Taking a Deeper Look at Rheumatoid Arthritis & What Really Aggravates it?
Episode 163
Rheumatoid Arthritis falls under the category of an autoimmune condition. With Rheumatoid Arthritis on the rise along with much information to navigate through, today on Integrative Wellness Radio Dr. Nicole dives into a few of the many reasons why it manifests in the first place. She briefs us on why taking an immunosuppressant is just a temporary fix when it comes to Rheumatoid Arthritis and how it can lead to much bigger problems in the long run. Tune in to the full episode to learn more about the right testing and how you can diagnose it early on to avoid joint damage! Interested in learning more about Dr. Nick & Dr. Nicole’s courses, memberships, or private work? Learn more at Integrative You . Have a quick question, Would you like to schedule a call, or just want to say hi? Text us at 732.913.0009. Our mission to innovate humans & Healthcare does NOT start and stop with us! This is why we are also dedicated to helping other practitioners in evolving healthcare too! If you are a healthcare leader and are looking to up-level your clinical + business excellence Learn more about our course membership: Limitless Healthprenuer and start boldly disrupting this industry! Noteworthy Time Stamps: 04:00 Figuring about your body’s needs 08:49 A patient’s case study 13:24 The other factors to the cause of Rheumatoid Arthritis 17:25 Neurological pain patterns 24:55 Common infections found in joints 31:27 Does mold affect and damage your joints? 39:14 A patient’s story with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Topics: rheumatoid, arthritis, pain, autoimmune, unknown, integrative, nicole, learn
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Rheumatoid Arthritis: Uncovering the Root Causes and Triggers
- Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune disease with multifactorial causes beyond just genetics.
- Immunosuppressants manage symptoms but do not address the root cause of RA and can lead to significant health issues.
- Early and accurate testing is crucial for diagnosing RA and preventing irreversible joint damage.
- Identifying and addressing triggers, such as infections and environmental factors, is key to managing RA effectively.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey.
Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own. **Unknown:** Hello, hello.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I've been up all night, no sleep. Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems. No sleep. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick and Dr. Nicole to learn more about the top trends in integrative medicine to learn about what the limitations are with testing and what you can do to start your health journey. I feel like I'm always dreaming. Sometimes I tend to lose myself when I'm out here on my own.
**Unknown:** Hello, hello. Dr. Nicole here, and today specifically we're gonna be talking and diving into a little bit more about rheumatoid arthritis. And rheumatoid arthritis is one of these conditions that is classified as an autoimmune condition.
**Unknown:** It is unfortunately very, very common nowadays, and it is often being talked about in the sense that we don't really know why it manifests, and there is no cure, and there is not necessarily much that we can do about it outside of taking something that is classified as an immunosuppressant. So with that being said, as I talk more about some very specific case studies tonight about when it comes to rheumatoid arthritis, I'm also going to be talking about pain as a whole, and this is in reference to conditions like fibromyalgia, chronic low back pain, um, other types of inflammatory joint conditions. So this is not necessarily just for people that are dealing with rheumatoid arthritis. You definitely are going to walk away with some very significant clarity about rheumatoid, why it manifests, and some things that you can obviously do about it, and even better, testing that you can acquire to understand your condition better.
**Unknown:** But we also will be diving into a variety of different reasons why pain exists in the first place, and also the reason why a lot of different physicians and medicine is running into roadblocks when it comes to how do we actually fix this? How do we actually get better, especially if we're opting out of necessarily going down the road of painkillers, muscle relaxers, and, and surgery? Because if we opt out of that, a lot of us feel very stuck, and we feel very scared because we don't know what else is out there for us, and we don't know what else to do. And I know that when it comes to pain, some people do opt for more physical type therapies.
**Unknown:** So I'm gonna be talking a little bit more about physical type therapies, if that's physical therapy, massage, chiropractic, um, orthopedic surgery, but it's really helping you guys to walk away with understanding, is my pain actually physical? Is my pain from stress? Is my pain from toxicity? Is my pain from infections?
**Unknown:** And I think that that's probably one of the most, uh, fascinating pieces is understanding how different types of infections that we could have even had in childhood that can linger in the body and cause us to have chronic pain or even develop these inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis. With that being said, I just want to kind of reiterate, so tonight we are gonna be talking about rheumatoid arthritis. I'm gonna go through some really, really interesting case studies about different rheumatoid cases that we've dealt with that they technically came in with the same diagnosis, but their root cause was completely different. And I think this is really huge for you guys to understand is that it's very unlikely that you could potentially have the same symptoms as someone else or the same diagnosis as someone else, but it's very unlikely that you actually have the same root cause.
**Unknown:** So in addition to that, we're gonna understand a little bit more about the limitations of the testing that exists when we're trying to figure out where our pain is coming from, and then we're also going to talk more about what are the different strategies once we get that clarity on where the pain is stemming from of what can we actually do about it to start getting better. So first and foremost, what your body needs is very different from someone else who has rheumatoid arthritis or someone else who has fibromyalgia. It's really about figuring out your body's needs. So it's not just about knowing your diagnosis, it's also knowing the strategy that you need to actually get better.
**Unknown:** So this is probably, like, the most important because this helps you to understand the foundation of why you potentially are frustrated and not getting out of pain. So number one is, I've already kinda said this, is that I personally feel that the biggest detriment to medicine right now is the fact that we are always seeking out the expert or the specialist, and the entire system is based on specialties. So if you have a heart problem, you're gonna go to a cardiologist. If you have a gut problem, you're gonna go to a gastroenterologist.
**Unknown:** If you have depression or anxiety, you're gonna go to a psychiatrist or maybe even a psychologist, and nobody is talking to each other. Nobody is co-managing your case. So this brings me to the second point of the complete misunderstanding of basic physiology. So very, very simple, eighty, or I'm sorry, ninety to ninety-five percent of your serotonin, which is your feel-good hormone, is made in your gut.
**Unknown:** So if you have depression, but you also have irritable bowel syndrome, and you don't have your psychiatrist and your gastroenterologist co-managing, you're not gonna get better. Or you might be treating a depression that is actually caused by your gut issues that maybe you haven't figured out how to fix yet. So it's extremely important to understand that this is not about the specialist or the expert. This is about someone who understands the body as an integration of systems and also understands basic physiology and understands how things communicate and how things are connected, and especially this is so, so important when it even comes to hormones.
**Unknown:** I can't tell you how many women I work with with hormone issues that I never actually do anything to manipulate their hormones, and all I do is I fix the foundation, and sometimes that's a detox, and sometimes that's a gut issue. Sometimes it's a neurological issue. We get that fixed, and most of their problems go away.Their thyroid balances out, their PMS goes away, their cysts go away on their ovaries. You would be mind-blown to know how many of those types of hormonal issues self-correct when you fix the foundation.
**Unknown:** So a lot of people ask me on a day-to-day basis, "Why doesn't everybody do what you do? Why doesn't everybody think the way that Integrative Wellness Group thinks?" And my answer is, is that medicine is based on a lot of chemistry-based tests. So the most traditional test that all of us do on a yearly basis is gonna be blood work. So blood work is a biochemistry test.
**Unknown:** It's chemistry and biology. It's using chemistry to look at your biology. So if your chemistry of your blood is off or altered or high or low, then it's ... we're going to use methods to manipulate the chemistry, and the way that we do that is by using drugs, pharmacology, medicine.
**Unknown:** So our whole system is based on using testing that is going to then result in the solution being pharmacology and medicine. So when you go beyond using just blood work, and you dig deeper, and you use more elaborate testing, and you look at the DNA, and you look at the emotional side, and you look at the meridians, your treatment protocol is very different. But unfortunately, there's not a ton of money to be made in all the rest of that. So it's very important for you to understand that, you know, we don't do things the way that we do just to be weird.
**Unknown:** We do things because it's effective, it gives us better answers in a faster amount of time, and it also allows us to have more tools in the toolbox when it comes to the healing process. And it also gets us away from this idea that everything is a one size fits all treatment. So one of the things that we do with our testing is we actually customize what is the best therapies for your body. What is the best supplements, herbs, tinctures, remedies for your body.
**Unknown:** Nothing is cookie cutter. So even if you come to me with rheumatoid arthritis, I'm not going to give you my cookie cutter rheumatoid arthritis regimen or protocol. I'm actually gonna still customize it to your body and what your body's needs are because your body is gonna be completely different than someone else who has rheumatoid arthritis. With that being said, we're gonna start diving into the causes of pain because there are many, many reasons.
**Unknown:** But as we get into this, I actually want to tell you guys, uh, about specific person that we worked with that had rheumatoid arthritis. So we had a woman who came to us. Uh, she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis after having her third child. She was definitely dealing with some pain and inflammation, but it really catapulted after her third child, and she was to the point that it was taking her almost an hour to get moving in the morning because she was in so much pain.
**Unknown:** She really couldn't function. She was a new mom. She was developing postpartum because she just couldn't even pick up her child without, like, crying because she was in so much pain. So when she came in, we were digging into her history and trying to understand, you know, what was the big catalyst or what was the straw that broke the camel's back for this person.
**Unknown:** Was it, you know, was it the pregnancy, was it the stress of, you know, the hormonal change, or was it something more? So one of the things that came up is she did reveal that her mother passed away right actually three months before the rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis, and as she was even bringing this up, she did start to cry. So she clearly was still going through the, the grief process, and it was something that she hadn't really worked through. She hadn't even had time to.
**Unknown:** She was obviously trying to, you know, manage her life and, and manage a newborn. So I told her that I ... based off of our testing, I did feel that, you know, this, this grief was definitely a big player in what was the catalyst that caused all of this inflammation to come to the surface. So I don't wanna confuse you guys because the thing you have to understand here is that a lot of us have this story.
**Unknown:** A lot of us have the story that, you know, we didn't maybe feel the best, but it came and went, and we got through our lives. We function. And then there was just this, like, one moment that we're like, "What is going on? My body is literally shutting down on me, and I'm, I'm scared." And it's like we kinda feel like everything hit us like a ton of bricks.
**Unknown:** And what I always explain is that there were things brewing in the background, but there was the one thing that was the straw that broke the camel's back, and sometimes that's a virus, and sometimes that's a trauma, and sometimes that's a ... that's the birth of a child. It, it could be different person to person. But I explained to her that I, I did not want to ignore the fact that she was grieving and feeling that that was a big part of what was the onset for the rheumatoid arthritis, and she just was like, "Listen, I can't function.
**Unknown:** I need to take care of my child. I need you to help me detox and, you know, get this inflammation down. I can't imagine that the culprit behind this has to do with my mom passing away." So I said, "Okay. So we're gonna do the regimen, and then in four weeks we're gonna revisit this conversation, and we're gonna check in and see how you're doing." And I said, "If you, if you have not improved by at least 50%, we are going to revisit the conversation about this emotional piece." She goes, "Okay.
**Unknown:** Okay." She's kinda blowing me off. So four weeks later she comes to me and she goes, "I don't really feel much better." And I go, "Okay." I was like, "Are you willing to do something called the Demartini method," which is the method that Dr. Nick does in our office that helps people to work through grief. It's actually done over the course of a few hours.
**Unknown:** It is not talk therapy. It is not tapping it. It's very, very different. It's something that you can definitely read more about on our website.
**Unknown:** So she did it. She did it over the course of a few hours. She completely walked away like a new person, so much lighter, so, so balanced and appreciative and loving towards her mom but not in a place of feeling massive sadness but just feeling very grateful that she had such a wonderful mom in her life in the time that she was with her.So within a week of her doing the Demartini method, she lost fifteen pounds of inflammation. So this is not something that happens all the time, but this is really, really significant.
**Unknown:** And I'm saying this to you guys, not telling you that this is your root cause, but having you understand that you, you can't just ignore some of these pieces of the puzzle. You have to make sure that your physician is looking at all aspects, so you're not wasting time and money, essentially. You could do all the detoxes in the world, but if your root cause is something emotional that you haven't worked through, then you're not gonna get better. So it's very, very important that all factors are considered, and it's really just a matter of understanding what your root cause is.
**Unknown:** So obviously, with that story, the emotional piece can definitely play a role. But for other people, there are so many other factors to consider, one of them being, is your pain from physical trauma? Did you have a head injury? Did you have, you know, knee injuries because you were a basketball player?
**Unknown:** Did you have a ton-- tons of tears and strain sprains because you were an athlete, or do you have tons of chemical and toxic stress? Did you grow up on a farm? Did you work in a factory? Um, did you have a ton of dental work that caused you to be exposed to mercury?
**Unknown:** Do you eat tons of fish? Have you lived in a moldy apartment? Those are all contributing factors to joint pain. And then we have infections.
**Unknown:** This is something that I'm gonna tell you guys a, a story about because this is something that is so not on people's radar. And I think the only thing that is on some people's radar is Lyme disease. And Lyme disease, when you hear about it, it is usually associated with some type of joint pain, and it's very well known to affect the knees and the hips. But there is another type of infection that is actually more common to affect the joints, and this is strep.
**Unknown:** Yes, the strep that you get in your throat. Strep is the most, most common thing that I find in people's joints. So this is an interesting story. So we have chiropractic in our practice, and we have a device called a SoundWave unit.
**Unknown:** So SoundWave is specifically geared towards sending sound waves into tissue to break down scar tissue. So in the very early stages of our practice, we got the SoundWave machine specifically for joint pain, injuries, rotator cuff, all of those types of things. And it works wonders. It's amazing.
**Unknown:** It breaks down scar tissue. It gets people out of pain. It, it's literally an amazing technology. But what happened was is we had a guy that came in for chiropractic.
**Unknown:** He did not come in for functional medicine. He did not want further testing. He just says, "I have a knee problem. I heard about your SoundWave.
**Unknown:** I wanna get SoundWave done, and I wanna resolve my knee pain." So he was working with one of the chiropractors. He did the SoundWave on his knee, and at this point, we've only seen success with SoundWave. We've seen people say, "Oh my gosh, fifty percent of my pain is gone after one or two treatments." So we expected the same result. So he came back about two days later, and he said, "I was supposed to come here yesterday, but I couldn't even make it here because my knee was so bad.
**Unknown:** Do not come near me with that machine." And we were like, "Whoa, that's the first time we've ever heard that." So we said, "Okay, clearly there's something more going on with your knee, and we need to do more testing on it." So we tested the knee, and it turns out the culprit was strep that was in the meniscus and also in the synovial fluid of his knee. So what happened was we used the SoundWave, and the SoundWave, because it breaks up scar tissue adhesions, it can also break up any type of adhesions in the lymphatic system, in the lymph nodes. Lymph nodes also are part of your immune system. So what happened was is we mobilized the strep in his knee from doing the SoundWave.
**Unknown:** So that was one, the, of the most eye-opening pieces of the puzzle, I should say, because at that point, we opted to have a chronic pain program in our practice because we knew that if you just look at pain as being a physical issue, that's when you can't help people to the maximum capacity. Because if you have chronic pain that you've had PT, you've had chiropractic, you've had orthopedic surgeries, you've done all of those things, then you need to start looking elsewhere because I doubt your pain is actually due to just physical trauma, injury, or repetitive stress. So it's very, very important to do the right testing so that you're not on this merry-go-round of never getting better and never getting answers. So the other thing too is neurological pain patterns.
**Unknown:** So neurological pain patterns are always very interesting because when I have people that come to me and they say, "Oh, my pain's different all the time. I'll wake up, my elbow will hurt. The next day, my knee will hurt, you know, and a week later, I'll have, you know, my, my neck is hurting." Those types of migrating pains are not necessarily because you have issues in every single joint of your entire body. That can actually be stemming from your neurological system, and that can be your brain is stressed from a, a head injury.
**Unknown:** Uh, it could be stressed from not getting proper blood flow. It could be stressed because you have blood sugar issues. Um, we're gonna dive more into that, but the brain can be affected by a lot, a lot of different things. So this alone should be extremely eye-opening to you guys to understand that pain is not necessarily always physical.
**Unknown:** It could have many, many origins. So some of the biggest, biggest myths about pain is that it can only really be taken care of through surgery and painkillers, that emotional trauma and stress has nothing to do with your pain or your onset of rheumatoid arthritis, that you have been thoroughly testedFor all of the possibilities, toxicity being one, infections have nothing to do with joint problems, and that your diagnosis actually tells you anything about your root cause. And what I mean by that is most diagnosis is just a description of your symptoms. It actually doesn't usually give you any insight as to why.
**Unknown:** It just says, "Oh, fibromyalgia, you have various pain points on your body, end of story. We don't know why, but that's what you have." Like, in my opinion, that's not good enough. You need to understand why. You deserve to understand why.
**Unknown:** So when it comes to the physical pain piece, I wanna dive into this even more because this is not as cut and dry as you guys think. This is not just, "Oh, I was an athlete, and I banged myself up pretty good," because it's really... there are other factors that can play in that are totally not what you're thinking about on a day-to-day basis. One of those is antibiotic use.
**Unknown:** So antibiotics, there is a family of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones, and fluoroquinolones is Cipro and Levaquin. If you guys have ever heard about the side effects of Levaquin, is it can cause you to tear your Achilles tendon. Your Achilles tendon is the tendon on the back of your ankle. That is actually the strongest tendon in your entire body.
**Unknown:** So if this fluoroquinolone family has enough power to break down your connective tissue enough that it could potentially rupture the strongest tendon in your body, think about what that's doing to other parts of your body. So this is something that is extremely important, especially if you have a young athlete. One of your kids is, you know, this superstar athlete, but maybe they keep getting strep throat. Maybe they keep getting upper respiratory infections.
**Unknown:** Maybe your daughter keeps getting urinary tract infections, and you keep putting them on these antibiotics. And then all of a sudden, you're like, "Oh, my gosh, they're injured again. Oh, my gosh, podiatrist," you know, orthopedic, chiropractor, and you're just running around to all of these different types of, you know, physicians. And what the root cause is, is that their connective tissue is breaking down because of this antibiotic family.
**Unknown:** So this is very important to take into consideration because I find that a lot of young athletes that I work with that are injured, it's because of this reason. So another thing too is if your pain truly is physical and you are trying to seek out a therapy to get better, work with someone who is going to work on your muscles, your ligaments, your tendons, and your joints. Because your muscles, your ligaments, your tendons, and your joints are all working together. They are all connected.
**Unknown:** So if you go to a chiropractor that doesn't do muscle work, you're going to find that your really tight spasmed muscles are gonna pull you right back, back out of alignment. And if you try to address muscles and break up scar tissue and strengthen, but the joint is still out of place, so the nerves are not firing to the muscle, you're also going to run into roadblocks, or you're gonna do seventy-five PT sessions. So it's really a matter of working with someone who understands both of those pieces, and that might be a chiropractor who does muscle work, that might be, um, osteopath. It really is up to your preference.
**Unknown:** Another big piece too is scar tissue. Another thing that, uh, people are not necessarily taking into consi-consideration is they have an injury, they have a tear, they have a herniation, and they have to go get things cleaned up. Anytime you have a surgical intervention, you are going to develop scar tissue. If you have repetitive stress because you were a pitcher, you are going to have scar tissue.
**Unknown:** So you need to make sure that scar tissue is being addressed if you're trying to heal your physical pain. And that's actually something that we test for is we test does, you know, does this person need something called scar tissue release. I can't tell you how many women that have had C-sections need their C-section scar to be worked on because it's actually causing adhesions in their bowels, or it's causing adhesions in their uterus. So this is something that definitely should not be overlooked, and you really should make sure that your scar tissue is being addressed, and there are a variety of different ways to work on that, one of them being the sound wave therapy that I mentioned, and then there are other types of manual therapies that you can do, uh, for scar tissue.
**Unknown:** So another thing too is if we've had surgery, and we maybe had a replacement, we had a hip replacement, we had a knee replacement, or maybe we broke our collarbone, and we had to get a plate in to hold it together, and you're continually having pain in these areas. It's not about, okay, maybe, you know, I'm-- my body's adapting to the surgery, or my body's still healing. You also have to make sure that you're not having an immune response to the materials that were put into your body. Because that is also not uncommon, that maybe they put titanium in you, or maybe they put some other type of metal, and your immune system is having a negative reaction.
**Unknown:** So there are many ways that you can actually test these types of metals to make sure that your body is going to have a positive response and not necessarily activate some type of, um, immune response. So the connective tissue disorders, I mentioned that obviously these antibiotics, uh, like the Cipro and Levaquin, can definitely play a role. But in addition, um, somebody has something like lupus that they are unaware of, that can also be a culprit as to why they're constantly tearing, strain-straining, spraining, et cetera. So if you're-That person that's always getting injured, you always have soft tissue damage, you might need to get checked to make sure that you don't have some type of autoimmune, uh, connective tissue disorder like lupus.
**Unknown:** So that's very, very important to take into consideration. So the infections. I know that I talked about this a little bit already. The most common infections that I find in people's joints, one of them is Lyme.
**Unknown:** Lyme, the bacteria is technically, technically called Borrelia. The other one, the most common, is strep, and yes, that is the strep that you get in your throat. Strep can get into your lymph nodes, and then it can travel throughout the body through your lymphatic vessels. Your lymphatic vessels do funnel things through the body.
**Unknown:** So that's one of the primary ways that it gets into other areas. And these types of infections, they're choosy where they go. They will go to an area that is vulnerable. So if you were a runner or a basketball player and you do have some damage to your knees because of that, or even your hips, then these bacterias will migrate to that vulnerable tissue and make that its new home.
**Unknown:** So interesting enough too is I remember doing testing and finding strep in people's joints and wondering, like, "Is this common?" Because I feel like this is common in my per- my personal practice. And what's interesting is one of our newer softwares that we have that's for all of our electronic medical records, one of... I was going in and putting diagnosis codes in, and I typed in strep, and there was a dropdown, and there were over fifty diagnosis codes for strep in joints. So this is definitely not as uncommon as people presume it to be.
**Unknown:** So strep is definitely something that you have to take into consideration if you have had joint pain that has not been resolved through physical type therapies. The other big one is Epstein-Barr virus. Um, Epstein-Barr virus is pretty well known because that is the virus that is, uh, known to be associated with mono. Um, viruses don't leave your body.
**Unknown:** Viruses become part of your DNA. And later in life, when there's stress or there's a big hormonal change or you have a baby or you're burnt out, a lot of times viruses can reactivate and rear their ugly heads, and that's definitely sometimes when you're like, "Oh, I feel so achy, and it's really hard to get out of bed, and I'm feeling really stiff." And then you're like, "Oh, I feel better. Oh, it's back. Oh, I feel better.
**Unknown:** Oh, it's back." That is very typical of viruses that you're on this rollercoaster ride because they'll be active, they'll be dormant, they'll be active, they'll be dormant. So it's definitely important for you to take these things into consideration when you're trying to understand what is the root cause of all of this. So another big one is toxicity. So for those of you listening that are not necessarily new to this world of integrative and functional medicine, you may have already done some research on toxicity.
**Unknown:** But a lot of us, you know, I know for me, it took me time to really understand it to the capacity that I do now, but we are living in a massively, massively toxic world. There is toxins in everything we eat, everything we put on our body, our nail polish, our hair dye, our makeup. Uh, it's on our plates, it's on our pots, it's on our pans. Like, it's crazy.
**Unknown:** But I will say to you is that... And also I'm saying this to you because this is one of the things that my patients say that they're like, "Thank you so much for easing my mind." And what I explain to my patients is that if you take the very, very simple concept of a vacuum, if you have a vacuum that has a filter and you keep using your vacuum, your filter is gonna get more and more full. And it just makes sense that eventually when the filter's full, you dump the filter, and then you keep using your vacuum. But we don't apply that principle to our bodies, and our bodies are designed to filter out bad stuff, and that's everything from infections to toxins to mold, all that stuff.
**Unknown:** But we call it aging, but really what's happening over time is that our filters are getting more and more full. They're getting clogged. One of the, or three of the major filtration systems of the body is the liver, the kidneys, and the lymphatic system, technically your tonsils as well. And your liver is also attached to your gallbladder, by the way.
**Unknown:** So think about how many people get their tonsils removed, how many people get their gallbladder removed. Technically, your appendix is a filter. How many people get their appendix removed? So we're actually just removing these filtration systems when they get really full, opposed to using the principles of let's clean it out.
**Unknown:** So it's very important that if you... We're all gonna be exposed to chemicals. You can't live in a bubble. You can't run away to an island.
**Unknown:** It's everywhere. But if you can maintain your body's ability to filter the bad stuff out, you don't have to worry. You don't have to be living in fear and be super anxious and, you know, have your kids, like, spray them down with hand sanitizer. It's really, really important for you to understand that it's not that complicated.
**Unknown:** It's just a matter of trying to keep the filters maintained. And also, there is a genetic layer here, 'cause what I mean by that is think about the people that drink, like, forty cups of coffee in a day, and they have zero issues. They're like, "Oh my gosh, it doesn't even phase me. I can go right to bed." And then there's another person that drinks one cup of coffee, and they're wired for, like-30 hours.
**Unknown:** So that has to do with the genetic makeup of your liver. So that means you're either an over metabolizer, AKA, your body is chewing up and spitting out the caffeine, or you're an under metabolizer, meaning that your, your liver can't really process it. So this applies to all of your filtration systems. Some people have weaker kidneys, hence those are the people that have kidney stones in their family.
**Unknown:** Some people have a weaker lymphatic system. These are the people that get a lot of swelling. They get varicose veins, um, they have denser fibrocystic breasts. These are all signs of lymphatic congestion.
**Unknown:** Or you, you can't lose weight. That's another big one. So it's definitely key to understand how the body works because if you understand that, the healing process is actually not that difficult. So there are over 55,000 chemicals that are released every month.
**Unknown:** Only 15 of those are actually tested for safety. Yeah, that's for real. That's scary. Another big one that is completely off of people's radar when it comes to joints is mold.
**Unknown:** And the crazy thing about mold is that mold can come from a water damaged building, but most people don't know if they're being exposed to mold in their environment. Then there's also a lot of mold in food. So everything from cheese, blue cheese, that blue stuff is mold, wine, coffee, all of these things, peanut butter, high mold foods. Then on top of it, one of the questions I a- always ask my patients, "Have you been exposed to mold?" "No, no, no.
**Unknown:** No possible way. Never been exposed to mold." My follow-up question is, "Are you allergic to penicillin, amoxicillin, or ampicillin?" "Oh, yeah, I've been allergic to penicillin since I was two." And I was like, "You've been moldy since you were two." Because penicillin and amoxicillin, anything in the cillin family, those antibiotics are made from penicillium, which is mold. Mold is something that you can get exposed to from your environment, from food, as well as from antibiotics. So mold is not as uncommon as people think, and in addition, if you look up the symptoms of mold toxicity, and you compare it to the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, you will find that they almost are identical.
**Unknown:** So it is very, very important for you to rule in or out is mold part of your puzzle when it comes to rheumatoid arthritis. So outside of mold, when it comes to the other toxins, the most common things I see are heavy metals, mercury, aluminum, silver, arsenic. Arsenic is in brown rice. It's in brown rice syrup.
**Unknown:** Yes, Kind bars. Um, benzenes are in tons of our detergents, our fabrics, the clothes that we wear, the couch that we lay on. And then there is a lot of toxins just in antibiotics as well. Um, and that's not...
**Unknown:** I shouldn't even say antibiotics because most people don't know that there is fluoride, aluminum, gluten in most of our medications. If you actually look at the ingredient list of your Synthroid, Synthroid has gluten in it, just so you know. So if you're celiac taking Synthroid, no good. You're actually screwing yourself up pretty bad.
**Unknown:** But unfortunately, most endocrinologists don't even know that, that Synthroid has gluten in it. So these are definitely things to be really aware of, is to understand, you know, you might be missing various pieces of the puzzle to your healing process. Okay, so the emotional piece. So I, I told you guys a story a little bit about this woman who was dealing with grief.
**Unknown:** So it's very interesting because this is actually the research of Dr. Demartini, and Demartini is one of my personal mentors as well as my husband, Dr. Nick. And, um, some of the interesting things that we learned from him is that very specific joint issues can be tied to very specific emotions.
**Unknown:** So as an example, your hands can be associated to what are you holding onto. Is there a toxic relationship you're holding onto? Is it the job you hate that you're holding onto? Is it grief that you're holding onto?
**Unknown:** Then when it comes to ankle and knee pain, sometimes this is connected to being scared of taking that first step, being scared of moving forward. These have a lot of synergies to, you know, being scared of leaving the job, leaving the spouse, you know, making that big move, becoming the entrepreneur or whatever the case may be. And then when it comes to even the shoulder pain, this can be tied to what are you tired of holding the weight of. Are you holding the weight of, you know, all of the family problems that everybody is dealing with?
**Unknown:** Are you holding the weight of taking care of everyone in your family? Are you holding the weight of everybody else's problems because everybody comes to you to vent or get advice? There is a lot of issues that can happen in our body that are due to these emotional things that we are not willing to acknowledge and address. So the last thing here is the neurological piece.
**Unknown:** So I mentioned when you have this migrating pain, a lot of this can be tied to a brain dysfunction. And it's not just about migrating pain. It could be phantom pain of like, "I don't understand why my arm hurts. I didn't do anything to it.
**Unknown:** I didn't bump it." Or you have very sensitive skin. It's almost like your spouse rolls over and, you know, kind of barely touches you, and you're like, "Ow." Or you find that you're very clumsy. You're bumping into things. You're finding bruises on yourself 'cause you're always, you know, bumping into things, falling over.
**Unknown:** Another one can be constipation. I'm gonna connect these dots so you understand it better. Another thing is neuropathy, especially if you have burning, numbness, tingling in your hands and feet that is not tied to diabetes or blood sugar issues. And another factor is weakness.
**Unknown:** You're having trouble getting upstairs. You're having trouble opening jars. You're having trouble getting up out of a seated position. All of these things can be tied to your pain stemming from the brain.And that's why it can drive you crazy because there's no rhyme or reason.
**Unknown:** "Oh, my elbow hurts today. Oh, my neck hurts. Oh, now it's my knee." And you're just like, "What is wrong with me?" So the neurological piece can come from brain injury, which could be concussion or can be a car accident, or could have been even just a minor bump on the head. It can also come from blood flow issues.
**Unknown:** Blood flow issues, um, if you are curious about that and, and if you've ever heard of something called vascular dementia, you should definitely listen to our podcast that's on our website about it, because I dive really deep into people that suffer from brain fog, memory loss, which could potentially turn into dementia, or they even have migraines or headaches. This can actually be associated with vascular issues to the brain, which can then lead to neurological pain. And then the other piece is blood sugar instability. I'm not necessarily talking about you being a diabetic, but I'm talking about your insulin not working, uh, very well because your pancreas is stressed or the fact that you're low blood sugar, hypoglycemic.
**Unknown:** Those are the people that never eat breakfast. They're nauseous in the morning, then they drink coffee, then they suppress their appetite, then they crave carbs, then they want midday coffee, and then they want sugar after dinner. How many of you guys can relate to that? So this is really, really significant for you guys to understand that sometimes your pain can stem from the top-down, not always the bottom-up.
**Unknown:** So pain in the lower back can definitely have a lot of meaning, but your nerves in your lower back do go to a lot ... So it, it kinda depends on which part of your lower back because those nerves go to your gut, and then some of those nerves also go to the reproductive organs. So with the reproductive organs, if there is, like, any type of, like, shame or, or, um, resentment around sexuality, um, or if there was any type of sexual trauma, that can be correlated to low back pain. And then with the gut, the gut actually is tied to something called your solar plexus, which has a lot to do with self-identity.
**Unknown:** Self-identity is not necessarily associated with, like, oh, you don't know who you are, but it could be that, um, people are telling you how you should act, people are telling you, you know, what you should do with your life, and, you know, you get conflicted on your purpose. So there's many interpretations. So when somebody comes in and this comes to the surface, we obviously dive in and ask a lot of better questions to really understand this deeper. So there definitely can be some significant ties to low back pain when it comes to the emotional piece.
**Unknown:** Okay, so this is another rheumatoid, uh, story. So this is a little bit different than the story that I told early on that was tied more to this emotional layer. This was a person that she was diagnosed with, uh, rheumatoid arthritis actually after about 20 years of joint pain. So the joint pain was, was there.
**Unknown:** It definitely got worse. It ebbed, it flowed, and then they were like, "Well, your rheumatoid marker is not that high, but it has to be rheumatoid arthritis because that's the way your symptoms present." So other things that were going on were brain fog, gut issues, anger, irritability, celiac disease, and a variety of other types of food allergies. So as we dove in, this person specifically had their tonsils removed at four years old due to chronic sore throats. Um, before getting the tonsils removed, had a ton of antibiotic use because of the sore throats and also upper respiratory infections.
**Unknown:** So throughout this, the child was still really, really active, playing a ton of sports, which then resulted in some injuries. You know, no big deal. That's what happens. Also grew up close to farms, which is significant because of a lot of the spraying of pesticides.
**Unknown:** And then also had childhood eczema, which then came back later as an adult. And it wasn't bad as an adult. It kind of came and went, and it usually coincided with when the joints were really flaring. So to break this down and make this all significant, we talked about strep and infections being part of the puzzle for these types of joint issues and conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.
**Unknown:** So this person, they were told that their sore throats were not strep, but my testing showed that their sore throats were strep because all the strep was still in all of the lymph nodes of the neck, and that was also in the joints. Then on top of it, all the antibiotic use weakened the connective tissue, which caused a lot of the injuries. So then the injuries caused a lot of the scar tissue, and that created a whole nother array of type of ... or, or a whole nother facet to the joint pain.
**Unknown:** Then there was a toxicity piece because of pesticides that were in the water, in the air, in the soil, and then the eczema. So the eczema was interesting because the eczema was tied to some of the antibiotic use and the gut being really off as a child. But as an adult, when the eczema came back, it wasn't eczema. It was actually psoriasis.
**Unknown:** And the person, based off of my testing, didn't really have rheumatoid arthritis, actually had the early stages of psoriatic arthropathy, which is psoriatic arthritis. So this is really important because a lot of times when the testing is not super black and white, maybe your rheumatoid factor is borderline, and they don't really know what's going on, they'll just say, "Well, you have rheumatoid. That's the only thing that it can be because that's what your symptoms look like." But it easily can be something else. So it's just very important for you to kind of understand that your diagnosis is not necessarily a definitive, and it's not necessarily going to be the end-all be-all, and it's not about one thing.
**Unknown:** This person had a cascade of things that led them down the road of having the, these issues and having the psoriatic arthritis. This was toxicity related. This was antibiotic related. This was infection related.And this person, it was very fascinating because they actually didn't have Lyme disease.
**Unknown:** They had strep as an infection but also ended up having syphilis in their system. And I actually just did a podcast about this because first of all, everybody thinks syphilis is strictly, um, sexually transmitted. It is not, by the way. Syphilis is very, very, very similar to Lyme disease under a microscope, and syphilis is also known as the great imitator of psoriasis.
**Unknown:** So if you have psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis, get tested for syphilis because that might be part of the puzzle. So with this story and my previous story, the point of me telling you guys this is that you don't know what you don't know. You don't know what you don't know unless you do better testing, unless you dig deeper. It is impossible for you to understand the bigger picture and to understand how there are various pieces to the puzzle.
**Unknown:** And it's not that you just have a r- inflammatory condition that just happened out of nowhere because you have a bad immune system. That's not what happens. Your body has stressors that it reacts to. So it's very important for us to just not settle.
**Unknown:** Let's not settle for this inflammatory diagnosis, and let's not settle for just saying, "I'm gonna shut down my immune system with immunosuppressants." It's a matter of knowing that there are other alternatives out there and to really stop just accepting this as my normal. "Oh, okay, I'm just gonna navigate around it." So a lot of us, you know, I know feel that we're not really in control. And at the end of the day, if you understand the root cause of your pain, of your rheumatoid arthritis, of your fibromyalgia, of whatever it is, then anything is possible because the first step is knowing what is the actual root cause. And as you can see with the, some of the stories I've told you, is that very rarely is the root cause matching a textbook.
**Unknown:** Very rarely does your blood work match, match the textbook. Very rarely do your symptoms match the textbook. So if you don't look like the textbook, we can't use the textbook protocol. We need to think outside of the textbook because your body is going to have a completely different set of needs and a, it's going to need a completely different protocol than someone else who potentially has the same diagnosis.
**Unknown:** So with that, when it comes to how do we figure all of this out, that's always people's questions. Like, okay, what ... Like, what is all this crazy testing that you guys do? So we forget that healthcare is about answers and solutions, and we settle for like, "Okay, I didn't have to pay a lot.
**Unknown:** I went and, you know, I had ... Either it was free or I paid my copay." And we almost like allow for us to walk away without any answers, and then we walk away with the only solution being a medication or a surgery, and I think that we need to start asking more. We need to demand more out of our healthcare because this is, especially in this pain world, this is what's getting our children into trouble. This is the epidemic of heroin right now.
**Unknown:** These painkillers are making our kids addicted, and then they're seeking out the same high on the street. This is a very, very scary thing. And from my hometown, I have heard of 30 people that have died from heroin overdose, and these are people that I, I knew from school that were jocks and varsity football players. Like, these are people that I remember going wakeboarding with them, and like, they were amazing people that had an injury, were put on painkillers, and it spiraled.
**Unknown:** So it's very dear to my heart for people to know that there are other options out there, and these are some of the options. So when it comes to our style of testing is we do very elaborate blood work. We run rheumatoid markers. We do the Vectra scan.
**Unknown:** We look at, you know, um, psoriatic markers. We look at inflammatory markers. We look at all that great stuff. But we also use some very customized technologies to evaluate for toxicity, to evaluate for environmental allergies, food allergies.
**Unknown:** We test for heavy metals. We test for mineral deficiencies. We test for vitamin deficiencies, and then the best part is, is the autonomic response testing. Okay, so if you guys want to hop on a strategy call to learn more about our onboarding process, you can obviously find this link also on our website.
**Unknown:** So feel free if you wanna head over there, um, later this evening or even tomorrow. But, um, we definitely like for people to apply to become part of the practice primarily just because, uh, we wanna make sure that we're a good fit for you and you're a good fit for us. This program is, is amazing, but we understand that maybe it's not for everyone, and we like to just make sure that, you know, we can be as transparent as possible with how it all works. The other really amazing thing is that the, uh, onboarding process can actually be done from a distance, and the reason is, is that a lot of our tests that we do are DNA based.
**Unknown:** You have DNA in your hair, so if you actually send us a hair sample, we have the ability to do the testing on your hair. Okay, guys, I really, really appreciate those of you that have been here. I know a few of you have been on here for the whole duration of the hour. I'm just ...
**Unknown:** You know, I do this because I, I love it. I love opening people's eyes to this style of medicine, and you know, this is really such an educational experience. But once you're able to get clarity on your health and what your body needs, that's really when it becomes a breakthrough experience, and that's why I get up and do what I do every day because I, I live for that. I live to see people's lives changed.
**Unknown:** Um, it's amazing to, to see it happen, and it, it's amazing for people to completely shift their quality of life and, and achieve things that they didn't even think was possible because they were so used to feeling like crap. So thank you guys for being here. I really appreciate it. I would love, love, love for you to share this with others and be able to kinda spread the word, spread the message.
**Unknown:** I will see you next week. All right. Good night, everyone. We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio.
**Unknown:** If you're looking to learn more about Integrative Wellness Group as well as Dr. Nick or Dr. Nicole, you can check out integrativewellnessgroup.com. All night, no sleep.
**Unknown:** 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay
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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.
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