The undiscussed causes of Pancreatic Issues and Diabetes
Episode 201
In this episode of Integrative View Radio, Dr. Nicole takes a deep dive into the fascinating world of pancreatic function, diabetes, and the psychosomatic connections to pancreatic dysfunction. Dr. Nicole explains the foundational reasons behind pancreatic dysfunction, emphasizing the interconnectedness of the pancreas with the liver, small intestine, and overall digestive health. She highlights how issues in the mouth and stomach can lead to a cascade of problems that eventually affect the pancreas, leading to conditions like diabetes and pancreatitis. In addition to providing valuable insights into pancreatic health, Dr. Nicole touches on the concept of how our values and societal influences can affect our overall well-being. She discusses the importance of staying true to one's authentic self and the potential impact of living out of alignment with one's core values. This episode offers a holistic perspective on pancreatic health and encourages listeners to consider both physical and emotional aspects of well-being for a comprehensive approach to health and vitality. 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: Interconnected Organs: The pancreas is closely linked to the liver and small intestine, with digestive and oral health playing crucial roles in its function. Hidden Factors Impact Health: Besides diet, issues like an overloaded liver and psychosomatic influences can affect pancreatic h
Topics: pancreatic, health, pancreas, issues, function, liver, diabetes, unknown
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## The Undiscussed Causes of Pancreatic Issues and Diabetes
- The pancreas is not an isolated organ; its health is intimately linked with the liver, small intestine, and even oral cavity.
- Digestive issues beginning earlier in the GI tract, such as in the mouth or stomach, can significantly influence pancreatic function.
- An overloaded liver can place additional stress on the pancreas, contributing to the development of conditions like diabetes and pancreatitis.
- Psychosomatic factors, including living out of alignment with one's core values and societal pressures, can have a tangible impact on physical health, including pancreatic health.
Pull quotes
This is the place where you become limitless. **Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior.
We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare.
If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place. **Unknown:** But buckle up because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive.
Transcript
**Unknown:** Welcome to Integrative U Radio, hosted by Dr. Nick Carruthers and yours truly, Dr. Nicole Rivera. This is the place where you become limitless.
**Unknown:** We are covering the latest and greatest topics, of course, in a disruptive fashion around integrative medicine, mental health, and human behavior. We are also covering how those topics affect the human and family dynamics. We will be sprinkling in some truth bombs for our healthpreneurs so they can join us in our mission to evolve healthcare. If you are health curious and growth focused, you are in the right place.
**Unknown:** But buckle up because this is real, this is raw, and this is disruptive. This is Integrative U Radio. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Integrative U Radio.
**Unknown:** I am Dr. Nicole, and I am flying solo today talking to you all about pancreatic function, diabetes, and also the psychosomatic connections to pancreatic dysfunction. We're gonna throw in a little pancreatitis too. Why not?
**Unknown:** Because at the end of the day, the foundational knowledge that I'm going to provide here is going to give you a better understanding as to why the pancreas dysfunctions in the first place. Because despite our conventional medicine always focusing on the disease, the pathology, the diagnosis, there is a foundational reason as to why our organ systems and our physical body start to break down. And one of the most interesting things about the pancreas is its anatomical position. So for those of you that are gonna find this hard to follow, pull up a picture from a search engine, Google, et cetera, and you're-- this is gonna make a lot of sense once you have that visual image, but I am going to do my darndest to explain this in the easiest way possible.
**Unknown:** So first and foremost, your pancreas is positioned on the left side of your body. It is located right below the breast pec, and it is protected by the rib cage of right below, right at the very top of your abdomen, but below that pec breast area. Your pancreas is connected to your liver. It is also connected to your small intestine, and it is connected to these organs via the pancreatic duct, which then also is connected to the bile ducts.
**Unknown:** So really at the end of the day, the biggest thing that I want you to take away is that there is a big connection between liver function, pancreatic function, and the function of your small intestine. And there's a lot, a lot, a lot of opportunity for your pancreas to become involved in a cascade of issues. So let's kind of start with the top down. So we have some individuals that deal with oral health issues.
**Unknown:** They've had tons of cavities. They've had tons of fillings put into their mouth, which are amalgam-based, which means they are mercury-based. We have root canals, um, which most biological dentists that have removed root canals or investigated root canals have found that there were infections underneath those root canals. And then we have other individuals that get lots of canker sores.
**Unknown:** They constantly have pain in their tongue or they, um, find themselves getting sore throats a lot, or they have bleeding gums. These are all different signs that there is dysbiosis in the mouth. There is bad bacteria, not enough good bacteria. And most people fail to realize that your mouth is part of your digestive system.
**Unknown:** It's the start of your digestive system. So if we have poor oral health, there is a probability that that is coming from the stomach, and the stomach is where we have a lot of our reflux, our heartburn, our indigestion stem from. And there are many people walking around with mild to severe symptoms in that category, and we find that these individuals are palliating that with Tums and Pepto-Bismol and a variety of other over-the-counters that I'm probably not mentioning. And also the statistics of the, the prescriptions, which are classified as PPIs, proton pump inhibitors, you know, th-that is also an astronomical number of individuals that are on those medications.
**Unknown:** So again, this is just showcasing that different issues in the stomach, different issues in the mouth, this is going to eventually work its way into the small intestine, which is connected, which can then also affect the liver and pancreas. So for someone who is having a lot of stomach issues, and maybe they are medicating to relieve the symptoms, and then all of a sudden they're starting to have blood sugar crashes, and maybe they're told they're hypog-hypoglycemic, or they suspect they're hypoglycemic. Or let's fast-forward ten years down the line, and now they have type two diabetes. So l-let's just get one thing out of the way here.
**Unknown:** Your diet will, will very much affect your pancreatic function because there is hidden sugar in everything, which I'm gonna get into momentarily. But the point is, is that a lot of people are very aware that they eat too much sugar, they drink too much sugar. They are aware that their diet is crap, and they're not willing to do anything about it.And but the, the point that I'm trying to make here is that that is a layer, but there is also a whole lot of other things that no one is talking about. And this is definitely the integrity of our stomach, the integrity of a s- our small intestine, because they're connected, and also the functionality of our liver, gallbladder, and bile ducts.
**Unknown:** So just diving into the stomach alone, so again, someone who has mild to severe symptoms, they're using different medications, they're using some over-the-counters, and then this creates a cascade of issues that moves into the small intestine, and then this will then move into the pancreatic duct, and now we have inflammation in the pancreas. The more inflammation that we have, the less likely we are able to handle and modulate sugar from our diets. And then this is going to create a slew of different issues from inflammation in the pancreas to insulin resistance, which then the more sugar you have floating around in your bloodstream because your body can't use it and metabolize it, the more likely you are for cardiovascular issues. So this is why they say that diabetes is such a severe disease, because if you cannot metabolize and utilize sugar, glucose properly, then that's just gonna float around in your bloodstream, and it's gonna create damage to your arteries, it's gonna create damage to your heart, it's going to not provide any fuel for your brain, and then it's also going to have to get filtered out b-by your kidneys because your kidneys filter your blood, and now you're going to have a boatload of issues going on in the kidneys, which can lead to stones or degeneration, chronic UTIs because bacteria love sugar, so on and so forth.
**Unknown:** So you could see where I'm going with this. So the other factor that I wanna bring up here is the liver, and if you've listened to other podcasts from me, you have heard me talk about the liver many times, and that is because our liver is a giant filter that gets rid of bad shit. And unfortunately, we are living in a day and age that we are getting bombarded with everything from different chemicals in our personal products to pesticides, herbicides, uh, different chemicals that are in tap water, the chemicals that are in the water that we're showering in, and different organisms from parasites to fungi, bacteria that are in the waters that we swim in, let alone different things we're exposed to through food, poor quality fish, poor quality meat, the list goes on. So as I said many times, your liver, my liver, everyone's liver is under assault every day, every minute of the day, es- and especially if you have no idea that there are chemicals on the food that you eat or in the products that you use.
**Unknown:** So we have to think about the idea that we've used things that have a filter. We've used vacuums that have a filter. We have pools that have pool filters. And if you do not clean out the filter, then those things will break down, and they will seem like they don't work anymore.
**Unknown:** So you have a vacuum, you can buy the best one on the market, drop the, you know, hundreds of dollars on your Dyson, and you use it, the filter gets full, and now the filter is at its max capacity. You try to use the vacuum again, and you could say, "Oh, the vacuum doesn't work." And really, at the end of the day, there's nothing wrong with the mechanics of that vacuum, but the filter needs to be dumped out. It needs to be cleaned out. So when we think about this idea in the human body, we have our liver, which is a giant filter.
**Unknown:** Your kidneys are also a filter. And we go through life getting exposed to chemicals on a day-to-day basis, getting exposed to all different things, and it's like the filter is getting more and more and more full. And then we start to not feel our best. We start to feel like, "Oh, I had a glass of wine, I'm hungover for three days." Like, "Oh, I can't drink coffee anymore.
**Unknown:** I can't eat this. I can't eat that." And we call it getting old. And really what's happening is that the filter's maxed out, and it needs some help to get dumped. And this is why the term detoxification has become so big and so popular is because people find a lot of relief with detoxing, AKA ungunking their filter.
**Unknown:** But if you are someone who maybe gets some pain in your right rib cage where your liver is located, you've had your gallbladder removed, or you've had gallstones, these are all indicators your filters are real fucking full. Um, if you've had tests that your liver enzymes have been elevated, you have been told you have fatty liver from an ultrasound or CT scan, um, or even if you're getting side stitch when you're doing physical activity, that side stitch on that right rib cage means that your liver's inflamed. So when you're going and doing activity, and you're moving around, and you're twisting, and you're using your little muscles in between your ribs, it's all just showcasing the inflammation because your liver is pressing up against those structures. So the reason I'm talking about this in detail is because your liver is connected to your gallbladder, and it's also connected to your pancreas all through your bile duct systems.
**Unknown:** And your bile duct systems play a role in helping you to break down food. Bile helps to break down fats, but it also is what helps you detoxify, and it is also what helps you to eliminate, eliminate things out. That bile gets dumped into your gut, and then you poop it out. That's the goal.
**Unknown:** Get the bad stuff out. But if everything is getting backed up and now there is a cascade of inflammation, and say it starts in the liver 'cause the liver is totally maxed out withQuote unquote filter being full, then you are going to then have a cascade of that inflammation moving into the pancreatic duct, which is gonna move into the pancreas. That also means the same chemicals, the same pesticides, the same parasites, the same fungi, the same bacteria, whatever is in the liver, is now gonna also choose path of least resistance, and it's gonna move into the pancreatic duct, which can then create inflammation and infection in the pancreas. So I've seen many times people that have had upper GI infections like SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, um, individuals that have had H.
**Unknown:** pylori in their gut or in their stomach that has moved into their small intestine. All these things then start to affect the pancreas. But they get told, "Oh, well, you just have type 2 diabetes. Clean up your diet, and everything should be fine." And as mentioned before, some people are like, "No, I'm not gonna clean up my diet." And then there's other people that do.
**Unknown:** They are-- They either say, "I've never been a big sugar person. I've never been a big dessert person. I don't drink soda. I don't do any of these.
**Unknown:** I don't drink alcohol," and they still have type 2 diabetes or pancreatitis. And then there's others that they're like, "Ugh, I know my diet's crap, but I'm gonna clean it up because I wanna recover from this," and they still don't necessarily see the recovery of their pancreas. And that is because there are other pieces to this puzzle. So symptomatically, I wanna give you guys a rundown of some of the things that are happening when your pancreas is not functioning optimally.
**Unknown:** And if you have not listened to our blood sugar podcast, you should 'cause it's gonna go way more into detail than I am right now because there's more things that I wanna talk about, about the psychosomatic aspects of this. So first and foremost is there are many, many people walking around with pancreatic dysfunction, and it's for all of the reasons that I just described. And I would say from the higher percentages, more than likely the pancreas is becoming affected by a liver that is overloaded more than stomach infections or stomach issues. But don't get me wrong, every case is very different.
**Unknown:** So with that being said, individuals are experiencing that their blood sugar, it's spiking and crashing. So they wake up in the morning, they don't have a huge appetite. They usually skip over breakfast. They have to run out the door.
**Unknown:** They might grab a cup of coffee. And now it's into the later morning, sometimes into the afternoon. It could be eleven, twelve. Some people don't even eat something until two PM, and by that time they're starving, so their blood sugar has totally crashed.
**Unknown:** They eat something, their blood sugar is going to spike, and it is then going to plummet. So this is when you get tired after you eat your lunch or you're looking for your caffeine. You're looking for some type of sugar pick-me-up from the vending machine. And then you go about the rest of your day kind of struggling, feeling like your brain capacity isn't all there.
**Unknown:** Brain fog is definitely a huge part of this puzzle. And then you get into the evening hours. You're grabbing for something to snack on as you're getting dinner ready. You eat dinner and, you know, within twenty minutes to an hour you're looking for that little something sweet.
**Unknown:** This is a typical telltale of someone who has very unstable blood sugar. They're spiking and crashing. This is the early stages. And then as this gets more, more progressed is when we start to have light-headed dizziness.
**Unknown:** We feel like we're gonna faint if we don't eat. We get extremely shaky if we don't eat or we just are shaky all the time. We find that eating makes us feel nauseous, and this is how you know you're progressing into a more and more compromised pancreas. And I know this is a lot of people.
**Unknown:** So overall, it's not just about looking at your glucose and looking at your hemoglobin A1c in your blood, which is maybe what's gonna typically be run on your annual checkup or your physical. And I will say this, very often you're only getting your glucose checked. Um, most practitioners are not even looking at hemoglobin A1c. So that will definitely give you more insight as to your overall pancreatic health, but you should also be looking at liver function, and you should also be looking at your pancreatic enzymes, amylase and lipase.
**Unknown:** I find many, many times that individuals have totally normal blood sugar, but their amylase and lipase are out of range, showing either a, uh, a breakdown of pancreatic function because those levels are low, meaning that they're not even producing pancreatic enzymes anymore, meaning they're not breaking down food, they're not breaking down carbohydrates, they're not breaking down fats, and they're definitely having a huge upregulation of glucose in their bloodstream. Or those numbers, those pancreatic enzymes are elevated, which is then showcasing massive inflammation, also known as pancreatitis. Either way, the pancreas is compromised. So some will say that elevated enzymes are worse.
**Unknown:** I challenge to say that they both have their set of issues. And then when it comes to the liver, it's a matter of looking at your acute liver enzymes, AST, ALT. People look at those and that is showing you that there is acute inflammation, like new inflammation, new issues in the liver. But what about the long-term look at the liver?
**Unknown:** The overall function of the liver? This is where it comes to running things like phospholipids, running your GGT levels, um, also running an autoimmune liver panel to see is there something more going on with your liver function outside of just these typical liver enzymes. All of this is gonna give you the bigger picture, and then you'll have more information to know what to do with.But the kicker here is that when it comes to the psychosomatic components to pancreatic function, and for some of you that are very new to this world, you might be thinking like, "Is this even real?" Well, hell yeah, it is. That's why I'm talking about it.
**Unknown:** I didn't choose to be the weird doctor. It's just because when you see things over and over for twelve years, you can't really ignore it anymore. But one of the things that is talked about when it comes to the pancreas, and even the liver, is it's connected to one of your energy centers that has a lot to do with your identity and your personal power. And I find this really interesting because if you've listened to some of our other podcasts or if you're part of any of our courses where we talk a lot about the mind, we talk about this topic very often, and we talk about the concept of understanding your values.
**Unknown:** Because your values are who you are at your core. What are the things that are most important to you? And we all have values because this is one of the reasons why you'll judge things in your environment. You judge things that other people do.
**Unknown:** You judge things according to them not being in alignment with your values, because you don't understand that other people have different sets of values. But sometimes our values get very convoluted because who we are and what we believe in gets influenced by our parents, our relatives, our mentors, our professors, our culture, our society, our government, our religion. And we have this, this intuitive compass saying, "I don't know if I... Like, I don't, I'm not really in alignment with this." But if there's enough societal pressure, or you'll be ostracized by your family, or you'll be ostracized by your community, your, your religion, you're, you're gonna subscribe.
**Unknown:** And you are essentially, if you don't truly believe it, but you are being forced to believe it, you're going to be in au-- you're not going to be authentic to yourself. You're not gonna be authentic to your belief system. You're essentially kind of living a lie, and you get further and further detached from who you truly are, your authentic self. And that's at the seat of not knowing who you are, being pressured to believe things that don't intuitively feel good.
**Unknown:** It's going to keep you farther and farther from your own personal power. It is gonna keep you farther and farther from who you are at your core, and it's going to suppress your voice from speaking your authentic truth. And this is a huge problem in our world, in our society. There are so many people that feel scared to speak up.
**Unknown:** They feel scared to be their true selves. They don't wanna be judged. They don't wanna be ostracized. They just want to belong.
**Unknown:** And the more they subscribe to what other people want them to subscribe to, the more they disempower themselves and the more they have breakdown in their physical bodies. This is very important for those of you that are listening right now, that you've been down the rabbit hole of functional medicine, conventional medicine, integrative medicine, homeopathy, naturopathic. You've done it. You've done supplements.
**Unknown:** You've done detoxes. You've done SIBO protocols. You've done lymphatic drain. You've done it, and you're like, "Nope, still not better.
**Unknown:** Still symptomatic. My labs still look like crap." It's time to take a deeper dive and to dig into who the heck you really are. What do you truly value? Who are you at your core?
**Unknown:** And how to become more empowered to be that person and stop living for others. And it's not easy because very often you have to abandon old parts of yourself. There always has to be a death to be a birth. And I think that we live in a world where everyone thinks that it's gonna be extremely one-sided, that it, things should only be good.
**Unknown:** There should only be pleasure, no pain. But this is, you know, they talk about this all the time in entrepreneurship, so for those of you that have ever embarked on that, you, you know that there's, there's a lot of beautiful things, but there's a lot of hardships that come along with the creation of those beautiful things. And this is something that a lot of people choose to avoid in their lives. They, they avoid the pain.
**Unknown:** They seek the pleasure, which creates essentially a fantasy to a nightmare, because if you think that you live in a one-sided world, you're gonna always be slapped with reality, which is gonna create your nightmare. So the point is, is that I feel very, very passionate about helping people to give themselves permission to be their authentic self, to be their authentic self unapologetically. Because what, like, what are we doing anymore? What are we doing in a world where we just are trying to please others?
**Unknown:** We're just trying to belong, but then internally we're having this battle, this feud. And what is that life? What is that life that we serve everyone except for ourselves? It gets to a point where you are just so broken down, and we call it depression.
**Unknown:** We call it anxiety. And we think, "Oh, something wrong with me. I need to medicate myself." There's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with any of you.
**Unknown:** It comes down to lying to yourself, being, having an internal feud every day because you are not giving yourself permission to be who you wanna be because you're scared of the ramifications of your environment and your community. These are the bigger conversations that need to be had in integrative medicine, and I really hope that this inspires you to think outside the box and to give yourself permission to be who you want to be, whoever that is, and to find your people, find your tribe. Because they're, your people are out there, but if they're not around you right now because you've been subscribing to what other people want you to subscribe to, then again, there's gonna be a death to be a birth. There's gonna be a loss to be a gain.
**Unknown:** Don't forget that. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio. We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments.
**Unknown:** Please visit us on social media as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
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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.
Further reading
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