Feb. 18, 2023

Get Well with Sandy Cowen

Get Well with Sandy Cowen

Do you believe you can find the answers to your health questions and get well? Today I am excited to introduce you to Sandy Cowen. Sandy is the author of 4 books on the connection between the body, mind, and soul of “getting well”.

After developing several auto-immune diseases in her late 30s, Sandy needed to make significant changes in her life to heal herself. Through her healing journey, she has sought out holistic forms of healing and has published her books on the mind-body-spirit connection of healing.

Listen in as Sandy and I discuss how the body-mind-soul approach impacted Sandy’s health, and how you can use that approach to strengthen and heal our immune system. Sandy gives us practical ways to use a holistic approach to our healing. She truly believes we can get well!

Ways to connect with Sandy:

Website: https://www.sandycowen.com/

Transcript
Dr. Jude Galea:

Welcome back to the doctor body mind soul podcast. My name is Dr. Jude. And this is a podcast, which explores how we can integrate modern medicine and alternative therapies to help you get the holistic health care that you deserve. I will be speaking to healers and seekers, researchers and authors who will share their experiences and the evidence to help guide us all to Holistic Health. Let's do this sandy, Karen is releasing her fourth book titled get well. This is a book showing the lessons from her own healing journey and the body mind soul approach she used to strengthen her immune system and get well. So welcome, Sandy, and congratulations on the release of your new book.

Sandy Cowen:

Thank you, Dr. Jude, it's a pleasure to be here.

Dr. Jude Galea:

Great, well, I want to get right to it. And as you know, I'm such a fan of the body mind soul approach. And I am dying to find out more about the specifics of how you used this approach and how it actually impacted your health.

Sandy Cowen:

Okay, and I think probably to lead up to this in a way that puts everything in context. I sort of developed all of my illnesses when I was in my late 30s. Having worked for about eight years in my own business with no vacation, a lousy lifestyle, ate terrible, smoke cigarettes drank. I was in the advertising PR business high stress, single mom lost, both parents got into an emotionally abusive relationship. So I don't need to go for on a finally broke down. And I developed the first of my autoimmune diseases when I was about 37. And that was rheumatoid arthritis. And I come out of a background of allopathic care. I mean, I was on the board of directors of a major hospital chain, I knew every top doc in the state, I went to only the best of blah, blah, blah. But anyway, I sought treatment from my RA for about 18 months and realized that this chronic condition which I had a problem with anyway, I don't like chronic labels, because I'm sort of a problem solver by nature, and I can't accept chronic. So I wasn't really getting better. My meds were just getting more powerful. And I thought, you know, there has to be something better for this chronic condition than this. And so when they were about to put me on methotrexate, I said, No, I don't think so. And I left my husband at the time said, Well, what are you gonna do? Oh, my gosh, I mean, and I said, I have no idea. But I'm getting well, and I'm not doing this. And I found that the process for eventual healing for me, was cumulative and progressive. That was not a silver bullet. Silver Bullets weren't great symptomatically rarely get to the root cause I've found. And long story short, after a couple years. During that period, I had developed also psoriasis on the bottom of my legs. I had chronic allergies before, which really hadn't gone away. And once my immune system got stronger, all of those things disappeared. In retrospect, I went back and looked at all the things I had done to get my immune system stronger. And there were about 15 things. Many of them were common sense, but you know what, they all broke into three categories. Guess what the three categories were the physical, the mental, emotional, and the spiritual. And they all fell within those. And you know, all the years Jude, I have fiddled around with alternatives. I've gone to conventional medical doctors, which of course, I still have some in my repertoire, because I wouldn't go to anybody else for a diagnosis, except them. But anyway, nobody has ever sat me down and told me that the immune system is critical to good health, and what I can do to help myself, so I put this proprietary list together which I have in my book.

Dr. Jude Galea:

So from a body's perspective, let's go into that, like what are the things that we can really focus on? Common sense things that we can focus on? to to to help our bodies build up a strong immune system.

Sandy Cowen:

Yes. So in the physical body, sleep is probably one of the most critical or the most critical things. I actually allowed myself to take sleep medication if I needed it. So I would get at least eight hours sleep a night. And I found my body requires nine, nine good hours. So anyway, lack of sleep, so plenty of rest is very good. The other thing, a lot of people have our vitamin or mineral deficient. And so vitamin and mineral deficiencies, if you can identify them, common ones that I have found, for me, were C, D, three zinc, all critical to good immune health. Magnesium, I think because it works well with d3. And anyway, so that's another area to replenish the body's nutrients, then I'll just talk

Dr. Jude Galea:

to you right now. But it's actually in the UK, it's quite difficult to get a full screen from your GP. So very commonly, we, the GP will test you bus for D. And that's a very common test. That's, that's routinely done. Because we were all are often so deficient. Calcium is another one. Magnesium can be added, but it's not routinely added. So if you would like that screened, you'd have to ask your GP to add that on. And zinc is almost never tested in the UK as a routine. Now I'm sort of as we speak here, I'm eager to go and look at the literature to see what the what the relationships are between these minerals and a functioning immune system common sense, but say we need we need not to be deficient in these minerals and these vitamins. And yeah, I would like to go and research more about exactly which minerals and vitamins, we should be asking our GP for to make sure we get good immune mot, as it were,

Sandy Cowen:

you know, and I have found urine exception here. So you're you're pretty enlightened about a broader way to look at health. But I have found that most allopathic physicians don't realize they're not taught in medical school enough about supplementation vitamins, minerals, and I think it very few hours even in nutrition, but anyway, so replenish the body's nutrients, that's helpful. And then the chemicals and dyes and preservatives and artificial sweeteners and foods in the genetically modified foods, those things aren't healthy for the body, they aren't living organisms, most of them are chemical, and, you know, so they're dead when they go in us. So healthy, fresh or frozen foods are more nutritious during a healing period.

Dr. Jude Galea:

I would totally agree with that. So we know that from all the evidence that the most nutritious and healthy diet for our bodies, which includes obviously our environment system, and its key vital role that hasn't given us well, is a whole food unprocessed diet, which is very plant forward. It's not necessarily vegetarian, it's not necessarily vegan. But we want to have a diet which is low, which allows a low inflammatory diet, and essentially a low inflammatory diet. I've done a post on this before on my Instagram, so please check it out. And there's a blog about it on my on my website, so check it out. But it's all about what foods that are found to have been a pro and an anti inflammatory. So essentially though, the upshot of all of that is eat a whole food diet, which I think is essentially what you're saying avoid chemicals, avoid processed foods. And I think what you're also saying is just to be aware of chemicals in that you're consuming on your body, including dyes, including plastics, and these sorts of things.

Sandy Cowen:

Yeah, two more things in the physical body and then I'm done with that section. One is a physical stress, such as environmental pollution. If you're living around loud noises all the time. Chemical things that you have to bug spray paint All kinds of those kinds of pollutants. And then the last one, alcohol, tobacco, caffeine, prescription drugs, illegal drugs, when you're healing and trying to reboot your immune, it's really better not to do any of them. If you can for a shoot for for a while, during the healing period, sometimes for a person, it's a year, you know, but it's not the end of the world, most everybody can survive for a year finding alternative options for something, you know, for whatever it is, but those things all weaken the immune system a little bit, and don't strengthen it. And so that's the physical piece for Milan.

Dr. Jude Galea:

To summarize, really, what I'm hearing is good sleep and unprocessed diet, to consider our environment to, for it to be as supportive, so restful, think about what we're consuming in our body, mind and soul, you know. So I think that that really underpins everything, and I'm really in line with all of that. So tell me, telling me, let's move into our minds like how, how can we use our minds to strengthen our immune system?

Sandy Cowen:

Yes, that's a shorter list, you'll be happy to know. So one is self love. Now, the reason that's important to me, I think self love has gotten a bad rap over the years. And if you love yourself enough to fight for survival, love yourself enough to say no, when something is going to be harmful to you. Love yourself enough to nurture and take care of yourself like you would your child or your partner or your parents or people you love. You shouldn't be able to do the same thing for yourself. So that's one of them. Another one is, well, this is huge. living in fear based emotions is very detrimental to one's health. I have a list in the book of tons of fear based emotions. And I have a list of love based emotions. And people can see how living in one space is very stressful, and creates more problems. And well, I'll give you an example. Here a few fear based emotions, anxiety, contempt, bitterness, disgust, Dread, envy, greed, impatience, jealousy, resentment, I mean, what you live with those kinds of things all the time in your life. And it week, it puts a strain on your you can feel it in your core, just reading those contrarily. If we live with gratitude, astonishment, compassion, delight, excitement, humility, humor, relaxations support, surprise patients, to see those things are so warm and reassuring and loving and, and wonderful. So when we find ourselves worrying all the time, and being anxious all the time and living in that fear based state, I give people little hints of how they can break free of that. The quickest way is to switch into gratitude for something, shift right away and just just stop for a minute, take a breath and think, Oh, I am so grateful. Or, and you don't have to say it, you have to feel it. Gratitude. You can't be fear based and love based at the same time. So the minute you shift to a love based emotion, you've broken the cycle to see. So anyway, so that's another big one. Attitude whether it's negative or positive kind of common sense. The more positive you're, the stronger and healthier your immune system will be the more negative your attitude the little weaker, it'll become and stress. Emotional stress is a real biggie. You know what 90% of diseases or conditions they come to you for our stress based. It's just pay it plays a huge role in health and wellness.

Dr. Jude Galea:

It helps that we don't at Dodgers don't pay enough attention to I mean, we've got so much evidence to support that. And that sort of piece of evidence, I think demonstrates it so profoundly, and clearly is the work done on adverse childhood events. It's so clear that emotional stress, any big traumatic event in our childhood leads us to illness in future. So stress has a fundamental, fundamental role in the development of our DIS ease later in life. Feel the tension to to that. I mean, it's quite profound in your story. And you're not alone in your story of when you developed an autoimmune disease, and you described your life leading up to that event. And I think that that is actually way more common. And I think we as doctors need to be really delving much deeper into someone's life in order to give them a much more holistic approach to managing their condition and see it as part of the cry for help that it actually is. So yeah, stress is huge.

Sandy Cowen:

Well, you're so smart, because it is true. But you know, physicians, again, are so specialized today, they have a body part they focus on. And so to look at the whole patient, as a, as a, as an, as an orchestra, instead of a flute, you know, and trying to see where all the parts Connect is, is they're just not trained to do that. But the patient can take some responsibility there. And realize, even on the stress, dude, piece of it, there are ways to reduce stored negative emotions, there are ways to learn to forgive, and to reflect back in a more benevolent way, about humans in general, we're just not that perfect.

Dr. Jude Galea:

Emotions are very powerful. And actually, at the moment, I'm really learning a lot about ayahuasca experience that I will ask a lot about myself, and I've been posting a lot about it on social media, but also that health system is is very much focused on the root of our DIS ease being based in our cycle and emotional world. So this is not this is a well recognized source of our suffering. That manifests into our physical illness in multiple health paradigms in multiple health approaches, not just the Amazonian, but also our Vedic that also recognizes the importance of looking at our emotions and our thoughts as being a source of our DIS ease. Because as you say, we create our own stress and stress is so important, like we are the ones who are narrating our lives. So if we relate to something and make it stressful, then we are impacting how our body receives that because our body doesn't know any difference between real stress and perceived stress. So you know, how we actually talk to ourselves, how we actually experience the world, how we actually relate to the world, and relate to ourselves is fundamental and creating an environment within us that supports us, rather than fights us?

Sandy Cowen:

Well, you know, I, I did my I have two books on this subject. One I wrote in 2018, titled Get Well, even when you've been told you camp, this book and 2023 is get well, even in today's confusion, uncertainty and fear. So there's, they're similar because they're both about holistic healing. This one is much more comprehensive. But I did around the first book, a series of workshops here, and one of them was, it isn't stressed, that kills us. It's our reaction to it. Exactly the point you you made. That's, you know, some people overeat when they're stressed, or they shop till they drop, or Allah,

Dr. Jude Galea:

or cigarettes, or work, or all of these things. And actually, if we start to look at what we reach for in terms of food, cigarettes, alcohol as medications to treat an underlying discomfort, emotional discomfort, again, rather than sort of reaching Another symptom, which is the risk behavior for it, and we get to what is leading to that, again, we're really trying to get into the root cause which I, which I much prefer. And now I'm so intrigued about the spiritual aspect, because this is actually may be less familiar, especially to people in the UK, the UK is a much more secular society than than the states is, as I'm not sure if you're referring to religion, because I mean, religion, in general, is is not prominent in our culture. But tell me more about how you relate health to your spiritual well being?

Sandy Cowen:

Well, I think we're so beings you see, I don't think we're religious beings. But that's just my own perspective. There is one spiritual component that weakens us to the point that it does more damage than any of the other things I've mentioned. And that's hopelessness. When we have no hope. I can I can explain me with a circumstance with me, and also a very good friend of mine, you can reach a point in your life, where you give up where you don't want to be here. It can be an instantaneous thought. But it's at the soul level, it's so deep, and it's so real. And you are basically saying, Get me out of here. Okay, because I can't do this anymore. Get me out of here. You can even forget you said it, you can forget you felt like that. But your body heard you and your body says, oh, okay, well, I didn't take care of that. I can tell you when that happened with me, it was an urgent it was in January of 1999. And by April, I was so tired, I was getting more tired. And I just thought it was over involvement. I was you know, nine boards, and I was doing all kinds of stuff. And by August, I had the leukemia diagnosis. So the good news is you can correct that. But the bad news is we can do this to ourselves. And people who say, you know, Fred lost his wife, they were married 68 years, he died nine months later, he died of a broken heart, he and I have a broken heart, he died because he didn't want to be here anymore. Without her, you see, the will is full, you know, really. And so the what strengthens us is hopefulness faith. You don't have to have faith in an organized religion kind of way. But you're gonna have faith in yourself. Faith in the Future, faith in nature, faith in the universe, I don't care what you have faith in but faith in something that's strengthening and trust, the same kind of blind trust. It can be a universal thing, it can be tied to God or who ever is a higher power in your life. And those the strengthening and weakening part, the spiritual component, the soul based element is really important to health and healing. Yeah, I find that very interesting. Maybe it can be interpreted even instead of trust as a belief. You know, when I walked out of my rheumatologist office, when I wasn't going to do the methotrexate, I was determined to get well. And I believe down to my core that there are answers for everything too. I really do. I think the universe is too complex and everything is so interwoven and so magnificent, that nobody left anything out. There are answers everywhere. We just quit before we find them. And so somehow I knew the answers from I had no idea where didn't know how to find them didn't know where to look. But that didn't matter, that core belief that there is always an answer for everything kept me trusting the process. You see, that's a soul spiritual thing.

Dr. Jude Galea:

It is a soul spiritual thing completely agree with you. And I'm very glad you went on that soulful and spiritual journey. I mean, it's the it's like science. Science is a spiritual endeavor, because at its core, it is trying to pursue truth. And truth is a very big Powerful, powerful force. So I really thank you for going on this quest. And thank you for going on this journey. And you know, our illness free symptom free, medication free. And it's a real testament to the power of using your body, mind and soul to strengthen one of the key organs in our body are the key systems in our body, our immune system. And I really that, you know, if we can all strengthen our immune system, by taking that approach on board, we can really make an enormous impact on our risk to so many diseases from autoimmune disease, which is very obvious one, two, are diseases related to inflammation, which are so many include cancer. So this is a huge, huge, really important topic. And I'm really, really grateful you've gone through so comprehensively through your body, mind and soul approach.

Sandy Cowen:

Oh, thank you, dude. I'm glad I did too.

Dr. Jude Galea:

And I thank you for that sharing what you've learned with others. So thank you so much your book is out in mid February. Is that right?

Sandy Cowen:

Well, it's out now.

Dr. Jude Galea:

Where can people find your book,

Sandy Cowen:

they can find it on Amazon. At the end of the month, they can also find it on my website where I can do autographed copies on that Sandy cowen.com co w e n. So it's easy to access. And, and because there are two getwell books, I don't want them confused. It's the one on top. It's the latest one,

Dr. Jude Galea:

the one on top so Sandy can get well. And thank you so much for going on this journey and sharing your knowledge.

Sandy Cowen:

Thank you, Doctor Jude, I love it.