Awakening Your Own Healing System

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

That’s great, thanks so much much for having me, Eric, and it’s such an honor to be here and to be able to have an opportunity to share all this information that we’ve all gleaned, you know, helping others with chronic illness recover. And, you know, I always like to just start to say like, you know, if you are suffering with a chronic illness or chronic condition, I get it, right? Like I’ve been there. I had, you know, chronic Lyme and babesiosis and heavy metal toxicity. And you know, what was really interesting was the first six years of this, everybody just told me I was crazy. And then they’re like, oh no, no, well, we found out that you’re not crazy, ’cause none of the meds work so.

Well, you know, you’ve got ADHD. I’m like, well, no shit I’ve got ADHD, right? That’s like a super power and stuff, right. And then ultimately it was like chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and they just kind of, they throw medicines at you. If it doesn’t work right away, it’s all over. And so the reason I start here is, a friend of mine gave me a DVD. She had bought it for her son who had a seizure disorder that was really very difficult to control. And she thought yoga would help him. But she picked up an Ashtanga yoga DVD, which is like, sort of where power yoga comes from, right? And so she’s like, he can’t even do it. He can barely like stand up some days, so this is a gift for you. 

And I just was like, I’ve never done this. I tried yoga once in college for a gym class. And I didn’t quite like that at 8:00 AM, you know, and all the cute girls were flexible and I was in horrible pain ’cause I was an athlete and I never did it. And I took it and I said, why are you giving this to me right now? And I go, wow, I’ve been studying all this osteopathy and this medicine, I know this isn’t a coincidence. And the long and the short of it was, I started to do this, and it was very challenging. But as I did it, my body started to open. And at the time I didn’t know this, but now with everything I learned, I was really slowly, gently in a really controlled way, opening up my natural detoxification pathways. I was opening up the fascias and I was letting the lymphatics work. I was pumping the muscles, and all of this was movement on breath. 

And so a lot of people are familiar with power yoga you know, or Ashtanga itself. They think it’s almost like competitive. But when you actually go back to the roots, Eric, it’s actually a lot about movement on breath. And if you can’t breathe fully and deeply, you’re too far, you’re pushing too far beyond your body’s capacity. So from that point on, I learned to really pay attention to my body and the combination of doing this yoga, where I was gently opening up my body because it was all being driven by the breath, and the breath was doing the opening, allowing the natural energies to open. I started to detoxify at a very slow rate in the beginning. And ultimately it was like quantum leap detox, but I wasn’t ready for that in the beginning. And so that was really a lot of fun to sort of see that. And then as I went down the journey, my body started to reject all the normal foods I was eating. 

So like this was back in the day where you didn’t know a lot about nutrition and Coca-Cola was a food group and stuff like that. And that’s what my whole family drank. And I just started letting it all go because my body just naturally, so I went from six cans of soda a day down to like four, and then down to three and two. And ultimately I remember the day I was like, I figured I should have one soda a year just so that I could have a soda and say I had it. And it was so disgustingly sweet and chemically, but it was like over a course of about two and a half years or so, my body shifted away from that because I let that natural healing process work. And then at the very end of all of this, I still needed about 25% help from the doctors, and I finally was able to meet somebody to help me get it fixed. Bit it’s just really cool that like, most of my healing, which I say about 75% of my personal healing from Lyme and all this other stuff actually occurred before I met the doctors who actually did the treatment. So I pretreated my body by allowing the natural healing process to open up and allow detoxification to start on the slower and then gradually quicker basis.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, that is, you know, listening to you. It just is such an inspiration and reminder. And, you know, as I’ve been doing this summit, you know, I mean the last one and especially this one, so many of the healers were ill. That’s what got them here. But they were again, highly functional people who got ill along somewhere in their training or after, and the path for all of them. And I’m just thinking of another fellow who was a path for his daughter, was the detox, you know, was finding that way in, you know, the bugs are bad, but they can be dealt with if the body is ready and is whole.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, when you said that, what reminded me of is Dr. Andrew Taylor, I’m an osteopathic physician, and it is like the first truly unique, you know, US medical based practice. I mean, and sort of chiropractic and naturopathic grew up around a similar time, but this is a gentleman, who’s a frontier MD by training, right? And he would go around and he saw, we were giving like arsenic and strychnine. And he’s like, that’s dumb. 

Why don’t we just stop giving stuff that hurts people? We used to think it was okay, but now it’s bad. And then, oh, by the way, why don’t we add in some manipulation, because it actually helps the body heal quicker. And they all thought he was nuts. So in like 1892, he had his first class, he had women, he had Blacks, he had Native Americans, he had men, like everybody, like if you were interested in supporting healing in another human being, and learning about this amazing healing temple we have, he was like, come on in, you’re here to learn. And one of the quotes he talks about is essentially, and is that like within our body, we have all of God’s pharmacy, right? And so a lot of his work is very flowery religious talking because his dad was a preacher. And a lot of the MDs back in the day were also, they were doctor and a preacher. 

So that’s kind of where he came from, but it was so interesting because we have the reason that heroin works. And the reason that morphine works is we have opiate receptors. The reason that marijuana works is that we have cannabinoid receptors. We didn’t like go, oh, this drug in our body made a new receptor. We actually have the ability to do this. And it’s like, when you look at meditation. First, we need to have good sleep in order to even be able to really get a good experience, because we need to be creating great melatonin and melatonin’s broken down to like DMT and all these other cool things. 

But part of the thing about meditation is we’re using natural products in our body, and we’re sort of allowing them to, you know, break down in such a way that you have what we call spiritual experience, but it’s all because the universe, God, life, whatever you want to call this amazing force that lives and breathes us, divinely created this body. And we have all the receptors to have spiritual experiences, religious experiences, sexual experiences, like it’s just all in there already. And sometimes like, if you broke your leg, maybe we need help you with a little extra morphine, but we don’t need this like for the chronic illness crowd, the body has so much more that you could harness, right? We talk about placebo being like a third of medical outcomes. So we have to control for it. I think it’s actually closer to 70% or 80% of our outcomes. And you need a doctor for 20%.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, so, that’s just a thought. No, no, no. You know, when you start off in medicine, as we were talking earlier, before we hit that record button, how much as trained as doctors, we love the quick response, you know, like, oh, give you a drug and look at that. You know, I always say like, you know, somebody comes in with heart failure in the ER and you give them some LASIK, a medicine that makes you pee a lot. And somebody who can’t breathe and is blue in 20 minutes, they’re relaxed and talking to you, you know, it’s like out, yay, yay. But that’s teeny little bit of what we do and that’s not healing. That’s just getting out of the way and preventing somebody from dying. But when you have chronic illness, it’s about marshaling your own resources, you know, come to us, ’cause we got lots of doo-dads to help you. But what Tom’s talking about is the heart and soul of healing.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, you know, and Eric, I gotta say like, I spent a good amount of effort getting better on my own because it was in a corner. Like, I didn’t know. I couldn’t find someone to help me, and a friend, you know, it’s a coincidence, but it was more divine intervention. But then, when I look at how I met my doctors, if I hadn’t in paid attention to my intuition and my gut, I would’ve not have changed around one of my schedules in medical school that landed me in their office where I was like, oh, you’re seeing people like me. I know what all these people have, and it’s what I have. So what do they have so I can get better, right? I still needed them, but the difference was I had done all the pre detox, detox, all the life changes that they would’ve asked me to do. And so when I finally took the medicines, I finally took the herbs, and I got the detoxification support protocol. It worked like this, because I had already done all the work, and my body was ready to receive the healing.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, and that’s what I hope that people get from this summit is that, you know, when people are home listening, a lot of the stuff that you know can get presented. Well, you know, as I said, don’t do this at home, you know, but the heart of what we’re talking about today and many of the other people we’ve had on, is what you can do at home. This is the beginning, get started. And I said, Dr. Parvio always likes to remind people. She came up with pre-tox because it’s like, you know, yeah, you gotta go slow. ‘Cause I think the point you brought up right in the beginning is that when you started with the yoga, you listened to the basic concept of doing what your breath allowed. You didn’t do your normal cowboy thing of pushing yourself to the point of exhaustion, which you might have done a few times, but I- 

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

You know me well, there’s a little cowboy in here.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, yeah, but I figured, but it sounds like you found that place when you realized you had to listen to your body, instead of listening to that, I think I should.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

You know, what’s really cool about what you just said was it’s a hundred percent dead on. Two things, like, I couldn’t do anymore than I was doing. Like I was tapped out, right? And a lot of people, like I think in the chronic illness world, I think there’s two main groups of people. One is, if you don’t stop, you’re gonna drop. So you have to rest. And then there are people like me who, if we stop, we’ll never get up. We don’t feel well, but we don’t look like the other group. And it’s like, not a, one’s better than the other. It’s just like I was on adrenal overdrive like for most of the 13 years of trying to get better. And a quick side note, I have been asymptomatic for over 11 years at this point. And I have tried my best to do the cowboy thing and burned myself out a little bit, and it doesn’t come back out. So I’m pretty sure it’s done done, right? And I’ve been able to live a really rich and full life since then, thankfully. And the reason I throw that out there now is I just want people to know there’s hope. I mean, I was undiagnosed for eight and a half years, and I was able to get better.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, and I think that is the crucial, crucial thing is I just know how hard it is ’cause I’ve listened to so many people who’ve spent, you know, their money, their family’s money, and years of trying and just keep hitting the wall, ’cause, you know, and it’s like so hard because you know, the hope is that no matter what’s happening to you, we are learning. I think if you look back, you know, on what was offered to you now 20 something years ago, okay? And what we know today, I mean, it is, when I started this, it was, you know, kind of, you know, at least for the medical world, it was antibiotics, and, well, more antibiotics. Well, one didn’t work, maybe five will do it for you.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right? And this is where it really came from. I mean, yeah. Like I tell my patients like probably at least a couple times a week, I never had the chance to do this. I would’ve totally done it, but it didn’t even exist when I was sick.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Right.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

And despite all that, I still got better. You reminded me of something that I don’t wanna miss over. And it’s interesting about more and more antibiotics is when I was in medical school, we had these case presentation competitions at osteopathic conferences. And the first one I ever did, I did this one. I called it the day I learned to listen. So everybody’s like, oh, well I found a erectile dysfunction, and I did this and I fixed it or somebody rolled their ankle and I clicked their ankle and they were better. And I was like, look, I sat down with a patient one day and I actually listened to what they told me. And then I listened to what their body said and then they got better. 

But it wasn’t about the miracle of like the maneuver or the protocol that we used. It was all about- I had a moment in time where I said, you know what? Five antibiotics is sometimes necessary, but maybe there’s something in addition to that, that could help my patient, if I just shut a hell up and get past their words and get past my words and listen to their heart and what their body’s trying to tell me and listen to my heart and what the hell my heart’s trying to tell me, because the medicine is here for a good reason, right? We need some. There’s a time and a place, like you said, acutely, and sometimes in the chronic state, but it was just really interesting. Like people didn’t really get it. They were like, you learn to pay attention to the body? I’m like, I’m at an osteopathic conference. 

We’re talking about paying attention to what the body’s telling us. And then like a year or two later, I did another one. I did one on a seven week old who had fallen off the growth curve. We did an osteopathic treatment. She pooped all over her dad who was a jerk. And then she got back on the growth chart and they’re like, oh my God, this is amazing. I got all this awards and everything. And I’m like, that was a great save. But did you miss the part in the first one that said before you can do the fancy miracle looking stuff, you have to go deep in yourself and deep with your patient to find out what the hell is really going on.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

That is so true because we have such a large, large repertoire of possible. I mean, that’s what the summit in a way has meant. We present this. I mean, we could do probably 80 interviews on different interventions.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

At least, okay? And that’s why people will spend their money because they keep trying and you nailed it is that when we are lucky enough to be present and to really hear on both sides and to create that environment that allows the patient to really see what resonates with them, you know, we improve our odds quite a bit.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Quite a bit. You know, one of our mentors, her teacher is a gentleman by the name of Robert Fulford, DO.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, yes.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yes, Bob Fulford is pretty much a legend in the osteopathic community. And through our mentor, or Paula Eschtruth, DO, I came along for the ride. I mean, she picked my wife out of a crowd one day when we were first year students and said, we need to have lunch together. And so thankfully I was already married to Jill and she still likes me. So I got to come along for the ride, but Dr. Fulford said, as long as you get them breathing properly and their energy flowing, it doesn’t matter what you do, it’ll work. 

And Paula adds on like, kind of almost like just a different way to say it, is as long as long as you treat people from the higher vibrational frequency of love, anything you do will work. And what’s really interesting, ’cause I know you wanted to really dive into this today, is we’re talking about, we need to breathe. We need the natural energies to flow, which includes the detoxification pathways. And we should use a little more of this thing in the center of our chest and allow that energy that drives that to reach out and embrace all of us.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

No, I’m just laughing because there was a, we had a conference years ago, it was a small Lyme conference. We had, you know, Dr. Burrascano and a bunch of others there. But I invited the head of infectious disease at Kaiser, Northern California at that time. And it was, we actually had some of the, anyways, we had some interesting people there from across, and you know, we had dinner on like the last, there was like three and a half nights. And, you know, he just said to me, you know, the only reason this works is because you actually listen to people.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

No shit.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

I know, but I took that as an insult back then. ‘Cause I said no, ’cause you know, I said, no, wait a minute. We actually help to treat these folks. But you know, that is the yin and yang of this, is that yes, if you’re sitting there with the practitioner and you’re feeling like you’re fighting an uphill battle to be heard, you know, they might have a magic wand for you, but if it doesn’t work immediately, it probably isn’t gonna go, you know?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

If you are sitting with your practitioner and you don’t feel somebody on the other end of that, then again, it would, if they just have to set your ankle, it still might not be a great place to be. But yeah, it would probably be okay.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Get it done.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, get it done. But if you have a chronic problem, this is about your flow and that gonna happen from the book.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

And it’s a shame that they acknowledge the fact that you are listening to the patient, which then suggests that they’re not.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Well, no, because to be honest, it’s because, you know, if I’ve been, you know, going to see your Kaiser doctor, it’s, you know, seven minutes, and if you hang for 15 minutes they’re kind of annoyed already, you know?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Even though, and they’re good folk, it’s just that’s the way the system is designed because, anyway.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

But the thing I wanna really get to, I mean, ’cause I just love, I mean, this is probably the most important part of any kind of thing. You’ve gotta listen to your heart, and how can you mobilize your system, because you’ve done a lot of work in that area? I’d just like to hear.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, you know, and it’s interesting, and it kind of comes from what the infectious disease doctor kind of said to you is people need to be heard, and they really need to know that someone else is being empathetic. And I think about if we kind of structure it on a science-y way, if we look at Polyvagal theory, right? And for anyone who may not know, we talk a lot about sort of the sympathetic and the parasympathetic nervous system. So we’ve got that fight or flight, and we’ve got the rest heal rejuvenate, spend time hanging out with your friends and your family and chilling. And that’s kind of our typical thing. 

We say a one’s up, one’s down. And they’re always in this teeter-totter balance. If we look at fight or flight and the sympathetics, the fight or flight suggests like, if a saber tooth tiger comes out of the woods while you’re around the campfire, if you decide to stay and fight, you think you can win. And if you decide to run away, you think you can actually get away. So in either event you can be successful. But when you have chronic illness or you’ve been chronically betrayed by people not listening to you and not validating your personal experience, which is different than believing that you have the- sometimes doctors think there there’s a difference between agreeing with the patient’s self diagnostic name- that is not the same as acknowledging that they are truly going through suffering.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Wow, excellent point, keep going. I just wanna nail that for the practitioners out there. That is so important, thank you.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

I have people all the time, come in, I have my Lyme and my Bartonella are acting up. I’m like, okay, that’s really great, I understand this. Can you share to me how that manifests itself in your life? Can you let me know, not only how it manifests in your life, how does that impact your life? How does it impact your family and your kids? Because usually like, I, you know, I have some people come in, tell me their Lyme and Bart is acting up and they’re dead on. I have other people, their Lyme and Bart’s been acting up for five years and six doctors. They come in, they have mold toxin that no one’s looked at. And lo and behold, yes, they had Bartonella but it wasn’t the primary problem. So I try to let people express the diagnosis they believe they have, but most importantly, tell me what the symptoms are, how they feel it and how their community experiences it. ‘Cause then you find out what’s really going on.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

And so for anybody who’s been experiencing that, right? Eric, we go to the other side, there’s this newer kind of idea in the parasympathetic where we do have that parasympathetic, the joy, the rejuvenation, the rest. It’s kind of more of this vagus nerve coming down to the heart, but there’s this other part that’s kind of goes below the diaphragm, more to the gut, which is really where this becomes super important, where if the saber tooth tiger is so close to you, that you don’t think you can run away, and you don’t feel you’re strong enough to win, what is your only mechanism for survival? And typically it’s called freeze. 

So I learned about this when we, before I realized what cats like to do when you let them outside a long, long, long time ago. And you would see, your cat would grab the chipmunk and the chipmunk was scurrying around. And as soon as it got grabbed, it would go limp. It would completely freeze, because it’s only survival mechanism at this moment in time, was to play dead. And then as soon as the cat got bored and let go of it, it would run away. And humans can do this with this sort of dorsal vagal response that goes down to the gut. And unfortunately, if we feel frozen, we get numb. 

How many of our Lyme/mold patients start to look at the ground and not look at you when you’re talking to them? How many people withdraw socially? How many people during the pandemic have gotten way worse? Because not only do they start to, because of their frozen state in their preexisting nervous system condition, pull away, but now they’re being mandated to pull away. So it’s like that double whammy thing from back when I was a kid. And unfortunately you get stuck. But when that happens, it also suppresses your immune function and it numbs you to pretty much everything around you. And then you kind of get the people who walk in to Kaiser or anywhere else where there’s well-meaning people. And they’re like, I don’t understand what’s going on with you, and you’re taking too much time. So maybe you should go see, you know, Gordon or Morco, just something

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Or, or. Well, first the psychiatrist.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Well, true.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

We come after.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

But what’s really interesting when you look at Steven Porges’ work, and he’s the guy who really pulled all this out, how do I get myself out of a frozen state? You talk to other people, you sing, you do something that brings positive emotion into your heart. And I’ll add to it. This is where fake it till you make it is really good. You gotta get some gratitude for anything and find a thing that you love, or you used to love, or you plan to love in the future when you’re healthy and you just spend five minutes a day with it in your heart.

And the idea is we want to get the energy of that, you know, when we had a gut reaction, it’s all curled up, erg, that’s gonna be a thing, but I wanna bring your energy up into the heart because once we get into the heart, that’s how you then express to the world. And that’s one of the ways that Porges, they do a safe and sound program, but there’s all kinds of stuff. It’s like, turn on the music, nobody’s around. Sing some dumb ass song that makes you laugh and just scream and have a good time, you know, vocalize, call up an old friend. But it’s really about getting out there and doing something that’s socially interactive at a level, like my yoga, that is appropriate for you in the moment.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, yeah. I think that, “appropriate for you in the moment”, but gratitude for anything. You know, everything in the body is habit. You know, we can’t be, you know, you don’t want, when your heart is spontaneous, it starts getting really uncomfortable. You know, it’s habit. It beats kind of the same way all the time. And if you can learn anything, it’s easier the next time. Everything about the body is like blowing up a balloon. And so that’s where sickness behavior gets you into trouble, but it’s physiologic, you know.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Totally.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

What happens. But so you have to now use those powers that humans have of finding, opening your heart, a little bit of gratitude. And I can only imagine what that must be like when life is all about just surviving through the next painful moments and it’s hard.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Well, and this is the hard part, right Eric? Because I just told you, like, hey, be grateful, even though you’re in a frozen state. The way to get outta your frozen state is to kind of work on the opposite of it. But you do all these things at the same time. And one of the things I tell people is like, have gratitude for micro things. Like I had people come in, they’re like, I’ve worked with them for six months, they’re 70% better. But I’ve still got this and this and this. I’m like, yeah, you do. And how much better are you? Well, I’m like 70% better, but blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, pause for just a moment. 

If the universe, or God, just gave you 70% improvement in your health in six months, and you said, that’s not good enough. Do you think you’re getting any more of that? So I’m like, look, if I get 1% increased abundance, I’m like health abundance, money abundance. I literally, one time, this is like, ridiculous. I got, I remember this really clearly, I got like a, a $16 or $18 check in my email just said, oh, you got a thing for, you know, I signed up to try out some organic wines or whatever. And so I signed up under my own affiliate. So I got a commission on myself and I was like, I was looking at that 16 bucks and I go, oh my God, two months ago, I got one for $4. And I said it wasn’t enough. I literally went back to a $4 email. I apologized to it, then I had a party. Then I went to the $16 email. And a couple weeks later I got a $69 check. Then out of the blue, I got $187 check from somebody else who I’d done work for a year and a half ago. 

And yes, I recorded like three hours of videos. And they sent me a check for $187. Probably not a lot, but I was so thankful. And then all of a sudden, somebody else sent me something. And then I got a consulting opportunity out of the blue. and it just kept growing. And when that occurred to me, and when I had that experience, Eric, I went back and I go, this is what happened when someone gave me the yoga DVD. I said, I don’t even know why this is in my hand, but it’s a new possibility, thank you. Then I put it in the DVD player when we actually had those things, and I hit play, and it hurt like hell for like three weeks. But I only did what I could do with the breathing. And every day I said, thank you, because this actually hurts as opposed- it’s a sharper, “aliver” pain than my typical fibromyalgia pain. And it was horrible, I was like miserable. I could literally put my fingertips to the tops of my knee caps when I was bending forward. That’s how tight I was. And it was like, but I just said, thank you. 

This is crazy because it’s something different than my norm. And every time I said thank you for something new and different, something new and different and better came into my life. And I would invite everyone who is a practitioner to teach the people this and practice it in your own lives. But anyone who’s watching, who’s suffering. Like we’ve got some more science to talk about the heart and the gut and the brain and memories and brain detox. But the important part is supercharge this shit yourself, awaken your own inner healing mechanism by just saying thank you to something infinitesimally small, because when you make a habit, like Eric was just talking about, because it’s like with illness, when it came, you were like, oh, what’s that? Oh, what’s that, what’s that? And then every focus of your day becomes about trying to find a way to get around this.

Say, hey, you know what, for these ten seconds, I’m just gonna look at a new opportunity and being grateful for it. And then I can, can go back to my other story if I want to. Try on a new story of thankfulness for the minute stuff, because I can guarantee you the more minute stuff you say thank you to, the larger and larger and larger that minute thing becomes until it becomes this huge shift in the way you think and the way your body heals itself.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, thank you, Tom. I mean, that’s, that’s just, yeah. Words of true wisdom, and especially in being thankful for just feeling different, because that is one of the things that I have found to be so hard when people have been ill for a long time, is that different, even if it’s not been bad, is often perceived as bad.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

And it’s being able to just like, just stay present for it. Don’t label it. Don’t compare it to the old one. Just say, thank you, this is a new sensation, you know, because when you’ve been in pain a long time, those pathways that amplify pain are so unregulated even that different can often be misinterpreted as pain. And so just-

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Keep the heart open, you know, you’ll know pain. It’ll hit you.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right. And for anybody who wants it, like I have thousand percent agree, but, or I should say, and, what I would say to any buddy who was like, oh, I just want like a brain detox hack, right? Because like my brain’s not working. I can’t be thankful because my brain’s not working. Well, guess what, if you look at your gut, right? We just said, if we get more dorsal vagus, we get more in that frozen state that so many of us who have had chronic illness experience at one time or another, or a lot, when you get that and it tones down your gut, any imbalance in the optimal function of the gut feeds back along the vagus nerve up all the way back into the cranium. 

And we talk a lot about the limbic system and limbic retraining and all this. Gratitude and thankfulness for small stuff feeds back to your brain, because if your vagus nerve in your gut is off, when it goes back to the brain, it messes with a part of the limbic system called the hippocampus. And the hippocampus has a lot to do with emotional memory, but also short and long term memory creation and retrieval. So if your word finding issues, executive function stuff, if you can’t make short term memories or you can’t pull back stuff you already know. Hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex work back and forth, back and forth to be able to make new memories and to retrieve them. 

But it’s governed by the vagus nerve coming out of your gut. So now, if you’re eating better, if you’re calming down and detoxifying through proper bowel movements, if you are getting yourself out of the stress state, by focusing on this gratitude in the heart, we got couple things going on. One is, there’s gonna be less negative going up the vagus from the gut. But as soon as you go back into the heart, now we have the ventral vagus, or the heart centered vagus nerve. And when you open up the heart, that will positive feedback to the brain, which will allow you to remember more. So everybody who wants these, what’s your best brain detox supplement. I go, well, look, there’s no supplement that can detoxify your brain better than the natural stuff inside of you. And I wanna open up those pathways, but the beginning part of it is just by opening the heart and the gut.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

And that’s yours. You know, that, I think that that is the beauty, that is your natural ability right there.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, and you know, Eric, another way to look at it, is the breath controls so much detoxification in your pelvis, your abdomen, and your chest. In your arms and legs, yes. it’s muscle contractions that do a lot of detoxification, but in that middle cylinder, it’s so much breathing, allowing that diaphragm in your pelvis, the diaphragm of your breathing, to your thoracic diaphragm to push down and soothe. So breathing deeply does a couple things. It’s going to soothe the solar plexus region, which is going to also help do what we were just talking about from a mechanical perspective. It’s a natural flusher of all the toxins in the gut. And we know so much of the immune system lives down there. 

So breathing is detoxification. It’s life, it’s immune support, and it’s relaxation. And the other cool part is if you just do five minutes a day, if you do nothing else, pay attention to your breathing for five minutes a day. I don’t care what part of it is. Could be your nose, your throat, your mouth, your eyeball, wherever, your chest rise, just pay attention. And if some other thought comes into your mind, that’s cool. Say thank you so much, for these five minutes, I’m gonna go back to my breathing. And what you usually are gonna find is that’s gonna open up and it’s gonna allow the breath to get naturally deeper. You don’t even have to try. And then you’re gonna feel little more relaxed. 

And if you do this a little before bed, this will help you get to sleep better. ‘Cause if we look at brain detoxification, I know we were talking as we started, about the glymphatic system. So I told you arms and legs are muscle contractions and movement, in the middle, chest, abdomen, pelvis, really pressure gradient changes from breath, up here, a little bit of gravity, a lot of a system we call glymphatics. So if you can see a cranial osteopath who can help you get everything moving in your head, well, that’s all well and good. But most importantly, your brain detoxifies primarily in deep sleep, upwards of 90% of the overall brain detoxification occurs while you’re sleeping. 

So if you want another brain detoxification hack, figure out what’s keeping you up at night, your screens, your lights, maybe you’re stressed out, and you just need to do that breath awareness meditation. But every time you get three or four or five minutes of extra sleep at night, that’s a little deeper than it was the night before. And I went through this myself, I know this. This is literally how I healed my brain, it was crazy. And you know, we just didn’t have the science to know why, but every time you’re closer to that deep sleep, your brain detoxification pathways open up even more. And then you can start to notice that. So as you get better, if you notice, here, we’ll do the opposite. If you have a bad night’s sleep, how good’s your brain the next day?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right? So it’s really cool to be able to say, hey, if I do a little something that’s gonna boost my immune system, it’s gonna help my vagus get more in heart centered, which is gonna help my memory, which is also gonna help me calm down and relax. It’s also gonna help me sleep better, which in turn helps me drain my brain better, naturally, because that’s where sleep is. So the body is amazing. Literally, you could just do five or ten minutes. Notice how I just added another five minutes there to your daily breath awareness right before bed. And there’s many, many, like you said earlier, there’s options. 

There’s many ways to help you sleep better. Many ways to meditate and de-stress, but it’s just like the glymphatic drainage system is so sleep critical that it’s just, but nice part is like, I feel like I, when you come to see me, I’m like, take this supplement, take this supplement, take this supplement, this medicine, this supplement. And then when you take that medicine, that counteracts that medicine. Now I have to go back and give you another supplement. And you’re just taking things. When I do one thing, I breathe right before I go to bed and I can help all of these things by spending five minutes a day. And that gets me pumped, because it’s free and it works.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, and it works. And we don’t have to try. I mean, what I love, is yeah, no, I hate that place when you suddenly realize that the helpful supplement has become a shopping bag full of helpful supplements. I mean, that’s never a good sign. And we see it and when people get sick, it’s this desire to protect yourself that begins to run amok. And some people go to the magic world of the next supplement that’s gonna protect me, you know? And I think it it’s just a mess, but sleep. I love it. So sleep, opening your heart, taking care of your gut. If we do those three things, you’re all gonna be better.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right. 

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

And I mean that seriously, that’s not a joke. That is the truth. It’s just that it’s hard getting there. And I think we all have to respect that. And that’s why I love where Tom’s bringing it back down to just like breath awareness. You don’t even have to do fancy breathing, just start with.-

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Notice.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Awareness, notice, pay attention, feel your body. ‘Cause it’s hard when you’ve been ill for a long time. The body is not this place that is- you’ve learned to kind of push it away, sometimes. And like you say, Tom, in order to like be the person who keeps functioning, you have to learn to ignore. And now you have to come back in.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

I think one of the things too is when I used the word betrayal before, I mean, I think people are betrayed purposely and most commonly accidentally by the conventional system where they just don’t, it’s not set to listen, but a lot of people with chronic illness seem to have a sense that their bodies betrayed them. And having spent, I’ve been in medicine in one way or another since 1995. And I can tell you that I’ve never seen any evidence of a person’s body not trying its damnedest in in the moment to compensate perfectly and to do its very best for them. So healing is always perfect. It might not be complete yet, but your body is in such a state of perfect compensation in every single moment. 

It’s like when people go to the hospital, it’s crazy, man. Like, you’re just like, the people who end up dying of some like sort of end of life illness, even right up until the moment of death, like 98%, 99% of every organ system of their body is working great. And it just happens to be this one little spot where it’s time. And there’s some part that we don’t know. But what I want people to know, is your body is doing everything it can in the moment, just like your mind and your heart are finding the right doctors, watching this summit, getting all the things that you can together. 

You’re making the schedule for your supplements and your medicines, you’re doing everything. Maybe the home’s being remediated. Your body is literally doing that 24/7 to its best ability to give you the best life possible. And it might have been dealt a shitty hand of cards, but it is still a hundred percent on your side each and every time. And I just think it’s so important, Eric, because otherwise, if your body’s betraying you, what do you have left? It’s not, it’s on your side. Love it.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Love it because it is, you know, this is where a whole other talk, I keep talking about this so-called cell danger response and I have to have a talk where we actually go through what it is piece by piece, but.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Oh my God, right?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Just the idea of that, when you’re ill, you’re stuck in a loop of self-protection on the cellular level, and it’s not a bad thing. It’s doing it to protect you. It’s just needs some different signals. And that’s why what Tom is telling us about opening your heart, breathing, leave room for something to shift because our drugs don’t necessarily change the signaling pathways that need to be changed. But nature does, you know, when our body gets the right signals from the world and from its internal milieu, it begins to change back towards health. It knows that the danger is gone. The problem that we stay sick is that, that invade that danger and our body’s response have states stuck in a dialogue. And it’s sometimes that dialogue doesn’t need to continue, a little bit of silence, follow your breath. And that silence can allow the system to realize that, oh, it has another option. And it’s-

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

So true.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

So important because we all are stuck in the let’s fix it mode. I mean me, especially, I wanna fix you, but we gotta remember that your body isn’t broken. It’s just dealing with a problem. And our job is to let it know that the problem isn’t as big anymore and it can dance a little differently again.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, you know, it’s so interesting. So it’s almost like with that movie “Inside Out”, and like, if you’ve ever read about internal family systems therapy, like they talk about like these parts of you and whatever, right? But what’s really interesting is your body reacting the way it’s reacting in a given moment is trying to protect you. And sometimes, these habitual patterns, we create a protection for ourselves, were very valuable when we were four. But when we were nine, maybe not so much. And maybe when we were 21, we had to do certain things. Or like in my case I was 23, but then like 13 years later, I had to move on from the 23 year old, ’cause I was 36. 

And that part of you that keeps trying to pull you backwards literally is there because in a given moment of time, it was there a hundred billion percent for you. It’s time just happened to be six years ago, you know? So if we open up to the possibility that we can have a new potential in our future, we can say, thank you so much for having my back. And now my body and every iteration from each week or day or month or whatever it is of chronic illness, it’s been holding me up and pushing me up. Even if it didn’t feel like it in the moment. So I get excited, I love it.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

No, no. And, this goes back, you know, I hate the overly computer analogies, but the one that really works was the one that Neil coined, Dr. Nathan, years ago, was rebooting.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

You know, I mean ’cause we would talk about this all the time, kicking around, and it really is that simple, those of us who aren’t very good with computers, just know, unplug it and plug it back in, and all the garbage from those programs that you loaded that aren’t serving you anymore, that you’re not using, stop being on the top. And unfortunately it’s easier with the computer, but.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

But we have a choice to upgrade our operating system. This thing will show up and I’ll go, do you wanna upgrade tonight?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yes or no? And it’s like, now, if we go back to like the way the nervous system functions, it’s repetitiveness, or every once in a while, something major will shift, like we have a pandemic or we have like 9/11, but usually those things are kind of a negative thing. But when you make positive change and you rewire the way your brain talks to itself and your nervous system talks to all your organs, it happens with small repetitive change over time. And there’s a huge time lapse in a positive way. 

Meaning, if you screw up today, no harm, no foul. You can just choose to wake up tomorrow and every morning wake up and just, see the thing is like, if I wake up in the morning and I go, hey I’ve got chronic Lyme disease or whatever, or I’m gonna feel like shit today. That’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. But if I wake up and I go, hey, you know what, today I might feel 1/1000000th of a percent better. You at least have a half a chance to get moving in that direction. And every time you program your nervous system with something new and different and positive, it’s gonna start to wire that way. And then you’re gonna start to think that more. And then as soon as you start to think it, because the way the brain works, all of our results in the world are physical manifestation, health results, our relationships, our business results, whatever, have to do, first, we create it in our mind and then we create it in the physical plane. So neurologically, we wire the thought process of health. Then the body can go to work and manifest a physical part of health.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

And it will do it for us in the positive and the negative. I, you know, what are the negative-

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

That’s so key what you said right there, I’m sorry to interrupt, but what Eric just said is so key. Are you walking through your day? You’re saying, oh, I can’t do that, I can’t do that. But are you spending 90% of your day doing a negative health meditation?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Well, and you know, you can see the evidence of this, in food allergies, is a great example, in chemical sensitivities. I mean, people, when they keep losing foods, you know, and they are, their mast cells are probably reacting to more and more, but what controls that, you know? Your brain controls everything on some level, you know? And when, you know, when there’s inflammation, it begets inflammation. And so you will lose foods. But if you can also regain them as you get more comfortable in your body and it’s hard because the effect of the reaction to the food, for some people, is so disturbing that the need to protect just seems so strong. And so don’t go with the food, but I love what Tom was saying, but go with a prayer of gratitude for something else and just let the brain relax. We don’t always have to go through the front door. I always tell people like, you know, you don’t have to attack the thing that you’re most afraid of. You know, don’t. Say, thank you.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yes, this is an abundance play. ‘Cause I, honest to God, and people probably hate me for saying this, but I’m telling you the truth. I have never met a healthy person who has a shitty relationship with money, ever. And the reason is because- and the reason I choose money here, I could put in relation, I could put in any other word, but money’s objective. And it’s very highly emotional for people. 

They either got a lot or they don’t. And then we all know, right. But abundance to the universe, abundance to the life force that lives and breathes each one of us, isn’t separated to money category, health category, you know, sexy partner category, really good kids category, great foods that I can eat category. It’s just abundance. And when you say yes, so what Eric was saying, if there’s a challenging area of your life and everything we’ve been talking about, doesn’t feel like you can hit it head on. Definitely don’t go through the front door like he said. Go find somewhere else in your life that’s a little easier, that doesn’t hit, that doesn’t sting as bad, because, granted, like you take the food, you’re gonna have the reaction. Let’s work on another part that will come the side door. And when you welcome abundance in money or abundance in friendship or abundance in some other area of your life, that’s the first signal to your body that, oh, I’m welcoming abundance now, so I can let in a little more health, I can let in a little more food. 

So it doesn’t even have to have anything to do with health. And if you don’t believe me, that’s awesome, because I don’t want you to believe me. I want you to say, hey, you know what, what he just said, that kind of bothered me maybe a little bit, or maybe it peaked my interest. So maybe it’s a new possibility that I could try on for one day. And after you try it on for one day, and you don’t drop dead, ’cause you won’t, welcoming abundance is not a problem. Try it for a week and then try it for two weeks and start to see in your life how things will change. This is not about hammer and nail. 

This is about being creative. Like a friend of mine says, you know, when you wanna get great results, you can be a warrior, right? And the warrior fights it head on. Or you can be wizard. And a wizard is someone with the motivation of the warrior, but who also wants to figure out a new, different, and potentially much more fun and quick way to the result. And I would just challenge everybody to play around with being a wizard a couple minutes a day. Try it a little bit different, because you still are gonna be able to, when you do that and you welcome that abundance, you’re still gonna be able to take your supplements. You’re still gonna be able to talk to your doctors and your other providers, and we’re still gonna do all the same things. It just might work that much better. Or you might just be a little happier. And get a breath, a deep breath. Instead of zero, you get one. Instead of zero, you get half, and then it just keeps growing.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, yeah. And I think, you know, I have a tendency to, I get yelled at a lot for, I always focus on when I call my failures, you know, I mean like in myself, and also in my patients, you know, the ones who are like, ugh, just can’t move. But you know, the things we have to remember is that the vast majority of people, and even in them, it’s just a failure of all of our imaginations, you know? That’s what it is. If we can just see a new way in, you know, and prayer is the beginning, you know. I mean, whatever you believe in, I don’t know, it just doesn’t matter. It’s just having faith that there’s a possibility and saying thank you.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yes.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

You know, simple things, but let’s, before we go, I really wanna get to a little bit of your thoughts, ’cause this has been amazingly beautiful riff.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

I know, right?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

I know, but your thoughts on, you know, just on the connections, ’cause this is something that Dr. Parkia has talked a lot about to me over the years, just on how much the nose and the brain are connected. So I just, I’d love your thoughts on this.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

I’m so glad. I’m like, how are we gonna get ourselves back over to that one? ‘Cause I wanna talk about it too.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

I’m just gonna pick us up and put us there, ’cause I wanna go there.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

So a lot of what we’ve been talking about are opening to new possibilities, and one of the new possibilities would be to think about it a little bit differently. So one of the things that we find is if we look at PANS and PANDAS right? So pediatric acute onset neuropsychiatric syndrome, or another way to say, is it’s an infection or a toxin triggered autoimmune brain inflammation. And we see it with kids and we see a lot of behavioral changes that are acute. In adults we see a lot of executive function issues, but you can see new onset rage and OCD in adults too.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Oh yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

But when we look at, if PANDAS was the original description of this phenomena, triggered by streptococcal infection. So if we look back around 2015, they were doing some studies and they said, well, how does PANDAS get triggered? Because it’s not the infection doing it. It’s in an autoimmune reaction to the infection that’s causing the brain issue. So what the researchers found, Dilipan and his group found, that the first infection of the nasopharynx, meaning the nose and the throat with strep, we had these things called T-helper 17 cells, or chief 17 cells. They would come and they would say, oh good. This is group A strep and let’s kill it. And now your immune system knew what that was. And if it got a second infection, it would mobilize the troops, so to speak, a little more quickly. 

But with recurrent infection, multiple, multiple, they found that these T helper cells that are all ready to protect you against strep would just congregate in your nose. And then they would go up the nasal lymphatics into your brain. And the nasal lymphatics are actually where 20% to 30% of the brain detoxification, dirty water removal process occurs. So the nose, call it about 25% of all brain detox comes through your nasal lymphatics, right? So then if we go back the other way, your own immune cells against strep are going back to your brain. They cause breakdown of the blood brain barrier. They cause all kinds of inflammation. And there are these really cool cells called microglia, which are support structures, but they’re very much like the immune system of the brain. 

So if an infection gets in your brain, say like Bartonella, it’s supposed to gobble them up, but they get all goofed up with this recurrent strep infection, right? So then I started looking at it. I go, well, Bartonella actually likes to go inside the microglia, right? So that’s a problem. And how many of our Bartonella patients are really sensitive and you can’t treat their Bartonella really well until you work on their mycotoxin or their MCAS, right? And so then I started looking at the research in the nose and we look at Richie Shoemaker talked about MARCoNS and many others. 

Then Dr. Brewer talked about nasosinus biofilm that were fungal in origin in your nose. So I started there, I’m like, and I’ve not seen anybody research this, Eric, like actually like put it in a mouse and see if you get the same T helper 17 cell response. But it just- that’s how our body works. So if it happens in strep, and that’s just recurrent infection from going to school. What if you had a colonization in you and now you have all these TH 17 cells for whatever the molds are you have, they go back, and chronic mycotoxicity in your nose could be creating auto immunity and brain inflammation. And what we see from a clinical perspective is as we open up the nose and we open up that, now we have less of the pro inflammatory sort of symptoms. 

Brain starts to work a little better. Then nasal passages open, we have more drainage down that nasal lymphatic. And now it looks like we are doing some magic. And what we’re really just doing is typical Anatomy and Physiology 101. This is how the body functions. So then if we wrap it back to what we’ve been talking about, one of the ways to open up your nose really well is a thing called Buteyko breathing. And essentially- right?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Haven’t played with that one in a while. That’s an oldy but goody.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

It is, and it’s like, you literally- so now if you wanna create more nitric oxide in your body, right? And that is a something that vasodilates, it opens up our blood vessels, veins, even our lymphatics, what is the best way to do that? Is literally to slow your breathing down. Now, in the beginning stages, its breath awareness. We just slow our breath down. Carbon dioxide goes up a little. We start to create more nitric oxide in our nose. Now, if you’re really feeling comfortable and you can breathe well, you can go look up Buteyko breathing, and you kind of like are breathing so slow that you get a little bit of this, what they call comfortable need for air. But what you’re doing is now, more nitric oxide in your face. But the cool part is it’s made in those same sinuses that are all gummed up with this mycotoxin biofilm. 

So we’re opening them up locally, but it’s also going throughout your whole body. So people who breathe slower usually have better circulation. So now you’ve gone from improving brain detoxification by breathing, which then allows you to sleep better, which then improves your brain detoxification more because the drain is now open in your nose. When you do Nefe’s stuff and what I just said, you put them together, nose is open, the process of opening your nose to a higher degree, allows you to relax and sleep better, which then allows more drainage to come out, which then calms your gut down, which allows you to heal your gut. Then your supplements get absorbed better. They get into your brain and now they have somewhere to freaking go. 

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

I love it.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

That’s the way my brain works.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

I love it, I love it. The reason I love these supplement- I love these summits is that each time, you know, whoever I talk to, you know, there’s so much to learn. And the thing is is that the Buteyko breathing is something I remember years and years. I mean, I remember using it years ago and I forgot about it. And it also ties in with another thing that someday, for really sick people is, you know, they actually have hypoxy, you know, using a hypoxicator to actually transiently, you know, ’cause it does it.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

I have one.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah, no, because it’s like, you know, we’re looking for ways again, this is the whole point, that the difference between sickness and health, is transient stress is good for us, is how our body thrives. It’s this signal to get rid of the sicker cells and the older cells and grow and heal. But when we have chronic illness that got a little bit, that pathway got stuck and if we can only unstick it, and the way to unstick it is with simple, natural.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Oh my God.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

And that has been, you know, and again, and I come from that medical background where all I wanted to do 20 years ago was find the right drug for you, you know? And you know, I knew better. I mean, the point is I want to, I knew better. I always wanted to do it gently and holistically. But when you’d see really sick people, you want-

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

If you can give them a magic pill, why wouldn’t you?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

You wanted to fix them. And it took a lot of times of realizing that I couldn’t fix that way. ‘Cause you see, the thing is that sometimes you can, and that is always what seduces us, is that the few people who’ve been sick for ten, 20 years, and they come in and I give them the right antibiotic and they get better. I always go back to that because they exist, you know? But unfortunately that’s not who we see day in and day out, you know?

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Right.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Well, you know, and so it’s all about coming back and finding a way to return people, so they can begin to turn on that healing, that internal healing, as you said in the beginning, use those, those endogenous opioids, and let your body have some space. And you just described, ’cause Buteyko breathing is something you can find online. You read about, I’m sure there’s YouTubes on how to do it.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah, literally like Patrick McEwen does unblock your nose in five minutes. He has a couple now where he does- but it’s so good. And Eric, what you’re saying is so great. It’s like do all of it, but cut yourself some damn slack.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yeah.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Stop trying so hard, like, to push your face through a wall. If you’ve ever read this, there’s this great little book about quantum leaps called “You2”. Do you know this?

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

No, I don’t. 

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

It’s really thin. It’s basically, chapters are like two to three pages, Price Pritchett writes it, right? And in the prologue or the intro or whatever you call it, he goes, as I’m writing this book, I’m sitting at this and he describes this fancy hotel, like cottage place he’s at, but he’s in like a little cottage, and he sees this fly, and the fly just keeps banging up against the, you know, the glass to get outside. And he goes, I’ve watched this thing fruitlessly pound against the glass and it’s going to do it till its last breath expires. When if it would just turn around and look over over the other side, out of the room, a ten foot flight, there’s an open door to its freedom. 

And so, so many times we’re like, we’re this close to it, right? We’re so up against it because it’s every moment of our damn day. What I want you to do, everybody, is to go like this, and have just a little bit of space so that you can actually turn, and see the door’s open over there. And I don’t know which direction your door is. It might be up or down or sideways. And you might have to walk through a few hallways to find the open door that lets you out. But my point is, if what you’re doing is working, awesome. Keep doing it. And do what we’ve talked about as an adjunct. But if you’re getting stuck and it’s not working, realize that no matter how hard you and your body are trying, maybe in the moment, you just need to turn and look for a different open door. New possibilities.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Tom, thank you. That, I mean, that’s a beautiful, beautiful summation of why we’re we doing these summits. There are a lot of doors out there and you know, and in your heart, it’s funny. Just the last little thing I have to say. Just funny when I did that. Is I bought this, this mask one time in Mexico and it was a demon and it was a very special demon. It was the demon that hides men’s joy and it hides it in your heart.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

How cool.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

And that is, you know, so start here and move out. And as Tom said, just try to find a new perspective, ’cause if you’re banging your head against the wall, we all know that it doesn’t work. And believe me, between Tom and I, we’ve learned a hundred, God knows how many different ways of healing, you know? And the hard part is finding what’s gonna work for you. But if you listen to what Tom is saying is that if you find that space to breathe, then listen inside, it will come.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Yeah.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Have faith in it.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

And a lot of times when it comes, have faith, you know, find someone, that when the more you feel and hear, the more you can say, hey, I’m gonna be objective with do I resonate with my provider? Do I resonate with a certain treatment? Do I resonate with the support group, or is this taking me down a path I don’t want to go down? You have that choice. Because the more you resonate in here, the more you’re gonna be able to objectively choose the members of your team, which includes the supplements and the medicines that are right for you, right? And then we start to go quicker, and just know, that if you have the inspiration to be healthy, you have to have the ability to achieve it. 

There’s nothing that has ever been divinely inspired by God, the universe, life, whatever it is for you, that you don’t have the ability to achieve. Doesn’t mean it’s gonna be easy, could be, but it might not be. But if you have complete faith in the process and you do the necessary actions each time? What you need may not show up to that last possible minute, but it’ll show up. And I guess I would love to share a quick quote. Wallace Wattles is, you know, a uniquely American early 19th century philosopher. And he said, “By thought, what you want is brought to you.” So, so many of us say, we know what we want, be real clear on what you want, because you actually do make it, be clear, focus on what you want, your health, and also focus on what you’re gonna be doing when you’re healthy, because health is boring to focus on. Oh, I want to, I’m gonna like, you know, I wanna be healthy. 

Why do you wanna be healthy? Like healthy is great, but what are you going to be doing? And what are you gonna be feeling like? Because by what you think, and you have a motion behind, the result is brought to you, but it’s through action you receive it, is the end of Wattle’s quote. So by thought you bring it to you, by action you receive it. It works both ways, but what’s really cool is if you’re thinking it, it’s bringing it closer and if you’re doing it, it’s rapidly coming. So it’s a give and take. And also Eric, I do want to say, it sounds like we need to have a conversation about autophagy and hormesis someday. 

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Yes, yes, yes. ‘Cause we are thinking these same things, but so I wanna thank you. Anybody that, you know, especially practitioners, Dr. Morcroft has an amazing course. If you’re interested in Lyme and treating Lyme or treating any tick born diseases, or really, probably any chronic illnesses at this point, and it can be overwhelming when you first start out, yeah. And he’s got a course that I think you will find really helpful to help get you started on the path.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Awesome.

Eric D. Gordon, M.D.

Thank you, Tom. And just blessings, so much.

Thomas Moorcroft, DO

Thank you so much. So honored and grateful to be here.