The chronic pain and infectious disease connection
Episode 184
Chronic pain is a common, complex, and distressing problem that has a profound impact on individuals and society. On this episode of Integrative Wellness Radio, we will be discussing the connection between permanent solutions and does not resolve our issues indefinitely. Leading the episode, Dr. Nicole will be elaborating on the bigger picture as to why so many of us suffer from joint pain. And also, why aren’t most of us getting the required answers and solutions to our problems? So tune in and listen to the entire episode as Dr.Nicole unravels the root causes of chronic pain and shares useful insight on how to overcome it. 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! What you’ll learn in this episode: Why these different conditions exist and how they can be tied to infections that make their way into our joints. How to identify the root cause of pain and what measures to take to resolve it permanently. Importance of knowing how to differentiate physical pain from emotional pain. What are the roles of different tissues in your body and how they can affect your joints and muscles? How to pay attention to what your body needs and act upon them. Most common types of infections and how they make their way and get carried to different parts of your body. How you get exposed to different toxins on daily basis and their contribution to your inflammatory conditions and joint pain. What are the things you need to consider
Topics: pain, chronic, many, joint, root, infections, different, cause
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## The Chronic Pain and Infectious Disease Connection
- Many chronic pain conditions, particularly joint pain, can be linked to unseen infections that have entered the body.
- Understanding the distinction between physical and emotional pain is crucial for effective diagnosis and treatment.
- Exposure to various toxins in our daily lives can exacerbate inflammation, contributing significantly to joint pain.
- Identifying the root cause of pain, rather than just managing symptoms, is key to achieving permanent resolution.
Pull quotes
Imagine if medicine actually looked at you as a whole opposed to looking at you as a bunch of separate systems.
Nick and Dr. **Unknown:** 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.
Unfortunately, most of the solutions that exist in the toolbox ex-- are primarily consistent with painkillers, and then if the painkillers do not work at a certain point, then we move into surgery.
Transcript
**Unknown:** I 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. Dive into Integrative Wellness Radio with Dr. Nick and Dr.
**Unknown:** 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 the- Hello, everyone. We are coming to the end of our all about pain. So tonight, as we start to move forward with our whole conversation this month about pain, we're specifically talking about the connection of infections that can be causing our joint pain or even our arthritis.
**Unknown:** And I know for many people this is completely off of the radar, and this is not something that many people are even talking about. And, you know, the only thing that I feel like is in the common awareness is that when people sometimes have Lyme disease, it is associated with joint pain, but there is actually many other types of infections that can be correlated to different complaints that we have in our joints. And this doesn't mean all joints. This could be really any joint.
**Unknown:** And we're going to really dive in to understand more about this process, but also being able to just elaborate on the big picture as to why so many of us suffer with pain, and why are we not necessarily getting answers and solutions to be able to resolve our pain. Unfortunately, most of the solutions that exist in the toolbox ex-- are primarily consistent with painkillers, and then if the painkillers do not work at a certain point, then we move into surgery. And these are the most common avenues for being able to address pain. But unfortunately, it's not always a guarantee that it's going to resolve our issues with pain, and very much so it's not going to resolve issues with inflammatory pain conditions like fibromyalgia or even rheumatoid arthritis.
**Unknown:** So we're gonna try to really understand more about why these different conditions exist, how they can be tied to a variety of things that are not being talked about, and one of those biggest things being infections that make their way into our joints. And I'm going to also dive in to tell you a little bit about some really specific clinical experiences and stories of people that came in with pain, and then as we dug in, we realized that the origin of their pain was definitely not what they were thinking. Uh, 'cause most of us really classify our pain as being tied to repetitive stress or arthritis or injury, and it can definitely be a lot more elaborate than that, and it can stem from many, many other reasons. But overall, the biggest things we're touching on is we're gonna talk about the limitations in the testing that will allow us to figure out what is the root cause of our pain.
**Unknown:** And then we're also really just gonna establish that you don't know what you don't know, and it's impossible to know what the root cause of your pain is until you dig a little bit deeper and you work with a physician that's asking better questions. And then from there, being able to leverage the testing to really understand how can you actually resolve the root, the foundation of why you have pain in the first place? Because if we keep putting a Band-Aid on it, we're not necessarily going to get results, we're not gonna get better, and we potentially put ourselves at risk for becoming addicted to painkillers, which then can lead us down a road of drugs. And unfortunately, this is just a very sensitive subject because I have lost many people in my life due to addictions that started from painkillers, and then they spiraled into something bigger.
**Unknown:** So this is not uncommon. I think most of us that are watching and listening can relate to this to some capacity because we are in a massive crisis of, uh, addiction to painkillers that are leading people down the road of heroin. And if you ask any person that is in, you know, some type of police enforcement, there is a huge issue with kids that are overdosing. So it's really a matter of us taking this into our own hands and being able to understand the root of where pain comes from.
**Unknown:** So first and foremost, before we dive in, is I want you to know that it is not your fault. It is not your fault that you haven't been able to figure out what's wrong with you. It is not your fault that you have felt paralyzed from all of the information that is on the internet. It is not your fault that you haven't known what to request from a testing perspective from your doctor.
**Unknown:** It is not your fault that you haven't figured out the right diet or supplement protocol or medication that is going to get you healthy again. It's not your fault. It's very, very difficult to navigate the sea of information. We have the internet.
**Unknown:** We have tons of people putting information on the internet. We have paleo diets, we have keto diets, we have vegetarian diets, we have vegan diets, we have documentaries. We have all this information, but it's conflicting, it's overwhelming, it's confusing. But I want you to say-- uh, I want you to understand nothing is wrong or right.
**Unknown:** It's really just a matter of what does your body need? Because what your body needs is completely different than someone else who has pain or fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis. You could be sitting next to a person that technically has the same diagnosis as you, but your needs to get better are completely different. And I think this is extremely important for people to understand because when we're trying to, you know, work within the limits of our insurance or we're trying to, you know, figure this all out on our own, we're, like, s- wasting a lot of time and money.
**Unknown:** And what I mean by that is we're looking up, okay, rheumatoid arthritis, what is the best supplement protocol for that? What's the best anti-inflammatory diet for rheu-Rheumatoid arthritis. And we start like trying all these things, and then we are maybe getting better, then we're hitting a plateau, or it's not working at all, and we're just like throw our hands up and go, "Screw it. I...
**Unknown:** This is too much. This is overwhelming. This isn't working. I guess I just have to be on medication." And I get it because you could be doing this great protocol and be super strict and super diligent and be doing the most expensive supplements, but if it's not what your body needs, then you're gonna fall flat, and you're gonna feel really frustrated with that.
**Unknown:** So it's not necessarily even just about doing the right testing, it's also about knowing what your body needs and understanding that you can test those things. You can test to know what supplements are good for you and what remedies are good for you and what foods are good for you. There are ways of testing these things, and this is something that we do in our practice because I was really tired of people wasting time and money, and I was also tired of doing that for myself. I wanted to take the trial and error out of medicine, and that's why I shifted into the style of testing that we do, which I'll share more with you guys.
**Unknown:** So number one, this is my personal opinion. My personal opinion is that I think that the fact that we have specialists and... or specialties and subspecialties in medicine is the biggest detriment to medicine. And what I mean by this is that we are assuming that you are a bunch of systems that are working independently and not working together.
**Unknown:** We are assuming that your gut is not working with your brain, and your brain is not working with your heart, and your heart is not working with your circulation. We're assuming that all of these systems are separate. And this kind of brings me to my second point is this is a lack of understanding basic physiology. So if you have a gut issue, and you're working with a gastroenterologist, and maybe you also are dealing with depression, and you're working with a psychiatrist or a psychologist.
**Unknown:** So you have two different practitioners that are treating two quote-unquote separate things, assuming that they are not connected at all. But basic physiology tells us that ninety to ninety-five percent of your serotonin, AKA your feel-good hormone, is made in your gut. So if we are dealing with a gut issue that maybe isn't being addressed properly, but then we're also taking an antidepressant, we're assuming these things have nothing to do with each other. But you can easily just fix your gut issue, and your depression might go away or vice versa.
**Unknown:** So it's very, very important to understand that your body and your systems are working together at all times. Your liver plays a role in your hormones. Your brain plays a role in your gut. Your gut plays a role in your mood.
**Unknown:** Everything is connected. So we need to stop thinking that we need to find the expert or the specialist because if we find the expert and the specialist, we're going to then isolate either a condition or a sy- a system, and we are usually going to find ourselves not necessarily finding the solutions or creating sustainable changes. Another big thing that people ask me all the time, "What you do? Why doesn't every doctor think this way?
**Unknown:** Why doesn't everybody look at the body as an integration of systems?" And my answer to that is our entire foundation of medicine is based on chemistry. So what I mean by that is the most typical test that you do on an annual basis is what? It's blood work. Blood work is a chemistry-based test.
**Unknown:** It is looking at flaws in your chemistry or abnormalities in your chemistry, vitamin D, minerals, uh, lipids, et cetera. So if you have something out of balance in your chemistry, we can use chemistry to manipulate that pathway. What I mean by that is chemistry is medicine, pharmacology, drugs. So when we use specific testing that is chemistry-based, then it allows for the solution to be chemistry-based.
**Unknown:** And unfortunately, most of medicine is profit-driven. There is a lot of money to be made in pharmacology. So I am not saying that pharmacology is bad, and I am not saying that there is not a place for it. There is a place for it, a hundred million percent.
**Unknown:** Do not come to me if you are bleeding or if you, you know, have some type of emergency situation. But when it comes to creating sustainable changes and dealing with chronic lifestyle illness, we need to use other tests that are outside of just being chemistry-based, especially if we're looking for other solutions outside of medication. So really what this comes down to is when we stay within this model of only using chemistry-based testing, it leaves us with a very, very small toolbox, AKA meds, medications. And this kind of brings me to this concept that we're always looking for the one-size-fits-all treatment.
**Unknown:** We're always looking for the, the one pill that's gonna cure us or the one, you know, surgery that's gonna fix everything. And I really do wish it was that simple, but unfortunately, it is not that simple. And when it comes to the body as this integration of systems, we have to look beyond that, and we have to understand that we have stress, we have emotions, we have emotional trauma, we have our physical body, we have neurological pathways, we have the chemistry, we have our cells. There are so many pieces of the puddle-- puzzle that have to be considered, and this is what allows for people to truly get better and sustain it is when you're looking at all of those pieces.
**Unknown:** So when it comes to some of the amazing things that we see on a day-to-day basis, it really comes down to the type of testing that we do. So a specific story about a woman who came to us with rheumatoid arthritis. So we had a patient, she came to us with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. She said that the onset was after having her third child.
**Unknown:** So when you're dealing with rheumatoid arthritis, you know, this is something that is extremely painful. This woman specifically was struggling to even get out of bed. She w-Was stiff, she was in pain, and then she was starting to have postpartum because she couldn't really care for her child because she was in so much pain. So as we started to ask more questions, really trying to understand, okay, you know, what were some of the other things going on, you know, are there other symptoms that you were dealing with, et cetera.
**Unknown:** So what it turned out is that after her third child was also the same time frame that her mother passed away. Her mother was very, very close to her, and actually, as she was telling me about this, she started to, to cry. And she said, "I'm definitely still grieving. I, you know, I, I'm still very, very affected by the loss of, of my mother." So we moved forward, and we did her testing.
**Unknown:** So as we did her testing, she definitely had different contributing factors to her rheumatoid arthritis. One of the big things that came up was mold toxicity. So interesting enough, if you actually look up the symptoms associated with mold toxicity, and then you also look at the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, they are actually very, very, very similar. So this was a definitely a huge part of the puzzle for her.
**Unknown:** So we found this piece, but the thing about it is the way that the mold presented in her results was that it wasn't necessarily new. She didn't move into a new house that was moldy. She didn't necessarily start a new job that was moldy. So the mold was in the body.
**Unknown:** So the thing is, is what was the catalyst? What was the straw that broke the camel's back that made everything come to the surface? Part of it was the stress of the pregnancy and the birth because that's a very significant hormonal change that can definitely stress the body. But the biggest thing stressing her system was the fact that she was in such a deep grieving process.
**Unknown:** So when I spoke to her, I said, "Listen, you have a couple of things that are contributing to this. You definitely have toxicity. We definitely have mold that we need to help your body detox from, but we can't necessarily ignore the fact that there is an emotional component." And she said, "Listen, I get it, but I'm in so much pain. I need you to help me.
**Unknown:** I need to detox. You know, I need to be on an anti-inflammatory diet. We need to-- I need to get better. I need to take care of my kids." And I said, "Okay, we're gonna get you rolling.
**Unknown:** We're gonna start your detox protocol, but we're gonna revisit in about four weeks. In four weeks, if you do not tell me that you are massively better, at least fifty percent better, then we're going to revisit the conversation about this emotional stress that you're dealing with." And she said, "Okay, okay." She really just, you know, didn't wanna hear it. She was like, "That has nothing to do with anything." You know, "Everybody goes through this," and she really didn't feel there was a connection. So we met again in four weeks, and she said, "You know, I'm really not feeling that much better." And I said, "Okay, are you willing to revisit the conversation?" And she said, "Yes." So at this point, she decided that she would do the Demartini method with Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick, my husband. So the Demartini method is something that you can, uh, look up on our website. Uh, there's a lot more information there. This is a process that's done over the course of a few hours, and to keep it very simple, it is a way to collapse the massive emotional ties to different events in our life.
**Unknown:** This is not about disassociating. This is not about blocking it, forgetting it. This is about walking away with a different perspective of something that you once perceived to be extremely negative or sad in your life. So she did the Demartini method, and she came out feeling just like a very, very different person.
**Unknown:** She had a different perspective, not just on the loss of her mother, but also just on a lot of different scenarios that she experienced in her life. So within one week of doing the method, she lost fifteen pounds of inflammation. This is not something that happens all the time, but this was just so massively significant for this woman. And really what was happening is a lot of the detox she was doing was beneficial, but it wasn't, it wasn't able to fully help her until she removed that burden.
**Unknown:** So she really started to reap the benefits of the detox process when she was able to lift that massive emotional burden from her system. So again, this is just one scenario. I'm not sitting here telling you that, you know, every single person that has rheumatoid arthritis or pain syndromes has an emotional tie, but it can definitely be piece of the puzzle, especially if you've been doing detoxes and an anti-inflammatory diets and medications and surgeries, and nothing is helping you. This is when you have to stop doing the same thing and start to explore, is there more to this than we're realizing?
**Unknown:** So when it comes to the biggest reasons for pain, so one of them is actual physical injury. This could be physical trauma. It could be injury. It could be scar tissue from surgeries.
**Unknown:** Then there's also this other piece of chemical and toxic stress. So mold can be a big culprit to toxicity affecting our joints, but then there are a variety of chemicals we could be exposed to that can create inflammation in our bodies. With the story that I just told you, now understanding that there is an emotional tie, but very interesting, one thing I'm gonna elaborate further on is how very specific joints are attached to very, very specific emotions. In addition is infections.
**Unknown:** There are many infections that can be tied to joint pain, Lyme disease being one, but even more prevalent than that is strep. Yes, the strep that gets in people's throats can be in your knees, in your elbows, in your shoulders. It is a huge, huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to joint pain that is not being resolved by physical therapy, chiropractic, orthopedic surgeries, et cetera. And then there's also neurological pain patterns.
**Unknown:** Neurological pain patterns are so interesting because these are the pain patterns that move around. There's no rhyme or reason to why you have pain. Sometimes it's your elbow, sometimes it's your knee, sometimes it's your hip, sometimes it's your neck. So I'm gonna talk a little bit more about neurological pain patterns and some of the things you can do about it as well.
**Unknown:** So getting into it, some of the most common myths about pain is number one, that physical pain, only in painkillers, that is a myth, that emotional stress has nothing to do with your pain, that you have been thoroughly tested to rule out toxicity, mold, strep, Lyme, because most of us have not been tested for those things, and that also your diagnosis actually gives you an idea of the root cause. What I mean by this is that you get a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia is that you have fifteen or more pain points on your body thatThat's a description of your symptoms. That's actually not giving you any insight to why.
**Unknown:** Why do you have that? So it's very important to understand it's not about fishing for the diagnosis, it's about fishing for the root. What is the root cause? So getting into the physical piece here.
**Unknown:** So when it comes to physical pain, there is so many things that are completely off of people's radar. So number one is when we're dealing with a true physical pain, we think that... or we usually seek out an orthopedic doctor, or we seek out chiropractic, or we seek out physical therapy. So really at the end of the day, in my opinion, all three of these things should be fused together.
**Unknown:** And what I mean by that is your muscles and your joints are connected. So if we want to do an adjustment and not address the muscles, then the muscles stay spasmed or stiff, and then we'll find that the joint goes back out of place. 'Cause I personally, I'm a chiropractor, and I would get so frustrated when people would say, "Oh, you always have to go to the chiropractor. Once you go, you have to keep going forever." And the only reason you have to keep going forever is when your chiropractor is not necessarily addressing the fact that you potentially have a muscular problem in addition to a joint problem, 'cause they're both connected.
**Unknown:** And the same thing goes for physical therapy. If you want to go and necessarily work on the muscle, strengthen the muscle, but not address the joint, you're still going to run into issues with getting better. So with that being said, it's a matter of doing both of those things together, and there are many chiropractors that will work with physical therapists or chiropractors that do muscle work as well. But another huge piece of the puzzle that is completely being overlooked is antibiotics.
**Unknown:** And what I mean by this is there is a family of antibiotics called fluoroquinolones. Fluoroquinolones are the antibiotics like Cipro, as well as Levaquin are the two most common. So Cipro and Levaquin are two antibiotics that are in this family, and this family of antibiotics are known to break down connective tissue, to the point that one of the common side effects of Levaquin is rupturing your Achilles tendon. By the way, your Achilles tendon is the strongest tendon in your entire body.
**Unknown:** So if Levaquin has the ability to break down the strongest tendon in your entire body, it could definitely do some significant damage on the other ligaments, tendons, and muscles of your body. So if you have a young athlete who is getting tons of respiratory infections, tons of ear infections, tons of sore throats, they're constantly being put on different antibiotics, and then you also start to notice that they're constantly getting injured. Oh, strain, sprain, tear, labrum, knee, ACL. You have to start connecting the dots to, is this child or teen having more susceptibility to injury because of the antibiotics?
**Unknown:** And in addition to that, when we're dealing with, you know, connective tissue, is that sometimes could be connected to the antibiotics, but we also have to rule out if someone keeps getting injured, is there a connective tissue disorder? Is there lupus? Is there something called scleroderma? Is there mixed connective tissue disorder?
**Unknown:** These are things that are autoimmune based conditions that are unfortunately not that, uh, like uncommon. They are actually a lot more common than people realize. So if you keep getting injured, injured, injured, you might need to get better testing and which is a simple blood test to know if you have connective tissue disorder. So another thing too is scar tissue.
**Unknown:** So when any time we get an injury, or if we get a surgery, or we've had, um, a C-section with any of our births, these are all different things that can create a buildup of scar tissue. So when we're constantly feeling stiff or in pain or we have arthritis, we need to also rule in or out, is there a massive scar tissue issue? And just a really interesting story about this is we had a woman who came to us many years ago, actually, and she was a victim of violence, and she was actually stabbed, I think it was over forty times. And she was dealing with, you know, a variety of different health conditions, and she primarily came to us to get testing and to try to deal with a lot of her anxiety, which you could easily have classified her anxiety as PTSD.
**Unknown:** She was a victim of a very extreme crime. And what was interesting in our testing is that w-we, we tested her body in a way that revealed that she needed her scars to be worked on. She needed to do something called scar release. So Dr.
**Unknown:** Nick in our office, he specifically just worked on her scars, and he did that over, I think, three to four sessions, and we actually didn't see her again. And we were kind of almost like concerned like, "Oh gosh, I wonder if she's okay. I wonder what happened." And she came back about a year later, and she just came in for chiropractic, and we were like, "Oh, like how are you?" You know, "What happened?" And she was like, "I felt amazing after I did the scar release." She pretty much said most of her anxiety went away and, you know, a lot of her em-emotional issues went away. And we really couldn't believe that just doing the scar release was that impactful.
**Unknown:** But it really just shows that with scars is it can create a lot of issues in your, in your joints, in your muscles, but scars, especially due to trauma, can hold a lot of emotional energy. So it's something to definitely be considered, especially if you had a really traumatic birth and you ended up having an emergency C-section. So another thing too that is often overlooked is that if you have had a knee replacement or a shoulder replacement or some other type of joint replacement is, is your immune system having an immune response to the materials that were put into you? And it's very important to rule this in or out because you can develop something like a rheumatoid arthritis or a fibromyalgia because of massive inflammation due to the fact that your body is having a negative response to the foreign materials that have been put into the body.
**Unknown:** So this is definitely not something that is uncommon. It's really just a matter of having those materials tested. Best case scenario is to have those materials tested before you even get the surgery. So the big topic of tonight is infections.
**Unknown:** And don't get me wrong, there are many, many types of infections that I do see affecting people's joints, but the mostCommon that I see affecting people's joints is going to be Borrelia, which is classified as Lyme disease, which is a bacterial infection. Strep, yes, the strep that is in your throat, and the other one being Epstein-Barr virus. So the biggest thing to understand is that when it comes to the, the Lyme disease, Lyme is a type of infection that is classified as a spirochete. So what happens with Lyme is it looks for vulnerable tissue.
**Unknown:** So if you were a basketball player and you had a lot of stress on your knees because you were a basketball player, and maybe you have some, you know, breakdown of tissue or, or your cartilage is a little bit damaged because of all that repetitive stress, you could easily get exposed to Lyme disease or bit by a tick or however the exposure goes, and you can have the Lyme infection make its way into the knees because that tissue is more vulnerable than other tissue in the body. And the same thing really goes for the strep infections. So most of our strep starts in our nasal passages, our sinuses, or our throat, or both. And if it moves into the throat, it can get into the lymph nodes.
**Unknown:** And lymph has the tendency to carry infections to other parts of the body. So this is how strep can go from being in the sinuses, mucus membranes, tonsils, into other parts of the body. So a really interesting story about this type of scenario is in our practice, we offer chiropractic and physical therapy, and specifically for that type of work that don't necessarily come in for all of the functional medicine testing. So what happened was is we had a patient, he came in with a long-standing knee issue, and he heard about our therapy called Soundwave therapy.
**Unknown:** So Soundwave therapy is an amazing therapy that is geared towards breaking down scar tissue. So with at this point, which was a few years ago, we had only very positive experiences with the Soundwave. We had people that would come in with either scar tissue or adhesions from repetitive stress, or they had it from surgeries or, you know, injuries. And we would use the Soundwave, it would break down the scar tissue, and it would actually help to reduce their pain within one to two sessions.
**Unknown:** So it was always a very positive feedback that we got from the, from the patients. So we worked on, um, this specific patient's knee that had a lot of long-standing knee issues. He did not report any other health concerns. You know, I always try to dig in.
**Unknown:** I said, you know, "Have you had a history of strep? Have you had upper respiratory infections? Have you had urinary tract infections? Have you had Lyme disease," et cetera.
**Unknown:** And he was, "No, no, no, no, no. I just have knee problems, end of story." So we used the Soundwave, and he came in about two days later after we did the Soundwave, and I was like, "How did you do?" And he said, "Do not come near me with that machine. It made my knee blow up, and I was in so much pain," which was the first time that I ever really heard that. So at that point I said, "We need to do more testing." And he didn't really understand why, but it turned out that he had strep in his knee, and the strep infection was the reason for why he was not able to get his knee better at this point with all of his different types of physical therapies that he was doing.
**Unknown:** But it was also why he flared from the Soundwave, 'cause the Soundwave was going in and mobilizing the infection. So at this point in our practice, we really make sure that we do more elaborate testing on anyone who comes in with any type of pain, because pain can stem from so many different things, and it's not just about being repetitive stress or physical injury. So for those of you that have been listening since the beginning, one of the things that I mentioned is that when you look at specifically rheumatoid arthritis, and you look at the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, and you look at the symptoms of mold toxicity, they look almost identical. And mold is not necessarily something just from a water-damaged building.
**Unknown:** This is something that you can get exposed to from the overuse of antibiotics. Penicillin, amoxicillin, ampicillin are all antibiotics that are made from penicillium mold. So frequent use of antibiotics can be a huge culprit for how mold builds up in the body. Water-damaged buildings, heating and air conditioning ducts that are blowing mold and dust.
**Unknown:** By the way, if you have an allergy to dust, you have an allergy to mold because mold spores settle in dust. In addition, peanuts and peanut butter are super high in mold. Blue cheeseGorgonzola cheese, very high in mold. Coffee and wine, also high in mold.
**Unknown:** So if you are irritated by those things, you have allergies to those things, you potentially are dealing with a mold issue. Unfortunately, I have not really worked with many people that do not have some level of mold in their bodies. And a kind of an interesting story is when I was in France, uh, it actually turns out-- 'cause France is known for their wine. It's the best of the best of the best.
**Unknown:** So in France, they actually use artificial intelligence. They use drones that hover over the vineyards that actually monitor the vines for mold, for fungus, because that's how big of a problem it is in vineyards. So as soon as they find any traces of mold, they actually rip up that vine, so it doesn't spread. So mold is something that is very, very common in wine.
**Unknown:** So if you're a wine drinker, and especially if you're the wine drinker that can't drink wine anymore 'cause it gives you headaches and makes you feel sick, it's probably because of mold toxicity. But outside of mold, there are many, many, many other toxins. Some of the big ones, you know, comes to heavy metals, things like aluminum that we use every day in antiperspirant. There is mercury that we get exposed to through fish and silver fillings in our teeth.
**Unknown:** But even outside of that, there are fifty-five thousand chemicals that are released every single month, and unfortunately, only fifteen of those are tested properly for safety. So we are dealing with a huge, huge epidemic of toxicity, and this is a huge part of the puzzle when it comes to infla-inflammatory conditions that can be a huge culprit behind why we are dealing with pain. And I find it very interesting because there are so many men, especially that are in the world of construction and contracting, that they assume all of their pain is due to manual labor, bending over, lifting, carrying, climbing. And what's really interesting is the men that I've worked with, their issues are usually toxicity based.
**Unknown:** It's usually not necessarily just because of manual labor, because they're exposed to so many things from paints to primers to PVC glue to insulation and fiberglass. So that is a huge part of a lot of their pain and inflammation that they deal with. So this is always the most fascinating part of is when we talk about the emotional ties to pain. So some of the emotional ties to pain can be very, very specific.
**Unknown:** So if you have a lot of pain in your hands, this can be associated with what are you holding on to? What is the person that you're holding on to, the, the really bad fight that you're holding on to, or the boss that tortured you? Then in addition is ankle and knee pain, and this can be very much tied to being fear of moving forward, fear of taking that first step, fear of moving on. And this could be in relation to a job.
**Unknown:** This could be in relation to a relationship. This could be in relation to just even taking that step of doing self-care. There are so many, um, ways that this can manifest. And it's the same thing that goes for shoulder pain is what are you tired of holding the weight of?
**Unknown:** Are you holding the weight of taking care of everyone in your family? Are you holding the weight of, you know, the, the all-- everybody at work coming to you with their problems? Are you constantly being bombarded with people wanting advice and dumping all of their problems onto you? You could be holding the weight of the world, essentially, and that could physically manifest in your shoulders and upper body.
**Unknown:** How many of us are like, "Ugh, my shoulders, my traps, my shoulders, my traps"? And this is a very, very common thing when we're constantly feeling the weight of the world. And this is not necessarily always associated with people, but this is sometimes just feeling so overwhelmed with things that are going on in politics or religion or other things that, you know, we just feel a lot of emotions towards. So when it comes to neurological pain, this is always something that, um, a lot of people overlook and a lot of physicians overlook.
**Unknown:** So when you're dealing with pain that moves around, your pain has no rhyme or reason. Sometimes it's your knee, sometimes it's your hip, sometimes it's your shoulder, sometimes it's your elbow. This is very, very common when your pain is coming from your brain, and this is because you have major pathways and connections from brain to body, but you also have from body to brain. So if you're dealing with neurological stress, which can easily come from toxicity and inflammation, it can also come from improper blood flow.
**Unknown:** This is very typical that it can start to create numbness, tingling, burning sensations, feelings of crawling, or you find yourself being clumsy, falling into things, constantly hitting into corners. Or you can also find yourself even being constipated because constipation in someone who's done a lot of things for their gut can be neurological because your vagus nerve that comes from your brain connects into your heart rate, respiratory rate, and your gastrointestinal system. So it's very, very important to understand if your pain moves around, is the pain stemming from a neurological stress? Especially if you have very sensitive skin, if you have burning, numbness, tingling, and also if you have weakness.
**Unknown:** These are things that you need to consider. Is your situation being evaluated properly? Because is... Are you having proper neurological evaluation?
**Unknown:** Are you having your brain hemispheres tested? Are you testing the vagus nerve? Are you testing all of these different things? And this is something that's very overlooked and a very common thing, unfortunately.
**Unknown:** So kind of a story about a patient is someone who came to us dealing with rheumatoid arthritis. So this was a person that was diagnosed after twenty years of... joint pain. So this person specifically was not always, um, told rheumatoid arthritis, but it was about twenty years of joint pain that then eventually ended up with a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis.
**Unknown:** And they said that really at the end of the day, the rheumatoid marker was borderline, but there was no other answers. There was no other answers to the joint pain, so the doctor kind of labeled it as, "This must be rheumatoid arthritis because your levels are borderline." So the other things that turned up when we were doing the history was the patient also had a lot of brain fog, also had a lot of gut issues, definitely some unwarranted instability in mood, um, finding themselves like shifting to anger and irritability, but not necessarily for a reason, just kinda feeling like, "What?" Like, "I'm really irritable, and I really don't know why." The patient also had celiac, uh, was dealing with a lot of gluten sensitivity, but in addition to that was also dealing with other types of food allergies, so it wasn't just about gluten. So as we got into the history, we started to piece some of the puzzle together here. And first and foremost, this was someone who as a child had their tonsils removed at four years old, um, due to chronic sore throats.
**Unknown:** So when the patient says this, the first thing that I think is how much antibiotics were they on, what type of antibiotics, and strep. That's where my mind went. So because of all the sore throats, the patient... and also upper respiratory infections, the patient ended up doing a lot of antibiotics.
**Unknown:** This was obviously a long time ago, so the patient was like, "I'm not really sure which antibiotics I was on, but I know I was on a lot." So patient started to get a little bit older, started to play sports, was definitely really athletic, lot of competitions, but was getting a lot of injuries. But overall was like, "Well, I'm really competitive. I'm really aggressive in my sports, so this is why I'm getting injured," and really just kind of dealt with, you know, ice, heat, ph- uh, physical therapy, cryotherapy, things like that. So then digging in, asking more questions, this patient also grew up in the Midwest, grew up around a lot of farms and also had childhood eczema.
**Unknown:** The eczema kinda stabilized at one point but then returned as an adult. So just to kind of understand where my mind goes just based off of this is I start thinking this person potentially still has strep in their body from all their chronic sore throats and also upper respiratory infections. Also, all the antibiotic use created a lot of weakness in the connective tissue, which was part of the reason why they had a lot of injuries. I also start thinking toxicity of pesticides and herbicides from growing up close to farms, and also the fact that they had eczema is a hu-huge indicator that there's a lot of lymphatic issues.
**Unknown:** So meaning that the lymph nodes, which are the major, major filter system of the body, potentially is not working optimally and not clearing out these toxins at this point. So it becomes multifaceted for this person. Yes, they had a lot of pain, but there were many layers, and it was a snowball effect that got them to where they were. There was the piece of the antibiotics that affected the connective tissue, then the eczema actually turned out to not be eczema but actually to be psoriasis, and the psoriasis was actually psoriatic arthritis.
**Unknown:** So this patient didn't have rheumatoid arthritis. They actually had psoriatic arthritis that was manifesting, um, as a massive inflammatory condition due to the antibiotics in addition to infections that were undiagnosed at this point. So the interesting infection that came up was syphilis. And I know many people are like, "Syphilis, isn't that eradicated?
**Unknown:** That's not... That can't be common," et cetera. So syphilis is actually classified as the great imitator of psoriasis or syphilis is the great imitator of psoriasis. So it's very, very important if you're dealing with psoriasis or psoriatic arthritis that you rule out syphilis.
**Unknown:** And syphilis is not necessarily sexually transmitted. It comes from a variety of different sources. But also syphilis is very, very similar to Lyme disease, and this is something that not many people know because it is not being tested for because it's deemed to not be a very common infection. So the point of me telling this to you guys is that when you're dealing with pain, it's not one thing.
**Unknown:** It could be a variety of different things that happen over time like a snowball effect. So it can start with infections, and then there could be toxicity that also layers into that, and then you can also have the layer of the body's ability to filter the bad stuff out to become compromised. Because one thing that I say to my patients all the time that they're very appreciative to is that we are designed to get the bad stuff out. We are designed to deal with infections.
**Unknown:** We are designed to deal with toxicity, but the problem comes in when the filters don't work anymore. And the simple, simple concept is if you have a vacuum and you use it every single day for a month, the filter gets more and more full, and it gets to the point that you can't use the vacuum anymore until you dump the filter. And in our bodies, the major filters are our tonsils, how many of us have had our tonsils removed, our spleen, our liver and gallbladder, many of us have had our gallbladder removed, our appendix, another thing commonly removed, our kidneys, and our lymph nodes. So we have a lot of filters because our body knows that we're gonna be exposed to things over time.
**Unknown:** So when the filters become clogged, overloaded, congested, and then especially when we start removing filters, like our appendix and our tonsils and our gallbladder, that's when we start to run into trouble because now our bodies can't get rid of the bad stuff anymore. And then we become more susceptible to these infections and these different toxins. So it's not about living in a bubble. It's not about being on an elimination diet for the rest of your-Your life.
**Unknown:** It's not about, you know, any of those things. It's about knowing what your body needs to get better and to clear the bad stuff out. So with all of that being said, you don't know what you don't know. It, it's impossible for you to know are your filters clogged?
**Unknown:** Do your detox pathways work? Do you have infections? Do you have toxins? Do you have mold exposure?
**Unknown:** It's impossible for you to know these things if you haven't done better testing, if you haven't dug into the information, it is very, very difficult for you to know. So it's a matter of doing more elaborate testing and also being able to work with a physician that is knowing that all of your systems are integrated, and you are not a bunch of separate systems. And we need to get away from thinking that our symptoms that come and go, our fatigue, our bad sleep, our occasional stomach aches, our PMS, our hormonal imbalance, that all of these things are normal. We just classify them as normal.
**Unknown:** And unfortunately, everybody around us feels like crap, so we're just like, "Well, I guess it's just getting old. This is what it is." And we just adapt, and we, we learn how to live our lives around feeling like crap. And I think it's really important for us to get away from this mindset because this is what is getting us into trouble. This is what is getting us to a place that there's a heart attack.
**Unknown:** This is getting us to a place that there is cancer. This is getting us to a place that there's dementia because we ignore, ignore, ignore, and it's not our fault. I want you guys to understand that this is not our fault. This is the way that we're all programmed to think, and we're also then programmed to think that there's gonna be some magical pill that appears one day that's gonna fix all of our problems.
**Unknown:** And I really, really wish that that was as simple as it was, but it's not. And we need to really understand that we are an integration of systems, and we have emotions, and we have stress, and we have a lot of technology and radiation and all these things around us, and all of those factors need to be considered. And you could sit here and say, "This isn't my belief system," or, "This isn't real." It's real. And every time you meet someone, you go, "Ooh, don't like them.
**Unknown:** Mm, bad vibe." That's because you're exchanging energy. Energy is a real thing. We are made of energy. How do you think your cell phone works?
**Unknown:** How do you think you see me right now? It's all energy. We use energetic types of technologies, wireless technologies on a day-to-day basis, but then we say that energy has nothing to do with our health. So we need to start thinking outside the box and understand that it's okay if it's not congruent with your belief system.
**Unknown:** It's okay if it's not the common belief. It's just a matter of knowing what your body and what are your body's needs. But I thank you all for being here with me, so thank you all for being here tonight. I really, really appreciate it.
**Unknown:** I hope you know that this is really an educational experience, and I hope you gained a lot of amazing knowledge. But most importantly, when you actually do your testing and figure out what your body needs and what is the root cause to your pain, that's when this becomes a breakthrough experience. So again, I really hope that you take the opportunity to jump on a strategy call to learn more about how you can take that first step, and I look forward to seeing you guys. All right, everyone, I will see you then.
**Unknown:** We thank you for being a listener and subscriber to Integrative Wellness Radio. 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.
**Unknown:** All night, no sleep. 'Cause I feel like I'm always dreaming. Wide awake, that's okay
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 →