The mindbodygreen Podcast 640: How to unlock your body’s innate healing system | Victoria Maizes, M.D.
Mar 8, 2026
Victoria Maizes, M.D., executive director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and author of Heal Faster, outlines the body's recovery reflex and innate healing. Short sentences cover why people heal differently, protein and pre-surgery testing, microbiome limits, trauma and vagus nerve tools, mindset and guided imagery, long COVID mysteries, circadian timing, and red light therapy.
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Prepare Nutrition Labs Before Major Surgery
- Optimize nutrition before major surgery by checking BMI, unintended weight loss, and albumin levels and increase protein intake to prevent catabolism.
- Victoria Maizes recommends an omega-3 index and CRP to assess chronic inflammation and albumin to gauge protein reserves pre-op.
Guillain-Barré Improved By Eliminating Black Pepper
- A patient with Guillain-Barré recovered after identifying food sensitivities via an elimination diet that caused leaky gut and inflammation.
- Maizes found black pepper triggered his gut permeability and removing triggers dramatically reduced his chronic nerve pain.
Boost Your Microbiome With Simple Habits
- Support the microbiome with diverse vegetables, fiber, fermented foods, reduced antibiotics and artificial sweeteners, plus gardening and time-restricted eating.
- Maizes emphasizes lifestyle experiments over noisy single-spot microbiome tests for practical benefit.
