A conversation between Trailhead Health and Holistic Allergist, Dr. Jay P Wilson.

Here is another example of how allergies affect everything especially kids. I had a little boy about 3 years old. When he came in with his mom his behavior was absolutely abominable. He would take his mother’s cell phone and throw it across the room. He was totally unmanageable. We did our usual allergy testing and started treating him. We were maybe halfway through his treatment program and he was doing so much better. His parents decided to take him to the auto show - something they would have never done before. He was being an angelic little boy, holding on to his mom’s hand and his dad’s hand, just being angelic little kid. He was being so good they decided to give him a little reward for being so good. They bought him a soft-serve ice cream cone. Fifteen minutes later they had to go home because his behavior was off the wall. He was reacting to something in the ice cream cone and it was causing behavior problems. Today, after completing his allergy treatment is of course this angelic little boy all of the time. 

There are many stories like him. Here is what I want people to think about. He came to us as a last resort. Didn’t have any place else to turn. Came to us and found help. We want you to think about natural holistic treatment first. And if natural holistic treatment won’t work, we will be more than happy to refer you to a medical practitioner if our treatment is not effective or is not indicated. One of the sources that could have been for Dwayne but didn’t exist then is Trailhead Health. Trailhead Health is a resource for alternative practitioners of all kinds and so if you have a health problem, this is something you should check out.

About Dr. Wilson

Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D.PSc. is a Holistic Allergist and has been in practice since 1964. He has helped thousands of adults and children to rid them of their allergies, heal their pain, and improve their health. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health related questions.

Contact info:

You can send questions to Dr. Wilson at 612-866-7575

You can email Dr. Wilson directly at drjay@allergyelimination.org

See the full 36 min video where Dr. Wilson explains his Allergy Elimination method at the link below.

Best way to get rid of allergies, naturally and in a single treatment per allergen:

https://trailheadhealth.com/allergyeliminationofmn/jaywilson/best-way-to-get-rid-of-your-allergies-naturally-and-in-a-single-treatment-dr-jay-wilson

Today we would like to introduce you to Dr. Jay Wilson of Allergy Elimination Center of Minnesota. Dr. Wilson received his Doctorate in Chiropractic in the year 1964 and has been in practice ever since.  He’s a doctor of Pastoral Medicine, Health Minister and lovingly calls himself a Holistic Allergist. Using the principles of Biokinetics, Kinesiology, Chiropractic, JMT, NAET and Functional Medicine, Dr. Wilson has developed a unique method not just to manage allergies, but to get rid of them. He has had tremendous success with many of his clients in the last 50 years and is a firm advocate of people not having to live with allergies. Allergies can be eliminated. His method does not involve any invasive procedures or needles. Therefore it is especially helpful for children.

In this sit-down interview, we talked to Dr. Wilson about his methodology, how he developed it, and why he is so confident that allergies, can, in fact, be eliminated entirely.

“There is hardly a symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies.”

The other day a 12-year-old asked me, what are allergies and how come what you do helps them and eliminates them?

Well, we develop allergies for a couple of main reasons. One is because of our SAD American Diet, SAD, meaning Standard American Diet. We don’t have the 90 nutrients...90 vitamins, minerals and enzymes that are necessary to make the body work optimally. Food is grown on mineral deficient soil. It is laced with trans fats, sugars. It’s just very unhealthy.

Number two is we live in a very toxic world. We live in a world where our water is toxic; our food is toxic, our environment is toxic. It’s been said you can’t get out of your bathroom in the morning without being exposed to over 160 different chemicals. So what these toxins do is they kind of clog up the system, and they don’t allow the body to work right.

So as a result of these two things, our SAD (Standard American) diet and our toxic world, we start to develop allergies. Now, people think of allergies in terms of itchy eyes, runny noses, and hives. Believe me, that is the smallest part. Allergies can cause digestive problems and female problems and joint aches and muscle pains, behavior problems in children and cognitive issues and on and on and on. In fact, there is hardly any symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies.

So because we don’t feed it right and we jam it up with a bunch of toxins, then the body starts developing allergies. The allergies simply mean, in the body’s language, it’s like a foreign invader. The body thinks each allergen as a foreign invader, like a bacteria or virus or something like that. And so it reacts, and the reaction might be having stomach problems, the result might be your brain won’t work right because of the different chemicals and so forth.

So how do we get well?

Well, first of all, we have to realize that the body is a self-healing organism. The body already has every drug, every chemical, every hormone it needs if we feed it the nutrients that it needs and if we remove the toxins.

So how do we go about doing all this?

First, all of we do an allergy test to see what are you allergic to. Second, we do a blood profile.  A comprehensive one where we test 67 different items in your blood. Testing your liver, your thyroid, your autoimmune function, your blood count…everything. So we want to know what that SAD diet and the toxic world has caused in our body chemistry. What functions have been disrupted and what are we deficient in and so forth. And then we go about doing a detox. A detox program takes about three weeks. It's eating a very specialized diet and taking supplements to pull the toxins out of the system. And then develop a plan to eliminate the allergies, which is obviously what I do. And then to develop a nutritional plan based on the blood profile that we have done based on what we have determined what the imbalances and deficiencies are. Lastly, we need to take a look at altering your lifestyle, because you know the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So we need to take a look at our lifestyle so we can change it, improve it and move it towards a healthy lifestyle, so we don’t keep doing the same things over and over again that got us sick, to begin with. So that’s how we get sick, that’s how we get well, and it’s the only way I know of.

Is your Allergy Elimination treatment effective in children?

Absolutely, positively Yes! Many times I can change the direction the child is going in. I can make a lifetime of changes for them.  I can take care of tummy aches, digestive problems, behavior problems in children. One little boy that I took care of… his dad said when he gets into something he’s allergic to he becomes Attila the Hun. After we got done treating him for his allergies, we have this sweet little boy. In fact, his mother told me that when she realized this, she broke down and cried because she has her sweet little boy back again. This is so rewarding to be able to help children, and it is going to make a lifetime of changes for them.

We can help children focus better, pay attention in school better. I’ve had situations where the diagnosis for autism spectrum and ADHD has been dismissed by the doctor after their allergies were cleared. Allergies are super important for kids. It is so rewarding, so satisfying, for a doctor to be able to change children’s lives in such a way. And the thing that is so powerful is that the idea of allergies causing all of these problems or allergies being at the root cause of the problem is not even on the parent’s radar screen. Frankly, it’s not even on most doctor’s radar screen. They don’t realize that there is hardly any symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies.

Now, what are we screening for?

Well, we screen for the common inhalants, the molds, pollens, trees, weeds and so forth, and foods. We screen a lot for environmental issues – latex, formaldehyde, artificial coloring, flavoring, preservatives. We screen for autoimmune problems. We can actually become allergic to different body substances, and this I believe is the foundation for a lot of autoimmune problems. Let me read a list of things and categories that we look at.

Inhalants – Like I mentioned the grasses, pollens, flowers, powders, smoke, cosmetics, perfumes, chemical fumes such as paints, insecticides, fertilizers, flour from grains, etc.

Ingestants – These are allergens that are contracted through the normal course of eating a meal or enter our system through the mouth and thus find a way into our GI system or the gastrointestinal tract. These include foods, condiments, drugs, beverages, chewing gums, vitamins, supplements, etc.

Contactants – These are allergens that produce their effect by direct contact with our skin. Example of contactants includes poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, cats, dogs, rabbits, cosmetics, soaps, skin creams, detergents, rubbing alcohol, gloves, hair dyes, various types of plant oils, chemicals such as gasoline, dyes, acrylic nails, nail polish, fabrics, and formaldehyde.

Injectants – These are allergens that are injected into the skin, muscles, joints or blood vessels, in the form of various serums, antitoxins, vaccines, drugs and they also include substances entering through insect bites.

Infectants  - These are allergens that cause sensitivity to an infectious agent such as bacteria.

Genetic Causes – Most people inherit their genetic tendencies from their parents or their grandparents. Allergies can also skip generations and be manifested very differently in parents than in their children.

Mould and fungi

Auto-immune problems

So these are all the different kinds of areas that we test in and with the way that I check. We can also have a patient or parent bring in a sample of their food or a piece of their carpet, or some other item from their environment that I can use for testing and also for treating it. So it’s a little different from most allergists.

What are the most common culprits that cause allergies? And also, is the list specific when it comes to children?

The most common culprits are dairy, gluten, soy, sugar, and eggs are the most common ones. With children, especially with ADHD, the artificial coloring, flavoring, preservatives are huge allergens and culprits.

How did you develop the Allergy Elimination method? There are no other doctors around that do it the way that you do. How did you come up with it?

Well, first of all, I have developed it over the course of 40 to 50 years, and so what I have done, is that I have found certain aspects of different treatment methods that are effective and that work and I have put them together. Nobody, I guess, does exactly what I do because what I do has gradually evolved over the last couple dozen years using different methods. We use for example NAET; some people are familiar with. It stands for (Nambudripad’s allergy elimination techniques). I use Biokinetics which is a form of treatment for all kinds of problems and JMT (Jaffe-Mellor technique). And what I have done is that I have taken what I feel is the best most effective part of these treatments and put them together, and then we have to straighten the diet around, clean the diet up. If necessary, give supplements to balance the body chemistry so we can bring about healing as it should.

Dr. Wilson insists on looking at other aspects as well, not just allergies.

We have looked at problems from different aspects. We don’t just limit it to allergies. Sometimes there can be emotional components. Sometimes we need to talk about exercise. Sometimes we need to talk seriously about sleep issues. Because all of these are important if we want to get lasting results, and effective results. And simply put I’ve found many things through the years that work, and I’ve eliminated things that don’t work.

How do you screen for allergies?

I don’t do the usual medical testing with the pinpricks on the back. We use a form of Applied Kinesiology. What I do is we have the patient lay on the adjusting table. What we usually find is that one leg is usually shorter or longer than the other. Then I check a bunch of reflex patterns to see why that is happening and then we will make some adjustments on the spine. When we get done the legs will balance out, and they will be even. The system will be balanced. Now the body is an electromagnetic field. If we bring something in contact with that body that’s not good for it - either toxic or allergic - the whole nerve and muscle system tenses right up. Then guess what happens, that leg pulls up short again, and it occurs almost that fast because we are dealing with the nerve system, the electrical system of the body. If it is not a problem, it doesn’t react. It just stays even.

So what this does for us, is that not only helps us identify the true allergen, but also helps us to determine the hypersensitivities. In my experience, there isn’t much difference between a real allergy which develops antibodies and can be detected in a lab test vs. hypersensitivities, which can’t be tested with a lab test, and they both react almost identically within the body adversely.

The other thing is, it enables us to have a patient bring in a sample of whatever they might be suspicious of from their environment. It might be food, we might have them bring in a tablespoon of food, it might be the family dog, so we might have them bring in a hair sample of the dog and a saliva sample. It might be a piece of carpeting that they have put in, that’s new to their environment. So anything that is questionable, we can have the patient bring in a sample and then use that for testing, and then if it turns out to be that it’s a problem, then we can also turn around and use it for treating.

Thank you, Dr. Wilson. As I’m listening to you talk about allergies, the one thing that is coming to my mind is, maybe children should just be screened for allergies. What is your opinion on that?

Yes. First of all, most allergies are hidden. People don’t know that they are allergic to a particular item or food. And they are not aware of the effects it can have on them. So if we were able to screen all children, we would be able to find problems that would be affecting their behavior, affecting their focus in school, their ability to learn, their coordination in sports, all kinds of problems. For example, I had a child with growth problems. She wasn’t growing. After her allergies were cleared, she grew 4 inches in just a few months. This is something parents wouldn’t even think about. It’s not on their radar screen. So if we were to do an allergy screening test for all children, it would make a huge difference in their health.

So let’s say that through the screening process we have come to identify 12 different things that we are allergic or hypersensitive to. Once that determination is made how do you go about treating every one of these allergies?

Well, first of all, each allergen is usually eliminated with one treatment. I know that sounds unbelievable, but that’s our usual experience. Sometimes, if it's a real deep seeded allergen or one that is affecting the individual adversely, it might take two or three treatments to clear it. Once we have gone through the entire treatment program, to whatever number that we have started out with, we will then wait three months. At the end of the three months, I have the patient back again, and we will retest everything that was positive initially, be sure that they are holding. We might find that there might be one or two that might need an additional booster treatment.

Well, that is great. So we have determined that we need to handle each treatment for each allergy individually. What does a single treatment involve? Is it in any way painful or invasive? Can it hurt? And how long does each treatment take?

Nothing that I do in my office is in the least bit painful and this is why I get along great with kids. Because we don’t use needles, nothing hurts, and they love us for it.

So how long does it take?

Each treatment takes about 15 minutes. What we do is we get the patient adjusted so that their system is balanced and the legs are even. And then we put a vial in their hand, whatever we are going to be testing that day if its eggs or milk or whatever it is. And when we do that leg will go short and then I will come up and work on what we call the Master Reset Button. It’s the Brain Stem and a major Acupuncture point. I use a little instrument to it. In fact, I will show you what it is. It looks like this. I carry it with me all the time. Its very light and just a light click. And we use that in a point up here (pointing to the Brain Stem). When we get done, we will go back down and will find that the legs are even. So once the legs are even, we will take the vial out of their hand, out of their energy field, for a short time, just 7 to 10 seconds, then we put it back in their hand. We will find that the first time, maybe that leg went up half an inch short. This time, it’s only about a quarter of an inch short. So, it's reacting less. So then we will come up, and we will work on the master reset button again. We will come back, and the legs will be even again. We will take the vial out of their hand and wait for 7 to 10 seconds and put it back in, and this time maybe it will be an eighth of an inch. So every time we do this cycle, it reacts less and less, until pretty soon, it doesn’t react at all. So when we have done that, then we use a laser to work on acupuncture points. We acupuncture the acupuncture points in the ear. There is a branch of acupuncture called Auricular Therapy. In Auricular therapy, the whole body is represented in the ear. I have a chart on the wall I can show patients this. We laser the entire ear for a short time, and then we laser down, either side of the spine. There is a major acupuncture meridian or energy channel called the Bladder Meridian. It starts from the inside of the bridge of the nose and goes all the way up over the head and down below the side of the spine, down both legs, all the way to the little toe. And we work on the bladder meridian with the laser because it has all kinds of connecting points with the other 11 meridians.

Our goal here is while the patient is holding that allergen in their hand, we want to normalize the acupuncture energy system. So we are in essence saying to the body, its okay now. It’s not a threat; it’s not a foreign invader, its okay. And when we get done, the legs will be even. Or the short leg might be longer, its overcompensated and that’s where you want it to be. So then we are done with the treatment for the day. Excuse me, missed a couple of points. Then we laser a couple of acupuncture points in the hand and on the wrist and in the knee and the foot. And then we are done. Then when the patient comes back on the next visit, we will get them balanced again, then we will take their vial, the substance that we treated in the last visit, put it in their hand and see if it reacts. If it does, we might have to treat it a second time. If it doesn’t, then we move on to the next allergen. And that’s how we do it! Simple, easy, effective and painless.

So when you start the treatment, there are two questions that come to mind, from your explanation. One is, every treatment seems to begin with a chiropractic adjustment. Why is, in your opinion, that so significant and vital? And the second is, you mentioned stimulating the acupuncture points using the laser. Why laser and why do you opt for that?

The treatment that we do is with chiropractic care, to align the spine, be sure that the nerves are working right because nerves control every organ action, tissue, function, cells of our whole body. So, nerves have to be working right.

So the treatment is with Chiropractic adjustment first, and we use laser acupuncture. We use acupuncture, but we use lasers. A lot of time people don’t realize that there are many different ways you can stimulate acupuncture points. And we use lasers instead of needles because a lot of times, people, especially kids have an aversion to needles. And the other thing is, it's much quicker and faster. If we were going to use needles, the patient would have to lay on the table, and to have a hyperactive child lay on a table for 20 minutes, with needles sticking in they, is just isn’t going to happen. So we want to use the quickest way, which is lasers. And so what we are doing is we are saying to the body, its okay now. This allergen that we are treating you for is not a foreign invader, its okay, it's not a threat to you. And so that’s what we are doing with allergy elimination work.

Sometimes people say to me, you know Dr. Wilson, you just tested me for allergies, and you came up with 23 allergens, and I would just like to take care of the top 6 ones that I know that I am allergic to. Can we do that?

And my answer to that is NO. Because if we treat those six allergies out of 23, we are still going to have 17 that are dragging the immune system down. And we are going to not have lasting results with the six that we did treat. You have to remember that most allergens are hidden. We don’t know that we have them and most of the times we don’t realize how those allergies are affecting us. Because allergies can affect us in so many different ways, whether it is a digestive problem, joint pain or muscle aches or female problems or kid’s problems. We are not aware of that. For that reason, I only treat whatever we find and get rid of all of them, and then that’s going to get the immune system upward, where it belongs, and the body will take care of itself.

Thank you, Dr. Wilson. I do have one question about just expectation from you as far as your patients are concerned. What are you expecting from your patient who is coming to receive this treatment?

The scripture says – My people die for lack of knowledge. And I feel one of the reasons we get sick today is because people don’t realize what’s necessary, why they get sick, and what is necessary to get well again. And so I feel that patient education is primary and a very important part of my care. The word doctor means to teach. And so we should be teachers, we should be teaching people not only how to get well and how to stay well. So this is what you can expect from me. What I expect from you is that you need to realize and expect the fact that we are in a partnership. I have to do my part, and I expect you to do certain things. So, when I coach you and educate you on lifestyle changes, which are extremely important, that you will take them and run with them and incorporate them into your way of being.

You remember the definition of insanity, don’t you  - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, if we are going to go back to the lifestyle that set up the environment, the situation that would drag our immune system down and cause allergies, then we are not going to get lasting results. So to get lasting permanent results, we need to change our lifestyle. And I feel my job is to educate you and train you in a way that is healthy and it’s your job to take the ball and run with it. So I expect a certain commitment from patients, and it's important because I can’t do the whole job. Again, it’s a partnership. It’s both of us working together, both of us having a common goal of getting you well, getting you healthy and get rid of your allergies.

People sometimes will ask me  - Can you eliminate an allergen that has caused a patient to go into anaphylactic shock and have to go to the ER?

My answer to that is No. I can’t. I can sometimes help make it less sensitive, so that may be if they get exposed to it accidentally, they aren’t going to go into anaphylactic shock, but it’s not something I say, we are going to eliminate this allergy, just like I do some of the other allergens.

Dr. Wilson, you know so much about so much. How do you keep up with everything and how are you able to evolve your treatment method?

First of all, I love learning. I think when you quit learning you are dead. So I love learning, I love reading, I love new things. I love especially to be on the leading edge when things develop. I love to be able to bring things to people that are new and effective. I guess that’s the main thing. We are always looking for what’s effective - what is going to help people the most.

And finally, I just love educating and teaching people healthy lifestyles and eliminating their allergies. It’s my sport. It’s my hobby. It’s my vocation. It’s my mission. My wife says that if I won the lottery, I would still continue practicing. And that summarizes I guess why I’m still practicing and all of my classmates are retired already.

Conclusion

Thank you, Dr. Wilson. So there you have it, folks. In this whole presentation, we covered how allergies can be eliminated naturally. If there are two things you can remember out of this entire recording, it’s as follows.

Number one, there’s hardly a symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies. And the second and perhaps the most important thing. The body is a self-healing organism. The body has every drug, chemical, every hormone it needs to get well and stay well. Providing we feed it right and get rid of the toxins and eliminate the allergies.

Thank you, Dr. Wilson.

ABOUT DR. WILSON:

Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D.PSc. is a Holistic Allergist and has been in practice since 1964. He has helped thousands of adults and children to rid them of their allergies, heal their pain, and improve their health. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions. His center is called Allergy Elimination Center of Minnesota.

Contact info:

You can send questions to Dr. Wilson at 612-866-7575

You can email Dr. Wilson directly at drjay@allergyelimination.org

https://trailheadhealth.com/offers/getridofallergiesinkids

Thank you

That's a pretty common experience to have where a patient comes in and says, "Well, my ortho says that they don't understand acupuncture but they think it's great, and they think it works, so they are all for me continuing to see you."

I just recently had a patient who had a knee reconstructed, and when she went into her PT the next day, she already had five more degrees of flexion, and the PT was so amazed when she was doing some manual work at the acupuncture. So you have a "lifer" that when you have an experience like that as another practitioner even if you don't understand the medicine. I don't understand half of the medicines out there or ALL of the medicines out there to the extent that I understand acupuncture. 

I talk to them in very basic terms like, "I'm going in to release a muscle. I'm going in to nourish a joint to have the body pay attention." I don't start talking about chi, blood, yin, yang...I can't get into that realm because they are not going to understand it. If they are willing to meet me halfway on the bridge, I better be willing to meet them halfway on the bridge and talk to them in terms that they are going to understand, words that PTs would use, that chiropractors would use. People in an industry that they are used to working with. I talk in the same realm, you know, injury prevention, treating an injury, releasing a knot, releasing a contusion, working with a concussion and the cerebral spinal fluid. Talking in the terms that they would understand. 

About Hilary Patzer:

Hilary Patzer, L.Ac. is a Licensed Acupuncturist, Chinese Herbalist and Sports Medicine Specialist in MN. Being an athlete herself and having worked with pro and elite athletes since 2009, she believes that it takes a fusion of sports medicine, holistic healing, and manual therapies to keep people performing at their best. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Hi, I'm Hilary Patzer. I'm a licensed Acupuncturist working out of Minneapolis, MN. I am also the Viking's contracted acupuncturist, so I get to work on some pretty incredible athletes and people. My private practice is called Jada Studios, and it is located in the International Market Square building. 

What is something that is misunderstood in Acupuncture?

For me, it's that it is scary and it hurts. I get it. I'm not a big fan of needles either, but if I held the needle up here, you wouldn't even see the blade that I insert. The two biggest questions I get from patients prior to seeing me are does it hurt and is it scary. And I say, no and no. Does it hurt? No. But there is a sensation. But that sensation is an exciting thing. It is your body waking up. It's your body recognizing that something is wrong and that it needs to change. 

It doesn't hurt. It's not like getting a shot. And when you come and see me, it's a laid back, easy going, fun experience. Often people fall asleep on the table with 30 to 40 needles in them. It's nothing to be shy of and to keep putting off and off and off if you are looking for a therapy that might fit into your lifestyle or might work better than what you are currently doing. 

About Hilary

Hilary Patzer, L. Ac.  is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist in MN. Being an athlete herself and having worked with pro and elite athletes since 2009, she believes that it takes a fusion of sports medicine, holistic healing, and manual therapies to keep people performing at their best. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Which might be different than how acupuncture is used for the general public. For sports medicine, acupuncture is awesome for relieving muscle tension. All of those knots you feel, those are adhesions in the muscle and acupuncture can go and blow them up and get the muscle fibers to realign. It’s great for joint pain, inflammation, blood flow...so getting you ready for the game. Or inflammation, bringing you down after the game. You have built up lactic acid and inflammation. It’s really good for helping to control stress. Even if, you don’t know it is. You get off the table, and it’s what I call “acupuncture drunk” where you get off, and you’re just kinda, good. For pain management, it can help shorten the duration of time it could take for a patient to heal. It’s really good for Tendnosis, Tendinitis, Headache. Acupuncture is fantastic for a concussion. So as you can see the list goes on and on.

If an athlete is having trouble with digestion that’s also something I look at. Or if they are not sleeping well, that is something I look for because then they are not performing at the top level. 

I work on pain management, inflammation, flexibility, sleep, muscle tone - all of that with them. 

Some people would probably wonder, “Well, how does that work to bring an acupuncturist in?” I work synergistically with the whole medical training staff. All the trainers, all the ortho docs, general docs, the chiropractors, the massage therapist who’s there. We all work together and communicate about what the athlete is experiencing and how we can all help that. 

A couple of times a week I go down to Winter Park, and the guys are booked for me. I always see the injured guys who are on the list. And then the guys who aren’t injured or maybe aren’t as injured will see me at my studio. After that, I communicate back to the head athletic trainer what I did and how the treatment went so that he always has his finger on the pulse for what’s going on for these multi-million dollar bodies that we are all trying desperately to keep healthy and keep on the winning side of the game.

Do you always work in the same way with every athlete or is it different?

I have a huge, so it’s just whatever they need at the time that they need it. Even if I’m treating the same guy day to day and he has the same issue I’m probably going to treat it differently because his body is reacting differently and presenting differently.

About Dr. Hilary Patzer

Dr. Hilary Patzer, L.Ac. is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist in MN. Being an athlete herself and having worked with pro and elite athletes since 2009, she believes that it takes a fusion of sports medicine, holistic healing, and manual therapies to keep people performing at their best. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Quotation: "The best way to avoid misdiagnosing a patient is to be consistent. We go through the same procedure, in the same order with everybody when they come in here

Question for Dr. Moon - So many patients these days have had the unfortunate experience of misdiagnosis. Can you explain the process at YWellness to ensure that patients have an accurate diagnosis and get on the right path to treatment?

Dr. Moon's response: I would say the best way that we can avoid misdiagnosing a patient is to be consistent. When a new patient starts, we go through the same procedure, in the same order with everybody when they come in here. For the chiropractic part, we start with our chiropractic exam. We always do the thermography test, we always do the muscle exam, and we always take full spine x-rays. I’m going to let you know a secret. I don’t read the paperwork of why someone comes into our office initially. The reason I do that is I don’t want anything that I read to bias or skew what I’m looking for. If I can help somebody, I will be able to find it by interpreting our analysis from our tests that we do.

Key take away:

1. When it comes to what might be going on with you, its best to cover all your basis instead of assuming, what it might be. A consistent thorough exam is key.
2. Pay close attention to whether your doctor is cutting corners or running a full exam to figure out the problem.

Trailhead Health Tip:

When working with your doctor, make sure they are not omitting any steps or cutting your visit short in the interest of time. Each exam by a doctor should be complete and thorough. While you may have an idea of why you are going to see the doctor or what might even be going on with you, there may be a possibility that there is some other issue that is causing the problem. The only way to find out is if the doctor does a thorough exam. Bottom line, there is no substitute for a consistent, comprehensive examination.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Dr. Paul Moon, DC, is a family chiropractor who focuses on patients and their families, especially children. He utilizes the Gonstead Method of Chiropractic care along with state of the art technology to diagnose and work with you on a treatment and wellness plan. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Check out Dr. Moon’s Blog:

https://trailheadhealth.com/y-wellness-mn/paul-moon#tiles

Please subscribe to our Trailhead Health YouTube Channel where you can see more videos like these.

(A conversation between Trailhead Health and Holistic Allergist, Dr. Jay P Wilson)

Dr. Wilson's response: The short answer is absolutely, positively Yes! Many times I can change the direction the child is going in. I can make lifetime changes for them. I can take care of tummy aches, digestion problems and behavior problems in children.

One little boy that I took care of… his dad said when he gets into something he’s allergic to he becomes Attila the Hun. After we got done treating him for his allergies we have this sweet little boy. In fact, his mother told me that when she realized this, she broke down and cried because she has her sweet little boy back again.

This is so rewarding to be able to help children and it is going to make a lifetime change for them. We can help children focus better, pay attention in school better. I’ve had situations where the diagnosis for autism spectrum and ADHD has been dismissed by the doctor after their allergies were cleared.

Allergies are super important for kids. It’s so rewarding, so satisfying for a doctor to be able to change children’s lives in such a way. And the thing that is so powerful is that the idea of allergies causing all of these problems or allergies being at the root cause of the problem is not even on the parent’s radar screen. Frankly, it’s not even on most doctor’s radar screen. They don't realize that there is hardly any symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies.

About Dr. Wilson

Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D.PSc. is a Holistic Allergist and has been in practice since 1964. He has helped thousands of adults and children to rid them of their allergies, heal their pain, and improve their health. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Contact info:

You can send questions to Dr. Wilson at 612-866-7575

You can email Dr. Wilson directly at drjay@allergyelimination.org

See the full 36 min video where Dr. Wilson explains his Allergy Elimination method at the link below.

Best way to get rid of allergies, naturally and in a single treatment per allergen:

https://trailheadhealth.com/allergyeliminationofmn/jaywilson/best-way-to-get-rid-of-your-allergies-naturally-and-in-a-single-treatment-dr-jay-wilson

WOULD IT BE BENEFICIAL TO SCREEN CHILDREN FOR ALLERGIES?

Dr. WIlson's response: And I would have to say yes. Most allergies are hidden. People don’t always know that they are allergic to a particular item or food. Remember, there is hardly any symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies. So if we were able to screen all children, we would be able to find problems that would be affecting their behavior, affecting their focus in school, their ability to learn, their coordination in sports…all kinds of problems. For example, I helped a child with growth problems, wasn’t growing. And once her allergies were cleared, she grew 4 inches within months. This is something parents wouldn’t even think about. Its not on their radar screen. So if we were to do an allergy screening for children, it would really help and make a huge difference in their life.

About Dr. Wilson

Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D.PSc. is a Holistic Allergist and has been in practice since 1964. He has helped thousands of adults and children to rid them of their allergies, heal their pain, and improve their health. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Contact info:

You can send questions to Dr. Wilson at 612-866-7575

You can email Dr. Wilson directly at drjay@allergyelimination.org

https://trailheadhealth.com/offers/getridofallergiesinkids

Could there be any correlation between buying a new car and flu-like symptoms? A conversation between Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D. PSc. and Trailhead Health.

Dr. Wilson: Let’s talk about Sarah for a minute. Sarah came to me in June a few years ago. She had originally gotten sick in March with a bad flu but it did not clear up and go away. She went to the doctor. The doctor put her in the hospital and did and ETKM. You know what that is don’t you? Every Test Known To Man.

And all they came up with was the possibility of pancreatitis or irritable bowel. So they sent her home, gave her some medication and it didn’t help so she went to see a chiropractor who used chiropractic adjustments and some acupuncture on her. That did not help. He happened to be a friend of mine so when he didn’t give her any help he sent her to me to check some allergies. When I saw her it was June as I mentioned. And at that point, she had lost 30 pounds.

We did our allergy test that I do routinely on patients. Found out there were only two things she was allergic to. One was formaldehyde and the other was a mix of fabrics. I knew she had brought something new into her environment. When I asked her what she had brought new into her environment she said she had bought a new car in February. That is when she started feeling not so good. I told her to go home and take a clean wet washcloth and wipe down everything inside of the car, the steering wheel, the dash, the carpet, the seat, the headliner, everything. Put it in a clean glass jar and bring it back on the next visit so we can use it for testing. In the meantime, I talked to a colleague of mine who also does allergy work because I thought it was such an interesting case and he said that he had a patient like that not too long ago and she was very sick. She was a pharmaceutical salesperson and the company had given her a year’s leave of absence to get well. She was down to 5 months and wasn’t feeling any better. She went to see him and he tested her for formaldehyde and she was the type that researched everything. She researched and found out that Ford Taurus - her car - used formaldehyde in the headliner of her car. Of course when my patient came back the first question out of my mouth was, “what kind of car do you drive?” And of course, she said a Ford Taurus. We were able then to use the cloth that she brought in for testing and for treating. It took about two weeks but we were able to clear her of her allergy to formaldehyde and she was able to keep her car.

About Dr. Wilson

Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D.PSc. is a Holistic Allergist and has been in practice since 1964. He has helped thousands of adults and children to rid them of their allergies, heal their pain, and improve their health. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Contact info:

You can send questions to Dr. Wilson at 612-866-7575

You can email Dr. Wilson directly at drjay@allergyelimination.org

I guess we have to go back to my beginning. I was raised in a chiropractic family. My dad was a chiropractor, so it was just natural that my thinking was along the natural line. I have always wanted to do things that help people with natural treatment. So I’ve done chiropractic for 52 years. Actually, I don’t have a choice, that's my background. And I’ve gradually gravitated toward taking care of allergies. Because as I’ve said many times before there is hardly a symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies. So I have gradually become a holistic allergist, that’s what I call myself. We want to take care of a person from a holistic standpoint. We want to get rid of their allergies, but inorder to get rid of their allergies we have to take a look at their diet and also the toxic world that they live in. We have to improve their diet and we have to get rid of the toxins because these are two of the main reasons why we develop allergies.

About Dr. WIlson

Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D.PSc. is a Holistic Allergist and has been in practice since 1964. He has helped thousands of adults and children to rid them of their allergies, heal their pain, and improve their health. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

https://trailheadhealth.com/offers/getridofallergiesinkids

Roxanne explains how breathing right can make all the difference in the management of stress.

So one of the big things I notice with people who are stressed out, they come and lay on my table, I start people face up, and I watch people’s tummies. The majority, if not 99% of my clients that come in and their tummies barely move. And you might say, “So, what does that mean?” What that means for me and what I’m looking at is that they are not breathing deeply. They are not taking the deep, really coming down into the diaphragm belly breath. What that tells me - because you are probably thinking, “Well they are alive, they are breathing, they are laying on your table, right?” - And yes, that is true. What they are doing though is they are breathing from this part of their body up. Why is that significant? Several reasons. One is, when you breathe from your chest you are using your neck muscles to help you breathe. And there is a specific set on the side that comes off of your neck, vertebra, down under your collarbone and attach to your first and second rib. So you are using them to do your inhalation and your exhalation. So if you have neck/head issues, you are making those worse. By not breathing way down into your belly you’re not using the breath in a manner that would massage your internal organs. Breathing fully down and into the diaphragm, which helps massage your internal organs that will then help them work better too.

The other thing that happens with stress is we tend to when we’re in a stressful environment or a stressful moment or even a traumatic environment we tend to go “hhhuuuuuuuuhhh”. And then a lot of people hold their breath for the next 20 years. Why that’s significant, is when it is done in that stressful moment we are activating and staying in the trauma. And so when we are in that part of our brain we literally, really cannot think properly. And so you have a hard time making decisions. And you feel triggered your whole day. Every little thing just might set you off farther. And it keeps that stress building and building and building. Remember I said our mind, our heads, are connected to our bodies so what happens up here happens in here.

So if we can just take a moment and I start to teach my clients how to breathe, how to bring that breath all the way in to push your stomach up. If you put your hands there and let your hands rise and fall like you are blowing up a balloon. That’s how you should be breathing. People struggle with it. My clients really struggle because we are not used to breathing that way. But what happens when you start to do that is you start to come down. You start to get to a different level. A state of relaxation begins to bring down the stress, the feeling of stress. It starts to relieve the tension within your physical body. It takes you out of that trauma brain and brings you back into the part of your brain that thinks. And so you don’t feel foggy. You get to make better decisions. You’re not triggered. You’re not crabby with your kids or your coworkers. That car ride home from work you can just take some moments and take some big breaths and that way when you walk in and see your kids and be like, “HEY! How was your day?” You just don’t have that edge. So you start to calm down, and your whole body calms down, and your mind calms down, and your body and your mind start to function properly. And you have a calmer life. You’re not triggered, you’re not crabby, you communicate better, you make better decisions, and the easiest thing is the breath.

Roxann is offering free consultation over the phone to see how therapeutic massage and Trauma Touch Therapy can help you. If you would like to take advantage of this, please contact Roxann at 612-270-6323

ABout Roxann Keyes

Roxann Keyes, CMT, Certified Trauma Touch Therapist, is a certified massage therapist specializing in Trauma Touch Therapy and Hypnosis. She works to empower individuals affected by all kinds of trauma and abuse to help them connect within, heal and achieve their life’s goals. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

What people are saying about Roxann

"After knowing Roxann for a few years now, and after using her services, I can honestly say that not only is she a highly skilled massage therapist and coach, she is an absolutely laudable person to know and to work with. She has a deep knowledge and understanding of bodywork and is truly talented at listening to you and being able to recognize exactly what needs to be done." - Allison, Minneapolis

"I have had massages at different times over the last 25 years and Roxann is by far the BEST! Her energy to soothe and restore peace of mind and body are terrific. Her massages adapt to what you AND your body at each session. If you haven’t scheduled time with Roxann, you are missing out on the greatest gift to yourself!" - Wendy, Minneapolis

"Roxann is an amazing massage therapist. She has a unique understanding of how the mind and body are connected, and a wide range of techniques to relieve physical tension and pain. She has a client-centered approach, allowing clients to tailor a session their particular needs, and a commitment to continued learning in her field. I’ve been a client regularly for over 5 years, and always leave her office feeling incredible." - Amy, Minneapolis

Roxann is offering free consultation over the phone to see how therapeutic massage and Trauma Touch Therapy can help you. If you would like to take advantage of this, please contact Roxann at 612-270-6323

Sure, absolutely, you know acupuncture has long been used to treat addictions, you know whether it’s heroin addiction, opioid addiction, you name it. It can be very very effective. I think the biggest step in helping to treat an addiction is that person wanting to quit it. You know that way they’re fifty percent there, they’re fifty percent on the way because they want to stop. And again, acupuncture as an alternative, great, especially if they’re using the opioids for pain purposes, absolutely. You know, some conditions may be that, you know, acupuncture has not been helpful, but it’s very very rare cases where it just has not helped. There are specific protocols for working with addiction and you know whether what drug it may be that is just extremely helpful.

For you know as someone, who’s debating between whether to keep pills or whether to take acupuncture, for acupuncture obviously I have to come to see you on a regular basis.

Follow up question for Jen Winer: How long does the pain treatment last? Is it like an opioid drug where I take it, and it lasts a few hours and kind of tapers off, and then I come back for my next treatment? How does that work?

Right, you’re right on. Acupuncture is a cumulative effect, so what I usually tell people is allow one to ten treatments at once a week to get a pain condition under control. We hope it’s less than ten treatments, but sometimes it can be a few more as well. It depends on how severe the condition is, how long they’ve had the condition, what exactly happened. Obviously, if you have a broken bone, that could take a little bit longer to heal. But it is a cumulative effect, so each time you come in, you might feel great that first time for that night or the next day. Then the next time you come in the hope is two or three days until we get you to that point of maintenance where it just becomes your once monthly maintenance of keeping your body at peak potential and everything’s working the way it should. So hopefully within one to ten treatments, we can clear up an issue, a problem, a condition and help the person through that and they’re on their way.

About Jen:

Jennifer Winer, L.Ac., Dipl. Ac., MSOM, is an acupuncturist licensed in both MN and WI. She specializes in infertility treatments and helping patients reach their goal of pregnancy. In addition to acupuncture, she utilizes Chinese Herbal Medicine, moxibustion, nutritional counseling and more. She listens to her patients and compassionately supports them in all their healthcare choices. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

In assessing toxicity, the categories are very large. It could be some form of metals - there are very light metals, there are very heavy metals, there are very obscure metals. Each of which comes out of your body differently and can cause different stresses in doing so. It could be that you are dealing with some form of insecticide, pesticide, we’ll call them farm chemicals, fertilizers for that matter. And again, depending on where it is and what’s holding it in place or what’s blocking it, different ways of dealing with it are necessary. When it comes to airborne, it could be as simple as the smoke in the air from a western forest fire. It could be as bad as the neighbor just sprayed yard chemicals, but the idea being there are different things and different purposes to clean these things. And if you don’t have the full line on what you are doing, understanding what it is, where it is in the body, what it is affecting and how it is going to come out, you are not going to have a good detox. A general detox kit does not provide that.

About Dave Eide, Traditional Naturopath

Dave Eide is a Traditional Naturopath founding The Natural Path Wellness Center over 25 years ago. Using non-prescription natural healing modalities as a complement to traditional medical care, The Natural Path helps people discover their personal health success story. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Who is a good acupuncturist to work with? How do you pick your acupuncturist? After all, this is not a form of medicine that most people are familiar with.

Here's what he had to say.

There's a lot of benefit to acupuncture. In Chinese medicine, there's a lot of research about it, there's a lot I have written about it on my website, but there's also a lot of trust needed to bridge that gap. This is something very different, very foreign to our way of thinking. It is a practice that we don't understand, and it's really hard to experience through just a description.  So part of the accessibility of Chinese medicine and acupuncture is through practitioners that are devoted and diligent, and experts in their field; but also recognize that medicine is a heart-centered affair.  There isn't any checklist of practitioner verification that I find necessary.  

Obviously, the person should be a licensed acupuncturist, and that doesn't necessarily mean that there are people that haven't gone to school, and are practicing acupuncture all over, especially in Minnesota, in any part of this country. Medicine is very well regulated, and people go to jail very quickly for fraud, for saying that they're a practitioner when they're not. 

There's a big difference also, between a licensed acupuncturist and a certified acupuncturist; someone that did a hundred hour course, or a two hundred hour course.  So, I would be careful of practitioners that aren't specialists in acupuncture. That doesn't mean they're all bad, but it means that they should be honest with you and say, I'm going to try this and if it doesn't work, go and see a licensed acupuncturist because the expertise level is way higher. 

The training is very different, around 4000 hours to be a licensed acupuncturist and four full
years of post-grad training compared to 100 to 200-hour course for those that say they
got training in this field. Because acupuncture and Chinese Medicine is so unique, it doesn't necessarily translate.

If you have a loved one or you are looking for an acupuncturist or somebody that practices Chinese Medicine, I would make sure they're licensed. I would ask for referrals like you would from anybody else, and I would see if you can call or email or meet that person
and see what they feel like. I think we know deep down when we found the person that gives us hope, which inspires us, that has a certain level of expertise, and that is talking about our issue. Not reframing it in such a way that makes it feel foreign to us, that we have to learn this whole new lingo and this whole new culture to be able to get better. I think a good practitioner is relatable and makes us feel like we're ready to be free. You know, like we're bound up, and we're seeing what those ties are binding us up and between what we can do, and the practitioner can do, we see that we can be free. 

About Dr. Josh Eha, DAOM, L.Ac., C.SMA

Dr Josh Eha, DAOM, L.Ac, C.SMA brings a sophisticated, holistic approach to the art of medicine in Minnesota. In just a few visits, he will catalyze the growth and healing you have been looking for - even after failed surgery, physical therapy, meds, or chiropractic. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

That's a very good question.  I think the approach a practitioner takes from any medicine, has a huge impact on the results they're going to get with the patient. My particular approach and one that many of us practitioners use, is an interview process that's extensive. I don't spend 10 or 15 minutes with a patient when they come in. I spend a whole hour with a patient. I want to get to know you.  I don't just want to get to know your symptoms, and put you in a category and treat you according to how most people in that category respond.  Because, there's a person behind what you're feeling, and that person has a variety of experiences that they may or may not know, contribute to that issue. What I want to know is who you are and what your personality is, to get a better sense of not only how I can treat that issue, but also to understand how our lives contribute to that issue. How our lives can be better in the future so that you don't have to keep coming back for the rest of your life. 

So when I get a sense of who you are in my clinic, I start the Chinese Medicine diagnosis which starts with medical pulse diagnosis. Chinese Medicine, especially the herbal portion, is very much directed at fixing organs that aren't receiving enough blood flow. Organs don't receive enough blood flow because of blockages, because of inflammation and swelling, vasoconstriction which makes blood flow limited to an area. The body naturally does this because we have to survive. Prehistorically, when we had a chronic issue, the body would cut off blood supply to that area so that we wouldn't suffer sepsis, which is an infection throughout the entire body. These infections can be limited to a particular area. 

In modern medicine our problems are not infectious normally, so the problem with limiting blood flow is one of limiting the benefit of the body healing itself.  Because, the healing components come with the blood, so if we can maximize blood flow, we maximize healing, that's huge. And if there is an infection we have ways of dealing with that, that we know now, that our bodies didn't know then.

About Dr. Josh Eha, DAOM, L.Ac., C.SMA

Dr. Josh Eha, DAOM, L.Ac, C.SMA brings a sophisticated, holistic approach to the art of medicine in Minnesota. In just a few visits, he will catalyze the growth and healing you have been looking for - even after failed surgery, physical therapy, meds, or chiropractic. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Yeah that's a good question. Acupuncture uses needles in order to coerce the nervous system to be in harmony with itself. There's a lot of competing vibrations and effects that the body sends back to the brain, in terms of the stimulation, and when those aren't working together we have dis-integration or dis-ease in the body.  What the acupuncture needle does, is put a very talented musician next to somebody who is not doing their job appropriately, in order to show them how to stay in rhythm, how to stay in tune, and the body naturally melts that information into homeostasis; which is the body's natural way of balancing itself, right? 

When we get hot, we cool off; when we get dry, we moisten; when we get empty, we fill up.

That's all very natural, and that's happening all the time. When that falls apart, it's because of a lack of communication and that communication has been shown through evidence with patients, even on lab animals that the brain re-connects things that are disconnected with acupuncture. The needles are needed because stimulation of the nervous system is how the body changes habits from what kind of works a little bit, to what's optimal. 

The stimulation that I give is not sharp or stabbing as if I'm drawing blood, or getting a vaccine type needle.  Our needles are as thick as human hair and no thicker. Our needles in the hands of an expert practitioner will move through the skin quickly and not cause that sensation, and when it reaches the target, then there is a sense of peace and calm, the endorphins kick in, almost like a massage. There is a spreading and a quieting, in a relaxing sensation and the grand majority of my patients find it very comforting and positive as an experience not just in the effect.

About Dr. Josh Eha, DAOM, L.Ac., C.SMA

Dr. Josh Eha, DAOM, L.Ac, C.SMA brings a sophisticated, holistic approach to the art of medicine in Minnesota. In just a few visits, he will catalyze the growth and healing you have been looking for- even after failed surgery, physical therapy, meds, or chiropractic.  This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Question for Nicole: The work you do is called energy work, and you have various tools that you use within this energy work. Without going into the specifics of each tool, because most people don't understand what they are, could you explain what energy work is? What does that mean for you?

Nicole:  I like to use the analogy of going to the dentist. So when we are little, our parents brush our teeth, and they teach us how to brush our teeth. And then when we get to be a certain age, we start to go to the dentist. And we hopefully go at least twice a year to get them cleaned, and then if there's anything bigger needed, the dentist will take care of that. And we go home, and we continue to brush our teeth at least once or twice a day, and if we are really good, we floss. But what would happen if we didn't do that in between? Of course, the work of the dentist would be fantastic, it would still be doing its job, but if we didn't ever brush our teeth in between, we would find detriment and illness in our teeth along the way. So our energy is a lot like that. And wouldn't it be nice if we all knew how to manage our own energy? To clean and clear it, to balance and that it was as easy, as brushing our teeth. So what I can do for people is be that dentist. And sometimes its more often than not, and then at other times, it's more like maintenance. Once people learn to manage it and take care of their energy. 

Question: Nicole, you have many tools that you use to help people with managing their energy or clearing their energy. Do you teach these tools to your clients or do you just clear the energy for them?

Nicole: So two different things, when I do clearings I do just clear the energy for them. So initially sometimes people will come every week or every month or when they feel it is needed, and along the way they observe and learn things about themselves and so naturally start to learn to navigate and manage their own energy. But I also do teach and bring tools to that as well. I teach Reiki, and I teach other tools to help people navigate life and also just to get to know and love and understand themselves and to live more in alignment with themselves.

Question:  Nicole, what are some of the reasons why people feel like their energy is blocked? What are some of the common things that you've observed, when people start wondering why they feel blocked or what's wrong with their energy.

Nicole: Sure. That's a good question. Why do people sometimes come initially? I would say the most common reason is feeling unsettled, anxiety or there's a big change going on in their life. The common theme amongst all of it is wanting to have some kind of change. Whether it's going off to college or moving house, possibly changing career or having a health issue, a physical health issue or not sleeping well and just noticing a sense of "oh I'm not as calm and relaxed as I would like to be and I'd like to change that." 

Question: One of the things that you have been able to do in your career as an energy practitioner Nicole that a lot of other energy practitioners aren't able to do is you have been able to break the barrier with the Western Medicine side of things. There's a beautiful picture of you working in Dr. Ron Hansen's office. He's an MD who works on people's knees and joints and different issues and then here you are, right before he does his procedures, kind of helping people manage their energy. Going into the procedure, coming out of the procedure, helping with being more relaxed, maybe even affect their pain in a positive way or affect their perception of pain. That's huge, to watch you and Dr. Ron work together. How do you feel about it? What is your take on this sort of Medicine working together with Western medicine?

Nicole:  I love working together with Western medicine. My take on it is that what I do can only compliment Western Medicine.  And the real first experience that I had with that was when my husband was sick, and we were taking him to Mayo and getting chemo and radiation and having surgery and all of these things. And the one thing that helped him get through all of these things was energy work. So it complemented everything that he was doing. As a practitioner, what I see is people relaxing in the environment. I also have worked and love working during the procedures as well. So before the procedures, during and even after as follow-up, both that day and throughout the coming weeks to just support the healing. What I see is aside from just a calmness during it, it's just, a variety and open-ended what people say that they experience. And of course, we can never say oh this is because of the energy work. We can never make those claims. We can't claim anything like that. However people do say that they have less pain, are sleeping better, are feeling better more quickly. They are just calmer. Take less pain medication, and so I'm loving, I'm loving working with the Western medicine community. I see it as a compliment and a completion. You really can't have one without the other.

Question: Sure...You also have had this amazing ability to help the healers, so to speak, help the healthcare professionals. I know Dr. Ron Hanson himself has gotten energy work done with you. He raves about it. But you also work with chiropractic offices and yoga centers and you kind of work with the healers, with the practitioners. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Nicole:  Yes! I love working with them as well. You know we as people who go to the doctor, to the chiropractor, the medical doctor, do a yoga class.... great wonderful. But what about those people! They need some self-care too, right?And also it's a fantastic way as a group, for the staff of the chiropractor's office or the staff of the yoga studio to be cohesive in how their practice or their business runs. So whether it's specifically about healing or if it's a financial center or whatever it is, this work creates more cohesion and collaboration, and you know, we see each other, and we're on the same page. It's a reminder. So if I'm using this energy tool, and you're using this energy tool, and we've agreed that this is how we're moving through our day or how we're going to be manifesting our vision as a business. Then we see each other in the hall or in meetings and.... First of all, we have a really beautiful clear structure that's
honoring ourselves and each other, and secondly, it's just physical reminders of what we're already committed. So we're supporting each other in spades in that way.

Question:  Sure...That makes a lot of sense. If we were to describe energy, in terms of energy medicine, how would you explain that?

Nicole: In terms of energy medicine... so I think that question means if energy was medicine what would it be? It would be Food for the Soul. It would be the alignment pill. You know the pill for alignment. It would be the pill for the procedure for awakening all of the self, and it would also be... Sometimes in medicine, they say go home and do your exercises. So it would be the practice of using the tools to continue the alignment, the awakening of the self. And... I guess I'll just share then the benefit of all of that is harmony and balance. 

Question: Whats the best way for people to get a hold of you. How do you prefer to work with people?

Nicole: Most of my energy work is done over the phone. So. people will call in, or I'll call them. We've made an appointment either by email or by texting. That works really well for me. And so whichever way people reach out to me initially is great. And then typically we meet. I call them at their time, and
we have a little conversation to explain what I'm doing, and most of the time
we are still on the phone throughout it. Although, occasionally if people would
like or if it just is showing up that way, we'll hang up the phone, and they'll go into meditative state space, and I'll do my work. And then call back at the end. But most commonly we are on the phone, and I'm clearing or sending Reiki, and we do it right there on the phone.

And what that looks like for me is, I set up my space exactly as if someone is here with me. So I have a table like a massage table, and I connect with the person energetically. And it's like placing them on the table, and then I work with them whether I'm seated or standing and whatnot. And I work along the energy of the person from a distance. Because energy doesn't know time or space. It permeates all of it. And you can tell this because when you walk into a room, you can kind of feel like okay something just happened in here. But that thing isn't happening right now. That thing already happened. So the energy is still there, it's already gone through time. So, that's one way to understand it. And then space as well.

 There's this great exercise that I'd like to show it to you. It's when you can put your fingers little apart from each other and open and close. Oh
and then you kind of feel... If you can do that a few times, eventually you'll feel something. And here anybody can do this. It's not magic. It's physics. So you feel eventually ....you'll feel like a buzz or pressure or heat. Okay so then once you've got that down you can do that exercise,  here's the top of the table and here's under the table and you can feel...Oh, it went through the table. Or you can go around the door. Here's one part of the door and the wall and here's the
other and you can feel it through the wall. So you see it travels through space and it's just why I'm here, and the client is in Australia on the phone. Energy can travel that far. Another analogy for that is when a butterfly flaps its wings in Japan, it can create a tsunami in Hawaii. It travels just a teeny bit, a teeny little flutter of a butterfly can create that someplace else. So it knows no time and no space.

And I also really like to work with people over the phone. Long distance because it allows them the preciousness of being in their own space, in their own home. So they can be in their bedroom, or their living room or wherever is relaxing for them. Wherever they can find a quiet space, have this work done, without having to drive or having to go someplace, and then afterward integrate it right away. Often, what I see when I do in-person treatments is, well.... first, people arrive, and they've just left their office or home or school or whatnot and driven all that way. So first we have to get back to Ground Zero from the drive. And then when they're done. They are refreshed or relaxed or whatever experience they're having and what do they do, they go, and they get back in the car. And I have heard so many times from people that it would just be nice to be able to get in the car but then not have to drive to any place for a while. Right? So being at home allows them the possibility of integrating right where they are.  And it's interesting for me too, because in person I often ...well..... I get impressions, their information. And I'll get that about the home even if we're in person but when they're at home, it's just more palpable from my end.

Conclusion:  Thank you, Nicole. This was a really good introduction to energy work. I'm sure we'll be talking to you about more, as questions come in from our viewers. Thank you for your time today. 

Nicole: Thank you, my pleasure!

Quotation: "Think about any bad relationship you've been in. It's probably broken down simply because of bad communication." - Dr. Moon
 

Transcript:

Dr. Paul, How does chiropractic work? How does my body work?

I always bring it back to things that people can understand, and that's usually communication. It's 100 percent communication. Think about any bad relationship you've been in. It's probably broken down simply because of bad communication. So I think of what my father did. He made us these tin cans with strings and used them like telephones. So when I was studying the body, I thought my body is just a bunch of tin cans and strings. Let me show you...So our brain, that's one end of the tin can. It's the big tin can because obviously, it's coordinating all your thoughts, your actions. Here's the complicated part. Every cell, gland, muscle, organ, and tissue in your body is another tiny tin can. Now those two tin cans are connected by the fancy string. The fancy string in your body is the spinal cord and the nerves. So our simple rule here is really simple. We just want to make sure that your brain and your body are communicating at 100%.

How does the chiropractic part work?
In your body, you have 206 bones. If I can help you, that means what's blocking the normal communication in your body is a bone that's moved out of place. So my job is to figure out which one of those 206 bones is actually the cause of the problem for you.

Key Take Away:

1. A Chiropractic doctor checks to make sure your brain and your body are communicating at 100 percent.

2. Communication between the brain and the organs happens through an intricate system of nerves housed and protected within our spinal column.

3. Just like a breakdown in relationships can often be attributed to bad or incomplete communication between two people/partners, we function well, when our brain and our organs communicate properly. And many times, a breakdown in communication between the two, could be the reason for our body not functioning optimally.

4. Our adult body has 206 bones. A chiropractic job is to figure out, which ones of these 206 bones is out of place and adjust it to help clear any blockages and allow communication between the brain and the organs.

Trailhead Health Tip:
The next time you are not feeling well, or something doesn't feel right, don't just assume something is wrong with that organ or that part of your body. Instead, ask yourself. What if my brain and my organs are just fine... What if there is no issue with them. The breakdown is in the communication between the brain and the organ. That's when and how you work with a Chiropractic Doctor.

Annette explains: What clinched it for me was the transformation I saw.  I was doing meditation for eight years, my mind got quiet for 20 minutes a day, but nothing else changed in my life. Everything else was still the same; so I’d react the same way, I’d respond the same way, I was still attracting the same kind of stuff, and those are the things I wanted to change. So I started doing The Inner Diamond Meditation, and a couple of things happened.  

One, because I started working with the colors and again recognizing what characteristics, what qualities I wanted to connect more with my life...  I had the tools to do that, consciously; like “oh, this color, I can bring this color in my life, and I can connect and be that quality.”  It was so profound for me!

The other thing with the colors, I feel is really important to understand is; once I brought in a color I knew that that color was vibrating in my field for 24 hours.  So, The Tubes of Light Meditation that I do every day, it’s working with these colors of the royal blue, the rose, the violet, once I bring them in, they are there for 24hrs. So, I can spend just five or ten minutes a day meditating, and I’m walking around in this high vibrational place for the rest of the day, carrying these colors with me, and any other of the 24 colors I want to be in my field.  

The other piece that was really profound for me as I learned The Inner Diamond was a conscious connection to my higher self, to my soul.  I know so many people I work with, they’re asking, “What is my soul purpose, what am I here to do? How can I connect with this? I’m lost, I’m feeling disconnected.

 This is a conscious connection with the soul vibration, and you learn how to be in alignment and connected, and it opens you to receive insights, inspiration, guidance from your higher self. So many people are walking around disconnected from their highest self, their essence of who they really are.  So this meditation, I love it because it’s so profound.  So many people I work with, people that have taken the classes, all of a sudden, they wake up, and they go “Oh I need to do this, or I need to connect with this person. And all of a sudden, their life expands or they get that inner guidance, or they’re connected with that inner guidance, and it’s like “Oh, this feeds my soul. This feeds my Spirit; it brings me passion, it brings me joy and something that they didn’t see before they started doing the meditation.  So, I’ve seen people shift and transform what they do, what they think they were here to do, and what they are actually here to do, simply by opening up to these higher levels within themselves and to their essence.

One of the aspects of The Inner Diamond is to help understand who we are on an energetic level.

So, we all have something; we’re walking around in it, something called the "Personality Body".  We also have a "Soul Body", but to connect more fully with ourselves on a Soul Level, it’s also important to understand these energy fields that we are walking around with referring to our personality body.  We all know we have a physical body, we’re walking around in it.  Outside of that, we have an etheric body; some people refer to it as our second body. A lot of people are seen etherically, so when people see etherically, they may see color, or the Chakras, or energies that exist in this second body that’s around us.  Outside of that, we have our emotional body where we carry and create our emotions, so sometimes we have different things in our lives, where we’ve created a lot of heavy emotions, a lot of grief a lot of anger, whatever that is.  Once it’s created, it sits there until we release it sometimes.  Outside of that, we have what’s called our Lower Mental Body where our thoughts are created.  The personality doesn’t create from light; it doesn’t create from our soul, it creates from experiences, or things that keep us stuck... it’s not enlighted.  It doesn’t create in an enlightened space, so the mind, the lower mental body, would create perhaps judgment, or blame or, it sees things in black and white.  A lot of people refer to these when I’ve read books and talked to other teachers; it’s like this is where we create from a concrete mind.  So, it’s like, things get stuck in that field and it’s like we only look at something "This way or from This Perspective".  So, when we do the meditation it uplifts us out of this personality body and this quantum point the “Tip of the Magical Hat” that I refer to, it’s called the Abstract Mind, it’s the higher mental body, so then we can see things abstractly we can see things beyond black and white, beyond judgement, beyond blame, beyond what our Lower Mind creates.  

So, when we start understanding these different aspects of who we are and that we are walking around with these energies that we’ve created, this is one of the things The Inner Diamond does, is as we fill our field with light we get to see, “Oh I do that, or I respond that way, or I feel that way every time or I go into self-judgement or a feeling of wanting to close off to the world every time I make a mistake.  What response do we have to different situations and a lot of those are because of patterns that we carry around in this personality body.  I just worked with somebody a couple of weeks ago where she was doing a session (I do personal sessions), and I look into where these patterns come; a root pattern.  So, when I was looking at this, and she was feeling like she’s not living her life to the fullest and she’s hard on herself.  So when I looked into her energy field, I saw her as a four-year-old little girl, with her knees up, her hands covering her face, and just sitting in a corner, feeling this shame.  When I continued to look into that, where that energy came from, she had a very...her daycare provider or babysitter at that time, was an Aunt, who just was so hard on her and all of the kids that she dealt with, but her way of dealing with the kids was shaming them. So, at the age of four, she’s in this place for a couple of years that created this heavy, heavy, shame and every time anybody tried to help her or give her guidance she felt it as a judgment against what she was doing, and she just would go into hiding.  So that’s what I talk about with what we carry in our field will set up a response to a situation, so now it’s not her aunt doing that, but anybody else in her life that has any kind of disagreement or correction for her, she goes into that same response; her four-year-old [Self] created it; it didn’t have anything else to do.  So those are the things that we can release, we can recognize them, we can see them, and we can release them, so we are free of that energy!  It’s not controlling our life; it’s not controlling our responses.

About Annette Rugolo:

Annette started teaching transformational seminars in 1999 and began her teaching career in 2002 with Marie Diamond, known for her role in the Global phenomena, The Secret. Annette became the first certified Master Instructor for the Inner Diamond Meditation and Diamond Dowsing in the Marie Diamond Transformation School and has given Master classes to the students worldwide. With her experience of more than 15 years of Transformation, she has currently taught more than 1,000 students around the world and consulted and mentored people in more than 20 countries. We are thrilled to have Annette Rugolo join our team of educators helping people learn and understand themselves and their life's journey through the Inner Diamond Meditation Series. Annette welcomes questions and loves helping people. She is accepting new students at this time. To learn more about her please contact her at 612-605-8608

Annette's response: So I started doing The Inner Diamond Meditation and a couple things happened. One, because I started working with the colors and again recognizing what characteristics, what qualities I wanted to connect more in my life... I had the tools to do that, consciously; like “oh, this color, I can bring this color in my life and I can really connect and be that quality.” And it was so profound for me! The other thing with the colors, I feel is really important to understand is; once I brought in a color I knew that that color was vibrating in my field for 24 hours. So, The Tubes of Light Meditation that I do every day, it’s working with these colors of the royal blue, the rose, the violet, once I bring them in, they are there for 24hrs. So, I can spend just five or ten minutes a day meditating and I’m walking around in this high vibrational place for the rest of the day, carrying these colors with me, and any other of the 24 colors I want to be in my field. The other piece that was really profound for me as I learned The Inner Diamond, was a conscious connection to my higher self, to my soul. I know so many people I work with, they’re asking, “What is my soul purpose, what am I here to do? How can I connect with this? I’m lost, I’m feeling disconnected. This is a conscious connection with the soul vibration, and you learn how to be in alignment and connected and it opens you to receive insights, inspiration, guidance from your higher self. So many people are walking around disconnected from their highest self, their essence of who they really are. So, this meditation, I love it because it’s so profound. So many people I work with, people that have taken the classes, all of a sudden, they wake up and they go “Oh I need to do this, or I need to connect in with this person. And all of a sudden, their life expands or they get that inner guidance or they’re connected with that inner guidance and it’s like “Oh, this feeds my soul. This feeds my Spirit, it brings me passion, it brings me joy and something that they didn’t see before they started doing the meditation. So, I’ve seen people totally shift and transform what they do, what they think they were here to do, and what they are actually here to do, simply by opening up to these higher levels within themselves and to their essence.

About Annette Rugolo:

Annette started teaching transformational seminars in 1999 and began her teaching career in 2002 with Marie Diamond, known for her role in the Global phenomena, The Secret. Annette became the first certified Master Instructor for the Inner Diamond Meditation and Diamond Dowsing in the Marie Diamond Transformation School and has given Master classes to the students worldwide. With her experience of more than 15 years of Transformation, she has currently taught more than 1,000 students around the world and consulted and mentored people in more than 20 countries. We are thrilled to have Annette Rugolo join our team of educators helping people learn and understand themselves and their life's journey through the Inner Diamond Meditation Series. Annette welcomes questions and loves helping people. She is accepting new students at this time. To learn more about her please contact her at 612-605-8608

Question for Annette: Welcome Annette. Thank you. Thank you for sitting with us today. A lot of people are fascinated with color and you have so much experience with it. Your course really works specifically in working with different frequencies in color. So let's jump right in. Tell the average person on the street who has no idea how to use color or what color really means, what is it that you do and how do you teach them? 

Annette's Response: So, first of all, I work with 24 frequencies of color. So these are aspects of universal energy. Every color, we describe it by color, but every color has a certain quality, a certain characteristic. Every color has a number, a frequency. So some people hear it, some people smell it. It has a smell. It has a name. So when I introduce people to these 24 frequencies of color, one way to use it is to really start looking at the
quality or the characteristic of a color and see what that color stands for. 

So these 24 frequencies of light create wholeness. There are 12 masculine frequencies. There are 12 feminine frequencies and in that combination of masculine-feminine, it creates a wholeness within ourselves and within the universe. So to start working with the color it's interesting because a lot of people I'm talking to, they're meditating, and these colors are already coming in. But they don't know what they mean, they don't know why they're coming in, but they're there. You meditate, you connect in with a higher vibrational field around you, and they're already there. So a lot of people are already starting to see them but they don't know what to do with them. So one of the things I tell people is go into, if you're meditating already asked what color do you need today and see what color your higher-self sends you. And if you go to my website then you can find out what these colors mean and hopefully, they'll be on this in this program as well. But you can look at it by the color.

So if a color comes in then you can look at the color and go, “Oh, here's the characteristic.” So for instance, if you're asking what color and yellow comes in, you can look at the color yellow in my color chart and go, “Oh, I'm needing some wisdom right now. I have to connect in with my inner wisdom.” If aqua comes in I'm asking for clarity right now. My soul needs clarity. So those are different ways to start doing that. The other thing I tell people is when you go shopping, what pops out at you? There's a rack of clothes and all of a sudden you're seeing this pink and there's everything is pink and it's like a color that pops. So it's something in you that's asking for that color or that vibration and trust that. And it's something that you need. So pink means tenderness. 

So it's a frequency that as you wear it, it covers you with that vibration or connects you deeper with that vibration, so you can be more in touch with what you're needing through the color that you're looking for. 

About Annette Rugolo:

Annette started teaching transformational seminars in 1999 and began her teaching career in 2002 with Marie Diamond, known for her role in the Global phenomena, The Secret. Annette became the first certified Master Instructor for the Inner Diamond Meditation and Diamond Dowsing in the Marie Diamond Transformation School and has given Master classes to the students worldwide. With her experience of more than 15 years of Transformation, she has currently taught more than 1,000 students around the world and consulted and mentored people in more than 20 countries. We are thrilled to have Annette Rugolo join our team of educators helping people learn and understand themselves and their life's journey through the Inner Diamond Meditation Series. Annette welcomes questions and loves helping people. She is accepting new students at this time. To learn more about her please contact her at 612-605-8608

So aside from working with color, that's unique to the Inner Diamond, the other piece of it is, I remember sitting out this weekend, my first Inner Diamond weekend, and I was just blown away by the end of the weekend. I just knew I would be teaching this. But what it did for me was help me, again we're working with vibrational frequencies, we're working with energy, and the first part of the meditation is it helped me to quiet my emotional body, my lower mental body, what's referred to, it helped me quiet my mind in ways that other meditations didn't do, just because I was working with these frequencies. So first of all it helped me understand who I am on a physical, emotional, mental level, really helped me understand my etheric body and what these different aspects are, and what they do, and how they operate in our lives. The second most important thing that it did for me was help me consciously connect with my higher self.

So we all have a personality body, we all have a soul body, a spiritual body and the other meditations that I tried, it's like every once in a while I'd have this wonderful experience, I felt connected. But then the next time I don't know what I did or didn't do and I didn't have the same results. So this opens you up consciously to your higher self. 

So I'm connecting with my higher self, my essence, and there's one thing that happens very profoundly just by doing that consciously. Everyone has a ball of white light an arm's length above their head. It's called the Quantum Point. In Marie's program she was calling it the Magical Hat. It's the tip of the Magical Hat. But it's our access point to the Quantum Field. So I learned how to consciously connect in with that point and when I was doing that I felt that calmness, that peace, that I was trying to attain in other meditations but one of the things about it that I loved about the Inner Diamond, is it teaches you to walk around from that level of awareness all the time. 

So one of the things I started learning was paying attention to when I fell back into my personality and when I was connected to my soul. So we're here to align with our sole purpose to, you know, live our soul purpose how do we connect with that.

So it's a conscious connection. And what happens to the brain, we have brain waves, so when we're in our personality body we're in beta brain wave. It's chaotic. We can't see the forest through the trees. Just taking to that conscious awareness, to that Quantum Point, all of a sudden it's like, well I'm above the personality. I can see where I'm going more easily. I can see what's coming to me more easily. And my brain waves shift into an alpha brainwave. So there's this calmness. It's like being out in nature. So we know how to go to these places to feel that but to consciously connect there, that blew me away. So in that weekend that's what I learned. That was the one of the first things. And I felt the difference immediately. 

About Annette Rugolo:

Annette started teaching transformational seminars in 1999 and began her teaching career in 2002 with Marie Diamond, known for her role in the Global phenomena, The Secret. Annette became the first certified Master Instructor for the Inner Diamond Meditation and Diamond Dowsing in the Marie Diamond Transformation School and has given Master classes to the students worldwide. With her experience of more than 15 years of Transformation, she has currently taught more than 1,000 students around the world and consulted and mentored people in more than 20 countries. We are thrilled to have Annette Rugolo join our team of educators helping people learn and understand themselves and their life's journey through the Inner Diamond Meditation Series. Annette welcomes questions and loves helping people. She is accepting new students at this time. To learn more about her please contact her at 612-605-8608

Annette: What I love about teaching the Inner Diamond Meditation method is that it provides students, my clients, continued growth, continued educational opportunities to learn more about themselves, more about the energy around them. And I've seen people; it's so interesting.... because I love watching people unfold. So there's different levels of the Inner Diamond. And each level taps into something deeper and more expansive for the person who take the class or takes the course. When they're ready for the next course, the next step, there's the next level available for them. And I believe in timing for each individual. When you listen to yourself, and that's what's taught in the first course, is really tapping into aligning and start listening to yourself. When you're ready for that next level, the next course is available to you that will take you into even a more expansive and deepening experience. So continuing to educate yourself about energy. About who you are on an energetic soul level will continue your... I would say the ability to be in the world and really live your soul purpose. And that's what all of these classes are about. It's like how expansive and big can we get? How many souls can we touch? How many ways can we share our gifts? So continue to educate yourself, will help you to do that. You are supported every step of the way in your journey. The other thing I would like to say about the Inner Diamond is that it's more than just a course. It becomes a way of life. It's something that people can connect with and embody. The other things I like about it is they take the basic course there's different levels of the entertainment and every time they're ready for the next course it is available to them, so it is an expansion, a deepening, a greater connection with their essence their self that they hadn't had before.

About Annette Rugolo:

Annette started teaching transformational seminars in 1999 and began her teaching career in 2002 with Marie Diamond, known for her role in the Global phenomena, The Secret. Annette became the first certified Master Instructor for the Inner Diamond Meditation and Diamond Dowsing in the Marie Diamond Transformation School and has given Master classes to the students worldwide. With her experience of more than 15 years of Transformation, she has currently taught more than 1,000 students around the world and consulted and mentored people in more than 20 countries. We are thrilled to have Annette Rugolo join our team of educators helping people learn and understand themselves and their life's journey through the Inner Diamond Meditation Series. Annette welcomes questions and loves helping people. She is accepting new students at this time. To learn more about her please contact her at 612-605-8608

Answer: We live in a universe filled with color. Each one of these colors that we have available to us has a quality. It has a characteristic. And once we begin to understand what these colors are here for and what they're here to help us to do, we can work with them, and they help us transform our lives. Some of this transformation can happen on an emotional level, a mental level or a spiritual level. So if it's on an emotional level, there might be some emotional pain, which they are holding on to, that's creating some physical illness. One of the things that I believe is only 10% of our physical ailments come from our body. 90% of our ailments, come from our emotional body, our mental body, our physical body. Then when it is in our spiritual body, this relates to karmic past lives.  One of the things, I love to help people release is karmic energy, a program, a pattern, that was created in past experience... It could be in this lifetime, could be in a past life, that is creating some imbalance, disconnect or block... That is creating illness and stopping them from healing. I have seen this with a lot of my clients.  By the time they come to me, they are just kind of at the end of their rope sometime. Sometimes, they have tried a few things, but they are ready to explore and go deeper into what is right for them. And this is where I like helping my clients. A big part of that is helping them connect with who they are. We all have an essence, we all have a vibration. We all have a higher self, a soul and we all have a purpose for being here. Many times, with a lot of my clients, they find themselves sick, because they are out of alignment with their essence. And that is the first thing; I help my clients do, is reconnect with their essence. Who are they beyond their physical body, the emotional body, their mental body. Who are they on a soul level? And once they start connecting with that vibration, an aligning with that, solutions show up, methods and tools they need, all of the help and support that is in the universe for them starts to shows up. And that's what I like to do with my clients. Help them expand beyond their current situation. So they can see, what else, exists for them, that they haven't been able to see.

About Annette Rugolo:

Annette started teaching transformational seminars in 1999 and began her teaching career in 2002 with Marie Diamond, known for her role in the Global phenomena, The Secret. Annette became the first certified Master Instructor for the Inner Diamond Meditation and Diamond Dowsing in the Marie Diamond Transformation School and has given Master classes to the students worldwide. With her experience of more than 15 years of Transformation, she has currently taught more than 1,000 students around the world and consulted and mentored people in more than 20 countries. We are thrilled to have Annette Rugolo join our team of educators helping people learn and understand themselves and their life's journey through the Inner Diamond Meditation Series. Annette welcomes questions and loves helping people. She is accepting new students at this time. To learn more about her please contact her at 612-605-8608

Question for Dr. Litchy-Miller: What is Naturopathic Medicine. What are the 6 Pillars of Naturopathic Medicine

Explanation from Dr. Litchy-Miller(Transcript):

Naturopathic Medicine is a form of Healthcare that stimulates the body's natural ability to heal through the use of natural therapies. Naturopathic doctors do that utilizing a set of two systems. The first system is the Six Principles of Naturopathic Medicine. 

1. Do No Harm

Those principles include first Do No Harm. And that means that we're going to use the absolute least invasive procedures and therapies possible and utilize the healing power of nature to the utmost extent before going up the ladder and using more invasive procedures. 

2. Treat the Whole Person

The second principle is Treating the Whole Person. Utilizing all the aspects of the person -  to include what they do for work, what their social life is like, what are their genes saying, what is their diet like, what is their sleep like, what is their exercise like? All of these things are extremely important to understand what is going on in their body physiologically and biochemically so that we can treat accordingly and get the best results possible. 

3. Healing Power of Nature

Another principle is the Power of Nature, The Healing Power of Nature. Because we believe that the body has an inherent ability to heal itself using nature. To stimulate this power of healing is the best way of supporting the body in the healing process. 

4. Doctor As Teacher

Another principle that we use is Doctor As Teacher. When one is involved in their healthcare, we see that the results are that much better. So educating the patient, having them understand what is going on in their body, what the biochemical processes are. What the physiology is. How we're going to correct that and then also talking with them about how we're going to go about that. What are their options? What makes sense to them? What do they want to do? Because if the patient isn't on board, it's just not going to work. I can tell you to go to ABCDE, but if that's something that's not going to work with your lifestyle or your schedule, it's going to make it very difficult for you to follow those recommendations. Establishing a true partnership with the patient is of the utmost importance.

5. Treat Root Cause

The next principle would be Identify and Treat the Cause. This is where Naturopathic doctors are truly unique insofar as we want to treat the cause. What this can look like, theoretically, is if a patient is coming in with chest pain most of the time we're going to go straight to a cardiovascular event. Meaning that we are going to definitely rule out if the patient is having a heart attack right? So that's treating the symptoms. We're going to treat the symptoms to get rid of the chest pain. But what's causing the chest pain? Is it indeed cardiovascular? Is it something else? Could it be that they're having a reaction from food? We don't know so we need to systematically go through and determine what the cause of that symptom is. When we reveal what the cause is, that's when we see true healing. 

6. Prevention

Then the last principle of that we follow, but could possibly be the most important principle, is emphasizing prevention. One of the phrases that I like and appreciate is “An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure.” So if you were to come to me and say Dr. Litchy-Miller, I have a history of heart disease in my family. I have a history of diabetes in my family. I don't want to follow down that road. Well, I’ll think I don't want you to follow down that road either. Let's see what we can do to make sure that that doesn't happen. So I would utilize a lot of my tools. Diet. Exercise. Possibly some supplementation to support your cardiovascular system and your endocrine system to make sure that that didn't go down that road of diabetes and heart disease. Preventative medicine is really the most cost-effective of healthcare because if you can avoid double bypass surgery, that's great. So that's the first system that we follow.

Key Take away:
Six pillars of Naturopathic Medicine Include
1. Do No Harm
2. Treat the Whole Person
3. Healing Power of Nature
4. Doctor as Teacher
5. Treat Root Cause
6. Prevention

 Trailhead Health Tip:

Your Naturopathic Doctor is also your teacher, who helps you understand your body and practice prevention. The Naturopathic doctor believes in and helps you harness the healing power of nature and your body using natural therapies. If faced with a health problem, the naturopathic doctor is trained to help identify and treat the root cause.

Question: Naturopathic doctors have several therapies and tools in their toolbox to help meet a patient's healthcare goals. When someone shows up with a healthcare issue or goal to a naturopathic doctor, what is their course of treatment? How do they decide which therapy to use and why?

Dr. Margaret Litchy-Miller, ND, explains:

The first system we use is the Six principles of Naturopathic Medicine. These are explained in the following video. The next system is called the Therapeutic Order. And you can think of this as a stairway, and as you're going up that stairway you're going to go one step at a time right? 

1. Foundations of Good Health:

So thinking about it that way first step we take in treating a patient is we're going to treat what we call the Foundations of Health. Foundations of Health include diet, lifestyle, sleep, exercise, stress. Everything that's in your daily life. Everything that you need to survive. So I need to establish what is going on there, where could we make some tweaks that could stimulate the body in a way to heal itself so that we don't have to go to other measures. So we're going to talk about that at every visit for sure. How are we going to change that? 

2. Support Physiological Function:

The next step would be more of a treatment protocol, and that is going to look like botanical medicine and supporting or maintaining physiological function. We're going to discuss the possible use of homeopathy. Homeopathy is another way, a gentle, effective non-toxic way, to stimulate the body's ability to heal. And then we're going to talk about possible supplementation.

3. Correct Physiological Function:
So the next step we go to Orthomolecular Therapy. This is where I wanted to talk about the difference between two and three, okay? Because three we're using supplements to correct physiological function. This is a difference between level 2 in supporting or maintaining physiological function, and this is the difference between nutraceutical therapy and supplementation. So when we're supplementing, we're giving the body what it needs insofar as vitamins and minerals that you are not needing through your diet. I have yet to find a person that can meet all those recommendations through their diet even though they're very strict and they eat very well. So that's when we're adding in these vitamins and minerals. So that's supplementation. Nutriceuticals is pharmaceutical grade supplementation. So this is going to be higher dosages to correct physiological function, and this is where a naturopathic doctor can be useful because this needs to be monitored although these are vitamins and minerals they are medicine and they need to be treated as such. It's important that you're under the care of a doctor or a naturopathic doctor that understands how these work. They need to understand the type and level that they're being given, and then they also need to understand when to discontinue them. How do we know when to stop this? How do we know when to bring it down? So that's very important. 

4: Bodywork:

Then we go to level four. Now we're getting a little bit more invasive because now we're talking about bodywork. We're talking about adding a chiropractor in to correct structural integrity we're also talking about adding something called craniosacral therapy which is the practice that I do in my office. That can help correct the nervous system and kind of reset it and set that button so that it is again functioning properly. Soft tissue work, those types of things.

5. Prescription drugs and antibiotics (Work with an MD):

Now level 5 we're getting to some pharmaceuticals. We're getting to some antibiotics. We're getting into prescriptions. This is where I may refer to an MD.

6. Saving the most invasive interventions for last - Surgery, Chemo, radiation, Suppressive drugs.

And then the top of the level here is where we're getting to surgical procedures, chemotherapy, radiation, and suppressive drug. This is when you are coming in, and you have cancer, and we need to get some invasive procedures going to beat the cancer. Another example would be if I'm in a car accident I'm going to want to see an MD because they're going to be trained in all these surgical procedures that I don't have enough training to perform. But if I were coming to a doctor with a chronic problem, this is where I think a naturopathic doctor is a great option. Because they're going to go through the systems to determine where is the chronic problem stemming from. This is where we see true healing, okay? So I hope that is enough information for you to understand the basics of a therapeutic order and the six principles that we practice as naturopathic doctors. Thank you.

Key take away:
The Naturopathic Doctor follows the following steps to ensure the best healing for their patients:

1. Establish and practice a good foundation for health - Understanding the patient's lifestyle and life goals and establish basics such as diet, exercise, nutrition to help meet these goals. The important thing is helping to do it in a way so that the patient can easily incorporate that into their life.

2. Support Physiological Function: Using Botanicals, homeopathic and Supplements help body meet its daily nutrition requirements so it can function optimally.

3. Correct Physiological Function: Correct any physiological functions using ortho-molecular therapy and nutraceuticals. Knowing how to administer these, monitoring body functions and knowing when to stop is very important.

4. Prescription drugs and antibiotics.  Working with an MD to help with stronger interventions.

5. Saving the most invasive procedures as a last resort - Chemo, Surgery, Radiation, etc.

Trailhead Health Tip:
Your naturopathic doctor will always try a softer, least invasive intervention before attempting the more aggressive intervention methods. They will almost always start with understanding you and your lifestyle and establishing a good foundation of health. In the Naturopathic world, Natural therapies will be tried first. 

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Is it fat or is it sugar which is a bigger culprit, you know with heart disease or just in general? Yeah, we have really focused, well it's been up and down over the years right? There's the low sugar and then there's the low fat and we go back and forth. The research is really coming out in just really quite recent years here talking so much more about how sugar is really one of our bigger problems and the fat hasn't been as much of it, as much of a concern as far as heart diseases we once thought. The way I look at it is we we can improve we can improve in so many ways. So the typical American diet is actually not a super high fat diet it's just the quality of our fat is really poor so we tend to, I mean, processed foods tend to have more trans fats more saturated fats which are not as good for our heart health. We don't get as much seafood and nuts and seeds and things like a Mediterranean kind of diet that is really one of the best in the world as far as heart health and disease prevention. So it's really not that quantity of fat isn't the problem is just that we're getting really poor qualities of quality of fat and then from a sugar side, you know again, carbohydrates aren't a bad thing fruits and vegetables are, you know, some of our main source of carbohydrates, whole grains, brown rice and whole wheat and you know barley and bulgur and rye. I mean there's lots of different wonderful whole grains that provide great nutrition. We tend to a have a diet that's very heavy in refined grains, you know, white breads and white pastas and pastries and crackers and those things.

So getting people away from you know the quantity of those but also shifting the qualities that are getting high fiber and lots of vitamins and minerals in the whole grain. I do think just as a population we've shifted so much more to a carb heavy diet and I think we're learning more and more that that's really not the answer to to weight management, to heart disease prevention or management, to diabetes prevention. You know there's just all the chronic disease conditions we're not seeing that that's having tremendous benefit. I think we know so much more. It's really getting good quality fats, lean sources of protein lots of fruits and vegetables not thinking so much about low-carb or no fat.
 

I find that most Hypnotists are in second or even third career like myself. Most of them have had an experience with hypnosis, it has profoundly change their life. They want to help people they care about people some of them are people that want to enhance what they already do, like a massage therapist or a dentist or nurse. Nurses are natural Hypnotists. They just want to expand their skills. I think that it draws from a wide variety of professions. It is hard to find those people. If I were to go out and search for them for Facebook or whatever they're hard to identify but they have all had some kind of knowledge, previous knowledge, either they have a friend who had gone through hypnosis that had a great experience or they did it themselves or they're just looking for another tool in their tool kit. So those are the people that make good hypnotist.

There are some special qualities that come with it a caregiver, an ability to build trust very quickly, some of those skills can be taught but some of them need to be natural. It's like when I used to have my Montessori School I didn't always look for someone who was a teacher in fact I kind of avoided them because they had a lot of bad habits that I didn't want them to bring with. What I looked for was not so much what they had done in life or how well they had done in school. They had to be bright and could learn. I looked for people that had a natural rapport with children, because that's something you can't teach that's something that comes from within.

It's different with hypnotist and I think that some people that are hypnotists are very good at the mechanics of hypnosis because there are definite mechanics, things that you do, and ways that you do them, but the ones that are really really good, are the ones that have that thing you can't teach. That genuine caring for people, that genuine rapport. So those people that draw people naturally to them, they make great hypnotist because people trust them; and that are open to other people. Those are some of the innate qualities that I would look for in a good hypnotist.

Then the other thing is a willingness to do it, because you can't become a great hypnotist unless you use the tool. I mean I even noticed if I take a vacation and I'm gone for a couple of weeks, it takes me a few days almost to get back in the flow. It is the repetition not only for the subconscious mind for the client to learn, but for the hypnotist because with every client that comes in I learned something new. I pick up something that I put in my back pocket and say hmm I might use that again.  My clients are continually teaching me, so the more you do it the better you get at it. Hypnosis can be a very good tool for lots of different kinds of practitioners to have in their toolkit.

It is just a tool. It is a complement whether you're doing acupuncture or homeopathy or massage, if you are a doctor a nurse or a dentist, hypnosis will help you number one with your own stress, but provide you with tools to use with your patients or your clients to help them get better results with what you normally do. Sometimes massage therapists- they develop back problems joint problems - they look for a second career well when the client is on our table they're already in a light state of trance and so why not use that to know how to deepen them to give them suggestion for what they want and make an experience even greater.

I recently spoke to some practitioners at Park Nicollet a lot of physical therapists, occupational therapists, and nurses about languaging skills how to talk to their patients in a different way. How do you use your words to redirect patients who are catastrophizing or kind of stuck in this thinking process about their pain that's very unhealthy for them. So hypnosis is all about words and it's all about how to build rapport, it's about understanding how the mind works and when the mind is open to suggestions, and the little things that you can do to get your patients there. When people come to practitioners very stressed or emotional, they're in pain, they're not sleeping, these things, strong emotion induces trance. So here at my office we have soft lighting, we have pretty music, we have a comfortable chair, you don't need any of that to induce the hypnotic state. When they come to you and they're scared, and they're nervous, or they are tried everything else and it hasn't worked, they're desperate and they are open to your suggestion. They want to hear what you're saying, they're very focused, and they're in a light state of trance so if you can use the tools of your trade to enhance that you will get better results with what you normally do.

Hypnosis or hypnotic technique can be a tool for every practitioner that is on this site or that it is in the general domain. Because it's going to help you be better at what you do and develop better communication skills, better rapport building skills and it's going to help your patients be better at whatever it is they do get fixed with you.

I would love to tell my clients what it's like but it's different for everybody and it's typically not what they expect and the reason I know that is because they'll say things to me like, well that wasn't what I expected. Some people might feel heavy like I couldn't lift my arm if I tried or they might feel like they're floating or some people feel like they're just sitting in a chair. Most clients think that it looks like this and for the most part when they're in my chair it looks like they're sleeping because their eyes are closed, if they choose, some clients choose to leave their eyes open, but some clients are very active a hypnosis doesn't have to be fragile it doesn't have to be in a room with soft lights and music, although that is what I give the experience of here, because that's what people expect. Expectations are important.  

Everyone experiences hypnosis different and that's okay because they're choosing how they want to experience it.  Some people want the traditional swinging watch like I said earlier and other people have no set expectations. Usually the client is very unaware of how much time they are in hypnosis there's a lot of time distortion in hypnosis. They hear everything, you will remember pretty much what you would remember from any typical conversation. Sometimes you might zone out and come back in but your subconscious mind is taking everything in; and then sometimes a day or two later something else will come to them, just like our normal life, it's really no different.  It doesn't have to feel that much different than your waking state but typically the client will feel extremely relaxed, very peaceful, and ironically what they experience is this intense level of focus and a sense of control.

This is what I love, this is what I love to have happen to people because hypnosis, no matter why you come in here, whether it's to lose weight, or you're having pain, or you can't sleep, the one thing that every single client has in common is that there's something in their life that has gotten out of control and they want to take it back. So when they feel that focus and that relaxation and that sense of control that's exactly what I want them to experience.

Well, I have to pick this out because this is what we think of hypnosis right? I don't use this in my practice. I used it for the first time in five years, yesterday, with a client who is quite elderly and that was her expectation, and she just wasn't getting what she needed, so I brought the watch out. We don't use swinging watches anymore. We've evolved quite a ways from them.  

But there is a lot of misconception around hypnosis and we have TV and the movies to blame for that. Somehow they just love to grab on to one little thing that maybe has a bit of truth and take that to the extreme.  Most people that don't understand hypnosis, think that is mind control and that is so far from the truth. Believe me, if I had that kind of power I wouldn't be sitting here talking to you. I would be ruling the world, let me tell you and the world would be a much better place.  I don't have that kind of power. I wish I did. I wish I had the power that when someone came into my office I could just wave a magic wand and they would be fixed. The problem would be gone. The fact of the matter is, I tell clients all the time, hypnosis is like a bicycle. I'm like a bicycle. I can transport you in the direction of your goals, but you got to pedal and you got to steer.  

If you notice around the office we have a bicycle in every room of this of this office, because it is the perfect metaphor for hypnosis. I cannot make you do something against your will.You're not gonna get stuck in hypnosis. I don't have any ESP or special powers. I'm not gonna read your mind, you're not going to disclose secrets to me. I have people lie to me in hypnosis, why? It's kind of counterproductive for what we're trying to accomplish, but it just shows that I don't have control.

The reality of it is, that hypnosis, the ability to go in and out of trance, is a natural state of mind; you do it every single day at least twice a day. When you go to sleep and when you wake up, your brain goes through the trance states. It's simply a function of how fast your neurons are firing. We go in and out of hypnosis every day. I mean have you ever driven your car from one place to another not remembered how you got there?  That's a light state of hypnosis. You get lost in the book, you are at a movie and you know it's sad and you feel like it's happening to you and you're crying and you're getting emotional. That's all hypnosis is. It's a state where you're very aware, it's a heightened state of awareness and focus; when you are receptive to new ideas and thoughts.

Another time when you go into hypnosis very easily is watching television. That's why advertising is so effective because you are open to new ideas, open to new thoughts. I like to give this example. If I am watching television and the bathtub commercial comes on, you know what I'm talking about, for Cialis right. I have no need for that product and I'm not going to be receptive to that. But if Matthew McConaughey is driving that Lincoln Navigator and I happen to be in need of a new car I might find myself at a Lincoln dealership down the road. Because I am open to that idea that was presented to me. I may or may not act on it, or I there might be a delay for that action, but the result is the same. I took that idea in, it satisfied me and that's how hypnosis works.

I can never give you a suggestion that you wouldn't take. That you wouldn't do already, nothing that would ever go against your morals or your ethics. Our brain has built-in protective mechanisms so it doesn't allow for that to happen.

You mentioned something about us being open to suggestion in a state of hypnosis, as a practitioner when somebody walks in through your door how do you know what suggestion to give? Is that what they teach you in school or is that something that comes from you?

That comes from my client. You know, I may be able to look at clients sitting here and from a third party perspective I'm more objective, than that client who is emotional at that moment. They're all wrapped up in whatever is going on and don't see things clearly or from a different perspective. That's part of the problem. I can sit here and I can think, “yeah I can see what's going on here pretty clear.” But that client is probably going to be very resistant to looking at that any other way. And my suggestion for how to fix that problem, number one isn't important, but it may not be agreeable to them. It doesn't do what matters is what the client wants. So we spent a lot of time talking about the solutions and the benefits, we hardly ever focus on the problem.

I call it my 80/20 rule. So 20% of the time we're gonna talk about what's going on and what the problem is, so I know why they're here, and that gives me some information. But quite honestly after a while I stop listening because that that's the conscious mind talking and the conscious mind is analytical and logical and has to figure stuff out. It's gonna do that because that's what we need to be satisfied, even if the answer or the information is wrong. We're gonna figure it out one way or another. So I can't always trust what the conscious mind says to be true. People come in here all the time and say, oh I know exactly when it started. In five years there's never been one of them that's right, ever. It might be when the symptoms started. It might have reinforced something, but it's never where it started. That's buried in the subconscious and that's where I work as a hypnotist.

If I were to be able to give them my suggestion they may not be receptive to it. So we spend lots of time, what do you want to accomplish, this is where 80% of our time is spent. What do you want to accomplish? What benefits, what positive benefits do you want to see? What have you accomplished in your life that you've been really proud of? How did it make you feel? We talk about a lot of those things, because those are the words and the things that I am going to suggest back to them, because of course they're receptive to it, it's what they want. There's no doubt in my mind that the subconscious mind will accept them.  My suggestions mean nothing.

That's amazing, it sounds almost like a discovery process, we are trying to figure out what the answer is and  basically reciting it back to them and it's that moment of "aha", yes this is what I need.

Correct and that's a great way to explain it, because the client will have lots of insights, they'll make connections for themselves. I'm not a therapist and I don't profess to be; there's lots of areas that I don't tread in. But a client and, this is the one thing that I know for certain, in my five years of practice, is that the subconscious mind always knows what the problem is. It always knows the answers. It knows how to fix it. The client may think they're here for one thing and end up in a totally different path but it does that, that happens because the subconscious mind knows, that this is where the problem really is.  You're overeating or you're smoking or you're gambling too much or you're sexting or you're working too much, because you're trying to distract from what the real problem is. It's the real problem that brings people into this office. Consciously they just don't know that. They discover their own answers. I don't give anybody their answers. Because if I did the work for them, it wouldn't be nearly as meaningful. Even if I can clearly see what the answer is, they have to connect their own dots and make their own discoveries. That's where the power comes into play. My job as a hypnotist is to empower every client that comes in here to become independent of me, so they learn how to do self-hypnosis. We work on the hard stuff together because it is easier when someone's guiding you, I mean you don't know how to do it yet. So I'm teaching you the process and giving you the tools so that you don't ever have to come back and see me again.

Welcome to Trailhead Health. In this video we ask Roberta Fernandez a Board Certified Hypnotist and Certified Hypnosis Instructor how she became interested in hypnosis and listen to what she has to say about pain management, opioids and hypnosis.

Hi there, I‘m Roberta Fernandez, I’m a Board Certified Hypnotist here at the Fare Hypnosis Center. I’m also a Certified Hypnosis Instructor. We bring people into the training center and we teach them how to be a hypnotist and certify them.  We are one of just two schools that are licensed to do that in state of MN. I’m really excited about that and really proud of it.

I didn’t grow up to be a hypnotist, it found me and I what I mean by that is I had a friend call me up and say, “Hey are you watching Oprah’s super soul Sunday?” I said NO. She said, “You have got to watch this guy, he is amazing.”  So I turned it on and the guy that she was interviewing was really fascinating to me. I went to his website to check him out after the show was over, turns out he was doing a retreat in NY state, not far from where my daughter was going to college, and I thought perfect I can do a road trip and go visit her.  

I just went. It was an amazing 4 days that I spent there, and I thought I want more of this guy. He only does 2 training a year and his wait list was a mile long, so I thought hmmm, he used hypnosis in his work, I wonder if I became a hypnotist, if I learned how to do that, I would have a better chance to get into his class, so I came to back to MN and I found someone to train me, as it turned out that was not the case. But I did get in his class and I became a hypnotist and as I was taking the course I had tremendous knee pain and I could barely navigate the grocery store.  I told the instructor being the kind of I-need-proof-person that I am, I said, “Can you get me out of pain? I want you to prove to me this stuff works.” He said, “Sre if you want to be out of pain that can happen.” I made an appointment to see him and viola I didn’t have any more pain after a couple sessions. Eventually I knew I had to have my knees replaced because I was falling down stairs all the time even though I didn’t have pain it had to be done.

So when I started practicing and preparing myself for that surgery, I had both knees done at the same time. It’s called a full bilateral knee replacement. I knew that I could manage my pain. I always like to show this to clients, because being able to do this on my own, this is how many pills that did not go in my body because I didn’t use any pain meds for my surgery. I only used self hypnosis, and this, not having these in my body helped me recover so much faster and everybody was amazed.

Makes me wonder why this isn’t part of standard regimen or protocol when someone is getting ready to do a surgery.  This would go such a long way in reducing the addiction issue and problem with over prescribing of opioids?  

You are right Raina. A couple years ago I wrote a book on opioids and pain because doctors need another tool.  Doctors go through medical school learning to prescribe drugs, because that’s what they know and that’s what they have.  Hypnosis is not always a substitute for anything, it is a compliment to everything. It can take whatever you are doing and help make it more effective.  Yes, I didn’t have to take any drugs when I had my bilateral knee replacement, but that is not going to be the case for everybody. Not everybody would be able to do that.  Everyone is going to be different, and it depends on how much they practice beforehand to what extend it’s going to be. But you are right, hypnosis before surgery? There is a lot of medical scientific research out there about effectiveness of one 15 minutes session 20 minutes before surgery.  The results are remarkable, how much less medication, how much less anesthesia, how much more stable the patient is during the surgery from their heart rate, blood pressure, all of that, and then the recovery times are shortened. There is a tremendous amount of scientific around hypnosis, that was important to me, when I started.  I’m kind of a geek about that. You have to prove things to me. I really want that. Not all my clients need that but some of them do too.

I also work a lot with children. Usually six and above the child has to have a certain level of maturity to be able to work with them, but I do a course called Parents Are Hypnotists Too. I used to own a Montessori School. I found it in Florida and ran that for 11 years and we had children from 3 to 12. I wish I would have been a hypnotist then because I could have been so much more effective in helping parents parent their children in understanding what is going on in the development of the child's mind. I have had several children in here with bedwetting problems. They're 10-12 years old, and still wetting the bed and this is not an uncommon problem. It's not everyday, but typically it is caused by the parents. Not intentionally, but the child has experienced a time where they had an accident at night in bed and mom looks so disappointed in me, or mom was angry when she was changing the sheets, or you know, now that is the child's perception. That may not actually have been what mom was portraying. Maybe mom was hurrying out the door to go to work and she was running late and she had to get those sheets off the bed before the mattress got saturated right? But the child's perception of whatever happened is what is important, and so it's simply getting the child to see that differently and perceive and understand that differently.

Parenting is huge, parents are hypnotists. When a child is very young in fact children about 7 or 8, we don't really have a conscious logical mind, so we are totally functioning at that age in our subconscious mind and the subconscious mind is literal so everything goes in. Good, bad or indifferent, and the child has no context for that. It's why every four-year-old believes that Santa comes to everyone's house on the same night down a fireplace even if you don't have one.  That doesn't matter in their head, it just happens because mom and dad said it was gonna happen, right, and they liked getting presents, that always helps.

It's not until the child gets into elementary school that they start questioning. Parents look at that as pushing back and not being obedient or whatever, but it is a natural process of brain development. The child isn't necessarily questioning the parent, they're just trying to logic things out this is a new tool they have. And so things start changing there. What a parent says to a child before that critical factor that protective mechanism is formed is critical for the child.

Sometimes a parent might have very good intentions but the child perceives it very poorly. An example would be, I had a gentleman in for confidence, he was an extremely handsome man and I that not for any other reason except that was part of the problem. When he was a little boy he was very cute, very good-looking child and he had an older sister that was constantly ragging on him. Being the typical mean older sister and teasing and you're just a baby and you're so stupid and all of those kinds of things, and she was good at everything and everybody loved her and she was very popular. One day she's kind of being mean to him and dad walks in and sees what's going on and he feels bad for his son because this is a common occurrence in their household right, and so he walks over to his son and he puts his arm around. He's four and he says, “Son don't worry. They may got all the brains in the family but we got the good looks.”

Now at that moment that little boy was feeling pretty vulnerable and he took that in literally. And his whole life, he was in his 40s when he came to me, he was a very handsome man. I am sure that throughout his life people constantly remarked to him how good-looking he was and that reinforced that belief that he took as the truth at that moment.

And here he is 40 years later with no confidence, because he just believes that he just looks good. He's never going to be smart. Now that was a total misperception, but it became his truth and so that's something that's easily fixed and changed but something that consciously, a) we would never remember happening and b) we can't get to it in our conscious mind. We can only get to that through the process of hypnosis.

January is a busy time for me. People come in for all kinds of reasons. They want to find love, they want to lose weight, they want to stop smoking, they want to take responsibility for themselves or change their life in some way; we usually find that it takes more than a resolution in order for that to happen.

Typically all behaviors, whether we are feeling stuck in something, or we just can't seem to change a habit or break a habit, those behaviors are all driven from some kind of emotion. We think that logic is what runs our life because it is our conscious mind that is analytical and logical and figures things out. But in actuality very seldom does logic make our decisions. Our decisions are driven purely by emotion and we confirm them with logic. You know, I might say, “Wow I really want that dress but $350? I've never spent that kind of money on a dress before, but I really want it.” You think about it and you imagine yourself in it.  You find a way to justify that price tag and sooner or later that dress is on your body.

We make all kinds of decisions that way, so what happens with resolutions is that we really want to make those changes, and we think that willpower is gonna do it, but willpower. Science now knows. They're doing a lot of studies around willpower. Some really good books out there - that willpower is affected by how many decisions we have to make during the day.  It gets less and less. As we get tired, we kind of use it up during the course of the day. Then the next day maybe it's back again.

For example, weight. Usually when people start out on a diet they do really well in the morning, then afternoon starts coming and then by the time it's getting close to dinner, it's out the window, because we're hungry and because we're out of willpower. I tell people, willpower, let's say you love Donuts okay, and there's this amazing donut shop on your way to work. Willpower will help you take a different route to get to work, so you don't have to go by that donut shop and be tempted. But if you're already in that donut shop, you've already made your choice, willpower is gone, it's out. You're gonna be eating those donuts. So willpower has its place and it's very important but what we have to look at is what's driving the behavior to begin with. That's where hypnosis comes into play, and because behaviors are driven by emotion, and because emotion lives in subconscious mind, all our beliefs, all our emotions, all of our rules about life, that's where they reside.

All of our long-term memories are there, so when we use the process, the tool of hypnosis to go and access those things, we can then get to solutions and resolution to our problems much much quicker. The client can then decide, “Wow now I get it.” I get why I've always done this, or why this is so important to me. Then, they can make the conscious decision; do I want to continue doing that same behavior, or do I want to do things different? When you have that kind of insight, when you have that understanding about what's driving your behavior, the behavior is much easier to change. It still takes work, it's not that magic pill or that magic wand. It takes work, but now you know. I like to tell my clients every situation every person in your life, every event, everything is neutral, it's always neutral. It is not neutral however, once we place judgment on it. It's like a coin and there's two sides, and you get to choose, do you want heads or do you want tails? Do you want to be positive or do you want to be negative about it? Do you want to see it as good or do you want to see it as bad? So, it is our judgment that we place, whether it is on smoking that cigarette or not, or having that piece of candy or that bag of cookies or not, it is about everything. You know, do we go down that same old path or do we choose a new one.  Yeah, that new one is always a little bit more challenging, because we're trying to change something that our brain is used to doing and let me tell you, our brains don't like to change. It just needs to be efficient so it's going to keep us doing easy things all the time. It takes effort but hyp

Ok, so Roberta there are applications of hypnosis in so many different areas. In your experience what are maybe the top conditions or issues for which people seek Hypnosis.

Well, they range the gamut. Most of them are emotionally based and I know for some people that might sound really strange. Well, I'm sleeping, sleep is the problem. Or I'm overweight, the food is the problem or I'm in pain, stress. Those are all emotion driven so at the basis of pretty much everything I do there is emotion.

One of the biggest reasons that people come in is stress and that stress manifests itself in a lot of different ways for people. So they may come in because they're pulling their hair or they just keep scratching or they've developed a tick or they're rolling their eyes or whatever it is. But stress is at the base of that. It's 90% of why people end up in a doctor's office or an ER. Stress takes an incredible toll on your body so it manifests in a lot of different ways physically. People might have IBS or they might get psoriasis or some kind of skin condition. Eczema is really big there. They might get digestive issues. They might gain weight. They might lose weight. They might develop an ulcer. They can't sleep at night. This is the way stress manifests and we're seeing a lot of stress lately. I just did a recent blog on headline stress.

So what we do with our clients is we help give them real-life tools where they can manage their stress but hypnotically we work on allowing them to feel that relaxation and take control their mind can take control of their bodies so that they can literally stimulate that part of their nervous system that releases calming chemicals and shuts off the adrenaline and the cortisol and the things that are ultimately harmful and detrimental to the body. So we work with stress on a very a lot of different levels and they learn to do self-hypnosis so that they can do this on their own that they don't need to keep coming back here.

Another thing that we deal with quite often is pain. Obviously that's what brought me to hypnosis and I'm very passionate about that. Pain is a perception in the mind and you can you can change the way you perceive pain. You can your brain can decide to not feel pain if it doesn't really need to. So I educate the client about how pain works in the body and in the brain and then I give them lots of techniques. And some of this is art.

The same technique does not work for every client. I have three that I use first session always because typically one of the three will resonate but not always. Or if the client gives me something when I ask them, "How would you like it to feel?" If they're really passionate about that or they have an idea around it then I'm going to use that because they're gonna accept it.

And then I teach them how to do self-hypnosis and practice that technique again and again and again and again because repetition is really important. And the more you practice something just no different than learning to tie your shoes, or brush your teeth, the more you repeat it the more automatic it comes. So when I was getting ready to have my surgery I used a breathing technique and I practiced it so that by the time I just kind of went huh, or thought about it my brain was already telling my body what to do. And that was it wanted total comfort.

So we take a technique, we create a new neural network in the brain that the brain will say when he does this this is the expectation and then that's what you get. So it's pretty simple.

As far as success stories, oh my gosh you know, it just depends on what you're talking about. Pain, I had a woman drive from Wisconsin and she came over for what I call an intensive. So she spent four solid days, we worked together, rather than spreading it out over time. There's some advantages and disadvantages to doing it that way but, she was out of town. She had fibromyalgia for 20-some years. She had to take a nap at 4 o'clock. She couldn't work full-time. She couldn't sleep with her husband anymore. Half the time she couldn't put sheets on her body, they hurt too much. There were times when she would try, if she will left work a little too late, she would get that fibro fog that people talk about. She would have to call someone to come and get her, she couldn't find her way home.

It's pretty severe case, this woman is managing her fibromyalgia. She doesn't have pain, she doesn't take a nap anymore, she works full-time, she has had amazing results. She took what I said to heart. She practices every single day, five minutes. That's it. Five minutes of hypnosis every single day and she has her life back.

I have clients that have come in, that have had no surgery, no illness, no diagnosis of any kind, except the doctor doesn't know why they're having pain. It's emotional pain. When we get to the root of that emotion, the pain can go away. You can let it go away.

Clients that have had pre-surgical, post-surgical pain, I'm an example of that. That's very typically why people come to see me.

So, with pain the efficacy around hypnosis and pain management is huge. It's a great compliment. Sleep it's amazing; first of all, teaching people good sleep hygiene is important, and a lot of people have very poor sleep hygiene. We work on that, but hypnotically it's really interesting what we discover.

I had a client she could only sleep three or four hours a night and she'd been doing that for a long time, and it was wearing on her, developing health problems, she looked terrible and she would get up and just had these random thoughts. Not the typical thoughts that people would have; like oh I got to do this, I have to do that. They were random. Like you know, “Why'd Bob wear that blue tie with that purple shirt, it looked terrible?” I mean why would people think that right?

So in hypnosis, she recalled a time when she was four and she's in her room, she has a lot of siblings, everybody's crying and mom tells her Aunt Betty went to sleep last night and didn't wake up! She's four and she's desperate to make people feel better. She's telling jokes or telling this one a story, or trying to distract somebody else. There is the randomness. But that one, that one instance of Aunt Betty didn't wake up; that was deeply embedded in her subconscious mind at a time when she was very open, and her subconscious mind was very literal. It affected her sleep her whole life.

Our subconscious mind is very, very literal. It doesn't understand nuances, and humor, and sarcasm. It takes everything in, as it is said as the truth and a lot of times we hold on to beliefs that we get when we're very young,  that at the time serve us just fine or that really have no context or an effect on us. But when we get older, there might be something that happens that triggers that in our subconscious mind and consciously we have no awareness of what is even being triggered, or why we feel that way? So, there's this disconnect with what consciously we think and a belief that's very embedded in our subconscious. In hypnosis it's very easy to get to the root cause of a lot of issues that we're having in our current life that we don't understand.

Dr. Litchy's response: Well, it is very complicated right now, and currently the medical community is very divided, or at least very concerned about even the existence of chronic Lyme. So there's a lot of reasons for this.

Number one, this is one of the first bacterial infections we've encountered that is not always eradicated with one to two meds of very intensive antibiotics. It's not acting like other infectious diseases we've seen before.

Two, testing is complicated. Testing is not truly diagnostic, and a lot of false negatives can happen with this, which can be confusing to clinicians.

Another reason which is a little troubling is people with chronic Lyme may have psychiatric comorbidities. They have pain and symptoms that are not explainable by lab tests and historically for forever, people with unexplained symptoms and possible psychiatric comorbidities are not listened to, and put into a category. You do have problems with their psychiatric or somatization issues. But there are other illnesses where this can happen as well, and Lyme is one of them.

I think it is fairly well believed in infectious disease practice that a month of doxycycline or a month of IV Rocephin will treat it and after that, the problems that remain are not Lyme and not infection related, and that is just what their specialty believes. There are people that believe they have Lyme that don't have Lyme and have symptoms which can confuse things as well.  When any illness becomes very well-known that this can happen as well, it becomes complicated to diagnose. Certainly until even very recently medical practice did not allow long-term antibiotics, and in fact, people who did the long-term antibiotic usage had faced troubles with their board, troubles with pharmacies, and it's only very recently that it has opened up. In the last year, there have been some position statements that are allowing people to practice within their training, which means they can do treat appropriately and this is a very recent event. There are many reasons why it's complicated to get diagnosed with Lyme, and it can be very difficult to get the Lyme diagnosis unless you go to the right practitioner.

How does somebody know that they are going to the right practitioner?

Dr. Litchy's response: That's a good question. Someone who is literate with Lyme, if you want to be tested for Lyme. Someone who believes in Lyme, that it can happen, that's important as well. Fortunately, most practitioners are very fairly transparent if they believe in Lyme and chronic Lyme or not. They will tell you, and then that can help you understand who you're talking to. It is essential to be educated on the type of testing you've received and if it is appropriate to your situation.

Are there any resources, a book, or an online website, or something that you recommend that people can go to, to read about this information?

Dr. Litchy's response: Yes, there are a variety of resources. There is the ILADs Foundation. There's a Lyme Disease Foundation as well. These are great. Buhner, as an herbalist, has a wonderful website about the herbal treatment of Lyme as well. There's a variety of online resources for this. Anything from the CDC to ILADS all the way to strictly herbal treatment.

Or they can send you a question?

Dr. Litchy's response: That is possible too. I also recommend people dealing with Lyme to be careful about hanging out on the forums too much. Because there are very ill people that are having very difficult experiences that don't represent what happens for most people. So it can be very negative and discouraging if you look too much on certain forums and it can be much scarier than it has to be.

Thank you Dr. Litchy

Special thanks to Dr. Andrew Litchy ND for being an educator on TrailheadHealth.com and for helping answer consumer questions.

Dr. Andrew Litchy, ND specializes in Chronic Lyme Disease, Integrative Cancer Care, Autism Spectrum Disorder and Botanical Medicine. In addition to his clinical practice at the Neighborhood Naturopathic in Edina, Minnesota, he also teaches at the University of Minnesota. He loves Educating consumers and is offering free initial consultation to anyone who has questions on Lyme and wondering if Naturopathic Treatment can help them. He can be reached at (612) 259-8529 or email at info@neighborhoodnaturopathic.com

Other videos from Dr. Litchy

Top 36 consumer questions on Lyme Disease answered by Dr. Andrew Litchy, ND

WATCH PART 1 of THE INTERVIEW WITH DR. LITCHY

WATCH PART 2 of THE INTERVIEW WITH DR. LITCHY

WATCH PART 3 of THE INTERVIEW WITH DR. LITCHY

So that prompted me to get more interested and to continue to learn more about how my nutrition really had a big impact on how I felt every day. So then I was able to go back to school and pursue my master's degree in nutrition. So moved up to the Twin Cities and went to the University of Minnesota to get my Master's Degree and just continued to love the topic and learn so much about the importance of the choices that we make on our health every day. And that relates to so many things. Not only what we eat, but our stress and our sleep and our exercise habits and all the things that go into really how we feel every day.

I just loved to all the education that I got at the University and then went into private practice. I worked in fitness centers for some years. Went into private practice and as I continued to work with people and help people to eat a very healthy diet. How do we stay really well nourished? That's always what was important to me. And how do we create the best battle in your life, so you feel really good? But what I found was then there's that it doesn't always take people to the highest potential of their health.

Then some years after I was into practice I listened to a class on food sensitivity testing and just understanding a little bit about what happens with food sensitivities. It was sort of this “aha” moment for me because it was a lot about IBS which is why I went into nutrition in the first place. So I subsequently when it continued to get some education and some certification. I'm a Certified LEAP Therapist. So I did his training in food sensitivity testing and the protocol to use around that. So that's been just super rewarding because the results you can get for people is tremendous when we figure out again, very specifically, what is the right eating plan for that person. And you know again eating healthy, nourishing your body really well is super important for all of us. But sometimes people are eating really healthy diets, and it's not working for their body, and there's a variety of reasons that might be the case.

After I spent some time working in that area, I realized there was so much more to it than simply removing the foods that were reactive for people. So I've continued over the last several years to get continued a continuing education in Integrative and Functional Nutrition. So I am continuing to work on some certification from if now the Integrative and Functional Nutrition Academy. And that is helping me to continue to expand my knowledge about why we end up in this position and why do people end up with IBS. Why does autoimmune disease happen?

I'm such a believer that we have so much control over our health if we figure out the reasons why these things happen in the first place, we can we can take the top-down approach and look at symptoms and how do we address those symptoms and that can help a lot. It can help people feel better. But if we don't get to that underlying why did we end up here in the first place and I for me personally I think that's what sort of took me to the next level of really feeling great. I still struggled over the years because I think I'm just sensitive to the things that I eat. But once I figured out about healing the gut and solving leaky gut and the damage that I had probably done from years of fast food; that then I was able to really ultimately just create my best health and that's what I'd love to be able to do with my clients is help them to get to that next level.

About Lynda:

Lynda Enright M.S., RDN, LD, CLT is an educator, coach, and nutrition expert .  She has a Master’s of Science in Nutrition from the University of Minnesota, certification in LEAP Therapy for food sensitivities, Health and Wellness Coach certification from Wellcoaches, and is a Registered and Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist. She offers free initial consultation to anyone who wants to understand how nutrition and food can help them achieve their healthcare goals. She can be reached at lynda@bewellconsulting.com , Phone: (612)-581-4668

See more videos from Lynda Enright answering common consumer questions.

Which is worse? Is it fat or sugar when it comes to our diet?

Nutrition Expert, Lynda Enright MS, RDN, LD, CLT answers consumer questions, Part 1

Hi there my name is Dr. Dana Schomberg and I am a chiropractor at West End Chiropractic & Wellness. And as a chiropractor, you could say that I specialize really in all conditions relating to the spine but it goes a whole lot deeper than that. I guess to give you a little background about myself, I grew up in La Crosse, Wisconsin on a farm, in a little town with maybe the overall mentality if it's not broke don't fix it.

Well, the chiropractic philosophy is a little bit different than that because it's easier to fix little tiny problems than wait until something is broken. So I was always fascinated by the body's ability to heal itself when given the right tools. Western medicine wasn't necessarily my jam. Physical therapy wasn't really necessarily what I was interested in. I was looking for something a little bit deeper than that.

In college, I went to the University of Minnesota. I stumbled into chiropractic and I thought it was pretty interesting that when the body is in alignment, when you give it the right tools from a nutritional standpoint and an exercise standpoint, can actually heal itself.

So shortly after I learned that philosophy, I enrolled in chiropractic school at Northwestern Health Sciences University, which is here in the metro area in Bloomington. I finished my schooling undergraduate and my graduate degree in about seven-and-a-half years and ended with my Doctorate. I graduated in November of 2011 and I've been practicing at West End Chiropractic & Wellness ever since.

Why would you say you chose this path for your career?

I think the main reason why I wanted to become a chiropractor is because, again I've just been incredibly fascinated by the human body. I've always been into exercise. I've always been into nutrition, and it was just a really good fit. What Chiropractic believes in, is that if you give the body the right tools from a physical alignment standpoint, from an exercise standpoint, and nutrition standpoint your body's going to heal itself. You're not going to have to deal with aches and pains. You won't have to deal with chronic disease. You'll be healthy, you'll function at a hundred percent and life will be a lot a lot easier and a lot better for people.

About Dr. Dana Schomberg: , DC

Dr. Dana is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. In Kinesiology and Exercise Science and received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2000. She has been practicing for 8 years at the West End Chiropractic in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is in general practice and sees a variety of patients with a range of conditions including arthritis, back and neck pain, whiplash, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel, old muscular tightness, and tension. Other areas of expertise include sports medicine, and treating female patients that suffer from headaches and migraines. Dr. Dana is also the official doctor for the Minnesota North Star Roller Derby team, who fondly refer to her as "Doc Bones"

She is currently accepting new patients at this. Please feel free to mention this video for a free 15-minute initial consultation. She can be reached at 

Email: drdana@westendchiromn.com

Phone: 9525008477

Dr. Dana Explains: Subluxation is a big word but it's a pretty simple concept I guess. I'm sitting next to my model spine so I'll go ahead and pull this thing out and kind of explain what a subluxation is. For those of you watching, you maybe have seen these before, this is the model of a spine. This is where the back of the head is and these are the little bumps that you can feel on your spine. Well anyways, what can happen from everyday stress or poor posture or maybe an old injury that never healed right, or a car accident, is that, these individual joints can shift out of alignment and that's what we call a subluxation. Now when these joints shift out of alignment two main things happen.The first thing that happens, is you're going to get nerve irritation. There are over 300 million nerves that exit the spine. One hundred percent of the time if you have a subluxation that's irritating a nerve, you're going to have some kind of a problem and oftentimes it is pain. That's the first problem that sets in, you're going to have a nerve pinch.

The second thing that's going to happen is all of your muscles that stabilize the spine are going to shorten and spasm and that's going to cause a problem, because not only will it wear out the joint space, it's going to continue to irritate the nerve but it will also decrease your range of motion because your muscles will shorten and tighten.

A subluxation is again, it's a large word but it's a pretty simple concept that the joint is out of alignment pinching a nerve. When your nerve is being pinched your body won't function at 100% and it won't heal properly. So, we don't like subluxation around here.

Question: So, Dr. Dana, what are some conditions or symptoms that a patient might be having that they should come see you for?  

Dr. Dana explains: A lot of times unfortunately people don't seek out chiropractic as a first option. They typically go to chiropractic almost as a last resort. They go to the medical practitioner and they maybe say, “I'm having back pain.” And the medical practitioner unfortunately gives them a medication or a series of stretches, and that's not always going to do the trick. So, when people come to see me it's typically for back pain. Whether that be lower back pain, shoulder pain, neck pain, headaches, whatever it might be, they usually come in for some kind of a pain symptom, and what I would love is if people would seek out chiropractic before they get the runaround from the medical community.

Can you let our consumers know why would a patient come to you, other than back pain? What other symptoms could subluxation or misalignment in the spine cause in a patient?

There is a lot of different things that subluxation can cause other than pain. Typically people come in because the subluxation is causing pain, and when pain starts to set in that's kind of the tip of the iceberg they only notice that part, but there's a whole lot of stuff underlying underneath the iceberg if that makes sense. Some very common things that we see that subluxation can cause are sinus issues. The nerves that exit the top part of the spine innervate the sinuses. A lot of times people with subluxation in the upper part of their neck can have significant sinus issues. It can cause various issues with breathing. We've seen a lot of patients improve in their asthma symptoms after removing the subluxations in their mid-back. Reason being the nerves that come out of your mid-back, innervate the lungs and the bronchioles so if you have subluxations that are irritating the nerves that supply that area, you're likely going to have issues in that regard too.  

We actually see a lot of digestion issues as well. Sometimes people are coming in with IBS or maybe constipation or diarrhea whatever it might be and it's not necessarily because there's a problem with the intestines but the nerves that come out of the lower back innervate the intestines and the whole entire GI system. So after removing those subluxations, the nerves will be able to communicate with those organs much better and relieve some of those symptoms as well.

Question: Who is your average patient? Do you see children only, seniors, anything in between? Athletes? Who is your ideal patient?

Dr. Dana explains: I do see a variety of patients from - the youngest that I've treated was four days old, people might say what the heck does a little kid need an adjustment for? If you think about it, a little moldable human body is inside of another human body and the birthing process can be awfully traumatic and tumultuous. Sometimes if an OBGYN is pulling a little too hard on the poor infants head or neck. It can actually cause the very first misalignment and if that's left untreated for a long period of time, these kids might end up with migraines they might end up with headaches. So taking care of it, again when it's a small issue, is a lot easier to fix it than when it turns into a large issue. Anywhere from an infant that maybe has torticollis or some shifting in the neck, or maybe they're constipated, or they have colic, an adjustment can help clear that stuff up so little kiddos, all the way up to the older geriatric patients that maybe have arthritic symptoms that medications aren't helping and so forth.

If I were to say who my main demographic of who I treat on the most regular basis and who I enjoy working with the most, it would be that middle age to younger female athlete.  Not necessarily your Olympian by any means. Although, we do have some pretty talented athletes that come in here that I treat. You know that 35 year old female that loves yoga but just feels a little bit of a catch in her hip when she's trying to get into her downward dog position, or that roller derby girl that skating around the rink in the same direction every single night and starts developing a knee issue, that's kind of my ideal patients. Actually over the last five years, I've been lucky enough to be able to work with the North Star Roller Girls. They're actually the roller derby team of Minneapolis. That's been really rewarding because they are tough awesome athletes, but they end up with injuries because it's a pretty significant demanding sport from a physical standpoint.

About Dr. Dana Schomberg: , DC

Dr. Dana is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. In Kinesiology and Exercise Science and received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2000. She has been practicing for 8 years at the West End Chiropractic in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is in general practice and sees a variety of patients with a range of conditions including arthritis, back and neck pain, whiplash, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel, old muscular tightness, and tension. Other areas of expertise include sports medicine, and treating female patients that suffer from headaches and migraines. Dr. Dana is also the official doctor for the Minnesota North Star Roller Derby team, who fondly refer to her as "Doc Bones"

She is currently accepting new patients at this. Please feel free to mention this video for a free 15-minute initial consultation. She can be reached at 

Email: drdana@westendchiromn.com

Phone: 9525008477

One of my more recent patients came in about three weeks ago because they were involved in a pretty significant car accident. They were sitting at a stoplight and not necessarily paying attention to the person approaching them from behind, but the speed limit was 50 miles an hour and the person unfortunately ran into my patient rear-ended them. The other vehicle is going 50 miles an hour and this poor woman was completely at a dead stop.

She suffered aggressive flexion and extension in her neck. Her head actually hit the steering wheel and the headrest, and she blacked out for a moment, not for a long period of time, but she blacked out. Immediate headaches, tons of pain shooting down into her arms. She had never had pain like that before, she was really scared. Ambulance came and picked her up, they brought her to the hospital and they did an x-ray and a CT scan.

The x-ray didn't show any broken bones, and the CT scan didn't show any hemorrhaging, so they sent her home with a muscle relaxer. That was incredibly frustrating for her because it didn't help at all. They didn't do anything more than just say oh, your spine is not broken. Well we can't do anything for you then, from a medical standpoint, see you later.

This is where I then met up with her. She came into the office thinking that maybe there's something chiropractic can do and after doing a thorough exam taking some x-rays doing some orthopedic tests and testing her reflexes, found out that she had a significant whiplash sprain/strain injury in her upper back, neck area, that was severely compressing the nerves that came out of her neck and went on her arms. With that flexion and extension, that's why she was experiencing pain shooting down her arms.

After her first week of treatment she actually is not experiencing any of the numbness or tingling or shooting pain down into her arms. The road to recovery after a big accident like that, unfortunately doesn't happen overnight. She will have a few more series of treatments moving forward, but just after a few chiropractic adjustments and some simple stretches and exercises that I was able to teach her, she has been able to go back to work she's been able to actually function in a normal life, rather than having to sit and take these muscle relaxers and just hope and pray that it's going to work. Chiropractic is such a great holistic, non-invasive way to rehabilitate, not only the spine but the muscles, from a terrible accident.

Whether it be a car accident or a bad fall, that's one of my more recent, exciting testimonials that I've had.

About Dr. Dana Schomberg: , DC

Dr. Dana is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. In Kinesiology and Exercise Science and received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2000. She has been practicing for 8 years at the West End Chiropractic in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is in general practice and sees a variety of patients with a range of conditions including arthritis, back and neck pain, whiplash, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel, old muscular tightness, and tension. Other areas of expertise include sports medicine, and treating female patients that suffer from headaches and migraines. Dr. Dana is also the official doctor for the Minnesota North Star Roller Derby team, who fondly refer to her as "Doc Bones"

She is currently accepting new patients at this. Please feel free to mention this video for a free 15-minute initial consultation. She can be reached at 

Email: drdana@westendchiromn.com

Phone: 9525008477

There's actually two different types of patients that we treat in here. We'll kind of talk about that first time patient that you mentioned. A lot of times people think, once I get adjusted once I'm gonna have to keep coming back forever. The truth of the matter is, what chiropractic does, is it helps realign the spine, it trains the muscles to hold things in the right spot, and it gets you feeling better. Now if you didn't sit at a desk all day, if you weren't hard on your body, if you lived on a beach in Mexico, you'd probably really never need to see a chiropractor more than every once in a while if you trip on a coconut on the beach or something like that.

The unfortunate reality is, we are really hard in our bodies. The human body was not designed to sit for 8-10 hours a day, it wasn't designed to skate around a roller derby rink and fall super hard and hit your head. It wasn't designed to sit in a car. And so the fact of the matter is, maintenance chiropractic or coming in for an adjustment every few weeks, every few months, is actually what we recommend for patients that have an average amount to a high amount of stress in their lives.

We do have another section of people that come in only when they're feeling a little bit of back pain and something is better than nothing, honestly. You can feel phenomenal after an adjustment or two, but what we always recommend, is more of that, like I said, chiropractic maintenance, because it's easier to fix those little problems and maintain your spine, rather than wait until it turns into a giant problem and causes you a lot of grief and pain.

About Dr. Dana Schomberg: , DC

Dr. Dana is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. In Kinesiology and Exercise Science and received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2000. She has been practicing for 8 years at the West End Chiropractic in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is in general practice and sees a variety of patients with a range of conditions including arthritis, back and neck pain, whiplash, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel, old muscular tightness, and tension. Other areas of expertise include sports medicine, and treating female patients that suffer from headaches and migraines. Dr. Dana is also the official doctor for the Minnesota North Star Roller Derby team, who fondly refer to her as "Doc Bones"

She is currently accepting new patients at this. Please feel free to mention this video for a free 15-minute initial consultation. She can be reached at 

Email: drdana@westendchiromn.com

Phone: 9525008477

What I do with them is about three to four times throughout their season I go into their practice space and I watch their mechanics and I make sure that they're skating correctly, and I make sure that they're utilizing their muscles right. I usually will do a little workshop with them. Maybe teach them how to foam roll or rehabilitate some of their muscles that are tight. I watch to make sure that their stance is correct, that they're not doing anything awkward or dangerous with their posture.

They have between four and five tournaments a year, where I go to the space that they're playing, I bring my chiropractic table and I sit on the sidelines and if one of the girls gets knocked over goofy and they shift a rib out of alignment, they run over to me and they're like, "Fix me up!" They don't say fix me up, they say, "Doc Bones" can you help me?" Because that's what they call me, that's my name, I'm "Doc Bones", that's pretty cool.

One of my favorite patient cases I guess, with these girls is not only do they have the league that participates in tournaments, but they have a league where it's kind of like the practice squad where these girls aspire to become regular athletes on the full-blown league. Some of the girls that are on the practice squad so to speak, have come in to see me because they've struggled with some mechanics, or muscle control, or their skating. In particular, there is this one girl that came in, that had a really uncoordinated balance. She wasn't able to skate very well, and so she was never able to make the time on these various tests that they have you do to make the team.

That was just her one goal, is to make the team. I took an x-ray of her hips because that was where the main problem was coming from, and noticed that her left hip was significantly lower than her right. It was also rotated, and the muscles were spasmed on that side. She was working her left side way too hard, and her right side didn't even know what it was supposed to do. Through a series of chiropractic adjustments and some simple but effective physical
therapy modalities, we were able to completely balance out her hips. She was able to skate around in a circle, make all of her times, and she actually ended up making the league after about a year and a half of trying so hard.

That was really cool to help her realize that her body had the ability to do it, and it was awesome be a part of that.

About Dr. Dana Schomberg: , DC

Dr. Dana is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. In Kinesiology and Exercise Science and received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2000. She has been practicing for 8 years at the West End Chiropractic in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is in general practice and sees a variety of patients with a range of conditions including arthritis, back and neck pain, whiplash, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel, old muscular tightness, and tension. Other areas of expertise include sports medicine, and treating female patients that suffer from headaches and migraines. Dr. Dana is also the official doctor for the Minnesota North Star Roller Derby team, who fondly refer to her as "Doc Bones".

She is currently accepting new patients at this. Please feel free to mention this video for a free 15-minute initial consultation. She can be reached at 

Email: drdana@westendchiromn.com

Phone: 9525008477

One of my most recent favorite patient testimonials or patient success stories is about an 8 month old little boy and he came in to see me originally with his mother of course, because he had tremendous ear infections. He was actually on his fourth ear infection and his mom didn't want to give him a fourth round of antibiotics because the third round of ear infection antibiotics that he was on, didn't even hardly help, and that's why he ended up with this fourth one.

Unfortunately as the last resort, she brought the little kiddo in here and after looking into his ears I was able to see that his eardrums are incredibly red. He had actually fluid building up behind the eardrum. What I told the mother is, there's some adjustments that we can do to the neck, and to the ears, and just the upper back area to help clear out the fluid that's building up and get rid of some of that infection.

The little kiddo, even though he wasn't super excited or happy to have me touch his little sore head and neck, we did a couple of adjustments over the span of a week, we actually did three, and at the fourth visit when he came back in and I looked at his ears, there was no more redness in eardrum there was no more fluid that was building up in the ear. The mother said that she has never seen him as happy and as smiley as he had been in a very, very long time.

That was really amazing because unfortunately a lot of times people don't realize that, when you have an ear infection, you might not need an antibiotic, you might just need a little bit of help to drain the fluid. If you get the fluid out of there, ear infection heals and the kid feels a lot better.

About Dr. Dana Schomberg: , DC

Dr. Dana is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. In Kinesiology and Exercise Science and received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2000. She has been practicing for 8 years at the West End Chiropractic in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is in general practice and sees a variety of patients with a range of conditions including arthritis, back and neck pain, whiplash, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel, old muscular tightness, and tension. Other areas of expertise include sports medicine, and treating female patients that suffer from headaches and migraines. Dr. Dana is also the official doctor for the Minnesota North Star Roller Derby team, who fondly refer to her as "Doc Bones"

She is currently accepting new patients at this. Please feel free to mention this video for a free 15-minute initial consultation. She can be reached at 

Email: drdana@westendchiromn.com

Phone: 9525008477

Often times people will come in with a pain complaint and I want to figure out if that pain symptom is coming from a muscle, a joint issue, a nerve problem, or a combination of those three things. Then it's my job to figure out the best way to not only get them feeling better, but to fix it at the root of the cause, which is oftentimes one of those three main things.

A patient will come in, we'll do a variety of range of motion tests, some orthopedic testing to really narrow down where the problem is, strength testing, reflexes, all sorts of different things. I take a look at biomechanics, which is kind of a fancy word for posture in motion, to see how the muscles are firing, see if there's imbalance. Then 90 percent of the time, we take an x-ray. I love to see exactly what's going on with the structure, because that will give me a good idea of what a patient needs from a treatment standpoint. The reason why I say 90 percent of the time is because oftentimes children don't require an x-ray. If a woman's pregnant, we don't x-ray them. There's a few other varying reasons why we might not take an x-ray, but otherwise we take an x-ray.

After developing the x-ray, I get to take a good look at not only the structure of the spine, but compare it with the exam that I did, to see where there are parallels and see if there's any red flags or anything crazy going on in there. Then at that point, I'm able to develop a treatment plan for any individual patient that comes in.

A question that I get often times before I'm able to look at everything, patients will say, “You know I do have this issue. How long is it going to take to fix?”  I love answering that question because everybody's a little bit different, and oftentimes when you go to a medical provider, or you go to a different sort of provider, they just kind of give you a cookie cutter regimen, you know. You go to the medical doctor, I've got back pain, here's a muscle relaxer.

You go to a physical therapist, I have the X Y Z, maybe here's a couple stretches you can do. What I pride myself in at, West End Chiropractic and what we pride ourselves in, is making a very individualized curtailed treatment plan, that involves chiropractic, rehab, and an education, so that a patient doesn't fall back into that same pattern of injuring themselves again. How long does it take? It varies. It might take a couple of adjustments, if your body isn't as out of alignment as it could be.

Or, it could take a couple weeks or maybe even a month or so, to get your body back to where it needs to be, depending on how long you let the problem go, or how significant your injury might be. To answer that question, every treatment plan is very individualized to fit the patient's needs and goals to fix their problem.

About Dr. Dana Schomberg: , DC

Dr. Dana is a graduate of the University of Minnesota with a B.S. In Kinesiology and Exercise Science and received her Doctor of Chiropractic from Northwestern Health Sciences University in 2000. She has been practicing for 8 years at the West End Chiropractic in St. Louis Park, Minnesota. She is in general practice and sees a variety of patients with a range of conditions including arthritis, back and neck pain, whiplash, fibromyalgia, plantar fasciitis, sciatica, carpal tunnel, old muscular tightness, and tension. Other areas of expertise include sports medicine, and treating female patients that suffer from headaches and migraines. Dr. Dana is also the official doctor for the Minnesota North Star Roller Derby team, who fondly refer to her as "Doc Bones"

She is currently accepting new patients at this. Please feel free to mention this video for a free 15-minute initial consultation. She can be reached at 

Email: drdana@westendchiromn.com

Phone: 9525008477

If we start eating well, can we truly reverse the damage we cause to our bodies by lousy eating?

Question from a consumer: When people in their younger years go eating whatever and putting whatever in their mouths, it almost seems like our bodies can handle that and that they're somewhat immune to it up to a certain age. It seems like it's almost like a cumulative effect where if you continue to make the wrong choices, eventually it catches up to you. Is the same true for the reversal too? So if you have been eating poorly for ten years, that in fact when you switch it around, and you gain healthier habits, and eat the right way, that you can truly reverse all of the damage done to your body?

Lynda's response: Very often I find that to be the case.  Yes absolutely! As we say with heart disease - Heart disease continues to be the leading cause of death in this country, and heart disease doesn't happen when you have a heart attack, when you're 50 years old. It happens from years of lifestyle choices and damage that occurs. It's not an instantaneous situation. It's plaque that builds up and inflammation over years and years. And the same thing with our dietary choices, and how that and all the stressors, whether it's medication, or a high-stress lifestyle, or lack of sleep, or under-exercise, or over-exercise, something that really isn't working for your body.  That those years of things that aren't perfect for you can create some problems that all of a sudden now have spilled over to create this symptom and the situation that things aren't working very well. What I'm continuing to study and understand is that there's so much we can do to heal that damage that's happened. At any point we can start taking care of ourselves, and it's going to help. But if there's damage that's already happened, there needs to be some healing process that needs to happen too. It isn't just that we start doing better and immediately we feel better. Yes, very quickly people feel a lot better when they go from a Standard American Diet to a well nourishing diet. But then we still need to do that healing process because those years of damage don't just go away, it's going to take some time for that to recover. So absolutely, it's a build up over time, and then we go back down the other way and get things to a place of healing.

How long does it take to create healthy habits?

Question for Lynda: In your experience how long does it take for people to rebuild their new healthy habits? You know, clean up their refrigerators. Instinctively in our busy lives, it's easy to drive through a McDonald's than it is to come home and prep a healthy meal. How long you does it take a client to make that switch and really stick with it?

Lynda's response: That's a great question. Everybody is different of course, just like everyone is different in their health situation. Everybody is different in their ability to make change or their motivation to make change, the ability in their lifestyle to make change. So that's a lot of what I do, is help people to get to their motivation. You know, what are the reasons? 
A lot of people come to me because they want to lose weight. That's sort of what they're seeing. That's sort of, you know, kind of the top of mind thing that's bothering them the most. But when I start to dig deeper I realize there's a lot of other things going on, and it's not necessarily because of an aesthetic reason. It's because they don't feel good. Because their energy is really low. Because they can't get up off the floor from playing with their kid, you know get up and down playing with their kids or their grandkids. So,  I try to help people get to that.  The why! What's going on with you and really that deeper why then sort of the thing that we kind of see in front of us. And then I, really help people to figure out how to make it work in their life. Because, for me to hand you a plan and say here you go, go do this. Well, if that's not right for you, and that doesn't fit into your life, then you're never going to be able to accomplish that.

So everybody is different. Some people can just take things and run and have tremendous success really rapidly. For other people, there's a lot of history that has created the habits that they have, and it doesn't just happen overnight. A lot of people are so busy these days, so it's also just the the environment that people are in.

I'll give an example of a woman that I'm working with right now. She was really excited about getting started. She has some health concerns and her weight. It is really important that she takes off some weight. She's a single mom, and since we started working together she had a sinus infection, her daughter had the flu. She now just had another medical complication that she's dealing with. So we went from creating a really specific plan of these are the things that she was going to work on. To okay, those aren't working because life got in the way. So now what do we need to do? Let's create Plan B not that it's a bad plan, by any means, but it's a plan that's going to work better for your life right now. Then we'll take the next step when we are able to take that next step.

I think it's so important to work with people where they're at because to suggest that she's got to stick to that plan A because that's the only plan that's going to work! Well, she just can't do that right now; it's not going to happen. 

But there are great things that she can still do. I always think too - you know exercise is something we have to do or we have to we can build movement certainly into our day. And exercise is certainly one of the things that kind of gets knocked off the calendar when people get busy which isn't ideal. But with food, we're eating anyway. We have to eat. So how do we make it the best that we can, even in a situation that, it's really challenging right now.  We can make it better We can find easy ways to simplify your life, to simplify the cooking. Even if it's getting some pre-made things at the co-op or you know or a good deli or something where they have some good salads and things available, so there's lots of variety.

So back to your question of how long it takes?

For some people, within a month they've made dramatic changes to their life. For some people, it might be six months to a year before they've really felt like they've made this shift. You know they generally I sort of think of a few months three months or so that it takes people to build some habits. When I worked in the Fitness industry we've done some weight management program. We did a 12-week program I've run a number of times and what I found is a lot of people over 12 weeks they felt really like they had made positive changes. They felt really good. All of their symptoms had improved, everything was better, but they didn't really feel like the habits were solid yet. And so that then they needed to sort of build that. Like I can do these things they're working, I know they're working but how do I just make them part of my life. And that can just take a little bit longer.

Question from a consumer: A lot of people associate food with pleasure. And so many people say food should be considered as nutrition and fuel. Where does Lynda Enright stand?

Lynda's response: Number one, of course, food is fuel. That’s what it is and should be our fuel, and we need to fuel ourselves well. But food also is pleasure. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a joy in our lives, and that's absolutely ok. 
What I try to get people to step back and think about is that some of the choices we make that gives us some immediate pleasure, also give us long-term pleasure or benefit or help our health. My experience is that a lot of people, when they clean up their diet, eating whole foods, reducing sugar, cutting back on alcohol ( some of the things that are sort of kind of flares for symptoms that people are living with), they feel so much better. Then those things aren't important to them anymore. They realize that I'd rather not eat sugar because I just feel so much better without it. And I'm a big believer that if you can prepare nourishing foods, that they should be delicious. And I will argue any day that a well-cooked highly nourishing meal tastes just as good or better than the highly processed foods that are on the market. I will also say it's kind of scary how food is manufactured to be really highly stimulating. So we're up against manufacturing of food, of processed foods, that are designed to be very pleasurable and make it very difficult for us to stop eating them. But when I get people to the other side of eating whole foods, real foods that isn't the pleasure that they get any more from it.

Is your Sweet Tooth a preference or an addiction?

Question from a consumer: When people come to you and say - but I have a sweet tooth. Do they really have a sweet tooth or are they addicted to sugar?  

Lynda's response: I think that part of our taste develops throughout our life so and I have children, and so I can see how one of my kids is definitely more driven to sugar than another. So I do think that we have, even are born with some of those taste preferences, and they're certainly developed in early and childhood. So some of that is our history. 

There's physiology and then there's habit. So we do have a physiological response to exposure to food, sugar being one of those things. Its when we continually feed ourselves sugar. 

Particularly when you start out the day and you have that coffee drink with sugar and scone you've got this huge increase in blood sugar and then you crash, and you're going to crave sugar. And that's what people do all day long is go on this roller coaster. And so that's a physiologic response. Your body is demanding that because you've started that cycle. 

On the other hand, then there's the habit that goes along with, well.."That's just what I do in the morning". That's what I do for breakfast, that’s what I do, I go get that. Or when there are pastries in the breakroom at work, thats just what I do, I go get that or when I get home. We have these patterns that then create these eating habits. 

So we need to shift the habits, build some different patterns. Not just say we are not going to do that anymore, but create some different patterns that work better for you and then that physiologic response changes as well. I do think people have preferences. Some people say I like salty, crunchy things appeal to me.  Sweet things appeal to me. Everyone has that taste preference, but I really believe that can change if you create good habits or change those habits that create an environment that really creates nourishing foods.

Why do more men say, they have to have meat and women say they can't live without sugar?

Question for a consumer: A lot of people say to me, the percentage of men versus women, a lot of men will say they can’t live without meat -  that's their source of protein! if there was one food group they can't give up it's their hamburgers or steak. And then there are women who say to me that they can’t live without their sugars. Is that really true? Is it true statistically that a lot of men crave meat and women crave sugars?

Lynda's response: I can't say that I've seen research to say one way or another, but that's certainly my experience as well. I think we've shifted in general to everyone craving more sugar. So I do think as a culture we just have such highly stimulating sweet foods in our world. But yeah, that's kind of what I see also is men lean towards a higher protein, maybe a higher fat diet in some ways depending on the quality of the meat things that they consume. Women tend to gravitate towards the higher carb, pastry things. Some of that could be hormonal impact as well. Some of it definitely is just behaviors that we've developed over time. I can't say that we have proof of one way or another, but that's been my experience as well.

The debate - Which is worse, Fat or Sugar?

Question from a consumer: Is it fat or is it sugar which is a bigger culprit when it comes to heart disease or just in general?

Lynda's response: It's been up and down over the years. There's the low sugar, and then there's the low fat, and we go back and forth. The research is coming out in just really quite recent years here talking so much more about how sugar is really one of our bigger problems, and the fat hasn't been as much of a concern as far as heart disease as we once thought. The way I look at it is we can improve in so many ways. The typical American diet is actually not a super high-fat diet; it's just the quality of our fat is really poor. Processed foods tend to have more trans fats and more saturated fats, which are not as good for our heart health. We don't get as much seafood and nuts & seeds and things like a Mediterranean kind of diet. That is one of the best in the world as far as heart health and disease prevention. So it's not that quantity of fat isn't the problem. Its just that we're eating poor quality of fat. 

And then from a sugar side, carbohydrates aren't a bad thing. Fruits and vegetables are some of our primary source of carbs, whole grains, brown rice and whole wheat and barley and bulgur and rye. There are lots of different wonderful whole grains that provide excellent nutrition. We tend to be a have a diet that's very heavy in refined grains, white bread and white pasta and pastries and crackers and those things. So getting people away from the quantity of those but also shifting the quality, so they're getting high fiber and lots of vitamins and minerals in the whole grain. I do think just as a population we've shifted so much more to a heavy carb diet, and I think we're learning more and more that that's really not the answer to weight management, to heart disease prevention, or management to diabetes prevention.

There are just all the chronic disease conditions we're not seeing that's having tremendous benefit. I think we know so much more. It's really getting good quality fats, lean sources of protein, lots of fruits and vegetables not thinking so much about low carb or low fat.

Lynda Enright, MS, RDN, LD, CLT is an educator, coach, and nutrition expert. I have a Master’s of Science in Nutrition from the University of Minnesota, certification in LEAP Therapy for food sensitivities, Health and Wellness Coach certification from Wellcoaches, and am a Registered and Licensed Dietitian Nutritionist. Lynda has resolved her own IBS, irritable bowel syndrome, and has helped hundreds of patients achieve a healthy weight, reduce inflammation, increase their energy, eliminate aches and pains, and come out of their brain fog! 

If you read this article and are interested in working with her, Lynda Enright is offering a free initial over the phone consultation to anyone trying to use Food as Medicine in the management of their disease. Please call her (612)-581-4668 and mention this video and article.

To see Lynda's personal story and struggle with IBS, click here

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About this video: 

The Mayo Clinic calls Regenerative Medicine a “Game Changer.” More and more people are trying regenerative (Stem cell) therapies to help with many conditions. These therapies are showing lots of promise. There is lots of interest in these therapies and an increase in funding because they are providing hope with many different health conditions. There is hope and promise, but there is also caution.

Most regenerative therapies are still considered experimental and not FDA approved.

Using them the right way is very important. Regenerative therapies allow for restoration of body function, by using stem cells through a simple injection into the problem area. Throughout the country, many clinics have popped up offering “regenerative therapies” How do you know which clinic and MD to work with. How do you know if regenerative therapy is right for you? Not all stem cells are the same. And the procedures and protocols to handle these stem cells are not standardized. We asked our expert, Dr. Ron Hanson, MD these questions. Dr. Ron Hanson, MD has been practicing Regenerative Medicine for over ten years. In this interview, Dr. Ron shares his experience and the important considerations regarding regenerative therapies. Why is it so important to use stem cells from your own body instead of some other source?

Dr. Ron Hanson, MD explains.

I’d like to talk a little bit about what’s called “allogeneic tissue.”

Allogeneic tissue is tissue from a different source put into you. It can refer to other people or animals, and these are issues that have been used in orthopedic and other working medicine for a long time to augment healing.

There are a number of products on the market that have been approved by the FDA for use in very specific circumstances to augment tissue reconstruction. I prefer to use a person’s own tissue; there’s no chance of rejection, there’s no chance of infection, there’s no chance of other impurities, through an entire processing outside of an individual lab or clinic. This is not something that’s been “boxed” you know your own tissue is good, it’s viable, and you know your own body is not going to do anything abnormal with it. It is very lucrative, and there are many clinics that have popped up in the last year or two offering amniotic tissue injections almost as a “cure-all” kind of approach. But, there is still a possibility of there being proteins, and other cellular remnants from those injections that your body is going to immunologically react to. An immunologic response is not the same as a healing response. Whereas impurities or other immunologic reactions can occur from a tissue that’s not from you that was literally taken off of a shelf and re-hydrated just before it was put into you; you’re going to take that instead of, say your own adipose or your own bone marrow which has all of the cellular components needed to be able to heal your tissue structurally in the way it needs to be healed? I think that the choice for me is very elementary; you are going to use your own tissue to heal yourself. Why? Because it works, and number two because it has almost no chance of harming you. So, both from a safety and an efficacy standpoint, having done this for 10 years, I think people need to know that it’s a very important choice they need to make.

Umbilical Tissues: These are being significantly hyped by many clinics. They will universally get together large groups of people and tell them, “Ah, you have 75-year-old stem cells, those don’t work anymore, those are not potent anymore. You need those little baby stems cells from an umbilical cord to heal you.” This represents a phenomenon that I’ve seen many times in medicine where somebody takes you and your situation and presents it in such a way to destroy your own hope, to destroy any good feelings about yourself that you can have and then make you dependent on, or give you an option where you can have hope, but it’s dependent upon them. Fundamentally, I have a problem with that approach. I think that people need to be given hope intrinsically from the point of view that helps them depend on themselves so that they’re not dependent on anyone else.

Aside from that, I have three independent labs throughout the United States, which have no money in the game on either side. They have looked at every one of these tissues that are called umbilical stem cell tissues and they no live stem cells in them. These are things that have been extracted, they’ve sat around, they’ve been processed, they’ve been dried, they’ve been frozen, they’ve been stored, they’ve been reconstituted, and now you have a vile full of dead tissue that definitely has cellular components in it from somebody else.

On the one hand, you’re paying $5,000 for dead tissues that sat on a shelf, or, let’s just go with the other possibility that these other clinics are talking about, which is you have these wonderfully potent fetal stem cells that are going to magically fix your whole body in an instant. Aside from that being a ridiculous claim to make, but it is made over and over again, let’s just say that it’s true; that you’re going to get stem cells from this source. What they fail to tell you is that stem cells have a very particular property about them. They have no cell surface proteins. Cells around the body, just like we as humans, we have noses, eyes, ears, we have shape, all of those things identify us. In the case of cells, there are proteins that are put on the outside of the cell that identify that cell as what it is and where it came from. That’s how the body signals and understands what kind of tissue or what kind of cell that it's working with.

A stem cell is very odd, in that it has none of these. It floats around like it’s an inert object and it has no response from a person. If I took rhinoceros stem cells and put them inside of me, my body would not recognize them as anything foreign, because there’s no means or mechanism to do that. Now, if those stem cells floated around or lodged into tissue and only stayed stem cells and would excrete substances that help in modulation of tissue, helped in chemically improving that tissue, helped in recruiting other cells to make new tissues in that area, and that’s all they ever did, that would be a really beneficial thing.

However, stem cells have a second property; they also will differentiate into other cell lines. That means that a stem cell, say, from the blood can become a white blood cell, a red blood cell, they can become a cell that makes platelets. That’s call differentiation. Once a stem cell starts to differentiate into another type of cell, or a terminal cell, is what they are called, they will then have cell surface markers on them. Those cells, once they have formed from a stem cell are now designated down a particular pathway. One of the ways the body communicates to do that is to have proteins on the surface which identifies them to the rest of the world. In the case of having someone else’s stem cells inside of you; if that cell differentiates into another one, which will happen, (pretty much 100% of the time), then those cells are going to have the cell surface proteins not of the person that it was injected into, but of the person that it came from.

Now your body is going to recognize it as foreign and then either accept it, reject it, or that cell can actually attack you. There is a lot to discuss in the physiology of what can happen in those circumstances, but none of them end in a good response for the person. Now, these products; neither the umbilical or the amniotic products have been evaluated for long-term safety by the FDA for regenerative purposes. None of them. They have been used by a good concept, by the FDA called, “Off-Label Use” where a physician has the ability to use these products for means that they feel is important and right for the patient, and that is a good thing from a practice and medicine standpoint. However, when you are talking about actively biologic tissue that creates active biologic response in a person, that have never been evaluated; now you’re talking about something that has no long-term studies for doing anything good or efficacious for a patient, it also has no safety profile for people.

In November of 2017, the FDA cited significant concerns with these products, and I believe there is going to be an appropriate response from a regulatory standpoint. Until then, most clinics that are using these products are seeing people for about an hour in their clinic and charging a patient $6,000-$10,000 to use these products... with no established pathway to definitely create long-term success, no long-term studies on safety and no approval by the FDA to be using them for the purpose to be used. I fear for regenerative medicine in general, because once the backlash happens and what I know becomes more known to the public, there is going to be a response from regulatory agencies and I’m afraid it’s going to harm regenerative medicine in general.

Question for Dr. Hanson:

You’ve been involved with regenerative medicine since 2007. Has the use of a person’s own tissue vs. using amniotic tissue from somebody else- has that been happening in parallel this whole time?

Dr. Ron's response:
No. The amniotic umbilical stuff did not really come on the scene until the last couple years...I mean, significantly. But what you have is this; of 100’s of physicians that I’ve trained and to prepare the patient appropriately, to gather or aspirate the bone marrow or adipose in such a way that it’s going to be tissue that is really viable, active and in very good shape to make a good tissue graft with, it takes time, it takes energy, equipment and it takes expertise. And those are in short supply.

Taking something off the shelf and putting in a little bit of saline into and injecting it into somebody takes a far lesser degree of expertise. It’s very similar to grabbing that bottle of Cortisone that you used to do. So, they are doing the same pain procedures with just a different bottle of stuff and calling it now “Regenerative Medicine,” and these are not the same things, they are from different planets. My plea to people is stop and think; do you want somebody else’s tissue inside of you, or would you rather use your own tissue, that has no chance of causing harm to yourself? Do you want to use something that has no established safety record or efficacy record in the studies or literature? Do you want to see somebody who is going to work very hard to help you be independent and to create hope In yourself, or are you going to go to somebody who is going to create hope based on what they can do for you? These are not small things to consider, and I know it’s a very difficult thing to have to decipher. But, trust in what your body can do healing-wise, working with somebody who also trusts in that. Together amazing things can happen.

"Trust in your own body, use your own tissue and work with a doctor who is willing to do that" Dr. Ron Hanson, MD, Pioneer in Sports and Orthopedic Regenerative Medicine

Special thanks to Dr. Ron Hanson, MD Pioneer in Sports and Orthopedic Regenerative Medicine, for being an educator on Trailheadhealth.com and helping answer consumer questions.

Dr. Ron Hanson, MD  specializes in Sports and Orthopedic Regenerative Medicine, Spinal Restorative Therapies and Nerve Regeneration Therapies. Dr. Ron sees all types of joint degeneration, tendon tears/tendonitis, ligament injuries, non-healing fractures, spinal degenerative conditions and nerve injuries. Examples include arthritis, meniscus tears, labrum tears, rotator cuff tears, tennis elbow, degenerated discs with or without sciatica, carpal tunnel syndrome, ulnar neuropathy, hip bursitis, runner’s knee, and ACL tears.

Dr. Ron Hanson is accepting patients at this time. Please call him at 612.800.5096 to see if you are a good candidate for Stem cell Therapy with Dr. Ron Hanson.

This video was brought to you by trailheadhealth.com, a platform dedicated to helping connect consumers to the BEST therapies and practitioners via education. 

Learn from the BEST practitioners and then work with them to meet your healthcare goals.

Other links:

About Dr. Ron's and services at the Orthocure clinic - Orthopedic Conditions, Spinal Restorative Therapies, Arthritic  Regenerative Therapies, Nerve Regenerative Therapies

Dr. Ron Hanson's pledge to his patients

Video Transcript:

Dr. Kaur: I am Dr. Tara Kaur and I practice General Dentistry and Edina, Minnesota. I'm also an eco-friendly dentist, and one of the fundamental principles in my practice is to really look at the whole picture, look at the whole person as a patient, look at the whole clinic as a comprehensive organism; a living being. One of the things that I was noticing in my office, was that things weren't feeling connected or grounded. There was a lot of turnover with staff members, and I wasn't feeling supported as well, I was feeling exhausted at the end of the day, and almost overwhelmed by some of the day-to-day tasks. 

A couple of my patients that came in to see us, as regular patients, had just off of this side note conversation, mentioned Feng Shui and Carole's name came up several times with that. Some of the things that they were talking about, were the plants that we have in the office and how that brought some warmth and life into the office. They also were talking about how we have lots of color, and things like that at the front reception, in particular. So, they were already versed in what Feng Shui was and were appreciating some of the elements that we had in our clinic. It was nice to hear from them, that Carole was a good source and resource.

Dr. Kaur had a beautiful space, however, she was feeling disconnected, there was high turnover in staff and she was feeling overwhelmed. 

Dr. Kaur: I ended up contacting Carole, and she came into the office, and did a very thorough walkthrough of the clinic with me. She made some really brilliant suggestions, on how we could very easily incorporate some Feng Shui concepts into the clinic, both physically and energetically, to help me feel more supported, to help the clinic feel more grounded, and to
help our patients feel more safe and comfortable, and the team members as well. She came in and we went through the clinic, we made some very simple changes, but very powerful and effective changes. 

Carole Hyder: Starting off with Tara, first of all, she had a beautiful space. I knew we weren't far off the mark. I knew that there would probably be some very subtle things to do, and she could shift into it. I also, could tell she was totally open to just about anything I would say, which is a good thing. I thought for one thing I felt very privileged to be here, because she clearly knew how to put a place together. We weren't starting from scratch, we were really starting from a pretty “elevated” physical spot in her clinic. I could see that those few little things that we would do, sometimes it's just this little {adjustment} and it's just huge! It's like, you could almost audibly hear the change, like something “clunks” into place, and you go, “See that was just it, that's all we had to do!”

I was excited, she was so excited, I met the staff, we walked around; there was no withholding any information, or withholding any areas, and believe it or not I do run into that. It was just a delight right from the get-go. She has long-term plans, which she shared with me, in terms of future, which helps me put things into perspective. It's just been a delight, and it's been really beautiful to see how she's very gently, and I mean; sometimes with {customers} when I leave, I know that weekend they're just going to rip everything apart. 
With Tara, it was more of a gradual, you know, she waited for the right artwork, in fact, she created her own artwork, which is even better. She created it, and she was waiting for the right thing, and waiting for the moment, and that all, timing, all comes into play with that as well. I just appreciated being part of the process!

Interviewer: As I hear you ladies talk, the word intentional keeps coming up, and it's very intentional. Beautifully done! 

Carole Hyder: It is interesting, how some small things, just something subtle, and you were so open to it. Certainly, we've done a ceremony here to just shift energy, and a lot of times people aren't really open to that. They're open to Feng Shui, but that's as far as it goes.  I really appreciate that, because that sort of remodels things on another level. An unseen, invisible level, which sometimes is even more important than moving furniture around.

What was the biggest, what was the one that had the biggest impact for you? 

Dr. Tara Kaur: I think there were three things. The first thing was reconfiguration in the reception/waiting area. I think that was the big one. The second thing, I think was this idea of balancing the elements. I felt, now that I know more, and now that I've been through this process, I was very aware of how much metal there was in this clinic, and that's awesome for a clinic. You need the precision, that kind of laser-like focus and all of that, but that's not the warm and fuzzy stuff. So, I really appreciated balancing the elements and bringing that warmth into the clinic, still keeping it very metal, but balancing that out of it. That was another, that was the second big thing I think, that I noticed. Then the third, just has to do with feeling supported in the space. I just feel less tired at the end of the day. I feel like, it's easier for me to speak what my need is, and delegate if I'm feeling overwhelmed, or whatever it happens to be. 
Carole: And do you know why that is? No?! 
Dr. Kaur: We changed your office around! That probably is it! 
Carole Hyder: She was in a, you were really in a much less supportive area. You were very vulnerable in that office.  We moved a couple pieces of furniture. I think it was more than that, but it looked like a couple pieces of furniture. It was just flip-flopping it basically. It really was flip-flopping and suddenly there you are, in a place that makes you really the leader. It does, it feels more protected, yet it feels more powerful, and I definitely get more done throughout my day, because I'm not interrupted, and not in {peoples’ line of sight}. I would say, those are the top three things that I really notice, pretty much right away, from our initial time together.

Carole Hyder walks us through the transformation of Dr Kaur's office:

Carole Hyder explains: One of the things that Tara talked to me about was feeling unsupported, and that was a cue, that I should look to see what she was saying about her space. She's a dentist, so I'm not going to start moving her dental chair around, and have her patients in some weird place.

We look in her office, and this is what we were seeing in her office. She actually had her desk right in here. When she was sitting at her desk, she was vulnerable to the door to the entry door to her clinic, and to people sitting in the waiting room. Which leaves you feeling exposed, you were feeling like you're just not protected and supported; a lack of support. It was lovely. She had done a beautiful job in here of course; she had a little round table over this nice little area, but my suggestion was to exchange the table and her desk, and she did. Now, we have a roundtable {positioned here}, which means that she could be here with a client, she could be here with an employee, and that's more of “public experience.”

Then she is protected by the wall, and sits in this office in a very strong and powerful way; she's got this strong, solid background, she's got her credentials behind her. It's like the wind beneath her wings, and she can sit here, and the only time she would be seen, is if actually, a patient were leaving, or an employee was walking by, but not just accidentally, just sitting over there and somebody coming in and watching her. It really shifted things a lot for Tara, because it gave her a sense of some privacy and that's really what she needed.

Carole and Dr. Tara walk us through the front desk / reception area:

Carole: This was an area where I wanted to incorporate the five Chinese elements. This area is people's first impression and what's happening here, (she's done such a great job with it, unbeknownst I think to her), I don't think she quite realized what she did, but this is indicative of a person who's really in touch with her space and energy, that you can do that without much guidance. She has water, she has plants, she has this metal, and look at the ceiling its metal.  It's white; it's round, it's really pretty. She has a lot of Earth. Earth in terms of the countertops, the wood tops, all Earth energy. Of course, the one thing we were missing was that fire piece. She happens to have a receptionist who is very “Fire,” but we don't wanna come to people. She added some artwork that had the "fire" in it, which was some reds, and that really nailed it. 

Carole and Dr. Tara walk us through the changes in the Break Room
 Carole: My experience is that break rooms, usually, they tell the true story about a business.  They're kind of the junk room because nobody knows what to do with the stuff and we’ll just put it in the break room. Then people try to eat there. Well, this is a whole different story. She has set up an incredible room. We had some ideas in here, she implemented everything, which was fabulous. It's a nice storage under the smocks, a great place for them to eat. She's got a little kitchenette for them. It's just a fun, beautiful little place. 

Dr. Tara: I loved the scrubs, the color of the scrubs was a big deal for me and having the organization. I'm a very organized person, but I really love not having open shelves, just having something that has a little softness with the fabric and yet there's a place for everything to be.

I also like the fact that there are these pops of colors. I really love the bright artwork, and I love the furniture that's back here.  I think the size is appropriate, and it's welcoming.  I value my team.  I couldn't do it without my team, so I wanted a place that was a nice spot for people to take a break, and feel comfortable and still feel bright and enlivened, even though it is a space without windows and things like that.

After the Transformation:
Dr. Tara says happily: It seriously has been an incredible journey to watch the space change, to watch how I feel in the space, feeling much more supported, and connected, and grounded in the space. Watching my team members and how they're interacting with the space, with our patients, and then also with each other in the team.
Then watching the growth of the business in it as well. It's been a fantastic journey both personally and professionally, and I'm so grateful for your wisdom, and your ability to come in, and really identify areas, and that your simple changes made such an effective transformation!

Special Thanks to Carole Hyder, MA, Consultant (Integrative SpacesTM) for inviting us to see this transformation!  Integrated Spaces StrategyTM combines ancient strategy (Feng Shui) with modern research to create superior environments within the healthcare industry. Using her Integrated Spaces StrategyTM, Carole has done wonders redesigning waiting room, hospital rooms, treatment areas, assisted living, and senior care facilities, just to name a few!

Carole holds an MA in East Asian Studies and has been a Feng Shui Consultant since 1992, having studied with His Holiness Grandmaster Thomas Lin Yun, Her Holiness Crystal Chu Rinpoche, and Roger Green, all master teachers in the respective philosophies of Feng Shui.

To book an Integrative Space Consultation, please contact Carole Hyder at 
email: carole@carolehyder.com 
Phone 612.823.5093  
Website: www.CaroleHyder.com

Carole has a beautiful guide for Doctors and Clinics highlighting key elements in designing the perfect space. Click here to access the guidebook.

This Video is Brought to you by TrailheadHealth.com, a platform dedicated to connecting consumers with the best therapies and practitioners via education. Learn from the Best Practitioners and then work with them to meet your healthcare goals. 

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Send questions or feedback to questions@trailheadhealth.com

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You can reach Carole at CONTACT HERE

Carole has a beautiful guide for Doctors and Clinics highlighting key elements to designing the perfect space. Click here to access the guidebook.

• Dr. Gervais explains Frozen Shoulder.

• Dr. Gervais shares a patient story who came for treatment of his frozen shoulder after 13 years.

• Dr Gervais shares another patient story of someone who developed frozen shoulder overnight.

• What to do when you experience frozen shoulder.

• How common is frozen shoulder and how many cases does Dr. Gervais see.

• Can surgeries for frozen shoulder be avoided.

• How about people who undergo surgery but don’t see relief? Is that common?

• Dr Gervais advice to athletic teenagers and young adults for staying healthy.

Frozen shoulder is one of those things I see quite a bit, inherit with athletes and even stay-at-home moms, just anybody who's had, usually from a shoulder injury. Frozen shoulder is another one of those loose terms, well, what is it? My shoulder is frozen and it won't move.

Could have been from a fall, from falling out like this where in Minnesota winter, on the ice or something, you fell out and everything tore, or you were lifting something heavy that didn't move but your shoulder moved, or just over time the repetitiveness of, out here on the shoulder, this is the backside, the rotator cuff, in those tendons, they tend to wear out over time with misuse and dis repetitive strain they shouldn't, but with use that is non optimal, the kind of mechanics or twisting that is too far or something, you can strain those.

What happens with frozen shoulders?

It's simply an adhesive capsulitis is another term for frozen shoulder, meaning the caps of the shoulder are adhesed, it's frozen. It's a lot different than muscular injuries that we deal with because when you have this ligament, it's a ligament down there, and when it undergoes tightness, it's more of a contracture. It's different cells than a muscle, where you can stretch it open and elongate it.

When I work a frozen shoulder, I have to get way up in there where it depends if it's on the bottom side of the shoulder, or in the upper, or on the top, we look at the area that's more adhesed, and when we do the treatment, we have to hold it for a little bit longer because you're letting these myofibril blasts, it's more of a muscle and ligamentous contraction tissue, you have to hold it longer, to let it kind of release slowly. It's very effective, usually it depends on how long this has been there.

I have an interesting case from a few years ago, I was treating a drummer that tore something in his shoulder and I don't remember what it was, but he developed frozen shoulder. He let it sit for 13 years! Imagine having this trauma, and by the time he came in to see me, he couldn't lift it up. He's like doc look I lifted my arm, he had his whole spine bent, so it looked like he lifted his arm, but he couldn't really move it. There was none of this (shows a moment) he could go out a little bit like this (shows a movement). It was traumatic.

Lifting a couch, the couch didn't move, shoulder gave way, a bunch of stuff tore. The profession as a drummer made it hard for him to work pain free, so he would just kind of lean and do this and that (shows a movement), so he started chewing up other parts of his body, due to this frozen shoulder.

We got in there, and we started working it, and very sore, but we did make positive change with him, and over a few months he saw quite a bit of relief and kept coming in for maintenance. I told him he was good, he says, I want to keep doing it cause it's helping. It was one of those cases where you don't win them all, but that was one that really jumps out, because it's the worst one that I ever saw, and probably some of the best improvement I ever saw too.

In a few months, what kind of range of motion was he able to get back?

He could only, at the beginning come up (shows a movement). If I said, bring your arm out; it was more of this and twisting (shows a movement). You want to have the shoulder move, in the flexion extension, abduction, adduction, external, internal. He could only do flexion, a little bit, and it still hurt. His extension, everything pinched extra, he could not get an external. Combing his hair, it was the left side, but combing the hair, putting the shirt on, I remember putting his jacket on, it was just the most unorthodox style, he'd have to swing it around and try to get it in there. That whipping motion of just getting dressed, would irritate things too. Once we started to teach him, okay here's the range; here's the safe range we're going to work in, let's just try to do our rehab and exercise in there.

There's no need to go out here (shows a movement) because you're not there yet. We would do that and it would get better, get inflamed a little bit, but better, but as we kept doing it, and it would build on each visit, he got a lot better and was very happy with the improvement. I'm surprised he waited 13 years to come to see you. He didn't know, you know. What if he hadn't waited? I said why would you wait this long? He's like, I didn't know. I'd do some PT (physical therapy), and things like that, I'd get some relief, but I hadn't heard about ART. He did a Google search, led him to my office, and he was like, I want to try this new Active Release Technique (ART) I've never had it. I kind of told him here's what to expect, here's what it'll be, you might be a little bit sore. He says, I've been sore for 13 years, I'm ready to try anything. We stayed on it weekly, for quite a few months and it made a big change for him.

Do you know if he was on pain medication?

No, he didn't want to take that; he was very holistic and did not want to try that. That's great too, because when I'm working, I want to know is the treatment helping? Because if you were to come in, and you took something before your appointment to get numbed up, now I don't know what's the safe range to work in. I always try to have patients come in as natural as you can. If you want to work out before or after that's fine, whatever, but don't skew the results by taking something, because I don't know what your new barrier for pain is going to be. As well as I don't like to know, I mean I like to know if you're doing other treatments, so if you're getting injections or this and that, we kind of stay away from those areas. Because I want to know truly, is what I'm going to do help you or was it your other method of treatment.

One more case study of a nurse that I treated, that developed frozen shoulder overnight with nothing. She had no trauma; no anything, just woke up with it. She wasn't feeling well too, she developed sort of a cold, so there are some cases, where you can develop frozen shoulder that is viral induced. She came in, there was no activity. Couldn't lift it out, couldn't do anything, and that was very interesting because, the whole other side was just fine, and it wasn't so much pain, she just couldn't move it. It happened overnight, so having her try to move it, nothing happened. I started digging around in there elicited a few responses - oh that's really sore, can't move it. I started doing some Active Release techniques on the backside of it and helping her move it, and then we did some banding, and just try to facilitate some things, and after about 30 minutes of working on her, her whole shoulder was moving just fine, like it had never happened. I don't know what that was, but I've read some of the research saying that frozen shoulder can be viral induced, so that was one of those cases where it was just like it turns on a switch.

When someone experiences a frozen shoulder, what should they do immediately and how quickly should they come to see you?

If you have been under care, you would know that I always say if you have something like this, let me know right away, so we can knock it out. But if you're new, this is new to you, I would get somebody to look at it right away to see what it was. If there was trauma, you usually would want to do imaging, to see is there a labral tear, is there a fracture, is there some sort of x-ray findings, that could be why it shut off.

Your body knows, hey let's not move it, if it's hurting. Let's stabilize by just keeping it still. If there's no trauma, and you want to get it, you know, it's best to get it assessed. Your provider, you know, whoever helps you with movement therapy, you know PT or me. Just get it assessed, to make sure there's nothing wrong. The sooner you get on something, then, the quicker you knock it out. If you let, things just brew up, tighten up for no reason, it just costs you a lot of time, money, and effort in the long run if you don't address it quicker. That makes a lot of sense.

Do you see a lot of cases with frozen shoulder?

I do, you know, early on in my career, I saw a couple of really bad ones, that was kind of humbling, like, wow, the drummer for instance, came in and I was able to help him, but I've seen a few over the years, where some had, one of them had to have a total shoulder, just because there was so much that was going on in there, that we never resolved. That was another one that I saw, that had a total shoulder replacement but I would say, I see probably one a month, on average, and it's usually from overuse, where you do have an injury,and things tighten up, where the rotator cuff tendon up here (refers to a picture), you'll get some fraying or you'll get some, really nasty adhesions, where it's not allowing it to move. Or deep below that, you can get some impingement, or the labral is tearing so by default, you're going to get a frozen shoulder because you don't want to move it in that range, it hurts. It could be a whole array of different things going on, so there are different diagnostic tests, and orthopedic tests, that we can do to see what is the tissue that's in question.

Are there any surgeries in your opinion, that happen today, or these days, that can be avoided if people come to you first? What is your experience with use of surgeries to treat some of these issues?

I do think that a lot of the surgeries in this area are over prescribed so to speak, just because your body can repair on its own too, and there are new procedures with PRP and stem-cell, that I work with other providers, to do that in conjunction with what I'm doing. I've had patients to go in there, and they do exploratory surgery, because the MRI was not conclusive, so they'll get in there and see like there's nothing wrong with this tissue.

You can have issues where it's just so chronic, where your body just shuts it down. It needs just to be stimulated and rehab with neuromuscular education, manual therapy, PRP, different things to regenerate some of this tissue,because what happens, is I keep looking back here at this tendon (points to a picture), there's this common insertion tendon up here where these muscles attach, and you can get full resection of one of those, and some of the elements might be intact, so you can help that tissue regenerate with some of these stem cells, and PRP procedures, and at the same time myself included, with the other provider. I'm doing manual therapy around that tissue, they're doing the work in there, and it's just kind of a win-win without having to do any more damage so to speak.

Anytime you have a surgery, there's a benefit to it, but there's also, you have side effects. You cut the tissue, and right away your body has to start scarring to heal that tissue, that they have to get to. Try to avoid it, at all costs. That's my thought.

For people that have undergone surgery and are not seeing relief from it, we see that a lot, with different cases, shoulder, or back, you know, surgery was recommended, there was hope given, then the surgery happens and the relief hasn't happen. Do you see a lot of cases of that?

That happens more often than not. With ART being not as well-known as kind of mainstream, other treatments, I had a gentleman in here on Monday that had, they cleaned up some calcification, tendonitis stuff in his shoulder, I've been doing ART and he is like, I wish I would have found you sooner, because this is, so much better just with getting that motion and that movement back, because when you go in there and you clean that up, or you have a spur, they'll shave it off, it'll be good for a few years, but it comes right back because body's response to stress is, it's gonna put down bone. You can shave off the bone, but if you don't reduce that stress that's adding to it, it's gonna come right back. I've heard that a lot of times, where it'd be nice you know, someday, my goal is to have people try ART and these services first off, and then go with a surgical route. It's you know, least invasive, there you know the cost, and the rehab time, and lost time from work, and lost time from having fun, and doing what you want to do. It's just more in your favor.

What is your advice to teenagers that are active in sports and young adults because, maintaining our skeletal system and our nervous system and have it continue to function normally, it's so important, it's core to staying healthy. What is your advice to the younger generation?

That comes up a lot right now, just because of the media and what's going on in the news, is sports specific for these children, and you know I have two children of my own, and we try to just have a variety. To play what's going on during that season. If you're playing baseball year-round, or hockey year-round, as you are skeletally maturing, that's a lot of stress for anybody. Our age, kids, whatever, but as you're growing, and you start to have repetitive strain injuries or let's say compression fractures, or anything that can happen to the osteo structures in a skeleton, you're gonna have that issue, and then you have to build on it from there, as you continue to grow. It's just a lot of demand for young kids to keep up with that, playing hockey 12 months a year or baseball 12 months a year. It's best I believe, to have a variety of sports, where you're in court, always having varied movements, different change, where you're not always going this direction, but maybe this direction (points in different directions) or back, you know different. Building the brain to - you know, map out new movements, and learning new things, is more beneficial than playing the same thing over and over. So, variety is good, variety is key, that is good, wonderful advice, very helpful.

Yes, I want to work with Dr. Gervais

Dr. Brian Gervais, DC, CCSP, ART® expert, specializes in full body Active Release Techniques (ART®).

ART® is a patented, state-of-the-art soft tissue system/movement-based massage technique. According to Dr. Gervais, headaches, back pain, carpal tunnel syndrome, shin splints, shoulder pain, sciatica, plantar fasciitis, and tennis elbow are just a few of the many conditions that can be resolved quickly and permanently with ART®, massage, and proper nutrition.

Dr. Brian Gervais, DC, CCSP is currently accepting new patients. 

He is offering a free 15-minutes over the phone consultation to anyone who contacts him after watching this video. 

To book an appointment with Dr. Brian, CONTACT HERE

Good news: We don’t have to live with allergies, we can eliminate them! But first we have to understand what allergies are, how do we know what we are allergic to and then how to eliminate them.

Question: What are allergies and how come what you do helps them and eliminates them?

Dr. Wilson explains: Well, we develop allergies for a couple of main reasons. 

1. One is because of our SAD American Diet, SAD, meaning Standard American Diet. We don’t have the 90 nutrients...90 vitamins, minerals and enzymes that are necessary to make the body work optimally. Food is grown on mineral deficient soil. It is laced with trans fats, sugars. It’s just very unhealthy.
2. Number two is we live in a very toxic world. We live in a world where our water is toxic; our food is toxic, our environment is toxic. It’s been said you can’t get out of your bathroom in the morning without being exposed to over 160 different chemicals. So what these toxins do is they kind of clog up the system, and they don’t allow the body to work right.

So as a result of these two things, our SAD (Standard American) diet and our toxic world, we start to develop allergies. 

Question: What are some of the allergy symptoms?

Dr. Wilson: People think of allergies in terms of itchy eyes, runny noses, and hives. Believe me, that is the smallest part. Allergies can cause digestive problems and female problems and joint aches and muscle pains, behavior problems in children and cognitive issues and on and on and on. 

In fact, there is hardly any symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies.

So because we don’t feed it right and we jam it up with a bunch of toxins, then the body starts developing allergies. The allergies simply mean, in the body’s language, it’s like a foreign invader. The body thinks each allergen as a foreign invader, like a bacteria or virus or something like that. And so it reacts, and the reaction might be having stomach problems, the result might be your brain won’t work right because of the different chemicals and so forth.

So how do we get well?

Well, first of all, we have to realize that the body is a self-healing organism. The body already has every drug, every chemical, every hormone it needs if we feed it the nutrients that it needs and if we remove the toxins.

So how do we go about doing all this?

The FIRST STEP IS UNDERSTANDING WHAT YOUR BODY MIGHT BE ALLERGIC / SENSITIVE TO AND ARE REACTING TO.

First step: We do an Allergy Screening to see what you might be allergic or sensitive to. 

Now, what are we screening for?

Well, we screen for the common inhalants, the molds, pollens, trees, weeds and so forth, and foods. We screen a lot for environmental issues – latex, formaldehyde, artificial coloring, flavoring, preservatives. We screen for autoimmune problems. We can actually become allergic to different body substances, and this I believe is the foundation for a lot of autoimmune problems. Let me read a list of things and categories that we look at.

Inhalants – Like I mentioned the grasses, pollens, flowers, powders, smoke, cosmetics, perfumes, chemical fumes such as paints, insecticides, fertilizers, flour from grains, etc.

Ingestants – These are allergens that are contracted through the normal course of eating a meal or enter our system through the mouth and thus find a way into our GI system or the gastrointestinal tract. These include foods, condiments, drugs, beverages, chewing gums, vitamins, supplements, etc.

Contactants – These are allergens that produce their effect by direct contact with our skin. Example of contactants includes poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, cats, dogs, rabbits, cosmetics, soaps, skin creams, detergents, rubbing alcohol, gloves, hair dyes, various types of plant oils, chemicals such as gasoline, dyes, acrylic nails, nail polish, fabrics, and formaldehyde.

Injectants – These are allergens that are injected into the skin, muscles, joints or blood vessels, in the form of various serums, antitoxins, vaccines, drugs and they also include substances entering through insect bites.

Infectants  - These are allergens that cause sensitivity to an infectious agent such as bacteria.

Genetic Causes – Most people inherit their genetic tendencies from their parents or their grandparents. Allergies can also skip generations and be manifested very differently in parents than in their children.

Mould and fungi

So these are all the different kinds of areas that we test in and with the way that I check. 

And here is something in addition to all of the above, that we do with our patients. We can also have a patient or parent bring in a sample of their food or a piece of their carpet, or some other item from their environment that I can use for testing and also for treating it. So it’s a little different from most allergists.

Knowing what your body is allergic to or reacting to, is the FIRST STEP to feeling better. 

How do you screen for allergies?

I don’t do the usual medical testing with the pinpricks on the back. We use a form of Applied Kinesiology. What I do is we have the patient lay on the adjusting table. What we usually find is that one leg is usually shorter or longer than the other. Then I check a bunch of reflex patterns to see why that is happening and then we will make some adjustments on the spine. When we get done the legs will balance out, and they will be even. The system will be balanced. Now the body is an electromagnetic field. If we bring something in contact with that body that’s not good for it - either toxic or allergic - the whole nerve and muscle system tenses right up. Then guess what happens, that leg pulls up short again, and it occurs almost that fast because we are dealing with the nerve system, the electrical system of the body. If it is not a problem, it doesn’t react. It just stays even.

So what this does for us, is that not only helps us identify the true allergen, but also helps us to determine the hypersensitivities. In my experience, there isn’t much difference between a real allergy which develops antibodies and can be detected in a lab test vs. hypersensitivities, which can’t be tested with a lab test, and they both react almost identically within the body adversely.

The other thing is, it enables us to have a patient bring in a sample of whatever they might be suspicious of from their environment. It might be food, we might have them bring in a tablespoon of food, it might be the family dog, so we might have them bring in a hair sample of the dog and a saliva sample. It might be a piece of carpeting that they have put in, that’s new to their environment. So anything that is questionable, we can have the patient bring in a sample and then use that for testing, and then if it turns out to be that it’s a problem, then we can also turn around and use it for treating.

Question: What are the most common culprits that cause allergies? And also, is the list specific when it comes to children? 

Dr. Wilson: The most common culprits are dairy, gluten, soy, sugar, and eggs are the most common ones. With children, especially with ADHD, the artificial coloring, flavoring, preservatives are huge allergens and culprits.

Question: Thank you, Dr. Wilson. As I’m listening to you talk about allergies, the one thing that is coming to my mind is, maybe children should just be screened for allergies. What is your opinion on that?

Yes. First of all, most allergies are hidden. People don’t know that they are allergic to a particular item or food. And they are not aware of the effects it can have on them. So if we were able to screen all children, we would be able to find problems that would be affecting their behavior, affecting their focus in school, their ability to learn, their coordination in sports, all kinds of problems. For example, I had a child with growth problems. She wasn’t growing. After her allergies were cleared, she grew 4 inches in just a few months. This is something parents wouldn’t even think about. It’s not on their radar screen. So if we were to do an allergy screening test for all children, it would make a huge difference in their health.

THE SECOND STEP IS KNOWING WHAT YOUR BODY IS DEFICIENT IN: 

Second, we do a blood profile.  A comprehensive one where we test 67 different items in your blood. Testing your liver, your thyroid, your autoimmune function, your blood count…everything. So we want to know what that SAD diet and the toxic world has caused in our body chemistry. What functions have been disrupted and what are we deficient in and so forth. 

ONCE WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DEALING WITH, THE THE NEXT STEP IS CLEARING SOME OF THESE TOXINS AND HELPING BODY RECOVER NATURALLY, THAT MEANS A DETOX!

Third: And then we go about doing a detox. A detox program takes about three weeks. It's eating a very specialized diet and taking supplements to pull the toxins out of the system. And then develop a plan to eliminate the allergies, which is obviously what I do. 

(At this time, Dr. Wilson also starts his allergy treatment with his patients. He treats one allergen at a time in a single session.)

Finally and very importantly, to sustain a healthy body Dr. Wilson also does this very important fourth step with all his patients. 

Fourth: And then to develop a nutritional plan based on the blood profile that we have done based on what we have determined what the imbalances and deficiencies are. 

Lastly, we need to take a look at altering your lifestyle, because you know the definition of insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. So we need to take a look at our lifestyle so we can change it, improve it and move it towards a healthy lifestyle, so we don’t keep doing the same things over and over again that got us sick, to begin with. 

Question: So let’s say that through the screening process we have come to identify 12 different things that we are allergic or hypersensitive to. Once that determination is made how do you go about treating every one of these allergies? 

Dr. Wilson: Well, first of all, each allergen is usually eliminated with one treatment. I know that sounds unbelievable, but that’s our usual experience. Sometimes, if it's a real deep seeded allergen or one that is affecting the individual adversely, it might take two or three treatments to clear it. Once we have gone through the entire treatment program, to whatever number that we have started out with, we will then wait three months. At the end of the three months, I have the patient back again, and we will retest everything that was positive initially, be sure that they are holding. We might find that there might be one or two that might need an additional booster treatment.

Well, that is great. So we have determined that we need to handle each treatment for each allergy individually. What does a single treatment involve? Is it in any way painful or invasive? Can it hurt? And how long does each treatment take?

Nothing that I do in my office is in the least bit painful and this is why I get along great with kids. Because we don’t use needles, nothing hurts, and they love us for it.

So how long does it take? 

Each treatment takes about 15 minutes. 

What we do is we get the patient adjusted so that their system is balanced and the legs are even. And then we put a vial in their hand, whatever we are going to be testing that day if its eggs or milk or whatever it is. And when we do that leg will go short and then I will come up and work on what we call the Master Reset Button.

It’s the Brain Stem and a major Acupuncture point. I use a little instrument to it. In fact, I will show you what it is. It looks like this (see video for the image). I carry it with me all the time. Its very light and just a light click. And we use that in a point up here (pointing to the Brain Stem). When we get done, we will go back down and will find that the legs are even. So once the legs are even, we will take the vial out of their hand, out of their energy field, for a short time, just 7 to 10 seconds, then we put it back in their hand. We will find that the first time, maybe that leg went up half an inch short. This time, it’s only about a quarter of an inch short. So, it's reacting less. So then we will come up, and we will work on the master reset button again. We will come back, and the legs will be even again. We will take the vial out of their hand and wait for 7 to 10 seconds and put it back in, and this time maybe it will be an eighth of an inch. So every time we do this cycle, it reacts less and less, until pretty soon, it doesn’t react at all. So when we have done that, then we use a laser to work on acupuncture points. We acupuncture the acupuncture points in the ear. There is a branch of acupuncture called Auricular Therapy. In Auricular therapy, the whole body is represented in the ear. I have a chart on the wall I can show patients this. We laser the entire ear for a short time, and then we laser down, either side of the spine. There is a major acupuncture meridian or energy channel called the Bladder Meridian. It starts from the inside of the bridge of the nose and goes all the way up over the head and down below the side of the spine, down both legs, all the way to the little toe. And we work on the bladder meridian with the laser because it has all kinds of connecting points with the other 11 meridians.

Our goal here is while the patient is holding that allergen in their hand, we want to normalize the acupuncture energy system. So we are in essence saying to the body, its okay now. It’s not a threat; it’s not a foreign invader, its okay. And when we get done, the legs will be even. Or the short leg might be longer, its overcompensated and that’s where you want it to be. So then we are done with the treatment for the day. Excuse me, missed a couple of points. Then we laser a couple of acupuncture points in the hand and on the wrist and in the knee and the foot. And then we are done. Then when the patient comes back on the next visit, we will get them balanced again, then we will take their vial, the substance that we treated in the last visit, put it in their hand and see if it reacts. If it does, we might have to treat it a second time. If it doesn’t, then we move on to the next allergen. And that’s how we do it! Simple, easy, effective and painless.

Question: So when you start the treatment, there are two questions that come to mind, from your explanation. One is, every treatment seems to begin with a chiropractic adjustment. Why is, in your opinion, that so significant and vital? And the second is, you mentioned stimulating the acupuncture points using the laser. Why laser and why do you opt for that?

Dr. Wilson: The treatment that we do is with chiropractic care, to align the spine, be sure that the nerves are working right because nerves control every organ action, tissue, function, cells of our whole body. So, nerves have to be working right.

So the treatment is with Chiropractic adjustment first, and we use laser acupuncture. We use acupuncture, but we use lasers. A lot of time people don’t realize that there are many different ways you can stimulate acupuncture points. And we use lasers instead of needles because a lot of times, people, especially kids have an aversion to needles. And the other thing is, it's much quicker and faster. If we were going to use needles, the patient would have to lay on the table, and to have a hyperactive child lay on a table for 20 minutes, with needles sticking in they, is just isn’t going to happen. So we want to use the quickest way, which is lasers. And so what we are doing is we are saying to the body, its okay now. This allergen that we are treating you for is not a foreign invader, its okay, it's not a threat to you. And so that’s what we are doing with allergy elimination work.

Dr. Wilson further explains: Sometimes people say to me, you know Dr. Wilson, you just tested me for allergies, and you came up with 23 allergens, and I would just like to take care of the top 6 ones that I know that I am allergic to. Can we do that?

And my answer to that is NO. Because if we treat those six allergies out of 23, we are still going to have 17 that are dragging the immune system down. And we are going to not have lasting results with the six that we did treat. You have to remember that most allergens are hidden. We don’t know that we have them and most of the times we don’t realize how those allergies are affecting us. Because allergies can affect us in so many different ways, whether it is a digestive problem, joint pain or muscle aches or female problems or kid’s problems. We are not aware of that. For that reason, I only treat whatever we find and get rid of all of them, and then that’s going to get the immune system upward, where it belongs, and the body will take care of itself.

Question: Thank you, Dr. Wilson. I do have one question about just expectation from you as far as your patients are concerned. What are you expecting from your patient who is coming to receive this treatment?

Dr. Wilson: The scripture says – My people die for lack of knowledge. And I feel one of the reasons we get sick today is because people don’t realize what’s necessary, why they get sick, and what is necessary to get well again. And so I feel that patient education is primary and a very important part of my care. The word doctor means to teach. And so we should be teachers, we should be teaching people not only how to get well and how to stay well. So this is what you can expect from me. What I expect from you is that you need to realize and expect the fact that we are in a partnership. I have to do my part, and I expect you to do certain things. So, when I coach you and educate you on lifestyle changes, which are extremely important, that you will take them and run with them and incorporate them into your way of being.

You remember the definition of insanity, don’t you  - doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Well, if we are going to go back to the lifestyle that set up the environment, the situation that would drag our immune system down and cause allergies, then we are not going to get lasting results. So to get lasting permanent results, we need to change our lifestyle. And I feel my job is to educate you and train you in a way that is healthy and it’s your job to take the ball and run with it. So I expect a certain commitment from patients, and it's important because I can’t do the whole job. Again, it’s a partnership. It’s both of us working together, both of us having a common goal of getting you well, getting you healthy and get rid of your allergies.

People sometimes will ask me  - Can you eliminate an allergen that has caused a patient to go into anaphylactic shock and have to go to the ER?

My answer to that is No. I can’t. I can sometimes help make it less sensitive, so that may be if they get exposed to it accidentally, they aren’t going to go into anaphylactic shock, but it’s not something I say, we are going to eliminate this allergy, just like I do some of the other allergens.

Question: Is your Allergy Elimination treatment effective in children?

Absolutely, positively Yes! Many times I can change the direction the child is going in. I can make a lifetime of changes for them.  I can take care of tummy aches, digestive problems, behavior problems in children. One little boy that I took care of… his dad said when he gets into something he’s allergic to he becomes Attila the Hun. After we got done treating him for his allergies, we have this sweet little boy. In fact, his mother told me that when she realized this, she broke down and cried because she has her sweet little boy back again. This is so rewarding to be able to help children, and it is going to make a lifetime of changes for them.

We can help children focus better, pay attention in school better. I’ve had situations where the diagnosis for autism spectrum and ADHD has been dismissed by the doctor after their allergies were cleared. Allergies are super important for kids. It is so rewarding, so satisfying, for a doctor to be able to change children’s lives in such a way. And the thing that is so powerful is that the idea of allergies causing all of these problems or allergies being at the root cause of the problem is not even on the parent’s radar screen. Frankly, it’s not even on most doctor’s radar screen. They don’t realize that there is hardly any symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies.

Question: How did you develop the Allergy Elimination method? There are no other doctors around that do it the way that you do. How did you come up with it?

Dr. Wilson:Well, first of all, I have developed it over the course of 40 to 50 years, and so what I have done, is that I have found certain aspects of different treatment methods that are effective and that work and I have put them together. Nobody, I guess, does exactly what I do because what I do has gradually evolved over the last couple dozen years using different methods. We use for example NAET; some people are familiar with. It stands for (Nambudripad’s allergy elimination techniques). I use Biokineticswhich is a form of treatment for all kinds of problems and JMT (Jaffe-Mellortechnique). And what I have done is that I have taken what I feel is the best most effective part of these treatments and put them together, and then we have to straighten the diet around, clean the diet up. If necessary, give supplements to balance the body chemistry so we can bring about healing as it should.

(Dr. Wilson insists on looking at other aspects as well, not just allergies).

We have looked at problems from different aspects. We don’t just limit it to allergies. Sometimes there can be emotional components. Sometimes we need to talk about exercise. Sometimes we need to talk seriously about sleep issues. Because all of these are important if we want to get lasting results, and effective results. And simply put I’ve found many things through the years that work, and I’ve eliminated things that don’t work.

Conclusion

Thank you, Dr. Wilson. So there you have it, folks. In this whole presentation, we covered how allergies can be eliminated naturally. If there are two things you can remember out of this entire recording, it’s as follows.

Number one, there’s hardly a symptom or condition that is neither caused, aggravated or accelerated with allergies. 

And the second and perhaps the most important thing. The body is a self-healing organism. The body has every drug, chemical, every hormone it needs to get well and stay well. Providing we feed it right and get rid of the toxins and eliminate the allergies.

Thank you, Dr. Wilson.

ABOUT DR. WILSON:

Dr. Jay P. Wilson, D.PSc. is a Holistic Allergist and has been in practice since 1964. He has helped thousands of adults and children to rid them of their allergies, heal their pain, and improve their health. Dr. Jay Wilson center is called Allergy Elimination Center of Minnesota. Dr. Wilson received his Doctorate in Chiropractic in the year 1964 and has been in practice ever since.  He’s a doctor of Pastoral Medicine, Health Minister and lovingly calls himself a Holistic Allergist. 

Using the principles of Biokinetics, Kinesiology, Chiropractic, JMT, NAETand Functional Medicine, Dr. Wilson has developed a unique method not just to manage allergies, but to get rid of them. He has had tremendous success with many of his clients in the last 50 years and is a firm advocate of people not having to live with allergies. Allergies can be eliminated. His method does not involve any invasive procedures or needles. Therefore it is especially helpful for children. This is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions. 

Knowing what your body is allergic to or reacting to, is the FIRST STEP to feeling better. 

• 1 in 8 Women will experience Breast Cancer in their life.  (According to National Cancer Institute)
• Early Breast Cancer Detection can make a BIG difference.
• Mammography is the primary diagnostic tool for breast cancer screening and detection.
• Digital Thermography is an important adjunct used along with Mammography for Breast Health Screening.

In this video interview, Callie Eide explains why Breast Digital Thermography is being used more and more along as a powerful adjunct tool for early detection of Breast Cancer.

Callie explains:Here at The Natural Path, we have been doing digital thermography for many years.  My husband David Eide brought this modality in, in 2003.  There have been several Thermographers over the years, and I took it over in 2012. We use camera equipment from ICI; it’s a very small camera with very powerful software.  The way that Digital Thermography works is to identify and detect heat patterns in the body.  You may have seen it used on houses to see what kind of heat is escaping.  When we’re using it with The Body, we are looking for vascular changes. We want to see if there is any sort of abnormality; is a tumor or a clogged node, or congestion causing a heat pattern?  When there is an abnormality it’s going to ask the body for sustenance, it’s going to ask for more blood, there’s going to be responses in the blood cells that do create more Heat.  That’s why Thermography is such a valuable tool!

How does Digital Thermography work? 

Pre-cancerous and Cancerous masses are “highly metabolic” tissues. They need an extra supply of nutrients to grow.  This results in higher chemical and blood vessel activity in both pre-cancerous tissue and the area surrounding a developing tissue.  This higher metabolic activity results in higher regional surface temperatures in the body.  Thermography can detect the higher temperature.

Question:When that particular area in the body looks “heated,” or it shows up in your scan as somewhat heated, what does that really mean or imply?  

Callie Eide: It can imply that we want to do some further studies.  What we do is we take the images, (I do those images), we send them out to a medical doctor by the name of Dr. Jeanne Stryker.  Dr. Stryker then provides the medical report, assessment, and recommendation as to what’s the next step. So ideally you come in, you have your scans, and she says it looks great, and come back in a year.  She might say, you know we need a better baseline, let’s have you come back in 3 months, 6 months; what we are looking for are changes. Is there is anything inconsistent in the heat patterns? We want to know about that...

All scans are reviewed by Dr. Jeanne Stryker, MD, a Board Certified Interventional Radiologist based out of California specializing in Women’s Imaging.

Question: Is it possible Callie that if I just worked out and then I’m coming to do my scan, or if I’m getting over a flu or if I’m getting over some kind of sickness that my scan might look different?

Callie:There is some preparation involved in order to do Digital Breast Thermography.  We give you a questionnaire to fill out to give us some medical history. We also give you information on how to prepare in the days preceding your Thermography. It’s not extensive. We ask that you do not do any major workouts 24 hours before your scan because we do not want any excess heat in the body.  One of the Big ones here in MN that I always remind my clients of; please do not turn on your heated car seats when you are on your way to visit me. Who would think of that?! That heats up the body!  Not drinking any hot coffee or hot liquids two hours prior or eating two hours prior. So, it’s a pretty simple preparation; it’s a non-invasive technology. 

Our goal at The Natural Path is to always start with the Least Invasive Process and move towards what may be needed.

Question:What do you say to someone who is considering doing this?  What’s the right age group? Someone in their 20s, or someone older?  

Callie:Absolutely, there are strong recommendations that people do Thermography to get a baseline at an early age; much earlier than Mammograms are usually recommended by the medical community. I like to see someone in their early to mid-20s come in for their first scans and then they don’t have to come every year, provided we haven’t seen anything unusual. Every three years or so is recommended up until about the age of 35.  There are recommendations based on your overall health.  If you are seeing one of our practitioners and you are dealing with a certain health problem such as fungus or lymph congestion, we may want to run those scans a little more often in the younger people.  The blessing in doing this in your twenties is that when you get to your 40s, 50s, 60s (when as women in the US we are much more susceptible to breast cancer), we’ve got those comparisons to identify at an early moment what might be a problematic area.  And be able to use some natural processes to help alleviate it, get you over to whatever sort of additional testing that might be recommended by our Medical Doctor, Dr. Jeanne Stryker.

Question: When Dr. Stryker looks at this report, what usually comes from that analysis?  

Callie:After you do your images, we send those out, she sends them back within two weeks, you receive a paper copy of the images of the scan, along with the reports.  What she is doing is reading something called the “Delta T” what that is; measurements of heat in comparison.  She may be comparing the left nipple to the right nipple.  We are looking for differences; that’s what we’re hunting for.  She then writes a report that includes recommendations regarding supplementation, Iodine or Vitamin D3, (for example is very important for breast health). And she will give us an idea of what might be the next step if there is something questionable.  Either come back in three months for a baseline or, perhaps go to your medical doctor for an ultrasound or an MRI.

Question:What % of people come to you that have doubt that something is wrong with them?

Callie:People often come in for the peace of mind that you mentioned earlier. They may have had a mammogram, and they see something questionable, and they want to gather further information.  Thermography is for gathering information on what is going on in your body.

Question:Can you share any client stories that came from doing the scans?

Callie:My favorite topic is something that you mentioned earlier, which is how Peace of Mind can affect us in such a marvelous way!  If we know that our body is clear, it takes away the stress and the worry.  Many women will come to me saying “You know what, I just feel like something is wrong.”  I’ll give you an example; I had a woman come into me about a year ago, and her mammogram had been clear, and she never had any problems.  She said “I have an intuition there is something wrong in my left breast.  So, we did the images, we sent them out to Dr. Stryker, and it came back, and there was Clearly a problem.  Now, thermography is not a 

Diagnostic Tool. So, we didn’t say “you have cancer.”  We do not do that here at The Natural Path.  Dr. Stryker doesn’t do that with her report.  She may say that this warrants further study. So, my wonderful client went directly to her MD.  They took the thermography information, referred her to an ultrasound and an MRI, and she did indeed have active breast cancer that was effectively dealt with using some natural processes and some medical intervention.  She is doing Great Today!  

Interviewer:So, she did a mammogram first, and that didn’t show anything, then she did the Digital Thermography, and something showed up, and then she went back and did an ultrasound, and there was something there?!

Callie:Yes, and she followed her intuition! I’ve also had a woman come in who had been given numerous testing at a very famous clinic and had been told she had breast cancer.  She was preparing to have a double radical masectomy. And guess what?  It wasn’t active cancer. And on thermography, our medical doctor came back and said, I have to questions this diagnosis; let’s get a second opinion.  We did the work that we do here with Electrodermal Screening, she also followed up with some other practitioners and discovered that what she had was an intense case of Candida infestation.  It had clogged up her entire lymph system, and it was appearing on the scans that were being done through mammography and ultrasound that she “had cancer,” and that was over two years ago and she is 100% clear of Candida and did Not have to have the surgery!

Interviewer:That is a powerful story, and I wonder how many people go through that sort of an experience?! Many times, when you are dealing with cancer, a doctor will say that we will only know for sure if it is cancer or not once we biopsy a sample.  Which means we have to get in there, take a sample and biopsy it.  So, no matter what a patient has to go through that, but the fact that there is another way to look at that same issue and get a second opinion is Very powerful...I Really like that option!

Question:I do have to ask, and maybe this is expertise specific, why did you focus on Breast Cancer or Breast Health?  What about if someone has oral cancer or has an issue with their ovaries or uterus; is that something that can be captured through Digital Thermography too or is it just the breast?

Callie:We originally chose to focus on breast thermography due to Dr. Bill Hobbins really- his book is Breast Cancer Boot Camp.  Dr. Hobbins was The Founder of Digital Breast Thermography.  He was also our mentor here at The Natural Path.  He passed away recently; he was in his 90s, and he actually worked with us and did reports up until about 2012. He wrote this book in 2013, this is really the “Bible in Breast Thermography” in my world.  He really saved many, many lives and helped us to work with people to save lives too.

Question:What were some of the things that he shared with you that maybe you can share with us?

Callie:He was a firm believer in Faith.  He was a Faith-Based Medical Doctor, and he so believed to listen to your own body.  He empowered women to know what they want and how to get it.  He said that you need to take that power and bring it into your health and trust your faith.

Dental Thermography

So, one thing I’d like to mention is about Dental Thermography.  We expanded into that many years ago.  We’ve worked with many may holistic dentists in the Midwest area.  We can do images in color and in black and white, for both Breast and Dental.  What we’re looking at here are two images of someone who came in with no symptoms what-so-ever, and we were just doing some sample thermography, and we spotted these pockets and these drainage patterns. We subsequently did some further scans and evaluation; we worked with the holistic dentist, and it turned out to be a very, Very Serious Infection of the Molar.  Why is that important?  It’s important because we believe that a vast amount of the breast cancer in this country is due to infection from drainage from the mouth. Dental drainage is a very common thing.  There are many studies to support this.  In this client’s case, she went in, and I think your regular dentist would have probably recommended a root canal.  We see so many root canals, using Dental Thermography that have ongoing latent infections that it just sends so many red-flags to me as a Thermographer.  Working with a Holistic Dentist; she determined that she would prefer to have that molar pulled.  She (the client) did that, and we followed her as a client. Her entire Body’s Health Pattern Changed, within a period of approximately 4-8 weeks; everything changed, her blood pressure changed, her readings on the electrodermal screening changed; it was very dramatic, and it was all due to this one latent infection.  That was asymptomatic, no symptoms at all, but we spotted it on Thermography.

Question: What do you recommend for people as root canals are so common!?  They really are...and as someone who cannot give medical advice, but what do you typically say to someone when you share this story? Should they be coming in to you if they are experiencing a dental issue, or going to have a dental procedure done to work with you, before or after?

Callie:If you are working with a holistic dentist, they are likely going to request that you do have a dental assessment using electrodermal screening which can evaluate all of the different types of composite, even the Novocain, all of the things that a dentist uses, to find out if it’s compatible with your body.  That’s one of the big problems; compatibility, so we do that. In addition to that, the dentist may suggest that thermography would be beneficial in the case that we discussed earlier to find any sort of infection that doesn’t show up on X-rays...remember we are looking at Heat Patterns.

If considering a root canal, consider a Digital Thermography Scan first!

Question:Is Dr. Stryker’s expertise with Breast Health, or do you also send her the Dental images and other areas of the body?

Callie:Dr. Jeanne Stryker who does our actual medical reports...she is a Board Certified  interventional Radiologist out of California, extremely well-known.  We are so blessed to have her as our Reader.  She is really renowned in her field, and she works with some of the most intense breast cancer situations from both a medical and a holistic standpoint.

Question: If I have a breast thermography appointment with you, I know you talked about preparation for it, what should I expect in the procedure and how does the procedure work?

Callie:When you come in to The Natural Path for breast thermography you would’ve done your preparation that we discussed earlier, then you and I will sit down and take as much time as we need to discuss your history, go through the forms that you’ve filled out and identify what is your purpose for being here.  Then we will move into, what I call "The Cold Room." It’s about 62 degrees, and you’ll be seated in a chair. You’ll take off your top and your underclothes. We will put your hair up using a headband, and you sit for about 10 minutes in the cold. You’re cooling down with a fan blowing on you.  After that cool-down, I come back in the room and check the temperatures, we talk a little more; it’s usually about a total of 15minutes to get your body to the proper temperature.

At that point using our camera equipment, we take the images, and there’s nothing invasive about it; you don’t feel anything, it’s just like taking a picture. Then you’re finished, that part usually takes about 10 minutes and then you get to get dressed, and I get you a hot cup of tea!

Here is an image of breast thermography- as I move it around, it’s taking temperature measurements.  Our Medical Doctor uses this high-tech software to identify any temperature differentials- it’s called “Delta T.”  You can see that the temp numbers change.  I’m not the person that does that; a Medical Doctor does that. What I use that for is to make sure your body is cooled down enough to get a useful image we then send off to Dr. Jeanne Stryker.

So, once we’ve taken the images and I send them to Dr. Stryker she does her evaluation, and she sends back the results; we mail them to you; in a hard copy. You get two copies one for yourself and one for your medical professional if you choose and you get those within two weeks (with recommendations).

Interviewer:That’s wonderful.  Is there anything else that you want to explain about this process, Callie?

Callie:I think it’s really important for women to realize that we have choices.  So many times I have women come in who’ve been through the medical community and really feel that they’ve been bulldozed into making a choice that wasn’t in keeping with what they wanted to do. So I encourage people to speak up for yourself and explore the possibilities.  And come visit us at The Natural Path!

Key take away:Lets recap what we have learnt from this interview:

• Digital Thermography is a great adjunct method for Breast Cancer Screening.
• Digital Thermography is a non-invasive procedure requiring no contact and no compression of the breast.  
• In digital thermography, there is no exposure to radiation.
• Digital Thermography uses an FDA cleared Infrared Thermal camera to capture temperature differences in the different areas of the breast.
• Digital Thermography can detect vascular changes in breast tissue associated with breast cancer.
• A Baseline scan is recommended for women in their early twenties.
• A vascular and interventional radiologist (MD) interprets the scans and makes further recommendations. 

Special Thanks to Callie Eide for being an educator on TrailheadHealth.com and helping to answer consumer questions! Breast Digital Thermography appointments can be made by contacting Callie Eide at the Natural Path Holistic Health Center. 

Wondering if Digital Thermography is right for you? Callie Eide if offering a free 15 minute phone consultation to anyone looking for answers on Digital Thermogrpahy.

Callie Eide can be reached at:

The Natural Path

952.941.1919  

info@the-naturalpath.com 

The-NaturalPath.com

Yes, so the Webster technique was formerly known as the breech turning technique, that babies that were breech or were facing the wrong way, not head down, they would be adjusted and helped turn the baby. And so, it's kind of gotten away from being known as a breech turning technique but basically an adjustment or a check to make sure that the baby can move into the position it needs to move. In that, what can happen is when there's a misalignment or subluxation in the sacral area, in the pelvis, there's ligaments that connect the uterus, to the sacrum. There's ligaments that connect the uterus to the sacrum and if that sacrum is misaligned, it can cause a torque on the uterus, which basically doesn't allow a baby to move as he or she needs to, and so if that's going on and the baby's in the wrong position when we make that correction, it can allow a baby to move into the proper position. 

So I've seen expecting moms come in early in case particularly you find that obviously later in pregnancy when the babies, when they can start feeling baby position so it's early you know as early as 33, 34 weeks, but I've had moms come in at 39 weeks with baby in breech position we were able to make that correction we've been able to turn. 

So, and again there can be other reasons that baby is not in a proper position but you know our goal is to make sure giving the baby, the best chance to get into the proper position and if that's going on we need to make that correction so that baby can move into the proper position. 

Is there something that you recommend for pregnant moms to do even in their house to help support the chiropractic care, and what is your advice to them in general? 

Yes, basically for expecting moms to do things they normally do, continue to exercise, drink plenty of water, you know the basic things to be healthy. When we do see moms with specific issues say as the babies breech, there are techniques that, there's a website called spinning babies that we'll have them go to, and help them with that to just specific positions they can get into to help encourage the baby to be in the right position so along with, you know my part of it is to make sure that everything is in alignment to keep the baby the best chance. But then, they can do certain positions to help encourage that as well.

The aromatherapy patch is a new delivery system that we really needed in aromatherapy. It was invented by a Minneapolis man who is a biochemist. He developed a patented material that the essential oil is placed onto that's inert and it does not interact with the purity of the essential oil in any way. It holds it and essential oil molecules are volatile. They dissipate and evaporate quickly. And the patent hold that he has on this product is that it allows the molecules to disperse much more slowly and so now that one drop of essential oil is available for up to 8 hours depending on the oils used.

It's a simple delivery method delivering one drop. It's a little bit more than one drop. Technically it is 55 microliters of essential oil. It might be a mixture of mandarin and geranium and frankincense blend. I have 10 different blends on the patches. Its inhalation only.

A lot of times when we say patches people think it's a dermal application. No essential oils touch the skin. It has FDA approved medical glue on the backside and that is affixed to the collarbone area. The essential oil reservoir then, you open up the patch you peel away a layer that has kept it hermetically sealed so no oxygen touches the patch or the oil. Because oxygen is what would degrade the therapeutic value.

The patch is just applied to the upper sternum area and then the patient or the person receiving the aromatherapy has that available to them without having to remember to use an inhaler. That's why it's become such an important delivery system for fast paced medical environments. They used to tape a cotton ball to the shirt and actually that's why the creator of it really brought it into use in the medical environment. He was in the hospital and he got a cotton ball with lavender. He said, "Well that's nice but we can make that look a lot better?" And so that's how the patches were started. I've been a distributor of them so I've worked with him and I put my oils, my formulas, under my own label. I'm using his technology.

That's great Jodi. Thanks!

I want to share with you guys a couple of different things that I see in my practice and that how chiropractic has helped children as well as their parents and families. One of the number one things that I will see is colicky babies. Colic is defined by a baby who cries for three hours at a time, for three days, for three weeks. So three, three, three. That's a lot of crying. And if any of you have had a colicky baby it is very unsettling. It's hard on the baby and it's hard on the family. A baby has absolutely no way to communicate that anything is wrong aside from crying. So colic is a sign that there's something wrong. So what chiropractors can do is we can evaluate these babies and mind you everything is extremely gentle and soft and we use fingertip pressure. So very, very gentle. You can evaluate the baby and make sure and just see how their nervous system is working. A lot of times there are restrictions, usually in the head or at the base of the spine, that can cause some tension or torsion or twisting on that nervous system that is just uncomfortable for the baby. and so they cry. Many times I've adjusted babies within a couple of days, they're doing a lot better. They go from crying for three hours to crying for one hour. So those are huge when it comes to it comes to a family.

Another thing I'll see with the young children is feeding difficulties. So if a baby is breastfeeding or bottle feeding they may have a problem with their latch, they may have a problem with indigestion, or problems with their stomach as well. And what chiropractic can do is help to again alleviate the spinal subluxation up here and we can also do work on the cranial bones which affects how the baby sucks. We can look inside the mouth and just see how that the palate is and if that's unlevel or if there's any distortion or just tightness. So again very gentle releases that can help with the baby and help their ability to suck because
that's their way of getting food.

A few more things that I've noticed, especially as of late is something that's called torticollis. Torticollis is a tilting or twisting of the head. If there is that then a baby's laying on that head and they're gonna cause what's called a plagiocephaly, or a flattening of the head. And nowadays because they've changed everything to the back to sleep so babies are now recommended to sleep on their backs, everybody's on their backs. Which is fine. However it's creating another issue called flat head syndrome or plagiocephaly. And so the two go hand-in-hand if a baby's head is turned one way will be resting on that side a lot more, thus creating a flat spot in the back of their head. What chiropractic can do is we can help to increase the motion of the head, which is oftentimes the cause of the torticollis. As well as do some cranial work to work on moving those bones because they're very pliable as infants. Again, very gently to help the baby to be more comfortable. Oftentimes I will refer out to a cranial-sacral therapist if it's a little more severe and the combination of chiropractic and cranial-sacral therapy are amazing.

A couple of other things I notice are any sort of like motor developmental delays or abnormal motor challenges. So if a baby is starting to crawl and they've got they don't have that proper cross crawl motion maybe one hip is is hiking up or they're scooting on their bottom that's a problem. It may look cute and it may seem like, "oh that's kind of fun," but neurologically the connection between the brain and the body is off. And the baby isn't able to do that proper cross crawl. So what we can do is look at the pelvis, look at the low back, look at the shoulders, the head, to see if there is a way that we can help that. Babies that are having hypotonia or hard time standing because their muscle tension just isn't quite there, by adjusting them kind of turning on the neurology between the brain and the body it helps to establish that connection. I've seen a few babies that have had a hard time with with holding their head up or crawling and walking be able to respond really well once they start getting adjusted.

As you get older ear infections are oftentimes a problem with children. I've got a local pediatrician who sends a lot of his infection patients to me because chiropractic has shown to help with ear infections and reduce the incidence of the fluid inside the ear. The first vertebra, so you see one which is right at the base of the skull, it's right behind the ear here, when that is distorted if it's either pushed to one side or the motionless isn't proper up there it can cause a lot of problems. One being ear infections as well so obviously we'll adjust the baby we can do a little some cranial work and work on the ears it kind of helped to open up those eustachian tubes, and then do some cranial work as well to help everything to move and flow properly. We also do recommendations for certain supplements, ear oils, other types of recommendations for diet too that can help to decrease the incidence of ear infections.

Moving on to older kids - anytime there are falls, any concussions, I don't deal with concussion specifically. I refer out to specific therapists that focus more on that if there is a brain injury. However, every time there is a brain injury there is a cervical spine injury and your cervical spine is here in your neck and if the brain is bruised, there is injury to the spine. So as a chiropractor I'd like to look at anybody who's had as a any sort of fall I mean babies fall on their head, toddlers fall all the time, checking the cervical spine is is a good thing to do then too.

Scoliosis is another thing that I see with children usually it's the prepubescent, usually girls, 10, 11, 12 years old. Once they hit puberty is when the spinal growth really starts and that's when the curvature can expand or can and can worsen. So I've had a number of children in my practice that have come in with 10, 12, 14 degree curvatures that once we've started working with them doing some adjustments and stretching those kinds of things after six months they've had zero curve. So anybody who has the beginnings of scoliosis, even if the doctors say it's mild and there's not much they can do about it, a chiropractor can help for sure. That's great.

Thank you Dr. Adrienne. How often do you recommend parents bring in their children? 

This really depends. If a patient has a condition, one thing I didn't mention was constipation that's another thing I see quite a bit. If I have a baby that's constipated, I want to see them every couple of days because I want to get them regular. Once we start to help everything flow better so I'll see them a little more regularly. If a patient has plagiocephaly or has a significant issue then I'll see them more regularly. But just for a wellness care, if there's a handful of things going on, once every two or three weeks, once a month. Kids are growing rapidly, they're falling a lot, they've got a lot of different traumas, so it really depends on what the conditions is.

There are two or three other disease conditions that our consumers have asked about. One is bedwetting. Is that something that you've seen in your practice and is that something chiropractic can help with?

Yes I have seen it in my practice. There are a couple different causes for bedwetting. Some may be dietary issues so a lot of times a dairy intolerance is one of them and that can affect the bladder. So I usually recommend dietary changes, first of all. But the nerves that go to the bladder are located basically right here in the sacrum if you see here on my picture the bladder is here. So if there is an issue with the tailbone, the lumbar spine, the nerves that exit those bones, if there is a concern with how the bones are moving, it can affect those nerves. So that's how chiropractic can help is by adjusting the sacrum the lower part of the back, relieving leaving the tension that's on those nerves there can help the bladder to function properly. There also could be a previous issue with constipation. I see connection between bedwetting and constipation as well. So adjusting in this area which is more the lumbar spine here, and thoracolumbar spine that area goes to the small and large intestines to help to address the constipation. So it's a very well-rounded thing kind of finding the cause and addressing it with a couple different types of techniques.

What about sleep? Sleep and children? Have you seen any patients that have complained about it?

Absolutely, I had one little girl, I think she was nine months at the time, she came in to see me her parents brought her in out of desperation. She's been sleeping one or two hours a night and they had heard that chiropractic can help with this. So they brought her in and within I think three visits she was sleeping through the night at that first hour. That first night she slept two or three hours and then it went to six hours. And then she's been she's been doing that she's now in first grade. I still see her about once a month or so. Yes, basically the the premises is that when the body is is calm it's going to relax and then this works for children all the way up to the elderly. If your body and your nervous system is tense and there's a lot of restriction or tension if you will on your nervous system your body's not going to rest well. And sleep is your body's ability to heal, that's the time that we feel that's the time that children grow it's it's very very important.

Jen:  I'm Jennifer Colletti with Jennifer Colletti Yoga and Wellness. I teach prenatal, postnatal, and fertility yoga and help women struggling with infertility build their families. I'm a yoga teacher. That's how I started out in the wellness world. It wasn't my first career. About 12-ish years ago, give or take, I took my first yoga teacher training and really never looked back. And I started out just teaching general classes but quickly realized that I wanted to give more attention to what I saw as a lack of help in the women's health area. So I realized, as I was going through some struggles trying to get pregnant, that there was no support, very little support holistically to women that were having trouble getting pregnant.

And so in 2009 after a few years of teaching yoga I started to really hone in on teaching fertility yoga to women that have either a diagnosis of infertility or having some type of fertility challenges and were really struggling to not only to heal their bodies to but to figure out how to feel grounded in that information. Which is really challenging to figure out how to be supported and to have a circle or community all around them. And so I basically started teaching the classes that I wanted to attend. I basically started offering up to women a circle that I wanted to be sitting in because it didn't exist. And you know I think it's it's really humbling work to me it almost makes me a little bit emotional to even talk about it at times because the breadth of women that have sat with me in that circle, it is so, it's just so beautiful. It's so immense. It's so needed and I just feel humbled and grateful every day that I get to sit across from women and help them go through what I went through too. You know when I taught my very first workshop that I did I had 13 women in it but it's so funny because whenever someone asked me how many how many women I had in my first class, it was a workshop then, so how many women did you have in your workshop? And I would always say 14. I was the fourteenth. And I did that subconsciously.  

Question: You've done this for a very long time. If we asked you to compare that very first circle that you sat with versus where things are today, even from the perspective of the society, how do you think that support for women when it comes to fertility issues has evolved?

Jen:  That's a good question. I think the shifts and changes have been subtle and dramatic all at the same time. You know the beautiful thing is we have so many different holistic support people for fertility now in our city, in Minneapolis, and so that it's really, really expanded. And there's more knowledge out there I think people are understanding on a deeper level what imbalance looks like and then how to swing back to balance. I think sometimes what happens is there's so much information now is people have a really hard time discerning what they should do, where they should go. Should I take yoga? Should I have one-on-one coaching? Should I do acupuncture? I think that's one of the bigger challenges that is coming up now.

I also have mentioned too that I think there's a much more expansive marriage between what's happening holistically and what's happening in what I often call Western medicine so those things are really melding together much more so than they ever have which is really wonderful. Because we need both of those modalities to help our bodies create balance and heal again people have a tendency to go inward when something goes wrong. You know I'm grateful that they choose that. I myself have chosen not to when things have gone not so great with my health. I wish we were a culture that revered stepping into that balance sooner. I wish that we were a culture that that saw that we all needed life balance whether we have children or don't have children. Just because you're a single person doesn't mean that you should have to work all the hours you know and those with families go home sooner, right? I think it's really what throws off the balance in our bodies today and that's why we end up with the universe tapping us on the shoulders saying hey you know what here are some symptoms that you need to listen to or they're going to get louder. Again, our culture's not great at stopping and listening to that. We are great at ignoring it until it gets to be really loud.

Not every woman feels comfortable sharing with friends and family what's going on with them when it comes to infertility. There can be a lot of shame and there can be some judgment. And there is a ton of stress when it comes to this diagnosis. And so people don't always feel like it's okay to say it out loud. They're afraid of what people might say, or what people might think. So oftentimes they keep it to themselves.

When I teach the classes that I do, when we sit in a circle, sometimes that's the first time that we might sit next to someone who's going through exactly what she is. Their stories may be slightly different right but they might sit in a circle with five, ten other women that are going through the exact same thing they are and that's the first time they've ever had an experience where they could relate to the woman next to them so directly. That is so true.

Question: I have to share something that somebody shared with me and when going through infertility. They love their OBGYN. They love going to them but the only thing that the OBGYN is focused on is getting them pregnant. That is, their only focus and it sounds like what you do Jen is acknowledging what that person is going through in that process and not just acknowledge but also then provide them the support they need to build the energy to be able to go through something like this.

Jen:   I've listened to my students talk about that over the years. Often that there's such a disconnect between procedures and them feeling really deep and connected with their bodies. So that's one of my goals is to empower them to listen to their own body's wisdom because there's plenty of it there. Our culture is taught us to seek outwardly to heal. There's a quote by my instructors from my holistic health coaching school and he says you know given the opportunity the body will heal itself, right? I'm not here to say that people don't need to have procedures to get pregnant because some do and many do - and maybe some don't too. I'm just saying that given the opportunity to swing our bodies back into balance, given the opportunity to really listen to those tabs on our shoulder that the universe is giving us, we can we can shift that by paying attention to it.

You know I have a host of opinions around that. I think a big part of that is our lifestyle and stress and we're moving through life in through that fight or flight part of the nervous system and so our bodies don't get the message that is safe to conceive. I think that's a big part of it. I think that oftentimes women
feel, and men too for that matter, going through this process is its because it is so isolating, they all commonly feel like it's a failure to to not conceive easily, and which i think is a really hard, those are hard emotions to sit with. It's a hard place to sit in and I think as a culture we become a really hard on our bodies. And the expectation of performance whether it be at work, or even achieving pregnancy can be really, really intense. It's really about conscious rest. We spent so much time in fight or flight in our culture. All our devices, all the television shows we have these days, right? Our corporate culture. Everything is keeping us engaged 24/7 it's really hard to shut things off. We have very little downtime and very little rest time. We don't have constructive rest in our lives, very little. We don't oftentimes.

Restorative yoga, that's what I primarily like to teach because the restorative yoga is, it's really about conscious rest. And restorative yoga is about laying over bolsters and blankets and resting into the earth so that so we can shift our nervous systems into the rest and digest part of the nervous system. That's the part of the nervous system where we conceive. If we are living in fight-or-flight at all periods of time, then our bodies are not in the mode of conception, they are just trying to survive. Because the tiger is behind. You're being chased by a tiger at all periods of time and so our bodies are basically sprinting through life trying to survive. Restorative yoga helps to shift that. I really like that explanation. I think that food is a huge part of it. I don't really feel like in Western medicine we have supported really clean good nutrition and I think that there are confusing messages through nutrition. A lot of what is taught even in Western medicine is from a nutrition standpoint is still based on 1970's theories that were proven not to be true. We're still not getting the information about real food and that eating real food is really important. And we've so gotten away from cooking our own meals, right? The way our grandparents used to cook all their own meals and we're connected to local farmers and  connected to local dairy, things like that, is very different than the bulk of our culture today. You know maybe nutrition give you really tricky and but my approach is much like my approach to restorative yoga in that my goal is to keep your body in the rest and digest part of the nervous system more so than its been. I literally will look at foods that nourish the nervous system and so I try to to at least start my clients on foods that are going to keep them grounded and balance their blood sugar which is going to help keep them in the rest and digest part of the nervous system. That's gonna shift your body more than you can even imagine.

In your experience how quickly does that shift occur, so in other words how long does it take for changing your diet or nutrition or your restorative pattern, how long does that shift take to occur in someone?

It really depends on what's going on in their life. At the Institute of Integrative Nutrition we use this term called primary food. Primary food is your lifestyle. So it really depends on someone's lifestyle and how they're moving through life. That said though, you can shift breakfast for yourself by adding more grounding foods, more good fat, more real food and in a week's time I've had people feel completely different in their bodies. Yeah. That's amazing.

Then lastly I really believe that chemicals are a strong component in throwing off our hormone balance and it just happens that there are over 80,000 different chemicals in our culture alone in our country that go unregulated by the FDA. These chemicals are in our health and beauty products, in our cleaning products, they are in food products, food storage and people don't really understand. I think we're guinea pigs right now. People really don't understand the consequence of those chemicals and basically they are xenoestrogens. They're coming into our bodies and trying to act like hormones and messing up our our normal hormone system. The challenge is that it's not that we just  used a lipstick that had chemical in it or or we used a food storage container where we put in microwave oven, heated it up in plastic and those chemicals leached into our food, or that our laundry detergent has scent on it and and then we are absorbing that in. It's not just one of those things it's that these chemicals are in multiple places in our lives. It's multifaceted unfortunately and that a bigger conversation of all of those chemicals coming in is called body burden. It's really scary and we don't know the effects of all of that on our bodies right now. We do know that girls are getting their periods earlier and earlier in life and I think that's super scary and has a lot to do with chemical exposure and xenoestrogens and their own body burdens.

Is then detoxing or cleansing your environment part of what you do with your clients?

Yes,  detox can be something that I do work with women. I do it in a really gentle way and the reason why is because intense detoxes can be really intense on the system and really stressful, in my opinion. So my goal is to do detox in a way that's super gentle so someone doesn't get completely stressed out when they're doing it.

What about making changes like the cosmetics you use, the soups you use or the detergent you use? Are you a strong advocate for that?

I am and it's a really big part of my teachings whether I'm working one-on-one with, someone or through my workshops, I do a great deal of teaching where chemicals are typically found, what products are really high in chemicals and give guidelines like the Environmental Working Group for people to check the toxicity of their products. I have vetted so many products in the last, I don't know 10 -12 years, so I always have a list of things that I'm sharing with people and great companies that I feel really doing really great work and advocating for clean products ,and legislation around around that too.

That's fantastic. That could be so much bigger than just women dealing with infertility.

Absolutely, it's really for every single group, for all of us. Choose you. Choose you. Choose your own nourishment, and choose your own wellness right and find people that are really going to support you and hold you in that space. It does take conscious effort. It does take choice. It takes stepping out of what is the norm and I think sometimes that's the hard part is that you know stepping out of our crazy culture and doing something nourishing for yourself is not necessarily always revered in our culture. Sometimes I think we feel guilty about doing those things. And what I want you know is that that's paramount, is stepping out and taking care of you is paramount. Paramount to your health. Paramount to you conceiving if that's your path right now. Paramount for living a long healthy lifestyle. Paramount for nourishing both yourself and those around you, and it's feeling really good in your body.

That's great. Thank You Jen.

Thank you so much.

So Jen, as a fertility health coach what can clients expect from you? Is there a fixed curriculum you follow with them through their journey or what is it that they can expect?

I love first and foremost, I love this work. I love working one-on-one with people. As a partnership, what I really love about it is that we have some guidelines as to how we're going to work. We're gonna work together twice a month whether it be in person, so we're sitting across from each other. I really like that when we can look eye to eye. Or with people that are out state I work through Zoom or Skype or or even or over the phone. We work twice a month and basically I'm going to start by listening to your story. I get to hear where you are in your life, and what you want to shift, and what you want to come easier, what are your big hopes and dreams. Then I feel really humbled and grateful that I get to to hold that energy and help support you through making those shifts and changes in your life.

Then through that, each time that we're together, we're sitting across from each other or having a conversation about what's going great, what challenges are coming up, what stressors are coming up, and we're taking all of that information. I am just really allowing, really listening to my guidance and to my intuition and I'm choosing for you what next right steps are for you to take based on the information that is at hand.

Even though we have this guideline, and we get together a couple times a month, and we're specific about the goals that you want to meet, everything is tailored to you and what's happening in your life or you and your partner's. The shifts and changes that we make are really never going to be this laundry list. I'm never, ever going to give you a list of ten things that you need to do by the next time I see you. We're going to pick one or two things that you're going to work on and that's how we create really big change and lasting change by just choosing small bites, a couple weeks at a time. Then we work together for six months. As we work together through that six months those little bites of right action of shift and change add up to a really big change by the time we have reached that six-month mark.

How many of these clients continue beyond that? They say, "No I still need the support."

Many of them. Commonly we keep going. Either another three months or another six months. It's really common to keep going through that program and having that support because I think it's really hard to get unbiased, neutral support through lifestyle change and nutrition. When we are having those conversations with family sometimes there's a lot of charged energy around that and to have someone just totally be your partner around that I personally think is invaluable.  I think so.

Sometimes with my client I might some of the changes that we might make during the those two weeks or homework I should say, some of the homework they might have is doing a meditation each day. It's a five-minute meditation. Sometimes some of the things I might give them are eating more good fats for breakfast. Having some avocado along with some egg or some turkey sausages or something like that. Sometimes it's shifting how they're moving through life. Shifting their schedule. It can be such a myriad of different things but it's all tailored to that person that's sitting right across from me.

In your opinion, the person who's come to you, who's reached out to you, looked you up on your website or has been referred to you by another friend or colleague, how committed are they to making that switch?

To make the changes in their life? They're really committed. Are they really open and really committed. I think the hard part is knowing what changes to make because as soon as you start doctor googling, right, it's like, "Oh, I should be doing this and this this and this." And that gets super overwhelming and really unproductive. Because if you get a laundry list of things to do, it's going to stress you out and you're not going to achieve it, and that's gonna make you more frustrated. So by taking little nibbles at a time with change that helps us achieve those greater goals that we want to achieve.

That makes a lot of sense. It is very true that it's not just commitment but then knowing what to do. And knowing what change to make and that's where you really come in. That's where you're holding that commitment and then being able to make that change, that's the core of what you do, right?

And then holding people accountable for that too you know in a kind and gentle manner. Gentle but firm, right? Where are we at with this and how did this go and you know his life still kind of circulating the same way? I think we need to focus on this a little bit deeper level this next time then. And you know what? All of our lives are crazy, right? I really do believe there's choice and all of that. It gets comfortable to sit in those things that maybe don't serve us well, right? Because change can be sometimes scary. To have someone sit across from you and hold your hand through that, I think is really, really powerful. And knowing that there's no judgement within that. That's not my job. My job is to be there and hold space and be your Switzerland, right? But also tell you where things need to change.

Karen: I have more freedom!

Wendy: You have more freedom? That's the goal!!

Karen: I have taken yoga for a long time, like since 2009, and it's really helped me with some body issues. But I walked into one of her classes one time and we were doing some shoulder work in a Soma yoga class, and I didn't really get it. She came over to help me a lot, because I really didn't get it. I thought I'd done yoga all these years, and I just wasn't getting it. So, I walked away, but then I had a couple other classes with her along the way, and thought, well, maybe this Soma stuff has something to it.

Then I got into some shoulder and neck pain that got really bad. I was in a very stressful situation with work and it came out in my neck and my shoulders. And I got to the point, where I couldn't even turn my head to drive, like to look over your shoulder, and I was actually scared to drive because I didn't think I could see very well. I had gone to physical therapy and I had gone to massage, and it just wasn't getting better. So I said "I’ve got to see this Wendy," something just said I've got to go see Wendy. And I did a private with her, and within, about, within a few days it was just like so much better, like almost 50% of what it was before! Then I had a lot to work on, but within a few weeks [the pain] was like completely gone, and it really freed up my neck a lot!

And so that was what convinced me that Soma yoga is something I really need to do more of, and learn more about. I've taken several classes and workshops with Wendy, and do a home practice of it, and I'm really just exploring it; you become a student of yourself. Because the practice teaches you about yourself and your own patterns and your own, maybe, areas where you need to work on. And everybody's different, so Wendy has a great intuition about where to guide you to look, but you have to seek within yourself too, and try to learn to listen to those cues.

We've turned off our listening mode in our society so much, that you have to tune that back up and to really listen when your body says "this is a little ouchy," you should listen to it!  Or, your breath is catching now, what's that mean? Or another part of your body wants to help, what does that mean? So, you start becoming aware of all those little things that you were just ignoring all your life, and it does help a lot. Then, when I get away from the practice I start feeling more pain again, so I have to come back and see her. You have to keep up with it too. 

Interviewer: What do you say to someone who's never done yoga in their life? How to see Soma yoga? 

Karen: Well, Yoga is for everyone. The pictures that we see maybe introduce it to you but it is not a really, a full understanding of what yoga is. Yoga is connecting your mind and your body and your breath together, in a way that meets you where you're at, and it's therapeutic for you. Actually the real Yogis from India would prescribe a specific yoga prescription for each individual. When you were starting out, you wouldn't be walking into a big class and expected to do these amazing poses that your body might not even be ready for. So, it's a matter of having an instructor who really gets it, who really is intuitive about you, and is not going to push you farther than your limit. In fact, is going to teach you to pull back from your limit right now. In our society we're all about pushing our limits, so you need those messages, telling you no, you should not go to your limit. You should not go beyond your limit. You should find where that limit is and come back from it. That's actually a harder message to hear. 

Wendy: With Karen, when she came to see me, she had a lot of neck issues and shoulder issues. And we did want to focus on that. We also had to pay attention to the entire pattern that was going on with it. So, you know sometimes, like you'll come in, and so she, of course, is thinking, let's just focus right here on the shoulder and neck, which we did, but we also have to focus on all the larger muscles in the trunk. So that we can hold the work we do in the shoulder, right? So I gave her, we did a whole session together, a little bit of educational piece, and then we get a movement session like 60, 45 to 60 minutes of a movement session so that she could get some relief. And then I gave her, in our movement session, time to practice what I wanted her to practice at home so she could learn it with me and get it into her body, and then have it and bring it home. Really, she was a great motivated student, right, which is really important because this is something that is more of a, we work together as a team, you know. It's a We, it's not just You, or I. We work together. So really for Karen, she was highly motivated and inspired to do the work, and that's important. So she really did make some good progress with that. 

Karen: Well, I just wish I had discovered Soma Yoga earlier because I've had a lot of other health issues I think it could have helped me with. And I think it can really help people in all different parts of their life, from very young people who think they can do it all, until they find out 20 years later that they actually injured themselves when they were in their 20s, to people who are middle-aged and really under a lot of stress and need to deal with that right now, versus people who, as they get older, they can still come back to a lot more functionality than they think they have. So I think it really is for everyone, and it's just a matter of finding where you need to be at the moment in it!

When you're ready Karen you can draw this right shoulder blade down toward the left hip, so we're kind of moving at a diagonal. And then you'll lift that arm and head up with that, and then lift the left leg. You can do a few little practice movements getting into it if you'd like. It's really helpful when you're new to the movement to just break it down into smaller parts, but Karen's been doing this for a little while. So now we're moving into the whole pattern of it. We have muscle fibers that run in this diagonal pattern that work together. This is a movement that releases all of that chronic contraction in the back of our body. Which is a result of us propping ourselves up through the world most of the time, and this results from, really, (in our culture it's so predominant) because we're over-stressed and overworked and we are just getting through each moment.

We kind of create this contraction in the back line of the body. And, you know, Muscle Memory is a real thing! Our bodies then stay that way. We have this pain that results from the muscles being chronically tight. So we're now re-educating them! We're going into that contraction on purpose, getting the brain involved in the releasing and the lengthening out. Even three to five of these is really effective.

Karen, how do you feel? Do you feel complete or do you feel like you need to do another couple or one?

Karen: I think I need just one more.

Wendy Brom: One more? Okay...

Karen: Now it feels like it’s coordinated more.   

Wendy Brom: Now you feel more coordinated, lovely. And do you feel like you have more length? And a little more freedom?

Karen: Yeah through my left hip for sure. And the right ribs.

Wendy Brom: Great. So let's have you roll onto your back. Great, and let's have you bend your knees. And just do a few arch, that, come into the arch of the back body. Okay. And then that slow release. Take your time. Just let the back float down, like a parachute floats down. Gentle release. So you're coming to neutral, you're not using any muscle strength to bring the back down to the table. And then you can come into the curl; the little bit of that flattening of the back where you contract the front of the body and even lift the shoulders a bit. There. So now we're getting into all the muscles on the front line of the body, going into the contraction on purpose, and then slowly now releasing.

We're kind of doing a little bit of recalibration from the other movements and bringing a little more integration in. So you can even see as you watch her, you know, even this pattern. Which, you know, some of us may find that we have that in our bodies as well with the shoulders coming in. Now she's getting into that to clean that up, so what we're really doing-cleaning it up, creating some new muscle memory here. So this integration piece at the end now, this is really important to, as you release, take a pause in the release. We want to be creating some new muscle memory!

So, the more you practice, the more competence you can build with this. And ultimately the goal is then to have it become your new normal in your posture.

Alright, so Karen let's do a little bit more integration so that you can create more of a memory in your body. You're going to press into your feet and start to shake yourself up and down. Yeah, and now just play. Do a little play and just feel, just notice how your body feels different. Just sense and feel where you are now compared to when you came in today.

Karen: I have more freedom!

Wendy Brom: You have more freedom? That's the goal!

So what's really great about this too, and you can share how you feel, Karen, but, when we have this more suppleness in our body and we're able to move more freely, our mind is more relaxed. It just, it's, there's no way that it can't be, Right?

So this is a great "IN" to even, I mean, to just be reducing stress completely in your body and your mind. You have, you really have less of a heaviness to you to. Like, you look lighter, right? So when we get, kind of, all of that tightness out of our trunk of our body, then we can stand, even stand, where you feel more grounded and then there's this automatic rebound up; it's more effortless. Like you have less effort into moving in your body.

Karen: It feels less effort but still stronger somehow.

Wendy Brom: I think what you said is really what it comes down to, is having more freedom. So more freedom in our, how we feel in our body, more freedom in how we even, where we are in our minds, our emotions, and then even more freedom for life, just so we can go out and do all the things that we want to do and not be in pain doing it!

Wendy Brom: So Karen, now we're going to practice with the movement of the shoulder blade sliding down, at a diagonal, down the back body. So this movement allows us to get into these lower trap trapezius muscles.

So again lots of people suffering from a lot of shoulder pain, we do carry a lot of tension back here. So we are going to help Karen get rid of that tension. That's the movement, just so that you can get familiar with it. Let your brain kind of understand what we're going to be doing here. Now you're gonna move into that. Lift into that now that you are kind of familiar with that movement. You're going to continue to press into my hand here, as you slowly slide that shoulder blade back up now, so you're staying in the contraction, and then slowly lengthen it like all these muscle fibers in here are releasing, lengthening it out.

All right and then even here, see if there's even a little bit more that can release and let go. Good. And then just gently press into my hand there and stay with that contact as you slowly release. So here all these muscle fibers are getting some relief. Nice. Interesting, that time I felt it more in the front, in the pectoral muscles. Did you feel them contracting? And then releasing.

Well let's come back and try that again and see if we can keep this focused with the muscles in here. So maybe you want to let's try even going slower and smaller and a little bit less pressure into my hand so we can see if we can isolate this, okay? All right. So when you're ready, drawing that down, good. Press into my hand. As far as I go up the pecs don't want to get moved. Okay, so now let's begin to release. Sometimes it takes just a really lighter touch. Again, that slow small movement is gonna give us the greatest boon.

We over-effort so much, right? We over-effort a lot so it's learning how to move a little with less effort really, right? We have this idea that our muscles need to be strong. So they are tight all the time. These six-pack abs and these big strong muscles. But think about it; if you look at bodybuilders who lift weights all the time. Bodybuilders are really strong, but they can barely move, right? They have no mobility at all. A good functioning muscle is different from a muscle being tight all the time. Our muscles want to be able to contract; we want to be able to contract them when we want to, release them when we want to, so they are resting, "tonus" and then lengthen them when we want to. For us to have that kind of voluntary control means that we can move with so much more freedom and less pain... It's exciting! 

So Karen let's begin. Let's have you bend your legs, one at a time, and just move through a few arch and flattens. As you arch your back, feeling those back muscles contract, and then slowly let the back float down. Those muscles just melt, relax and release along the way. Then pause at neutral. Nice breath and go into that flatten. Great, so lengthening out those muscles so we are going into muscle contraction, on purpose, so that we can retrain those muscles, how to let go, and release. We live in a very stressful culture and our body creates memories of that stress,  so here we have an opportunity to re-educate the body through conscious movement. And when our body feels more supple, our mind is more quiet and relaxed as well.

All right, so do you feel complete with that Karen? Okay, so let's now have you roll on to your belly.... (click below to see the next video)

Physical Therapist and Senior Pilates Instructor, Kristin Procopio, founded Studio U to bridge the gap between Insurance covered Physical Therapy and the local gym. How can someone transition from a hospital physical therapist to working out at the local workout facility? Kristin explains the reason for the gap, how much  physical therapy is covered by health insurance and why she founded Studio U. She also dives into why she combined Physical Therapy with Pilates.

As I'm teaching people what they need to do in PT, and really I teach movement, how to move better. I took a class, a mat Pilates class, and I realized the exercises in that class that I was doing, I didn't do very well, but I'm trying to teach my patients how to do something similar because it's its movement and it's where movement comes from. So I started looking into this a little bit deeper, and this was about five years into my career, and realized that I needed to pursue it. So I started pursuing the exercise. I started going through all the certifications and all that.

I became the person at Park Nicollet that people would send to me to be able to discharge their patients and get them to that level of we think you can go into the real world. And we did a pretty good job with that. However, when patients leave the world of traditional PT, in the insurance pays world, they're kind of thrown into the world and haven't realized how to completely navigate the real world without all their exercises, and they're feeling better so they stop doing what they're doing. They feel great, and then they reinjure, so they came back. Then I decided that there was a need, a niche, a need to fill that, a bridge, between traditional PT and the fitness world or just real world in general. Getting back to golf, getting back to walking, taking care of your grandchildren, getting in and out of a chair. There's only so many movements that we can do and we need to know how to do them whatever level you're at. And that's when I saw a need for it so I started Studio U in 2006.

What it evolved into is people who really wanted to take care of themselves coming in to do what's right so they can continue to do whatever they want. And it's been great since we opened in 2006. We've built this this fabulous world of PT and Pilates combined together, helping people figure out how to live their life. I've had people who have hung with me for two times a week for the past ten years. Just because they see it as value in their bodies.

What I have found in this world compared to the traditional PT world is the people who come in here want to be in here. They've chosen this path. The people in my other world in the traditional world were sent to me. Their doctor said you need to go to PT. Here's your referral. They call the clinic and they get signed up with whoever they might have. Yes I had clients who came back to me because they knew me in the traditional world but that first entry into that world you don't know what you're getting. The people who seek me out now are seeking us out to help them fill that void that they need and they're coming to me because they've chosen us. And the no-show rate, the cancellations, all that is just not there because they want to be here.

What do you love about being a physical therapist?

Working with people, getting to know them, and watching their bodies. Bodies are amazing. They move so beautifully, and I like pretty movement so we like to restore it.

What can you expect at Studio U? Pilates, Physical Therapy, Neuromuscular therapy, Pole, silks, Aerials, Power plates and much more...One of one training and physical therapy and group classes to meet every budget. All age groups especially the ones that need more attention. Kristin Procopio, Master Physical Therapist and Senior Pilates Instructor, and Founder of Studio U, talks about Studio U and how they combine different therapies with Physical Therapy to give their patients and clients the best healthcare outcome and make that transition, after an injury, into the real world much easier.

Kristin: All right, so Studio U is a special place because you can really go through the full, full spectrum of care. We named it Studio U because it's all about you and what you can afford, what your schedule is like, what makes sense for you.

We have some people who will come in to us and just want a home program. We send it home with them, they come back once a month, whenever they feel like, "Oh I need a little tweak." We also have people who come in and once they start with a physical therapist, they want privates with a physical therapist, for as long as they can afford it and they'll keep going and going and going. And they're sold on it. And then we have people who come in and they start with a physical therapist for a few sessions so they can understand what they need to do. And then maybe because of financial reasons or just scheduling reasons or anything, they move into classes where they can play with some of the stuff that they've been learning.

So we offer group classes here so they have an economical way to to continue practicing, moving in their body with an eye on them. We have small classes. So we have classes of four for the reformer. We have some mat type classes where we can get six to ten people, not big huge classes.

We have Power Plate classes. The Power Plate is a special piece of equipment. It's a vibration platform. So imagine yourself on and gravely rode, on a bus, standing on one leg, and trying to maintain your balance. And what we're working is a proprioceptive level, as how that joint understands what it needs to do. So those little muscles that have to stabilize, that have to kick in, the big muscles that have been trying to hold you up have to shut down because you're contracting and relaxing 30 plus times per second, which voluntarily you can't do. So that kind of workout tends to get you from inside out. Which is really lovely. You don't really know that you're working until later and you're like, "Oh, I guess I did something." It doesn't take very long. If we're doing the class it's a half hour. Some people come in and train on that on their own if they want.

But once again, everything has started with the guidance of a physical therapist and we send you off to the other worlds. We have Pole Dancing classes and I know that sounds a little crazy but it's movement. And once again we're all about movement. We also have aerial, trapeze and silks.

And really think a movement can be anywhere from the ground up. And and wherever that is, whatever pattern that is, there's no reason we can't work with it. So anything that makes your body happy, we have again. We just want people to feel good in their bodies and whatever mode that is if it's not physical therapy that's fine but whatever that is you should feel good in your body.

At Studio U you have a number of different therapists and practitioners. Can you talk about why you have more than just physical therapy at Studio U.

Yes, it goes back to a continuation of care of where a patient comes from, what they need to do. There are specialties in this world that do what they do, and they are great at what they do and we all can't do everything. And so we need to find our niche and when we see that our clients need something else, to get them to that person that can help them is great. So I've incorporated so far at Studio U, I'm hoping to develop even of a bigger integrative care type clinic, we have neuromuscular massage therapy, we have personal training, we have straight Pilates without the physical therapists piece. We also are introducing some hours with another group of traditional based therapy insurance based for those people who really do have acute injuries that need to be seen. It's part of that whole continuum. I believe that people need to have access to other places and we need to refer to other people so that client can get everything that they need.

How do athletes benefit from physical therapy?

Obviously athletes benefit from physical therapy for the injury. Athletes can utilize a physical therapist to start to work on building performance and whatever that requires performance. So whether it's skill, or speed, or power or whatever that is. An athlete could come in, we would evaluate them, figure out what are they lacking, where is their motion. Is it a tightness? Is it a weakness? Is it a hypermobility somewhere, flexibility issue. And we would help train them into that and help to train them into their sport.

Now that being said, we are not technically coaches. We are not professional pros for golf. We are not that. However we know movement and we know what movement needs to happen for those sports. So we will help recreate that movement, help those muscles figure out where they need to go. And then, of course, we'll send them off to people who really know their skills and they get to work on the skills and put all that together.

As our consumers and patients learn about physical therapy, to us it feels like there's no substitute for it. Would you agree with that? Is there any other specialty that really competes with physical therapy because yoga doesn't seem like it competes, Pilates has its own unique benefits. Would you say that physical therapy is really its own unique therapy?

I would. Once again a physical therapist looks at a body from a certain way, how is it moving and is it moving cleanly and efficiently. We have our chiropractors who also look at a body similarly but we end up working differently we're actually very, very complementary. Oftentimes I will have a client see a chiropractor so they can get the bones moving a little bit better and let that that movement happen and then they're back to me so I can help train that new movement pattern.

When you move into the yoga in Pilates world you're absolutely training those patterns however it's more of a generalized training so it's a great way, great transition in your own world to play with it because you know money is a factor. You need ways to play in your own place and if you love yoga and if you love Pilates, well let's teach you how to be safe there, and then you can go play there. Personal training same thing. They will look at movement and all that too but once again not as not to the same degree that a physical therapist can. So they might say you have a weakness in your glute, will see that while your hip doesn't move, your hip capsule is too tight, we need to stretch it and open it and do this and that is not within their realm. So they send people on. So yes, physical therapy does have its own niche for sure.

Can you explain it as a physical therapist to our consumers out there what is the difference between good pain or bad pain post-workout?

All right good question. Pain in general with a workout, I'm going to start with during the workout. If you feel anything sharp and shooting or a very specific pain, that is a bad pain. That's true for during, after before, that's a bad pain. You never want to have that. That's more of a joint type issue, a deeper issue. Now a little soreness and tightness and muscles you've used, normal. That being said, if you feel completely wasted after a workout you probably worked too hard. The muscle recovery should be within within a couple hours you should still feel pretty darn good. If you're feeling a lot of pain within a couple hours, too hard of a workout. Next morning you might feel a little sore, that's normal. That's delayed muscle soreness and that's normal, sometimes up to 48 hours is not a bad thing. Now if you're still feeling this a week later, once again that's a bad pain, you overworked. If you're feeling muscle soreness and pain you're going to want to rest if you can. You might want to take a casual walk or something like that, get some movement, but not like a workout a hard workout. More of a let me get my blood flowing to see if you can kind of clean out some of the junk that's hanging out and the muscles and get rid of that. But you don't want to force yourself to keep using that tired muscle even though it's not a bad pain if you keep using you could injure it.

Can you cover some of the top reasons you that they should see a physical therapist?

The top reason would be you don't feel good in your own body. That's probably the main reason, whatever that is. Whether it's a pain, a stiffness, I don't move very well anymore, I don't understand why it takes me so long to get out of a chair. I can't go up the stairs. I need to reach in to grab my grandchild out of out of the crib. When I'm cooking or doing dishes, I feel a lot of upper back pain. I sit all day at work and wow I get really tight in my neck. So really anything that just doesn't feel normal that you're starting to notice is catching up with you and a lot of times some of these vague feelings we might take them into our doctor and and sometimes it gets discredited as you're just aging. I don't buy that. Yes aging, aging happens. However we if we can keep our muscles moving and limber and our joints moving where they need to do, we can fight aging to a point and keep you moving.

We just want people to feel good in their bodies in whatever mode that is if it's not physical therapy that's fine, but whatever that is you should feel good in your body.

Interviewer: Can you explain the different types of Pilates machines?

Kristin Procopio: Of course, alright. So the hardest level of Pilates is actually the mat, okay, because it is you and the air. So the nice part about mat Pilates is it can be for the masses. You can take a big class and you have a teacher and you do this, do this, do this, and you can do it.
However, to do it well we take you to the equipment.

The equipment is spring-loaded. We have various types of equipment. We have a reformer, which is my favorite piece of equipment, which is a platform that you lie on, similar to a leg press machine, that's spring-loaded, and what that is to do is to help you find the stretch. Figure out how your body works, figure out, can the front or the back of your body balance itself out or does one want to work harder than other?

For example think about you're in a fitness class and they have you bring your legs up towards the ceiling lying on your back and you're lowering them down, raise them up, lower them down, raise them up. Well, most of us feel our back lifting and lowering, lifting and lowering. Our poor little spine is just overworked. That's not healthy. So what we can do with the equipment is we can put your feet in straps which supports the legs so you can start to figure out how can I get my legs to move towards the ground, while I keep my spine stable, and up and down. We can take you in any position like that, so that's the reformer. And we can work in actually all the way up to standing on that piece of equipment.

We also have a Cadillac and the Cadillac is more springs on a wall kind of feeling. So it's a very stable piece of equipment, and you can do, once again, anything you want. We can either work at the straight bars or we can pull springs, and we can find movement patterns there.

We have a CoreAlign which is a standing machine for the most part and that starts working gate a lot more. It's two platforms that are connected with bungies that you're starting to move independently.  Once again we can do anything we want and we are very creative here. We do lots of stuff.

We have the chair, so you can do a seated thing. The chair has springs that are loaded down. Interesting fact about the chair, it started off with Joseph Pilates creating it because people in New York wanted equipment in their house, however they don't have room in those small studio apartments. So that was meant if you turned it one way, you get the spring loaded, if you flipped it over you could actually sit on the chair which is kind of funny. It's a good piece of equipment though. And like I said we have pole, we have aerial equipment, with the power plates. Not technically Pilates equipment however, depending on how you move your body and how you're thinking about it, anything can be Pilates. So we "Pilaticize" size things here.

• How infertility is categorized in Western Medicine and prevalence of infertility in the US

• Male vs Female unknown infertility, prevalence and causes

• When individuals seek acupuncture and/or Chinese medicine and how that can work with Western Medicine

• A case study of a patient with unknown cause of Infertility

Infertility based on Western medicine:

To look at it from an age standpoint; if you're a female under 35 years old, you would be considered “having infertility problems” if you’ve been actively trying for a year and have not conceived. If you're over 35 years old it would be, actively trying for six months and not conceiving, and then also in that category is recurrent miscarriages or not being able to retain a pregnancy. In the United States right now, it's quite amazing; 9 million people are having trouble conceiving, and it could be either you, or someone you know. The chances of that happening is one in eight.

Statistically when you're looking at how much of this is a female factor, how much of this is a male factor, how much of this is unexplained, the statistics show that 35 to 45 percent of all cases are due to female fertility problems. 15 to 35 percent are due to male and 15 to 25 percent are due to a combination of male and female issues.

The female might have an issue with growing follicles or implantation. The male might have an issue with their sperm quality the way it moves or the amount he has. Then 10 to 20 percent of all cases are identified as unexplained. They really aren't finding an answer as to why these two people can become pregnant.

The female is healthy, the male is healthy, there's just no answer, and that is a lot of times when people might move on to acupuncture, Chinese herbs, assisted reproductive technology, like artificial insemination and in-vitro fertilization. I've seen many patients get pregnant with acupuncture and herbs alone, but many times we have to combine with Western medications. Sometimes it's as simple as, they need some progesterone to start their cycle, so that we can get their cycles back on track. Sometimes they may have to go farther, because they aren't ovulating and we can do treatments to help trigger ovulation, but sometimes their body needs a little push. The really exciting thing about going through acupuncture combined with Western medicine or alone and getting pregnant that way, is many times after one pregnancy the body kind of figures it out, and then once the couple wants to try again, if they do, a lot of my patients have gotten pregnant on their own. Just that whole working with the body balancing it, and then the body knowing oh that's what I was supposed to do okay let's do that again and it works out great.  

There's a really great case study for that [example]; a patient who, there really was nothing wrong with either of them, nothing that could be found, perfect body type, perfect situation to get pregnant. She was, however, under a lot of stress, because fertility can be incredibly stressful thing to deal with, however she did go in and get a little bit of endometriosis removed, which sometimes the littlest bit can cause a problem. As her doctor was looking around she saw the vein supplied to her ovaries, and she says, “wow, those veins are really, really small but they're pumping quite hard.”  My patient said that I just came from acupuncture! The Doctor told her “Oh, that makes sense!” Finally, through a few rounds of assisted reproductive technology we had to do IVF - In Vitro Fertilization combined with acupuncture, also doing a before and after treatment, it can be very, very, successful. A lot of times these success rates go from 20% to 60 to 70 when you're combining acupuncture and Chinese medicine.

Yes, I'd like to work with Jennifer E. Winer

• How stress impacts infertility

• What does acupuncture do for infertility

• A study looking at infertility treatment success rate in individuals with high stress levels

• How acupuncture affects individuals with high stress levels after treatment

Stress is huge, when it comes to fertility for several reasons. Cortisol production gets increased which can throw off your other hormones. Stress alone, your body is just going to be hyper stimulated, and in my opinion sometimes that hyper stimulation of the nervous system is shown in studies, is what can keep the blood flow from going to the uterus. There are actually studies showing that, that hyper stimulation of the nervous system can cause that.

What does acupuncture do to help that? Well, acupuncture increases endorphins and it also increases serotonin, which relaxes your body, and then relaxing your body, creating more circulation and blood flow, which it also does, get some more blood flow to every organ in the body. That's in a sense, how it works.  I so wish people would start combining Western medicine and Eastern medicine together because it is so incredibly effective for stress and as a lot of people know, going through trying to get pregnant, there are a lot of medications that they're not allowed to take, and so we can offset a lot of times what may be happening because they can't use that certain medication. I like that a lot.

If I was oversimplifying, as I'm listening to you talk about stress, and how acupuncture can affect it, I keep thinking if my body is stressed out, and for lack of a better word, in a  survival mode, it's not gonna say this is the time to get pregnant, and with acupuncture, you fill it up with endorphins and better feeling hormones and chemicals, the body is starting to relax and it's saying okay, now, I might get pregnant because I feel no threat, I feel no danger?

Absolutely. There was a study in 2001 in the University of San Diego California, they examined the success rates of women undergoing Western fertility treatments. The study concluded women with higher rates of stress, were 93 percent less likely to become pregnant, and achieve a live birth. You can see how incredibly important it is to listen to your body, be kind to your body, calm your body down, do what you can, to be in a good state, so that we can get you there. That's really powerful. Jenn, thank you for sharing that study with us.

Do you have people that come into your office, that don't even realize that they are stressed and then you start doing the treatment with them, and then it hits them how stressed they have been?

Yes, it happens on two levels. So absolutely yes. The people who I find that really don't realize it,  are people who are really good in high-stress situations. You take people who maybe are like trauma workers, EMTs, ER doctors, ER nurses, psychologists, things like that, who are in high-stress jobs. They just have no idea, what even happened to them the first treatment, because they're just so relaxed. Also, when people are going through treatment series and then they decide to take a break, which normally we like to maintain, you maintain your car, you maintain your teeth, you know it is a maintenance thing to keep your body balanced. But sometimes you need to take a break, and then they'll be on that break and say I had no idea how much this was helping me. Everybody is different as far as how they react to it, but many times more than not, at least 80% of the time, they really feel a difference. It's very helpful, it's helped along with anything else they might be doing. That's amazing.

Yes, I would like to work with Jennifer E. Winer

• How Chinese medicine uses pulse, tongue and whites of one's eyes to determine a diagnosis

• How Chinese medicine treats the entire body and not just one issue at a time

When we talk about your diagnosis, we'll start by looking at your tongue and looking at your pulse. We aren't really looking at your pulse for Count as much as the Quality of the
pulse. There are 30 different “Qualities” and they all mean something different. There are three organs [we are reading] on each wrist. When we are feeling your pulse, we're putting three fingers down [on your wrist], not just one. We're looking at kidney, we're looking at the other organs that are associated, and then on the other side of your wrist, same thing; three different organs that we're feeling for.

When we look at your tongue we're looking not just for color, but your tongue is divided into six different areas, based on organs, based on coding, based on how the veins look under your tongue, all of which can tell us something.

We also can look at the inner parts or the whites of your eyes, and find out things, and your pupils, and your face, and any markings on your body. We also can potentially tell if a patient is pregnant based on their pulse, but that's never “foolproof.” We're never gonna say “I think you're pregnant,” before you're pregnant. But, we can tell from several markers, like pulse, tongue, taste, smell, just different things that might be going on. Again, usually those things start to occur once a woman finds out they are pregnant and they're more into the hormonal fluctuation as the body is figuring out it's pregnant and getting situated for pregnancy.

An advantage of Chinese medicine is that we're treating your body as the whole entire body. In saying that, we're not only treating infertility, we're also going to ask; how do you sleep at night, how's your stress level, and how are your bowel movements? All of these factors, and more, can indicate that your body is imbalanced. What we want when you're preparing to be pregnant and carry a baby for that nine-month period is for your body to be at its peak potential. So, if we're just focusing on one aspect of your body such as stress, cortisol levels, hormones, or other imbalance you might have going on, the other factors need to be addressed as they also play a role in the body as a whole.

Yes, I would like to work with Jennifer E. Winer

• How Traditional Chinese Medicine views fertility problems

• How Chinese medicine looks at imbalances in specific organs like kidney, spleen, liver and how they impact infertility

• How an acupuncturist will remove blockages to assist fertility

• Advantage of Chinese medicine when dealing with infertility

How does Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) view infertility or any kind of fertility problems in male or females? The theory of Chinese medicine is that you have meridians or pathways in your body, and when these pathways become blocked, or stagnant, or stuck, you're not happy, you're not healthy, you're not fine. Diseases can manifest, things can happen. Also, it's all about the organ system. When we're looking at an organ, or when we're talking about an organ, it's not as in the fact that it's not functioning properly. That's “Western Medicine.” We're looking at it, in an aspect of balance. For example, a diagnosis could be liver blood and Qi stagnation, with kidney yang deficiency and spleen Qi deficiency. That, in western terms, can mean infertility, but the way we're looking at it, we're delving much deeper into different organ systems of the body that are affected. Essentially, if anyone came into the office, we're looking at it the same way. However, for fertility, there seems to be some consistency with irregularities and imbalances that we look deeper into.

For example, the kidneys in Chinese medicine; when we're talking about
balance for the kidneys, the kidneys are responsible for creating the ovum and also creating a substance called Jing, which gives you peak performance in your body and keeps your body balanced and fine-tuned. Both body and mind, but also spirit. So, with an imbalance of the kidneys, it's very important to get them balanced, because they're behind this very important area here (points to the ovaries), that many people get pregnant with.  A very important organ in the scheme of things.
 

The next organ we look at, is the spleen. In Chinese medicine, spleen has to do with blood transportation, or transporting the fluids in the body. A lot of times, if you were to just hit your arm and bruise very easily, we would say the spleen isn't doing their job, because it also contains the blood in the vessels. When you think about blood, that's all about nourishing the uterus, and building the lining of the uterus, and getting that supply of blood, so the uterus can help hold the baby.
 

Finally, the liver, which we shouldn't say finally because the liver honestly, anyone who walks into this office has liver issues. It's just lifestyle, diet, stress level, but when the liver Meridian particularly is blocked, the liver Meridian starts at your feet, goes right up through your ovaries and uterus and right through your breasts. It has a ton to do with hormones, and cycle, and balancing that, and emotions, and when that is blocked, or out of balance, you're gonna have anxiety, depression, and potentially fertility issues just because of all the stress and the blockage. The liver, in Chinese medicine, looking at it from an order to conceive, and have a healthy pregnancy, it's very important to have that free flow of Chi in that meridian, especially.
 

Your acupuncturist, when you go to them, should be wanting to open all the meridians and keep all the blockages unblocked. There are other organs, the lungs and the heart, and again remember we're not looking at how it dysfunctions, we're looking at balance! The heart has to do with your spirit, or your emotions, so again, that can be affected based on how emotional, and how daunting it can be to go through [infertility], which it is. If you don't have a great support system, if it's gone on for a very long time, it can be very stressful, and then the
lungs have to do with the emotion of Grief. You can see where grief can play a role in the whole fertility issue, as well.

An advantage of Chinese medicine is that we're treating your body as the whole entire body. In saying that, we're not only treating infertility, we're also going to ask; how do you sleep at night, how's your stress level, and how are your bowel movements? All of these factors, and more, can indicate that your body is imbalanced. What we want when you're preparing to be pregnant and carry a baby for that nine-month period is for your body to be at its peak potential. So, if we're just focusing on one aspect of your body such as stress, cortisol levels, hormones, or other imbalances you might have going on, the other factors need to be addressed as they also play a role in the body as a whole.

Yes, I would like to work with Jennifer Winer

• Jen Winer explains what all is offered within Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)

Part of Chinese medicine, obviously like we said is acupuncture. We also offer Chinese herbals, I have a master's in science of oriental medicine, which means I took not only the Acupuncture Courses, but also the Herbal Courses, to support that. Sometimes you can just take the Acupuncture Course, sometimes you can go as far as the Master's Degree, four years of training, and acupuncture, herbs, and other modalities. We also have cupping available. We have “Gua Sha” available, which is a form of getting toxins out of the muscles comparable to cupping, but with different tools. Chinese medicine nutrition, which is not about carbs or calories, it's about what foods make you hot, what foods make you cold, and balancing the body. Because, essentially, when you look at acupuncture in Chinese medicine, it's all about balance. It's all about keeping the body in a neutral, not too cold, not too hot functioning, “perfect” balance.

Yes, I would like to work with Jennifer Winer

• How can acupuncture help with weight management for infertility

Can I talk about weight management here for a little bit? A lot of times people are concerned with fertility, infertility, and maybe being overweight. Is that something acupuncture can help with?

Acupuncture can definitely help with the cravings, the stress, the cortisol, which can often cause emotional eating. Also, there's something called Candida, which is yeast that is in your guts, and oftentimes if someone's taken any antibiotic in the past, which we all have, and we never knew to take probiotics with it, this yeast can overgrow. Whenever we give a patient a supplement like that, like a probiotic, or a vitamin, we always, always, have them check with their OB before taking it. But, if we can help control that yeast, a lot of times, it gets to the point that people are craving sugar, because they start to clean up their diet, which is going to kill the yeast. There's something called a die-off reaction, and that die-off reaction can be craving sugar, often times intensely.

It's kind of a catch-22. It's like, “I want to lose weight, how come I'm craving sugar; what's the problem?” In two parts to your question; is there a way we can work with that? Absolutely. Do you still have to do the work of eating right and exercising and working with your OB? Absolutely. Do you need to lose a significant amount of weight to help get pregnant?  Not necessarily, in my opinion. I've seen people very overweight get pregnant. I've seen people lose five pounds and get pregnant, when they couldn't get pregnant. I have seen people who I have actually told to gain some weight and get pregnant. Again, I'm not a doctor. So there are protocols, and rules, and [the opinion] that you should lose weight before we do this treatment, that's all between you and your doctor. I just don't believe from a Chinese medicine perspective, when you're looking at the whole body, that weight is the determining factor why there's unexplained fertility issue. I think there are other things going on in the body, because we're treating the body as a whole.

That makes sense!

Yes, I would like to work Jennifer Winer

• How acupuncture supports pregnancy

What we do during a pregnancy as far as Support; we keep the patient on once a week until week 12. During that time, they're still pretty nervous [due to the] possibility of miscarriage. From the studies I've read; the chances of having anything happen past week 12 are pretty low, and so we get them to that week 12; they feel really confident and more secure.

Then, it's often every three weeks for the patient to visit [for acupuncture], just to help with any symptoms of pregnancy like hot flashes, or sleeping, chronic urination, or to keep their body balanced because they want an easier labor which can happen with the help of acupuncture as well.

They can come see you more often than that but, that is your recommendation.

Absolutely.  By the time they're pregnant, it's their decision as far as their stress level. I'll definitely give my recommendation and if I thought I needed to see them a few more times than once a week, or once a week, if possible, I definitely recommend that to the patient.
Past week 12 [of pregnancy], it's also a consideration of how they're feeling.

Thank you Jen!

Yes, I would like to work with Jennifer Winer

• How soon you should seek acupuncture treatment for infertility

• How infertility acupuncture protocol may vary depending on your particular situation

• How acupuncture can help with the cost of infertility treatment

• How acupuncture supports you throughout pregnancy

How quickly do you recommend people come see you Jen?

As soon as possible; honestly, the sooner the better. Because acupuncture is kind of a slower medicine. It's not like taking for example an ibuprofen, and in 15 minutes you're getting pain relief. It's a very cumulative effect, so each time you get a treatment, we're getting the body better and better and better.

Now, fertility is a little different when you're treating that, because there are different treatments for each week of your cycle and different treatments based on the first half of your cycle, versus the second half of your cycle; different treatments as far as if you're not ovulating properly, different treatments if your FSH level is higher, so there are many other things we look at that help us with diagnosis. And fortunately, it does come from Western medicine sometimes. Basal body temperature graphs, for example, we look at and even though it's telling us this is when they're ovulating, and this is when they're getting their period,
based on the way that graph looks it helps us diagnose and we can relate that to our Chinese medicine diagnosis terms. There are many, many things we can do, and the sooner the better.

I work with my patients and if there are herbs that I think they should have, I definitely make sure that after ovulation they are completely safe to get pregnant on. Before ovulation, usually completely safe too, unless we need something that, for example we're going to work with polycystic ovarian syndrome, and work with ovaries and that might be an herb you take day one to ovulation so it's not interfering with the second half of the cycle. A lot of things to consider there. Essentially, the sooner the better, because even just getting your stress down alone, it's going to up your chances so significantly.

I love that. I love that. If nothing else, do the acupuncture to manage your stress, so everything else can happen in your body!

Absolutely, because when you look at it as an advantage point, and also as a cost point. I know a lot of people are concerned with cost, looking at most people, they go through seven rounds of assisted reproductive technology, before they get pregnant. Just on that alone, that's a huge expense, and if we can get you pregnant on two rounds of assisted reproductive technology, while combining acupuncture and or herbs, you are gonna be saving a lot of money. You're gonna be balancing your body, your entire body, so you're going to get the benefit of us not working only on the fertility aspect, but do you have allergies, do you have insomnia, do you have a sore neck, do you have frequent urination, do you have an old injury that is really revving up and you can't walk on your ankle very well, because you sprained it 10 years ago? Do you have an autoimmune issue, or chronic inflammation?  All of those things can be worked on, with acupuncture.

So, essentially in one treatment, although it's very honed in, to your fertility issue, we're still going to touch on all those points.

That's great!

Yes, I would like to work with Jennifer Winer

Infertility based on Western medicine, to look at it from an age standpoint; if you're a female under 35 years old, you would be considered having infertility problems if you have been actively trying for one year and have not conceived. If you're over 35 years old, it would be actively trying for six months and not conceiving. And then also in that category is recurrent miscarriages, or not being able to retain a pregnancy.

In the United States right now, it's quite amazing; 9 million people are having trouble conceiving. It could be either you, or someone you know. The chances of that happening is one in eight.

Statistically, when you're looking at how much of this is a female factor, or how much of this is a male factor, versus, how much of this is (categorized as) Unexplained, the statistics show that 35% to 45% of all cases are due to female fertility problems, 15% to 35% are due to male, and 15% to 25% are due to a combination of male and female issues. So, the female might have an issue with growing follicles, or implantation. The male might have an issue with their sperm quality, the way it moves, or the amount he has. Then 10% to 20% of all cases are identified as unexplained. So they really aren't finding an answer as to why these two people can't become pregnant. The female is healthy, the male is healthy, there's just no answer. This is when often times when people might move on to acupuncture, Chinese herbs, assisted reproductive technology like artificial insemination, or in-vitro fertilization. I've seen many patients get pregnant with acupuncture and herbs alone, but many times we have to combine with Western medications. Sometimes, it's as simple as a patient needs some progesterone to start their cycle, so that we can get their cycles back on track. Sometimes they may have to go farther because they aren't ovulating, and we can do treatments to help trigger ovulation but sometimes their body needs a little push.

The really exciting thing about going through acupuncture combined with Western medicine, or alone, and getting pregnant; many times, after one pregnancy the body kind of... figures it out! And then, once the couple wants to try again, if they do, a lot of my patients have gotten pregnant on their own! Working with the body, balancing it, and then the body knowing, "oh that's what I was supposed to do?! Okay, let's do that again!" And it works out great.

A female patient who (has), really, nothing wrong with (her or her partner) that could be found; perfect body type, perfect situation to get pregnant, under a lot of stress, because fertility can be an incredibly stressful thing to deal with. However, she did go in and get a little bit of endometriosis removed, which sometimes the littlest bit can cause a problem. As her doctor was looking around, she saw the veins supplied to her ovaries, and she says, "Wow, those veins are really, really small, but they're pumping quite hard!" My patient (told her Dr.) that she just came from acupuncture! Her Dr. says, "oh that makes sense." So finally, through a few rounds of assisted reproductive technology, we had to do IVF, in vitro fertilization, combined with acupuncture; also doing a before and after treatment, it can be very, very successful! {These success rates go from 20% to 60-70%, when you're combining acupuncture and Chinese medicine}. She got pregnant, had a happy healthy boy, up on the Baby Board. Talked to her a few months ago, and she says that she thinks she is ready to try again. Well, I hadn't heard from her in a few months, so I just checked in again, and...she said "I'm pregnant!" And he whole time, we we're kind of like, hmm, must have been, maybe, the vein supply because, we just thought, you know, they're tiny. But, she did it, and she couldn't be happier! And her pregnancy is going fantastic, and we're still doing supportive treatment to help through the pregnancy, which can also make the labor a lot easier.

That's a beautiful story. If they can end in success, that's all anybody can ask for, right?

Absolutely. Acupuncture can help on so many levels with many of these issues. Polycystic ovarian syndrome, we can help with getting more circulation, more supply to the ovaries, and helping to hopefully decrease the size of the cysts that are on the ovaries, and the cysts can sometimes emit a hormone, which again, when one hormone is off, they all kind of get thrown off. Luteal phase defect, when you're looking at studies, the group that had acupuncture, and the group that didn't have acupuncture, the success rate actually doubled with the acupuncture group, as far as, I don't want to say fixing that, but as far as, making that happen the way it should. Luteal phase is the second half of your cycle after you ovulate, and it's when your body creates progesterone. And the progesterone is what helps you hold a baby in. So people who have recurrent miscarriages often have a part of what this luteal phase defect is. I'm not a medical doctor, I can't diagnose, or say that's what you have. I'm just giving you a definition. But if you do have a lower progesterone, that can definitely cause an issue where you might not be able to retain the baby and have recurrent miscarriages. So by balancing the body, we are, in a sense, balancing the hormones in the entire body, which helps with that issue. Again, are there times we have to have progesterone from Western pharmaceuticals as well? Absolutely. It just depends on the situation, depends on the person. Unfortunately, a person will have to go through three miscarriages before they kind of look into why the person is having the miscarriages. So again, not only is it important to be a whole-body treatment, instead of just singling in on a certain issue, but being a support system for that patient is just huge. Imagine, having to have three miscarriages before you can find out what is happening. It is very difficult, and sometimes it just happens, and it has nothing to do with anything the patient did. But as humans we have a tendency to just go there. So it's really being supportive, and hanging in there, and talking about how we can best make this happen, and best make this possible. We can work on poor blood flow to the uterus, we can work on fibroids, we can work on polyps, ovulation, blocked fallopian tubes. Acupuncture is a slower medicine, which does work on scar tissue. However when we're trying to get a patient pregnant, we have to look at what's the safest route, what's the best route, and what's going to be the most optimal route to get them to their goal as quickly as possible. So, sometimes it's not the female at all, where she's not having a problem with creating follicles, the follicles going down the tubes, the tubes are cleared, they make sure of that. They've been checked out, where they don't have endometriosis, they don't have signs of cysts or polyps, and all of that has been ruled out. Oftentimes, fertility clinics, which is a good thing, and OBGYNs if there's some unexplained fertility going on, will do a semen analysis. A semen analysis can show several things. For males, motility, morphology, and sperm count. Motility is the way it swims, morphology is the shape of the sperm, and then count, is the count. The average male sperm count dropped 45% between 1940 and 1990, and a lot of that's caused by environmental exposure, exposure to recreational drugs, exposure to medications, also smoking. Smoking has shown that, that can significantly lower counts, and create abnormal sperm. And they've shown studies, where after quitting smoking for the males, after 6 to 12 months it significantly improves. And then of course, you know, not just with male factor fertility and female factor fertility, sometimes you just have to look at, is this female's body working to get pregnant with the male's body? We find our partner, we get married, but that's not saying that all the times, it's going to be that easy, where you'll immediately get pregnant. Again, a lot of that is unexplained infertility, and either it takes a long time to find out why it is explained infertility, or eventually we will get to our goal and it just takes a little bit to get the body balanced.

Those are powerful statistics that you shared Jen. Thank you for sharing with us.

We like to plant in people's heads, allow at least three months, of once a week of treatments, to get the body balanced and prepared to carry a baby, and also to help with the sperm count, morphology and motility. Now, when you're looking at how long it takes to make a follicle into egg status so that it's ready to go, that actually is a hundred and fifty days. So, when we say three months, it can be three to six, but I've seen people get pregnant within a month, I've seen people get pregnant within six months. It all depends on what we're dealing with, what the diagnosis is, and what other things we're having to work with. If we have to combine it with Western medicine, if we aren't, if there are other things affecting the issue, especially endometriosis, which is unfortunately one of those things that can't be found unless they actually are to laparoscopically go in and look, to see. Even the tiniest bit of that can cause a problem.

Q: How quickly do you recommend people come see you?

A: As soon as possible. I mean, honestly, the sooner the better. Because, acupuncture is kind of a slower medicine. It's not like taking, for example, an ibuprofen and in 15 minutes you're getting pain relief. It's a very cumulative effect, so each time you get a treatment, we're getting the body better, better, better, better, better. Now, fertility is a little different. When you're treating that. Because, there's also different treatments for each week of your cycle. Different treatments based on the first half of your cycle, versus the second half of your cycle. Different treatments as far as, if you're not ovulating properly, different treatments as far as if your FSH level is higher. So, there are many other things we look at, that help us with diagnosis and, fortunately, it does come from Western medicine sometimes. Basal body temperature graphs, for example, we can look at. And even though it's telling us this is when they're ovulating, this is when they're getting their period, based on the way that graph looks, also helps us diagnose. And we can relate that to our Chinese medicine diagnosis terms. So there's many, many things we can do, and the sooner the better. What I do with my patients, is I work with them, and if there are herbs that I think they should have, I definitely make sure that after ovulation, they are completely safe to get pregnant on. Before ovulation, usually completely safe too. Unless we need something that, for example, we're going to work with polycystic ovarian syndrome and work with ovaries, and that might be an herb you take from day one to ovulation. So it's not interfering with the second half of the cycle. A lot of things to consider there, but essentially the sooner, the better. Because, even just getting your stress down alone, it's going to up your chances so significantly.

I love that.

And also, as a cost point, because I know a lot of people are concerned with cost, looking at most people go through seven rounds of assisted reproductive technology before they get pregnant. Just on that alone, that's a huge expense. And if we can get you pregnant on two rounds of assisted reproductive technology while combining acupuncture and herbs, you are going to be saving a lot of money. You're going to be balancing your body, your entire body, so you're going to get the benefit of us not working only on the fertility aspect. But, do you have allergies? Do you have insomnia? Do you have a sore neck? Do you have frequent urination? Do you have an old injury that is really revving up and you can't walk on your ankle very well because you sprained it ten years ago? Do you have an autoimmune issue, or chronic inflammation? All of those things can be worked with, with acupuncture. So, essentially, in one treatment, though it's very homed in to your fertility issue, we're still going to touch on all those points.

That's great. Thank you. That explains a lot.

In TCM, there's never a bad cycle. We're constantly working to keep you calm, to keep your anxiety down, to keep your nervous system balanced, to keep more blood flow going to the uterus and to your organs. Blood circulation is key. Not only to get to your organs and uterus, but to also flush out the excess cortisol, and things that might be in there that's not serving your body. It also works, again like I said, with calming down the nervous system, getting your natural endorphins going, working with balancing the hormones. As we talked about before, when one hormone is off, all the other hormones can be off as the body tries to compensate that. And it also works with helping with the follicle, as far as how big it gets, as far as the quality of the follicles, and also working with the lining of the uterus, and getting that thick enough for implantation. We want our clients to get to their goal as quickly as we can make that happen. Now, it can be a slow process, so that can be very stressful, sometimes frustrating. So that's where the support system of your practitioner comes in. And throwing all these other options out there, not to stress the patient out, but to give them the hope that they know there are other things we can look at, and there are other things we can look at together as a team: getting their doctor involved, getting their husband involved. He may not have a motility, or a morphology, or count problem, but there may be herbs he can be taking just to help. Even though, his count is at an okay count, or just on the threshold of being too low, we can make that higher, we can help make that higher. I should say we can make that higher, it can be effective for people. But a lot of times when the partner comes in to help, in that way even, just taking herbs, it makes them feel more like they're not doing everything alone. It makes them feel like they're doing something together. I think a lot of times it gets lost, where the husband, or the partner, who's not trying to conceive and carry the baby kind of feels helpless and doesn't know what they can do to help. When you feel like you're in this together, you're taking your herbs, I'm doing my acupuncture, we're going to talk about these other issues, we're going to rule out what could be possibilities of problems, instead of flying blindly through, and just trying and trying every month and getting a negative. It creates a much better environment for the patient.

Lovely. Working as partners together helping both the male and female, helping the Western medicine side of things, supporting and supplementing, not just what's needed to get pregnant, but also maintain that pregnancy, and speed up the labor process. Amazing words, all good things. We are so grateful that you gave us this time, and helped explain this. I'm already at ease just thinking about it. We love your Baby Board, and we wish you most success. We hope we grow more, more, more pictures on that Baby Board!

We will! We'll keep doing it. Thank you.

Thank You Jen. Appreciate your time.

"So around 30 years ago I was working with a friend of mine who was a Doctor of Chiropractic.  His daughter had scoliosis and it was pretty severe; they wanted to do surgery on her. So, we started the standard scoliosis protocols for chiropractic, adjusting "High Side of the Rainbows" [convex side of the curvature], and it just didn't work. We got her down a little bit, but, it was like hitting a brick wall; nothing changed!

For the next 17 years we really studied and focused on scoliosis and understanding that scoliosis is a lot of abnormal biomechanics, and what that means is it doesn’t function like a normal, regular spine would. For example, if I laterally flex to the left side all the spinous would rotate to the right side. Well in scoliosis they rotate to the opposite way. Now that's fascinating to me, I mean why does it do that? And the reason is when we look at the spine like this when I bend to the left side the spinal cord has to go over the hill, but when they rotate to the inside then the spinal cord goes through the valley. So, the body’s innate intelligence adapts in time and need to its environment and the spinal cord’s environment is the spinal canal, which has a lot to do with that. Once I started to understand how that functioned I realized that we could eliminate spinal cord tension. We can get the spinous to start to rotate back to normal. And when the spinous rotate, that the ribs follow and that’s where the rib arch comes from, or the rib "hump"-not my favorite word, so we call it a rib arch! As the ribs follow that, that causes that spinal deformity. So, we’ve been able to, by changing that, getting the adverse mechanical tension off, I’ve been able to help a lot of these kids cosmetically, as well as avoiding surgery. And the doctor that I was working with, his daughter never did have to have surgery once he got this thing figured out. And now she’s married and she has two kids- she's doing great."

What an amazing story!

Q: What do you say to the other chiropractors and the other doctors, that are on our platform, [Trailhead Health], about scoliosis?

A: "Probably that the average chiropractor can't really treat scoliosis unless is a very small curve. But I think rather than referring that patient to an orthopedic surgeon, recommend him to a CLEAR Doctor first. You know, the CLEAR Doctors have been trained with a 300-hour post-graduate program in scoliosis that we do through the CLEAR Scoliosis Institute. It’s approved by Parker University out of Dallas, Texas for CEE. It's the ONLY scoliosis class or curriculum that actually has CEE accreditation through a chiropractic college! The CLEAR Scoliosis Institute is a nonprofit institute, so we're not focused on the money; we're really focused on helping patients! And the other thing that what we do; as the CLEAR doctors want to work together with the referring doctor, help co-manage that patient together. It's definitely a niche practice when it comes to scoliosis, not every doctor wants to do that.

I think every doctor does want to work together for the benefit of their patient. The idea is "All Working Together" and this includes medical doctors, it includes the orthopedic surgeons, working together for the benefit of the patient."

That’s great! Thank you Dr. Woggon.

"Digital motion x-ray is an x-ray machine that takes 30 x-rays in one second, but it's about one-one thousandth of the normal radiation, very minimal amount of radiation. But with that we’re able to see the entire spine through motion. If you take a regular x-ray, that's a static x-ray, it's in one position. But as I start to move I can see the flexibility of that. We can actually see ligament instability or ligament laxity in the neck, and the back, and the lower back as well. You can't really see ligaments on the x-ray, but I can see the effects of ligament damage, ligament instability. It's like if I look outside I can't see the wind but I can see the wind blowing the leaves through the air, blowing the flag, going back and forth. So by being able to see that we get a much more interesting picture of a complex situation.

Scoliosis is very unique. In the 44 years I've been practicing, I've never seen two scoliosis patients that were the same. But once we do find out that they do have scoliosis, then I want to get as much knowledge as possible to understand it, so that I can figure this thing out. It's kind of like being a detective, which is kind of fun. I can figure out in two minutes with the digital motion x-ray, what it used to take me three weeks to figure out. So because of that we can get the answers much more quickly. Or if there's ligament laxity we can do specific spinal isometric exercises, take the place of those ligaments so that they can strengthen. It gives me a much better understanding of how the spine is going to respond to treatment.

This is the digital motion x-ray machine. It was designed by Dr. John Postlethwaite out of Florida. As I said before it takes 30 x-rays in one second, but it's a very small amount of radiation compared to scoliosis x-rays or any other x-ray. Because of that they'll have taken 30 x-rays in one second, we can see the entire spine in motion. And if we look here this is the cervical spine and there's a loss of curve. Now as the head goes up and down I can see where ligament laxity is, where there's ligaments that have been strained. We can actually see how that whole thing starts to change. And I can see the patient in the small picture box and I can see what the spine was doing just above that. So it really allows me to see what's happening. I'm gonna skip ahead here a little bit. We can actually check the intervertebral foramina where the nerves go out into the arms. So this isn’t good just for scoliosis patients, it actually works for any patient at all. I love working with scoliosis patients that are really difficult, but I love working with any difficult patient where there's scoliosis where normal medical and chiropractic procedures haven't worked; that's where I like to step in. So being able to see how this whole thing functions. We can also look at shoulders, elbows, knees, wrists. And then we can look at it from the front. I can check out the entire jaw. You can see her jaw actually gets stuck when she moves it to the left side. And then here, this allows me to see the neck as far as how it functions. The bottom of the head is called the occiput and on top of that sits the atlas. Now the Atlas holds up the head like Atlas held up the world in Greek mythology. The second vertebra’s called the axis because it's an axis of rotation. There's 22 more vertebra below that-none of them have names. It's like having 24 kids and only naming the first two. In other words, the Atlas and the occiput must be really important. And going back to birth trauma, this is the alar ligament that attaches. There’s, the Atlas has a little peg that sticks up called the dens, and we can see it right here. So as we get back and forth it should never be any motion this is where the spinocerebellar tracts are. And that alar ligament goes from that dens and hooks up to the head, so it stabilizes that whole entire head. Now, if my head drops off to the right side if I'm a baby, then as I start to grow, and we always have to let up to gravity, as I start to let up to gravity CR starts to pull the right shoulder up. So I really think it has a lot to do with, with that instability up on top. So I can actually watch this and measure it to see exactly where it goes off to the side.

And then I can come down and look at the entire scoliosis. That's the heart beating, so we've got an upper curve here that goes to the left. And then I can check it for motion. So when they bend how much does that move? Where is the hypermobility? Where is the hypomobility? Are there fixations in there? Is there flexibility in there? Things that I can actually address. I can take pictures of this. Now she's standing straight. So, this is the middle thoracic Cobb angle, and you can see how it's a lateral motion of the displacement spine of, but I can have her bend and see what type of flexibility in here. And by, based upon the flexibility I can come up with the prognosis. And then I can also figure out, do I need to focus on the lower back, or do the middle back, or the upper back? And it varies from scoliosis patient. Just because I've got a large middle back Cobb angle, doesn't mean that the upper cervical Cobb angle or the lower Cobb angle aren't the major ones. So by doing this bending I can actually figure out what is the major Cobb angle, which is gonna allow me to figure out what I need to focus on to work with. And again, I can figure out in two minutes what it used to take me three weeks to figure out. This is what I dream; literally, this is what I dream at night, but mine's in color instead of black and white! And I've been visualizing the spine in my head for 46 years. So today, being able to have a piece of equipment like this where I can actually see what I saw in my head years ago is just a fantastic asset to me."

A: "That's where I probably disagree with the standard medical community, again, because at 20 degrees they want to start to put bracing on these kids.

Now, when you put a brace on you're immobilizing everything and once you immobilize muscles, muscles begin to become weaker; it's called Atrophy. So, a lot of times we'll put these braces on the kid and the average child has to wear it for two and a half years. Those muscles become so weak that's, I've seen it where they can't even stand when they take the braces off because they become so reliant upon it.

I think there are times when bracing is necessary, but you have to understand that the compliance rate with wearing a brace with the child is about 30%. Imagine the peer pressure of a fourteen-year-old girl wearing a brace to school every single day. I mean that's the kind of kid that people (other children might) avoid because they're different.

So, with the CLEAR scoliosis protocols, we don't have to use the brace. As I said there are some that are showing potential, but when you immobilize that spine, too, it starts to cause degeneration of the discs as well as atrophy of the muscles. So we try to avoid bracing as much as possible. A number of years ago I had a scoliosis patient came in, a young gentleman, and he was pretty big. I put his brace on and I wore it for an hour. There's no way I could wear it for 23 hours a day for two and a half years!

The average cost of wearing a brace is $30,000 a year, so after two and a half years that comes to $75,000 to wear a brace. That's a lot of money!"

Q: It really is. So, as you developed the CLEAR protocol, at what point did you feel comfortable saying “Okay I'm going against what the standard community is recommending, what the standard protocol is, and I'm going to get rid of the brace.” At what point did you decide that?

A: "It took me about 17 years really studying scoliosis to try to figure this thing out. And I had a lot of friends that helped with that. And right around 2004 we were seeing results that were probably 96-98 percent success rate. And that's when I started teaching the CLEAR Scoliosis Protocols to Parker University, in 2004."

Q: That’s amazing. So, then that leads me to the other end of the spectrum, which is surgery. For a lot of people, surgery seems to be the only option.  There are not many people comfortable doing the research and figuring out other options on their own. What is your message about surgery and what do you say to those parents?

A: "Surgery is a really drastic decision to make, and it's a permanent decision. I can get a job and if I don't like that job, I can get a different job. I can get married and if I don't like that wife, I can get a different wife. I've been married for 42 years, okay. But the thing is, there is, certain decisions that we make in our lives that are permanent and surgery is one of those permanent decisions. And the thing is to make that, that decision with informed information, informed knowledge. You know, forty percent of the kids that have the scoliosis of surgery are classified as permanently handicapped for the rest of their life. There's about 50 percent of these scoliosis surgeries will fail and they have to be redone again. If you take someone with a scoliosis surgery and put them into a type of trauma, a car accident, a bad fall, the rods can break and they have to be redone again. They're more susceptible to injury. And you have to understand that the spine isn't just a bridge that connects the hips to the head. The spine is a machine, a spinal biomechanical machine that locomates the body, that allows the body to move freely. So it's like a car. If I have a car with six cylinders in it and it's not running properly, so I'm going to fuse four of the cylinders together. Is the car going to run better? It's not going to happen. So we take away the function when we do surgery and it's a, it's a very extreme surgery. I’ve seen it performed. They go through and remove a lot of the parts of the vertebra, the discs in between each vertebra, they're going to take bone from the pelvis and put it in between each vertebra. And they're not just doing it in one area as far as the spine goes. They're doing it through, say, from T2 all the way down to L3. And that's an extreme surgery. Very traumatic for the child and very difficult to create function in the future."

Q: How long would the recovery be after the surgery for scoliosis?

A: "Total recovery is about a year. Yeah, to resolve from that completely. You know, we've all had friends of ours that had, say lower back surgery or neck surgery. There they're only doing two units together. So here you're doing like twelve units together and it's much more. It's a very serious, well probably one of the most serious surgeries that they do. There are times, you know, don't get me wrong, when you have an extreme scoliosis, maybe seventy, eighty, ninety degrees and the only avenue left, then, is surgery. So there is a time for it, but it's always better to go and take the most conservative approach first, no matter what we do. And that includes scoliosis."

Q: How has the adoption been in the surgical community, as far as promoting the CLEAR method before surgery is picked as an option?

A: "Actually, it's going really well. There's an orthopedic surgeon in St. Cloud that just came here a couple years ago and he called me up and said “I'd like to get together and meet with you. I keep hearing about you.” So, I went over to his office and my son and I sat down with him and his associate and he said “look, you know, I really want to work together for the benefit of the patient. Now if you need a consultation you know, you send them to me. If I need a consultation on a patient I'll send them back over to you.” It's creating that togetherness and working together. It's really improved a lot over the years. I've been working with Dr. Ron Hanson down in Minneapolis and doing some injection therapy relative to Prolotherapy to help stabilize the spines in a number of scoliosis patients. There's a number of orthopedic surgeons that we work with, and I've actually had orthopedic surgeons, there are some cases that they do have to go to surgery. And what the orthopedic surgeon has done is recommend the CLEAR scoliosis protocols, because they find that by going through the mix, fix, set protocols, their surgery has a much better outcome. Because that spine has been loosened up and it's more corrective. There's a number of orthopedic surgeons in Pennsylvania and Florida that we've been working with in regard to that. It's really as a community. And so if there's a medical doctor that says “look, you know, you shouldn't be doing the CLEAR protocols, you've got to have the surgery.” If it's not a serious case, are they focused on the patient or are they focused on the finances?"

Hi guys! Today we are going to do a demonstration of dry needling, and Mike has graciously volunteered to be our volunteer today. We're going to be needling his upper trapezius which sits right on top of the shoulder. So, without further ado, we have Mike prepped, we've cleaned his skin, we have our needle ready to go. We also have Mike holding on to the end of our stim unit. We're going to use some Tenstim as an addition to our treatment today so you can see what his muscle’s doing, and also to make sure Mike doesn't walk away quite so sore. So we'll turn that on in a second.

I'm going to get my needle opened here. All right. And the needle sits in a tube, and that's for sterile reasons and for insertion. We'll go ahead and grab on to Mike's upper trap. We're going to pull it up and away from his body so it's nice and safe. We're going to get our needle in place, and I've kind of already palpated or poked on Mike to see where he's tender. We're going to give the needle a little tap, all right. And then we'll go ahead and start to piston that needle. We're going to see if we can get some twitch response from Mike. And if you watch carefully we should, there we go, a nice twitch in that muscle. And now that we have our latent twitch response, we're going to go ahead and throw on some of that TENS. Mike's holding on to that ground unit so that we can run that current through. We're going to touch the end of that needle and start to slowly turn up our TENS. You should start to see that muscle fire. While I'm treating Mike, I might play with how quickly or slowly I'm using that, or how that twitch frequency is being utilized. If I go nice and slow, so Mike has a slow twitch, that's going to focus on getting some blood flow, getting some good nutrients in and getting some of that, what I like to call, "sludge" out of the muscle.

If Mike was having a hard time firing this muscle I might turn that twitch frequency a little faster, and that's to start encouraging neurotransmitter, which is the chemical that goes from the nerve to the muscle, to run across there and get that muscle firing better. But we'll bring that back down so it's nice and comfortable. And we might let this run until Mike’s sensation of cramping or aching kind of goes away, or until I see a change in what I'm feeling. Dry needling, we can have almost an immediate after-effect in terms of what we're feeling. So sometimes when the muscle is feeling really, really stiff, the minute we get the needle out we have a nice healthy supple muscle.

This is Kelly Brouwer saying Move Well so you can Live Well. 

Hi guys! Today we're here to do a selective functional movement assessment test with my good friend Jessica. This test is a way for physical therapists to look at gross movement so we can eventually break it down and help you move better, so that you can feel better. We're going to have Jess go ahead and face to her left I'm going to step out so you guys can see her. With all of our screens we want to make sure we have Jessica set up in a great way. We want her feet together and we definitely want her barefoot.

Our first test, Jess, (she's going to let us know also if she has any pain), I want you to bring your chin down to your chest. Good. What we're looking for is that there's no space between her chin and her chest and that she's not experiencing any pain. Great. Alright test number two. We'll have you stay right there. Jess, I want you to look up as far as you can towards the ceiling. Good! On this test, go ahead and try that again, we want to see her get to about 80 or 90 degrees in her neck, meaning that her face is almost flat when she gets to the top, and a nice c-curve through the back of her neck. Great! Jess let's have you turn and face forward, feet together and touching. Now, Jess let's have you turn just your head as far as you can towards your right. Good. We're looking to see her chin get to her clavicle-the midline or the center of her collarbone. Let's have you go the other way and back to the middle. Let's have you do that again from the side. Alright Jess let's go left first, alright. We're looking for her chin to sit right over her collarbone. And back to the middle, alright. And then same thing to the right, looking for that chin to center over that collarbone. Alright go ahead and back to the middle Jess. With all those patterns we want to make sure they're pain-free, and we're also looking at symmetry. We want to see that the right side is completely equal to the left side.

Alright let's go into some upper body patterns. Jess let's have you turn all the way around so you're facing backwards. Again, feet together and touching. Let's have you take your right hand, reach behind your head, and touch your opposite shoulder blade. Good. We're looking to see that her hand touches that bony prominence, the boniest part in the back of the shoulder blade. Go ahead and come back down and then same thing on the left side. Good. We can see that she has a slight symmetry difference. She can reach a little farther with that left side. Go ahead and come back down. You can stay in that same position. Let's take the right arm and I'm going to have you reach it up behind your back, touching the bottom of your shoulder blade. And back down. And we're going to watch that one a few times because as Jess does it we're going to watch her right shoulder blade. We don't want to see the shoulder blade rotating forward. We want to see it stay nice and still, which you can tell she's having a little bit of trouble with. Alright let's try the left side Jess. Same thing, touch the right shoulder blade. And back down. Alright go ahead and give that a few more repetitions. Same thing, we can see she kind of picks up that left side a little bit to clear that shoulder. Good.

Alright Jess let's have you turn all the way around to the front. We're going to go into our trunk patterns now. So feet together and touching. Our first pattern, we're going to have Jess keeping her knees straight we'll have you try and touch your toes without bending your knees. Good. And back up. We're looking for the fingertips to touch the ground, go ahead and try that again, which she can easily do but let's have her turn to her left and we're going to watch that pattern again. Jess, go ahead. Touch your toes, if you can, keep those knees straight. We're looking to see her hips get behind her heels, keep going there Jess, and we're looking to see a nice c-curve through her spine. So Jess has just a little bit of trouble with that, you don’t have a totally uniform c-curve quite yet. Alright let's have you turn and face back to the front. Our next pattern is going to be an extension pattern so we're going to have her just raise her arms above her head. Now, let's actually have you turn to the left again. When you're running someone through this test, if they can't get their arms overhead it's actually an automatic fail. Jess does pretty dang well. We want to see those hands centered right over the top of the shoulders. From here, we're going to have Jess bend backwards as far as she can. Go for it Jess. Good. And come back up. Go ahead and try a few more reps there. With this test, we want to see the front of her hips clear over her toes, past her toes, we want to see her shoulder blades pass the back of her heels. Good. We also want to see a nice c-curve in the back. Try a couple more there Jess. Which she, she has a little bit of a hinge, but she has lots of motion. Alright, go ahead and bring those arms back down.

We're going to go into a rotational test now. Jess let’s have you turn and face opposite the camera, again feet together and touching. Alright, let's have you, moving everything but your feet and we want to keep your knees locked out, turn as far as you can over that right shoulder. Good. And then come back. Let's try that a few times. We want to see her whole body moving together uniform, and we want to see that left shoulder as she turns around. We want to see that left shoulder clear her body, which we can see. Go ahead and try a few more reps Jess. But Jess gets a lot of extension in her back, meaning a lot of sway back or back bending, so she does have a movement compensation with that one. Alright Jess let's try the other direction, going to the left. Go ahead and turn and back, and turn. And we can see she clears that right shoulder but just barely we're not totally uniform, and there we'd mark her as having an asymmetry. Good. Alright Jess let's have you turn all the way around.

Now we're going to go into a balance test. So let's have you stand shoulder-width apart, comfortable. Starting with your right leg, let's have you lift your leg so your knee is at the height of your hip. And we're going to have her balance here for 10 seconds. During this test we can see a little bit of foot wiggle, that's called an ankle strategy. It's a really good strategy to see. We don't want to see her standing hip drop, we don't want to see her tilting side to side, we want to see her shoulders stay nice and even, and she's doing a nice job with this one. Alright let's have you go ahead and switch, try the other side. Good. Same thing, want that hip to stay up. She's just using that foot to help her balance a little bit, but we don't see any big movement. Good. Go ahead and bring that back down Jess. Alright. For our last test, we're going to run Jess through a deep squat. Let's have you do it to the camera facing first. So we're going to have her set up so her second toe is straight forward on both feet. We're really picky with this one. About shoulder-width apart. We're going to have her bring her arms in front and her cue is reach forward as you sit back and down, as close as you can to the floor. You want to bring your butt down to the ground. Good, and back up. Keep going, give us a few reps there Jess. What we're looking for here is that her feet stay straight forward, we're not seeing any turnout through the foot, we're not seeing any dropping in or, kind of, a kissing of the knees. Try a few more reps. She does a pretty good job, I see a little bit of turnout on that right foot but, overall, pretty good. Alright Jess let's have you turn and face to the left, same set up. We're going to watch her from the side this time. Same thing, we're going to have her reach forward sit back and back up. And we want to make sure she resets between each rep so we have uniformity in our testing. Good! And back down. You can see Jess clears her hips below her knees which is a trademark of this one. Her back stays pretty nice and uniform. She's got a little bit of pelvic rotation, as you see when she comes up and down, you can see that low back position changes but we don't get too picky about that. And back up. Great.

Well Jess thank you so much for letting me run you through the SFMA! This is Kelly Brouwer reminding you to Move Well to Live Well.

The number one thing I always check first is their seat height. Seat height can often be an issue, because most of us are sitting way too low on our seats. And we're under the misconception that we want to always have our knees and hips at the same height. Really, what we need to do is raise that seat up so that our hips are slightly higher than our knees. We want to see about a hundred and ten degree hip angle, so I'm sitting slightly higher. That puts our pelvis into a nice neutral position so we're not slouching backwards. We're not getting really into a sway back position. From there you can set up the rest of the desk.

So desk height itself may need to move, and then the next biggest thing [mistake] I see is usually monitor height. People typically have their monitors way, way too low, so they're really slouching down and looking at the ground or looking down all day, which can put a lot of stress on the back of the neck and create things like tension headaches. So when you set up your monitor you may need to actually bulk it up on a couple books or get a monitor stand. You want the top of your eyes to hit at the top of the monitor and you should have about a 20 degree tilt-back angle on the monitor itself.

Keyboard, you want to have fit where your elbows are at a relaxed 90 degrees, and I tend to take away people's arm rests so that they're not trying to use them. Armrests tend to encourage shoulder shrugging. And so someone's typing up here all day and they'll often walk away saying "Man I have a headache, or my shoulders are tight, or I carry all my stress in my shoulders." So sometimes you need to take away the armrest, bring those shoulders down, you want to see a 90 degree angle in the elbow and just a slight extension or, kind of, cocked back in the wrist while you're typing. They do say sitting is the new smoking. So we want to make sure that we're encouraging movement, I say at least every hour if not every half an hour. So it could be as simple as just take a lap around the office or go up and down the stairs a few times, but get a few minutes of movement in at least every hour if not every half an hour that you're in the office.

*Little bits of movement often are much more effective at improving and maintaining your health than even a big dose of movement, like a workout, at the end of the day.

I think the biggest thing that I see is people tend to transition right from sitting into a standing desk, and they'll try to stand almost eight to nine hours a day thinking that they're doing their body good. Really when it comes down to it, our bodies are made to move! So "static," meaning not moving standing or sitting, are not really great for our bodies. I still encourage that movement of, you know, once every hour to every half an hour, but I would encourage someone to transition from sitting to standing. So optimally if they can get a desk that allows them to do both, really as soon as you get uncomfortable you want to move into a different position, and then just kind of keep switching between sitting and standing all day long. What we don't want to do is sit and load on one leg for a long period of time. We tend to see common postural things: women tend to shift over on to one side, it's usually their right side, guys tend to throw the pelvis forward and kind of hang on the front of their hips and their low back. So we want you to stand with, you know, comfortable foot position, soft knees, want you to relax your low back so that you're distributing that weight evenly, not through just your back but your pelvis and through your feet. I think that as we age our posture tends to not be as malleable as someone who is younger more, would I say, as someone who's, you know, in their 20s or 30s making sure that they’re posturing well so that they don't end up with movement dysfunctions that we can't correct later on in life. Sometimes I get postural impairments that, when we are in our 50s and 60s, we're just unable to change at that point. 

Prevention is definitely the best medicine in in this case. Thank you guys so much.

Please see the link in the article below to learn more about sitting and standing desks and how to posture yourself correctly.

This is Dr. Kelly Brouwer saying Move Well so you can Live Well!

What a tendonitis is, is an inflammation of the tendon which generates pain because of the inflammatory process. It softens the tissue somewhat and it can affect the attachment of the tendon to the bone.

So who's likely to get tendonitis? Well guys like me! The older we get the less resilient the tendons and soft tissues in the body are. So older people are more prone and more easily succumb to the pitfalls of repetitive motion injuries. Sometimes, not always, tendonitis can also be created by an imbalance in the bony, skeletal architecture. So a short leg, for example, on one time, puts undue stress on other parts of the body. Which, undue stress is the same as overuse activities. And eventually the tendons somewhere else in the body will revolt in response to that undue stress. 

Q: Doug, what are the symptoms of tendonitis? What does it feel like? How do I know that I have it? 

A: It is most often a sharper burning type of pain and it is most noticeable with the contraction of a muscle. So, if I have a tendonitis in my bicep tendon, if I pick up a glass of water or if I pick up a suitcase and do a curl with it I will get a sudden stab of pain. Part of that has to do with what stage that tendon is. A stage four tendonitis is acutely tender, highly inflammable visible swelling in the area and it hurts every time you fire that muscle. A stage one tendonitis tends to be a low-grade ache that isn't always noticeable until after several repetitions of a given movement. What we do for a tendinitis is, number one and most importantly, rest the tendon. You've overwhelmed the ability of the tendon to recharge and regenerate itself between activities and it needs rest. Ice is frequently utilized as a pain relieving technique and a variety of anti-inflammatory approaches, including Advil/Ibuprofen if your stomach can handle it. This should be followed by a period of gentle stretching of the tendon to regain its normal length and further flush the inflammatory chemicals that have accumulated in the area, and this, in turn, is followed by a gentle return to strengthening activities.

Physical therapists’ role in this is oftentimes coaching an individual as to what phase of their rehab and what activities are pertinent to that phase, from the active inflammation, to the rest period, to the stretching period, to the return to exercise and physical activities. The other thing, if it's an acute tendonitis we do, like a stage three/stage four, we do have available to us, with a physician's prescription, the ability to utilize iontophoresis, which is [using] a low-dose steroid which is pushed into the tendon through an electrical generator. We've also found that functional dry needling in the muscle itself to cause relaxation and lengthening of the muscle has been very effective in the treatment of some common tendonitises.

Q: How long does it take to be able to function normally again? 

A: That is dependent on how long the individual has dealt with the problem. Oftentimes, by the time people present clinically they've been living with this tendon problem for several months. Generally speaking, the longer they've lived with it the longer the rehab process is.

(Also see the special offer from Dr. WIlson on Allergy Screening for kids)

[John Gilbert] We've been suffering from allergies for quite a while now. For me, my whole life, seasonal allergies. I was self-medicating so over-the-counter, Sudafed, Zyrtec, I would take until they weren’t working anymore and then I’d switch to something else. I just, I had a constant rotation. And I mean the seasonal allergies, mainly sinuses and then, more asthma type response, too. A lot of food allergies too, I was inflamed right through here.  I was thinking I didn't want my kids to go through that, and we were planning on going and getting tested and doing the allergy shots. I was talking to somebody about allergies; she had recommended Trailhead Health and Dr. Wilson, so why not try it out. I would be the test subject to try it first and then after seeing positive results started bringing the kids in. Now, the whole family’s coming and I think we're all seeing results. My allergies are definitely Better and I'm not taking any more over-the-counter medications or any prescribed allergy medications. I definitely feel a lot better, my sinuses are clear. It's just, it's a world of difference.

I enjoy an occasional beer, and when I would have a beer, you know, I would definitely feel inflamed in the gut, and now, you know, that doesn't happen. I can actually enjoy it and not have to, suffer from it after. I can tell now, with some of the foods that I’d eat I am definitely not reacting now the way that I was in the past. I was skeptic, definitely a skeptic in the beginning, and just, well that's why I was the test subject. I wanted to wait until I saw results and then get the rest of the family involved. I know this guy, [referring to his son] when he would have sugar or anything sugary he definitely got really wound up, would misbehave on a frequent basis. I mean we cut way back on the sugar, but when he does get a treat now he doesn’t respond the way that he used to.

Q: That’s amazing! For someone watching this video and wondering whether this is a good fit for them or not, what would you say to them? What would your message be for them?

A: I would say try it. I used to dread mowing the yard but it’s something you have to do. I always, right after, I’d jump in the shower and clean up and just try to get all the allergens off me as best possible. Now I don’t mind mowing the yard, I’ll stay out and work in the yard after and it’s just, it’s a world of difference. It’s so much different. 

Q: That’s great! Is there anything you'd like to say? 

A: [Son] No, I wanted one question.

Q: You wanted me to ask you a question? 

A: [Son] One question. 

Q: Okay, well, do you like coming to see Dr. Wilson? 

A: [Son] Kind of.

Q: Kind of? Usually kids are afraid of doctors. You're not afraid of Dr. Wilson? No not at all? 

[Son shakes his head No]

[Dr. Jay Wilson]  "Nothing that I do in the office is painful at all. That's why I get along great with kids, because there's no needles, there's no discomfort to the treatment at all. That's one of my biggest joys and pleasures is seeing the change in children when they get their allergies cleared. They're always a lot more calm, they're more relaxed, they're more...they behave better! Their behavior just almost always changes. And we commonly will work with the mother and the daughter, the dad and the son, or, like in the case with the Gilberts, we take care of the whole family. This is very common in my practice. So the biggest thing is; everything that we do is painless and also very effective, because we don't just treat allergies, we work on eliminating them. So that people, for example, that weren't able to eat eggs, that after the treatment, they’re able to eat eggs. That's our goal is to get them back to a “normal” life where they don't have to worry about not eating that certain thing."

“Spirits don't always wait for someone to release them. Instead they may travel to find a soul who is willing to help. I have a grandson who will occasionally bring home a spirit that needs some help. His mother has learned how to recognize when this happens because her son's personality changes. Her easygoing, happy son becomes sad, angry, or defiant as the emotional energy of the spirit who attaches to him takes over. As I help the spirit release this energy, the story of why they got stuck comes to light. One especially poignant experience happened when I was helping the spirit of a six-year-old boy who attached to my grandson. As I was helping him leave I felt he was carrying a lot of anger in his energy field. The story unfolded to reveal what had happened right before he died. He had become angry with his dad and left the house on his bike. As he headed to a nearby park, he was hit by a car and died. The anger he held toward his dad kept him from seeing the portal to leave. I helped him release the anger and also forgive his dad for being angry with him. Once this energy was cleared, he saw the portal, stepped into it, and was greeted by the spirit of a grandparent. The anger that was keeping the spirit from leaving had taken over my grandson's emotions. Once the emotional energy and the spirit were released, he was able to be his own happy self again."

Not all hitchhiker spirits will affect the energy of the person carrying them. Some have resolved or kept them stuck and are just ready to leave. The challenge is simply to find someone who can help them. My daughter and I had spent a week visiting my mom at the Rehabilitation Center in Milwaukee and then drove back to Minneapolis. After my daughter left to go home, I started seeing a spirit out of the corner of my eye.” That's usually where we see them, it's at a 90-degree angle. “With all my experience of releasing spirits, I questioned how a spirit could have entered my space. It took a few days to realize that a spirit from the rehab center had attached to my daughter. She must have dropped him off at my house so I could release him. Upon realizing this was happening, I opened a portal and he immediately left. He didn't need any help releasing the energy that had kept him stuck in the first place, as he had released it already. He simply needed to find somebody who knew how to open a portal. This kind of experience happens to some people after learning how to release spirits. Their hearts are open and willing to assist. However they are slightly unnerved by the experience the first couple of times, until they realize that the spirits are finding them because they know how to help them. The feeling of knowing they are helping these spirits is immensely rewarding.”

So there are lots of other stories in the book but I wanted to share that with you. This has been my passion since 2005, since the first time I was in a class and my teacher opened up... it was my first Elson class that I took; she opened up a portal inside of the space. There were 14 of us holding the space. And over 200 souls came into our space. And it's like an energetic elevator, it just took them up and it's like they've stepped in and they're gone. So there are over 200, adults, children, animals, and they were all ready to leave!  And what I found out later is that she had called them in. So there's a lot of information in the book about spirit communication. They know, I think there's a little tag or something that we get when we learn how to do this work. And the spirits see this tag, it's like a little flag or something, and it’s like "oh, she knows how to send me home..." so they start coming. 

To me, this is amazing, amazing work that we can do, as these spirits release…

I was listening to a video of a chiropractor the other day. Her friend had told her, “I don’t believe in chiropractic,” and she went on in this great video, it was lovely, about how chiropractic is not a belief, it’s a thing. Like, it’s a thing. It’s got research. It’s got a life of its own. It’s a thing, and it is not a belief.

So people say,”Does acupuncture work? Does chiropractic work? Does aromatherapy work? Does eating healthy work?” And yes, they work. They all work. We have research; we have anecdotal information, we have testimonials, we have healed clients, we have miracles that we get to witness every day in our clinic.

Which, by the way, is my favorite thing about what I do. So it all works. But what resonates with you? So what if we could start asking questions like, “What resonates with you as the first thing you want to try?” Or, “What resonates with you as the thing that you think will make the biggest bang right away?” Because if you’re in pain, or you’re not healthy, or you’re having symptoms, how can we get you feeling better and address all the root and the underlying issues as well. It is not a matter of if it works. Do these therapies and treatments and modalities in the alternative world work? They work, it’s a thing, it's not a belief, it’s a thing. We don’t have to believe in acupuncture. Acupuncture works. It’s a thing. But what is the best entry point for you based on your current state to help you feel better fast.

Well, the clinical answer I would give you is of course I look at them with an acupuncture lens, but the honest answer is that I look at them with an intuitive lens. One thing that’s a little bit different about me is I can sense energy and I’m extremely intuitive, so I will often just kind of know like I’ll just kind of know what would help my client, know what to say, what to maybe try first. I think intuitively, I’m able to recommend where we start but then it’s such a redefining process. Like no individual is, not stuck, no individual is static, we’re all dynamic beings, cells are constantly turning over, we’re constantly changing. So I think any great point to start and then some clients I only ever do acupuncture with and some people, I continue to do other things with, but the honest answer is my intuition kind of helps me know where to start. Do you have clients that come in and say I only want to do this? Absolutely, and I have clients that come in and say things like I don’t know if I believe in acupuncture, I don’t know if I’m willing to stray away from Western Medicine. I am licensed by The Minnesota Medical Board of practice, so I don’t think it’s very critical that if acupuncture is going to become an actual alternative to Western Medicine that we can talk clinically, that we can think clinically and that we can be so welcoming if somebody only wants to do acupuncture and only wants to work within a medical model as I can be equally welcoming to somebody who wants to talk about energy and healing. I think to meet people where they’re at, means you don’t have to look like me, you don’t have to talk like me, you don’t have to think like me, but your body still has the capacity to heal, and how can I make a connection, that’s where the love comes in right? So make a connection with an individual and start a catalyst of healing so we can start to have a different conversation and start to expand my mind and my thinking. So meeting them where they’re at to create a catalyst for healing, in my opinion, is more important than creating an army of people who think the same and act the same and go to acupuncture first. And this is really important. I still tell this to every single one of my clients the first day they come in...I love the fact we have Western medicine, I love the fact that we have eastern medicine. I say this to all my clients. If I’m ever in a car accident, do not take me to my acupuncturist, please take me to the hospital, right? If I’m in a car accident I would like to use a Western model and I would like to go to the hospital please. And then as I’m on my healing journey, please take me to my acupuncturist, please take me to my chiropractor, please remind me to drink bone broth and do all these great healing things right? But bridging the two together. Yes, you have to have a knee replacement, how can I help you rehab? I’m not gonna judge you for having a knee replacement, it’s necessary, but how can we maybe stretch out the time until your other knee has to get replaced. And how can we rehab if you do have to have something like surgery.

About Libby

Libby Weibel, L.Ac., MFT Certified, is a licensed Acupuncturist whose goal is for her clients to feel, look and be their best every day. She is one of only a few practitioners in MN certified in the Morphogenic Field Technique (MFT) which uses muscle testing to uncover the body’s hidden barriers to healing. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

"A lot of people think that you have to be a pro-athlete to have a sports injury or injury from doing the same movement over and over again. It is not just the wild players that do the same movement over and over again. " Anne L'esperance, CMT, Neuromuscular Massage Therapist

"...Massage works to break down the scar tissue and to bring more blood into your muscles after you've had an injury. When you have an injury in the muscle, rather than the muscles sliding over each other smoothly as they should, the scar tissue causes them almost like a velcro to grab on to each other, so they can't slide against each other as they should. So what I do when I'm working on somebody is I try to work on breaking up that scar tissue and then spreading out the muscle so that the healthy blood can get in there and then your body can begin to heal itself...As a Neuromuscular therapist, along with increasing the blood flow, what I'm also working to do is to improve the way that the brain communicates through your nerves to your muscles." - Anne L'esperance, CMT, Neuromuscular Massage Therapist

About this video:

There are so many different types of massages.  Neuromuscular massage therapy works beautifully to complement chiropractic care and Acupuncture. A patient asked - What is neuromuscular massage therapy? How does it work, and how does it help in different injuries and different chronic medical conditions?  We asked this question to Anne L'esperance, CMT and Neuromuscular therapy at Ywellnessmn, in Plymouth, Minnesota

Transcript:

Question for Anne: What is neuromuscular massage therapy? How does it work, and how does it help in different injuries and different chronic medical conditions?  

A lot of people think that you have to be a pro-athlete to have a sports injury or injury from doing the same movement over and over again. It is not just the wild players that do the same movement over and over again. Think about somebody who's working in a factory, who's on a manufacturing line, and they're moving the same piece, in the same direction and doing the same movement over and over again. The injury is no different. The cause, the way that they became injured can be different, but the actual injury isn't any different than if you were a pro athlete. And the way that massage addresses that, is by helping to re-train the way that the muscles are working, so that it reduces that compensated injury, and reduces the way that injury sort of travels. So if it starts in the wrist, then it starts to affect the elbow and then it begins to affect the shoulder. So what I do is, I try to stop it and I kind of nip it in the bud before it progresses further up and then someone's ending up with headaches or jaw pain or something from their job.

So massage works to break down the scar tissue and to bring more blood into your muscles after you've had an injury. When you have an injury in the muscle, rather than the muscles sliding over each other smoothly as they should, the scar tissue causes them almost like a velcro to grab on to each other, so they can't slide against each other as they should. So what I do when I'm working on somebody is I try to work on breaking up that scar tissue and then spreading out the muscle so that the healthy blood can get in there and then your body can begin to heal itself.

So where and how does the Neuromuscular part come in?

Along with increasing the blood flow, what I'm also working to do is to improve the way that the brain communicates through your nerves to your muscles. So when you have an injury and those muscles are grabbing on to each other, other muscles will do the job of those stuck muscles. So it's sort of like if you have a traffic jam, people are going to reroute the cars are going to reroute around the stopped traffic. It's the same with your brain signal, if you have something that's stopped, that's not working correctly like a traffic jam. The brain signal is going to reroute around it, and if that goes on for a long time, then your brain will accept that as the new way to route that nerve signal. So the neuromuscular therapy helps to improve the health of the muscles and then allow the brain to reconnect in a more direct route to the tissues.

Some common conditions that I treat are chronic pain conditions. Some of those include neuromuscular pain syndrome, myofascial pain syndrome, fibromyalgia, and then another one is Ehlers-Danlos which affects the connective tissue, but it causes systemic splinting in the muscle. So it causes all of the muscles to compensate for the lack of integrity in the ligaments and the tendons in somebody's body. But the other ones mainly affect the nervous system and the connective tissue. Myofascial pain syndrome is in the connective tissue coverings of the muscles, and neuromuscular pain syndrome affects primarily the way that our brains communicate with our muscles.

So by improving how a muscle is functioning on the most basic level, is how I help somebody who has one of these chronic pain syndromes by using the Neuromuscular therapeutic massage.

Key Take-Away:

1. Doing the same movement over and over again can cause the same kind of injury as a sports injury.

2. Good circulation, good communication of signals from the brain and easy (un-hindered) movement of muscles is key to our body muscles functioning well.

3. Increasing blood flow, breaking adhesions, and allowing of a smooth signal from the brain to muscles and related connective tissue is the goal for neuromuscular therapy.

4. A good neuromuscular therapist, helps you get better by not only addressing the issue but also preventing compensatory problems from happening in our body as a result of that issue.

Trailhead Health Tip:

Every single day pay attention to which muscle/part of your body uses the most. Which movement are you doing repeatedly every single day...Whether it is sitting on a desk and typing on a keyboard, or working in a factory and doing the same motion or dancing or sports, if we are aware, we will notice which parts of our body are overused and therefore prone to an injury. It is essential to be mindful of this not just to prevent injury, but also to avoid compensatory injuries from happening (which is our body's way of reducing stress on that overused part) of our body. A good neuromuscular therapist will not just help health that area faster and better, they will also send you home with some exercises and tips to be able to do these functions longer without causing long-term damage to that part of your body.

Acupuncture is an entire system of medicine, 2000 to 3000 years old originating in China. The key is that it is an entire system of medicine. Even though people may want to use acupuncture for a specific symptom, it can treat anything is the philosophy. It is an entire system of medicine. What’s fascinating is, that they discovered these lines of energy that flow through your body, two to three thousand years ago. They did this without having things like MRI. But MRI now confirms that these channels, which are all these lines that you see in these models, that they match our neurological pathways. They match our nervous system, our dermatomes, and all these things that we can show under MRI are there. It is amazing that 2 to 3 thousand years ago without technology that they could figure this out. Qi is a word that we use to describe energy. My mentor in Denver says that Qi is the oxygen of life. All the things that need to free flow through your body to heal, to create change, and to keep us alive. Qi is blood and oxygen. Qi is energy.

What is most important with acupuncture, in my opinion, is FLOW. I describe acupuncture like our highway systems here in the Twin Cities, and this is where everybody laughs because as you know our highway systems here in the big city are not awesome. We want them to be awesome. We hope for them to be awesome. We want to get from point A to point B in not a lot of time. That usually does not happen.

We have road construction, re-routing, detours, accidents, traffic jams, snow, heat and all of these other things that make driving more difficult. Imagine that these lines of energy are supposed to be open and free flowing like our highways systems, but they are not. Then as we can get the highway systems open and flowing, sending ambulances, and highway helpers to those areas that need repair. In my opinion, the most important thing to stop is rerouting. The body is brilliant, brilliant, brilliant about compensating. So if something is happening it has to pull from someplace else to compensate but that compensatory pattern over time can start to create wear and tear on the body. It can start to cause Qi, i.e., blood and oxygen, to not be so effectively delivered and the body is not healing in it’s most efficient way.

When we look at inflammatory diseases and all these things that are happening in our health today. In my opinion, it is an accumulation of the body working less efficiently than it possibly can. So if we can get the body working the most efficiently, especially in our neurology our nervous system, in my opinion, that is where the healing happens.

We have channels that flow from head to toe - about 4 of them. And then we have channels that flow head to arm, foot to the torso and a few other little patterns. But then we have these two little pesky channels that run horizontal, and what my mentor teaches, which is a little bit different, is that when we block those horizontal channels, we start to get a reverberation in energy because there is no room for it to flow and things get stuck. Then over time that efficiency of the system starts to break down. When the efficiency of the system starts to break down we have pain; we have a disease, we have headaches, we have stomach issues. If this is blocked, your digestion is going to be blocked. You are going to have low back pain. If you have a lot of chest related issues and this is blocked, it makes a lot of sense.

My favorite, favorite thing is when I unblock somebody for the first time, and they are like, “Oh my gosh, I feel it moving.” And then we have this amazing conversation about that’s what energy flowing blood and energy in your body feels like. And then keeping that block open. Acupuncture is cumulative, and it’s because retraining the body is hard but possible. So we front-end load acupuncture at the beginning to help people’s bodies keep those blocks open and flowing.  

About Libby:

Libby Weibel, L.Ac., MFT Certified, is a licensed Acupuncturist whose goal is for her clients to feel, look and be their best every day. She is one of only a few practitioners in MN certified in the Morphogenic Field Technique (MFT) which uses muscle testing to uncover the body’s hidden barriers to healing. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Dr. Kyle: This is probably our most common “Brain Complaint.” People describe it very differently.

Dr. Paul: Decreased mental clarity, lack of mental clarity. 

Dr. Kyle: They tell people, “I used to be smart, now I'm not...” 

Dr. Paul: I feel like I'm not as focused, I feel like I know the word, it's on the tip of my tongue, I just can't say it…

Dr. Kyle: This is particularly troublesome for a lot of women. They kind of have to pass themselves off as more of a “ditz” when it really bugs them on the inside. 

Dr. Paul: I feel like I can't engage in a conversation because I can't maintain eye contact. 

Dr. Kyle: I remember I had a woman come in and tell me “I used to have a steel trap mind.” She goes, “and now I feel like everything just slips away.”  Another person said she used to deal with a lot of different clients in her business and she used to always remember all these, you know, little things about each person that came in. And when that stopped happening it actually made a big difference in making those personal connections with all her clients. It actually really affected the success of her business.

Dr. Paul: I feel like I'm always in a fog or I'm looking through like a thin layer of plastic, nothing's really crystal clear. Spacey, cloudy thinking, lack of memory. And where are my keys, my wallet, my phone? Why'd I come in the kitchen again? What's her name again? I've met you before, but no idea what your name is. The word’s on the tip of my tongue; that kind of stuff. 

Dr. Kyle: And it's something, they can't quite put their finger on it. And this gets lumped under “Depression” a lot or gets lumped under “Anxiety,” but so much of brain dysfunction doesn't really fit great under that glove. It's a little bit of a stretch to say “its depression.” It's really just my brain not clicking right, people use those kind of words. And they just go, “I don't know what's wrong but, it's not me…it's not right.”

Dr. Paul: You know, in the field of neurology, the things that we pay attention to, too, are more of the things that the patient used to be very good at and it's now difficult. That's more concerning to us then, “I was never good at math and I wasn't good at math when I was a kid I'm still not good at math.”  I'm not…my job is not to make that person good at math. But if they're like, “I was really good at math or calculating or balancing my checkbook” or doing whatever, “and now that's really challenging.”  “This part of my job used to be super enjoyable and it wasn't difficult at all, and now it's really hard!” Those are the things that are more red flags to us and to investigate, like, why is that patient having that?

Interviewer: Do you have people that come into your office that don’t even know that they’re experiencing brain fog...

Dr. Kyle: Sure-

Interviewer: ...and you’re running tests on them you ask them questions and then you report back to them?

Dr. Paul: Yeah- so for example, say we do labs and the patient, you know, their blood sugar doesn't look great, whether it's fasting glucose hemoglobin A1C, insulin, you know, whatever markers we’re looking at. Or if they have a high homocysteine level in their blood, which anything over “7” in homocysteine inflames the neurons in the brain, is what the research says. So that involves particularly the hippocampus, it can be a problem. And that's where memory comes into play. Now if a spouse is with, right, they may be like “yes they have brain fog!” And the patient's just totally unaware of it. 

Dr. Kyle: Modern neurology really looks at, you know, vestibular or vertigo, you know, your “falling over” kind of disorder. Or it looks at, Alzheimer's or mild cognitive decline and some memory issues. But really, when you have more mild brain dysfunction, we don't really have a good category for that. It's described in functional medicine really as, kind of, “brain fog.” And that's the most common term people use for it. 

Dr. Paul: The biggest thing that I always express to patients, what I already talked about, was, you know, if something was easy before and now it's a problem, those are the things that we really want to investigate because you were good at it before. Why is it any different now? What was the thing that made you have that problem and now it's a challenge? Those are the big things that we try to communicate to patients.

Well you can't do a nutritional supplement or a diet to get it back. You actually have to use it! You have to use it or lose it. You have to contract that muscle, you have to use it with grip strength or with, you know, some sort of rehab. And that's very similar to the brain; if you don't use it or if it's not being activated to its full potential, it just can't function to its capacity. We can give you good nutrition or supplements to dampen inflammation, but we still have to activate the brain to make it work better. Because it has to generate protein, and it has to talk to the other neurons, and start to produce what's called neuroplasticity, and better communication, efficient communication, increased conductance speed, all that kind of stuff so it can start to work better. That's where the neurological therapy comes in; we can give you specific rehab or do the rehab in our office based on where your complaints are where the function is maybe lacking a little bit and isn't optimal, and, you know, try to get that back up "to Par." And our results have been, you know, pretty good with brain fog activity. But, again, that's usually not the only complaint the patient has, it comes along with something else that they're suffering from. 

Dr. Paul:  There's a lot of different reasons why you might have that. Neurologically, the mechanism is that, you know, neurons just aren't communicating or firing efficiently from one neuron to the next, so it's like the speed of conductance of that signal is slowed. Where is the culprit? What's the trigger? What's the underlying root cause of why your neurons aren't talking to each other like they should? Why is that slowed? 

So chronic fatigue syndrome: super tired to go through the course of the day, and they wake up they're okay; by the end of the day they're going home, eating dinner, watching Netflix, and going to bed. They have brain fatigue. Two questions we ask about brain fatigue is, do you get tired more quickly than you did in the past with Reading or with Driving? Okay, so those are huge metabolically demanding activities to the brain, and so if you do, then that's a red flag dose that we have to investigate. 

Dr. Kyle:  And this gets lumped under depression a lot, gets lumped under anxiety, but so much of brain dysfunction doesn't really fit great under that lump. 

Dr. Paul:  The reason why patients feel depressed is because this part of your brain, your orbital frontal lobe or orbital frontal cortex, does not fire or function the way it should to capacity, but still you're left with the question: why? Why is that part of the brain affected? Is it just this part of the brain? Probably not. That's the same part of the brain that controls decision-making, so this is why a lot of depression patients have a really tough time making a decision…What do you want for dinner tonight? I don't care, I don't know. Like, they go shopping, like, there's 10 of something. What one do I pick? I'm overwhelmed. I don't know which one, right? Like, it's hard for them to make decisions. That's because it's the same part of the brain. Kelly Brogan's work, in, her book, Mind of Your Own, and some of our other colleagues, they've now transferred the theory to what's called the Cytokine Model of Depression, which means inflammation. So, obviously the serotonin model is still there, but the new research, they're really going after inflammation as the root cause of depression and trying to figure out where that inflammation is coming from and why is that patient depressed. Yeah, you're just in menopause, or, for a guy, it could be testosterone. 

Dr. Kyle:  People will talk about mom brain, or pregnancy brain, and how much the hormones really have to do with brain function. And so we, you know, I remember learning about what stress hormone does to your brain, and what estrogen or progesterone or testosterone do to your brain, and realizing that, oh my gosh, there's a lot of brain fog coming from these hormone problems. So we look at hormones for people with brain fog. 

And then into Hashimoto's and autoimmunity. Autoimmunity, thyroid, autoimmunity, you can target the brain. So you can have inflammation in the brain creating brain fog!

Dr. Paul:  Over 90% of the cells in the brain are now thought to be immune cells. You know, women, there's three big triggers in their life hormonally, and like, immuno-wise. It's, you know, puberty, pregnancy, menopause. Those are the three stages where, you know, autoimmune disease can be triggered, right? So…I get pregnant…then I [could] have hypothyroidism or Hashimoto's or whatever, things like that. 

Dr. Kyle:  You know, and you look more and more into gut, and, oh my gosh, functional medicine and the gut, and you just go, well there's a saying in function medical, you know, “gut on fire, brain on fire. Happens the same way. So when we have gut problems and you find people with all kinds of irritable bowel disease, one of the most common things with irritable bowel disease is, you get concurrent brain function problems. So we think that Alzheimer's as a general, you know, category is a huge issue in our aging population. And we do not agree that it is, you know, normal. It's common, but we really disagree that this brain deterioration we see with age is a normal occurrence. And if you look at some of the blue zones of, you know, the healthy, longest-living people, you know, you talk to people in their elderly years and their brain is still sharp and they're still, you know, so cognizant and so thoughtful and so responsive. And then, you know, we've all talked to people who aren't that way. Who, in their later years, you're going, oh my gosh. where are you? What's happening to you? And others around you can see it before they even, you know, really realize it. And what we really find when we talk to these people about Alzheimer's and dementia is, they've had brain symptoms for years. Things that they might describe as brain fog. And it usually starts out as funny or annoying things like, I always lose my keys, I always lose my phone, I put, you know, the shoes in the wrong closet, I put, you know, different, I just start to mix things up. And people just kind of laugh or giggle or they start to get lost more or they don't remember little things, but it starts out that way. And we tell people, that's not normal healthy brain function. You should really be, you know, sharp and cognizant and not making a lot of these, you know, little mistakes. 

And it's when these little mistakes start to pile up and become, you know, more repetitive, that we really want to step in and go, wouldn't it be better to help the brain now? Rather than you wait 10 years and then it's bad enough to where we go, oh my gosh, you have the beginnings of Alzheimer's. 

Dr. Paul:  Chemo-brain after chemotherapy treatment, you might have a food sensitivity, underlying subclinical infection that doesn't show up on a standard blood panel, things like that too, could be inflammation. High 

C Reactive Protein (CRP). Then you have to investigate, well, is it a virus, a bacteria, a yeast, a fungus, a parasite? Is it a food? Is it a toxin? Is it too much stress in their life? There are symptoms associated with different issues and it can be endless on what they come from. And that's our job as doctors, is to try to figure out, why are you getting brain fog? Is it from inflammation? Is it from hormones? Is it from food? Is it from, where's the source coming from? And, just, that's where history comes into play, right? You got 80-90% of your results come from taking a good history. 

Dr Kyle:  And so that's where we come in, and go, okay. We ask you a bunch of different brain questions, I mean that's, some of our paperwork is all these different brain related questions. And that's why the exam from Dr. Paul is so important, and really surprising for so many people. 

Dr. Paul:  Brain fog: it's not a diagnosis, right, it’s a symptom! Your medical doctor is not going to give you like an ICD-10 code. And remember, functional neurology is, we're looking at how well does the brain work, how well does it function, which an MRI cannot tell you that. MRI tells you structurally: are all the pieces in place? There's no stroke, there's no tumor, there's no, you know, abnormal blood vessel, abnormality like an AVM they call it, they're ruling out the bad stuff, right? And then, if it's, like, normal, then that's where like we come in and test how is the brain working. 

Dr. Kyle:  When we go to a normal neurologist, which most people haven't been to, but even if you've been to, they're really looking for these big problems in your exam. They're looking for MS, looking for Parkinson's, we tell people they're looking for the bullet in your head. They're looking for, “oh my gosh, I have a tumor.” Oh my gosh, I have something that's so big and so obvious we go, oh, you know, this is a huge problem. These more subtle issues, but really, that affect your life, but they're not a tumor. And we believe there's a whole lot of nervous system problems that aren't a tumor. And this is what Dr. Paul's exam is really able to reveal; people are shocked when they’ve finished talking to my partner, Dr. Paul, about how badly their brain functions when he kind of pins them down and really starts to test it. 

For people who've done functional medicine education- have you ever realized that a lot of people who achieve great things are just kind of jerks?! Like Steve Jobs, not a nice guy. Right? Now nobody’s like “Steve Jobs, so nice! Oh he's just the nicest person I've ever talked to!” No, a lot of people who are just these trailblazing, genius-level people are not, you know, gentle and kind, and always say everything nice.

I remember I was at a seminar being led by one of these people, and he said, we were at kind of a mixed [event], he's like “Okay, so you Hormone people, you think every problem is hormones. Every time you come in it's all hormones. All hormones, every problem’s hormones. Hormones are the most important. And you Neurology people, you think neurology is the most of all. The brain. You just fix the brain, it’s just the brain just this.” He’s like, “then you got your, you know, Gut people. Oh, just fix the gut. Just all about the gut- do the gut. And you got your Metal people. Just detox everywhere. It's all about metals. Its metals, it’s metals.” He goes, “you guys are all so prejudiced. It's like, everything is just what you do.” He goes, “this is not a good system!” So he really challenged us; I think he was trying to offend people, to try to wake people up, right? Because when you're in this lecture with you know hundreds of other medical professionals, he's trying to shake the boat a little bit.

So, I came to the realization of, although I love functional medicine, it has some limits. And what was interesting was functional neurology really was where I was hitting a lot of these limits. So let's use chronic fatigue for example. We started putting step counters on people with chronic fatigue. So, you know, how many steps are these people taking? And, you know, goal for a lot of active people's 10,000 steps a day right that's a pretty good, a lot of workplaces will do that they'll work for that. And we would put our chronic fatigue people on the step because I remember I had someone at 300 steps a day, right, and most of my chronic fatigue people honestly were lower than 1,500. So they were very, very low steps. And I realized that if you're not getting the neurological signal to “Go,” your body… I can give you all the nutrition in the world and your body doesn't do anything with it! We came to this realization with so many problems in functional medicine, there comes this time where, okay the basic equation for health is eat some good food, put some good things in your body, and supplements are really just a form of food, but put some good things in your body, move. Go do something, go have a purpose with both physical movement and, you know, cognitive movement. And we were hitting all these obstacles with trying to implement these parts of the program. What happened is, we found with functional neurology, we just got better results. 

I started referring to a colleague of mine who did some functional neurology, working with people on their balance, working with people on some of their brain functions, especially unconscious brain function. If your unconscious brain function, your balance, your eye movement, all those sort of things, are off what happens is your brain works so hard to try and fix it, you feel exhausted. And you can't really think about anything else so you feel brain fog, you feel like you you're not smart because your brain’s literally using all its power to correct all these, you know, subtle kind of behind-the-scenes things that used to work perfectly well. So I started just referring back and forth to Dr. Paul, and I found that my people with functional medicine got great results with, when I got stuck with them that they started to do neuro and they saw these new improvements, that we got to better levels of health and better levels of function in their daily life. Similarly, Dr. Paul was frustrated because he was doing some rehab with people, and some people he just couldn't get progress on, he couldn't get him to hold things. And he says that, well you know, if I try to do this exercise with you but you literally don't have testosterone. To have healthy testosterone levels when you work out, you'll get more muscle growth. If you have no inflammation and good nutrition, your brain is going to work so much better when you try to do brain therapy. And that's what he found too; we found that there's this nice interaction between, “I need some nutrition, I need some good things happening in my body, and then I need to ask my body to do some things.” And there's this play back and forth between the two you kind of need. So, in our clinic we really find that the neurology and the nutrition work beautifully well together for our people.

You can branch out into so many different specialties in chiropractic school. You can do orthopedics, pediatrics, functional medicine, functional neurology, you can do really whatever your passion is. In 2003 I was introduced to functional neurology and Dr. Ted Carrick's work, and got fascinated in the brain and the nervous system and how that can control a lot of your health outside of just the adjustment. And then from there I started to study different parts of the brain. So when you look at the brain and the nervous system, you look at the spinal cord and parts of the brainstem and part of the cortex that all of us are familiar with and how that all integrates, but the thing that was fascinating to me was how many things can make the brain not work so well: hormones, inflammation, autoimmune diseases, a bad gut, an infection; you have all these things and I can't really “rehab the brain” and make all those things just magically go away! Then I became introduced to functional medicine and started to learn the connection between, you know, the blood chemistry and the hormone testing and the gut testing and stool testing, and how that integrates and can cause things like, or contribute to things like, migraines, headaches, exacerbate things like post-concussion syndrome, other forms of dizziness and vertigo and that kind of stuff. And then I knew that I couldn't specialize on both of them as much as I wanted to, and that's when I met my partner, Dr. Kyle Warren. I'd known him for a little while, but he kind of had the [complementary] view; he really wanted to go deep into the functional medicine. He was fascinated by the brain and I had like the food perspective,and that's what made us meshso well; that's why we integrate both of them into our practice. 

Well, postural restoration is a unique approach to physical therapy where we're looking at abnormal, unbalanced movement patterns. And we all have a little bit of imbalance in us and that is perfectly normal, but sometimes we kind of go past a certain threshold that's “healthy,” and so we really need something to help fine tune us and rebalance us out. So postural restoration looks at certain patterns, and there's a couple main ones, and we basically really try to focus on balancing that out. And it's not just about balancing strength, but it's also about approaching that balance with looking at neurology and respiration and even how we sense our bodies in space. Some people do not have a good sense of even where their bodies are, and so, if you don't have a good sense of where your body is, you’ve got to kind of start there before you can really change how you're moving!

How do you study postural restoration? 

Well postural restoration, they have an institute, and there's a lot of different training courses that you take. And then there's an actual certification that you end up getting. And you really have to, even, apply to try and get certified and take the test, and it's pretty rigorous. So even going through that whole process, taking the coursework and then applying for certification and then finally taking that test, is a really long and arduous process.

How many years and experience did [certification] take for you? 

I really fell in love with the approach and so I took a lot of the classes really quickly, and right after school, so it probably took about three years. And then, even once you're certified, you're not done. It's just the tip of the iceberg, like almost anything is; you get a really good handle on a certain body of knowledge and then you realize how much more you've got to learn. And so it's a continual process of just adding on to layers and layers of aspects to that approach to really becoming an expert clinician. 

What type of client should come and work with you? 

The people that I tend to see can range quite a bit to be honest. I see, from chronic pain to, I've seen professional athletes. They're all great and they're all challenging in their own right. So chronic pain has its own aspects that make it really challenging, but then athletes are really hard because they're super ingrained in their patterns and so you actually have to kind of break them down a little bit to change their patterns because they're super strong in what they do, but they have to get more balanced. And so you've got to get them stronger in other ways. 

I really can treat a gamut, but generally I will look at a patient and assess their asymmetries, and we really do all have something going on that we can improve, and try to become, and really try to create people that are more efficient. And that really works with any population. You've got athletes that want to become more efficient, because if they're a swimmer, they're going to swim through the water a lot faster if they're much more streamlined. Same thing with people in everyday life. So, if it takes every single bit of effort just to get out of a chair, that's not very efficient. And so if you can have more muscles helping you out, so some people are only using half of what they really should use to get out of a chair-say they're only using their quadriceps, the front of their thighs, if you have your butt and your back thighs working for you, that's two-thirds more of the muscles that you're accessing to get out of that chair and you've just become more efficient because you've got more things helping you. So even everyday life needs to be more efficient. 

First of all, it's so important that Joseph Pilates himself, 70-80 years ago, said “above all, learn to breathe correctly,” and I will second that! And the reason is...because we do it all the time. So if you're thinking about, I don't feel so great when I sleep, I wake up in pain, or I wake up in the morning in pain, maybe we need to change how you're breathing. And we can do that by some conscious training, but we want it to become subconscious.

And if you think about where we breathe, we breathe right here-through our diaphragm. But really, our lungs are here. [Breathing] is a big piece of our body that is often neglected when we talk about posture or how we carry ourselves. We talk about shoulders and getting those back, we talk about the pelvis and getting that in a good position, but this is a really big missing piece! And if we can improve that breath, we can actually mobilize these ribs in here. And all these ribs connect to your spine, and so if we can get those ribs moving, we're actually mobilizing your spine and getting that to move better. 

Getting back to breathing; how can we work on that to change posture? Well, first of all, there's a lot of people hyper-inflated in our world. So, "hyper-inflated..." what does that look like? It looks like these ribs are pushing forward. And they might not look like that when you're standing. Sometimes it looks like this, but you lay somebody down and you'll see that their ribs pop up and forward, and that's sign that their diaphragm is actually already flat and descended. Now even at rest it shouldn't be pushed down that far. We want that to happen, we want the diaphragm to come down when you inhale but when you exhale it should dome up, and dome up kind of like a parachute, and that's the diaphragm relaxing. And in fact, that helps relax our nervous system and helps us become more happy, especially in our necks and our backs. 

A lot of times when somebody's stressed out people will say “take a deep breath of air in.” When was the last time you took a breath of air in and held it and felt relaxed in your shoulders!? Instead, try to take a deep breath of air out. Exhale completely! You're going to feel those shoulders drop and your back can relax, so we really actually need to start training people to exhale first and really get that air out so that diaphragm can dome up. And that actually gives us an opportunity to finally relax the shoulders, relax the back, and it gets our ribcage in a good position where we can actually utilize the obliques and the abdominals correctly. From there we just need to be able to keep those abdominals on as you breathe in and as the diaphragm descends. And so what that looks like is a little different than what we talk about when we talk about belly breathing or diaphragmatic breathing, so that's a bit on the controversial scale because a lot of times, people are talking about diaphragmatic breathing and promoting belly breathing, but when was the last time you saw an athlete belly breathing as they were finishing a marathon? Probably not. Because they need their core musculature on to keep them being efficient as they run and so that they can run fast and without injury. And that actually works for us even with daily life. So I have no problem with belly breathing when it comes to meditation and relaxation purposes, but when it comes to really breathing and posture and movement, we actually need to get those ribs in a good position and we need to stop the belly breathing. The belly, it can move a little bit but it really shouldn't be descending that much.

When do you address breathing techniques with your clients? 

The first session is almost always breathing first, and the one exception might be if you have, like, sprained your ankle. But if you're talking about anything in your torso, which is including the shoulders and the hips, I'm going to be addressing breathing because that's how important it is. Not only is it important for mobilizing this part of the body which is the upper half of the torso, but the diaphragm actually inserts into your lumbar spine and can affect your low back in great amounts. So if you're breathing with your back, low back muscles, and they're tensing up every time you take a deep breath of air in, that's always going to compress that low back. So we've got to address that first because that's something we do all the time; we never stop breathing. So that's #1. One of the main things that I see is people are very shallow breathers, which means they breathe in and then they exhale and then they breathe in right away, so we really need to slow down that breath. And not by inhaling and holding it, but by exhaling and holding it, and then breathing in. But there's so many people that, they have, they can't hold their breath out for the life of them and they don't have any awareness that they're breathing in right away after they exhale, and we don't have to- especially at rest. Maybe if you're running a marathon, yes, you need to breathe in right away, that's going to be faster. But generally, we need to slow down that breath rate. 

Is there a certain technique for better breathing? 

Well it really depends on the population that I'm working with. So I start, especially if you're more compromised in your breath, I'll start with exhaling and just seeing if you can hold your breath out for three seconds and try to stay calm, because some people get really nervous because they're not used to holding their breath out for that long. So just trying to get comfortable exhaling and pausing even for just three seconds, but even better if you can get ten seconds. It's a long time, but there's even people that do longer which would be even better. So if we can exhale, pause, get nice and relaxed there, then breathe in, then we're going to be much better able to slow down that breath rate!

So, one of the reasons why I love this skeleton model is because we can see that reflected in the knee joint. So here's what we see in the most common pattern in the pelvis is that the left pelvis likes to tilt forward, so it goes like this. Now, if you were watching up here, now go down here and look at the knees. So if this hemipelvis rotates forward, you can see how that changes the angle of these femurs here . And if we change the angle of those femurs and they start to rotate a little bit, well this little knee actually doesn't go along with the with the thigh. Instead, a lot of times, it'll stay straight ahead. And so now this little guy is no longer tracking in the groove of the kneecap. So if we can get this pelvis in a better position, we can actually line that up better. And this hemipelvis coming forward can affect not just the left knee, but it'll affect the right knee too. So we're going to have problems in one or both knees with the same problem in the same position of the pelvis. Then, if we went from here all the way down to the feet and what you can't see because Boris has no feet, but if you looked in his feet he would bear more weight on one side of his foot, on the outside of his right foot and the inside of his left foot, and so that would be an issue. So if we can also affect the feet a little bit, we can take a lot of pressure off our knees. Which, again, it's just a simple hinge joint. But these joints right here, the hip and the foot, much more complicated and we’ve got to balance those out. 

Are people generally aware of their bodies?

Some people are really, really aware of their bodies and they come in and it makes my job super easy when I educate because they're already telling me, “I really feel like I'm always on the outside of my right foot and I know that's affecting my knee, I just don't know, you know, how to change it.” So that makes the conversation easy. But most people are walking around and if they're used to bearing more weight on the outside of one foot and the inside of another foot, or they're used to being a little bit twisted, that their brain thinks that's normal; their brain thinks that's straight ahead. And so they're thinking they're straight, and it's my job to help reeducate not only them on what's going on in their body, but also to re-educate their brain on how to move differently and feel their body differently. 

Will I have to constantly train my body with new techniques?

After a while that should become subconscious. So I'm going to reteach certain muscles to activate in certain ways, and then not only will we do some exercises laying down to find and feel those muscles and then I'll retest them and they're going to look much better in their pelvis, but that's one thing if you're laying down, but you've got to stand up and walk out to your car again, right? So we've got to make sure that we get you standing and also re-educate your muscles in standing and sensing your left foot just as much as your right and sensing it a little differently, and that's going to take some practice. But it should start to become more natural into your body as you do some exercises at home. So that's our goal. But, yeah, we need to make sure we don't just strengthen and try and correct a pelvis, much like some chiropractors do and that can be very helpful, but sometimes we get someone in a good position and then they walk out the door and they're still walking out with the same brain that they had before and the same habits and the same patterns, and so we've got to redo that motor planning in through their brain, so that they can walk out with a new motor plan. And they start walking differently and they have new habits that they can take with them and become more efficient movers. 

How long does neuromuscular reeducation take?

Everybody wants to know that answer, and it's such a hard answer. And the reason why is because everybody has different comorbidities that they’re walking into the clinic with. So, if you've got one thing going on, like knee pain, that's pretty simple and I can I can probably work on that in five sessions, and sometimes even less. If you're coming in and you're, maybe, more flexible or hypermobile, maybe you've got some pelvic floor issues going on, those things always take more time and it's really hard for me to answer that question. And it’ll be a little easier after I've seen you a couple visits because that'll give me a little idea because I'll see how you've changed and how you've carried forth what we worked on in our first session. But those two things make it a bit more challenging. So hypermobility, pelvic floor issues, a poor sense of where you are in space which might manifest itself in balance as well, that can be really much more challenging to correct. The other thing that's difficult is when you have a lot of things going on, and that's what I see a lot of times. So I'll see people with neck pain up here and knee pain and big toe pain on another foot and hip pain somewhere else, and if you've got a lot more areas to address, I always like to work on the whole body anyway, but we're going to have to be a lot more specific on getting all of those pieces working together in a balanced way, which is a bit tricky. Usually they come back in their second session and they do have some changes and improvements. Now if not, then I have to figure out what I didn't do or what I didn't instruct well enough the time before. And so then we remedy that issue. But, most of the time, if we can really get good breath and start engaging some muscles that help re-balance whatever asymmetry that that they might have, we can see pretty drastic changes really quickly. 

How does postural restoration, Pilates, and physical training come together? 

I love Pilates and especially equipment Pilates because it provides a lot of feedback for somebody to know where their body is in space. So there's a lot of people who love to work out, and I think part of it is that that it gives them some sense of the floor and just some feedback into their nervous system about where they are in space. And so we can get that through a Pilates Reformer with a little less compression and less heavy duty work and still get that feedback. So I love that aspect of Pilates. But the one thing about Pilates is that it kind of assumes that you're symmetrical, and that's a very dangerous assumption because most of us are a little bit crooked. And that's okay to an extent, but the more balanced we can be, the better. So I take my postural restoration skills, I'm trying to balance out symmetry, and I can apply that to my Pilates exercise or repertoire and we can tweak little things here and there, and I can get more of a left oblique on someone versus a right oblique which is going to help and impact their right back and lengthen that out, if that's their problem. So I can add those pieces to my Pilates repertoire and combine them to get the best thing for my patients and my clients. 

I love Pilates and especially equipment Pilates because it provides a lot of feedback for somebody to know where their body is in space. So there's a lot of people who love to work out, and I think part of it is that, that it gives them some sense of the floor and just some feedback into their nervous system about where they are in space. And so we can get that through a Pilates Reformer with a little less compression and less heavy duty work and still get that feedback. So I love that aspect of Pilates. But the one thing about Pilates is that it kind of assumes that you're symmetrical, and that's a very dangerous assumption because most of us are a little bit crooked. And that's okay to an extent, but the more balanced we can be, the better. So I take my postural restoration skills, I'm trying to balance out symmetry, and I can apply that to my Pilates exercise or repertoire and we can tweak little things here and there, and I can get more of a left oblique on someone versus a right oblique which is going to help and impact their right back and lengthen that out, if that's their problem. So I can add those pieces to my Pilates repertoire and combine them to get the best thing for my patients and my clients.

Last week a mom brought in a 3 week old baby boy because he wasn't gaining weight, wasn’t nursing well, wasn't sleeping. She came back on Monday and she had a different baby. He started nursing again, started sleeping and the one thing she said to me was kind of neat; I think they have 4 kids and he is the youngest. She said we've been to a lot of different chiropractors and said you have hands that heal. From a mom saying that - they are trusting me with her newborn. They put their newborn in my hands and I mean I'm honored for moms to have that trust because it's not easy to hand over your newborn to somebody and to have that trust. It just it makes it all worthwhile to have that trust to be able to work on them and help them. It's awesome.

Interviewer: Dr Brian you have ICPA Certification: With this additional certification, what did you have to go through to get it?  What does ICPA mean?

Dr. Brian: 

I did a four year undergrad program and got my degree in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of Minnesota-Duluth, and then went on to Chiropractic College which is basically a five-year program, 10 semesters. You can go year-round which means you can get in done in three and a half years which is what I did.  I was talking with my kids and they were asking me about college...undergrad is 15 credits and then Chiropractic College is 30, so it's about double the amount of work you are taking in.  You are studying all the time.  In the first couple years of Chiropractic College, it's similar to Medical School in that you are doing basic sciences, anatomy, physiology, biochemistry and after that, we branch out differently because we are focusing on the chiropractic portion, as opposed to medicine. Early on, I went through the ICPA cert program, which was at the time, a 120 hour course,  something I did on weekends, going through each of the modules, learning how to take care of infants and little kids.  It's different.  People ask when they bring their child, as parents have been to a chiropractor, "So you adjust a baby the same way...?" No, it's completely different...the principle is the same; you have a subluxation, a spinal problem, you need to correct it to get the pressure off the nerves so the body can function. But the technique is SO MUCH DIFFERENT! Because obviously their bones are tiny, and  t doesn't take much force to make an adjustment; as I explain to parents, it is just a light touch. The hard part, the Training part is knowing where to make that adjustment and when to make that adjustment, combining with the symptoms of the child, with my objective checks, to figure out okay what adjustment do they need to get better. And knowing as well, when there's something else going on that is out of my scope; something that you should see your pediatrician for. There is a pediatrician that I refer to that I trust and ask questions to when something is out of my scope or something else that needs to be addressed as well. 

Interviewer: When a newborn comes into your office what usually prompts that parent to bring them in?

Dr. Brian: I would say it's two-fold: the first is mom bringing in their baby and just wanting to be checked. Typically those are mom's that have been in my practice that I've taken care of through pregnancy, so they know the benefit of chiropractic care and we've talked about as babies are growing in the womb, they run out of room! And sometimes those subluxations and spinal problems can happen before birth or going through the birth process.  Obviously any mom who knows how intense the birth process is that that can cause spinal issues as well; typically I'll find them in the upper neck area. So the first would be mom's bringing in [children] just to get checked to make sure that everything is in alignment so that they will be able to grow and develop normally.

The second would be the infants that are referred in.  Typically with an infant with a mom bringing a child in, it's a Specific issue; especially with the little ones. Little by meaning, only a few weeks old to a couple months old. Colic is a big one.  Just in general not sleeping well, not nursing well, not feeding well, not pooping well they are constipated; actually a little girl I saw this morning, she is six months old and constipated. When that's happened in the past mom has brought her in and we've adjusted her and that has helped, so she knows that works!  So as they get older, a couple years old, a lot of times...ear infections will be one that they will bring them in for. That's probably the most common thing, even pediatricians offices, that children are brought into offices, it's ear infections. That's something we work with a lot.  People ask well how does chiropractic help ear infections?  What I find most common is that the very top bone in the neck can misalign.  It can happen in the birth process, and a lot of times it will take that amount of time for symptoms to occur.  Especially in the first year of life as these children are learning to walk and crawl, they are falling down a lot, this can cause misalignments as well. But what can happen is that that top bone misaligns pinches the nerve that is supplying that area, going to the ears and it affects the function that way.  It can also be mechanical as well, the Eustachian tube that drains the ear is right in that area.  So when a bone misaligns. and can block that tube from draining.  So the most common thing we find when they come in here for ear infections is that upper neck problem.  So many times that will make the correction.  Obviously there are other things we address as well...is it Dairy, are there other things that can be involved; most often than not it will be that upper neck out of alignment. So we see a lot of kids with ear infections and help them with that.

One of the analogies we use; the fastest most reliable way to take a plant that's dying, so it's brown, you know, it's not green. “The best way to make [a plant] green, is to paint it green.” It works every time and it works very fast. And we can do a study on if we give plants water or if we give it sunlight or if we paint it green, and all we have to do is, we just have to quick end the study like a day after. We go, “see painting is better than sunlight and water.” And this is what we think has been done a lot of times kind of this, you know, magic trick deception show with, “oh it changed this!” And I go… but did it?! Did we measure the right thing? Did you really look at getting patients Better? 

We deal with this with chronic migraines and headaches; we get people who, the medication will reduce the pain score, except the person is a “zombie” and can't function in their life. They're on two or three different meds and the side effects are pretty severe. So we have a lot of chronic fatigue/chronic migraine cases that the side effects of the meds which are curing them…it's not really a cure, it's not really functional. We deal with this with fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is said to be caused from overactive nerves, and the drugs work on really slowing down nerve function. Well there's a downside to slowing down nerve function. You don't feel pain. But, guess what? You don't feel anything!  A lot of times, your brain, people feel like they're like a zombie or they're like just… people use the words, they “just feel dumb, they feel slow.” I go “Right, because that's what it did,” it just stopped everything from working well. And so we at functional medicine are going to approach the problem so differently. We're going to say, “if you have fibromyalgia from overactive nerves, how can we get the nerves to not be overactive? How can we solve your problem by helping something work better?” That's what we want to do in functional medicine. 

What is your experience, when it comes to rehabilitative medicine; particularly with acupuncture and Western medicine?

Sophia Bouwens, L.Ac.: I think, I really appreciate that point that you made there, that we integrate both of them. Because I don't think that it's one or the other, or “Us versus Them.” I think that acupuncture works amazingly as an adjunct with physical therapy or with other kinds of therapies you might be doing as you prepare. If you're in physical therapy and you're having this limitation on your motion this way, or you're not able to break this level of strength for some reason, or, “this always hurts when I do that,” what we can do with acupuncture is tailor to what muscle it might be that's limiting it, what other structures are attached to that muscle and how they might be contributing to that factor, and release those or help them fire more accurately so you can go back to physical therapy to strengthen them in a way that they're relaxed and they're better able to take on that therapy. And you'll see that therapy move forward with a lot different strength and the approach there will be compounded by adding acupuncture in.

What is acupuncture’s role in particular? What does it really do in that instance? 

Sophia Bouwens, L.Ac.: It depends on what you're working towards. It can do a lot of things. So we can bring new circulation to a muscle, we can help break up adhesions. So muscle fibers run along each other and they can get twisted and they can get stuck so that they're not able to stretch and fire efficiently. And so what acupuncture can do is, kind of unwind those and help them loosen up. We can break up adhesions of lactic acid that gets stuck in the muscle forming knots, too. And so we bring in new circulation and flush that out. We can help the neurons fire more efficiently, we can help a connection to the brain so that when you think to do something, your muscle will fire more correctly and more accurately and quicker than it would have you just tried to strengthen the muscle. You have to connect both of them together. Neurons that fire together, wire together!And so, we can help that connection neurologically, mentally, physically. These things or these obstructions you have in your way that were limiting you before can start to open up and we can make new ways for you to progress!

One of the most common things that I hear people say when they’ve experienced an injury is the stress that comes with it. Whether you’re an athlete, or even not an athlete, or trying to become a pro athlete, there's a lot of pressure that athletes feel and our students feel, and with that pressure comes a lot of stress. 

So, how does acupuncture affect stress in someone? 

Sophia Bouwens, L.Ac.: Acupuncture is huge for stress; it can change what's called the parasympathetic nervous system and the sympathetic nervous system: It's our fight-or-flight mode or our rest and restore mode. Acupuncture works to help the body and the nervous system, our brain, switch those on or off. So we can get someone who's in that fight-or-flight because they're so stressed, we can switch it off for them so they're in the rest and restore mode, which is when healing and regeneration happens. So when you get an injury, you're stressed about it. That only compounds the nature of the injury because it can't heal as much. When you can turn it off, and maybe your stressed about it but you're not feeling that stress as intensely, we can change the body's ability to restore and start pouring resources into regenerating and helping that heal. And so acupuncture can be really great for the injury itself, but then also for the person. While they're trying to navigate the stress of this injury, they can show up in life a little less wired or a little less tense about things because we can change the way that their nervous system is operating from the fight or flight, really stressful state, to that rest and restore, more enjoyable, peaceful state.

Do you think that when it comes to rehabilitative medicine, having acupuncture be part of the overall treatment can really be synergistic and take that rehab to the next level, or is it kind of a “nice to have?” Where would you categorize it?

Sophia Bouwens, L.Ac.: I absolutely think it will help take it to the next level. That was my personal experience, that's my experience I see clinically, that's the experience I see with athletes when they are performing, they have better performance after acupuncture. I think when you're rehabbing, whether it's from an injury or to perform, you're just trying to get your body to operate at the highest level, and acupuncture can be a great adjunct. It's amazing at helping, kind of, break through those things. I definitely think it should be in the rehab or the performance building as part of the treatment, not just a supplement to it.

If someone is undergoing physical therapy, let’s say after surgery or after injury, would you say acupuncture has more value before they go to their physical therapy session or after their physical therapy session?

Sophia Bouwens, L.Ac.: That's a good question. Generally I like to see someone after their therapy because I like to see, kind of, where the body is at after they've gone and done the hard work out that they're doing to restore. I am able to kind of read that, is this a time when they can have a lot of simulation where we can work the muscle really hard right now or did they just exhaust it and it really just needs to be helped along in a more gentle way? And so I like to see them after. Acupuncture itself is a lot like a workout. It brings a lot new circulation, it breaks up adhesions, people can feel really tired or sore after a treatment, which is very normal, but it's also part of the healing response that we get from the acupuncture treatment. So often times I say, try to plan them on separate days so that you're not going back to back, from work out to work out, or from acupuncture to a physical therapy, or to a stressful or intensive workout. I think that it's great to see them after, though, if they do have to have them on the same day. Seeing them after they've done their physical expounding or physical activity can be more helpful to kind of gauge where the body is in that moment when I'm working them and what I have to work with so they don't feel exhausted or overworked at the end of it. 

Sophia was hit by a drunk driver in March of 2015.

Within six months after graduating acupuncture school, I was hit by a drunk driver in March of 2015. I sustained a number of serious injuries: I was in a coma for six days and in the hospital for a month. Part of that was I sustained a diffuse axonal traumatic brain injury, which was so bizarre to wake up in the hospital having the background I had in neuroscience, with now an actual injury of the brain. So I was experiencing what I had studied for so long. 

In this two-part interview Sophia shares her personal story of recovery. She specifically talks about what she did differently at the hospital for her recovery. 

My story starts in undergraduate when I was studying to go to medical school. I wanted to learn to help people, to heal their bodies, just to feel better about where they were going or what they were doing. As I did some investigating I found, what I saw medical school, going to medical school starting to look like was more helping with acute care or disease management, rather than trying to figure out how to heal somebody from the inside out. Not that that's what medical school is about, but that was my perception from the early stages. I wanted to get less into, like, surgeries and saving lives, and more about helping lives thrive. 

And what I was seeing in the medical field at the time was more about surgeries and acute care, disease management, which is much-needed work, but I felt like that wasn't exactly what I was looking for. 

So, I found acupuncture on that journey. I was studying neuroscience at the time and so I started thinking, maybe I'll study acupuncture from a neuroscience perspective because no one can tell me what acupuncture is doing to the body. I could talk about qi and blood and all these things, but what is that? And clearly, it's probably using the nervous system to make changes in the body. So, I got really excited about investigating that and proving it from a neuroscience perspective, what was happening. 

What I found as I was doing this study in 2009 on pain and acupuncture was that we can measure that acupuncture would have an effect and it would make a change, but we couldn't understand why. And there was no research at the time that was well established to really talk about the mechanism behind acupuncture. And I realized I was excited to, kind of, find out what the mechanism was. In order to find out what it was, I needed to go to learn about acupuncture itself to find out what they were talking about when they were talking about qi and just learned this new paradigm that was really accurate. I could measure it in a lab or see the results of it, but I couldn't tell you the physiology of it. And so I went to school for acupuncture. 

Sophia became a licensed Acupuncturist in 2014. 

Within six months after graduating acupuncture school I was hit by a drunk driver in March of 2015. 

Part 2: Sophia was hit by a drunk driver in March 2015. 

I sustained a number of serious injuries: I was in a coma for six days and in the hospital for a month. Part of that was I sustained a diffuse axonal traumatic brain injury, which was so bizarre to wake up in the hospital having the background I had in neuroscience, with now an actual injury of the brain. So I was experiencing what I had studied for so long. 

Sophia was fortunate to be able to combine Acupuncture with Western Medicine to help her recovery. 

As a part of my recovery, I had an arsenal of acupuncturists come to my rescue to give me treatments right away. So not only was I experiencing the traumatic brain injury from the neuroscience standpoint, but I was also seeing the power of acupuncture and, a more broadly, Chinese medicine use, to help in that recovery and it was profound for me. I was really fortunate to have a position where I was able to have both worlds kind of come to my aid, and also the knowledge within me stayed there. So I was able to, kind of, utilize the knowledge and I was able to navigate things that I don't think the average person is able to navigate. I had surgeries avoided, I have scars not present on my body because I knew this knowledge and I had the ability to help myself rehab. 

Sophia’s background in Neuroscience and Traditional Chinese Medicine had a BIG impact in Sophia’s recovery.

My recovery was a long one, I was pretty in, I hope no viewer ever has to go to where the place I was because it was a really hard one to be in. But I was in the hospital, and I was, I had my jaw break on both sides so I had my mouth wired shut. So I was on this liquid diet and they were feeding me through a feeding tube, and the feeding tube was made of like a dairy based liquid. My body doesn't do well with dairy, I have a sensitivity to it where it causes my body to produce a lot of phlegm. From a Chinese medicine standpoint, that makes perfect sense for me. But from the outside standpoint, that's kind of a known thing that dairy can cause phlegm, but the mechanism behind or the weight behind that notion isn't always as well known. 

So, I was also, I was getting fed this dairy based diet through this tube. I was also having all this phlegm accumulation and not able to cough up very well and so, because my mouth was wired shut, they were really concerned it was going to obscure my breathing and I was not going to be able to breathe. So they were scheduled to put a trach in me so that my breathing tube can stay open. I just kept trying to advocate for them, like, I promised I could start to cough it, or I wouldn't have this phlegm, if you just wouldn't feed me dairy! They were very concerned about the protein I'd be getting and how I'd be getting my nutrients. I just said there's other nutrient possibilities besides dairy for protein and a more balanced place. Let me give you the examples I would use because these, often, these are going to serve my body much better than this dairy based formula you have me on. I remember, it was like an hour before they were going to place a trach. And so I had an acupuncturist come and she just did an acupuncture massage on a point that was to open the lung and help me start expelling phlegm in particular, and I started coughing right away and I got all this phlegm expelled. And the doctor was really amazed by this and kind of skeptical of it, but kept doing it. Every time I needed to get this phlegm to come out I would push this point and I would start coughing. And so I avoided a trach. I got them, convinced them to let me start feeding myself a liquid diet and change the plan that I had, gave them the nutrient components of what I wanted to use and they agreed. And so I don't have a scar across my neck because of the knowledge I knew from Chinese medicine more broadly, but even that acupuncture point is like one that's very dear to my heart now.

The Trailhead Health team was so touched by Sophia’s story and her willingness to openly talk about it, that we went back to learn more. 

Part 3: Sophia shared some more amazing ways she enhanced her recovery. 

So, the therapies I got, like the conventional therapies I had which helped me learn how to walk again, I did physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. So I learned how to talk again, how to shower again, how to dress myself again. I really did have to learn all these things because I didn't know, my connection to my body was so different from the injury that my brain had sustained, that I wasn't sure how to dress or how to move my arm so I could get it through my sleeve or just coordinate movements, coordinate thoughts that, those had to happen in those therapies, so they were tremendous. And I was very, I was well helped by them quite a bit. What acupuncture did for me within that was help me maximize the efforts I was putting forward in therapy. So when I was doing occupational therapy and I was having a hard time coordinating my thoughts, I was getting acupuncture. And the acupuncture treatments were helping coordinate a part of my brain called the cerebellum, which is important for coordinating movement, speech patterns, and it can help coordinate thought patterns as well. And when I was getting acupuncture, I remember the feeling of having acupuncture go over the cerebellum and to really stimulate blood flow to the cerebellum or that part of the brain, that I would wake up feeling, just so different and kind of more awake and more, I can't explain how it was but it was like, “oh. I'm here now. I can get this.” This connection was coming back. And I would see in my therapies, my speech patterns would change. They'd get more solid and be able to have more tone back in my voice. My movements as I was going through therapy would be more coordinated, I had better balance, and yes, it was because I was working on them physically in physical rehabilitation, but I would also feel the effects of acupuncture when I was getting acupuncture and then going to therapy and had a really changed pattern. So they were in conjunction, working together.

What was your frequency of acupuncture? So when you, I'm guessing you were scheduled to go see a physical therapist twice a week or every day, I'm not sure of the schedule, but how did how did acupuncture fit into that? Did you do acupuncture before you did physical therapy or occupational therapy or speech therapy, or did you do it after? What was the way that you incorporated it?

Acupuncture wasn't a prescribed part of my plan in the hospital, it was because of the connections I have and the friends I have who are fellow acupuncturists and practice Chinese medicine that they would come to the hospital. I remember, they'd have to, kind of, keep it secret from the hospital staff because they couldn't actually have permission to do acupuncture when I was an inpatient. But the nursing staff would say, you know, we are going to just leave the room for an hour and we won't interrupt you, and what happens behind closed doors we don't know. So they kind of gave their blessing in a roundabout way which was wonderful that we had that staff, and just a really great staff at Regions that could help us with that. Now, Regions has acupuncture in the hospital, so it's really interesting that that shift has taken place. It's on different floors but it wasn't available as part of my prescribed treatment plan at the time. 

And just as my regular treatments, physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, those were really heavy at first. So at first I was going every day, sometimes maybe twice a day. You'd have to be careful not to over stimulate me because I was in this state of, really, a fragile nervous system and so overstimulation was something that they were very aware of. But it would be some kind of therapy or maybe multiple therapies every day, and then it started to taper down to maybe three times a week. Then I was released and I would go twice a week to outpatient therapy. Acupuncture was really similar, had kind of a similar tapering schedule. When I was in my fragile neurologic state, a little bit of acupuncture would do a lot more and be really sensitive, so you couldn't over stimulate it. So, and then I was getting it several times a week, like three or four [times], sometimes every day, depending on who was coming to visit me and how often we could schedule it with the friends who were coming to give me this secret of acupuncture. And then as I was released it’d be more twice a week, and then once a week, and I still get acupuncture fairly regularly to help with recovery and just overall maintenance of things. But I don't, the treatment plan was similar to, kind of, what you would expect from conventional therapies. 

That’s great. Did your conventional therapist know that you were doing this other stuff and did they have any experience with it? Were they encouraging of it? Did they say that we feel like you're recovering a lot faster? Was there some sort of a sentiment from them that you can share?

I'd say that the therapists were all really excited, all really interested. Not very many of them knew about it or knew what it could do or what it would do. They were, I didn't have one person that wasn't really interested when I would share my experience or where it was going. They’d all say, like, oh we should do that here, we should really talk to them to get them to get that therapy here, and I'm working on that now. But it was, I think, all around my whole medical team as far, like my surgeons, my primary doctor who was on supervision for my case, the nurses around, the physical, every therapist was astounded by how fast I recovered. So, when I was first in they thought I was going to be in the hospital for months, maybe up to a year. They weren't sure what life would look like afterwards, but they were really preparing my family for a long-term change. I was in and out of the hospital in a month, to the day. So they, they were very surprised by that and there's many factors for that. Brain injury isn't, oh it's for sure going to take this long. It's not cut and dry. But I think all around my whole medical team was really surprised by my progress. 

That's amazing. So… you get into this accident, you're in a coma for six days, and you wake up and you sustained a brain injury. You have no idea how to walk or speak or write or learning to just be able to put on clothes some things that we take for granted. You find out you have a broken leg. When I just even imagine what you would have gone through, the thought of you being out of there in one month, it's just nothing short of a miracle. 

It was quite remarkable.

I’m just really impressed that that happened. And it's amazing that you attribute it to the knowledge and the efforts of combining traditional, traditional Chinese and Western medicines. Pretty amazing. 

Your physical therapist or occupational therapist, they were encouraging of acupuncture and acupressure, but maybe weren't as knowledgeable in those, including your speech therapist, but encouraged it. What was your MD’s reaction when, when he or she went through this, this decision process of not putting, not putting the tube in you and allowing you to try a different kind of protein-based product? What was their reaction before and after as you were going through this with them? 

I had a really interesting supervising physician. I had several physicians for different things and depending on the physician, they’d be more open to it or less open to it. I remember my neurosurgeon was very open to it. My supervising doctor was very, kind of, old-school in her way of practice. She, I think she has a reputation in the hospital for being more along those lines of that, so she was very skeptical of any intervention we had. I remember my husband had to, like, really advocate pretty hard and be really firm with some things which was stressful-we're already in this very stressful situation and here we have to step forward and put our foot down and not just like suggest it, but really say like no actually we're doing this. Which, felt uncomfortable because you don't want to be in a place where you're putting someone in a professional situation and on their ‘defense’ either, and we didn't want to override our respect for her because we do have a lot of respect for her knowledge, but we also needed to really advocate really strongly for this. And she eventually kind of started saying, like, okay I'll give you this parameter to work with and if it doesn't work then, you can't do it, we're going to do it my way. So I'll give her, like, she was really helpful for that. And so then we were just like okay here's our chance, we’ve got to do it. And every time she receded and it's like, oh. You did it. Like, okay, guess it worked that time. So it was interesting how she wasn't very open to it, but we pushed hard and we're really well versed in the understanding that your physicians are there to help you. And we knew when they were helping us and when their advice was actually counterproductive for us because we knew our body. 

Which gets me to one of, like, the five key components I think were huge for my recovery, were these and I'll say them. So the first one is, I knew my body. I knew how it worked, I knew how it didn't work. I knew what it liked, what it didn't like, what it responded well to, I just knew it inside out. And every body is different, right? So I knew that as well. What works well for this person might not work well for me because of the way my body operates. 

Second one was I worked really hard to eat really good food. I realized what I put into my body can be huge for my recovery or it can be a barrier to my health and well-being. It can either decrease inflammation or increase inflammation. So I worked really hard to advocate for good food for me, to be able to put things into my body that were going to be beneficial for my healing. My third one, I would say, was I really worked hard to hydrate really well. I think dehydration has a really systemic effect on your whole body. It's similar to a plant so if you have a plant that isn't hydrated very well, it's not going to grow and thrive very big. It's not going to get green, it's going to start to wilt and, kind of, not do very well. If you hydrate it at the right capacity and you give a little bit more water, it will help it grow, it will get more vibrant, it’ll have better color, it will start to flower more. Our bodies are the same. We're seventy percent water. Every single cell in our body needs water, so hydration is huge with nutrition. I think nutrition gets a big focus, we forget about the water. We need to hydrate well.

The third thing I would say is I slept really well. I really strongly, Tyler more than me, advocated for my rest. We would tell, physicians not so much because they would only come once or twice a day, but therapists who were coming to check my blood pressure, or they wanted to see if I had a meal ordered yet,  he would stand at the door and say you cannot come in now, she's sleeping. You can come back in half an hour. Which was a little bit frustrating for them because they were on their schedule, but for him and for me it was my recovery that was our priority and it was ultimately the hospital's priority too, for me to recover well. And rest, I was not going to be able to recover well if I wasn't able to rest well, especially my brain. Sleep is so important, so really good sleep was key. The fourth thing I would say is, we helped the healing happen from the inside out. So we were really cautious of our environment as well. So, I had a diffuser going with really relaxing scents and aromatherapy happening so the room had a sense of relaxation. We had the lights dimmed so I wasn't overly stimulated when I opened my eyes. We made sure that the room and the environment was a calm and quiet one. There was music going on in the background so we were very keen not to just focus on my physical body but the way that the room and the environment would be affecting me. 

And the last one I would say is that we had fun. So we worked, it wasn't always very fun, but we worked hard to have moments of laughter or like stress relieving moments of just doing something for fun, not being so focused all the time on, you have to do this well, you have to do that well, but really getting something to, like, give me joy. Whether it was a book, someone reading out loud to me because I like to listen to a story, or we even start to play some small games that were a part of my therapies but they were just fun. So something, even five minutes, to kind of break out of that stressful situation, to turn the body into more of a relaxed state. So those are the five things I think were huge for my recovery, and I think that if we could integrate that kind of component and approach to care as a whole we would realize we all have the same goals in mind, we just might have different ways of getting there. And that there are boundaries we need to respect. Like, if a physician came in the room and that was the time, then they could come in, if I was sleeping or not, like, their time is really valuable. But if it was for something minor like a blood pressure check or to see if I wanted ice water it could wait. So really understanding the parameters of what they're trying to do and what you're actually needing and helping merge that, I think, is where the integration piece can be really strengthened and we can really work to make that smoother and beneficial for both sides. 

These five things… anybody can do; they can really work to achieve that in a hospital when they're taking care of someone or whether they're the ones being taken care of. One of the biggest things that we hear from our consumers on Trailhead Health is, a hospital is such a, it's so “not a warm place.” And just the idea of it stresses people out, let alone being in it. And what they always want to do is get out of there. But sometimes that's where you need to be, and if you have to be there how can you make it the most comfortable. So I loved every one of those things that you said, thank you so much for sharing those with us, Sophia. This is a very, very powerful story. And, you know, when you talk about pushing with the MDs, pushing with the people that know the Western, that have the Western mindset and the doctors that have learned to do things a certain way, I am so glad that you were with a group that, in the end, allowed you certain parameters.

Me too.

I mean this is your body. We live in a litigious country and people are always worried about if something goes wrong, is that a lawsuit? Did you have to sign any waivers when you decided to do this? Or they just, sort of, worked with you? 

I know there was discussion around that, my husband could probably speak more to that because my ability to process information that high was not present. So if they did discuss it, they did discuss it with Tyler. I don't by any means want to undermine and say that we should be our own physicians, because we shouldn't. We have physicians who are well trained and therapists who know a lot more than we do and we should respect their knowledge, but the piece of that is, their knowledge, oftentimes, is a general breath of what would be good for the majority of people in a situation. If you know for you, for example my dairy situation, that your body doesn't do well with dairy and here's why, you can talk to them in that language and say actually, like, this is a risk for me. It's not, maybe, the risk for everyone because some people do just fine with dairy, the majority of people might, but I don't. So this is a risk to me and here's what I want to do. And so then we came up with a plan together to get a different care plan for me, to advocate for something different. So it wasn't like we were telling them what we were going to do in that realm completely, but we would say we don't want this, what do we have to do it to get it out? And they'd say, well we’d have to do this. I'd say okay great and we'd go do it. And what Tyler would do, my husband Tyler, he would likely do it. I would give him pointers or he'd get help from friends and other physicians that we knew. 

Sophia’s Mission: Integrate Western & Traditional Chinese Medicine

Are there are certain things from Tyler, you know, his perspective of the whole journey that he went through with you as your caregiver that you can share with people that are in that position? 

Yeah, I think for Tyler the weight and the burden of that experience was a little heavier because he wasn't in control and so there was a big piece of having to trust that whatever decision he was making or not making was the right decision. There was a lot of doubt there. So I think the biggest piece for us coming through that was, I remember when I first woke up one of the things he said as the physicians were kind of giving me the rundown of what my injuries were, what their prospect for my recovery was, I remember as soon as they left he turned to me and said, Sophia you're going to be different. Don't listen to what they say. Like, I know you know yourself and you're going to be okay. And I just hung on to, I personally hung on to that strength in his belief in me whenever, who knows it might have turned out very different he may have been wrong in that moment. But what it did for me was it helped me believe in myself. Like maybe the other people had all these doubts of what would actually happen, but Tyler believed in me and he was fighting for me and I wasn't going to let him down, I was going to fight really hard to help show up. And I really think his belief in me helped me have the confidence to step forward in the ways I did to advocate for myself. If he hadn't been believing in me and my ability to recover I think it would have looked much different and I wouldn't have had the courage to say I want this out, I want, he would fight for me when I'd say this isn't good for me. He would advocate for that because I knew my body and he trusted my knowledge. 

Sophia’s Personal Mission: 

I think because I learned so much from that experience and it gave me such a really big drive to merge the two in a way I’ve always seen and have always wanted to do, but now I have the experience that tells me, you know, this needs to be done, this needs to happen. And I'm excited to work to help do that. I think that it's not an us-versus-them, you have to do it this way or that way. It’s, no, how can we work together? We both have really strong goals, we both have amazing knowledge, not we but both, but all of, all of the sides have amazing knowledge and we need to figure out how to work together as a team. A true team with integration. Not being, oh I'm doing this aside from this. Like, no, I'm doing this and it's going to help me in my physical therapy. I'm doing this, it's going to help me with my swallowing. It's a whole comprehensive team where the team members are talking to each other. In that experience, often Tyler or I was the advocate telling our therapists what we were doing in other therapies. That would have been nice to not have to bear that burden and have a really integrated team that was talking together. Like, oh, I’ve seen this or that. Because what you share with your patient is a piece of the puzzle, but it's not the whole thing. I know that from being a physician, or an acupuncture physician at least, that you share what has capacity for that moment or for that person's perspective, not the whole slew of it. But when you're with a professional who shares your knowledge of language and discussion, you don't have to kind of narrow it down, you can tell the whole story. And if we had physicians that could sit at a round table and discuss a case and each of them could talk, a back and forth, with mutual respect and understanding that what they are working on physically, or what they were working on occupationally, or with acupuncture, or what the big overarching theme for the neurologic recovery was, and those people could discuss together, the care plan could be much smoother and really, really powerful. 

Final thoughts from Sophia

I had a very long recovery and it’s still, in some ways, ongoing. I think it's going to be, brain injury isn’t something that happens just once, it's something that you have to recover from. And it's not even a recovery as far as you're trying to get back to where you were. It's changing your perception and understanding who you are now that this has happened to you. I have definitely used acupuncture to heal physically, emotionally, how my body is operating like digestive system and my nervous system, how that's going, what my stress response is, it's all changed. So it's kind of helped me get myself back where, I would say, the medical care I got in the hospital helped me rehabilitate so I can function in life, acupuncture kind of helped me come back to life in the way that I wanted to show up. 

Q: Is acupuncture for pain just a placebo effect? 

A: The placebo effect is something that has gotten a lot of attention in our field, in the past eight years even, and I can say that now there are really good studies out there that prove it's not placebo. There are indications from different studies that study certain points and their effect under a functional MRI, resonance imaging. We have started to see that points that are classically known to help pain all over the body can talk to parts of the brain. For example, LI4 on the hand is well known to move pain and affect pain everywhere. We have, studies showing that under fMRI imaging it shows that the PAG, which is a periaqueductal gray, which is a part of the brain responsible for the perception of pain, kind of turns the volume up on pain or turns volume down on pain, it, this point that helps us decrease pain everywhere activates the periaqueductal gray, the PAG, so it turns down the volume quite a bit.

So this point, LI4, that's known to systemically treat pain everywhere, classically from our ancient texts two thousand to five thousand years ago, is now measured to activate a part of the brain that top-down modulates pain all over the body. So just because we didn't know the physiology before doesn't mean that the pathology isn't there! Two thousand, five thousand years ago, they had the knowledge that this point treated pain all over and now we can see in brain imaging that it really does, or, kind of, why it does. So it's interesting when people argue that it's placebo because there's studies now that prove that it's not placebo. And also, placebo doesn't work in animal studies, and we have a lot of animal studies where that is profound. So it's an interesting argument, but I don't think it stands!

Q: Do you believe that the effect of acupuncture, especially when it comes to pain, is Cumulative? So if someone is dealing with a pain issue, and I draw the analogy to pills. So if someone starts taking pills for pain until the body heals, that need for pills doesn't go away. It's not cumulative. It's not like you need less and less pills if the pain level is the same. How is acupuncture different from that?

A: I do think that acupuncture works in a cumulative effect, like a workout. So if you go to the gym once if you're training for a marathon, you're going to feel better after that workout, but you're not going to be ready to run the marathon or do whatever you're trying to do. It's the repeated going back that's really going to strengthen the body from the inside out and change the way that it operates so that you can run that marathon in a really high, high performance way. Same with acupuncture. You can come once and feel different, and hopefully you'll feel much better after your first treatment, but it's not going to change the physiology underneath and kind of how your body is operating. But, if you come repeatedly in a good treatment plan course, you'll see those changes and they'll stick longer. With pain medications, you're oftentimes just turning your alarm off. So you're just turning the symptom off and kind of having it "be quiet," but you're not fixing the reason why it's painful! There also has to be, like, a lifestyle change or some kind of mechanical change that needs to happen so that the stress isn't on that area of injury or area of pain so that it's alleviated, and acupuncture can work to do that.

Q: Pain is a subjective term. Everybody seems to have a different threshold for pain. What may be painful to you may not be painful to me or some other person or the other way around. And so, could we say that acupuncture, in fact, helps you increase your threshold for pain so you suffer less? Is that an accurate statement?

A: I haven't heard that or seen that in a study or seen evidence of that or looked at it from that perspective, but that would be really interesting; because I could definitely see how it could. It turns off this brain discussion of your perception of pain and so then you'd have a higher threshold, and your pain perception might change too. So that's a really good, I'd love to see some research on that, too!

Q: One of the things that we see a lot in the summer time is running. Runners are out everywhere and they’re running all day long.

What do you say to runners when it comes to, the issues that runners experience are generally around their knees, their joints, from excessive running, what do you say to them when it comes to acupuncture? 

A: Acupuncture in particular can be helpful for those aches and pains, that recovery, that limitation you might have in your ability to push yourself. It can free up the circulation, make the circulation "freer," so that blood is able to get to tissues to nourish them.

Oftentimes, I get runners (as patients) that ask, “what do I do for my runs?” or “what do I need to take?” And I see that the things that are kind of simple can make big changes in their ability to run or what their run experience is like. So, good shoes are a huge one. Get shoes that fit well, that give you the postural support you have. If you don’t have support from the ground up, you’re going to have problems from the ground up; your ankles, your knees, your hips, your low back will all start to come out because your foot isn’t supported correctly for your stride. So definitely get some good shoes.

Hydrate...Really Well. Because you’re using a lot of water and energy to move through your run, so please make sure you’re really well hydrated before and after, and during if you’re able to hydrate during your run. I like to see that level of hydration keep going. Some people get kind of "crampy" or they get an upset stomach if they hydrate in their run, but I do think hydration is key. Electrolytes are part of that as well. I also think that stretching before and after an activity is extremely important. Muscles that are well stretched and looser will fire better and stronger and have a better efficiency in their ability to execute whatever motion that they’re assigned to do with the body.

So make sure your muscles are, you’re not just going for a run. Stretch before and stretch after. You’ll be less sore, and you’re actually going to get more efficient use out of your muscles when they’re stretched well. 

Lyme disease has an acute illness, it’s like a flu, you can get a rash, you get headaches, you get sick, you get fever.  So, we know this is not the controversial portion of Lyme.  Yes, people get Lyme every summer there’s a tick-borne season; has about a week to three-week incubation period so you get bit and then usually get symptoms a week to three weeks later.  This is not what people argue about. The argument is about what happens about 20% of the time, 10-20% of the time…

Controversy #1: What is Chronic Lyme or Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome?

10-20% of the time, Lyme disease can cause chronic, mysterious, long-term illness. This typically takes 6 months or a year to ramp up and so sometimes by the time patients are going “oh my gosh I have chronic fatigue, or fibromyalgia or very mysterious neurological effects of POTS, anxiety, depression, (absolute havoc on their health system) they can’t even remember that they got bit by a tick 9 months ago, or 6 months ago. The argument portion isn’t on the acute phase, the argument portion of Lyme, is; what do you do with this sub portion of Lyme patients that seem to have their health completely unravel from this condition?  

So, is that what Chronic Lyme is?

Yes the term “Chronic Lyme” once again, people will argue over how good that term is.  What we’re really saying is “10-20% of Lyme disease does not self-resolve.  Your body cannot kick it out, and once your body cannot kick it out, it creates a chronic inflammatory state in the body which leads to a diffused set of mysterious symptoms.  There is controversy on treatment, there’s controversy on testing, on how common it is and how uncommon it is, how long it lasts and what it does.  So, this is a huge argument happening within the medical community.

Now I’d like to point out (and I do point this out with my patients)…this actually is not as uncommon as we thought.  If you look at the other famous spirochete, it’s called Syphilis.  So if you read medical history, Syphilis has three stages.  And it doesn’t always go to all three stages.  In fact most of the time it went to stage one and it didn’t go to stage two and stage three. It was only in this small sub-population that Syphilis caused complete and utter havoc.  

If you look at a disease like Polio; most people know Polio because our president FDR had Polio.  It causes this neurological paralysis problem.  Well, it only does that a small percentage of the time! Some people say 1% of the time!  1-5% of the time, are most stats we look at.  

So, Lyme disease is not the only disease that a good majority of the time presents in this… “oh I got a flu, got sick and then I got better and that’s the end of it.”  But in a small percentage of the population, small being 1-20% depending on exactly where you’re looking, it causes more problems and people don’t just get over it.

Controversy #2: Symptoms and Co-Infections

This topic of co-infections: when I go to ILADS conferences and Lyme disease conferences with doctors is one of the biggest things you see variance between doctors. A saying from doctors is that “The tick is nature’s dirty needle.” These ticks live and eat mice blood and deer, and these things don’t just have Babesia or Borrelia, you know Borrelia is Lyme, Babesia is a common co-infection, they often have multiple things.  So when you get bit by a tick, it’s not like you just got one present, you just got a whole hoopla of stuff that just went into your system. And this is also what makes each case a little different so if you get Borrelia with Babesia, or Borrelia with a virus, or Borrelia with Bartonella, you know, these are things that start to make each Lyme presentation very different because you get a different cocktail of microbial bugs that are now, we call them “the monkey piling on your back,” dragging you down.  It can really make each patient a little different, because it's not about just Borrelia, or Lyme, it’s kind of this weird conglomeration of... "you just got bit by a very, very dirty bug and probably got a couple of things in your system at the exact same time."

Controversy #3: Treatment

There are a certain amount of Lyme doctors and Lyme practitioners who just assume you have all the co-infections.  They aren’t even going to spend any money testing and assume you have them all and approach it that way.  That leads us into how accurate is all the testing…but I will tell you that that is a somewhat safe assumption that a lot of doctors make; that we assume this is an absolute mess and you probably have three or four or five things (co-infections) with the Lyme, every time.

That’s such an interesting point of view! 

I’ve been tested for Lyme and I was told the test came back negative, showing I do not have Lyme, but I feel like I do, and I’m not really sure...?

This happens a lot! There is a different argument on how the testing criteria is interpreted. So standard CDC criteria is they run what’s called an Elisa test, and then if that’s positive they do a Blot Test, either a Western Blot or an Immuno-Blot.  On the Blot test (what you look for are) matching Bands.  I tell people the coolest part about this is that they glow which for a nerdy scientist in college it’s like, “oh we’re in a lab and something glows!” So, this kind of a fun test to run!  I literally remember running these things in college, but you’re trying to match 5 out of 10 (Bands) for you to get diagnosed with Lyme. Now the CDC says directly on their website that this is really not to be used for a clinical diagnosis. It’s not really designed for doctors to use it as the criteria and in fact IDSA which is one of the societies for Lyme has a completely different criteria which is much more based on the clinical presentation of a patient.  So between the CDC and IDSA we have actually pretty different criteria, (published criteria), on exactly how to diagnose Lyme. So Welcome to some of the controversy between some of the biggest organizations here! 

Most people will follow CDC criteria...and there are some big problems with this.  This is really set up for epidemiological surveying not for the clinical diagnosis.  It’s set way on the side for if it’s positive, it’s absolutely positive.  But we are going to have a ton of false negatives. {False Negatives= Negative results that are highly inaccurate}  We are not going to have almost any false positives on the CDC criteria.  We have a lot of patients that say I’ve been tested and it was negative. Now what we do is a couple things and I really like what Dr. Richard Horowitz says; he’s got some great Lyme published books and published materials…  I just run the Blot; I don’t like to do the first test, then the second test, I like to run the Blot and there are some Bands that I say are very promiscuous, for example Band #41 will test positive a lot.  Other bands are extremely specific to Lyme and [Dr. Horowitz] says if any of the specific Lyme bands [on the test] Like Band #23, Band #83, and Band #93 and a few others, which are very specific.  If you have the clinical presentation and you’re matching some of those Bands he’s going to make the clinical diagnosis of Lyme.

So what we do in the office is a mixture of making sure you get some more thorough testing then just the initial screener test.  A lot of people just get that initial screener test…you want to try to get the Blot Test and then you have to realize there is some wiggle room in the interpretation of that Blot, particularly when you have a lot of the symptoms as well.

Controversy #4: Testing for Co-Infections

The testing with Lyme disease and co-infections is a huge topic for debate.  Dr. Paul and I love tests, but we are not naive enough to think that tests are perfect.  I think that’s what so many patients tell me “I just want it to be so clear!”  And I tell them, we are going to do some of the best tests available to see if we can gain clarity. I have a regiment of tests, but this has been a journey. I tell people I’m kind of in Phase Three of my Lyme Journey. We started this six or seven years ago, and the way we test and the way we help people with it is different than it was six or seven years ago.  When I first started there was a lab company, Lyme testing was incredibly expensive to get anything that had reasonable reliability. We’re talking $1,500.00 to $2,000.00 for a Lyme + a co-infection type test and that’s a lot of money!  To really just answer the questions of is this Lyme or not, it doesn’t answer, Is it mold? or Do you have inflammation? There’s a whole bunch of other tests you can run. That’s a pretty expensive mark for people. So one of our searches from the last six-seven years is; how can you get a reasonably accurate lab for a price that makes sense for many patients?  I gotta tell you, when the lab was $2,000.00 I didn’t run it very much!  It was a little outside of a lot of patients price range.  

What we’ve been able to get down, long story short with testing is, I usually run two tests for Lyme, those two tests cost about $250.  We think those have hit the cost-value ratio for so many people, if I’m suspicious (that you could have Lyme).  

I also like to test for the two most common co-infections in Minnesota so I will routinely run the two most common co-infections with Lyme and it’s all under $500.  Now you can run more, and we talk about that with each patient that walks in our office, but we often think that, running the most common things in Minnesota, double checking the Lyme through two different methods gives us a very good, cost-effective way to evaluate Lyme in people coming in to see us.  Always correlating it with the clinical symptoms and the clinical picture for a patient.

Do you still need to run these additional tests if someone has already been diagnosed with Lyme or treated for Lyme in the past?

That’s a great question!  If you’ve already been diagnosed with Lyme, we do things just a little differently.  Because I already know you had it at one point and then the question we are asking is “is it gone, are you over it or is this still causing problems?"  Because you had Lyme five years ago does that mean all your problems are coming from Lyme?  The answer might be Yes, and the answer might be No.  If we know we’ve had Lyme in the past, I tell you, we are suspicious because it can pop back up for some people, or they don’t get fully over it. But that is something we have a lot of questions we ask about that, if it’s in your history.  And I’ll do a little bit different testing procedure to see if we’re still really struggling with that.  But it’s an important question to ask because we find both assumptions on a case which is; you had Lyme, you’re over it, so therefore none of your problems can come from Lyme ever again. And then we also get practitioners that will blame everything on Lyme once you’ve had it, so nothing else ever can be thought of because you had Lyme once, so nothing else is on the radar!  It’s important to try to not make assumptions and try to look with an open mind and say; are your problems still coming from the Lyme? Is there something else that has happened that we need to make sure we don’t just assume it’s All the Lyme and then we miss, you know, this other (co-infection)?

Is the treatment the same regardless of the co-infections?

No!! For example we alter our protocol if you have a really bad viral infection, so there are different things you want to do for viruses, both Epstein-Barr viruses, Cytomegaloviruses, other viral problems.  If you have Babesia, Babesia is a red blood cell parasite. I always tell people; If you are interested in it, read about Malaria, it’s like Malaria, it just doesn’t kill you.  And to be blunt, in America if it doesn’t kill you, we don’t spend a lot of research on it, it just makes you miserable, it doesn’t kill you, we’re not going to spend money and time on it! Babesia, like I said is a red blood cell parasite.  Anaplasma is a white blood cell parasite; because the physiology is a little different, they are in different cells, you really have to approach them with some subtle differences.  There are some commonalities for sure, but there are differences, depending on what you are presented with for these co-infections.

We have a patient who really struggled for five years with this mysterious illness. She’s a highly educated professional, holds an advanced degree and was in her business, has started her family, and all of a sudden started to get ill.  She went to see lots of doctors, very expensive, down to The Mayo Clinic; very common when something gets mysterious that we’re down to The Mayo Clinic.  About a third of our people (patients) have been to The Mayo Clinic, and still couldn’t quite grab the answers.

And five years into this program, her husband comes to her and says, “I’m out. Im done. No one knows what you have, I don’t know if you’re making it up, I can’t function like this. I’m sorry but I’m leaving."  She did what she had to do, she just moved forward.  She’s got two kids, so you have to handle that, and her husband is going… "I can’t do it.”  So she lost her family, kind of, at least that was not how she expected it to go, she’s seeing her career slip away because she’s missing work. She’s going to her car to take two naps a day, just to get through a workday. And then when she gets home, she can’t really be the mom she wants to be.  

So this is a person, like I said, extremely well accomplished and educated before this all happened.  And her story just kind of broke my heart, because I’m going… "Okay, what happened?” And she found a Lyme functional medicine person in the cities, three years ago, diagnosed her with Lyme, and then started some stuff for her. And I met her, and we started talking and I said, “Well, how long have you been working on this?”  

She said, “Three years.”

I said, "Well how are you doing, that’s kind of a long time."  

She asked, “Is it a long time?”

I said, “ Well we tell people 12-18 months you really should be quite good.”  

She says, “Well it’s been three years!”

I asked, “Well, okay...are you better?!”

She replied, “I’m worse than when I started.”

I said “well maybe you need a second opinion.” I took a look at her protocol… she was taking 46 pills every day, which is somewhat common, you know, you’re on 12-15 different vitamins.  A lot of times when you are sick they start to pile up. So it was 46 pills…and I looked at this and I said “Of your protocol…44 of 46 pills are just trying to ‘help you keep it together. Two pills [vitamins] a day are really in my opinion trying to move you forward from point A to point B.  And I said that I thought this is really a disproportionate amount of what you are doing.  I tell people, we really want 80% of what you’re doing to be moving you forward. And we want 20% to be helping you get by, so you don’t have to suffer. I used to say “100% of the root cause!” That’s a mistake that an early doctor makes; 100% of the root cause means you are miserable while you’re going for the root cause; 80% means you’re making progress and the 20% helps people smooth it out.

But she started working with us about 6 months ago, and I’ve got to tell you, the last three months have been some of the best months she’s had in ten years!! And that’s some pretty quick results, although, she’s had some things going for her…but the last appointments were these kinds of “boring appointments” I’m talking about.  “How ya’ doin?”  

“Doing Good.”

“What are you doing?”

"I’m doing all this stuff with my family…trips with my girls. I haven’t had to take a nap in a month, I just work the day.”  

“And then what do you do?”

“Well then I go home and I’m Mom to my girls.”  

And I go…”Well Good!”  

[She asks] “Well do you want to change anything?”

I say “Uhhh, not really!!”

If it’s going that good, my general rule is let’s be patient, when it’s going good! The better it’s going, the more patient I am, the worse it’s going, the more I want to fiddle and change and alter things.  She’s the patient that, I saw her a couple week ago and I’m seeing her again in a few weeks…that, I’m thrilled for her ability to engage in her career because she has career aspirations and her ability to engage as a mom, because it’s been 10 years of her going “I can’t do the things in life…I can’t live the life I want to live because I don’t have the health to do it.

So, she is one of my patients we’re getting good results with it and I’m excited for her to get all the way through. There are some other people too who have similar stories; those are the [patient] stories that tend to get me when “I have career goals, I have family goals, I have these things, and they are just not happening because I have this illness.  Can you please help me re-gain even the option of being able to work in my life? And that’s really what we want to help people do, is re-gain their life, re-gain the health to at least engage in their life!

We undoubtedly know that Lyme disease is extremely common in Minnesota.  Minnesota is the #5 state in the country, Wisconsin is #4 so if we’re here, we know we're dealing with Lyme disease on a semi-frequent basis. 300,000- 400,000 cases per year in The US, and when you look at the data, that means 40,000ish in MN... 45,000-50,000 in WI, and if you think 10-20% of these are going chronic, we’ll say 8,000 cases a year, every year in MN that’s adding to this mysterious Lyme disease problematic population.  And this has been going on for years, which means we have 50,000-100,000 different Minnesotans suffering with this. So, I will tell people if you are mysteriously sick and don’t know the cause…We’re in Minnesota, it’s on the table!

Somewhere between 20-50% of people get a (bullseye) rash, which means 80-50% of people don’t get the rash so we tell people the rash is awesome because if you get the rash you kind of know, oh, this is (Lyme), slam dunk it home…there is a huge portion of people that don’t get the rash that have this problem.  

CO-INFECTIONS:

The big MN co-infections are Babesia, which is very famous, people talk about Babesia, Bartonella, and Borrelia, Borrelia is Lyme, “Bardy” is Bartonella, you know, we get these affectionate names… but actually the #1 co-infection in Minnesota is Anaplasmosis, and I talk to doctors about this and they go “What?! Anaplas-what?? And this is very mysterious to doctors because it causes low white blood cells and an acute infection, it causes a slight elevation in liver enzymes not a crazy elevation, but a slight elevation, usually it stays under 200.  So what I get is I’ll catch people who have been chronically sick and they say “Yeah when I got sick I went into the doctor.”  “Okay did they run some tests?”  “Yeah, and they didn’t know what was wrong because my white blood cells were low and said I was all fine.”  “Were they worried about your liver?”  “THEY WERE WORRIED ABOUT MY LIVER! But that got better…in a couple weeks to a month.”  “Okay, has it sporadically popped up in the last five years, every once in awhile?”  “It has, but it always goes back to normal.”  I go…”okay, that’s Anaplasmosis.” 

We are the #5 state in the nation, Wisconsin is #3 for Anaplasmosis, Maine snuck in there, Maine is #4…and this is a disease that is weird because it causes slight elevations of liver enzymes, low white blood cells, doctors are very confused by it, no one tests for it. So one of the secrets in my office is I run an Anaplasmosis test…it’s not expensive, maybe $90-$100 something like that, and we find a lot of people who have Anaplasmosis, because the standard testing is you run Lyme and if that’s negative…you run Nothing else!!

Now in MN I really think you should run Lyme with at least Babesia and Anaplasma because those are the two most common…at a minimum!  We do find people who are negative on Lyme and are positive on Anaplasmosis! Over two-thirds of our patients if this is on the table have never even had it mentioned! So, all I do is I bring up the maps, I mention the numbers and I go… “We should look at this, this is really a possibility of what may be causing your problem.

One of the questions that we get often on Trailhead Health is “I’ve had arthritis, I’ve never been tested for Lyme…should I be tested for Lyme?”

Absolutely.  The symptoms for Lyme that we really see are prevalent, is it Causes Pain; it frequently causes Pain! That can be headaches/migraines, that can be arthritis-type joint pain, it can be muscle pain. Probably ¾ of the time…it causes pain. 

The other big symptom; it causes fatigue and/or chronic fatigue.  If you have both fibromyalgia & fatigue syndrome, it’s way high on the list

The third symptoms it causes frequently are the neurological symptoms, so we get anxiety, depression, we get POTS we get very abnormal neurological sensations...and Dr. Paul can talk more about that.  But if we see neurological symptoms/brain fog, with pain and fatigue those are the big things in my brain that start to light up of “Is this a Lyme patient in front of me…it at least has to be considered.”  And we’ve had other people that have been told “Well, you’re just going to have to hurt.”  And we’ve found, that No, [the pain] is just coming from Lyme!

Q: Could you share with us, were you doing anything before seeing Dr. Wilson to try to address your allergies? Did you know you had allergies before Dr. Wilson?

Yeah, so I actually have had two pretty significant allergies since I was very young. I'm not sure if I had them when I was born or acquired them very young, but I have allergies to seafood and to tree nuts where I get an anaphylactic reaction, so it's quite severe. And probably about ten years ago I started having some major digestive issues, I didn't realize that I was necessarily having issues with the food I was eating and that's what was causing it, but I've come to realize through Dr. Wilson that a lot of the foods that I was eating were triggering the symptoms that I was having. So it's been an interesting journey with Dr. Wilson just learning about how your body reacts to food. 

Q: How quickly did you see results in working with Dr. Wilson? 

Yeah, I am very happy to say that I saw results within two days. It was amazing. I thought that I was eating healthy and when he started me on the program, within two days I saw significant results. I would say over the last year it's been a very significant change. So when I first started seeing Dr. Wilson, my quality of life was probably about a three and it is somewhere between a nine and ten today I'm very happy to report. 

Fantastic! 

Q: Did you ever think that allergies could actually be eliminated before meeting Dr. Wilson? 

Absolutely not. Absolutely not, no.

Q: How would you describe to other patients what Dr. Wilson's process is for working with you to eliminate allergies?

So how much detail do you want me to go into here?

Q: So, yeah, it’s a fun question but a tough one for our patients. So from a patient's perspective, how could you describe what Dr. Wilson has done? 

Yeah, so, you know, I have had allergies, significant allergies, since I was very little. And I had heard friends that had done, like, the spot testing on their back or their arm to figure out which foods they're allergic to, and I never wanted to do that because I figured that it would be painful and I already knew some of the foods that I was allergic to. And with Dr. Wilson, it's completely different. Nothing hurts, nothing is invasive, you’re not taking any pills that are going to have side effects on you. It's all natural, it's holistic, and that makes me feel really good about the treatment that I'm having because I know there aren't any negative side effects to it. So. it's all a kind of treatment that you leave feeling better than you came in, and those results actually stay with you for a long time. 

When I had my first meeting with Dr. Wilson, it was a very emotional meeting because I had been to so many doctors that were telling me that nothing was wrong with me and I was very frustrated. And, as I mentioned earlier, my quality of life was very low, so I was pretty miserable. And when I saw him for the first time, he just explained that he really wanted to help. He explained what his process was and it was like I was on a journey with him to better health. And he's been that way since day one. So we've been working with each other for over a year now and I will continue to come to him because I want to continue to get better. He is such a special person that really cares about his patients. Any issue that I'm having, I can talk to him about it; he usually has ideas. He continuously is always learning new things and always trying out new things. So even if something doesn't work, he's got some other thing that he can try out with you. It's very inspiring to be around him as a patient and it leaves me as a more inspired person. 

The patient had just bought a brand new Ford Taurus, right before her symptoms started. Formaldehyde can be found in the inner lining of many cars, including this model of Ford. Most doctors don’t even know to screen for formaldehyde, but Dr. Wilson did! 

He treated me for the allergy and ever since then, I’ve felt fantastic. My symptoms have gone away and I’ve regained my appetite, no more back pain, so it was a very positive experience. I really, I wasn't eating. I was losing weight substantially and the doctors, you know… I went and saw a GI specialist and they did an endoscopy and they couldn't find anything wrong. And they said well, let's just put you on medication and see if that helps, and if not come back we'll put you on more medication. So they were looking at the symptoms and they weren't trying to figure out what the issue or the cause was. I didn't think something like that would cause an allergy or it would come out that way. I had no allergies that I could remember before this. But at that point I was so in pain and miserable I was trying to figure out what was going on and I wasn't getting answers and so it was, just, I have to try something different. 

Q: How quickly did you see results after working with Dr. Wilson?

Within days. Within days, yeah. 

Q: How is Dr. Wilson as a doctor to you? 

Fantastic. He is reliable, caring, if I need him for anything he's always there. I've recommended him just so many people and they've had great results with him. I can't speak any more highly of him. He's just, he's fantastic.

When Taylor first came to see Dr. Wilson, she had no idea that she had allergies. 

I think the first thing that drew me in was, I wanted to get blood testing done and from what I had heard, Dr. Wilson had a very, comprehensive blood test that, kind of, just checked off all the boxes of things that I wanted tested, so it seemed like a good option. And then, I also had family who came to him and recommended him.

In addition to allergy screening, Dr. Wilson recommended an extensive blood panel for Taylor. She had 44 different allergies and sensitivities[SS1]  that were causing her health problems including auto-immune type symptoms. 

I worked with Dr. Wilson probably, I think it was almost eight months and I came in three times a week. So it's a long process, but I think progressively, like, as I went through that process I started seeing results, and then, you know, obviously by the end was feeling a lot better than when I first began. But it was kind of a gradual process. 

Q: Which result has been your personal favorite?

This is kind of a weird one, but I feel like my favorite has been my digestion. Just because, like, throughout my entire life I've had so many problems with that and I didn't ever really think that it was not normal to have bad digestion, I just kind of thought that was a normal thing that everyone dealt with. And after going through everything with Dr. Wilson, I just noticed, that I was very regular, everything was completely normal, and I didn't have any problems with that anymore, which was super nice and something that I wasn't expecting.

We asked Taylor how she justified paying out of pocket for Dr. Wilson’s Allergy Elimination Protocol.

The way I look at it is, it's your entire life you're talking about, and your health, and that's something that I believe is worth investing in. So whatever that's going to take I think is worth it just so you can, you know, become your best self and live your best life. Whether that's, you know, with insurance or not, it's worth it in the end. The difference between working with a regular doctor versus someone like Dr. Wilson is he's going to look at like the root cause of why you're having problems and it's not just like going to a normal doctor where they're like, oh, you have headaches. Let me give you this prescription to help it. You know, it's not just treating the symptom, it's actually trying to heal you from the ground up, which is something you're not going to find everywhere and makes it worth the money. 

Dr. Wilson’s protocol is unique and sometimes hard to describe. 

Q: How do you describe what Dr. Wilson does to your friends and family? 

Yeah, this is kind of a hard one to explain. So essentially what I say is he uses lasers and acupressure points to, kind of, tell your body that a certain allergen is okay and not something to react to.

Q: Would you have believed that allergies can be eliminated before working with Dr. Wilson? 

No I wouldn't. And so that was something when I started working with him, I'm like, I didn't even know that you could possibly get rid of them. And, like, every normal doctor you go to, they'll just give you medication to, like, help deal with your allergy. But, you know, I've never heard anything like, oh you can actually get rid of them. 

Q: How is Dr. Wilson as a doctor to you? 

I would say he's more than just a doctor to me. And the reason behind that is, he's someone that I know genuinely cares for me as a person. And, like, whatever concern I have I know he's going to try and address that. And I guess, like, an example to that is, he's helped me not only with just, like, my physical health and my allergies, but, like, if I have something emotionally going on, he always helps me work through that. And every time I come in, you know, we talk about life, we don't just talk about the work that he's doing or my physical health. And over my eight months of coming in three times a week I think we've just gotten to know each other very well and I know that, like, he will always be there for me on, like, a personal level as well, which is something that I have really appreciated.

Q: Anything else you’d like other people to know? 

I guess one thing is that when you start working with Dr. Wilson, like, you have to put in the effort too. And Dr. Wilson can help you and the things that he does are amazing, but at the end of the day, your health is your own responsibility. And when he recommends doing a certain diet or following other things, like, I would just say those are just as important as actually coming into the office and having him treat you for an allergy. And I think when I first started working with Dr. Wilson and he wanted me to cut out gluten and dairy and I'm like, there's no way I can do that; that's not going to happen. And I came to realize if I want the best results for myself, then I have to put in the work outside of the doctor's office as well. 

So I started seeing Dr. Wilson just over a year ago, and I was experiencing a lot of health issues. I had been to a lot of different doctors and everyone was telling me there wasn't anything wrong with me. And it was interesting coming here for the first time because Dr. Wilson was different from day one. He was very interested in hearing me, what was important to me, the issues that I was having, and really seemed to care about addressing those issues and getting me into a better state of health. So he did some extensive testing with me right away and was able to tell me what was going on with my body, which was very, very refreshing and depressing at the same time! But I was so happy to have some answers, finally. And within a couple of weeks we made some significant progress and honestly I couldn't be happier with the services that I've had with him. 

Q:  Could you share with us, were you doing anything before seeing Dr. Wilson to try to address your allergies? Did you know you had allergies before Dr. Wilson?

Yeah, so I actually have had two pretty significant allergies since I was very young. I'm not sure if I had them when I was born or acquired them very young, but I have allergies to seafood and to tree nuts where I get an anaphylactic reaction, so it's quite severe. And probably about ten years ago I started having some major digestive issues, I didn't realize that I was necessarily having issues with the food I was eating and that's what was causing it, but I've come to realize through Dr. Wilson that a lot of the foods that I was eating were triggering the symptoms that I was having. So it's been an interesting journey with Dr. Wilson just learning about how your body reacts to food. 

Q: How quickly did you see results in working with Dr. Wilson? 

Yeah, I am very happy to say that I saw results within two days! It was amazing. I thought that I was eating healthy and when he started me on the program, within two days I saw significant results. I would say over the last year it's been a very significant change. So when I first started seeing Dr. Wilson, my quality of life was probably about a three and it is somewhere between a nine and ten today I'm very happy to report. 

Q: Fantastic! Did you ever think that allergies could actually be Eliminated before meeting Dr. Wilson? 

Absolutely not. Absolutely not, no.

Q: How would you describe to other patients what Dr. Wilson's process is for working with you to eliminate allergies?

So how much detail do you want me to go into here?

Q: So, yeah, it’s a fun question, but a tough one for our patients. So from a patient's perspective, how could you describe what Dr. Wilson has done? 

I have had allergies, significant allergies, since I was very little. And I had heard friends that had done, like, the spot testing on their back or their arm to figure out which foods they're allergic to, and I never wanted to do that because I figured that it would be painful and I already knew some of the foods that I was allergic to. And with Dr. Wilson, it's completely different. Nothing hurts, nothing is invasive, you’re not taking any pills that are going to have side effects on you. It's all natural, it's holistic, and that makes me feel really good about the treatment that I'm having because I know there aren't any negative side effects to it. So it's all a kind of treatment that you leave feeling better than you came in, and those results actually stay with you for a long time. 

When I had my first meeting with Dr. Wilson, it was a very emotional meeting because I had been to so many doctors that were telling me that nothing was wrong with me and I was very frustrated. And, as I mentioned earlier, my quality of life was very low, so I was pretty miserable. And when I saw him for the first time, he just explained that he really wanted to help. He explained what his process was and it was like I was on a journey with him to better health. And he's been that way since day one. So we've been working with each other for over a year now and I will continue to come to him because I want to continue to get better. He is such a special person that really cares about his patients. Any issue that I'm having, I can talk to him about it; he usually has ideas. He continuously is always learning new things and always trying out new things. So even if something doesn't work, he's got some other thing that he can try out with you. It's very inspiring to be around him as a patient and it leaves me as a more inspired person. 

I'm Pam V. I had 45 that he came up with. What I actually came to Dr. Wilson for was an allergy I'm having in my eye, and we're still trying to get to the bottom of that, but I have been taking treatments for the other allergies that I have. 

Q: Can I ask, why did you pick Dr. Wilson’s treatment?  

I had been with another holistic doctor and last fall he relocated out of state, so I was kind of looking for another doctor there in that respect. But my eye doctor told me I needed to see an allergist because drops and stuff just weren't working for my eyes. So when I came in to him I did not even realize he was a holistic doctor, I just thought he was a general allergist and, was, that's what I was expecting, and so it was truly a Bonus! So he's been, when he tested me and found out everything else, so he's been doing treatment on me and getting to the bottom of things and I've learned a lot more even from him. 

Q: How quickly did you see results in working with Dr. Wilson?

Probably more so, I started in February I believe, probably more so in the last month to two months.

Now it's, I feel more clear and I just, I just have a better overall feeling. 

Q: Of the results you've seen with Dr. Wilson, what has been your personal favorite? 

I feel like a couple of things, because I dealt with a lot of exhaustion over the last few years and I believe that that is going away, so I do have more energy. Still working on getting my strength back, you know, and I just feel, and this has just been in the last, maybe, within the last month, I feel more clear like I've been cleansed. Like, my body is feeling, I'm just lighter and better and I hope it stays that way. 

Q: How did you justify paying out of pocket to work with Dr. Wilson? 

Well, yeah, because I totally believe in holistic healing, 100%. What I have seen over the last few years and I just, I just am somebody who knows that, I know it's going to cost me but I know what I've been dealing with and I know I'm going to get better. And so for me, it's worth it to pay that money.

Q: What would you say to someone unsure about paying out of pocket for Dr. Wilson’s services? 

Well I have talked to so many people about this over the years and how it just has made an incredible difference in my health, but actually it was my mother several years ago who wanted me to go to a holistic chiropractor, at the time, and it took me five years. It took me five years. And then it was, I said mom why didn't you make me! And because it was just, I was convinced. I mean, because I know what they've done for me. 

Q: Would you have believed that allergies can be eliminated before meeting Dr. Wilson? 

Yeah, but I just never realized that these are really allergies. I knew that there were things that I was sensitive to: foods and cleaning products, health products, beauty products. So I've slowly been eliminating those certain things, but I just really didn't feel that I was allergic to them. Because, to me, allergic means you have a huge reaction. And so when you don't even know that you're allergic to them, you know. 

Q: How is Dr. Wilson as a doctor to you, personally? 

I feel like, he is, just his whole bedside manner and his care and compassion, that is what I've always believed a doctor should be. And over the years, that's the way they used to be, and over the years it's in and out in and out. It's just like, you know, you're on an assembly line and that really, both with my daughter when she was younger, myself with health issues, and I'm just really, really turned off. Another thing I would like to say as far as holistic healing, I went off all my six medications back in 2011. I don't even take aspirin today and I can control my health issues. Not that it's easy, you have to have a lot of discipline, but I don't take any medications at all. 

Q: Good for you! What else would you like to talk about as far as your experience in working with Dr. Wilson? 

Just that he is truly a genuine person and he truly is interested in helping you and it's not all about the dollars, you know. And I'm certainly not saying that it's, you know, not expensive and stuff because, you know, it can cost a lot of money to get to the, to, you know, get your problem, your issues taken care of but so is the conventional doctor, you know? And as far as insurance not paying, it's totally not the doctors, it is the insurance company. That's probably one of my big beefs because they just truly, and Dr. Wilson has, truly, you know, helped me in just the six months that I've been here. Just, anybody who is contemplating, you know, taking a holistic route to recovering your health, it is 100 percent truly worth it. But you do have to be disciplined, you do have to believe. But seeing is believing and if you, you know, get to that point then you will never go back. 

Q: Did you ever think allergies could be eliminated before meeting with Dr. Wilson?

Roxy: I did not. And I will say that I'm a bit of a skeptic and I was pleasantly surprised when my husband had the success that he did. Because when he first started coming to Dr. Wilson I wasn't sure what his experience would be. But, you know, we would go to restaurants that had open-air kitchens and we would have to leave those restaurants because the scents were just overwhelming to my husband. And sometimes we would be in church, in our liturgy they use a lot of incense, and we would have to leave liturgy because the scents were overwhelming to my husband. And after he got treated for certain allergens and we were able to resume our normal living where we could go and enjoy a nice dinner or go to church and not have those interruptions, that's when I was sold. I said okay, there's something here and I guess I believe it.

Shelly: About a year ago is when I started seeing Dr. Jay, and it was for allergy elimination as well as some issues with anxiety and depression based on a situation I was going through at the time. So, they had such good success with him that they referred me to him. So I've been seeing him for about a year now.

Q: Can you share with us how many allergies you did have that you uncovered through Dr. Wilson's protocol? 

Roxy: My situation is a little bit unique. I came to Dr. Wilson two years ago for some debilitating symptoms like brain fog and some gastrointestinal issues and a host of other issues, and so I didn't really come knowing that I had allergies. It wasn't until we did the protocol that he was able to identify between the 60 and 70 that I realized that I had an issue with allergies.

Shelly: So when I came to him we had actually worked together to create a plan that would, number one, so he did the whole allergy elimination to find out how many allergens I have, but then we also created, like, a detox plan to go through and just detox. I've never done in detox before so we did a natural one that uses oregano and oil and all these different, kind of, natural herbs, and so that helped to kind of get my body jump-started and level-set so that when I started the allergy elimination process that it would take pretty easily. 

Dr. Wilson develops the detox protocol based on each patient’s needs, allergies, and the findings from the blood work. Not everyone needs to do the detox. 

Q: How quickly did you see results in working with Dr. Wilson? 

Roxy: I would say pretty soon after we started I noticed some relief in different pains that I had felt in my shoulder and other areas, so I would say within the first couple of months I definitely started feeling some relief. 

Shelly: Yeah, not too far behind that for me. I'd say within the first two to three months, especially knowing that I went through the detox protocol, I started seeing relief from that, like, immediately. And then when we started the allergy elimination I started to feel relief from that as well. I would come in sometimes with just neck pains and he would do an adjustment and I would feel better like that day. So, you know, he's just got miracle hands, you know, it’s really been great. He's extremely knowledgeable. I mean, every time I come in here I'm like, what you find out this week Dr. Jay? And there's either some new vitamins or there's, you know, something new that he's learned that, you know, he's always staying up-to-date with the latest and greatest, kind of, information just in health in general. So, he's compassionate, he's very knowledgeable, and yet he's got an energetic kind of passion about, like, what he does. You can tell that he thoroughly enjoys what he does and that just makes it so much more, you know, enjoyable to come in and work with someone that really wants to be doing this and not necessarily just for a day job. 

Q: How would you justify paying out of pocket for this treatment? 

Roxy: So I can say, my husband, his family is Greek and my mother-in-law, she has a saying that she learned a long time ago. And it's “you pay now or you pay later!” And I would say I listened to that phrase and it makes so much sense that you can either pay it now or you can pay it later, and if you pass the buck now, down the road your symptoms are going to get worse. And so I justify paying it because I know it's going to help me. And secondly, I have the faith and the trust knowing that he has the results proven from others who have come before us that he's been able to help. So I'm quite comfortable with paying that and I just look at it as another, as another expense and my health is worth it. 

Shelly: Yeah, I would say that, you know, it seems like it might be a lot up front because it's not something that generally, you know, your health insurance would cover, but I had been to doctors before and, overwhelmingly they want to write you a prescription or they want to get you, you know, basically in and out of the office as quick as you can. So after doing that for so long, you can really take a stand and say okay, do I want to try and do this the traditional way or do I want to try and do it more holistically that's going to be better for me in the long run? And so, you know, for me, I have HSA funds that I was able to use towards it and it was just worth my health, knowing that, you know, it was going to be better for me in the long run. And it's not something that necessarily is just reduced after one visit. So you are coming over a period of time and while you're doing that some allergens may clear a lot quicker than others, so depending on how severe your allergy is could require multiple follow-up visits for it. And I know both Roxy and I had some pretty strong allergies. He said, I think, one of the toughest allergy patients he's had. And so there's been some where I've come in and they've been cleared in a day, but then others like, you know, the typical mold and dust allergens have taken, you know, several times. 

Q:  Anything else you'd like to add at all about working with Dr. Wilson? 

Roxy: Yeah well, my sister and I we are identical twins, and so this is kind of a unique situation. I think we're one of the first identical twin sets that Dr. Wilson has had, and so with our allergies being so similar across the board for us, I think we've both had just really good results and I think our experience has been so good. You know, you come to know a practitioner not knowing quite what they bring to the table, and if we have any questions or, just like Shelly had said to your point about, he is so knowledgeable and is always staying up to date, that it's assuring as a patient knowing that you're getting the kind of quality care that you get by coming to Dr. Jay. 

Shelly: Yeah I would say, just to add on to that a little bit, so not only have we been using him, I also have a son that has autism. And so, because I've had such, a good experience over the last year of coming for elimination, we're now working with my son and seeing improvements with his behavioral, kind of, attitude, and it's a long road. I wouldn't say that he's severe on the spectrum but he's, you know, somewhere in the middle, and so Dr. Jay has done a ton of research and is always open to trying, you know, something new just to see what works and what doesn't. So it's been very helpful.

Special thanks to Shelly and Roxy for sharing their stories!

Which might be different than how acupuncture is used for the general public. For sports medicine, acupuncture is awesome for relieving muscle tension. All of those knots you feel, those are adhesions in the muscle and acupuncture can go and blow them up and get the muscle fibers to realign. It’s great for joint pain, inflammation, blood flow...so getting you ready for the game. Or inflammation, bringing you down after the game. You have built up lactic acid and inflammation. It’s really good for helping to control stress. Even if, you don’t know it is. You get off the table, and it’s what I call “acupuncture drunk” where you get off, and you’re just kinda, good. For pain management, it can help shorten the duration of time it could take for a patient to heal. It’s really good for Tendnosis, Tendinitis, Headache. Acupuncture is fantastic for a concussion. So as you can see the list goes on and on.

If an athlete is having trouble with digestion that’s also something I look at. Or if they are not sleeping well, that is something I look for because then they are not performing at the top level. 

I work on pain management, inflammation, flexibility, sleep, muscle tone - all of that with them. 

Some people would probably wonder, “Well, how does that work to bring an acupuncturist in?” I work synergistically with the whole medical training staff. All the trainers, all the ortho docs, general docs, the chiropractors, the massage therapist who’s there. We all work together and communicate about what the athlete is experiencing and how we can all help that. 

A couple of times a week I go down to Winter Park, and the guys are booked for me. I always see the injured guys who are on the list. And then the guys who aren’t injured or maybe aren’t as injured will see me at my studio. After that, I communicate back to the head athletic trainer what I did and how the treatment went so that he always has his finger on the pulse for what’s going on for these multi-million dollar bodies that we are all trying desperately to keep healthy and keep on the winning side of the game.

Do you always work in the same way with every athlete or is it different?

I have a huge, so it’s just whatever they need at the time that they need it. Even if I’m treating the same guy day to day and he has the same issue I’m probably going to treat it differently because his body is reacting differently and presenting differently.

About Dr. Hilary Patzer

Dr. Hilary Patzer, L.Ac. is a licensed acupuncturist and Chinese Herbalist in MN. Being an athlete herself and having worked with pro and elite athletes since 2009, she believes that it takes a fusion of sports medicine, holistic healing, and manual therapies to keep people performing at their best. This video is part of our Educational Series at Trailhead Health, where our community of amazing Doctors and Practitioners share their experiences to help answer your health-related questions.

Energy is everywhere! It's in clients that we work with, it's in spaces that we work in, so energy exchanges can absolutely happen between a healthcare provider and a patient. 

It can happen in a room; if you're seeing a lot of people in a room and you notice when you come into a room and it just feels heavy, it feels, like, you know, you want to feel lighter when you come into a space. So it's really important to maintain your own energetic clarity as much as possible. This happens frequently when you're working with someone else because their energy can be bounced onto you, you're also bouncing energy onto them, and so that's why it's important and responsible for your own energy to be as clear as possible because you don't want to be bouncing your own stuff onto them, right? 

Then also, you don't want to be absorbing what they are going through too much into your own world. You want to be able to stay as clear and centered so that as you go into your own life, you're not carrying a lot of that negativity back with you. There's always going to be energy exchanges no matter what. You want to do it mindfully, you want to do it responsibly, right, so that you are giving your clients the best energy possible, and then you're also not taking in any energy that is not in your highest good.

So burnout for healthcare providers is real, and there are different signs that it can be happening to you. One of the signs is feeling tired for no apparent reason, one of the signs is not wanting to go into work the same way that you used to, one of the signs can be, simply, almost a “resentment” that you have to see another patient, or add on something else into your day. And for me, that is one of the number one signs of when I know I'm starting to get burnt out, is that I, kind of, start “resenting” that I have to see, you know, one more patient or one more thing that gets put into my schedule. And that's when I know, okay I'm overbooked. I need to cut back, I need to start taking care of myself better, because that’s the last energy I would ever want to bring into a session with someone is resentment! We want to bring compassion; we want to bring the highest energy possible at all times. Burnout can be a combination of physical, mental, emotional, and energetic, and that's what makes it complicated. So, sometimes it's a matter of looking at your scheduling and doing a business review, so-to-speak, of how are you organizing your practice; are there ways that you can manage your own energy field a little bit better? Sometimes it's mental. How are you approaching your day? How are you approaching your clients? Sometimes it's emotional. We can absorb emotions from our clients if we're not careful, and as many energy practitioners or holistic practitioners are aware, most people that are coming to us have a lot of emotional, physical things they want healed and that's why they're coming to us. So we have to be very careful about that. And then energetically, spiritually, we are giving what we have to our clients on a daily basis and we need techniques and tools to replenish that energy ourselves, otherwise we will end up feeling drained if we're not careful. We're doing energy exchanges with people all the time whether we're conscious of it or not. 

So ideally, we have knowledge of how to protect our own energy, how to recuperate our own energy, but unfortunately a lot of people don't know how to do that, they're not taught that in chiropractic school or acupuncture school. And they go off into their practice and realize, ‘oh my gosh I'm drained every night. I thought this was my passion, but maybe it's not because I'm feeling so drained, or I'm feeling so tired all the time. 

So what I offer are ways to help people recover that passion and recover that energy and realize, oh, maybe this is still my passion, I just needed a few more techniques and tools so that I can regain that passion again! So what I've seen is that people shift from being tired and exhausted and not even sure if they want to keep doing their career anymore, to people that are loving their career again and excited to be passionate about their job, which is what their soul has really been meant to be doing this whole time!

Self-care is so important. I was forced to learn self-care for myself because I neglected it for a few years and realized that it is probably one of the most important things that healers can do for themselves is self-care. We have to be on Top of the list of making sure that we are doing what we need to do to take care of ourselves, making sure that we are getting enough sleep, that we're eating healthy foods, that we're taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. And sometimes we, as healers, have difficulty saying no. We want to help as many people as possible and it's noble and it's wonderful, but also learning to set healthy boundaries of, maybe I need to scale back on how many days a week that I'm working, maybe I need to restructure how I'm helping people. And that's really important so that you don't burn out. Because you have unique gifts to offer the world and that's why you became a healer. 

We have to maintain your own energy so that you can continue to offer those gifts for many years to come.

Q: What are the typical symptoms if I have leaky gut? 

It can be a lot of different things. Intestinal permeability, by the way, is the clinical or the medical name for leaky gut. That's why a lot of people will say, like, well it's not in the research. That's because its, intestinal permeability is the name for leaky gut medically. 

Leaky gut could result in many different symptoms, both localized (in the gut) and systemic (all over the body). Dr. Paul explains…

Gastrointestinal symptoms like bloating, constipation, diarrhea, you know, getting full quickly, belching after a meal, bloating with carbohydrates, things like that. It doesn't have to be just gastrointestinal symptoms. You can have autoimmune conditions that affect almost every part of your body. Things like eczema, acne, maybe they're, you know, they're getting patchy hair loss like alopecia areata, and maybe it's migraines. It doesn't have to be out auto-immune. It can just be an inflammatory mechanism, but it can be so many different things that that's why a lot of people go to that as a first resort. Because depending on the research that you look at, like 70-80% of your immune system lives in the gut, and so what better place to start when you're looking at like, okay inflammation is an immune type of characteristic, right, we want to look- where is the source of it? Well, it's in the gut. What can we measure? What can we kind of look at as to what could be causing that patient’s problem? So leaky gut can cause so many different things so it's, I try to encourage patients to don't just think, oh I have I have to have GI symptoms. I think the latest statistic where 87% of celiac patients don't have any stomach complaints and that's an autoimmune disease associated with the gut, right, and the reason why is because we don't have many pain receptors in the gut. So you can have a bunch of negative stuff going on and not necessarily have like a noticeable symptom sometimes. 

Q: That makes a lot of sense. So, I experience bloating, but then a lot of my other autoimmune type symptoms could be because of leaky gut. How many of your patients that call you about this stuff even make that correlation before calling you?

We're conditioned a little bit to think, okay I’ve got five different problems, right, like symptoms, I must have five separate issues. So I have a skin issue it must be a different cause than my headaches or my migraines or my constipation or my joint pain or my brain fog, whereas, you know, one or two things can easily stem and cause one thing then the next then the next and the next if they're unresolved. And so we want to get to the root cause of like what's causing the inflammation, what's causing the leaky gut, and many things can cause leaky gut, right, so you can't just always just blame it on one thing. And there's a lot of different things that come into a gut patient, it's not that simple; it's not just a one-size-fits-all approach, it should be a personalized approach for the patient. And so one person it might be, you know, an infection, in the next person it might be a food sensitivity, in the next patient might be a toxin that they can't get rid of, or they’re, you know, environmental toxin that they're not doing well with, in another patient it might be a hormone imbalance, right, so it's, you just have to, you know, go with each individual patient and make it unique to them and make sure that you're addressing their individual needs and concerns and then the outcome hopefully is better for them. 

Key Takeaway: 

Leaky gut is not just bloating, constipation, diarrhea, i.e. localized GI symptoms. It could also be autoimmune and inflammatory type symptoms that can show up differently in each patient. Examples: Acne, Eczema, Patchy Baldness, Migraines, Joins Pain, and many others. 

Q: I don't have a Gut Issue, but I have an Autoimmune Problem. Should I still be coming to you? Because it sounds like a lot of work you do would be able to help me too...?

Yeah so again, going back to that theory, like where does autoimmune start? It starts with leaky gut and then the gut wall becomes permeable and then things get into the bloodstream that aren't supposed to be there and the immune system reacts, and it gets you confused with a foreign invader and now it's attacking yourself, right? Auto-immune, okay?

The autoimmune, when you look at that kind of thing, we look at three different approaches: Remove the negative things that are affecting or triggering that, you know, that process, you try to support the tissue that was irritated, damaged, or inflamed, and then try to ramp up the immune response so that the immune system is more robust and it's less tilted and can’t get, kind of, confused on Yourself versus something else that's not anything to do with your body, like Gluten or any Food Protein or Bacteria, or whatever it is. 

Auto-immune and gut are obviously highly related, so we would look at the gut in a lot of those patients. But if the gut is clean, we look at other things in the blood, typically, whether it's immunoglobulins or immune-type panels that you can look at that are a little bit more specific for autoimmune patients. 

Key Takeaway: Many autoimmune conditions can be helped with Functional Medicine and Neurology. The Restorative Team looks at each patient individually and makes recommendations for care based on their specific situation and needs!

Dr. Paul Deglmann, DC, DACNB, FACFN discusses the connection between gut health and neurological symptoms…

"We do the functional medicine with the functional neurology, so we offer both. But with GI-type stuff, functional medicine helps a ton of [people]- a lot of them! 

But there are a certain population where, maybe, there's a neurological connection with it. Maybe they have depression, anxiety, maybe they have migraines, maybe they have some memory issues, maybe they have brain fog, mental processing speed’s an issue, decision-making is an issue, maybe they have chronic pain, whatever it is, maybe it's a neurological connection to that pain; if they have stuff like that and there's more of a neurological connection that needs to be addressed directly, you can still get good results of the gut part of it, but the brain might need some stimulation. When the brain needs stimulation it’s kind of like if you have a cast on and the muscles start to atrophy after, if you’re in that cast for six weeks, let's say. And you take it off and you compare arms, but one is significantly shrunk compared to the other side because you haven't used those muscles, in a while. Same thing for the brain. You can reduce inflammation, but a lot of times we have to go and we have to fire those pathways to generate neural plasticity, which is a change in the brain where one neuron branches off to the other and it starts to communicate and then it starts to communicate back with it, and then increasing the network, or the efficiency, of the brain. That's what we try to do, and then that information can further go into the gut to control some of our vital functions. 

So there's always, like, in movies and stuff you hear we only use 10% of our brain or you always hear that stat. Well, that's not true because if you don't use it, you lose it and that part would just be gone, right, but 90% of our brain function is used to fire down to, like, the brainstem to regulate automatic, autonomic systems. Is my heart beating? Am I digesting food? Am I breathing? You don’t have to think about those things. If I take something in that's toxic, will I throw it up? All those things are automatic, autonomic nervous system functions that your brain needs to fire in information to regulate those. So, the healthier the brain, the healthier you can feed information into the gut, and then hopefully have a healthier gut. And then the gut sends happy information back to the brain and the brain sends happy information back to the gut. So functional medicine is great and a lot of times it can help gut patients, but there's a certain population of patients that may have neurological symptoms where maybe that's not all you can do for them. Maybe you can do a little bit more as far as specifically going up to the brain and then the outcome is hopefully better for them!" 

Key Takeaway:

When it comes to gut health, combine functional medicine with functional neurology for a better outcome. The Restorative Team looks at each patient individually and makes recommendations for care based on their specific situation and needs. 

Q: From a functional medicine perspective, there is big emphasis on the gut-brain connection, and I'm wondering, where do you begin that conversation with your patients when they first come to you?

Yeah, it's challenging, right, because people come in with a gut problem and they're like, “I'm not coming in for my brain. Why are you looking at my brain?” 

Well the last 10 years, probably the biggest area of research is the gut-brain access or the brain-gut access.  Whatever you look at; your brain usually has some sort of influence over it. So, when you look at The Brainstem: the brainstem out in the middle and the lower part of it is where the nucleus lies that controls what's called your Vagus Nerve. Okay, the Vagus nerve, Vagus in Latin means “the wanderer,” the Vagabond, means it goes everywhere. Vagus nerve is a rest and digest, a parasympathetic nerve. It goes into your heart to control and kind of calm down your heartbeat when you're in the fight-or-flight stage. Fight-or-flight tips the scale, you might have a higher heart rate. Parasympathetic is the rest and digest, which, Vagus nerve is a rest and digest, a parasympathetic nerve. 

It can aid in proper digestion it can calm things down this is where deep breathing, meditation, Pilates, yoga, doing the things you enjoy to do, taking time at the dinner table, not being in a hurry, all those things are very parasympathetic things, right, very healing, very restful things that can really, really do a lot of good things and just making us, you know, heal a little bit quicker. The Vagus controls a lot of those functions and when the Vagus works correctly, 

one: it increases your digestive enzyme production naturally, 

two: it moves blood flow to the area, right, to promote healing and to absorb the nutrients and all that kind of stuff, 

three: it will also increase motility, so in the constipated patients, like, if you don't get that nerve signal to the smooth muscle, the gut, it can't contract the gut and squeeze behind that, you know, fecal matter and move that bowel movement along.

Another one is also increasing gall bladder contraction to squeeze out that bile to break down your fats. It will even go into the gut lining and basically make those tight junctions be less vulnerable to leaky gut. 

The last one is the ileocecal valve. Ileocecal valve is where the last part of the small intestine joins the first part of the large intestine, that transition segment. There's a valve there and most of the research shows that the Vagus nerve goes right into that valve to keep it nice and firm and taut and toned. And the reason why is because when you look at conditions like SIBO, Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth, okay, it's more of a translocation, or movement, of the bacteria that's supposed to stay in the colon, the large intestine, and it ends up getting through that valve and traveling up into the small intestine, and then when the bacteria is there where it's not supposed to be, then it starts to gobble away at your food that's not digested yet and it releases a gas as a consequence. Gas has nowhere to go and then it distends or bloats your gut. Okay, so the Vagus controls a lot of those functions and when the Vagus works correctly and it goes into the proximal 2/3 of the gut, which means the stomach, the small intestine, even parts of the large intestines, the beginning parts, and when it works properly it does a bunch of really good things in just making us you know a little bit quicker. 

If someone had a concussion, a traumatic brain injury, things like that, could that influence gut? And we know that's true because they've done studies on giving rats concussions, sounds kind of mean, but they study a lot of these things on rats and they gave them a concussion. They measured what happens at the lining of the gut, the level of the gut, and all the rats got leaky gut after the concussion. I can't remember how many hours, but within a certain amount of hours they got leaky gut. And then what they did is they take the same parameters, they gave the same amount of force and everything with a different population of rats, and then they measured the gut, but the only difference is they put a little electrode on the Vagus nerve and they kept the Vagus nerve firing the whole time, even after the concussion, and they ended the study because there was no leaky gut. So, it shows you that the brain has a tremendous influence over gut function.

That’s fascinating. If the parasympathetic system isn't triggered the right way, then definitely there will be issues and multiple issues that we’ll experience. 

Q: The thing that I still need clarification on is, if my gut is imbalanced, if there is dysbiosis in the gut, how does that slow my parasympathetic system down? Why does it affect my brain?

Yeah so there’s communication from the brain to the gut and the gut to the brain, the brain to the gut, the gut to the brain, right, back and forth, back and forth. So, if I have dysbiosis in my gut, which is likely to produce some sort of inflammatory type of mechanism. When you look at, like, the world of Parkinson's research, I think it was the Michael J. Fox Institute or Foundation, they found, man Parkinson's patients, they have this certain strain of bacteria in the GI tract that travels up into the brain stem and then causes a problem. Now, one characteristic of a lot of Parkinson's patients is they have constipation for a long time prior to the diagnosis. Okay, so you start to look at that as like the brain-gut kind of connection there.

Calprotectin is the measure that they use in the stool test to look at just inflammation. It goes really, really high, you get more suspicious of, like, inflammatory bowel diseases like Crohn's, Ulcerative Colitis, things like that. There's other things that are more sub-clinical, meaning the patient could have normal calprotectin but maybe they have this huge dysbiosis, right, where they have way too many of the opportunistic bad bacteria and they don't have enough of the beneficial bacteria and they have this huge, you know, ratio problem. And so, when you look at that, if that creates some sort of inflammation, that can travel up and cause, you know, a barrier breach in the blood-brain barrier, right, same lining is the gastrointestinal barrier. When you have, like, a neurological consequence to it, okay, then that can then affect the gut more negatively, right? It's just like, this perpetual cycle that just goes on and on and on. Sometimes, you know, the gut causes the brain problem, brain causes the gut problem, things like that too. But you have to look at both of them and figure out, kind of, like, how one can negatively affect the other and what one might be primary, what one might be secondary as a result. 

Bottom Line: 

To maintain a healthy brain, we need a healthy gut, and to maintain a healthy gut, we need a healthy brain!

"Now unfortunately, testing is not great for Bartonella. This is the one co-infection I always test a minimum of two times. So I will test you once and then, if you're still, when we're doing re-tests maybe a couple of months later, we're going to check Bartonella again even if you were negative because we do have some problems with it being very, very hard for your immune system to identify. One reason why it's really hard for your immune system to grab onto it is it is an “intracellular bacteria,” so it actually loves blood cells, and loves endothelial cells, and including immune cells in your blood, not just red blood cells. It then goes inside your cell, so because it's inside your cell it's a little harder for your immune system to identify. And then secondly, it actually takes over part of your cell which creates a vacuole. Now, this is a normal process your cells do, if we’re going back to 10th grade biology, you can actually create a little “compartment” where you can store stuff, maybe that'll harm your cell. Well Bartonella uses this in its favor to create its own little home inside your cell. And this is one reason why it's pretty hard for your immune system to get at, because it hides. It's a double membrane-bacteria that then hides inside your cell and then it hides inside a vacuole, so it's got four layers of protection to help it survive inside your system. 

There are people who actually believe Bartonella may be an even bigger problem than Lyme, it just doesn't get, you know, as much press and as much funding!"

In terms of Testing; if I went to my medical doctor versus coming to a functional medicine practitioner such as yourself, will there be difference in how this is tested?

"Your primary doctor will run Bartonella Henselae. We do that test, but also we have access to some PCR testing, and you can run, like, if I run a big co-infection panel, we run nine bartonella markers as part of it as opposed to just, you know, just one. So, and then you can get even more specialized from that, but like our big co-infection panel does somewhere between three and nine, you know, ways to look at it, if I can put it that way." 

Image Text: 

Simple serological test doesn’t always work to detect Bartonella. 

If you test positive with the simple serology test, you know you have Bartonella. 

If you test negative, but show symptoms of Bartonella, the more extensive Bartonella PCR panel may be recommended. 

Understanding PCR panels: Dr. Kyle explains how he decides which of his patients need the more specific and therefore, more expensive Bartonella panels. 

"There are two labs which now are pushing some Bartonella. One is called Galaxy Diagnostics. They were started as a Bartonella lab. Now, they have some of the other tick-borne stuff now, but they're agenda’s really trying to help people be aware that bartonella may be an even bigger problem than Lyme disease, at least a possibility. And then also Igenex, who anyone in the Lyme disease world is usually familiar with Igenex as a lab. They also have some, you know, specialized Bartonella testing to try and better visualize this problem. The problem with both these labs is they're very expensive. And so what we often do is we run, like I said, we run two tests which can be run very well, and if we're still suspicious, sometimes I have a talk with patients about, you know, maybe spending the money to run one of those, kind of, more specialty Bartonella panels." 

How much does it cost? 

"Depending on which version of things you run, it's often about a thousand dollars, and that's just a lot to answer the one question of, do you have bartonella or not, right? It doesn't answer any other question, it doesn't look at other tick-borne things, doesn't look at inflammation, doesn't look, it just is to answer the question of, do I have Bartonella or do I not? And, so that's a decent amount of change to answer you know, a very narrow, you know, very narrow question." 

If a patient is hesitant to spend the money on the Bartonella panels (roughly $1000) Dr. Kyle has an ingenious way to determine if Bartonella is really causing the issues for his patients…Dr. Kyle explains…

"Because we know that there's a little bit of a Bartonella blind spot possibility, you can also do some things to be, you know, clinically relevant. Like for example, Bartonella really attacks endothelial cells, so we get into blood flow. This is why it's documented, I think it's the third leading cause of seronegative endocarditis, which is a heart infection, and it really causes a lot of blood flow issues. Well because of this, the nutrient arginine or L-arginine or also L-citrulline, people with Bartonella tend to feel better with this. And I remember going through this, we were doing some different blood, this is just blood flow, nutrition, pretty basic stuff if you look up those things, there's research with heart and with workout for these nutrients. And I remember just doing this randomly with people, and some of my chronic people felt really good with this. And I actually back-ended to realize when I was doing some reading, that bartonella patients typically respond very well to that because it actually kind of addresses some of the imbalances Bartonella causes. So part of what I'll do when I'm suspicious is, I’ll have somebody try something that improves nitric oxide, which is what arginine and citrulline do, and if they respond very positively to nitric oxide based supplementation, then I become more suspicious that Bartonella may be a big player."

Bartonella is maybe the most mysterious of what people call the Lyme co-infections, and it's probably the most mysterious because it's also more than a co-infection.

Bartonella can be a co-infection with Lyme but also a stand-alone infection.

Bartonella actually gets into the veterinary world because it's carried by mammals; it's classically known as cat scratch fever, so cats are known to be the reservoir. And so, basically, it can be transmitted by flea, by lice from cats, and then to humans. Now while that's the famous way it's transmitted, we also know almost all mammals can be carriers. We've even found it in about 10% of dogs, it's about 30-40% of cats are the estimates. But we have found it in whales, so we know Bartonella is easier to move around than some of the other tick-borne illnesses.

What is its correlation with chronic Lyme?

Bartonella can cause all the same symptoms as Lyme. So, it can cause fatigue, joint pain, rashes, and neurological symptoms, just like Lyme can, which is where you get some confusion about, is this Lyme, is it Bartonella, is it both? If you have a cat and you have symptoms that are very similar to Lyme, you really need to look at Bartonella. It can come from your dog too, just want to phrase that. A little lower chance, but if you have a cat or dog consider Bartonella if you're having that mysterious chronic fatigue, rashes, pain, neurological problems, really can come from just fleas from an infected animal. And your animal may be healthy; they may be just a carrier. 

How common is Bartonella in humans? 

Bartonella is a disease we learned a lot about, if you look back in history, people came down with HIV. And as people come down with HIV, they become immune suppressed. And all of a sudden, these bugs that have probably been around for a long time become more obvious because in immune suppressed people, these bugs cause major problems. And this is also where, if I were to, kind of, classify the arguments for Bartonella, it gets even more muddy than Lyme disease. There are some people who think that about 25% of all mammals have Bartonella, including humans. That would mean there's about 80 million Americans who have Bartonella, now most of these are asymptomatic. And really, when I look at symptomatic, there's somewhere between maybe a million, maybe two million people infected with Bartonella. Now CDC rates of cat scratch fever are much, much lower than that, but that term is being abandoned for Bartonellosis, which is a little more encompassing than just a simple cat scratch fever.

So, if you have mysterious symptoms, especially like seronegative reactive arthritis, where you're just, you're not feeling right, something's wrong and you don't know, start with testing. Lyme disease is a good place to start, but we always run a Lyme and co-infection panel including Bartonella. The one to test is Bartonella Henselae; that's the place to start.

Taking antibiotics after 3-6 months, are they effective at all? 

"Well that's a good question. So I can tell you what, what we, kind of, see in our clinic. So in our clinic what I'll often do for, for tick-borne diseases is we start with some detox support and some immune support. Remember there's a lot of people who just get this and get better, so we tell people the primary problem with both these diseases is immune failure. There are some people who think that about 25% of all mammals have Bartonella, including humans. That would mean there's about 80 million Americans who have Bartonella, now most of these are asymptomatic. And really, when I look at symptomatic, there's somewhere between maybe a million, maybe two million people infected with Bartonella. If there's really this big reservoir, a quarter of the population has it and only 1-2% of people are actually sick with it, the problem really is your immune system is unable to handle the problem that it should be able to handle."

Similar to Lyme disease, if symptoms are showing up due to a Bartonella infection, the immune system becomes a critical focus. 

"Now, we do antimicrobial herbs at the clinic, and I usually do them for 6-8 weeks and then I rotate. I can usually clear Lyme disease about 30% of the time after one rotation, so in about, you know, 3 months total. And by the time we hit about 7 months, which is about 3 rotations, I've got about 80% success rate in that part of the protocol. And once again, I want to tell people it's not like in chronic Lyme, you just eliminate the bug and it all magically goes away. There's, kind of, a rehabbing the body process, helping the inflammation system work, helping the liver work again. And if you just look at, you know, Dr. Horowitz or Dr. Hammond or Dr. Shoemaker, they kind of emphasize this point in eliminating the bug. Whether they're using herbals, whether they’re using antibiotics is part of the program and maybe an important part, but we honestly feel like it's a part that gets over-emphasized and the rest of the protocol to bring it together gets under-emphasized. People have a lot of hope that if they just took the right antibiotic it would all magically go away. And I'm really here to tell you that I'm sorry but that's not the way it's going to work if you missed that acute window." 

Some people, at least on the internet, research this stuff. Some people suggest long-term antibiotic treatment, and so what I'm wondering in my mind is, is that even valuable? And then secondly, with what you do in functional medicine, can that work together? 

"So some people are not going to get better without antibiotics, and they really need that as part of their, you know, protocol and regimen. But I also am very hesitant because I see a lot of people who have, first you fight through the regular medical system and you go, I'm sick. And they go, we can't find anything. You finally find someone who's more literate in Lyme or Bartonella, and you go, oh my gosh, you have Bartonella, you have Lyme disease, you have, oh my gosh we found it. Okay then, here's 3 different antibiotics, high-dose, and you're going to take these for 3 years. And then I see them 3 years later and, once again, what I find is the antibiotic portion has been hit really hard for 3 years and the rest of the protocol, the detox, the immune support, has really been given a very fluffy, nonspecific approach. And I, kind of, challenge a lot of Lyme, of my Lyme colleagues and go, if you paid as much attention to your detox protocol and your immune support protocol as you did to your antibiotic protocol, I think you'd be much more successful with some of these tough patients. You know, the 12th round of antibiotics isn't going to be, you know, what magically cures them."

Definitely, that makes a lot of sense. Not to mention the side effects of antibiotics and the additional damage that they're doing.  

"Well, and this is one reason why I said we use antibiotics, I have some good partnerships, we work with some medical doctors, and some of our colleagues to help get people what they need, but antibiotics, especially for that long term, are a little bit of a double-edged sword, and let's not pretend they don't cause any problems. So if we can get it without long-term antibiotics we really prefer to, but we do, you know, partner to use them in cases where we think it's worth it." 

I like your approach Dr. Kyle, because your approach is all about healing the body from within. The question I have for you is, how long does that typically take? 

"Well that's a good question I get, how long. So we, generally as a rule, tell most tick-borne people it takes 12-18 months to get you all the way better. Now my record’s 5 months, 5, 5-1/2. I don't like to count on you being the record or breaking the record, but I tell people, so usually when we just look at stats, you know, 30% of people are through what I call kill phase in about 3 months, and about 80% are through in about 7 months. So then after that there's some you know liver help, some immune help, some other things to help walk out, but at the end of this disease, people feel good, they function well. Usually they're a little paranoid about going out in the woods, they don't want to get bit again, and so I have to calm them down and tell them they have to keep living their life. But, you know, usually you can make a very, very complete recovery. You can have brain function, you don't have to have pain all the time, you know, you can have energy again, you can really be, you know, healthy and functional and well, you know, after these, after these things, if not maybe a little more aware of ticks and your own body then you were before."

That’s great. One of the things that, testimonials from your patients that's, that jumps at me is that they say that you keep them feeling good even as they're going through this. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because the word detox scares most Lyme patients…

"It does. This is actually a big thing in our office. So when I tell people it's going to take 12-18 months, they go, oh gosh. And I say, but if we balance the parts correctly, you really should feel better, you know, during the process. I had a patient who just finished, and he said, well it took 15 months, but it was the best year I had in about 4 or 5 years. And I really strongly disagree with doctors who really push patients very hard through detox, or what are what are known as Herx reactions."

Image Text: Herxheimer Reaction, also known as die-off reaction are a mixed set of symptoms produced within the body as the bad bacteria die and release endotoxins. These endotoxins produce intense inflammatory reaction(s) throughout the body. 

Image Text: Patients sometimes dread detox due to fear of the Herx reaction...

"To me, a really, really strong Herx reaction is a signal that you're doing something wrong, you're doing the wrong order, doing the wrong dose, you're not balancing the protocol correctly. So if you'd balance, you know, the detox portion, the immune support portion with, you know, some of those killers in the right way, you can actually feel decent and better and improved while you go through moving forward, as opposed to, sometimes I feel like doctors go, you feel bad now wait till I hit you with this detox reaction you'll be lying on your couch an invalid. And I go, goodness, we really don't think that's the way to do it, especially with Bartonella and Lyme causing so many neurological complaints. So that was really the kicker that made us want to stop doing that was, if you're getting a lot of neurological complaints when you detox, that means you're getting nerve damage. Nerves are very slow to heal and so I'm always wary of causing more nerve damage because it can take such a long time for you to recover from that. If there's any way possible to avoid that while you heal, then we want to make sure we protect you while we're getting you better." 

That’s great!

"My big thing for all Lyme disease patients is just have hope. There are some really smart people working on this, there's some great people who, this is kind of their mission in life is to make this more aware and know that there are solutions. Just know that there are people out there, there's other people who have gotten better, so you can do it. I've seen it now. And we were looking at our stats, and since I've been doing this, 7 or 8 years, I think we're up, like 250 to 300 different, you know, Lyme and tick-borne patients that we've seen, so, you know, I've seen it time and time again. And if you're sick and without hope please, please know that there is hope for you. You can be healthy and you can, you know, go live your life."

Should you be concerned about being low in one or two vitamins or minerals? Yes!

I work with women everyday who are struggling with hormonal imbalances. Vitamins and minerals are not only important for a healthy balance of cortisol, thyroid and progesterone, but they are crucial for overall optimal health.

Many women are suffering from symptoms because they are low in nutrients. Though being low may not cause immediate symptoms, it does also put you at risk for many serious diseases that can affect your brain, heart, blood, immune system, metabolism, bones, mental health, etc.

Nutrients are crucial to maintaining all your systems in good working order. A deficiency in just one or two can throw off the delicate balance you need to be healthy and feel great. That’s because most nutrients don’t have just one vital role to play within the body, they play many, many important roles.

How would you even know if you’re at risk for a nutrient deficiency?

Symptoms you could experience include:

• fatigue
• irritability
• aches and pains
• decreased immune function
• heart palpitations

But sometimes symptoms aren’t felt for a long time and sometimes they can be vague and non-specific.

For women struggling with imbalanced hormones – elevated cortisol, low thyroid or low progesterone - there are a few nutrients that are particularly important.

Nutrients Required for Hormonal Balance

Vitamin B6

The number one most common nutrient deficiency in the US was Vitamin B6. This vitamin serves many important functions for your blood, brain, and metabolism. 

• helps the formation of hemoglobin in the blood (the part that carries oxygen around)
• maintains normal levels of homocysteine (high levels of homocysteine are linked with heart disease)
• production of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers allowing nerve cells to communicate with each other)
• plays a role in regulating the production of cortisol (your stress hormone)
• involved with over 100 enzyme reactions in the body, mostly for metabolism

Some of the main symptoms of a serious deficiency in Vitamin B6 are:

• depression
• confusion
• convulsions
• microcytic anemia

In addition, a less serious deficiency may have long term consequences including increased risks for heart disease and Alzheimer’s.

These wide-ranging health effects are why Vitamin B6 is so essential for health.

 Vitamin B6 is found in all food groups. Some of your best sources include:

• high-fiber cereals
• potatoes
• non-citrus fruits (e.g., bananas)
• animal-based foods such as poultry, fish, and organ meats

Try this recipe to add more B6 to your diet.

Chicken and Wild Rice Harvest Bowl, makes 5 servings, from Living Plate 

Ingredients

• 7 cups kale, spines removed and chopped
• 2 cups Brussels sprouts, halved and roasted
• 1 medium Delicata squash, peeled, diced, and roasted
• 1 medium sweet potato, peeled, diced, and roasted
• 1 lb chicken breasts, cooked
• 1 cup wild rice, cooked according to the package directions
• 1/2 cup pomegranate arils
• 1/2 cup sliced almonds

Dressing

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/4 cup tart cherry juice
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp maple syrup
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• salt, to taste
• pepper, to taste

Roast Brussels sprouts and Delicata squash. (see notes). Cook chicken. (see notes). Add dressing ingredients in a mason jar and shake to combine. Season with salt and pepper, to taste. 

To assemble, divide the shredded kale evenly in the bottom of five shallow bowls. Top with cooked wild rice, chicken, Brussels sprouts, squash, almonds and pomegranate arils. Drizzle with the vinaigrette to taste. (or dressing of choice).

Notes

For the Delicata Squash and Sweet Potatoes: In a large bowl, combine the delicata squash and half of the olive oil. Toss evenly and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Transfer to one of the lined baking sheets. In the same bowl add the Brussels sprouts, remaining olive oil, salt, and pepper. Toss to combine and transfer to the second baking sheet. Place both trays in the oven and bake 30-35 minutes at 400°F or until squash is soft and lightly browned and sprouts are crispy. For the chicken: On the other lined baking sheet, arrange the chicken breasts and season to taste with salt and pepper. Divide the olive oil evenly and spread around the tops and bottoms of the breasts. Bake for 13-15 minutes at 350°F or until the thickest part reached 165°F.

Vitamin C 

Vitamin C is important for wound healing (via a protein called collagen), the production of neurotransmitters, metabolism, and the proper functioning of the immune system. Vitamin C also acts as an antioxidant to reduce the damage caused by free radicals that can worsen several diseases such as certain cancers and heart disease. It helps your body absorb the essential mineral iron. Vitamin C is also important to balance cortisol production allowing better stress management as well as improving levels of progesterone. Progesterone may be an important factor in balancing the symptoms of PMS.

You can get Vitamin C from many fruits and vegetables. Ones particularly high in Vitamin C include:

• bell peppers
• broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• cabbage
• cantaloupe
• cauliflower
• kiwifruit
• oranges and orange juice
• strawberries
• tomato juice

When choosing foods for Vitamin C, choose the freshest options because levels of the vitamin naturally reduce over time the longer the food is stored. Try, as much as possible, to eat Vitamin C-rich foods raw. If you do cook them, then choose steaming and microwaving instead of prolonged boiling because the vitamin is destroyed by heat and is water-soluble.

Broccoli is one of the nutrient powerhouses in your diet. Try this delicious recipe today!

Italian Parmesan Broccoli, makes 4 servings, adapted from milkandhoneynutrition.com

Ingredients

• 1 head broccoli, chopped into florets (about 3 cups)
• 2 Tbs olive oil
• 2 tsp garlic, minced
• 1 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 tsp Italian seasoning blend
• 1/4 tsp pepper
• 2 Tbs Parmesan cheese (optional)
• salt, to taste

Preheat oven to 375°F. Place broccoli florets in a large bowl. In a small glass bowl, mix avocado oil, garlic, rosemary, Italian seasoning, and black pepper. Pour oil mixture over broccoli and toss to coat. Spread broccoli on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 12-14 minutes. Immediately top with Parmesan cheese and sea salt and serve.

Vitamin D

Vitamin D, also known as the “sunshine vitamin,” is very important for your bones. It promotes the absorption of the mineral calcium. When your body has enough calcium, it can maintain normal bone mineralization and prevent problems in the muscles that lead to cramps and spasms.

Getting enough Vitamin D and calcium can also help protect against osteoporosis. In addition to all these bone and muscle impacts, Vitamin D helps to reduce inflammation and modulate both immune function and sugar metabolism. Vitamin D plays a role in the balance of thyroid and is important for women with elevated androgens.

Without enough Vitamin D bones can become thin, brittle, or misshapen. Vitamin D prevents these issues known as rickets (in children) and osteomalacia (in adults).

 Your skin makes Vitamin D when it’s exposed to the ultraviolet rays of the sun and very few foods naturally contain it. Some foods rich in Vitamin D include:

• fatty fish and fish liver oils (e.g., salmon, trout, cod liver oil)
• egg yolks
• beef liver
• cheddar cheese
• some mushrooms (particularly those exposed to UV light)

Most of the dietary Vitamin D that people in the US get is from fortified foods and beverages. These include:

• dairy products (mainly milk)
• certain plant milks (e.g., soy, almond, or oat milks)
• various breakfast cereals
• a few types of orange juice.

Be sure to look at the nutrition labels to see if and how much Vitamin D is in each serving of the food or beverage.

Salmon can be a source of vitamin D but is always a great choice because of its nourishing fats that are good for your brain too.

Seed Crusted Salmon, makes 4 servings, from Living Plate

Ingredients

• 2 lb salmon, fillets
• 1 Tbs olive oil
• 1/4 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 3 Tbs hemp seeds
• 2 Tbs sesame seeds, black (or regular)

Preheat oven to 350° F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Brush salmon with olive oil and season with salt and pepper. Mix together hemp and sesame seeds in a shallow dish. Press salmon, flesh-side down, into the seeds, and place face-up on the baking pan. Repeat with all filets. Bake in the oven until salmon is cooked through (to an internal temperature of 145° F) about 20 minutes.

Conclusion

Up to one-third of people in the US are at risk for at least one nutrient deficiency. Most commonly, that deficient nutrient is Vitamin B6, but there are also many people deficient in vitamins C and D as well. Vitamins and minerals are essential nutrients because you need them for good health. Lacking in any one nutrient can have far-reaching consequences.

Eating a nutrient-rich diet with a variety of foods can help everyone achieve their health and nutrition goals. 

To know if you’re at risk for a nutrient deficiency, consult a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist who can review your foods and supplements and test for nutrient deficiencies.

I can help. Here is my link to book a chat about making sure to meet your dietary needs.

References

Bird, J. K., Murphy, R. A., Ciappio, E. D., & McBurney, M. I. (2017). Risk of Deficiency in Multiple Concurrent Micronutrients in Children and Adults in the United States. Nutrients, 9(7), 655.

Camfield, David (2013).  The Effects of Multivitamin Supplementation on Diurnal Cortisol Secretion and Perceived Stress. Nutrients, 5(11), 4429.

Mumford, Sonny (2016). Serum Antioxidants Are Associated with Serum Reproductive Hormones and Ovulation among Healthy Women. J Nutr, 146(1), 98.

National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements. (2020, February 4). Vitamin B6 fact sheet for health professionals.  

National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements. (2020, February 27). Vitamin C fact sheet for health professionals. 

National Institutes of Health Office of Dietary Supplements. (2020, October 9). Vitamin D fact sheet for health professionals.