Reena shares about her journey, shares tips to take charge of your health to prevent or transform your health.
Reena Jadhav, a Harvard MBA and graduated summa cum laude with a BSc. from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. She is also an advisor to numerous startups in Silicon Valley and has a passion for disruptive ideas that transform the human experience and create meaningful lasting change.
She had colon cancer at 35 years old and another health crisis at 45 which led her to take charge and become the CEO of her own health. She refused to accept conventional doctors telling her she would have to live with her 28 symptoms indefinitely and spent 15 months getting back her health. Today she is healthier and happier than she has ever been, and is on a mission to spread the truth about health.
TRANSCRIPT:
This is auto-generated and may have mistakes. Please listen to the interview for accuracy.
[00:07] DR. TREVOR CATE: Hi there I’m Doctor Trevor Cates welcome to the spa product podcast. In today’s podcast, we’re talking about how to turn your health and your life around. My guest is Reena Jadhav she is a Harvard MBA and she’s an adviser to numerous startups in Silicon Valley and has a passion for disruptive ideas that transform the human experience and create meaningful lasting change. On a personal note, she had colon cancer at 35 years old and another health crisis at 45 years old which this all led her to take charge and become the CEO of her own health. So she really shifted her focused and she refused to accept what conventional doctors were telling her that she would have to live with her 28 symptoms indefinitely and spent 15 months getting back to her health. She today she is healthier and happier than she’s ever been and is on a mission to spread the truth about health. And on today’s podcast, Reena shares about her journey. Shares tips to help you take charge of your health so you can prevent issues as well as transform your health and your life so please enjoy this interview. Reena is so great to have you on my podcast welcome.
[01:26] REENA JADHAV: Thank you so much, Dr. Trevor, I am super excited to be here. Thank you for having me.
[01:30] DR. TREVOR CATES: Yeah absolutely. So you have this pretty amazing health journey and some challenges that have come up for you. You don’t have a medical background but you do you have a business background which is kind of different for from other guests I’ve had on the show. And you’ve done some really interesting things that from your own path in your own experience in life have led you on a really interesting mission so can you share with everybody a bit about your journey.
[01:58] REENA JADHAV: Absolutely so I’m a tech entrepreneur. I’m a Harvard MBA working undergrad your typical sort of a working too much maybe partying a little too much kind of DNA and at 35 in the middle of one of my startups, I had colon cancer. And sort of that was my body giving me a huge signal not that I had time to listen to it so I had my surgery and continued on with another startup and about 2 years ago I had my second crisis and I call it my way beyond crisis because I had about 28 symptoms including extreme weight loss. I was losing a pound a week while eating 2000 calories a day and I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me. My test kept coming clear and so the conventional doctors all amazing doctors, very qualified tested me on every imaginable thing including cancer because they were concerned I might have cancer again. And basically came back and said you know what you are the healthiest we know so we think you might be depressed, we think you might be anorexic. You are not telling us the truth about what you are eating and oh by the way here is the peg results because you are right you do have some crazy symptoms like your high is all over you, your rashes, you are losing this weight. So we think if you take prednisone it will just normalize things for you and it will just go away. And I had this little breakdown sort of what do you mean go away, what do you mean like you are done with me I have to figure out on my own and so it’s one of those moments I could have just gone in one direction which is apparently what the rest of the world does. They take prednisone, they take anti-depressants and them kind of continue with you are getting an older deal with it which is what I was told or you can do what I did which is I said no that cannot be the rest of my life. Supposedly technology is going to make us live really long and this is no way to live and I mean I would breathe and I would hive out and so I decided to then figure it out for myself and I spent 15 months and I figured it out and I healed myself I reversed every symptom. But Dr. Trevor what’s interesting what happened in this journey is that I came out of it healthier, happier apparently younger looking as my friends tell me; and I had the second aha moment like wait I could have lived this life all my life I could be this joyful and happy and cheerful, I didn’t have to live with the fatigue and the exhaustion and the aches and the pains which kind of kicked around the mid 20s and slid all the way through. And so the mission I’m on is to share the truth with everyone that we are a sick nation, we are living in a polluted garbage dam we don’t see around us but we are living in this garbage dam, we are breathing toxins, we are eating toxins, thinking toxins, watching toxins and that we can get out of it. And we can not only get out of it, we can live happier, healthier lives and I call myself the PR agency for the sun, for chloral, for all things out there that don’t have PR agency. For doctors like yourself, for doctors like you know doctor Joel Kahn, doctor Mark, doctor Chung, doctors that are MD’S were permitted to natural healing. You know I’m sort of the PR agency for them at this point.
[05:20] DR. TREVOR CATES: Well and I think that is great because doctors are busy seeing patients so they don’t always have time to do that kind of method and also sometimes it might appear self-serving when they say oh I can do these things to help you, it can seem self-serving and people you know there is a trust concern and so it’s always nice when patients are people that have been through this journey share with other people because then people will see it’s not just doctors trying to make more money or do their practice or something; there really is a story behind it, there is a reason behind it and there is success. And because a lot of times with holistic medicine people look down on us I mean I have read everything from voodoo stuff to witchcraft, to…I mean I have had all sort of things and its shocking to me because I know there is so much science behind it and at the same time I also know research itself is fraud, you can make a study of just about anything so we need that boat, I mean I love research I think it is important to have but we also need this patients stories we need to know I mean this case studies and things in addition to the research I mean we have got the history behind holistic medicine to support it but you know it does take a longer effort because there is no kind of the same money as the pharmaceutical industry has a lot of money behind it and doctors just don’t have that I mean people do think like oh doctors have a lot of money but not compared to big pharma.
[07:05] REENA JADHAV: Absolutely and you know we talk about research and conventional medicine in sort of science-based and yet the statistics are that every five to seven we have reversed whatever we were saying right, so eggs are bad for you, eggs are not that bad for you right, like fat is bad for you, fat is good for you. So we know exactly what you said that research keeps coming up with changes and dramatic changes, what doesn’t change is how you feel and so that’s one of the other missions that I’m on is to empower people is to say you know how your body feels right, you need to learn that skill of listening to yourself and not blindly following what research is saying because research may not be right. Like they were saying forever take aspirin every day, take aspirin and just recently you did an interview where one of the doctors said I don’t recommend it, its counter-indicated for people who are 60. So there is so much conflict in research while we are able to support using that research I firmly believe that the mantra people need to follow is, how do you feel? Take something; make a note, be mindful, how do you feel? If you feel better to continue doing it, if you don’t feel better change it; don’t just follow the research blindly.
[08:24] DR. TREVOR CATES: Yeah, and sometimes it does take time to feel better or something you know and usually sometimes you know you give up caffeine for example you might get some weak headaches doesn’t necessarily mean that that’s bad for you so yeah it takes a little time to and a little patience but yes checking in with your body using that as a tool I mean I always talk about skin is the magic mirror that gives us a lot of information about our health, so checking in with your body what messages is it trying to tell you and skin is one of them and that has just been one focus that I have presented because it’s just easy to look at your skin but noticing how you feel is such a huge thing because I think so many people don’t like you were saying people don’t even know how good they can feel because they have been living so long in chronic pain or fatigue or insomnia this things that or inflammation, inflammatory conditions that they don’t even know what’s possible.
[09:34] REENA JADHAV: Exactly, I remember after my second child, I got an 18 and a 13, my 13 year old when she was born about eight months later I remember going in to the doctor saying I just don’t feel right, I’m so exhausted no matter what I do I’m having my multivitamins I just feel exhausted to the point where I can’t speak I get so tired and I remember her saying bless her heart welcome to motherhood what do you expect, this is how it is and you know now fast forward like 20 years from my little one 13 years and I wake up in the morning like jumping out of bed, of course, I have not had caffeine now for 18 months no caffeine pretty much no sugar other than fruit sugar so I don’t have any artificial stimulants, not even green tea. So when I wake up full of energy and I’m running around four miles in the morning and I’m having a full day having my first breakfast meal at around 11, I know that that’s possible for everybody that it’s not true that we have to live with fatigue and energy that is part of motherhood right, it’s because of the lifestyle that we have been living. The other thing you mentioned I have to share my story about skin so you know Doctor Trevor one of the first symptoms for me was skin it was hives so I woke up one morning and I had hives on my face and them kind of went away and a week later more hives third week my eyelids were shut almost you know rashes they started becoming bigger so that the hives will clump and wells as you can imagine as a woman, as a tech entrepreneur, how do I leave home looking like this, so it became my first reasons to rush to the doctor and say what the hell is wrong with me to fix my skin. As it turns out its the intestines you know Chinese medicine and Ayurveda strongly believe that your gut is your skin, so what’s inside is right here and the first thing those guys said to me is there was something wrong with your gut so that’s how I figured out what was wrong with me. It was those guys saying there is something up with your gut and then we found SIBO and then we found a whole bunch of other stuff it was all gut and it was all showing up right here. So now when I meet people who complain about acne and allergy, rashes, hives, redness, I always say go get your gut checked out.
[12:03] DR. TREVOR CATES: Yes it’s definitely one of the big root causes behind skin issues I definitely find that to be the case. And then you have also mentioned to me that going through menopause had a big impact on your skin too, do you want to share anything about that?
[12:18] REENA JADHAV: Yeah, so in the middle of all this crisis I went into menopause and a little early as my gyno would say no really 48 is normal but I wasn’t 48 then but she said fine you are just a couple of years out but to me I thought that menopause was far away, it was so far in the distance not in my horizon so when it hit my infestation on my skin back it just shocks me like wow I can’t believe I am already that old. With that said within six months of being diagnosed with menopause full fledge I started noticing like I would look at the skin and say what’s going on with my eyes, like my eyes started getting those wrinkles, when you smile there is all these wrinkles underneath that was the first and then I started to notice this complete sagging you know like in those cartoons you wear stuffs just start to melt it was like that, like what’s happening I was starting to see steps like down here and down here you know the wrinkles started kind of popping up, six months and I tried like you know the stuff that people recommend like go buy the really expensive clavier cream and all that stuff it just didn’t feel right like I said I had become so tuned to listen to myself so I did a whole bunch of stuff and as you can see it kind of all went away and I call it ‘my weeds program’ because it really got something I got addicted to because it was working and use stuff that you wear and I switched to putting argan oil and just different oils I switched to kind of the old stuff to just pure oils jojoba, carrot that kind of stuff. E for exercising so I started doing exercise that brings blood to your skin so yoga is one of my favorites I will do it twice a week and all this blood just rushing around your face kind of clears things out, gets nutrients up and detoxifying you know for the D really important I bought a infra-red sauna and I sit on it and make sure I get all the crap out. And so supplements you know I started making sure that I was doing halogen, I started eating chicken liver, I started having more jello like jello pudding just kind of taking things in that I had never ever taken before and it kind of worked.
[14:52] DR. TREVOR CATES: That’s great, and I think that you know that there is a lot in there that you said that can be beneficial for people I think some things are personalized that was a plan that really worked really well for you I can’t say that that’s going to work for everybody not everyone does great with Bikram yoga for example people don’t do well with that heat and it could be too rough on people especially those who have adrenal issues but certainly there is a lot of things in there you know collagens getting so internal collagen peptides and increase blood flow and detoxification and all of those things are really important for us to do and really you know cleaning up your life that’s a lot of weight you did just cleaning things up. Talk about things that clean within is that the whole approach of what can you do to clean up from the inside out, what can you do to have a more clean lifestyle so that your body can address those root causes like inflammation and hormonal imbalances and gut issues and collagen is also a helpful for healing the gut to so that’s another thing that’s could have been really helpful for you. So that great, and you said that you are not wearing makeup right now you just have some lotion on your face.
[16:21] REENA JADHAV: That’s right I’m not, I thought for this episode I would just come as I am I just you know have an eyeliner from actually probably last night because it is one of those hard coat ones and I’m just wearing a moisturizer actually that’s it. So I pretty much spend my days with no makeup these days I don’t feel like I need to cover up anymore and I feel I allow my skin to breath so much so yeah I feel like I’m very blessed that I was able to figure it out for me like you said I think people just have to take the time to figure out for themselves in terms of what’s going to work for them. And you have amazing products I love your products.
[17:05] DR. TREVOR CATES: Oh thank you and yes there certainly are very clean and nourishing and help with the skin, skin ph, skin microbiome so very supportive and nourishing to the skin. Thank you, so I will go back for a little bit, the life that you used to live can you describe to people on what a day in your life was like then versus what it is like now because think it will be interesting for people to see the difference.
[17:33] REENA JADHAV: Wow! what a great question, what a great question, so my life pretty much I would say the age of 15 because starting 15 kind of the high school craziness of school getting grades then going to college and working in undergrad then my first job, my second job, my grad school and my four startup before I got sick. Pretty much of the same kind of pattern which is and I will give you an example my most recent last startup it was a company that became a multi-billion dollar company I was here in the US the company was based out of Israel out of US marketing all and so I would start my day actually midnight because I would start to interact with the CEO and we would strategies and you know give up dates etcetera and I go to bed around probably 2-3 in the morning and then I will get up at 6:30- 7:00 to get my kids off you know we had a live in nanny but still to get the kids off, get them taken care of and then start my day because my day would start around 8 O’clock and so 8 O’clock on wards I would be on the go so whether I was flying to Las Vegas to sell something or flying to New York or I was going to meetings you know around the area everything is about an hour, an hour and a half away so kind of fighting that commute and in that time of course I was taking down about 4-5 cups of coffee a day and that’s been kind of consistent my whole life like I would start with a cup of coffee and then I would check another, check another, check another. Lunch was like a hazard depending on where I was and what was convenient. So if the vending machine was convenient, then that would be lunch, if a restaurant was convenient then whatever it was that’s what I would go for, there is not much mindfulness in terms of hey what I’m I having for lunch and nourishing myself the concept of how I’m I nourishing myself never existed. So lunch was kind of on the run and then back to the meeting, meeting, meeting, I love firefighting I would you know for startup things are never going right, so it was a lot of highs and lows. Oh my god I closed a customer, oh my god I got someone who is about to leave us right so someone is leaving, or someone is coming chief executive or CEO there is a lot of stress from that mode all the way to getting at home and I would usually grab food on the way from some restaurant for the family and then we would sit down hardly eat, get the kids to bed and then try to unwind for maybe an hour or so before then kind of starting my night shift and that was in essence my lifestyle pretty much you know since I can remember even when I was studying that’s how I would study I would just kind of study, study, study because that is what it takes to get into kind of good school’ today it’s the exact opposite. So today my entire day is structured around how I’m I going to nourish myself so first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is I actually do a meditation. So I did a couple of [unintelligible] so I start my day with [unintelligible] so either a 25minute or an hour depending on how much time I have in the morning. I will do my little oil pulling, I’ll do my sack pushes, oxide dump work out in the bathroom and depending again whether its 30 minutes or more I will either go for a quick run in the sun because for me the sun is the most important Quinoa just even 20 minutes and I’m actually looking at the sun right now and go oh I’m looking forward to doing that later this afternoon. So just getting out in the sun and then I will start my day. And I will make sure to have a green drink of some sort that’s for the alkalinity part of it. So whether it’s a green smoothie or an amazing grass green drink, my lunch is always extremely nutritious made fresh so I will make a combination of protein whether that’s like Quinoa and some vegetables or I do…I added seafood I added fish so I’ll do a salmon that’s pretty the only fish I take because you know all that I will add a little bit of salmon in or I will do like a minced chicken liver depending on how I’m feeling with again maybe a portion of white rice and some vegetables so that’s my lunch every day, I always take a break after lunch, so lunch means I’m sitting in the sun with my feet on the ground re-grounding myself then I will take maybe 15-20 minutes just to kind of close my eyes and then after that I am back to work. So once I’m back to work I then go into my dinner mode right so pretty much around 6 O’clock or so dinner is always something that I cook for the family so we all eat something fresh, I go to the farmers market so there is always fresh vegetables and it will be a combination of maybe lentils, maybe play we do a lot of Indian cooking at home with a lot of spices because they are good for you. So we’ll do that family time maybe a little stroll outside and a little work out and in bed 10:30 or 11:00 absolutely the latest.
[22:46] DR. TREVOR CATES: Great and that’s fantastic I think it’s great for people to hear from one extreme to the other and you have certainly gone to one extreme to the other and I think we all everybody listening or watching we all either have related to this extreme or there was places of high work hives intensity and not really nurturing yourself, we either have done it ourselves or we know people who are doing it right now. And so I think it’s good to catch ourselves before getting sick like you did because if we continue on that path there is a really good chance at some point it’s going to catch up with you and I do see it and people will say I mean but so and so is living like this and they eat whatever and they smoke or they drink whatever, the problem is most of the time it catches up at some point it could be in their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, 70s you know you never know when that exactly is going to happen but it usually does happen and instead of waiting for that you know to hit the wall and have all these health issues take advantage from learning from you know someone like yourself and then this your story and make those changes now and even the lifestyle that you are living now, not everybody can change and shift into that right away it can take time for people to gradually make healthier lifestyle choices. So do you have any suggestions of how to go from over here you know one extreme to all the way over here because it’s you probably going to wake up one day and all of a sudden be living the way you are living right now right?
[24:35] REENA JADHAV: Not at all, I did thousands of changes before even figuring out what worked for me and so what I’m leading now is a combination of almost 16 months of going through and experimenting and testing and figuring out. But you are so right now that I’m on this mission I’ve been telling everyone around me to wake up, wake up you know don’t get sick like I did like it’s awful because you don’t really value health until you lose it and please everyone out there that is listening listen to this once you lose it you realize its actually the only thing that matters in life. I would have given up everything at that point that one night in that bathroom when I had my breakdown I would have traded everything, I would have given everything and go and live as a homeless person if someone had said that’s the trade off, give everything up, become homeless and I will give you your health back I would say it’s a deal you got it. So when you lose your health you realize how pretty much your entire life experience is based on the fact that you have your health so treasure its literary the most important gift God’s given you. And so with that said here is a book that I’m writing it’s about the little changes, so Malcolm Gladwell is onto something and he said in his book you know it’s the little changes but you have to pick the right changes and they will make a huge difference and I have applied that to health. So I brought some business learning into health and here is what I found, there are a few simple changes that you start making every day so you don’t make all the changes immediately it starts first of all with your mind. So the first thing I recommend is to make that mental commitment to health because if you don’t do that anything else is going to happen. So how do you make a mental commitment? Write a journal, write it down in a piece of paper, get your cell phone to write in there, just say you wake up you say I am committing to my health, my health comes first. So you are starting to commit to yourself it will change the psychology of everything else around you, it’s remarkable how that works or look in the mirror and say you are important to me, your health is important to me, I care about you and again that will change how you make decisions. Our subconscious is so powerful so that’s the first thing I said you got to start with vocalizing this commitment of my health comes first. Number two sleeps forgives everything, you can fix your sleep so many a few other issues and ills as they say kind of got sorted out because your body wouldn’t sleep fixes your mistakes when you are awake. How you fix your sleep there is a lot of different things you can do it again figuring it out what are you doing that’s wrong that making you not sleep at night, for example, watching television in your bedroom that will ruin it, I don’t allow TV in our bedroom anymore it’s a huge fight we watch TV outside the bedroom the bedroom is a TV-free zone. What that does now is when I walk into the bedroom my mind goes shh…I’m ready to sleep because that’s what it is; it’s a place for rest. So create your bedroom as a place for rest, there is so many wonderful things like caramel tea you can take, there is a stress free supplement that I take [unintelligible] etcetera simple magnesium right that really helps calm you down for those who have sleep issues. So figuring why you are not sleeping but I would say sleep is the second most important little thing if you sleep at midnight start sleeping at 11:45 then 11:30 then 11:20 don’t go from 12:45 to 10:00 that will never happen so you got to make little changes every day, you make the change every single day that’s kind of my mantra. The third thing is call it mindfulness call it meditation but find a mini vacation for yourself so that’s the other thing that’s found scientifically if you can find that mindful moment that calms you down during the day it forgives a lot of the ills of the morning so that can be ten minutes in the sun that you are just sitting with your bare feet I would suggest do it at lunch because that’s the easy tizzy thing you are going to have lunch anyway you might as well come to sit outside take your shoes off and you will feel different there is scientific research that when you eat vegetables and you get sunlight your body absorbs the greens better so lots of benefits there so that’s the third big one is taking mini-vacations every day and the fourth one is the sun. We are not getting enough sun there is an interview I did with doctor Jack two days ago the sun is meant to literary reverse like 33 different cancers and will help you obviously and will fix so many issues in your body, it’s the power that powers us I mean it’s the power that powers the plants right that powers the planet, it is the power that powers us we are just not plugging into it enough. So five minutes’ walk in the sun in the morning a little more in the afternoon, something at night schedule it in so that’s the other thing I say whatever you want to do schedule it in and initially just do one little thing every day so you don’t have to do all six things just pick one and say today I am going to do this and what you’ll notice is overtime suddenly you will start yourself doing two things a day and then three things a day and then it becomes a habit.
[30:02] DR. TREVOR CATES: I really like the tips that you have given for helping people shift and make those changes in their lifestyle and I think that there is so much that we can do to support people and its really those daily choices that we make right so we need a little bit of encouragement, a little bit of motivation, some support so I know you got these healthy bootcamps and that’s great that you can and help people whatever their stages and what their focuses and that’s fantastic. So do you want to share your website or how people can find out more about you?
[30:43] REENA JADHAV: Absolutely, so its healthbootcamps.com, just go to healthbootcamps.com and there you can look at the list of bootcamps you can get a free journal by the way, I also wrote my heal journal because to me any healthy journey begins actually with the journal I’m convinced, because I tried without and it didn’t work, I looked for journals I couldn’t find one so I just made one and we sell it at cost you can order it at Amazon the links are there as well and we give you a free 30 day journal so you just go on the site get your free journal and you can try my heal journal bootcamp which will be completely free so if someone is interested they can sign up and give that a try and all the other information we have some wonderful podcast interviews including with you, doctor Trevor so someone who is interested about what is the truth about health, how do I get my health back there is a lot of free resources including interviews with amazing doctors that they can listen to.
[31:44] DR. TREVOR CATES: Alright, Reena thank you so much for coming on the podcast today I really appreciate your information today.
[31:50] REENA JADHAV: Thank you so much doctor Trevor and everybody else out there stays smiling, get your health back, I will see you soon.
[31:56] DR. TREVOR CATES: I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Reena, to learn more about her you can go to the Spa Dr. com go to the podcast page of the interview and you will find all the information and links there. And while you are there I invite you to join the Spa Dr community you can also subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you won’t miss our upcoming shows you get audio or video versions so you can listen at your leisure or watch when it works for you. Also if you have done this already I highly recommend that you get your customized skin report and at theskinquiz.com it can give you great information of what your skin is trying to tell you about your health or the root causes and what to do about it just go to theskinquiz.com. Also, I invite you to join me on social media on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and join the conversation and I will see you next time on this Spa Dr. Podcast.
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