Ep9 (part 2) - Let Life be a Little Messy, Dr. Maya Shetreat

The Pursuit of Health Podcast

On Part 2 of this episode, we continue the discussion with our special guest, Dr. Maya Shetreat, M.D., a thought leader in Medicine and a pioneer who has helped redefine how we think about health. After her conventional training as a Pediatric Neurologist she continued to grow intellectually and philosophically and is now also an herbalist and urban farmer.

She is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Dirt Cure: Growing Healthy Kids with Food Straight from the Soil, which has been translated into multiple languages. Her work has been highlighted in The NY Times, The Telegraph, the Dr. Oz Show, and a multitude of other media forums.
She is the Founder of the Terrain Institute - which fosters the field of Terrain Medicine: earth-based programs for transitional healing.
Dr. Maya picks up on her discussion of the microbiome, including details of the mitochondria and the concept of quorum sensing. She highlights that we are many organisms functioning as one unit and the relationships we have with the world around us. This has been her motivation for starting the Terrain Institute, to promote our alignment internally and externally - the Ecoterrain - to attain health.

Dr. Maya and Dr. Fethke enter into a discussion of Epigenetics - the idea that we have a genetic code and depending on the particular interactions with our environment can turn on or off disease-causing genes. Dr. Maya explains the concept of Resiliency and Hormesis in which a little regular stress actually makes us stronger. Getting a little messy with a diversity of foods and exposures creates a healthy internal terrain. If we make the environment around us too clean, then we may be handicapping our systems. This thesis underlies the title of her book - The Dirt Cure.
Together they touch upon the implications of this thesis for the current Covid-19 pandemic, here and abroad, and the the impact of healthcare disparities as a major contributor to negative epigenetic effects - racism-induced lack of Resiliency - in our own country.

Dr. Maya finishes our episode with a retrospective look at the professional and intellectual hurdles she overcame in creating her approach to health. She is now more confident than ever as her ideas are increasingly gaining validity as a part of mainstream research and scientific thought. She emphasizes that to be healthy we must establish a good relationship with the environment around us.

References:

1. The Terrain Institute - shtreat.mn.co,

2. Drmaya.com

3. Book - The Dirt Cure: Growing Healthy Kids with Food Straight from the Soil - 2016, Publisher- Atria Books.

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(This episode is also available in video format on Youtube @drfethkemd).

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