Truth Bombs and Holy F*ck Did We Just Say That?
Episode 286
In this no‑holds‑barred special, Dr. Nicole Rivera and Dr. Nick Carruthers pull together their most explosive, unfiltered quotes from past episodes—those moments when they stopped apologizing and started speaking truth . Think of it as a greatest‑hits of reality checks, mindset shifts and boundary‑breaking insights. Brace yourself for real talk, raw confession and the kind of metabolic/mental rewiring that only comes when you refuse to settle for the comfortable. #TruthBombs #RealTalk #IntegrativeYou #MindBodyMastery #BreakthroughMoments 🔥 Quotes + Origins 1. From: The Real Reason You’re Not Healing: Beyond Discipline, Into Breakthrough “Based on where you are at, there is a strong probability that you will not get the same results as this individual in the case study.” — Dr. Nicole Rivera [00:02:44] “It’s not about going balls to the wall… There are other foundational components that are really what’s going to lead to long term outcomes, long term success.” — Dr. Nicole Rivera [00:04:12] “He relinquished control… They still need to be in control of aspects of their healing and they don’t surrender to the possibilities that maybe you’re going to start supplements and maybe you’re going to feel like shit.” — Dr. Nicole Rivera [00:06:00] “If you’re trying to ever get back to where you were in life, it’s always going to be a downfall because that was a part of creating who you are today.” — Dr. Nick Carruthers [00:09:32] “Sometimes you can just make a very bold choice in your life and start being that new version of yourself. So I’m not saying that’s easy by any means.” — Dr. Nicole Rivera [00:17:43] Spotify Link: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zwaYUIWChrFVJY0h3QkfE (navigate to episode titled “The Real Reason You’re Not Healing: Beyond Discipline, Into Breakthrough”) 2. From: The Psychological Root of Parasites (And Why You Can’t Clear Them) “Once you don’t need your anger anymore, you will pass your parasites. You will eliminate or eradicate out your parasites.” — D
Topics: healing, unknown, nicole, rivera, gonna, truth, control, maybe
Key takeaways from this episode
- ## Integrative You Radio: Truth Bombs and Holy F\*ck Did We Just Say That?
- Actual healing often requires acknowledging your unique starting point rather than comparing yourself to others.
- True long-term success in health comes from foundational practices, not just pushing harder.
- Emotional states, such as anger, can play a significant role in parasitic infections, suggesting a deeper energetic imbalance.
- Attempting to return to a past state is futile; true growth involves embracing your current self and evolving forward.
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. Heads up, this episode isn't our usual format. Today we're diving into the holy fuck did they just say that moments from the last six months.
**Unknown:** The mic drop punches, the truth bombs that probably triggered someone's nervous system, the wisdom that made you pause your treadmill and go, "Oh shit, that's about me." Think of this as a highlight reel for your healing. The raw, real, call you out and lift you up kind of stuff. Let's get into it. The biggest thing we wanna bring to you guys is that it's not about going balls to the wall Because we work with a lot of people from New York, New Jersey, and, you know, they have these strong personalities.
**Unknown:** They wanna take the bull by the horns, and they're like, "Just tell me what to do and I'll do it." And that's great. There is a level of discipline that will yield success in your health in a variety of areas of life. But there are other foundational components that are really what's going to lead to long-term outcomes, long-term success. So if you're trying to ever get back to where you were in life, it's always gonna be a downfall because that was a part of creating who you are today.
**Unknown:** So he was open initially from the standpoint to what do I have to do? What do I have to be? What do I have to learn? Like he was just open, like you said, to everything.
**Unknown:** And through that, he didn't feel better. He became a different human being, which allowed him to change, which allowed him to feel better, which is a completely different scenario. So- I wanna be very clear on what I mean by this. He relinquished control because people will say, "No, I trust you.
**Unknown:** That's why I'm on this phone call with you." But they will not always relinquish control. They still need to be in control of aspects of their healing, and they don't surrender to the possibilities that maybe you're gonna start supplements and maybe you're gonna feel like shit. Maybe you're going to start a detox protocol and maybe you're gonna gain a couple pounds because you're gonna have all of this inflammation that's going to increase before it decreases. And you, you're relinquishing the idea that I'm gonna control every little aspect of this and that I'm gonna roll with the good and the bad, and I'm gonna trust in how you're guiding me and what you're telling me.
**Unknown:** The whole moral of the story is, is that those phone calls and the conversations that unfolded really led to this podcast. And something that I found myse- self saying to certain individuals is, based on where you are at, there is a strong probability that you will not get the same results as this individual in the case study. And they were pretty floored by me saying that. Whatever is suppressed has to be expressed.
**Unknown:** Uh, there's... You, you can't... It's impossible to live a one-sided life. So you can't live all expression, you can't live all suppression.
**Unknown:** Health, vitality, gratitude, love, joy, it's-- that's all in the middle, the balanced state where there's no force. So if you have parasite infection, those parasites are there for a purpose. They're counterbalancing another energy, you know? In this era of AI, the...
**Unknown:** It's not just about access to information, but it's essentially access to information that has been suppressed. Yeah. I mean, I think AI is allowing us to be a lot more efficient in accessing more information, uh, for sure. Um, I think that's part of the algorithm behind it.
**Unknown:** But I also think on the back end, you know, we're, we're getting deeper into this information age, um, so we're just gonna naturally have access to more and more, and it's gonna be, uh, a necessary probably evil for, for some that don't wanna see the bigger picture of, you know, not only just the bad, but there's good too. Um, both sides have been suppressed, kinda keeping humanity numb. But that's like what gets me so excited about AI is the access to, to more information and the efficiency to it. You know, when you think about most important thing is time and energy, so if we can spend less time figuring out, you know, better results, we're gonna have more energy.your, your, your life is, the quality of your life is dictated by the quality of the questions you ask.
**Unknown:** So if you're gonna ask AI a question connected back to the big toe, you could be like, um, "Hey, AI," what if you have a name? Um, you know, "What could be the top issues causing physical, chemical, neurological, metaphysical, meridian pain in my big toe?" And it would list out, "This is connected to L5 nerve. This is connected to this meridian. This is connected..." And it could give you all these possibilities, um, so that we have more awareness so that we can be like, "Oh yeah, that, that skin rash is literally falling in a meridian.
**Unknown:** It's a meridian issue, you know, that's connected to this organ." So is it the organ creating the dysfunction in the meridian, or is it just, you know, a imbalance of chi flow, and I just need some acupuncture or some red light or laser therapy on it. So it, it can allow us to get more efficient, you know, kind of like all that time you spent creating what I call the bi- So this information age that we are in that's going to only get bigger, I guess you can say, is don't be the person that just gobbles up tons of information and then doesn't know what to do with it. If anything, take in relevant information and then have the, the right team or the right mentors or the right people to help you use the information to increase the quality of your life. They're instilling a belief system of worst case scenario, and if that's the belief system, the placebo effect is gonna say, "Hey, this isn't gonna work." And then we're gonna give them recommendations that are gonna create interactions that are gonna fuck them up more.
**Unknown:** You're in a lose-lose situation. If you get out there, great, you're... Literally go buy a lottery ticket because you're a fucking winner, you know? You- It's-- The system's fucking designed to lose.
**Unknown:** You know, there are many people that might be listening here that have taken, um, sleep medications. You know, Ambien is the most commonly prescribed one. And so one morning we saw that she was really cognitively off again. And then it turned out my dad leaves at night because he has to go home.
**Unknown:** They have a dog, take care of the dog, and then he always goes back early in the morning. And he's like, "Something's off, something's weird." And it turned out that she couldn't sleep, so they came in and they gave her Ambien. And Ambien, contraindicated for brain injury, number one. Number two is it can make you, uh, delirious, hallucinatory, especially if there's brain inflammation already.
**Unknown:** Um, you know, she was acting bizarre. She was having a panic attack, et cetera, and it was because of the Ambien. Um, so then, you know, when we're like, "Okay, so no oxycodone, no Ambien." And once we finally signed off that she was not gonna be put on any of these mind-altering types of medications, we're like, "Whoa, there she is. There's, there's the woman we knew." Don't get me wrong.
**Unknown:** Is she struggling with words? She gets a... You know, it's-- she's a little slower to respond. She gets, you know, her words twisted a little bit.
**Unknown:** That's-- Her brain's still inflamed. Like, we expect that. We don't think it's permanent, but we expect that there's gonna be some level of difference from who she was prior to the stroke. And, but as soon as we got those drugs out of the picture, we're able to really see where she's at.
**Unknown:** But it could... You know, think about fueling your fear and anxiety and your worry is when you're looking at a person you love and you're like, "What's wrong with them? What's wrong? What's wrong?" And it has nothing to do with what damage is actually there.
**Unknown:** It has to do with the fucking drugs they're giving them. Yeah. But it's like, I also think it goes back to what you always say is, you know, the, the quality of your, of your life is dictated by quality questions, and it's like the quality of your outcomes is dictated by quality questions. And I think that a lot of people don't know the right questions to ask when you're in a hospital setting, when you're in an emergency setting.
**Unknown:** And don't get me wrong, there's a very powerful, authoritative energy coming from doctors and nurses. They don't want you to challenge them. They don't like being asked questions. At one point, there was a doctor that got very intense with, um, my dad, and then I had to step in, and he, you know, he was able to, to soften when he, he understood why we were asking the questions that we were.
**Unknown:** So I understand how people kind of get punked out in these types of situations, but you fucking have every right to be asking questions to understand the whole picture of how a family member is being, being treated and what's being recommended. You know, uh, one of the other factors that I, I think that could have been very, very confusing for family members in this same situation that we've been in is that, uh, when my mom was first admitted, and it was in the f- within the first week where she was in the emergency room, you know, of course, we're evaluating, we're observing her in a, um, not a great cognitive state. And we're trying-- we're looking at this of like, is this damage from the stroke? Is this damage from the hemorrhage?
**Unknown:** Is this medication induced? Like, what is this? It's hard to know. It's very hard to know, even when you're, you know, asking questions.
**Unknown:** And at one point, my mom was-- they sat her up, and she was slopped over to the, to the side, which was her left side, which is the side of paralysis. And she's like, "Oh," like... And I-- this is gonna be kind of funny because I asked my mom, I go, "Mom, how do you feel in this moment? Like, do you feel anxious?
**Unknown:** Do you feel worried? Do you feel calm? Like, what do you feel right now? Do you feel confused?"She's like, "I feel really relaxed." And I was like, "You ain't never relaxed." So I pu- I go, "Dad, turn the phone." I go, "She's high as fuck." And it turned out that they were giving her excessive amounts of oxycodone, which is a narcotic.
**Unknown:** It's an opioid. It is literally essentially the same thing as heroin, it's just time released. And I started to... You know, and listen, she just had a stroke.
**Unknown:** I imagine that it feels like somebody put a, a spike through her head. I am not going to be ignorant to that to say, "Get her off all these pain medications" But one, there are other pain medication options. Why was the first option to put her on oxycodone? It's not that it's the strongest out there and nothing else competes with it.
**Unknown:** That's not the case at all. There, there's morphine, there's other, there's other opportunities. And so I started to ask questions. I'm like, "You know, what's our reasoning for putting her on oxycodone?" Number one.
**Unknown:** Number two is, "What is the, what is the max dose you'll go to, um, in her situation? And how many times a day, uh, are you allowed to administer this?" They could go up to 10 milligrams up to six times a day. 60 milligrams of oxycodone for, you know, a 5'2" woman. You want her to become an addict?
**Unknown:** Because all you have to do is give her one 10 milligram dose per day and she'll be an addict. Did you take a history on any type of addiction tendencies? Nope, none of that. You know, "We feel the benefit outweighs the risk." The way they answer you is, like, you know, it's very robotic.
**Unknown:** They have been trained very, very well. And I was like, "Guess what? Why don't we fucking try Tylenol? Tylenol Codeine, and let's just...
**Unknown:** We're... No. Hard no on the oxy." And literally, she looked like a heroin addict. And, 'cause unfortunately, there were, over the course of the past three and a half weeks that my mom went from emergy- emergency room into a rehab, there have been three different medications advised on three different occasions that were contradictory, contraindicated to stroke.
**Unknown:** One of the drugs, the primary side effect was death. And do you know why I know that? It was because one, I asked questions, and two, Google. Literally, you can go on Google, you can type in the name of a medication, and right after you type in the name, you type in package insert.
**Unknown:** It gives you the exact PDF of the little insert that goes in the box with the medication, gives you all of the side effects, the contraindications, black box warning, everything. Anything that you need to know is in that package insert. And so they re- they recommended a drug to help with spasming in her arm, because, uh, her arm is still not really operational from the stroke. And so they said, "You know, we wanna be proactive and make sure she doesn't get any muscle spasms in her left arm." Sounds so benign, right?
**Unknown:** Like, oh, okay. I don't, I don't want my mom to have muscle spasms in her arm. But I'm like, "What's the drug? I would like to know the name.
**Unknown:** I would like to know the dose that you're gonna recommend. I would like to know how often you're gonna give it to her," et cetera, et cetera. Go on my lovely friend Google, put in the medication name, put in package insert. This was the drug.
**Unknown:** Contraindi- indicated to stroke. If someone has had a stroke, there is a strong probability that they would have another stroke, but if she did have another stroke in the hospital or in the rehab, they would've been like, "Oh, yeah, well, you know, she had one, so it makes sense she had another. The problem is still there," when it's actually medication induced. And literally, the primary side effect was fucking death.
**Unknown:** All to eliminate the possibility of a fucking muscle spasm. I think that we live in a world right now, you have to educate yourself on health. Like, you don't really have the option to just put your blind trust into conventional medicine. Because if you look at the leading cause of death, it's called iatrogenic, AKA mistakes in hospitals, mistakes by healthcare providers.
**Unknown:** That is the leading cause of death. It's not cancer, it's not heart disease, it's not any of that. So you should probably take an interest in how can you best be your own advocate, and also an advocate for your family. We thank you so much for being an avid listener of Integrative U Radio, formerly known as Integrative Wellness Radio.
**Unknown:** We appreciate all of your support. We love your comments. Please visit us on social media, as well as our website to see all of the fun things happening behind the scenes, and the new amazing content and courses that is being rolled out on a monthly basis. We hope to see you there.
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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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