Josh (04:10.274) Deanna Minick. Welcome to Reversible.
Deanna Minich (04:51.546) Thanks, Josh. Good to be here with you. I'm excited for the conversation.
Josh (04:54.142) It's a pleasure to have you here. You and me both. I think we're in for a real treat. I think we're gonna get into some really interesting, colourful things, no pun intended. But just for our audience here, Deanna, who may not know you very well, or is just getting to know the work you do, you got quite an impressive resume. Can you tell us a bit about how you got started and what brought you here?
Deanna Minich (05:19.17) Oh, Josh, you broke up. You're totally paused, so I have no idea what you said. Uh-oh. OK. Yeah, I can.
Josh (05:20.086) That's all right. Did you get my question? That's all right. So I just left the intro there. Can you hear me now?
Perfect. So you have a really impressive resume. For those viewers or listeners who may not know you or know much about you, can you tell us a bit about how you got started and what brought you here today?
Deanna Minich (05:40.506) Yeah, you know, how did I get started? Gosh, if I go back to my root and my origin, it's really my mom. So I grew up in the 1970s when it really wasn't cool to be eating healthy and to be living like we talk about today. Now health is such a huge trend. But at the time when I was growing up in the 1970s, my mom was one of those health nuts. And so she was exercising to Richard Simmons, she was reading Adele Davis books,
sandwiches instead of the Wonder White Bread. So I was kind of the different kid in class and I would say that I really rebelled against this. You know in my teen years I would sneak. I actually developed an eating disorder because I would binge, I would overeat, I would emotionally eat because there was all of this restriction about what I could and couldn't have. So if we truly get back to my point of like where was the turning point?
I really went back to growing up with a very strict mother who was into health. So it's kind of ironic that I kind of made my path into what I'm doing now, which is in health. But I would say that my approach might be just a little bit different from my mom's. Whereas my mom was very, I would say, foundational, fundamentalist in her health views. I would say that I have moved into much more of a science and spirit kind of combination.
And what that means exactly is looking at the body, mind, spirit aspects of eating. To know that not everything that you're taking in is on your plate. There's so much more. And I think it really came from, you know, having that rigidity, having disordered eating. I was always a nerd. I always loved to study science and I started to have my own health conditions as well. So I realized that I needed to pivot back to some of the things that my mom was teaching
quite honestly, and that happened in my 20s. And I would say I got turned on to color when I was going through some mental emotional things in my late 20s. I had a lot of stress. I was finishing my PhD, and I began coloring and painting as part of that process to deal with the stress. So all the while I was studying health and nutrition, and then in comes the color, which was perfect because I was already studying phytonutrients.
Deanna Minich (08:07.78) which are the plant compounds that are colorful in nature. So it was kind of this, the perfect coalescence of a lot of different things that were just coming together in my life.
Josh (08:22.338) There's a lot of parts and pieces there, but I find it interesting that you led with science and spirituality because in modern science, those are often considered to be two very contradictory things where one may not benefit from the other one says that the other doesn't actually exist. So you explained it pretty well and how things sort of got started in the integration, but can you explain to us how those two can play in the same household without fighting?
Deanna Minich (08:33.551) Yes.
Deanna Minich (08:49.486) Well, I think science needs spirituality and I think spirituality can benefit from science. And the reason why is because, you know, as you get into science and maybe you're in the lab, you're in a hospital, you're doing clinical trials, whatever it is, you start to realize the miracle of the human body and how incredible it is and how there are layers and layers to it. So you start to realize, wow, we're not just our bodies. There's a lot more here. There's the mind. There's the emotional body.
is more of the subtle aspects of who we are. Then there's even kind of the intangibles like the spirit, the sense of meaning and purpose that one has in their lives. You know, those aren't really physical. They can become physical, but they do prime so much about our health. And then on the side of spirituality, to me spirituality is wholism. It's coming back to the whole. Science is taking something and breaking it apart into its little minutiae, but spirituality is seeing the
great big hole in realizing that everything is interconnected. So to me science is the micro, spirituality is the macro, and together they can work I think very well together. You know sometimes we need to take a microscope view to things and other times we need more of a telescope view where we need to just you know kind of zoom out and say well this is really what's going on. It's not just gut issues, it's really looking at
the mental emotional aspects of what my gut is actually processing and moving through me. What am I actually assimilating? So that's how I would see it and how they could work together.
Josh (10:30.802) I think that's a really interesting point.
I think it's really interesting to talk about the spirituality as being the macro and science as the micro. Because I'm a very data driven individual, right? Which is why I have so much interest in the things that aren't data. Because the things that make sense to me, I want to pursue. I can quantify, I can write down on paper, you can cite studies and reference ranges and all kinds, but you can't cite spirituality. And it's something that obviously you're not the first to do this. I mean, we've been seeing this since Louise Hay. Even earlier than that, there've been all kinds of, you know, people who might have
as gurus or spiritual teachers over the years but Louise Hay, You Can Heal Yourself, Bruce Lipton, The Biology of Belief, there's all these different books about the spiritual side. And I mean 500 years ago there was witchcraft and they just burned you at the stake but today we're starting to realize that there's really something to this that's just immeasurable and really the only difference between science and magic or witchcraft is what we can actually prove and
Josh (11:35.064) that I find absolutely fascinating. We know chakras exist. We can see energy centers and meridian lines. You can actually see if you were to test the electrical connectivity of a human body you can see
in these neural pathways that they use, or they're neuromeridians or something. I'm not the guy who does these things, but acupuncturists use them. There's actually higher electrical signals that come from these points. So when you talk about this stuff, what level of measurability do you have to say this is real versus the clinical anecdotal evidence you have to say, hey, we measure these emotions, we see improvements in these areas of health?
Deanna Minich (11:48.218) Mm-hmm.
Deanna Minich (12:12.846) Well, and I think that that's why we need science to help spirituality along because spirituality can feel like it's nebulous, like it's vague. It's like, what is that really? It's, I can't grok it, I can't grasp it, I can't, it's nothing that it feels very physical. So that's why applying something like a physical method of science and testing things I think can be important for helping people to realize the importance of spirituality. I mean, if you just look,
Josh at all of the different research that is percolating up around consciousness. So consciousness research, and it even goes back, you named a couple of people like Louise Hay and Bruce Lipton. What about Joe Dispenza? What about Carolyn Mace? What about Deepak Chopra? What about Larry Dawsey? And a bulk of them were actually talking about this way ahead of the curve back in the 80s and 90s. Talking about, and even Dr. Candice Pert.
talking about psycho neuroimmunology, the fact of the connection between the psyche, the psychology of our being, how we think, how we feel, and how that translates into the body, which would be through the immune system, through the nervous system, and I would even say the endocrine system. We even now have the acronym PNEI, which circulates, right? There are scientific journals on psychosomatic medicine.
meaning that we are looking at the influence of the mind on the body. And in fact, one of the hallmarks of a well-done scientific study incorporates a placebo, which tells you that the mind is so powerful. If the mind wasn't powerful, we wouldn't have needed a placebo. So with the placebo, we're accounting for the power of the mind and saying, okay, and it's amazing how much the placebo effect can be. It can be like 40 to 60%.
Josh (13:50.455) Mm.
Deanna Minich (14:06.902) of a particular effect. You know, and sometimes we even see that with studies on pain, where there can be a placebo effect. Studies even on perimenopausal hot flashes, a placebo effect. I mean, you name just about any bodily function, there can be an influence of the mind on that particular function. So where does science go right now in the 21st century to bring out...
that mind-body interface in a way that we can understand? Well, I think that we're starting to understand the quantum a bit better. So what do I mean by quantum? Quanta refers to light or we're looking at light, which is composed of various wavelengths. Those wavelengths are composed of various particles, which may have a certain type of vibration or this frequency or this rhythm.
And what we're seeing in medicine and even science, and there's so much now being talked about as it relates to the circadian rhythm, the influence of light and even darkness on our physiology. So that's just kind of in the natural world. But I'm married to an acupuncturist and my acupuncturist husband even uses laser for acupuncture.
So that's just one example. Laser is being used for surgical means. Laser is being used to help people with pain, to rev up certain aspects of mitochondrial health. So even if we were to transition away from kind of what I would call the gross medicine, gross meaning not like gross, like sick, but like the large kind of the, it just feels kind of.
like not sophisticated. If we're moving into from gross to subtle and I think now we're starting to use instead of a scalpel, a knife, surgery, we're starting to look at, oh let's look at laser, let's look at frequency. Can we use sound to break up those gallstones or kidney stones? You know, let's start to look at the influence of sound, light, breath work. You know, there are so many subtle things that can influence us.
Josh (15:51.758) Hmm.
Deanna Minich (16:19.086) and we can be using them to pick up what's happening in the body. So the quantum world, which I think Dr. Bruce Lipton and others have started to bring to the forefront, is I think where the two will converge. So in other words, you know, what is the subtle aspect? Before your body has a disease, what's happening in your emotional body? What's happening in your thought body? What's happening in your field? What's coming in?
Deanna Minich (16:49.1) fields and frequencies or maybe it's a certain light spectra that is hitting your retina. You know we are composed as I see it of onion-like layers that are
connected to the subtle and into the more physical. So if we can address it in the subtle aspect, then we can prevent it potentially from moving into the physical, which again is more of the solid, the gross, the concrete, the apparent, right? But we're so much more than meets the eye.
Josh (17:22.286) Hmm.
I think it depends on the eyes you look through because obviously you're seeing things in a very different way But I see this being really integrated the future of medicine I mean, there's so much that used to be poo-pooed. There used to be so much I mean, what was it back in the late 1800s? They first decided to start washing their hands and people thought that was a joke and it started, you know Saving babies and pregnancies and all kinds and so obviously science develops over time But it has to be proven and it's so far behind What I would consider to be the holistic
Deanna Minich (17:36.39) Yeah.
Josh (17:53.504) at Western medicine versus holistic, I find the Western side to be very far behind. 20, 30, 50 years sometimes. And even in clinical practice, we look at new research that comes through. Once they pick it up 30 to 50 years later, from there, it gets into journals, gets the studies done before it actually trickles into mainstream medicine. It's the average of 17 years. So you got 50 to a hundred years, give or take before Western medicine picks up what holistic has already been doing and it's bananas.
Deanna Minich (18:15.74) Yeah.
Josh (18:23.484) you talk about these fields of frequency and energy layers and the power of the mind.
There was a neat story. I don't know if it was Louisa Nicola or one of those neuroscientists who was talking about this, but they had put somebody on a small group of athletes on a strength training protocol for two weeks, I think it was just two weeks. And they had them visualize strength training, not actually strength training. They did no actual physical activity, just visualized. They gained 13% more, whether it was strength output or muscle mass. So the mind really does influence the body. When you talk about these fields and frequencies and energy layers, is this
can test tangibly, is this something people can do at home to really test this out and say, hey, this is real and here's a quick little home experiment I did, or is there some reference material that you have? They can really look this up to understand the depth of what you're talking about.
Deanna Minich (19:13.318) Well, I wrote a book called The Complete Handbook.
quantum healing. And in that book, I cite some of these studies that you're referencing about how you do something, maybe it's a visualization. You know, one of the things that I became very attracted to was guided imagery and looking at the power of what we visualize. And once you have that visual, and not everybody's very visual, some people need to hear it, they need to sense it. But 60% of people, and I recall that number just vaguely, are very
Josh (19:29.131) Mm.
Deanna Minich (19:45.876) back to what you were saying about strength training, or you visualize maybe a growth on your body, or you visualize that you're playing piano, or you're visualizing that you're more functional, you're stronger, you're walking better. You know, the more that you continue to visualize and you put your energy into that, I feel like you're giving it momentum, and you might actually be doing small micro behavior.
Aspects that are getting you there because it is so part of your consciousness to me consciousness is the how? Consciousness is not doing something. It's how you're doing it
So if you are placing a lot of attention and awareness into whatever it is that you're aiming for, then I feel like your energy is already there. The imprint, the blueprint is being laid for you to move into that space more readily. So in the complete handbook of quantum healing, what I do is I go through up to 100 different conditions.
So medical conditions, symptoms, all kinds of things, even things like stress. And I give a menu of different options. I go through nutrition, emotions.
thought patterns or different things that are, might be limiting in how we're thinking. I go into flower essences as a modality. I go into visualizations. I go into a meditation. So I'm giving a long list of different things that may open the key or be the key that opens that door of healing for the individual. And for some of us, we need to start with something physical. I just have to say, you know, I know you specialize in gut issues.
Deanna Minich (21:31.808) And gut to me is a beautiful interface of physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. And oftentimes we need to actually address the symptoms physically and tone down some of the inflammation in the symptoms so that we can actually start to look at the behaviors, look at the mind, the thoughts, the ruminating, the worrying, the anxiety, the stress, looking at those emotions that might have been stuffed within us. The gut is a very interesting place to me because...
To me it represents so much of how we digest not just food, but how we digest things that happen to us in life. And along the way, if we're not digesting, assimilating, and eventually eliminating, I think that things can take on greater energy within our lives. So this whole...
metaphor, and this is what I love about spirituality. Science is practical, it's literal, it's what you see is what you get. And spirituality is symbolic. It's, it's the myth. It's the archetype. It's who are you at more of your deep core? And how are you living through the spiral of your life? Right? So the physical and the spiritual, the non
the non-physical are kind of working together through that interface. So I think that sometimes people become so mired in the physical and they're looking for the next diet, they're looking for the next supplement. I call it the shiny object syndrome, where they're moving from one thing to the next. It's like, have you heard of this?
this latest supplement, it's good for aging, what do you think? Maybe I should be taking that. And then it's like, but you're not addressing the root cause. And some of the root causes may even have other root causes. So even though there could be a physical root cause, like inflammation, we have to go deeper and say,
Deanna Minich (23:26.106) what's causing the inflammation. Is there physical, emotional irritability in one's life? We know that there was a great paper, I think it was in Scientific Reports, published some years ago, basically showing that people, or at least that the state of inflammation was associated with increased impulsivity. So behavior, psychological display of behavior in one's environment was different when there was inflammation in the background. So when you are inflamed,
physically, you might actually start to look inflamed in the way of your behavior. You might be irritable, you might be easily angered, you might be quick to do something and not very thoughtful. So the consciousness may not be in the foreground, it might be in the background while all of those emotions continue to be expressed by way of that physical process in the body.
Now for everybody of course, that's different. Not everybody is going to line up in the same way. So it's like a mosaic. We have to figure out what is tugging, what part of that web for that individual.
Josh (24:35.742) I think that's an interesting thread to start pulling on.
You know, and I really do wonder how far this thing can go on the spiritual side. We know emotions affect the body. We know what stress causes. In fact, Western medicine, even being a hundred years behind the rest of it does acknowledge stress as being a factor for strokes and heart disease and gut issues and all kinds. And I think the only reason they really trace it back is we can measure tangibly with the testing they have today to say, okay, we've got high stress, therefore you have high cortisol. Therefore it's causing this level of
here and here. It's putting you into fight or flight. It's shutting down stomach acid production and digestive enzymes and gut motility. So you're not moving food through. Therefore, imbalances bacteria. Imbalanced bacteria cause these issues. So we can tangibly trace with things like stress. We can trace the physiological manifestations of it, but things like other emotions, things like grief. Yes, it's still a stressor, but how does it hit differently? Are we only measuring some of this? And I think it's going to be really interesting as time goes on.
Deanna Minich (25:17.235) Mm-hmm.
Josh (25:38.7) you can answer these questions maybe not a hundred years from now but maybe in this episode excuse me maybe we can answer some of these questions about how some of these emotions tangibly affect the body in ways that are measurable and so my question for you I suppose Deanna is how far can this go so you got somebody coming in with you know gut bacterial issues or they have
paralysis from a broken spine or they dealt with a stroke and part of their brain is now inhibited neurologically. How far can these visualizations or these other modalities that you put in the complete handbook for quantum healing, how far can they really take the biology of a human being?
Deanna Minich (26:20.954) Well, I think that there's a spectrum. I think it depends on the individual, what other factors are at play, how often they're doing the visualization, how much momentum they put into that practice. You know, like anything else that is physical, spirituality can be a practice as well. And so the more momentum that we create, the more energy that we create is...
is going to build in a certain direction. But I first want to back up into something really practical. You're talking a lot about the emotions and I want to get into that for a second because emotions to me, you know, if we break apart the word.
emotion, we have energy and motion. And so these things need to move through us, they need to express, they need to come out, they need to bubble up, they need to come out in ways that feel healing and not threatening. So one of the things that I do have in that quantum healing book and also in my whole detox book is an emotion log. And let me tell you how I got there because first of all I'm a very emotional person. If my emotions aren't in something,
It's just, I'm not a part of it. So like on the plus side, emotions can really work for you. They can drive you and drive your vision, your mission, your purpose in life. I mean, gosh, if you don't have that passion and expansiveness of emotion, it's hard to get things done. It can also, these emotions can serve as catalysts. Like I don't see that emotions are bad or good, they just are, they're messengers for something that needs to come out. So with anger,
great catalyst for sure. You know I think of the book from David Hawkins where he goes power versus force like all these different emotions and that they each have their own kind of frequency and field. You know I feel like emotions much like a food it has a purpose. It's getting us to do something. There was a very interesting study in which they looked at 22 different emotions and the one emotion that had the longest life within us
Deanna Minich (28:22.382) was grief. And I think grief is an interesting one because if you look at how people talk about grief or dying or death or a loss, is that
I don't feel that people are in that state of mourning very comfortably. Like in our society, we don't really have rituals and ways to move people through a grieving process. So I mention this because I grew up with a grandfather who owned a funeral home. And so as a young child, I grew up around death all the time. I was around weeping, grieving people because I'd be running around the funeral home and you know, visiting my grandparents and kind of like I was always comfortable with death
because I just grew up and it was part of my context. But not everybody is comfortable with that loss and that grief. And what people tend to do, I think, is they wanna shut it down. They wanna fix it. Like, let's get you to stop grieving. Let's, you know, your dog died, let's just get you another dog. Or, oh goodness, you broke up with your partner. Well, just, you know, there's somebody I wanna set you up with. You know, we wanna quickly.
Get in and fill that space so it's not uncomfortable. So I went through some training through the Grief Recovery Institute back in 2004. And the Grief Recovery Institute is really interesting. And there's a whole book called the Grief Recovery Handbook. And what I learned from that whole process was grieving needs space to come out and be seen and witnessed. So it's actually really good. And it shape shifted how I perceived grief with people.
So instead of hugging, giving them, you know, quick consolation and support, it's almost like the grief needs to be seen and needs to come out, needs to come through the tears. In fact, if you look at the science of tears, you can see that there are a number of chemokines and cytokines that get released in the tear fluid. So when we're grieving, if we don't allow for the expression of tears, this is why children can be so great
Deanna Minich (30:29.964) for us adults, we kind of forget those things, those things get shut down. Well, where do they go? They go in our bodies. They come out in dysfunctional behavior. So I do think that an emotion loss, so where I was getting with all of this is
I've noticed that when I would do workshops with people and I would ask them how they felt, they weren't using feeling words. They were using thinking words. You know, oh, I'm concentrating. I'm focused. You know, it was all about the mind and it was less about like a feeling state. So one of the things that I think we need to do if we are going to get into the space that you're asking about, which is truly tapping into the mind-body interface through that emotional body.
is we first need to have a dialogue and a lexicon of emotions. There's a great wheel, and people can find this online, it's called the feeling wheel. It's all the many words for feelings. And so I just put together an emotion log for people to start to track their emotions on a daily basis because I kind of feel like if you don't measure it, you don't do anything with it, right?
tests, don't guess, like get to know those feelings. And when you know them, I feel like you can route them better. And they're messengers. You can say like, oh my gosh, I'm feeling so much anger. What is it trying to get me to do? You can start to look at it in a more spiritual or symbolic context.
Josh (31:58.55) It's interesting because I'm very much a mental.
thinker, right? I'm a very logical, it's my wife's favorite thing. She has problems. I just try to fix them all the time. And so while we were dealing with our favorite things in marriage counseling, we were talking about these emotion wheels and emotion words. And that's something I had to practice. It's actually uncomfortable. It was very awkward to go through and so I'm feeling and I had to pick like these words out of this list. They don't compute, right? My brain feels to me more like a computer than a biological, physiological, spiritual
Deanna Minich (32:05.746) Hahaha
Deanna Minich (32:17.702) Yeah.
Josh (32:31.916) where life is sort of, I'm trying to navigate it, not allowing it to flow like water. I'm trying to build it more like a business, you know what I mean? Like very methodical and logistic. It's like a building and it's been very interesting to explore that side and still to this day, years, I'm better at it. We're a lot better off because I can communicate like I believe an adult should. You know, use emotion words and understand to sit through these processes, but it's still uncomfortable. And so when you talk about it being like any physical skill it does
Deanna Minich (32:32.178) Hmph.
Josh (33:01.636) practice to understand these emotions. And you talk about the science of tears. And that is the one thing again my measuring brain is trying to get back to is that we can actually measure this and prove well different emotions, tears of grief, tears of joy, tears of whatever have different physiological chemical makeups. I find that absolutely fascinating. Are they finding measurements like that? So again myself my measuring brain can understand and wrap my head
around as well as the listeners who are struggling with emotions like me. Are there other emotions that we can tangibly trace and go, Hey, here's the different chemical or biochemical makeup of these emotions?
Deanna Minich (33:45.126) Hmm.
Not that I'm aware, I mean probably. I mean this is not really something that I've gone too deep into, but that's an interesting idea. I think where I have taken it from a nutrition science perspective is can foods change your moods? Can foods change your emotions? And how do emotions change your eating behaviors? Because I remember a statistic from many years ago that was over 75% of overeating is due to emotional reasons. Now I don't know if that's for most people and that was just kind of
I don't think that there was a lot of science behind that, but that was a statistic that was being tossed out there. And so why don't we deal with emotions in food? Why don't we get those neurotransmitters right before we start to be thinking about changing and shifting into a different way of eating, right? I mean, it can be a challenge. Most people know how they really want to eat and perhaps need to eat, but they can't get there. They can't get there from a behavioral...
perspective. And so this is more behavior design, behavior change, you know, how do we stimulate that? So if we look at the emotion food interface, you know, I put together a another I like practical tools, and that would appease your metal side, I would think, you know, it's, so what I put together is a food and mood tracker. So that you know, I have one of my mantras is colorful foods, make for colorful moods.
So if you have colorful eating, and I'm not talking about the candy and the cakes and the dyes, I'm talking about colorful, whole foods from nature have certain plant compounds that can help us with our mood state. And that's what I have found is that when people eat in a way that aligns with more whole foods, healthy proteins, quality fats, non-starchy carbohydrate, not all of the ultra-processed foods that people are eating these days.
Deanna Minich (35:42.202) they get a different mood state, you know, and you can see that immediately, right? So I think we need to be thinking about that food, mood, and also the food emotion interface and how important it is. You know, here's my vision for the future. So I just want to jump ahead a bit. And we're not there yet from a science perspective, but this might tickle your metal mind.
Josh (36:01.219) Mm-hmm.
Deanna Minich (36:06.102) So I have had this vision for many years that we have our smartphone, right? Many of us live by our smartphone, right? And we walk around, we've got certain apps. And I had this vision where we put our finger on the lens, right? We kind of, we have some kind of app that might be reading our energy, but it's kind of like an accumulated number, a frequency number. So it's kind of like.
okay, I don't know, from zero to a thousand, maybe I'm like a 690. Like the higher would be the better. And maybe within that frequency that it's getting, it can break it out into like where my physical energy is, where my emotional energy is, where are my thoughts, my mental energy, my subtle fields kind of energy. You know, there might be a way to actually in the moment because it's changing so rapidly to get an assessment. And I think that by way of doing that,
Then we go and assess food and there is actually Some companies have started to do like very remedial versions of this where you can take a food and actually scan it and get a sense of its I Would want to call it something like an energy or frequency value and then you could see will it match what I need at a very subtle energy level not just calories and
protein and carbohydrate and fat, but I'm talking about like the frequency of the food. Because not all apples have the same resonance. You're gonna have some that maybe were battered, bruised, you know, or, you know, different type of apple that has different phytochemicals. I have this connection with plants where I do think that plants are really smart. And I do think that through those phytochemicals, which would coincide with the colors of different foods,
that they have functional signatures and further on, more of the frequency that we might need. Now we're not there yet, but I'd love to be, I mean, I'm like you, I'm a bit of a geek and a nerd when it comes to measuring things. I don't wanna measure something like my subtle energy. I wanna know how high is my vibe or low is my vibe and what will bring me back into that balance. But I'm not aware of, you know,
Josh (38:21.004) Mm-hmm.
Deanna Minich (38:27.07) I have an energy medicine device and things like that. There are more sophisticated things that are circulating out there. But what we need is in the moment to be informed on how to make decisions based on just even our energy. So if we're tuned in and tapped in more intuitively, we can already gauge that. We don't need a metric. But I do think people need training wheels to kind of get a sense of where their energy is and how they will shift if they eat certain foods, right?
Because some people wonder why they just feel like crap. And I'm like, well, what are you eating? Let's start there. Just what are you eating? Because if you're eating inflammatory signals, that's gonna translate into your psyche, right? So, I mean, I don't think we overlooked the obvious, but I think that there's a lot of room here for curious exploration.
Josh (39:02.068) Right.
Josh (39:15.314) I think there's a lot of curious exploration there and my mind is being very tickled. You talk about food versus emotions and I think you did touch on it briefly. I'd love to back up and ask about that. So we mentioned food versus emotions and how they make us feel. And my question was going to be, until you might have answered it, maybe we can elaborate.
When you talk about food and emotion, is it the chemical high, the sugar high? Is it what the chemicals do to the brain, the dopamine, serotonin? Oh, I'm giddy. I'm happy because I feel good. Or was it a vibration and a frequency thing? And as a quick caveat to that.
For our listeners who maybe think vibration and frequency is a bunch of bullshit, I want to encourage you to look it up because it's very real. The frequency and vibration of water and people and food and all life on Earth carries a bioelectrical signature in charge and it does vibrate. That's the science we have. We know it. Anybody who says they don't is A, refusing to look at it. It is physics. It's metaphysical. It's super cool stuff.
Deanna Minich (39:58.361) Mm-hmm.
Deanna Minich (40:05.678) It's more physics. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Josh (40:11.034) And Bruce Lipton talks about it, Joda Spencer talks about it, you've touched on it. So that is my question for you Deanna. When you're talking about food and emotion, and maybe it's a combination, is it the chemical sugar highs and the things that like red dyes change the biochemical signatures back to our brain? Or is it a vibration and frequency thing from these foods and how they resonate with our body? Ha ha ha.
Deanna Minich (40:16.21) Mm-hmm.
Deanna Minich (40:25.156) Yeah.
Deanna Minich (40:31.502) Yes. I mean, I don't really see a difference, you know? As above, so below. As within, so without. I mean, I kind of feel like it's just a word choice at that point, right? To say, like, OK, is it vibration or is it chemical? It's like, yes. I think you could have, too, the same food, but maybe it is grown in a different location.
Josh (40:47.278) Hehehe
Deanna Minich (40:56.362) It's got, you know, it's tended to maybe by a farmer and then in the other case, maybe it's more synthesized through a lab. You know, then we start to talk about, well, you know, what's the essence? And some people can really pick up on those things. I bet if you were to do kind of a placebo controlled or just side by side testing with somebody and say like, what's the difference? Like people have done this with water. There's a lot of discussion right now about structured water.
This is Gerald Pollack's work at the University of Washington, right? So he has done a TED Talk and talking about the fourth phase of water. I think we're starting to explore these types of things through something as basic to life as water because it seems that there's a lot more than meets the eye with water. And most of our bodies is actually water. So applying intention to water. Can you change the?
the structure, the type of an effect that you would get in the body. Well, there's very scant science out there. I would say it's not robust. I don't wanna overshoot and over promise and kind of say like, well, all of it's in the can. I think all of it's in the works and people are really interested in going to that next level. We're kind of moving into the quantum era where we're starting to look at.
the super small. What I think is happening is physics is merging with biology and chemistry. Biology and chemistry have always been kind of cousins and whenever I studied them in school, it's just kind of like, you know, and even you see biochemistry, there's a merging together of both of them. But I think what is happening now is now we're starting to get the physics, the people in the quantum space, the engineers, all of the people that have been working on more of that,
Those concepts, those are now getting mingled into the biology and the chemistry, which is exciting, because it gives us another layer to look at. You know what I think is interesting? I just want to bring it back to something that you were asking about. Is it the dye that has the vibration or the chemical signal? I just think again, it's yes. But on the flip side, to look at it in a positive way of like, can we be feeding our neurotransmitters and hormones through foods? So one of the things that I found very interesting is that
Deanna Minich (43:17.57) neurotransmitters like dopamine, GABA, acetylcholine, serotonin, those are found in foods in that actual neurotransmitter form. In fact, there was one study going all the way back, I think in the 90s or late 80s, in which they were looking at the serotonin content of foods. And they found that some of the highest serotonin-containing foods were things like plantains, pineapple.
and bananas, all yellow foods, which is really interesting to me. But what we don't know is if I eat more bananas, which kind of looks like a smiley face, if I eat more bananas, will I actually affect my serotonin levels? Will that serotonin actually cross the blood-brain barrier? Does it need to cross the blood-brain barrier in order for it to have an effect? Or can I impact my mood state by impacting my gut?
through that neurotransmitter that's in that banana. So that's the science that we need to do. There are a number of nutritional psychiatrists out there who are looking a bit into these areas like Dr. Drew Ramsey, Dr. Uma Naidu, which I think is good that we're starting to see that cross talk between nutrition and psychiatry. And I would say we need those gastroenterologists to enter in. We need nutritional gastro psychiatry. Because if you're a psychiatrist, you've got to look at the gut.
If you're a gastroenterologist, you're looking at the brain. Yeah, it might be the gut, but it's still like that's the first brain, so to speak, right? So I do think that there's, you know, people can experiment and try out different foods. How do different foods make you feel? You can do kind of the bodily aspect, which many people are used to doing like on an elimination diet, but you can also do like, okay, do I feel happier if I have a banana? Do I...
You know, we don't have to measure serotonin, but we can measure kind of the end game or the end product of something like having serotonin.
Deanna Minich (45:22.146) I'm tossing a lot out there of what's known and what's not known though. You know, like I can see because I play in the science, I can start to see like, oh wow, we don't have information on X, Y, and Z. And I don't want to make like huge extrapolations because I still think that we're in the process of connecting dots. We might already be intuiting things, but it would be nice to have the science that does support that.
Josh (45:23.146) It's really interesting. Yeah.
Josh (45:49.394) I absolutely agree. I think it's really interesting.
Just to circle it back a little here, you brought up even food color, certain things, continuing say serotonin, even though if you look at on a very basic level, things we've known for years about science of marketing, right? Colors and branding yellow makes people happy and feel good. Science of blue, blue is a color that you'll see banks use blue because blue is very trusting. Green shows a lot of abundance. Red can be a very hard tough to see a lot of gyms using red and black. And so we know these colors.
Deanna Minich (46:08.111) Right?
Deanna Minich (46:12.507) Right?
Josh (46:22.164) can precipitate certain emotions, I suppose it'd be very interesting to explore is it the color that we have, these artificial colors, are they mimicking what nature is intended to do with food in our bodies and in our brains based on the chemicals they allow us to produce? But
I'd love to circle back again, a lot of circling in this episode about these manifestations of certain things in the body and in the gut. So we got these foods, we talk about frequency and vibration and emotions and chemicals. What is the link here between all of this and gut health and gut disease, which we know gut is a center of all disease. What's the link between all these emotions, frequency, vibration, colors and chemicals in our gut health?
Deanna Minich (47:07.194) Well, the gut to me, if we think of the gut being the mouth to the anus, right? So the gut to me is more than just like the squiggly intestines. It's, it's up here. It's what's coming in. So it's a tube within us. And so when I think of all of these different things that we've been talking about, frequency, vibration, it's, it's kind of like the interface between the environment and who we are as people. And.
To me, nutrition is such a philosophical science because the ability of the gut to actually take something, break it down, which is known as digestion, then assimilate it, and then ultimately we metabolize it, for that process to go smoothly really speaks to when we have energetic alignment, when we have some kind of glitch.
somewhere along that line where we're not able to digest properly. So now we get big proteins instead of small proteins. Now that's going to get our immune system more inflamed. Right, so much is actually starting in the gut. And I would say that there's a beautiful process here, a spiritual one, where when we have a plate of food before us and we start to take in that food,
looking down at the food and really looking at it to realize that food is now in this spiritual process of becoming one with us. We will make that food into who we are. So how do we bring the consciousness aspect into the first point of entry? It's like, well, if we want to change who we are in physical, emotional, mental, even
Josh (48:44.13) Mm-hmm
Deanna Minich (48:50.962) purpose and vision and mission, what I think we do is we look at the food and say, am I wanting to become one with this food? How will this food increase my frequency, my vibration? Will it reduce my vibration? What is required of me?
in my energy to make this one or assimilate with me. I mean, we're actually merging with the food and this is a process of unification. It's a process of connection. It's, I mean, what is spirituality? In many different disciplines, we would say it's connection. It's realizing the interconnection. So eating is actually a spiritual practice. When we sit down to that meal, we consciously are becoming that meal.
Now sometimes it's very subconscious and unconscious and sometimes we're not having that awareness at all. But if we brought that layer into it to your question, how is the gut kind of this interface of all of these different parts? Well, it starts with our intention and seeing eating a very physical act as being something that's actually very spiritual. We're merging, we're unifying with that energy. That energy is becoming us. And you know, sometimes
What happens with people, especially with a lot of ultra-processed foods, is that food takes away our energy. You know, it may have low life force. It may have less nutrients that we need. It doesn't have maybe the resonance we need at more of the particle level. So instead of assimilating and becoming part of us, it may actually take from us. We may get a little bit of energy initially.
but then only to realize like now we need more energy, like we have had a loss. So to me in that way, if we just look at eating in a very simple way of whatever the food is we become at a very foundational level, physically, emotionally, mentally, how do we bring in the consciousness so that we can align better and actually increase our energy, increase our vibration rather than lower it?
Josh (51:08.49) Hmm. You know, there's an old saying, right? You are what you eat. And there used to be a big joke. You know, you eat fatty foods, people call you fat, whatever it was. But there is a science obviously to it. We are what we break down, digest and absorb. We would be nothing if not for our food. Our cells can only consume themselves so much until there's no cells left to consume. And then eventually we waste away and we die. That's just called starvation. But you talk about food.
as a spiritual practice, this really interesting integration of life force. There, there's so much to be said for resonance and frequency and everything in our world, right? I mean, if you have a table made out of a tree that was in the middle of a battle of the civil war or Romans and Churians, it doesn't matter how far back it goes. There has been some very interesting evidence to suggest that tree, that wood, that table then carries a lot of that energetic frequency. And this is why people I'd say who are highly sensitive might sit
down in a room and get a little bit of a chill. Like, I don't like this, something's off. And then you don't know why, because we're not measuring. But this food you're seeing has a life force, a resonance, a frequency, which...
Deanna Minich (52:11.483) Yeah.
Josh (52:17.666) One could argue your vibration, those who are very successful, those who are very happy, who have healthy relationships, a lot of friends, those who are, you know, even very wealthy in business are very influential and personable. They have a different frequency, a higher vibration. And so what you're saying is your food carries all these properties to influence all those things. Is that right?
Deanna Minich (52:40.426) Yeah, yeah, we become that, right? I mean, there's no separation, but we also become the thoughts that we're thinking, the emotions that we're feeling. I mean, everything counts, so it's not just food. I just happen to be a nutrition scientist where part of my lens is through food. So I think that because we're eating most of the day, it's powerful. What we're eating is changing who we are at that energy level.
So that's why, and also it's not just what you're eating, it's also the how, it's the when, it's the why. I think in nutrition we have focused so long on the what of eating and we haven't given adequate attention or at least equal attention.
to the other features and facets that are quite relevant for our health. You know, you can have like a really healthy meal and scarf it down. You can have a really healthy meal and be eating in the car and doing what I call dashboard dining. You know, you're just eating, you're multitasking, your awareness is not there. Do you really get the same energy, the same potential, the same quantum level as if you actually sat with that food?
express gratitude, you know, was in that place of awareness and intention and then took in the food. So I think that when it comes to a meal or when it comes to food, we take in not just the food itself and what energy it's bringing, but also what energy we're bringing to that meal from us.
You know, and that's where things like gratitude, intention, and a number of those things, we've seen, you know, the power in science we've seen of a gratitude journal, the power of things like intention. So now taking all of those good things and then applying them into our meal in order to amplify that experience. I think that's, and you know, that doesn't cost anybody anything. That's just a matter of having the time, attention, and awareness to dedicate in that moment.
Josh (54:43.374) Hmm. You know, I think that'd be something really interesting to explore. Obviously there's, there's not really much money in the science of things that are natural in the science of herbs, the science of vibration and frequency. Of course, unless you know, you're Joe Dispenza and can travel and speak on it. But for pharma, for example, influences medicine in the modern world, there's no money in it, but I think it'd be fascinating to see.
some studies being done on the different health conditions around the world. Obviously there's a lot of variables, there's a lot of factors like
diabetes based on sugar intake and other things, but to look at the culture, the norms around mood and attitude and intention and gratitude, practices around food like you described in this episode about spiritual practices, to see these correlations between that and other diseases or illnesses that people actually carry in these countries with these practices. I think it'd be fascinating to explore how they actually influence human health and sickness.
Deanna Minich (55:38.519) Mm-hmm.
Josh (55:44.816) go check out the complete healing or the complete handbook of quantum healing to maybe dive into some of this stuff on their own. I know we're sort of wrapping up here Deanna and I want to respect your time. So is there anything you'd like to say to our audience kind of in summarizing this episode any last words of wisdom it's completely open table no leading into here on this one.
Deanna Minich (55:49.2) Yeah.
Deanna Minich (56:05.862) Well, I always like to leave people with three things. And that would be, these are my three principles for life and my three principles for food that all tie into the energy that we've been talking about. One is color. I think it's really important to invite color into our lives in all the ways that it can show up, whether it's food, colors of clothing, colors of our spaces, getting exposure through our eyes to different colors, and bringing that in. Because that is.
the wavelength of light, that's really important. The second one is creativity. Taking a very creative or out of the box way to thinking, living, being, eating, I think can have benefit. When we allow ourselves to be more creative, we stay in the flow. And then the third thing I would say is variety. Variety is really important for kind of changing things up, becoming resilient. And when I think about food, many people are good at
the color, like they're eating the rainbow, they got that down. Number two, they're really good at being creative, having different food combinations. But I think what happens with so many people and the third concept of variety is that people get into ruts. They get into life ruts, they get into food ruts, they get into relationship ruts. And I think we need a little bit of that diversity and variety to kind of come on in and shake things up and to keep us on our...
Physical, emotional, mental, toes. So those are the three things I would leave people with. I think that, and curiosity I think goes into that creativity sphere that we were getting at within our conversation. So yeah, color, creativity, and variety, those are my principles. I never say to like follow a diet. I just say to follow the principles that can help you to have a more energized, vital life. And to me, those are the three that I use.
Josh (57:57.302) Beautifully said and just so well wrapped up. Deanna, thank you so much for being here and just sharing your expertise and your time. Now our listeners, I'm sure, are gonna have so many questions. There's so much to explore. How can they reach you? How can they learn more about you or get in touch with the need?
Deanna Minich (58:12.966) Sure, my website is probably the best place because it has blogs, resources, my social media handles and things like that. So my website is dianaminic.com, D-E-A-N-N-A, M-I-N-I-C-H.com, so it's just my name. And you can find many things there. If you want the Heady Metal Mind Stuff, you can go to the blog page. If you want more of the resources and the creative tools, you can go to the resources page.
Josh (58:41.95) I'll make sure we link all that in the show notes. Deanna, thank you so much for your time, your expertise, and just tickling my mental mind. It has been an absolutely fascinating conversation and I'm going to have to go back and listen to this one all over again for myself, just to learn and tune some things up. So thank you so much.
Deanna Minich (58:49.286) Hahaha!
Deanna Minich (58:59.814) Great having the conversation with you, Josh. Take care.