Scott DeLuzio: [00:00:00] Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we are focused on giving hope and strength to the entire military community. Whether you’re a veteran, active duty, guard, reserve, or a family member, this podcast will share inspirational stories and resources that are useful to you. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.

Hey everyone, welcome back to Drive On. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and today my guest is Dr. Gary Sprouse, also known as the Less Stress Doc. Dr. Gary is a leading expert on stress management, health, and wellness. He is the author of Highway to Your Happy Place, A Roadmap to Less Stress, and he has been helping people find their happy place through his innovative techniques and insights.

Today, we’ll discuss ways to deal with stress, PTSD, and how to achieve a happier and healthier life. So before we get started, uh, first [00:01:00] off, welcome to the show. I’m really glad to have you here.

Gary Sprouse: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on here. I am super excited.

Scott DeLuzio: Excellent. Excellent. Um, Let’s start off. Um, if you, if you don’t mind sharing a bit about your background, a bit about yourself, how you became known as the Less Stress Doc,

Gary Sprouse: Yeah. Well, so I’m a primary, I’ve been a primary care doctor for 38 years. So I worked in a rural area in Maryland. And so when I was, as a doctor, I was faced with all these patients coming in with high blood pressure and diabetes and can’t sleep. And, and I realized that stress was causing a significant problem in my patients lives.

And coupled with that, with some of my books that I’d been reading and some of the ideas that came together. And I came up with this concept and it was critical. So as a doctor, I’m used to giving people medications and say, Hey, this medicine is going to cure your problem, but it has the potential for some side effects, right? So when I applied that to where we are as humans, I was like, wait, so I have the ability to envision the future. That’s an incredible skill, but it has a [00:02:00] side effect and the side effect is then I have to worry about it. And you’re like, wait, what? So what I realized was then most of the human stresses are just side effects to our skills.

And you’re like, wow, that’s an interesting concept. So then I go, well, okay, so let’s look at it. So our skills, uh, we can make choices. Well, then you have to regret, or I can look into the future. Then we have to worry, or I can know what good and bad is. And I have to feel guilty, or I have my self esteem and then I can have low self esteem.

So as I started putting all that together, I was like, this is going to help people. So I started using with my patients in the office and it really made a difference. So then I was like, we have to get to a bigger audience. And that’s when I started writing the book.

Scott DeLuzio: and let’s talk about the book, uh, so there’s for the video, uh, viewers here, we could see kind of the, the cover of it in the background of your, your video. Um, so highway to your happy place. Right. Um, tell us about the main message of the book and kind of what, what people can expect from it[00:03:00]

Gary Sprouse: Wow. So here’s the interesting thing. So I would say to my patients, like you really, they would come in and say, doc, I’m really stressed out. I’m like, really? I said, if you weren’t stressed out, where w...