Chronic Pain: Uncovering Hidden Viral Reactivation | Webinar

hello everyone we are coming to the end of our month all about pain and I am currently on my webinar as well as join you guys on Instagram live as well so this is my new thing that I do every week but I think it's really fun to be able to have two different audience that can access this information so tonight as we start to move forward with our whole conversation this month about pain we're specifically talking about the connection of infections that can be causing our joint pain or even our arthritis and I know for many people this is completely off of the radar and this is not something that many people are even talking about and you know the only thing that I feel like is in the common awareness is that when people sometimes have Lyme disease it is associated with joint pain but there is actually many other types of infections that can be correlated to different complaints that we have in our joints and this doesn't mean all joints this could be really any joint and we're going to really dive in to understand more about this process but also being able to just elaborate on the big picture as to why it is so many of us suffer with pain and why are we not necessarily getting answers and solutions to be able to resolve our pain unfortunately most of the solutions that exist in the toolbox are primarily consistent with painkillers and then if the painkillers do not work at a certain point then we move into surgery and these are the most common avenues for being able to address pain but unfortunately it's not always a guarantee that it's going to resolve our issues with pain and very much so it's not going to resolve issues with inflammatory pain conditions like fibromyalgia or even rheumatoid arthritis so we're going to try to really understand more about why these different condition this how they can be tied to a variety of things that are not being talked about and one of those biggest things being infections that make their way into our joints so as we dive into the topic for either one of my audiences that are on either Instagram live or that are on the webinar please make sure to you know put different questions in the chat box or put different questions that are coming up into the comment section because I can definitely answer them as I go and I'm going to also dive in to tell you a little bit about some really specific clinical experiences and stories of people that came in with pain and then as we dug in we've realized that the origin of their pain was definitely not what they were thinking because most of us really could classify our pain as being tied to repetitive stress or arthritis or injury and it can definitely be a lot more elaborate than that and it can stem from many many other reasons those of you that are on the webinar I'm not I'm going to start the PowerPoint just so I don't go off on a tangent but overall the biggest things we're touching on is we're going to talk about the limitations in the testing that will allow us to figure out what is the root cause of our pain and then we're also really just going to establish that you don't know what you don't know and it's impossible to know what the root cause of your pain is until you dig a little bit deeper and you work with a physician that's asking better questions and then from there being able to leverage the testing to really understand how can you actually resolve the root the foundation of why you have pain in the first place because if we keep putting a bandaid on it we're not necessarily going to get results we're not going to get better and we potentially put ourselves at risk for becoming addicted to painkillers which then can lead us down a road of drugs and unfortunately this is just a very sensitive subject because I have lost many people in my life due to additions that started from pain killers and then they spiraled into something bigger so this is not uncommon I think most of us that are watching and listening can relate to this to some capacity because we are in a massive crisis of addiction to painkillers that are leading people down the road of heroin and if you ask any person that is in you know some type of police enforcement there is a huge issue with kids that are overdosing so it's really a matter of us taking this into our own hands and being able to understand the root of where pain comes from so overall just to kind of understand a little bit about the concept of Integrative Medicine and also just the concept of my approach as an integrative physician is that I've always asked more questions I always kind of challenged the things that I was taught and told because I found that very rarely did a person or a person symptoms match what the textbook was and because I always ask those questions I ended up really going against the grain with the way that I practice and I use a lot of different technologies and I look at the body in a very different way and the biggest thing is is I look at the body as an integration of systems I don't look at the body as a bunch of separate systems that are working independently and this is really important because when you talk about pain everybody thinks of the physical body they think what did I strain what did I sprain what did I tear you know did I hurt a disk did I do you know did I do some type of repetitive stress and we're always thinking physical physical physical and we're not necessarily thinking about inflammation we're not necessarily thinking about infections we're not even necessarily thinking about our stress that can be tied to this so these are some of the things that we're going to talk about tonight so another thing too is just a little bit about myself and kind of understanding you know what is an integrative physician and you know what is it all about what do I do and one of the things that I really pride myself on is working with complex cases but what I really get joy out of is working with mystery cases and what I mean by that is the people that have been on the merry-go-round of trying to understand where the root cause of their pain comes from but haven't been able to get those answers and working with those people it really starts with asking better questions number one and it also all starts with doing better testing and if you can use those different tools it's not just about pain it's about working with all different types of conditions because it's not about the condition it's not about the diagnosis it's about what is the root what is causing it and that's what integrative and functional medicine practitioners do is they dig deeper and they use better testing to understand what the foundation is and that's why they can help your pain but in the process of helping your pain you might notice that your depression goes away or your anxiety goes away or your gut issues go away because at the end of the day everything ends up being connected and intertwined so with my personal story I was not necessarily the perfect who through go down a different route of alternative medicine to finally get better I actually was the complete opposite I found that for myself I thought it was really healthy I thought you know I was invincible I felt great I worked out I was conscious of my diet and I was conscious to what I knew I didn't know a lot but I knew that what I did was better than the average person and when I started getting into this field I got into this field because I wanted to help people and I didn't want to do that through traditional medicine I wanted to do it in a different way and I did my testing thinking that everything was gonna come back amazing because I was super healthy and it didn't come back that way and I remember being quite baffled I remember thinking is this right and it turned out that I had a lot of inspections a lot of gastrointestinal infections my biggest issue was parasites just do you know for those of you that are like what the heck are parasites or are those even a real thing is parasites are something that you can get exposed to by eating fish by eating meat fast food sushi ting you can get it even from swimming in a body of water so parasites are not uncommon they are just not commonly looked for through conventional testing so when I did better testing I found out that I had a lot of parasites and I also had actually pretty significant mercury toxicity which was due to all of the sushi that I ate as well so for me what I realized at this time as I really kind of sat with the information was there were a lot of things that I was dealing with that were my normal there were a lot of things that I learned to adapt to and that was occasional stomach pain it was like oh I ate out oh I ate too much Oh way too many carbs my brain fog oh I didn't sleep oh I stayed up too late oh I drink too much caffeine I also started having heart palpitations I blamed that on not getting a great sleep or drinking too much caffeine there were all these subtle things that a lot of us deal with we deal with fatigue we deal with crappy sleep we deal with feeling achy occasionally we deal with these things but because they come and go we just classify them as being no big deal or being normal and this is not awful this is because we've all been thought or brought up to think don't fix it until it's broke and we also think that when we get our blood work on a yearly basis that that reveals all so if our blood work checks out to be fine we assume we're all good and what I've realized over time is that blood work is just a snippet in time but it is also one piece of the puzzle you know you can be the most stressed burnt-out person in the world your blood is not going to reveal that so you walk away being like well I'm healthy but you just really didn't do the right testing so when your bloodwork checks out fine you kind of just say well I'm still healthy so I can continue with my burnout lifestyle and still it gets to the point that you can't get out of bed and then you're like crap I got to do something about it so when you come to me and we talk and you've you know you're sitting there having all these subtle complaints what I try to really help people understand on is that these are things that we've all just settled for and we're just gonna dig in figure out what is the root cause so you can actually know what it's like to feel good again because most of the time we actually have no idea what it's like to feel good so as we dig in I want to give you guys the opportunity to really tune in you know put your phones away be able to shut your email browsers down you know tell your spouse and your kids to give you at least the next 20 minutes two and a half an hour to dive in because the things that I'm going to tell you when it comes to pain is not your run-of-the-mill information this is not things that you've heard before this is not things that you've read on a blog or a paleo site these are real life situations that I see every day in clinical practice that are gonna help you to get clarity and blow your mind to be like holy crap I never knew that but that makes perfect sense so just give yourself this time to really be able to sit with me absorb it because this is amazing information that nobody is talking about so first and foremost before we dive in is I want you to know that it is not your fault it is not your fault that you haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with you it is not your fault that you have felt paralyzed from all of the information that is on the internet it is not your fault that you haven't known what to request from a testing perspective from your doctor it is not your fault that you haven't figured out the right diet or supplement protocol or medication that is going to get you healthy again it's not your fault it's very very difficult to navigate the sea of information we have the internet we have tons of people putting information on the Internet we have paleo diets we have key to be a vegetarian diet we have vegan diets we had documentaries we have all this information but it's conflicting it's overwhelming it's confusing but I want you to say I want you to understand nothing is wrong oh right it's really just a matter of what does your body need because what your body needs is completely different than someone else who has pain or fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis you could be sitting next to a person that technically has the same diagnosis as you but your needs to get better are completely different and I think this is extremely important for people to understand because when we're trying to you know work within the limits of our insurance so we're trying to you know figure this all out on our own we're Likes wasting a lot of time and money and what I mean by that is we're looking up okay rheumatoid arthritis what is the best supplement protocol for that what's the best fanta inflammatory diet for rheumatoid arthritis and we start like trying all these things and then we are maybe getting better then we're hitting a plateau or it's not working at all and we're just like throw our hands up and go screw it I this is too much this is overwhelming this isn't working I guess I just have to be on medication and I get it because you could be doing this great protocol and be super strict and it's super diligent and doing the most expensive supplements but if it's not what your body needs then you're gonna fall flat and you're gonna feel really frustrated with that so it's not necessarily even just about doing the right testing it's also about knowing what your body needs and understanding that you can test those things you can test to know what supplements are good for you and what remedies are good for you and what foods are good for you there are ways of testing these things and this is something that we do in our practice because I was really tired of people wasting time and money and I was also tired of doing that for myself I wanted to take the trial and error out of medicine and that why I shift it into the style of testing that we do which I'll share more with you guys so for those of you that are watching this is probably the most important part of this presentation because this helps you to understand the foundation so number one this is my personal opinion my personal opinion is that I think that the fact that we have specialists and more specialties and subspecialties in medicine is the biggest detriment to medicine and what I mean by this is that we are assuming that you are a bunch of systems that are working independently and not working together we are assuming that your gut is not working with your brain and your brain is not working with your heart and your heart is not working with your circulation we're assuming that all of these systems are separate and this kind of brings me to my second point is this is a lack of understanding basic physiology so if you have a gut issue and you're working with a gastroenterologist and maybe you also are dealing with depression and you're working with a psychiatrist or a psychologist so you have two different practitioners that are treating to quote-unquote separate things assuming that they are not connected at all but basic physiology tells us that 90 to 95 percent of your serotonin aka your feel-good hormone is made in your gut so if we are dealing with a gut issue that maybe isn't being addressed properly but then we're also taking antidepressant we're assuming these things have nothing to do with each other but you can easily just fix your gut issue and your depression might go away or vice versa so it's very very important to understand that your body and your systems are working together at all times your liver plays a role in your hormones your brand plays a role in your gut your gut plays a role in your mood everything is connected so we need to stop thinking that we need to find the expert or the specialist because if we find the expert in the specialist we're going to then isolate either a condition or a system and we are usually going to find ourselves not necessarily finding the solutions or creating sustainable changes another big thing that pains me all the time what you do why doesn't every doctor think this way why doesn't everybody look at the body as an integration of systems and my answer to that is our entire foundation of medicine is based on chemistry so what I mean by that is the most typical test that you do on an annual basis is what it's blood work blood work is a chemistry based test it is looking at flaws in your chemistry or abnormalities in your chemistry vitamin D minerals lipids etc so if you have something out of balance in your chemistry we can use chemistry to manipulate that pathway what I mean by that is chemistry is medicine pharmacology drugs so when we use specific testing that is chemistry based then it allows for the solution to be chemistry based and unfortunately most of medicine is profit driven there is a lot of money to be made in pharmacology so I am NOT saying that pharmacology is bad and I am NOT saying that there is not a place for it there is a place for it a hundred million percent do not come to me if you are bleeding or if you you know have some type of emergency situation but when it comes to creating sustainable changes and dealing with chronic lifestyle illness we need to use other tests that are outside of just being chemistry base especially if we're looking for other solutions outside of medication so really what this comes down to is when we stay within this model of only using chemistry based testing leaves us with a very very small toolbox aka meds medications and this kind of brings me to this concept that we're always looking for the one-size-fits-all treatment we're always looking for the the one pill that's gonna cure us or the one you know surgery that's gonna fix everything and I really do wish it was that simple but unfortunately it is not that simple and when it comes to the body as this integration of systems we have to look beyond that and we have to understand that we have stress we have emotions we have emotional trauma we have our physical body we have neurological pathways we have the chemistry we have our cells there are so many pieces of the puzzle that have to be considered and this is what allows for people to truly get better and sustain it when you're looking at all of those pieces so when it comes to some of the amazing things that we see on a day to day basis it really comes down to the type of testing that we do so a specific story about a woman who came to us with rheumatoid arthritis so we had a patient she came to us with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis she said that the onset was after having her third child so when you're dealing with rheumatoid arthritis you know this is something that is extremely painful um this woman specifically was struggling to even get out of bed she was stiff she was in pain and then she was starting to have postpartum because she couldn't really care for her child because she was in so much pain so as we started to ask more questions really trying to understand okay you know what were some of the other things going on you know are there other symptoms that you were dealing with etc so what it turned out is that after her third child was also the same timeframe that her mother passed away her mother was very very close to her and actually as she was telling me about this she started to cry and she said I'm definitely still grieving I you know I I'm still very very by the loss of my mother so we moved forward and we did her testing so as we did her testing she definitely had different contributing factors to her rheumatoid arthritis one of the big things that came up was mold toxicity so interesting enough if you actually look up the symptoms associated with mold toxicity and then you also look at the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis they are actually very very very similar so this was a definitely a huge part of the puzzle for her so we found this piece but the thing about it is the way that the mold presented in her results was that it wasn't necessarily new she didn't move into a new house that was moldy she didn't necessarily start a new job that was moldy so the mold was in the body so the thing is is what was the catalyst what was the straw that broke the camel's back that made everything come to the surface part of it was the stress of the pregnancy and the birth because that's a very significant hormonal change that can definitely stress the body but the biggest thing stressing her system was the fact that she was in such a deep grieving process so when I spoke to her I said listen you have a couple of things that are contributing to this you definitely have toxicity we definitely have mold that we need to help your body detox from but we can't necessarily ignore the fact that there is an emotional component and she said listen I get it but I'm in so much pain I need you to help me I need to detox you know I need to be on an anti-inflammatory diet we need to I need to get better I need to take care of my kids and I said okay we're gonna get you rolling we're gonna start your detox protocol but we're gonna revisit in about four weeks in four weeks if you do not tell me that you are massively better at least 50% better then we're going to revisit the conversation about this emotional stress that you're dealing with and she said okay okay she really just you know didn't want to hear it she was like that has nothing to do with anything you know everybody goes through this and she really didn't seem all there was a connection so we met again in four weeks and she said you know I'm really not feeling that much better and I said okay are you willing to read this at the conversation and she said yes so at this point she decided that she would do the Demartini method with dr. Nick my husband so the Demartini method is something that you can look up on our website there's a lot more information there this is a process that's done over the course of a few hours and to keep it very simple it is a way to collapse the massive emotional ties to different events in our life this is not about disassociating this is not about blocking forgetting it this is about walking away with a different perspective of something that you once perceived to be extremely negative or sad in your life so she did the Demartini method and she came out feeling just like a very very different person she had a different perspective not just on the loss of her mother but also just on a lot of different scenarios that she experienced in her life so within one week of doing the method she lost 15 pounds of inflammation this is not something that happens all the time but this was just so massively significant for this woman and really what was happening is a lot of the detox she was doing was beneficial but it wasn't it wasn't able to fully help her until she removed that burden so she really started to reap the benefits of the detox process when she was able to lift that massive emotional burden from her system so again this is just one scenario I'm not sitting here telling you that you know every single person that has rheumatoid arthritis or pain syndromes has an emotional tie but it can definitely be piece of the puzzle especially if you've been doing Detox's and an anti-inflammatory diets and medications and surgeries and nothing is helping you this is when you have to stop doing the same thing and start to explore is there more to this than we're realizing so when it comes to the biggest reasons for pain so one of them is actual physical injury could be physical trauma it could be injury it could be scar tissue from surgeries then there's also this other piece of chemical and toxic stress so mold can be a big culprit to toxicity affecting our joints but then there are a variety of chemicals we could be exposed to that can create inflammation in our bodies with the story that I just told you now understanding that there is an emotional tie but very interesting one thing I'm gonna elaborate further on is how very specific joints are attached to very very specific emotions in addition is infections there are many infections that can be tied to joint pain Lyme disease being one but even more prevalent than that is strep yes the strep that gets in people's throats can be in your knees in your elbows in your shoulders it is a huge huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to joint pain that is not being resolved by physical therapy chiropractic orthopedic surgeries etc and then there's also neurological pain patterns neurological pain patterns are so interesting because these are the pain patterns that move around there's no rhyme or reason why you have pain sometimes it's your elbow sometimes it's your knees sometimes it's your hip sometimes it's your neck so I'm gonna talk a little bit more about neurological pain patterns and some of the things you can do about it as well so getting into it some of the most common myths about pain is not number one that physical pain only in painkillers that is a myth that emotional stress has nothing to do with your pain that you have been thoroughly tested to rule out toxicity mold strep lime because most of us have not been tested for those things and then also your diagnosis actually gives you an idea of the root cause I mean by this is that you get a diagnosis of fibromyalgia fibromyalgia is that you have 15 or more pain points on your body that that's a description of your symptoms that's actually not giving you any insight to why why do you have that so it's very important to understand it's not about fishing for the diagnosis it's about fishing for the root what is the root cause so getting into the physical piece here so when it comes to physical pain there is so many things that are completely off of people's radar so number one is when we're dealing with a true physical pain we think that or we usually seek out an orthopedic doctor or we seek out chiropractic or we seek out physical therapy so really at the end of the day in my opinion all three of these things should be fused together and what I mean by that is your muscles and your joints are connected so if we want to do an adjustment and not address the muscles then the muscles stay spasmed or stiff and then we'll find that the joint goes back out of place because I personally I'm a chiropractor and I would get so frustrated when people would say oh you always have to go to the chiropractor once you go get to keep going forever and the only reason you have to keep going forever is when your character is not necessarily addressing the fact that you potentially have a muscular problem in addition to a joint problem because they're both connected and the same thing goes for physical therapy if you want to go and necessarily work on the muscles strengthen the muscle but not address the joint you're still going to run into issues with getting better so with that being said it's a matter of doing both of those things together and there are many chiropractors that will work with physical therapists or care cultures that do muscle work as well but another huge piece of the puzzle that is completely being overlooked is antibiotics and what I need this is there is a family of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones fluoroquinolones are the antibiotics like cipro as well as levaquin are the two most common so cipro and levaquin are two antibiotics that are in this family and this family of antibiotics are known to break down connective tissue to the point that one of the common side effects of levaquin is rupturing your Achilles tendon by the way your achilles tendon is the strongest tendon in your entire body so if let the Queen has the ability to break down the strongest tendon in your entire body it could definitely do some significant damage on the other ligaments tendons and muscles of your body so if you have a young athlete who is getting tons of respiratory infections tons of ear infections tons of sore throats they're constantly being put on different antibiotics and then you also start to notice that they're constantly getting injured oh strain sprain tear labrum knee ACL you have to start connecting the dots to is this child or teen having more susceptibility to injury because of the antibiotics and in addition to that when we're dealing with you know connective tissue is that sometimes can be connected to the antibiotics but we also have to rule out if someone keeps getting injured is there a connective tissue disorder is there lupus is there something called scleroderma is there mixed connective tissue disorder these are things that are autoimmune based conditions that aren't unforced not that like uncommon they are actually a lot more common than people realize so if you keep getting injured injured injured you might need to get better testing and which is the simple blood test to know if you have connective tissue disorder so another thing too is scar tissue so when anytime we get an injury or if we get a surgery or we've had a c-section with any of our births these are all different things that can create a buildup of scar tissue so when we're constantly feeling stiff or in pain or we have arthritis we need to also rule in or out is there a massive scar tissue issue and just a really interesting story about this is we had a woman who came to us many years ago actually and she was a victim of violence and she was actually stabbed I think it was over 40 times and she was dealing with you know a variety of different health conditions and she primarily came to us to get testing and to try to deal with a lot of her anxiety which you could easily have classified her anxiety as PTSD she was a victim of a very extreme crime and what was interesting in our testing is that we we tested her body in a way that revealed that she needed her scars to be worked on she needed to do something called scar release so doctor Nick in our office he specifically just worked on her scars and he did that over I think three to four sessions and we actually didn't see her again and we were kind of almost like concerned like oh gosh I wonder if she's okay I wonder what happened and she came back about a year later and she just came in for chiropractic and we were like oh like how are you you know what happened and she was like I felt amazing after I did the scar really she's pretty much said most of her anxiety in the way and you know a lot of her emotional issues went away and we really couldn't believe that just doing the scar release was that impactful but it really just shows that with scars is it can create a lot of issues in your in your joints and your muscles but scars especially due to trauma can hold a lot of emotional energy so it's something to definitely be considered especially if you had a really traumatic birth and you ended up having an emergency c-section so another thing too that is often overlooked is that if you have had a knee replacement or a shoulder replacement or some other type of joint replacement is is your immune system having an immune response to the materials that were put into you and it's very important to rule this in or out because you can develop something like a rheumatoid arthritis or a fibromyalgia because of massive inflammation due to the fact that your body is having a negative response to the foreign materials that have been put into the body so this is definitely not something that is uncommon it's really just a matter of having those materials tested best-case scenario is to have those materials tested before you even get the surgery so the big topic of tonight is infections and don't get me wrong there are many many types of infections that I do see affecting people's joints but the most common that I see affecting people's joints is going to be Marilia which is classified as lyme disease which is a bacterial infection strep yes the strep that is in your throat and the other one being epstein-barr virus so the biggest thing to understand is that when it comes to the the Lyme disease Lyme is a type of infection that is classified as a spirochete so what happens with Lyme is it looks for vulnerable tissue so if you were a basketball player and you had a lot of stress on your knees because you were a basketball player and maybe you have some you know breakdown of tissue or or your cartilage is a little bit damaged because of all that repetitive stress you can easily get exposed to Lyme disease or bit by a tick or however the exposure goes and you can have the Lyme infection make its way into the knees because that tissue is more vulnerable than other tissue in the body and the same thing really goes for the strep infections so most of our strep starts in our nasal passages our sinuses or our throat or both and if it moves into the throat it can get into the lymph nodes and lymph has the tendency to carry infections to other parts of the body so this is how strep can go from being in the sinuses mucous membranes tonsils into other parts of the body so a really interesting story about this type of scenario is in our practice we offer chiropractic physical sir specifically for that type of work that don't necessarily come in for all of the functional medicine testing so what happened was is we had a patient he came in with a long-standing knee issue and he heard about our therapy called sound wave therapy so soundly therapy is an amazing therapy that is geared towards breaking down scar tissue so with at this point which was a few years ago we had only very positive experiences with the sound wave we had people that would come in with either scar tissue or adhesions from repetitive stress or they had it from surgeries or you know injuries and we would use the sound wave it would break down the starch issue and it would actually help to reduce their pain within one to two sessions so it was always a very positive feedback that we got from the from the patients so we worked on this specific patients knee that had a lot of long-standing knee issues he did not report any other health concerns you know I always tried to dig in I said you know have you had a history of strep have you had upper respiratory infections have you had urinary tract infections have you had Lyme disease cetera and he was no no no no no I just have knee problems end of story so we used the sound wave and he came in about two days later after we did the sound wave and I was like how did you do and he said do not come near me with that machine it made my knee blow up and I was in so much pain which was the first time that I ever really heard that so at that point I said we need to do more testing and he didn't really understand why but it turned out that he had strep in his knee and the strep infection was the reason for why he was not able to get his knee better at this point with all of his different types of physical therapies that he was doing but it was also why he flared from the sound wave because the sound wave was going in and mobilizing the infection so at this point in our practice we really make sure that we do more elaborate testing on anyone who comes in with any type of pain because pain can them from so many different things and it's not just about being repetitive stress or physical injury so for those of you that have been listening since the beginning one of the things that I mentioned is that when you look at specifically rheumatoid arthritis and you look at the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis and you look at the symptoms of mold toxicity they look almost identical and mold is not necessarily something just from a water damage building this is something that you can get exposed to from the overuse of antibiotics penicillin amoxicillin ampicillin are all antibiotics that are made from Penicillium mold so frequent use of antibiotics can be a huge culprit for how mold builds up in the body water damaged buildings heating and air-conditioning ducts that are blowing mold and dust by the way if you have an allergy to dust you have an allergy to mold because mold spores settle in dust in addition peanuts and peanut butter are super-high in mold blue cheese gorgonzola cheese very high mold coffee and wine also high in mold so if you are irritated by those things you have allergies to those things you potentially are dealing with a mold issue unfortunately I have not really worked with many people that do not have some level of mold in their bodies and it kind of an interesting story is when I was in France it actually turns out because France is known for their wine it's the best of the best of us so in France they actually use artificial intelligence they use drones that hover over the vineyards that actually monitor the vines for mold for fungus because that's how big of a problem it is in vineyards so as soon as they find any traces of mold they actually rip up that vine so it doesn't spread so mold is something that is very very common in wine so when you're a wine drinker and especially if you're the wine drinker they can't drink wine anymore cuz it gives you headaches and makes you feel sick it's probably because of multiplicity but outside of mold there are many many many other toxins some of the big ones you know comes to heavy metals things like aluminum that we use every day in antiperspirant there is mercury that we get exposed to through fish and silver fillings and our teeth but even outside of that there are fifty five thousand chemicals that are released every single month and unfortunately only 15 of those are tested properly for safety so we are dealing with a huge huge epidemic of toxicity and this is a huge part of the puzzle when it comes to in slap inflammatory conditions that can be a huge culprit behind why we are dealing with pain and I find it very interesting because there are so many men especially that are in the world of construction and contracting that they assume all of their pain is due to manual labor bending over lifting carrying climbing and what's really interesting is the men that I've worked with their issues are usually toxicity based it's usually not necessarily just because of manual labor because they're exposed to so many things from paints to primers to PVC glue to insulation and fiberglass so that is a huge part of a lot of your pain and inflammation that they deal with so this is always the most fascinating part of the the presentation is women we talk about the emotional ties to pain so some of the emotional types of pain can be very very specific so if you have a lot of pain in your hands this can be associated with what are you holding on to what is the person that you're holding on to the the really bad fight that you're holding on to or the boss that tortured you then an addition is ankle and knee pain and this can be very much tied to being fear of moving forward fear of taking that first step fear of moving on and this could be in relation to a job this could be in relation to a relationship this could be in relation to just even taking that step of doing self-care there are so many ways that this can manifest and it's the same thing that goes for shoulder pain is what are you tired of holding the weight of I'm holding the weight of taking care of everyone in your family are you holding the weight of you know the everybody at work coming to you with their problems are you constantly being bombarded with people wanting advice and dumping all of their problems onto you you could be holding the weight of the world essentially and that could physically manifest in your shoulders and upper body how many of us are like oh my shoulders my tracks my shoulders my tracks and this is a very very common thing when we're constantly feeling the weight of the world and this is not necessarily always associated with people but this is sometimes just feeling so overwhelmed with things that are going on in politics or religion or other things that you know we just feel a lot of emotions towards so when it comes to neurological pain this is always something that a lot of people overlook and a lot of physicians overlook so when you're dealing with pain that moves around your pain has no rhyme or reason sometimes it's your knee sometimes it's your hips sometimes it's your shoulder sometimes it's your elbow this is very very common when your pain is coming from your brain and this is because you have major pathways and connections from brain to body but you also have from body to brain so if you're dealing with neurological stress which can easily come from toxicity and inflammation it can also come from improper blood flow this is very typical that it can start to create numbness tingling burning sensations feelings of crawling or you find yourself being clumsy falling into things constantly hitting into corners or you can also find yourself even being constipated because constipation in someone who's done a lot of things for their gut can be neurological because your vagus nerve that comes from your brain connects into your heart rate respiratory rate and your gastrointestinal system so it's very very important to understand if your pain moves around is the pain stemming from a neurological stress especially if you have very sensitive skin if you have burning numbness tingling and also if you have weakness these are things that you need to consider is your situation being evaluated properly because is are you having proper neurological evaluation are you having your brain hemispheres tested are you testing the vagus nerve are you testing all of these different things and this is something that's very overlooked and a very common thing unfortunately so then the story about a patient is someone who came to us dealing with rheumatoid arthritis so this was a person that was diagnosed after 20 years of joint pain so this person specifically was not always told rheumatoid arthritis but it was about 20 years of joint pain that then eventually ended up with the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis and they said that really at the end of the day the rheumatoid marker was borderline but there was no other answers there was no other answers to the joint pain so the doctor kind of labeled it as this must be rheumatoid arthritis because your levels are borderline so the other things that turned up when we were doing the three was the patient also had a lot of brain fog also had a lot of gut issues definitely some unwarranted instability and mood finding themselves like shifting to anger and irritability but not necessarily for a reason just kind of feeling like what like I'm really irritable and I really don't know why the patient also had celiac I was dealing with a lot of gluten sensitivity but in addition to that was also doing other types of food allergies so it wasn't just about gluten so as we got into the history we started to piece some of the puzzle together here and first and foremost this was someone who as a child had their tonsils removed at four years old due to chronic sore throats so when the patient says this the first thing that I think is how much antibiotics were they on what type of antibiotics and strep that's where my mind went so because of all the sore throats the patient and also upper respiratory infection the patient ended up doing lots of antibiotics this was obviously a long time ago so the patient was like I'm not really sure which antibiotics I was on but I know I was on a lot so patient started to get a little bit older started to play sports mm-hmm was definitely really athletic a lot of competitions but was getting a lot of injuries but overall was like well I'm really competitive I'm really aggressive in my sport so this is why I'm getting injured and really just kind of dealt with you know ice Heat physical therapy cryotherapy things like that so then digging in asking more questions this patient also grew up in the Midwest grew up around a lot of farms and also had childhood eczema the eczema has stabilized at one point but then returned as an adult so just to kind of understand where my mind goes just based off of this is I start thinking this person potentially still has strep in their body from all their chronic sore throats and also upper respiratory infections also all the antibiotic use created a lot of weakness in the connective tissue which was part of the reason why they had a lot of injuries I also start thinking toxicity of pesticides and herbicides from growing up close to farms and also the fact that they had eczema is a huge indicator that there's a lot of lymphatic issues so meaning that the lymph nodes which are the major major filter system of the body potentially is not working optimally and not clearing out these toxins at this point so it becomes multifaceted for this person yes they had a lot of pain but there were many layers and it was a snowball effect that got them to where they were there was the piece of the antibiotics that have affected the connective tissue then the eczema actually turned out to not the eczema but actually to be psoriasis and the psoriasis was actually psoriatic arthritis so this patient didn't have rheumatoid arthritis they actually had psoriatic arthritis that was manifesting as a massive inflammatory condition due to the antibiotics in addition to infections that were undiagnosed at this point so the interesting infection that came up was syphilis and I know many people are like syphilis isn't that eradicated that's not that can't be common etc so simplest is actually classified as the great imitator of psoriasis or syphilis is the great imitator of psoriasis so it's very very important if you're dealing with psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis that you rule out syphilis and syphilis is not necessarily sexually transmitted it comes from a variety of different sources but also syphilis is very very similar to Lyme disease and this is something that not many people know because it is not being tested for because it's deemed to not be a very common infection so the point of me telling this to you is that when you're dealing with pain it's not one thing it could be a variety of different things that happen over time like a snowball effect so it can start with infections and then there could be toxicity that also layers into that and then you can also have the layer of the body's ability to filter the bad stuff out to become compromised because one thing that I say to my patients all the time that they're very appreciative to is that we are designed to get the bad stuff out we are designed to deal with infections we are designed to deal with toxicity but the problem comes in when the filters don't work anymore and the simple simple concept is if you have a vacuum and you use it every single day for a month the filter gets more and more full and it gets to the point that you can't use the vacuum any more until you dump the filter and in our bodies the major filters are our tonsils how many of us have had our tonsils removed our spleen our leur and gallbladder many of us have had our gallbladder removed our appendix another thing commonly removed our kidneys and our lymph nodes so we have a lot of filters because our body knows that we're going to be exposed to things over time so when the filters become clogged overloaded congested and then especially when we start removing filters like our appendix and our tonsils in our gallbladder that's when we start to run into trouble because now our bodies can't get rid of the bad stuff anymore and then we become more susceptible to these infections and these different toxins so it's not about living in a bubble it's not about being on an elimination diet for the rest of your life it's not about you know any of those things it's about knowing what your body needs to get better and to clear the bad stuff out so with all of that being said you don't know what you don't know it's impossible for you to know are your filters clogged do your detox pathways work do you have infections do you have toxins do you have mold exposure it's impossible for you to know these things if you haven't done better testing if you haven't dug in to the information it is very very difficult for you to know so it's a matter of doing more elaborate testing and also being able to work with a physician that is knowing that all of your systems are integrated and you are not a bunch of separate systems we need to get away from thinking that our symptoms that come and go our fatigue our bad sleep our occasional stomachaches our PMS our hormonal imbalance that all of these things are normal we just classify them as normal and unfortunately everybody around us feels like crap so we're just like well I guess it's just getting old this is what it is and we just adapt and we we learn how to live our lives around feeling like crap and I think it's really important for us to get away from this mindset because this is what is getting us into trouble this is what is getting us to a place that there's a heart attack this is getting us to a place that there is cancer this is getting us to a place that there's dementia because we ignore ignore ignore and it's not our fault I want you guys to understand that this is not our fault this is the way that we're all programmed to think and we're also then programmed to think that there's going to be some magical pill that appears one day that's going to fix all of our problems and I really really wish that that was as simple as it was but it's not and we need to really understand that we are an integration of systems and we have emotions and we have stress and we have a lot of Technology and radiation and all these things around and all of those factors need to be considered and you could sit here and say this isn't my belief system or this isn't real it's real and every time you meet someone you don't like that bad vibe that's because you're exchanging energy energy is a real thing we are made of energy how do you think your cell phone works how do you think you see me right now it's all energy we use energetic types of technologies wireless technologies on a day-to-day basis but then we say that energy has nothing to do with our house so we need to start thinking outside the box and understand that it's okay that's not congruent with your belief system it's okay if it's not the common belief it's just a matter of knowing body and what are your body's needs so for those of you that are watching on Instagram lives if you do want the rest of the webinar make sure to send me your email through direct message so I can send you the webinar because I am also on there for those of you that just hopped on so I can send that to you just send me your email through a direct message and I will get you over the remainder of the winner and thank you guys for being with me because it's gonna shut me off in about a minute okay for those of you that are with me on my webinar so the biggest thing too is I know a lot of us feel very overwhelmed with the process of getting better and we think that you know we're gonna have to give everything up we're gonna have to really you know go on elimination diet we're not gonna be able to go out we're not gonna be able to socialize we're gonna have to live in a bubble and we're never gonna be able to have fun again and that is not true because if you understand the root cause of what's going on with you what is the root cause of your pain then really anything is possible with your healing process and it's also you can really use very very specific strategy to get yourselves better and you could do it in a short amount of time this doesn't have to be the next year of your life has given up to get better if you do it right you can be extremely effective in a short amount of time so this kind of brings me to the point of very rarely do things look like the textbook and what I mean by that is when you look at the textbook of rheumatoid arthritis or fibromyalgia you might not match that completely or you may match that but also have depression and anxiety and gut issues and fatigue so you can easily not fit the textbook so what happens is if you don't fit the textbook then how are you going to be treated like the textbook how are you supposed to follow that cookie cutter protocol and hope for the best so if you understand what is the foundation to your pain and your fatigue and your brain fog and your hormones then you can really be effective at getting to the root of the problem so this kind of brings me to this concept of functional versus integrative medicine because I do think that these terms are used interchangeably I know that most people are more familiar with the concept of functional medicine and not necessarily integrative and the biggest difference is that when you're dealing with functional medicine the testing is amazing but the tools are limited and what I mean by that is traditional functional medicine is going to use supplements and herbs and maybe even homeopathic remedies and diet to help you get better and I moved away from functional medicine and into integrative medicine because I found that there was a huge group of people that that wasn't enough that didn't cut it and then I'd also had a lot of people that been there done that they did an elimination diet they took supplements they took 45 supplements a day and they still didn't get better so it kept me learning evolving and being able to fill the voids for my patients and also my own personal journey and I really started to acknowledge that not so Bing could be part of it burning yourself out can be part of it stress can be part of it emotions can be part of it meridians can be part of it lack of detoxification can be part of it all of those things can be part of it so when you're talking functional versus integrative yes when you're talking about integrative medicine we're doing very very elaborate and comprehensive tests and we're figuring out the root cause but the tools to get better are more elaborate because we're able to address all of the pieces of the puzzle that are your foundational issue and that is what allows you to get better faster cheaper and in a fraction of time so people always want to know how do we work with patients how does it all work does it work with insurance etc and overall we designed our practice to serve you and to not necessarily serve insurance providers and I really really do hope this changes in the future but right now we would never be able to spend the amount of time do the tests that we do and be able to give you the massive massive clarity if we didn't if we stuck within the insurance realm and it's really I would only be allowed to spend 15 minutes with you and in 15 minutes I can barely get through the first 10 years of your health history so we ought to be out of network so what's amazing about that as most people do get amazing coverage out of network and they also have the opportunity to use flex savings accounts and health savings accounts as well but I really do hope in the future that it moves in a different direction but as of right now we are an out-of-network practice because we need to be able to spend more time to get results in a faster amount of time and I think one thing we forget a lot is that health care is supposed to be about answers and solutions and a lot of times we are working within our framework of our insurance or using you know the doctors that are within the network and under co-pay and we settle for not getting answers and we settle for I don't really know what's wrong with you maybe it's in your head try this antidepressant to see if it works and I just feel like it's a ton of trial and error and there's so much lack of specificity and doctors feel okay with not necessarily giving you an answer and they're just like well you're in pain so you must have rheumatoid arthritis and you have to just take painkillers to manage it and we need to ask better questions and we need to demand more so that we don't get ourselves into a place that we get to the point that we're so debilitated that we can't function so when it comes to the way that we decide to decided to structure our practice is we tried to structure everything in a strategic way that we can create a very very in-depth onboarding process so that you can get a ton of information about what is the root cause of what's going on with you but also we're able to design a customized plan based off of your DNA which I'm going to explain a little bit more but when you come in most of your tests are done in-house so we do everything from a DNA evaluation that tells me about any dysfunction in your tissues it also picks up on foreign DNA meaning is there DNA of bacteria fungus parasites mold any of those things in your body we do a thorough evaluation on heavy metals minerals food allergies environmental toxicity we do an emotional evaluation and then we do comprehensive bloodwork which all goes through your insurance and the best part is the autonomic response testing so we do not guess we test everything there is not one supplement that I will recommend for you when you come to my office that has not been tested against your body and your all of your supplements your curbs your rent is your detox therapies your neurological therapies emotional therapies every single one of those things are tested to see are you going to benefit from this and because of this we're able to be extremely specific and effective in a fraction of the time so our programs are laid out over three months and we see anywhere between a sixty most of the time closer to a 90% reduction in people's symptoms over that course of time the best part is is that the way that we do things it creates sustainability because people's question is always like okay am I gonna do this and then I gonna slide backwards am I gonna go back once I'm not doing this anymore and I will tell you this is the reason why we do the testing the way we do is because I went down that road I was super frustrated with the fact that when I would do I would be on my protocol I would be on my supplements I would be on my strict diet I would feel pretty good and then as soon as I straight away I didn't feel good anymore and that was very very frustrating to me I really wanted to figure out a way to create sustainability and that was why we do things the way we do now so when it comes to you know someone who's been in pain for twenty years to be able to know exactly what has caused your pain that is priceless if you're someone who doesn't know what to eat and you figure out what you can and cannot eat that is priceless so depending on what your goals are and what you can achieve it's priceless it really really is because you will learn so much about your body and also be able to be preventative to other things in the future because when you're getting down to the DNA level you're able to know you know what is stressing my body the most and what am i at risk for so everybody always wants to know how does it work what does it cost etc so our entire onboarding process that includes all of those tests that I described is 1425 so for those of you you listening you might thinking Wow you know I've never paid more than a copay I get it trust me but I will tell you this is that most of the time when you move into the functional integrative world you're going to go in to an office for a consultation fee that consultation fee might be 200 300 and might be $600 but you will walk out of that office with anywhere between 2 all the way up to $6,000 worth of lab tests and those lab tests will potentially reveal what's wrong with you or potentially not so you could easily be anywhere between three to seven thousand dollars in the hole before you even know what's wrong with you I personally have transformed our practice to give you answers at a fraction of that cost but also to be able to get you to a place that you can spend money on the most important thing getting better because what does it all matter if you don't actually get better so we really tried to set up our practice in that way so for you for those of you that are interested it's really important to know that we want to make sure that you are a good fit for us as well as we are get fit for you so we do ask you to apply and talk with one of our client services team members so you can learn a little bit more about the process and make sure that it is the best fit for you and that you are definitely on board with how we do things and really learn a little bit more about the whole healing process and if you are a long-distance that is no problem at all because you have DNA in your hair so by simply sending a hair sample we obviously give you insight and rection on how to do all of this you can send us our hair hair sample and we can do all of your testing from a distance and then at that point if you just decide that you want to do care with us we can actually do care in office by doing something called an immersion week or even immersion weekend this is an amazing way to jumpstart your healing process and then we usually will give you at home recommendation moving forward from there so again our onboarding process is extremely unique and we do this because we really want to make sure that you have the ability to spend your money on the most important thing which is the healing process so I'm gonna check to see if we have any questions and we do not have questions I always say that I think it's a good thing when I don't have questions does that means I did a good job but but for those of you that have questions definitely check out our website to hop on a strategy call so you can get anything answered that I did not answer tonight but I thank you all for being here with me this is the last part of the series for pain we're going to segue into hormones next month which is always such a hot topic so April is all about hormones and we're going to be diving in and talking about all of the different pieces of the puzzle when it comes to hormones and the things that you're not being told about why you're only hormonal eeyow so thank you all for being here tonight I really really appreciate it I hope you know that this webinar is really an educational experience and I hope you gained a lot of amazing knowledge but most importantly when you actually do your testing and figure out what your body needs and what is the root cause to your pain that's when this becomes a breakthrough experience so again I really hope that you get the opportunity to jump on a strategy call to learn more about how you can take that first step and I look forward to seeing you guys next month in our webinar series for hormones all right everyone I will see you then you