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Let's Talk Wellness Now
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Deep Health, Real Answers - hosted by Dr. Deb
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Episode 256 – How Peptides Work, Benefits, and FDA-Approved vs Off-Label Use Explained
Feb 2700:41:38Tap to summarizeDr. Deb Muth What if the reason you’re not healing isn’t that you need another diagnosis? 0:08 It’s that your cells aren’t receiving the right signals. Because the body doesn’t run on diagnosis, it runs on 0:16 communication. And peptides are one of the most powerful, most misunderstood 0:21 tools we have for cellular signaling, immune balance, tissue repair, gut 0:27 lining support, metabolic control, brain signaling, sleep cycles, and even sexual 0:35 wellness. Today, I’m going to do what most people won’t. Define peptides in 0:41 plain English for you. break them into categories by what they’re best at and 0:47 tell you which ones are FDA approved on the list and which ones are commonly 0:53 used off label or investigational with the evidence that actually says these 1:00 work. This is going to be a powerful episode and if you’ve ever felt like you’re hearing hype without clarity, 1:07 this one’s for you. So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee or tea and settle in 1:13 as we talk about peptides that can fit into your healing journey. We’re going 1:19 to have a short word from our sponsor. You know, we got to do that. That’s how we stay on the air here. So, we will be 1:26 right back after this. Did you know sweating can literally heal your cells? 1:32I nfrared saunas don’t just relax you. They detox your body, balance hormones, 1:37 and boost mitochondrial energy. I’m obsessed with my health tech sauna. And 1:42 right now, you can save $500 with my code at healthtechalth.com/drmuthqen25. 1:54 All right, here we go, guys. I am excited to dive into peptides with you. 2:00 So understanding peptides is foundational, right? And I’ve been 2:06 studying peptides now for about nine years. Um, and I find that they are 2:13 incredible. Um, so I want to break down for you what peptides actually are, what 2:19 they do, and some of the top peptides that are available today, and how they 2:25 can be utilized. Because I think it’s really important. And I think it’s it’s there’s a lot of confusion out there about what these things actually are and 2:32 are they safe? Are they not? When do we use them? What’s the science behind them? So, we’re going to dive in and 2:38 we’re going to talk about all things peptides. So, let’s get ready here. Here we go. So, peptides are short chains of 2:45 amino acids and they typically range anywhere from 2 to 50 amino acids and 2:51 they’re linked by peptide bonds. So think of them as the superglue that holds the amino acids together. They sit 2:58 between the amino acids and they are full proteins in terms of their size and 3:04 their complex structure. And what makes peptides particularly interesting in 3:10 medicine is their role as signaling molecules. They’re essentially the 3:15 body’s text messages carrying specific instructions to cells and tissues. And 3:21 unlike our proteins which often serve as structural roles or act as enzymes, 3:28 peptides typically function as hormones, neurotransmitters and growth factors and 3:33 they bind to specific receptors on the cell’s surfaces or within the cells and 3:39 they trigger this effect. It’s like a cascade effect of a biochemical reaction 3:45 that ultimately changes the cellular behavior. So basically, it’s changing 3:50 the way the body’s cell structure acts. And this is why peptides can be so 3:56 incredibly powerful and therapeutic when you introduce the right peptide signal. 4:02 Now, you could theoretically redirect cellular processes toward healing, 4:07 towards metabolism, immune balance, tissue repair. Any of those things can 4:14 be manipulated to do a certain thing once we add the peptide. The challenge 4:19 in peptide medicine though lies in distinguishing between those peptides that have been rigorously studied, 4:26 proven safe and effective and approved by regulatory bodies like the FDA versus 4:31 those that exist in what we call the gray zone of a promising clinical data. 4:36 But they really lack human validation so far. And this distinction is critical because the presence of a plausible 4:43 mechanism does not guarantee safety or efficacy in living humans. So, this is 4:50 really important and we’re going to dive in and look at some of the research on all of these different peptides that are 4:56 available and I’m excited to say there’s some amazing peptides being studied right now that unfortunately are not 5:01 available. But I can’t wait to see them hit the market for us because it is going to be a gamecher as far as health 5:09 and longevity. So there is a quality control issue and there is a hidden 5:14 variable in peptide medicine with this and it’s one of the most underappreciated aspects of peptide 5:21 therapy particularly for non-FDA approved peptides. It’s quality control. 5:26 When we discuss pharmaceutical medicines, we take for granted that the pill contains what the label says. Not 5:32 always true depending on where it comes from. You guys, if you’ve heard my episodes before talk about how many of our medications are made in China and 5:41 have been contaminated with other things, you will realize that that is not always true. So, just because it has 5:48 the FDA stamp of approval on the medication, it still does not necessarily mean it’s safe and we still 5:54 need to do our homework on it. So, sorry for digressing on you guys, but you know, when we get a medication, we we 6:00 think that what the amount says is what is there, doesn’t have contaminants, it’s manufactured with good 6:06 manufacturing practices. You’ll see that listed as GMP on the bottle, and it’s been stored properly, it’s been 6:12 maintained stable, and with research peptides and compounded formulations, 6:17 none of this can be assumed. So, I will share a story with you. There was a gentleman that was purchasing these 6:24 peptides online from a research facility and um did not know that they were 6:30 coming from China and he was ordering a particular growth hormone peptide and 6:35 after a little while he had he had done fine for the few first few bottles. After a little while he started having 6:42 some complications. He started getting really irritable and angry and ragy and 6:47 he didn’t quite know what was going on. And so he decided to go get some testing done. He had some blood testing done and 6:53 his testosterone level was over 5,000. So for those of you who know what testosterone level should be for a guy, 7:00 they really shouldn’t be any higher than about 1,00200 would be absolute max that we’d want to see. Now he was taking 7:06 testosterone but not to that degree. And prior to adding this peptide, his 7:12 testosterone was very stable. What they ended up finding out was the peptide that he was getting, whoever was 7:18 manufacturing it added testosterone to the peptide. They felt like if if it had growth hormone, that was great, but if 7:25 it had growth hormone and tes testosterone, all the better. And he didn’t know that. And this is the <p class="wp-block-par...
Transcribe →Episode 255 – Advancements in naturopathic medicine and whole-body healing
Feb 200:50:25Tap to summarizeDr. Deb Muth 0:03Welcome back to let’s Talk Wellness. Now, I’m your host, Dr. Deb. If you’re a woman who’s doing everything right, eating clean, exercising, taking supplements, yet you still feel exhausted, inflamed, or like your body suddenly stopped cooperating, this episode is for you. Today’s conversation challenges one of the biggest myths in women’s health. That midlife struggles are just about hormones or worse, just part of aging. My guest today is Dr. Deb Heald, a naturopathic physician with one of the most fascinating backgrounds I’ve ever encountered. Yeah, she’s got a really diverse background, which is kind of exciting. She’s been an ER nurse, a stockbroker, a Silicon Valley data analysis, teaching machines to learn from microbiome research. And yes, she holds an mba, too. But it was her own menopause crash that changed everything. When the protocols she had been teaching stopped working for her, her, she didn’t double down on templates or trends. She did what she was trained to do. She followed the data and what she discovered reframed menopause, metabolism and women’s longevity in a completely different way. This isn’t about willpower. It’s not about another diet, and it’s definitely not about copying what worked for someone else. It’s about learning to listen to your body and finally understanding what it’s been trying to tell you and all along. So grab your cup of coffee or tea, settle in, and let’s dive into this amazing conversation about women’s health and menopause. And right after our guest is arriving with us, we’re going to get a word from our sponsor quick here. And then we are going to come right back to having this conversation with Dr. Deb Heald. Ladies, it’s time to reignite your vitality. Primal Queen supplements are clean, powerful formulas made for women like you who want balance, strength, and energy that lasts. Get 25% off@primal queen.com Serenity Health. Because every queen deserves to feel in her prime. But okay. All right. Welcome back, everybody. I am here with my new friend, Dr. Deb Heald. And she has such an amazing background, like I shared with you a few minutes ago. But I would love for her to give us her insight in how she got where she did, because it’s rare that you find somebody with a data background and a medical background. So, Dr. Dove, welcome. Dr Deb Heald 2:30Thank you. I am so glad to be here, and it’s a real privilege to meet you. Dr. Deb Muth 2:34I feel the same way. Dr Deb Heald 2:35Yeah, it’s. I think that the more of us that start to think and practice this way, the easier it’s going to be for women going forward. Because it’s not easy. Dr. Deb Muth 2:44It is not easy. I mean, I’ve been in this industry a long time, over 25 years. And every time I think it’s getting easy, it’s getting harder for a variety of reasons. It’s the medical system, it’s the. The clients we work with are sicker. It’s taking longer to get them to a place where they feel good. There’s just so many variables these days. So tell me a little bit about what got you here. Dr Deb Heald 3:06Well, I made the decision when I was graduating from high school to be a nurse instead of a teacher, because those were really still the two options that were common for women. I thought about medicine at that point, but my sister convinced me that if I would spend all that time learning and practicing medicine, I might not be as good of a mom. So I took the path of nurse, because nurse works around kids schedules and that sort of thing. I’d only been practicing about six months before I thought, oh my gosh, there has to be more to it than this, and toyed with the idea of starting med school at that point, but then married and started having children, and I just sort of fell into that pattern. But I typically work emergency room. There was a short stent in the post anesthesia recovery room as well. And emergency room was a place where western medicine actually shone. Right. People come in, they are no longer capable of functioning, they’re having a heart attack, they lost limb. Whatever else, they do need the, the bells and the whistles of western medicine. But when you think about it, western medicine was derived out of the Civil War where you didn’t have to say what’s the cause of the problem. It was a bullet or a bayonet, and it was, it was about patching up the soldiers and getting them back on the front line so they could continue to fight. And naturopathic medicine, which had been a lot around for an awful lot longer than that, just didn’t work in the battlefield then. The assessment was done in the early 1900s as to which style of medicine got people back to work faster. The Flexner report was all about how corporations could maximize the value of employees. And naturopathic medicine didn’t win because nutritional fixes take a long time. Taking away somebody’s stress so that they can just function more capably is. It’s a, It’s a big ask, right? So the funding of naturopathic medicine went away and western medicine became all that we knew. So in context to the emergency room, it worked. But when I saw the same person coming in, having their third heart attack, I just thought, how is this happening? Has no one told this person what, what’s going on in their lifestyle that’s creating this environment for them to continue to have heart attacks? And so that’s when I made the switch. And that was after 17 years in practice as a nurse to head on over to the naturopathic side. There was a little bit of a, a segue there, but we’d need a much longer interview to get into the details of that. I was a stock broker for six years. Anyway, when I jumped into the idea of med school, it didn’t make sense to be practicing the same thing that was already being practiced because I saw where it worked and I saw where it was failing. So hopped into the naturopathic tract. I also had one child that had a lot of physical and emotional ailments that western medicine couldn’t solve. Their answer to everything was putting her on amoxicillin. And I, I just absolutely could not convince the medical system that she didn’t have a deficiency of antibiotics, but that was their only solution. And so while she was on the antibiotics, her sinuses were clear, her sleep apnea was not an issue, and she appeared better, but her microbiome got decimated. She was on antibiotics for seven years. So, yeah, so my pursuit down the naturopathic pathway was in large part to try and figure out what else could be done for my daughter. And I did take her to a naturopath or I embarked on the field myself. And her GP threatened to call social services. Oh my gosh, yes. Dr. Deb Muth 6:22You hear these stories, I’ve heard these stories from clients before over really dumb things that they’re going to call CPS for. And it always blows my mind that we think it’s appropriate to call CPS on somebody who’s truly not injuring their child. Dr Deb Heald 6:38So anyway, that started my 17 year path in the naturopathic realm. And after, after I’ve been in practice about 10 years, an opportunity came up to move to Silicon Valley and research the microbiome and then take what we were learning from the microbiome and program it into AI. So I did that for a few years and it was amazing. There was a huge disconnect between the funding model and what its expectations were and what the research was able to do. There was a time gap, there was a funding gap. And so I thought, medicine doesn’t understand what’s important to business. And Business isn’t understanding what’s critical to research. So I went and did my MBA and wanted to be able to be the translator between those two worlds. And then the pandemic hit and then. Dr. Deb Muth 7:24Everyone’S life got turned upside down, right? Dr Deb Heald 7:26Yeah. Yeah. So I’m back in private practice. My, my practice always tended to be more autoimmune focused, which is predominantly women and predominantly middle aged women. But through my own experience of menopause and looking at how I assisted people that were in menopause before I was, you know, that the success rate wasn’t as high as it needed to be. And I started to really drill down into the biochemistry behind what was going on and then also realized that my menopause was very different than even my sister’s menopause. There we were, the same genetic template, the same lived environment, though very different lived experiences in that environment. And realized that we have to find ways to make it relevant to the person in front of us. And it’s not so much which herbs will or won’t work historically, it’s how is this person’s body responding in the immediate term to the diet we’ve put them on, to the nutritional plan we’ve suggested to the supplements, and because we’ve come so far in the data world, our whoop straps or aura rings or whatever else, there’s so many devices that are actually able to let us know whether somebody’s burning carbs or fat in this moment or ketones. We can se...
Transcribe →Episode 254 – Beyond the Diagnosis: Healing in a Post-Diagnosis Era
Jan 2900:30:27Tap to summarizeDr. Deb Muth 0:03There’s a quiet shift happening in healthcare right now, and most doctors aren’t talking about it yet. People aren’t chasing diagnoses anymore. They’re exhausted by them. I see it every single day in my clinic. People who come in with stacks of paperwork, portals full of results, and a list of diagnoses longer than their grocery receipt, yet they’re still not living their lives. And they’ll say to me, Dr. Deb, I don’t want another label. Dr. Deb Muth 0:32 I just want my life back. If you’ve ever been told this is just how your body is, if you’ve been diagnosed, rediagnosed, and then dismissed, if you’ve been handed labels but never handed a roadmap, today’s episode is for you. Because we are officially entering what I call the post diagnosis era and it’s changing everything about how healing actually happens. So grab your cup of coffee or tea and let’s settle in to let’s talk wellness. Now, before we dive in, we need to take a quick pause to thank today’s sponsor. And when we come back, we’re going to talk about why diagnoses are no longer the most important thing about you. Dr. Deb Muth 1:17Did you know sweating can literally heal your cells? And infrared saunas don’t just relax you, they detox your body, balance hormones, and boost mitochondrial energy. I’m obsessed with my health tech sauna, and right now you can save $500 with my code at healthtechhealth.com Dr. Muth req 25 so here’s some truth for me. Dr. Deb Muth 0:47It was three years ago Christmas that I received my Ms. Diagnosis. And I remember it very clearly. It was the day before, two days before Christmas Eve, that I got the call and I heard the words, you have white matter brain disease. That’s consistent with Ms. And I immediately stopped in my tracks and thought, okay, well, this is just the way it is. We’re gonna fight this. We’re gonna figure this out. And it led me down a deeper path of healing and spirituality and emotional growth. And there were some really difficult days ahead for me because I remember thinking, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna practice what’s going to happen in my life? And every year at this time, I reflect back to that day that I got the call that really changed my life. And not for the worse, but for the better. It changed the way I was thinking about life. Dr. Deb Muth 3:01It changed the way I was complaining about things being ungrateful for all the amazing things that I have in my life. Not intentionally, but just living the American life. Right. Dr. Deb Muth 3:14And striving for more and wanting more and chasing more and doing more, and never really having the opportunity to just be present and just really think about life and enjoy what the Lord has given us and enjoy what’s around me, the people in my life, the family that I have, the amazing practice that I have, and the amazing people I get to work with and change lives with. And it really changed me for the better. And I’ve watched diagnoses like this change people for the worse and for them to sink deep into a depression and give up and. And live to their label instead of living to their potential. And that’s why I think this episode is so important for us, because we all have a choice in life. When we get dealt something kind of difficult, we can let it consume us and let it take every ounce of life from us, or we can allow it to become the fuel that makes us better, makes us contribute to life maybe differently, but in a better way. So, you know, I know that this idea of letting diagnoses lose their power can be really uncomfortable for some people, because there’s people that are waiting for that diagnosis. I’m in some. Some social media groups, and I’m listening and reading to people who are saying, I’m so angry I didn’t get the Ms. Diagnosis today. I’m so angry I didn’t get the Lyme diagnosis today. I’m so upset that they can’t find anything wrong with me. And I understand. Dr. Deb Muth 5:20I know the feeling of wanting to put a name to what you’re feeling so that you have validation and you have power around this diagnosis, and you can prove to people that what you’re feeling is not in your head. I get all of that. But for many people, the original diagnosis is meant to help guide treatment in the conventional sense. It’s a created, shared language that we have, and it brings clarity. But for many people, you give that label and that name so much power and so much control over your life and who you are and what you’re being. And that’s not what the label is meant for. Somewhere along the line, medicine started confusing naming with healing. And today, we have more diagnoses than ever. We have more testing than ever. We have so many thousands of specialists, and yet people are sicker. They’re more inflamed, they’re more exhausted, they’re more confused than ever. And that’s not just a coincidence. That is how the system is meant to work. It’s meant to confuse you. Dr. Deb Muth 6:44It’s meant to keep you dependent on it. It’s meant to. Meant to keep you on medical management for the rest of your life. And by doing that, we enrich the pharmaceutical companies to the point where their whole role is to continue to create drugs that you need to be on for the rest of your life. And the hard truth about all of this that I’ve seen in my practice is for many patients, the diagnosis really becomes their identity. They own it, they gravitate to it. It’s who they are. It also becomes their prison because they only live confined inside the diagnosis. I can’t do this because I can’t do that, because if I do this, this will happen, because I have. They’ve capped their ceiling of life based on a couple of words that somebody gave them at a point in their life when they were so low and potentially so desperate that they needed that name to identify themselves and what was going on. And instead of asking, why is this happening? Dr. Deb Muth 8:05Why are these symptoms happening? What’s causing these symptoms? They’re told, this is what you have, and this is what you’re going to have to live with. And instead of restoring function, these people become managed. Like I said, they’re managed with drugs. They’re managed inside the system. And instead of healing, they’re monitored with this blood test and that blood test and this MRI and that mri. Instead of providing hope, they’re handed a lifelong prescription with expectations that do nothing but decline. So you walk out of that room with this expectation that your life is never going to be the same, that your function is going to decline, your neurological disease is going to take over eventually, you’re going to be put in a home, you’re going to lose everything you have because you’re not going to be able to afford the care that you need. And that’s the expectations of our healthcare system today. When you’re labeled with a chronic illness diagnosis, and for a woman, especially women, this is magnified because their symptoms are told to them as. It’s stress, it’s hormones, it’s anxiety, it’s aging, it’s motherhood, and then, of course, it’s perimenopause. Like that is some major traumatic thing that should disrupt your entire life. Yet it shouldn’t, and it does, and it doesn’t have to. And of course, my favorite is always, but your labs are normal. We don’t know what’s wrong with you. It must just be in your head. Dr. Deb Muth 9:53And this is why women are done being dismissed, why this shift is happening now that we are empowering women to take back Their lives, take back who they are and take back how they’re being treated in the healthcare system. And it is one of the most important things that we can do right now is to give women their power back so that they can stand strong in who they are and in their intuition and fight and say, no, this is not happening to me right now. I am not accepting this label. I’m not accepting this diagnosis. I will fight, I will find answers, and I will do what I need to do to be the woman that I want to be. So why is this conversation exploding right now? Well, there’s actually three big reasons, and first and foremost, it’s over. Diagnosis, burnout. People are collecting diagnoses without solutions. Autoimmune labels, syndromes, vague neurological names, but no one’s connecting the dots. Dr. Deb Muth 11:02You see, when you start to stack these labels on top of each other, one after the next after the next, you know, it’s celiac disease, it’s Hashimoto’s, it’s fibromyalgia, it’s autoimmune. You know, rheumatoid arthritis. It’s. Whatever it is, it’s long haul Covid. These days, no one is putting these connections together to say, why are you developing so many diseases that are so similar in nature, ones that just kind of domino after each other? Nobody’s looking at your immune system. Nobody’s measuring it, Nobody’s telling you how well it’s working. No one’s supporting it. They’re just throwing these biological drugs at you. And if there’s an autoimmune disease and sending you on your way and saying, this is what you have to look forward to for the rest of your life. But don’t worry...
Transcribe →Episode 253 – Environmental exposures, Lyme disease & multiple chemical sensitivities: integrative approaches to healing
Jan 2200:52:36Tap to summarizeDr. Deb Muth 0:03Today’s guest is someone I’m honored to call both a friend and a mentor, and one of the most trusted voices in medicine for patients with complex chronic illness. Dr. Neal Nathan is a board certified family physician who has spent decades caring for patients who don’t fit neatly into diagnostic boxes. Patients with mold related illnesses, Lyme disease, mast cell activation, and profound nervous system dysregulation. These are the patients who are often told their labs are normal and their symptoms are anxiety or that nothing more can be done. Instead of dismissing them, Dr. Nathan listened and he asked better questions. His work, including his landmark book, Toxic, has helped thousands of people finally feel seen, believed, and understood, and more importantly, has given them a path forward when medicine failed them. This conversation is for anyone who reacts to supplements or medications, for anyone who has gotten worse instead of better with treatment, and for anyone who knows their body that something deeper is going on, even if they’ve been told otherwise. Dr. Nathan, I’m deeply grateful for your mentorship, your integrity, and the way you continue to advocate for the most vulnerable patients. I’m so glad to have you here today. And before we begin, grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever grounds you, because this is the conversation you’ll want to settle into. Now, before we go onto this conversation, we need to hear from our sponsors. So give us just a quick moment and then Dr. Nathan and I are going to dive in to his story and how this all started for him and leave you with some nuggets of wisdom that you can help yourself with. Ladies, it’s time to reignite your vitality. Primal Queen supplements are clean, powerful formulas made for women like you who want balance, strength, and energy that lasts. Get 25% off@primalqueen.com Serenity Health that’s PrimalQueen.com Serenity Health because every queen deserves to feel in her prime the right places and then we can get started. All right? So, Dr. Nathan, like I said, I’m so excited to have you here today. Tell us a little bit about how did you start your career? Because you didn’t intend to work with the most complex and sensitive patients, I’m sure when you started out. But what did you notice early on that made you realize medicine was missing something? Neil Nathan MD3:03You know, Deb, actually, I did start out wanting to work with the most complicated cases. My delusional fantasy when I started was I wanted to help every single person who walked into my office. And so when I left medical school, I realized pretty quickly that the tools that I learned there were not adequate to do That I needed to learn more. So I started on a passionate journey of discovery, if you will, in which I started studying with anyone who had anything interesting about healing to talk about. And I want to emphasize that I was interested in healing, not in what I’ll call medical technology. So medical school taught me to be a good medical technologist, but it didn’t teach me about healing. I graduated a long time ago. I graduated from Medical School in 1971. And the word holistic wasn’t even a word back in those days, but that’s what I was looking for over many, many years. I studied osteopathic manipulation, homeopathy, therapeutic touch, emotional release techniques, hypnosis. If it’s weird, I probably have studied it at some point. I wasted some weekends studying things that I don’t think were particularly valuable. And I’ve had some remarkable experiences with true healers that taught me how to expand my understanding of what healing really meant. So early on, when I first started practice, I would invite my colleagues to send me their most complicated patients because that was my learning. That makes me weird. I know that. I love some problem solving. You know, I’m the kind of person who I get up in the morning and I do all of the New York Times kinds of puzzles. That’s. That’s my brain wake up call. So actually I did invite my colleagues to send me their complicated patients, and they did. So, I mean, they were thrilled to have me in the community because these were people they didn’t know what to do with. And I was happy as a clam with all these complicated things that I had no idea what to do with. But it pushed me to keep learning more, to keep searching for this person’s answer. And this person’s answer, that constant question is, what am I missing? What is it that I don’t know or understand? What questions am I not asking this person that would help me to figure it out? So sorry for the long winded digression. Dr. Deb Muth 6:14No, I’m glad you shared that. I’m very similar to you. I didn’t seek out working with the most complex, but as I started that, I was always very curious as well. So I was the same as you. Every weekend I would learn something and hypnosis and naturopathic medicine, homeopathy, and all these quote unquote weird things, right? And there’s always a pearl that you learn from something. You never not learn anything, but some of it, you kind of take or leave or integrate or not. And, and I think it, it makes you a better Practitioner, because you have all these tools in your toolbox for helping people that nobody else has been able to help. And. And it’s just kind of fun learning. I mean, I’m kind of a geek that way too. I like to learn all those things. Neil Nathan MD7:00Learning is my passion. One of my greatest joys in life is going to a medical meeting and getting a pearl. Literally. I’m not one of these people at medical meetings that have a computer in front of me listening. And I have a pad of paper and I’m writing down ideas next to people that I’m working with. So that, oh, let’s bring this up for these people. Let’s bring this up for these people. So it’s like, oh, great. Can’t get right back to the office on Monday so I can start, have some new ideas about what I’m missing. Dr. Deb Muth 7:38Yeah, I do the same thing. I have my pad of paper and I do the same thing. And as I hear something, I’m thinking about a person that’s in my office that I haven’t been able to help, or we’ve been stuck on something, and I’m like, oh, there’s a new thing we can try. And it’s so exciting. I love that. Let me ask you this. Was there a time when you finally thought, like, if I don’t listen to these patients differently, they might not ever get better? Neil Nathan MD8:04That’s a very complicated question. The people that I was treating that weren’t getting better were the ones that got my greatest attention. And one of the questions that constantly troubled me still does is, is this person not getting better because of some feature of themselves, or is it because of something that I don’t know? So I’ve wrestled with that for a very long time. My answer to it now is, For a long time, I’ve been able to see what I will call the light in a person. Call it a healing spark and energy. It isn’t truly light. There’s just something about that person when I work with them where I know this person will get well if I stick with them long enough. And then when I don’t get that, I don’t think I’ve helped any of those people over the years. Yeah, so it was a very long process of really not helping people for five years daily. And I would. I would ask those patients, I would say, you know, I haven’t helped you. We’ve been doing this for a very long time. Why are you still here? And they would say, because you care. And I would. Back when I was Younger, that was enough for me to go. That’s true. Okay, I’ll keep working at it. But as I’ve gotten older, caring isn’t enough. It’s. I’m not sure I’m the right person for you. And so as I’ve gotten older, when I don’t see that spark, when I don’t get that sense of someone, I’m more inclined early on in the relationship to tell them I’m not the right person for you. Yeah, you know, see if you can find someone else who can understand what you’re going through and help you. Because I, I’m not it. Dr. Deb Muth 10:16Yeah, you, you kind of know that you can help them or not. Yeah. Neil Nathan MD10:21I don’t know how to define that sense, but it’s very clear to me. I call it like seeing the inner light of another being. If it’s not there, and maybe it’s not there for me to see as opposed to someone else can see it. Dr. Deb Muth 10:41That’s interesting. So you’re known for working with patients who are highly reactive. They don’t tolerate supplements, a lot of times medications, or even some of your most gentlest protocols. Why are these patients so often misunderstood? Neil Nathan MD 10:59Because they appear to their family and to many other physicians to be so sensitive that the thought process of families and other physicians is often. Nobody’s that sensitive. This has got to be in your head. And that is what is conveyed to those patients. And they’re told it’s gotta be in your head. Go see a psychiatrist or a therapist. But I can’t help you. And unfortunately, we have learned in the last 20 years a great deal about, is making our patients so sensitive. It is a true reaction of their nervous system and immune system, and it is in response to various medical conditions they have. So again, as we’ve been talking about, those were the people that got sent to me for many years. And I...
Transcribe →Episode 252 – Induced Native Phage Therapy (INPT) & advanced natural therapies
Jan 601:07:31Tap to summarizeDr. Deb 0:04Today on let’s Talk Wellness now, we’re diving into the most cutting edge and misunderstood frontiers in chronic illness treatment. Induced native Phage therapy, or INPT and induced native microbial therapy. My guest is Dr. David Jarrigan, one of the country’s most innovative minds in biologic and bioregulatory medicine. Dr. Jaragan is widely known for his pioneering work in the treatment resistant Lyme disease and chronic infections and for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible when we stop fighting the body and instead learn how to regulate it. He is the inventor of multiple advanced diagnostic and therapeutic technologies including biospectral emission sequencing, matrix interface testing, chrono quantum testing, and most recently INPT and inmt, technologies that aim to activate the body’s own native intelligence to restore balance and eliminate chronic infection. Dr. Jaragan is the author of five books, including the best selling Beating Lyme Disease and trained extensively in Europe, Biologic Medicine and under Thomas Rao at the Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland. His work challenges the conventional infectious disease model and raises an important question. What if chronic illness persists not because we haven’t killed enough pathogens, but because we haven’t restored regulation? This is going to be a fascinating and paradigm shifting conversation. But before we dive in, let me remind you this podcast is about empowering you with knowledge to make the best choices for your health. So grab your tea or coffee and let’s talk Wellness Now. So for those of you who have heard me before, you’re going to recognize my voice is a little froggy today. I’ve been fighting a little laryngitis for the past couple of weeks. So forgive me for my voice sounding a little bit off. You may see me drink a little bit on this episode just to kind of moisten my voice. I am totally fine. I’m not sick. I am just fighting this laryngitis that just will not go away. So it is clearly telling me something. But I’m going to keep pushing forward, bringing you amazing guests like Dr. Jarrigan today and I am so excited for this conversation. For those of you who know me, I’ve been treating Lyme for 20 years. So this is going to be an amazing conversation for me as well as you and we are going to learn some some great things together. So right after we get back from our sponsor, we are going to bring Dr. Jaragan on and we are going to have this amazing conversation. Today’s episode of let’s Talk Wellness now is brought to you by Health Tech Sauna. One of my absolute favorite tools for detoxification and cellular healing. If you’ve followed me for a while, you know I talk often about the importance of supporting your mitochondria and removing toxins, especially if you’re healing from chronic illness, mold exposure or hormonal imbalance. The HealthText sauna uses advanced full spectrum infrared technology that penetrates deeply into the body to help release stored toxins, reduce inflammation and boost circulation. All from the comfort of your own home. I personally use and recommend the HealthTech sauna in my own home because it’s medical grade, low EMF and built for serious healing, not just relaxation. And right now my listeners can save $500 off their own sauna by going to healthtech health.com doctordr muth hyphen R-EQ hyphen 25 so run over there right now and get your $500 off your own sauna because healing starts with detox. David Jernigan 4:12All right. I’m Dr. David Jernigan, and I own the Biologic Center for Optimum health in Franklin, Tennessee. And I’ve been in practice for over 30 years. I shook Willie Burke Derfer’s hand, if anybody knows who that is. It’s kind of infamous now with some of the revelations that have happened about Lyme being bioweapon weaponized. But you know, I’ve been doing this probably longer than almost anybody that’s still in the business in the natural realm. It chose me. I did not choose Lyme. Matter of fact, there were many times in my career that I was like, you know, cancer is easier because of the fact that everybody agrees, you know, what we’re dealing with. And in the 90s, it was a whole different reality where nobody actually understood that you could have Lyme disease and not be coming from New England. I had actually the first documented case of a Lyme disease CDC positive patient that had never left the state of Kansas before. So they couldn’t say that it wasn’t in Kansas. And so, so she had actually been pregnant with twin boys and they were born CDC positive as well. So it is transmitted across the placenta. We know. So the history of how I did all this was in the 90s, probably 1996, probably somewhere in there. 97 with this woman. I if you go into Robin’s pathology books from back then, which we all used medical doctors and everybody else studying, you know, there was basically a paragraph about Lyme disease. And on the national board tests, as you recall, it was probably like, what causes or what is bullseye rash associated with? And you had to guess Lyme disease, of course, but that was, you know, considered to be more in New England illness. And you Would never see it anywhere else. But here was this woman. I knew nothing about Lyme beyond what we had gotten taught in college, which was, like I say, next to nothing. And she would not let me stop feeding me information. I mean, you gotta remember, the Internet wasn’t even hardly in existence. Dr. Deb 6:36Yeah. David Jernigan 6:36Years. I mean, it was brand new. It was supposed to be this information highway. And so I started purchasing like a lot of doctors do. Even now, they start purchasing every kind of new supplement that’s supposed to work for bacteria. There was no product in those days that actually was Lyme specific. I mean, nobody was really dealing with it naturally. It was always a pharmaceutical situation and. Dr. Deb 7:05A very short course at that. David Jernigan 7:06Yeah. Two weeks of doxy in your period, whether your symptoms are gone or not. Which she’d had the two weeks of doxy, and her symptoms and her son’s symptoms were not gone. And so I absolutely just purchased everything I could find. Nothing would work. I mean, I could name names of products and you would recognize them because they’re still out there today. Which is kind of a sad thing that natural medicine is still riding on these things that have the most marketing. Dr. Deb 7:37Yeah. David Jernigan 7:38Sometimes the things that actually have the documented research behind it. I am a doctor of chiropractic medicine, and I specialized all these years in chronic incurable illnesses of all types. That may sound odd to a lot of people, but doctors of chiropractic medicine are trained just like a GP typically would be. The medical schools, as I understand it, got together decades ago and said, wow, if all we did was crank out general practitioners for the next 10 years, we wouldn’t have still enough general practitioners to supply the demand. Dr. Deb 8:17Right. David Jernigan 8:18Everybody in medicine, in medical schools wanted to be a specialist because that’s where the money was. It was easier kind of also to just focus on one part of the. Dr. Deb 8:28Body and specialize in that, be an expert in that one area. David Jernigan 8:32Yeah. So we all now have the same training. We all go through pre med. We got a bachelor’s degree. I got my bachelor’s degree in nutrition through Park University in Parkville, Missouri. And so, you know, when I ran out of options to purchase, I just used a technology that I developed, which was an advancement upon other technologies, but I called it bioresonance scanning. And I coined the term back in the 90s. It was a way to kind of like a sensitive test. You know, like you might think of applied kinesiology, then clinical kinesiology, then chiroplus kinesiology. Then, you know, you can just keep going with all the Advancements that were made, well, this was an advancement upon those things. So I developed, I was the first in my known world of doctors to develop a way to detect adjunctively. Obviously we can’t say it’s a primary diagnosis adjunctively detect the presence of given specimen. So we can say, thus, say if my test, it’s highly likely you have Borrelia Burgundy for a. But I had to have the specimen on hand to be able to match what I call frequency matching to the specimen, which was a brand new concept in those days. And so I was able to detect whether or not my treatments were successful or not. This is something even now that’s really difficult for doctors because antibody tests, even the most advanced ones, it’s still an antibody test, it’s still an immune response to an infection. And accurately. Some doctors will slam those tests saying, well, that doesn’t mean you actually have the infection. That just means your body has seen it before. Which is a correct statement, kind of. So being able to detect the presence and even where in the body infections are was a way huge advancement in the 90s, for sure. It’s kind of funny, I think about a conference I went to because I’m kind of jumping ahead because I ended up developing my own formula just for this woman and her children. And it worked. And I was like, wow. Their symptoms were gone. All the blood tests came back negative in those days. We were using the Igenx Western blot eventually. And the what was called a Lyme urine antigen test. I don’t know if you remember that because it only decades later did I meet the owner of ...
Transcribe →Episode 251 – Chronic Bladder Symptoms, Biofilms, and the Hidden Genetic Drivers
Jan 600:48:25Tap to summarizeDr. Deb 0:01Welcome back to another episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, and I’m your host, Dr. Deb, and today we’re pulling back the curtain on a topic that barely gets a whisper in conventional medicine. Chronic bladder symptoms, biofilms, and the hidden genetic drivers that keep so many women stuck in a cycle of pain, urgency, and infection that never truly resolves. My guest today is someone who is not only brilliant, but battle-tested, like myself. Dr. Kristen Ryman is a physician, a mom, and the author of Life After Lyme, a book and blueprint that has helped countless people reclaim health after complex chronic illness. After healing herself from advanced Lyme, she has spent her career helping patients recover their most vibrant, resilient selves through her Inner Flow program. Her Healing Grove podcast, her membership community, and her deep dive work on bladder biofilms and stealth pathogens. And what I love about Kristen is that she teaches from lived experience. In 2022, she suffered a stroke. And not only survived it, but rebuilt her brain, resolved lateral strabismus, restored balance, and regained her ability to multitask That journey uncovered her own genetic predisposition to clotting, the very same patterns she sees in her chronic bladder patients. And that personal revelation ultimately led to her Introducing this groundbreaking work that we’re talking about today. So let’s get into it, because bladder biofilms, clotting genetics, stealth pathogens, and real recovery is the conversation women have been needing for decades. And we’ll get started. Where did this one go? There we go. Alright, so welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now. I have Dr. Kristen with me, and I am so excited to talk to her for multiple reasons. A, she’s got a fabulous story, and B, she’s an expert in a topic that nobody’s talking about, and I want to learn from her, too. So, welcome to the show. Kristin Reihman 3:07Thank you! I’m so happy to be here, Dr. Deb. Dr. Deb 3:10Thank you. Well, let’s dive right in, because we have so much to talk about, and you and I could probably talk for hours. So, let’s dive into this conversation, and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in this. Kristin Reihman 3:23Well, I mean, like so many people, I think, on this path, I had, had to learn it the hard way. You know, I had to find my way into a mystery illness, a complex, mysterious set of symptoms that sort of didn’t fit the… the sort of description of what, you know, normal doctors do, and even though I was a normal doctor for many years, nothing I’d been trained in could help me when I was really debilitated from Lyme disease back in 2011, 20212, 2023. And so I kind of had to crawl my way out of that, using all the resources at my disposal, which, you know, started out with a lot of ILADS stuff, you know, a lot of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, resources online, found some Lyme doctors, and then my journey really quickly evolved to sort of, like, way far afield of normal Western medicine, which is what my training is in you know, I think within a year of my diagnosis, I was, like, you know, at a Klingheart conference, and learning all sort of, you know, the naturopathic approach to Lyme, and really trying to heal my body and terrain, and heal the process that had led me to become so, so ill from, you know. A little bacteria. Dr. Deb 4:29Yeah. Yeah, same here. Like, I’ve been an ILADS practitioner for over 20 years, and when I got sick with Lyme, I was like… how did I not realize this? And I knew I had Lyme before I even was ILADS trained, but when I got really sick and got diagnosed with MS, I never thought about Lyme or mycotoxins or any of that, because I was too busy, head down, doing what I’m doing, helping people. And I, too, had to take that step back, not just physically, but more spiritually and emotionally, and say, how did my body get this sick? Like, what was I doing, and what was I not doing? That allowed this to happen, and now look at this from a healing aspect of not just the physical side, but that spiritual-emotional side as well. Kristin Reihman 5:13Totally. I have the same… I have the same realization as I was coming out of it. I was like, wow, this wasn’t just about, sort of, physically what I was doing and not doing. There was something spiritual here as well for me, and I… I feel like it really was a wake-up call for me to get on the path that I’m supposed to be on, the path that I’m on now, really, which is stepping away from the whole medicine matrix model and moving into, you know, working with really complex people. Listening to their bodies, understanding intuition, understanding energy, understanding all these different pieces that doctors just aren’t trained to look at. Dr. Deb 5:46Right? We don’t have time to learn everything, right? Like, you have time to learn the body and the medical side of things, and that’s a whole prism of itself, but then learning the spiritual energy medicine, that’s a completely different paradigm. That’s a full-time learning aspect, and it’s so different than what we learn in conventional medicine. Kristin Reihman 6:04Yeah, it’s a complete health system. Like, it’s a complete healthcare system. Dr. Deb 6:10Yes, and nobody takes it that seriously, but I, for myself, I’ve been spiritual healing for decades, and it wasn’t until I got really sick that I dived deeper into that and looked at what is it in this world that I’m owning, what belongs to generational things that were brought to me from childbirth and other generations in my family that I’m carrying their old wounds. And how do I clear some of that so that it’s not still following me? And then how do I help my kids so that they don’t have to carry what I brought forth? And it’s just… a lot of people, that may sound crazy, but that’s the kind of stuff that we need to be looking at if we want to truly heal. Kristin Reihman 6:54Yeah, and I think it’s also, it’s inspiring, you know, because when people… and I would tell this to my patients with Lyme and these sort of mystery illnesses, like, look, you are on this path for a reason, and this is going to teach you so much that you didn’t necessarily want to learn, but you need to learn. And this… nothing that you learn or change about your lifestyle or the way in which you move through the world is gonna make you a worse person. Like, it’s only gonna sort of up-level you. You know, it’s gonna up-level your diet, and your sleep habits, and your relationships, and your toxic thinking, like, it’s all gonna change for you to get better, and that’s… that’s a gift, really. Dr. Deb 7:27It really is, and I tell people the same thing. Like, we can look at this as… something that’s happening to us, or we can look at this as something that’s happening for us. And that’s how I looked at my MS diagnosis. This was happening for me, not to me. I wasn’t going to be the victim. And you have a very similar story, so tell us a little bit about your story and what kind of catapulted you into this in 2022. Kristin Reihman 7:52Well, by 2022, I was, like, 10 years out of my Lyme hole, and I had been seeing patients, you know, I had opened my own practice, and I was working for another company, seeing, families who have brain-injured children. I was their medical director, still am, actually. And so I was doing a patchwork of things, all of which really fed my soul. You know, all of which felt like this is, like, me, aligned with my purpose on the planet. And so, based on a lot of my thinking, I sort of figured, okay, well, I’m good now, right? Like, I’m on my path now, like, the universe is not going to send another 2×4. And then the universe sent another 2×4. And in 2022, I had an elective neck surgery. You kind of still see the little scar here for my two-level ACDF. Because I had crazy off-the-hook arm pain for, like, a year and a half that I just finally became, like, almost like it felt like I was developing fasciculations and fiery, fiery pain, and I just got the surgery, and the pain went away. But when I woke up, I was different. I didn’t have a voice. Which is a common side effect, actually, of that surgery that resolves after a few months, and in many cases, and mine did. But I also didn’t have, normal balance anymore, and my right eye turned out a little bit, and I couldn’t multitask. And my job is all about multitasking. As you know, with very complex people in front of you, you’re hearing all these pieces of their story, and you’re kind of categorizing it, and thinking about where they fit, and you’re making a plan for what to work up, and you’re making a plan for what to wait until next time. It’s like all these pieces, right? You’re in the matrix. And I… I couldn’t hold those pieces anymore. And I didn’t realize that until I went back to work a couple months after my, surgery, because my voice came back and was like, okay, well, now I’m going back to work. And then I realized, I can’t do simple math. In fact, I can’t remember what this person just said to me, unless I read my note, and I can’t remember taking that note. What is going on? And so I had a full workup, and indeed, I had some neurological deficits that didn’t show up on an MRI, so they must have been quite tiny. Possibly were even low-flow, you know, episodes during my surgery when my blood pres...
Transcribe →Episode 250 -The Great Medical Deception
Jan 200:49:27Tap to summarizeDr. DebWhat if I told you that the stomach acid medication you’re taking for heartburn is actually causing the problem it’s supposed to solve that your doctor learned virtually nothing about nutrition, despite spending 8 years in medical school. That the very system claiming to heal you was deliberately designed over a hundred years ago by an oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller, to create lifelong customers, not healthy people. Last week a patient spent thousands of dollars on tests and treatments for acid reflux, only to discover she needed more stomach acid, not less. The medication keeping her sick was designed to do exactly that. Today we’re exposing the greatest medical deception in modern history, how a petroleum empire systematically destroyed natural healing wisdom turned medicine into a profit machine. And why the treatments, keeping millions sick were engineered that way from the beginning. This isn’t about conspiracy theories. This is a documented history that explains why you feel so lost about your own body’s needs welcome back to let’s talk wellness. Now the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I’m Dr. Deb. And today we’re diving into how the Rockefeller Medical Empire systematically destroyed natural healing wisdom and replaced it with profit driven systems that keeps you dependent on treatments instead of achieving true health. If you or someone you love has been running to the doctor for every minor ailment, taking acid blockers that seem to make digestive problems worse, or feeling confused about basic body functions that our ancestors understood instinctively. This episode is for you. So, as usual, grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind. Settle in and let’s get started on your journey to reclaiming your health sovereignty all right. So here we are talking about the Rockefeller Medical Revolution. Now, what if your symptoms aren’t true diagnosis, but rather the predictable result of a medical system designed over a hundred years ago to create lifelong customers instead of healthy people. Now I learned this when I was in naturopathic school over 20 years ago. And it hasn’t been talked about a lot until recently. Recently. People are exposing the truth about what actually happened in our medical system. And today I want to take you back to the early 19 hundreds to understand how we lost the basic health wisdom that sustained humanity for thousands of years. Yes, I said that thousands of years. This isn’t conspiracy theory. This is documented history. That explains why you feel so lost when it comes to your own body’s needs. You know by the turn of the 20th century. According to meridian health Clinic’s documentation. Rockefeller controlled 90% of all petroleum refineries in America and through ownership of the Standard Oil Corporation. But Rockefeller saw an opportunity that went far beyond oil. He recognized that petrochemicals could be the foundation for a completely new medical system. And here’s what most people don’t know. Natural and herbal medicines were very popular in America during the early 19 hundreds. According to Staywell, Copper’s historical analysis, almost one half of medical colleges and doctors in America were practicing holistic medicine, using extensive knowledge from Europe and native American traditions. People understood that food was medicine, that the body had natural healing mechanisms, and that supporting these mechanisms was the key to health. But there was a problem with the Rockefeller’s business plan. Natural medicines couldn’t be patented. They couldn’t make a lot of money off of them, because they couldn’t hold a patent. Petrochemicals, however, could be patented, could be owned, and could be sold for high profits. So Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie devised a systematic plan to eliminate natural medicine and replace it with petrochemical based pharmaceuticals and according to E. Richard Brown’s comprehensive academic documentation in Rockefeller, medicine men. Medicine, and capitalism in America. They employed the services of Abraham Flexner, who proceeded to visit and assess every single medical school in us and in Canada. Within a very short time of this development, medical schools all around the us began to collapse or consolidate. The numbers are staggering. By 1910 30 schools had merged, and 21 had closed their doors of the 166 medical colleges operating in 19 0, 4, a hundred 33 had survived by 1910 and a hundred 4 by 1915, 15 years later, only 76 schools of medicine existed in the Us. And they all followed the same curriculum. This wasn’t just about changing medical education. According to Staywell’s copper historical analysis. Rockefeller and Carnegie influenced insurance companies to stop covering holistic treatments. Medical professionals were trained in the new pharmaceutical model and natural solutions became outdated or forgotten. Not only that alternative healthcare practitioners who wanted to stay practicing in alternative medicine were imprisoned for doing so as documented by the potency number 710. The goal was clear, create a system where scientists would study how plants cure disease, identify which chemicals in the plants were effective and then recreate a similar but not identical chemical in the laboratory that would be patented. E. Richard Brown’s documents. The story of how a powerful professional elite gained virtual homogeny in the western theater of healing by effectively taking control of the ethos and practice of Western medicine. The result, according to the healthcare spending data, the United States now spends 17.6% of its Gdp on health care 4.9 trillion dollars in 2023, or 14,570 per person nearly twice as much as the average Oecd country. But it doesn’t focus on cure. But on symptoms, and thus creating recurring clients. This systematic destruction of natural medicine explains why today’s healthcare providers often seem baffled by simple questions about nutrition why they immediately reach for a prescription medication for minor ailments, and why so many people feel disconnected from their own body’s wisdom. We’ve been trained over 4 generations to believe that our bodies are broken, and that symptoms are diseases rather than messages, and that external interventions are always superior to supporting natural healing processes. But here’s what they couldn’t eliminate your body’s innate wisdom. Your digestive system still functions the same way it did a hundred years ago. Your immune system still follows the same patterns. The principles of nutrition, movement and stress management haven’t changed. We’ve just forgotten how to listen and respond. We’re gonna take a small break here and hear from our sponsor. When we come back. We’re gonna talk about the acid reflux deception, and why your cure is making you sicker. So don’t go away. This episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now is brought to you by Primal Queen Supplements, a brand created just for women who are ready to reclaim their strength, balance their hormones, and feel vibrant again. I’ve partnered with Primal Queen because their formulas are clean, clinically backed, and designed to work with your body, not against it. Whether you’re supporting energy, hormones, or detox pathways, you’ll feel the difference when your supplements are crafted with real women in mind. And just for our listeners, you’ll receive 25% off your entire order when you visit primalqueen.com slash Serenity Health. That’s primalqueen.com slash Serenity Health. Your path to feeling strong, grounded, and radiant again. Because every queen deserves to feel in her prime. All right. Welcome back. So I want to give you a perfect example of how Rockefeller medicine has turned natural body wisdom upside down, the treatment of acid, reflux, and heartburn. Every single day in my practice, I see patients who’ve been taking acid blocker medications, proton pump inhibitors like Prilosec, Nexium, or Prevacid for years, not for weeks, years, and sometimes even decades. They come to me because their digestive problems are getting worse, not better. They have bloating and gas and nutrition deficiencies. And we’re seeing many more increased food sensitivities. And here’s what’s happening. In the US, most people often attribute their digestive problems to too much stomach acid and they use medications to suppress the stomach acid. But in fact, symptoms of chronic acid reflux, heartburn, or GERD can also be caused by too little stomach acid, a condition called hypochlorhedria. Normal stomach acid has a pH level of one to two, which is highly acidic. Hydrochloric acid plays an important role in your digestion and your immunity. It helps to break down proteins and absorb essential nutrients, and it helps control viruses and bacteria that might otherwise infect your stomach. But here’s the crucial part that most people don’t understand, and, according to Cleveland clinic, your stomach secretes lower amounts of hydrochloric acid. As you age. Hypochlorhydria is more common in people over the age of 40, and even more common over the age of 65. Webmd states that the stomach acid can produce less acid as a result of ...
Transcribe →Episode 249 – SILENCED & DISMISSED: Breaking Free from Medical Gaslighting in Women’s Healthcare
Dec 2300:19:21Tap to summarizeDr. Deb 0:01When your body speaks but no one listens, when your pain is dismissed as all in your head, when you’re told it’s just stress for the fifth time while your health deteriorates, you’re not crazy. You’re being medically gaslit. Did you know women in America are up to 30% more likely to be misdiagnosed than men? Or that when experiencing a heart attack, women are seven times more likely to be sent home from the ER? This isn’t just about feeling heard, it’s about survival. Dr. Deb 0:56And what if I told you that mysterious symptoms you’ve been battling for years have real physical causes, and that you’ve been overlooked because of your gender? But I’m pulling back the curtain on one of the most dangerous epidemics in healthcare, the systemic dismissal of women’s health concerns, and what you can do to finally be seen, supported, and strong. Welcome back to Let’s Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I’m Dr. Deb, and today I’m diving into medical gaslighting and the epidemic of misdiagnosis that affects millions of women. Dr. Deb 1:41If you or someone you have been diagnosed with that you love with a chronic condition or are struggling with unexplained neurological symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, numbness, or chronic pain, this episode is for you. So grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind and settle in. Let’s get started on your journey to deeper healing. Dr. Deb 2:03So today’s episode, Silence and Dismissed, Breaking Free from Medical Gaslighting in Women’s Healthcare. What if your symptoms aren’t your true diagnosis? Today, I’m exploring how women’s health concerns are systemically dismissed, misdiagnosed, or undertreated in our current healthcare system. I’ll reveal the shocking statistics and historical biases that have created a dangerous epidemic of medical gaslighting. Dr. Deb 2:36Many of you know, three years ago, I found myself on the other side of the exam table. After experiencing troubling neurological symptoms, I was diagnosed with MS. And for three years, I lived with that diagnosis, constantly wondering about my future. But recently, in June of 2024, a new MRI revealed something different. Dr. Deb 3:06My brain wasn’t showing the progressive lesions typically of MS. Instead, my neurologist now believes I experienced post-COVID peripheral neuropathy. Crazy ride, isn’t it? I have lesions in my brain. They’re not progressing like MS, but they created some damage in my brain. Dr. Deb 3:30In October of 2024, I did a brain MRI with a researcher, Dr. Goodenow, who you guys have heard me talk about before. And after being on a protocol that he and I developed together to help my condition, my brain lesions have not only not progressed, but I have increased or grown my gray matter of my brain by 1.4, 1.5. Sorry, I got to give that little extra point in there. This is amazing because as we age, we lose gray matter. Dr. Deb 4:01We know that. And up until now, there’s really been no way for us to show or even know if we’ve improved brain health or not. Well, this new MRI technology that he’s utilizing has been able to document the protocol that we’re doing is actually working and it is growing my brain instead of allowing my brain to shrink with age, which would typically happen. Dr. Deb 4:30We are stopping those lesions from progressing. MS or post-COVID peripheral neuropathy, it doesn’t really matter what the name of this problem is. The lesions are there. Dr. Deb 4:43They’re affecting my prefrontal lobe. And I am trying to prevent any consequences or any symptoms that could result of that. So what this journey has taught me is essentially the truth that I share with my patients. Dr. Deb 4:57True health lies not in chasing a diagnosis, but in pursuing wellness itself. You know, the statistics around women’s healthcare are truly alarming. When a woman enters an emergency room with severe abdominal pain, she’ll wait 33% longer than a man with identical symptoms. Dr. Deb 5:20Approximately 66% of women report receiving a misdiagnosis in the last two years. Think about that. Two thirds of women are being told that they have conditions they don’t actually have. Dr. Deb 5:35While their real health issues remain untreated, and the condition that they were told they had either isn’t treated at all, or they’re given the wrong medication because it’s the wrong diagnosis. This is not about incompetent doctors. It’s about a system built on incomplete science. Dr. Deb 5:57Did you know until the 1990s, women were routinely excluded from medical research and clinical trials? The assumption was that the male body was representative of the human species. So why study women separately? You know, women are not small men. Their bodies function differently at a cellular level. Dr. Deb 6:20And even today, this knowledge gap persists. Medical textbooks still primarily focus on how diseases present in men, while women often experience entirely different symptoms. Take heart attacks. Dr. Deb 6:34Men typically feel crushing chest pain, while women more commonly experience fatigue and shortness of breath, or pain in the jaw, the neck, the back. And when women feel symptoms that don’t match the classic male pattern, they’re dismissed, as you’ve guessed it, anxiety or stress. You’re just too overwhelmed with raising your children. Dr. Deb 6:56You’re burning the candle at both ends. And while some of that may be true, that is not the reason for your symptoms. This misdiagnosis epidemic isn’t just frustrating, it’s deadly. Dr. Deb 7:11It leads to delayed treatments, worsening conditions, unnecessary procedures, and preventable deaths. And for conditions like endometriosis, did you know the average delay in diagnosis is 7 to 10 years? Not months, years. For autoimmune diseases, which affect women at rates up to three times higher than men, that diagnostic journey can span a decade or more. Dr. Deb 7:42Now we’re going to take a break here and have a word from our sponsor, and we’re going to be right back to talk more about medical gaslighting and its roots. Welcome back, everybody. What is medical gaslighting anyway? Well, this happens when health care providers dismiss, minimize, or psychologize physical symptoms. Dr. Deb 8:09It’s when you’re told your debilitating fatigue is just depression, your crushing chest pain is just anxiety, or you’re disabling pain. It’s got to be all in your head. According to recent surveys, about 72% of the millennial women report experiencing medical gaslighting. Dr. Deb 8:35And for women of color, the statistics are even more alarming. While research showing they face compounded biases at every level of care. But why does this happen? The roots run deep, all the way back to ancient Greece, when Hippocrates first used hysteria as a formal diagnosis. Dr. Deb 8:58And throughout history, women’s bodies have been viewed as mysterious, unpredictable, and fundamentally flawed versions of the male body. What a crock. This bias isn’t always conscious. Dr. Deb 9:16Even well-meaning doctors operate within a system that has trained them to view women’s symptoms through a skeptical lens. And the problem is compounded by several factors. First, there’s the knowledge gap. Dr. Deb 9:30As Dr. Mark Gordon, a leading expert in neuroinflammation has demonstrated, male and female brains respond differently to identical triggers. The same is true for hormonal systems, immune responses, and even drug metabolism. Yet most medical protocols don’t account for these differences. Dr. Deb 9:53Second, there’s time pressure. The average primary care visit lasts a little longer than you probably think, but just 17 minutes. Barely enough time to address one concern, let alone a complex constellation of symptoms that don’t fit neatly into a diagnostic category. Dr. Deb 10:15When I see clients for the first time, we’re spending well over an hour just having a conversation, and another hour in doing diagnostics in my office, so that we can understand individually what’s happening with each client that we see, male or female. A far difference from the 17 minutes. Did you know that practitioners are taught that if someone complains of more than two symptoms, it must be depression or anxiety? That’s how our medical system is training these days. Dr. Deb 10:54When I was training, it was completely different, and I was blessed to be trained by a pioneer in medicine who was trained even differently than I was, and trained at a time where we didn’t have a lot of medications, we didn’t have a lot of testing options, so your conversation, your history, your exam had to tell you what was going on with that client. It makes a huge difference today. This is just, I don’t know, it’s craziness to me at this point. <p id="bloc...
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Episode 228 – Toxic Foods
Feb 16, 202500:27:35Tap to summarizeDisclaimer 0:00 Welcome to the podcast. Before we begin, there is a disclaimer we have to make. Let’s talk wellness now brings expert insights directly to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let’s Talk wellness now its management or our partners, each affiliate, sponsor and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today’s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances, we encourage you to consult with a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold let’s talk wellness now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time, and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcasts. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought provoking. Listener Discretion is Advised now for the show you Deb 1:45 Welcome to uncovering the truth in your food where we’re going to dive deep into what’s hiding in the foods we eat every day. I’m Dr Deb, a naturopath passionate about uncovering the truth about our food systems and making our system and people healthier. Today, we’re peeling back the layers on additives, pesticides and herbicides commonly found in our food, and exploring why these ingredients are more tightly regulated in places like Europe than they are in the US. Deb 2:17 So why is it that so many chemicals banned across the world are still widely used in America’s food supply, and what impact could they be having in our health? Deb 2:30 Many everyday food items are filled with substances that don’t just add color or prolong the shelf life. They pose real health risks we have known for decades that artificial food dyes are one of our well known examples that have been linked to behavioral issues in children. But dyes aren’t the only concern. Today. We’re also exploring some of the hidden toxins, like pesticides and herbicides that can affect our health in a subtle but lasting way. Deb 3:04 Robert Kennedy Jr has been very vocal about the need for tighter regulations, and he argues that our current food regulatory framework prioritizes corporate interests over public health, allowing chemicals like glyphosate and synthetic dyes to remain in our food despite evidence of harm. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup. Deb 3:29 It is one of the most widely used herbicides in the world, and in 2015 the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer classified glyphosate as a probable human carcinogen. Deb 3:43 So let me let that sink in for just a second. Deb 3:47 Why are we putting a active carcinogen on our food? Deb 3:54 And you may think that this doesn’t really happen, but it does our big farming, industrial farming, which I have no problem with farming. My family were farmers. They’re still farming. We farm, and I think it’s important for us to deliver healthy food, but putting a toxin on our food to grow a larger crop or produce more at the risk of increasing cancer in our people. I’m not willing to trade that. That’s just not worth it when we can do farming in a different way, and we can have different practices that will still yield us a lot of product, Deb 4:41 but without the toxins. Now, people might argue and say this isn’t true, but I’m going to tell you to take a look at the ads that run on TV if you granted thereby the legal system attorneys, if you’ve been exposed to paraquat, you. Deb 5:00 Call us if you’ve developed Parkinson’s disease. Well, paraquat is an industrial pesticide used by farmers, and people who are exposed to this in quantities that could be mild or moderate, can develop neurological diseases. Don’t believe me. Deb 5:18 Go read the back of the label. It will tell you all of the consequences that can happen. Go to the internet and look up the side effects of paraquat. It’s neurological conditions that occur after being exposed to a product like paraquat. Roundup has very similar things. You know, we spray roundup on our weeds, because we don’t want our weeds to grow. Well, when we spray it on our foods and on our land, that’s the same thing that happens. But we not only then disrupted the plant that we’re growing, we’ve also disrupted the soil for a number of years after that, because you cannot get those chemicals out of our soils immediately. Now Have there been ways that people have found to get that out of the soil quicker? Yes, they grow hemp on that land, and if they grow hemp on that land, the toxins grow up in the hemp, and then they can throw away the hemp, and a lot of those toxins can be pulled from the soil. Deb 6:17 Still, don’t believe me. What about water supply? Deb 6:21 We know that that round off roundup that grows goes on our land, will leach into our water fields, and if our water table is then disrupted with Roundup, and you’re drinking that water that was never an intended use of Roundup, but it’s happening. Test your water supply. There are many rural places that have a well that have roundup that has seeped into their water and into their water table, and unless you’re filtering it, you’re not getting that stuff out. And we don’t even know how well a filtration system will actually take that roundup out. Roundup is also known as a what we call endocrine disruptor, which we’ll talk about in a little bit, because I kind of went off on a tangent here. As you can see this, I’m very passionate about this, because it’s really a problem for us, so I want to try to get back on track. Let’s talk about the impact of glyphosate on health. Studies have linked long term exposure of glyphosate to the increased risks of cancer, including non Hodgkin’s lymphoma. These researchers from the University of Washington have also found that glyphosate exposure increases the cancer risk. Are you ready for this by as much as 41% in what they classify as high exposure groups? Well, high exposure group is going to be the farming community. Now, you may not farm, but you could live in a farming area, and if they’re spraying their crops and we have a windy day, research has shown that that chemical can blow up to 1200 miles on a given day. Deb 8:09 So we think we may be clean in some areas, but we’re really not. We’re getting exposed to these things all over the place. This glyphosate residue has been detected in many of our popular foods, from breakfast cereals to breads, and yet, unlike Europe, where glyphosate usage is being restricted, the US continues to allow it in our agricultural practices, this raises a lot of questions about the potential long term effects of Our health and the health of our future generations. Deb 8:42 Let’s talk more about pesticides, herbicides and what we call hormone disruptors. So beyond dyes and glyphosate, many common pesticides and herbicides disrupt the body in ways that go beyond cancer risk. Several of these chemicals are known endocrine disruptors, meaning that they can interfere with our hormonal balance, affecting everything from the growth and development to our fertility. Deb 9:11 Atrazine is a widely used herbicide in the US, but it’s banned in Europe due to its environmental and health impacts. Research from the University of California, Berkeley, has shown that Atrazine exposure can cause changes in reproductive development and in some cases even gender changes in animals due to the hormonal interference. So let’s question that for a second. Are we not seeing one of the highest ever rates of fertility that we have ever seen in this country. Yes, we are. Everybody knows somebody who’s touched by a fertility issue that never used to be the case, that never used to be a problem. You know, if we look back in our family histories, many of. Deb 10:00 Our grandparents and great grandparents had eight, 910, children. And I know there’s going to be people that are listening to this that are going to say, Well, that’s because they didn’t have use of birth control. Yes, that’s true, but they were also much more fertile than we are today. So what is going on with our fertility? There are a lot of things. I am not saying that it is just chemicals or just pesticides and herbicides. There’s a whole host of things that are disrupting our fertility right now. But what I am saying is that if we want to preserve our future and our generations to come, we have to start looking at this now. We should have been looking at this 1015, years ago, and we should not have let money and greed get in the way of this. So Dr Tyrone Hayes, who’s a researcher on Atrazine and the effects of Atrazine, has the ability, he believes, has the ability, to disrupt endocr...
Transcribe →Episode 227 – From Diagnosis & Fear to Healing & Strength
Feb 2, 202500:24:00Tap to summarizeSpeaker 1 0:00Welcome to the podcast. Before we begin, there is a disclaimer we have to make. Let’s talk wellness now brings expert insights directly to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let’s Talk wellness now its management or our partners, each affiliate, sponsor and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today’s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances, we encourage you to consult with a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold let’s talk wellness now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time, and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcasts. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought provoking. Listener Discretion is Advised now for the show, hello. Speaker 2 1:20Welcome back to Let’s Talk wellness. Now. I’m your host, Dr, Deb, and today I want to share with you something deeply personal. It’s a chapter of my life that changed everything for me, how I went from diagnosis to healing, from fear to strength. This is a journey of navigating the unknown, facing the unsettling reality of chronic illness, and ultimately choosing a path that aligned with my beliefs and my values. My story is about facing the diagnosis of MS multiple sclerosis and going against the grain by choosing a different path for anyone out there feeling lost, isolated or misunderstood in their healing journey, this episode is for you. I hope that by sharing my experience, I can inspire others to take control of their health and find their own paths to healing. So let me take you back to the beginning. Life was really busy, and I was doing all the things I loved. I was running a busy medical practice. I have six businesses. My career in healthcare was flourishing. I was educating practitioners and training them in functional medicine. My children were grown, but I was loving every minute that I could with my grandchildren, and I was doing a ton of traveling and just really living my life to the fullest. But something wasn’t quite right. I started experiencing these strange symptoms that came out of nowhere, or so it seemed. It all began with this deep, relentless fatigue that no amount of rest could fix. Now it was easy to blow off the fatigue, because it was COVID, and I had been sick with COVID twice. I knew that post COVID Fatigue was a real thing. We were just learning about long haul COVID, and I was busy. I wasn’t sleeping much because I was busy and I was stressed and I had lots to do, but I’d sleep and I’d feel like I never even closed my eyes, there was this constant brain fog, this kind of mental exhaustion, where even the simplest tasks felt overwhelming. It took me much longer to accomplish things that it had in the past. Taken me half the amount of time, and then the tingling started. It began with my toes. I love to walk, so I would be walking, and all of a sudden realized that I couldn’t feel one toe then another toe. And as we all do, we can make excuses for it. I simply thought that my socks weren’t right and my shoes, so I’d stop and I changed them, and then it must have been my shoes. Maybe those were bad and I needed new ones. Or the ones I always walked with suddenly weren’t good anymore. Or maybe it was the road and I wasn’t used to it, because I wasn’t walking on the road as much I was walking in the woods more. And then that sensation started to spread. All of a sudden, it would be a brushing across my leg, and then the brush across the face that felt like a feather. My muscles began to feel really weak, and I felt like they could. Betray me at any moment, I kept pushing it aside, telling myself I was just overworked or maybe a little too stressed, but deep down, I knew that there was something else going on. It was like my body was trying to send me a message, one that I wasn’t quite ready to understand. As I tell all of my clients, if you don’t listen to your body, your body will begin to speak louder and louder to you, and eventually it’ll be screaming at you. And I knew that, so I didn’t put it off too long, but probably a little longer than I should have. I finally decided to see the doctor. And I went to see my orthopedic specialist, who I trust, thinking this is just a bad neck issue. I’ve damaged my neck before. I’ve had multiple car accidents, multiple whiplashes, and I have a lot of degeneration. It must just be a bad neck. When I sat down to tell him my symptoms, he looked at me and said, Deb, you’re a very smart woman. You know what’s going on? Speaker 2 6:28my neck is bad, and I just need a little cortisone. I’ll be fine. When he sat down and pulled up next to me and closely got into my face and said, Deb, I think you have MS, and I remember looking at him very perplexed, because that was not on my radar anywhere. I remember feeling a little numb as the words sank in, and it was if the air had been sucked out of the room. At that moment, my husband looked at me, I looked at him, and I was filled with fear and dread, but I had to be strong for my husband. I didn’t want him to know how afraid I was, but I couldn’t help but think about what this would mean for my future, for my family, for my career, would I lose my independence? Would I become a burden to those that I loved? It was a devastating moment, one that I’ve had to share with clients numerous times, but it is very different. Sitting on the other side of the desk hearing those words, my doctor’s solution was very straightforward, let’s go get a brain MRI, let’s see if what I suspect is correct. And we laughed and joked about how he just wanted to see if I actually had a brain or not. I agreed, and I got in the car that night with my husband, not knowing what to say, not knowing how much to share. My husband doesn’t work in the medical field. He doesn’t know what’s coming if this is truly ms, but I do. We drove quietly for about 20 minutes, when he finally looked at me and said, What does this mean for you? What’s going to happen? And I sat back, and I shared with him what could potentially happen with Ms. I could lose function in my limbs. I could lose function of my brain. I could end up in a nursing home because no one would be able to take care of me, and that’s what we could be looking at right now. Speaker 2 9:06And we drove quietly for another 15 or 20 minutes as we went back to my office. And as I always do, I put on a smiling face, and I went back to seeing my clients, pretending like none of this happened, all the while in the back of my head, truly being worried about what I had just learned. So I did the brain MRI Speaker 2 9:37and December, 23 2020 22 i Two. I got the call from my orthopedic doctor who said, Deb, you have white matter brain disease. It’s in the prefrontal lobe, and this confirms, MS, I want you to go see the neurologist. And the good news. Is, this is early stage. You’re young, you’re healthy, and this can be treated with immunosuppressing drugs, and we can manage your symptoms. And I sat back and laughed and said, Thank you, but that’s not the route that I’m interested in taking in my world MS is a few other things until proven otherwise, their toxins, their infections and their nutrient deficiencies, mitochondrial deficiencies and viruses. Speaker 2 10:40So I’m going to go this route, and I’m going to find out what’s actually causing my white matter brain disease before I take on an immunosuppressive therapy. He encouraged me to not wait to get treatment, but he understood, and as wonderful as he is, he shared with me his last bit of encouragement, and said, I’m here if you need anything, if it doesn’t end up being ms, let me know, and we’ll take a closer look at what’s going on physically for you. And at that moment, I had to call my husband and let him know that the diagnosis looked like it could be. Ms, and he immediately said to me, Deb, you know the most brilliant people in the world in this field, you know how to heal yourself. You’ve healed others. We’ve got this. And then he proceeded to tell everyone in my family and my friends that I had been diagnosed with MS, which I wasn’t quite ready to admit to people, but I also understood in that moment that he needed to share and he needed to have support, and he needed To know that things were going to be okay. So I did what I do best, and I began to do the research and look at all of the things that could potentially trigger ms, and take them one by one to identify what is the culprit? And what I realized after all these years of practicing, when we’ve been taught MS is tick borne disease, until otherwise proven that MS is so much more than that. It is infection, it is toxins, but it’s also traumatic brain injury and non traumatic brain injury, and it’s also a mitochondrial dysfunction. And all of these things put together, put us at risk for neurological conditions like MS and Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s disease and ALS, and we don’t aggressively address these soon enough, in my opinion, we trea...
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