Brave New Medicine Quotes

“Food isn’t just generic energy—it’s molecular information. In addition to fueling the mitochondrial powerhouses, food tells our cells what to do and serves as building blocks for hormones, brain chemicals, and cell membranes.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“What to remove? Dairy. From cows, goats, and sheep (including butter). Grains. For the more intensive version of this 30-day diet, eliminate all grains. This is important for those with digestive or autoimmune conditions. If this feels undoable for a full month, add in a small serving a day of gluten-free grains like white rice or quinoa. If that still feels undoable, consider a whole-foods diet rich in vegetables that is strictly gluten- and dairy-free. Legumes. Beans of all kinds (soy, black, kidney, pinto, etc.), lentils, and peanuts. Green peas and snap peas are okay. Sweeteners, real or artificial. Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, maple syrup, honey, agave, Splenda, Equal, NutraSweet, xylitol, stevia, etc. Processed or refined snack foods. Sodas and diet sodas. Alcohol in any form. White potatoes. Premade sauces and seasonings. How to avoid common pitfalls: Prepare well beforehand. Choose a time frame during which you will have limited or reduced travel, and that doesn’t include holidays or special occasions. Study the list of foods allowed on the diet and make a shopping list. Remove the foods from your pantry or refrigerator that aren’t allowed on the diet, if that makes it easier. Engage the whole family to try this together, or find a friend to join you. Success happens in community. Set up a calendar to mark your progress. Print out a free 30-day online calendar, tape it to the refrigerator door, and mark off each day. Pack snacks with you, pack your lunch, call ahead to restaurants to check their menu (or check online). Get enough vegetables and fats. If you feel jittery or lose too much weight, increase your carbohydrates (starchy vegetables like yams, taro, sweet potatoes). Don’t misread withdrawal-type symptoms as the diet “not working.” These symptoms usually resolve within a week’s time. Personalize it. Start with the basics above and: * If you’re having trouble with autoimmune conditions, eliminate eggs, too. * If you’re prone to weight gain, eat less meat and heavier foods (ex: stews, chili), more vegetables and raw foods. * If you’re prone to weight loss or having trouble gaining weight, eat more meats and heavier foods (ex: stews, chili), less raw foods like salads. * If you’re generally healthy and wanting a boost in energy, try short-term fasts of 12–16 hours. Due to the circadian rhythm of the digestive tract, skipping dinner is best (as opposed to skipping breakfast). Try this 1–2 times a week. (This fast also means no supplements or beverages other than tea or water during the fasting time.)”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“Visualize. Here’s a visualization practice my friend and mentor Pia taught me: Find a comfortable chair and sit upright. Take 10 deep breaths, relax your shoulders, and clear your mind. Visualize walking through a forest, or a field of cornstalks, or a lush garden. Visualize coming to an open beach. Hold that scene in your mind’s eye for as long as you can, and see what emerges. Objects or people that emerge from the left represent the past. Those from the right represent the future. Record the images in your journal. Writing helps to consolidate the experience. Do timed automatic writings to quiet your rational mind. See 13. Survive love and loss for directions. Record your dreams in a journal. Note patterns, repetitions, symbols, and archetypes, rather than literal events. Before sleep, invite your subconscious for revelation through dreams. Pay attention to your body’s signals: twinges, goosebumps, or nausea, for example. Intuitive signals tend to be fleeting, whereas signals that represent physical imbalances or disease tend to be longer-lasting. Enlist the gift of hindsight. This can help to correlate images and signs with actual happenings, and decipher between intuition and wishful or fearful thinking. Record these notes into your dream journal, which may be used for all intuition-related reflections. Be patient. Developing intuition is like learning a new language. It takes time, repetition, and practice. Practice humility and trust. Like analytical thinking, intuition isn’t 100 percent accurate 100 percent of the time.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“12. Investigate hidden root causes.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“detoxification. This is the body’s natural process of removing toxins, or any substance that can cause cell injury and disease. Toxins include internal waste from our own metabolic processes, as well as external waste from drugs, pollutants, harmful germs, or radiation. The primary detox organ is the liver, but there are accessory detox organs, too: a healthy gut rids our bodies of waste via stool; the skin via sweat; the lungs via mucus and exhalation; the kidneys via urine; and the immune system via lymphatic channels. The only way I had known before to reduce pollutants in the body was to live a clean life and eat a nutrient-dense diet. Though still important to reduce harmful chemicals, for myself and for the planet, certain foods and nutrients could help my body more efficiently metabolize and eliminate harmful substances. That is, in addition to 5: Detoxify the house, we can detoxify our bodies—(and detoxify yourself).”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“His making the bed had somehow made me feel seen. To feel seen was to feel wanted, though until then, I hadn’t been able to pinpoint that I wasn’t feeling wanted either. To know that David didn’t just want sex, that he wanted me—which I understood now because I was in a more self-possessed place, and believed I was wantable—it was better than any dopamine-boosting drug could ever achieve.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“Although celiac disease is typically thought of as a “gut problem,” more precisely, it is a body-wide inflammatory disease that manifests in the gut. Celiacs, it turns out, can have poor teeth for a couple of reasons. One, gut inflammation can lead to poor absorption of minerals, making the teeth generally weaker and prone to decay. And two, enamel defects commonly seen in celiacs make teeth vulnerable to cavity-forming bacteria. In children, celiac disease often presents as failure to thrive, anemia, digestive symptoms like diarrhea or constipation, or a distinctive rash on the skin. Rosa was too healthy. She had hit every milestone in her development, and her height and weight were above average for her age group. She had no signs or symptoms of anemia, digestive symptoms, or rashes. But in addition to her cavities, she did have another symptom common to celiacs: frequent canker sores.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“Early stresses could create abnormal stress responses, favoring fight-or-flight, which generated chronic inflammation.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“Study after study showed that green spaces shifted the autonomic nervous system from fight-or-flight to rest-and-digest. Consequently, moods, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing patterns improved, and stress hormone levels decreased. Short doses of nature, including mere photographs of nature, sharpened performance. Other studies showed they increased feelings of generosity and social connectedness. The presence of houseplants in hospital rooms lessened pain and hastened recovery from surgery. Studies of functional brain scans showed regions associated with empathy and love lighting up when exposed to nature scenes, while urban scenes and sounds lit up regions associated with fear and anxiety. I added my next entry to the How to Get Off the Couch list: 4. Get a daily dose of nature.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“This time, we kept things more practical, hoping to figure out, with the counselor’s guidance, how to fight better. She gave us useful tips, like listening before talking, using I statements over you statements, and avoiding words like always and never.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“Noise pollution activates the fight-or-flight nervous system. Since healing requires people to be in the rest-and-digest state, noise pollution can impede healing. And being stuck in fight-or-flight is, in fact, a cause of immune dysfunction and inflammation. Even noise that isn’t consciously registered, like traffic sounds in the background or dogs barking while people slept, can cause stress responses to rise, and hence, inflammation to rise.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“In the coming weeks, I added chamomile tea, Epsom salt baths, and lavender essential oils. These homey remedies were also backed by science as having anti-inflammatory and anti-anxiety properties, along with low-risk profiles and long traditions of use. The combination of melatonin, magnesium, and the day-night hygiene measures was the start of regulating my body’s rhythms and easing inflammation. Beyond the physical, I felt a hint of mental renewal: empowerment.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“Magnesium promotes relaxation and facilitates energy metabolism. It reduces inflammation and regulates sleep, too. Half of all Americans don’t get enough magnesium through their diets. So repleting my magnesium levels was another example of treating the root cause instead of masking the symptoms.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“The circadian rhythm is an inner clock that follows the twenty-four hours in a day. The master clock sits in the master hormone gland in the middle of the brain, where it regulates the sleep-wake cycle and governs the clocks for the entire body. Each internal organ has its own clock, too, which is somehow coordinated by and with the master clock, so different functions turn on at different times of day. Next to the master hormone gland is a pine cone–shaped gland that makes melatonin, the hormone that induces sleep. The pine cone and the master gland talk to each other, synchronizing their roles to maximize a good night’s rest.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“In patients with chronic fatigue, inflammation often builds up in the limbic system, the part of the brain that stores survival instincts, emotions, and memories. Inflammation in the limbic system can result in heightened anxiety and PTSD-type responses. And heightened anxiety can generate more inflammation in the brain.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“But he added a 5R protocol for the healing of the gut (in addition to simply changing the diet): Remove—remove stresses, like processed foods or intestinal infections; Replace—replace herbs or enzymes to break food down better; Reinoculate—reinoculate with beneficial gut flora (like in fermented foods); Repair—repair the gut lining with key amino acids (like in bone broth!) and antioxidants (like vitamin C—in oranges!); Rebalance—rebalance sleep, stress, and exercise (like the circadian routine). By addressing the 5Rs, healing the gut might not take nearly as long as it had for me.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness

“Then I started wondering about myself. While the incidence of celiac disease in the Chinese was only a small percentage of the 1 percent of Americans who have the disease, the searches for gluten kept citing a familiar name: Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. For those who had the genes, gluten could trigger Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, which was basically the same as postpartum thyroiditis.”
― Cynthia Li, Brave New Medicine: A Doctor's Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness