The future of personalized healthcare is here, and Judy Gaman, CEO of Executive Medicine of Texas, is leading the charge with innovative strategies for optimizing health and wellbeing. In this deeply insightful episode, we explore the fascinating intersection of science, purpose, and human connection, as Judy shares her remarkable journey and the lessons learned from centenarians like Lucille. Discover how Executive Medicine of Texas is redefining preventative care through groundbreaking medical breakthroughs like biological age testing, micronutrient analysis, and the ALCAT test for food sensitivities. Judy, a bestselling author and TEDx speaker, also reveals the profound impact of community, hobbies, and a higher power on longevity, and how these insights have transformed her approach to patient care. Join us as we delve into practical biohacks, the power of sleep for brain health, and the cutting-edge technologies like brain mapping and neurofeedback that are revolutionizing our understanding of wellness.
The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.
—
Watch the episode here
Listen to the podcast here
Rewrite Your Future: Optimizing Health & Wellbeing To Thrive Now With Judy Gaman, CEO Of Executive Medicine Of Texas
Our guest is someone whose work beautifully blends science, purpose, and human connection. Judy Gaman is the CEO of Executive Medicine of Texas, a concierge medical practice that’s redefining the future of proactive preventative healthcare. She’s also a bestselling author, a TEDx speaker, and a podcast host known for her warm storytelling and sharp insights into what it truly means to live well.
What makes Judy’s perspective especially powerful is her lived experience, including an extraordinary friendship with a 100-year-old woman named Lucille that transformed her outlook on longevity, love, and legacy. That story became the heart of her award-winning memoir, Love, Life, and Lucille. In this episode, we’re going to dive into how Judy is helping patients and audiences alike stay young in body, mind, and spirit.
We’ll talk about the science of personalized health, the importance of purpose and community, and why it’s never too late to rewrite your story. Whether you’re in your thirties, forties, eighties, or nineties, this conversation will inspire you to take the next step toward living more fully and more intentionally. Let’s dive in.
Judy, thank you so much for being on the show. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation. It’s such an honor and a privilege for me and for our audience to learn from such an amazing, inspiring person. Thanks for being with us.
You’re so sweet. I’m so happy to be on. I love what you’re doing. I think it’s terrific. You’ve got a great message yourself. It’s an honor for me to be here with you.
Lucille’s Life Lessons: Inspiration For Vibrant Living
Thanks. I would love to hear a little bit of the backstory. I know you wrote a book, Love, Life, and Lucille. Maybe that could lead us to the rest of our conversation. Tell us and our audience about your relationship with Lucille and how that inspired you and influenced your outlook on life, health, and everything else.
I have to rewind a little bit because an interesting take on all this is what was my first job in life. My first job in life, when I was sixteen, was working in a nursing home. At that point, I learned a lot of life lessons. You do that when you are helping people who can’t help themselves. You’re feeding them, bathing them, and so forth.
One thing I did learn is what I didn’t want to be like when I was older. When I was working on a book called Age to Perfection: How to Thrive to 100, Happy, Healthy, and Wise, I was doing all of the usual research. I was diving into the science, studying the Blue Zones, and all of that. I had this moment where I turned to my writing assistant and said, “We should find people over 100 and ask them what they did. Let’s go straight to the source. These people got the T-shirt.”
Since we were doing that, we were talking to people who were living that life. First of all, I was shocked because I was not expecting to find as many people over 100 who could remember things, tell stories, and have a conversation like they’re 50. It was amazing to me how aware they were and how happy and proud of their own lives they were in reaching that milestone.
When I did that and I interviewed, there was one particular person, Lucille Fleming, whom I met. She’s what inspired the Love, Life, and Lucille book. She had turned 100, and I interviewed her for this book. We became attached at the hip, going through that process of spending that much time with somebody. I’ll tell you about the other book that I was writing because when that book came out, it was time to go on a national book tour. She went with me. Traveling with somebody over 100 is a hoot. It was crazy how she, at 100 years old, had reinvented herself. She always said, “If you still have a breath in you, you still have a purpose.” She had found her new purpose as a longevity expert, somebody who’d been there, done that.
I love the lessons that I learned from her, but it also helped me as the CEO here at Executive Medicine of Texas to talk to our patients in a different way. Sometimes, you hear patients say things like, “I don’t want to live to be 100. 80 is probably cut out for me because I don’t want to be old, drooly, and smelly.” I’m like, “It doesn’t have to be that way.”
There were so many lessons that she taught. That’s how we met. I was working on that book. She was larger than life. Sometimes, you connect with somebody on an incredible level. In the 4 years that I spent with her, and she died 2 weeks shy of her 104th birthday, she became my best friend. It was an incredible journey.
That’s amazing. What were 1 or 2 of the primary lessons that you learned from her or others that you were interviewing in that process?
What was fascinating about the people I interviewed was that they had very similar answers in some regards. They all had a higher power. It didn’t matter what religion they were. They all believed in a higher power, which was a very important thing for each one of them. They talked about it in the sense that they didn’t feel the need to control everything in the world or everything that was going on in their life.
“If you still have a breath in you, you still have a purpose.” Share on X
They would say, “Give it up to God.” I thought that it was important to hear that from people who have been through so much. These people, when I was working on this book, were over 100, which means they lived through some incredible wars, the Great Depression, unbelievable things, and pandemics. They lived it and lived to tell about it.
A couple of other things I thought were important were that they all understood the meaning of friendship. They all said it was important to be social. They have a lot of friends. Lucille would always say, “I’ve got to have younger friends. When you’re my age, you always have to have younger friends.” I felt that that was a testament to their spirit. Also, they had hobbies. Lucille played duplicate bridge. A lot of them went to Bingo. Some of them took yoga. Whatever it was, they had a hobby. They had something that they looked forward to.
Even at forty, fifty, and sixty, sometimes, we forget that those are important things for us to do for our longevity. It’s not just about how we are going to spend our time, how old we are, and all of those things. It’s about how we are growing and learning. Even at that age, they were learning new things. We know about neuroplasticity and how important it is to continue to learn and use our brains. Having a front row seat to see that in action was amazing.
Judy’s Journey To CEO & Cutting-Edge Medical Breakthroughs
That does sound amazing. I love that we’re continually growing and continually learning. That’s such an important lesson for us. Tell us a little bit about how you became the CEO of Executive Medicine of Texas. What was that journey like?
My background was in health sciences, and I had a lot of clinical research experience. At one point, I was a director of a clinical research operation, and I was involved even in the onset of executive medicine. What did it look like? How was it going to evolve? What was the practice going to look like? I wasn’t in the day-to-day early on. I had another career. It was a crazy circumstance that changed that. I came into the office or into the practice.
It has been twenty years since Executive Medicine has been around. In 2005, it was founded, and then in 2008, I was there full-time. I was the director of business development and things like that. As it grew, we went from a very small office to a large office. All of these things were happening, even hiring more providers and such, because the demand was there.
There came a time when it was like, “We need a CEO.” I became the CEO. We have the C-Suite here and have an incredible team behind not just the doctors. A lot of medical practices feel like the doctors should be able to run the business and run the practice. 99.9% of doctors are good at medicine and bad at business. They can’t focus on both. Their focus should be on patient care. This model allowed our business to grow and the doctors to stay focused on patient care.
I love that. That you freed them up to do what they do best. As the CEO there, you guys are on the cutting edge, learning all kinds of new things. What are some of the medical breakthroughs or the things that you’re seeing that you guys are doing that are on the cutting edge that you’re most excited about?
I’m glad that you asked that because medicine is always evolving. I think back to the things that we were doing in the beginning. Many of those things we still do, like bioidentical hormones and things like that. Those are still part of the practice. We’re looking at a lot of different areas with our patients. We’re able to look at their genetics and say, “What’s going on genetically?” We’re able to measure their age. It’s not just their chronological age, but their biological age.
We’re able to measure their telomeres. We look inside the cell and micronutrients and say, “We’re not going to do the usual where we draw your blood and check for B, D, and things like that. We want to look at a lot of different nutrients, minerals, and all kinds of things, and say, “What’s going on inside the body? Is your body able to utilize these nutrients?” You can have a high serum level of B vitamins, but then when you look inside the cell, it is not being utilized. That gives us a lot of information. Not everybody needs the same dose. If you’re not able to utilize it, we need to know why.
For example, a lot of times, we see deficiencies in people who have celiac disease. Vitamin D is a common one, as well as other vitamins as well. It may be that they’re in for their half-day physical exam, and we happen to draw their blood and see different things in their lab values. We start piecing it together, and then we start asking other questions, like, “How has your gut been?” They’re like, “I have this dairy allergy. I have this dairy thing.” We’re like, “Are we sure it’s dairy?
Don’t ever go somewhere where the company that tests the micronutrients is the same company that provides their supplements. That’s a huge red flag. Share on X
We then do the ALCAT Test, which is another one that we do. We can look for food sensitivities. Dairy is an easy one to go to. It gets blamed for a lot. It is inflammatory. It’s a common problem, but a lot of times, other things get overlooked. Is gluten a factor? We have done ALTCATs on people and found out that they are eating salads, but there happens to be a particular lettuce that they’re sensitive to.
We’ve seen nuts. People think, “If I’m allergic to nuts, I’m going to break out or I’m going to not be able to breathe,” but there are other nut allergies that can cause headaches and memory issues. There are a lot of things that people don’t think are allergies simply because there’s no rash, or they’re like, “I don’t have my throat closing up.”
It is deep diving into each particular patient to say, “What’s going on in your body?” It’s a personal health journey. One size does not fit all. That’s, unfortunately, what a lot of medical practices do strictly because they can’t spend a lot of time with the patient. You’re seeing 40 or 50 people a day. I always like to say, “You got your 10-minute appointment, but 5 of that, the doctor’s hand is on the door because the nurse is knocking and saying, “We got to get over here in this room. We have people waiting.”
It’s a different mentality to say, “Let’s look at the whole picture. Let’s look at the individual. Let’s not just write a prescription or stick a Band-Aid on something, but let’s get to the root of the problem, get you in the best health possible, and make sure that we can give you the best chance for living the longest and healthiest life.”
Unlocking Food Sensitivities & Brain Health Mapping
That’s fantastic. Say a little bit more about the ALCAT Test. Is that something that people can find for themselves wherever they are if they’re not able to come to your practice center?
This is a test that there are providers that do it. It’s not covered by insurance, but there are providers that do it around the nation. There are practices like ours where if we have a patient and they’re an established patient, because we see them from all over the globe, they can have that done while they’re here or we can send them the kit and they can have it collected where they live. That can be sent in from there, and we can go over the results. There are other providers.
ALCAT is a very good test. It gives a lot of good information. There are different types of panels. For example, some of the panels include food additives. We do know that food additives could be a major problem. There are people who, if they are sensitive to MSG and they get MSG, can flush, get rashes, and have migraine headaches. It can also affect their vision and their speech.
It is being able to look at the individual and say, “We know something’s going on. Now, let’s dive into the different areas that we can look at.” Maybe that’s a blood test. Maybe we do brain mapping here. Let’s map your brain and see what’s going on. If we see that there are some misconnections here, the synapses are not connecting, your EEG looks off, or a particular part of your brain doesn’t look like it’s functioning, let’s tackle that.
Is there something like grief or trauma going on in your life? Is it that you have some kind of deficiency we haven’t uncovered? Maybe we haven’t done a micronutrient test on that particular patient, but we’re seeing something’s going on. Maybe there’s something in the prefrontal cortex that doesn’t look quite right, which is affecting their ability to make good decisions. That’s important information, especially at different stages of your life. If you feel like something’s off, there’s probably a good chance there is something off because we know our bodies better than anybody.
That’s amazing. You can do a biological test. Are you using an epigenetic test for that?
We have different genetic tests that we can do. We can look at a variety of things. We also have tests that we can do where we can check the gut microbiome. There are all of these tools in our toolbox, and we’re not the only ones in the world that can do these. As you search out, if you’re looking for somewhere to go and you don’t come to us here at Executive Medicine, find somewhere that is affiliated with some of these other tests that they can do.
What’s a red flag? Don’t ever go somewhere where the company that tests the micronutrients is the same company that provides their supplements. That’s a huge red flag. There is a major conflict of interest there. Be smart about it. Do your research. There are also tests out there that will give you results that you can’t do anything about, which is terrible. We try to never ever recommend something unless it’s something that we’re like, “These results are going to be helpful to you, and here’s what we can do about it.”
Inflammation is at the root of almost all diseases. Share on X
Also, be cognizant that there are some crazy tests out there. Some of these social media sites do a good job of convincing you, “You’ve got to have this. Spit in this cup and send it here.” I would be careful with that. I’d also be careful where you’re sharing your DNA. If you’re going to do it, don’t do it with somebody online. Go through a provider who has already done some of that research to say, “How are you protecting our patients? How is the information going to be used? How do you destroy the information?” and all of that. It’s important in this day and age.
That’s good advice. I’m putting some things together here. We can test our biological age through an epigenetic or other type of test, and then you can optimize your health with testing the micronutrients, finding out what you’re sensitive to, and doing the gut microbiome testing. You can start to put that together, so that you’re optimizing your health based on your nutrition and what you’re eating or avoiding. You’re mapping the brain. If I were doing those things and came back six months later, would you test my biological age again and see how I’m improving?
Yeah. We can do it every six months. We can do it once a year. We generally like to take a look at a year’s time because we want to test it at the same time of year. We want to see how much progress has been made. Also, checking those inflammatory markers is hugely important. We do know that inflammation is at the root of almost all diseases. Cancer, diabetes, and heart disease all link back to inflammation. We look at those inflammatory markers, check those telomere lengths, and look at the person as a whole, but taking different slices.
Some of the answers are on imaging. We do CT body scans. We don’t do them every year because nobody needs that kind of radiation. We’ll do virtual colonographies. We can look at the inside and the outside of the colon, which is important. We’ve identified some cancers on the outside of the colon that would’ve been missed with a regular optical colonoscopy.
This is a very interesting story. We had a patient. He was 34. I take it back. This patient was 45. He was on an airplane. He was an entrepreneur, flying all over the place all the time. He took a magazine out of the backseat. This is when they had magazines pre-COVID. He was flipping through the magazine, and it wasn’t even our ad, but there was an ad in there about an executive physical.
He reaches out to his executive assistant, who ironically happens to be his mother. She was his executive assistant, too. She is a tough nut, too. She called around and said, “My son read about this. He couldn’t sleep for two days, and he told me to find the best place for him to get this done.” She asked a lot of questions. We were the only place she had called that was doing the virtual colonography. She said, “I’m going to do this because you have this in your program.”
These are those kinds of things where a guardian angel was out there. She made the right decision. He came in and had all the testing. He was with us for half a day. He did all the lab values, all the cognitive testing, and the physical testing. He did everything. He did that virtual colonography. You could fly through the colon and look at the outside, but because it also includes an abdominal and pelvic CT, we were able to identify tailbone cancer.
He didn’t know he had it. He didn’t have any symptoms. This is something that you generally aren’t going to find symptoms of. It’s going to spread somewhere, and then you have a bigger problem. We could identify it. We lined up the surgeon and got him in. In two days, he was on the operating table. They got it all and had him spread. In two weeks, he was playing baseball with his kiddos again. Those are the kinds of stories that touch my heart because this is why we do what we do.
I mentioned 34 as an age because it’s another fascinating story. A 34-year-old male came in and wanted to have a colonoscopy. He had some symptoms. There was nothing massive or major, but a change in bowel habits and such. We did the virtual colonography and found that he had colon cancer that was on the inside and the outside of his colon.
He went in for a complete resection of that area. He is alive and well. Both his parents went and got tested, and it turned out’s mom had cancer, too. She got hers out. It was at an earlier stage than her son’s. That was a circumstance where it saved two lives. It is about listening to your body if you think something’s off. Like in the first story, if something is telling you, “I never had this kind of exam. I probably should have it,” listen because that still, small voice is so important.
That’s amazing. Going back to the ALCAT Test, for example, I’m eating things all the time, trying to eat a healthy diet, but there are probably things that I’m sensitive to or that my wife is sensitive to that we’re taking in. Having tests like that and having data to show, “This is what’s happening,” I’m sure, is extremely helpful.
You get it. It’s about the data. We want data on our cars. We take them in for expensive checkups. We do all these things for our cars. We want data in our businesses. We have to know the numbers. You can’t run a business if you don’t know the numbers. We want pie charts and graphs. We want all of this everywhere else, but we ignore our own health. This is where it’s so important to get those data points.
Even for the people who have never been through a program like that, the first one is like, “This is what I can measure against. Now I know where I want to go. Do I want to improve, or is this something that everything looks good that next year, if something’s off, then that’s serious because I know what my baseline was?”
Gathering Your Baseline Data: Optimizing Health From Within
You’re doing all the things to gather all that baseline data, and then you can optimize from there. You mentioned brain mapping. That sounds interesting. Tell us a little bit more about the brain mapping and how that is changing lives.
I want to tell you the story of how it came to be in our practice because this is a fascinating story. We get called all the time, like, “You should look into this. You should look into that.” We get pitched a lot of things. 95% of it doesn’t make it into the practice. It doesn’t pass the sniff test, so to speak. This particular one was someone I knew well and said, “You guys aren’t doing brain mapping. I think you should be doing it. I’m going to set you up with this neurologist friend of mine. Go over and get your brain map so you can see what it is. Maybe you guys should do this technology.”
I had never met this neurologist before. I say friend, but it was more like a colleague. My friend didn’t know anything about what was going on in my personal life. It was crazy. I went in to get my brain mapped. You put a helmet on your head. You got these little connectors. You do certain things, and it’s measuring your brainwaves and such.
Afterwards, he said, “Have a seat. I’m going to take a look at this, and then I’ll bring you in here and we’ll talk about it.” I had my husband with me. We sat around this table, and he put it up on the screen. I said, “What’s all that red right there?” I point up and he goes, “Green is good and red is dead.” I’m like, “What do you mean? A part of my brain is dead?” I’m freaking out. I’m like, “This is crazy.”
He got quiet and then said, “Was there something that happened to you recently? Did you have a recent trauma?” This is what we see with trauma, grief, and PTSD. We see this with a lot of the soldiers who do it. I said, “Yeah. Two weeks ago, my sister died. It was unexpected.” I start crying. I’m like, “It showed up in my brain.”
He explained grief and how it affects your brain. Right where that was was the grief center. I was sitting there with tears streaming down my face. He said, “Are you having trouble concentrating?” I was like, “Yeah,” and he went down this list of things. I was like, “You’re describing everything that’s going on in my life right now.” He said, “You’ve got to cut yourself some grace because your brain has to repair itself.”
We see people who go through the loss of a loved one, or they’ve been through some kind of situation and this grief is there. It shuts that part of the brain down. He said, “Your brain is doing this because it’s in survival mode. It needs to focus elsewhere. It needs to focus on things like, “I need to eat. I need to sleep. I need to go back to the basic things.” It was a huge eye-opener. I said, “What am I going to do about it?” He goes, “There’s neurofeedback.”
I became such a huge believer in not just the brain mapping, but if we can’t do anything about it, we don’t want to give people information and say, “Good luck with that.” I went through neurofeedback, and the neurofeedback helped so much. It was so drastically different from what I imagined. I wanted some other members of my family to go through it, too.
We use it for a lot of things. We use it for TBIs. We’ve got a lot of athletes, so we use it for that. We use neurofeedback for grief. We use it for a host of things. We do see a lot of trauma, PTSD, and a variety of things, whether they were in the Military or whether they were in some terrible situation, such as school shootings and other awful things. It doesn’t even have to be that. It could be they’ve been through a divorce, and their grief center is so lit up that they can’t move past it. It’s amazing.
We had one patient, an NFL guy. He was like, “Can I buy one of these machines? I’m going to put it in my house. It’s such a game-changer.” It works. When you find something that works and you can help a patient, and you’ve helped yourself, so you’re such a firm believer, it’s a game-changer in your life, one that saves you in ways you can’t even describe.
Neurofeedback & Sleep: Repairing And Rejuvenating The Brain
That’s amazing. You’re a beneficiary of your own work there, too. Tell us a little bit more about the neurofeedback device, then.
When you find something that works, and it helps your patients because it helped you—making you a firm believer—it's a game-changer, saving you in indescribable ways. Share on X
This is how it works. It’s fascinating. I’m going to describe this in probably the easiest way for all the readers to understand. If you’ve ever been in the car and you’re driving, and it goes static-y, you can’t stand it. The first thing you do is turn it down and turn it off, almost in a panic, because we hate that sound. With neurofeedback, there’s music that plays. You may or may not even hear it, but there’ll be this static.
People who come to us at the beginning who are bad are like, “I didn’t hear anything,” but then as they start repairing the brain, they’re like, “I hear it.” It was probably because certain parts of their brain were so shut off. When the music is playing and your brain is listening to it, it suddenly gets static wherever the brain isn’t connecting. The EEG is showing that there’s something that’s not right. It will take that music and create a static noise. Your brain wants to shut that noise off, so your brain starts to repair itself.
It’s fascinating because nothing is put into your head or screwed into your head. There are no devices inside. You’ve got some little EEG sensors. You’ve got some headphones in and clips on your ears. You lie there, and you go to sleep. The one thing that we hear consistently is that it’s the best sleep they’ve ever had the night after or for a couple of days after that. They are able to go to sleep and have a deep sleep, too.
What is the name of the neurofeedback device?
We switched our device. I can’t remember the name of the one we’re using. There was a great upgrade, and we upgraded to a new device. It’s only in clinical offices. I wish I could pull it off the top of my head.
People can come and have a session. It’s creating new neural pathways or healing those that are damaged and repairing them.
It’s repairing the old ones and creating new ones. We know that the brain is neuroplastic. It was the old, “This is your brain on drugs. You fry your brain, and you never get it back. You hurt your brain and you never get it back.” With neuroplasticity, we know that we can reconnect. We can make those new pathways. We can do workarounds, almost like the venous system.
This happens a lot of times with the heart. If there’s a blockage in the heart, sometimes your own body will build what they call collaterals. You’ll start getting vessels that build and grow around that. They’re generally not as good as the original vessel, but your body is trying to find a new way. This is a great way for your brain to rebuild, strengthen, and grow. The brain is like a muscle. You’ve got to exercise it. There’s another thing. You were talking about sleep. This is important. Do you talk about sleep a lot on your show?
Yeah. One of the pillars of longevity is sleep. It affects everything.
We didn’t know this until a couple of years ago. We were talking about it on our podcast. People were writing to us and going, “I never knew that.” This is a fascinating thing about sleep that came out of research using functional MRI. In a static MRI, which is most MRIs that people would get into, it’s a static image. Still slices are taken fast of whatever you’re having an MRI of. I will say the brain, for example. With a functional MRI, they’re able to do images in real-time of what’s going on inside the brain. We can look.
With functional MRI, they found something very important. We know about sleep patterns and how we go into sleep cycles. We want to get into that REM sleep. The longer you’re asleep, you go through the cycles of sleep. You get into REM sleep, Rapid Eye Movement. This is where we dream. This is where you want to be. If you stay asleep, that REM sleep gets longer. Every time you cycle through and the longer you stay asleep without being woken up, the more REM sleep you have or the real, true, restful, and restorative sleep you have.
We knew that REM sleep was important, but we didn’t know until not that long ago that why it’s important is because when we get into that deep sleep and we’re seven and a half hours in, and we’re going through that length of REM sleep, the brain washes itself like a washing machine and gets rid of all of that gunk in there that leads to dementia and Alzheimer’s. It’s fascinating that it cleans out the plumbing in your brain. This is so important.
With neuroplasticity, we can reconnect the brain, make new pathways, and create workarounds, much like the venous system. Share on X
If people can’t sleep, it’s little wonder that they end up with memory issues, depression, and a lot of brain-related or neurological-related issues. We know why. The body was made to sleep. It’s a beautiful, incredible machine. If we let it do its thing and we obey the rules, such as eat right, sleep, and exercise, the body tends to take care of itself well.
That’s amazing. It’s like a sponge, almost, that has to be squeezed out.
If you look at a picture of a brain, you see all these little canals. There’s a lot of water or a lot of fluid in the brain. If you look through the canals, that’s where all of that system is. We want to clean that out. We, the people who don’t know medicine or aren’t around that, often think of the brain as being hard or solid, but it’s quite complex. There are crevices and all kinds of things in there.
It’s one of those things where you have to take care of it. You have to take care of your brain on a real level. It matters what you put in your mouth. It matters if you exercise. Exercise grows the brain. It helps you with the type of brain that you want to have in terms of white matter, gray matter, and all of that. You want to have good, strong gray matter.
You don’t want white matter disease. That’s what we see with Alzheimer’s and Lewy body dementia. You think of Robin Williams. He had Lewy body dementia. It’s tragic when you think of how much we’re affected when the brain’s affected. For Michael J. Fox, it is the same thing. Parkinson’s is a brain issue, too. It’s a dopamine issue.
If you have a bad night of sleep, the next day, it’s often hard to concentrate or remember things. You’re forgetting words, names, or things like that.
Most accidents happen when people have not had a good night’s sleep. It’s not that they are up all night. It could be that they slept 5 or 6 hours, but they were interrupted. If you have a pet that keeps you up at night, this is a big problem. If you have to get up to urinate all the time, you need to cut off your fluids early because you have to get your sleep. Don’t look at your device. Look at the television. Be on your computer. Don’t get up in the middle of the night and go to the bathroom and check your phone. It’s the worst thing you can do because then you can’t get back to sleep. Sleep is so important.
Judy’s Daily Biohacks: Steps, Light, And Grounding For Wellness
I’m curious. What are the things that you’re personally doing? You guys at Executive Medicine in Texas are doing so much to optimize health. We could probably have a whole other conversation about regenerative medicine and all the things that are coming, on the cusp, and that you’re doing there as well. In our last few minutes, because we don’t have too much time left, what are the things that you’re personally doing? What does a day in the life of Judy look like in terms of your biohacks or health tips? How do you incorporate all those things that you’re doing there in your own personal life?
There are a few things that I try to live by. 10,000 steps by 10:00 AM is a big one for me. My mom passed away with Alzheimer’s. Knowing your genetics can be a blessing or a curse. I chose to take it as a blessing because knowing I have some of these genes makes me work harder and makes me do the things that I don’t want to turn on. You mentioned epigenetics previously. Having the genetics doesn’t mean I have to turn it on. The epigenetics are like light switches. I don’t have to turn it on.
Exercise is important. I do 10,000 steps by 10:00 AM. I take my own medicine in the sense that I get an executive physical once a year and get all the lab values. I generally follow up at the six-month mark with some of the values, hormones, and things. I do take hormone replacement therapy. We have a whole body vibration plate. I’ll do that for ten minutes a day. It’s so good for the lymphatic system.
It feels so good afterwards. You feel amazing after a few minutes of that.
You can tackle the world. It’s good. It’s so funny because sometimes, my staff will be like, “Did you get off that machine?” because I’ll come out and I have a big old smile. It zaps you back to life. I do red and near-infrared light therapy. I do that 3 to 4 times a week. I do about twenty minutes each session. It’s interesting what we do because we’ve got these dual panels. They have red and near-infrared. We’re on a grounding mat, and then we have what’s called bio waves. We do the grounding mat and do the red and near-infrared.
When we get into that deep sleep, around seven and a half hours in, and experience that length of REM sleep, the brain washes itself, like a washing machine, getting rid of the gunk that leads to dementia and Alzheimer’s. Share on X
We also have what you listen to when you do these things, which is important. There are a couple of settings, but I tend to put on some neural music that helps you meditate a little bit and lowers your blood pressure. It’s great. Sometimes, if I’m going to do that and I have a big meeting, I might listen to something that is a focus music.
I come out of there and say, “I’ve been on the jiggle machine.” I call it the jiggle machine because it does make you jiggle. You don’t want to do it in front of anybody. I get full-body vibration. I go and do my red light. When I go into that meeting after I’ve listened to that focus music and I’ve done those, I’m so focused. It’s incredible. You said you feel like you can conquer the world. It’s good to have this right here. I’m very fortunate to have it on the other side of the wall.
That’s amazing. It’s nice that our readers who might not be able to come to Executive Medicine of Texas can have access to things like red light therapy, grounding mat, PE mats, and things like that in other places or in their own homes.
I was not a big believer in the whole ground thing. I’ve got to be honest. I was slow to adapt to the grounding sheets. There was a point in time when there was a lot going on. We had a lot of growth. We had a lot of things happening, and it was starting to take a bit of a toll on me. Have you ever been in that situation where you have so much happening that you can’t shut your brain off?
Yeah.
You almost feel like you’re buzzing. I’m like, “I feel like I’m buzzing.” Somebody said, “You need to get a grounding sheet.” I’m like, “What?” They’re like, “Seriously. Get a grounding sheet. You plug one prong, the ground, into the outlet.” If you’re looking at a plug, the bottom part of that plug is the ground. You plug it into that. I slept that one night, woke up, and said, “I cannot believe this. I am not buzzing.” I was like, “It’s a placebo effect. Whatever.”
About a month went by, and a very similar thing happened. I was flying a lot. I was like, “Oh my Gosh.” I felt like I was in front of the computer too much. I was out speaking. It was a lot again. I was like, “Here I go. My whole body is buzzing again.” I looked over and said, “Maybe I should pull out that grounding sheet, try that again, and see if it was a fluke.” Being a skeptic and not expecting it to work, and then going back and saying, “I’ll give it one more try,” it became my go-to. I fall into a deep sleep with it. I don’t use it every night, for sure, but if I ever have that buzzing, I’ll put that grounding sheet on, lie on it, and go to sleep for the night and sleep like a baby.
That affects everything else. That’s great.
The problem is you don’t want to get out of bed in the morning because you’re like, “I can stay here.”
Connecting with Judy: Resources for a Healthier Life
We’re running short on time, but this has been amazing. I would love to maybe have you back some other time where we can talk about a whole other set of things, like stem cells, regenerative therapies, and all the other things that you guys are doing that are helping to regenerate.
I’d love to do that as well. It has been a great time. I’d love to come back on. It’s an honor.
Thank you so much. Tell us. Where can people find you? Where can they connect with Executive Medicine of Texas? Tell us all the ways that we can connect with you.
If you’re interested in the practice, you can go to EMTexas.com. EM is for Executive Medicine. I do a lot of speaking. Being an author and such, I speak all over the nation. You can find more info about me at JudyGaman.com.
Are your books there as well, Love, Life, and Lucille and then Age to Perfection?
Yeah. All that’s there.
I got some good reading to do. Thank you. It’s an absolute pleasure and a privilege to have you on. Thank you so much for the amazing work that you’re doing, which is going to continue to change lives, heal people, and help us live longer, healthier, happier, and better lives. Thanks for inspiring us all. It’s an honor.
Thank you. It’s been an honor to be on with you.
Have an amazing day.
You, too. Bye.
—
What an inspiring conversation with Judy Gaman, CEO of Executive Medicine of Texas. I hope that you were inspired and maybe learned some new things like I did. I loved learning about the centenarians that she interviewed for her book, Age to Perfection. She summarized a few things for us, and I want to reiterate those. She talked about the idea that someone who’s 100 years old could reinvent themselves, that they’re continually learning new things.
She said a few things that were themes as she interviewed centenarians. They all had a higher power or a higher purpose, something beyond themselves that they believed in. They held things loosely. She said they lived through all kinds of hard things. They didn’t cling to life and try to control it, but they allowed it to unfold. They understood the meaning of friendships and having good friendships, and even friends who are younger.
Also, hobbies are something that’s so important that we overlook. You need something to look forward to that gives you that excitement and joy. A key to our longevity is having hobbies. Maybe that gives us a little freedom to go play golf, go fishing, or whatever you love to do. You can go snow skiing. Go enjoy those hobbies because that’s important.
We talked a lot about optimizing your health with things like the ALCAT test. I know that’s something I want to look into for myself to find out what foods I’m sensitive to, what foods I’m not sensitive to, and what I should be avoiding. We all know that health starts in the gut, so have that gut microbiome tested to know what we’re sensitive to and see what micronutrients we need, might need, we’re deficient in, and need less of or more of.
We dived into the brain mapping as well and the amazing ways that our brains can heal, continue to grow new neurons and new neural pathways, and then even heal ones that are broken. All of this is available out there. At the end, we talked a little bit about some things, like getting 10,000 steps in a day. That’s a theme I hear as I talk to all these experts. Everyone says the same thing. 10,000 steps a day is one of those things. She talked about vibrating plates and red light therapy. I’m going to check out getting a grounding sheet for myself and for my wife. She might like that a lot.
I hope you learned a lot in this episode. There’s a whole lot more to check out. Go to JudyGaman.com. She’s such an inspiration. What an amazing person. Check her out. There are TED Talks and books. EMTexas.com is the Executive Medicine of Texas. EMTexas.com is where you can find them as well. Thanks so much for joining us. It’s a privilege and an honor. We’ll see you next time.
