Vitality and Stress with Dr Jon Romney, ND

In part one with Jon Romney, ND he shares his journey into naturopathic medicine and what it is really like as a practitioner working with complicated cases that require more than traditional eastern or western medicine alone. (Some patients require teamwork of perspective and tools!) We learn where to look as the basics of health, more about how chronic stress may be affecting gut, liver, brain and hormonal function, and lay the building blocks for part 2 in our conversation, which covers the ins and outs of our hormones , how they affect us, and how to help them balance.

2:52 Dr. Jon’s journey to naturopathic medicine

13:00 How does a ND decide where to start with treating a complicated problem?

15:00 when do you start looking for mental/emotional stress? And what can that do to your immune system?

15:00 Can stress be a friend? How?   Link to Kelly McGonigal’s book  https://a.co/d/dSwjukX

Link to her ted talk : https://www.ted.com/talks/kelly_mcgonigal_how_to_make_stress_your_friend?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

23:24 In an inflammatory state in the body we look toward your gut/microbiome. 79-80% of immune system is in the gut!

26:00 microbiome, Crohn’s, migraines, food reactions, bloating, autoimmune….and more!

28:00 Vagus nerve, cavewomen, and when is a good time for a bowel movement?

31: What did Becca pack for Bolivia, and why? Food in Bolivia,  glyphosate, and bacteria…communicate?

36: Treating when tests are showing normal, but the patient is obviously sick. PANDAS and infected teeth, and a disgusting sulfur smell

42: MTHFR is not just a fun acronym, and how gene testing is helpful for many situations

46: Endocrine system, and testosterone under threat. Why is that a bad thing? WHAT affects testosterone?

48:07 Mouth shape, mouth breathers, and what Dr. Becca thinks of her husband’s watch. .and his sleep apnea. Measures to reduce apnea that might surprise you.

Transcript

0:00

Hello and welcome to the what really makes a difference podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Becca Whitaker. I've been a doctor of natural health care for over 20 years and a professional speaker on health and vitality, but everything I thought I knew about health. Was tested when my own health hit a landslide and I became a very sick patient I've learned that showing up for our own health and vitality is a step by step journey that we take for the rest of our lives and This podcast is about sharing some of the things that really make a difference on that journey with you So grab your Explorer's hat while we get ready to check out today's topic. My incredible guest network and I will be sharing some practical tools, current science and ancient wisdom that we all need, no matter what stage we are at in our health and vitality. I've already got my hat on and my hand out, so let's dive in and we can all start walking each other home. Hello, I am so excited to share this conversation with you. I was able to talk with Dr. John Romney. He is a naturopathic doctor that practices in Southern Utah. He is a very busy man. And I think you're going to see why as we have a discussion, his blend of science and wisdom together with practical things you can implement right away, lifestyle choices, supplements. It's just a whole strategy of how your body can increase in health while you are also moving through complicated or difficult to treat situations. That's kind of what he specializes in. We meant to record a shorter interview, but then the conversation was so good that we just kept talking and I'm very grateful. So this is the first of two parts in this first part, we get to know Dr. John a little bit better and how he got to the place that he is now. And we also talk about stress. Not necessarily that it's a terrible thing, how we need some, but what can happen when it gets to be too much. And he walks us through in our bodies, some of the systems or functions that might be compromised when we have too much. And then. The winner subject of what we can actually do about it to balance it and help restore our health. We talk about reacting to foods, gut function, breath, breathing through your nose, breathing through your mouth, all kinds of really interesting things I am so excited to greet you to it. Without further ado, I give you Dr. John Romney. John, I am so glad that we are talking today. Yeah, I know you are super busy, so thank you for taking time out of your schedule. Absolutely. I think absolutely glad to be here. I think it's gonna be great for the podcast listeners and also I'm excited to get to know a little bit more about you two. So, to start off, just to introduce yourself, can you tell me what got you interested in naturopathic medicine? Yeah, absolutely. So when I was young I would say in high school I started to take biology classes and, and I really wasn't like this great student by any means. And, and I, I was actually fine though anytime it was like human human biology or health classes, you know, suddenly I was like, you know, doing well and, and actually intrigued by it I think a lot of it was'cause my, my father is still a practicing chiropractor, and so that was always interesting to me. And so I kind of determined at that point that I wanted to do something in medicine, but I was young and had no idea. So, and I, I, you know, at a young age, people would come up to me and say, Hey, thank you so much. Your dad's like so awesome. Your family's great Just tell your dad thank you he's fixed my back and I feel so much better now. And I was always like, oh, thanks. That's awesome. Like, that's really cool that my dad has been able to help you. And then somewhere around high school, and I'm taking all these, you know, human bio classes, sports medicine classes, human anatomy. I started to get the sense that, that not everybody in medicine thinks of chiropractic the same. Right? So there's like this massive division between the medical system and, and what we used to call may, maybe still call alternative medicine. So I, I was kind of like, like, what, what is this division? So my dad starts talking about it to me as I, as I get older, and I thought it was really weird because I didn't really see that, you know, like I felt, I always felt like, you know, they're both important, but why do they, why do they have such a confirmation bias? They can only see the good in their one profession. Mm-hmm. And so that was, you know, slightly weird to me. And as I, as I went on in my education, I, I started to realize that I wanted something where I wasn't just focused. I, started out thinking, well, maybe I'll just be a chiropractor. But I wanted to, you know, I wanted to also be both. And I didn't find a profession really right off the start, right, right out the gate. I didn't find a profession that kind of met that demand of, being able to prescribe medications, do surgeries, and be a primary care physician, but also be a chiropractor. And I think medicine's come a long way since then. But that was the biggest thing for me, and I wanted to find that. And so my wife began to, started working for a naturopathic physician. Mm-hmm. And and, and at first I was like, what, what is this? You know, I didn't, what is this guy really a doctor? What's going on here? And, and then I finally, yeah. And I became, he always laughs at me to this day. He still laughs at me. Because I was like who is this guy you're working for? I don't want, and she'd always say, well, he wants to meet you. And I'm like I don't really know if I wanna meet him, you know? Anyway, so I finally went in and met him and I was shocked at what he could do. He was a primary care physician. He could prescribe medications. His scope of practice was very large. But he also, his scope of education was really, really broad and I really enjoyed that. So He told me what he could do, and, and it just hit like, like a light bulb turning on. It was like, oh, there it is. That's the profession that meets the demand of what I'm wanting. Right. It was, it, it kind of encompasses both worlds and brings'em together. So so that's, that's where I, I chose, you know, and I thought, should I go md, do dc you know, and'cause of course I always loved what my dad did. I just mostly really enjoyed that as a kid, that people were so appreciative of him that my dad was making a difference, you know? And, and always wanted to make a difference. So that's kind of what led me down that path. And of course, there was a lot of resistance at the time, you know, is like they, people didn't know what it was. Yeah. So friends and family are like, what are you doing? Are you crazy? And I, I ultimately was just able to say, well, I know what I'm doing, and if you guys don't understand now, maybe you'll understand later. And of course it seems like, you know, it's, it's like, oh, okay, now it makes sense, you know? Yeah. And so, and I, and I'm very happy in, in, in that field, you know, and, and it, it, it's been great to kind of combine both worlds. I feel like in what I do, I can be more of a scientist. You know, rather than just following a standard of care or just a set of guidelines that the hospital puts on me, I'm able to think outside the box. I'm able to, I'm able to customize way better. There's yeah, no insurance company saying, Hey, if diagnosis A comes in, you've gotta give'em drug B. I can say, well, that's great. We can use the drug if we need it, but let's address root causes. And ultimately that was what mostly inspired me about the education is, identifying root causes. Each, disease state comes with, you know, a root cause and each individual, like, I mean, if, if we're talking about one disease, say fibromyalgia, there's maybe 10 different ways into the, into the western diagnosis of fibromyalgia. And so identifying those and then going that direction, that specific de direction for that specific patient was really what I wanted to be able to do. And that, that becomes more of an art form. It's hard to just be like, oh, for, for all of medicine, everybody can just kind of do what they want. I understand. Insurance companies have to kind of like, you know, they have to say, you have these labs, Here's what you can do. You and everything has to be justified. But in my world, you know, I get to be a scientist and an artist Yeah. Together. So I've, I've enjoyed it. Yeah. So that's kind of what brought me there. That's why I do what I do I think that is so beautiful. And I'm wondering, so you were already married, you started were, did, were you also like having kids while you're going through school? What was it like to start up Yeah. Knowing that people didn't really know what exactly what you were doing. I know you came to a smaller town at first and mm-hmm. what, what was that whole process like? Well, yeah. So, and teaching people what you do, like how it's the same or how it's different. Yeah, absolutely. So I you share a conversation. I would say, I would say that, you know, I had kids, so I, had my, my first child who's, who's, who's now 14 years old, I had just had him. Right before I left, and then I had two kids while in medical school, so I left with three kids. Mm-hmm. And that was quite stressful for me. that is a lot of work. and I, and I, I had, I had quite a few cran caners in my mouth when I, I came outta school and had to figure out what to do. So, and I had opportunities to go, you know, in Arizona it's just so open to naturopathic physicians. There's tons of them there. Every physician knows what a naturopathic physician is. They're familiar with, the style of practice. And so it would, it would've been an easy option to just be like, oh, stay where it's kind of well known where, you know, where it thrives. Of course, my dad is here, so that was a, a, a major benefit, as he's already practicing and, and he has a good reputation. So I thought, well, I really wanna live in Cedar. Yeah. This is where my heart is. This is, this is, this is, you know, I grew up here. I love the community, I love the people. I love the recreation, I really wanted to come home. And, and so we had a few options that I looked at. I did a residency program through Rick Jensen, who's in St. George. He's a, he's a great friend and a great physician over there. And and we, we talked about possible, you know, possibly just kind of joining practice together and, and practicing there. We ta I had, I had some offers in, in Arizona and I ultimately was like, you know what, I just want to come here and I wanna see what happens. And, and, and to be honest, it like, once you really get to the root of somebody's issues, they usually will tell a lot of their friends and yeah. So I've never been a marketer and, and, and I guess I just, I, I, my philosophy is just try to provide a really good service and help people and be genuine about it. And, and usually they'll tell their friends. So we had the, that's kinda how we're growing. We had the same advice and I'm so grateful they, people had us envision where we wanted to live, what we wanted to do with our time. And we realized, I mean, we could go to bigger cities, we would definitely make more mo more money. Yeah, yeah. Doing it. But we would probably spend that money just driving right back to where there's mountains, Yeah. So true. Right. And lakes and family. Like the cost of living and Exactly. And, and the driving, the amount of time you're in your car's. And we also have found that is we do very little marketing as well. That is our favorite way Yeah. Is just to do a really good job. Yeah. And just to, it feels better for me to know that I'm making a difference in someone's life and just to start the conversation absolutely. Naturally about what I'm doing that might Be helping someone that they, that could help someone that they love or yeah, help them and they don't know how. I think that is the best marketing for anything. Absolutely. Absolutely. So I have a question just to highlight what's different. I'd like you to walk me through something. So tell me some of the artistry. Where do you begin when there's somebody in that place? This is a good question because, so like, it's the same thing for me, right? Like, I've gone to a lot of conferences and it's, it's, it's, you know, and everybody kind of has their thing and their, and, and their focus and their confirmation bias, and they're like, oh, this is how it's done. Yeah. You know, and, and it's like, this is how this is treated, here's how it's done. And, and it has maybe, you know, it's just like, oh, everything's a thyroid problem. And if you just fix the thyroid, you know, and then, and then the other person's like, no, everything is a gut problem. Yep. And then, you know, everything's a, you know, it's like, oh, we gotta align the spine. Yep. Right. And I had, so we, we, we learned manipulation in school as well, and we had physicians like that, that they were just kind of like, they had their tunnel vision on their one thing. And I think for me it was always about being eclectic. The first naturopathic physician was Benedict Lust, and he was very eclectic. He was an md a do a dc and he started the first naturopathic medical school Wow. After he was healed by this, this German priest slash physician named Father Knight. And I always, I always thought, well, you know, I want to be eclectic. I want to be able to see things, you know, from, from that like, you know, 30,000 foot view Yeah. Where I can step back and kind of see all the moving parts here and then put the puzzle together. Yep. And, and, you know, I clearly not everybody, every physician is able to do that. That was one thing that was just inspiring to me, that I wanted to kind of be able to try to put those moving parts together. So in my education, you know, of course I'm gonna always listen to that guy who says, this is, this is how you treat this condition, and, and this is what you need to focus on, this one little thing. And then I go to the next Person. And the that person says, no, it's this. And I'm like, well, maybe it's, maybe maybe both. Maybe it could be either. So I always took, you know, it's like, I'm not gonna throw the baby out with a bathwater. Both of those are good directions. So I would say in general, say like an autoimmune patient comes in and, and you know, this could be like a lupus or a, a, a Sjogren's, scleroderma, you know, ms. They're all kind of different. Hashimoto's you know, a lot of people out there with autoimmune issues in our Western world. Well, usually I look at it all the same. So in my, in my intake, I'm gonna be looking for I'm gonna be looking, well, of course I'm looking for mental emotional stress. Right. Thing. I love you. Put that first. Sorry, can I just pause that shows experience and paying attention as a practitioner. Yeah.'cause most people would go right to the supplement protocol or to whatever. Yeah. Or just like a protocol, right? Yes. You know, and, but that is the most important. That's a, that's a huge piece. Yeah. Yeah. Huge piece. Right? And when you were working with me mm-hmm. that was one of the biggest pieces. So later on in the episode, we'll talk a little bit about p r P injections, but I was having massive pain. I mean, I. Massive pain in my neck and shoulders and my hands were getting all discoordinated. And I remember you were doing injections that would usually work to relieve all this. And I just remember, but there was some deeper well too. I remember your tone. I remember like your words and your face. iT's kind of ingrained in my mind.'cause at the time I didn't know how to stop working. Like for me, there was so much other stress and trauma that I was dealing with. Mm-hmm. that work was the island of safety. Oh. That's where I knew where I belong. Yeah. That's where people said thank you. That's where you're like numbed with work. Yes. Yes. Especially because in our profession we help people. Yeah. So I thought if I don't know what is going on anywhere else in my life, at least I'm gonna step in that adjusting room. And here I know what is happening. Yeah. What is, you know, what I can do to make a difference, but Absolutely. So I didn't really know how to stop working and this neck arm, really interesting arm and elbows and hands that was stopping me from working. So I just wanted you to fix it. That's what I wanted you to do. Yeah. And, and to be honest, maybe I could have been guilty of just like, well, let's just go straight to this. But when, when there was deeper seated issues, you talked to me about it, but we had to Yeah, we had to figure that out. Yeah. Kind of, you know, step by step. But you looked at me and said, have a crystal ball. Yeah. No, you looked at me and you were like, There is something else going on here. Yeah. I know that you are doing everything that you can do. These injections would usually work in this way. I've seen this so many other times. There is something else, Becca. Mm-hmm. And then you started talking to me about my stress and I started crying. And you probably get a lot of crying people in your office And you were like, sometimes you're like somewhere there has, there has, there has to be a place where you prioritize your health. Like this is not going to improve until you prioritize yourself. Mm-hmm. and I, that was one of the first times it really hit me that not prioritizing myself, not just my health. Like health to me at the time was like, oh, what do I exercise? What do I take as a supplement? How early am I getting up to make sure I get all these things done? But prioritizing myself in front of even my health was the reason that I took some time off and has kind of been a running theme in what has helped me better. Yeah. That's amazing. So I love you put that first. So it was a good, but yeah, so, so, so that mental emotional piece is really important. Everybody has traumas, right? And those traumas can build, narratives. Those traumas can, can build reactions that put us into high cortisol states. Cortisol is, is that hormone that comes from the adrenals, as you know. And high cortisol levels have been shown to be more detrimental than smoking in, in studies, but high cortisol levels can be very immunosuppressive so they can suppress the immune system. When you have a patient that has high cortisol states from, from an old trauma. You, you, you know, it's, it's not like you can just be like, oh, you need to stop stressing out and, and you wish it, which is what people say. We all wish it was that easy. I wish I could tell myself to do the same. Right. Stop. Just stop stressing. And I had a conversation about this yesterday. Mm-hmm. someone was dealing with some big P T S D and the advice in her family was like, you just need to let that go. You just need to, yeah. Let it go. Oh, easy for you say buddy. I'm like, that's detrimental advice I think. Yeah. I would like to pause before we keep going.'cause Wow, when I think about it, that's so obviously true that high cortisol, Would be worse for your health than smoking. Mm-hmm. But we don't really think about that. High cortisol comes from stress. And in our kind of stress culture, it's almost like the more stressed you are, the more badges you get. Like you must be doing something really productive and really amazing. Yeah, true But if we were giving, we don't give out badges. Like the more cigarettes you have in your mouth at once. I'm, I'm gonna remembering that part more detrimental than smoking, but hold on.'cause there's actually a, a little bit of a caveat here. So, so stress is how we grow, right? So if we want to go to the gym and grow our bicep, what do we do? We stress our bicep. Mm-hmm. Stress plus rest equals growth. Ah, so here's an interesting thing, and there's a podcast that hopefully your listeners can, can, can watch. This is a Ted Talk, actually. It's by Dr. Kelly McGonigal. She's from Stanford. She writes a really cool book called The Willpower, instinct. She talked in this TED Talk. It's, it's called, how to make stress Your Friend. Oh, I don't remember. Wonderful. Okay, so how to make stress your Friend. And basically what she talks about is that it is not the stress that kills us, it's the perception of the stress. I have read a book. She might have written the other one that's, or their friends or fellow researchers or something that was. Get on about that Uhhuh. Yeah. Because stress is how we grow. So emotional stress is actually not the problem. It's when we're kicking and screaming and hating it and, and hating life and saying, why me? Right. And, and get from me. Or not knowing to, to do about it. Like being on the merry-go-round of something that you don't know what tos like that was mine. I don't know how to fix it, so I'll just go to work. Yeah. So I think of it like we're on this river and this current is always going and you can't stop the current. And, and sometimes we hit these rocks and, and we crash and, and then we have to get back in the boat and keep going. Well, some people get back in the boat and they just start to kick and scream and try to stop the current, and then the next time the rock comes, they hit the rock again and they just never, they never learn. Those, those people will have very high cortisol levels. And by the way, and I'm not saying these, like, I'm not looking at these people judging. I do the same thing. Yeah. Sometimes I'm going through a stressor and I'm kicking and screaming and I'm trying to stop the current. Yeah. Other times I'm like, wait a second, I hit that rock. Let me get in the boat and, and learn perspective and learn how to steer away from that rock. Next I, next time I see the same obstacle. Thank you for highlighting that. Yeah. So this, this truthfully is big. Truthfully, I think I've noticed for me some of my stressors are. I learned there's a river, I learned how to navigate. I'm like meditating and resting, and I think, okay, I've got this handled now. Mm-hmm. like, so the next stressor, I'm gonna be fine. I know what to do. And when it knocks me out of the boat, I'm kind of surprised, I think, like I learned how to handle this stress once, like shouldn't I be done now? Yeah. And that's, I've, I've noticed.'cause I'm a perpetual, no, I want it to be this way. Yeah. Person. That, that has been one of most detrimental and one of the things that's helped me the most mm-hmm. is trying to learn how to be in the current. Yeah. And, and so it's perspective, right? So, so again, there's so many studies on this subject and it, it gets quite confusing and sometimes we just have to infer from data. But there's, there's a lot of data showing, like, you know, when people are working and they're holding their breath, that it's extremely detrimental to their health when they're working and holding their breath. But then if you take an athlete and you say, okay, you're gonna purposely hold your breath as you run, and that actually increases oxygen utilization and increases VO O two max. So they're both holding their breath one's doing it subconsciously in a stressed out way. The other one is purposely putting that stressor on and then giving themselves rest. their physiology grows in a productive way. So in many ways it's, it's, it's the, it's the, it's our perception of these stressors. So if we can change our perception of the stress that, that we're going through and, and use it as an obstacle, to grow our character, then those high cortisol states don't exist. And, and we're able to have a healthy relationship with that. And we don't start to degenerate. But when you kick and scream and you don't wanna, and you don't want to be here, your body finds a way to degenerate quickly. And so that's one interesting point of the stress that we're always looking at. But that's one, that's one aspect. You know, where we're looking for big T traumas, little t traumas. Many patients don't have that. That's not, that's not what put them in the situation. So then we're looking into gut health. Now in the gut we're looking at the microbiome, right? So if you're in, if you're in an in inflammatory state, 70 to 80% of your immune system in the gut. So we're looking at the microbiome. So I just treated a, a psoriatic arthritis patient the other day. I get stool tests back every day and I look at these different patients. And the psoriatic arthritis patient had almost no microbiome. So the microbiome is just the bacterias in our gut, right? So they're the balance. And some patients will know this. Some, some of your listeners may know what that is, but just the, the collection of bacterias, you want these collection, the, the collection of bacterias to be balanced. Well, some people are just straight deficient. When you're deficient, there's nothing communicating to your immune system to keep it in check. So that immune system is just hypersensitive to everything. Can become hypersensitive to the foods, it can become hypersensitive to anything, you know, in, in your joints. You know, with rheumatoid arthritis patients, we'll see, they'll, they'll check the,, the microbes in your mouth and they will find, oftentimes the same microns in your mouth are existing in your synovial fluid of your knee. Wow, I didn't know that. And, and, and then, and, and then those are patients with rheumatoid arthritis where the immune system flares on the knee. And so Kind of interesting that these microbes actually are kind of getting into other places of the body. And if your immune system isn't tuned because you don't have a microbiome, it just starts reacting really, you know, pretty strongly to different parts of your body. I think it's so amazing to think about how it's the bacteria and the viruses in our gut. Yeah. That can create the health. We're used to thinking about bacteria, viruses being something we should fight, but no, like they, they create and that's the network as long as we have also the ones that are creating a network that we want. Yeah. You know, this is a scary thing with Covid because we've gone, you know, I mean in the agrarian age, we were probably a little bit excessive in the bacteria front, right? Like you'd bathe your kids in this nasty water with bacteria, fested water, and yeah, kids would get sick of bacterial in illnesses and they were like, what's the bacteria? But now we've gone to over sterilization. Yeah. And this is another problem. I would say the two most deficient microbiomes I've ever seen were both one lady who, who cleans, who, who cleans houses. The other lady cleaned industrial buildings for a living. Mm-hmm. So they both had almost zero microbiome. Their healthy microbiome was just not there. Just like low, low, low, everything low. And, and that's a, those are people with immune systems that just super touchy. Yeah. Right. So if we build a microbiome so always, and, and we can talk more about how to build a microbiome, but building the microbiome is massively important. And those gut infections are massively, massively important. I see all sorts of bacterias, parasites, and yeast as the cause or causal agent to like so many autoimmune issues. Yeah. Or gut issues. Yeah. Or, or you know, Crohn's, ulcerative colitis or, even migraines and, and all sorts of neurological conditions. So that'd be number two. Then food reactions. So this is also very, very big and, and we have changed the way we farm a lot of these foods, but our microbiome has also changed a drastic amount. So the way we react to foods is changing. So wheat, dairy are probably the main foods that people react to, but oftentimes it isn't enough to just be like, well, let's just get off wheat. Let's just get off dairy. Oftentimes it's, no, we gotta dig a little deeper. What's the microbiome doing? You know, and the microbiome can be overgrown in the small intestine. It can also be an upper GI issue like sibo, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. So when that happens, there's a lot of bloating associated with that. And they can have autoimmune issues, or they can have, you know, mast cell activation syndrome, which is like, they just have tons of histamine. Right? And so a lot of your, a lot of people that are probably listening just feel like they react to everything in sight. That would be, that could be a microbiome issue. So I know I have listeners that are reacting that way. Mm-hmm. in fact, one of the biggest frustrations for men and women that I talk to is like, I am doing all this stuff with my diet. I have not had gluten, I have not had dairy. I'm trying to stay away from sugar. Yeah. Still every time food touches my belly, I bloat no matter what food. No matter what food. Yeah. And they're like, I'm exercising. It's not like I'm like eating chips all the time, but my belly is so big and it hurts. Yep. So you, it's like, I know there's people still a little deeper. Dig into that. And, and then when it comes to sibo, one of the most important parts is the vagus nerve. Yes. And that's a cranial nerve that comes from the brain, goes down through here, through your neck, and then connects to your heart. Bunch of prongs go off, connect to your heart, and then a bunch of prongs onto your gut. And that vagus nerve is telling the gut to do this normal peristalsis, which is movement down to, to kind of get, you know, the, the basically push a bowel movement, right? But if that vagus nerve is not firing, that vagus nerve may not be firing because, you know, they, you know, they're, they're stressed out, right? If we're a cave man or a woman and there's a tiger roaming about, you don't want to have a nice relaxing bowel movement. You need to get that, you need to get it either constipate, you want, you wanna be constipated so you don't have Yeah. Bowel movement so you can survive. Or it's just quick so you can just get your business done quick and get back in, in, into shelter. anD so that's what happens is, is we, we basically Are sending signals that there's a tiger roaming about. So let's, let's shut that vagus nerve down and if we shut it down from that side, eventually the microbes overgrow in the small intestine. And now that signal is going both ways. That signal from the gut is saying, Hey, we don't need the vagus nerve. And then he it from the brain. It's saying, Hey, you know, it's not time to have this relaxing digestion. Right. Not to mention by the way that, that, that tiger roaming about theory is, is raising cortisol levels. Right. And lowering a female's progesterone levels. Hold on before we go to this side, which is huge. Just wanna say, this is why I love working with you. Mm-hmm. because I was thinking when I,'cause I had sibo verified SIBO and had pathogenic bacteria in my gut. And I had been on all kinds of specialty diets, but still I was bloating all the time. And the vagus nerve activation, the, yeah. Learning how to work with my nervous system to calm it down. That was the biggest thing. In fact. Huge. Huge. So I know there's different breath work, there's different points to do mm-hmm. And there's lots of stuff you can do to bring your nervous system back in regulation. But I even still Now if I am stressing and moving about my day quickly mm-hmm. and I don't stop to calm myself before I eat. Like if I'm shoving food in on my way to somewhere else. Exactly. It will not digest. Yeah. It just sits there. I like, might as well just be skipping the nutrition part. I'm going straight to the bloat part. Yeah. So thank you so much for addressing it, because I think that is vital. Yeah. And you're right, people need to sit down. They need to eat, not eat on the run. This is part of like the, you know, the people that live in the Mediterranean, the blue zone that lives so long. Part of their lifestyle is, of course it's eating really healthy foods, but they also have a very strong culture about sitting down. Yeah. With friends and family enjoying mills. You know, it's like, I, I'm, I'm not a huge, I'm not a, I'm, I'm not super, super sensitive, but I do, I am sensitive to dairy and it's interesting. I, I try to avoid dairy most of the time, but for me it's like I can get away with it. So I have a little leeway there and I, so I'll have maybe ice cream every once. Mm-hmm. once every, you know, two months or so, I'll, I'll eat a little ice cream and if I'm really relaxed and I watch the portion, I actually can fly that right under the radar digest. Fine. No issues. If I eat, I mean, if I eat most things on a stressed out gut, I can't digest it. Yep. But dairy will tear me apart if I'm stressed and eating it. And I had to learn that the hard way.'cause I used to have to have a dairy Queen blizzard, you know? Yep. And, and so I had to go, like, I had to go twice a week.'cause it was, it was my, it was my numbing. All the congratulatory foods or ones I am Yeah. I don't do it with, so when, when I go out of the country, which I've been on like a few retreats mm-hmm. and I know that's probably fewer pesticides, it's probably less stress, it's probably whatever. If I am, we went to England on a writer's retreat and by day three, I could eat whatever I wanted in Bolivia. Yeah. Well, that's interesting. Bolivia, when I went, I was so sensitive to foods, I was nervous. I wasn't gonna be able to eat anything. Uhhuh like the bottom half of my suitcase was all hypoallergenic powders and Yeah. So everything, you had something there. Yeah. But by day you could just, you're like, Hey, I mean, totally. I eat anything. Yeah. They'd like pick a mango out of their backyard, peel it, give it to me. I felt Yeah. And you're like, what's different about this? Amazing. Well, so, so this is something I hear all the time. Yeah. People go to Europe and they're like, they, they eat the wheat and they eat the dairy.'cause they're just like, they're on vacation and they're with family and they's pressure and they go to a restaurant and they're like, ah, whatever. I'll just eat it. And then they come back and they're like, I thought I wasn't reactive anymore. So I was super, I was super stoked. So I came home and I started eating dairy and wheat and then yeah, like, yeah, two seconds later they're back to square one and not feeling great with it. And by the way, a lot of the goal is not necessarily that we are never able to eat. These foods ever again, the goal is to build the microbiome and get the microbiome, changed enough that, that you start to digest foods normally and that you can start to add little bits of those foods. That doesn't happen every time. A lot of patients, you know, because of circumstances or whatever else, there's complexities. They may never be able to eat wheat again. They may never eat dairy again. Obviously people have celiac disease where they have quite a strong reaction to, to wheat. So they just frankly just never get back to eating wheat. But I would love for all patients to be able to eat some wheat, but I still want it to be eaten in a healthy way. Right. Yeah. I don't really want, I, I mean, I think that we should be aware that most commercial wheat is sprayed with glyphosate. Yep. Wheat is not a genetically modified food, but is sprayed with glyphosate as a drying agent so they can, they can get it into their turbines a little better when they're harvesting it. They want to dry it, so it, it breaks off the stem a lot easier than a green, a green healthy stem, you know, just fall down. So, so we, we have a lot of glyphosate and, and since about 2015, we've known that glyphosate's pretty toxic to our microbiome. And their argument has always been, well, we lack the shiga mate pathway to our cells. So we're not, it doesn't, it's not toxic to humans. Well, we have microbes. Yeah. And this, these microbes, by the way, have been considered in, in research to be a separate organ. Like we will discuss them as a separate organ, like the new organ. You know, there's lots of research saying the new organ, the microbiome, the new organ. And we have maybe two to five pounds of this, of this bacteria that is in constant communication with our immune system. And so, going back to the Yes, the, the, the food reactions, which would be the third thing. So, so food reactions are huge, and you will find people get off those food reactions and their inflammation goes down. But like I said, not always, not, it's not always as easy as saying, oh, just go off wheat. Sometimes we have to go and, and heal the, the gut and the microbiome and what we'd call the leak, you know, leaky gut. Yeah. Which we, we didn't technically mention, but it's all part of the gut. And a lot of your listeners, I'm sure have heard of leaky gut. Mm-hmm. So we, we do a lot of things to kind of heal that in our gut program., I would say the other thing, the, maybe the fourth thing would be viruses, and other pathogens that exist outside. So sometimes I will find a patient that says, Hey, you know, when I was young, I had this strep throat infection and, Always came back and they got my tonsils out and, and I finally was kind of, I was, I was Okay. And, and what happens was strep too, is strep can sit in a cell wall deficient, state where, you know, when we use, we use beta-lactams antibiotics to kill strep, and they're going after the cell wall, but strep can mutate to, to hide from, from a beta lactam antibiotic. It's not wild. Yeah. And so then they can persist with strep For years and years. I've treated patients, with pandas. This is, this is kids with pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric, neuropsychiatric syndrome associated with strep pandas. Wow. I think maybe some of your listeners have heard of that, but they, they tend to look like they, they'll tend to be diagnosed with autism, but they're very o c d, very, very high anxiety. You know, they have like really unique things, like their handwriting is really, really poor. And when you treat them, their handwriting goes back to really uniformed. so their handwriting will be really, really large and not in this, not within the lines. It's like sideways on the page. With one of these kids, we found out that he had strep, he had a strep throat when he was a kid, and he was never treated. And by the time they took him to the doctor, it was kind of over. So the doc's like, oh, I guess it's over. But from that point on, he started having a little bit more anxiety and got worse and got worse. And then all of a sudden it progressed to, to the point where it was like, oh, you know, your, your son has autism, we think and has a D H D and O C D. And just diagnose, diagnose him with everything in the book. I found out he had a strep infection, treated the strep infection, and his O C D went away a hundred percent., his anxiety went down by over 80%.,And, and his writing was actually incredible. It was, it was right within the lines, you know, and, and very organized. And that one, and literally a month before his writing was like all over the page, really big, taking up three lines and then sideways. That is amazing. I mean, the life that I. Can be changed. Mm-hmm. Right? When you find what's really causing, actually causing it, the root. Yeah. I mean, I know people with O C D and I know people with all those different, to, to be able to find something that can give him an entirely different life. Yeah. I think that's why it's worth the artistry and the learning and the constant reading of books. Yeah. To try to figure out what it is. That's, it's fascinating to think about the untreated diseases because like with strep, sometimes you can heal and it's not a big deal and sometimes you can't, as it turns out, part big part of mine was Lyme disease that I didn't know I had mm-hmm. and I had no idea. Mm-hmm. I didn't get any kind of bullseye rash. I was 17, so I wouldn't have even known what to look for. Yeah. But I have met quite a few people that an underlying infection was the thing. Was the thing. So, and it's not showing up on normal paperwork. Yep. It's not showing, I mean, blood work, it's not showing. Absolutely. Yeah. So, and, and Lyme's kind of the same thing. Epstein-Barr virus. Yep. Cytal mag cytomegalovirus. Yep. Herpes simplex six. We look at chlamydia pneumonia. Mycoplasm pneumonia. We go on, there's a bunch of viruses and bacterias that can persist after an infection. And how do you find them? You have, you do different tests. Yeah, we do tests than a traditional medical doctor would do. Right. Yeah. I just, I just have a bunch of antibody tests and, and so I will go searching for those things. But then again, of course I've seen times with autoimmune issues or, or other issues where there's an old infected tooth. Yeah. You know, how many times have I seen a patient where they say, man, this, this old root canal just is bothering me, but every time I go to the dentist and they do an x-ray and they say, oh, it looks fine. Yeah. And I, and, and so, you know, I've had many times where I say, well go back to your dentist then, and, and, and, and just say, this tooth is bothering me actually. Like, it's, it's, it's, it's bigger than just, oh, it's fine. It's, there's something wrong here. And that dentist will open that tooth up and pus flies out of that tooth. Yeah. Oh X-rays. My gosh. Can I just, X-rays say X-rays. Don't always catch those things. You asked me about my teeth. Mm-hmm. when I first started with you. So I started with you years before I really crashed. Mm-hmm. And you said, tell me about your teeth. Like what are your gums doing?'cause you were looking at me in that way. I know doctors look at me now, because I, I've learned stuff and I remember thinking, why is he asking about my teeth? And you said lots of times with autoimmune or some underlying something, you'll be having problems with your gums. Yeah. I started to get fistulas that would just open. So fistulas are, you know, but the holes, the, like that your body creates so you can get puss out. Yeah. And it happened like three times and by the time I could get to the dentist, everything looked fine. Mm-hmm. we took x-rays, we couldn't find anything. So, it was part of Geir behest that I did, thermography. So I went to St. George Thermography. Yeah. And we found a red line, which was infection or heat. Yeah. Straight from my jaw down into my chest. And from my jaw up into my brain, I went to a, holistic PR dentistry practitioner up north. Yeah. This is Dr. Robert Roberton Robertson. Uhhuh He opened it up and in, it was under from where my wisdom teeth were in all four areas of my wisdom teeth. Mm-hmm. I had infections that had eaten the bone all the way down to the nerve. When he opened that up, the smell of sulfur was like, Well, it made you wanna like knock out everybody in the room. He cleaned it all out, but it was so the bacteria were secreting toxins that were going through that nerve straight into my brain. Yeah. So I'm like, yeah, God. And irritating your brain. Yeah. Right. And, and making a leaky brain barrier, right? Yes. And, and so that is, that's kind of the same idea too, that you'll get with a lot of patients with all sorts of things. But this Pandas case, it's just inflammation that is just persisting and eventually breaks down that barrier and just basically just creates havoc and inflammation in the brain and you kill off those infections, whether it's in the mouth or whether it's in the body. So we're looking for infections all over. Right. Okay. And I'm not saying that these are always easy, it's not always easy to identify root causes. No. And I spend a lot of time with patients to try to figure this out, and, and I just, I hope that, you know, I ask the right questions every time and that we can find them. But infections are a huge part of it. And, you know, there's a bunch of other little things that, that we will see. You know, like the genes make a big difference. M T H F R gene mutations can be a big, big part of it. And a lot of your listeners, I'm sure have heard of the M T H F R gene mutation. Can you put simply what that makes happen? Like what is that? Yeah, so it's a, it's a methylation gene. Methylation is a chemical process that occurs in like 200 biochemical processes in your body. So if you have a gene mutation in the, in the M T H F R gene, one detox pathways are affected because you can't create as good a glutathione. Glutathione is heavily involved with detox pathways. two, you can't create brain chemicals. So you'll oftentimes see a lot of depression and anxiety in these types of patients. And you'll see immune imbalances, methylation is involved in all of those processes. And there's different, there's subtypes. There's these different subtypes of these genes you can have. So getting those evaluated, and, and again, not a lot of doctors will know about these. Yeah. But, but finding those is oftentimes a direction that I will take. you know, of course though, we have to look at all sorts of things. Toxicity is huge too. Yeah. Right. And by the way, the genes, you, you, there's a bunch, there's a whole slew of genes that I will oftentimes be looking at in some of these genes. You can have gene mutations in the glutathione peroxidase system, so they don't detoxify very well, and then they got exposed to a little mold. You know, how, how often have I had a patient that basically said my health was totally normal, and then I went and lived in this house Yep. That I found out later, had mold. And then they, then they start this journey of illness, right? Yep. And, and they, and we say, well, why does that person live in that house? But the spouse didn't get sick. Yeah. Well, we are all very different in our genetic makeup. And so, you know, I've had patients, and I don't mean to be too controversial here, but I've had patients where, you know, after vaccinations they, they, they started having a, an imbalance immune system. And then I have found, when I got their gene report, they have tons of mutations. Like they just happen to be that one person that has a bunch of mutations in their glutathione peroxidase system, multiple genes. And so then understanding that, oh, okay, well we need glutathione, we need detox pathways. So, so it's like, you know, we get a asana, we get, they're doing dandelion root t they're doing milk thistle and, and glutathione of course is the biggest thing. And just finding any way they can keep, toxins out in any way they can open up detox pathways. Yeah. And that's huge. So I, I wanna pause here just to highlight as we're talking about things that can be a root cause there's a time in my life when that seemed really overwhelming. Mm-hmm. like, well, it's hurt, but it can be this or this, or this, or this. And I don't know, it can be anything. Ah, yeah. Frustrating. But now I turn it around in my mind and say to the people who are trying So many things. Mm-hmm. and nothing is working. It can be that you're not at your root cause yet. Right? Yeah. I mean, I had infections in my jaw I didn't know about so, and infections in my gut I didn't know about. So I could be staying away from dairy, but if bacteria or eating the bones in my jaw, I'm gonna be hurting. Yeah. And other people can be, you know, doing other cleanses and drinking plenty of water, but they could have an M T H F R gene that makes it so it's really hard to detox. Yeah. And I think so that's a little more empowering actually. It's like if with what, you know, you still aren't at the vitality level that you wanna be, or you still know that just something isn't right. Mm-hmm. then seeing someone who has the time and the know-how to go in to find the different causes. Yeah. That can be life changing. Yeah. So, so those genes are important. Yeah. And I would say the last thing probably is the endocrine system., of course if we sat here and thought about it, I could probably think of a bunch of little things on the side that often I often am looking for. But the endocrine system is massively important. So if the patient is a male, testosterone levels, yeah. testosterone levels have been under huge threat. With so many lifestyle things, but also just the, chemicals in our foods and you know, water, food, and air. So we have, testosterone levels were recorded on average in 1950 to be 1200. Now they're less than 400. Holy crap, So, and even 1989, they were 6 0 5. So even from 1989, they've steeply declined. And we say, well, what's changed? And we say, okay, you know, we, we are maybe more sedentary. Maybe we, you know, of course we know the high fructose corn syrup and the obesity epidemic, which those are correlations. But I think that, I think the correlation is strong enough to say, well, yeah, that, that did something. But I think that in general sugar that we've put in foods and, and most of that sugar is high fructose corn syrup, but we've caused an epidemic of metabolic issues. So that would be like, you know that's like the obesity epidemic and the high blood sugar and high cholesterol and high high insulin levels. We've caused a lot of that and all of that will, will make our testosterone production really low. Sleep apnea, we never had sleep apnea. Like our ancestors didn't have that. I did not know that. Right. So if you look at old skulls and, and if I had the books in front of me, I'd show you maybe old skulls, but I don't know how well your can would pair up But old skulls have very perfect teeth and they have their wisdom teeth in. They don't have any problems. So they didn't have oral surgeons back in the day that would just go in and take your wisdom teeth out. Right. So they had teeth though. They had a wide crown, wide enough to fit all their teeth and straight. They didn't have toothbrushes, so they would just basically eat foods from the earth and, and they were good and they didn't have the problems that we have in our western world. And so, A lot has changed. And, and West Nate Price had his own observational. It was kind of more of an observational study. He thought it was definitely all due to the nutrition, which I still think is likely part of it. But a lot of it too is just the breathing. We'd become mouth breathers and when we mouth breathe, we, we, we start to create more space so that you can get air through your throat, through, through your mouth. So that narrows the arch, right? So suddenly your arch was really large and now it's just narrowed and you have more space, you know, at the top of the roof of your mouth and it actually deforms your face. Yeah. You know, our jaws become narrow, our noses become bigger. Mm-hmm. and they can actually deform the face of chimpanzees. And they've done this in, in studies where they've plugged their nose and their whole jaw will deform and their nose will get larger and their jaws will narrow. Why do you think we're breathing through our mouths? So I think, I think there's probably a lot of things going on here, and, there's nothing like that's concrete in the data here, so I think. that our food is changing and we're reacting to our food, which causes a lot of congestion. Oh yeah. And then we start breathing through our mouth in, in particular at night when we're, when, when we're just in the subconscious state. And then we start to kind of create that problem and it, and it perpetuates. Now, do I think that nutrition has a part of it? Well, I just said that basically it's the foods and the reactions. So I would say, I know many scientists that don't think this, and there's scientists at Stanford that think, no, it's breathing. It has nothing to do with Western a prices theory. And I think, well, it's probably both. Probably both. But who, you know, we don't know for sure. Nobody knows. but anyways, that is a big time epidemic. So sleep apnea, 80% of people that have sleep apnea are undiagnosed. So asking your spouse, am I snoring at night, asking yourself or your spouse, do I sleep on my back? Mm-hmm. do I breathe through my mouth? Do I wake up with a dry mouth? There's a lot of problems breathing through your mouth at night. You'll reduce oxygen by 18%. You can have more cavities, dental cavities, which nobody likes to go to the dentist, you know? So, you know, there's all sorts of issues there. So I, I catching that is important. Yeah. And we had to stop there to make a cut somewhere on this episode, but we're not done. So pay attention for part two with Dr. John Romney coming on the very next episode. We talk about, dun dun dun, hormones! Testosterone, progesterone, estrogen. All kinds of good stuff having to do with how they affect the liver, the gut, and your microbiome. How leaky gut can have a link with hormone function that might be surprising to you. We talk about menopause, about pre menopause. And what we can do to help during menopause. We talk about hormone replacement therapies, the bad, the good, and what to run from like the plague. We also talk about adrenal fatigue, osteoporosis, sleep. We just basically follow all the trails. Once you start talking about hormones, it branches out into so many different areas of your biochemistry. And there really are some things that can be done to help. Aging. menopause, hormones changing does not have to be hell and I'm grateful to offer the gift of being able to talk with someone who knows about them very well. So look forward to part two and thank you for joining us today. See you next time.