Episode 51 of The Living Life Well Show: The Rule of 3 to heal your Life
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Jon: [00:00:00] Welcome to the Living Life. Well show the intersection of God's word, today's science and healthy living with common sense application, all based on the truth of the word of God. I'm your host, Dr. Jon Skelton. Now let's get straight to the truth.
All right. Welcome back to The Living Life Well Show Today. I'm excited to bring you what I call the rule of three to healing your life. The rule of three is based upon a principle that I've developed through my years of working with many clients and really helping them to understand what is helping and what is hurting them.
This rule of three applies to your gut health. It applies to your autoimmune diseases, it applies [00:01:00] to your diabetes even potentially applies somewhat to your thyroid health. And so the rule of three is really pretty easy. However, it is sometimes little difficult to implement. So what is the rule of three?
The rule of three is. Look back three days. For the next three months. So look back three days for the next three months. So, so what am I talking about? Well, most people are very familiar with doing a food log, a, a, a diet log, if you will. And most people are really looking at calories. They're looking at individual ingredients.
They're looking at lots of, of different things, and that can be very helpful. But they'll do it for a week, maybe two weeks something like that. But they don't really do it consistently over time. And why do I say [00:02:00] that? It needs to be three months. Well, anything that you're doing over a a week may just be kind of days like this.
You may not have any really good days or really bad days. You may just have a lot of these little kind of InBetween days. Over the course of three months, you're gonna have some peaks and you're gonna have some valleys, and you're gonna have a whole lot. Of in-betweens. And so if you have that long runway of three months, you are going to be able to really look at and determine what is helping and what is hurting.
So when we use the rule of three, we want to look at and record several different areas we want to look at. Our food. We want to look at our movement, we want to look at our sleep, and then we even want to look at our relationships or [00:03:00] interactions because those are all gonna be very significant .
Then once we determine, okay, today was a good day, or today was a bad day, what we want to do is we want to determine, okay, this is the good day. Let's look back the three days prior and why do we want look back three days? Well, I like to give this example of. Allergies. Being an emergency physician, I've seen numerous, numerous allergic reactions, rashes come into the emergency department and being from very minor to very severe and causing significant respiratory issues, having to give rescue medications, all the whole gamut.
Well, what is the one commonality that is the same, whether it is a minor reaction? Or a major reaction to suppress symptoms. We give medications for a number of days, typically anywhere from [00:04:00] three to five days, depending upon the severity of the reaction when the offending substance was last interacted with.
And we do this because anything that we ingest. Stays within our body for at least 72 hours, typically even longer. So for example, if somebody has ever gone to an allergist after having an allergic reaction to determine what it actually is, because a lot of times you don't know. Because a lot of times you have no clue what it is that actually caused the reaction.
Sometimes you do in those most severe cases, usually you do, but not always in more minor cases with persistent itching and rash and maybe some congestion, those types of things. Now the allergist is gonna tell you, okay, you were put on steroids, you were put on antihistamines in the emergency department, and all those are appropriate to suppress [00:05:00] that natural allergic response of your body, that immunologic response of your body to say, Hey, we have a foreign invader here.
We need to get rid of it. And so what we're doing is we're giving you medication. To suppress that histamine response, to suppress that immune response, if you will, and to allow your symptoms to abate. And we do that for a minimum of three to five days because that substance, whatever it is, whether it's something that you've ingested, inhaled an interaction that you've had it is gonna stick around in your body for a period of time.
That's why you may be taking prednisone or a steroid so that you don't have a rebound effect when the medication and its potency wears off to a high degree. Now. When we're doing allergy testing, though, you're waiting weeks after being on prednisone, if not months before they will do allergy testing.
[00:06:00] Why? Because that medication has lasting effects in your body for weeks and months potentially, and can skew the results when they actually introduce that allergen back in. So you want to get down to a very low inflammatory state. Introduce that allergen and then see what happens. In this rule of three for helping you to heal your life, what we're wanting you to do is
Look at your. Food. So what you want to look at with the rule of three is you want to really just record what it is that you're eating.
So say you go through the drive through at Chick-fil-A, you always get the same thing every time. Just write Chick-fil-A then. What you want to do is you want to look back two and three hours later, how am I feeling? Am I completely just devoid of any kind of energy whatsoever? Am I wired? Do I [00:07:00] feel really good?
How are you actually feeling two and three hours after you eat? Just note that. Then we also want to look at our exercise. Many of us really think that we are doing the best exercise, be it hit, be it yoga, be it walking, be it, running, be it, whatever it is. And the truth is, usually we need a combination of different exercises and we need to see how those exercises are really helping us move forward or holding us back.
And so. Making sure that you are logging the type of exercise and duration and intensity of the exercise will help you determine what exercises are best for your body and doing that over the course of 90 days. Now, obviously you may not be exercising you know. Every day for 90 days. That's not what I'm suggesting.
Whatever your exercise routine [00:08:00] is, whether it's once a week or six times a week or somewhere in between, most likely just log that exercise log, the different types of exercise, the intensity and duration, and then determine and go back and look what seems to correlate with your good days or your bad days.
Then you also want to look at sleep. You want to look at what those. Two hours are prior to going to bed in general before making any kind of changes, and then really determine when am I getting my best sleep? When am I having my best day? How does that correlate? Overall to my mindset the next day, my interactions with those that I come in contact with in my home, in my work just about town, whatever the case may be, and really going back and looking at that because.
Whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's what you're eating, whether it's how you're exercising, [00:09:00] whether it's the interactions you're having, whether it's the sleep you're getting, those are all affecting you to varying degrees for the next 72 hours. And so really using that rule of three, looking back three days is gonna help you determine what really is helping and what is healing.
Same thing for gut health, when we're talking about gut health. You know, wow. Today I had no, no reflux symptoms. Today I had severe reflux symptoms. Today I had no bloating. Today I had massive bloating. Today, it was just kind of in between on all of it. Well, really looking back, determining what those commonalities are between the good days and the bad days is really gonna help.
Same thing for diabetics with blood sugar issues. Looking at what foods your sleep, your interactions, or stress is really going to help determine. What is best for [00:10:00] you? Exercise is really big when we talk about diabetics as well. Determining what exercise really works best. And a good way to look at this is through your, your blood sugars.
Seeing what those blood sugars are doing for the previous three days. For the three days after the exercise. And really looking at that and determining, Hey, this is helpful, this is healing. This isn't. And then for those with autoimmune disease, specifically when we're talking about skin issues, when we're talking about joint pains things like that, using that rule of three is going to be very important and beneficial to you to really help determine what is or isn't healing and what is or isn't helpful.
So I encourage you to use this rule of three. Try to record in the moment because we know that when you try and remember your food log, it, [00:11:00] it, it's not very accurate. Food logs in general tend to not be accurate when you are trying to do it a day or two days. Once you are feeling bad, when you are feeling bad, you're gonna forget that you had, you know, that Snickers in the middle of the day you're gonna forget that you did, oh yeah, I did this workout.
Or No, I didn't work out that day, but I worked out this day. Or, you're gonna forget about that interaction that you had that was really uplifting in the moment, or you're gonna forget about that, maybe forget about that interaction with the boss. That wasn't so great. So. I really implore you to do that on a daily basis.
Use the Notes app on your phone. That's the easiest way to do it. We all have our phones with us at all times and really look at that, that notes app on the phone, and then you can help go through that a week at a time really looking at. Did I have any good [00:12:00] days? Did I have any bad days? Was there a correlation?
As you develop correlations, you can start instituting a change over that 90 days. When you think that you found a commonality, then you can help determine. Am I having more good days? Am I having more bad days, or is it just staying the same? Because that's really what's gonna be important, is taking notice, taking inventory, applying a change, testing to see if that change is resulting in the desired outcome that you want.
So I encourage you implore the rule of three. This will help you heal your life now. As many of you know, you, I have been speaking about this new 40 days. A project that I have coming out this new 40 days program to begin living life. Well, I'm really excited about it. We're gonna launch it on April 20th, [00:13:00] 2025, and so that will be available.
We are gonna have some discounts available as well. So if you're interested in receiving one of those discounts then please message us on social media. And we will help get you the information you need to be able to obtain that discount. So I hope this has been beneficial. I, I, I hope this has been enjoyable.
Thanks and God bless.
That's it for this episode of The Living Life. Well show if you like what you've heard and want to learn more or want to know how to put this into practice for yourself, go to live life well clinic.com. Until next time, this is Dr. Jon Skelton saying go out and live the truth so you can live life well.
