Nice People Aren’t Healthy (Hot Take)
Episode 293
This one is pure “Doctor Duo” improv: we start with a playful holiday question—are you naughty or nice?—and quickly turn it into a real conversation about duality, judgment, and why trying to be “good” all the time actually messes people up. The core message: you’re not here to be one-sided. Healing (mentally, emotionally, physically, and even relationally) comes from seeing both sides of yourself and other people—without the guilt, shame, or performative “niceness.” #IntegrativeMedicine #MindBodyConnection #EmotionalHealing #DemartiniMethod #Duality #ShadowWork #PersonalGrowthJourney #ConsciousParenting #HealthyRelationships #CommunicationSkills #NervousSystemHealing #TraumaHealing #HolisticHealth #FunctionalMedicine #SelfAwareness #HighPerformanceLiving #LegacyHealth #ValuesDrivenLiving #ConciergeMedicine #TheDoctorDuo 3 Key Takeaways: You’re not one thing—ever. Trying to live as “only nice” or “only good” is a half-truth, and it creates internal stress. Real growth comes from integrating both sides (kind/firm, confident/humble, etc.). Judgment is a mirror. The traits you judge hardest in others are usually the traits you carry too—just expressed differently. That’s why resentment can be such a powerful (and uncomfortable) teacher. Guilt + shame kill connection. Whether it’s desires, fantasies, spending habits, or preferences—shaming your partner (or your kids) for what’s real for them creates separation. Communication + curiosity creates closeness. Quotes: “ It’s impossible to live a one sided life. You know, you’re not just nice, you’re mean too. ” “ When you judge someone else, when you see something in someone else, it’s only because you have that same trait—different form usually—but you have the same trait. ” Find Integrative You Radio On: Website Youtube Apple Spotify 2 Doctors Committed to Innovating the Healthcare Experience. Integrative You Radio is hosted by husband-and-wife duo, Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers. With their voracious curiosity
Topics: integrative, unknown, nice, because, judgment, healing, stress, real
Key takeaways from this episode
- If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place. **Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
- This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
- Uh, so we are talking about nighttime sleep apnea and nasal congestion. **Unknown:** Part of this is because of me.
- But it's the emotional response, because they drowned every single Navy SEAL, and the Navy SEALs don't have sleep apnea. **Unknown:** So it's the perception to the responses- All is one, my friend ... to the moments in our life.
- A, a couple of clients over time, but more recently a client, a client with sleep apnea, and it, it got me kind of thinking about the, the connections. **Unknown:** Sleep apnea, major nasal congestion, and technically...
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place. **Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion, around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place.
**Unknown:** But buckle up, because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. This is Integrative U Radio. Welcome back to another episode, guys. Uh, so we are talking about nighttime sleep apnea and nasal congestion.
**Unknown:** Part of this is because of me. Uh, it's interesting because I definitely had sinus issues as a kid. I think it yo-yoed for many years, and then, uh, as we went through big life transitions post, post Quentin, our four-year-old, uh, it has intermittently come back, but come back with a bit of a vengeance at times, to the point that, like, Nick is like, "I'm not sleeping in the same room with you because you're snoring so loud." And so ironically, we ended up working with, uh, someone... A, a couple of clients over time, but more recently a client, a client with sleep apnea, and it, it got me kind of thinking about the, the connections.
**Unknown:** Sleep apnea, major nasal congestion, and technically... Technically, what am I saying? In the mornings, for me, I, I tend to do a lot of my, my thinking time when I'm kind of, like, half awake, half asleep. It's when I have the most clarity.
**Unknown:** And literally just, like, woke up one day and I'm like, "Subconscious suffocation." And I, I don't... I just was like, "Oh my God, this is it. This is what's happening. I am not able to process certain things that are in my subconscious, and, and it's literally causing me to suffocate at night." So anyway, I was like, "Let me research this.
**Unknown:** Let me dig into it and, and really understand if this is, is part of it." So we're shedding light on that, but before I go there, I do want to preface with this: Having sleep apnea, having chronic sinus congestion can have many different origins, and it can have a combination of origins. As I mentioned, when I was young and a teenager, I had a lot of sinus issues, and part of it was because I had major, major strep infestation between my tonsils and my sinuses. I had grade three enlarged tonsils that were never removed. I had tonsil stones.
**Unknown:** Those are all signs that you have inf- bacterial infections or even fungal infections throughout sinuses and throat. So I, I want that to be very clear. Um, there are a lot of people that have strep colonies in their sinuses. They have mold colonies in their sinuses, which will contrib- people have parasites in their sinuses, not to totally horrify you guys.
**Unknown:** So these are all possibilities. A couple of ways for you to know is there something physical happening is, one, do you also have associated neck pain, especially in the mornings? Do you have a puffy face in the morning, puffy under the eyes? Do you have a frontal headache?
**Unknown:** Do you have low-grade brain fog when you wake up that gets better about a half an hour to an hour, uh, upon waking, AKA now you're in a vertical standing up position? This is a different podcast we can link in the show notes, uh, for you to listen to, which is talking all about how your brain detoxifies at night, and if it can't because of inflammation in the brain, in the sinuses, congestion of the lymph nodes of your neck, there are, are practical solutions to that. One, uh, we'll put the link in the show notes as well. There's an intranasal laser, uh, red light therapy that we love that works like a charm for this, usually in conjunction with a series of nasal sprays, even ear drops, throat sprays.
**Unknown:** So there are 100% more physical and, and tangible things to do to help with sinuses and sleep apnea. But for those of you that have tried it and it hasn't worked, 'cause that was me, I'm like the fucking nasal spray queen, red light up the nose, uh, gua sha, uh, lymphatic drainage to the neck. Like, you know, I had Nick sticking his fingers in my, uh, throat to, to work on my palate, to clear out the lymph, like the deeper lymph in the back of the throat. Like, done all the things.
**Unknown:** And I still was having congestion, and that was when I was like, "What the fuck is going on?" And an easy way to think about it is if you're constantly working on healing the body and it's not healing- Yes ... the body's not the problem. The mind is So Which I think a lot of us hit that point, and we'll say, "Oh, the... I bought the $5,000 sauna.
**Unknown:** Ugh, it didn't work," or, "I tried this with a doctor and it didn't work." Yeah, maybe, maybe the approach could have been better, but if something you feel like really didn't even make the slightest bit of a change, it's not because that therapy, that technology, that, that protocol was shit and it sucked, it's because it's not the root cause. So with that being said, my friends, the, uh, the really interesting, uh, conflict, biological conflict associated with, um, sleep apnea in particular, which is obviously more intense. You know, people with sleep apnea, they're, uh, they're... They stop breathing.
**Unknown:** They're literally suffocating. They usually have to have a CPAP device in order to, um... Well, I should say they have to have a CPAP device in order to make sure proper oxygen is getting to the brain, and also for their family members to feel comfortable that they're not gonna die in the middle of the night. It's usually more.
**Unknown:** So if somebody's suffocating, how does one suffocate in life? Pressures, injected values. Um- No, like physically, like you're underwater and you're suffocating. Oh.
**Unknown:** Well, yeah, near-death drowning. Um- No, no, no. Like, you're trapped. Oh.
**Unknown:** I was like, "Are you tricking me right now?" No, I'm trying to do something. Well, I, I think that's, that's the thing- So- ... is that just to be clear, this can be literal and this could be more symbolic. Like, this could be that you, you had a near-death experience, you had like a...
**Unknown:** You almost drowned and, and you went into like a shock from that experience that could play a role in changing the brain, which then can change the nervous system, which can then be a part of the sleep apnea issues. The thing is, is even if you had that near-death experience, it, it's not just... There... It's a neurological, psychological, and physical.
**Unknown:** Like, it's all three. The same thing happens with what you just said is- Well, it's, it's actually- ... feeling trapped ... it's actually, to make it simple, it's all emotional.
**Unknown:** Because you could have a near-death experience- Being trapped ... you could have a near-death experience like you're physically trapped underwater, and that creates an emotional response. Yes. But it's the emotional response, because they drowned every single Navy SEAL, and the Navy SEALs don't have sleep apnea.
**Unknown:** So it's the perception to the responses- All is one, my friend ... to the moments in our life. Yeah. Always.
**Unknown:** The mind dictates the body. Like, I, I only can say this so concretely because that's... It's the work that I do every single day with a bunch of people that constantly shows me this, and it still blows my mind that I'm like, "Holy shit, man." It's like, you know, it's not that vitamins and working out and all these things aren't important, but it's, it's not that important. It's...
**Unknown:** They're secondary. It... Yeah. They're secondary or tertiary.
**Unknown:** That's, that's the thing, is I... People say, "I don't have time to do all this, the vitamins and the therapies, and meditate." And I'm like, "Then meditate." And drink, you know, distilled water. You and your fucking distilled water. So it goes back to broadly being trapped.
**Unknown:** You know, once you get into that feeling of being trapped, then you can get more specific on what your label is, what your exact sensation, feeling, emotion is, but you can be trapped, you know, physically underwater. You could be trapped in a relationship. You can be trapped in a job. You could be trapped financially.
**Unknown:** You could be trapped being a mom or a dad. Like, you can be trapped so many different ways. And it's like- And- ... trapped is creating a, like a choking response- Yeah ...
**Unknown:** like being choked- And if you become- ... by the being trapped ... if you become a victim to- Yeah ... that trap, then you start suffocating, like as if you are actually physically being held underwater.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. And then the body has what? The exact same response. Yeah.
**Unknown:** Gasping, not breathing, et cetera- Mm-hmm ... which is, like in my mind, still just so- Isn't it so funny, the phrases- ... so beautiful ... that we say, though?
**Unknown:** Like, you know, if you're having... You're... You know, we're entrepreneurs, and like I remember there were times of just feeling like there's not enough fucking hours in a day. There, there's not enough...
**Unknown:** Like, there's not enough people, employees. There's not enough... Like, uh, it just being like I feel like I'm gasping for air. And- There is no time.
**Unknown:** Oh, my God. It, it's just, it's just interesting the phrases that we say that actually hold so much more merit than we realize. And- Well, it holds merit, but it's also... You know, you get deep into that, and words are vibration, which when spoken- Well, yeah ...
**Unknown:** first there was the Word of God. It's- 100% ... it creates the vibration, the resonance to attract us our reality, and this is why I get so specific sometimes with, you know, people saying forgive or forget and all these things. It's like I understand what most people are saying, but they also don't understand that's a s- like, that's a spell.
**Unknown:** Like, you're literally casting a spell, which is like what media does, newscasters. Like, it's, it's all a play off of words, and you can joke about it, but it's like newscasters are casting the information for the entire world to listen to so they all have the same information, so that they're casting a spell.The word, the vibration- That's the vibration ... that attracts, that attracts the resonance that lays the foundation of our reality. And it's like your self-talk does the same thing.
**Unknown:** Your perceptions does the same thing. And then you start speaking out that, oh, there's um, there's not enough of this in the day, and I'm, I'm choking, I'm gasping, I can barely breathe. Like, you're, you're, you're saying what you're feeling, and then the body goes through and it actually expresses what you've been saying and feeling. Yeah.
**Unknown:** Sleep apnea. Yeah. But a lot of what we're talking about too is more in the, in the conscious mind, and one thing I wanna bring to people's awareness is that, you know, when we get into the, the other side of the spectrum, which is, you know, someone who maybe doesn't have full sleep apnea but has, like, pretty significant nasal congestion, you know, this is, um, uh, essentially it's like not wanting to smell something, not wanting to face something in life, and it's feeling... It, it, it's essentially being blocked from processing something emotional.
**Unknown:** And a lot of times this idea that I said in the beginning as of, like, subconscious suffocation, it's like you're, you're not able to process something that is running in the background of your brain from a past experience. And this, in all of the, the time that I really took to think about this, this goes back to some topics that I've talked about in other podcasts, is that when you're using your pain or conflict, you're not always wanting or willing to process it. Because if you're using your anger in order to make you a better entrepreneur or make you more aggressive in the, in, in the boardroom with negotiating deals, makes you a better salesperson... I love that your eyes are, are all over the place.
**Unknown:** I'm getting you thinking. Ha ha. So if you're using it, you're not always willing, ready, or able to process it because it's holding... It's...
**Unknown:** No matter if you're using it, it's still holding you back in other ways. And this is essentially what's, what's kind of ironic about it, is that I used my childhood pain and experiences to go to school, become a doctor, open a business, because the, the fear of being my parents was greater than the fears of taking all these risks of becoming, you know, a business owner with essentially no money. The, the fear of failing, like that... The fear of being nothing was, was more intense than the fear of having a business that struggled or failed, et cetera.
**Unknown:** So I used it, and then I felt like it was holding me back, and the peak of my fucking sinus congestion was when we lived in South Carolina, which was the pivot point where we closed the brick-and-mortar of Integrated Wellness Group, our first business, and we transitioned to a virtual model and m- moved to South Carolina. And essentially, in that, that process, what I said was, "What got me here in my life and my career, all of the leveraging of the pain that I had from the past, will take me no further." But that didn't mean that I knew what to do. That didn't mean I had tools. That didn't mean anything.
**Unknown:** It was just the start of my journey. And so I started this process of uncovering all the shit that was no longer serving me, and I was congested for almost a fucking year because I was having such a struggle of letting go of that, those experiences and, and those challenges and that pain, because even though they were holding me back in certain ways, they also served me for many m- uh, more than a decade of my life. Yeah. Smells.
**Unknown:** The, the nasal passages are very interesting. Um, do you care if I get a little deep on, like, the specifics of it? You don't need to preface with getting deep anymore. Just go there- ...
**Unknown:** because that's what you do. The... So neurologically, um, your left nostril's connected to its lateral brain, so your left cortex. Right is right.
**Unknown:** Um, so usually people will have more of a congestion on one side, um, not usually both, which means that there's a hemisphere issue. And then you look at neurodramatic medicine, it goes deeper, left-handed, right-handed, you know, mom, partners, et cetera. Uh, but when you look at that, there's... Okay, so there's a hemisphere and balance of how we're perceiving that moment of where we got congestion, um, suffocated.
**Unknown:** And with that, there's... The beautiful part of the nasal pathway is... I mean, the easy way to think about it is breath. Breath is your life force.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. So you're moving your life force around. So there's a disconnect with who you authentically are, and you feel trapped, and that trappedness isn't allowing you to be you. And when you can't be you, you, you suffocate.
**Unknown:** You can't breathe. Mm-hmm. The other beautiful part of the nasal pathway is its smell.And most people don't use or are consciously aware of, you know, using their smell to guide them. You know, we use touch, we use visual, we use auditory, but smell is one of those senses that we haven't, as a society, really worked on, um, using to serve ourselves.
**Unknown:** But when you think about smell, it's, you know, like dogs. There's... They sniff out danger. So a lot of times, smell is the sense that's connected to our, our gut, our instincts- Mm-hmm ...
**Unknown:** or our impulses. And that's going back to, you know, when did this occur? Because now an instinct is something that I wanna protect myself from. I don't wanna experience pain.
**Unknown:** Impulse is something that I want to experience pleasure. So depending on that moment and how the brain, depending on which part of the nostril, left brain or right brain, and with handedness and how we're wired, is it drives us to be able to take that information to more clearly see the root cause. And when we can get that root cause, we can intelligently go and rebalance the perception so that the benefits and drawbacks are equal, and that sets us free. Then the mind- Well, I find it's really interesting the way you just put that, because one of the primary ways to help your body recover and process, um, sleep apnea, chronic nasal congestion, is the, is a vasovagal reset and hypnosis.
**Unknown:** And so what you just described, the, the vagus nerve, it starts in the, in the brain, and then it innervates the, the heart, the lungs, and the gut. And so, you know, there's a lot of talk about people, uh, or a lot of talk, especially on social media, at least in my algorithm, you know, people talking about this, um, polyvagal system, the vasovagal reset, and how this is what we need to do to regulate our nervous systems and get out of the fight or flight. And yes, there, that is true, because if you are in more of a sympathetic anxiety, fight or flight overdrive state, yes, you can have more constriction in your airways 100%. But the, the same thing goes is if you-- if there's something that you don't want to smell or something that stinks, like metaphorically about life, or something you're feeling suffocated by, then you're going to have a different root cause to your vagus nerve issue.
**Unknown:** Your vagus nerve, it's not just about, um, doing vagus nerve exercises or, or doing, um, you know, uh, vagus nerve, uh, r- like, different therapies, like red light or PMF to target the vagus nerve. This is about what is affecting-- what's the root cause that's affecting the vagus nerve. And- Well, I look at it, just to kind of build off what you're saying, is I look... Energy's bidirectional.
**Unknown:** So it's like, if the vagus nerve has been so fucked up for so long because the vagus nerve should be pretty much, you know, healthy, half parasympathetic activation, half sympathetic activation. It's one of those weird cranial nerves that actually does-- works on both. But too much of anything is detrimental. It's bad for us.
**Unknown:** Yeah. So if it gets stuck in the sympathetic, well, it's kind of like the use it or lose it process, you know? It actually... We need to train it physically to be more parasympathetic.
**Unknown:** So those reset technologies, et cetera, everything, breathing, smelling through, 'cause we can activate it a lot of different ways. Um, gagging reflex helps kind of reset it, gargling, humming. Like, there's a lot of different tools one can use. But if you're not taking the stress off of it, and it's constantly putting it back into a sympathetic state, like, w-what the fuck are we doing?
**Unknown:** We're just wasting a bunch of time. Yeah. 'Cause I've, I've had vagus nerve issues for many years, and they were very, very, very bad at a certain point in time, where it was causing me to, um, faint. Uh, and I was able to stabilize it, but the true remedying of all vagus nerve symptoms didn't happen until I was able to go through and process the major aspects that were creating the sinus issues, which was the root cause.
**Unknown:** And, you know, and part of, for me, is the... I've done some work with you, I've done some work with your colleague, David, and then I've done my, you know, my own meditation. But a lot of my meditation was, um, able to be, I would say, more effective because of the work that I've done with you, done the work that I've done with David as well. Um, but all kind of pr- putting myself in that hypnotic state was a big part of the subconscious processing, 'cause I was not able to...
**Unknown:** You can't always process subconscious things on your own. You restart. Love you. We had an intermission.
**Unknown:** You're weird. So as always, it's, for me, it's just... This is why it's my favorite quote, "The quality of your life is dictated based off the quality of the questions you ask." So it's like, if we're feeling a symptom, 'cause the... We're gonna get feedback from the body first-Or usually be aware of it in the body.
**Unknown:** And, and it's like you have sleep apnea or you have nasal congestion, something like that in that world, there's some form of being trapped, suffocating. Okay, this is with my nose, it's connected with breath. Breath is a life force of who I am, circulating that throughout the body. So there's an aspect in one of the categories of life where I'm not really being me.
**Unknown:** Let's be honest with myself. Let's go through different categories of life. You know, is it the relationship? Is it the social?
**Unknown:** Is it the spiritual? Is it the vocational? Is it financial? Like, let's look at all the different buckets and say like, "Where am I not being authentic?
**Unknown:** Where am I feeling suffocated? And how can, how can I start being more of who I truly am?" Mm-hmm. 'Cause that's the only way to change. And when we start becoming more of that, we free ourselves.
**Unknown:** We're not trapped, and we, we, we're not a victim to that symptom anymore. 'Cause the congestion, the sleep apnea, it's not bad. It's actually a necessary feedback mechanism so that we can serve ourselves, so that we can get awareness and reflect on that awareness and use that to better serve ourselves. And that's, that's the beauty of, quote-unquote, every symptom, every disease, is that none of it's bad.
**Unknown:** Mm-hmm. It's, it's all just a feedback mech- mechanism for us to be a better version of who we truly are. Yeah. And, and when we can do that, you know, then we can tap into also the physical side of this probably creating the brain imbalance in my left hemisphere, so let's do some neurological exercises to strengthen that, and let's start smelling into that to strengthen that neural pathway, and let's start doing some vasovagal exercises to help tonify that.
**Unknown:** Like, there's so many different things we can do, but it all comes back to the quality of the questions we start asking ourselves. And it's also not about what you do, it's how you do it. And, and that's the thing that people need to understand is that, you know, when you are a, a self-researcher and you want to go ahead and look at, "Oh, this podcast makes a lot of sense. Let me figure out on my own what do I do for my, you know, my vagus nerve and my sleep apnea," and then, you know, you have a series of different things.
**Unknown:** Oh, you can, you can do this, you can do that, you can meditate, you can, you know, do this supplement, you could do this activation, you could do... I- I- it's, it's not that anything is not good or, or, or great. It's more so what do you need? What is your hierarchy?
**Unknown:** What is going to give you the most, uh, the best outcome with, uh, the li- most limited amount of resources? And, you know, I don't say that in a bad way. I just mean, you know, we all wanna be more time efficient and energy efficient, and- The downside to being a human is that we're all unique, so there's not one protocol that works for everybody. Yeah.
**Unknown:** Yes, yes, yes. And it's also too, I invite you to also know that you don't always have to figure it all out on your own. It took me a really, really, really, really long time to ever say, "I don't think I can figure this out on my own." I just kind of felt like it, that was my, my duty as a, as a person. If I'm a strong person, I can figure it out.
**Unknown:** And, you know, it, it really wasn't until 2022 that I was like, "I'm stuck, and I can't figure this out, and I need help." And, and that really was a huge catalyst to my biggest leaps in, in personal development. So just know that you don't have to do it on your own. And even if it's someone who could just help you, help probe better questions for you to see things that maybe you haven't seen before, that is going to be massively impow- impactful and really help you with the outcomes that you desire. All right, guys.
**Unknown:** Good stuff. Good stuff. See you on the next one. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio.
**Unknown:** We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments. Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
Related episodes
About Integrative You Radio
Integrative You Radio is a root cause medicine and integrative medicine podcast hosted by Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers — two integrative doctors who build personalized wellness protocols from your DNA, minerals, hormones, gut, and nervous system rather than from a population template. Looking for an integrative doctor who reads your labs together instead of in isolation? This is the show.
Further reading
Listen and read the full episode →