Limit The Potential Impact of Wildfire Smoke on Your Long Haul Symptoms

Jill Carnahan, MD

Thanks so much for having me. 

Nafysa Parpia, ND

So let’s start by having you introduce yourself to the audience.

Jill Carnahan, MD

So my name is Dr. Jill Carnahan and often Dr. Jill is what I go by. I have a functional consultation practice in Boulder, Colorado. It’s actually Lewisville, but right next to Boulder and you know, I love my knee root cause I know we’re so similar because there’s so much chronic complex illness out there and I get real excited about helping people find answers to the unsolvable problems or things they’ve been told there is incurable. So that’s kind of what drives me and I practice in my clinic three days a week. I’m writing a book and doing a documentary. So lots of other things too. But just the idea is if we can inspire people just like this summit, I love being here with you because there’s so much hope and so many people are looking for answers and that’s what my life is about and I know yours is as well.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Right, well, thank you. Will you start by telling the audience about your own personal journey? I know that you’ve had some pretty deep and profound experiences yourself around health. Thank you.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Yeah, so it’s interesting because the frame of this is that all of us go through difficult times, I’m not unique. But if we can find meaning and purpose in those difficulties and turn them around and either learned something from them or turning around to help others. And I found out after many years of illness that that was my life, souls work. And it started when I was 25. I grew up on a farm, so probably some pesticide chemical exposures. All that was a lovely I we ate a lot of homegrown organic food. I had a wonderful family, so lots of good things, But unbeknownst to me, I was probably being poisoned by some of the organophosphates and Atrazine and chemicals on the farm. So at 25, when I was in my middle of medical school in my third year, my clinical rotation, I found a lump in my breast and I literally just had my 25th birthday. So I just turned 25. I didn’t think anything of it. But it turns out within a few weeks I had a biopsy and I was given the diagnosis of a very aggressive breast cancer at 25. So that was the start of this journey. And I because I was so life threatening, I always tell people who I share my story with, I was in a group of women in Chicago where I was diagnosed under 40 and I’m literally only one still living. So it’s a very deadly disease. 

And young women, it’s very different from if you’re 65 or 70 or older, It doesn’t mean it’s not serious, but in young women it’s deadly. And so I was facing the battle of my life and I ended up doing three drug chemotherapy surgery, radiation, like everything they could throw at me. I lost all my hair, lost weight, got a horribly damaged gut, but I survived and I don’t regret that at all. But it was a very aggressive treatment regimen at that age. So I survived the cancer. nine months later I bawled and I’m headed back to medical school to finish my rotations, but something wasn’t right. I was still having cyclical fevers and abdominal pain. I had lost a lot of weight, but I was continuing to lose weight. My gut hurt all the time. And I thought it was just post treatment, like I went through a lot and I survived, but about six months later, I was in the hospital again and they diagnosed me with Crohn’s disease. 

I had an abscess that they diagnosed and treated and drained and then they said, well, you have Crohn’s disease Now, for your listeners, it’s an autoimmune disease where the body attacks the gut lining and it can cause information, you can lose part of your bowel, it’s also life threatening and it’s considered incurable. I remember my doctor telling me, you know, Julia jones, you’re going to have this lifelong, you’re gonna need many immune modulating steroids and drugs to keep this under control. You may have, you know, steroids at times, you may have other things at times you probably lose part of your colon. Like he was pretty grim and morbid. And I remember like right before I left, I was just a third year medical student and you know how our medical training, at least for me, I didn’t get much nutrition. So I didn’t really know I was very sincere and right before I left, I said doc, you know, I want to do whatever I can. Does diet, can I do something different with my diet, what should I eat? And he just didn’t even pause and he said, Jill diet has nothing to do with this. And I just thought, oh my and you and I have talked and this is what I want to encourage your listeners to, to our intuition knows when things aren’t right. And if you’re a patient or your person who’s looking for answers and you’re here on the summit, there’s something deep inside you that gives you wisdom on where to go and even you and I as healers. So often the most profound insights of my patients come, not from the head level, which we both have a lot of smart up here, right?

Like we have the knowledge and the training, but the place in the heart and I learned this that day as I walked out of that G. I office I thought that doesn’t seem right. My heart says that’s not true but I didn’t have the knowledge to prove it. I really didn’t know any better. But I went to the medical school library for two or three weeks. I just searched and searched and searched finally came across Elaine Gottschall specific carbohydrate diet. And I thought wow this has a lot of good stories and antidote. 11 since I’m going to try this and I have nothing to lose. Like why not change my diet. So what if it doesn’t work Right? And what happened was the biggest initial lesson in my life that totally trajectory me into functional medicine. And that was within two weeks of going on the specific carbohydrate diet which was a lot of different carbs that affected like SIBO and SIBO. 

So I’m sure unbeknownst to me I had had overgrowth of bacteria and fungus in my gut. The chemotherapeutic drug drugs damage the gut lining and caused this interplay between the gut immune system and cause for me who also has a gene called N. O. D. That relates to increased risk of Chron’s. So it caused this cascade of inflammation that led to an autoimmune attack of my gut. So now I know all the factors but at that time I didn’t so went on this specific carbohydrate diet and the lesson was this within two weeks my fevers were gone. I started regaining weight. I felt better. No more pain, No more bleeding. And I knew the diet did have something to do with it. And even though it took me years to heal and you know, it’s funny, he said it’s incurable. And even now most medical doctors will say that autoimmunities incurable, but you and I know it’s reversible and I do not have crumbs any longer. I have no signs or symptoms of it.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Thank you for sharing that. I’m so happy to hear that, right. That you are able to find a way to heal that by first of all trusting your heart, your inner wisdom, that inner knowingness and and then following through with it. And what is shining example you are to patients and to our listeners, right? That when you follow your heart, when you follow your intuition, it actually does lead you to the right places and then we marry that with the medical knowledge and, and wow, we can really go places with our patients.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Yeah, that’s the thing, right? We need the science. We need like I went to journals and and and you and I both like our foundation is on great science and great evidence and all that. But I find there’s this piece that we at least from me and medical training. What they did is they trained out the intuition, they said, don’t ever trust that there’s no value, there is like all or nothing and it’s all science. All analytical and I’m highly analytical by nature. So I just, you know went down that road and learned a lot and used all the science and then I started realizing, oh wait, when I have this sensation like this feeling that we may be intuitively need to go in a different direction and I follow that and then prove it with the science. It’s so accurate. Like the melding of these science and intuition is kind of where it’s at. You need both.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

You need both. And I tell my patients that some patients may want one or the other. And I say when we bring them both together, that’s when the real healing happens right? We could just be too stuck in here or maybe we could just be out there in a la la land but not not able to ground ourselves in the science and the medicine. So I’m just, I’m happy you’re here talking about this. I don’t think there are too many people on the summit who are going to talk much about this. So I’d love to actually continue on this path. And let’s talk about your book and your documentary first because I think that you’re bringing those two pieces together in both.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Thank you so much for even letting me talk about it. And it’s it’s such a passion project because just like you and I know there’s so many people suffering and I’ll tell you the story of how it happened eight or 10 years ago I had this idea, you know, it was kind of like a divine universe thing where I felt like I needed to write and I remember literally arguing with whatever’s out there, whatever you believed remember. But for me it was like this thing, I was like arguing, I’m like, no, I can’t do this. I don’t know what I’m doing. And it was so clear at that moment. It was like I just almost audibly, but not, not audibly just in my heart, I was like, tell your story. I’ll take care of the resources that all the things that need to happen in order to get the story out into the world will be taken care of all you need to do is tell your story. And eight or 10 years ago I didn’t have the mold related illness and I went through divorce and and all the healing of childhood, all these levels. So I didn’t know back then that I had more chapters to live in order to write it then when it really was the right time, I had all kinds of resources and people that came and helped and I couldn’t have done it without that. But it was a very organic process of me just focusing on the story and interestingly I first thought, you know, let’s write about environmental toxicity and how to heal from that or whatever, which is a worthy cause because we’re talking about COVID long COVID and infections and toxins.

But then the idea became bigger to relate to childhood trauma and relational trauma and emotional trauma and all these levels that are not just a physical infection, the toxin, but also the mental, emotional. And then from there I realized, you know, if I’m reading a book, I have all my colleagues books here and they’re wonderful resources, you can go and flip to a couple of pages or if you get the book you can flip through and kind of summarize it in a couple hours. And what I wanted was a story because stories where we connect with people and connect and I realized kind of scarily that I had to tell my story and it became much more of a memoir of my story. And it was so funny because publisher after publisher was like you can’t write a memoir, no one knows you and no one who you know is an unknown as writes a memoir. But in my heart talk about my intuition, I kept saying, no, I know I’m supposed to tell my story and you know what, maybe no one will read it, maybe no one Read it, but I have to do it this way. And so when the book became something beautiful, it’s my story, but also in their sidebar, sidebar sidebar of just practical advice? So you don’t want to read the story. You can just look to the side bars and see how to heal from mold and how to heal from environmental illness. So it’s been a labor of love and it’s coming out in March 2023.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

So, so exciting. I love that you’re bringing in your own personal story. It’s rarely shared people’s personal stories, especially us. Right as doctors. Very often we hide our inner story. But I think it I think you’re right Jill that when we share of ourselves, we become more human. 

Jill Carnahan, MD

People permission to because I love you’re talking about this because I’m guilty of it just as much as anyone where I think that I as a healer have to have it all together. I remember one day other part of my journey is mold-related illness when my office got flooded and I got very, very sick from toxic black mold in 2014. And remember right after that my eyes, if I would show you wouldn’t recognize me? I know eyelashes, my eyes ringed with red and irritation and my body was full of rash and hives. And I remember one day in the midst of that sitting in a parking lot getting ready to go into a meeting and I sat in my car and I took the visor down, I looked up and I saw my face and it was so hideous. I sat there and cried because I thought, how will people ever believe I can heal that? I’m a healer and a doctor. Right? But look at my face, I look horrible. I had postural acne, I assisted acne and I had and all this was from the inflammation, right? Like we don’t know why, but I remember just like weeping there because I realized how many people, you know, feel like this walking billboard of ourselves and especially as healers. The truth is like we think we have to have it all together and none of us do. I mean we have maybe more answers than most because we’re trained. But it’s also like we are still in the process. And if anything breaking down that wall and saying, hey, I’m in the journey with you and hopefully it’s not even about my story, but it’s about a reader seeing that reflection in that story and saying, oh, I remember feeling like that and then they feel like they’re not alone, right? Because that’s the key to humanity and connection and healing. And even in COVID part of the biggest thing that I always had trouble with was I had no problem with the mandates and the mask in the isolation. But isolation, loneliness is a bigger mortality risk than hard to see smoking obesity, the biggest risk of all in our lives is literally isolation and loneliness. And I thought, okay, we’re not talking about this, right? And so that connection with the story all of a sudden we can say, oh I’m not the only one and you’re not the only one. And like we’re in this together in this journey and I think that’s so important.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

It is so important. Thank you. Usually that doesn’t happen to me, right? So talk about just being human and and allowing our true selves to to reflect forwards, reflect forwards backwards, all that surrounds us, right? So beautiful. But you just shared. Just thank you. Thank you for being authentic.

Jill Carnahan, MD

It’s scary too, isn’t it? It’s much easier to hide behind a mask and like I’ve got everything together. And I remember back in the days of early medical school and then right after I would like speak on a stage and I wear a black pantsuit and be very masculine and like here’s the data and then and then as you know. Journeyed on and I much more embrace that heart space, which is where we’re at and talking right now and it’s so powerful. It’s so much more connect than a study behind a black pantsuit, right?

Nafysa Parpia, ND

And then when we bring this to the patients, they feel that it allows the patient to open up and share the things that they might not necessarily share because each person has a story I know and I know you know when we talk to a patient we’re looking for their story? What is it, what is it that makes this patient unique and what is the key behind the particular imbalances that they’re experiencing.

Jill Carnahan, MD

And I I love that. And if you’re listening and you have, you know, so often, you know the answers. We were just good listeners and putting puzzles together you and I in our offices. But the truth is it’s actually much deeper than that in the sense of the patient often knows the answers. If we ask the right questions or if we help like timeline something I know you do as well as I do and just asking when do things get worse? When do things change? So if you’re listening and you maybe don’t even have a functional or integrative doctor yet, you can put together a timeline and say, when did things happen? When did my health change? And often you can come up with clues of what preceded that. It was stress me, it was divorced me. It was a toxic exposure. Maybe it was a move and then you can figure out yourself a lot of the clues that might have led to your illness or whatever you’re suffering from.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Yes, it’s true. Don’t you love it when a patient does come in with the timeline.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Thank you. This is amazing. Yeah. The ones that are and it’s funny because I think a lot of patients out there have been two maybe conventional doc and they don’t want to hear that you’ve looked on the internet for something or that you’ve done your work or that you brought in a stack this thick of papers, which is all of my patients, right? I love it. I’m like, bring on more, more information the better and it can be a last, but it’s like it’s so helpful for us to,

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Yeah, I’m always looking to pull it out. Tell me more. Let’s understand how this started with you and why you’re here the way it is now. Yeah. Well let’s talk a little bit about actually before we move on to talking about wildfire smoke. I don’t think we’ve talked about your documentary. Tell us about your documentary. 

Jill Carnahan, MD

Sure. So what happened is the book I’ve been writing that for several years. It’s complete, it’s going to be published next year. It’s called unexpected by the way. It’s readunexpected.com. You can find it if you want. But what happened is January of last year, sitting in my meditation chair January 1st actually the first day of the year, it’s in the midst of COVID, right? We’re just starting to come out but still not back to normal. And I had this like epiphany, you know what people still read obviously, but more and more people, especially due to COVID or on screens, they’re watching netflix and they’re watching things and they’re stuck at home and I had this sense that like, gosh, if I want to reach and inspire more people, I need to do a documentary. Well, the funny thing is I have no experience and I don’t know what I’m doing at all, but it was just this thought and it was it was sticky enough that I went out and started sharing and within a week I had producer director a team and like all of a sudden the whole team to like, let’s do this documentary. 

And again, on environmental toxicity, there was like, okay, so I’m like, it’s a go. And then we sat and talked and made some plans but we don’t have any money. So again, just we all collaborate. And I said, well, do a budget and I think if we’re supposed to do this, the money will come. And within three months we met an investor who was all for the idea and said, here, I’ll give you the budget, you can do the film. So from May of 2021 through August of this year, we’ve been filming and the producer director were planning on doing this like interview a bunch of docs and do environmental toxicity and all that. But what happened was they read the a memoir of my book and they said, well we have to follow your story. So we’re back to my story again, it ended up being a lot of the journey and begin in my story, it’s different from the book, but it’s kind of and once again it’s reflecting the patient and the real theme there is we need more docs that are root cause thinkers like you and I and because we are on the the tsunami edge of a pandemic, aren’t we? Like another one. Another one with we sure are.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Absolutely. Now we’re gonna talk about fires because telling the audience here because well where Dr. Jill comes from, where I come from Colorado and California. We now have fire season and it’s a thing that happens every year for us both and in other places Washington now Oregon now. And that’s in America. I know in Canada it’s happening more in British Columbia, global warming. But because of that there is a lot of environmental toxins now in the air more than ever before. And now we have this second pandemic, long COVID and there’s an intersection here between the toxins from fires and an already inflamed body with long COVID. Dr. Jill tell me about about your experience with your patients and your time over there in Colorado during, during fire season.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Yeah. So I did not, it wasn’t that I didn’t take this seriously, but it wasn’t like on the tip of my radar and what happened was like I mentioned, I went through mold illness got healed over to a couple of years from that and that was kind of behind me. I was doing better and just a year ago, in December, I was actually on vacation and all of a sudden I get a frantic call from my office manager said, I got your dog, they’re evacuating your area and what was different. And we’ve had fires, I’m near Boulder and we’ve had lots and lots and lots of severe fires clearly, but typically it’s up in the foothills right next to where all the trees and the brush burns. And this time was different because I live in a suburb of Boulder, basically it’s a, it’s miles away. So this is in the middle of a commercial like housing, right? It’s not like, right, Like we can see the mountains and the trees from our homes, but typically the fires aren’t in these community That are a little bit away from the hills and the trees and this time it took, it started burning just north of me a few miles and I live in Lewisville and superior, those two towns right next to another. And by the end of the fires, 1000 homes, actually, more than 1000 homes were completely burned to the ground, all of friends and neighbors and people in my community. And literally I was again out of the state. I remember watching from afar and I looked at the fire map, my office was smack dab in the center of the fires like that. I knew there was no way I would come home to and I just knew it right, There’s no way and my home was a little ways away and just on the edge, but it still was very much at risk. I remember that night going to sleep miles and miles away from home and being like okay, I’ve got to be okay if I come home and I don’t have any office in any home, that’s a very, very real possibility. 

And even though I knew of fires and I was aware of them and they’ve been close and hit friends and family, this was my, my community this time, my office and I literally was, it was, it was shocking. I still have a little PTSD if they said evacuation right? And I get home and literally over 1000 homes were burned. Now the miracle was my office, it smacked up all around it were neighborhoods gone all around it and even our office started burning. But the orthopedic office, the guys downstairs came out and they hand put out the fire and my office was still standing and when I came home to was smoke and devastation and just settling as you can imagine it was, the fire was on the last day of December, so January of this year, all of a sudden we have communities that are completely flattened and gone. But what I learned medically was we went back to our office, it actually was without heat or electricity, but we were meeting there just to say how can we mobilize support for the community, we all got such bad headaches and such bad burning and our office looked okay right. 

Like you didn’t think there was a lot of damage but of course in hindsight it was full of smoke damage. And then I started saying, okay, what is the deal? Why are we all so sick? And for weeks we had our office professionally cleaned and everything got back to normal eventually and nothing was damaged permanently. But what I realized, we all got so sick from being here in the community and then being in my office, which is right smack dab in the center and I started to dig deeper and realized all of these fine particulate 2.5 microns unless are burned. So if you think about plastic deaths, the chemical plastic decks and chemicals in someone’s garage and all this stuff is in the fire and becomes part of the air. So the particulate matter in the air for several months even was so hard harmful. And we have things like a subtle Aldo hides, acid gasses, nitrogen oxides, polycyclic hydrocarbons, styron tooling, heavy metal, so so much toxicity and because it’s aerosolized and all of a sudden goes in our lungs and as soon as we get aerosolized particulate, all we need is a small particular 2.5 microns or less, it goes directly into the cli directly in the blood, there’s no transport needed. 

And literally, unless you were wearing like an n 100 respirator, you were getting massive toxic exposures. So as I started to dig I realized, oh my goodness, the pattern, even the patients when I do their labs, it would look like someone who had toxic mold exposure. Their T. G. F. Beta was elevated. Their MMP nine was elevated. They’d be very sick with headaches, they’d be toxic. And it was amazing to me how much it mimicked toxic mold just because it’s an inhalation toxin. So I started saying, what can we do? And I learned about all kinds of things. Obviously it’s kind of hard to wear a respirator 24 7 but for a few weeks it was ideal for us to wear that if we’re outside at all having the air filters in our home which has always been a good idea was even more important. And then what I did, it’s so funny for my office. I got an estimate from a professional company tens of thousands of dollars, like a big price tag and my insurance. I was a little under insured. So I ended up saying I’m gonna try this and I did a treatment just like I would do for mold. I fogged with a specific like a citrusy fogger and then wiped down and cleaned everything and it was amazing. It completely took care of the problem. We never did get the professional clean because it was so clean. I think we did a better job than the professionals would have, but I did the same thing I would have done for mold, which is kind of amazing it works because it’s that particulate.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

That is amazing. That’s it. It’s a huge tip for people.

Jill Carnahan, MD

It is literally about a product you buy online for less than $1000 for and I still have left over, right and then my staff and I, we actually literally fogged ourselves and then we had someone come in and clean and it, it totally took care of the problem.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Fantastic wow. Do you think that there’s more long haul COVID in your community now because of the fires that I just want to be clear with the audience though, it’s not that we’ve seen data, there hasn’t been enough research yet now about long COVID and the impacts from wildfire smoke but action. 

Jill Carnahan, MD

For sure because in that time of course it was December and then January, February which is still like flu and cold and COVID season at its height. That was this year again. And basically into the 2022 opinion when this is played. And what happened though was if you look at the data on respiratory toxins so we can look at docs from mold, docs from like material building materials like formaldehyde, off gassing and flooring and cabinets any sort of off gassing from like carpets and things or fires wildfires, all of these things, there’s a definite effect of respiratory low like when the toxin level is high you can you know look at those air quality reports of different areas. There was increased incidents of COVID. So I’m not positive about long COVID. Again we’re just speculating but I do know that the actual risk of COVID when your lungs are filled with smoke and fire damage was greater. Absolutely. 

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Right. And there was data on that California in In Washington saying you know I forget the I’ll get I’ll get this data for you audience. But that there was a certain percentage of increased COVID itself I think it was 20% in California and Washington due to fire smoke was actually.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Yeah exactly like so… 

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Right. And so we know that this the smoke it enters through the lungs and the sinuses. And people often think about just the organ that might be making the most noise. Maybe lungs or maybe the sinuses, the upper respiratory tract. But these particles actually enter the rest of the body. And we see higher inflammatory cytokines on the lab. So actually the systemic effect on the patient. So I can imagine that it must contribute to long COVID. Especially if somebody already has long COVID I imagine would exacerbate.

Jill Carnahan, MD

That’s exactly the kind of lives that I saw if you think about MMP nine and T. G. F. Beta. These are complex inflammatory cytokines. But the truth is they drive auto immunity and they drive inflammation. So in my mind there’s no doubt that say you had wild fires and then you got COVID it would exacerbate your immune dysfunction and inflammation. And it’s very likely and plausible that someone who got COVID right in the midst of the fires would be in such a weakened state. They may be more prone to long term effects of the COVID as well. 

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Right. In fact, I’m actually seeing a lot of auto immunity in young people that I didn’t see before. I’d say that I didn’t see prior to fire season or prior to the pandemic. So people with more ulcer colitis or Crohn’s and sudden onset, right? Or Hashimoto’s of course that’s been around for a long time. I think due to a combination of infections and toxins. But definitely I’m seeing more of it post this pandemic and fire season here.

Jill Carnahan, MD

And even if we’re checking, like I’m sure you’re as well like anti possible liberty and that is your anti cardio life and some of the markers into lupus. And sometimes as you and I know, but for those listeners you might have an a and a positive or an anti cardio life and positive but not a lot of symptoms. And so you’re kind of like walking in that doorway towards auto immunity, we know there’s immune dysfunction and it’s probably just a matter of time unless you see one of us and reverse it or whatever. But we see like for me, I see a lot more of those markers post COVID, Even in someone for me, for example, april of this year, I had COVID and pretty significantly it wasn’t bad symptoms, but I did have some symptoms that lasted a little bit and for a few months my anti cardio like pin and my a and they were positive and then they went negative. So it’s like this blip in autumn unity and I think it’s really common even if you’re not symptomatic.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Right? I see that too. And I tell the patients, you know, no doctor would diagnosis as an autoimmune condition, but it’s an autoimmune tendency that you have in your body right now. And yes, we can reverse this. We’ve got to find out the reasons that you have this by looking at the labs and taking the story in and really weaving that in together what’s happening with the patient right now in the past and what kinds of infections do they have? What kinds of toxins do they have? And actually some talking about, I’m thinking about the different infections that the immune system could have suppressed prior to having COVID and then on comes COVID and we kept this inflammatory cytokine flare and suddenly infections like Epstein Barr virus or mycoplasma pneumonia or lyme suddenly they’re active and they were poor.

Jill Carnahan, MD

I’ve seen kind of a pattern with long COVID and everybody’s different and I’m sure you’re seeing this as well. But there’s a few things and we’ve known with the chronic fatigue community that these things were real and we’re existing way before long COVID. But it’s very similar and because it’s on a bigger scale now that people are talking about it and the things that I see are B cell activation which is this auto immunity T cells will be like lower and decreased and that can be the fighting of infections of fighting of cancers. And so because of that you’ll see these popping up of Lyme, Epstein Barr, old infections even shingles super super common now HSB cold sores super common. So all these infections are getting to pop up because it means it isn’t keeping them in check. And then I’ve seen a lot of adrenal dysfunction as well, like low cortisol again, post COVID. 

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Yes. And so we’re seeing absolute immune dysregulation, right? We’re seeing people hyperactive immune system, the autoimmune conditions we just talked about and then at the same time they’re unable to suppress it. It’s about inflammation causing the immune system to just go into chaos.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Like yeah,

Nafysa Parpia, ND

When you have smoke on top of that and and then it’s real pandemonium.

Jill Carnahan, MD

It really is.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Yeah. Well I want to give them hope. So let’s talk about that. Let’s talk to the audience about how we’ve reversed these kinds of issues and our patients heavy start.

Jill Carnahan, MD

Yeah. Well the whole the thing that’s important is it starts with awareness. So even though this is like doom and gloom and it’s scary and there’s wild fires and COVID and oh my gosh, what am I gonna have next? And some of you who are listening, I’m sure are suffering right now. But the thing is we have this resilience inside of ourselves and our bodies and part of why I wrote the book, write the story is that we can have really difficult circumstances and our bodies still know how to heal if given the right clean air, clean water, clean food. And it can be that basic, it can start with really basic things like getting an air filter in your home and doing what you can to avoid wildfire smoke if there is fires near you are happening, I would actually recommend wearing a respirator outside for a short time while the smoke is clearing or going to a different location temporarily and making sure that you have good air filters. I recommend a HEPA filtration system with a V O C meter, V O C filter. 

I’m sorry docs are volatile organic compounds that are less than 2.5 microns and most filters will have clay or charcoal or Z lie inside them to actually pull out those docs from whatever source. So just a HEPA is going to be large particulate like 10 microns and above, but you won’t get those docs and those little fine particulate that go right into the cli. So you need a V. O. C. I have three in my home and five at work. So I have so many filters and that you almost can’t have enough. That’s clean air, clean water. You wanna make sure you filter your water too and you get a good clean source. I have a countertop system, I have a different system. I don’t have an R. O. System which is probably the best for the whole house. But all of those are good options to make sure you have filtered clean water or spring mountain water if you can afford to get that delivered however is easiest for you and then clean food and again it sounds so basic but if you can eat local grow and you can and or buy from local farmers or just try to get organic and sometimes it costs a lot. So you can focus on the dirty dozen and avoid. Those are something you can find every year on environmentalworkinggroup.com or dot org. 

And that will tell you what the top like red pepper, strawberries always topped the list. And a few others that things like bananas and avocados you can peel are less likely. So if you want to spend your money on organic. The top pesticides sprayed foods are the best way to do that. And then things like wild salmon is wonderful. But farm salmon and farmed fish which is pretty toxic with PCBs. So you can actually decrease your toxic load and increase resilience just by doing those basic things because then you get fire, you get COVID and your burden, your bucket is less full, you have margin and when you have margin then something comes along and doesn’t totally take you out. So that’s some hope. And then the other thing that’s so important is knowing your internal your body wants to heal or kind of created that way. And so there’s this internal drive to heal and survive and we all have that if we can just tap in and I believe that healing is possible and then find the resources, do the research. Listen to some it’s like this and get all the information that you can because you do have the ability to heal. I’m living proof.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Yeah, I love that. It’s all the foundation support that they can do at home so that if they need to come to us, speak the audience, if you need to come to us, you’ve got that foundation ready and then once it’s in place our work Dr. Jill’s and my work is a lot easier. It’s a lot faster. We can come in with the appropriate medications or the appropriate detoxification therapies. I tell my patients it’s like the foundation of a house that once you, once you build the foundation on your own then all the therapies I give you have a place exactly, they’re gonna fall through the cracks. If we don’t have that foundation it’s just so important. 

Jill Carnahan, MD

Yeah. You were the one who first taught me pre talks. I love that word because you know that before we go through a big detox we gotta have the foundation and it’s not always that hard to do. Some of the basics.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Yeah. And I think a lot of people go into a detox especially after fire season and then come back and say, whoa, that was hard on me. Why was that detox so hard? It’s because maybe there was constipation or maybe there was chronic urinary tract infections or some other reason that your body wasn’t able to handle the toxin. Maybe there weren’t enough minerals or amino acids on board for co factors of your system. And so I want to prepare people for detox, that’s for sure. And so much they can do at home.

Jill Carnahan, MD

A few other really practical things to leave your listeners with is Epsom salt baths. My favorite. I take them every night. Infrasonic, give access to or you can get a home unit or a sleeping bag unit or whatever you can do that. And sweating is a great way to detox dry brushing. I’m a huge fan. Getting that lymphatic drainage, liver lymphatic go together as you so well know. So if you push your liver detox, your lymphatic or slugs you get stuck. Or if you push your lymphatic too much in your liver stuck. So that lymphatic just keep and then you know, red light therapy, some of these things that can enhance detox, anything you can do to kind of start the process is really helpful and sleep, sleep is the core. You’re not sleeping whatever you can. Yeah. So Right,

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Right. Your brain detox is when you sleep. I tell my patients until we can get you sleeping properly, it’s gonna it’s gonna be a little more difficult. So we’re gonna work on that is one of the first things, Yeah, is there anything else that you want to share?

Jill Carnahan, MD

No, thank you for letting me be so open and honest with everybody and thank you all for listening. I just, the last thing I believe you if you’re suffering, you’re not alone, there’s a lot of people out there and we know how it feels to have illness and to suffer. But also there’s hope there’s always hope. There’s always answers. Be your best advocate because you can’t count anymore on our system or the doctors in it to always be finding every little you know, root thing. But you yourself can be your best advocate.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

Thank you so so much. Thank you for being so open and just for sharing so much and just being the great doctor and human being that you are awesome,

Jill Carnahan, MD

You’re right back at you have so much gratitude for you. Thank you.

Nafysa Parpia, ND

So much gratitude for you. Thank you.

Jill Carnahan, MD

You’re welcome.