Oral Health: The Root of the Matter

74. Why Your Nervous System Is the Missing Link in Health, Detox, and Healing

• Dr. Rachaele Carver, D.M.D. Board-Certified, Biologic, Naturopathic Dentist • Season 4 • Episode 74

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What if real healing this year has less to do with trying harder and more to do with listening differently?

In this episode of The Root of the Matter, Dr. Rachaele Carver explores why New Year’s resolutions so often fail and what actually creates lasting change in the body.

Instead of focusing on goals, this conversation centers on values, nervous system regulation, and the foundational pillars of health that support true healing from the inside out.

Drawing from clinical experience, personal health challenges, and a powerful reminder from time spent in Italy, Dr. Carver explains how safety, rest, and emotional regulation directly impact digestion, inflammation, detoxification, and overall resilience.

This episode is an invitation to slow down, realign, and build health in a way your body can actually sustain.

In this episode, you will learn:

  • Why most New Year’s resolutions do not stick
  • The difference between chasing goals and living in alignment with values
  • The five core pillars of health that influence oral and whole-body wellness
  • Why nervous system regulation is the foundation of digestion, immunity, and detox
  • How stress disrupts minerals, enzymes, and gut health
  • Why detox does not work when the body does not feel safe
  • How relaxation and environment can dramatically change inflammation and symptoms
  • Simple ways to support your nervous system before changing your diet or routine

Key themes discussed:

  • Nervous system health as the missing link in chronic symptoms
  • Diet, sleep, movement, and minerals as supportive tools, not fixes
  • Emotional and mental health as drivers of physical healing
  • Consistency and planning as acts of self-respect, not discipline
  • Listening to the body instead of forcing it to comply

A grounding takeaway

Your body is not broken.
 It is responding exactly as it was designed to.

Healing happens when we stop fighting symptoms and start creating the conditions where the body feels safe enough to repair, digest, and release.

Maybe the first step this year is not a new plan, but a slower breath.

Your body already knows the way.

Connect with Dr. Carver

Join the 6-Week Gum Disease Course: https://reversegumdiseaseinsixweeks.info/optinpage

Book Your Personalized Consultation: https://calendly.com/drcarver-1/health-coaching-consult?month=2025-10



Disclaimer: This podcast is for educational purposes only. Information discussed is not intended for diagnosis, curing, or prevention of any disease and is not intended to replace advice given by a licensed healthcare practitioner. Before using any products mentioned or attempting methods discussed, please speak with a licensed healthcare provider. This podcast disclaims responsibility from any possible adverse reactions associated with products or methods discussed. Opinions from guests are their own, and this podcast does not condone or endorse opinions made by guests. We do not provide guarantees about the guests' qualifications or credibility. This podcast and its guests may have direct or indirect financial interests associated with products mentioned.

SPEAKER_01:

Hello, everybody, and welcome back to The Root of the Matter. I am your host, Dr. Rachel Carver, and as promised, this is part two of our New Year's values and pillars of health. So that's what we're going to talk about today. And, you know, depending on who you follow, who you read, you know, there's some main areas of health. I kind of break it down into five main ones, right? You can always branch off in other ways, but there's like the main core principles of health that are going to affect, you know, not just our oral health, but our overall health. So let's talk about them. For me, it's diet and nutrition, exercise, sleep, sleep is a major, major pillar here. Um, and circadian rhythms or bio rhythms and mental and emotional health, right? That is to me the probably the biggest piece of the puzzle. And, you know, if you listen to my last episode and I I told you a little bit more about my experience in Italy and how I was able to eat all the gluten and dairy and drink all this alcohol, you know, more than I had probably in the last decade. But why was I able to do that without any inflammation or any consequences? Because I felt great, right? I was relaxed. I was in an environment where I felt supported and loved, and my nervous system was great. So to me, in the last, you know, 15 years of you know, trying to uncover the root cause of my eczema and other chronic disease, the nervous system is the major player, right? And so many people we talk about eat this, don't eat this, you know, you gotta detox, you gotta do all these things, you gotta get rid of these infections. And while all that is absolutely true, if we don't get that nervous system piece correct, then we only get so far, right? We can only get to about maybe, you know, 90% better. And I've mentioned this many times on the podcast that when I started diving into the mental emotional piece of all the stress, then I really made the biggest impact. And that's why I mean, and so it really further made it concrete in my mind how important the nervous system regulation is. Because, and I used to notice before I'd go on vacation and I'd eat horribly, right? All the processed stuff that was available, and my eczema would go away and I would feel great. And I was like, oh, is it the sun? You know, maybe it's the sun, you know, but a lot of it was because I was relaxed, right? I wasn't having to go, go, go all day. I was having time to just relax and enjoy and experience life. And so my nervous system is more balanced. When your nervous system is balanced, all of your digestion acids are being produced, all of your enzymes are being produced, you know, the gut just feels better. And the gut is where our immune system, at least 80% of the immune system, lies, right? So if all of the signals were positive to my digestive system, then my immune system is better. So I didn't get inflamed, my eczema actually would clear up. So really, really important. The last year I've really been focusing on the breath and breathing, because to me, that's the biggest way we get to the nervous system reset. But let's back up a little. We'll get into that um at the end. Let's let's talk about the easy things first, right? So diet nutrition. We all know, right, we should not be going to McDonald's three times a day, right? And it's not that we don't know what is good food versus bad food. It's again the stress that builds up, the busyness of life. You know, it's it's more challenging. Mom and dad sometimes are working, you know, and they come home and who's there to cook the meals anymore, right? It becomes a challenge, becomes stressful in the family. Families are just different these days, right? You know, you can have two parents that are that are working, and that that definitely makes it a challenge. So, what I want to express is that as much as possible, you know, there's a million diets out there. And generally, if you try a new diet, you usually get better. And why is that? Because you're switching from the diet that you're on before, right? So any switch, you can notice some positive effects for a short amount of time. So I'm not a big believer, and I've tried every diet, right? You know, I was I was right there with the pack, like, okay, maybe this will cure my eczema, maybe this diet, maybe this, maybe this. And I and I same thing, it might I might get a real, although vegan, I never got any relief whatsoever on the vegan diet. I am not a proponent. If you vegan works for you, amazing. I think you're a small subset of people where you can actually thrive. But for the majority of us, we really need to get our minerals and fat-soluble vitamins from animal foods. But again, if you can do it, awesome. Um, that's that's wonderful. But these fat diets, again, are fats, right? I know I've talked to you about the carnivore diet, how amazing it was for my brother-in-law, even my husband, if he wants to lose a few pounds, he just does that and it works great. Do I think it's a long-term solution? Not necessarily, but on that diet, generally, you are eating whole foods. So to me, the key to healthy, a healthy body and a healthy metabolism, which only about 3% of Americans actually have is eating whole foods, right? Just a generation ago. I mean, in one generation, even from when I was a kid, I'm 47, almost 48, to my kids' generation, the amount of non-food in grocery stores has exploded. I mean, it's it's it's unbelievable. And now all these newer, healthier brands, right? Um, they're getting bought up by all big food, right? All of my favorite brands, Siete, I love that brand. And they just got bought up by Pepsi, right? But Annie's organic mac and cheese stuff, they got bought up. Like everything because these big food companies are seeing, ooh, people want more of this kind of healthy eating. So the biggest takeaway is eat whole foods. And it seems like exhausting and daunting in cooking, but when you plan ahead, um, that is actually my word of the year, too. I wanted to mention that. For me, it's consistency. You know, we talked about in the last podcast, you know, if you can keep a habit for 21 days, you're more likely to stay and keep that habit. And so, same thing, consistency, right? And I think about all the time, you know, parents would come in and say, but my kids won't let me brush their teeth. I'm like, okay, you're, you know, five foot ten, your child is 20 inches, you know, here, you know, I get that, Sarah Fresh. And I said, Do you make them buckle in their car seat? Well, of course. Do you make them hold your hand when you cross the street? Well, of course. Okay. Do they fight you on those things? Yes. I'm like, okay, but you don't negotiate, right? You are consistently doing it no matter what. And so kids, they will give up the fight. You know, kids want to exert control. Like this is human nature, right? They want to see how far they can push the boundaries. And it's our job, I feel like, as parents, is to have that consistency. So I said, you know, for my kids, I used to straddle them when they were little. I would lay them on the bedstrut and brush their teeth. I didn't have to do it for very long because they knew I wasn't going to give up. So the same thing, right? How do we have good consistency to make sure, you know, we we move through planning ahead. That is big for me. When my kids were little, I had a whiteboard and I would plan five days, you know, the weekends, whatever. We'll be more flexible. But Monday through Friday, we had, you know, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And I would plan it out on a Saturday or a Sunday. I would shop Sunday, I would shop Wednesday. I didn't like having a lot of extra food and I didn't want to waste food. It's been a little more challenging as the kids are in sports now, high school and wanting to be with their friends, you know, but but I can see, whereas when they were kids, they if they got sick, it was a day, you know, 24 hours, they'd be over it. Now, with their, you know, they're out and about eating God knows what, and they're sick a lot longer, a lot longer. And it's frustrating to me, obviously, because I tell them, but right, trying to let go, let them kind of find their own way a little bit, right? Live in their own values. So for me, again, another part of this year is letting go a little bit and just loving them and knowing that at some point, you know, they're gonna come back around. Um, and they'll wanna they'll wanna learn from me at that point. Um, but whole foods. And and then some people say it's so expensive. You don't have to eat everything organic, right? Every single year, EWA comes out with their um dirty dozen, right, and clean 15. So you don't have to buy organic for everything. Generally, berries, apples, things with really thin skin, you know, the pesticides we're gonna get through those things. But a banana, you know, think about how thick a banana peel is. You don't need to eat an organic banana. And so, so check out those those lists if you're worried about that. Um but again, with healthy eating, your body's gonna be able to process some of those things um a little bit more easily. So um, so again, think about whole foods for dinner chicken, some broccoli, some rice, right? Or a steak, sweet potato, green beans, right? You don't have to have, you know, crazy elaborate meals, but those things take no more than a half an hour to make. And if planned ahead and prepped ahead, it can go very, very easily. So that's my number one tip is plan ahead, shop strategically, and eat whole foods. And you're going to see such a dramatic change in your metabolism, in your immune system, but that that's the biggest game changer, I think. And again, we want as much as you can, we want to try to buy grass-fed, pastured things, you know, minimize the amount of toxins and pesticides that are in the foods. I still think even on a whole foods diet, mineral supplementation is really crucial because even in the best fed stuff, right? The just the environments become so toxic, our food, no matter how well it's raised, has fewer nutrients. So I still believe in a mineral supplement. The fat-soluble vitamins, D, E, A, and K, again found in it good quality, animal products are good. And then the B vitamins, which again we find in a lot of fruits, uh, fruits, and vegetables. So those are to me the key foundational nutrients that when you get that right, everything will work better. But if you're the type of person who's type A, who might be more anxious, have more stress in their life, you're gonna go through your minerals a lot faster. So the other big key component would be to have an electrolyte drink. Again, those of us who are more stressed for go, go, go, we burn through, you know, especially like the sodium, the potassium, the magnesium chloride, we burn through that so much faster. And again, those of us again who are more anxious, we have more of those nutrients. So you can take the medications if it helps take the ease off. But if you can raise those nutrients, you're going, that's going to be the natural way to ease some of that, you know, the anxiety and that nervous system dysregulation there. So I don't care what kind of electrolytes you can buy the packets. I don't love a ton of them because they have, you know, weird sugars in them, um, especially, you know, the main brands. But simply a pinch of a good quality sea salt with a squeeze of a lemon or lime, that's gonna be good electrolytes. You know, most of us are like, not most of us, but some people are wary of too much salt, right? Oh, it's gonna raise my blood pressure. It's gonna be horrible. That has been debunked. There's only about 5% of the population that is salt sensitive. So that's that's almost no one. Okay. So salt, a high quality good salt is really, really important. Again, especially if you're somebody who feels, you know, more stressed, more anxious. If you have very, very low blood pressure, right? A lot of women, we might have pots, right? That's postural orthostatic hypotension, right? Where we stand up and we feel really dizzy and need to sit right back down. You know, we're not, we don't have enough minerals to create that adrenaline that we need. So that's uh really, really important. That's that's an adrenal thing. And really, again, that can be resolved with salt electrolytes, right? So mineral supplement, fat-soluble vitamins. You can, again, I'm I really love cod liver oil. If we get natural vitamin A, natural vitamin D, does have a little bit of K in it. I eat kerrygold butter, it's almost orange, so, so thick and yellow. That's that nice vitamin K. So I don't really eat a lot of leafy greens anymore, which is another source of vitamin K. And the B vitamins, which the best sources are liver, whether you take it in a capsule or you eat the real liver, B pollen, and nutritional yeast. So bee pollen, you can get a little sweetness that way, or with the nutritional yeast, it's kind of tastes like cheese, and you can sprinkle that um on just about anything. So those are, you know, again, the foundational nutrients that you need um in your diet. Protein is super, super important. So you want to think approximately one gram per pound of body weight. So if I'm 115 pounds, I should eat approximately 115 grams of protein. Really important for us women, also as we're getting older, we need more protein, right? We in the last episode, I talked about, you know, one of my goals this year is to build more muscle mass, protect my bones, and give me that rechargeable energy that I need to keep accomplishing all the great stuff that I'm doing. So protein, very, very important. So that means if we're eating three meals a day, right? 30 to 40 grams of protein every meal. And I like to have eggs in the morning, kind of easy. I have these delicious like cauliflower wraps. You know, I can get it on the go if I don't have the time to eat there. But a couple of eggs, it's only about 14 uh grams of protein. So not nearly enough. I also like to add collagen to my tea in the morning. So that's gonna give me another 20 grams. So with 20 and 14, that's about, you know, pretty good. I can add a little bit of maybe ground beef. What did I? Is there any leftover chicken or steak or whatever we had the night before? Just adding a little bit of that to try to get to that 30 to 40 grams a meal. So really important. So I think that kind of hits our our diet nutrition. Again, think whole foods, think good supplementation, think electrolytes, right? Because hydration is very, very important. Without proper hydration, so if you're just drinking water all day, we we've heard the older badge, oh, drink half your body weight in ounces. It's kind of arbitrary. The best type of water in your body is called structured water. And that is made ideally from eating healthy fats, right? I didn't really mention that, but let's, you know, in that dinner of chicken and broccoli and rice, making sure you're having a good fat with that, right? So butter on that rice, butter, ghee, coconut oil, avocado, that's that's really important to be able to absorb those fat-soluble vitamins, right? The D, E, A, and K. That's why it's naturally found in a cod liver oil, right? Oil is just naturally fatty. So that's why I do really like that supplement. And I usually take that uh with dinner. But you can take it any time of the day that's convenient for and all kids, all kids should be taking that. It's really important for the proper growth and development of the mouth, the head, the teeth, the airway. Okay, so big part of the diet and nutrition. And now exercise, we know this is another main pillar. Um, and as I mentioned, why is exercise important? We all know we should do it, but again, we want to build muscles because the older we are and the more muscle we have, the longer we'll live. That is your rechargeable battery. As we get older, we become more frail, we become more fatigued, we have less energy in the body. Our frequency is diminished, and we just we don't have the power. So by having that built-in extra energy, you know, in the muscles, you're going to live longer and feel better. So this is why exercise is important. Now there's so many shifting, you know, situations happening in exercise today. And the greatest thing is if, no, I love to walk. I don't love to slug it out at the gym like I did when I was 20. I just don't feel like I have the time, or it's not as much of a priority for me, I should say. Um, but now there's, you know, if you've ever heard of HIT high intensity interval training, um, there's lots of science to now support that that's much better, you know, taking 15 minutes in a workout versus a 45 to 60 minute, you know, really high intensity, right? So we think the the longer we go, the harder we work out, the more tired we are, the better off we are. And science is proving that that's not true. So these HIT exercises are you can have any equipment. You can be just walking outside. Let's say so you walk at a normal pace for five minutes, then you sprint as hard as you can for 10 to 15 seconds, walk again three to five minutes, then sprint as fast as you can, 10, 20 seconds, and then walk another five minutes. That's it. And that is more beneficial to your body, as the science is proving, than a 60-minute hardcore slugging it out on the treadmill or you know, running or whatever your exercise might be. So for those of us who feel like I just don't have time to exercise, now we don't have an excuse because the science is proving less can be more, right? So, same thing, you could do that on a bike. I have an elliptical machine, I love that. I'll walk on it for five minutes and then bust it out for you know 30 seconds as as much as I can. Do that two to three times. We recently bought the big biohacking conference my husband and I went to last May. We bought the Carol Bike, C-A-R-O-L. And this is a kind of AI-designed bike that tracks you, understands you. So three times a week, you can pick. You can do, you know, three 10-second sprints or two 20-second, you know, again. And the more that you do it, it understands you and how your body is working and it adjusts um everything for your exercise. But that's amazing. So in 10 to 15 minutes, I can get a workout that I used to think I need to spend, you know, 60 to 70 minutes on. And the the research is really exciting about that bike because they're saying, you know, in just a few weeks, you improve your metabolism, your um VO2 max, which is how well, how, how, how well you're taking in oxygen, which obviously is important for building that that muscle mass and uh keeping everything working really well, keeping that mitochondria healthy in a very short amount of time, doing it just three days a week. Um, you can grain. Because VO2 max is another something they use to track your longevity, uh, your health, your you know, biologic age versus your chronologic age. So very, very exciting to do. And then strength training. Again, really, really important to build that muscle so we can do those HIT activities. Carol calls it re-hit. Um, but they um, you know, and again, if you have doing that for 15 minutes, well, then you could probably spend another 15 minutes lifting weight, right? And there's so many programs out there, right? Tons of free stuff all over the internet. You know, whatever flows about, whatever you like. I have a mirror at home. I love that. I can pick a program, you know, it'll take me through six weeks and then I could do another one. Um, so again, for me, it's the consistency and continuing um to do that, living in my values, which are again, if empowered teaching is my value, I want to have that energy and that passion to be able to do that. I need to be, you know, at my best. So to me, that 2026, and I'm getting, I'm going to be nice and toned by the end of the year. So I'm excited about that. So again, for exercise, you know, look at those, the the HIT type of activities and then find a strength training program. Best if you do it, like for me, consistency. If I had a buddy that I did it with, that's great because they're going to keep you accountable. So I think that's really important. I was listening. To a podcast a couple of weeks ago, and it was talking about don't just have one friend, but maybe two, because maybe one day, you know, somebody gets sick or whatever, and then it might say, okay, I'm gonna take the day. But if there's three of you, you know, that gives you that buffer, like, okay, it's non-negotiable. We are doing this. And anytime we know, one of the biggest pillars of longevity is community, right? And I kind of lump that in with the mental emotional pillar. Um, but community and connection, if you look at the blue zones, right? They talk about all these blue zones where people live the longest. And look, the food is totally drastically different. So it's not about the food per se. Um, but the I think the biggest common denominator is the community. All the people in those have tons of support, love, connection. There's just an amazing amount of community, of teamwork. And that is huge for your mental, emotional well-being. So, really, really important. All right, let's move on to the next pillar. So, sleep. This in any person, any doctor, anybody you follow, sleep is gonna be up there as number one. And so many women, you know, around my age, primenopause and into menopause, struggle with sleep. How many of us, you know, there's kind of two things, right? One is we have a hard time falling asleep because our mind is going a million miles an hour. And the second is we're always waking up, you know, one, two, three o'clock in the morning. What is happening? I've seen that described a couple different ways. And I feel like that waking up in the middle of the night is more common and for men, right? And maybe like, oh, I gotta go to the bathroom. And we blame it on a prostate issue. Well, let's turn the dial, let's really go to the root there and let's think about this. So a lot of people said they'll call it maybe tired and wired, right? I'm just my brain's going too much. I can't, I can't slow down. So, very, very common. Some simple ideas that can maybe help us with that. Number one, we talk about diet and nutrition, right? One thing I didn't talk about, which I have mentioned before in previous podcasts, timing of eating, right? It's not just about what you're eating, but also how you are eating, right? So when we also think about blood sugar regulation, if you eat the carbohydrate of your part of your meal first, you're gonna spike your insulin very fast. But let's take that example of the chicken, broccoli, and rice again. If you eat your broccoli first, followed by the protein and then the carbs, your blood sugar spike is going to be much less. So that's what I want you guys to think about. So when we're eating, how we're eating, right? One, ideally, we should be feeling calm, you know, we're not sitting at our computer doing our emails. And this is no judgment. I'm not great about this sometimes because I have so much to do. But if we really want to be healthy and make some good changes, we want to our nervous system, right? I talked about that, right? We need to be in that parasympathetic in order for all those digestive juices to be released, all the enzymes, the bile, everything to get released to be able to break down those foods to be able to absorb the nutrients. Because it's not about what we eat, it's about what we absorb. And many and many of us, as we get older, we don't have as much stomach acid, right? Or we're on one of those proton pump inhibitors, right? Because we supposedly have acid reflux and we don't make as many enzymes, right? So we're not, you know, absorbing as much as we can. So getting in that quiet space, allowing that vagus nerve to do its thing and secrete all that great digestive juices, that's that's really, really important, right? We also don't want to eat late. So when we're thinking about sleep, the later you eat, you know, you need approximately three hours for your stomach to empty. So if you're eating eight, nine o'clock and then getting in bed at 10, you know, your body is still trying to digest. Like it's it can't relax right now. It's trying to, you know, do the work of digestion, which requires a ton of energy, right? So ideally, we want to have a window of three hours from the time that we stop eating to the time we go to bed. Now, let's say, okay, I'll stop eating at night. I won't go to bed till midnight. Well, and we'll we'll talk about a little bit in my pillar of circadian rhythms. Ideally, for circadian rhythm purposes, biorhythm purposes, we should be asleep by 10 p.m., right? You know, there's the moon and the sun cycle, all that humans evolved with that, right? Before we had lights and before we had all this technology, right? We had to go to bed when it was dark, you know. We then we we had candles, which was okay, which is a form of red light, right? If you've heard my podcast, we love red light. That's the better light to be um the around at at nighttime. But we want to try to be in bed by 10. So that means ideally we want to finish eating by seven, right? And sometimes that's challenging. What if you don't get home till six and then you gotta make the meal? Again, you know, the nothing is hard to set, but that's why prepping the meal ahead of time. If you get home at, you know, 5:30, 6 o'clock, it takes half an hour to make the meal. You can be eating at 6:30 and done by 7, 7:30. That would be ideal scenario, right? And thinking about not having a super carb-heavy meal because as the day goes on, our insulin sensitivity decreases, our metabolism decreases a little bit, it's a little bit harder to take in a whole ton of carbs there. But you're gonna have an easier time falling asleep if your stomach isn't full. And then what are ways we can quiet our mind? You know, tons of ways. Like for me, reading, you know, again, just whatever, some chick flick, rom, novel, whatever it is, that works for me. Just helps me shut off, stop thinking that things. Journaling, right? That's amazing. There's so many great, I love, there's lots of meditation music, which I absolutely love. And put some headphones if you don't want to disturb your partner, and listen to some meditation. And there's a lot of frequency music that will help, you know, your body get right into the rhythm of sleep, too. So again, find something that works. Find something that you can put your attention to that takes it away from all the other things you need to do. And that may help you fall asleep. And then the waking up in the middle of the night. So for men, the prostate, you know, everybody blames it on the prostate. I believe that a majority of that can be due to airway. So many of us, whether we may not have overt sleep apnea where we're stopping breathing and choking to wake up, but we may have intermittent um, you know, where we stop breathing. A lot of women who are thin have upper airweight resistance syndrome. We may be sleeping in a room, like, you know, if you don't wash your sheets often, like I'm kind of guilty of this. Um, you may have a lot of dust mites, right? That maybe create a lot of clogging in your sinuses. You can't breathe through your nose very well, so you start breathing through your mouth. When we breathe through our mouth at night, we are getting into the sympathetic nervous system. Okay, this is coming up on the theme again, nervous system dysregulation. When we have this dysregulation and we're in that sympathetic, we're not sleeping, right? Our body is jacked up, the adrenaline, the cortisol, everyone's like, okay, what's happening? Right. So I've seen a lot of men start mouth taping and they no longer have to get up in the middle of the night. Amazing. Now, my husband, he's he's 50, mouth tapes, um, never gets up in the middle of the night. So, really, really important that we train ourselves how to breathe properly. I think the majority of sleep apnea and snoring is physiologic. It is the way our diaphragm during the day, where most of us are hunched over all the time. We that diaphragm is not expanding. It is not getting to its proper capacity. Most of us, you know, with the mental, emotional stuff going on all the time, we're breathing too rapidly. You know, not just not bring, not just that we're breathing shallow, we are breathing too often, right? Ideally, we want to have six breaths in, six seconds in, I'm sorry, and six seconds out, right? Five to six seconds, right? That is the ideal breathing rate for nervous system balance. I I bought a little thing years ago. I was like, I want to just untrack this at work because I'm like, man, sometimes at work, I'm so tired. Why am I so tired? And I was breathing 20 breaths a minute.

unknown:

Right.

SPEAKER_01:

So I was in sympathetic, you know, it's no wonder I was in sympathetic all day long, just go, go, go, go, go. And then finally I get a break and I'm like, oh my God, you know, I'm exhausted because my adrenaline now I've I've used up all my adrenaline, used up all my cortisol, and I'm so tired. This is often also why pain is worse at night, because cortisol levels just naturally, talking about circadian minimum, they naturally drop down at nighttime. So at in the morning, right, they rise to help us wake up. The pain sometimes is not as bad, but it'll get worse. This is really common with tooth pain. It's like, oh, at night, or I'll wake up in the middle of the night. So our cortisol levels, which are is a natural anti-inflammatory, is uh is weaker at that time of night. And especially if we used it up earlier in the day, it gets it gets harder. So again, let's go back to those electrolytes, getting back to all that salt and making sure we have enough minerals to help us make more cortisol when we need it. All right, so waking up in the middle of the night. So one of them could be we're mouth breathing, and that's putting us in in sympathetic. Another one, if you follow Chinese medicine, um, they have a clock, right? And time of the liver is between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m., which again, that's the most common window most of us will wake up at. And I listened to a podcast the other day that was saying it's a it's a blood sugar regulation, and the blood sugar drops really far. So then the liver wakes up because now you have to start the process of gluconeogenesis, which is creating glucose out of proteins or whatever raw materials you have in your body. But to me, the liver, I think a lot of it is due to toxicity. We live in a crazy toxic world, well over 100,000 chemicals in our environment today, which our liver and kidneys were never designed to process that many. And so many of us have methylation issues, genetic defects that we're we're not able to detox as well. So when that liver is overloaded, boom, you know, signal to the brain, like, hey, wake up. We've got all these toxins, we need to do something about it. So, so if it were me, and I'm waking up at that time consistently, I'm thinking, what do I need to do to support my kidney and my liver and my bowels? I need to drain those elimination organs, lymph system as well. What can I do to help my elimination organs, support my liver? There's not enough talk about liver today, right? We have basically two tests that they run that are liver enzymes. And those generally don't go out of whack unless you have an acute infection, you know, or like liver cirrhosis, right? End stage liver failure. So when we think about it, if you have blood sugar issues, that's a liver issue, right? If you have skin issues, liver issue. So many of the chronic ailments that we have are liver issues, right? Most of us have Epstein bar, right? It's over 90% of the human population is has Epstein Bar. And a lot of it, you know, it's just latent in there. Um, but that's another one that can eat away and kind of destroy, destroy the liver. But again, there aren't good tests that show anything is happening there. Parasites, they have that's what happened with me when my aunts in law had all these parasites in the bile ducts. And that was not allowing me to absorb my fats very well. It was causing a backup. So all those toxins, instead of being able to come out, my bowels, was coming up into my skin. So if your body can't get rid of the toxins downward, they have to go somewhere. And I swear to God, every other commercial now on TV is about some new skin rash product, right? A pharmaceutical. And so any skin, any type of skin issues, rash, psoriasis, eczema, acne, this is an overload of toxins. They can't get out the right way. So now they're coming out. Now, not only do they come out their skin, but they're coming up through the lungs as well. And so to me, I believe that most of lung cancer is from this overburdened liver toxicity versus smoking, right? I think they've said smoking is maybe 5%. You know, a lot of people with lung cancer have never smoked before. So, you know, what's happening? It's the toxins. And again, a lot of it can be from liver toxicity that nobody checked for because we don't have great tests to look at the liver health. But again, blood sugar regulation issues, um, hormone issues, skin issues, lung issues, these are all liver problems. So you gotta find a good doctor, a good functional doctor or health coach who can help you work on that, you know, the detox. We did a great series in the fall all about detox. So if you're interested in that, go back, listen to those few episodes and work through those things one by one, but really, really important. Once we start removing those toxins, our sleep becomes so much better. And right, sleep is so vital. Like that is when we're supposed to be detoxifying, restoring, rebuilding our body. And if we are in that sympathetic from mouth breathing, or we have all these toxins now that are, you know, floating around, our body's not going to be repair. So we're gonna get stuck in that chronic illness state. Like we've got to. There's a reason why we sleep. And does it have to be eight hours? No. Ideally, what we're what we're aiming for is an hour and a half of RAM sleep, which is rapid-eyed movement when you're dreaming, and an hour and a half of deep sleep. That's the restoring sleep. And actually, just the other night, my husband woke up at three o'clock and he had this terrible dream. We were at a hotel that we had too much carbon dioxide in the house and he was worried our daughter was, you know, gonna get poisoned from this. And he he was rummaging around trying to find the keys, which were right next to me. And I feel like I'm a light sleeper. I never heard him one bit, you know, looking for this. I woke up and I was like, huh, where'd he go? We were at a hotel pretty close to our house. We're at a ski mountain. And um, I was just like, and it made me feel real good. I was like, wow, okay, that means I was getting good sleep. I must have been in deep sleep for that to happen. But and there are plenty of ways nowadays with all the wearables that you can track, um, track your sleep. But that that's a goal. So you want again 90 minutes of REM and 90 minutes of the deep sleep. So if you can do that in four hours, great, right? Five hours. If you need eight hours, okay. But that's what we want to wanna aim for. And the biggest ways to get that again, we got to make sure we're nasal breathing, right? That's really focused. And even just doing five to 10 minutes of that of simple breathing exercises before bed, that can be a really good way to get your mind to stop racing too. If you focus on breathing, your mind doesn't, you don't have the capacity to worry about all the other stuff, right? You you you focus on that breathing, you know, counting in, counting out. That makes a humongous difference, right? Helped you get to sleep, but then it will help you get into those deeper sleep. Not eating too close to bed. That is key, key, key, key, key. You know, so if you're hungry, you're going to be starving. Well, you need to maybe eat a little bit more protein or a little bit more fat in your dinner. If you're so hungry, um, you need to work on that. And again, blood sugar regulation could be a liver issue. So, how do we dive into that? Kind of support that liver to be able to make sure things are working well. So, really important. Next, let's talk about circadian rhythms or biorhythms. We've kind of mentioned it a little bit already and talked about the sleep, right? The Chinese calendar, right? One or their clock, I should say, one to three is the time of the liver. But ideally, you want to wake up with a sunrise, get natural sunlight into our eyes. Now, for me, I live in western Massachusetts in the mountains. It's freezing, it's been snowing. Um, you know, we get a lot of dark days here in New England in the winters. Can be can be challenging and it's freezing. Like I don't want to step out there. So that is the idea. So I have a red light panel. So I will, it's not the same, right? Sunlight is full spectrum. Red light is only, you know, one part of the spectrum. So I'm not, but they do now sell folks full spectrum lighting. So you can change out the light bulbs in your house. You can have a full spectrum. I bought for my kids, the little uh, you know, my older daughter, right, with her anxiety and sometimes depression. They say light, you know, therapy can be really good for that. So they have little lights on there, a little makeup stand, so they can um, you know, try to get that first thing in the morning. So, so for those of us who don't want to go out in, you know, minus 15 degree weather, we do have a few alternatives to use. But and ideally that's without contacts, without glasses, right? You want that to get, you know, and we usually when we look at the sun directly, we close our eyelids, right? We don't want directly getting into our eyes. But that is an but but with a red light, you can, you know, they tell you not to look into it, but you can. And there's lots of studies show they can help glaucoma and macular degeneration using red light in eyes. I'm actually, I'm wearing glasses now because my eyes have gotten so dry that uh I went to a doctor. He said, Your eyes are so dry, the contacts are really problematic for you. And then, yes, I've been putting plastic, you know, I'm so big about no plastic, but I've been putting plastic on my eyes for 35 years. And it finally caught up to me. I so I actually have to get red light therapy um on all my little oil glands that's coming up in January. So in a few weeks. So that should be, I'm hoping, will be really uh beneficial because it is kind of a pain to wear glasses all the time. But anyway, we want to get um that natural sunlight onto the skin into and you know, 10 minutes is we don't need a ton of that. So that kind of sets our circadian rhythm for the day, right? Gets our serotonin going. The more serotonin we make in the morning, the more melatonin we make in the evening, right? Melatonin is that hormone we're all aware of that helps us sleep better, right? So if so maybe in the morning, right, if you're not getting the right inputs into your brain, into your body, you might not make that melatonin, which might be another reason why you're having a hard time sleeping. A lot of people like to use melatonin to help them go to bed. But what about earlier in the day? What are the activities we can do earlier in the day to boost the serotonin, which will then make more melatonin? A lot of us, too, if you have an unhealthy or leaky inflammatory gut, that is not going to produce enough serotonin and therefore not produce a melatonin. So the other thing we, and that's when I talk about the liver and the toxicity, that's really related to the leaky gut as well, right? Because everything, all the blood gets filtered through the liver. So if you've got a lot of inflammation, you've got this leaky gut, you're not absorbing your nutrients, right? That's gonna get filtered through the liver, and then we're gonna have the problem there. So focusing on good gut health, which will improve with better diet and exercise habits, right? And the nervous system regulation, which we'll get to in a minute, then we should end up having more melatonin later on in the day. So you're also your digestion is at its peak performance midday. So if you think about in Europe, they take siestas or they take, you know, three-hour lunches and and and it's marvelous. I loved this in Italy. We just lounge for two hours eating and drinking and laughing and just having so much fun. But that's what you know, you can eat ideally your biggest meal of the day. In the US, it's a little more challenging, right? If we're working, we get one hour. And for me, it's like, oh, that's when I gotta try to go through all my emails. And, you know, I get over 500 emails a day. If I don't keep up with that all throughout the day, it's you know, it's forever. It's so time sucking, which AI, I think, will soon be helping clean that up. So one good thing about the the AI movement coming, but not to sidetrack. So with the um, you know, again, having that is when we can have our biggest meal. So if you're gonna have a lot of carp, like That's the time to have the pasta, right? That's the time to drink the soda. If you're gonna do it, I don't recommend. But you know, your body can process that things a little more at that time. Whereas at the end of the day, dinner time, you know, should be a generally small amount, still high quality with high quality protein, high quality carbage, high quality fat, but maybe not as many carbohydrates, right? And maybe not the dessert. If you want to have the dessert, eat it at lunch, right? That's gonna be much better for your bio rhythms going on there. So, and then at nighttime, you know, four o'clock comes. Ideally, that's when the sun is starting to set, depending on the season, right? Well, we want to start diminishing the amount of blue light. So, you know, now a lot of smartphones and computers, they all have all these great filters that will filter out the blue light, which blue light's important in the morning, right? But as the day goes on, now we need to switch more towards the red and the orange part of the spectrum. You know, that again allows our melatonin to get released, starts letting our body know it's time to relax and quiet down and move on to the bed, right? To rest. And so for me, I am always wearing if I'm gonna watch a TV show at night or I'm gonna read on my phone, my Kindle, might always have the blue blockers on just to prevent that. And I will I can fall asleep very, very quickly when I have the blue blocking glasses on. And then you want to sleep in the darkest room possible. So ideally, your cell phone should be out of the room. A lot of us use it as an alarm clock. So you just want to make sure it's on airplane mode as far away from you as is feasible, right? Face down, right? That's the less radiation when it's face down. You're not gonna have that light beaming on you because we can wear eye masks, but even if there's light and any of your skin is exposed, your skin is gonna absorb, absorb that light. So just by closing your eyes isn't going to diminish some of that. If you have things like your, if you have a carbon monoxide monitor or you have your smoke alarm, right? And they that flash the little, you can buy little, you know, just use electrical tape and just put it over. That's not gonna interfere with the sound going off, but the the red light that's constantly blinking you turn that off, right? Try to get room darkening shades, really, really important. But I use electrical tape on just about everything because you know, everything you plug in, it's got there's a light there. And so um you can put that all all over and just try to be in a dark, kind of cool room. Ideally, you want it to be a little bit cooler, uh, your body will sleep um a little bit better that way. So, again, those are important things to think about. We don't we kind of take these things for granted, but when we're trying to live a healthier, you know, happier lifestyle, we want to think about the timing of things during the day. So um I hope that was um some good information there. And then last but certainly not least, let's get into the mental emotional component. So, as I've talked about a million times on this podcast and earlier on this podcast, in the one I did, just the one right before this, nervous system regulation, in my opinion, is really the key to health. So, those of us with the chronic illnesses, whether it's uh, you know, an IBS or an eczema, you know, cancer, even these really debilitating things, there is a nervous system dysregulation. As I said, the nervous system is what turns on your digestion. Digestion is where the majority of your immune system lies. And those of us with chronic illness, our immune systems are just totally out of whack, you know? And so we need to get that balanced. And this is such a huge topic. There are people who just specialize in this, and I think it's important. For me, it's one of the things it's a non-negotiable for me. Every month I speak with my emotion code, body code, um, Nick Carrellers at Integrative U. He works on this kind of stuff with me, but this is like a non-negotiable that I am the breathing, right? That's another way to stimulate my vagus nerve. Every morning I stand in front of my red light and I do qigong. Qigong is a moving meditation that that incorporates the breath and simple movements to move the energy and to connect all of the different meridians of the body. This has been the biggest game changer for me with my eczema. Like I don't have it anymore. You know, occasionally if I get stressed out or I'm not eating as much as I should, because another thing for me that I've noticed is um deficiency, depletion, right? Because we live in a toxic world and because I'm a little more prone to, you know, type A, you know, anxious, go, go, go, go. If I don't get enough of those nutrients, if I'm not taking my electrolytes every single day, if I'm not taking high dosing my minerals, I'm gonna get into that deficiency state and I might see the toxins start coming out of my skin. But now I know, so I can very easily rectify that. And it's not like I did I have spent over 10 years in a state of chronic inflammation, which really taxed my immune system. When I use my emotional, my bioenergetic scanner, I mean, it constantly is coming up with immune deficiency. Again, I spent so, so many years, and there was only about one year where I used steroids, which would suppress my immune system. So again, it's you know, working back from that a decade of having that, you know, is a challenge, but um, but it can be done, absolutely. So, and the the the motion co-practitioner I work with, you guys have met her. She's been on the program twice. I love Katie. And just, you know, from the outside, my life has been pretty great, you know. I've been so blessed and I'm so grateful for everything that I have and everything that I've been able to do and share. But I still have stuff, you know, the trauma that's stuck in place that, you know, prevents me from being my best self sometimes. So I think that stuff is is really important to really understand that filter. Like I said, my daughter, her thoughts are so negative. Like, how do we, and and my practitioner work with her too, like trying to change, you know, that filter. Where did that come from? Could it be that, you know, I had her induced because I was impatient? I was hadn't been working for two weeks and I was bored and I wanted my first baby, right? And they had to suck her out, right? Can you imagine? Like, you're in this beautiful, comfortable, warm womb, and you get this rude awakening, somebody's, you know, bursting your bubble and trying to pull you out of there. So from the get-go, right? Like, you know, I try not to, I didn't know any better, so I try not to blame myself too much. But um, you know, and she sucked her thumb for the first eight years of her life. I learned later, you know, that where you put your thumb, right, that is where the top of your nervous, the front of your nervous system, the back of your nervous system connect, right? So kids that are sucking their thumb, that is a soothing tool, right? That is how they are trying to regulate their nervous system, right? Because again, a rude awakening into this world. And I wish also at the time I'd known about craniosacral, right? Her because of sucking that out, like her whole spinal alignment was off for the first four years of her life. And so again, she didn't have great energy flow um connecting everything. Like she was hardwired because I didn't know the stuff then. She was hardwired to have more anxiety and have more imbalance in her nervous system. So now we're working to, you know, correct those things and rewire her. And, you know, she gets chiropractic work, she gets craniofascial work, um, and then, you know, also the the therapy and all these kind of things to recreate that, you know, because it makes me concerned, right? That she's so young. If we can't get her regulated early, that, you know, there's the potential for chronic illness down the line. So at least I know that, and we have a lot of tools, you know, as a teenager, she doesn't want to do a lot of the tools, but I think she will come back around very soon. So biggest key for me is the breathing, just having the awareness, right? Having those tools, you know, we don't want them to be love substitutes, like I said, but you know, reading, meditating, all these kind of things, and then using your values, right? If you guys kind of did your homework, you kind of dug into that, figured out what your values are, your mental and emotional state will change 180 degrees if you start living in those values. And again, most of us have anxiety, depression, you know, negative thoughts because we are not aligned with our true values, right? We're doing what we're supposed to do, what we should do, not what feels genuine to us, right? There's such a structure in society that we have to be a certain way, do you know certain things. And the people who break away from that, those are the happiest people, you know, there are. So, and again, you think, well, I have to do this, or I can't pay my bills, and I have to do this. But it's really not true because when you can change the thoughts and live, live in those values, you will accomplish and achieve everything. And it's it's a process, right? It doesn't happen overnight. But the more now that you're aware of these things, you can kind of restructure your goals, right? What you want to achieve, what it is you really want in life. You know, I just want you to restructure it, base it on what your real values are, and you're gonna have the most amazing 2026 possible. So I hope you guys got some good information out of this, and maybe you can design your own pillars of health and think about your values and think about you know, things that you want to accomplish. And what is the exercise that's gonna fit in your value? What is the diet nutrition plan that's gonna work, you know, best for you to allow you to be your best self? As always, please feel free to reach out. You have my connection. I'm always available for consult. It's one of my favorite things to do where I can really connect with somebody one-on-one and you know, really dive into your story and help give you the tools that are the most meaningful for you. Anyway, I hope everyone had a wonderful end of 2025, and here's to a great 2026. Huge thanks to you, our amazing listeners, for helping us climb into the top 5% of podcasts in the oral health space. With all the love and support, we've been getting many requests for one on one consultations. So we made it happen. Are you ready to take your oral health to the next level? Click the link in the show notes to book your personalized consultation and let's kickstart your journey to a healthier, brighter smile starting today. We'll see you then.