Clear HPV Naturally: Ancestral Self-Care with Dr. Doni Wilson

Introduction to HPV and Dr. Donnie Wilson 0:00

There is a virus that both men and women most likely have, but don't know they have until it's too late. Men typically only find out they had it once they get cancer, and, women, only found out if they'd have it when they got a pap smear. This is what we're going to be talking about today on Everyday Ancestral. I am your host, James Berry, and my next guest is Dr. Donnie Wilson. She is a powerhouse of a naturopathic doctor, professional midwife, clinical nutritionist, bestselling author of Master Your Stress, reset your health and an internationally renowned speaker and thought leader in women's health for over 24 years has been on the cutting edge of healthcare, standing alone in her proven approach to helping women clear HPV, prevent cervical cancer and transform their health naturally.

Please welcome my next guest, Dr. Donnie Wilson. 24 Years you've been in the business of health. That's a long time. You are kind of pinch myself and be like, Oh really? Did that much time go by? It's riled, right? 24 years. So you're a naturopathic doctor, a professional midwife, clinical nutritionist, which came first. It all kind of happened at the same time, actually. I'm kind-of one of those people who dives in. And sometimes I am the kind person who starts at a shallow end and I tiptoe into the water.

There's other times where I jump off the diving board in my life.

From Pharmacy Roots to Naturopathic Medicine 1:29

This was one those times when it just became very clear to me. 21 years old when I decided I want to become a naturopathic doctor. I wanna become midwife.I wanna help women with their health. i wanna to help humans in a different way than what I could observe in the standard medical system. So at age 21, I entered into natriopathic medical school and midwifery school at the same time. Did something happen though? Like what led you down that path of natripathetic medicine? I would say it's because I grew up in a pharmacy.

You see, my father was a pharmacist and he ran a chain of 1,200 pharmacies. So throughout my childhood, I was always in the pharmacy because we were always moving locations and I observing the pharmaceutical industry from the time I born. And then I worked in my fathers pharmacy when I in college. And I started to have these thoughts of, you know, how it all, it happens when we're in college sometimes. We're like, what do I want to do with my life? And, I was getting a pre-med degree. So, i was taking all these science classes, which I really enjoyed.

And at the same time, Wait a minute, what about nutrition? How does nutrients play a role? And I was very curious based on my own health. I had digestive issues like reflux and I have migraines and menstrual cramps. And every time I tried to take a medication from the pharmacy, I felt worse. Like I would have a reaction. Reactions to birth control pills. medications that someone would take for migraines. I had reactions to the medications they were used to treat reflux. So I couldn't take the medication.

They were all causing side effects. And so I started really thinking, hey, what can I change in my diet? And so I, because I just started having those thoughts and experimenting it with myself, I decided, you know what? I'd like to take a nutrition class. And here I'm taking a pre-med degree and I decide to to a take nutrition classes just as an elective. I fell in love. This is amazing! I need to know more about nutrition. I want to about every vitamin, every nutrient, what they do in the body, how they can help us heal.

And so I ended up getting a degree in nutrition alongside my pre-med degree. That's when I started having the thought, wait a minute. I want to go to a medical school that includes nutrition. I mean, it seemed like such a like out of nowhere thought, but really it should be that way, right? Medical schools should include nutrition, But the truth is that most standard medical schools, the doctors come out with less than 15 hours of training in nutrition So at that age, somehow I was having these thoughts of, I want to go to a medical school that teaches me nutrition.

And a friend of mine said, well, what about Nature Empathic Medical School, which I had never heard of? And I'm like, well, that sounds interesting. There was no Google at that time, so I couldn't just Google it. I had to drive there. So I'd go in my car, drive to Bastyr University in Seattle, because I lived in Oregon at the time. And drove to Seattle. Walked into the naturopathic medical school and said, I want to study medicine that includes nutrition, Because I believe food is medicine. They must have just thought that I came from outer space or something, but they were like, well, we do that here, you know, that's exactly what we're doing here.

And so it was like a dream come true. I literally was, like I listened to my intuition. And I found what I was looking for, and it was so clear to me at 21 years old, I, was supposed to go to pharmacy school, James. I entered into pharmacy, school I supposed start pharmacy. And, called on day one of pharmacy and said, sorry, not going to the pharmacy I'm going naturopathic medical school. How did your dad handle this information? I mean, I imagine he might've been a little heartbroken because you're not following in his steps.

Yeah, he was. It was really tough. it was, it really was tough for him I think to understand my decision because of course this is back in the 90s when this was much less known and they were,

Lessons from the Pharmaceutical Industry 6:18

my parents were afraid for my future. You know, is she choosing a career that's not gonna going to help support her through her life and so they were really afraid for me and they weren't supportive of the decision. But I did it anyway. And I think that's one thing about my personality is I tend to be someone who if I see something that makes sense and I feel it in my intuition, even if people around me are saying you know, hey, are you making the right choice? If it's clear to me, I'll choose it.

And so that's how I ended up going to Nature Pathic Medical School. I had interned with a gynecologist during my pre-med studies as well. So I spent a lot of time with the gynaecologist in a hospital and in deliveries and all the things that gynoecologists do, surgeries. It became very clear in that process that that I wanted to become a midwife because I could see the midwives in the hospital and how they practiced differently than a gynecologist and I had the thought, I want to be a Midwife. And so that's how I ended up deciding, okay, i'm going to became a naturopathic doctor and mid-wife and i luckily found Bastyr University that offered both of those programs at the same time which is I wouldn't necessarily recommend doing all of that at the same time because by the time I finished five years later, I was completely exhausted and it took me time to recover from that because when you're training as a midwife, you are often up all night.

I training was a home birth mid-wife so I'm at home-birth all around the Seattle area. And it was beautiful and amazing, but also exhausting. And then after I graduated and I completed my degrees and my residency, I also did a residency at Bastyr University. And then by then I had gotten married and my now ex-husband got a job in New York in publishing. And so I wasn't planning to move to New york, but at that time it was like, okay, I finished all of my training and at the time he got the job here and we moved to new York.

So I've been in the NewYork Connecticut area ever since then. Wow. Okay. So before continuing on your journey, are there any, what are like the three kind of things that you learned from the pharmacy industry? Since this is something we all face, right? We're all enmeshed in the pharmaceutical industry, whether we want to be or not. What are three things you learn that are not really known about in public? That's such a good question. I would say one is that you have to be so careful with pharmaceuticals.

If anything, even if you're taking an Advil, I'd look at the other ingredients in the product. which we don't, we're getting better at looking at other ingredients when we go to the grocery store, right? You and I talked about that on the How Humans Heal podcast, so you gotta look at the back of the package and see what else is in there. I really recommend you do that also with anything you take from a pharmacy. If it's not easily, then they make a tiny font. And sometimes you actually have to pull it up on their website and get out a magnifying glass to look at the font, but you need to at what are the other ingredients in your medications because they're often filled with colors.

fillers, waxes, sometimes there's gluten in there. And other things that you otherwise wouldn't want to put into your body are other ingredients in medications. I find that a lot of times when I react to a medication or patients react a medications, it's because of the other ingredient in them. So I really recommend people pay more attention to what's in their. The other thing I would say is, to really, and I'm thinking your listeners may be already aware of this, but you start to, if we can pull back the veil, right, because still there's a lot of people who are kind of following the standard medical system as if that's the only option for their healthcare, where it's like, Oh, whatever the standard medical system says is what I'm going to do.

Redefining Medicine and Healing 10:48

And kind of we have our blinders on and that's what they want us to. You know, since the Flexner report when they really made it seem as if conventional traditional standard medicine and standard protocols and whatever's covered by insurance is the only way or the right way In reality, it's not the only way and we have so much else available to us for our health. So what happens is when you're in that mindset of this is my only approach and I'm going to go to the doctor and get this pill or this prescription or procedure that they offer in the standard medical system that we just have to understand that it is a It's also a business, right?

Insurance is a Business and these pharmaceutical companies are in business and they're in Business to sell more of these Now, I'm stopping myself to say medications. My father, it was a pharmacist, he ran a drug store, right? These are drugs. These were legal drugs that are made by pharmaceutical companies in the pharmaceutical industry, and they have some approved uses. but they most all have also some side effects, potential side-effects, and many of them have a risk of dependency and withdrawal symptoms.

And so I think it's really important for people to understand that because sometimes we just are so much wanting to get out of pain, right? Whether it was physical pain or emotional pain. Right? We're either having neck pain back pain menstrual pain Or we're having emotional like anxiety and depression. We are wanting so many to out pain that we are going to go to the doctor and say, give me whatever I can take to take out the pain And what we have to do is stop just enough to say, wait a minute, am I really willing to put this substance into my body when it may have some side effects that affects other parts of my and it cause my to become dependent on it?

And then when I want to stop taking it, there's withdrawal symptoms that can make me feel worse. And so I just really encourage people to think this all through before you just think that you only have this one option in your healthcare and to help you with pain. It's a good point, you know, that we have been conditioned and taught to look at pharmaceuticals as medicine. But I think you're really welcoming us to question what is medicine? So how would you define what medicine is? Oh, I love that question.

Yeah, because medicine, for me, one of my best medicines is dancing. It's very clear to me that I, from my body, I need to be dancing on a regular basis in order for my bodies to feel good and to heal. And so medicine can come in many forms. It's not necessarily something that we swallow as a pill, right? It could be, it could a tea, It can be our food, as we were talking about. Our food can our medicine. it can being in nature, just it be being with our pets. Being in community, yeah. I really like what you're introducing here is that medicine is not just this kind of parallel or this very one-to-one thinking.

It's very expansive and it's specific to the person and to potentially the ailment. But that it's not a one-to-one relationship that even the ailment that you think, and this is what I hear you saying is that, even when you. Oh, I should be taking this red pill. Actually the medicine could be at movement. It could just getting out of your house that we have to expand our definition of what healing looks like. Absolutely, absolutely.

HPV, Stress, and Cervical Cancer Prevention 14:59

Thank you for offering that way of looking at it and to say that it is unique to each of us. And it's here we are as we're having this human experience, right? We're in these human bodies. And yet we are more than that. We are this energetic, even, people would argue, spiritual beings existing in a human body. And we don't come with an instruction manual. You know, we land in these human bodies without an Instruction Manual. It's not like a... a camera that comes with an instruction manual. We have to figure it out as we go.

And even though we're all human, we know we have our genetic uniqueness. Also, everything that we've been exposed to in our lifetime, what I refer to as stresses. It's really from our environment, whether that's from emotional exposures, to toxins, to just daily stresses, those impact our genetic expression and that determines how our bodies might respond and what medicines our body's need. And so yes, we need to be really thinking more broadly about what is a medicine for each of us and then it doesn't have to, just be in a pill, in the bottle, at the pharmacy.

Well, and I love that this is coming from the daughter of a pharmacist. Hey YouTube fam, 80% of you watching aren't subscribed. If you're digging these episodes and haven't hit that button yet, now's the time. Every sub helps us grow, land bigger guests and keep the good stuff coming. So hit subscribe and stay curious. Now you spent a lot of your career helping women clear HPV, prevent cervical cancer, in you and just in general, transforming Health naturally. And you mentioned even, uh, migraines, you support people with chronic migraine.

Stress levels. So let's dive into a few of those. Like, for example, HPV, can you talk a bit about that? Like what is it and, and what, how should people be aware? What are they looking for to know that that's what's going on? Well, this is, it stems from, I want to emphasize two things from what I was sharing with my training. Two things is while doing all that training in naturopathic medicine and midwifery, while I learning how to support women in labor, One of my big research topics, in fact, my thesis was on how stress affects women in labor.

So we can come back to understanding how stressed impacts women and labor that then had me look at how does stress impact all of us, men and women, and children, whether we're in labour or not. That was part of that learning. And at the same time, I was helping a lot of women with abnormal pap smears because that's one thing that midwives do is pap smear. Also, usually we only think of going to the gynecologist, but you can also go to a midwife or naturopathic doctor to get a pap Through that process, a lot of my colleagues would refer more and more women to me because they knew that I was helping in that area.

And so I started seeing thousands of women over the years with abnormal pap smears and high-risk HPV virus. And I started to see this parallel where as I was helping women to prevent cervical cancer, because that's really what we're doing with a pap smear is we are looking for early signs of cervical or cervical if it's there already, I start to seeing this parallels with this impact of stress. And so what I starting seeing is the more I help women recover from stress, the better they were able to prevents cervical cancers.

So back to your question about HPV, So with HPV, we talk about it as if it's a single virus. Actually, there's over 150 different types of HPvirus. Of those 150 types, Some of them are low risk, and when we say low-risk, it means they're not associated with cancer risk. And HPV virus, or human papillomavirus, is associated warts, like even if you think of wards on your hands or feet or genital wart, those are the low risks types of HP. And then there's the high-risk types of HPV that we know of at this point in time.

There's 13 types high risk HP V out of the 150. And these 13 high risks types are associated with cancer risk, including 99% of cervical cancer is caused by high risky HP. but it's also associated with vaginal cancer, vulvar cancer as well as anal cancer and oral cancer. And it is also associate with cancer in men. that men can be, it can anal, penile, or oral cancer. In fact, 70% of head and neck cancer is caused by high risk HPV virus. So this is something that a lot of times we're not thinking about it, but it's in the background because when it comes down to it The way we get exposed to high-risk HPV virus is by sexual activity.

Through genital contact is how we got exposed. And while a lot of people think that this is not a common issue, it's actually more common than you would think. 80% of us are exposed a high risk HP virus by age 50. So if 80% of us men and women are getting exposed and the rates of HPV related cancer are increasing, so this is actually something that many people are dealing with, but there's still very much a stigma around it. So people. Are embarrassed to talk about it? How does it show up? Like obviously if you get any pap smear, you can discover, how does the person who the male or female, How do they know if they have it,

Self-Care, Recovery, and Daily Stress Reduction 21:08

Well, this is the thing, the high-risk HPV doesn't cause wards and it doesn' cause any symptoms. So men, because they're not being screened, there's no equivalent to a pap smear for men. Men only find out usually that they have HPB when they get cancer. And so it's really scary. Women oftentimes are going in for a Pap smear, so they are hopefully finding out a little sooner. I really encourage anyone who I would say even, you know what I'd say at this point James, I recommend that men and women do at least a high-risk HPV test on a regular basis.

Like, depending on if you've had any risk in your past, but I say every year to every 3-5 years, we should all be doing a HPP test because If you know that it's positive, you can start taking action to help your body clear it, because the human body can clear the virus. It's just that we're not aware that, we have it. Men especially, but a lot of times women, if they're are not going in to get tested, they don't know they have either, there's no symptoms. So there's no obvious symptoms. So let's assume.

Let's just assume we all have it. And let us assume, we have to just be mindful. Okay, if you have, it we got to start fixing it, so how would someone go about fixing? Well, and this is exactly brings us back to what I saw in terms of the parallel with stress. Because what i see is that as humans, when we're exposed to stress, which we all have stress right, we We have parenting stress, or taking care of our parents, caregiving stress. There's constantly going to be stress and when we're exposed to stress it affects our stress hormones, our cortisol and adrenaline levels.

That's how we have a built-in stress response system. as humans and when we're under stress it is going to affect that stress response system and as it does it disrupts our cortisol and adrenaline levels. And when that happens it lowers our immune function. So when were under-stress we are less able to protect ourselves from high-risk HPV. And so what I would say is, to me, if we all just come back to this concept of, how can I help myself recover from stress each day in small ways? The more we can help our bodies recover form stress and re-optimize our stress response system, the more were going to fend off infections like high risk HPV and other infections as well.

So what are some, I don't know, three things people might do? And in a way, really, maybe a better question is how can ancestral or primal living reduce stress in modern world? Since we are on the Everyday Ancestral podcast. So, uh, how Can ancestral, or Primal Living Reduce Stress in Modern World That's Wired for Burnout? Well, and I would say that That's exactly like to me the best way is what I refer to as self care. Now the thing is a lot of times we kind of blow off self-care like it's pampering or we never have time for it.

What I've done is I use care as an acronym. and I'll talk you through what the acronym is, when we can implement self-care, which is really self stress recovery on a daily basis, Which is absolutely ancestral. When we look back in time, and if we looked at areas of the world, for example, the blue zones, where people are living the longest and healthiest. What have they been doing over time that's helping them live longer and have less illness? Well, they're doing what I refer to as self-care. So the acronym for care is C for Clean Eating.

It starts with our food and what foods we're choosing to put into our body and which foods were choosing not to have. Right? So it's this C, for clean eating. A, adequate sleep. which I know you love that concept as well. So we got as humans, we have to eat, We have the sleep. And so we need to be prioritizing our sleep and sleep is when our immune system is functioning and repairing and helping us recover from what we're going through. The R in CARE stands for Recovery Activities. And we can go more into this.

The recovery activities is some of those things we talked about before, the things that we choose that are medicine for us to help our stress response system recover in the moment each and every day. And then E in care stands for exercise. So exercise is whatever movement is best for you and your body at this point in time, but we need to be moving and exercising. But it's also important to not overdo any of this, James, right? There's such a thing as over-exercising and then we're triggering another stress response, right?

So we need to, it's tempting as humans to like go in, believe me, I've done it too, you know, go into, we like, oh, can do more,

Daily Check-Ins for Nervous System Regulation 26:38

or I can better and we can even overdo something that's good for us. But in the meantime, care is how I think about things we do and I absolutely teach this to women who I'm helping to prevent cervical cancer and other HPV related cancer, and I teach this to all my patients. If we can implement this acronym of care on a regular basis, that's going to, I would argue, help us to stay well and prevent really all different health issues, including cancer. Well, okay, so let's take this a little bit more granular.

So if you had like three minutes with someone who's dealing with a hormone issue or sleep trouble or anxiety, what daily habit would you tell them to start today? I love that. Well, I just recorded a video for for patients yesterday of something that I recommend and I'm happy to share it with all of you here. I would say I start with what I call a daily check-in and you would do this daily checking like right when you wake up in the morning, maybe even the middle of the day and the end of day. And the daily Check-In could take one minute literally or five minutes if you have five And it's simply an opportunity to even close your eyes and start noticing your breath.

Get reconnected into your body by noticing you breath, noticing in your inhale, notice in you exhale. Now you're teaching your nervous system. Instead of being distracted by our to-do lists and a million things that people are pulling us in different directions, you are saying, no, I'm not doing that right now. I am doing this. and you just focus in on your breath and then you can put your hand on you heart which also helps release oxytocin which is our anti-stress hormone. So by doing deep breaths you're signaling the anti stress system.

By putting your hands on the heart you are signaling your anti stressed hormone and your starting to just be with your body and yourself and bring to your mind something you feel grateful for. By doing that, now you're even shifting at an energetic level to a higher energetic state of gratitude. You do this and you say to your body, body is there anything you need to tell me? Is just your buddy have a message of tension? is their an emotion that's coming up? There's something that your need you to know in that moment.

So you are checking in to say, hey body what do I need know right now? So that I can take action on that. and then you bring yourself back to this reality and you can then be in a much more balanced state. You've activated your anti-stress nervous system and now it's much easier to navigate our day-to-day routine. I love that. I loved that you're even bringing up energy. It's something that I think is not talked about enough within the health field. We sometimes look for very practical and very kind of tangible solutions, but I find in my 20 years of experience that it's actually the intangible that are more powerful.

The things we can't quantify that we really understand fully, that just have to almost have faith with. And I have to say, I think this almost carries us into plant medicine. Um, because there's an interesting kind of debate going on and maybe it's not on a national level, but just within, within some circles I'm in, which is, you know, plant, medicine is more and more being looked at as a means of therapy. But the argument is with some therapists saying, well, that you can't just only do plant medicine, there has to be integration and the integration is using

Plant Medicine and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapy 30:28

traditional therapy modalities. but I've been experiencing some plant medicine ceremonies, and I have had now four total, but three recently, the best way I can describe them is they have been astounding in the changes that have happened to me, just truly almost mind-blowing, profound, truly profound. So can you dive into talking about what drew you towards plant medicine and what have you seen? What kind of healings are you seeing from it? I was researching stress. I have been researching for years, right?

Ever since I researched stress in women in labor. And I actually had just at that time started writing the book that you see over my shoulder, the Master Stress Reset Your Health book. So it was in the midst of writing about how can humans recover from stress? And by the way, I don't go with this concept of managing stress. To me, managing stresses like just treading water, right? And we don' want to just be treadying water. We wanna be surfing the waves, we wanna able to be living our best life, feeling our bass, living out passion, spending time with people we love and improving our health.

That's not just trending water so I was in a mode of I wanna go beyond just managing stress, I want to help people to master their stress. And at the same time, it just so happened that in my life, i was going through a very stressful time. I was dealing with a different health issue. It was essentially arthritis. Um, turned out to be, but at that time we didn't know what the diagnosis was. So I, was in the midst of this diagnostic process and it was the middle of the pandemic. So it was like this whole sort of sequence of events that happened that I was, like, when a friend of mine, you know, said to me, hey, I found a shaman in Peru that.

I trust and I had she and i had already been talking about. ayahuasca for years and thinking, well, as herbalists, because ayahusca is a plant medicine, it's an herb. As herbalist, we were like, We would like to know more about this herb from the Amazon. And so we we're looking for an opportunity. It just so happened that she found the shaman at that time. I said, I'm in. again went off the diving board to the deep end and said, I'm going. And I just booked a ticket to Peru during the pandemic because I knew I wanted to research for the book and I needed it for my own healing.

And so those were the reasons why I was willing to, because a lot of people will be like, how did you just dive in like that to go straight to Peru, straight two weeks of a diet with ayahuasca? And the first day, the ceremony that I took ayahusca, I came out of that ceremony and I said, this is the medicine I've been looking for. Yeah, I have to agree. I did ayahuasca once I was only able to do one of two days. It was a two day ceremony and I only was able do to one. And I understood what people meant.

Like it's not a drug, it is a medicine. and it talked to me.I saw very clear images. i was told things that were beyond my current knowledge. It was profound. I can't stop using that word about it. And then the experiences I've had more recently were not ayahuasca. They were other, I mean, so plant medicine, just so anyone who is unfamiliar with that, you're going to hear terms like ayawaska. You're gonna hear psilocybin. It can also be other things like 5-MeO, right? Which is also known as Bufo.

Could be what's known previously as ecstasy, but it's MDMA. So there's so many others, I'm not mentioning all of them, but there are a lot of these things that I know when I was younger I saw as a drug. I see these as things like LSD even. Like I say this is a drugs. And now I am experiencing these modalities, these medicines in ways that are not drug like. That are very therapeutic and very deep. Deep and profound, I'm going to keep repeating that word, profound. So I am in a training program right now.

I just completed a certification program in psychedelic assisted therapy. It's a it's training programs through IPI, which is the Integrative Psychiatry Institute. mental health institute in the United States that's offering a whole program to therapists and I'm in first cohort of medical providers that are not therapists that're completing this psychedelic assisted therapy program and so we're seeing more and more providers even from the standard medical system. Like I'm in a class with ER doctors and gynecologists and all different practitioners, pediatricians, and we're in this training program together to say, hey, we can see that these medicines can help people.

And as health care providers, We see the limitations of how we Can help our patients. These doctors that I'm in class with are saying, hey, I've been trying to help my patients and I am seeing that there's only so much I can do with what's available in the standard medicine in a pharmaceutical industry. And so they were wanting to bring these medicines to become more available. As you said, i also grew up during the war on drugs. And so these drugs were categorized in Schedule 1, you know, several decades ago.

And that's why they have not been available in the United States in terms of illegal ways to get these medicines. But that is starting to shift. Now, for example, Oregon and Colorado have found, have approved certification for use of psilocybin. Psilocybin is from mushrooms as a psychedelic substance from mushroom. And MDMA is having so much research being done. They're hoping to fast track that too. The idea here, James, is not to just make it available for everybody free for all recreational use.

This is very much for medicinal use. And as you mentioned, it's to be using the substance along with support to integrate what we receive from these medicines. So it is not that a person is just going to use the medicine on their own and be all on own with their insights. What the research is on all of these substances when we research it, is done in a very intentional way with where you're working with a therapist or a provider before, so you are prepared during your session, after, to help you understand what you experienced and how to integrate it into your life going forward.

And most of the research is on stress-related conditions, PTSD, which is post-traumatic stress disorder. This is where these substances are being used effectively. It's also being use to help with anxiety and what is currently being referred to as treatment resistant depression. When they say treatment-resistant depression, they mean that the pharmaceutical drugs are not helping the person. To me, it just means that, of course, we can't expect these pharmaceutical chemicals that are just helping to deal with the receptors to solve a person's depression.

We need to help the person in a holistic way. And I really believe that that's where these medicines are different, is that they are helping us in more holistic ways to actually help our bodies heal and recover from stress instead of just making us dependent on a chemical substance for the rest of our lives. I think that is such an important distinction. It kind of brings us full circle back to the pharmacy earlier, the Pharmacy discussion, which is when you were mentioning pharmaceuticals that A, you're dependent on, but also B, they have a lot of side effects.

And are you aware of many side-effects with some of these plant medicines? Because the one that I'm aware is you can get really low with electrolytes, so you get depleted from dehydrated is the word I am looking for. The one side effect that I'm aware of is that you can get dehydrated a bit, which just means you got to increase your electrolytes or your intake of fluids while you're doing it or right afterwards. But even there are some more and more health practitioners that are helping people that on doing these medicinal journeys to prepare for them even with vitamins and minerals.

So are you seeing any kind of side effects that people need to be aware should they go down this path? Well, and this is the thing, is sometimes in the midst of taking a substance, there may be symptoms, but I don't tend to think of them as same as side effects from a medication. It's more like, depending on the substance sometimes there's some nausea, right? Even with psilocybin, for example, some people feel a little nauseous. Same thing with ketamine. Ketamine, by the way, It's considered a dissociative anesthetic, and it is legal in the United States at this point in time to be used in a therapeutic way.

But even ketamine for some people can cause some nausea during the time. None of them cause symptoms that are ongoing, right? And, I mean, there's a very rare, very, rare I think less than 1% of the time that someone might have ongoing symptoms after taking one of these substances. Also, they're not addictive. Now, Like, say, for example, ayahuasca, psilocybin, these are not considered to be addictive substances. And the treatment is not something you have to take every day. So it's very different than what we usually think of as, right, when you go to the pharmacy and you get a pharmaceutical and have you take this pill every and a lot of times you'll have take it at the same time every, and if you don't, you're going to have withdrawal symptoms.

It's a very difference than that. These medicines are used in a therapeutic window. Usually, depending on the case, you might have one or two, or in the cases of MDMA, sometimes they're giving one dose per month over six months. So there's specific protocols that are use, but as the person recovers from their symptoms, then they are no longer needing this substance anymore. It's a very different treatment protocol. Versus a daily pill and the the likelihood of any kind of You know side effects or dependency is very low.

There is a slight I wanna say dependency possibility with ketamine, but this is why it's so important to work with a provider who can help you to make sure you're using it based on the protocol, what's gonna be effective, What's going to help your heal so that you can then go on with your life and not be needing a substance all the time. Wow, yeah, I'm so excited to talk about this. And I know that we should dedicate an entire episode or multiple episodes just to this topic. Because I think it's one that if anyone takes anything away from this conversation, it is that I just hope that it opens your mind to other modalities of healing.

Cortisol Testing and Personalized Stress Care 43:28

Many of these medicines that were plant medicines, that they are plant derived. So they're really more ancestral and natural than what you find on the market in the pharmaceutical industry. And they've been used back in time. What we know is that these substances have been being used, psilocybin and magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, these are substances were used thousands of years ago. So if we're looking at what was helping our ancestors deal with their stress, this was part of it. They were using, and we found psychedelic substances in all different continents.

Humans have been using psychedelics substances, I'd love to talk more about it, James. There's so much information and theories of how psychedelict substances have even helped humans through time. to get to where we are now. So I absolutely consider these plant medicines to be very ancestral. And it brings us back to our roots. It brings back our self-care, as I talk about. I consider the plant medicine to a recovery substance. They help us recover from stress and trauma. Just like breath work, just like meditation and yoga and time in nature.

psychedelic substances have that same ability to help us heal. They heal the vagus nerve, they help process and release emotional stress and trauma. This is way different than what we're seeing in the standard medical approach and it's very needed. So many people are dealing with these health issues, pain, right? We know there's an epidemic of pain medicine use and millions of people on psychotropic medications when only 30% of them are being helped by those medications. So there's a huge need for humans to be helped in emotional and physical pain as well as prevention of health issues like cancer and heart disease and dementia.

And so I'm simply a person who's on the look out seeking medicines that can actually help humans heal and not just have humans stuck on being dependent on a substance every day that's not actually helping them heal. Well, once again, I think it's really powerful that this is coming from someone who grew up around the pharmacies and pharmaceutical industry that you're seeing that that was not the answer, that there's something else. And then the fact that your taking these classes with other health practitioners, doctors, people that are also acknowledging, hey, our system is not working.

I also love that, well, these things are, as we just said, they're ancestral. So we're actually looking towards the past to find solutions for the present. And that's exactly what this podcast is about. So I'm so appreciative that we talked about this today. Thank you so much. Before I let you go though, I do have a question. If every woman had access to one lab test in their thirties or forties to prevent burnout and hormone chaos later, what would it be and why? My dream, James, you're asking me my dream test.

My Dream is I wish we could all have access to testing cortisol levels because, again, cortisol is our main stress hormone. And we can measure cortisol in a blood test, but it's usually not done. You would have to ask your provider, please measure my cortisol. But even then, they're only gonna measure your cortisol at the time you have your blood drawn, which is stressful time. So we need to know our cortisol levels because what's happening is oftentimes people guess that they have high cortisol, But I'm telling you in at least 50% of the times they are wrong because Not everybody has high cortisol.

Some of us have low cortisol and some of have us low cortisals some time a day and high cortisol a different time of day. We need to be measuring cortisol morning, midday, evening, bedtime to find out where your cortisol is because here's the thing is, the treatment is different. So you're my theory and this is what I share in the Master Your Stress Reset Your Health book if you want to learn more. My theory is that we need to be even modifying our self-care and our stress recovery based on our cortisol levels.

If we have high cortisol, we different herbs, different nutrients, then someone who has low cortisol. And the only way to know right now is we can do a urine or saliva test, which is what I offer patients through my practice. We'll do our urine and saliva tests at different times a day to measure your cortisol, and talk about profound. It makes profound difference in people's health to first of all know what their cortisol is up to at different times a day, and then to know how to take steps to get their cortisone back to optimal.

Because if our stress hormone is high or low, it's sending out a stress signal throughout our whole body and throwing everything off track. And if your cortisol's optimal, everything's going to be on track and signaling on-track. So it's, to me, so essential. And what I wish would exist, I would love to meet a lab that wants to create a way to measure cortisol through, for example, our watch, or our ring, something that allows us to know our cortisol level each and every day throughout the day so we can take that information and modify our activities, our exercise, meditation, sleep.

We need to modify self-care based on our cortisol levels and that's only truly going to happen when we get daily analysis of our cortisol. So for right now, our best ways to do that again is you can do a urine saliva test through a specialty lab, and a specialist like me in my office, we offer that. Also, just so your listeners know, I developed an online quiz called the Stress Type Quiz. You can find through my website. And this quiz allows you to get a sense of what your cortisol likely is, if it's likely high or low, based on an online quiz.

But still, my dream would be that we could all know our cortisol throughout the day, every day. So that, we can make in the moment five tuning changes to optimize our health. I love that. We'll put the link for this quiz in the show notes. And I would like to offer that I bet you that the solution is not going to be a ring or a watch. It's going be like a bidet, like something that you put on your toilet and it's measuring your poop and your urine whenever you go to the bathroom. Something I, you know, I mean that, that just seems like there's going to be certain things you can get from, heart and whatnot through rings and watches.

But then, You're always going need to get other things from poop and pee. So we might as well have the measurement where you're actually going. Right. I love that idea, James, I loved that. That'd be perfect. And then it could just tell you on your mirror when you wake up in the morning, here's how you need to modify your day based on cortisol. Oh my gosh. Talk about synergy.

Where to Find Dr. Donnie Wilson 51:18

I'm sure that someone's working on that, and I know that the toilet that analyzes your health is being worked on, but how cool would it be to then have it talk to one of those smart mirrors or something like that? Yeah. Wow. Well, that is a real congruence of taking modern tech and helping it with our health. Thank you so much for joining me, Dr. Donnie. So how can people get involved? Do you take clients, like if someone wants to work with you based on our conversation, what do they do? And I work with patients from around the world, even though you can come see me in New York, but you don't have to.

I, I've worked with patience virtually from Around the World. They can just find me at drdonnie.com. So D-O-C-T- O-R-D-ONI.COM. And, um, and I'm also on social media, so I am happy to see you there as well. You know, thank you for trusting your instincts. I think that it would have been very easy for you just to go down the straight and narrow path that your father had. And I'm just so glad that you were aware enough in your early twenties to say, you know what? I, I need to, go a different way because you're helping thousands and thousands of people.

So thank so much for what you do. Thank you, James. Appreciate you too. Thanks to your listeners for being here and yeah, feel very grateful. And thank you all for either watching or listening. This has been the Everyday Ancestral Podcast. If you're enjoying it, share it. Please let other people know what we're about and make sure to subscribe or follow us. But most of all, check in on our next episode. Thank you again. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe so you don't miss the next one.

You can find the show notes, links and resources mentioned at EatPluck.com. That's E-A-T-P-L-U-C-K dot com. And hey, if you know someone who gets something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well, and keep it ancestral.