Longevity secrets from a 102-year-old doctor: Gladys McGarey, M.D. | mbg Podcast

hey everyone Jason here founder and co-ceo of mindbodygreen and your host of the mindbodygreen podcast look the conversation and Longevity has advanced by Leaps and Bounds since we launched my muddy green back in 2009 and while it's great that there are so many evidence-based recommendations on this subject than ever before it's become overwhelming and impossible to keep up with them all so much so it can actually add more stress to your life than Improvement this is why my wife and co-founder Colleen and I set out to cut through the noise and answer this question when we began writing our new book over two years ago called The Joy of well-being a practical guide to a happy healthy and long life practical being the key word here now in this book we've taken 14 years of our Insider knowledge leveraging all we've learned from the best experts in the world and the latest and greatest science and Distilling it down to just the most practical info essentially we've done the leg work so you don't have to we're confident that we can get you to 80 of your maximum well-being and help you maximize Joy at the same time if you're a fan of mindbodygreen or interested in longevity I know you're going to love this book so go to the joyofwellbeing.com or to Amazon or your favorite book retailer to order your copy today thank you so much if you stop moving you die but your body needs to move you're the life force within your whole being has to keep reaching I keep thinking of it as reaching for our true Humanity hey everyone we talk a lot about longevity on this show but that's the thing we're talking about longevity we're hypothesizing what works but Dr Gladys McGarry is living proof of what longevity actually looks like she's a hundred and two years old and she has no plans to retire she's a practicing MD and she recently wrote a book called The well-lived Life which Chronicles all of her tried and true secrets for longevity and guess what her tips are simpler than you think you won't hear anything about NAD injections mtor telomeres or any other trendy longevity topic during our discussion our conversations certainly changed how I approach living a happier healthier life and I really think you'll enjoy it Gladys welcome thank you I'm happy to be here well I am so honored to have you you know we talk about longevity all the time on this podcast but we're talking about it we're hypothesizing about it you're you're doing it at age 102 which I absolutely love so you've got a new book out which I love the well-lived life which I'm holding up for those watching in YouTube which everyone should pick up I usually this question is an easy easy one I start by asking our guests if they could briefly describe their background ah but you've you live such a full and tremendous life I'll I'll say can you briefly describe your background including your founding of the American holistic Medical Association how much time do we have I'm joking I'm joking I'm joking uh no I was born and raised in India my parents were met medical missionaries in North India my mother went into labor with me at the Taj Mahal I think she was kind of a drama queen you know anyway uh then we lived in the jungles of North India and The Villages of North India my parents took their medical work back into the jungles and so um my my brothers and my dad actually did quite a bit of hunting because the tigers and the leopards and so on would attack the villagers and I have a tiger skin on my wall which my dad shot and I have a leopard skin on my you know this kind of stuff was normal and it wasn't that we were Trophy Hunters we were helping the people in The Villages by acting as PR not protectors but helping them to live their lives too so I started out with that kind of a view of life and it's it's it stood me in good stead and so how did you end up practicing medicine and then founding the American holistic Medical Association well I came uh when I was 15 I came to the states for college and then went to Women's Medical College in Philadelphia just as the war got started and so my first four years in in medical school were totally caught up with the killing with with the war and this is World War II absolutely yeah well war against disease and pain and so on but when I got out of when I got past the educational part and into the actual practice part where people weren't used to women Physicians that was really a very interesting time in my life because they thought I was a nurse and I had nurse nurses snatch it uh sing out of my hand and say you know it was but we worked through it you know you lived through it we were everybody was getting educated into the fact that women could do this and uh but the thing that was missing for me was that we knew how to work with the body and we knew how to work with the mind but where was the whole Spirit of the thing my parents were medical missionaries working at that level and so that whole thing was coming in and that's where the holistic medical came in at that point there were a group of us Physicians who were beginning to say yeah this is great but where where is the inner aspect of this whole feeling process including the fact that my eldest son came through Phoenix and he said to me he had just graduated his training in orthopedic surgery in Miami at the big hospital anyway he said Mom I'm real scared I'm going into the world I'm going to have people's lives in my hands I don't know if I can handle this and I said well Carl if you think you're the one that does the healing you have a right to be scared but if you can understand that it's your job to do this amazing thing which is called orthopedic surgery do it the best you can you've learned how to do it you'll do that and then you support the patient as a physician within that patient does their own healing and it was on that premise that we began looking outside of the medical community for where our colleagues were and they were in the in the very essence of the patients that we were working with and so when we started American holistic Medical Association took us two years to decide whether we should how to spell holistic and we finally did realize that the word that we were looking for was Health healing and holy so it was that Divine aspect of all of us the physician and the patient who could do the healing and that love itself was the great healer I love it I love it you know longevity is a topic we discuss a lot here and so I was so excited to to see your book and look again you're obviously doing a lot right sitting here with me having a conversation at age 102. and a half 102 and a half there you go 102 and a half and and in the book you share your six secrets to longevity one you're here for a reason two all life needs to move three love is the most powerful medicine four you are never truly alone five everything is your teacher and then six spend your energy energy wildly and then strangely I'm looking through the book I don't see anything about NAD injections mtor VO2 max grip strength telemarket telomere length and all the other trendy longevity topics these days they're not there no because people uh need to look some other places too because you know uh the way I look at it disease and pain aren't our enemies our job is not to get rid of them but to learn from them some of the most amazing people we know have chronic illnesses they'll never get rid of look at Roosevelt he had post-polio syndrome and what he did the whole concept for me is shifting from a war against disease and pain into a loving atmosphere of love and healing which then accepts the fact that you're going to have Thomas you're gonna have times in your life when things are just really bad and you don't know how you're going to get out of them but if you don't look for the light if you don't look for the love if you don't look for the healing actual healing you don't see it because it's not presented and that's why the whole concept of of holistic medicine stepped in and now I'm calling it living medicine I love that so what what I would love to do is just briefly go through each of the the six pillars so so so one you are here for a reason absolutely I think of it as a huge jigsaw puzzle and we each have our own place and nobody else can fit in that place I love it too all life needs to move if you stop moving you die but your body needs to move you the life force within your whole being has to keep reaching I keep thinking of it as reaching for our true Humanity like E.T you know home it's at reaching up and Beyond and so it's that that essence of ourselves it's reaching for our true Humanity I love that three love is the most powerful medicine the Native Americans have always known this and that most of the religious people in the world and their core know that it's the whole idea that love is what does the healing and everybody has the aspect within their being of loving a lot of people have never really experienced it and if you have never experienced love it's like trying to teach a blind man who is born blind the color of green you know if you've never experienced love you don't know what it is so so it becomes them come incumbent on us who know what love is to reach out to others so that the ones who don't know can feel it a good a good segue is number four you are never truly alone and that's absolutely true if you just give yourself time to look around outside of yourself but the nice thing is that when you really learn to love yourselves that's when you really learn to love other people number five everything is your teacher there we go no matter how much how it sucks you know I mean it might be a terrible terrible thing that you're going through but if you can look at it as a teacher not as an enemy you can begin to find the things that allow you to grow with it not get over it I get tired of people saying well just get over it you don't have to get over it you have to you don't you don't have to do anything it's it's a good idea is to live through it and then you've then you've learned from it if you don't live through it you don't really learn from it you just jump over it and think oh well it doesn't matter there and the last one spend your energy wildly don't be afraid to reach out you know uh we have so many restrictions on what you shouldn't do and what and and children that are told they shouldn't climb trees or or take risks or that kind of thing they might get hurt yeah they might get hurt but look at what they had learned from that hurt and um so the overprotectiveness of trying to keep ourselves and our world from not hurting doesn't allow us to understand that the not not the deliberate hurting not not create creating hurt but if you're faced with something if you're faced with a divorce live through it and learn what you can from it if you're if you're faced with a broken leg figure out what maybe there's something in the way you I don't know some aspect of your whole being that says you need to look at your way of walking it's there's lessons to be learned if you're looking for what it is to be learned and then and then work with them so what what I found to be so interesting is all of these six pillars really hit on mindset you know there's nothing in here on superfoods exercise hacks this this is all mindset connection love purpose spirituality I'm curious given your perspective which is extraordinarily valuable we're not doing so well right now in terms of the Obesity epidemic diabetes mental health I could go on and on I think our our listeners are tired of me uh telling them how bad the the statistics are what do you think's driving that is how much is it our mindset and how much of it is us eating terrible food and sitting on the couch I think it's we don't love ourselves we don't know you know uh Pride cometh before a fall that well was was hard for me to get past the concept that I really needed to love myself because my basic core said yeah but if you're loving yourself you're being proud and therefore Pride cometh before our fall therefore you don't do that but I I was 93 before I realized that in all of my my years and working with people and so on I'd been denying the very thing that I was teaching because I would I'd write something and I would teach it and then I would say well but that came from Bill said this and then and so and so Deepak said something or selling you know I was deflecting it and in essence denying the very thing that I was talking about and the way I found out about that was through a dream I woke up one morning and um in the dream and the waking up I was laughing and singing and what I was and you know in that dream state you can be in both sides of so I was watching myself those nine-year-old Gladys in the Camp North India looking out of the tent flap making sure that my younger brother was to run because he was going to tattle on me if he if he saw it what I was intending to do because it was I knew it was a Sunday morning it was a Sunday morning at this dimension also but that in our family on Sunday mornings we weren't allowed to sing anything but hymns and bhajans and I thought that was stupid as a nine-year-old girl I knew it was better than that and so I checked and there was nobody around and I ran as fast as I could up the mango tree and I'm sitting up in the top of the mango tree and I'm singing I'm watching I'm watching all this this nine-year-old Gladys sitting up in the top of the tree saying I'm seeing all kinds of crazy songs caterpillar songs or anything else that I wanted to but every so often I'd look over my right shoulder and Jesus was up in the tree with me and I look at Jesus and I say Jesus loves the little children right and he's he's cracking up he's laughing he says yes so then I go back to my singing and then I get to doubting and I look back again and I say I'm still a little children right and he says yes and so I go back to my singing and I wake up and I realized that in all my preaching and so on and I appreciate I mean speaking about things that I knew were really important I was denying and so from that time I actually began to accept my voice as having some some strength some understanding and knowledge in it and I began to love it so in other words it sounds like you didn't really have self-confidence self-esteem no I when I first grade and second I had to repeat twice because I was so dyslexic I couldn't read or write so I had that damaged part of my soul that was still hanging on until I was 93. wow so you know on that note look life is in all roses there are setbacks there are you know death and divorce or or big ones which are devastating can paralyze people you've experienced both how how do we come out the other side when we're faced with such circumstance well what I've learned is that you can either hang on to the pain or hang on to what the pain has taught you it's like if you cut your arm and you have a scab you can keep picking at that scab because it kind of hurts good you know you kind of keep at it but when you stop picking at it and let it heal you can look at it and say oh I know what you were I know who you are you know it's that kind of a learning when you actually live through the process and learn the lessons that you have to learn from that then you can then you can heal and as you heal it's just a scab it's not I mean a scar so how do you you know again I I love this notion we're talking about longevity and again you're you're walking the talk here when I tend to have a discussion around longevity maybe we'll talk about blood pressure maybe APO B maybe grip strength maybe telomeres or all these data and metrics out there which you know we're not just missing but we haven't touched on that and I think what's so fascinating given your perspective is your perspective is entirely different and so with that all said how do you define health if someone were to walk into your metaphorical office and said say Gladys how am I doing my guess is you're not going to ask them about their blood pressure I might [Laughter] here's the thing it's not the modality that's that's not whether you're osteopath whether you're a chiropractor or the naturopath allopath or what it's not the modality or the the structure that you're using them they're wonderful the things that we've learned in medicine stem cells my goodness the lessons that we've learned from The Sciences has come on that's not they're not really the issue the issue is how you're using it it's like I spoke to talk to my son you know about touching the reaching out with love to the the physician within the patient and connecting there and that's that's everybody's personal stuff and so when I try to give somebody a diet I won't do that because I don't know what they are what they could tolerate my one son can't handle garlic primarily I grew up in India I love it you know so it's it's what what we as we begin to understand and love ourselves except for our path then we fit into our jigsaw puzzle if we're so all the time try to Pond ourselves into that jigsaw puzzle we don't fit it doesn't fit it sounds like we're not probably giving enough attention to our emotional and spiritual well-being because love really is a great healer in the long run and as a medical doctor I know this is the case for reading your book but and hearing you speak can you talk a little bit about when you've seen people who are suffering physically and then what's what you've seen with those people emotionally and spiritually there is a connection here I have so many uh friends and patients and who I call Essence of living medicine these are people who have like I have one friend who just died at the age of 79 and she had lived since she was 18 months old with one quarter of one kidney I mean none of us know how she did that none of the Physicians that worked with her through the years we would talk about and none of us had any idea how she did that but she knew how she but her body could tolerate and she was able to do that until she she was 79. so what what do you you know as I go through the sex and I think about you know this is a dear friend of yours she was and you're one of your chapter titles is you're never truly alone this woman obviously had a strong connection with you I think about the loneliness epidemic we're in right now oh yeah yeah how do we get ourselves out of this well look for solutions that are loving Solutions it's like these young men that are killing each other in the you know that that to me is one of the saddest things that we have in our culture is these amazing young men who think that getting a gun and killing other people is there whatever and so I I have I have had a friend who she she was a school teacher and she said the best year she had in school was when she had a dog in the classroom so I'm talking about this I think that we should really begin to think about dogs as guardian dogs in classrooms not guns for the teacher but if you had a guardian dog in the classroom that dog knows when a child is sad when they're having problems at home they and they'll come and stay by that child or if a child is afraid of a dog they won't come anywhere near until the child begins to reach out for them but I would I don't know this but I think some of these young people who are doing these things about killing have never really understood about death think about when you're when kids are watching TV you have a hero he dies you will look at the TV the next day he's alive so he he dies then he dies again then he dies again if you don't if you have never experienced a pet or a parent or something that you really loved and cared for dying how do you know anything about death and if you don't know anything about death it's nothing you can go shoot a person and shoot yourself what you know it's it's it's like we've trivialized the very essence of life to the point where even the things that we are teaching are sort of mixed up so that the people are can but if we had dogs in a classroom we'd have a whole new profession you'd have to have how hypoallergenic dogs they'd have to be trained to do this their trainers would have to be trained the teachers would have to be trained parents would have to know the kids would have to I mean it's a whole new profession well the idea of therapeutic animals is one that a lot of people are very interested in oh I know it's why not bring it into the classroom and so what I think you're also hitting on you know in the mental health epidemic is you know mental health is a is a serious issue with kids and it can stem from a lack of purpose a lack of spirituality uh there's a great statistic we have from Dr Lisa Miller who's been on the show and has done a lot of work on the subject where when mother and child or quote unquote high in spirituality and she's a very broad definition of spirituality is anything from organized religion to Transcendent awareness you know walking in nature picking up trash being grateful the child is five times less likely to be depressed five times less likely and so if you think about purpose anecdotally we hear this all the time someone's may be older in life maybe they just retire maybe they lose a partner and they lose their purpose and then their health rapidly declines can we talk about that because this is number one in your book you are here for a reason why do you think that's so critical well because you have to life has to move if you if you lose your purpose and you have nowhere to go I look at it kind of like I have a flashlight and I can walk my path but as I walk my path maybe I see a person whose flashlight is a little dim if I add my flashlight to that flashlight their dimness can go a little bit maybe maybe not completely away but I can add my light to that light and help them see that the path goes a little farther than they were going In Their Own Stuck you know when they were having their problems so it's metaphorically we need each other but in the process of needing each other it's that reality that we really really need each other so that our and if I have a patient and I say to him well now go home and arrest and he goes home to rest and figures out that that's all he needs to do he'll he'll he'll you know just lie down and give up that's not what I'm saying when he's when I tell him to go if I say go home and rest that's doing something go home and rest doesn't mean you go home and give up you go home and rest until your juice comes back in somebody helps you up and you can get up off the couch and move so on that note what do you do when you're having a moment or adversity strikes would you ever go to actually it depends it depends entirely uh currently I have my second son here who's staying with me and that's been amazing is it retired Presbyterian Minister and he's he's technologically you know he can do all this technology stuff which is woo-woo stuff from her for real but it's it's the reality that I still have work to do I've still got a 10-year plan there's I want to have a village for living medicine for people of like-minded heart issues can come and actually help live together so that there will be a place on many places because I don't see it as any one place but a village for living medicine where we can live the kind of lives that we're reaching for I love it where is the village going to be well we have a couple of places that are beginning to show up as places and um oh you know will it'll grow into what it is I love it so uh what do you think we should be all doing more of what do you think we should be doing less of in our Quest To Live happy healthier and longer lives figure out how we can Love More but maybe it's just loving a uh caterpillar that's climbing up the wall or whatever you know it's beginning to realize that all of nature around us is there for us now living in the desert people think that there is nothing that grows I'm telling you spring in Arizona is absolutely magnificent things that have been dormant pop up and it's just gorgeous that's within all of us we live in that nature mother nature has it we you know I here's something I think that when when the good Lord created us and said now you are have dominion over the Earth we real we thought that he said dominance so we've taken as being the people that can choose and have uh thoughtful things going on in our brains and our hearts we thought that we were had the um right to choose what we did with the Earth and with the creatures on the earth he that's not what was said biblically it's dominion and that's caring for so if we're really looking to care for ourselves our neighbors our children our pets our Earth our plants you know that's a that's a whole different thing from you know telling the Earth what it needs to do you know and hearing you speak and reading your book it feels like your spiritual practice your faith this played a significant role in your longevity with that said how do we you know for for those who are listening and and you know thinking well I don't know what my purpose is or you know maybe I'm conflicted about religion or had a bad experience in in church or or organized religion what advice do you have to someone who you know wants to be happier wants to be more deeply connected to something bigger than themselves start looking for what makes you want to sing or what makes you want to smile or what makes you want to look further than where you are I mean if you're not looking for it you're not going to see it no matter how many times a person tells you this you're not going to see it but if you're looking for it it might just be a little match someplace that lights up or some somebody to Elsa's flashlight that is helping you see a little farther it might just be a little thing like that it might be a baby smile for crying out loud the there are things that are just divinely placed in our presence and they they're there if we're looking for them you know this idea of paying attention to what you're looking for and that thing appearing and I think hits on mindset and I'll use an example which I've I've used previously on the show when I was living in Washington DC and I think it was O2 or 03 there was a sniper it was terrifying and they the news uh put out an alert this person is in a white minivan all of a sudden um everywhere I went I saw white vets they're everywhere and I think it speaks to this idea of when you develop a mindset or a view that the world operates in a certain way or you're looking for something you tend to see it everywhere and that can be a blessing but it can also be a curse yeah it's like picking at your scab you know if you've got to hurt and you keep re-injuring it by picking at it it can't heal but if you can allow it to heal do the things that you know you know whatever but allow it to you live through that trauma it may take you 93 years took me but when you do wow so while I say the message to our listeners is it's never too late yep and I'm curious given your perspective in 2023 we certainly live in an interesting time what concerns you and also what excites you I'm concerned about the random killing I you know I'm really concerned about that but I'm excited about dogs in the classroom so is there one thing for our listeners that they should absolutely do tomorrow look for love today and loving anything loving the cat and love anything yeah it can be anything it might be well I'm not even gonna put the idea in your head go find it laughs so if you could go back in time and give your younger self advice usually this is an easy question of talking to someone in their 50s and I say you know go back to your 20s but given your perspective I feel like I wouldn't get that I need to broaden it for you but if you could go back to any point in your life your younger self give yourself advice what advice would that be trust want you what you're saying trust your own voice I mean really I I didn't trust my own voice but when I did I was able to say things that that were really had some enough truth to them that people could they were hearing them before but they were hearing them at at a level that wasn't as deep as it is now I mean the way this book is going is just it's taken on a life of its own because the message is there for anybody to pick up and reuse it is tremendous and and something that's not a focus of the book but I would be remiss not to ask I am very curious like what do you eat like no I love that answer first of all I love that answer what you like so what what do you like Grayson Brandon prunes for breakfast for crying out loud with lactose-free milk and you know stuff that works for my gut well I'm curious what works for your gut s some things that don't work for other people's guts you know I like I like hot Indian food but you know I grew up with it so um so but I don't recommend that I can't recommend it for my kids so I love it on that note you did grow up in India and Gandhi yeah what was Gandhi like I was 10 years old uh in the train we were coming to the states my parents had a furlough and I was sitting in the with my face plastic against the window because there was a whole crowd of people following some men and and when I realized it was Gandhi I was really looking and he was walking ahead with his dhoti and his lock tea the stick they walked with and he stooped just he came just to where my uh window was and I was looking out and um he stooped down and took a flower from a little girl and looked up and looked into my eyes and I to this day feel that connection reconnected but 30 years later my parents worked with him during the partition as they helped with their medical work with people who were being injured when India was torn apart when the partition happens you know and and my dad worked with Gandhi on I have a shawl here that Gandhi gave my mother because of the words that they did together so it was that kind of a connection that happened when I was 10 years old that has carried through my life with knowing that there was a a loving connection not just to India but to Gandhi personally and and my parents then lived that house wow powerful do you have any parting words of wisdom or anything else you'd like to say or touch on yeah I would just like to say I love your neighbor and love yourself you know I mean what's greater than that I love it Gladys thank you so much for coming on congratulations on the book such an honor to have you thank you thank you

Channel: the mindbodygreen podcast

Views: 23,838

Keywords: gladys mcgarey, mental health, the well-lived life

Id: ADEwtBQHqoI

Length: 41min 25sec (2485 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023