Parasites: Protocol & Drainage Deep-Dive

hello hello everyone dr. Niccole here so I am officially multitasking right now I have an Instagram live going hello everyone and over there as well as the webinars so for those of you joining us if there is someone that you really were wanting to watch this webinar today which is all about the lingering issues that can be happening with your gut that have nothing to do with your gut and are potentially being caused by a cognitive or brain dysfunction so we're really going to be shedding light on different issues like something called gastroparesis which means that the gut is not mobilizing food properly we're also going to be talking about constipation depression anxiety and a lot of other conditions that we're not always getting answers about but in addition we might be making a lot of efforts to get better and keep falling flat with our efforts so for those of you that are watching on the webinar if you have someone that wants to head over to the Instagram live we are doing that at integrated wellness group calm calm integrated wellness group and for those of you that are watching on the Instagram live if you are looking to have the full experience because I am going to use some visuals you can hop onto the webinar by checking out the link in the bio but otherwise you're just here for some good information check it out just here on the Instagram live so let's dive in guys um I want to definitely make sure that I answer questions so if you have questions as we go feel free to populate those into the chat if you're on the webinar or just put those into the comments section if you're on the Instagram live we're gonna get to the questions at the end but I'm gonna do them at the end primarily because I might answer a lot of the questions that you have so um with that being said I want to use the beautiful PowerPoint slide that I made just because I don't want to go off on tangents because that's what I have a tendency to do but for those of you that are with us I just want to kind of reiterate what we're talking today so number one is really just kind of establishing the foundation of what this concept of integrative and functional medicine is secondarily of understanding that you don't know what you don't know and that really comes down to have you have the proper testing have you been asked the right questions and have you been evaluated in the right way and then beyond that it's really just breaking some of the false beliefs that were led to believe about our current symptoms a lot of it is oh well this is my new normal or I'm feeling this way because I'm getting older and I know that that is a common thing that I hear on a day-to-day basis and I'm here to kind of bust that myth and elaborate a little bit further on it so you would really understand why you're feeling the way you're feeling and then of course we always want to have solutions we want to know like what can we do to start being proactive in our health so we're gonna make sure that we touch on that as well so just a little bit about myself my practice you know we have really evolved tremendously over the past few years primarily because we started out with more of a linear approach meaning that we were really focused on nutrition and diets and supplementation and we realized that that was good for some people but there were other people that hit plateaus so we started to think beyond these this concept of looking at separate systems and especially what we're talking about today is if we're dealing with a gut issue and we're not getting better based off of the dietary changes that were making and the supplements that we're taking in the medications that we're taking and we keep hitting these plateaus it's probably because there might be a bigger picture and it might not be just the good and it might actually be that the the neurological system is involved and I'm gonna take you through some very very specific scenarios to really understand what I'm even talking about when I say that so a little bit about me is I'm an integrative physician I used to call myself more of a functional medicine physician and I I transitioned from functional medicine - integrative because I found that often when it comes to healthcare you need to look beyond just dietary changes as well as supplements they are vital they are important but with how complex our health is at this point because of us navigating the amount of stress that were under these go-go-go schedules in addition to toxicity and all these different infections we're getting exposed to it's it's become more complex than just you know this just take a couple vitamins and you're gonna feel great so with that being said I do a lot of really comprehensive testing which falls again under that integrative model and because of the testing that I do and having the ability to dig deep and and really uncover the mystery behind people's symptoms that is why I'm able to say that I work with so many different conditions everything from lime to mold toxicity to gut issues neurological issues skin conditions and it's because you if you have the right approach and you look at the whole person the whole picture you can really help someone no matter what their symptoms are because you actually understand the foundation so beyond that I am such an advocate for education hence why I'm doing this webinar and alive at the same time and that's really one of my biggest driving forces is getting this information out there in a big way because you don't know what you don't know and I know from my personal journey I didn't know that I had any health issues and when they were uncovered through the testing I really reflected on it and I was like wow I really just adapted to the way that I felt and I just classified it as my normal and I'm fortunate that I was able to address it sooner than later because I don't really know where I would be right now if I didn't do that testing prematurely I think that I would honestly be in a lot of trouble and I don't even know if I would be able to be in the profession that I am because I don't know if I could mentally physically and emotionally handle it and so I'm very grateful for being able to uncover my own mystery behind my sense and that's why I want to share it with everyone else is because you know you don't know what you know you don't know that's really all that it comes down to so kind of piggybacking off of that you know one of the main reasons that I got into this field is not because I was super sick it wasn't because I had Lyme disease it wasn't because I you know couldn't get out of bed or had a bad virus or anything along those lines it was more so that I was very fascinated by a human health human potential and I got into the field I started to obviously kind of play trial and error with myself I started to do some testing and it uncovered that I had a lot of issues I had a lot of issues with my neurotransmitters which was contributing to me feeling low at times but again I just adapted to it I had a lot of infections in my gut that you know my gut bothered me but not all the time so again it was my normal and another big one was I had pretty severe mercury toxicity and what I found really interesting is when I stopped back to think about it I was like you know there was many times that I had that negative self dialogue that I was like you know what I'm gonna I mean maybe I'm not cut out for this profession maybe you know I can't be a doctor maybe I'm not smart enough and at the end of the day it wasn't really that I had a learning issue it was the fact that I think my brain was toxic with mercury so you have to kind of understand that you could be beating yourself up and feel so lost and so powerless and there could be a reason for it so it really is a matter of how can you dig a little bit deeper to figure that out so that you can really resolve a bigger problem down the line so I know that it's about 7:15 right now there is tons of things happening in our house they're our children to feed and dogs to feed and you know emails to look at and to prepare for the next day but I just want to give you guys the opportunity to really just kind of shut down the internet or the internet browser or shut down you know the email browsers slide the cell phones away not those of you on Instagram live but being able to kind of take a minute to really just hone in because there's so many things around us distract us and you know one of the things I pride myself on is I'm gonna give you information that you haven't heard before that's why I absolutely love what I do on a day-to-day basis because I love people having that aha moment and literally seeing their mouths drop and being like holy crap that makes so much sense so that's really what I'm here to do tonight is to be able to give you that aha moment and be like oh my gosh that makes sense and I'm so glad that I fully understand this now so first and foremost the biggest thing you have to understand is it's not your fault it's not your fault if you went on an elimination diet and it didn't work it's not your fault if you really like gave up your social life to be super super healthy and you didn't necessarily reap the benefits it's not your fault that you didn't know what supplements were good for you it's not your fault that you went on medication that didn't make you feel better there is a lot of information out there it's very hard to navigate there is a lot of conflicting information out there so for everything that I really want to talk about today is I want to just first of all give you information that I've learned over time but I've also seen the valid in clinical practice because at the end of the day it's all about the real-life situations you know you can look at a textbook and say do I match the textbook but you probably don't and if you don't match the textbook then that means your treatment protocol really shouldn't match the textbook either so it's a matter of understanding that it's complex doesn't mean that a super-hard heal but it really comes down to you need a strategy when it comes to your healthcare and it's not just this linear approach and some of the downfalls that I find personally with medicine right now is that we have all of these experts and we have all of these specialties and subspecialties so tonight we're really talking about the gut and we're also talking about depression and anxiety which if you think about it okay you're good you're gonna work with a gastroenterologist if you have depression earrings you're gonna work with the psychiatrist or a psychologist and you know if you have a heart issue or low blood pressure high blood pressure you're gonna work with a cardiologist but at the end of the day nobody's talking to each other and I personally feel that that is one of the biggest detriment to health care because all of these systems are communicating with each other all of these systems are interacting with each other and this brings me to my second point is it's like a lack of basic understanding basic physiology so ninety some say up to 95% of our serotonin is made in our gut so if we're dealing with a gut issue and then we're also dealing with a mood instability of depression anxiety whatever the case may be and we're working with two separate positions that are not communicating with each other they have two separate approaches then how do we expect to ever really tackle it and really truly get better and resolve it altogether so if we take a step back and we have someone looking at us as a whole person looking at us from an integrative approach we might actually be able to figure out what is the route and then be able to address the route opposed to feeling like we have to see a million doctors for a million different reasons because chances are there's one foundational problem maybe two and if you can figure out what those are you can actually get better and also be more empowered to know like the way your body works and what it needs so a lot of times when people come to us they often say why doesn't everybody do what you guys do why doesn't everybody use this technology why is it everybody you know understand the body this way and my response is usually that it comes down to the the most common testing in the u.s. the most common testing that we use is going to be chemistry based testing so chemistry based testing is blood work what is the routine thing that you get every year his blood work and most of the time you're getting very basic blood work so if all of our testing is based on chemistry then it makes sense that the healing approach is going to be based on correcting our chemistry so the primary way that we correct chemistry is by using pharmaceutical drugs so the testing shows us where the imbalance in our chemistry is and then we correct it with pharmaceuticals so at the end of the day there's a lot of money to be made in pharmaceuticals and if we want to ignore the fact that all of medicine is for profit then we can easily stay really really confused as to why the system works the way that it does but that is why there is this whole industry of functional integrative medicine is because we're taking that step back we're using other testing we're using better testing and we're able to look at the body in a different way opposed to always relying on how are we going to fix the broken chemistry we're asking why is the chemistry broken is it stress is it imbalance lifestyle is it lack of sleep is it toxicity is it any of those things and when we always focus on the linear outlook of always looking at the chemistry and looking at nothing else then we're always going to find limitations with finding the root cause so if we can't find the root cause at the end of the day there is a high probability that we cannot get better and last but not least is it comes down to this this concept of there's gonna be a one-size-fits-all treatment or one day they're gonna figure out that one pill that's gonna resolve all of your problems if we stay in that mindset we're gonna be in really big trouble and if anything we are in big trouble already because it's not that simple I personally wish it was that simple because that would make my job a lot easier but it's not about just that one-size-fits-all treatment because everything one of us are so so different and every single one of us needs something different I don't care if you and your best friend have the same exact gut symptoms you will not need the same supplements and you will not need the same diet you will need completely different things because you are different people with different genetics and different composition and different sleep patterns and different stress patterns and different brains so we need to think that we're all very very different individually and we need to be looked at individually so one of the most fun parts of my job is getting to blow minds and that's usually when I get to see those people with their jaw dropped and really the reason we're able to blow minds is partly because of some of the amazing technology that we have but also it's because we spend a lot of time with you and we spend a full 75 minutes when you first come in to dig dig dig dig dig and really understand the timeline of how you got where you are right now and how you develop the symptoms that you did so we ask a lot of questions and some of those questions some people think are really bizarre but one of the questions that I often ask is do you feel worse around a full moon and this is really valid to what we're talking about today because under a full moon is actually when an organism called parasites are the most active so we always hear that phrase is oh the crazies are out it must be a full moon the funny thing is there's validity behind it there's a reason why that people are saying that and it comes down to parasites that get into our system through sushi contaminated water contaminated fish contaminated meat trust me it is very common one in four people have parasite issues so and I'm going to talk all about that and how we miss it through the testing that we do but if you have this issue you can easily find that you're super irritable you're moody you're anxious or your stomach is killing you around a full moon so that simple question alone is something that's really valid second to that is a lifetime of constipation so I have people that have come to me and usually unfortunately it's not their first rodeo they've been other places so when someone comes to me with a lifetime of constipation I don't even care if it's a lifetime or five years of constipation I'm gonna start asking them a lot of neurological questions and the reason I'm doing that is because it might not be their gut it's more than likely their brain and that's really the whole thing that we're going to talk about tonight so in addition to that you know diabetes and gut issues something that people don't often know is that your pancreas is actually part of your gut so talking about the first point if you have something like parasites that got into your system through contaminated food then you can easily have that infection affecting your pancreas and then all of a sudden you go to the doctor and they go whoop your pre-diabetic and you're like but I don't even really eat sugar and I'm low carb I eat keto paleo blah blah blah and it has nothing to do with what you're eating it actually has to do with an infection second to that respiratory issues so respiratory issues and the diaphragm this has a lot to do with the topic we're talking about tonight if you have major issues with your vagus nerve which is the nerve that innervates your lungs and your heart and your gut and again this comes from top down bringing down if you have an issue with your vagus nerve you might be dealing with constipation but in addition you might have a lot of respiratory issues too and nobody can figure out what your respiratory problems are and no matter how much cardiovascular activity you do your respiratory system still doesn't get better so last but not least is the root cause of autoimmune conditions this is something that we touched on in a previous webinar so I'm not going to dive too deep into it but just like a basic understanding is that when you think about what the job of the immune system is is it's to attack foreign invaders foreign invaders can be infections it can be toxin it can be all different types of chemicals so if you new systems job is to attack foreign invaders if that foreign invader is living in your gut you might all of a sudden develop celiac or develop something called anti parietal cell antibodies syndrome which is autoimmune pernicious anemia I'm not trying to throw fancy words at you but overall what I'm trying to say is that if your immune system is attacking an organism then a kid that organism can be in a tissue that's almost like in the line of fire and your immune system now is damaging that tissue and you get diagnosed with an autoimmune condition so with the epidemic of celiac disease we need to start thinking about do we have organisms in our gut that should not be there and are we not getting the right testing which is part of this presentation so reiterating what I said before if I'm here to tell you you don't know what you don't know if you have only done a colonoscopy if you've only done an endoscopy you don't have the whole picture there's no possible way that you do because your gut can be influenced by infections by toxins and you will never see that through imaging you're not gonna see it on a cat scan you're not going to see it on an endoscope scope you're not going to see it on a colonoscopy you need to understand that that those tests are very linear and they're very limited so if we can start exploring better testing we actually might be getting more answers so my example how many of you are dealing with irregular bowel movements and unexplained bloating I have people that come to me they say I drink water and I get bloated I don't even know what to do I don't know what to eat I don't know what else to eliminate like I don't even know what to do anymore and if you have tried to change your diet and take supplements and do all these great things and you keep falling flat we need to start exploring things outside of the box and the primary thing that needs to be explored is your neurological system and your neurological system can be compromised for a million different reasons me as an example mine was compromised because I had mercury toxicity but I also had a head injury at some point so there's many reasons why your neurological system can be compromised and also when we just talked about Anatomy your vagus nerve comes from your brainstem how many of you are dealing with neck pain your brainstem really is part of your neck so those of you all my neck my neck my neck my neck just your neck pain alone can be a sign that your vagus nerve is not functioning optimally and I'm gonna give you guys more tools with that as well to understand more about the vagus nerve but the point of me saying this is we need to take a step back we need to stop accepting these symptoms as our normal well you need to stop saying oh I'm just getting bloated because I ate out oh I get bloated everybody gets bloated oh you know I didn't go to the bathroom for two days but it's probably because I traveled or because I got on a plane you know like when you sometimes think about it you go like this even makes sense like oh I traveled so I can't poop and you know these are things that happen to a lot of people so we think that they're very very normal so we need to stop just adapting and just normalizing these symptoms because they're not normal we're supposed to go to the bathroom three times a day so for us to think that these symptoms are normal there they're definitely not so the major myths that I'm gonna bust tonight number one is going to be the gut is the only problem and your mood and mental health are completely separate number two is your testing is always accurate which is not and number three is that you have to give everything up to get your health back I totally have a typo in the PowerPoint or whatever um but it's I know that a lot of us start researching and we think oh gosh we have to eliminate all these things out you know we can of a social life we can't have a glass of wine we can't do any of these things because you know we need to just you know be really really really strict is that's the only way we're gonna get better unfortunately I've had people that have done that for years and may themselves miserable and they came to me still struggling so it's all about balance it is not about just making yourself miserable and I think that's really really important because I kind of did that to myself and I hit a plateau with it and I really strive to give people balance okay so starting with number one is the gut is your only problem and that your mood and your mental house are completely separate so going back to what I said earlier 90 to 95 percent of your serotonin which is your feel-good hormone is made in your gut I know that that is like mind blowing to some people so when we are dealing with a gastrointestinal issue I do not care if it is as simple as burping if it's occasional heartburn occasional indigestion or if it's full-blown Crohn's full-blown ulcerative colitis full-blown constipation diarrhea whatever it is all of those are symptoms of your gut not being healthy and that is going to affect how your brain is functioning and it is going to affect your mood because now at this point you do not have the ability to make proper amounts of serotonin so for us to sit back and say I just need to go on an antidepressant we will find that we'll feel better for a little while then all of a sudden we need to up the dose or we need to switch the medication or we need to add a medication and also too this is just a side note when it comes to mental health is first of all we assume that all of our depression and low moods stems from serotonin you have another hormone called dopamine dopamine for those of you that love your wine your cigarettes your your mocha latte your cookies like you call them your vice or you call them your addictive behavior that's a dopamine problem so to go on an antidepressant or an SSRI for that it's not gonna work so second to that is if you have too much of any neurotransmitter serotonin as an exam so serotonin dopamine all of them it is a balance if you have too little you have a problem if you have too much you have a problem so low serotonin makes you depressed makes you not find joy in anything you're doing makes you not have pleasure and anything that you're doing see watching eating then if you have too much serotonin because you started taking a medication and maybe you didn't need it because you didn't do the right testing then all of a sudden you're anxious so it's so so important for you to know if you've been on a long long term antidepressant and you are super anxious you might have in serotonin overload or toxicity so there are tests that exist there are urinary tests that you can do to actually measure your neurotransmitters and very very often I find that people are completely overloaded with their serotonin especially in the event that they've been on medication so telling you a little story about a patient patient came was dealing with constipation for ten years patient also had a history of depression and anxiety so we started to dig a little bit deeper and through the consultation what we started to unravel was a timeline essentially and in that timeline there was a snowboarding accident that resulted in a severe concussion neck sprain 13 staples in the head shortly after started having some sporadic constipation came and went wasn't always there then the person started to develop dizziness and then they actually started to have fainting spells but the fainting spells were mainly around their menstrual cycle then anxiety then came burnout then came memory loss so I know this story very well because it was me and I wasn't able to piece this puzzle together for a really really long time but I was when I first started my career I didn't know what I know now and I thought I had gut problems that problems got problems got problems I was constantly going from one diet to the next one supplement protocol to the next constantly chasing the symptoms and when I took the step back and I started to understand the integrative approach I realized that my health was a snowball effect and the snowball of facts started at a young age because I'm sure that I had the mercury toxicity since I was really young but my snowboarding accident was a huge huge culprit for how my vagus nerve became compromised and my vagus nerve started to cause problems in my gut first then it started to cause problems with my respiratory system which I was having a lot of shortness of breath because I was a big runner then I started to have dysfunction with my blood pressure and I was actually low blood pressure best part is as you go to the doctor and they go low blood pressure you're doing great so my low blood pressure was actually not allowing me to get proper blood flow to my head which was causing my dizziness so that's something important for those of you to know is one of the ways that you can know if you're not getting proper blood flow to your head so if you have cold hands at the feet because that means you're not circulation to the most distal parts away from your heart your head is one of them your hands and your feet are the others so that is part it could be just strictly a blood pressure issue but it also can be stemming from a vagus nerve dysfunction so then on top of that because my blood pressure was so low I started to have some issues with fainting and this only came around my mental cycle so it was super confusing to myself and also to my doctors so pretty much asked the snowball kept going year upon year because I didn't know what was wrong with me is then I started to develop anxiety funny story though is I would have never in a million years ever admitted that I had anxiety and it wasn't until I actually did some testing and I working with this Russian physicist and he actually have one of the technologies that he's created in our office and when he analyzed me he goes you're kind of anxious huh and I was like no I don't think I'm anxious and when we were we were actually in New York at the time and the comical thing was as we were going to meet this Russian physicist we were in a cab and it was summertime so sitting in the cab and the air-conditioning in the back must have broken there's the glass between us and the driver so the driver took a tube and from his vent where the air-conditioning was coming out and he put it through the glass so we could get air-conditioning and I started to hold my breath and I didn't say it out loud but what I was thinking was well you know he's gonna probably turn on some gas and then he's gonna abduct us and he's gonna like sell us into slavery and the best part is is after this guy is like wow we must be anxious so I said this to my husband I go just so you know this was my thought process in the cab and me this is what he means by me being anxious and my husband goes well I was just thinking he was really nice for allowing us to get air conditioning so this is really like oh I opened because I wasn't a person having panic attacks but this was where my mind went was like doom and gloom so for those of you listening you might relate to that and be like you know I'm not having kind of attacks that I worry a lot so kind of back to like understanding the bigger picture here is my vagus nerve started to dysfunction massively from the snowboarding accident and it started to just be this trickle-down effect and I really started to get concerned at one point because my memory was actually really bad and it was really bad at a very young age and when I was being able to dig deeper I was really able to unravel the bigger picture here and really understand that my vagus nerves was contributing to my gut it was contributing to my low blood pressure it was actually even contributing to low blood sugar and for those of you that are hypoglycemic meaning you have low blood sugar one of the things that's really important to understand is your brain is not getting a good amount of glucose so if you don't have proper amounts of glucose that's what your brain runs on and you're gonna have a lot of issues and I know that it took me a very very long time to correct this or suck it up to him Oh dress it because I woke up in the morning I wasn't hungry and then I would drink coffee and that would suppress my appetite and then it would be 2 p.m. and I'm like ravenous and I grab for carbs I know that I tell that story to a lot of people and a lot of people can relate so when it comes down to is you have to eat breakfast to correct your hypoglycemia and you have to go almost more keto with your breakfast even if you're vegetarian there's options you have to eat fat and protein in the morning so if you're relating to this and you're like oh I do feel like I have low blood sugar and I do I'm not eating breakfast I don't feel hungry in the morning if anything I feel nauseous in the morning those are all your signs that you're hypoglycemic so that is definitely important when it comes down to how are we gonna correct the vagus nerve these are all significant things and again I'm gonna elaborate further on that and how to correct it so number two is your testing is always accurate when it comes to your testing you have to just make peace with the fact that you probably haven't had elaborate testing and if you've gone to a functional doctor and you did a lot of very expensive labs you still might be missing pieces of the puzzle and I know this because I learned from it and that's why I do what I do now and why I have a lot of technologies that a lot of people have never even heard of but kind of first and foremost is understanding just like with celiac testing I know that a lot of people get celiac testing and they say oh no I'm fine I don't have celiac so I don't have a problem with gluten so first of all that's not how it works you can easily have a problem with gluten and not have celiac so that's kind of fact number one but number two is if you look to the left sorry those of you on Instagram live I know you can't see this but to keep it as simple as possible is there are six markers that are run on your traditional celiac test those six markers are run through quest and lab court but when you look to the right those on the webinar there is going to be over 20 different markers that are run on a comprehensive celiac test done by sterics labs so the point of me showing you this is you can easily not be getting all of the information and think that you don't have celiac and also think that you have zero problems with gluten because you haven't had the right testing so it's important to understand that there is a lot of variables when it comes to testing so one of the most important ones that I want to talk about is the limitations on testing when it comes to infections especially when it comes to parasite testing so the only test that exists for the most part in the u.s. to test for parasites is going to be stool analysis and for those of you that have worked with a gastroenterologist and you've done a stool analysis when they test your stool they're testing it through your in-network lab so they're gonna test it they're LabCorp or they're gonna test it to request if they send in your sample they're only looking for one organism so it's almost impossible to know what organism to look for so if they test it and they say oh no you have no problems with parasites they really were only able to test for one or two parasites Maps so the other types of stool analysis that exists are labs that are called doctors data or you know other labs that are private labs Genova is another one I personally like doctors data so when it comes to doctors data i used to use them religiously to look at people's gut health but the problem was is that nobody really ever came up for parasites which i thought was okay well clearly they don't have a problem with parasites and what i then found out which i'm gonna kind of go up to my next slide is that i had a patient who came to me and he was a kid he was about seven years old maybe eight and he had a lot of sensory issues they honestly thought he was kind of borderline on the spectrum and he also had a lot of gut issues so when I did his stool analysis it revealed that he had a lot of fun will overgrowth which can be Candida was the primary thing that came up but he did not come up for parasites and then we did find a lot of neurological stress due to heavy metal toxicity which was also a big part of his sensory issues so because he had sensory issues what happened was we didn't we couldn't take a lot of supplements so with that being said we actually started to do some detox and work with suppositories suppositories for those of you that don't know what a spa story is it is a little capsule essentially that goes into the rectum to help someone with detox or to help somebody with their gut not necessarily for constipation but it can be used for other reasons so this was the option that was best for this kid so in the process of his mom administering this she came to me said I saw a worm and then we did another stool sample still no parasites came up so then I did a different company and I it was a company that was supposed to be really really specific for parasite infections so three stool sample later about $1000 later no signs of parasites on the testing but at that point she saw worms three times so the point of me telling you this is that there is a lot of limitations when it comes to the testing and you could easily have this problem and you can easily have infections in your gut that nobody is finding and once you do know if they're there it's actually pretty easy to get rid of them and to recover completely for those of you that are completely horrified by this conversation about parasites I was a pescetarian for 10 years meeting I only ate fish I did not know that not all fish was created equal I ate farmed fish I ate sushi I buffet sushi I ate all of it thinking that I was doing great because I was you know eating low calorie and I pretty much ended up with a boatload of parasite infections so it's common it's not uncommon again one in four people have a parasite issue so we definitely need to entertain that especially in the event think you have IBS you have Crohn's you have ulcerative colitis we cannot ignore that that might be part of the puzzle so overall I kind of gave it away already but mom's observation was there was clearly a parasite issue and then when we started to treat for the parasite infection we definitely found that he almost resolved all of his neurological issues because parasites also have a tendency to hijack our behaviors and to make us very very cognitively foggy so it's really it can be brained down but it also can be gut up and it's really really important to get the right testing to figure out which is which for you so the other big thing that I wanted to talk about was the concept of having to give everything up to get your health back and at the end of the day if you figure out what the root causes is you don't have to give up your life and not be able to go out not have the glass of wine not eat out and be on this crazy elimination diet if you understand what's causing your gut issues then you can easily get back to where you need to be and then in the event of chronic constipation chronic stomach pain gastroparesis which is when you're having lack of motility in the gut you need to evaluate the neurological function of the patient the vagus nerve needs to be evaluated and one of the easiest ways to do this is to evaluate the gag reflex so it goes one of two ways some people gag super easily like they smell something bad and they gag they brush their teeth they gag they try to gargle they gag and then there's other people that have no gag reflex so both of those are problematic if it's overactive or if it's under active so being able to monitor that reflux actually tells you do you have a vagus nerve problem and again if you have had chronic gut problems actually in the world of constipation and no supplements and no dietary changes have helps you chances are this is more of a neurological problem so with that being said going on an elimination diet is not going to fix that it is not going to get rid of the constipation because it doesn't stem from the gut it stems from the neurological system so understanding the vagus nerve is extremely important and understanding there is a bigger picture just beyond diet and again sorry for those on you of you on Instagram live but I have the this picture here of the parasympathetic system so this is what the vagus nerve does it starts in the brainstem so let's say that's the top of your neck to keep it super simple but this will pretty much control your rest and digest it controls your heart rate it controls your breathing it controls how well you break down your food it controls how well your liver detox is you it controls your bladder and it also controls your ovaries so if your vagus nerve is dysfunctioning you can have the constipation but you also might have bad PMS you might also have breathing issues you might also have problems with detox you might also be drooling I know that sounds weird but if you wake up and there's drool on your pillow that is because you have a vagus nerve issue so it's very very important to understand that there is a bigger picture behind this your constipation is the sign that your body is giving you saying there's something wrong and unfortunately we kind of put the trust in the physicians to say tell me what's wrong with me and tell me how to fix it but again someone who's looking at the the vagus nerve and the parasympathetic nervous system that's a neurologist and then you have your gastroenterologist so if they don't talk to each other they're not going to piece that puzzle together so that's really where this integrative model comes in is being able to understand the whole picture and have a physician that's really looking at every single aspect here so I want to give you guys tips so if you are someone who is like oh my gosh I have no gag reflex or a gag all the time and I've definitely been struggling with constipation all of my efforts haven't held my elimination diet hasn't held nothing has helped my gut problems so a couple of things that are so so valuable I know this sounds really weird and I usually see a very funny face when I talk to my patients about this as well is you need to gag yourself you need to brush your teeth and press on the back of your tongue with your toothbrush twice a day if you brush your teeth more than that do it more than twice a day and the way that you know you activated your vagus nerve is if your eyes get watery and that is a step towards getting your vagus nerve working better the other thing that you can do is gargle so the gag reflex and gargling think of gag reflex is like the push ups for your vagus nerve a strengthening exercise gargling is like sprinting for your vagus nerve so that's gonna be more like a like a cardiovascular exercise so those two things alone can start to repair your vagus nerve function and then lastly not everybody's favorite but doing enemas you can actually do something like coffee enemas on a day-to-day basis I know that's a commitment but doing that will actually stimulate the vagus nerve from the bottom up so it'll stimulate it from the gut up to the brain so if you're able to do those things you can actually start to repair your vagus nerve on your own obviously it's not always that easy for everyone especially if you've had a head injury if you've had a bad neck injury if you've had a significant neck surgery you might need to be seeking out care from a professional to really work on that so as we're finishing up here one of the biggest things that I said earlier is really just don't be fooled because very very rarely do things look like the textbook especially in the event that you're dealing with a variety of different things going on you know you might not have you know the the telltale symptoms or the tell-tale textbook description of constipation because maybe you're only constipated sometimes maybe you're only constipated when you travel but regardless your dealing with it to some capacity so it's really just understanding that if you don't match the textbook very unlikely that your treatment protocol should follow the textbook so it's a matter of taking the step back looking at the bigger picture and understanding that your needs might be very very different so with everything that I've described tonight it is it's really kind of looking at this old model versus the new model and I'm not even talking about conventional medicine versus integrative medicine I'm even talking about functional medicine versus integrative medicine because when it comes down to functional medicine which I used to do more of is I used to have people come in I would do a lot of testing their testing would rack up to a thousands of dollars and then at that point I have to hope that I know exactly what's going on with them and then my my tools were diet and supplementation and I felt very frustrated with that because not everybody got better with that and as I continue to learn and grow and evolve one of my mentors said to me don't call yourself integrative if all you do is diet and supplements and that was extremely eye-opening to me my business is called integrated wellness group so it made me realize there's more to the picture there's more to health and it's really understanding the big picture behind what's going on here so as we have transitioned into this integrative approach our testing has changed pretty dramatically which I'm going to talk a little bit more about but before I talk about that you know the one thing that I always find that so interesting is we find it very very hard to invest in ourselves to take care of our health we usually find that we feel that we're being selfish we find that you know there's a lot of other things that have to come first like our rent and our insurance and everything else and it's a very very common theme that we put ourselves on the back burner until it gets bad enough and partly we've been programmed to think that way don't fix it until it's broke and we need to move away from that and we need to get more comfortable with understanding that we're gonna have to pay for quality health care and that's because your doctors in your in network plan do not have the ability to spend time with you they just don't fifteen minutes is max that is dictated by the insurance so this is not like your doctor doesn't want to spend time with you he doesn't hurt he or she doesn't have the option so being able to shift away from that mindset of this makes me selfish this is not a priority this is a luxury is it's really what's gotten us into trouble and we need to start thinking outside of the box and for us in the way we function in our practice is we serve people we don't exert the insurance providers and one day I hope that does change but right now I would never be able to do what I do and give people the answers that I do as well as help them actually get better if I was being controlled by the insurance companies so of course when it comes down to the insurance you can use out of network coverage you can get reimbursement you can use flex spending accounts you can use health savings accounts all of those things are all options but at the end of the day we would never be able to give you the quality care that first of all you deserve but also need if we were being controlled by the insurance companies so the other thing that I often find as well is when it comes down to taking that step to take care of ourselves again it's don't fix it until it's broke but then we on our heads a little bit of oh are people gonna judge me um is my spouse gonna be you know judging me because I'm spending money on myself oh you know does this make me selfish because I should be paying for my kids soccer camp and whatever else these are all such limiting beliefs that we've all been programmed to and this is what keeps us trapped unhealthy not happy and and then there's just obviously some people that just want a really simplistic approach and that's you know then this approach is not for you if you want to just take one pill then that's not what this integrative approach is about it's about the people that want to understand what is the route and they want to get rid of their symptoms like once and for all and I think we forget that health care is about answers and solutions you know we go to our doctor we're lucky if we get an answer if anything we just got a prescription and I think we really have gotten away from understanding that we're supposed to really understand what's going on with us and what about the solution and not just the band-aid to the symptoms and I know a lot of people are waking up and and thinking beyond that and thinking bigger but you know it's really really gonna take a lot of us waking up to make this shift I love that new jersey wellness networking group hopefully in our lifetime we'll see changes necessary for better care and coverage and you know for all of us that are on the other side of it doing the integrative approach and the functional approach and you know really just trying to do what's best for our patients you know we understand that you know we would love to see insurance shift and I think it will eventually I just unfortunately we're just not there yet so I've talked all about this amazing amazing approach that we do and you know I've talked a little bit about testing and all of that but just to kind of clarify the some of the tests that we do on some of you may have heard of them and some of you may have not but just to give you kind of the global view is the type of testing that we do is we look at the body from an emotional standpoint we look at the body from an energetic standpoint looking at the meridians so we're almost taking this concept of the way acupuncture works and Chinese medicine then we're also looking at your biochemistry through your blood work and then we're also looking at your body from a DNA standpoint getting down to the DNA level and looking at the most subtle changes in your DNA and our bioresonance technology is the primary technology that allows us to see that was absolutely amazing as we could see changes before they fully manifest so talked about being preventative you can actually be preventative with this type of technology because we're able to really really see what's going on and then with the bioscan this is the Meridian based technology that I was mentioning but this technology is endless because we can look at everything from toxicity to environmental allergies to food allergies to emotional things that we're holding on to like the sky's the limit and the technology fascinates me on a day-to-day basis and in addition we're always evaluating is there a toxicity piece and unfortunately in this day and age there is a huge issue of toxicity and that toxicity is usually causing us to be very deficient in a lot of our vitamins and minerals and so many of us are taking b12 and vitamin C and Co Q 10 and all of these great things and we're peeing bright yellow and repeating bright yellow because we can't absorb it and we can't break it down and our body can't even use it so oh I hear it all the time when I talk about you know okay these are the supplements that we're using because this is what your body tested for then so much of the time people are like well what about my b12 what about my multivitamin what about you know my folate what about my prenatal and I'm just like if you want to have really expensive urine then go for it but right now we need to do a little groundwork before we bring those things in so again I didn't actually say this before but I say to every single of my patients it's not about what you do is about how you do it and that is so so important this is about strategy when it comes to your healing process and that kind of brings me to this next slide here but one of the tests that we do excuse me is called autonomic response testing this was a test that was created by dr. King Hart and it's very confusing to a lot of people that were leave it but as we get it done and it uncovers so much information people are like holy crap this is like the craziest type of testing I've ever had because it's always correct and it's oh he's just so on point but to keep it as simplistic as possible the autonomic response testing is amazing because when I said how every single person is so so different and every single person needs a different approach even if your symptoms look similar to someone else the way that we're able to customize this approach is because this testing gives down into the DNA level and if we test supplements against your DNA we can see which supplements are actually going to better the function of your body we could also see what types of therapies are best for your body so like when you go to the store and you're looking and you're like alright well I think I should take vitamin D how many bottles of vitamin D are they how and you're like I don't even know which one to pick and you don't know which one to pick because there's so many different options they're all have different additives they're all different companies they're processed differently and that's what's crazy is sometimes we will test 10 different types of one supplement like a vitamin D and that person will come up for one out of the 10 so it's not just about they need vitamin D it's about they means that specific type of vitamin D so when it comes to your supplements and you're the person cuz I know that I did this I still have a cabinet that is filled with thousands of dollars of supplements and then I started to test the supplements against my body to see what does my body need and I realized I only need it a little bit I didn't even need half the supplements I was actually taking so it's really important for you not only to get answers to the root of your issues but it's also important for you to walk away with strategy what are your best supplement what is your best diet what types of therapies do you need to do in addition to changing your diet and maybe taking some supplements because unfortunately it's not super linear any or you know for those of you that went down that road already you might need more you might need to detox you might need to clean up your lymphatic system you might need need to do brain balancing exercises you might need to do those things so it's important to understand that there's a bigger picture behind it all and the treatments that were kind of left with especially in the world of the gut is we're left with oh you have an autoimmune condition great we'll shut down the immune system using immunosuppressants oh you have diarrhea okay we'll put you on antibiotics we don't know if it's a bacteria but we'll assume that it is oh do constipation okay we'll be on laxatives oh none of that work okay we'll cut out half of your bowel they're all masking the symptoms they're not ever getting to the root cause and then on the flip side we have the natural approach okay take these herbs take these supplements take these vitamins eliminate everything out of your diet and then then what and then what about going back to a normal life what about you know being able to eat more than five foods it's about being specific and it's about knowing what your body needs so everybody always wants to know what is the cost of the testing um so the cost of the testing obviously you know when it comes down to the cost versus the value the value of the testing I personally think is you can't even put a number on it and I say that because everyone's so different if you're the person that literally you can't eat anything you have no idea what's good for you you're bloating from drinking water you figuring out what you can and cannot eat is probably priceless to you for you having constipation for your whole life and figuring out it's a brain or or vagus nerve problem and knowing how to fix that that's gonna be priceless to you so when it comes down to that clarity I think that at the end of the day depending on you your goals and what you can achieve is priceless but of course there is a price so when it comes down to our specific on-boarding price that encompasses all of our bio residents the autonomic response testing your 3 hours with the doctor your nutritionist what am I missing your heavy metals your your blood all of that it's 1425 1425 so some of you might be like that's astronomical that's crazy I would never pay that that's ok but I will tell you is we try to lump this down to be as cheap as possible because when I was in my old model what you thought used to happen is you came in and you came to see me you know a couple hundred dollars and then you walked out with two to five thousand dollars worth of tests that was neurotransmitters hormones food allergy blood test all of that so just know that that you have to do your research before seeking out partial integrative approach because that's the last thing that you want to do is these thousand dollars in the hole before you actually know what's wrong with you so overall when it comes down to the price it's going to give you more information than you ever can get from all of those other tests that can rack up to be a ton but also for for those of you watching it is we really always want to make sure that the expectations we're gonna meet them and we're the best fit so we do actually ask for you to apply and when you apply it's just a couple of questions before you get on a strategy call with one of our client care team and this is just so important because we want to clarify any of the questions that you have and then we also want to make sure that you understand the bigger picture behind us because the onboarding process is step number one then obviously the biggest thing is you want to get better you want to actually have a solution so being able to kind of walk you through what that looks like as well is just really important for for us and our team and how we work but really really amazing is some of the things that we've worked towards over the past few years was making our testing accessible to anyone any where in the world so all of your testing can be done remotely which the reason why we can do this is because we do things that are testing the DNA you have DNA in your hair so strictly by sending us a hair sample we can actually do some of our tests and then the rest of the test we will do via blood work and you can go to your local lab and all of that great stuff so the people that work with us from a distance we often recommend one or two reps we can work with you from afar which is more of a simplistic approach or if you are an intense case and you are like I've been everywhere and I just need a solution we do have immersion weeks and those immersion weeks can be a long weekend it could be a week and they can be even up to two weeks if you're dealing with really really bad neurological issues that's usually when we recommend two weeks so again I've already talked about this but the reason why we do this unique onboarding process is because we want to save money up front on the testing because we want to be able to give you an answers of what's going on with you and be able to be sure you to allocate your funds to actually get better and I think that's really really important again because when you walk into the functional medicine world when it's new to you you don't realize that you could easily be spending thousands of dollars on your testing and then you're like I just spend thousands of dollars and I still don't even really know it 100% what's wrong with me so um so we definitely have work to change that and involve our process okay so I want to check the chat box see if there's any questions oh no questions so if you have questions feel free to throw them in but I guess I did a good job if I didn't have questions and I always so bad at doing this but I'm gonna put this little box up to give you guys a direct link if you do want to touch base with our client services team this is actually how you can apply to potentially learn more about the onboarding process and also especially if you're from far away so I really thank all of you for being here with me I hope you learned a ton and I I do this because I love it and my mission is to get the message out there in a really really big way but you know just for those of you that have been with me through the entire webinars just understand that this is an educational experience and what you truly experience when you come to iwg is a breakthrough experience and it's a breakthrough because you can literally sit back and be like holy crap that makes perfect sense and now I finally understand why I feel this way and I have a solution in place so it's really really just the things we see on a day to day basis I just couldn't even begin to tell you it's just such an amazing feeling and it's amazing to see people's lives transformed so thank you again for being with me for those of you who want to check out our website integrated Wellness Group com I would love love love for you guys to share this webinar with friends and family those that you think can benefit from it we are segwaying into February and we are going to be talking all about the brain and mental health in February so we're going to be diving a lot more into you know the brain and neurological conditions Alzheimer's dementia a DD and we're going to be really elaborating on that so keep that in mind for next month sign up for the series send it to your friends it's all about having information that you can actually use and take charge of your health so again thank you guys for being with me I really really appreciate it and I will see you in February