening in chronic illnesses, then the body breaks down and then it now begins to tear tissue down and cells cannot work properly and then that’s when we have the issues long term that our being so costly and creating so much of the suffering today.
Jonathan: Dr. Fab, I so appreciate you bringing up that analogy of spraining your ankle because it does seem like so much of the approach that the mainstream continues to tell us is, so you’ve broken your ankle, you’ve severely sprained your ankle, well here is a brace that you can strap on it and just continue to run around, continue to do whatever caused you to break your ankle in the first place.
Just strap this brace on and then we wonder why five years down the road, we have to get our leg amputated because there is this like this horrible infection because we didn’t take the time to actually heal the underlying cause. So, what are some of those most common ‘braces’ we’re told to apply metaphorically that masks symptoms but don’t actually solve the problem?
Dr. Mancini: Well, I mean unfortunately and I’ve been dealing with this work for 20 something years and being in many environments; governmental, corporate etc. to discuss the solutions of health care and the bottom line is that we are dealing not with health care system, we are dealing with the sick care system. That means that we enter the system only when we are sick, when we have symptoms and I’ve often said that the symptoms are only the alarm system of the body. It’s like having a fire alarm in your kitchen and all of a sudden you’re cooking and the smoke rises up and it sounds the alarm.
It can be very annoying and you want to just do whatever it takes to stop that alarm because you’re like, please turn that thing off. So, some of you are going put a tape on that speaker and it’s going to muffle the sound and maybe you don’t hear as much but that does not do anything to the smoke or the potential fire behind the smoke. Well, some of you are going to yank that thing out of the ceiling or take the battery out and that’s what metaphorically for surgery just to make it stop but did that help in any way with the warning signs that you have smoke that may have fire behind it.
Well, that’s what we’re doing to our bodies every day. So, the bottom line is that we have to pay attention to our symptoms. Our symptoms are only the way of the body communicating with us saying, ‘Hey man you’re doing something that’s not helping me and I’m trying all that I can but my systems are being broken down’. It’s like being on a treadmill, you’re running on a treadmill and for a short period of time the treadmill can be very great. It can be very healing, it can be, it’s going to tone your bodies, it’s going to give you more energy, it’s going to make you feel good, but try to do a treadmill for hours after hours, you start breaking down. Well, that’s exactly what’s happening right now and some of those masking is the fact that we’re dealing with that system that patients have been conditioned that it’s all about stopping the pain.
Do whatever you’ve got to do but just please stop the pain or it doesn’t matter what it cause because my company may be paying for it or I have good insurance etc. Well, that’s not working anymore as you know, insurances are getting are so expensive that companies, companies are actually spending more money on insurance than the products and services that they buy or they supplied for their customers. Harvard just had a study two years ago that say over 50% of Americans were financially bankrupt because of health issues.
So, that means that health is really having an impact in our lives more than ever before and you know what is amazing Jonathan? Is that the answers are simple, the answer is just to pay attention, to reflect upon what is happening, how did I get to this world of insanity, in which I keep doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results? How is it that we get to such a point that we stopped listening to our bodies and now we are listening to whatever commercials we’re seeing on TV, if you take this pill this is going to happen or whatever.
Most people don’t even know where or what comes after that announcement which is all the side effects that are usually worse than the symptom that you are trying to alleviate. So, we’re living in this world of insanity, but we’re being conditioned because of what is called repetition. The more you hear something, the more you think it’s actually reality or a fact and you just have to surround yourself with a world that is going to be working for you and it’s going to allow you to be as healthy as you want to be.
Jonathan: Dr. Mancini, surrounding ourselves with that world that will combat us against what you rightly identified as a lie told often enough, becomes the truth and we need to move away from that. So, you are doing amazing things. You’ve given testimony to the Whitehouse Commission for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and served on the Texas Governor Advisory Board on physical fitness and you do a lot of work to help keep the Hispanic community informed on healthy habits.
Now, Dr. Mancini one thing I really want your insight on, is a lot of what we hear about in terms of wellness, least on the surface, sometimes seems like it may be targeted at the 1%, like go to this really high end grocery store and buy these really high end foods, and go to your spa and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah but clearly, that is not a viable option for much of the population. So, what can we do, like you said change the world? What can we do to do this on a mass scale?
Dr. Mancini: Well let me give you the example of something that I was very honored to be a part of and that in the country of Mexico, 125 million people, I was called about seven years ago because the Governor of the State of Mexico, which is the largest State in Mexico, which is almost 30 million people, they wanted to introduce healthcare professions that were holistic in nature.
So because I’ve been in this field of not only as a practitioner for 10 years but also as an educator and President of Parker University for over 13 years, they asked me to come in and be able to guide the Secretary of Health and the Secretary of Education in how do we integrate this into the country. So, then what I do usually in these types of meetings, I listen and I find out what is their pain, what is their challenge and there were two.
I found out that 95% of their healthcare cost in that country is paid by the Government and I found out that their satisfaction rate of their residence or citizens was somewhere around 30%. So, the patients were, the people were not happy with the healthcare system they were getting. So, then I decided, okay how do we do this? So, we decided to open a University that was holistic in nature that was going to have Chiropractic, Acupuncture, another degree called Gerontology Rehabilitation, all the natural holistic premises that are going to be able to shift the way that country handle their healthcare system challenges and then I said, now we’ve got to put this into practice.
Now, we’ve got thousands of people in school but how do we put it into practice. So, we started with seven pilot hospitals in which we started replacing medical doctors with holistic practitioners and we noticed the two things that we wanted the most happened immediately. Some hospitals were able to rate, I mean lower their cost by almost 50%. Some were between 30 and 50% and the satisfaction rate by the patients went up from 30% to over 80%.
So, it was so successful that all of a sudden we opened up another University in a different city of the same State and now that same Governor became the President of the country and now has decided to do that all over the country and began to expand this holistic perspective. The interesting thing is that the approach of the holistic practitioners is a very natural, holistic approach but also one that engages the patient into making sure that the lifestyle choices are being paid attention to. So, they’re teaching them how to eat healthier, how to maybe move their bodies a little bit more, how to think more positive and it’s working. I then got a phone call that said that the Governor is so pleased with the success of the project that they took one of the brand new leading Universities and they named their library after me and then, during their ceremony, my mom flew in and my family and he says well this is the first time in the history of Mexico that we have named a public building after a non-resident or non-citizen of Mexico or a living person.
I’m sharing that story for you to understand one thing. You’ve got to think big, we’re not thinking big enough and when you get called in to be able to participate in something that matters, you make the time for that, no matter how busy you are but nothing matters more that you. I often say this, you know Jonathan we have a car and we don’t take care of our car very well and we don’t wash it often. We let it get scratches or dents or whatever and then we trade it in two years later, five years later whatever or we buy an apartment or house and we don’t take care of it and then we just trade it in but our body is one thing you can’t trade in and our bodies, if you take care of it.
Science has already determined that you can live up to 120 years old but look at the senior citizens of today. Look how many people are living in assisted living, look how many people that are now developing what they called dementia or Alzheimer’s disease which was unheard of 30 years ago, 50 years ago. Now, it is one of the fastest epidemic of people over 55. Yes, 55. You can’t remember your name, you can’t remember where you are, and then unfortunately, ultimately kills you.
These are the, look at the depression statistics, over 25% of kids, listen to this, over 50% of Americans, adult Americans are on antidepressants or in some form but the latest statistic show that twenty five percent of kids under the age of sixteen are on their anti-depressant and I’m saying to myself, what is a kid has to be depressed about?
I can understand that an adult maybe things are not working, maybe relationship issues, lost their jobs, but a kid, that is supposed to be the happiest time of your life and none of this medication has long term studies that show what the impact is going to be on those kids when they turn 50, when they turn 60 and that is why I get alarmed by where we are heading as far as the health care or the sick care system in the world.
Jonathan: Dr. Fab you hit on the two teach, to that I am so excited I can’t to talk. You hit on two things that are so key there and one is the scope of the problem but also the scope of the opportunity and I think what we have to be hopeful for, which is as you described with your work in Mexico when people start to take these simple steps, and they are simple, it is not complicated.
It is amazingly simple, it might not be easy in today’s modern world but it is simple, the results are so deeply needed, they’re so needed and they are so compelling that if you just give it a shot like when you are on your work you talk about 21 days. I often talk about 30 days, just try it, and there you go. You’ll be done, you’ll be good because the results are so powerful aren’t they?
Dr. Mancini: Well it’s interesting that you mentioned that Jonathan because, when you say simple, it’s more simple than we even think. So, let’s take for instance the fact that you’re working, you have 30 minutes for lunch and you feel like you have to rush and go to a fast food place. Fast food places first of all are not very cheap anymore. They used to be cheap but now, they’re getting more and more expensive. Number two, I tell people, I say look what about buying some vegetables and fruits and what about making a smoothie and you don’t even have to come home and do it, just make it before you go to work, take it to work, put it in the refrigerator and then have it during lunch or have it during dinner.
You realize that not only are you getting all the requirements that you need as far as your daily nutrients, you’re going to get more energy, you’re not going to go through this fatigue after lunch, especially in Texas. Mexican food is very big over here and you notice that all the Mexican restaurants are full during lunch and then those individuals go back to work and they going to do like a siesta or something because their bodies are functioning at a 30% level in what productivity they’re going to give that employer that is paying for that.
Not only that but look at what they’re doing to their bodies and now, they’re going to be gaining more weight and they’re going to be feelings upset stomachs or all those kind of things. It is so simple, so I showed somebody recently how long does it take to make a smoothie, and it was less than five minutes. I’m talking about just talking all their stuffs out of their refrigerator and put it in a blender, blending it, putting in all the stuff that’s really healthy and then drinking it five minutes or less and people still would say that’s too complicated, that is the part that I don’t understand.
Jonathan: Well Dr. Fab, I think you hit the nail on the head there which is we can obviously provide this pathway. We can show the power of self-healing and as you do in your book we can explain the science and the individual obviously has a responsibility of the end of day to act on that but the thing that breaks my heart Dr. Fab is, I think so many people are in a state…I’m sure you’re familiar with this, have learned helplessness where because they’ve tried what they’ve been told for the past 40 years, just eat less and go jog for hours and cause even more inflammation and your just stare yourself and that didn’t work and justifiably so.
The science shows it won’t work, it will actually make the problem worse. So, at this point they’re just like, well nothing I do will help. We almost have to say, we just know, wait we’ve got something better now, we’ve got updated science, we can do better for you, just give it one more try.
Dr. Mancini: Well let’s talk about the issue Jonathan because I’ve been, in my mind going through this for so many years and I’m going to be very candid with you. I really believe that the issue, the cause of it all, the cause that stops us from really doing the things that we know can make the difference in our lives is what I call a lack of love, self-love and a lack of self-worth. I noticed in my life that when I’m feeling good about myself, when I’m loving myself, when I’m being kind to myself, when I’m being supportive of myself, when I am taking care of myself, my life is pretty good.
I also notice that when I don’t feel pretty good about myself for whatever reason. Maybe I try to do something that didn’t work out as well, perhaps I had an argument with my spouse and that make me feel a little bit bad or maybe I had fought with my brother or my friends, maybe I did a business the that went south and I lost some money. That’s the time that I find that we begin to sabotage our own behaviors because we’re not feeling worthy of doing the right things.
One of the things that I talked about in this book is that I talk about how important it is to love yourselves and I give you the science of the people that are actually making the effort of being, of thinking positive like having a positive perspective. These individuals are healing almost 50% faster than the ones that are not, regardless of their condition. I mean there were so many studies and I was seeing the same consistency and I’m saying, why would I not be positive.
The only reason I want to be positive is because I’m not expecting a positive outcome of whatever I’m dealing with. If I’m not expecting a positive outcome, it’s usually because I don’t think I’m worthy of a positive outcome. I started really paying attention to my own self-worth, my own self-love, and recognize that that is one of the greatest healers of all, is for you to begin to treat yourself. [Inaudible 00:25:20] many years ago shared a statement with me that I loved and that we’re not human beings living a spiritual experience but we’re actually spiritual beings living a human experience. I took that if I start looking on myself as a spiritual being, I began to look at the perfection or the good things about me, rather than the negative things which are more humanistic, the imperfections. Listen, I know that right now you may be looking at yourself and saying, I wish I was taller, I wish I had different color of hair, I wish I had a different skin, I wish didn’t grow up with a body type that is a little bit round etc. Guess what, we must embrace those things that we can’t change but we can change some things that we’re currently doing right now.
If I was to ask you right now, I mean this is so interesting because I do that usually when I do a lot of my talks, I ask the audiences to tell me, okay how many of you right now, you can think of one thing, one thing that you can do right now that will improve the quality of your life by at least 10%, 50%? I usually get about 90% of the audience raising their hand and then the question that I asked is that, then why are you not doing that? The answer is that, most people get distracted, most people are following what everybody else is doing, most people have routines in their lives but they’re not paying attention to the fact that they do have the power, and that’s why I named the book ‘The Power Of Self-Healing’.
The power is the power of choice, you have the power to make the choices and the choices you make today is what’s going to determine how healthy you are tomorrow, and that power is something that no one else has but you. In other terms we can call it the power of free will.
You get to choose, how you want to choose that day or that time or who you want to hang around with, what you’re going to eat, how much you’re going to move your body today. You’re not exercising that to the degree that you can and most people are feeling victims to environments external to them and I often say that the environments around us should never define who we are. What defines who we are is how we choose to respond to it, and you always have the choice to respond in a different way if you want to.
Jonathan: Listen, I hope you guys got chills down your spine as well and I hope you see now why Dr. Fab is quite fabulous indeed. Dr. Fab that was beautiful and I just realized we are actually over time. We’ve got to have you back on the show because I wrote so many notes down. Thank you so much for all that you are doing, this is brilliant and Dr. Fab, you’re up to so much. What’s next for you?
Dr. Mancini: Well, right now the main thing that I am working on is more segments for television because that’s the mass media. I’ll continue to do radio, I’m doing a lot of lectures especially to corporate America. We’re finding out that corporate America’s really struggling, when it comes to the health of their employees. They’re trying to create incentive levels but they’re not, the patients, the 20% that are not taking advantage of that is what gives them 80% of the cost. If we’re going to have a productive society you got to have a productive work force, and I think that the reason we don’t have a productive work force is because people still not understanding that health is something that can actually impact your life in every possible way in a positive.
If you choose to use the right habits and the habits are very simple. I mean the reason I created the 21 day program was because it takes around 21 days to build a habit and I call it building a habit for life. It’s not about 21 days and you’re going to get there, it’s about 21 days to give yourself permission to develop that habit that will carry you throughout life in a positive way.
Jonathan: Brilliant and Dr. Fab, I know listeners can get a bunch of wonderful additional free resources in addition to your book at your website, doctorfabmancini.com. Again listeners, this is doctorfabmancini.com and the humanitarian and wisdom giver that we’ve been talking to today. Dr. Fab Mancini, thank you so much for joining us, it’s been an absolute pleasure.
Dr. Mancini: Thank you Jonathan for the work that you do and for spreading this message around the world.
Jonathan: Listeners, I hope you enjoyed this wonderful conversation as much as I did. I’m pumped up now. I going to go like jog a little bit, I wouldn’t be able to sit at my desk and remember, this week and every week after, eat smarter, exercise smarter and live better. Chat with you soon.