Enhance Digestion Through Breath Work

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

Welcome back. We're continuing a conversation on Reversing Crohn's and Colitis. I'm your host, Sinclair Kennally. And today I'm joined by my wonderful friend and colleague Sachin Patel. He is a father, a husband, a philanthropist, and a functional medicine practice success coach. He's a speaker and author, a breathwork facilitator, and a plant medicine advocate. Sachin is convinced that “the doctor of the future is the patient” and he has committed himself to helping others raise their consciousness voice, activate their inner doctor, and initiate their deepest healing through the use of lifestyle and breathwork.

Sachin founded The Living Proof Institute, through which he pioneered a revolutionary approach to patient centered health care. He has coached hundreds of practitioners around the world so that they are empowered to deliver affordable and inspired care to their communities through his Perfect Practice Mentorship Program He's an advocate of transforming the health care paradigm, and he has devoted his life to the betterment of health care for both patients and practitioners. And he's one of my favorite humans in this space because he really walks his talk, and he makes this so accessible and easy and inspiring for those of us who are, you know, at any point along the health journey, whether you're just figuring out, you know, what has gone wrong in the body or you're deep in the middle of trying to heal it.

Sachin is such a voice and a light in the dark. So thank you so much Sachin for coming on today. It's my absolute honor. I always enjoy our conversations, whether they're in-person or whether they're online like this. So thank you for including me as part of your special event. And, here's to health, to everyone who's listening has. Okay, so one of my favorite things about, the way you teach is you really demystify what are the factors that have gone into these choice points that have actually created our chronic conditions?

And then how do we take back control and get ourselves out of it? So can we start with just the factors that you see from a lifestyle perspective, from your living proof paradigm? I really contributing to these chronic gut issues today that might get overlooked. Yeah, I think, you know, really simple 30,000ft view is treat your body like a temple, not a trash can. And and so most people, unknowingly, they end up treating their body like a trash can because they never been taught to differentiate what's garbage

Lifestyle Roots of Chronic Gut Issues 2:36

and what's actually real. And I feel like that's something that's been indoctrinated into us, intentionally. Right. And that might be a controversial statement, but it becomes very clear when we just ask ourselves a few questions. You know, there's three things we never learn about in school, at least in a meaningful way. We don't learn how to grow our own food. We don't learn how to manage our finances, and we certainly don't learn how to take care of our health. So it's by no coincidence that those are the most profitable industries on the planet, right?

So right now, health care is the most, profitable and fastest growing industry in the United States, right? And that's not because people are getting healthier. It's because people are getting sicker. Big agriculture. Right. And the food industry is manipulating food so that they can make something that should taste like garbage, taste glorious. And there are scientists that are spending millions and millions of dollars, and companies that are spending millions of millions of dollars tricking our nervous system. Right?

That's what our taste buds are. They're part of our nervous system to make us think that what we're actually eating is food. But here's the thing. You can trick your tongue. You can't trick your cells because once the food gets into your body, that's where it creates a lot of devastation. And so when people can start grasping that and understanding just a simple concept, this body's a temple. It's the only one I'll know in this lifetime, at least. How can I take the best care of it? Well, it's not by listening to what other people have to say, right?

Unless there's people on this conversation or other conversations that are part of this summit. I mean, if we think about what's being marketed to us and what's been, you know, shoved down our throats, we should be doing in many cases, the exact opposite. So I feel like a lot of it starts with the head game. And I truly believe, you know, that it's never been easier to be healthy than right now. I mean, it's not that it's simple, right? But it's never been easier to know what the right thing is to do and what the wrong thing is to do.

We just have to really start listening to that inner voice. And for a lot of people, that inner voice has been dampened or shut down or, you know, they are slaves to their senses. And, you know, when we're slaves to our senses instead of being masters of our cells, then that's what we get into a lot of trouble, especially when it comes to gut health, when it comes to mitochondrial health, when it comes to sleep, I mean, you name it, a lot of these things are connected to, how we treat ourselves.

And a lot of that is tied up into our own self-worth and our wounds and our traumas and things like that, that we've experienced. So, yeah, I know that's a lot to unpack, but, that's where I start with a lot of my clients that I work with is really helping them understand that this is a temple. We're going to treat it that way, and we're going to treat your body with the utmost respect, because that's what it deserves. It's the only thing right now in the entire universe that is working for you.

24 seven 365 how can you honor it right. And there's so many ways that we can honor our body. In fact, I recently made a list. It's called 100 Ways to Win the Day and ended up being about 112 things that I do on a consistent basis that are somewhat passive. Some are active. but there's a little microscopic things that we can do throughout the day that show our body and reinforce to our body that this is my temple, not my trash can. That's really beautiful. I hope that you'll include that, in the summit.

That'd be great to see. So the, the piece that I really want to unpack with you is if we're going to treat our body like a temple, if we're going to take control over our own health outcomes. You have spent a lot of time studying the digestive system itself, right? Obviously, you master the nervous system first as a chiropractor and then the digestive system out of your own curiosity. And now you focus predominantly on teaching people breathwork. Can you share with the audience how you see digestion and breathwork interrelated?

Yeah, absolutely. So when I started studying breathing and breath work, I mean, that's it's a spectrum, right? So we're all breathing and then breath work is the active engagement in breathing to create a physiological or physical or emotional or spiritual shift in our body. So, when I started studying, when I experienced breathwork, I could see the spiritual and emotional impact it had on me. But then I started studying breath from a functional perspective, from a physical perspective, from a physiologic perspective, from an anatomical perspective.

And I started realizing that how we breathe has such a profound impact on so many different systems in our body. And I started scratching my head, wondering, why the hell did I never learn this in school? And I could have gone through so many different trainings, and I've gone through hundreds of hours of continuing education and been to so many different conferences, and not once did anyone help me connect the dots between breathing and my health. We kind of learn about it from a meditation perspective, but that's about it.

It just kind of ends there. But when you start studying breath, you start realizing that, breath is one of the most breathing is one of the most brilliant things that we do. And so we consume about 30 pounds of air a day, which is more than the amount of food we eat in a week in most instances. So I just think about that. There's all this air that's moving in and out of our body. We also take 23,000 breaths a day. The muscle in our body that is on 24 seven, there's two muscles that are on 24/7, our heart and our diaphragm.

Breathwork and the Nervous System 8:30

Now our heart we can't actively control, but we can indirectly control our heart through our diaphragm. So our diaphragm is the only muscle that we can actively control that never turns off. So it's always on while we're breathing, while we're awake. And so when you start looking at it, you're like, oh my God, like, I didn't know any of this. When we think of longevity, the slower we breathe, the longer we live. So that's been proven across various animal studies. a turtle lives about 150 to 200 years.

Takes three breaths a minute. A dog takes 35 breaths a minute. Age is about seven times faster. The greatest predictor of lifespan is lung capacity. And when you start studying the diaphragm itself, you start realizing that a lot of, grief is stored. Trauma is stored in our diaphragm, grief is stored in our lungs. And so a lot of people are carrying around a lot of trauma. And we know that, chronic stress and anxiety and adverse childhood experiences and trauma that we're carrying around, you know, really wreaks havoc on our nervous system, but it's very closely connected to our digestive health as well.

I mean, one of the first things I think of when somebody has digestive issues, I think of their their autonomic nervous system. Is it are they stuck in this perpetual state of fight or flight, or are they, are they in a parasympathetic state, which is when they can actually activate their digestive processes? The diaphragm is also interesting because not only does it move up and down 23,000 times with each breath we take, but it also acts as a piston and a pump. So what's really cool about the diaphragm is under just underneath the diaphragm is where we have our biggest lymph nodes.

Now that's not by accident. It's because as the diaphragm moves up and down, it's going to pump the lymph, especially the lymph and our trunk organs. The other thing the diaphragm does is it acts as our second heart. So it's referred to as a second heart because every time we breathe, our lungs expand and contract our diaphragm moves up and down mechanically assisting the heart in circulating blood. The third system the diaphragm is responsible for maintaining pressure in is the myofascial system.

And as we become more aware of what the fascia does for us, one of the things that our fascia does is it actually stores physical and emotional traumas in it, so it becomes distorted based on physical and emotional experiences that we've had. And so it's not uncommon for people to go through breathwork experiences and really start moving that old stale energy around. they start, releasing it as well, which can be a very powerful experience. And so when you when you look at breath from just those few perspectives, you start realizing how important it is.

Now, the other thing that's really interesting and relevant to this audience is that our digestive system starts in our mouth, and our immune system starts in our nose. So when we start thinking of digestion and immunity, you know, how can we leave out the breath as part of that conversation? So our oral microbiome plays a very important role in our dental health. And what's really fascinating is that about 50% of the population are habitual mouth breathers, which means they alter their oral microbiome, which means they're more prone to issues in the oral cavity.

Right. So cavities blocking, you know, gingivitis, like inflammation. Those challenges can start just by simply, being habitual mouth breathers. The other thing that happens when we think about the mouth is that if we breathe through our mouth, the mouth is the dirtiest part of our body. And so with every breath we take, we're breathing in this dirty, dirty, whatever the air quality is, it gets dirtier when we breathe through our mouth. So now our lungs, which also have their own microbiome, are now like, dude, what the heck?

I gave you a nose to breathe with. You should be breathing through your nose because your nose actually perfects the air. Your nose, is lined with the mucosal membrane that is, is producing nitric oxide. Nitric oxide kills viruses and pathogens on contact. So we have this beautiful, system that is designed to perfect the air before it goes into our lungs. And, 50% of the population don't breathe correctly. And about 66% of the population breathe through their mouth while they're sleeping. And so the consequences aren't just happening while we're awake if we're habitually mouth breathing, but they're also happening while we're sleeping, which is when our body should be in its most restorative state.

And so simple things like tongue positioning, will activate the vagus nerve to create a relaxation response. Breathing in through our nose will increase our nitric oxide production by six fold. 15 fold. If you hum it, increases vessel dilation and circulation throughout the body, kills viruses and bacteria, and actually reduces our blood pressure. And it puts us in a more parasympathetic and relaxed state. And when we're in that parasympathetic and relaxed state, there's actually much more blood flow going to the digestive organs.

So for example, in a fight or flight state, there's an 80% decrease of blood flow to the gut, 90% decrease of blood flow to the liver and kidneys. So these organs essentially go into a state of suspended animation where they're getting enough blood. So they don't go necrotic, but not enough blood to perform their functions. And so we always want to look at what is the fastest way to shift somebodys autonomic state from sympathetic dominant to parasympathetic. And it's actually the breath. So this is why we start studying breathing.

It affects our facial structure. It affects our nervous system. It affects our lymphatic system. It affects our circulatory system. It affects our immune system. It affects our myofascial system. And it makes perfect sense because if we're created through the infinite wisdom of our of our God or, you know, evolution or whatever you believe in, it's it's it's this infinite wisdom that and source wisdom that creates us. That's where I would put all these benefits and features is in something that you do 23,000 times a day, that you have active control over whenever you want to, because then you can choose how you feel.

So I refer to the breath as the steering wheel of the nervous system and nervous system controls everything, right? It controls your immune system. It controls you know, where blood flow is going. It controls when cells are repairing, when they're dying, like all of that coordination of function is done by our autonomic nervous system. And every goal that people who are listening to this conversation have when it comes to their health, better fertility, better digestion, normal blood pressure, better blood sugar balance, better sleep, better cognition, heart brain connection.

Everything that you're looking for lives on the side of the parasympathetic division of the autonomic nervous system. You can never heal in a fight or flight state. And so when people are perpetually stuck in fight or flight, it's difficult for them to change their circumstances. However, what they can change is the way they breathe because the breath informs the nervous system. So what's really interesting, Sinclair, is that maybe I should pause here. I don't know, but, I'll finish with this thought.

So what's really interesting is that it's a two way communication between the nervous system and the breath. So our nervous system will use the breath to assist it, assist it physically, emotionally and biochemically. So, for example, if you were to feel a sense of relief, which I'm sure you will after you're done all these interviews for this summit, right, you're going to see you like because you're and you're not going to do that intentionally. You're not going to be like, oh, I should sign out because I feel a sense of relief.

You're going to do that unconsciously because your nervous system uses your breath to put you into that relaxed state. Now, we can lean into that and we can do something called a physiologic sigh, where we take two sharp breaths in and then let it out with a sigh. right. And we could do that for a few minutes and we will completely shift the state of our nervous system. Or slow down and do that with the audience really quick because, yeah, sure. So cool. And we breathe right by it. So let's do it again.

Sure. So we're going to take a two phase breath in. Sometimes I do three. So one portion of the breath into the belly, another into the lungs and another one into the upper lungs. So we'll breathe into our belly, tongue at the roof of our mouth and through our nose. And then let it out with an audible sigh. And you let it all the way out, and you repeat that several times. This is a great technique. If we're feeling overwhelmed, if we're having a stressful day and we don't want to bring it into the house, you could do it in the car.

you could do it in the car before you get to work. If you've had a stressful day at home and you don't want to bring it to work, and it's a great technique for your children to practice as well, because a lot of times children don't have ways to soothe themselves. They don't have ways to alleviate their stress. Right. So what do they do? They just bury it back down and it just all builds up. And then, you know, who knows how it comes out in adults a lot of times don't have good coping mechanisms or wait ways for them to release stress.

So you can use your breath as a tool to alleviate stress. And just like just like that, there is like a variety of different breathing signatures, right? So yawning is a breathing signature. Usually when people are yawning, it's because they're not breathing through their bellies. We will use, you know, when somebody is laughing. That's a breathing signature, right? Your diaphragm is going into a fit, right? You're breathing.

Sinus Health, Mouth Breathing, and Oral Microbiome 18:30

You're you're stimulating your vagus nerve so intensely. That's why you start tearing. Because where the vagus nerve inserts on the brain stem is right next to the part of our brainstem that produces tears. and so that's kind of fascinating. You'll also cool. Yeah. So, so, like, you know, little things that we do, when we start paying attention, we're like, oh, what if I laughed? Even if something wasn't funny, or even if I was just sitting on my couch and I started laughing, would it be possible for me to change my physical and biochemical state?

And the answer is yes. And you could do the same with yawning. You could do this. Well, yawning is, is a sign that you're not belly breathing. You could do the same thing with sighing right? So there is a variety of different breathing signatures that we can pay attention to that our body uses already. The nervous system is already using these signatures. but we can pay attention to them and say, I want to feel this way. So let me breathe the way my body would feel or breathe if I was in that state.

Right. So you know that phrase, fake it til you make it right, so you could breathe a certain way, to feel a certain way. I love that you've got a great line that you often share, like there's a breath for every way you want to feel. There you go. And it's absolutely true. Right. And here's here's another interesting thing. Like, as clinicians and I know people who are listening to some of their might be clinicians, some of them might be clients, pay attention to how somebody is breathing when they're around you.

So, for example, if I'm, you know, having a conversation with my wife, I'm not just paying attention to her body language. I'm paying attention to her breath language because the way she's breathing tells me the state of her nervous system, whether she likes to, you know, people can hide, you know, behind their words, right? They can hide behind their actions. But their breath is the dead giveaway of the state of the nervous system. So I encourage people to pay attention to that. And it's quite fascinating when you do that.

And I know, you know, you know, deeper too. So I know when I should and should not have this conversation. I yeah. And I could walk away without saying anything. I you notice there's a single word I could just pay attention to how she's breathing. And I know she wants to have this dialog or not. Yeah, absolutely. So really, it's a recipe for success, for committed relationships. Attention to the breath. So you've touched on a number of really crucial concepts so far. And I just want to underscore a couple of things about this.

Because, you know, our both of our orientation is towards what can we control. Right. And what is within our own grasp in order to reclaim our own health. You know, of course, you need a guide for certain parts of your healing journey, especially if you feel really depleted and if you become really desensitized with these chronic conditions such as Crohn's and colitis. Right. Like this. Those did not happen overnight. We have lived our way into them and we will live our way out of them. Right? And with their attention on root causes and those exposures, that's a great start.

But we're also, often overlooking the lifestyle component, aren't we? So the pieces that I think are most useful, lot of what you shared is the working with the nervous system through the breath and how the breath informs the nervous system, and vice versa. If we want to heal our digestion, we want to work with the nervous system so that we can get blood flow back into our vital organs and they can return to digestion and connection and detox. And I also really appreciate, the emphasis on the oral microbiome and the sinus microbiome.

I'm still so surprised that we don't get enough air time for the sinus microbiome in digestion conversations with health experts. It's like, well, wait a minute. Yes, your digestion begins in your mouth, but your gut microbiome actually starts in the sinuses because you're swallowing any infections up there all day long. In a post nasal drip. So of course, we want to be attending to the health of our sinuses. Do you want to comment on that at all? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, one of the things I recommend to everyone is, using a neti pot or an average and, this is a great, way to rinse the inside of your sinuses.

Remember those 30 pounds of air that are moving in and out of hopefully your nose and not your mouth? for the most part, at least 8020, I think is a good, good, range for people 80% through your nose, 20% through your mouth. If you're exercising, moving around a bit, talking like I am right now, you obviously have to use your mouth now. So I. I've rinsed my sinuses. I used to do it every day. And then I found that I didn't really need to do it that much because they stay pretty clean. But, you know, one of the things that I did, Am I allowed to mention brands and names?

Yeah. Go for it. Okay, so one of the things I did recently is I started putting para three, which is made by a company called silicone. I would put 1 to 3 drops in my, in my Navajo and I would rinse my sinuses out with that if I was outdoors a lot, cutting the grass or, you know, just spending a lot of time outdoors. You just don't know what they're spraying in the sky and what they're spraying on people's grasses. I would then use carboxy. So carboxy is, you make an folic acid powder that you can just put.

It's like black. It's, it's so it's so fun when you put in the dividers because the water turns, I completely block. And then you and then you rinse your sinuses out with it. And the first few weeks when I did it, it was interesting to see the stuff that would come out. I could swear that there were like little worms coming out. But then, oh yeah, right. My wife convinced me that they weren't. But you know. Now I teach sinus rinses in our rapid resect course like this, and there's so many fun things have been added to the parasite family photo album from those Navarro's catch trays.

It's so cool, you guys. You have to try this. Yeah, it's like these stringy things that were coming up. But now, if no matter how much I rinse my sinuses, that stuff's not coming out. So, I know there was something in there. but my wife convinced me it was nothing, so. Oh, Deepak. Come on. We'll see what comes out of her nose. But she's got to do a round of it, and then we'll. Then we'll see what she thinks. So. Yeah. So, so the sinuses are play a huge role, right. And, if we've got stuff going on up there, it's 24 over seven, right.

And you know what we eat may not necessarily affect that. So we've got to get in there and kind of rinse things out that don't belong there. And just keep in mind that, you know, this is direct access to our brain, right? Our olfactory is the shortest nerve in our body. So when we're inhaling all this stuff every day, I mean, it's getting right into our brain. And there's a lot of delicate structures that are right behind our, our sinus cavities, in our in our face. So you want to keep those, you know, functioning optimally and keep things moving, you know, so there's a lot of people that have deviated septum and there's people that, have very narrow palates which can make it difficult for them to breathe through their noses.

but the nose is an interesting organ because the more you use it, the more it actually starts opening up. And and so you can start by just practicing mouth breathing during the day. You can mouth tape during the day five, ten, 15, 20 minutes and then work your way up to breathing exclusively through your nose, especially while you're sleeping. but as much as you can consciously during the day, it can make a profound difference. And if you have young children, one of the things that's really important to note is the positioning of a person's tongue will actually change the structure of their face.

So our tongue, when placed in the roof of our mouth, pushes our palate outwards, which creates a proper airway. And so that can be crucially important. because people who are habitual mouth breathers and this is important for digestion,

Breathing, Digestion, and the Five C's 26:30

is not only do they destroy their oral microbiome and their teeth and all that other stuff, but what also happens is it changes the way food tastes. So people who are a bit your mouth breathers require more sweetness to taste the sugar that's in their food. So they might add more sugar to their coffee for it to taste the same as, let's say, you know, let's just say there's a sweetness level of 1 to 10 and for them to, for if the for for it to taste like a ten to them, they'd have to add more sugar than for it to taste like a ten to me.

So it can actually change our dietary, patterns and behaviors and food choices based on how we actually breathe. Yeah, it's fascinating stuff. I love the idea of doing an X, an accessible five, ten, 15 minute increments because you're right, it's a use it or lose it. That's what your sinuses are. We think oh, our our facial structure is set as adults. But that's not the case. And I for one like I, I habitually put the tongue on the roof of my mouth. But the back of my tongue I would let fall because I had too narrow of a palate.

And so I've been doing mewing to try to expand that. And it is work, you know, it's it's no joke. It's like a little workout for your tongue. Yeah. But I think it's still a difference. No, it certainly makes a lot of sense. And you know, like I know we've talked about the teeth a little bit, but it's also important when it comes to just digestion, whether somebody has Crohn's or colitis, or not. you know how we like it. How we eat makes a huge difference. and so like, just, you know, we have the five seas of, of, digestion.

So the first one is choose right, choose the right foods, choose the right time, choose the right people, choose the right state to eat and choose the right feelings around your food. Right? So you should feel grateful for the food that you're having. Not resentful towards eating healthy, right? We live in the first time in human history where people complain about eating healthy. the second key is to chew your food, right? So we have to have, a good, healthy, occluding job in order for us to chew our food properly.

and most people don't chew their food enough. And especially if you're eating, you know, plant based foods, let's say if you're eating fruits and vegetables and things like that, well, they're cells, are they're nutrients are encapsulated in a cell that's made out of cellulose, which means that our body can't access the nutrition. So if you swallow a sort of a leaf of lettuce, you're going to poop out a leaf, a lettuce tomorrow or the next day or whatever. Whatever your GI transit time is, because you can't digest it.

You you chemically are incapable of digesting and accessing the nutrients. So you really have to chew your food. And in chewing your food, you taste it. Your brain gets a sense of what macronutrients are going to be presenting themselves. The flavor of your food starts signaling to your, pancreas what you know, how much carbohydrates are coming. Your stomach gets a sense of how much protein is going to be coming, how much fat is going to be coming. So all of these signals are crucially important to enhance digestion.

And when we don't chew our food adequately, we don't increase the surface area to actually digest through it. And when we have undigested proteins making their way into the small intestine, then this creates a disrupted microbiome because, you know, you have undigested putrefying proteins in your gut now, which are going to create inflammation and all kinds of other problems, and you're going to feed bacteria that you don't want down there. And then the next key is to chill. You want to be in a relaxed state.

So you want to you can use some deep breathing techniques like box breathing for 3 to 5 minutes to calm your nervous system down. So many people eat in a fight or flight state. And so we call this an autonomic mismatch, which means that their autonomic nervous system is in fight or flight. But they're asking their body to do something that's more on the rest and digest side of things. So they never actually thoroughly and properly digest their food. The fourth one is to cherish, right? So being grateful for the food that you're having, the people that went into preparing it, growing it, you know, all the steps that were involved and then check, right.

So checking is probably where you come in. Or I might come in where, you know, annually at least we're doing a stool test, if not more often than not, depending on the state of the person's, challenges. And at least daily we're checking or however many times we use the restroom, we're checking, for any abnormalities in our stool. So for those of you that don't know, you can download something from, the internet called the Bristol Stool Chart, and it'll show you what the shape and texture of your poop should look like.

Don't worry. It's cartoon drawings. And, it'll give you a sense of, hey, like, what's my Bristol score? Because if your stool is very hard or compacted, that's a problem is if it's very loose and watery, that's also a problem. So you want to be somewhere in the middle. Bristol. Bristol chart four is is what you want to shoot for. So I think those are the, those five keys are also very crucial for people to understand. And again how we breathe and, and our facial structure and all those things, play a huge role in and how we digest our food.

Yeah. It's so true. I think it's really important to, honor the fact that, yes, there is complexity to this, and you're going to need a protocol to address the root causes, but some of those are classes can shift today with these small lifestyle shifts and reclaiming what we once knew, what our ancestors took for granted. You know, there's a reason why we're all sick today. And it's not just toxins. It's also all the lifestyle choices and, the sensory overload, the how far away we we have gotten from nature on many levels.

So anything that you want to really underscore in the last couple of minutes, we have or unpack further about how breath and reclaiming digestive health are related, helps support our audience. Yeah. You know, one of the things I would say is I think really the breath is the, you know, the pathway to regulating our nervous system. And if we can start, you know, understanding the importance of the role of the nervous system, then, we start to understand how important proper breathing is, you know, kind of going back to some of the things I shared, remember that our trunk organs need to move lymph and the master pump for our trunk organs is the diaphragm.

So proper breathing techniques are going to help remove waste products and massage those internal organs. And then it's also important for us to know how breathing changes the way food tastes, so it can impact the food choices and, the types of foods that we eat. And then understanding that eating in the right state is absolutely crucial. And the best way to change your state is to is to change your breath. So there's a variety of ways that that these things are connected. And we talked about the immune system starting in the nose.

Right. And the important role that that plays. Also preserving our oral microbiome by breathing through our nose instead of through our mouth, I mean, it's it's it's connected and so, so many ways. and of course, you know, when people have colitis, you know, the immune system or Crohn's, the you know, these are conditions that are very heavily impacted by the state of our immune system. And so if we can give our immune system a break, meaning that we can breathe correctly so our lung microbiome isn't under constant attack, we can create a healthy oral microbiome.

So we're not having to, to the immune system to deal with that. And just keep in mind, it's not just what we swallow, but it's like what's happening in the mouth. You know, we have, a mucosal barrier there, so you can have a leaky mouth as well. And, you know, as, as we, as many of you might already know, that

First Principles for Healing and Practitioner Advice 34:30

the state of our gums and our teeth are very closely connected to our cardiovascular health. And and the the mouth can be a tremendous source of stress on the body if we don't have a good, healthy oral microbiome and, dentition and dental structure. Yeah, that's really well said. I, I would love for you to just because you're a practitioner mentor as am I. Any any last thoughts. You want to share encouragement for the practitioners listening. They're trying to help people with complex gut conditions looking for to expand their toolkit.

What advice do you have for them. Yeah. You know, one of the things I would say and, I mean, there's so many things I can say, but one thing I'll say is never ignore the first principles. there are so many times, and I'm sure this happens to you, Sinclair, as we would get clients coming in and they've seen, like, so many different practitioners. And, you know, the primary focus was nutrition, which is, I think, very crucial. But on the list of in the hierarchy, like if we study people as quantum, you know, beings, then food and nutrition probably comes around five, 6 or 7, making sure people are getting enough sunlight, making sure they're grounding, making sure they're drinking clean, structured water, making sure they're breathing correctly. Right.

It's a lot of the stuff that, they actually need to do isn't very sexy. It isn't very like, complicated. And therefore, I believe it often gets overlooked. So, you know, watch the sunrise and sunset as many days as you can, get your feet in the grass or get a grounding mat. I've got a grounding mat on my desk, so I stay grounded all the time. you know, making sure you're drinking clean water. We use a water distiller and we're mineralized our water. I mean, these are some basic things that are very often overlooked that not only impact our gut health, but impact, you know, our health globally.

Absolutely. I agree, it's a beautiful overview of what we have control over and what we may have, overlooked along the way. I think oftentimes the longer we suffer, the more oriented towards complexity with the protocol. We are like, oh, because I'm set such a long suffer, I must require a complex protocol. That's not necessarily true. You know, you might have been exposed to some great ideas or tools along the way, but it was right thing, wrong time, or you actually overlook the basics without realizing it.

So thanks so much for your inspiring words today. My pleasure. Thank you. Where can people find your work? Well, there's a few places, if they're more interested in learning more about breathing and breathwork, I've got a whole bunch of free tools. They can go to breathworkwithSachin.com. They can see some keynotes. You can download my PowerPoints. I share all of that freely. I've got a great guide that I send out to called Breathe Like This, Not That. So it shows people different breathing techniques for different circumstances.

So you can literally choose how you want to feel based on how you want to breathe. And then if they want to learn more about our, about our clinic and working with us, they can go to becomeproof.com. and they can learn about the work that we do. Our focus is metabolic health. So we we tend to focus a little bit more on helping people attain, you know, more energy, better weight management. helping them sleep better, improving mitochondrial function, a lot of stuff that you do as well, our focus, generally tends to be, more on global health and wellness and, specifically geared towards metabolism.

Very cool. If you ever get a chance to be facilitated by Sachin for breathwork, you simply must go. That's all I will say. That's one of my favorite experiences. So thank you for being such a bright light in the world and for being so generous with your information and your experience.