Neuro-Autoimmunity: When Your Immune System Attacks Brain

welcome everyone we're just kicking off the webinar hello hello welcome back everyone to our last episode of the month we are finishing off this month talking about autoimmune neurological conditions I know that there was many people that hopped on last week hoping that that was the topic but we were a little thrown off from technical difficulties but you are here now today for those of you that are on Instagram live with us if you are not able to stay for the full webinar because it is a full hour definitely feel free to direct message your email address and I will get you the replay so you can watch it on your own time same thing for you guys here that are on the webinar you will have access to the replay just in case you can't spend the full hour with me we have a lot to cover tonight when we're talking about neurological conditions there are so many pieces to the puzzle this is obviously a good thing and a bad thing good in the sense that it's not just that your neurological system starts to decline and degenerate and there's nothing you can do about it there are many many reasons why that can happen which really opens the doors for many opportunities to to heal most importantly is you have to figure out what is the root cause to why you have developed this autoimmune condition in the first place if it is multiple sclerosis if it's ALS if it's dementia Alzheimer's whatever the case may be these are all different conditions that have a root they don't come on for no reason they don't just come out of nowhere they're not just based on your genetics and they are definitely not just based on age so as we talk tonight we're going to understand the bigger picture here but before we get into it I want to give you guys a little bit of a background so tonight again we're diving into talking all about neurological disorders that are correlated back to autoimmunity we're going to really uncover some of the limitations with the testing that is available to us which is unfortunately why so many people get diagnosed once their condition has progressed we are also going to talk about some of major root causes that I see in my integrative practice so we're gonna be talking about everything from blood sugar instability to poor circulation to toxicity to infections Lyme disease there are so many components here and again this is not to overwhelm this is so that you understand that there can be so many opportunities to understand the root cause as to why you have developed this specific condition in the first place so I'm going to use the PowerPoint so I don't go off on my tangents but again we're going to talk about these conditions but I'm gonna give you guys a lot of insight to understand the bigger picture and then of course most of you are here because you're looking for an alternative you're looking for a solution you're looking for answers and you're most definitely going to get that from today as we go as well if you are on either Instagram or if you're on the webinar definitely pop questions into the chat box I'm going to be answering questions either as we go or I'm going to be answering them closer to the end of the webinar so so definitely make sure that if you have a specific question that you want to be addressed just pop it in the chat box and I will make sure to cover it for you guys so just kind of a little bit of background on this concept of integrative medicine and who I am in general is I'm dr. Nicole I run a practice called integrative Wellness Group I run it with a couple of other practitioners my husband included and unfortunately he's working so you can be here today but his biggest passion is the neurological system as houses is it mine but for him he's really focused on working with a lot of patients that have dealt with brain injuries because he unfortunately has had over thirteen concussions in his life yes he is functional Eisler for myself I dealt with a lot more neurological issues nothing necessarily super severe but everything from brain fog to you know not necessarily having clarity having headaches and these all ended up stemming back to infections in toxicity for me so we have two very different story when it comes to our experience with our own neurological decline and then obviously being able to get ourselves back to health both of our routes poor pads look very very different so for us you know how he even got into doing this is primarily because we always have challenged what we were taught we always felt that there was a lot of things that didn't always connect there was a lot of things that didn't always make sense and we found that it was very frustrating how there were so there's many many limitations when it came to the healing process you know our background was in a lot of physical medicine so we're we're both trained as chiropractors and physical therapists so we were taught all about physical body physical body physical body and then you know medical doctors it's all about pharmacology drugs pharmacology medicine and you know no matter what route you go in you're going to hone in on one modality and we just kept challenging that and evolving our way that we work with patients which brought us to more of this integrative mindset and integrative approach and that's one of the reasons why you know our practice works with so many different people it's because it's not about the diagnosis it's not about the pathology sometimes it's not even necessarily about your symptoms it's more so about what is causing it because most of the people that we work with they come to us with a myriad of different things they have brain fog they're tired they're achy they can't lose weight you know they're inflamed their joints hurt there's so many layers and they think like oh my gosh like how did I get here what is causing all of this and a lot of their symptoms end up having anywhere between one to two root causes so it's not that all of your symptoms make you overly complex it's just about connecting the dots better and leveraging the different testing that's available and also asking better questions that is one thing that I have really really mastered over time as I will ask you the most questions and I will ask you questions in a variety of different ways because most of the things that you are dealing with have become your normal and we have just accepted to be tired we've accepted to sleep like crap we've accepted that we get bloated after most meals we accept all of those things and we don't realize none of those things those things are actually normal and this is very very relevant when it comes to you know neurological issues so for me I know that my personal story well I guess for a while I didn't have a story I remember feeling kind of guilty when I was amongst my colleagues most of my colleagues had this story about how you know they were really sick and they got better by seeking out integrative or functional medicine because nobody was able to figure out what was going on with them and then they finally ended up at a functional doctors door and they figured it out and they were able to get better so for me I found that when I realized what my story was my story was more relatable probably than or more relatable to most people and that was primarily that a lot of the things that I was dealing with became my normal being tired all the time was my normal and not being able to concentrate was my normal having to read a page three different times to to grasp it was my normal sitting there talking down to myself saying you're not cut out for this profession you're not smart enough was my normal you know all of these things were my normal occasional stomachaches was my normal oh I can't eat too much cheese and hurts my stomach that was my normal and there were even more significant things that I adapted to I started having heart computations to the point that I lost my vision I started having fainting spells but I said oh it's close to my period it must be hormonal so it was very eye-opening when I did my testing and I realized that I wasn't that healthy I thought that I was I thought I was doing the that I knew how to I thought I was eating well I was exercising and when I sat there and I kind of sat with my results and I realized I had mercury toxicity and I had Lyme disease in my body I had tons of parasites in my gut because I was eating tons of fish and sushi we'll get there we'll talk more about that don't worry I realized that all of these these things that I was dealing with that were my normal they had a reason there was a root cause to it and to be really honest with you I didn't even know how they were affecting me until I started my own healing process and I started to peel back those layers and I was like wow I really did feel like crap I just didn't know any different so that's one big thing as most of you are here because you have some type of condition or diagnosis or you have a loved one that has a diagnosis and you're here to learn more but there's a lot of you that are listening that maybe this you know you don't have MS or you don't have Alzheimer's or you don't have to mention or you don't have any of that and you're just curious and you're resonating with this because unfortunately most of us are tired most of us feel like crap most of us can't think most of us have terrible short-term memory most of us have all of these things but everybody else that we talk to has it too so we think it's normal so I know that we are well into the evening and there are tons and tons of things going on around us but I want to give you guys the opportunity as we dig into this information to like shut the email browser down tell your kids to give you the next like 20 to 25 minutes don't everyone to just kind of give you this time to hone in because I am NOT going to be giving you information that's your run-of-the-mill ins of information I'm not gonna sit here and talk to you about the Paleo diet the keto diet I'm not gonna sit here and tell you about the magical supplement protocol I'm gonna give you information that allows you to be empowered and understand why you may be feeling the way that you do or why you have made a attain the day notice that you have and this is information that other people are not talking about because I have spent years collaborating and I literally was just at a brain conference two weeks ago I am constantly learning evolving because that is what needs to happen because unfortunately people and illness and sickness is not getting any easier it is actually getting more complex because there are many many things that are unfortunately working against us so first and foremost for those of you that are here and it's either you that have been diagnosed with some type of autoimmune neurological issue or it's a loved one I want you to know that it is not your fault that you got to where you are it is not your fault that you weren't able to you know prevent your mom or dad from developing this autoimmune condition it is not anyone's fault there is a lot of things that are working against us in our you know in our everyday that are completely off of our radar number one and number two is if you are the person that was like you know what I'm gonna try to clean up my diet I'm gonna try to take some supplements I'm gonna try something and you went on the internet you went on Google University and WebMD and you got paralyzed because you're like I have no idea I don't know should I be paleo should I be Kia keto should I be a vegan you know should I take this supplement should I take that supplement there is a lot of information there's a lot of mixed information there's a lot of bad information so it is not your fault that you have not been able to get yourself on track it is not your fault that you don't know which doctor to go to that is really why I'm here is to be able to give you information that allows you to feel empowered and knowledgeable enough to take that first step on your health journey so a couple of foundational things about medicine functional medicine whatever you want to call it is our whole entire healthcare system is built on specialties and it's built on specialists and it's built on seeking out the expert the is obviously going to provide benefit in some capacity but in my opinion I feel like the fact that we have segregated out all of the systems of the body and there are specialists for each system is what has gotten us unfortunately into trouble because we are assuming that all of our body systems are working independently we are assuming that our gut has nothing to do with our brain that our gut has nothing to do with our heart that our heart has nothing to do with our thyroid we are assuming that these systems completely work independently of each other and this brings me to my second point which is basic physiology so 90 to 95 percent of your serotonin not yours everyone's serotonin that is meth which is your primary feel-good hormone 90 to 95 percent of that is made in your gut so if you are dealing with irritable bowel syndrome but you also are struggling with depression then you potentially could be treated for your depression but nobody's necessarily addressing your irritable bowel and then you're constantly running into roadblocks because your medication has to be it has to be changed it has to be higher than its lower and then you add a medication then you switch medications because the root cause is not your depression the root cause is the fact that you have a dysfunctioning gut that is causing you to not produce serotonin which is then affecting your mood so I'm not going to secure and tell you that every case of depression is because of a gut issue but the point is is that you have to look at the bigger picture and we need to know how to connect the dots so we're not treating the effect and we're actually true to treating the cause because that is so much of what we do in health care now is we're constantly treating the effect which are the symptoms and this is why we run into roadblocks or we get recommended medications that are forever medications they are now lifestyle medications and unfortunately we're on these medications and we might feel better for a short amount of time but then we hit a plateau and we get frustrated why am I not better why is this not solved so a lot of people always ask you know why why doesn't every doctor look at the body integrative Li why doesn't every doctor use the different tests that you use at integrated wellness group and really at the end of the day my training as well as most physicians training unless you were trained in Europe everything's on the foundation or the premise of using chemistry so the most typical test that you get on a yearly basis is going to be blood work and your blood work is a chemistry based test so if you have changes or alterations in your chemistry we are going to manipulate that pathway by using chemistry aka drugs medicine pharmacology whatever you want to call it so the point is is that most of our testing is going to be using or looking at the body strictly from a biochemical standpoint and we're not looking beyond that we're not looking at energy we're not looking at emotions we're not looking at meridians we're not looking at any of those things and we assume that everything is a chemistry based problem but for those of you that are listening and you've been down the road of maybe a functional medicine approach and you hit a plateau it's because you haven't necessarily been looked at from an integrative standpoint because there are many other pieces to the puzzle other than what your blood work tells you okay so Story number one is patient comes to me diagnosis of vestibular migraines she was managing these migraines by the by the use of six different prescriptions and I asked her I was like are you taking six different prescriptions on a daily basis and she's like well kind of I was like okay tell me more and primarily she had these migraines for so long that she was becoming her own pharmacist essentially she knew like how to combine her medications for what type of migraine it felt like that day some of her migraines induced vertigo some of her migraines induced neuropathy numbness and tingling some of her migraines like made her have to crawl up in a ball and be in the dark like her migraines actually changed on a day-to-day basis some of her migraines gave her facial paralysis and made her slur so she learned how to mix these medications up so that she could function and go to work and live her life so this is a pretty risky thing for someone who is not necessarily a physician or a pharmacist but she just kind of knew her body at this point so I was very you know interested to see what her testing was going to reveal because of how severe these migraines were and how long they were going on so this is the interesting thing this is how this is how and why we blow minds on a day-to-day basis because as soon as this patient gave me a very brief description of what she was dealing with from a migraine standpoint I started to think about all the possibilities okay does she have lymphatic and I'm gonna talk about these more in depth but does she have lymphatic congestion does she have a circulatory issue is she not getting proper blood flow to her brain does she have toxicity maybe that toxicities from a bunch of dental work does she have infections that are affecting her brain does she have issues with her sinuses that's also affecting the brain does she have problems with drainage from her ears does she have abnormally shaped or angled eustachian tubes which is the drainage of the ear does she have tonsils does she not have tonsils does she have imbalance blood sugar does she have type 1 diabetes does she have gut issues so the point of me telling you guys this is that those are all things that need to be evaluated in a person that has migraines it's not just oh you have migraines so okay well what medication can we give you or what supplements can you come and give you or what anti-inflammatory diet can I put you on there are so many factors to be considered everything from blood flow to infections to dental - how is her palate shaped so your doctor if your doctor is not looking at every single one of these things with a neurological issue like MS Alzheimer's dementia Parkinson's ALS like your doctor is not going to necessarily be able to find be able to ever find the root cause so these are all things that need to be considered so this patient was really interesting because we were able to leverage one of our technologies called the bio resonance can and the bio resonance revealed this photo so sorry to those of you that are on the Instagram live so you can't see this photo but what it is is it is a picture of the brain and the vascular supply to the brain and it is the under portion of the brain which is where some of the areas of your brain one of them is called the hippocampus the hippocampus has a lot to do with your memory and it also has a lot to do with the potential onset of Parkinson's because the hippocampus is what starts to become compromised and degenerated which causes excuse me your dopamine to drop which is then what causes the onset of Parkinson's so this patient I did a neurological exam on her and it was very fascinating because she definitely had a lack of facial expression and I asked her if she had Botox because that's always a possibility when you're dealing with lack of facial expression she said she actually did not have Botox but the other thing that I noticed is when I had her just simply walking she had a loss of arm movement her arms didn't move when she was walking which is a very common manifestation when you're starting to have issues with your hippocampus the other thing that I noticed is she walked with her legs very spread apart it's called having a wide gate so pretty much what was revealed is that a big part of the puzzle for this woman for her migraines was circulatory so it turned out there were men many circulatory issues in her family there was her grandmother passed away of a brain aneurysm which is a tearing in a blood vessel of the brain her father had bypass surgery so he had clogged coronary arteries of the heart her mom had a lot of varicose vein issues also ended up having different vein surgeries so these are all signs that there are susceptibilities in the vascular system but unfortunately for a very very long time nobody was necessarily correlating the cardiovascular system to neurological conditions and now they actually are finally acknowledging that something called vascular dementia does exist so the thing is is that you don't have to have full-blown dementia to have vascular issues to the brain it starts with headaches then can become migraines then can become dizziness vertigo what they call vestibular migraines and then it also can become something like a Parkinson's or an Alzheimer's dementia etc so this is a very good visual to see that the areas where you see those diamonds with the teal and the dark burgundy color in between that is where she was having the most compromised circular circulation in the brain this is also another reason why people get headaches and they drink caffeine and it makes them feel better because the caffeine is a vasodilator so it dilates those blood vessels and it brings more blood flow to the brain so it makes people feel better unfortunately it's just a temporary fix it's not ever going to fix the problem or fix the root cause it's just going to palliate the symptoms essentially so the interesting thing about this is that when it comes to brain degeneration especially in the event of multiple sclerosis you have to have more more than a 70% loss of the myelin sheath before you will see anything on an MRI so when you're having all of these really odd neurological symptoms and you go an MRI done and they say no no we we've ruled out MS you know there's there's no possibility because you know you don't have any lesions on your brain that is not always necessarily the best information because it takes more than a 70% reduction or loss of myelin sheath before you will see anything that comes up on an MRI so the point of me telling you this is don't sit around and think that your loss of memory is normal or your massive brain fog is normal or your inability to concentrate as normal those are all warning signs that you're having brain degeneration which again we're going to talk more about why that happens in the first place so foundationally there are three major things that your brain needs and of those three things one of them is stable blood sugar I'm not talking about high blood sugar I'm not talking about low blood sugar I am talking about stable blood sugar so if you are getting your blood work done and they're saying oh you're your blood sugar on your a1c and your glucose they're so low that's really good keep it up that's not good either that means you're hypoglycemic so that means your brain is potentially not getting glucose and glucose is the primary fuel for your brain that doesn't mean go eat a bunch of candy bars because that's not how the body works that's not how the brain metabolizes glucose or sugar but it is very very important for you to eat properly through the day so that your blood sugar stays stable which we will talk more about the other thing is is that you've established this through the case study that I just showed you is oxygen is necessary for your brain to function and the proper or the the way is that your brain is going to get proper oxygenation is through proper blood flow so circulation is extremely extremely important for you to have your brain get the nutrients that it needs another thing is stimulation so many of us get into a routine of just going to work doing the same tasks every day we don't necessarily you know drive a new route we don't do it they knew we don't read a new book we don't have time and then we just kind of used the same pathways over and over again and in the brain so exercise and learning something new is two of the primary things that we need to do on a regular basis to provide stimulation to our brain as well so it's not necessarily just about constantly exercising it's also about learning something new reading a book etc so blood sugar let's go back to this so number one is that if you are the person that wakes up in the morning and you're like oh I'm not hungry oh if anything I can't even look at food but I have my coffee that suppresses my appetite then you know I don't end up eating till 12:00 1:00 2:00 o'clock then by that time I'm starving so I grab for my sandwich or a rice bowl or sushi a cave with rice then you crash you need your midday coffee or some other type of caffeine then you get to dinner you're starving again you're eating cheese and crackers before you make your dinner and then dinner's done and you're like whoo I want something sweet can I wish I had a little chocolate in the house so this story I hear it constantly and this is all the signs that you are hypoglycemic that means you have low blood sugar so again having low blood sugar is not a good thing it means that your brain is potentially not getting the fuel that it needs and then if you have high blood sugar then what happens is is that your insulin doesn't work very well keep it very simple insulin allows your cells to use the sugar so if your cells can't use the sugar including your brain cells then what's gonna happen is that you are going to have a bunch of sugar floating around and if you have a bunch of sugar floating around that can't be used then you start to have a ton of inflammation including brain information and this is one of the reasons why we get foggy or we crash after we eat a high card or a high sugar meal this is all because your blood sugar is spiking and crap and your brain is becoming very very very stressed from that so another thing here is oxygen so if you have high blood pressure that's a problem if you have low blood pressure that's also a problem every time you go to the doctor and your blood pressure is low they're like oh that's good keep up the good work make sure that you know you you definitely keep your blood pressure low it's great so the thing about low blood pressure is think about it if you have low blood pressure that potentially can cause or make your heart work harder to pump blood out to your extremities aka your hands and feet so if you constantly have cold hands and feet or you have what we call rain odds these are all signs that you potentially have low blood pressure or abnormal circulation so if you if it if it's difficult for your blood to get to your hands and feet it is also difficult for your blood to get to your head so your brain is potentially not getting the proper oxygenation that it needs this is a huge culprit behind the behind brain fog so the other thing is is that if you have high blood pressure you can easily start to develop a lot of headaches or migraines even visual issues dizziness or vertigo the funny thing is is that I work with many many people that have low blood pressure when they get their blood pressure taken on their arm but when I look at their testing they end up having high blood pressure in their head and this happens sometimes because they have very swollen glands in their neck they have a lot of spinal issues maybe they've had head injuries neck injuries scoliosis those are all parts of the puzzle or they've had surgeries like tonsils removed lay down scar tissue that can play a very significant role and blood gets in but struggles to get out so you get a bunch of back up in the head so there are many many possibilities when it comes to how blood flow is going to play a role in your brain so like I said before stimulation is equally as important so one very interesting thing is that if you're a person that you maybe drive 20-30 minutes maybe like 45 minutes a day and then you go for a long ride you take a little bit of a trip and you drive for two three four hours and then you arrive to your destination and you feel physically fatigued you're just like oh my god I need to take a nap like I'm so tired I all I did was drive this is not a physical fatigue this is a neurological city so what's happening is that you're you're you're activating pathways that are not very strong and you're fatiguing out those neurons so the way that I explain this to patients is if I walk in the room and you don't see me and I slam a book on the table you're gonna get startled but if I dropped a pin on the table you're not gonna get startled so when your your neurons become very what you call close to threshold it's like that pin drop causes you to jump just as much as the loud noise it's like everything's over firing too fast so this is the very common thing so if you're that person that you get a physical fatigue by doing some type of activity that you don't normally do or just from driving a long distance this is really representing that you're having massive neurological Tooty because of lack of stimulation so I'm here to tell you you don't know what you don't know and if you think that your mind's blown yet just wait so as we kind of get into more of this some of the biggest biggest myths around these autoimmune neurological conditions so number one is that your autoimmune brain condition or neurological condition cannot be caused by infections or toxins that is definitely false which I will elaborate more on that you have the best testing for your neurological conditions also there is no such thing as vascular brain issues which have you been listening the whole time we already know that's not true and then also that dental has nothing to do with Neurology alright so number one is oh actually I'm also going to talk about the myths around healing your neurological conditions because I know that the most common things that people are talking about right now is they're talking about CVD everybody's talking about the MTHFR gene if you guys don't know what that is that's fine I'll still elaborate on it detox has no benefit to neurological disorders because the neurological damage is already done melatonin is something that's for everyone because I know that's a big one that everybody's using because nobody could sleep and then when it comes to the medical recommendations is that these immunosuppressants are going to solve your problem or get rid of your neurological condition and also one of the big myths is that your neurological damage is completely irreversible so I'm gonna talk about kind of some of the the causes and the myths around the causes and then I'm gonna talk about the myths around healing and improving your neurological conditions so number one is that when it comes to infections and toxins so first of all there is not a lot of good testing that is available to test for toxicity and infections number two is that the primary physician again because all of healthcare is segregated the primary physician that looks at infections is infectious disease doctors so infectious disease most of the time you're never getting referred to an infectious disease doctor unless you have chronic diarrhea that nobody can figure out what's going on or you actually have you know some type of reoccurring theme or that nobody can figure out the other on the flip side of toxicity that's a toxicologist which most people are not going to see a toxicologist either so that's kind of the beauty of the functional ninja medicine world is we actually evaluate for this because we know how relevant it is so one of the most interesting test that is available through just traditional run-of-the-mill testing you can get it done to request you could get it done through lab court and it will go through your insurance is a test called tgf-beta one very fancy item so the interesting thing is that I learned from the our Richie shoemaker all about mold toxicity a long time ago and he primarily said that tgf-beta one is really elevated in the event that somebody has mold toxicity so then you learn very quickly as a clinical position that that's not always true it's not always about mold it's really about your body going into survival mode and you having such severe inflammation that you're having cell death so the highest I've ever seen this marker through just again a traditional LabCorp test was first of all the tgf-beta one should never be higher than 2,300 2,300 the highest I ever saw was 60,000 this person's immune system was in complete disarray and this was because in the combination of different viruses and another specific type of virus called retrovirus so when it comes to viruses there are some viruses that we know about we hear about the herpes virus that can cause cold sores you know we hear about the viruses that can cause chicken pox we hear about shingles there are so many different types of viruses number one number two is these viruses almost never manifest like the textbook I have seen people that have the shingles virus internally I've seen the shingles virus in people's vaginal tract I have seen herpes virus that has caused Crohn's disease I have seen the Coxsackie virus which is the hand foot and mouth which like every kid gets I have seen that in the brain of an autistic child I have seen the crazy things when it comes to these viruses so it's not about just getting a simple blood test and saying oh you have a virus but it looks like it's inactive no big deal these viruses can definitely play a significant role in autoimmune neurological issues and I actually didn't put it in here but there is a test that's called neural Zoomer it's called neuro Zoomer plus specifically and it's fascinating because this test is now readily being used by functional and integrative doctors that specific test it actually tests for over I think 30 different types of viruses that show up as affecting the neurological system for people so it is fascinating when you're able to see that you know this is now being acknowledged as being a primary player in conditions like Parkinson's and rumor I'm sorry multiple sclerosis and Alzheimer's etc but another really big one too is Lyme disease you know we hear about Lyme we hear about it affecting joints and causing people so you know have a lot of problems with their physical body but there is a such thing as neurological Lyme and neurological Lyme is very very very hard to diagnose even through a spinal tap so I can go into all of these topics and it can get very very you know elaborate and we could be here for hours but the point is is that I have never worked with a patient that had no viruses I have never worked with a patient that has never been exposed to molds there is mold in peanut butter there is mold in cheese there is mold in coffee there's mold in wine there is mold and a lot of the things that we eat let alone most of our antibiotics like penicillin amoxicillin ampicillin are all made from mold and then there's obviously the possibility of living in a water damage building working in a water damage building so when it comes to mold it is a big player and a lot of knowledge cool issues and one of the seminars that I was actually just at the owner and researcher for Fry labs Fr why he actually found he did tons of studies on multiple sclerosis and found that fungus was the primary player was finding fungal antibodies as the primary reason for the myelin sheath degeneration and then the other interesting thing was with ALS patient's Lou Gehrig's disease it was algae so algae like think of like the crap that builds up in like a fish tank so found very very unique types of algae as the primary trigger to ALS so these are things that we're getting exposed to by swimming in lakes and ponds and rivers and it's not that we need to live in a bubble it's more so understanding that if your immune system is compromised maybe because of toxicity maybe it's because you're exposed to a bullet of pesticides and herbicides because you don't know anything about eating organic like maybe you work as a mechanic maybe you work in a hair salon and constantly breathing in hair sprays and dyes and formaldehyde these are all things that we take for granted that we don't necessarily consider as being a player and why our immune systems are compromised because fungus mold parasites lyme disease these things have been around for like thousands upon thousands of years so why is everyone so affected now why are people debilitated from Lyme disease it's because our immune systems can't fight this stuff off and our bodies are not resilient anymore we're our immune systems are compromised we are removing organs that are primary or vital for our immune system so like as an example your tonsils are a primary player in your immune system so we're how many people get their tonsils removed it's happening left and right how many people think their appendix removed your appendix as part of your immune system so how many people have their spleens rupture because of different viruses that's another immune system organ so when it comes to our immune systems we need to start asking why are our bodies less resilient and why are up but why are our immune systems so compromised and one of those reasons is toxicity and another part of this is just toxicity that we get from food I'm sure a lot of you guys have heard all about this like GMO conversation not a lot of us always understand like what the heck does it all mean but the primary chemical that's being used and most of our industrial farming is the same chemical that we use to kill our weeds it's the same chemical that we use called roundup it's the technical term is like phosphate but glyphosate I have never worked with one person that didn't come up toxic with glyphosate it is it's horrible but it's almost impossible to not have glyphosate in your system and this is a huge player in why our immune systems are so compromised so being able to do some type of supportive detox for your body is so so important if that means like just doing some type of cardio to break a sweat we need to really help our bodies to get rid of some of this stuff so another big thing - and you've probably realized this at this point is like is testing there's so many limitations with testing nobody's necessarily testing do you have different types of antibodies against viruses are they testing you for Lyme disease are they testing you for gluten sensitivities are they testing you for parasites you know one of the most common things that women here is if you have a cat don't change the litter when you're pregnant so the primary reason why they say that is because there is a very very specific parasite that comes from cats that's called toxoplasmosis toxoplasmosis has been studied many many times and it has been found to get into the neurological system and it can actually cause your capillaries which are little blood vessels in the brain to rupture and explode yes I know that's terrifying but this is like I'm the point of me saying this is that parasites are not like this weird like hippie dippie thing that like you know weird doctors are telling people about like this is a legitimate thing like if you actually go on YouTube and you type inyou Penn University of Pennsylvania and you type in toxoplasmosis there is a video of the researchers at that school showing you imaging of though that specific parasite exploding capillaries in a brain like it's wild so again I'm not trying to freak everybody out but the point is is that these things are real they're not just speculation they're not somebody's opinion like these are real things that need to be considered and on top of it too is when you have these severe brain disorders and maybe their seizures in the mix we're using you know such primitive testing we're looking at you know we're looking at ever eyes and we're looking at EEG s but nowadays there are things called QE II G's quantitative EEG s these literally map out the hemispheres of the brain it maps out the loads it tells you what's overactive under active it tells you about your brain waves it tells you everything and these are technologies that people are completely unaware of so for those of you that have been with me the whole time we've talked a lot about how this vascular piece of the puzzle is so significant so one of the most fascinating easy things that you can do to improve the vascular drainage of your brain is change how you sleep and what I mean by that is if you have a traditional you know bed frame headboard you can actually prop up the head of your bed literally you could stack with you books underneath the top of your head or underneath the you know the post of your headboard you raise your bed up three to four inches and yes you're gonna be on a little bit of an incline that will actually help your brain drain tremendously while you sleep because technically your brain shrinks by 40% when you sleep and it shrinks so that it can improve the drainage to get anything bad out of the brain and you have an entire immune system in your brain it's called your glymphatic system so that's the picture that I have here on the webinar so the glymphatic system is literally designed to drain all bad stuff away from the brain and that could be toxins it could be infections it could be viruses it could be all of those things so what's interesting is that you know if infection can't get in the brain and viruses can't cross the blood-brain barrier toxins can't affect the brain then why do we have such an intricate drainage system and immune system of the brain but the funny thing is is dr. Klink heart for those of you that know him he's one of my mentors and he is legitimately hilarious and pretty much what he said is what we sleep our brain takes a poop and if you pretty much continued on to say that our brains are not pooping and I found it rather comical but as soon as I got home from the conference this was literally a couple of weeks ago and he was talking all about just simply raising the bed I can't even tell you how much of a game changer this has been for myself and my husband from waking up refreshed to getting a better night's sleep to feeling more clear it is literally a game changer if that's the one thing you take away from this this webinar is do that um but obviously some people have more intricate issues they have a lot of spinal issues they've had neck fusions they've had neck surgeries they have scoliosis like those are things that need to be considered for how well your brain is draining and also when your brain is draining get for all that goes it goes into your tonsils and these lymph nodes so if you don't have tongs that's all going into the lymph nodes and chances are you're getting a bunch of gunk in this area that is causing these lymph channels to get all clogged up guess what is like one of the biggest risk factors for developing breast cancer or even lymphoma is having massive congestion in the lymphatic system because these lymph chains in your neck are connected to your breast and armpits so this is so significant not just for you know neurological issues this is so significant for decreasing the risk for different types of lymphomas and cancers and this is just a visual for those of you again on the webinar is showing you how many organs are involved with the immune system so your tonsils are part of your immune system your adenoids are part of your immune system how many of us have had these removed and again this is not blame like how are you supposed to know this but now knowing like you can at least be more proactive with your kids our spleen our lymph nodes our appendix you have various lymphatic pathways in your gut all of these things are significant on keeping the amuse of some healthy and resilient so that we can get rid of these infections that potentially can play a role in our neurological system so I actually I'm gonna skip over that really quick um so the other one is dental I know that I'm not a dentist but I work with a couple of holistic dentists because sometimes when we do our testing we find that dental is a big part of the puzzle that we sometimes need to refer out and simply the shape of your palate so if you have a very small face and you've had to have teeth removed by your orthodontist because of allowing or because your teeth were crowding chances are you have a small palate it's not a very cheap procedure to expand your palate but sometimes the shape of your palate and it being narrow can play a very significant role in the drainage of your brain on top of that this was an interesting scenario that I just had recently is that I had a patient she came to me with science issues like really really severe reoccurring sinus issues antibiotics nasal sprays nothing has been able to help her so when we did her analysis we actually realized or I realized that there was really nothing wrong with her sinuses but she had something called a dental cavitation on her upper right wisdom tooth area so let me just keep this simple so when you get a tooth removed they have to remove something called your periodontal ligament if they don't remove that ligament your brain does not know that the tooth is gone so it does not lay down the proper scar tissue and healing modalities so this becomes a gaping hole that bacteria can get into and pool so if the bacteria gets into that that bacteria can eventually move into the jaw bone which is a bone up here which can then penetrate into the sinus so this specific woman had ended up having line come up in her in her blood work and when I looked at the tooth through one of our technology is it turned out she had something called periosteum her eos Titus is spirochetes which are lime based organisms not always that her specifically so she has lime spirochetes in the jaw penetrating up into the sinus and she also said oh I get occasional headaches pain behind the eye my eyes blurry etc so this is really really significant because if you have boatload of dental issues there is a high probability that this could play a very very significant role in your brain and I've even had people that have gone and gotten their silver fillings removed and I've had one one patient he came to me for because he developed Parkinson's and then when we put the piece two pieces of the puzzle together it turned out the onset of his Parkinson's was two months after he had 12 silver fillings removed out of his teeth but they were not removed safely they were literally a dentist mine in crack them pop them out which released all this mercury vapor that went in and it started to affect the brain so you have to be really careful and you have to know what you're doing when you're getting into this world of dental um but dental can play a huge role in neurological autoimmune conditions another thing too is oral golf of albinism this is when you have say a crowd which is gold next to a silver filling so you have metal next to metal this can actually create electrical current which can compromise the electrical signaling to the brain so again biological dentists are the ones that deal with this kind of stuff so it's not that we necessarily are dealing with it but we are testing for it and then sending you out to a dentist that can help you the other thing too is fluoride I know that fluoride is you know have such mixed reviews in the research but overuse of fluoride if you're getting it through water plus cleanings plus fluoride treatments plus you're taking it maybe as a dropper through your vitamins fluoride can play a very significant role on the pineal gland which will compromise your melatonin which will then compromise your sleep and will then also cause brain degeneration so getting into this whole concepts of healing the brain is that everybody is all about the CBD kick so the thing about CBD is it's good but the CBD has to be in the form of oil not deeper if you are getting it in the form of oil that actually can activate something called your can avoid two receptors which can actually play a very big role in modulating your immune system it is way more complicated than that but I am trying to keep this as simple as possible but again if you are a CVG user and you do feel that it is benefiting you if you do it in an oil form you will get better bed of it um another really interesting thing is that I have the the MTHFR conversation on a day-to-day basis now nowadays because a lot of people are doing genetic testing through these ancestry companies one of them is called 23andme so this has happened not only to me but also to some of my colleagues and what they have found is that a child has this MTHFR mutation which does a lot to do with like how well they detox and it has a lot to do with development of the neurological system but we found that sometimes the child has this mutation but the parent don't which wouldn't make much sense because most of your genetic mutations are supposed to come from mom dad and then there passed down to you so the point of me bringing this up is that your genes can express differently based off of of environmental stressors so if a child has been overly vaccinated in a short amount of time or maybe the child has had a lot of antibiotics early on in life or maybe the child was exposed to different infections going through the birth canal or because they were a hospital birth these are all factors that can compromise genes and can cause genetic mutations which then can compromise the immune system of a child so I want you to understand that these genetic markers that you're finding through these different platforms like 23andme they are not a definitive they are not a make-or-break they are not you know dictating the health of your yourself and your child these genetic mutations can easily be compromised because of different types of stressors so I forgot to change the numbers on this but whatever um so another thing too is that when it comes to detox if you have MS if you have ALS if you have pandas if you have any type of autoimmune neurological condition you need to detox I don't care what they sitting here telling you the origin of this of this condition is but your glymphatic system again the Lin the the primary immune system of your brain is majorly majorly compromised in any person that has these autoimmune neurological conditions so you need to get that system working and you can get that system working by lifting up your head board and sleeping on an incline you can get the system working by using something called craniosacral therapy it can improve by using infrared sauna sweating cardiovascular activity getting your sinuses to improve there are so many factors that will improve your neurological health so my Instagram people this is gonna cut me off in a minute and a half if you want the replay because you want the rest of this please direct message me your email address and I will make sure to get you the replay so you can watch the rest of the presentation thank you guys for joining me though okay so in addition to that melatonin for those of you that have taken melatonin and the Hat gave you a really bad reaction what that means is your brain is toxic the melatonin can actually start to detox your pineal gland so if your pineal gland is compromised because of toxicity from heavy metals pesticides fluoride you can easily start to have really really wacky dreams or actually start to develop migraines by taking melatonin not saying that melatonin is bad for you but you need to actually support the whole system and you need to piece the puzzle together because it's not just about taking the melatonin and having those bad reactions and powering through it's about how can you make sure that you're detoxing the brain properly and that kind of comes back to the previous thing about making sure that your sweating improving your sinuses using things like craniosacral therapy using things to improve the lymph of of the body and the brain so the other thing too I know that we have high hopes when we get recommended these medications that are called biologics biologics are these immunosuppressants you know to Sabri metformin Remicade you know there's honestly show many nowadays I can barely even keep up but the thing you have to understand is that it's the root cause of your neurological issue has always been correlated back to an infection or a toxicity then it's going to you might find that you're having some improvement with taking this immunosuppressant but you'll finds that you'll hit a plateau and you might even go backwards and then you'll be recommended a different biologic or an additional biologic it's a it's a very slippery slope and most people end up on a merry-go-round and unfortunately they feel it crap the whole time too it's not that they're like feeling amazing and then they just sometimes have to switch their medication it's most of the time they continue to feel pretty poorly even despite being on these medications so one of the other ones is that neurological damage is irreversible that has honestly been embedded in my brain going through school is that you know once the neurons are dead or damaged that there's no turning back and they've actually proven something as simple as infrared sauna has now been connected to regenerating the brain and the other thing too is that they have seen massive changes on qee G's again quantitative EEG s and MRIs by improving people's circulatory system by improving blood sugar stability on giving the brain proper nourishment by making sure that neurotransmitters are balanced that there is proper mineral sufficiency etc so depending on what is your root cause and what your brain needs they have seen over and over again that the brain has had massive improvement by helping to either reverse or eliminate the root cause if that is toxicity or infections but also to then help the brain rebuild so I had a patient about 53 years old by the time she came to - integrated wellness group she was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis she was diagnosed in her early 40s she was diagnosed after she had an onset of chronic pain I think they ended up telling her she had fibromyalgia she started to have a lot of neuropathy I'll let him numbness and tingling in different parts of her body that neuropathy was not necessarily due to like diabetes or anything like that they honestly didn't know why because the neuropathy moved sometimes it would be her hand sometimes it was her feet sometimes they'd be random on her forearm she was having like all of these very very odd pain patterns and numbness patterns then she started having falling spells like she was kind of losing control she fell down the stairs a few times which unfortunately you know ended up in injury or causing injury so it was all of these things that happened over the course of a few years that eventually gave her the diagnosis of multiple sclerosis fortunately the multiple sclerosis was diagnosed based on her symptoms it was not necessarily based on her MRI showing up with a lot of lesions which is actually a good thing so it's always questionable you know is this really multiple sclerosis or did she just kind of check off a lot of the boxes of the symptoms so as we dug in and we started you know getting into her history it turned out that going back back back as a kid she had a ton of ear infection she also sand throat issues she ended up being on a lot of penicillin as a kid for those of you that have been listening the whole time penicillin is made from Penicillium which is mold so just by being on tons of penicillin can easily cause the body to become toxic with mold and mycotoxins the other thing too is she had a couple of concussions from skiing and sports what's always so interesting is people only remember the concussions they don't always remember all of the minor head injuries and you bumps especially when you're doing something like skiing as if you kind of like get up and keep powering through your day you just assume that you're fine so moral the story is is that she definitely had some good head injuries which will compromise circulation to the brain the other interesting thing she had growing growing pains as a kid I find this to be very significant because many of the people that I worked with that have had growing pains it is correlated back to stress on their joints and growth plates which is caused by Lyme and again Lyme is not always severe it is not necessarily always diagnosed it can easily be something in the body that is causing stress but at a low level so other things that came up she had something called Raynaud's phenomenon which is when you have really really poor circulation to the hands and feet she also had heart palpitations and a verythe mia so I start thinking okay is there a circulatory piece to the puzzle then she also talks about mild headaches again mild headaches can also be correlated back to circulatory issues to the brain which means the brain is not getting oxygen she also said she got occasional cold sores so herpes simplex is the primary cause of cold sores but her cold sores were on her face in her nose and in her mouth all of the sinuses and lymph nodes they all connect into the brain so if you have cold sores or herpes simplex in your sinuses as well as in your mouth I always start to question is this something that's affecting your neurological system the growing pains again was undiagnosed line that we ended up finding in her system we're interesting is that after her third child she had preterm labor or she went into labor early and she did not realize this but as I dug and I asked more questions she realized that her preterm labor was within three days of getting the pertussis vaccine while she was pregnant so it really seemed that because this was all within the time period that she started to have a lot of these symptoms so it was really after that third child is when she started to have a lot of these pain patterns so the point is that I want you to understand here is that this woman had a lot of different things going on and that you know the pregnancy and the the vaccine during the pregnancy was a huge catalyst that kind of pushed her immune system to its limits and that was what caused a lot of this neurological stress to come to the surface so another side note is that channel is skin cancer in her family so she used tons and tons of sunblock through her life so one of the toxicity she came up was for something called para amino benzoic acid which I know is a very fancy term but it is an ingredient that is in sunblock that can be toxic so that was a toxicity piece that is usually not now you just have some really really unique technologies that allowed us to find this and then she also was dealing with some blood sugar instability she was not a breakfast eater she kind of like went various hours without eating and she usually suppress her appetite with coffee so this was just another added stressor so the point is is that this person had a lot of different things going on this was not just you have MS end of story this was a lot of moving pieces that all came to a head act a specific time period in her life and it kind of hit her immune system like a ton of bricks and that is really when you know she went down the road of having these pain patterns which then eventually ended up with this diagnosis of MS so the point of me telling you that is that very rarely do things look like the textbook and very rarely should your treatment be the textbook because this is a woman who would just be put on this immunosuppressant as the solution to MS when she in fact is dealing with blood sugar issues she was dealing with toxicity issues she was dealing with top mold toxicity issues she's dealing with all of these pieces of the puzzle which would keep her on a merry-go-round of feeling terrible and also potentially having her MS progress so I'm gonna take a peek just to see if there's any questions no questions yeah okay so so with all of this I know this was like probably information overload for you guys but overall one of the biggest things that I wanted to understand about this approach is that obviously everything we talked about tonight is pretty different and more expansive than just your conventional approach to health care which is obviously looking at things like bloodwork very very basic panels and then recommending medications based off of those abnormalities so outside of that when you get into this world the functional medicine functional medicine and integrative medicine most people think that those terms are synonymous they mostly think that they're the same exact thing but in reality when we're talking about functional medicine functional medicine is using more expansive testing in order to figure out what is the root cause but the reason why I moved into this integrative medicine route is because I felt that the tools that I had when I did functional medicine were limited because the tools were diet and supplements and most of my patients when they came to me they're like been there done that what else do you got for me and I knew that I needed to bring more to the table I needed to understand more about detox I needed to understand more about the emotional pieces of the puzzle I needed to understand more about neurology I needed to understand more about the physical limitation with the body and we kept kind of growing evolving using more advanced technologies and also building the amount of therapies that we provide to patients because every single person is so different I could have two patients that technically have MS but their protocols need to be completely different because the root cause is completely different their genetics are completely different their biochemistry is completely different so I want you to understand that this is not about me giving you the cookie cutter protocol for these conditions or the cookie cutter diet that's just unfortunately not how it works I wish it kind of work that way because it would be a lot easier for people but there are so many layers and one of the things that I feel is so important that is different is that we make sure that we ask you know did this come on after the loss of a loved one did all of this start you know after your husband cheated on you because we all have things brewing in the background if those are toxins or viruses but it takes a catalyst that brings these things to the surface and sometimes that catalyst is emotional stress and we all know that stress doesn't make us feel good but we don't ever realize the long lasting effects that it can have and how it can actually alter our physiology so people always want to know how does this all work like how do I get access to all of this testing does my insurance cover it and yes your insurance will cover your blood work we do have a phlebotomist on staff and she draws the blood through quest and LabCorp which is amazing but when it comes to the amount of time that we spend with our patients to dig deeper ask better questions and really uncover the root you know we choose to serve you we don't choose to serve those insurance providers because they dictate what's medically necessary and they don't know what's medically necessary and it's impossible for us to do what we do if we don't have the time to spend with you so most of what we do with our patients is classified is out of network but you do have the opportunity to get your outer network reimbursement and also be able to use things like hell Siva's account health savings accounts and select savings accounts which is always really really useful but one thing I will say is that we we forget that medicine and healthcare it's supposed to be about answers you know we go to the doctor and we will spend all this money on these co-pays and be on this merry-go-round of oh you're fine oh you look healthy Oh blood work looks good oh you must be depressed ooh you must be anxious maybe try that xanax and it's just you haven't had better testing you haven't had something asking better questions it's not for you to sit back and just take that as maybe I am depressed or maybe this is all in my head because there is always going to be a root cause it's just about digging deeper and deciphering what that is and better yet having a solution all of our solutions thus far have been medication pharmacology and it's like what about meditation what about distressing what about you know what about acupuncture what about detox what about vitamins what about minerals what about all of those things you know there is more and more of a demand because people are over it they're just like this isn't working I'm tired of be on medications that don't necessarily make me feel better I'm on my third fourth fifth surgery and I feel worse than I did when I started and people are starting to demand more out of their health care which is really what's gonna push it forward so for us you know we have been evolving this process over time you know I used to do tons and tons of different types of lab testing I would do stool samples and nasal swabs and you know elaborate blood tests etc and I still do some of those things but I really want it to evolve my Diagnostics to give you answers faster that were more accurate that also helped you to save money because when you get into this functional medicine world a lot of the tests are very pricey it costs you know $500 for a extensive stool sample it costs $1,000 to get neurotransmitter tests it can rack up really really fast so we decided to collaborate a variety of different technologies as well as blood work that all goes through your in-network insurance so that we can look at everything from heavy metal toxicity to other types of toxicity to mineral deficiencies food allergies chemical allergies DNA based testing and my personal favorite is autonomic response testing so what's really really fantastic about what we do is that when we do all of your testing we do not guess on your protocols we test so when we tell you hey this is the diet that is good for you right now hey these are the supplements that are good for you right now hey these are the detox therapies that are good for you right now those are tested against your DNA this is not my opinion this is not a cookie cutter protocol this is not based off of generic research this is based on you this is based on your body and what your body says is good so that's why I said before that I can have two people that have technically the same diagnosis of MS but they are going to be treated completely differently and one thing I'll say too is I'm gonna obviously give you the information about the onboarding but you know one my last seminar or my last speaking engagement that I did I I was in a group of women and I know that with women we always have to be the caretakers we take care of everyone else we put everyone in front of us our kids our family members our husbands our spouses etc and another thing too is that we let a lot of people influence what we should or shouldn't do because you know we're always trying to please others and if you value your health do not let anyone tell you that you cannot invest in it because if you invest in your health you show up better to your husband to your wife to your kids to your family members to your job to your business you show up as a better version of you and everyone is going to benefit from that and it is not anyone else's business for them to say that you should or shouldn't invest in your health what always kills me is that I'll have people that'll be like oh I would never invest in my house I would never go somewhere that doesn't take my insurance but then they're walking around with their latest iPhone and their car that's a hundred and twenty thousand dollar vehicle so that's totally cool that's what you value you value probably being connected technology you feel good in that car it makes you feel powerful so I'm not gonna sit here and tell you not to do those things but for some reason when it comes to taking care of ourselves people feel that they have the right to say that's stupid for you to pay for that or you're getting ripped off and it's all just because we've been programmed to think that everything should just go through the conventional you know in network approach so in addition for those of you that are listening especially those of you that have been listening since we started you know you're here for a reason and if I can do my testing and tell you why you have MS or tell you how to get better or tell you what you can or cannot eat or tell you why your child is struggling develop to develop neurologically or why your children child has autism that is going to be invaluable to you there is no price that you can put on that clarity and being able to know that you're in the driver's seat that you can actually do something about this so it's really really important for people to know that you know if you have been looking and searching and just like I don't know to do I'm so lost I'm so tired and I'm so sad and I feel so disempowered being able to get answers is extremely priceless but when it comes to the price the price of our complete onboarding for your consultation the review of all of your results heavy metal testing mineral testing bloodwork food allergy testing suppliment testing protocol testing all of the things that we talked about in the previous slide it's 1425 the really great part about it is if you come in at 1425 and you just like might bring your child your husband or whoever it actually they get the same exact onboarding at a fraction of the price which is 597 but I will tell you is that we always always always want to make sure that it is going to be a valuable investment for you and that it is going to be a mutually beneficial relationship so we always want to make sure that you know we do we have you apply and that we do what we call a strategy call so that you can learn more about the process so this is actually how you can access the strategy call with one of our client care members you can also find us on our website so you can schedule this at any time and learn a little bit more about the whole entire process the other thing too I always should say the sooner if you are long-distance that's totally fine all of the testing that I mentioned that is DNA based you've DNA in your hair so simply by sending us your hair sample we can do most of our testing from a distance and then in addition to that blood work and all of that will be sourced at your local lab so we'll get you set up with a script you can go to your local lab court request and all that good stuff okay so then I want to see if there's any questions I don't think that there is I probably like blew everybody's mind which is what I love doing but um overall I really thank you guys for being here with me this was the last of the autoimmune series this month so next month we're getting into Lyme disease because it is Lyme disease awareness month so we're going to be talking a lot about that specific infectious disease and a lot of the things that people don't always realize about it and some of the limitations but the testing as well as the limitations with the protocols that exists like antibiotic therapy so definitely join us next month as we kick that off and we do the webinar series relation to all things line but for those of you that have been here tonight I really appreciate you being with me and I really love doing this because my biggest goal is to bring quality information to you so that you can understand the bigger picture and then hopefully take that first step in your health care journey because at the end of the day it's really about getting answers and getting better and that's when this becomes a breakthrough experience so I see some people that are just hopping on now I am finishing off but you will get the link to the replay so definitely just make sure to watch that and then you can also share this with your friends and loved ones I would really love to just spread the message and give people information that they've been looking for but again thank you guys for being here I really appreciate it I will see you next month as we kick off Lyme disease Awareness Month and definitely feel free to submit questions they do go to our email and we can answer them at a later time all right guys I hope you enjoyed this tonight and I will see you soon