In today’s episode I'm interviewing Dr. Jessica Higgins. Jessica is a Licensed Psychologist and Licensed Professional Counselor. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and a M.A. in Counseling Psychology. She is also a certified Dream Builder Coach and Life Mastery Consultant.

Jessica offers an integrative and comprehensive blend of psychology and coaching. She specializes in helping couples shift and transform their ways of relating, guiding them on a path from confusion and heartache to clarity and authentic connection.

She is also the founder and creator of Connected Couple, a comprehensive, research-based, transformational, relationship program. This program helps couples at any stage in their relationship or marriage.

Today we talk about how to achieve new levels of success, meaning, and aliveness in our relationships.

From a very young age Jessica had an inclination towards people, and by the time she was in junior high she knew she wanted to become a psychologist. A few years later, after going through her own relationship struggles, she started to go deeper in her own personal journey and felt very inspired and motivated to help people have access to more relationship principles that cultivate lasting love and long-term intimacy.

Healthy Relationships Have Health Benefits

Studies show that being in a healthy relationship or having a companion in life can actually improve our longevity.

Attachment is the emotional connection that we form as infants with our main caregivers. According to this attachment theory, the healthier the bonding and relationship we had with them the better our relationships with other people will be throughout our lives.

There are also FMRI studies that show how someone holding the hand of a loved one, like a significant partner, will experience less pain, so there's a sense of resilience when we can have that partnership. There is also evidence of better recovery rates in hospitals when people have significant partners with them. There are so many benefits physiologically and psychologically that we experience from being partnered. From cradle to grave we are wired to need this bonding. It is as necessary as breathing - we need connection.

How Relationships and Intimacy Can Trigger Past Trauma

We all have an attachment system, meaning the way that we are going to think about others in the world and how people are going to respond to us. It is affected by whether we feel safe and

our needs are met. It's intellectual, so our mental thinking and our beliefs, but it’s also physiological, like our nervous system, as well as emotional.

So, it's really this whole triad in the working model and that gets developed at a very young age. Zero to three are the formative years and it's the relational imprint of you. This comes through the patterning of how people responded to us, if our caregivers were responsive, if they showed up for us when we cried, if they were attuned and available, etc. Or maybe they were overwhelmed or under unfortunate circumstances if there's been abuse in the family lineage.

So, if we fast forward, people can have insecure attachment tendencies in adulthood if they didn't get exposure to consistent care givers in childhood. One of the ways this may show up is by being protective. They turn away from relationships, rely on themselves, and not reach out to others for help. When caregiving was inconsistent, another possibility is to be more anxious in relationships and doing more double checking for connection, such as saying “Are we still good, is everything stable, are you still with me?” That’s a hypervigilance tendency.

For both of these attachment styles, the studies and medical findings show that there's a lot of activation. It doesn't look like it on the outside. It can look a little indifferent, but what's happening inside the person is the heart rates increases and all the physiological symptoms of stress. So, it doesn't feel relaxed and calm and secure when connecting with another person.

It’s interesting to notice that these activation responses don’t occur with all relationships. It tends to occur in our most intimate relationships. The nervous system sees our close relationships as necessary for survival, so one might say the nervous system is going to respond similarly to being chased by a bear.

The nervous system might get triggered just as much if, for example, your husband is giving you a look and is upset with you and having an issue with you. So, that threat happens when we are deeply committed, and we get vulnerable, and if the stakes are higher, like having children together. Whatever it is that intensifies that connection is going to affect our nervous system and our attachment system gets more activated. That’s when those previous insecurities might emerge and we might be surprised by them.

Stages of Intimacy

There are various stages in the development of intimacy. The first stage is the romance stage or even referred to as the honeymoon stage, and it's highly fueled by neurochemicals, like dopamine and oxytocin. They get us in that super excited high and we tend to over romanticize, and project and imagine who they are, but we really don't really know them yet.

After 9 to 18 months we enter into the second stage, which is the power struggle stage. This is the place where we are like, “oh, that's how you do that?” or feeling the upset of the differences. At this stage we’re working on how we understand each other, how we learn what we're both feeling, and how we can work together. But oftentimes many of us don't know how

to do conflict very well. Conflict feels threatening, and all these things are emerging, and it can be difficult to sift through.

Navigating The Complexity of Conflict

One of the biggest traps we can fall into is when we might have certain expectations that aren’t being communicated clearly.

So, for instance, say there's a heated discussion. Partner A grew up in a family where there was a sense of connection. During a disagreement, it might get a little charged or people might yell but they all know they love each other so they're going to repair to get to a better place. Then there is Partner B, whose family is a group where they’re not going to say anything hurtful and they're not going to speak in any tone that has any ounce of upset. They might pause before talking to be more regulated, or sometimes maybe they don't come back, and they don't talk about things at all.

We have to recognize these very different orientations to know how to address a conflict. There are 7 to 8 irreconcilable differences that every couple has. That could be ‘the spender’ and ‘the saver’, ‘the planner’ and ‘the spontaneous one’, it could be ‘the social one’ and ‘the introvert’, or it could be ‘the one that's on time’ and ‘the one that's always late’. We have to be able to see all these differences when we're living life together and be willing to works towards communicating our needs and trust our partner will do the same.

How to Be More Curious When Conflict Feels Like Criticism

The core of most disagreements is that people don't feel heard, and then they aren’t feeling like they're able to collaborate and work together for a win-win.

It is very common for us to describe the thing that we do not like and hope that our partner will be able to interpret and understand what we are feeling and needing. But that's a lot of decoding that most of us do not know how to do. If it's not a clear signal most people are not going to give what you’re asking of them.

It's not an easy thing to access, but if we can slow down and say “I wonder what he/she is feeling” or “I wonder what he/she needs right now?” because it's not about him/her criticizing me, it's about there's something happening for him/her that he/she wants and I’m not actually hearing it. So, we could prompt our partner to uncover what might really be at the core of it with questions like, “Well what's this about?” or “Can you tell me about what you're wanting?” or “How does this have value for you?” and then hopefully this will reveal the real feeling underneath the perceived criticism.

When we express the feeling that is driving our usual first commentary, our partner – if they are the right partner -- will want to show up for that. No one is interested in showing up for a negative critique, but if we can understand what the other person needs, we can then pivot

towards that. That's where the win-win starts to come in, but that's hard to get at when we don't slow down and identify and reveal, and then start to work with those deeper layers.

Regulating Your Body can Have a Huge Impact on Having Regulated Relationships

If we can support the nervous system to feel more regulated, then we can have access to have more productive conversations.

Also, if there's past experiences or trauma and we haven't experienced safety in these types of conversations, then it makes perfect sense that there's going to be a lot of activation around perceived conflict.

There's a concept in psychology and neuroscience where our nervous systems are constantly harmonizing and picking up information from the people around us. So, if the tone of voice changes or the facial expressions and nonverbals being perceived, we might not know why, but we'll feel the agitation of that before we have an intellectual understanding of why. We could just start to feel things ratcheting up and we might not even have a real awareness around what's really happening. That’s where the importance of slowing down comes in, even to allow the nervous system to get regulated before we get into those conversations.

How to Deescalate and Find Clarity

Jessica finds it is helpful to create a new cycle together because that's going to create more safety and more connection in the communication. Oftentimes we're aware of the secondary emotions, the tendencies of how we might perceive our partner, but that doesn't get at the deeper layer of what is actually happening and the core of why we reacted that way. And so, we really have to work on slowing down to get to understand the deeper layer.

When we can get to a place to just say “Oh, I’m acting this way because I feel nervous or scared” and here's what I'm thinking, here's where I want to go, or here's what's happening internally for me.

Historically, couples wait too long to access therapy as support. But you don’t have to start there. If the conflict is at a low level, if the charge on a scale from 1 to 10 is like a 3 or 4, start with journaling to unpack these difficult emotions. Keep digging deeper. The first layer will most likely be writing about why you believe you are in the right, but then you should keep writing. Why did it make you feel like that? Did it remind you of something else? If you would like to get a good journal and start doing this this you can find one here.

Often times even just by having this unfiltered space where no one else but us can dictate what is going on, we can start to soften. This is because we are making ourselves feel heard and starting to come closer to the truth of why we are reacting in a certain way. And once you get closer and practice more with peeling back those layers and getting to that vulnerability that

you were hiding, you can see yourself more clearly, and that maybe you were acting out of fear. Then the next step is learning to share that vulnerability with your partner.

When your partner responds kindly and openly to your vulnerability is when real intimacy can be built. If the charge is higher on the scale, and there is also a backlog of problems, that’s when it’s probably time to seek additional support.

How Can We Change Patterns Individually to Get Unstuck Together

If we realize we want to make a change in our own lives, but we shy away from that change or delay on these types of conversations, while it might feel less conflictual in the moment, it can cause more difficulty in the long term.

There's a term in psychology called differentiating in which we can hold on to ourselves when our partner is doing something different or even disagrees with what we’re doing, and we can tolerate some of that discomfort and it can actually be highly attractive. So, we should look at change as something that has the potential to be very positive not just for the individual, but for the relationship as well.

When you are hiding yourself for the perceived continuation of the relationship, that can start to resemble something closer to enmeshment or codependence. In healthy interdependence, we do rely on each other, but we can also nurture and listen to our own development and our growth.

If we can do a little preparation before these conversations that we know might cause some defensiveness or tension, and if we can understand what we're needing or what that deeper request is or desire or what's not working, then we will most likely have much more productive and understanding conversations with our partners.

If we can make a reveal of vulnerability and/or a request in a vulnerable way, those conversations are going to happen in a much more productive and efficient way.

The Importance of Unconditional Positive Regard for Yourself

Our attachments exist on a spectrum. We are not purely anxious or avoidant. So, it can take time and difficulties in relationships before we are ready and have the history to see where we need healing.

As you start to get more curious about yourself, you can start to accept what your own patterns are. As you practice this more, you can realize when you are starting to act on a recurring pattern and choose to change it. That decision to change is a scary step into vulnerability, and what you have to remind yourself in those moments, is that no matter what happens with this person, you will always have your own back.

Even if that person doesn’t choose you after you show them vulnerability, that’s okay because you are showing up for that part of yourself that's scared and feeling anxious about being rejected or abandoned. You can say to yourself “I hear you, I see you, I got you.”

You will know you are with the right person if these signals or bids of vulnerability are met with a softening and a reciprocal tenderness.

Vulnerability is a Risk, But the Reward Can be Beautiful Beyond Measure

If you are parenting and you are taking the opportunity to work on these tough and sometimes scary emotions, you will be modeling these steps that are critical for authentic connection and bonds. Children in turn get to see that and it can shift their future relationships and their experience as a human.

Being vulnerable is the same as being brave, and can have a ripple effect into future generations, positively affecting the way people build relationships in the future.

In neuropsychology there’s this idea that we have to ‘name it to tame it’, so even just recognizing the intensity of the emotion and giving space for it (even if it's not resolved right at that moment) will help us start to regulate, and then we're in a much better position to deal with it. But if we're not willing to name it, a lot of things can happen and we will do all types of things to hide, to avoid, and to suppress.

A lot of injuries happen in relationship and so when we have the tools for healing, it has profound impact on cultivating repair and resilience and health and all the good things.

If you want to reach out to Dr. Jessica and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website. She is also on social media as @drjessicahiggins (Instagram) and @EmpoweredRelationship (Facebook). You can also check out her Empowered Relationship Podcast.

If you want to learn more about how stress and trauma affect us, and how to heal so that you can be better and more present in your relationships, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In the book, I describe what I refer to as SelfC.A.R.E. based on your Stress Type. C stands for Clean Eating, A for adequate sleep, R for recovery activities, and E for exercise. I share the research behind how C.A.R.E. works in a daily routine to help us process stress and overcome trauma.

To know your Stress Type, which is your unique cortisol and adrenaline levels based on how stresses have affected your adrenal function, you can take the quiz I developed. You can find the Stress Type® Quiz in the book and on my website.

Then, if you’re ready to start rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, to help your adrenals reset after stress exposure, you can start by ordering this home test kit. And you can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Online Program to guide you here.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my New 14-Day Detox Program here. In the Detox Program I teach you to connect with yourself, and use mind-body tools, such as biofeedback, to process emotions.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

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Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In this episode we're going to be talking about something that I consider to be the foundation of health and healing. This is what I refer to as C.A.R.E.™ or sometimes we refer to it as SelfC.A.R.E. I'm going to be describing what it is and the method that I use with my patients because it's one of the simplest things we can do for our health. In fact, it's so simple that we often overlook it.

It's when we start paying attention to C.A.R.E. that we can really create a major change in our health. This is true whether you're dealing with fatigue, anxiety, depression, burnout, menstrual cycle related symptoms, fertility issues, digestive issues, hormonal issues, autoimmunity, allergies, sleep issues, infections of all different types (skin infections, sinus infections, bladder infections, viral infections like EBV, HPV and even long COVID symptoms). They all improve with these foundational steps.

You can start working on your C.A.R.E. today. It’s not about perfection, it's about connecting with yourself, listening to your body, and getting to know what your body needs from you in order to heal. This is an individualized approach to your specific body needs (it's not one-size-fits-all). I will give you the guidelines here and then I want you think about how you can implement C.A.R.E. as an individual.

What is C.A.R.E.?

Self-care involves activities that I have been reading and writing about over the years. Specifically, what does it mean to take good care of ourselves and our bodies. And one day I realized that these activities fit this acronym C.A.R.E.

These are activities that you can do on a daily basis. The C stands for Clean Eating or eating in a way that matches your physiology and supports your health. The A is for Adequate Sleep. Just like eating, sleeping is essential for us to be able to recharge and reset. The R stands for Recovery Activities. This is a whole menu of possible activities that help us counterbalance stress. And E is for Exercise. We all need to exercise at our own pace to match what our body is able to do and benefit from it.

As a practitioner I am always observing and looking for patterns amongst my patients. This is how I was able to identify C.A.R.E. was common in patients that were successful at recovering from stress, improving their health, and maintaining their resiliency to stress over time. This is also the foundation of naturopathic medicine.

I will also share with you how to individualize your C.A.R.E. based on your Stress Type, which is how your body is uniquely affected by stress. I talk about all of this in detail in my latest book: Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. In the book you will find hundreds of references related to C.A.R.E., which researchers have been studying for decades.

Clean Eating

Clean eating is about eating in a way to support your health. I was originally trained as a nutritionist, so I see food as medicine. Our bodies need macro nutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fats) as well as micronutrients and vitamins and minerals to function and survive. And we need to get these things from our food because our bodies can’t produce them. So, it's a matter of really honoring food as this source of nutrition and life for us instead of just eating mindlessly. We want to start eating mindfully and choose our food with intention and gratitude.

The simplest way to start eating a healthy diet is to make sure you are having a relatively equal percentage or balance of protein, carbs, and fat. I see a lot of diets out there where they go a little bit too extreme with macronutrients, like the ketogenic diet that's very high in fat or the carnivore diet that's very high in protein. These diets can actually make us feel worse because they are extreme. Even a plant-based diet can make us feel worse. There are times when more extreme diets are appropriate, but I really encourage you to work with a practitioner who can help you so that you don't find yourself feeling worse following a certain diet.

We must make sure we are getting enough nutrients from our diet. Anytime we go to an extreme with our bodies we can create more stress. What our bodies need is predictability, consistency, and stability so that's what we want to create with our eating. We want to have predictable meals that are the amount of food that we can easily digest. It is when we digest our food that we absorb the nutrients. So, we want to have consistency in the amount and the timing of our meals. Usually our bodies do well when we feed them in 3 to 4 hours intervals throughout the day. If we go too long between meals it can disrupt your digestion and create stress responses.

I also find that it is best to stop eating at least a couple of hours before we go to bed. This means you would have at least 10 hours without eating if you are sleeping adequately. There can be some health benefits to temporarily or occasionally extending your overnight fast to between 12 and 16 hours but it's really important to modify your daily activities and make sure your body's ready for that so I don't encourage it or recommend it for everyone from the beginning. The first thing we want to do is eat to balance our blood sugar and create predictability in our body, so that our stress response can calm down.

If we go back to macro nutrients, I find that it’s best to make sure that you have at least 20 grams of protein and no more than 20 grams of carbs with every meal. Protein can be found in animal products (beef, chicken, fish, turkey, etc.) and also in legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils, peas, etc.). And then we want to have some carbs from healthy high fiber sources like vegetables and fruits. Then you have the healthy fats in things like avocados, nuts and olive oil (for high temperatures use avocado or grapeseed oil instead) for salads and salad dressing.

We also want to be feeding our gut bacteria, but we don't want to over feed them either. Whatever we eat and whatever we digest is going to determine what is feeding our gut bacteria. If we eat too large of a meal or we're under too much stress and we are not digesting our food well, that undigested food is going to over feed our gut bacteria. When our gut bacteria are overfed is when you start to notice bloating and gas and bowel changes and all kinds of other symptoms. It is also possible to overfeed our good bacteria by having a large quantity of fruit and vegetables in a single meal. It's much better to space our meals and to pay attention to our bodies signals on how much food can you have at one sitting that you can digest well.

Digesting well also has to do with mindful eating. To set aside time to eat, to take breaths to signal your Vagus nerve that it's time to eat, to chew your food well, to have a calm environment for eating, etc. This way you're allowing your digestive signaling to happen, to get the best ability to digest your food. You can support your digestion with digestive enzymes that make it easier for our bodies to process food and absorb all the nutrients. You can get a good supplement for this here.

Clean eating also has to do with eating organic whole foods, avoiding processed foods, avoiding pesticides on your food and any other kinds of artificial sweeteners, fillers, preservatives that are just not necessary and even toxic. It is best to eat whole foods that we cook ourselves or maybe go to restaurants where they are paying attention to making sure we're not eating things that our bodies don’t need and that are bad for our health.

If you are under a lot of stress and you are constantly suffering from bloating, gas, abdominal pain, constipation, or diarrhea you may have developed leaky gut. If you have leaky gut and food is leaking through your intestinal lining and it's triggering an inflammatory response that food is no longer a healthy food for you. It is now an inflammatory food. The most common inflammatory foods are dairy and gluten, but it can happen with things like eggs, almonds, bananas and many other foods. So, it is better to assess for leaky gut and food sensitivities, and to identify the highest reactive inflammatory foods. Then we can go through a process of healing the leaky gut and so you can get back to eating a wider variety of foods. If you want to know your food sensitivities, you can order a home test here.

Adequate Sleep

We need at least 7 hours of sleep. One of the first things that happens when we don't get enough sleep is our immune function decreases. When we're sleeping a lot of good stuff happens. Our immune system is helping to protect us from infections, it's helping ourselves to repair, there's a process called glymphatics which is a process of clean out in our brain. All this is not happening if we don't get enough sleep.

We need to look at both quantity and quality of sleep. Also, we need to look at our circadian rhythm. Are you sleeping when it is dark outside? Maybe you have to work a night shift that

affects your circadian rhythm. This increases our risk of different health issues so it's important to know and to support your body through that.

We sleep in cycles of about 90 minutes. We go through a process of deepening our sleep as time passes until we reach the deepest sleep stage. We spend a percentage of time in each sleep stage and then it starts over again. It's best to be able to complete several sleep cycles in a row because each time we create the subsequent sleep cycle we spend more time in the REM sleep stage and the studies show that when we're in this deep sleep stage is when our brains and bodies get the most rest and repair.

When it starts to get dark our bodies start producing a hormone called melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone that's signaling all kinds of repair in our bodies. If we don't have enough melatonin our risk of developing health issues will increase, so we need to let our bodies produce this hormone by turning off all lights when it’s time for bed.

There is this concept called sleep hygiene. I talk about this in my latest book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health and in my Blog too. I think about sleep hygiene in terms of our five senses.

For sight we have to analyze if there is enough darkness in our room when we sleep. Maybe you need to get blackout curtains or cover any other lights like phones or chargers or alarm clocks that may be generating light through the night. Also it is best to avoid any late night light exposure, especially blue light exposure from electronic devices because this is signaling the brain that it's not time to sleep yet and this is going to inhibit your melatonin. Also, take a look in your bedroom and see if there is clutter as there's studies that show having a cluttered bedroom can affect our sleep.

For smell I think of dust. Take a look in your bedroom and see if it needs to be cleaned. Is there dust in there that could affect your breathing while you sleep. Dust can also be the source of allergies so for a good night sleep it is best to have a clean bedroom.

For hearing we want to be paying attention to any noise that can disrupt our sleep. There are also certain sounds that can benefit our sleep. If you're having trouble sleeping you can actually use sounds like white noise or pink noise to help with calming your nervous system.

For touch think about the fabrics and materials you are in touch with when you sleep. Maybe you need softer sheets or a new mattress. Also, I always recommend buying organic sheets, blankets, pillows, and mattress. We have to make sure we have a comfortable environment for a better sleep. This includes the temperature in your room. We sleep better when there’s a slight lower temperature in the room. You can still be under a blanket but it’s better for quality sleep if the room temperature is around 67 to 69 degrees Fahrenheit.

For taste we go back to eating. Making sure we don’t eat 2 hours before bed and making sure our last meal is not too large. It's a matter of keeping your blood sugar balanced so you don't want to eat too many carbs too close to bed because you're going to have a spike in your blood

sugar and when your blood sugar drops it can wake you up. I wrote a whole separate book called Natural Insomnia Solutions where I go into the detail about how to help with sleep issues so if you're struggling with sleep, I recommend you definitely get that book and work through it. You'll see a big difference in your sleep.

Recovery Activities

There is a long list of recovery activities that help our bodies recover from stress. I am going to talk about some of the most common here. Research shows that these activities can help bring cortisol and adrenaline levels back to optimal, and that's exactly what we want. We are constantly exposed to plenty of activities that disrupt our cortisol and adrenaline levels. What we lack is activities that help correct and counterbalance those effects, so I encourage you to look at this almost like a menu and choose what interests you.

It's about choosing something that you're curious about. Maybe there are things you do already that you can continue to do, or there are things that you've been thinking about doing but you can’t find the time. If this is the case, I encourage you to say, “OK it's time to bring some recovery activities into each and every day”.

I want to start with gratitude. Anytime we practice gratitude and just allow ourselves to feel grateful for the things that are happening in our lives, people in our lives, pets in our lives, experiences, etc. When we go into a state of gratitude it increases our anti stress hormones like oxytocin, and this helps us to recover from stress. It can be as simple as journaling about what you feel grateful for or thinking about it before bed or when you wake up in the morning. If you would like to start journaling to practice gratitude you can get your SelfC.A.R.E. notebook here.

Sometimes just being in quiet can help us reset from stress. We are so used to having a TV on, the radio on, people talking to us, etc. We're just used to constantly having something going on and so it takes intention to stop and set aside some quiet time for ourselves. It's amazing what can happen when you have that quiet time, so I recommend you create that for yourself.

Meditation and mindfulness are also great for stress recovery. There is so much research on the health benefits from these activities. Some people can be kind of afraid or confused about how to do meditation, so I encourage you to just start simple. You can start with 5 minutes. Meditation is really about becoming more aware of your thoughts and becoming the observer in your own body. So much of the time we're just immediately responding to sounds and triggers and what's going on and what's next that we lose track of our ability to be the observer of our own experience.

I think about it as simply taking a couple minutes to just breathe and allow yourself to notice the sounds, the feelings in your body and your thoughts but without reacting, just be with them. It’s about a greater awareness for our thoughts and our feelings and our body in each moment. Meditation and mindfulness can make an amazing difference with healing not only our nervous system and our brain but our whole body.

Breathwork or any kind of deep breathing can have a huge impact on stress recovery. There are a lot of books and videos out there on how to use breathwork for healing. Also, Yoga has a lot of research on how yoga can help us recover from stress. And Yoga involves mindfulness, breathwork and movement. Very intentional movements and positions of the body that help us just be present.

Spending time with pets has also been shown to increase the release of oxytocin which is an anti-stress hormone and we start to go into stress recovery mode. Also, spending time in nature has shown a positive impact on stress recovery. Even if you're looking at pictures of nature without even going outside. I really encourage you as much as you can to get outside first thing in the morning. Just a 5-10 minute walk is enough. Then in the middle of the day another 5-10 minutes just to be able to observe nature. Now you're combining mindfulness with your time in nature to observe the plants and the sounds and the colors and the smells. Our human bodies respond to all of these things, and they help us recover from stress.

Listening to music or playing an instrument, singing, dancing, spending time with our friends and family, laughter, sex and intimacy, reaching out and just talking to someone who you care about or working with a therapist and being able to talk about your experience as a human in your life are all activities that can help us recover from stress and trauma. There are also many plant substances that help us recover from stress, including psychedelic medicines.

Find more information on many of these forms of stress recovery in episodes of How Humans Heal.

Exercise

Exercise is one of the activities that has the greatest ability to improve our resilience to stress. When we are exercising, we're preparing our body for stress exposure both in terms of creating a healthy response to stress and a healthy recovery from stress. That's one of the reasons why it's so important to find ways to integrate exercise into your life and into your daily routine. On the other hand, we have to make sure we don't overdo it because if we go too intense or for too long, we end up increasing our cortisol levels and that works against us in terms of our health. So, it's important to exercise but to listen to your body and to be aware of what's the right amount and intensity for you and even what time of day is best for you to exercise.

For example, we know that with exercise there's strength training which is anaerobic exercise and cardio which is aerobic exercise, and we need both. They both help us to become resilient to stress and recover from stress. You can choose from so many different activities but it's important to choose activities that match your body, your current activity level and also your interest. I encourage you to choose something you enjoy and that you like to do so it is easier to integrate into your daily routine.

If you are just about to start to exercise, I recommend you start small, you can start with 5 minutes a day, then work up to 10 or 15 minutes a day. The study showed that we can get the benefits from exercise even in short periods of time, and then you can potentially repeat that in a couple different times in a day to add more time to your exercise routine.

For those of you with joint hypermobility like me it's important to be really cautious with exercise and not overdo it because you're more likely to get injured than the average person. Even if it's Yoga you might have to do a little bit less than other people. One of my favorites is Pilates because it's helping me to gain strength and correct my body posture and position for my joints, which I find to be really helpful for the symptoms of joint hypermobility.

Again, the important thing with exercise is to know where you're starting, there's no reason to try to push yourself beyond what feels good to you. Always listen to your body during and after exercising. If you feel too tired and exhausted that means you overdid it. Also, make sure you're staying hydrated and that you have enough protein and enough sleep for your body to be able to recover.

Implementing SelfC.A.R.E. According to Your Stress Type

Your stress type is how your body is affected by stress, specifically related to cortisol and adrenaline levels. What I found in my research is that we don't all react to stress in the same way. We don't all have high cortisol and high adrenaline. So, it's important to know what's happening with your cortisol and adrenaline levels because your cortisol and adrenaline levels will influence what's the best C.A.R.E. for you.

What I find is when you fine tune your C.A.R.E. based on your stress type you're going to benefit even more from it. To find out your stress type you can do the stress type quiz right on my website. You can also find the stress type quiz in the book Master Your Stress, Reset Your Health.

It's a quiz that you can do in less than two minutes, and it shows you what is your stress type out of the five most common stress types: stress magnet that tends to have high cortisol and adrenaline at some point or all day, sluggish and stressed who has high cortisol with low adrenaline, tired and wired that has the high adrenaline with low cortisol, the night owl who is like a stress magnet but they have high cortisol and or adrenaline at night, and blah and blue that has low cortisol low adrenaline all day or part of the day.

Once we know your stress type, we can then use nutrients and herbs to bring your cortisol and adrenaline back to optimal. C.A.R.E. helps you get your cortisol adrenaline back to optimal and it helps you keep your cortisol and adrenaline at optimal going forward. To me the ultimate goal is for a good health is resiliency, is our ability to be exposed to stress and still do things we love, whether that's traveling or different sports or activities or being a parent or grandparent or building a business or project. We want you to be able to do these activities while being resilient to stress so that it doesn't have a negative impact on your life.

If you want to learn more about how stress and trauma have affected you and how C.A.R.E. can help you recover so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

If you’re ready to start rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, to help your adrenals reset after stress exposure, you can start by ordering this home test kit. And you can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Online Program to guide you here.

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. Keep in mind that 50% of people with leaky gut, have zero symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to do the food sensitivity panel I recommend.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here. The Detox Program includes a gluten-free, dairy-free meal plan, along with a protein shake (the protein shake is included), as well as videos to guide you every step of the way. This detox program includes a plant based or bone broth based protein powder. One of the key things we do in the 14-day detox is help you to understand how to integrate C.A.R.E. into your life so you can then continue on that path going forward so you can be your own best health advocate.

If you are interested in how C.A.R.E. can help you fend off HPV, you can find my HPV Recovery Guide here. If you would like more help getting HPV to negative, and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for the upcoming 5 Days to Heal HPV Workshop here (We start Monday September 18th at 7PM Eastern Time) or my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you would like to start journaling as a recovery activity you can get your SelfC.A.R.E. notebook here. This is the perfect tool to keep track of your C.A.R.E. as you're working on integrating it and fine tuning it to really create a self-care routine that's going to work well for you over time.

You can also subscribe to my newsletter, where you'll receive a newsletter from me every Thursday with the latest episode and additional resources and tools for your success with achieving optimal health.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

Be sure you sign up and subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of How Humans Heal. I love having you here with me and I would love to hear from you on other topics you'd like to learn more about.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

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Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

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Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I want to introduce you to Dr. Lindsey Elmore. She is a pharmacist (PharmD) and wellness expert. She's also a speaker, author and podcast host. She specializes in helping women to take full ownership of their health from wellness in the physical body, to stability in mental health, to robustness of spirit, to freedom in finances.

Today we talk about what options there are for people who may want to try a more holistic approach for their health instead of the medications that pharmaceutical companies produce and commercialize.

After suffering from an injury to her anterior cruciate ligament, Lindsey ended up attending an acupuncture session which opened this whole new world of homeopathic and holistic medicine for her. She then started accumulating knowledge about traditional Chinese medicine, started going to integrative medicine forums, hanging out with shamans, and learning more about indigenous medicines.

Lindsey eventually got a reputation of knowing as much about alternative medicine as western medicine. She became very practical about the integration of the two because she believes that to embrace natural medicine does not mean to deny western medicine as they are not mutually exclusive.

Do Pharmacists Get Training on Natural Approaches vs Drugs?

So, pharmacognosy is the study of plants as medicine and if you back up 150 years, a pharmacist was nothing more than someone who was there to put the medicines together using herbs and natural substances from plants that proved to work for certain illnesses. They understood the application of plants as medicine.

In our modern world this is not so much the case. Now you have to go out in search of it and that is because the division between western and alternative medicine became very bold after the Flexner Report came out about 100 years ago. They basically dismissed any kind of medicine practice and even schools that were not based in drugs and surgery.

Nowadays, if a doctor does only prescriptions, it is most likely because they don’t know any better.

There is no medicine out there, even the over-the-counter ones or supplements, that does not have any side effects. Over the counter medications can cause significant harm and have major drug interactions so be sure to know your medicines and know your pharmacist. Your pharmacist should be able to talk to you about your medications and to teach you about the safety of those medications and the alternatives out there.

There are so many alternatives to prescription drugs and surgery out there that are less invasive and have less harmful side effects. It is the responsibility of your health care provider to let you know what they are.

How To Navigate This World of Alternatives to Conventional Medicine and Drugs

You can start with anything you would like to try to get healthier. Sleep 20 more minutes each day, get up and get your circadian rhythm kicked off by going out into the sun first thing in the morning, lifting weights, eat one plant based meal, increase your water consumption, meditate, etc.

Lindsey names eight root causes of disease: stress, toxins, allergens, infections, dysbiosis, nutrient excesses and deficiencies, sedentarism, lack of sleep and then there’s the sociogenomics. One place to start is with stress. There's no disease that stress does not make worse and no disease that stress does not cause and so it's really important that we figure out how to mitigate our stress by intentionally crafting safety for ourselves.

The harder situation comes when you’ve been doing everything that you’re supposed to do to feel good, but something is still wrong and that's when you start getting into things like lab tests, blood work, allergen testing, hormones, or maybe some more sophisticated interventions like imaging, but we have to start with the basics.

Going back to stress, it’s not about having zero stress. Some amount of stress is necessary and even healthy. It's about how do we help ourselves recover from all the stresses and toxins that we're exposed to. We need to start simple with lifestyle changes that can allow for that space of recovery.

What About Choosing the Right Probiotics and Rebalancing the Microbiome?

One of the most popular ways to feel better and healthier recently is getting the right probiotics and addressing the microbiome. There's so much research now helping us understand how important these hundred trillion bacteria living in our gut are to our health.

The microbiome is so critically important, we cannot live without our microbiome. Our microbiome helps us to metabolize foods, extract energy from complex and digestible sugars, they also ferment our dietary carbohydrates and fibers to produce what are called post biotics, it uses our food to produce vitamins, it helps with mineral absorption, and they also metabolize our bile acid which helps us to regulate our cholesterol levels.

The microbiome has this huge metabolic function. It also has a protective function where it creates layers for our immune system to be educated as well as to provide a barrier function for bad bacteria to be kept away from our system.

Our microbiome can also help us turn genes on and off. It strengthens the gut barrier, it changes fat deposition, it influences our growth, it influences changes in the body.

We also have this really important system called the gut-brain axis. We have this interplay between good bacteria and bad bacteria, good viruses and bad viruses that are just part of how we educate and train our immune system. The gut-brain axis modulates our response to stress, mood behavior, it governs our food cravings, it manages our circadian rhythm, etc. The gut-brain axis plays a very important role on our mental health. The microbiome is critically important for brain development in early life, and it also helps with the education and regulation of the immune system.

Between birth and age 3 the microbiome goes through a maturation process and this maturation process is very important. This is why it’s critical not to over sanitize our children because this leads to allergies, chronic disease, immune disorders, etc. Early in life the microbiome is teaching the immune system how to operate correctly, then later in life the microbiome and the immune system continue to communicate, and this is what helps to balance out pro and anti-inflammatory responses.

We are getting more and more sophisticated in our knowledge of different strains of bacteria and what they do in our bodies. We can look for a specific strain that reduces cortisol or one that helps with constipation or one that helps with digestion. We get to be very specific about what's the intended end point for what we hope to happen by taking a specific supplement.

We now have all of this research and new information about how important the microbes living in our bodies are to our health. There are more and more products being developed to support balancing our microbiome and benefit from it. And the products we choose will depend on what we are looking to achieve, not everybody has high or low cortisol, not everybody has constipation or digestive issues, or anxiety. We're on the path of becoming way more specific when it comes to choosing the right product for the right purpose.

When Taking the Wrong Treatment Makes Things Worse: Bacterial Overgrowth

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth as well as small intestinal fungal overgrowth is very important to address. Many people are told they have IBS or heartburn and given a medication that doesn’t actually resolve the issue.

When someone has chronic heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux for example, they tend to take antacid medicine, but this medicine is not safe to use for long periods of time because it depletes our bodies from nutrients, it affects bone health, it affects your ability to digest. You actually need acid in your stomach to correctly digest food. So, this is not a real solution to this problem because again with drugs you are not addressing the root cause of the problem; you are just treating the symptoms.

What is typically happening with heartburn is a small intestinal bacterial or small intestinal fungal overgrowth, and as a byproduct of the bacterial/yeast metabolism, they generate hydrogen gas, and this gas is going to be forced to go upwards and will bring with it the gastric juices.

The problem is sometimes people already have an overgrowth of bacteria and they start supplementing with probiotics and prebiotics and they get sicker. It's worse because there were already too many bacteria. What we have to do is work to bring the microbiome into balance so that we have the correct distribution of good and bad bacteria.

If you know you have a small intestine bacterial overgrowth, it’s important first to use a prokinetic to make sure your bowels are moving well. Then use digestive enzymes to make sure you are digesting well. Then you can work on restoring your microbiome.

If you would like to learn more about what you can do to balance your microbiome you can watch Episode #169 of How Humans Heal here.

Naturopathic vs Conventional Medicine Approach and Pharmaceutical Companies Abuse

A good analogy to understand the difference between a naturopathic or functional medicine approach and conventional medicine and drugs is when a western medicine doctor walks into a room that is flooded he says “Oh my gosh the room is flooded, let me mop it up” and a naturopathic doctor or functional medicine practitioner walks into the room and says “Oh no the room is flooded, let me turn off the faucet”. And so, we're trying to look at where the faucet is to turn off versus just mopping the floor because mopping is not going to do anything.

Everybody's looking for magic but what we really need to be looking for is our simple, down to earth, grounded decisions that we make each day that will ultimately lead us to finding the miracle that is being healthy and being well. We have to stop looking for the magic pill.

This whole concept of evidence-based medicine being the only kind of medicine and the only way to inform guidelines and the only way to practice is simply not true. There are so many conflicts of interest between pharmaceutical manufacturers and the evidence they produce. If you send in a paper to the New England Journal of Medicine and they send it out to 10 people for peer review and they send it back and say yes, this is good enough to be published it gets published. The problem is nobody is required to go back to the pharmaceutical manufacturers and actually verify that the data that they presented in the paper is factual.

Take valdecoxib for example. Merck outright knew that valdecoxib was causing massive amounts of heart attacks and they did not care. They lied about the data, got it published in journals and now fast forward we know that thousands of people died from the side effects of it.

We need to have a much higher transparency in evidence-based research if we are going to live in a society where we live and die by treatment guidelines. The people that write the guidelines cannot be the same people that are doing the research for the pharmaceutical companies and manipulating the data in order to say this is what we recommend.

We have to be able to rely on the fact that we are going to get actual tangible information out of pharmaceutical manufacturers or we're simply putting patients at risk for harm.

We don't have governmental oversight of drug pricing, and this generates a problem because pharmaceutical companies can charge whatever they want. And a lot of times the medicine could be a natural substance and then pharmaceutical companies will just add colors and fillers so that they will be able to patent the substance and probably raise the price on it.

There's a lot of ways that these companies go about manipulating patent laws in order to keep drugs on patent. An example of this is the antidepressant citalopram where pharmaceutical companies made a simple chemical manipulation of the extraction to change the name to escitalopram, which is the S-enantiomer of citalopram. Another example is the pain medication oxycontin, where the Sackler family convinced the FDA to allow onto the label that oxycontin was non-addictive and had an effect that lasted 12 hours vs other drugs that lasted less hours.

We have to do the research ourselves; we have to go deep into the factual data before taking any drug. We have to educate ourselves and become more aware and learn more whether through a pharmacist or health care provider before even bringing the substance into our home. We need to be empowered owners of our own health.

If you want to reach out to Dr. Lindsey and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website. She is also on social media as @lindseyelmore (Instagram and Facebook) and @doctorlindseyelmore (Pinterest/TikTok).

Her functional medicine wellness platform is called Wellness Made Simple where you can find many resources to improve your health.

If you want to learn more about how stress and trauma affect us, and how to recover so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In the book, I describe what I refer to as SelfC.A.R.E. based on your Stress Type. C stands for Clean Eating, A for adequate sleep, R for recovery activities, and E for exercise. I share the research behind how C.A.R.E. works in a daily routine to help us process stress.

To know your Stress Type, which is your unique cortisol and adrenaline levels based on how stresses have affected your adrenal function, you can take the quiz I developed. You can find the Stress Type® Quiz in the book and on my website.

Then, if you’re ready to start rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, to help your adrenals reset after stress exposure, you can start by ordering this home test kit. And you can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Online Program to guide you here.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my New 14-Day Detox Program here. In the Detox Program I teach you to connect with yourself, and use mind-body tools, such as biofeedback, to process emotions.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In this episode I'm going to be talking about birth control pills (also known as oral contraceptive pills) and the information that I feel is important for everyone to have, especially those of you who are considering taking the birth control pill or are already taking a birth control pill. This topic is important because a lot of this information is often not shared by the providers who are prescribing these pills. It's really necessary to understand everything before you make any decision about what to take for your health.

One of the things I want to talk about are the risks related to taking the birth control pill, including risk of HPV related cancers (like cervical cancer) and nutrient deficiencies associated with the use of “the pill.” I also want to help you understand how it's possible to feel good and balance your hormones and ovarian function naturally if you have reached a point in your life where you don’t want to take the birth control pill anymore.

It is estimated that more than 10 million women in the United States alone are taking the birth control pill. These are prescription medications, and they are synthetic hormones. When these pills are made, they're made with chemical versions of estrogen and progesterone. You can get a birth control pill that's only a synthetic form of progesterone, but most people take what are called combined formulas that contain synthetic estrogen and synthetic progesterone.

When we make a hormone synthetically it signals to our bodies, but it doesn't signal exactly the same as natural hormones or bioidentical hormones. So, I want to emphasize that when I'm talking about birth control pills, I'm referencing synthetic hormones and the risks associated with those types of hormones versus bioidentical or natural hormones, like naturally produced estrogen and progesterone, or bioidentical estradiol, for example, or estriol, and progesterone formulas that are sometimes used for fertility and perimenopause.

Our bodies recognize bioidentical hormones. They know exactly what they are and they know how to respond to them in a healthy way. When we take a synthetic hormone, it can have a slightly different effect in our bodies and that's why there are side effects and risks associated, especially with longer term use.

If you're taking synthetic hormones on a short-term basis, the risk of health issues is lower and as the length of time increases, the risks increase. Sometimes you may need a birth control pill for a short period of time and that may not be as concerning. It's also known that the risks tend to decrease the longer you are off the birth control pill.

Why Are So Many Women Taking Birth Control Pills?

What I find in my practice is that for most women (I would say definitely greater than 50%), the pill is not just being used for birth control. They're more often prescribed by gynecologists for regulating the menstrual cycle in some way.

Most women, when they go in to see a gynecologist, it’s usually to get help with irregular menstrual cycles or maybe perimenopausal symptoms, PCOS or endometriosis, or perhaps you have PMS symptoms or even PMDD, higher anxiety or depression and fatigue, bloating, severe cramps or heavy bleeding and acne during your period. All of these symptoms can happen because of hormone imbalances related to the menstrual cycle. And often times the first thing a gynecologist or other practitioner will prescribe is a birth control pill.

What the birth control pill does is it takes over for your ovaries. It literally turns off the ovaries, so your ovaries are not making estrogen and progesterone on their own. You are relying solely on the synthetic estrogen or progesterone that you're swallowing in the birth control pill. This is why if you miss a dose, you could have breakthrough bleeding or other symptoms like headaches, nausea, etc. because these hormones are signaling to your body every day.

Birth control pills can regulate the menstrual cycle, decrease bleeding, pain and acne for a lot of women, which can help them keep up with their daily life. At the same time, it’s absolutely false to think that the only option to help with menstrual related symptoms is to use a synthetic hormone pill.

There are a lot of things we could do to help with those symptoms and support your body naturally to address them without necessarily having to use a synthetic hormone pill. Now, if your priority is to prevent pregnancy at this point in life, maybe the birth control pill is a good option, but there are also other options for contraception that don’t require to take a synthetic hormone. I’ll discuss them more later in this episode.

What Are the Risks of Long-Term Use of Birth Control Pills?

Nutrient deficiencies:

Birth control pills can end up depleting our nutrients. This is especially true of some of the B vitamins like B2 or riboflavin, B6, B12 and Folate or B9. All those B vitamins can become deficient with use of birth control pill. Also, vitamin C and vitamin E can become deficient. Minerals like magnesium, selenium, and zinc can also be affected. This is why it is important to take a good quality multivitamin if you are on the birth control pill. If you would like to learn more about high-quality multivitamins, you can watch Episode 167 of How Humans Heal here.

One of the ways to know if it's a high-quality multivitamin is to look at the ingredient list. Look at what form of folate is in the product. We want it to say “Methyl Folate” (or 5MTHF) instead of Folic Acid. If the label says Folic Acid, it's not a high-quality product. Then look at the B12, if it says Cyanocobalamin, it's not a high-quality product. It should say Methyl Cobalamin instead. This way you know you're getting active forms of the B vitamins. If a company is putting in those active forms of B vitamins in their products, they're much more likely to be a professional grade company that's invested in getting the nutrients that you need.

It's also important to be doing regular blood work to identify nutrient deficiencies. And it's important to do the right tests to get the correct information. That’s why it's so important to

have a practitioner who can guide you. I guide each of my patients on how to get the correct blood work and what the results mean. For example, it's not that helpful to only measure folate in the blood - we need to be measuring homocysteine.

HPV and Cervical Cancer:

Furthermore, I believe that one of the connections between HPV risk and birth control pills is related to the nutrient deficiencies. In cases where HPV is persisting and resisting treatment, I recommend doing blood work because I often find nutrient deficiencies exist. When you have low antioxidants and low B vitamins, that already increases the risk of HPV related abnormal cells and cancer risks. So, an important preventive step you can take is to make sure you're meeting your nutrients needs and monitoring your blood levels.

There are many studies connecting birth control pills to cervical cancer risk. One study in particular shows there's a 10% increased risk of HPV causing cervical cancer with less than five years of birth control use, and a 60% increased risk for five to nine years of use, and a doubling of the risk with 10 or more years of use.

If we talk about hormonal IUDs, there is also an increased risk with cervical cancer whereas the copper IUD does not have that risk, so the risk does seem to be related to the synthetic hormones. There are studies where the researchers try to identify exactly what's happening – there are multiple mechanisms besides the nutrient deficiencies where these synthetic hormones also are signaling to the immune system locally and the way that our body manages cells even at a local level on the cervix.

Cardiovascular Issues:

Birth control pills are also associated with increased risk of certain cardiovascular issues including heart attack, stroke, as well as blood clots in general (like DVT which is a blood clot in your leg). I really want you to know the associated risks so that you're monitoring for yourself and deciding intentionally, is this a risk that I'm willing to take?

One of the things that increases the risk of stroke with birth control pill use is having an MTHFR gene variation. If you want to know more about this gene variation you can watch Episode 29 of How Humans Heal here. MTHFR is a gene variation that affects our ability to activate folic acid into folate and it already carries a risk of stroke, so when combined with a birth control pill it elevates your risk of stroke even more.

How To Promote Healthy Ovaries Function After Having Taken Birth Control Pills

So, what I encourage you to do is weigh out all the information against the reasons why you’re taking the pill, and what would be the criteria for yourself for how you will decide when you want to stop using the pill.

Then you will want to make a plan for how you're going to prepare your body for coming off the pill, so that you can transition to healthy ovary function. You want to be addressing the

negative effects of the pill and start addressing your health in general before you stop the pill so that when you stop, you have a safety net there for yourself. You want to create a healthy environment so when you stop the pill your body is ready and your ovaries are ready to start functioning again.

When our bodies overall are functioning at our best, that's when our ovary function is going to be at its best too. Our ovaries can pick up on so many signals from our environment, like any kind of stress signals. We should be especially careful with new diet plans, whether that's intermittent fasting or a ketogenic diet, or if you're going to do some more exercising.

Exercise and diet are important for healthy ovary function but if we overdo it, that can also inhibit our ovary function. If we fast for too long, or we aren’t eating enough, or we are exercising too intensely, it will decrease signals to the ovaries and then the ovaries are not going to ovulate or produce hormones as optimally.

We need to focus on optimizing what I call your SelfC.A.R.E. C is for clean eating, A is for adequate sleep, R is for recovery activities, and E is for exercise. This is the foundation of health in general, but definitely the foundation for healthy ovary function, including fertility.

Clean eating includes things like managing your blood sugar levels, eating protein every few hours and identifying inflammatory foods. If you are experiencing inflammation issues, I suggest doing a food sensitivity panel that I use in my office. It is my favorite because I can see any sensitivities to dairy proteins, gluten, eggs or other foods that you may not even realize like almonds and bananas for certain people can be inflammatory.

When we ingest inflammatory foods, that inflammation affects our whole body, including ovary function. I can't tell you how many cases of women have come into my office where we identify the inflammatory foods and we start healing the digestion, healing leaky gut, balancing their biome, and all of a sudden, the ovaries start working better.

One of the key hormones to balance when it comes to optimal ovary function is cortisol. Cortisol is our main stress hormone and if cortisol is too high or too low, it inhibits healthy ovary function. So that means we need to know what your cortisol function is up to - we can measure cortisol morning, midday, evening, bedtime through the urine or saliva and we can see what is your cortisol up to.

Is it too high at certain times of the day or is it at too low at certain times? And wherever it is then we can use the correct herbs and nutrients to get it back on track again. If you would like to know if your cortisol and adrenaline are out of balance you can do a home test that you can order here.

I describe this in my latest book: Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. In this book I describe how to individualize SelfC.A.R.E., how to know what's happening with your cortisol as well as your adrenaline levels according to what I call your Stress Type. If you would like to know which stress type are you so you can start recovering from stress you can take the Stress Type Quiz here.

This even helps with perimenopausal symptoms, and it helps with postmenopausal as well. So even once the ovaries calm down and they go into menopause, we still need your adrenal glands to be functioning optimally because now you're even more reliant on your adrenal glands to help you feel good.

It's also important to have optimal neurotransmitter levels so this is serotonin and GABA and dopamine. It may come as a surprise that chemicals in the brain have anything to do with optimizing your ovary function, but they are incredibly interrelated. Neurotransmitters can also be measured in urine, and I offer those tests through my office, and you can then balance your neurotransmitters using precursor nutrients.

It can be scary to think about coming off the pill, as a doctor and as a woman, I completely understand this fear. What I can tell you is from my experience and from my patients’ experience, it's absolutely possible to help rebalance and prevent menstrual related symptoms with natural approaches, nutrients, and herbs without having to rely on synthetic hormones.

What Are Some Contraception Alternatives to The Birth Control Pill?

My recommendation for non-toxic alternatives includes the nonhormonal copper IUD and the fertility awareness method, which includes tracking your ovulation and menstrual cycles so you can either avoid sexual activity or use condoms in the time frame where you are most likely to conceive. You can also measure your basal body temperature on a daily basis where fluctuations determine when you able to conceive.

I will host a future episode for those listeners who are interested in learning more about how to conceive.

I hope this episode has been helpful for you and understanding birth control pills more and understanding their connection especially to HPV and cervical cancer risk, as well as some of the other conditions that we talked about today.

I invite you to reach out if I can be of more help or if you have any questions, and definitely if you are in a situation where you're working on fending off HPV.

I've been helping women with their health now for over 23 years. I'm a naturopathic Doctor, as well as midwife. I love helping women with understanding their bodies and what they can do to support their bodies to be as healthy as possible, as well as to prevent things like cervical cancer.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to addressing HPV, including why healing leaky gut is essential, you can find my HPV Recovery Guide here. If you would like more help getting HPV to negative, and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for the upcoming 5 Days to Heal HPV Workshop here or my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here. The Detox Program includes a gluten-free, dairy-free meal plan, along with a protein shake (the protein shake is included), as well as videos to guide you every step of the way.

If you want to learn more about how stress and trauma have affected you, in terms of your cortisol and adrenaline levels, and how to recover so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

To know your Stress Type, which is your unique cortisol and adrenaline levels based on how stresses have affected your adrenal function, you can take the quiz I developed. You can find the Stress Type® Quiz in the book and on my website.

If you’re ready to start rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, to help your adrenals reset after stress exposure, you can start by ordering this home test kit. And you can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Online Program to guide you here.

You can also subscribe to my newsletter, where you'll receive a newsletter from me every Thursday with the latest episode and additional resources and tools for your success with achieving optimal health.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

Be sure you sign up and subscribe so you don’t miss the next episode of How Humans Heal. I love having you here with me and I would love to hear from you on other topics you'd like to learn more about.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I get to introduce you to my friend, colleague, and mentor Dr. Tori Hudson. Dr. Tori Hudson has been in practice as a Naturopathic Doctor for almost 40 years in Oregon. She is a nationally recognized naturopathic physician, speaker, educator, researcher, clinician and the first woman in the United States to become a full professor of naturopathic medicine.

She is also the author of the Women’s Encyclopedia of Natural Medicine: Alternative Therapies and Integrative Medicine for Total Health and Wellness, and has served as a Medical Director, Associate Academic Dean, and Academic Dean at the National University of Natural Medicine (NUNM). Most recently, she has released her new book: The Menopause Companion.

In addition to founding and running her own clinic, A Woman’s Time, Dr. Hudson is the founder and co-director of the Naturopathic Education and Research Consortium (NERC), a non-profit organization for accredited naturopathic residencies. She currently serves as the program director for the Institute of Women’s Health and Integrative Medicine.

Dr. Hudson also co-founded Vitanica, a supplement company offering formulations based on her decades of clinical experience.

Today we talk about women's health later in life and how we can help women in new ways using a naturopathic approach and natural medicine.

How Has Women’s Healthcare Evolved Over the Last 20-25 Years?

There's been a considerable shift in menopause management. Specifically, the rise and fall, and rise again, of menopausal hormone therapy.

Natural medicine started to gain more recognition in the late 80s’. Dr. Michael Murray was very influential in bringing to light the botanical medicine research out of Europe and other parts of the world. Dr. Tori attributes to him the initiation of an awareness of the world of botanical medicine research and the influence it has had on naturopathic practice and the development of integrated physicians. The shift began in using supplements to both reduce the risk of disease and treat disease.

Women's health in particular is seeing an immense expansion of options, which can be fantastic, but also more confusing to navigate.

People are now able to research different approaches online and they're able to access different practitioners. So, women are more likely to say “I want something different” or “I don't just want a cookie cutter suggestion”.

Today, patients are more informed and have more opportunities to be informed. They come more often with their own thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Most the time that can lead to a collaborative process of determining their treatment plan.

Women today have a lot more tools to help themselves. They have new ways to get what they need from their healthcare providers, and they have a lot more ability to question if they really need a treatment or procedure.

Dr. Tori loves when a patient comes in and asks for a second opinion. Recently, she had a patient asking her if she really needed a particular surgery for her bladder and she was able to reassure her that surgery was the necessary next step.

Naturopathic doctors are trained to recognize the value of conventional medicine and how to incorporate that into a natural approach and a naturopathic medicine context. It’s important to recognize that every paradigm has its strengths, and every paradigm has its weaknesses.

That’s what is unique about the modern naturopathic physician - we can really help patients navigate the best opportunities for their healthcare.

Naturopathic Medicine as an Individualized Approach for Menopause

Perimenopause starts at least a decade before the period ends and then comes post menopause. So, for women living till their mid-80’s it’s really most of their lives.

It’s a lot of years of our lives to be navigating hormone shifts, and potential symptoms and health issues, and women really do need help navigating that. Especially because there's still not enough research, and the information that is available is not always consistent and can be confusing.

Dr. Tori reminds us that there's rarely a one size fits all approach, which is the beauty of naturopathic medicine. We try to individualize the approach for each person. If there are 10 different women who have hot flashes, there's going to be some recommendations that are common for them all, but there's also the nuance of suggestions that match for the rest of their health.

So, hot flashes occur in a context of: does the patient have arthritis, what's their risk for diabetes, do they have high blood pressure, what's their risk for Alzheimer's? There is the quality-of-life issues which can be fairly simple to resolve, and then there's the disease prevention issues and the disease treatment issues which need to be addressed.

A naturopathic doctor should help you look at the big picture and then help gather the information to help you make the best decisions possible about what to take and how to support your health.

Navigating The Ladder of Intervention in Women’s Health

Dr. Tori’s new book outlines what changes might be happening in your body, how to ask the right questions of your health care provider, what might be problematic in the world of tests and treatments, and more.

She compares it to a map, as opposed to a strict sequence. There are many options for how to get on from point A (where you are starting) to point B (feeling better). This is important because we are all coming to the table with a different set of cards, and we may all have similar pathways to navigate, but at the end of the day, each of our approaches needs to be individualized.

It is tempting to talk to other women and hear a particular intervention that worked well for them, but your menopausal journey will probably look very different from your friends’ or even your family members’ journey – and what may have worked well for them, may not have the same impact for you.

It's great to share stories and share experiences with other women, but no one else’s experience will be your exact prescription.

That’s where the ladder of intervention becomes helpful. On this ladder you can consider where you are starting and what makes sense in your case. Consider what symptoms you are experiencing, what your family history predisposes you to, your own medical history, and what you’ve already tried to help you see where you should begin.

The beauty of this process is to determine the most minimally invasive intervention we can introduce that will lead to the intended improvements. It’s not just a hierarchy for all circumstances, as in we do not always start on the first rung of the ladder. Each person or situation will have their own hierarchy.

Maybe you’ve already been implementing diet and exercise but still experiencing night sweats, or hot flashes, or have osteoporosis. In these cases, we move up the ladder of intervention to see what steps are needed to produce the necessary changes.

Multitasking Herbs for Menopause

Since our body is an ecosystem, symptoms do not usually occur in the singular. Taken together, the totality of symptoms can provide a more complete picture of what herbs might be most helpful.

Dr. Tori refers to these combinations as twofers, three-fers, and four-fers. For instance, if a woman is experiencing hot flashes we will also ask, is she struggling with her mood, does she have achy joints as well, or is she experiencing memory issues.

Then we look for herbs or formulas that will cover the most issues for a specific patient. Black Cohosh, for example, has by far more research than any other single herb, but that doesn't mean it's going to work for everyone. Maybe curcumin will be the remedy for someone who has hot flashes as well as joint pain.

Better Understanding of Hormone Replacement Therapy

Is hormone replacement therapy right for you?

Women are often hesitant about hormone replacement for one reason or another, as it can feel drastic. There's newer research that's helping us, even as providers, become more comfortable with hormone replacement therapy.

If you have been following a treatment plan, and you’ve tried herbs and formulas that can help with perimenopausal symptoms, but you’re still experiencing night sweats or vaginal dryness and your symptoms are not improving, then we can start talking about some form of bioidentical hormone replacement therapy.

It's important to understand the benefits and the risks of menopausal hormone therapy. Age will be one of the most important determining factors. How old is the patient, when did she become menopausal, does she have other coexisting health issues or what other coexisting health problems does she have, and what are her risks for what Dr. Tori calls the big three: Osteoporosis, Heart Disease, and Alzheimer's Disease.

Additionally, there are three buckets of information that are important to evaluate: what are your quality-of-life issues, what diseases are you at increased risk for, and what conditions or diseases do you already have. All of that informs the decision making on the benefits and the risks of menopausal hormone therapy.

If you're within the first ten years of your last menstrual period, less than 60 years old, you haven't had breast cancer, a stroke, or clot, or DBT, then the risks of hormone replacement therapy are negligible. There are a few other risks to consider, like fatty liver, but those are the fundamental considerations. From there we can determine whether menopausal hormone therapy is safe for that person.

The risk of breast cancer from going on menopausal hormone therapy is very low if you’re in the group just described. In fact, it is much more likely to get breast cancer if you drink alcohol every day, smoke, you don't exercise and you're overweight.

There are very few women for whom systemic menopausal hormone therapy is actually contraindicated. There are cautions on delivery methods, for instance if you have a gallstone, we shouldn't give oral hormones, and if you have fatty liver or elevated triglycerides, we shouldn't give oral, but we can give transdermal hormones instead.

It’s important to work with a practitioner who understand all the options, delivery methods, and ways to customize your dose based on your health.

What About Local Estrogen for Vaginal Health?

Vaginal estrogen can be a miracle worker for some women. Vaginal estrogen for the purpose of local vulvovaginal problems doesn't increase the risk of anything if it's done properly.

Typically, it is prescribed for local dryness, itching, irritation, painful sexual activity, and/or leaky bladder. In these cases, it’s often a waste of time to attempt vitamin E, moisturizers, or lubricants. You can skip up the ladder of intervention to vaginal estrogen since it is still very minimally invasive.

There are, of course, still instances where caution should be exercised, for instance if breast cancer is or was present. In that case, a non-hormonal option would usually be the beginning recommendation. But even gynecologist societies and menopause societies say you can use tiny doses of vaginal estrogen safely in a breast cancer patient for vaginal symptoms in many cases.

A low dose of vaginal estrogen has also been found to be helpful for women who tested positive for HPV and have abnormal cells on their pap smear. With vaginal estrogen, you're improving the vaginal biome and that means you can prevent bacterial vaginosis or vaginal infections. We're finding that the vaginal biome and the species of lactobacilli living in the vagina help fend off HPV as well.

Vaginal estrogen gets you a healthier ecological environment and balance of microorganisms. A healthy vaginal biome relies on healthy estrogen levels in the cells.

We might first notice vaginal dryness most acutely during sex, but vaginal dryness can be an indicator of other health issues and affect more than just your sex life. Local estrogen can be a preventive medicine that can help with vaginal dryness and a range of other health issues as well.

The dryness and discomfort put you at an increased risk for vaginitis, urinary tract infections, possibly HPV, bladder leakage, and overactive bladder. You can prevent those things from happening most of the time by using a small dose of vaginal estrogen twice per week. So, it's not just for sexual comfort, it's related to your overall bladder and vaginal health as well.

What Are Some Good Supplements for Menopause and Women’s Health?

As we mentioned before, Dr. Hudson co-founded Vitanica, a supplement company offering formulations to support women’s health. Some of my favorites are:

Black Cohosh: The most effective formulation I’ve ever come across for hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms.

Chaste Tree Berry: An herb that supports ovulation and helps with symptoms of premenstrual syndrome, breast pain associated with the menstrual cycle, infertility, and perimenopausal menstrual changes.

Slow Flow: A formula of herbs and nutrients for heavy menstrual bleeding.

CCDG Blend: Tried and true for HPV cases, CCDG contains curcumin, coriolus mushroom, DIM and green tea, all in one.

Cranstat Extra: Herbal and nutrient formula for bladder infections.

Candidastat: To support a healthy biome and prevent yeast overgrowth.

I’ve been working with these formulas for 23 years (Dr. Doni speaking), and I’ve seen time and time again how helpful they are for women. That’s why I recommend them in my practice.

As always, I am here and would love to help you wherever you are in your health and menopausal journey. I’m licensed to help with hormone replacement therapy in several states. Please feel free to reach out with any questions so we can get started on improving your life and your health, together!

If you want to reach out to Dr. Hudson and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website. Also be sure to check out Dr. Tori’s new book, The Menopause Companion, to learn more about how to navigate this process of perimenopause and post menopause, from finding the right practitioner or set of practitioners who can guide you along your journey, and the right questions to ask to take steps in the best direction.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to addressing HPV, including why healing leaky gut is essential, you can find my HPV Recovery Guide here. If you would like more help getting HPV to negative, and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for the upcoming 5 Days to Heal HPV Workshop here or my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here. The Detox Program includes a gluten-free, dairy-free meal

plan, along with a protein shake (the protein shake is included), as well as videos to guide you every step of the way.

If you want to learn more about how stress and trauma have affected you, in terms of your cortisol and adrenaline levels, and how to recover so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

To know your Stress Type, which is your unique cortisol and adrenaline levels based on how stresses have affected your adrenal function, you can take the quiz I developed. You can find the Stress Type® Quiz in the book and on my website.

If you’re ready to start rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, to help your adrenals reset after stress exposure, you can start by ordering this home test kit. And you can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Online Program to guide you here.

You can also subscribe to my newsletter, where you'll receive a newsletter from me every Thursday with the latest episode and additional resources and tools for your success with achieving optimal health.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today's episode we talk about gluten. What it is, the symptoms that it can cause (and how it may be involved in health issues you may be experiencing), how to know if it's an issue for you, and what to do about it.

Gluten has been something that I've been researching and learning about for more than 20 years. When I was in my training at Bastyr University in the 90s, it wasn’t well known that gluten could cause so many health issues. At the time, I, myself was dealing with health issues, including severe allergies and migraines, and I was trying to figure out the cause. I really wanted to understand how my diet and the food I was eating were influencing my health, and so I tried every diet and did every kind of test on myself to try and figure out the cause of my health issues.

It wasn’t until after having graduated from Naturopathic Medical School that I finally did a test that was able to identify that gluten was an issue for me. And so, I started avoiding gluten and immediately started feeling better. My allergies decreased, the migraines lessened, and I started to feel better in general, so discovering that I have a sensitivity to gluten really helped me.

As of now, I have been avoiding gluten for over 20 years and have helped thousands of patients to discover that gluten is an issue for their health as well. I became an expert resource on the topic of gluten and gluten sensitivity, lecturing at professional conferences across the U.S. and being interviewed by the media on numerous occasions.

In the process, I learned so much more about the trouble that gluten can cause. And in helping my patients I discovered that it is not just important to identify gluten as an issue, but also how to recover from gluten exposure. This is important because many patients come to me saying they are already avoiding gluten, but they haven’t started to feel better yet, and so it’s key to know how to do a full recovery from gluten in order to reset your health and to heal.

What Is Gluten?

Gluten is a protein that is found in certain grains, including barley, rye, spelt and wheat. This protein acts as a binder in recipes, to hold foods that we make with these grains together, and to make them chewy, like the dough in the process of making bread for example. Without gluten, the dough would just crumble and fall apart easily.

Gluten is made up of two smaller protein molecules: gliadin and glutenin. I find that it's helpful to understand that these protein molecules are made up of amino acids, just like all protein. When we ingest protein, in general, it is broken down by our pancreatic enzymes into amino acids which can be absorbed into our bodies.

The issue with gluten is that humans, in general, are not able to completely digest gliadin (in gluten) and the related prolamins (from wheat, barley, and rye) due to their high glutamine and proline content. That means that when we consume gluten, some amount of it will not be digested, and can become a trigger to our immune system.

It's also important to know that there's a whole spectrum of possible reactivities to wheat and gluten, and to understand that we don’t all react the same. A person’s immune system might be more reactive to gliadin than glutenin, for example, or vice versa. Some people may be equally reactive to both. Others may be more reactive to wheat, which is a larger molecule than gluten. It can be helpful to understand exactly what is triggering your immune system so you know what to avoid specifically.

When Is Gluten A Problem?

Anytime we eat a food that we don't digest well (like a larger amino acid chain or protein molecule) it has the potential of causing health issues, especially if that undigested food is able to get through the intestinal lining to where our immune system exists, ready to protect us from foreign substances. Our immune system picks up on proteins (remember that viral proteins, like all proteins, consist of amino acids!) and triggers an inflammatory response to attack the protein.

This is what can happen with gluten, because we don't digest it well, and because gluten itself opens spaces between intestinal cells, and gets through to where our immune system thinks it needs to protect us from it.

Our immune system releases cytokines (which are inflammatory molecules) to try to protect us. Cytokines are important because they help us heal but if our intestines are being constantly bombarded by gluten and cytokines, there will be constant inflammation, and this can end up causing damage to our cells in the long run. Damage to the intestinal cells is called intestinal permeability or leaky gut.

For most people, eating gluten occasionally is not a problem. It is more likely to be an issue when we consume gluten all the time. If we're not paying attention, we could even be exposed to gluten in every meal. Some people may be having gluten for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks. Gluten is often added to products and recipes, even when we don't realize it.

Besides the grains mentioned above, gluten is added to condiments, recipes and packaged foods that we wouldn't even think would have gluten in them. Some breads, for example, may even contain 10 times more gluten (as an added ingredient) to make them fluffier and chewier.

In fact, in the United States we're exposed to more gluten than anywhere else in the world because of the “added gluten” in products, intended to increase sales of these foods.

If you are wondering why gluten is such an issue now, it's because we're getting so much more exposed to it than ever before. Additionally, there are other factors, such as that most wheat,

especially in the United States, is grown with exposure to a pesticide called glyphosate. Glyphosate is know to damage to the intestinal cells. When you combine the negative effects of glyphosate with the increased exposure to gluten, it makes sense why we are seeing an increase in gluten-related health issues.

What is Celiac Disease and How is it Different from Gluten Sensitivity or Wheat Allergy?

Let’s start with wheat allergy. A wheat allergy is when your immune system is creating IgE antibodies to wheat, similar to when someone is allergic to peanuts. Someone with wheat allergy is likely to develop symptoms within minutes to hours after eating something containing wheat. The symptoms include itching, irritation and swelling of the mouth and throat, hives, itchy rash or swelling of the skin and nasal congestion. This is different from Celiac disease.

Celiac disease (CD) is a chronic digestive and autoimmune disorder that damages the small intestine. The disease is triggered by eating foods containing gluten. Celiac can cause long-lasting digestive problems and keep your body from getting all the nutrients it needs. It is an autoimmune condition meaning your immune system is not only trying to protect you from gluten (gliadin), but also from your own intestinal cells. It is thought that at first the immune system is reacting to gluten, and then begins to attack nearby proteins, including an enzyme in intestinal cells called transglutaminase enzyme or tTG. This process ends up damaging the intestinal cells, causing severe leaky gut.

About 2% of the population is considered to suffer from Celiac disease. There is a genetic correlation for this disease. We have been able to identify that people who have the genes that are called HLA DQ-2 and HLA DQ-8 have an increased risk of Celiac disease. Those people also have an increased risk of non-Celiac gluten sensitivity.

Non-Celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS or gluten sensitivity) means a person has a reaction to gluten but doesn't have the autoimmunity condition, so the immune system is not attacking their own cells. It is much more common than CD and is thought to occur in at least 6% of the population. Both CD and gluten sensitivity have a lot of health issues associated with them.

What Are the Symptoms of Gluten Sensitivity and CD?

One of the most common symptoms, especially in children, is a stomachache. GERD/reflux, gastritis, nausea, bowel changes, and abdominal pain are all associated with gluten sensitivity and CD. Headaches are also common. So, if you get a lot of headaches paired with digestive discomfort, you could be suffering from gluten sensitivity.

At the same time, it’s important to consider that only about 50% of people with Celiac disease and gluten sensitivity have digestive symptoms. Many people come in saying they do not have digestive issues. In fact, with gluten issues it is much more likely to have neurological symptoms, like anxiety, depression, neuropathy, or other neurological issues. The inflammation is going from your digestion straight to your nervous system.

Other symptoms include fatigue, brain fog, decreased focus, memory loss and sleep issues. Not only that but gluten can cause aches and pains whether that's joint pain, muscle pain (that might be considered fibromyalgia), and can cause nutrient deficiencies because of the damage to intestinal cells.

When we have damage to our intestinal cells, or leaky gut, we're not going to be able to absorb the nutrients from the foods we eat, so we become more likely to have nutrient deficiencies. The most common deficiencies are iron, vitamin D and B vitamins. It may go as far as developing anemia. So, if you have anemia or iron deficiency, you could be suffering from gluten sensitivity. It also can cause canker sores, skin rashes, menstrual issues (including fertility issues), and perimenopausal symptoms.

One of the most common issues I find related to gluten is that it increases our risk of infections of all different types - viral infections, bacterial infections, and yeast infections. If you're getting recurrent infections, whether that's sinus infections or bladder infections, vaginitis, skin infections, eye infections and even persistent HPV, it can all be related to gluten.

How Can You Know if You Have Gluten Sensitivity or CD?

At least one in four people are thought to have some degree of gluten sensitivity. So, how do we test for it? How do we know if we are sensitive to gluten?

For Celiac disease, the standard way to diagnose it is with an intestinal biopsy so, you would need to go into the gastroenterologist to have an endoscopy and biopsy. With the biopsy, they're looking for damage to the small intestinal cells caused by the autoantibodies.

There is a blood test that shows anti-gliadin antibodies and antibodies to tTG. These tests are part of a Comprehensive Celiac Panel, and can give a sense of whether Celiac exists, but for an official diagnosis of Celiac disease it is necessary to do the biopsy.

For non-Celiac gluten sensitivity, the standard is to avoid gluten for a period of time (usually at least three weeks) and monitor your symptoms. If you feel better when you eliminate gluten fully from your diet, then you could have gluten sensitivity. Then you can try re-introducing gluten to your diet and see if you feel worse to confirm if gluten is affecting you.

What I find really helps to identify gluten sensitivity is an IgG and IgA food panel. Not all IgA and IgG food panels are as accurate at identifying reactions to gluten, so I recommend using the lab that I have tested and found to provide the most accurate results. You can order this test through my office here. It's a finger poke so you can do it from home anywhere in the world and mail it in. With this test, we can also check for other food that your body may be reacting to – it tests for 96 foods.

It is also possible to test for gliadin antibodies in a stool test. The stool test that I recommend to my patients is called the GI Map from Diagnostic Solutions. It is a highly sensitive test for gliadin antibodies in the stool and can identify if your immune system is trying to protect you from gluten.

These tests can be helpful even for someone who's been avoiding gluten as they can tell you if your system is still trying to protect you from it based on your current diet. If this is the case, you may want to take a closer look at your diet so you can identify if gluten is sneaking in somehow.

What Is Leaky Gut?

Leaky gut is a short way of saying intestinal permeability. The mucous lining of our intestines is designed to absorb water and nutrients from our food into our bloodstream. The intestinal cells are lined up next to each other and our body grows new intestinal cells every day. Those intestinal cells can be damaged by stress, injuries, medications, toxins, and gluten. When the intestinal cells are not as healthy, the intestinal lining allows undigested food to “leak” through, causing an inflammatory reaction by our immune system.

When we're under a lot of stress, our body is not able to keep up with making new healthy intestinal cells, leading to increased intestinal permeability or leaky gut. Other causes of leaky gut include surgery, physical stress, lack of sleep, exposure to toxins (like pesticides and toxins from gut bacteria), eating non-organic foods, alcohol, caffeine, and gluten.

Gluten causes damage to the intestinal cells by triggering the inflammation that we mentioned. It also increases a substance called zonulin which is a protein that signals to open the spaces between the cells. So, gluten is literally signaling through zonulin to cause leaky gut. Then it gets through to the other side of the intestinal lining and that's where our immune system is hanging out waiting to protect us.

So, the immune system triggers even more inflammation. And that inflammation doesn't just stay in the intestinal area, it can go anywhere in the body which is why it can cause such broad symptoms. It goes to our nervous system, our joints, our skin, etc.

That inflammation then overwhelms our system, causing more stress. So, not only does the stress from our external world make us more likely to have leaky gut and a reaction to gluten, but gluten and the inflammatory response cause more internal stress. And so, it becomes this vicious cycle or snowball effect where it compounds, and you end up with more and more health issues.

By doing the food sensitivity panel that I mentioned we can get an assessment of the degree of leaky gut that you may have. To me, that is the real question – is leaky gut mild, moderate or severe.

Gluten can also disrupt our microbiome. We've discussed the importance of the gut microbiome in prior episodes. Microbes living in our body are important for maintaining our health in general, our immune system, our nutrient absorption, our neurotransmitters production, etc. If you would like to learn more about how important our microbiome is and how you can get yours back to balance, you can watch Episode 169 of How Humans Heal here.

Are Gluten Sensitivity and HPV Related?

Through many years helping people with gluten sensitivity, and also helping people with HPV, I have been identified a pattern. Gluten causes leaky gut, and it disrupts the gut microbiome. A disrupted gut microbiome leads to a disrupted vaginal biome, and this causes vaginal inflammation. Vaginal inflammation and a disrupted biome increase the risk of HPV.

Also, gluten and leaky gut cause nutrient deficiencies. We know that nutrient deficiencies increase risk of HPV and abnormal cells, and decrease immune function, so it is not able to protect us optimally.

Yes, we can work on healing leaky gut, rebalancing your biome, addressing nutrient deficiencies, and supporting your immune system to protect you from HPV. But if we don't take gluten out of your diet, it's just going to recur. It will happen again and again, and that's why I spend so much time in my programs and working with patients to help them successfully eliminate gluten from their diet and fully recover from gluten sensitivity.

If you have tested positive for HPV and are ready to get it out of your life for good, I encourage you to join me for an upcoming 5 Days to Heal HPV Live Online Workshop. You can learn more and sign up here.

Gluten and Autoimmunity

There is also a correlation between autoimmune diseases, such as Hashimoto’s, and gluten sensitivity. When there’s a reaction to gluten and the immune system starts to protect you from gluten, it can also begin to attack nearby tissue.

That’s what occurs with Celiac disease and tissue transglutaminase (tTG). Similarly with Hashimoto’s, the immune system starts to protect the person from their own thyroid cells.

Research shows the relation between gluten sensitivity, leaky gut, chronic inflammation, disrupted microbiome, and disrupted cortisol levels all leading to a likelihood of developing autoimmunity diseases.

So, if you're dealing with an autoimmune condition, then I would say it’s important to take a look at gluten sensitivity as an underlying cause.

How Can We Recover from Gluten?

Step one is avoiding gluten, and that's an important step. I have so many resources on helping people avoid gluten I have developed over the past couple of decades. I have written about gluten and how to avoid it in all of my books. I've created recipes and menu plans because I want you to have support. It doesn't have to be a difficult thing if you have the right support.

I also like to emphasize that it doesn't need to be an overnight change. You don't have to be stressing yourself trying to avoid all gluten by tomorrow. I wouldn't try to do that. I would look at it as a learning opportunity. Start by finding replacements for common foods in your diet.

It’s also important to know that most gluten-free products still contain carbs and sometimes more carbs and more sugar than the products containing gluten, and so you don't want to just switch from a gluten filled product to a gluten free product and end up disrupting your blood sugar levels. That's not a good idea either.

What we want to do is use this as an opportunity to go more toward a balanced diet where you're having adequate protein, adequate healthy fats and a nice balance of healthy fruits and vegetables, which, by the way, are already gluten-free. We have a lot of food options available that naturally don't have gluten in them. We just need to remind ourselves to choose those foods instead of those containing gluten, or high carbs and sugar.

I can help you to start shifting your diet so you have the support you need. I have many programs that help people with this every day. The Stress Warrior Program, for example, including my Stress Remedy 21-day meal plan, that guides you on exactly what to eat for a healthy gluten-free diet.

The next step is healing leaky gut. You need to help your body rebuild your intestinal cells. Yes, our body grows new intestinal cells every day but when your body has been constantly bombarded with gluten, and if you've developed severe leaky gut and a disrupted microbiome, then it's going to take some time for those intestinal cells to heal.

Often patients tell me they have been avoiding gluten for years, but they still don’t feel good. I find that is most often because they have not adequately healed leaky gut. Healing leaky gut involves getting the right enzymes, nutrients and herbs to help your body digest your food better and grow back new healthy cells, decrease inflammation and reestablish a healthy microbiome.

If you want to learn more about my protocol to heal leaky gut, you can watch my FREE Heal Leaky Gut Masterclass here. If you are ready to fully heal, you can join my Leaky Gut Online Program here. It includes a food sensitivity panel and support to address your results.

Step 3 is to address nutrient deficiencies. It's important to do the right blood test to identify if you have iron, B vitamin, vitamin D, and/or other nutrient deficiencies. These tests are not usually included in standard blood work, but they are tests I can help order so that you get the right information. When you get the right nutrients back into your body and into your cells, you’ll be able to fully recover from gluten exposure and improve your health overall.

The last step of gluten recovery is to fully reduce inflammation. Remember that gluten is triggering so much inflammation through your whole system, and even if you're avoiding gluten, that inflammation may still exist, especially if you have leaky gut.

To decrease inflammation, we need to look at the food sensitivity panel and see if there are other foods in addition to gluten that may be causing inflammation. By avoiding the highly reactive foods, while taking steps to heal leaky guy, you can drop inflammation levels for good. Taking anti-inflammatory herbs and enzymes can help speed up the process. And, of course, we need to address imbalanced cortisol levels in order to fully resolve inflammation.

It's about developing a strategy that is unique for your body and the symptoms you are experiencing. We need to understand your health issues and do the right tests to find out what your body needs and how to support it in the best way possible.

For those of you who have more severe reactions to gluten, including Celiac disease, and you feel restricted by having to avoid gluten so strictly, and if you potentially have other types of autoimmunity, you may want to consider something called helminthic therapy. This is something that I can talk with you about and help you with as well as it has been shown to reduce severe reactivity to gluten.

Personalize Your Recovery From Gluten

I want to emphasize that not everyone has to avoid gluten 100%, and not everyone has to avoid it forever. We really have to take it on a case by case basis, and understand how is it reacting in your body, and how it has affected your health, and then help you recover fully.

As I mentioned, stress of all types can trigger leaky gut and gluten sensitivity, as well as autoimmunity, and then gluten causes more stress from within the body. Stress then disrupts the HPA (hypothalamic pituitary adrenal axis), adrenal function, and both cortisol and adrenaline levels. A perpetual cycle of stress ensues. This is why I consider recovery from stress to be so important for reversing health issues.

If you want to learn more about how stress and trauma have affected you, in terms of your cortisol and adrenaline levels, and how to recover so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

To know your Stress Type, which is your unique cortisol and adrenaline levels based on how stresses have affected your adrenal function, you can take the quiz I developed. You can find the Stress Type® Quiz in the book and on my website.

If you’re ready to start rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, to help your adrenals reset after stress exposure, you can start by ordering this home test kit. And you can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Online Program to guide you here.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here. The Detox Program includes a gluten-free, dairy-free meal plan, along with a protein shake (the protein shake is included), as well as videos to guide you every step of the way.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to addressing HPV, including why healing leaky gut is essential, you can find my HPV Recovery Guide here. If you would like more help getting HPV to negative, and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for the upcoming 5 Days to Heal HPV Workshop here or my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

To read more blogs about gluten and leaky gut, you can find them here.

You can also subscribe to my newsletter, where you'll receive a newsletter from me every Thursday with the latest episode and additional resources and tools for your success with achieving optimal health.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

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Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I'm excited to introduce you to Chauncey Harrison. Chauncey holds a license in Creative Arts Therapy, specifically specializing in Movement Therapy. Additionally, she has completed her Masters in Social Work and is working towards her License in Social Work.

Chauncey’s passion is helping people recover from severe and persistent mental illness, substance use disorders, mood disorders, trauma, and interpersonal issues through creative arts therapy. Her therapeutic style is to meet clients where they are and use a strength-based approach to empower clients.

She is collaborative throughout the therapeutic process, working with clients to achieve their goals by using both verbal and non-verbal (dance, movement, art, and drama) tools to help them recover.

Today we talk about dance movement therapy and how this type of therapy can help people process emotions and recover from stress and trauma. I especially enjoyed talking with Chauncey based on my experiencing both a researcher of stress and as a dancer. I have found dance to be an amazing medicine for me.

Psychotherapy That Goes Beyond the Mind

Psychotherapy can be more than just working on the mind. A lot of times what people experience in terms of mental health support ends up being focused on the mind, and being aware of our thoughts, versus what could be stored in our body. There is a connection between the body and the mind, they are not two separate things. We are whole beings in body, mind, and spirit, and when one of those is not aligned, or is out of balance, the others will be affected too.

It's a beautiful practice to look into our thoughts and understand them. That’s an important part of therapy, in general. In today’s modern world it’s unavoidable to be bombarded with so much information that it can end up being overwhelming. Our minds are always racing with new thoughts that we sort of forget that we are living in a body. So, it’s important to take the time to return to the body. To unwind and practice mindfulness focusing on the body. When you're returning to the body it can be a practice of mindfulness in itself of bringing you back into the present and what's really going on and tuning in.

Your body really does keep the score. It really is aware. It's where we store emotions and so tuning into that can be an incredibly impactful and empowering tool for people to start to understand and work on this connection to the body. It can really help bring back more clarity and connection to a full integration of self.

Many times, we are not able to really listen to our body with compassion and to create healing from that place. There can be real disconnections between the mind and the body. People are

surprised when they find out that our bodies can be part of therapy. This can also feel incredibly vulnerable because typically we've formed more unconscious ways to defend ourselves with our words. It feels more exposing for many people to be considering what our body has to say, so trust is such a huge part of the work here.

How Does Dance Movement Therapy Work?

Part of what we're doing in dance movement therapy is 100% play. There's a lot of therapy in play. There’s also a lot of exploring what’s possible and trying to expand the full range of movement. That's huge for people. A lot of times people are really quick in their movements, or quite indirect in their movement, and they stay in a very small kind of sphere. In that case, we can start playing with what it’s like to feel bigger. To expand that sphere and expand in the space where we’re moving.

This also impacts our experience as humans and the ways that we relate to one another. If we're always relating in one movement repertoire, it can be limiting. Typically, it's helpful to have a full range of movement options. We might not even be aware that we're just moving in that one repertoire.

Dance and movement have been around since ancient times. It has been used for entertainment, storytelling, religion, and healing. There's so much research on how healing it is to our nervous system to move in general. Many people can relate to the experience of being in a bad mood and going for a walk and starting to feel better, or going to the gym and feeling less angry about that issue was bothering you, or having a little dance party in your room and realizing it's not that big of a deal. This has to do with the release of endorphins and neurotransmitters that are activated by that movement.

There is a lot of people where stillness is really present in the movement, where it feels really painful to move. And dance therapy is about meeting people where they are. You don’t have to do a specific amount or way of movement. It’s about being present and listening and observing how things develop without any kind of judgement. And then to maybe explore and just start playing with it and expand it when it feels appropriate. It's about following what someone is bringing into the space and really watching and seeing what's appropriate for them.

You can get these insights into a person's patterns simply by looking a little bit more closely to what's going on with their response to the movement. And there is so much restoring movement too, whether it's memories or what it brings up for you in that moment.

Certain movement patterns that have been more codified can be restored in people's bodies, energizing or relaxing them for example. Movement plays so many different roles in our lives.

Is Dance Movement Therapy a Kind of Somatic Therapy?

Somatic therapy, sometimes known as body psychotherapy, is a therapeutic approach that places importance on what we experience in the mind and the body, as well as the connection between the two.

Again, with dance therapy, it’s very important to meet the person where they are and where they are coming from. Certain diagnostic labels can be really helpful, and sometimes not so much. It’s about exploring feelings and emotions through movement while not being attached to a specific label.

And as we mentioned before, mind and body are one whole thing, and they influence each other. If someone is suffering from gastro-intestinal issues because of anxiety, it's real. A lot of our emotions reflect in our stomach. This shows us how mind and body are connected. It proves that we can feel emotions on a physical level.

Sometimes people are led to believe that something's only “in their head” or they’re making it up and it’s not real. If you feel it or experience pain or discomfort of any sort, it's real. We have to acknowledge and validate that, because it’s a crucial part of the healing process.

We have to be able to connect with our feelings and emotions and how these relate to what we feel in our bodies. A lot of the time we suppress our emotions. We aren't taught how to have awareness for them and how to just be present to be able to process them or just be present with them. If you want to learn more about this you can watch Episode 165 of How Humans Heal - Emotional Healing: A Pathway to a Better Life here.

Part of what dance movement therapy and creative arts offers is this nonverbal processing of feelings and emotions. You may not even know what you’re feeling, and it could be very uncomfortable, but we can start with a sensation and maybe we can put that into an image. What would this image look like? Can we draw it on a piece of paper? Is there a sound that goes with it? And this can be so helpful to process our emotions and get more information about what they are related to.

This can make people feel vulnerable, even just asking for help can feel vulnerable, let alone trying to listen to what your body wants to tell you. We don't know what we're going to find out, so it feels vulnerable in that way. The important thing to keep in mind is that this is a process that is unique to each individual and that everyone has a different pace and process.

It’s about going at your own pace and discovering little by little what your body is trying to communicate. It's not like you will come out of the first session in shock and lose track of your original existence. You’re discovering information slowly and then you can integrate that information into your daily life. It’s about providing a safe space and empowering people to tune in and listen to their bodies and connect with themselves.

Dance Movement Therapy and Yoga

The body has so much information for us, we just have to learn how to listen and access it. Some of Chauncey’s original connection to dance therapy was through yoga and what it did for her. And yoga is a form of movement that is used for healing not just on a physical level but a mental and emotional level. It’s also a way to experience the mind and body connection.

There are so many different types of yoga and different ways to enter the practice. For some people it could be through the physical practice and for others through reading the books and doing self-study or meditation. It’s always about what moves you and what speaks and resonates with you and where you are in life. Speaking about movement, some of the movements and postures in yoga can create a space for a lot of healing and release.

There’s so much research now backing up just how impactful yoga is for health, not only mental but also physical, including reducing inflammation for example. It’s not just about flexibility and balance. With all this neurological research, we also have a lot more proof of the mirror neurons and the impact of them. In dance movement therapy, there’s this technique called “mirroring” where you bring someone else's movement into your body, so that you're sharing the movement together and it’s so impactful.

There’s definitely some overlap between yoga and dance movement therapy but there are also beautiful differences in those practices. There are a lot of dance movement therapists who are yoga teachers and there are a lot of yoga teachers that seem to have a dance background or a dance movement therapy background too.

Using Dance Movement Therapy to Treat Chronic Illness and Pain

We know dance movement therapy can help with anxiety and depression, but it can also help with physical pain and trauma. As we mentioned, the body and the mind are connected and there are many chronic illnesses that can be traced back to unresolved trauma and stored emotions. Using the movement therapy lens, there might be unresolved traumas and things held in the body. Someone can come in because they think they’re depressed and then there's a lot more that we're unpacking and we're looking at during therapy.

Likewise, if someone comes in with a chronic illness or chronic pain, they can process and explore and find out what the source of the illness is through dance movement therapy.

So often in the mental health field what people hear is that there's a chemical imbalance and that they need medication, not to say that medications aren't sometimes appropriate and necessary and helpful, but it’s important for people to know that there are other tools that they can use to heal. It’s about opening up the possibilities for people so they don't feel stuck.

Whether it's through movement therapy, talk therapy or a mix of both. There are also art therapists, drama therapists, music therapists, etc. There are many creative arts therapists out there, it’s a matter of finding what works for you. And there’s research behind all of these different techniques that show how they are all therapeutic and can help us heal.

Recovery from stress and trauma can help with so many health issues, including anxiety, depression, fatigue, pain, digestive issues, autoimmunity, and recurrent infections, as well as HPV, and can help decrease risk of cancer, heart disease, dementia, and more.

If you want to reach out to Chauncey and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website or her Instagram @refresh.psychotherapynyc. She and the other clinicians in her clinic offer both in-office and virtual sessions.

if you want to learn more about how stress and trauma affect us, and how to recover so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In the book, I describe what I refer to as SelfC.A.R.E. based on your Stress Type. C stands for Clean Eating, A for adequate sleep, R for recovery activities, and E for exercise. I share the research behind how C.A.R.E. works in a daily routine to help us process stress. And why it’s important to choose C.A.R.E., including movement/exercise, that matches for your body.

To know your Stress Type, which is your unique cortisol and adrenaline levels based on how stresses have affected your adrenal function, you can take the quiz I developed. You can find the Stress Type® Quiz in the book and on my website.

Then, if you’re ready to start rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, to help your adrenals reset after stress exposure, you can start by ordering this home test kit. And you can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Online Program to guide you here.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my New 14-Day Detox Program here. In the Detox Program I teach you to connect with yourself, and use mind-body tools, such as biofeedback, to process emotions.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today's episode we're going to be talking about joint hypermobility. This is a topic that's important to me both clinically and personally because I was diagnosed with it a few years ago. What I find is that joint hypermobility is much more common than previously suspected, and there is so much we can do to help with the symptoms of pain, anxiety, fatigue, and more.

Joint hypermobility is sometimes referred to as joint hypermobility syndrome (JHS) or hypermobility spectrum disorder (HSD). It shows up a little bit differently in each person and is not well known by practitioners, which means that many people with hypermobility have seen numerous practitioners without receiving a diagnosis.

When they do receive a diagnosis, they are often told that “there is no cure,” which can make it seem as though there is nothing that can be done to help. That is simply incorrect. I’ll be sharing more why that is my perspective in this episode of How Humans Heal.

First, it is important to understand the various potential symptoms of hypermobility, so that you can start to understand how they are interconnected and unique to each person. That will also help us to understand why the approach needs to be individualized as well.

Mainly I want listeners/readers to know that I’m here as proof that it is possible to feel good, to be out of pain, and to thrive even when you tend toward joint hypermobility.

What is Joint Hypermobility?

Joint hypermobility is considered a connective tissue disorder. Connective tissue involves our skin, joints, ligaments, tendons, and fascia. Hypermobility syndromes are associated with joint instability and chronic pain. If you or someone you know has been experiencing joint pain and/or muscle pain for long periods of time, this is something to consider and to talk with your practitioners about, especially those who are experts in hypermobility, so they can help guide you.

Although it has been improving in recent years, still there is very low awareness for joint hypermobility amongst practitioners. I believe that is for two reasons: 1. it's a relatively newly identified condition. It was first described in 1967; 2. It’s considered to be a rare condition, otherwise known as a “zebra”in medicine, meaning that if someone comes in with joint pain, practitioners are more likely to think of the most common causes for joint pain before thinking of hypermobility syndrome. Research indicates that about 3% of people have joint hypermobility, but I actually think it's higher than that and is more common than we realize.

Now, joint hypermobility may or may not be part of another diagnosis called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS) which includes joint hypermobility, with unstable joints that dislocate easily, as well as stretchy skin, easy bruising, wounds that are slow to heal and leave wide scars, hernias and organ prolapse. There are thirteen different types of Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, some of

which involve the blood vessels and digestion. To be diagnosed with EDS requires a genetic analysis to identify collagen-related gene variations.

The important thing is, if you feel joint pain or discomfort, you should start taking action now, regardless of it being hypermobility syndrome or Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. You have to start taking steps to protect yourself and prevent it from causing further health issues.

To me the awful thing is that so many people who are diagnosed with joint hypermobility or with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome are told it's a genetic condition and that there’s nothing they can do, or that all that can be done is manage the pain.

To me, that is unacceptable. As a naturopathic doctor, and as someone with hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, I can tell you there are so many things that help me feel better, and that help me prevent symptoms and health issues associated with hypermobility. There's so much you can do about it. I'm not saying that there's a cure, but by understanding it and by being proactive, you can get yourself out of pain and prevent health issues associated with hypermobility.

How to Know if You Have Joint Hypermobility

Our joints and a lot of other parts of our body are made of collagen. Collagen is so important for joints, bones, ligaments, tendons, blood vessels, intestines, and more. We all make collagen slightly differently. If the way your body makes collagen makes it a little more stretchy, then you may have very flexible collagen and hypermobile joints. But remember, it's a spectrum so not everybody with hypermobile joints can do extreme movements. The best way to identify if you have joint hypermobility is to do a Beighton score test, which is a nine-point scale related to range of motion of joints in the body. The higher you score, the more flexible your joints are.

The Beighton test starts with evaluating if you can touch the floor with your hands with your legs straight; this gets you one point. Next is evaluating if you can hyperextend your elbows. If your elbows can extend beyond making your arm look straight, then you get one point for each elbow. Same thing with your knees, so when you stand if your knees bow backwards, that's hyper mobility of the knees, and that's one point on each knee. Then there's the fingers - a classic is to measure if your thumb can reach all the way to your forearm and another is if you're little finger can point back more than 90 degrees from your hand, these are one point each.

And there are other signs too. If you notice other joints that can move more than other people's or they move out of position easily (or dislocate), that's also a sign that you may have joint hypermobility.

What Are the Symptoms Related to Joint Hypermobility?

Anxiety: There are other symptoms that can be related to joint hypermobility like fatigue, anxiety and even depression. Anxiety is highly correlated with hypermobility, research shows that 70% of people with hypermobility have anxiety, and people with anxiety are likely to have joint hypermobility as well.

Neurodivergence: Hypermobility is also correlated with depression and what's called neurodivergence. Neurodivergence is associated with differences in social preferences, ways of learning, ways of communicating, and ways of perceiving our environment. It is often associated with autism, ADHD and Tourette's syndrome. Neurodivergent individuals may be more sensitive to our environment emotionally, chemically, and physically. The nervous system is more sensitive and perceptive, and that can relate to being in chronic pain.

Chronic pain: The reason for pain is caused by joints being slightly out of position, triggering muscle spasms and fascial restrictions. With hypermobility, it is harder to identify where our body parts should be in space because the joint range of motion is greater. Our nervous system also has a different perception because our joints are more flexible and it’s not so clear when motion should stop, making it less likely for our joints to automatically or naturally be in an optimal position. We have less of an internal guidance system. Luckily it is possible to learn proprioception (where your body parts are in space), and by practicing body position and posture, we can prevent joint dislocations.

For someone who has collagen that's not so stretchy, this is easier because their joints are not allowing for further movement. If you have hypermobility, your joints will not tell you where to stop and so we have to train ourselves to know where our body is healthiest in space in order to decrease our pain and other symptoms. Muscle strength can also help keep our joints in place.

Bruising & Palpitations: Now, with joint hypermobility, and especially with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, you could have symptoms of easier bruising, palpitations, and/or a heart murmur, such as mitral valve prolapse (which is when the heart valves do not close properly between each beat, allowing blood to flow backwards).

Digestive Issues: You may also experience issues with the digestive tract, like constipation or diarrhea, and it may be considered IBS or irritable bowel syndrome. You may be diagnosed with IBD, which is inflammatory bowel disease such as Crohn's disease or other forms of colitis. Hypermobility also makes it more likely that you will have Celiac disease or gluten sensitivity.

Dizziness: Joint hypermobility and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome can also be associated with dysautonomia. Dysautonomia is a disorder of autonomic nervous system function. The autonomic nervous system is in charge of involuntary functions, such as breathing and our heartbeat. It also has to do with our response to stress. Dysautonomia involves an imbalance in the sympathetic (fight or flight) and parasympathetic (rest and digest) parts of the autonomic nervous system. It can cause dizziness, fatigue, and weakness, especially when under stress.

It can also be related to POTS, or postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which is a condition in which a reduced volume of blood returns to the heart and brain after standing up quickly. When you have hypermobility, you have very flexible collagen, and this makes it harder for your blood vessels to get the blood to your brain, so you feel dizzy for a few seconds until your body can catch up by increasing your heart rate. It can make you feel like you are going to faint, or actually cause you to faint.

Symptoms from Stress: Also, stress makes all these symptoms harder to manage. If you've been under a lot of stress, maybe going through a loss or stress at work, or stress in your relationship, or trauma of some sort, then your autonomic nervous system will be affected and not work smoothly. The sympathetic nervous system carries signals that put your body's systems on alert, while your parasympathetic carries signals that relax those systems.

We need a balance of the two. We need our bodies to be able to do a stress response and protect us from danger, but we also need our bodies to be able to turn off the stress response and go back to calm. When we're under constant stress, our bodies have a harder time flexing between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. That's when the autonomic nervous system starts having a harder time, and we start becoming more susceptible to infections (HPV, EBV, etc) and toxins, especially for those of us with hypermobility.

Mast Cell Activation: Another issue related to joint hypermobility and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is mast cell activation syndrome or MCAS. Mast cells are present throughout our bodies and secrete chemicals during allergic reactions, histamine in particular. Symptoms include episodes of abdominal pain, cramping, diarrhea, flushing, itching, wheezing, coughing, lightheadedness, rapid pulse and low blood pressure. Mast cell activation (and histamine) can also be related to headaches, like migraines, as well as neuropathy, symptoms of vulvovaginal pain, vaginitis and urinary/bladder pain. Autoimmunity, like rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis, and other inflammatory conditions, like ankylosing spondylitis and SAPHO, are also related.

MTHFR and Methylation Issues: A recent study associated hypermobility with MTHFR gene variations. MTHFR is the gene that manages the conversion of folic acid into folate, and folate is the active form of vitamin B9. Of course we all need B9 along with all the other B vitamins to help us in so many processes, including having healthy connective tissue. If we don't have enough folate, and if we don't have healthy methylation, this is going to affect the way our body creates collagen.

If we know that MTHFR is associated with hypermobility, and we know that not having enough folate and effective methylation affects your connective tissue, then we can do something about that. We can make sure you have adequate folate, and we can make sure you have effective methylation, in order to help protect your connective tissue and prevent pain and other health issues.

If you want to learn more about this, I encourage you to go listen to Episode #145 of my podcast: Efficient Methylation and its Impact on Our Health as well as my Free MTHFR Masterclass.

What Can We Do to Help Our Bodies if We Have Joint Hypermobility?

It is possible to help your body rebalance and correct where it needs help. To me, it's about understanding your biochemistry, and understanding your body's tendencies, and giving your body what it needs to heal and rebalance, which usually comes in the form of dietary changes, nutrients, supplements and herbs.

A lot of people feel stuck with their symptoms and the need for medications. With joint hypermobility, the main issues are joint and muscle pain, so one of the first treatments recommended is a pain medication, like non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). While offering temporary relief, they have a lot of side effects and can't be taken long term, plus they're not really solving anything, in fact, they might be making things worse, so that's not really a solution. Neither are steroidal drugs for pain as they also have negative effects on our bodies. Additionally, medications prescribed for hypermobility symptoms, such as anti-depressants and benzodiazepines, create dependency and have withdrawal symptoms.

To me, it's not enough to tell people with joint hypermobility that the only option is pain management. There is so much more that we can do. There are ways to manage pain by actually decreasing inflammation and using natural substances that don’t have side effects. It is also possible to start helping your body alongside the use of medications when you are working with an expert who understands the interactions and is able to guide you.

Physical therapy, massage therapy, myofascial therapy, acupuncture and exercises for posture and strength (such as Pilates) can help reduce the symptoms. It is important to make sure the practitioner or trainer understands what joint hypermobility is and the special needs that your body has because when you have joint hypermobility, you are more likely to suffer from injuries.

The approach needs to be completely different. It’s not about increasing flexibility or increasing intensity too much. And It’s also NOT going to help to stop exercising all together. It IS about doing the right type of exercise, in the right amount and frequency, for your body.

For me Pilates has been extremely helpful. It helped me to learn joint position and posture, and to gain strength without causing injury. Ballroom dancing also helps with posture and strength.

Myofascial release therapy has been hugely helpful as it can release the restrictions in the connective tissue. If you want to learn more about myofascial release therapy you can watch Episode #166 of How Humans Heal: Myofascial Release Therapy - Bringing Your Body Back to Alignment. Also in Episode #170 you can learn about how to get rid of joint and muscle pain using natural remedies.

Acupuncture and especially acupuncture that's using electrical stimulation can also help address the trigger points and motor points in the muscles, so it is a great option too.

Paying attention to your body, your posture, and your strength every day is a must if you have joint hypermobility. You can’t just get a massage once a year or go to physical therapy only if you get injured. You have to have a weekly plan to help relieve the symptoms and prevent injuries. If you don't keep up with that routine of managing your body and your joints, that's when you are more likely to find yourself in pain and at a greater risk of injuries.

Dietary changes to reduce inflammation, testing for food sensitivities, healing leaky gut, addressing the gut biome are all things that can help. If there is leaky gut and imbalanced gut biome, you have a source of inflammation from within your gut, and that's causing inflammation through your whole body which is going to increase your likelihood of pain.

Our biome is so important. It's not just about having a bunch of bacteria or probiotics. It's about having the right balance and how these bacteria communicate with our immune system and our nervous system. If you would like to learn more about how to balance your microbiome you can watch Episode #169 of my podcast: Getting Your Microbiome Back on Track.

It is also essential for anyone who has hypermobility to measure your cortisol and adrenaline levels. Hypermobility makes it more likely that your nervous system and adrenal gland function are disrupted by stress. It's more likely that you're going to have neurotransmitter imbalances, and either too high or too low cortisol and adrenaline, or what I call the stress types (the five most common disruptions of cortisol and adrenaline).

That's what I wrote about in the Master Your Stress Reset Your Health book. If you want to find out if your cortisol and adrenaline are out of balance, you can order my home test kit here. You can also take the Stress Type Quiz online and sign up for my Stress Warrior Program to guide you to optimize your cortisol and adrenaline (adrenal health) here.

We also need to do specific blood work so we can understand exactly how hypermobility is affecting you and if you have nutrient deficiencies. If you have hypermobility and inflammation and nutrient deficiencies, it could snowball into various health issues. This is why we need to look at the big picture, see the interconnections, and then guide your body through the steps to heal and prevent more health issues.

The best treatments for hypermobility are from what I would consider a naturopathic approach. It has to do with giving your body what it needs to heal in terms of food, nutrients, plants, herbs and other natural approaches. We need to make sure you are consuming adequate amounts of protein – learn more about that here. We can support the body to heal itself by working on the root causes of problems and solving them.

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. Keep in mind that 50% of people with leaky gut, have zero digestive symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to do the food sensitivity panel I recommend.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here. If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

You can also subscribe to my newsletter where you'll receive a newsletter from me every Thursday with the latest episode and additional resources and tools for your success with achieving optimal health.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

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Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I get to introduce you to my friend and colleague Dr. Josh Levitt. He is a Naturopathic Doctor who graduated from Bastyr University like me and also holds a degree in physiology from UCLA. He is also the author and creator of several popular books and is a clinical preceptor for the Yale School of Medicine.

Dr. Levitt draws upon the science of both conventional and natural medicine and artfully combines the two into a “best of both worlds” treatment strategy. He employs a unique blend of nutritional therapy, herbal medicine, and physical medicine to treat a wide range of common and complex medical problems.

Today we talk about musculoskeletal health, especially what people experience in terms of joint pain and not only why they're experiencing joint pain, but also the frustrations navigating the medical system related to joint pain and joint issues.

His interest and passion in helping people with their musculoskeletal health, and pain in general, comes from being a surfer and skateboarder as he was growing up in Southern California. Being in casts and braces of various sorts and going through lots of X-rays and lots of broken bones he developed an early interest in orthopedics and musculoskeletal health. Later in life, after going through a very serious skin infection while travelling through Europe, he discovered a new world of natural and herbal remedies and was instantly drawn to the naturopathic health world.

Conventional Medicine vs Naturopathy. Are They Mutually Exclusive?

Like so many things in life, health and medicine exist on a spectrum. Within that spectrum there are different domains, you have nutrition and herbs, and surgery and neurosurgery, medications, laughter, community, love, gratitude, etc. There is a long list of things that qualify as medicine in that context and conventional medicine and naturopathy should not be seen as mutually exclusive. In Naturopathy, the philosophy is to use the lowest amount of force that's necessary in order to promote healing. That is just one way of looking at medicine and what it means to heal. Using the least invasive or the least forced therapies for what a person needs is what Dr. Levitt uses in his approach to treating orthopedic and musculoskeletal health issues.

What Are Some of the Most Common Joint or Muscle Issues?

The most common complaint in primary care offices across the country is low back pain. We can go from there and say low back pain, mid back pain, and neck pain. So, pain in or around the spine is a big one. A common diagnosis is a bulging or herniated disc. It might be causing sciatica, and it might be degenerative disk disease in the neck or back. These kinds of spinal complaints are the things that people might go to an orthopedist for, but also might go to a chiropractor or an acupuncturist or a naturopathic doctor.

Other common causes of joint pain are rotator cuff problems in the shoulder, tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome in the upper extremity, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain, and plantar fasciitis. There are so many different diagnoses in musculoskeletal category, but they all relate to people who have something that hurts and are looking for a way to heal.

What Is the Conventional Medicine Way to Treat Joint and Muscle Pain?

There's a very like predictable pattern of prescriptions that happen for people who are in pain. It starts with over-the-counter pain relievers or anti-inflammatory medications. It goes up from there to injectable forms of those drugs, to steroidal medications and corticosteroids, to some kind of surgical intervention. That's just a very common and predictable pattern we see in conventional medicine.

A lumbar fusion, a microdiscectomy, a laminectomy, an arthroscopic knee surgery, or a full-blown knee or hip replacement. There are hundreds of thousands of surgeries being performed in this country on spines, necks, backs, knees and hips that are outright unnecessary or totally inappropriate, and that's a tragedy.

In naturopathic medicine there are so many options and tools that could prevent the need for medications and even surgery. Why use such a powerful invasive tool when another less powerful, less invasive, less toxic, less forceful intervention would do the trick?

A knee replacement in the appropriate patient and circumstance is a beautiful thing. In fact, it's almost miraculous, but only when done on the right person in the right situation. If you do it on a person who doesn't need that level of intervention, that's almost criminal.

When we look at people who are in their 40s who do not have back pain and take MRIs of their backs, you will find that 40% of them have bulging discs in their lumbar spine. Same with knees with meniscus tears or chronic degenerative meniscus tears in the knees - 40% of people have those and their knees feel great. And then you go up every decade from there - in their fifties it’s 50%, in their sixties it’s 60% of people who are feeling good have evidence of degenerative problems in their spine and/or joints.

As soon as they feel some kind of pain and they go to a doctor they get that MRI and then the pain is immediately linked to that degenerative problem. This is simply not true. There are other things that can be causing the pain and they need to be evaluated. For example, excessive inflammation, muscle tension, strength versus flexibility imbalance, fibrosis, and also the psycho-emotional part of it. When we address these things comprehensively people get better and can avoid the need for medications or surgery to heal.

What Is Inflammation and What’s it’s Role on The Body?

Inflammation is named after fire in Latin and so inflammation and fire are really similar. We need them both. Fire is very important, as we know we use it to cook and we use it to stay

warm. Fire is part of our lives, and when it's contained and controlled it's great but when fire escapes the fire pit or the candle, you have a big problem. It becomes maybe one of the most destructive forces in nature. Inflammation is very similar; people think of it as bad and want to suppress inflammation, but it is absolutely fundamental to healing. It’s our body’s response to help us heal. But just like fire, when that inflammation is excessive, it becomes destructive. It can be a major driver of chronic disease and painful syndromes.

If you get stung by a bee or stub your toe, you want an inflammatory response to start the healing process. You just want it to be normal and not excessive, because that's when it starts to be a wildfire. Our diet, physical activity level, stress exposure, environmental toxins, and lifestyle in general are all factors that affect our body’s ability to produce a controlled inflammatory response. Then if a person is having an excessive reaction that persist, we can use therapeutic herbal medicines to get it back to normal.

Herbal treatments and diet changes are a long run fight. The person needs to understand that dietary changes, supplements, herbs, and nutrients are going to make that person less likely to have problems in the future.

Now, if someone shows up with a knee the size of a grapefruit, they will need to feel better right away because they are in terrible pain and that’s where conventional drugs might work.

But it’s also proven that when you suppress inflammation aggressively, like with steroids or non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, especially for extended periods, the problem will be worse over the long term. They will be more likely to require more medication and more interventions over time. It's like winning the battle but losing the war.

There's a parallel in fever. If we suppress the fever, we will feel better, but so will the virus or the bacteria and it will likely take us longer to heal. It's very similar with the inflammatory response.

What Natural Tools Do We Have to Drop Joint and Muscle Inflammation?

There are many natural remedies to drop inflammation that can avoid the need for non-steroidal or steroidal drugs that work for joint pain:

1. Curcumin: This is the active ingredient in turmeric. When you dry the turmeric root and put it into a powder, about 2% of that powder will be curcumin. Curcumin targets many of the different actors inside the inflammatory cascade and modulates the inflammatory response in a very powerful way. This herbal medicine is extremely safe, very well tolerated and powerfully effective. It also has a quite broad dosage range. You can go very high without getting yourself in trouble.

2. Boswellia Serrata Frankincense: This is made of a resin from a from a tree and it is also anti-inflammatory. It targets inflammation in a different way than curcumin and can work in

resurfacing cartilage and improving the integrity of cartilage surfaces that have been damaged by wear and tear.

3. Bromelain: This is an enzyme that is extracted from pineapple and it's antifibrotic. It’s the active ingredient in meat tenderizer so when you sprinkle meat tenderizer on a piece of tough gristly meat it chemically digests fibrin in that tough steak and makes it more tender, and so bromelain does the same thing in your body, it gets absorbed and will have a fibrinolytic effect in your body and that's a good thing when you have fibrin or fibrosis that's restricting blood flow, nerve activity or range of motion inside of a joint.

4. Magnesium: In terms of addressing the muscular part of the pain, there's a lot of things that can be done like acupuncture, stretches, strengthening exercises, etc. But if we talk about what can you take orally for muscular pain, magnesium is very effective. Magnesium is not an herb; it's a mineral and it is a very important for physiology for all kinds. It works by decreasing muscle tension and increasing muscle relaxation. Specifically, magnesium glycinate or malate are the types that will work best for muscular pain and not so much other forms of magnesium like citrate and oxide.

Magnesium can be used topically too in the form of lotion or Epsom salts because it absorbs through the skin and can work for muscle relaxation or healing injuries.

Another good resource for someone that has for example joint hypermobility and tendency toward pain is acupuncture with electrical stimulation. This is a procedure in which mild electric currents are applied to certain spots on the body and can control pain and other inflammatory symptoms. Myofascial release therapy can also be very helpful in combination with these approaches.

Also, cannabis in the form of CBD and THC is a good resource that is being used in recent years to treat muscle tension, pain, and inflammation. It can be used both topically in which case it doesn’t give you that psychoactive component, just the anti-inflammatory and antispasmodic effect. There’s a lot of literature for cannabis being used to treat all kinds of different medical problems so it is a good alternative when used in the right patient in the right circumstance.

What Else Can Be Done to Avoid Going Through Surgery?

If you have tried the all the natural methods described here (diet changes, addressing stress, using herbs and nutrients, stretch and exercises, physical therapy, acupuncture, etc.) and you are still in pain, you might want to consider going to the next step.

There are other tools out there for treating joint and muscle issues before you go through surgery. For example, prolotherapy, stem cell injections, PRP (which is platelet rich plasma injections), hyaluronic acid injections are all regenerative therapies that are absolutely resources to try before surgery.

Unfortunately, these things, generally speaking, are out of pocket expenses in most places and can cost thousands of dollars, so we have to evaluate about whether or not these treatments fit into our budgets.

What About the Psycho-Emotional Part of Pain?

Physical pain can have a psycho-emotional source. You have to be able to really ask yourself what is going on in your life now that can be triggering that pain. This becomes very clear when you start taking a closer look at what is going on in your life, what is happening and what emotions are coming up in this process of analyzing it.

We’ve talked about the spectrum between alternative or natural medicine and conventional medicine, and the spectrum of inflammation and here again, the body and the mind are not two different things, they are the same thing, they are part of this big spectrum called the “human body.” And so, it's impossible to have a physical malady, arthropathy, a degenerative meniscus tear or a bulging disc in your spine without having a psycho-emotional and even spiritual component to it. We are physical, emotional, and spiritual beings and so any impact upon any of our systems will affect all of the others as well.

There can be blockages or restrictions or suppressions from other things in our lives that can affect various parts of our body and they will manifest as pain. When you have a problem in your knee or your back it hurts, it's just pain and pain is a messenger. It's a messenger that tells us that something is wrong and that that our behavior needs to change, because if we don’t then something worse is going to happen. This change could mean changing something in our posture, physical activity, diet, stress exposure, toxins exposure, nutrient deficiencies, and the psycho-emotional part of our lives.

The problem is that very often those behavior changes can be counterproductive if we do not go through the pain of understanding the process we need to go through to really heal. If we just shield ourselves away from the pain either in a psychological, physical, or structural way, we could end up perpetuating the problem.

A lot of the work that needs to be done for musculoskeletal pain, especially chronic, ongoing long-term pain, is to help patients understand that in most cases, it's not dangerous; it just hurts. This is hard because pain feels dangerous; it feels scary, but we need to be able to pull back from that and really own the pain in order to heal.

If we take the time and the space to just be curious and present, and instead of being in fear and running away from pain, stay with it and learn from it, and listen to our body, it can be very liberating and it can show us what we need to do in order to start the healing process.

If you want to reach out to Dr. Josh and learn more about how he can help you, please make sure to check out his website Upwellness or find him on social @drjoshlevitt on IG and @upwellness on TT.

To find highest quality supplements mentioned in this episode, you can go to Dr. Doni’s online store.

To understand my approach to helping people recover from inflammation and pain, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected your cortisol and adrenaline levels. It’s by knowing your Stress Type that we are able to know which herbs and nutrients best match what your body needs in order to heal. You can also take the Stress Type Quiz online. And if you’d like help implementing my Stress Recovery Protocol, you can follow my Stress Warrior Program online from anywhere in the world.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do even while keeping up with your usual schedule, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here. In the Detox Program I teach you to connect with yourself, and use mind-body tools, such as biofeedback, to process emotions while balancing your blood sugar levels, dropping inflammation, and avoiding toxins. It’s the perfect reset that you can start at any time.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today's episode we're going to be talking about the gut microbiome. Why it's important, how to know what's going on with your microbiome and how to optimize it.

The microbiome consists of microbes that are both helpful and potentially harmful for us and our bodies. Most of these organisms are symbiotic, meaning they and us benefit at the same time, but some are pathogenic, which are those that cause trouble, produce toxins, and increase inflammation.

When we are healthy, both symbiotic and pathogenic microorganisms coexist without problems in a perfect balance and without causing us to get sick. The problem comes when this perfect balance is disrupted, causing our metabolic and immune function to be negatively affected.

That’s why it is so important to identify and to get your microbiome back on track.

Today we will focus mainly on the gut biome, although it is now well known that it is important to have a healthy balance of microbes in all different areas of our bodies, including the skin and vagina. They all relate back to the gut, so let’s focus there.

What Is the Gut Microbiome?

I'm thinking that a lot of you probably have heard about the gut microbiome, also known as the biome or the gut microbiota. Essentially, it's referring to the microorganisms that are living in our digestive tract.

This group of microbes living inside of us fluctuate on a daily, weekly and monthly basis based on our diet, physical activity, medications we take, toxins exposure and stress exposure.

The important thing here is to try to have a healthy balance of this microbes as much as possible. When there's a healthy balance, the good bacteria counterbalance the potentially harmful bacteria. When our microbiome gets out of balance, it’s either that there are not enough good bacteria, or too much of the potentially harmful bacteria. And that’s when health issues start.

Research is showing that if the gut microbiome gets out of balance, it can increase the risk of many health issues including infections (bacterial, yeast, and viral), autoimmunity conditions, metabolic disorders, even weight gain, anxiety, depression, menstrual irregularities, PCOS, endometriosis, fertility issues, osteoporosis, kidney diseases, heart disease, diabetes, and dementia. Having a healthy balance of microbes in the gut is essential for our health.

What Is This Gut Microbiome Doing for Us?

As you might suspect from the various health issues that I just mentioned, the microbiome communicates and supports our immune system and help protect us from infections and autoimmunity (which is when our immune system gets confused and starts trying to protect us from our own self) so, by having a good balance of microbes in your gut, you're helping your immune system stay on track and protect you.

These microbes also communicate with our nervous system via the Vagus nerve and other mechanisms. These guys are sending messages to our brain and our nervous system, they're communicating about what's happening down in our gut, they can cause us to crave some kinds of foods in order to feed them. They can affect our mood, our memory and our focus.

They also make certain nutrients like B vitamins (including activating B12), vitamin K and short chain fatty acids (which are protective to the colon). Furthermore, they participate in making neurotransmitters such as GABA and can influence the production of serotonin and dopamine in our nervous system. What we're learning from research is that they help us recover from stress and toxin exposure!

As you know I specialize in how humans are affected by stress and what we can do to recover from stress, and so I would say that optimizing the microbiome has a huge impact on our stress recovery.

How Do We Maintain a Healthy Microbiome?

So, we now know they're important, but how do we take care of them? It’s like having a pet, you must know how to feed them and how to take care of them so that they can be healthy.

What we eat is what feeds our gut bacteria. Of course, they're living in our gut so what we swallow is going to influence them and what's going to feed them potentially. Our gut bacteria can ferment foods what we as humans are unable to digest, like fiber or complex starches for example. They can ferment fruits, vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds.

Foods and fibers that feed our microbiome are called “prebiotics.”

Fructooligosaccharides in garlic, onions, leeks, asparagus, artichokes, kale, dandelion, as well as bananas, contain the highest amount of prebiotics, or super food, for our gut bacteria.

It’s important to know that it's possible to over feed your gut bacteria!

In fact, I would say that it is much more likely to overfeed your bacteria than to underfeed them. I see a higher percentage of patients with overgrowing bacteria rather than with too few bacteria. Going back to the pet analogy, we have to know how to feed our gut bacteria correctly.

Symptoms of overfeeding your gut bacteria include bloating, gas, cramping, bowel changes, weight gain, and burping. Consuming prebiotics in excess or eating too much fermented foods (yoghurt, sauerkraut, kimchi, miso, kombucha, etc.) can cause overgrowth.

We want that optimal amount and balance of good and bad gut bacteria, so just be aware and cautious and listen to your body. If you are consuming a lot of prebiotics, high fiber foods, fermented foods and you start to feel bloated or have bowel changes or gas, or even if you have infections (sinus, bladder, vaginal) or joint pain, inflammation, headaches, skin rashes, these are all symptoms that you may be overfeeding your gut bacteria.

How Can You Know if You’re Overfeeding Your Gut Microbiome?

What you can do is a stool analysis. For many years we have had stool cultures. The culture is when you send in a stool sample into the lab and they allow it to grow over several days. The problem with cultures is that some bacteria are anaerobic, so they don’t grow in a lab environment.

Then, about a decade ago, they came out with a DNA analysis of the gut bacteria. This is DNA sequencing so no matter whether the bacteria are alive or not, they can identify them based on their DNA. This is a much more accurate way of knowing which bacteria are thriving, or overgrowing, in your microbiome.

There are now consumer versions of these stool tests that you can order online and send in your stool sample. They may make suggestions in terms of how to change your diet to feed the bacteria that are too low, and not overfeed those that are too high.

It's important to consider that, while making certain diet changes can help, I have not found that decreasing or increasing specific foods is an effective solution to adjust your microbiome (and I have tried it with hundreds of patients). That is because many of the same foods that feed the good bacteria, also feed the bad bacteria. It doesn’t work to manipulate your diet, in terms of eating specific fruits or seeds, in order to make minor adjustments in your biome.

A much better approach is to choose a variety of foods in your diet.

If you’re eating the exact same foods every day, it is more likely to cause an overgrown of bacteria (or yeast). In that case, increasing the variety in your diet and eating other kinds of fruits, vegetables, nuts and seeds each day, or alternating through the week, will help to improve the diversity of bacteria because you’ll be feeding a greater number of types overall.

When it comes to our gut microbiome, we want diversity. There are over 1,000 bacterial species that have been identified with about 160 species being found living in the gut of any individual so we don't want to just feed certain ones.

Now, if your gut microbiome is really needing more help and you have symptoms of overgrowing bacteria, or a health issue related to the gut biome, then some additional steps need to be taken. There is a clinical stool panel called the GI MAP that I find has helped so many of my patients by showing exactly which bacteria, yeast, protozoa and/or parasites are present, so we can tailor a specific protocol to address them.

I can order this test through my office for you and then we can see who's living there in your gut. It will also tell us if there is inflammation (calprotectin) or antigliadin antibodies, and how well are you digesting your food. We can see quite a lot about your digestive system in this type of clinical stool panel, and from there I can get way more specific and design a strategy for you so we can get your biome back on track.

What Can We Do to Rebalance Our Gut Bacteria?

When we're constantly under stress, we don't digest our food well, and this will cause an imbalance in the gut bacteria, let alone many potential health issues. If our food is not digested well, we're not going to be able to absorb the nutrients, so it's not going to feed us, and instead it's going to overfeed the bacteria and other microbes.

So, how do we support our digestion? Well, we can start by taking the time to slow down and consciously eat. Take your time and sit down, breathe, chew well, etc. This way you are sending signals to your Vagus nerve communicating that it's time to make enzymes and digest.

You can also take pancreatic enzymes if needed to help you digest food while your system is healing. This is something that will show on the stool panel. Also, if you're not making enough bile, we can support bile production for fat digestion. If you're not making enough stomach acid (hydrochloric acid) we can add that to help with protein digestion. We can support the digestion of your food in many different ways, including herbs that stimulate digestion or even just eating plants that are bitter (like arugula), which help with digestion.

If there's overgrowing pathogenic bacteria, referred to as “dysbiosis,” I would guide you through a protocol of using antimicrobial herbs that are effective at addressing the bacteria that are overgrowing, without wiping out all your good bacteria. That's a very specific protocol that I developed and tested over the years and one that works for the majority of patients.

In addition to antimicrobial herbs, I also recommend using probiotics that contain the bacillus species (such as Megaspore), which I consider to be the traffic directors of the microbiome. These bacteria are able to rebalance your gut biome by supporting the good guys and telling the overgrowing or pathogenic bacteria that they need to go.

Once we get the balance back then we can shift our strategy to maintaining the balance by eating a healthy, balanced, and diverse diet, along with potentially using a maintenance probiotic, which is going to contain lactobacillus and bifidobacterium in the range of 25 to 50 billion per day.

It’s important to consider that when trying to rebalance your gut microbiome, it’s better to do it slowly. An aggressive change can cause the pathogenic bacteria to release toxins as a defense mechanism, and this can make you feel worse. Starting with very low doses of bacillus and antimicrobial herbs and listening to your body in the process is key to a good outcome.

It's also important to think about the environment. If there’s leaky gut, unhealthy cells, and inflammation, then the good bacteria will not thrive, so we need to be paying attention to making it a happy, healthy environment for the healthy bacteria and microbes to live in.

What Are the Causes of a Disruption in the Microbiome?

One of the main causes of dysbiosis, and one that I have been helping a lot of patients with through the years, is leaky gut. With leaky gut, the foods we eat “leak” through the intestinal lining because the intestinal cells have become damaged and there is more space between the cells.

When undigested food leaks through the intestinal lining, the immune system responds in an effort to protect us, which leads to inflammation that can spread throughout the body. At the same time, the intestinal cells are not able to absorb nutrients from the foods we eat and, of course, our microbiome is disrupted.

A poor diet, overconsumption of alcohol, smoking, stress and exposure to environmental toxins are all factors in developing leaky gut. The best protection is a healthful diet high in natural fiber and low in added sugars and processed foods.

Another cause of dysbiosis is taking some types of medications like antibiotics, antacid medications, such as proton pump inhibitors, and many other medications. These meds will kill both good and bad bacteria, so we need to counteract this effect by taking the right probiotics. This is also why it is important to avoid the use of medications whenever possible.

Stress is a major factor in the disruption of our microbiome. Stress includes psycho-emotional stress, trauma, as well as physical stressed and injuries. If you know you've been under stress, you're going to want to be proactive to help your microbiome to recover.

We also know that gluten (in wheat, rye, barley, and spelt) disrupts the bacteria and decreases the levels of various kinds of healthy bacteria. If you're consuming gluten, and even if you don't have gluten sensitivity or celiac disease, there's a chance you're disrupting your gut bacteria.

Also sugar, refined carbs, processed foods, non-organic foods, a low-fiber diet, pesticides, artificial sweeteners, artificial flavors and colors added to foods, all cause gut biome disruption.

Exposure to toxins, such as toxins in our environment, our food, water, air, and exposure to mold toxins (such as if you’re living in a water damaged building), all affect our digestion and they affect our microbiome.

When it comes down to it, our gut biome is potentially being disrupted every day. It’s by raising our awareness, and being mindful about what we eat, and how we recover from stress, that we are able to keep our gut microbiome optimized.

What Are Some Products Out There That Can Help Rebalance the Microbiome?

There is another new stool panel that not only tells us about the balance of bacteria in your biome, but then also offer custom probiotic formulations based on your results. So if you're low in certain strains of bacteria, then that's what they're going to put in your individualized probiotics. That company is called Flore and I can help you with that through my office if you're interested in trying that out as a way to re-optimize your gut biome.

There's recent research that's identifying individual strains of bacteria and how they specifically help us with our health. I think we're going to see more and more products, such as supplements or beverage products, that contain these specific bacteria based on research that shows how they're potentially beneficial for our health.

For example, there's one type of bacteria called Bifidobacterium 1741, which is considered a “psychobiotic” because it’s been shown in research to help with stress recovery, specifically to bring cortisol down. So, in terms of the Stress Types I identified, this would be especially helpful for a Stress Magnet, or Night Owl, or Sluggish and Stressed type, who have elevated cortisol levels. If you want to find out your Stress Type, you can do my free online Stress Type Quiz here.

Bifidobacterium 1741 has also been shown to help with mental health in terms of cognition, focus and memory. This type of bacteria can be found in products like Zenbiome - Zenbiome Cope and Zenbiome Sleep.

There's also Bifidobacterium 35642 which has been shown to modulate inflammation. This would be especially helpful for someone who is experiencing a lot of inflammation and pain. Zenbiome Dual contains both Bifidobacterium 1741 and 35642. https://doctordoni.com/product/zenbiome-dual-60-capsules/

There's also quite a lot of research on the bacteria related to the vaginal biome and how it is completely related to the health of the gut biome. This is so important because if you're having vaginal symptoms or recurrent vaginal infections, like yeast, BV, or HPV, we know it is important that we heal your gut biome in order to help heal the vaginal biome and prevent those infections from happening.

If you want to learn more about the vaginal biome related to the gut biome you can watch Episode #168 of How Humans Heal here. If you’re interested in a probiotic that is specifically formulated to support a healthy vulvovaginal microbiota you can find one here. And another here. https://doctordoni.com/product/ortho-biotic-womens-30-capsules/

More examples of specific oral probiotics to benefit areas of the body and for certain purposes are: * Bifidobacterium HU36 - shown to help with carotenoid and the skin. https://doctordoni.com/product/sereneskin-30-capsules/ * Lactobacillus rhamnosus DR7, which has been shown especially to be helpful for mood and stress recovery or bacteria that has been shown to help with our neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine.

*Bifidobacterium BPL1 which has been shown to help with weight gain around the waist.

One more approach that is being used, especially in cases where there is the need to control an infection called Clostridium difficile, or C. diff (which is a pathogenic bacteria that a lot of times is hard to treat and get rid of) is something called a “fecal transplant.”

A fecal transplant is a procedure to collect feces from a healthy donor and introduce them into a patient’s gastrointestinal tract. Research shows that a fecal transplant can restore healthy bacteria in the lower intestine, which can help control C. diff and keep it from coming back. In some cases this can be more effective than antibiotics for keeping C. diff in check.

Still, even after using a specific probiotic, or having a fecal transplant, we will need to come back to rebalancing and maintaining the overall population and diversity of bacteria based on what we eat and supporting healthy digestion.

How to Integrate Microbiome Optimization into Your Overall Health Plan?

No matter what, I think it's important to keep in mind that we need to take into account all of the root causes of our health issues.

Yes, we can take a bacteria-containing supplement, and we can learn to consume an optimal amount of prebiotics to feed our biome, and all that can help, but we also need to work on our recovery from stress and anything else that was thrown out of balance by stress.

We need to ensure optimal cortisol levels because cortisol determines the signals to our digestion. We need to optimize hormone levels such as insulin and blood sugar levels, thyroid, as well as leptin and the sex hormones. We need to address nutrient deficiencies and toxins.

We have to address all the underlying causes to really shift the imbalances permanently and achieve our best health and resilience to stress going forward.

If you really want to heal there needs to be a whole protocol put into action for your specific body. This is why I encourage you to refer to my overall stress recovery protocol because I'm addressing all the potential imbalances, not just the microbiome. Yes, the microbiome is hugely important, but we have to also think about all the other potential imbalances along with it because then everything can help maintain resilience together.

So, as you can see, there are many solutions - many ways to help you rebalance your microbiome. I've worked with some of the most challenging and complex cases - people who were put on the most strict diets and worked with many other practitioners - and I've helped guide them back out of it to heal their digestion, optimize their biome and help them feel better. That's where I get my confidence to say it's possible to get your microbiome back on track again.

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. Keep in mind that 50% of people with leaky gut, have zero symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to do the food sensitivity panel I recommend.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here. If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you want to feel better by rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, start with this home test kit. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here.

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

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Additional Resources: 

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sign up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program (https://doctordoni.com/leaky-gut-program) where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. 

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here (https://doctordoni.com/ddpp/hpv-guide/). 

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here (https://drdoni.lpages.co/hpv-12-week-program/).

You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here (https://doctordoni.com/stress-program). 

Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health (https://doctordoni.com/master-your-stress/). In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online (https://doctordoni.com/quiz/stress-quiz/)

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here (https://doctordoni.com/work-with-me/)

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I get to introduce you to my friend Dr. Betsy Greenleaf. She is the First Board Certified Female Urogynecologist in the United States. She is also a Distinguished Fellow of the American College of Osteopathic Obstetrics & Gynecology, a Premiere Women's Health Expert and a Motivational Speaker.

Dr. Betsy was in private practice for almost 20 years and now she's building online experiences for women to heal themselves in the urogynecological area.

Urogynecology is the area of medicine that covers the diagnosis and treatment of conditions that affect the bladder, reproductive system, and rectum, including pelvic floor disorders. Urogynecologists can be urologists or gynecologists trained in female pelvic medicine and reconstructive surgery.

Today we talk about urogynecology and general pelvic and vaginal health.

What is a Pelvic Organ Prolapse?

A uterine prolapse occurs when the muscles and tissue in your pelvis weaken. This allows your uterus to drop down into your vagina.

Our pelvic organs are open to gravity because we don’t have bone structures at the bottom of the pelvic floor. All we have is muscles and ligaments, and those ligaments are not even that strong, so anything that causes a lot of pressure, and the pelvis can rip and tear those ligaments.

Then the uterus may not stay up where it's supposed to be, or the bladder, or the rectum, and then those three organs that are very close to each other and lean on each other can end up pushing each other out.

Most commonly women who've had long and difficult pregnancies or have given birth to a large baby or multiple babies are at risk of a prolapse. Also, women who are chronically constipated, or do effort constantly like lifting heavy objects or gymnastics, or even people with asthma attacks or chronic bronchitis where they're hard coughing all the time, all these things are going to put a lot of pressure on the pelvic floor.

How is a Pelvic Prolapse Treated?

Surgery is an option that has been around for long, using the mesh as in hernia surgery, but they found out overtime that when you put mesh in the pelvic floor it doesn't work as well as it does when you put it in for hernia and there were some women who ended up developing problems over the years, so unfortunately there's not great surgery for this. Furthermore, these surgeries have shown to not be permanent so once you've had one surgery you're at higher risk

of it dropping again and having to get another surgery. Some non-surgical options that are available include a device called a pessary which folds up inside the vagina and they just wedge in place so they can hold all the organs.

Another option is prevention by strengthening the pelvic floor. Here is where Kegels which involve tightening and then releasing the muscles in your pelvic floor to strengthen them. We start losing 8 to 10% muscle mass every decade of our lives so if you don't start strengthening those muscles it's definitely going to be a factor of prolapse risk. Other exercises include sitting down and putting a ball or pillow between your legs and squeezing your knees together.

Physical therapy can help too. It is important to start this therapy as soon as possible. For example, in France when women give birth they automatically get put into a physical therapy program after birth and not surprisingly France has the lowest rate of incontinence and prolapse.

What About the Relationship Between the Pelvis and the Microbiome?

There’s now something called next generation sequencing where we can swap the vagina and we can see everything that's there and so we're getting a better understanding of what's going on with the microbiome of the vagina. With this advanced testing we're discovering other bacteria and so the exciting part about this is that women can now understand why some conventional treatments are not working for some issues. What they're finding out with these newer tests is that there's many more bacteria that are interacting in our bodies.

In Dr. Betsy’s case what happened was she was getting chronic yeast infections and the yeast medicines were not working. Then she started looking into the gut microbiome testing and finally found out that her gut was filled with yeast. So, a lot of times when you're someone getting vaginal symptoms it's really a symptom of a larger problem going on with the microbiome of the gut. So, in this case we need to balance the gut out to get the vagina healthy.

What’s even more interesting is that scientists are finding that there's this like microbiome connection between the vagina and the brain through the vagus nerve. So, if the bacteria in the vagina is off that is going to dampen our sex drive and a lot of women are going to their doctors thinking if they don’t have a sex drive it must be hormonal, but it may be a microbiome issue.

We have also seen evidence of more problems with infertility when the microbiome in the vagina is off.

It really is exciting because it gives more treatment possibilities, it helps us to see and so women don't have to be just struggling with infertility, low libido, or chronic infections, when we can actually be detectives and identify the imbalances both in the urovaginal area and the gut.

There are also natural ways to rebalance the microbiome in the vagina. We want the healthy bacteria to stay there and get the bad bacteria out. One way of doing this is balancing the PH in the vagina. The vagina is naturally very acidic and so in a very high acidic (3.5 to 4.5 acidity range) the healthy bacteria thrives, and the bad bacteria doesn't. One of the products that’s out there is Boric Acid. Boric Acid will balance out the vagina whether it's yeast or bacteria.

Are There Good and Bad Products to Use Vaginally?

When it comes to cleaning, plain water is the best option. If we want to use soaps or other products, we should definitely look at the ingredients and stay away from sodium lauryl sulfate which can be very irritating and polypropylene glycol that is in a lot of woman's products that is a mucosal irritant. And avoid fragrances, dyes and detergents. Also, it’s a good idea to avoid the use of lubricants because they can throw off the PH balance in the vagina.

There are also some products out there that promote acidity in the vagina like lactic acid products, the only thing is if you have a milk allergy you kind of want to stay away from lactic acid. Also, there are some vaginal probiotics that come in suppositories that are over the counter that promote healthy bacteria growth.

When it comes to vaginal douching we have to be careful because if you have a bacterial infection douching can spread that bacteria into the uterus, the fallopian tubes and into the abdominal cavity and that can make you really sick.

The best thing to do to promote vaginal health is to also address your gut health as there is evidence that these systems are connected. The more you improve your gut health, drop inflammation, and get your digestion working as well as your gut bacteria the more you’re going to see a positive impact in your vaginal microbiome and overall health.

We can also see how the gut health is related to HPV, when you have a persistent HPV case one of the first things to do is to get your gut health and gut bacteria on point, this will in turn improve your vaginal acidity and microbiome and make it harder for the HPV virus to thrive.

What About Regenerative Medicine for Pelvic Health?

This is something that's changing every day. We're coming up with new options and treatments that could be done at home or at practitioner’s offices.

There’s PRP which is when platelet-rich plasma is injected where stem cells multiply and grow new younger tissue. PRP can regenerate the vaginal tissue. This procedure works by stimulating stem cells to grow healthier vaginal tissue. There’s also laser or light therapy to rejuvenate tissue using devices in the vagina that work on light energy, penetrating the tissue and making a little hole. Then the body reacts to heal that hole and it floods it with growth factors. There’s radio frequency therapy using sound waves to generate heat to cause the tissue to regenerate. We're kind of entering this world where anything that's being done for rejuvenation purposes cosmetically is now being applied to the vagina and other areas of the pelvic floor too.

Doing all these things in combination can give people better results because they work on the tissue in different ways.

If you want to reach out to Dr. Betsy and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website or her Instagram @drbetsygreenleaf_.

You can also check her upcoming Happy Vagina Rally which is an online women's summit where 40 speakers will be talking about vaginal health, general pelvic health, HPV, hormones, hair loss, gut health, bladder health, energy levels, etc.

If you’re interested in learning more about my approach to healing HPV you can find my new HPV Recovery Guide here.

If you are tired of this virus and are really committed to erasing it from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you want to work on your gut health and microbiome you may want to sing up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. Keep in mind that 50% of people with leaky gut, have zero symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to do the food sensitivity panel I recommend.

For the most comprehensive support, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

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Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

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Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today's episode I'm going to be talking about the vitamin known as folate or vitamin B9. Like the seven other variations of vitamin B, vitamin B9 is used to convert food into fuel and support healthy skin, eyes, hair, and blood cells.

During pregnancy, some form of vitamin B9 is needed to ensure the baby's proper brain, skull, and spinal cord development to prevent birth defects.

Folate is also important for the detoxification process carried out in the liver as well as for protecting our DNA.

The reason I want to cover this vitamin is because I find that there's so much confusion about it and so many of you are trying to figure out whether you need more or less folate. Also, how to navigate gene variations related to folate to make sure that you can prevent health issues that are associated with those gene variations.

Folic Acid vs Folate

One of the first confusions is about the difference between folic acid and folate. A lot of times you'll find that the word folic acid and folate are used as if they're the same thing when they are not. Folic acid is a man-made or synthetic nutrient, so it's not found in nature naturally occurring, whereas folate (which is also in biochemistry referred to as methyl folate METHYL) is the form that's found in nature and in our bodies.

Methylfolate is active folate, which is the precise enzymatic form available for immediate cellular absorption and energy release. Although it has a similar end function to folic acid, choosing this efficient and ready-to-use form is a much more effective option for people who have difficulty converting food into fuel.

Our bodies know how to use and process folate naturally. We have a certain degree of ability to turn folic acid into folate within our bodies but it's our gene variations that determine how well we can do that. Depending on your genetics you may have a 10% to 80% decreased ability to turn folic acid into folate.

Folic acid is used to fortify different foods. It's a synthetic substance that's added to man-made foods. If you think of bread and cereal, you might see on the ingredient list folic acid as they're using the synthetic form. Sometimes multivitamins and B complex or prenatal vitamins or even protein shakes or other processed products might have folic acid as an ingredient. Using the synthetic form of these nutrients is oftentimes less expensive than using the natural form.

The natural form called folate or methylfolate is found in all green vegetables like spinach, broccoli, asparagus, Brussels sprouts, etc. Meat products also have this natural form of the nutrient, like liver and other forms of meat. You can also find it in sunflower seeds and some forms of beans and peanuts for example.

How To Measure Folate in Your Body

Depending on your genes, your body may have a better or worse ability to turn folate acid into folate. If you want to know your folate levels, blood work may be misleading because they show both the synthetic and the natural form under the name folate.

For a more accurate measurement of how much active folate you have in your body we need to either do a specialty test (there are labs that do specialty tests to identify your actual active folate levels) or do a test for something called homocysteine because homocysteine is a metabolite in our biochemistry that uses folate. So, if we measure the homocysteine, we can get a sense of if our bodies have enough folate, too much folate or not enough.

Another way to get a sense of this is to check your methylmalonic acid because methylmalonic acid tells us your B12 metabolism and B12 levels and how well your body is using the B12. I want you to know this because I want you to know that there’s people like me who have a lot of additional training to understand all this biochemistry and nutrients and can help guide you to optimize your homocysteine your methylmalonic acid and your folate and the use of folate in your body. So, I don't want you to feel like you're on your own with all of this.

Folate and MTHFR

MTHFR is a type of gene mutation that lowers the efficiency of the MTHFR enzyme. When you have MTHFR your body cannot properly convert folate into methylfolate. By disrupting the natural metabolic pathway, MTHFR blocks usable methylfolate from reaching the cells.

Inadequate methylfolate levels can have a wide variety of negative effects on the body, particularly those that affect the cardiovascular and nervous systems. During pregnancy, a lack of methylfolate can also have serious impacts on healthy fetal development.

Fortunately, there are several folate replacements available that can largely make up for deficiencies that are caused by MTHFR. Folic acid and folate can be cheap, but methylfolate tends to be the most effective option when it comes to treating the unique needs of MTHFR and giving the body an enzyme it can directly act upon.

It’s important to know that there are other factors affecting your body’s ability to turn folate into methylfolate whether you have MTHFR or not. This is what I refer to as your stress recovery. Depending on how well your taking care of your body and helping your body recover from various stress exposures determines the influence of your genes on your health. People with MTHFR might assume that there’s nothing they can do about their folate levels but there is. This depends on many factors that we will discuss today.

What Affects Our Ability to Use Folate Besides Genetics?

If you have a gene variation but if it's not expressing, then it is not affecting your health. But there's factors from our environment or what I refer to as stress that affect our ability to metabolize folate. Any kind of emotional or psycho-emotional stress in the present moment or even in the past or accumulated stress will influence your cortisol and adrenaline levels. When those levels get out of balance your ability to utilize folate gets hindered.

Also, any kind of physical stress (whether you have an injury, infection, nutrient depletion, etc) can affect your ability to use folate effectively and it also affects your genetic expression.

Those same stresses affect the enzymes that work with folate and our methylation or ability to use our B vitamins. Folate has to get together with B12 and all the all the other B vitamins and they do what's called the methylation cycle. If you want to learn more about methylation you can watch episode No 145 of How Humans Heal here.

So, our ability to use our B vitamins is affected by emotional and physical stress and that's why I talk about stress recovery because it really determines your ability to optimally use folate. Also, with stress recovery you can optimize your cortisol and adrenaline and you can optimize other functions in your body so that you can really get the most out of your folate from your diet.

Another important factor in how your body is able to benefit from folate is your nutrient intake and nutrient deficiencies. If you have nutrient deficiencies because you are not eating healthy or do not take any supplements to help your body with nutrients, you could have a deficiency in folate.

Also, some medications like birth control pills or methotrexate (which is a medication used to treat autoimmunity), some antibiotics, metformin for blood sugar issues, anticonvulsant drugs, etc. can all cause a deficiency of folate even if you're eating enough folate. These block the metabolism of folate. If you're taking any of these medications it’s important that you talk to your practitioner so you make sure that you are taking the right tests and the right form of folate.

Your ability to use folate is also affected by inflammation in the body. The main determinant of inflammation in the body is your diet. If you're consuming foods that are more inflammatory to your body, then your ability to use folate could be affected. To know which foods are inflammatory for your body you can do a food sensitivity panel. With this home test you can see which foods you need to reduce or avoid to reduce inflammation in your body. Also, if the digestion system is inflamed or if leaky gut is present there will be an imbalance in gut bacteria and this influences your ability to use folate and absorb nutrients in general.

Also, exposure to toxins, toxins from our environment, food, water, home toxins like mold, heavy metals, etc. all affect our ability to adequately use folate. If you would like to know more about how to detoxify your body, you can check out my 14-Day Detox Program here.

How Much Folate Do I Need?

The common confusion is people will find out that they have high homocysteine levels and then they're thinking they need to take more folate. But then very often people will contact me and say but I felt worse when I took folate. Why? Well we have to dig in and figure out what's blocking your ability to use that folate effectively. When you feel worse in any way when you take folate it tells me there's a traffic jam in your stress recovery and your inflammation and your digestive health, your toxin levels, your nutrients, we got to go through systematically to figure that out and address whatever we see and as we address those factors then your body will start using folate again.

It's not that you need more or less, it’s about getting your body to work in the right way to absorb just the right amount from your food and your supplements. We need to break up the traffic jams that are preventing your ability to use it effectively.

There is a dietary recommendation, everyone needs a certain amount of folate. The standard dietetic recommendation is 600 to 800 IU of folic acid, I convert that to methyl folate and that's the bare minimum. That's not taking into account your individuality, your individual genes your individual stress exposure and your individual imbalances. So, we need to figure out what is the right amount for you.

This is why I would say it's such a high priority to fully understand your potential gene variations and understand where to get the right information so you can figure out what's the right amount of folate for you. Now, keep in mind the right amount of folate for you could change from year to year if your hormones change, if your environment changes, if your job changes, etc. That’s why I think everyone should have their homocysteine levels checked in their blood work at least once a year.

You may or may not know if you have a MTHFR gene variation. Either way, you can still get your blood work for homocysteine and methylmalonic acid and you can work on identifying the factors that might be decreasing your ability to use folate efficiently. You don't have to do an MTHFR gene test but if you do an MTHFR gene test what I think is important to know is that this is just one piece of information. It can be very validating to get your genes tested and to have that information but at the same time it can be overwhelming. What is more important is to identify the ways in which you can support your body to use folate efficiently like stress recovery, detoxification, reducing inflammation, food sensitivities, nutrient deficiencies, etc.

The thing is we're all unique humans, we're all going to have some genetic variations and these genetic variations are not life threatening and actually have the potential to benefit your health because once we see where the genetic variations are we can address them using nutrients, diet, stress recovery, hormone balancing, etc. We can use many tools to help address those gene variations and to even potentially influence genetic expression.

If you want to learn more about this you can listen to my FREE MTHFR Masterclass here.

If you want to run a test not just for MTHFR but for all your genes I can guide you on which test to do for that and then I would suggest meeting with me to help guide you through that.

If you're looking for products that contain methylfolate you can look in my website and online store because I have a multi vitamins and B complexes and prenatals and protein shakes that contain methylfolate so you can be sure you're getting a product that has the right form of folate in it.

If you want to feel better by rebalancing your neurotransmitters, you start by addressing your cortisol and adrenaline levels with this home test kit. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here. Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

If you want to go through your specific case with me and improve your health (mental or physical) you can set up a one-on-one appointment here.

We’re here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

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Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

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7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

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HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

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Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I'm excited to introduce you to Marisa Chadbourne. She is a myofascial release therapist and she's been my myofascial release therapist for many years. Marisa owns Touch of Health Myofascial Wellness Center in Sayville, NY. She created Touch of Health as a supportive and therapeutic environment to assist her clients through their healing process.

Marisa is also a Certified NLP practitioner since 2019 and a locally and nationally published author regarding Fascia, the Mind-Body, and Subtle Energy.

Today we talk about how myofascial release therapy can help people with muscle and joint pain, inflammation, stiffness, physical pain in general, and even recovery from trauma.

The Myofascial Tissue

The myofascial tissue is a network of tissue that spreads throughout your entire body. It connects your muscles, joints, and bones. It also provides support to your organs, helping to keep them in place. If you could see it, your fascia would look like a single sheet of tissue paper.

The fascial system is omnipresent throughout the human body as one continuous web-like structure connecting all parts and systems together so, it's the only system in the body that actually comes in contact with every other system right down to the cellular level.

The myofascial tissue has three major components: 1. elastin fibers, which give our bodily movement it's elasticity and stretch, 2. collagen fibers that give our physical structural support and 3. a ground substance which is a gel-like substance that mainly helps with intracellular communication. So, this matrix of collagen, elastin and ground substance is what holds our bodies upright.

What is Myofascial Release Therapy

Myofascial release therapy is a connective tissue therapy designed to bring the body back into its natural alignment by releasing facial restrictions, and in turn, this increases our range of motion. It also takes pressure off of pain sensitive structures within the body. All different types of injuries can be treated. It can even help people who have autoimmune disorders, neurological dysfunction, etc.

During myofascial release therapy, the therapist applies light pressure by hand to find myofascial areas that feel stiff instead of elastic and movable. These stiff areas, or trigger points, are thought to limit muscle and joint movements, which can play a part in widespread muscle pain.

The main difference between massage and myofascial release therapy is that in myofascial therapy we are focusing on the fascia or connective tissue, while in massage the main focus is on the muscles. With myofascial therapy, the goal is to release fascial restrictions in order to bring the body back into healthy alignment. This is done by using gentle sustained pressure of 5 minutes or more to make a very specific change within the connective tissue.

A massage is more of a soft tissue mobilization technique. Another difference is in the intention to bring the whole body back into alignment by opening up the entire fascial system. For example, even if someone has neck pain, in myofascial release therapy we evaluate the whole-body posture instead of just focusing on one part of the body.

What is a Myofascial Restriction?

When we say there's a fascial restriction what we're mainly saying is that the ground substance part of the fascial system starts to become solidified. When that happens the elastin fibers, collagen and muscle fibers get stuck in the solidification and they're unable to slide across each other to do their job correctly. This will in turn stiffen movement and put pressure on pain sensitive structures.

The main four causes for this solidification or facial restriction are surgery, repetitive movement, inflammatory responses and also trauma, whether it be physical or emotional trauma. This solidification can happen in response to our thoughts, environment or something that’s happening to us on an emotional level. This is because of the mind-body connection and how they respond to each other.

What we're looking for in myofascial release is what was the cause of the restriction. So we allow for there to be many different types of healing: structural healing, somatic healing, and emotional healing. Some people have an emotional release and some people don’t. It really depends on the type of healing that they're looking for but it completely impacts the body much farther than people are aware of.

When we open up a fascial restriction it's like opening up the dam of energy flow. Opening up the dam for more intercellular communication to flow smoothly. When we talk about emotion, a lot of times we refer to it as energy in motion, and when trauma happens in our lives, that energy can get stuck, leading to solidification of the ground substance. And so, as we shift the gel-like substance back to its normal state, the energy is released and that's what people are feeling.

Sometimes during a myofascial release therapy the person might go into a meditative state or a deep relaxation state as this kind of therapy also stimulates the parasympathetic system and the vagus nerve. And that’s when we have the opportunity to be able to go a little bit deeper in feeling and releasing trauma because we're not in the place of thought, but it has to happen naturally.

Myofascial Release Therapy for Pain vs Maintenance

This kind of therapy is good not only for when someone does get in pain (to help release it) but also for maintenance and preventing pain. What’s important here is having body awareness and empowerment of how we can support ourselves during a treatment. It’s important that people tune into their body to see how they feel over the next few days after their first session.

Once people find that rhythm of what they need for maintenance they can make that decision on their own and so this decision is made from an innate place instead of being told what to do. If someone wants to make a lot of change quickly, they can do a myofascial intensive series, where the person comes in three to five times over one to two weeks and we get a lot done over that time. Then it's more likely for that change to stay with the person.

We also teach people how to do self myofascial release at home so that release and opening that was made can be maintained at home by the patient by continuing to feel into their body and where they're restricted. This is the special relationship between the client and the practitioner doing work together and teaching the patient how to do it on his/her own.

During this process you can also learn so much about your body, the signals it gives you and what it needs to heal. There are so many different symptoms that people come in with for this therapy, not just pain, but sleeping disorders, anxiety, fatigue, autoimmunity, neurological dysfunction, and they all benefit from this work.

We look at symptoms as the signals the body is giving you. The most important part of the facilitation is guiding the client to get in touch with what these messages are on a subconscious level. This is another part that isn't just purely structural. We're looking at the body as a whole, mind, body and spirit, and how they are always working together.

Combining Myofascial Therapy with Other Treatments

When we identify that inflammation is causing the fascial restriction, we then ask why the inflammation is there in the first place. We need to take a look at your diet for example, so the client might be advised to take the healing to the next level by talking to a Functional Practitioner or a Naturopathic Dr. to help them. Then they get the benefit of both by working synergistically. As the inflammation is coming down and the body's healing, then there's less likelihood of repeated issues coming up.

We don't want to just keep continuing releasing the same fascial restrictions over and over again. If what is causing the issue is a repetitive movement for example, then the client is oriented to find out how they can change that movement, and how they can change the inflammatory response. They need to make an ergonomic change. Or someone has a compensatory pattern from some type of physical movement they've been doing their whole life, then they can also do physical therapy along with myofascial release. This is because if you just continue to work on the restriction, without addressing the cause, you may not be solving

the problem. So it is a priority to think about what other approaches will complement myofascial release therapy for each individual so that you can feel better for good.

At the same time, myofascial therapy helps other approaches to work better because the fascia connects with all the other systems in the body. By opening fascial communication, it is going to support healing on every other level.

If you want to reach out to Marisa and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website or her Instagram @touchofhealthny.

To understand my approach to helping people recover from stress and trauma with my Stress Recovery Protocol, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my New 14-Day Detox Program here. In the Detox Program I teach you to connect with yourself, and use mind-body tools, such as biofeedback, to process emotions.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Today’s episode is about emotional healing. This is something that comes up with my patients from around the world and also with the people that participate in the programs that I offer.

Whether it’s healing something like HPV and abnormal pap smear results, or helping with anxiety and depression, emotional healing comes into play.

So, I feel like it's an important thing to for us to talk about as it's an essential part of the stress recovery process. I also cover emotional healing in my most recent book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

What is Emotional Healing?

We hear a lot about the mind-body connection, but what does it mean to process emotions?

Well, stress can come from a psycho-emotional level (our minds) like a traumatic experience, or it can come from a physical level (our bodies) like infections, toxins and injuries. And it’s the combination of those stresses and even spiritual or energetic stresses that compound into the total load of stress that we're exposed to. This is our environmental exposure to stress. And we know from research that it's this exposure that turns on our gene expression and makes us susceptible to all kinds of health issues.

We are so used to going to different practitioners for different parts of our bodies (including different practitioners for the mind and body) when in reality we are one whole being and all of our systems are interconnected. Our digestion is in communication with our immune system, our hormones with our nervous system, etc. They're all talking to each other and that means that they can either have a negative influence or a positive influence on each other.

Our physical bodies (digestion, glands, muscles, bones, etc.) are always in communication with our nervous system and our minds. So, our feelings and our emotional state are also in communication with our physical bodies. An example of this is not feeling hungry when you are feeling anxious or depressed.

So, it is very important for our health (mental and physical) to allow ourselves to feel and to process emotions. Emotions come naturally to us as humans. Our bodies and nervous system inherently knows how to feel emotions and to cry, laugh, and yawn. The problem here is that from a young age most of us are taught not to express our feelings or emotions. Society, schools, religion, or our own households teach us that we must suppress all of this.

Meanwhile research shows that when we don’t allow ourselves to feel and process all our emotions there is a high risk of developing health issues, again, mental and/or physical conditions. There are several good books on this topic, including by Carolyn Myss and The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk.

Unfortunately, I don't think people have enough support to learn how to process emotions and to recover from stress and trauma. As much as we might be bringing awareness to stress and trauma, we're not so much being guided what to do about it. And so then the stress and trauma just start feeling heavier and heavier.

I want to help you to have the right tools to transform the effects of stress and trauma, to recover from it, and it begins with learning to feel your feelings instead of suppressing them.

What also helps us heal on an emotional level is for us to start making decisions for ourselves, and to get in touch with our intuition and messages from your body. So, I would much rather give you information for you to then connect with yourself and see what feels right to you. Then along the way you're also learning to listen to yourself, you're learning to feel your emotions, you're learning to try things with curiosity, and learn through the experience.

How Do We Heal Emotionally?

First, we have to establish that healing is possible, and that recovery from stress and trauma is possible. Then we can start to look at how best to approach this healing.

A lot of times you hear me talking about how to heal on a physical level, such as how to get cortisol, the stress hormone, back to optimal levels. The amazing thing I find with my patients is that when cortisol, as well as adrenaline and neurotransmitters, are optimal, they find it so much easier process emotions and heal on a psycho-emotional level.

This is important because a lot of people find themselves spending hours and hours, and thousands of dollars, in talk therapy and end up feeling like they're only getting so far with it. In that case, we have to be sure we are also addressing the physical part of you, such as cortisol, adrenaline, neurotransmitters, nutrient deficiencies, thyroid imbalances, digestive issues, etc.

For those of you who are doing the work to balance your hormones, microbiome, and nutrients, but you haven’t paid attention to the mental, emotional, and even energetic aspect of your healing, then I encourage you to make that a priority. For some people it is very helpful to work with a therapist. And then you might decide to try different forms of therapy, from CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy to EMDR, which has been shown to be very helpful for stress recovery and PTSD.

There are also natural treatments like homeopathy, which is an ancient system of medicine that's very helpful for processing emotionally and connecting the mind with the body to heal.

Also, psychedelic medicine, which has been shown more and more to be effective at helping us heal on an emotional level. Psychedelic treatments include the use of psilocybin, ketamine, as well as MDMA and Ayahuasca, which is a plant medicine from Central and South America that has been shown to be extremely effective at healing PTSD and addictions. If you’re interested in psychedelic therapy you can learn more by watching Episode 151 of How Humans Heal where I share my experience of attending a shamanic journey in the Peruvian Amazon.

Other tools that help with emotional healing are meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, journaling, and rebalancing of the chakras. The important thing is that you experiment and find what works for you specifically.

Something that you can do for yourself starting now is to become more aware of your emotions, and to allow yourself to feel your emotions. Be curious about your emotions, because I think so often, we don’t allow ourselves to fully feel because we may think we don’t have time for this, or we fear what could happen if we let it all out. It's almost like our emotions are monsters and we run away from them. Well, if we don’t allow ourselves to feel these emotions, we will never be able to process them, and we will continue to carry the weight of them through our lives in our bodies.

I learned this lesson the hard way – by developing severe migraines and a chronic inflammatory joint condition. It was through my own process of healing emotionally that I have been able to recover from these physical health issues.

What Happens to Our Bodies When We Heal Emotionally?

I think that as humans we're probably only allowing ourselves to feel less than 5% of our emotional capacity. I know that for myself, and I know that from observing patients and others in my life. We really restrict ourselves from feeling and we have no idea that we can experience such emotional breadth. Just like when you go to the gym and workout your muscles, you can learn to expand your ability to feel, and feel comfortable and confident doing it.

There are many books out there that talk about emotions. For example, Atlas Of The Heart by Brene Brown where she talks about 86 different emotions that we can feel. Or 90 Seconds to a Life You Love by Joan I. Rosenberg where she talks about how most emotions can be felt in 90 seconds.

When we expand our ability to feel emotions and to feel comfortable feeling emotions, we are being more present. By practicing allowing ourselves to just be present with our feelings, we will be able to connect with ourselves more.

A colleague of mine, Dr. Debi Silber created The Betrayal Institute where she helps people heal from betrayal every day. You can find more about it in Episode 59 of How Humans Heal. So know that these resources exist and that it's possible to heal. There are tools available to help you heal emotionally from what you’ve been through, including somatic therapy and myofascial therapy (which will be discussed in the next episode).

I think emotional healing is as necessary as good sleep, exercise, drinking water and eating healthy foods. Just imagine what it would be like if could feel so grateful for something, or love

and joy at full capacity. We know that the emotions of love and gratitude really shift us on an energetic level. Research shows that these emotions create a change on a cellular level and therefore we can then see a positive impact on our health.

We Have More Power Than We Think

In quantum physics, which is this concept in science and math where there are more possibilities than we realize, things are not just black or white, and things are not decided until the very last second of them happening. For example, there are experiments where even atoms don’t show their decided location until they are observed by the observer. We tend to oversimplify and want to control and anticipate everything, when in reality, there are so many variables, we will make ourselves more stressed by focusing on control.

What we can do is take these lessons from physics and use them in our understanding of ourselves. By practicing being comfortable and navigating in the unknown. How do we get more comfortable with the unknown?

First, by processing and letting go of what happened in the past, we free ourselves to be in the present moment. Learn more about this from Eckhardt Tolle.

Then, by understanding that many possibilities exist and that it’s in the last moment that one will become a reality, we realize that the best way to shift our perspective or situation, is to simply choose a different way of looking at it. We can decide which reality we want for ourselves and in that way, we can create our future as we want it to be.

We can choose how we want to relate to ourselves and allow ourselves to feel. We can choose to be in silence and instead of attaching to a feeling or a thought as the only reality, we can be the observer and observe all the possibilities. And, with curiosity and acceptance, be able to see the reality as it is now and what it is that you would like to create in your life. We can get into a state of love and gratitude, intentionally, and from that state, we can create a different reality for ourselves.

The more you can envision what you want to create in your health and in your body, the more you spend time believing it and envisioning it, you can create that for yourself. This is how a lot of people experience healing, sometimes spontaneous healing or distance healing, because they're able to get into this state of creating a new reality for themselves and their existence using these concepts.

If you are wanting to learn more about this, check out Bruce Lipton and Dr. Joe Dispenza.

I mention it here because I think it helps in terms of emotional healing. I think it helps with getting out of that feeling of being stuck in terms of trauma and feeling that our future is already determined by our past. It’s not, as long as we step in and start choosing differently.

When we are able to connect with ourselves and feel our emotions to an extent where we can process them so that they're not in the way, we will feel so much better, relieved and less stressed, and our overall health will improve as a result.

The Highly Sensitive Person

Ph.D. Elaine N. Aron wrote a book in the 90’s called The Highly Sensitive Person which talks about how some people have a more sensitive nervous system so they can pick up on emotions, as well as physical sensations, more easily than others. I also think that many people have been suppressing their ability to feel their emotions and this means they can train themselves to develop this capacity to feel more.

It's about allowing ourselves to fully find out what our capacity is. What is your capacity to listen to yourself and your own signals from within, and to feel? What is your body really telling you that you maybe haven't been listening to?

It's that ability to sense your body and your response to your environment that can really help you heal. And so, I encourage you to practice this openness to feel and perceive. You can create some quiet moments in your schedule, for example by spending time in nature and journaling. You can start practicing by making a space for it in your life but at the same time not trying to force it or pressure yourself. You just have to allow yourself to completely lose yourself in the moment.

It's only by practicing feeling our emotions, and the subsequent self-discovery process, that you will find yourself open to the infinite possibilities for your existence and realize that your future does not have to be determined by your past experiences.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my New 14-Day Detox Program here. In the Detox Program I teach you to connect with yourself, and use mind-body tools, such as biofeedback, to process emotions.

If you’re ready to start healing emotionally by rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, you can start by ordering this home test kit. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here. Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

If you want to go through your specific case me and improve your health (mental and physical) you can set up a one-on-one appointment here.

We’re here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Today’s episode is about emotional healing. This is something that comes up with my patients from around the world and also with the people that participate in the programs that I offer.

Whether it’s healing something like HPV and abnormal pap smear results, or helping with anxiety and depression, emotional healing comes into play.

So, I feel like it's an important thing to for us to talk about as it's an essential part of the stress recovery process. I also cover emotional healing in my most recent book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

What is Emotional Healing?

We hear a lot about the mind-body connection, but what does it mean to process emotions?

Well, stress can come from a psycho-emotional level (our minds) like a traumatic experience, or it can come from a physical level (our bodies) like infections, toxins and injuries. And it’s the combination of those stresses and even spiritual or energetic stresses that compound into the total load of stress that we're exposed to. This is our environmental exposure to stress. And we know from research that it's this exposure that turns on our gene expression and makes us susceptible to all kinds of health issues.

We are so used to going to different practitioners for different parts of our bodies (including different practitioners for the mind and body) when in reality we are one whole being and all of our systems are interconnected. Our digestion is in communication with our immune system, our hormones with our nervous system, etc. They're all talking to each other and that means that they can either have a negative influence or a positive influence on each other.

Our physical bodies (digestion, glands, muscles, bones, etc.) are always in communication with our nervous system and our minds. So, our feelings and our emotional state are also in communication with our physical bodies. An example of this is not feeling hungry when you are feeling anxious or depressed.

So, it is very important for our health (mental and physical) to allow ourselves to feel and to process emotions. Emotions come naturally to us as humans. Our bodies and nervous system inherently knows how to feel emotions and to cry, laugh, and yawn. The problem here is that from a young age most of us are taught not to express our feelings or emotions. Society, schools, religion, or our own households teach us that we must suppress all of this.

Meanwhile research shows that when we don’t allow ourselves to feel and process all our emotions there is a high risk of developing health issues, again, mental and/or physical conditions. There are several good books on this topic, including by Carolyn Myss and The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel Van Der Kolk.

Unfortunately, I don't think people have enough support to learn how to process emotions and to recover from stress and trauma. As much as we might be bringing awareness to stress and trauma, we're not so much being guided what to do about it. And so then the stress and trauma just start feeling heavier and heavier.

I want to help you to have the right tools to transform the effects of stress and trauma, to recover from it, and it begins with learning to feel your feelings instead of suppressing them.

What also helps us heal on an emotional level is for us to start making decisions for ourselves, and to get in touch with our intuition and messages from your body. So, I would much rather give you information for you to then connect with yourself and see what feels right to you. Then along the way you're also learning to listen to yourself, you're learning to feel your emotions, you're learning to try things with curiosity, and learn through the experience.

How Do We Heal Emotionally?

First, we have to establish that healing is possible, and that recovery from stress and trauma is possible. Then we can start to look at how best to approach this healing.

A lot of times you hear me talking about how to heal on a physical level, such as how to get cortisol, the stress hormone, back to optimal levels. The amazing thing I find with my patients is that when cortisol, as well as adrenaline and neurotransmitters, are optimal, they find it so much easier process emotions and heal on a psycho-emotional level.

This is important because a lot of people find themselves spending hours and hours, and thousands of dollars, in talk therapy and end up feeling like they're only getting so far with it. In that case, we have to be sure we are also addressing the physical part of you, such as cortisol, adrenaline, neurotransmitters, nutrient deficiencies, thyroid imbalances, digestive issues, etc.

For those of you who are doing the work to balance your hormones, microbiome, and nutrients, but you haven’t paid attention to the mental, emotional, and even energetic aspect of your healing, then I encourage you to make that a priority. For some people it is very helpful to work with a therapist. And then you might decide to try different forms of therapy, from CBT or cognitive behavioral therapy to EMDR, which has been shown to be very helpful for stress recovery and PTSD.

There are also natural treatments like homeopathy, which is an ancient system of medicine that's very helpful for processing emotionally and connecting the mind with the body to heal.

Also, psychedelic medicine, which has been shown more and more to be effective at helping us heal on an emotional level. Psychedelic treatments include the use of psilocybin, ketamine, as well as MDMA and Ayahuasca, which is a plant medicine from Central and South America that has been shown to be extremely effective at healing PTSD and addictions. If you’re interested in psychedelic therapy you can learn more by watching Episode 151 of How Humans Heal where I share my experience of attending a shamanic journey in the Peruvian Amazon.

Other tools that help with emotional healing are meditation, mindfulness, breathwork, journaling, and rebalancing of the chakras. The important thing is that you experiment and find what works for you specifically.

Something that you can do for yourself starting now is to become more aware of your emotions, and to allow yourself to feel your emotions. Be curious about your emotions, because I think so often, we don’t allow ourselves to fully feel because we may think we don’t have time for this, or we fear what could happen if we let it all out. It's almost like our emotions are monsters and we run away from them. Well, if we don’t allow ourselves to feel these emotions, we will never be able to process them, and we will continue to carry the weight of them through our lives in our bodies.

I learned this lesson the hard way – by developing severe migraines and a chronic inflammatory joint condition. It was through my own process of healing emotionally that I have been able to recover from these physical health issues.

What Happens to Our Bodies When We Heal Emotionally?

I think that as humans we're probably only allowing ourselves to feel less than 5% of our emotional capacity. I know that for myself, and I know that from observing patients and others in my life. We really restrict ourselves from feeling and we have no idea that we can experience such emotional breadth. Just like when you go to the gym and workout your muscles, you can learn to expand your ability to feel, and feel comfortable and confident doing it.

There are many books out there that talk about emotions. For example, Atlas Of The Heart by Brene Brown where she talks about 86 different emotions that we can feel. Or 90 Seconds to a Life You Love by Joan I. Rosenberg where she talks about how most emotions can be felt in 90 seconds.

When we expand our ability to feel emotions and to feel comfortable feeling emotions, we are being more present. By practicing allowing ourselves to just be present with our feelings, we will be able to connect with ourselves more.

A colleague of mine, Dr. Debi Silber created The Betrayal Institute where she helps people heal from betrayal every day. You can find more about it in Episode 59 of How Humans Heal. So know that these resources exist and that it's possible to heal. There are tools available to help you heal emotionally from what you’ve been through, including somatic therapy and myofascial therapy (which will be discussed in the next episode).

I think emotional healing is as necessary as good sleep, exercise, drinking water and eating healthy foods. Just imagine what it would be like if could feel so grateful for something, or love

and joy at full capacity. We know that the emotions of love and gratitude really shift us on an energetic level. Research shows that these emotions create a change on a cellular level and therefore we can then see a positive impact on our health.

We Have More Power Than We Think

In quantum physics, which is this concept in science and math where there are more possibilities than we realize, things are not just black or white, and things are not decided until the very last second of them happening. For example, there are experiments where even atoms don’t show their decided location until they are observed by the observer. We tend to oversimplify and want to control and anticipate everything, when in reality, there are so many variables, we will make ourselves more stressed by focusing on control.

What we can do is take these lessons from physics and use them in our understanding of ourselves. By practicing being comfortable and navigating in the unknown. How do we get more comfortable with the unknown?

First, by processing and letting go of what happened in the past, we free ourselves to be in the present moment. Learn more about this from Eckhardt Tolle.

Then, by understanding that many possibilities exist and that it’s in the last moment that one will become a reality, we realize that the best way to shift our perspective or situation, is to simply choose a different way of looking at it. We can decide which reality we want for ourselves and in that way, we can create our future as we want it to be.

We can choose how we want to relate to ourselves and allow ourselves to feel. We can choose to be in silence and instead of attaching to a feeling or a thought as the only reality, we can be the observer and observe all the possibilities. And, with curiosity and acceptance, be able to see the reality as it is now and what it is that you would like to create in your life. We can get into a state of love and gratitude, intentionally, and from that state, we can create a different reality for ourselves.

The more you can envision what you want to create in your health and in your body, the more you spend time believing it and envisioning it, you can create that for yourself. This is how a lot of people experience healing, sometimes spontaneous healing or distance healing, because they're able to get into this state of creating a new reality for themselves and their existence using these concepts.

If you are wanting to learn more about this, check out Bruce Lipton and Dr. Joe Dispenza.

I mention it here because I think it helps in terms of emotional healing. I think it helps with getting out of that feeling of being stuck in terms of trauma and feeling that our future is already determined by our past. It’s not, as long as we step in and start choosing differently.

When we are able to connect with ourselves and feel our emotions to an extent where we can process them so that they're not in the way, we will feel so much better, relieved and less stressed, and our overall health will improve as a result.

The Highly Sensitive Person

Ph.D. Elaine N. Aron wrote a book in the 90’s called The Highly Sensitive Person which talks about how some people have a more sensitive nervous system so they can pick up on emotions, as well as physical sensations, more easily than others. I also think that many people have been suppressing their ability to feel their emotions and this means they can train themselves to develop this capacity to feel more.

It's about allowing ourselves to fully find out what our capacity is. What is your capacity to listen to yourself and your own signals from within, and to feel? What is your body really telling you that you maybe haven't been listening to?

It's that ability to sense your body and your response to your environment that can really help you heal. And so, I encourage you to practice this openness to feel and perceive. You can create some quiet moments in your schedule, for example by spending time in nature and journaling. You can start practicing by making a space for it in your life but at the same time not trying to force it or pressure yourself. You just have to allow yourself to completely lose yourself in the moment.

It's only by practicing feeling our emotions, and the subsequent self-discovery process, that you will find yourself open to the infinite possibilities for your existence and realize that your future does not have to be determined by your past experiences.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective body, mind and spirit detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can check out my New 14-Day Detox Program here. In the Detox Program I teach you to connect with yourself, and use mind-body tools, such as biofeedback, to process emotions.

If you’re ready to start healing emotionally by rebalancing your cortisol and neurotransmitters, you can start by ordering this home test kit. You can also sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here. Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

If you want to go through your specific case me and improve your health (mental and physical) you can set up a one-on-one appointment here.

We’re here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I interview Sandy Weiner. She is founder of Last First Date and The Women of Value. She's an internationally known TED X Speaker and Dating and Relationship Coach, as well as Women's Empowerment Coach. She's author of three books and is a podcast host.

Dating and relationships is such an important topic because, as humans, relationships with other humans can be a source of joy and love, or it can be a source of toxicity. Whether you are currently in a relationship, dating, or not, this interview will be helpful because we discuss how it comes down to knowing and feeling comfortable with ourselves in order to have more fulfilling experiences with others.

Sandy shares that it was after experiencing a difficult childhood, being brought up by two parents who had a terrible marriage, and divorcing her husband after 23 years of marriage, that she had an opportunity to reassess her life. She decided to reclaim the parts of herself that had been lost along the way, and one of those was her interest in helping others.

She trained as a life coach which gave her so much self-awareness. She found herself helping friends who were dating, and in the process, started studying the deeper parts of dating, communication skills and boundary setting. This changed her life for the better and now it’s doing the same thing for her clients every day.

When You’re in the Wrong Relationship

Sandy finds that a lot of people realize later in life - in their 40s, 50s and even older – that they are not in the relationship that works for them anymore. It's often when their kids are grown, if they have kids, and they’re starting to think about if they really want to spend the rest of their life with this person. Perhaps they realize they don't really enjoy being their partner anymore or it doesn’t feel safe anymore.

Sandy doesn’t think divorce is the right thing for everyone. She says, you must assess for yourself and think if you really want to stay in a relationship. She sees people staying in terrible relationships and that breaks her heart. Couples may be having the same complaint every single time they talk, and yet they stay in the relationship. Of course, there could be a lot of reasons for this, such as fear of going out on your own, or financial concerns.

You must believe in what you're doing and know why you're leaving. In the end, it’s almost always for the better. You have to weigh out how you want to live the rest of your life.

Avoiding The Same Patterns in a New Relationship

We often make the same choices over and over, and don't even realize it. Or we go to the opposite extreme. It's not just about finding the opposite. And we can’t make choices based on

attraction. It’s about analyzing if you’re going into a relationship just because it feels familiar and think about it based on your attachment style.

Knowing how you attach to your partners, how you tend to bring your past into the present, how to self-regulate, how to talk about the things that matter, how to bring up hard stuff, and how to ask questions when you have questions instead of keeping them inside, as well as knowing what you want in life… are all so important. These are things to work on before even going on dates, so that you can come as a whole person to the dating process.

We also need to look at the patterns of core relationships in our life, and what they have in common. We also need to consider our limiting beliefs, and where we’re struggling. When we really go deep into who we are, then it is easier to find someone that will be a good match for us.

Attraction is Not The Most Important Thing in a Relationship

You have to have some attraction obviously, but if you're so attracted that you lose yourself in that person's presence, it’s not a good sign. This is something to look at - we need to analyze where does this come from? Is there abandonment involved? Does this person remind you of someone, and now you’re trying to get that missed attention? If you do this, you then can rewire your brain for healthy attraction.

There’s a difference between attraction based on deprivation and attraction based on inspiration. Most of us are stuck in the attraction of deprivation. This is what we don't have, and so we want it. When we are attracted to somebody in an attraction of inspiration, we're inspired by that person, but we also bring value. That's called interdependence.

With interdependence, we have a life; we have wholeness and fullness, but we also have the capacity to allow another person into our life to add value to each other and to complement each other.

Narcissism in Relationships

Sandy finds that the term “narcissism” is thrown around a lot, so she tends to focus instead on behaviors. If you were in a relationship with somebody who was self-centered, not empathic, they always had to be right, and you felt that your needs didn't matter, that is something you need to look at and consider why you chose that relationship.

She helps clients to trace back in order to understand their choices - who did that person remind them of and in doing so, they start to rewire their brain for attraction in a healthier way. She doesn't believe in hard and fast rules. She believes in principles, and self-care, and knowing how you function best so that you can advocate for that in relationships.

To be able to succeed in a relationship you have to be able to communicate your needs in three main areas: worldview, lifestyle and sexual. If you don’t communicate your needs, you can’t expect them to be met. Lifestyle has to with whether you like hot or cold weather, and whether you are vegetarian, or not, and can you be with somebody who is a meat eater. What time do you go to bed, and are you an introvert or extrovert. It's really important to understand that lifestyle piece.

The next area is worldview, which is how you see the world. How do we view religion, politics, God, miracles, faith, community - all the things that are the bigger picture because that's really the core of you see the world.

And then the last category is sex, including what kind of sex you like and how often. You have to be able to communicate all these things. When you get comfortable advocating for yourself, as well talking and sharing your stories in a way that make the other person want to share their stories in a way that's healthy, that's a big win.

A Healthy Way to Be Motivated About Choosing a Relationship

Sandy shares that a lot of people have a hard time picturing what it is like to imagine a healthy relationship. We can create a vision of what you want, not just what you don't want, or what you think is out there regarding relationships. Also, it is not healthy to be too rigid or specific about it because you could end up overlooking some amazing people who don't have all those things that you think you need and then love shows up in a surprise package when you're open to it.

It's when we get out of our heads and into our hearts that we make room for real love. But we have to understand what would work best for us. We have to have certain parameters of who that person has to be in order for us to feel that way. That's where we start to really attract not just the right partner but the right friends and the right work - it's all connected.

And most people really don't have an idea and so they get distracted, discouraged, and they just shut down to dating, but what would it feel like to be in a partnership, what would it feel like to have somebody to travel with, to come home to at the end of the day and take a walk and share a meal. It's those small things that matter.

Communication Is Key in a Successful Relationship

We also need to look at our needs and feelings without judgment. We normally bring in history to our arguments or needs that were not met when we were growing up. When you start to see that needs and feelings are connected it's helpful. Then you don't have to say it all out loud. You could even just process it for yourself without feeling upset because of something your partner did or did not do.

Maybe you had a need for communication; maybe you had a need for respect. And then you get curious about the other person; maybe it wasn't disrespectful on their part to them but now you can have a conversation about what was going on for you, so your partner knows about it.

This takes practice and openness on both parts. We have to be able to honor the other person and see their needs being as important as ours. Sometimes we're taught is we say something then the other person might get mad and then we feel like we can never say anything, and then we never do say anything, and it just becomes a tense situation.

It is also very important that we give ourselves time after a breakup before dating again, to process what happened, and to analyze what we learned, what worked, what didn’t, and what would we like our next relationship to feel like; what type of communication would we like to have.

Give yourself the time to feel it in your body - to feel all the feelings. A lot of people miss companionship and the feeling of intimacy so much that they will either go back to the person or they'll find somebody to replace them too quickly and end up repeating the same thing over and over.

We have to take our time to really picture what it would feel like to be in a healthy relationship. What would that look and feel like to you because the more you have it as a felt sense, the more you're going to recognize it when it comes.

Sandy finds that a lot of people are waiting to be saved and rescued. Instead, she encourages people to enjoy their life while dating and find somebody who adds value. Don't settle for less.

If you want to reach out to Sandy and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website and her Last First Date Radio Podcast. You can also check out her Dating and Relationship Support Group on Facebook.

To understand my approach to helping people recover from stress and trauma with my Stress Recovery Protocol, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. I talk about relationships and their impact on our mental and physical health in the book too!

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

Today's podcast is going to be about HPV and why it is that women are having such a hard time clearing this virus and getting it to negative. This just so happens to be something that I've been paying attention to and helping women with for over 23 years.

I've accumulated a lot of experience in this topic through research and observing my patients and I really feel this information needs to be out there in the world because so many women around the world are struggling to protect themselves from the HPV virus.

So, today I want to focus on why this virus is turning up positive for so many women, and what women can do to help protect themselves and prevent this virus from causing abnormal cells and cancer.

The HPV Virus

The HPV virus is a sexually transmitted virus that has over 150 different strains and some of those (at least 13 that we know of) are associated with cancer of the cervix, vagina, as well as anal and oral cancer. The HPV virus can also cause penile, anal, or oral cancer in men, so men are becoming more aware and interested in protecting themselves.

Today I'm going to focus on women because women are more often being tested for HPV. In fact, that's part of the reason why more women are finding out that they are positive for HPV - simply because doctors are testing for it more now than ever before. In the past, we only tested for it when there were abnormal cells on the cervix. Now most doctors, around the world, are testing for HPV when women go in for a pap smear, whether abnormal cells are present or not.

It is very important to get pap smears regularly - I want to be clear about that. Thanks to pap smears, and biopsies, we're able to identify when cells on the cervix are being affected by the HPV virus, even before it gets to the point of cancer. That's good news because that means, if we can catch it early, we can be proactive and prevent it from progressing and causing more damage.

According to standard gynecological guidelines, if HPV is positive, but there are not abnormal cells, or mildly abnormal cells, your doctor is likely to say: “let's wait and recheck to see if the cells become more abnormal.” That is because a study from over 10 years ago showed that 90% of women are able to clear the virus within 2 years without abnormal cells or cancer developing. 

If abnormal cells develop, or if they become more abnormal (closer to cancer cells), then the doctor will likely say “let's do a biopsy (colposcopy)” to double check the severity. If the cells are indeed more advanced (CIN2 or 3 is common nomenclature), the doctor will recommend removing the abnormal cells using a LEEP (or what is referred to as LLETZ in some countries) or conization procedure (a surgical procedure to remove part of the cervix). 

Treatment Against the HPV Virus 

Unfortunately, in today’s conventional medicine, there isn’t a way to kill the virus. Even when the abnormal cells are removed, the HPV virus can continually cause more abnormal cells. Oftentimes women find themselves in a repetitive process of diagnostic and treatment procedures, in some cases for years or decades of their lives. 

Now, I can tell you, based on research and my 23 years of clinical experience helping patients with HPV, there are effective ways to prevent the virus from causing abnormal cells using natural substances (nutrients, herbs, mushrooms) to strengthen and reset the immune system and our body’s ability to fend off the virus.

Dietary changes (such as to decrease sugar intake and increase antioxidants), as well as certain nutrients and supplements at clinical doses, and herbs and mushrooms, have been shown to help prevent HPV from causing abnormal cells and from advancing to cancer. In this episode I’m not going into detail about those approaches, although you can find references and resources below if you’d like to learn more. 

Much of the research on natural products and approaches is aimed at using specific substances that are either directly antiviral and/or are known to improve immune function, decrease oxidative stress and inflammation, and provide nutrients important for healthy cellular function. This makes sense and studies have shown this approach to be effective. 

The human body, after all, has the ability to clear the HPV virus on its own as shown in the study that 90% of women will clear this virus within two years of it testing positive. 

Because I work with women who have persistent HPV – they have had it longer than two years – many of whom have already been trying natural approaches, such as diet changes and mushroom extracts (AHCC), in addition to avoiding commonly known factors that increase risk, such as smoking and birth control pills, I had to start asking… what else needs to be addressed? 

Why is it that 10% of women are not clearing the virus? (Keep in mind that percentage may be higher now.) If we can learn from the 10% who are not clearing the virus, then we can help them to get into that 90% percent that are clearing the virus. This is question I’ve had in mind while developing my strategy and protocol to help women over the past couple of decades. I have been able to identify the most common reasons why women are not clearing it and how to help them successfully.

Reasons Why Your Body is Not Clearing The Virus

Stress 

The most common reason why women are not clearing the virus, even after making diet changes and taking the right supplements, is their exposure to stress. It has been demonstrated that when women are under more stress (psychological, emotional, and/or physical stress, including infections, like COVID) they are more likely to have HPV be persistently positive. In fact, when our bodies are under constant stress, our immune system is affected and isn’t able to work as it should, and we are more likely to get sick from any kind of virus or bacteria we are exposed to. In research this is referred to as “immune dysfunction.”

In this modern world we are all constantly exposed to stress, from being a student, our careers, families and relationships. Everything that is going on in our lives will likely cause us stress, let alone the additional stress of the pandemic and/or abusive relationships and trauma. 

So to me it is not enough to just say: “decrease your stress.” That thought is stressful in itself. Plus finding out HPV is positive is stressful. 

To me, we have to think beyond that. We have to figure out not just how to reduce our stress exposures, but how to recover from stress WHILE STILL STRESSED. 

That’s why I put my mind to figuring out how to help people recover from our exposures and reset our immune system, nervous system and neurotransmitters, hormones and digestion, so our bodies can get back to performing as best as they can. This is where my Stress Recovery Protocol can really help. Throughout my years of practice, I have researched, lectured, and written books on how to effectively recover and become resilient to stress, while still living our daily lives.

And this is not a one size fits all kind of thing. We need to understand how stress is affecting you specifically and how your body responds to stress. This includes your cortisol and adrenaline levels, adrenal gland function, as well as your sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. These are all affected differently in each person. 

Vaginal Biome

The next reason why your body is not able to clear the virus on its own is a disruption in the microbiome. When we think of the microbiome, we generally think of the gut, however it is important to know that we have bacteria and other microbes living in and with us in all areas of our bodies, including the vaginal area. And they do more than just hang out! They help our immune system protect us from microbes (including viruses like HPV) that can cause trouble. They produce substances, for example, the predominant bacteria in the vagina, Lactobacillus, make lactic acid, which protects us from infections. 

We want this healthy balance of microbes that help protect us because if they are disrupted, we become susceptible. Research now shows that when the cervicovaginal microenvironment (CVM) is disrupted, women are more susceptible to HPV and abnormal cells. 

So we need to think about what are the things that disrupt our biome? This way we can avoid what we can, and we can also work to restore a healthy vaginal biome. 

Back to stress! Stress will disrupt this vaginal biome. Also, different kinds of chemicals and toxins (like pesticides in our food and chemicals in spermicides), as well as medications (like antibiotics) will get disrupt the vaginal biome and subsequently affect our immune system’s ability to fend off HPV. Stress also disrupts the digestion – decreasing the ability to digest food, increasing intestinal permeability (leaky gut) and inflammation, and disrupting the gut bacteria. And studies show that the gut biome affects the vaginal biome. 

Now, just because your biome gets disrupted doesn't mean it's going to stay that way. There are ways to bring that biome back to balance and I can show you how. 

Gut Health

Another thing that I see affects the body’s ability to get rid of this virus is leaky gut. Leaky gut is when the intestinal lining cells are not as healthy as they should be and so our digestive system is not capable of absorbing the necessary nutrients from the foods we eat. Moreover, the foods we are eating end up “leaking” through the intestinal wall (without being digested) and our immune system (70% of the immune system surrounds the intestines) reacts in an effort to protect us, which causes inflammation that can spread to all different parts of our bodies. 

We then start developing food sensitivities which delayed inflammatory responses, sometimes even to healthy foods, and our immune system starts trying to protect us from them. The cause of leaky gut is almost always the lack of stress recovery and an imbalanced gut biome, which can be caused by certain foods like gluten, as well as toxins and medications. 

Nutrient Deficiencies

When our bodies are nutrient depleted, including if we don’t eat enough protein, it is harder for our immune system to get rid of the virus and for our body to make new healthy cells. Nutrient deficiencies are caused by leaky gut, as well as restricted diets (including plant-based diets), medications, such as birth control pills (which are synthetic hormones), and stress without enough recovery.

Hormone Imbalances

Hormones imbalances are also a reason why our bodies struggle to fight off the HPV virus. When estrogen is either too high, and not being detoxified well, or too low (post-menopausal, for example), both are associated with increased risk of HPV. Other hormone imbalances can also play a role, such as low thyroid function, elevated insulin and blood sugar levels, as well as cortisol that is too high or too low.

Toxin exposure

Another reason why women are not clearing this virus as quickly is toxin exposure. I'm finding this more and more in people who have been exposed to mold toxins. If there are mold toxins in your body - if you think you've been exposed to mold in the building where you live or work - then we need to address this because mold toxins can suppress your immune function and make you susceptible to all different kinds of infections, imbalance the microbiome, cause leaky gut, and make you susceptible to HPV. 

There are many other toxins we're exposed to in our food, water, in our homes, our personal care products, cookware, and furniture, so it's really important to go through a process of identifying what toxins have you been exposed to and help your body get those toxins out. That’s why I developed a Detox Program, to help you detoxify without making you feel worse.

Methylation Issues

Lastly, one other reason why it's hard for women to clear HPV is because of what's called deficient methylation. Methylation centers around how well our bodies can use B vitamins in the biochemical processes that these vitamins are involved in. Methylation is also used for many purposes in the human body including detoxification, making healthy cells and neurotransmitters, as well as breaking down neurotransmitters and protecting our DNA. 

So, if your body is not able to effectively use B vitamins to protect you and make healthy cells, then you become more susceptible to HPV causing abnormal cells. Methylation is negatively affected by several of the other things on this list, including stress, inflammation, toxins, and nutrient deficiencies. You can learn more about efficient methylation and the MTHFR gene variation here. 

How To Get Rid of HPV

So, ultimately, it's by addressing the reasons we are not clearing the virus, that we are actually able to get rid of the virus. That’s what I see time and time again in my practice and program.

Imagine that! When we give our bodies what they need in order to protect you from HPV, you can clear this virus just like the 90% of people mentioned in the research.  And, at the same time, you’ll be able to move on with your life, have better energy, mood, focus, sleep and less likely to have any other health issues. 

It’s not enough to go after the virus with vitamins, herbs and mushroom extracts. We need to dig in to the reasons you're susceptible in the first place - the root causes of why the virus is still in your body. 

The women who work with me to address those causes end up not only reversing abnormal cells, but getting HPV to negative and keeping it negative. I've worked with patients over 15 years ago who have been able to keep HPV negative all this time because we got to the underlying cause of the virus being persistent in their bodies.

I hope all this really helps you get a better understanding of why HPV might be hanging around longer than it should be and also to feel empowered, optimistic and hopeful that there are ways you can protect yourself and help your body fend off this virus for good. 

If you are really committed to erasing this virus from your life forever, you can sign up for my Say Goodbye to HPV 12-Week Program here.

If you’re constantly feeling gut discomfort or digestive issues like bloating, gas, constipation or diarrhea you may want to sing up for my Heal Leaky Gut Program where I teach you how to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol. Keep in mind that 50% of people with leaky gut, have zero symptoms, so the only way to know for sure is to do the food sensitivity panel I recommend.

If you’re interested in a safe and effective detoxification that will actually make you feel better and that you can do without affecting your daily routine, you can sign up for my New 14-Day Detox Program here. It includes The Total Detox Support Kit with a Total Detox Protein Powder (your choice of plant-based or collagen based), Antioxidant Support Capsules, and Complete Amino Detox Capsules.

If you’re ready to fully heal your adrenal glands and rebalance your neurotransmitters, you can sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here. Also, if you want to learn more about how to recover from stress so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to read my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. 

In the book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

If you’d like me to help you one-on-one by phone or video, from anywhere in the world, to review your symptoms, and what your body is trying to tell you, and to have my guidance to implement my protocol, you can schedule a comprehensive or priority consultation with me. 

I think of myself as a health detective, reviewing complex cases to identify what has been missed, and then helping you create a strategic plan for healing. You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We’re here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode, I interview Christine Burke. She is a Forensic Genetic Genealogist, law enforcement expert, trainer and private investigator. She specializes in helping people who have discovered information about their biological family through genetic testing.

After experiencing "DNA Drama" resulting in the almost complete loss of her identity as she knew it, Christine created an innovative process using Genetic Genealogy to help others quickly and easily find biological family.

Since genetic testing has become more available, people are getting access to information that they didn't know about themselves or their families, or perhaps they want information about their families that they haven't been able to get anywhere else.

It was particularly interesting for me to talk with Christine from my perspective as a Naturopathic Doctor who specializes in MTHFR and helping patients understand how their genetic variations are affecting their health, and what they can do to circumvent those effects.

Over the past decade, I've been helping people to understand the influence of their genetics in terms of polymorphisms, such as MTHFR, that affect metabolism and health. I then guide patients to do testing, including an ancestry.com panel that I then run through software to identify the most pertinent gene variations, as well as tests to show whether those gene variations are being expressed. I developed my MTHFR protocol to optimize methylation based on my own case and working with thousands of patients.

In the process of identifying gene variations, people do often report being surprised at what else they discovered in their ancestry, finding out something about their family members or making connections with family members who they didn't know.

Genetics vs Genealogy

What's interesting about genetics is that for so long we've relied on the genealogy to know our history but that is just the record. When you bring in the genetics it provides people with information that they may had not known before.

In the interview, Christine shares that she herself is an example. She recently found out (by doing a 23andMe test) that her father, whom she never knew because he died when she was young, was not her biological father and that she has half siblings who she had never met.

This could be quite shocking to receive this type of information. It is common not to know what to do with the information or how to process it. For Christine it was shocking to find out that there are people who are biologically related to her. It shook her sense of identity. That is when she realized that she wanted to bring much needed awareness and support for people in a similar situation.

It can become even more complicated when parents or families perpetuate the lie. That’s why having support and realizing that there is a healing process is so important. People have the right to know. Everybody deserves answers, not only from a medical perspective, but to try to understand what happened and to deal with the grief that this new information could cause.

Dealing With the Shock of Finding Out About Your Genetics

A lot of people feel hesitant to share the truth with their own families for many reasons. They might feel they will be judged or criticized for sharing what really happened. And yet, when the person involved finds out the truth, it can be quite shocking for them.

People could feel that information that they had a right to have, was “pushed under the rug.” This is what inspires Christine to support people in this process.

The healing needs to come from people being honest. For example, in the case of Christine’s mother, who passed away recently - her father was not her biological father either and she would always say “I don't know why my dad doesn't love me.” This is the kind of trauma that can be generated when people are not honest with their family members.

Christine believes that parents have a responsibility to their child, to put their child’s emotional and physical health first. When people continue a false narrative, it only ends up damaging their child’s health.

If you are observing intergenerational trauma in your family and you have information about the truth of what happened, then you have the power to stop the intergenerational trauma from continuing by sharing information. In doing so, you can change the future of your family. When the truth is not told, it is just a form of abuse that gets handed down and handed down, and that's what we need to stop.

When people find out about their relatives through a genetic test, it can be a really hard place to be because, first, they need to cope with the shock of having this new information; then they could try reaching out to the people who they would normally reach out to, but they may not be there for them anymore; and then the new people they just found out about may not want to be present to listen to their identity crisis. This is why it’s critical for these people to find the right person to talk to about all this. Otherwise, one trauma leads to another.

Christine clarifies that she is not a counselor. Her background is as a detective. But after going through this herself, she wanted to offer tools for other people to be able to find out information they need in order to move forward. She is able to help people find biological relatives, and she has created training programs to show people how to look for this information themselves.

While finding new information about your family of origin can be shocking, Christine finds that it is also the first step in the healing process.

Genetics and Health

When I review genetic reports with patients (Dr. Doni speaking), it is common to first feel a sense of fear – what am I going to find out about myself that I didn’t know before and am I going to be able to do something about it. Then, once we review all the information, people often report feeling validated, realizing that the information in their genetic report makes sense in terms of their real day-to-day experience in their body.

It can actually be quite empowering to understand the blueprint behind your biological and metabolic processes, and responses to stress.

And then, to realize that we have the power to turn off genetic expression through diet and lifestyle – it’s mind blowing! Our health and future is not 100% determined by our genetics.

Our genes simply show potential tendencies. What has more power in determining our health destiny is what we do each day to recover from stress and trauma, and how we take care of our bodies, in terms of diet, sleep, nutrients, exercise, and activities that our bodies reset.

That is how I realized that our Stress Type – how we each respond to stress – is determined both by our genes and our past stress exposure.

For example, some people tend to have higher adrenaline levels when exposed to stress. This is related to gene variations of COMT and MAO, but it is determined by levels of inflammation, toxicity, and nutrients in their body. I can see all this when reviewing test results, and then guide patients to correct the elevated adrenaline levels so they can feel well and not be constantly in a state of high adrenaline.

Others tend to become depleted in adrenaline, which means they are more likely to feel tired when under stress. In that case, I can suggest the precursor nutrients to take to correct the deficiency and help the person keep up when under stress.

Overall, understanding your genetic variations, and how best to find out whether those variations are affecting your health, and then having guidance to support your body to navigate around those metabolic traffic jams, can make a significant difference in your health.

There is a lot of confusion out there on this topic. Many practitioners will prescribe based on a genetic variation, without finding out first whether you even need that prescription. So I often find myself warning people to work with someone like me who has extensive training and experience guiding people, so that you can feel better and not worse.

Where to Start with a Genetic Test

There are many genetic tests available now. Some tests are specifically designed for health purposes and can give you a sense of your genetic predisposition to health issues. There are other tests that give you information about your biological relatives.

23andMe and Ancestry.com are accessible to the public and can provide both health and ancestral information. There are some more specialized tests for identity, such as GED Match or FT DNA, which are the only databases that law enforcement is allowed to utilize to help identify unknown deceased and to catch criminals.

The important thing is to have someone who can help you evaluate and understand these reports correctly.

A genetic test result is like the blueprint of the person, which is amazing!

Everything needed to make the unique you is right in there and it's just fascinating what you can do with this information. We can take action in our lives to influence how this genetic information will affect us. Our longevity can be influenced by our lifestyle and by both our stress exposure, and our recovery from it.

Receiving genetic information and having support to allow ourselves to go through the healing process of having that information, makes it possible to integrate the information into our lives and our understanding of ourselves. All of this actually helps to decrease the probability of developing health issues in the future.

As traumatic as it could be to find out a truth that you didn’t know before, it can also be liberating. Once you have information, then you can become proactive and make choices based on that information.

If you want to reach out to Christine and learn more about how she can help you, please make sure to check out her website or reach out to her by email or on Instagram @dnageneticgenealogist.

If you want to learn more about how I help patients with genetic variations, such as MTHFR and others, be sure to watch my free MTHFR Masterclass. https://doctordoni.com/mthfr-masterclass

To understand my approach to helping people recover from stress and trauma with my Stress Recovery Protocol, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health. I talk about genetic variations and how to address them in the book too!

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected your cortisol and adrenaline levels. You can also take the Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

This episode is going to be about the head game of healing. I find that when I'm talking with patients a lot of what I'm doing is really coaching them on the process of healing. And I find this to be really important because sometimes we can feel like we're in this dark tunnel when we get diagnosed with some health issue.

As much as I can recommend the specific dietary changes and nutrients and herbs to rebalance and restore what's out of balance, I also think that an important part of the healing process is the head game of healing or how do you think about the healing process and how do you think about what's going on in your body.

What Is the Head Game of Healing?

If you're having a high level of anxiety about whatever your diagnosis is then that just ends up working against you. When we're in a state of fear, we are constantly thinking of all the worst-case scenarios, we're constantly worrying and feeling anxious about the diagnosis and what is going to happen or how will you get better.

When we're in a state of fear it's very hard to be proactive and at the same time, we're just reactivating our stress response constantly. So, now we not only have the original stress response that likely created the health issue but now we have the fear response that's triggering more stress and it just snowballs. That stress response to the health issue ends up working against you and actually makes the health issue worse.

This is why to me the symptoms and diagnosis are really just your body's way of communicating with us. You are not your diagnosis. A lot of times what our mind does is attach our identity to a definition of a role like sometimes we identify ourselves as the oldest child or someone who's married or a single mom, or we identify with our experience, and we can also identify with a diagnosis.

An important part of your healing process is to detach yourself from the diagnosis a bit because if you're completely identified with a specific diagnosis then it will be much more difficult for your body to heal.

For example, if I identified myself as someone who gets migraines then that becomes my identity. This is the way our brains work so we if we identify with the diagnosis, we end up recreating that same health issue.

This is something that is really hard to do because when you're in the midst of pain, that's the only experience you can have. You're 100% experiencing having a migraine or whatever pain you might be experiencing, so it's hard to even imagine how you could separate yourself from the symptoms or the diagnosis.

You have to think of who are as a spirit, as an essence, as a person, as the person who's existing in this human experience, in this body. Who are you separate from your symptoms or diagnosis. This way you can create a little bit of what I call separation between who you are and a specific situation that you’re experiencing at some point in time. If we want to create change in your health, you will no longer be that diagnosis. So, we need to separate from the diagnosis to create the possibility for something different to exist - to create the possibility for change.

Our Bodies Call for Attention

Our bodies way of communicating to us that something is out of balance is through symptoms. It could be physical pain or emotional pain, mood changes, energy changes, sleep patterns changes, brain fog, etc. These are all ways in which our bodies let us know they need attention.

And it doesn't help if we're hard on ourselves or in a battle with our own bodies over that because this just creates more stress and a vicious cycle that makes the healing process longer and harder.

Whatever signals your body is giving you, it's trying to communicate to you that it needs help.

That something is out of balance, something needs attention. It could be a heart palpitation, reflux, feeling tired, hair falling, migraines, etc. Then in the medical world what we do is we go through a process of evaluating to understand those signals so that we know what the appropriate treatment would be.

A Naturopathic Approach

A Naturopathic Doctor’s approach at how to fix a health issue is slightly different than that of a classically trained Medical Doctor. The latter are mostly trained to use pharmaceutical medications or surgeries or procedures and so they're looking for indications in the body that something requires a medication or surgery but a lot of times this may not be what our bodies need in order to heal.

If a Medical Doctor doesn’t find the cause of your illness or a reason to give you medication, he/she could say that there’s nothing wrong with you or that you should keep monitoring the issue because they may not have any other tools they can offer for you to feel better.

A Naturopathic Doctor, in contrast, is trained in a lot of other potential tools that you can be used to support healing, such as dietary changes, general lifestyle changes, sleep pattern changes, exercise changes, etc. We are also trained in the use of supplements, herbs and nutrients (based on research in clinical textbooks) and how to use these for different health issues.

Another tool that some Naturopathic Doctors use is Homeopathy. This is an energetic medicine that helps realign our bodies with its own ability to heal. There are also other tools like the use of plant medicines, meditation, breathwork, cold water therapy, physical therapy, detoxification, etc. So, there is such a long list of possible healing modalities that a Naturopathic

Doctor can use to help you heal naturally while getting to the real root of the problem, so it goes away for good.

This is not to say that medications or antibiotics or surgery are not important or ever necessary, but for you to know that if your M.D. says that they don't have a treatment for you, then I want to make sure you know that there are all these other treatment possibilities, like diet and herbs and nutrients and so on, for you to heal.

Prevention is Better Than Cure

Prevention of health issues is for each of us to choose for ourselves and this is one of the other key head games of healing. We can take on that responsibility and accountability for our own health. If we're here, we are living this beautiful life experience, why not try to be as healthy as possible through it and even try to make it as long as possible to enjoy more of the things we love doing with the people we care about.

Everyone has the choice to become more intentional about their health. We can choose to treat our bodies poorly and just eat whatever and work 24/7 and then rely on health insurance when health issues arise, or we can choose to take good care of ourselves today and try to achieve our best health each day so we can have better and longer lives.

A lot of patients I see wish they could have known before how to take better care of their health themselves. So, as a Naturopathic Doctor my goal is to help you become more in charge of your own health and your own future and then become more intentional about each decision you make.

This is what I call SelfC.A.R.E. (this is the acronym I use in my latest book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health) where you're taking good care of yourself and it turns out that the more we have compassion for ourselves, the more we are accepting of our experience in our bodies and in our lives, and then it decreases our stress and it creates more peace, and this actually prevents health issues.

Setting Yourself Up for Success in The Head Game of Healing

When we take good care of ourselves, we are going to be healthier, happier and more productive. We’re going to feel good and enjoy more what we're doing.

Stress is part of life. All humans are going to have stress. The key here is not trying to be stress free, but learning how to help your body recover from stress in the moment right alongside the stress exposure. We need to learn how to counterbalance the stress so we can help our bodies keep up with this experience.

We are all like a marathon runner or an airplane in our own lives. Marathon runners don’t only take good care of themselves the day before the marathon, they have to be on point in every

aspect long before the marathon; training, nutrition, sleep, hydration, etc. The same way that a plane must be in balance in every switch, control knob, altitude, weight, speed, etc. for it to fly straight. Our human bodies have thousands of systems working 24/7 at the same time and my job as a Naturopathic Doctor is to help you fine tune it a find a way to bring all those systems back to balance so you can be as healthy as you can.

Some of this evaluation can be done in regular blood work covered by insurance like trying to figure out if you need to be in the emergency room or tell if you have anemia or if you have an infection. But when I look at these tests, I'm also looking at a much more fine-tuned level. What I do is I help you to tune in your body to a much more optimal level. In standard blood work the ranges are wide so you may still be in the range, but you might not feel good. You might still feel tired and have borderline anemia or have low iron, or have low B12 or folate or a nutrient deficiency or a methylation issue or an MTHFR gene variation, etc. All this is going to give us a much better sense of your body's needs to get back in balance.

Going Further than Regular Blood Work

If you don't feel good there's a reason - that's always the case. If your body's giving you indications in some shape or form it means that something's out of balance and it might not show in the regular blood work because the regular blood work is really for identifying more emergency situations even when we do a complete metabolic panel. A complete metabolic panel is to identify the liver and kidney function and blood sugar levels and electrolyte levels, but you could have in range glucose and in range electrolytes and in range kidney and liver function and still not feel good for some other reason.

For example, the adrenal glands don't show well in regular blood work. You can pick up on the adrenal glands a little bit with the sodium, potassium and electrolyte levels because part of the job of the adrenal glands is to manage our sodium and potassium, so if there's an imbalance in sodium potassium even slightly in the blood work we should be thinking about the adrenal glands but what I find is I don't even wait for that because by the time it shows in your electrolytes, it's already a severe issue. I'd much rather pick up on an adrenal issue before it starts affecting your electrolytes.

Another example is your cortisol levels. You can run a blood level for cortisol which is a hormone made by the adrenal glands, but even then, the normal range is very broad. It's easy to fall in the normal range and I think that most of us are in this normal range but that doesn't mean we're at optimal levels throughout the day. It just means we're in what's considered normal range which means we don't need to go into the hospital because it's not an emergency but the more we optimize our cortisol levels the more we prevent ourselves from becoming an emergency.

I can't tell you how many patients I work with who the practitioner said this is a condition you're going to have for the rest of your life, it's irreversible. And after working with me, now those patients are testing negative, and for decades. Someone could test positive for an

autoimmune condition, like rheumatoid arthritis at one point in time, but then by making diet changes and detoxifying and resetting all their systems, they heal, the immune system and their bodies overall, come back into balance again.

Genetics as Part of The Head Game of Healing

For many years we thought that genetics determine most of our health. We tend to link our genetics with our destiny. That's why they did the whole human genome project to identify all the genes in a human and what they found is that our health is not mostly determined by our genes. Our health is mostly determined by what I refer to as our stress exposure – which is our environmental exposure, whether that's emotional stress, physical stress, injuries, infections, or toxin exposure.

All of those exposures, and even our parents stress exposure and our grandparents stress exposure, affect us and what's going to happen with our health. Studies show that less than 10% of health issues are genetically determined. We are all unique, there's certain things as humans that we have in common, but we're very unique in how our bodies use nutrients or how much we need of certain nutrients.

If you have a genetic tendency or you have a genetic variation, it does not mean that you have that issue. The only way we can know if that gene or gene variation is actually causing a health issue for you is to test your body and analyze if this gene is affecting you at this moment in time. Also, those genetic variations can turn on and off. So, if we see a genetic variation, let's say MTHFR, we need to do blood work for homocysteine and look at B vitamin metabolism. If your homocysteine is healthy then you don't have to worry, you can just keep preventing this gene variation from turning on and keep taking good care of your health.

So, we need to evaluate if a gene is affecting your health today, and if so, then we can take steps to address it, we can look at ways to turn a gene back off. Often times it’s stress exposure that turns a gene on, so we need to work on your stress and trauma exposure to get your body back in balance. It comes back to understanding how stress has caused imbalances and then address those imbalances in order to get you back to balance.

We need to give your body safety signals. Our bodies are constantly noticing stress signals all the time from changes in the environment, temperature, light, sound, toxins, etc. We are constantly exposed to plenty of stress signals (that affect our immune system, our nervous system, our digestive system, our hormones), but what we lack is the anti-stress signals.

We need to learn to balance our stress and anti-stress signals, so our body is in harmony again. Anti-stress signals could even be taking a deep breath or spending time in nature or with your pet. There are so many anti-stress signals we can choose from to counterbalance the stress and we need to integrate those in our daily routine.

Being Strategic About The Head Game of Healing

To me the thing about the healing head game is we have to be strategic, we have to think about it from a big picture view and we have to think about it from what can we do in this moment that's going to have the most positive ripple effect going forward. What are the things we can do that have the most healing potential on multiple levels because we are an interconnected system.

There are two core areas that we need to address that create such a positive ripple effect in the healing process. First, we have to address the leaky gut. We have to address your body’s ability to digest food and absorb nutrients by avoiding inflammatory foods and healing your intestinal lining. If we don’t address leaky gut, your body will have more inflammation and more toxicity coming from your gut, which only adds more stress.

The second core area to address is the adrenal glands. We need to heal our adrenals (your body’s main protection from stress by generating cortisol and adrenaline). If we're under constant stress, our system is going to break down. For some people they end up with cortisol being too high at certain times of the day, and for others it could be that cortisol is too low at certain times of the day.

At optimal levels our cortisol will be high in the morning to wake us up and gradually decrease through the day. We also need adrenaline (made by the adrenal glands) in optimal amounts; it gives us energy and focus, but we don't want too much or too little. So, we need to optimize your cortisol and adrenaline levels throughout the day to optimize your health and prevent future issues.

For this we need to measure your cortisol in the morning, midday and evening running a cortisol panel to know what your cortisol curve is up to. You can do this at home with a test kit that you can find here. Then we can use herbs and nutrients to address the imbalances.

We also need to reset our daily schedules so that we are not under constant stress. It's not just about relying on a nutrient. It's about how do we reset ourselves and our relationship with ourselves so that we can help our bodies to stay in a balanced state every day. This way we will not need to keep on taking these supplements and herbs forever. We recover back to balance and only need maintenance going forward.

This is why my stress recovery protocol has three phases: One is get out of stress mode first. Get the stress signaling to calm down enough so we can actually heal. Phase two is focusing on rebalancing everything and do the real recovery. And phase three is maintenance and resilience - becoming resilient under stress.

We also need to learn how to protect ourselves on a physical, mental and emotional level and even energetic and spiritual level. How do we protect ourselves from various stress exposures?

Well, this is part of the healing process. I really see that this is happening more and more. As humans we're learning how to choose for ourselves to have compassion for ourselves and have compassion for our human bodies. We can feel gratitude for our human bodies and how much they're working to help us survive. There might be a stress or trauma from way earlier in our lives, maybe a grief, maybe a sudden loss, maybe something that happened to us like abuse in a relationship or sexual abuse or something where your system got stuck into a state of stress and shock and you didn't get to process it.

When we are finally able to be present with ourselves, we start to realize when this started and when a certain health issue started. We need to have compassion for ourselves and our bodies, forgive ourselves for what happened and learn how to protect ourselves.

This is not something we learn in school or from our parents usually, but it's something we can teach ourselves and practice. I really think that the human experience is learning day by day how to have more compassion for ourselves so that we become the ones who can take the best care of ourselves and achieve our best health.

If you want to learn more about my approach on how you can start taking better care of yourself and apply my SelfC.A.R.E. protocol so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

Because I feel so strongly that I want people anywhere in the world to be able to access my protocols, I developed online video courses or programs you can start anytime.

· Heal Leaky Gut Program – teaching you to heal leaky gut with my proven protocol

· Stress Warrior™ - If you’re ready to fully heal your adrenal glands and rebalance your neurotransmitters, you can sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here.

If you’d like me to help you one-on-one by phone or video, to review your symptoms, and what your body is trying to tell you, and to have my guidance to implement my protocol, you can schedule a comprehensive or priority consultation with me. I think of myself as a health detective, reviewing complex cases to identify what has been missed, and then helping you create a strategic plan for healing. You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

This doesn't have to be a mystery, and this doesn't have to take forever, it just needs to be individualized to you.

We’re here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I interview Kimberly King. She is a sexual abuse educator and author of several books. As a freshman in college, Kimberly started her work with sexual abuse prevention as a women’s health Peer Counselor and Human Sexuality teaching assistant to the renowned Dr. Sandra Caron.

After more than a decade of teaching kindergarten and proactive momming, her son had a body safety scare with a friend - that triggered a shift. She realized she wanted take the scare out of sexual abuse prevention.

Now, Kimberly helps parents, and all who care for kids, learn to talk about body safety with ease so they can prevent abuse and protect their kids.

In this interview, we talk about sexual abuse. This is such an important topic and one that a lot of times we would rather not have to talk about, but we need to in order to raise awareness and help people recover and prevent sexual abuse from happening in the first place. Often parents report that it was by observing the experience their children are going through that they started to realize that they had a similar experience in childhood, but it was never addressed.

In fact, sexual abuse is more common than we realize. This type of trauma can paralyze children and adults with fear. In this interview, Kimberly shares ways to talk about it in a very kid-friendly or just simple matter of fact way. She describes that by having these conversations with your children, you can help to protect them and avoid anything from happening to them. When you think about it that way, the topic becomes easier to talk about.

How Common is Sexual Abuse?

It's shocking that one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they're 18 years old. That's a terrible statistic right there but what's even worse is that only 38% of children ever tell anybody, so most of sexual abuse is not even reported. So, we don't know the real number but it's of epidemic levels which is why prevention is so important.

90% of children who are sexually abused will be sexually abused by the people in their inner circle of trust, the people that they already know including family members, siblings, cousins, distant cousins, teachers, and people they already trust.

How Does This Happen with Access to Devices Like Smartphones?

When you give your child a cell phone, they have access to apps, and they have access to everything. Predators know that kids are on phones and are hanging out on these apps. So, to give your child a cell phone is dangerous unless you get very prepared and empowered to prevent sexual abuse.

These conversations must happen with our children very early, way before they have access to cell phones, so that they understand body boundaries, body safety rules, they know who to tell if something happens, they know who they're safe with. And then you must start implementing online safety measures on these devices to make sure that your kids are protected.

We Need to Normalize Talking About Sexual Abuse

This is a safety concern. The goal is to prevent sexual abuse. The topic of body safety needs to be as approachable as possible. We need to teach our kids about this just as we teach them to put on their bike helmet and to buckle up in the car. It should just be common language like of course we know our body parts, and of course we know we have rights to protect our bodies and of course if we have a problem, we're going to tell our parents or our safe adults. So, we must normalize talking about these things so that it's not so taboo that children are terrified to tell us when something happens.

Sometimes we don't really teach our kids but it's so important. They don't have to respond or comply when an adult is demanding a hug or physical attention or being mean or saying something dangerous. We do have to empower them to use their voice because we're not always going to be there to protect them.

There are very few people talking about this with children. We need to talk about the real risks that they face so that parents understand and do an assessment of where and when they are putting their children at risk. We can certainly educate our kids about this but as parents we must make really good decisions. Is it a great idea to let a random babysitter that you hired on Facebook watch your two-year-old? NO! It's not!

The Effects of Sexual Abuse in a Person's Lifetime

The healing process is different for everybody. Having a history of sexual abuse can increase the risk of drug dependency, alcoholism, depression, anxiety, psychiatric disorders, academic problems, criminal problems, etc. It really does blossom into pretty much every disorder that you can think of, especially if left untreated.

Even one incident can create a lifetime of anxiety and depression. It would really be ideal if we could get ahead and prevent this from happening but for the people who went through something like this earlier in your life, it's very important to get help and start the healing process. Just talking about it with someone safe will help by letting it out of your head.

Does Sexual Abuse Tend to Repeat Itself in Families?

The data on that is not very well studied but if you are a victim of sexual abuse once you're more likely to be a victim of abuse later. If you were abused as a child, you're more likely to be abused again later and this comes from a lack of awareness of what abuse looks like. If you

were abused by, say your stepfather, and were threatened or blackmailed and you felt responsible and he blamed it on you, if you were raised in that environment and you didn't even know what you were going through, then when you get to be a young adult, you're still not going to know what is normal and what isn’t. This puts you at risk and this is why education is so critical.

It's critical that kids, especially teenagers, understand what abuse looks like because you don't want them to make a mistake just because you haven't talked to them about it or because they don't understand it. Why risk it when you can teach them about it. You could really get ahead of it and save them a lifetime of hardship by preventing abuse from happening. It doesn't matter what age your child is - just start talking about it now.

So, having that conversation with your teen about alcohol for example, do not mix sex with alcohol because it will never go well or that you could you could actually be in some type of a sexual situation with a girl or a boy and they can change their mind in the middle of it and just because she or he is your girlfriend or boyfriend or partner, it doesn’t mean that you can keep going. You have to stop. Conversations about consent and what that looks like for your children and for their relationships are critical to have.

Healthy sexual activity with consent can be so beneficial to our health, but that doesn't mean that we get to just force that on someone and overlook these important boundaries, and so the more that these conversations can happen at a young age, the more we will be preventing the type of behavior that could push past these boundaries.

Having this education and being empowered in this space will also prevent things like sexual harassment in the workplace. Our kids when raised and taught these things aren't going to accept this behavior from their boss. They will have their boundaries in place and they will not be afraid of speaking up if needed.

The Fear of Speaking Up for Yourself

Being an authoritarian parent is not an effective way to parent because it can make it so that children don’t feel comfortable going to parents when they are dealing with sexual abuse, bullying and/or depression. You want your kids to be able to communicate with you, no matter what the topic. You want to develop a relationship with your kids that involves you being an active listener and not a dictator.

Studies show that children with authoritarian parents are more likely to develop anxiety and depression than kids with parents who are more open to talk about anything. A style of parenting that includes structure as well as calmness, gentleness, and very good listening skills makes it so that your children will talk to you and share these things with you, so that you know when they need help.

This is critical in the topic of body safety because kids have to know that when something is wrong, they have the right to speak up and they need to speak up and they need to know who which adults are safe for them to go to for help. Not all kids understand that, and not all parents teach that. There are kids who are worried they're going to get in trouble if they say something about sexual abuse.

A good option is to make a list of safe adults in case mom is not available. Who is it that you love and trust in case of an emergency or who is it that's super easy to talk to and can be on your body safety team. Some examples are people who have never asked your child to keep a secret, or they've never violated a body boundary, and they follow your family safety plan and rules.

We need to learn to protect ourselves not only physically but also emotionally and spiritually at the same time. And we are not really trained on how to protect ourselves very well. And so learning what does that mean to better protect ourselves physically, emotionally, and spiritually.

Having conversations about what are the feelings that make us feel good or green flag feelings and then the red flag feelings such as butterflies, or maybe you're nervous, maybe your hands are shaking, maybe you're sweaty, maybe you’re angry or scared or stressed. We need to teach our children to recognize these feelings and how their bodies feel when they're experiencing those emotions.

This helps them communicate with you better, and it doesn't have to just be about sexual abuse it can be about anything like feeling nervous because the teacher raised her voice. Where did your child feel that in his or her body? Ask your child if they want to talk about it. It's about processing all these emotions instead of just keeping it all inside because they don't know how to talk about it or they don't know how to express themselves.

Then we can make a list of who are the green flag people and the red flag people, and then why are these people in the red. This is a great way to have a conversation about it and it’s an easy way to talk about it.

Good Communication is Critical to Prevent Sexual Abuse

When we're able to be in such deeper real authentic conversations with our children we can reduce rates of trauma in future generations and the more we can prevent trauma experiences, the more we're going to be preventing health issues and abuse and addiction.

We also need to open up the conversation about what adults and parents have experienced and how can they heal in the process, because sometimes people are afraid to have conversations with their children because they're afraid of what they might feel as an adult.

You might not be ready to share your story with your kids, and that is fine. You can even just say something happened to me and I don't want it to happen to you so let's talk about it.

If you avoid these topics completely, it's like you're rolling the dice. Maybe your kids are going to be lucky, and they'll get out of childhood unscathed, but the statistics are not in the favor of that. So, even if it's difficult, even if you have to get through some stuff to talk about it with your kids, you need to have this open communication.

If you want to learn more from Kimberly please make sure to check out her website or reach out to her on Instagram @toughtopicsmom.

If you want to learn more about how I help patients recover from stress and trauma by reversing the effects of stress with my Stress Recovery Protocol, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected your cortisol and adrenaline levels. You can also take the Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

And if you have tested positive for HPV and you’re ready to transform your health and life, please start by watching my HPV Masterclass here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I am going to be talking all about your adrenal glands and why it is so important to prioritize understanding your body’s particular stress response pattern.

We will discuss what the adrenal glands are, where they are, what functions they serve, why they become depleted, why it’s so important to help these glands to perform their best, how we can test them and what we can do to help them recover!

How Does the Adrenal System Work?

We each have two adrenal glands in our bodies, and they are located on top of each of our kidneys. These glands are responsible for the production of adrenaline (epinephrine and norepinephrine), cortisol, and other hormones that determine heart rate, blood pressure, and other important bodily functions.

I like to think about the adrenal glands as our internal bodyguards. They help protect us from danger by activating our body into the necessary state for fight or flight when we sense there may be a threat.

Throughout time, as humans, our adrenal system would activate when exposed to a threat and then afterwards deactivate appropriately when the threat had dissipated. But in our modern world, the threats to our lives have become much more distant and abstract, leaving our body in a less certain state of fear for our safety. Did you know that your adrenal levels can become triggered just by watching an intense scene on TV?

Our bodyguards are now in an almost ubiquitous state of activation, meaning they are often chronically triggered and ultimately depleted, and they are not able to protect us as they’re really meant to.

You sense a threat and the amygdala in the brain picks up a fear response that sends signals through what's called the HPA axis (the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis). The brain is perceiving there's a danger going on and it's going to then send a hormone to your adrenal glands through the bloodstream to say we need extra cortisol and adrenaline to help protect us from whatever is going on right now.

That extra cortisol and adrenaline then tells all the other cells in your body we've got something dangerous going on and we need we need to turn off certain functions: we're not going to need to digest food right now or we're not going to do reproductive function. We're going to be making sure that there's blood flow and blood sugar so you can get out of danger. The heart races, and blood pressure increases, to get us out of danger.

Why is Chronic Depletion of Adrenals a Problem?

As our adrenal system becomes activated, it tells the rest of our body to cease normal functioning and upkeep. It tells our body to stop digesting food and absorbing nutrients, and instead to only focus on the threat in front of us. If we are unable to leave this heightened state, our bodies do not return to their normal functioning.

When we ARE able to return to a normal (healthy) level of cortisol and adrenaline, that's when a signal goes out through all of our cells, including our digestive system, and says: it's time to digest again, let's make digestive enzymes, let’s make healthy new intestinal cells, let's support our gut bacteria, let's absorb our nutrients.

In our nervous system, serotonin and GABA are calming neurotransmitters that help counterbalance the adrenaline, so if we have stimulating adrenaline happening, we also need a counterbalance of serotonin and GABA. I think of it like the gas and brake pedals in a car. You need the gas pedal to get your brain responding but you also need the brake pedal to be able to calm things down.

When we are depleted from over-use of our adrenal glands, we can become more and more reliant on things like caffeine because caffeine stimulates us to make adrenaline and then alcohol to sedate us in the evening. Caffeine and alcohol are fine in moderation, but they are cause for concern when we need them to maintain our lifestyles.

Optimal Adrenal Function is Key for Optimal Health

Research shows that when we have optimal adrenal function we live longer.

Unfortunately, this is something that is very rarely addressed in the traditional doctor’s office. Even when you go to an endocrinologist, who specializes in glands that make hormones. Only in extreme cases like adrenal insufficiency, Addison's disease, or Cushing syndrome would adrenals raise to their attention. But most of us are suffering silently in not extreme cases, but still suboptimal and correlated to most all health conditions.

Studies show that over 80% of adults have dysregulated adrenal function -- so most of us have adrenal function that is NOT optimal on a daily basis!

When our adrenal glands are over or under functioning, it's predisposing us to all different health issues.

The Prescription to Fix Adrenal Function Doesn’t Have to be Medicine

The good news is there is a lot we can do to help our adrenal glands return to optimal functioning, and therefore optimal health, and it often doesn't involve taking a prescription medication or an invasive surgery, even though traditional medicine would like you to believe that it does.

Instead, it involves learning how to give the right support to your adrenal glands for them to function.

My book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health is really all about your adrenal glands and understanding your body’s unique stress signature.

Through helping thousands of patients, I have seen evidence that adrenal gland function is usually the root cause of so many other health problems, and once corrected, tend to have a huge positive ripple effect on your health and your life.

Please dive into the research if you are interested! My book has hundreds of references, and many sources are available online.

As a naturopathic doctor, my goal is to help people feel better – not to give you a prescription that will keep you coming back into my office every week. This passion was ignited by not getting enough answers in my own life and wanting to share the wisdom and freedom I’ve found, to save you time, money, and headaches.

I often have patients with very complex cases where they've been in severe fatigue or pain or distress for years and have never had their cortisol and adrenaline tested. I’ve had countless cases of patients not receiving answers or making progress on their medical diagnosis, and then when we address their adrenal functioning, it is the domino that changes everything for the better.

Your Stress Pattern and Therefore Adrenal Function is as Unique as Your Fingerprint

It's not the same for all of us, and therefore our treatment plans are not one size fits all.

Your stress pattern is based on your genetics, past stress exposure, and it's even based on your parents and your grandparents stress exposure. These all influence how your body responds to stress today. So, to really understand what your cortisol and adrenaline are up to at this point in time, we need to measure them.

Standard bloodwork will not catch the inner workings of the adrenal glands. Additionally, your levels will – and should – change throughout the day. This is your natural cortisol curve, the highest point in the morning and gradually decreasing throughout the day. And so, we need to take measurements throughout the day to provide an overall picture of how your cortisol levels are fluctuating and when.

But we also need to measure adrenaline levels. What I want you to know are your actual norepinephrine and epinephrine levels and there's only a few labs that measure these accurately, and that's what I offer through my office.

Although everyone’s situation is unique, through the many patients I’ve seen and studied, everyone falls generally into one of five common stress types:

- The Stress Magnet: elevated cortisol with elevated adrenaline in the morning or all day

- The Night Owl: elevated cortisol in the evening with elevated adrenaline

- Sluggish and Stressed: elevated cortisol with low adrenaline

- Blah and Blue: low cortisol in the morning or at midday, with low adrenaline

- Tired and Wired: low cortisol morning or midday with elevated adrenaline

In my book, and online, I have a self-assessment quiz to help you figure out what your stress type might be, and I’ve included the links below.

Each stress type will have a different path to recovery. All treatments will fall within the umbrella of my treatment program called SelfC.A.R.E. where C stands for clean eating, A for adequate sleep, R for recovery, and E for exercise. I have tailor made programs for each stress type so your body will get exactly what it needs and nothing it doesn’t.

How to Help Your Adrenal System

You can start by testing your cortisol and adrenaline levels throughout the day, by knowing your stress type pattern, and watch every other facet of your health fall into place. You can get a home test for this here.

If you want to learn more about my approach on how you can start taking better care of yourself and apply my SelfC.A.R.E. protocol so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

If you’re ready to master your stress and become a stress warrior you can sign up for my Stress Warrior Program here.

If you’d like a more accurate and thorough picture of exactly what’s going on in your body, please make an appointment with my office. We would be more than happy to sit down and help you get to the core of whatever health issues you’re facing, so we can figure them out together. You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

This doesn't have to be a mystery, and this doesn't have to take forever, it just needs to be individualized to you.

We’re here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I interview Louise Swartswalter. Louise is an energy healer and certified biofeedback specialist. She specializes in clearing energy blocks and uses neurofeedback and neurolinguistic programming (NLP) to rebalance the human brain through her signature B.R.A.I.N. System. She is also the owner and founder of the Brain Soul Success Academy.

Today we talk about how a multisensory approach, which is used to help with dyslexia, can be used to clear past traumas, even generational trauma. Louise shares how the system she uses is able to transform health, behavior patterns, and emotions, and how by releasing our energetic roadblocks, we can achieve success and reach our goals in life.

During her career and own healing journey, Louise discovered that the brain operates like a motherboard for the body. When a person’s brain is functioning at optimal health and is in balance, the rest of one’s body and life is able to fall into balance.

We're not just a body. We've got to heal the emotions. We've got to heal the spirit. We've got to heal whole person. We have an energetic field that goes all the way out to the stars. We are energy bodies before we are physical bodies. So, in order to really heal, we have to reset on an emotional, spiritual and energetic level.

The B.R.A.I.N. System

B.R.A.I.N. is an acronym that stands for:

B: Body. This relates to all the work we do to heal our bodies like detoxification, taking supplements, mastering stress, supporting adrenal function, getting good sleep, exercise, etc. The B is the lifestyle pieces that a functional medicine doctor or somebody doing that kind of work would know.

R: Release. Release the trauma and the emotions and the baggage. Often times it's ancestral and we have to clear that out for people to become whole and aligned.

A: Alignment. The brain system is aligned with our spirit. And so, a spiritual God or whatever God means to each individual person is always a part of the healing process.

I: Integration. This is integrating your brain frequencies to your soul. Your true purpose. People don't really heal their life where they want to if they don't have a purpose. Our bodies will still struggle with some kind of adrenal issue if we don't have a purpose in life. It’s when we can identify and feel that sense of purpose that we really thrive. It’s your big WHY, so, we clear energy blocks to get to that.

N: New Program. The new program piece is this high-level energy work that rewires your brain. This is achieved by using frequency medicine which is neurofeedback. It’s about working multidimensionally to get the results we want.

Healing Trauma at a Brain Soul Level

People looking to heal are often getting one protocol from one practitioner and a different protocol from another practitioner. It’s when we integrate all the healing holistically that we will be successful. We need to find a way to be cohesive and synergistic when healing our body, mind and spirit.

Sometimes the challenge with energetic work is that it’s something we can’t see and sometimes people have a hard time believing or understanding how it works.

When we heal trauma at the brain soul level we can even see physical changes in peoples physique. They smile more, their eyes look brighter, they feel lighter, more energetic and vibrant, and they have a different glow in general.

Louise describes that when she was a special education teacher, she used a multi-sensory approach with her students. She would guide them to consider what they see, say, hear, write and feel all at the same time. Most of health and healing doesn’t integrate a multi-sensory approach. That's why she developed the B.R.A.I.N. System.

More than 60% of adults have experienced at least one adverse childhood event, let alone adulthood trauma, so it's something that's prevalent and yet a lot of times we go through life without being aware of it. And most people are not addressing it, and a lot of practitioners don't know how to address it.

We know that trauma is associated with health issues. We need to be able to release traumatic experiences, compassionately and effectively, so that we can move forward with our lives without the negative effects of this baggage called trauma.

By using this multidimensional system, we will definitely see results faster. Everybody wants to heal faster, no one wants to stay sick or imbalanced for a long time.

A B.R.A.I.N. System Session (Louise does a live session for Dr. Doni)

Here are the questions that Louise asked Dr. Doni about pain in her joints and posture.

- What would you want to have change or be different?

- If you were connected to your body and you knew your optimal posture, what would you be doing differently than you are now?

- If you're feeling lighter and easier and you're paying attention to your posture connected to your body and your optimal posture, what would you tell yourself that you're not telling yourself now?

- If all those things were happening, what would you be allowing that you're not allowing now?

We often don’t realize how much our self-talk is part of how we feel constantly. By taking the judgment away you could tell yourself you're stronger, you're allowing things to be the way they are. You allow what is, you're connected to your body, you're feeling lighter, you're aware of your posture and things are easier.

So, what is taking Doni away from allowing what is, to be connected to her body and feeling light or having that ailing easier flow of things?

The next step is muscle test what is preventing her from clearing energy. We're all energy and we can get other people's energy attached to us, and especially as a practitioner when you're working closely with people, some of their pains or their imbalances could become attached to you. This energy could also come from early experiences during our childhood with parents or siblings, this is what we call trauma and what constitutes the foundation of the restrictions that do not let you move forward with your life.

These experiences can make us demoralized and manifest through physical pain in our bodies later in life. These can also steal from us our peace, our strength, acceptance, fulfillment, and sense of protection.

The key here is to release this trauma by working on our brains so that this trauma is no longer allowed to follow us everywhere. It is no longer allowed anywhere near our physical body, nervous system, etc. This trauma has to leave all of your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual being in order for you to heal. We have to clear the shock to be able to heal.

When we release all judgments, assumptions, projections, conclusions, decisions about the situation, we let it go, allowing us to be free, to honor what is, to be connected to our bodies and to feel lighter.

The last part of the system is energy work that has to do with codes and numbers. Think of it as acupuncture points but in the energy field. Then you speak positive messages to your brain. In this example the messages were: I am connected to my body, I pay attention to my posture, I feel lighter and easier, I am stronger than I think, I have positive self-worth, I am able to do things I didn't know I could do, I choose to succeed, I choose to live in joy, I allow things to be the way they are and I allow what is.

By doing this you are reprogramming and rewiring your brain and therefore your reality to the reality you want for your life now. It is rebooting you with these goals and intentions.

How The Healing of Trauma Works

You can have an intention when you go into an energetic healing experience, but really you don’t have to try. Energy shifts tend to cause a subtle ripple effect without any effort. More important is to allow yourself to let go and be guided.

Louise asked me about my experience with her energy work compared to what I experience with shamanism and psychedelic medicine. I explained that psychedelics have a similar ability to help us release and overcome trauma. Transformation happens when deeper traumas are cleared at the brain soul level. These processes literally reboot every cell energetically.

And then right away you start to see things come back into flow again. When the energy field is aligned physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, you start noticing good things coming your way. You start feeling better and your health improves.

If you want to learn more from Louise and get a better sense of how her system works, you may want to attend her upcoming online masterclass. Find out more and sign up for free here.

If you want to learn more about how I help patients recover from stress and trauma by reversing the effects of stress with my Stress Recovery Protocol, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected your cortisol and adrenaline levels. You can also take the Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

And if you have tested positive for HPV and you’re ready to transform your health and life, please start by watching my HPV Masterclass here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I am going to be talking about protein and why it’s so important to make sure you’re getting enough protein not only in your diet but in every single meal. So, let’s get started.

As humans we need 3 sources of calories or energy that our bodies can’t produce by themselves: Protein, Carbohydrates and Fat. These are called Macronutrients. And, from my experience as a Naturopathic Doctor and Clinical Nutritionist for over 23 years, I see that the best health comes from balancing these 3 Macronutrients in every meal. Just as a point of reference, 1 gram of protein provides 4 calories for our bodies, 1 gram of carbs also provides 4 calories, and 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories for our system.

Why Is Protein So Important?

The basic structure of protein is a chain of biochemical 'building blocks' called amino acids. Our bodies use those amino acids to build and repair muscles and bones and to make hormones and enzymes. You also need protein in your diet to help your body repair cells and make new ones. Protein is also important for growth and development in children, teens, and pregnant women. Furthermore, protein is also a critical part of the processes that fuel your energy and carry oxygen throughout your body in your blood, and it helps make antibodies that fight off infections and illnesses. So, protein is a very important part of a healthy diet.

The protein we eat gets broken into amino acids during our digestion process and there are 9 essential amino acids that our bodies can’t produce: histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. These amino acids are not synthesized by mammals and are therefore dietarily essential or indispensable nutrients, meaning we must get it from food or another source.

We can get those nine essential amino acids from either animal-based or plant-based protein. We just have to learn how to choose the protein each time we eat.

Our bodies use these amino acids for building muscle every day, especially if we're working out and we want our muscles to grow, our bodies need even more of these amino acids. We also use amino acids in the liver for detoxification and we need amino acids for making neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, etc.

If we're not getting enough protein and amino acids in our diet, we're going to be making it harder for our body to maintain adequate neurotransmitters and to maintain adequate detoxification.

Where to find Protein?

The thing I find is that so often people are way more likely to get plenty of carbs and now we're even learning to get fat in our meals but still many people are not getting enough protein. It is so much easier to get access to carbs than it is to protein. For example, if you’re hungry and eat a snack it will likely have more carbs than protein or fats. Chips, crackers, even fruit are all sources of carbs and have little or no protein in them.

Remember, our bodies like balance and so we are going to be feeling so much better if we get sources of all 3 macronutrients in every meal. We want to have all 3 macronutrients in every meal in intervals of 3 to 4 hours through the day. We want to have space in between meals so our bodies can digest and absorb these nutrients.

So, you can get protein from animal sources like eggs, milk, chicken, beef, turkey, and fish. I normally see that eating too much eggs or dairy causes inflammation, especially in people with leaky gut so I recommend to have them in moderation. I also recommend when choosing meat like chicken or beef that it is organic, free range, grass fed and free of hormones.

There is also plant based protein like nuts, seeds, legumes, soy and certain grains like quinoa. The thing with plant-based protein is that the quantity you have to eat to reach the minimum requirement is large and plant sources of protein often come tied with high carbs so you risk overfeeding your gut bacteria and having digestive issues.

Now you could also get a plant-based protein powder like pea protein, for example. If you’re interested in this product, you can find it here. There is also hemp seed, flaxseed and watermelon seed protein powders available. These plant-based protein powders are a good way to reach your body’s minimum protein requirement if you don’t eat meat.

How Much Protein Should You Eat?

The amount of protein you need depends on a number of factors, including your weight, age, goals, and activity level. As a general rule, we need around 1 gram of protein per kilogram of body weight or 0.36 grams per pound of body weight per day. This is the minimum requirement for a sedentary person. However, if you do intense workouts, have a physically demanding job, or both, you may need more, maybe even twice as much.

If you're wondering how many grams of protein you’re eating you can do a google search and type for example, how many grams of protein in 4 ounces of chicken and it will immediately show up for you (in this case it’s around 31 grams of protein). If your food comes in a package, you can look on the label and see how much is in there.

My recommendation is to get at least 20 grams of protein per meal or each time you eat. So, each time you eat ask yourself where is the protein? At the same time, I recommend keeping the carbs under 20 grams in each meal.

The thing is there's not one perfect number you really have to know your body and your activity level and start to fine tune it and play with it until you find the spot where you feel the best.

There are also other factors to consider like health-related issues. If you have kidney issues for example you may need to moderate your protein intake because as your body uses protein, the protein breaks down into waste that your kidneys must remove from the blood.

Consistency And Balance Are Key

It's important to give your body consistent signals. Our bodies do best when they can predict what is going to happen regarding food during the day. If we shift things around all the time like not eating for long periods of time and then eating too much all at once, then our metabolism and digestion can be overwhelmed.

If we can't digest everything that we eat especially the carbs and fibers, we end up overfeeding our gut bacteria and then we end up with bloating and gas and burping and bacterial overgrowth or yeast overgrowth.

I see this a lot where people want to eat more of healthy stuff - more vegetables and more seeds and more nuts and they put it all in their protein shake or bowl - but our digestive system is only capable of absorbing a certain amount of nutrients each time we eat (especially if you have leaky gut), so the rest ends up just overfeeding our gut bacteria.

It’s the same with protein. You don’t want to eat 100 grams of protein in one meal because it would be too much to digest, and your body will not be able to benefit from it. What you want to do is space your protein intake evenly through the day in 3 or 4 small meals and combine the protein with some healthy carbs based on your blood sugar levels and insulin function and some healthy fats like olive oil, nuts and avocados.

What happens is when we have an adequate protein intake it really helps balance our blood sugar levels. If we have a meal with just carbs then our blood sugar is going up and down like a rollercoaster. Protein not only helps smooth out all of your metabolism, but it also helps prevent reflux as it signals to the esophageal sphincter to close so you're much less likely to have reflux happening.

Protein also helps you feel more satiated and satisfied. If you're only having carbs in a meal then it's just going to be a temporary blood sugar spike, but if you have protein in there and healthy fats now your brain is getting the signals that you ate and you're resetting your hunger and fullness signals which is way better for your leptin levels and longevity overall.

So, this is why it’s so important to have an adequate protein intake. I recommend that when you cook you leave some leftover protein in the fridge ready to eat so it’s easy to add protein in a meal that doesn’t have it.

For those of you who might be interested in learning more about how to eat in the way that I'm describing or would like to decrease the inflammatory foods and detox your body and really start feeling good then I definitely encourage you to check out my New 14-Day Detox Program.

This program includes two protein shakes per day with 18 grams of protein, and two meals per day with a meal plan that I created based on making sure you get at least 20 grams of protein in each meal. I also teach you how to eat mindfully and how to detox gently but effectively without feeling worse. This can all be done without pushing yourself too hard and stressing you out, and while carrying on with your daily activities and routine.

If you want to learn more about my approach on how you can start taking better care of yourself and apply my SelfC.A.R.E. protocol so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode, I interview Laura Paulisich. Laura is an industry-leading, toxin-free living expert, founder and CEO of TOXYFREE and the creator of the Basic Needs Method, which offers toxin-free solutions through products and systems easy to implement.

After going from struggling with a chronic autoimmune disease since childhood to thriving health, Laura has helped thousands of people find toxin-free solutions through physical products and digital classes.

Unfortunately, toxins, chemicals, and undesirable containments exist in many of the items we come into contact with in the modern world, and it can feel overwhelming to even think about where to begin. Today we talk about ways to de-toxify and simplify our lives, while increasing our performance at the same time.

Prioritizing Your Health Proactively

Understanding all the areas of our lives that are touched by toxins can feel like an overwhelming task but investing in learning more can pay innumerable dividends in your health.

When we neglect our relationship with our food, our surroundings, and our environment we believe that possibly we save ourselves some time, but the truth is that these toxins have large felt effects not only on the quantity of our lives but also on the quality.

We think we're sleeping but we're not really getting good sleep and we may think we're drinking water but we're not really getting what we need from our water.

I hope listeners will start to really get an “aha” moment from listening to this episode and really question: am I really getting my basic needs met?

Information is Power

One of my biggest goals as a naturopathic doctor is to make the information that will make you stronger, healthier, and living with greater vitality, as easy to implement into your daily life as possible.

Laura has a similar goal. At 12 she was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder, and like many of us, for years followed the unquestioning habits of most of our peers. It wasn’t until ten years ago when she learned that it’s especially important to avoid processed foods when you have an autoimmune disorder. Starting with that kernel of truth, set her off on a longer journey to rid herself of shame, common misconceptions, and finally learn how to give her body the nutrients and nourishment it needed to thrive.

We are Fundamentally Connected to Nature

We are biological beings who are in tune with what we need. And as is almost always the case, what is good for us is also what is good for the earth. When selecting products and foods that are as close to the source as possible, that are treated thoughtfully, and have less pesticides and chemicals, we are getting closer to the natural abundance that is widely available in our world.

It's not just about what we eat or drink, it's what we're wearing, what chemicals are on our clothes and what we're absorbing through our skin, what is in the air we're breathing, what’s in our homes, etc. If our food is that important, then our whole environment is that important.

Our most important ecosystems are our homes and our workplace and, as Laura points out, they're either making us sick or they're making us well.

We can integrate these toxin free practices into our day-to-day lives at home if we focus on how we can get back to our basic needs and get back to nature. We forget that as humans we are part of nature and that we respond well to nature. So, I hope anyone listening just has a chance to think “wow, how can I just start to bring nature back into my home, my experience, my food, my existence?”

Does Switching to Toxin-Free Products Really Make a Difference?

Yes. Making the switch can feel arduous at first, but the difference can be felt in being able to heal faster and perform at an optimal level.

Laura discovered that by switching to 100% toxin-free products she was able to outlive her autoimmune disorder.

By questioning the traditional marketing we receive every day, for instance with cleaning products, we may think that we are wiping away germs from our counter tops, but many of those products are filled with unnecessary chemicals. Another example is the usual laundry detergent that you can buy in any grocery store, these products are filled with unnatural chemicals that stick to your clothes and end up inside your body. Or, the sponge that you clean your dishes with can shed microplastics that are then absorbed into your body. Even your cookware is most likely a culprit in harboring unsafe chemicals and coatings.

All these toxins can add up and make our bodies unable to heal or recover as quickly. But, by changing the foods we eat, the products we buy, the water we drink, we can slowly but surely ensure that we are removing those harmful toxins from our environment and therefore our system.

It's especially important to avoid processed foods if you have an autoimmune disease. We have to understand that toxins can be very harmful to our bodies.

Laura learned that she would always feel hungry and until she got the right nutrients. Then the next thing was as a consumer and person trying to have less stress around food, how really difficult it was to find nutrient dense foods and cookware and other products that were free of toxins.

It may feel overwhelming at first, but it saves you stress, time, and money in the long term. And it gives you back what we all desire the most: Freedom. It’s better to spend more up front and invest in natural food and toxin free products, as opposed to spending much more after, on health issues that will inevitably arise.

Stress, Toxins and Autoimmunity

We know from research that autoimmunity starts in the gut. If we're under stress and we're exposed to toxins, pesticides, non-organic foods, plastics, etc. our digestion gets disrupted. Now, leaky gut further imbalances our gut bacteria and we know from research that when you have a combination of leaky gut and imbalanced gut bacteria this makes autoimmunity so much more likely.

Genetics can be powerful, but it’s what we choose to eat and come into contact with that can determine whether those genetics become activated or not. Stories like Laura’s are not only inspiring but also replicable. If you already have a genetic autoimmune condition and suffering from the subsequent symptoms, then it is still possible to turn off those genes by limiting your exposure to toxins.

Traditional medicine would rather have you collecting expensive diagnoses and medicines rather than resolving the root cause of the issue. An estimated one in six deaths are related to environmental toxins. But it is entirely possible to manage your exposure to toxins, your stress, and therefore your overall health.

Where Do I Even Begin?

The best place to begin detoxing your life? Begin with what’s on your plate, and how it gets there!

If you want something that is going to help you get a simple and effective complete reset on your relationship with your food and your body, then check out my New 14-Day Detox Program here.

This program includes:

- A specially designed meal plan with the detoxification process in mind. Foods that will deliver the greatest balance of your nutritional needs, while at the same time cleaning out the unnecessary waste.

- A Total Detox Support Kit including the Total Detox Powder (your choice of plant-based or collagen based), Antioxidant Support Capsules, and Complete Amino Detox Capsules.

- Your own SelfC.A.R.E. Notebook to track your experience and to learn how to get back in tune with your body and its signals.

- Recorded Q & A online group sessions.

- Instructional videos, comprehensive guide and daily emails.

- Access to online portal with resources.

Not only does this program give you easy step by step instructions on what you need for recalibrating your body, it also helps you understand what foods to avoid, why to eliminate them, and how to train your body to bounce back. I also teach you detoxification techniques and how to avoid toxins in your life.

Please also check out Laura’s incredible resources. She has classes on making your own nutrient dense bone broth, fermenting foods to restore healthy bacteria, mastering 5 recipes that will keep you satiated and nourished all day, making your own homemade cleansers, re-mineralizing your water, and systems to make it all easy to adopt habits.

If you want to reach out to Laura and learn more about how to live a toxin-free life, please check out her website or her Instagram @toxyfree. You can also check out her book: My Happy Life for Sale.

If you want to learn more about my approach on how you can start taking better care of yourself and apply my SelfC.A.R.E. protocol so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

And if you have tested positive for HPV and you’re ready to transform your health and life, please start by watching my HPV Masterclass here.

We're here to help you!

Connect with Dr. Doni: 

Facebook HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

Instagram HTTPS://INSTAGRAM.COM/DRDONIWILSON  

YouTube HTTPS://YOUTUBE.COM/USER/DONIWILSONND  

Weekly Wellness Wisdom Newsletter: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/WWW  

-

Books and Resources: 

Order My New Book: https://www.amazon.com/Master-Your-Stress-Reset-Health/dp/1953295576

Stress Warrior Book (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESSWARRIOR   

Stress Warrior Stress Resiliency Facebook Group (FREE) 

HTTPS://FACEBOOK.COM/GROUPS/STRESSWARRIOR  

7-day Stress Reset (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/STRESS-RESET  

HPV & Cervical Dysplasia Guide (FREE) 

HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/HPV-AND-CERVICAL-DYSPLASIA-GUIDE/  

-

Personalized Solutions: 

If you’d like to meet with Dr. Doni one-on-one for your health, request a Health Breakthrough Session: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/BREAKTHROUGH  

To get an idea of more comprehensive options, read about Dr. Doni’s Signature Consultation Programs: HTTPS://DOCTORDONI.COM/SERVICES

Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are product links and affiliate links and if you go through them to make a purchase I will earn a commission at no cost to you. Keep in mind that I link these companies and their products because of their quality and not because of the commission I receive from your purchases. The decision is yours, and whether or not you decide to buy something is completely up to you.

In today’s episode I am going to be talking about something called autophagy. Autophagy is how our bodies, and our cells do a clean out process and natural detoxification. It is an example of a process in our bodies that is responsive to our stress and toxin exposure. Optimizing autophagy has the potential to prevent health issues and increase longevity. However, too much of a good thing can also slow autophagy, so it is a matter of learning to choose just the right amount.

Let’s dig in to understanding what supports autophagy, how it influences health, and what you can do to optimize your autophagy to work with you, and not against you.

What is Autophagy?

Autophagy is amazing to understand because it has such power and influence on our health, and it's happening all the time in our bodies without us even realizing it. And there are actually things you can do to help your body out with autophagy, but I want to make sure you know how to do them in a way that's going to optimize autophagy the most and not overdo it.

Our bodies do better when we give them just enough change and support to create a beneficial outcome, and not too much of a change that works against us.

Our bodies are made-up of 100 trillion cells and those cells aren't just sitting around. They are actively making energy for us to function. They're making all of our processes work for us without us having to think about it. Our nerves cells, our muscle cells, our organs, our hormone glands, our brain, etc. Everything in our bodies is made of cells that are working for us constantly.

So, how do our cells clean out? As we know, our bodies need to get rid of old cells and produce new healthy cells to keep us alive. So how is all this happening?

When I was getting my pre-med degree back in the early 90s, I came across this researcher who discovered autophagy and how this process works. His name is Yoshinori Ohsumi and he won the Nobel Prize for his research. He found out that our cells can identify which substances need to be recycled or taken out of the cell. Our cells break down and destroy old, damaged, or abnormal proteins and other substances in their cytoplasm (the fluid inside a cell). The breakdown products are then recycled for important cell functions, especially during periods of stress or starvation.

How Can We Support an Optimal Autophagy?

A lot of processes in our bodies are signaled by our exposure to stress. So, if we're under a large amount of stress, if we have an infection, if we have an injury, anytime our body gets a stress signal it shifts the signaling for autophagy. This is why I always emphasize that it's not about having zero stress – we need some stress to signal healthy autophagy.

Our bodies also don’t do well with too much stress. So, how do we find just the right amount of stress to signal appropriate and healthy amounts of cell turnover in a cell cleanout and detoxification? How can we give our bodies the right state and setting to create the optimal signaling for autophagy?

When autophagy is working well it's helping to prevent aging. And aging is directly related to our bodies having more damaged cells than they need, or not being able to clean the substances that are not needed in our cells anymore. One example of this is Alzheimer's disease. When the cells are not able to clean out the debris, this debris gets stuck in the cells, and it makes the nerves not work well, and so then we it affects our memory. Another example is cancer. When our bodies are not able to clean out damaged cells, then those cells can perpetuate and that's when cancer progresses.

We need our bodies to be able to identify constantly what should be taken out or recycled and it’s our responsibility to support our bodies to keep this autophagy process running as efficiently and smoothly as possible.

What affects this process? Our stress exposure, our diet and nutrient absorption, our sleep patterns, substance abuse, etc. If we're pushing ourselves to the max and we’re not taking good care of our bodies, then this autophagy process and many others (like oxidative stress which I talk about in Episode #153 of How Humans Heal) will not work correctly, and then health issues start.

There is an optimal amount of stress exposure that our bodies need in order to have a favorable biological response, including autophagy. Take exercise for example, when we exercise our bodies trigger a stress response so we can endure the physical effort. Oxidative stress and antioxidant production like glutathione get a boost, it also signals autophagy. This is why exercise is good for us. It signals for our body to do a normal clean out process and reset all of these systems, dropping inflammation and increasing anti-aging effects. But if we overdo it, we will have too much autophagy, too much oxidative stress, inflammation, too much cortisol and we actually work against ourselves.

I think as humans this is one of the hardest things: to learn what's enough and what's too much. It requires us to be mindful and aware and to listen to our bodies and how we feel. There's not a great test for autophagy that exists now, but some good ways to support optimal autophagy are moderate exercise and fasting.

One way to get a sense of your status is with heart rate variability, which can be measured with an Apple watch or other device. If you are exercising in a way that reflects as an optimal heart rate variability, this translates to positive autophagy and hormesis. You’re likely to recover faster and feel better after the experience.

In the case of fasting (or a period of time when you’re not eating) there’s research that shows that going for 10-12 hours without eating can stimulate autophagy. Again, it's important to know your body because if you overdo it and go, let's say, longer than 15 or 16 without eating, it may cause poor autophagy, and end up damaging to cells and it could also raise cortisol levels and oxidative stress.

Another way to support optimal autophagy is cold water therapy. Doing short cold or ice baths can stimulate autophagy. This kind of therapy tells our cells that there's a need to clean things out and either recycle substances or get rid of them. This is why it can be so invigorating, boost energy and focus, and even support weight loss because it resets metabolic processes in the body. Likewise, overdoing it can cause harm instead of good. There could be a risk of increased heart rate, blood pressure, arrhythmia and even heart issues.

It’s always about balance, knowing your body and introducing changes in a gentle and safe way.

How is Stress Related to Autophagy?

When it comes to these kinds of health optimization tools, which I think are very important to know about, I always want to use them based on what I call your stress type. Your stress type is related to your cortisol and adrenaline levels. Different kinds of stress types need different things to support optimal autophagy. They need different intensity in exercise, different intensity of fasting and different intensity in cold water therapy, different supplements, and different nutrients.

Adrenaline and cortisol are our stress messengers. Cortisol is a stress hormone and adrenaline a neurotransmitter. We need a certain amount of cortisol and adrenaline to be healthy, the key here is to get them both to optimal levels. When cortisol and adrenaline are optimal, we're going to get the most out your exercise, sleep, diet, etc. and therefore your systems will be running smoothly, autophagy included.

Knowing your stress type means knowing your cortisol and adrenaline level throughout the day. If you're not aware of your cortisol and adrenaline levels, you might be trying things that could actually make you feel worse and do more harm than good to your body. If your cortisol and adrenaline are too high for example, we're going to use completely different herbs and nutrients to get it back to optimal than if your cortisol and adrenaline are too low. This is why it's so important to know where you're starting from.

When your cortisol and adrenaline are optimal, you're going to improve your health you will get more out of everything you do.

To be able to improve autophagy first you must first make sure you've optimized your cortisol and adrenaline levels, so you know which methods to use to optimize it.

You can find which stress type you are here. There is also a test to measure your cortisol adrenaline levels throughout the day. You can order it here and learn how to optimize your cortisol and adrenaline levels.

Once you know your stress type you will be able to know what to do to master it and recover from it and then improve autophagy.

How You Can Start Mastering Stress

We have to start by having compassion for ourselves. To realize we live in a human body that we need to listen to and take time to become more aware of its signals. We have to realize it’s not about perfection and it doesn't help to put too much pressure on ourselves. We have to learn how to get into stress recovery and healing mode. We are human not machines. We have to try and learn and practice. This is the human experience. This is mastery of being human.

We have to learn how our body works and then try new things each day in different routines. This is why I in my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health I really emphasize the need to fine tune your SelfC.A.R.E. routine. C for clean eating, A for adequate sleep, R for recovery activities and E for exercise. And this self-care is all based on your stress type which is your body's responsiveness to stress. By understanding how your body responds and what it needs to recover you will have the information you need to support your body better.

Stress is going to happen. We can't escape it, so we're going to be in a better position if we learn how to master it and have it work in our favor and to have it stimulate autophagy.

We also have to make sure we are getting the right nutrients and antioxidants for our cells to function correctly and to support autophagy. It's a matter of pacing yourself and start to walk down this path, or healing journey, and human mastery, and all of a sudden it starts to make sense and you start feeling better and better.

Another important aspect of mastering your stress and improving autophagy is to help your body get rid of toxins. When your body is not detoxifying correctly or has toxins that have accumulated over the years it makes it more difficult for your cells to run an optimal autophagy. Our cells need antioxidants; they need B vitamins; they need minerals; they need amino acids; and they need to be free of toxins to be able to process these nutrients and help your liver and your whole body to process the toxins.

This is why I have created a detoxification program called the 14-Day Detox Program. You can find more about it here. This program includes this Detox Kit which has in it the macro nutrients you need for optimal detoxification and autophagy. It also includes a designed meal plan with clean meals and all the guidance needed to follow this process to support your autophagy.

A detoxification process is also something that needs guidance in order for it to be safe and effective and make you feel better and not worse. There's a lot of different detox programs out there but what I find is that they don't offer the support needed to get the most benefit. With this program you don't have to turn off your regular life. It is intended for you to be able to do while still following your daily routine.

I can't wait for you to experience the changes in your health. People who have participated in the detox program are reporting improved blood sugar levels, weight loss, improvement in energy, mood, focus, sleep, skin, hair, nails, digestion, and more.

This program is perfect if you have extreme stress and trauma exposure, mold toxicity, post COVID symptoms or other kinds of neurological conditions like anxiety, depression, autoimmunity, fertility issues or even chronic viruses like HPV.

This type of autophagy optimization through detox has the ability to reprogram all those processes in your body so autoimmunity can turn off, your immune system can fend off viruses that it wasn't fending off before, your body can fend off cancer cells, and your nerves can heal and your neurotransmitters can rebalance. These things that maybe you never thought were possible, are actually possible when we give our bodies the right signals and tools. Your body knows how to correct itself. It's just a matter of supporting it in the right way.

If you want to learn more about my approach on how you can start taking better care of yourself and apply my SelfC.A.R.E. protocol so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

We're here to help you!

 In today’s episode I interview Michelle Burke. Michelle is a bestselling author of Hot Mess Magic, podcaster, speaker and Hot Mess Alchemist. She specializes in helping women reclaim their power, regain their confidence, and transform their life.

Today we talk about what it means to be a hot mess alchemist and how Michelle helps people by guiding them through their transformational journey.

Michelle lives by this philosophy that every one of us is a hot mess whether we want to admit it or not, and it's through those low points in our lives that we grow, we transform and we learn the most.

Change Starts from Within

We focus so much on the outside, like bringing more abundance, prosperity, and money but we forget that change need to start on the inside. It doesn’t matter if we are doing all the things that everyone says to do - such as working with a coach, or reading all the right books, or doing the meditations and affirmations and mantras - if we don’t change from the inside out, things are not going to shift for us.

Michelle was a middle school science teacher for many years. She woke up one day and realized she could not do it for one more day. She realized that what she was doing was crushing her soul. So, she quit her job, moved with nothing lined up, and started a business in network marketing.

She realized she needed to grow, to expand, to transform, because she was not happy anymore with the life she was living. That big change started from within, and in the process she outgrew the life she had, and realized she needed more.

If you are growing emotionally and becoming more aware of yourself and your passion and purpose, then you could start to realize your life doesn't match you anymore. You’re stepping into a new and improved version of yourself.

There’s Magic in Your Mess

There are times in your life when you might feel like everything is a mess. Nothing is working in your favor, and everything seems to be upside down. It’s like if you're in a snow globe that someone just shook and all you want is for that dust to settle. You may be glad that things are changing but you don’t know where you’re going to land.

It’s within this mess that the transformation process happens. And you will see later that you will start to connect the dots and start to gain clarity, you will see your life coming together and will realize the shifts that had to take place within you to achieve this new life.

A lot of times this can be scary, because even when you could be unhappy with your job or where you live or your day to day life, it’s what is familiar to you and the unfamiliar is always scary. We are used to be in our comfort zone, but change doesn't happen in your comfort zone.

This fear comes from our egos, it’s our egos job to protect us and keep us away from the danger of the unfamiliar. But we must reach that point where we get honest with ourselves and have that conversation with our ego, we thank it for keeping us safe but let it know we are doing this new thing anyway. For some people this means taking a big leap and for others it could feel more comfortable to pace it and introduce one change at a time.

What Tools can We Use to Change?

Meditation is a good way to start. Another option is something Michelle calls “body set” where instead of focusing on the mind-body connection, we approach it the other way around and focus on the body-mind connection by diving deeper into our bodies and our nervous systems and what feelings are coming up. We can also utilize traditional Chinese medicine, like acupressure points, and the concept of letting go - letting go of what no longer serves us and our purpose.

We are so used to living in our minds, constantly thinking, worrying, planning, and organizing that sometimes we forget that we're even living in a human body and that connecting with our bodies can also help heal our minds.

Being aware of our bodies and listening to them is also a way to be more present and realize the change that we need. A simple thing, such as taking a minute in the morning when we wake up to say good morning to ourselves and ask how do we feel, or making that French toast breakfast we are craving and eating it slowly, can help us connect more with our bodies.

We need to listen to what our body is telling us and analyze why is it telling us these things. If you're resisting doing something, if it doesn't feel safe in your body, ask yourself why. Why don't I want to e-mail this person? Why don't I want to make this phone call? Why do I have this anxiety that's coming up when I talk about a certain individual? This will help you be conscious about what is it that you want to change.

From my experience (Dr. Doni speaking), I see this situation come up very often for women that I help with addressing/resolving HPV (human papilloma virus) and abnormal pap results. The women who are most successful at getting HPV to negative are the most willing to really listen to their bodies and undergo a body-mind transformation. This virus is more likely to thrive in our bodies when we are out of balance. So, when they listen to their bodies, they are able to transform and get back to alignment with themselves and their purpose, and get the virus to stop causing abnormal cells.

Connecting With Our Bodies and Getting to The Heart of the Matter

By really connecting with our bodies and just taking the time to analyze things from a different perspective and opening our hearts, we can get to the heart of the matter, to the real root of our pain, either physical or emotional.

When we're feeling pain it's an indicator that something's wrong. A headache is an indicator that something is wrong. Pain in your knee is an indicator that something is wrong, but we live in a society that pushes us to the quick fix, instead of really opening up and thinking about what the real root of the problem is.

We need to allow ourselves to ride the waves of emotions. By riding those waves and truly honoring what it is that we’re feeling and express those feelings in some way, shape or form.

Normalizing Being a Mess

A lot of times we're judgmental about mess. Society tells us we are not supposed to be a mess. We are supposed to have everything sorted out and under control, and we're not even supposed to feel some of these feelings.

We should let ourselves be a mess because there’s magic in our mess. It’s when everything is a mess when we start our transformation. So, we need to accept it and be unconditional and forgiving and gentle with ourselves, and if that means you might be breaking rules, then break the rules!

We must normalize the fact that we're human and that nobody has it all figured out. Since the start of social media we've been living in this facade of perfect. Well, nobody is prefect, and nobody has it all sorted out. Nobody has a perfect life, and everybody needs help.

It's not about trying to be perfect. It's about allowing yourself to be human. To be flawed. Let's normalize being a mess. Let's take the stigma off things that are going on in your life, whether it’s a divorce, financial struggles, or family issues. These things are perfectly normal and happen to everybody.

We have to teach ourselves to let go of trying to control everything. We can’t control anything really. With the illusion of control, we are actually getting further from ourselves and we’re putting ourselves in a “tunnel vision” that will not let us grow because we will miss the opportunities that may come our way.

Each and every one of us has a gift. We're all here for a reason. We all have a purpose. It’s up to us to connect with ourselves and realize what it is and reach our full potential.

If you want to reach out to Michelle and learn how she can help you, please check out her website or her Instagram @magickshell. You can also check out her book: Hot Mess Magic.

I love this topic of emotional and spiritual transformation so much! It has made all the difference in my health, and I see if help my patients every day, so I’ve included it in my Holistic Detoxification Protocol and 14-day Detox Program. In the program, you’ll be guided to detox your body, mind, and spirit! Check it out and join in today.

If you want to learn more about my approach on how you can start taking better care of yourself and apply my SelfC.A.R.E. protocol so that you can get back to feeling your best, you may want to start by reading my book Master Your Stress Reset Your Health.

In my book, I also share the quiz I developed to help you identify how stress has affected you specifically by knowing your Stress Type. You can also take this Stress Type Quiz online.

For the most comprehensive support to recover from stress and trauma, even with the most difficult health issues (physical or mental), it is best to meet with me one-on-one, which is available to you no matter where you are in the world (via phone or zoom). You can set up a one-on-one appointment with me here.

And if you have tested positive for HPV and you’re ready to transform your health and life, please start by watching my HPV Masterclass here.

We're here to help you!

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