Faith, Family & the Root of True Health

Opening the podcast and introducing the guest 0:00

So the system in and of itself is more like firefighters. You know, the house catches fire. Those firefighters are there. They put out the fire, but what we really need is we need a system of healthcare that our architects that are looking at the overall building and design of the house. And I think that that's what we see more and more when we a functional medicine and this kind of this progressive movement in the healthcare sphere that is providing tools and knowledge and coaching in this space to really help families get healthy from the inside out.

Welcome to Take Back My Brain with Lori Hammer, where real healing starts in the brain. I'm Lori, a functional nutritionist and mom who's walked the path from anxiety and burnout to clarity and calm. Each week, we're going to dive into brain-based tools like amino acid therapy, gut health, fasting and faith to help you reclaim your energy, emotions and sense of self. Hello, everyone. Welcome back to Take Back My Brain. I'm your host, Laurie Hammer. And today I am joined with Dr. Dusty Hess. He is a functional medicine doctor, the founder of Upstream Health and the publisher of upstream magazines.

and functional medicine. And also what we're going to dive in today is cultural awareness to expose what's really keeping the family sick, distracted and divided. So you're gonna love this. I want you to make sure that you listen to the end because we are going have some great conversation here today because were going talk about the cultural war on health and why our society's health crisis Begins long before that root cause, everything about the root causality. Well, let's talk about what the route of the Root Cause is today.

So Dusty, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much, Lori. It's so great to be here. I just absolutely love your podcast and your voice and just the way that you communicate things and you get so down into the detail. And I absolutely loved that. That's what I love to see is people really getting down to detail and trying to figure out those root causes, but also having the awareness for everything else. Oh my goodness. It's my pleasure. I always love having you. And those of you who have been listening before, you're like, Hey, Dr.

Dusty looks a little familiar. Yes, I had Dr Dustie and his wife, Rachel, on here a while back. So you can scroll up and find that episode as well. You might want to catch that too, but we're going to dive into the culture war today, which I am super excited about. so you talk a lot, Dusti, about like families not feeling like free, right? Like something's off. There's anxiousness, just kind of like as a family vibration or whatever you want to call it. And then like the family just doesn't feel well.

Then we're kind like bouncing from thing to thing, trying to fix those things. But there's such a bigger issue there going on. Yeah. I'd say, you know, as we travel across the country and I give talks at different churches and different places, I just see families just really frustrated with health. Like the vast majority of families out there, especially Christian families, and you're looking at the healthcare system and it's almost like this. Uh, this distaste like the health system, they don't have my best interest in mind.

My doctor doesn't. That's interesting. They're just trying to push pills and, and it almost becomes this like conspiracy theory, you know, that they're all out there to get, to, get us and keep us sick and push these pills. And, so it becomes like this animus and I really, I, really don' believe that that's just the heart and the, the Holy spirit speaking. You know, that's like, you know there's that that not love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, most gentleness and self-control there.

That's just, there isn't a whole mess of frustration, fear and anger. And so we have to figure out like as Christian families, like why is that? And we had to define it and understand it. So I really try to get to this, this point with Christian and families Lori that we could be able to unpack this and, understand if we can define things, then we, can be, able, to understand what's for us and what not for, us, and then, we be beable to honor. God's original design through that. So that's the frustration that I'm hearing from families first and foremost.

Are you feeling like you're actually getting that same kind of temperature gauge when you talk with people and talk to families? Oh, yeah, all the time. And the majority of my audience would be Christian as well, right? And so I have these families that are like, we're doing all of the right things and you talked to them and they really are doing the all right thing. They're eating pretty decent. They have their own family culture of like Bible study and all those things. And they exercise and they do all these things, but something is still off.

There's this kind of underlying fear of so many different things going on.

Healthcare as firefighters vs architects 4:50

So yeah, I see that all the time too. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the fear is real, but the more we define it, The more, we understand it and how it's built and where it comes from, more. We can really free ourselves from that fear and then we can get back to true. So if we look at a system that isn't really built for health, it is built from maintenance. Right. And so the, when we, When we see it. I love the analogy of firefighter and architect. The system in and of itself is more like firefighters. You know, they, house catches fire.

Those firefighters are there. They put out the fire, But what we really need is we need a system of healthcare that our architects that are looking at the overall building and design of the house. And I think that that's what We see more and more of when we see a functional medicine and this kind of this, this progressive movement in the healthcare sphere that is providing tools and knowledge and coaching in this space to really help families get healthy from the inside out. And so we have this kind of parallel, but in same kind sphere, you have different types of doctors.

So you like a medical doctor, a DEO, DC, ND, all these different doctors that have backgrounds and different educations. This is where we define this, because a lot of people don't piece these together. You have all of these these practitioners and healthcare workers, and all of them came from somewhere, right? They got education somewhere. And so when we see where they came, from what their education was, what the curriculum was how they learn things, What their perspective is,what their philosophy is.

We can see how the end up on the other end. This is really important because that philosophy, is going to ultimately determine how their going, to react to things. So if they're trained a certain way and they are put into an environment to be able to to, to give a certain service in a way and they're put into a hospital, for example, and their train to be firefighters. We can't demonize them for not trying to. And so the, the hospital system is, is very important for let's say emergency care, acute care.

When it comes to creation care, we really need to find a health team that wraps around us with the right background of doctors that will help serve God's original design and really help us get healthy from the inside out, trained as architects, not firefighters. I love that analogy, the architect versus the firefighter, because when you do look at it that way, I know a lot of MDs, a know lot DOs. I knew a of people in the mainstream medical system. They're there because they love people and they want to help people.

They're not there because they're making a ton of money off of people being sick. That's their job and they are paid for that, but that's not their worldview as to why they were in there in the first place. When I went first into nursing, I thought this is where I'm going to make the most impact. I wanted to be a psychiatric nurse and I though this was where it is and went in with the right heart, the You know, eventually I found out that that's not where God had called me to be. And that wasn't where I was going to make the most difference.

But I went in there with the right heart and I. Was trained in their, and it took a while to unwind, you know that worldview because just just fell off, right? Absolutely. Yeah. I would say that there are. I have met so many healthcare professionals in that emergency sphere that are very frustrated because they went in with the intention of actually trying to really help people get healthy. Where, you know, if you went with intention that you want to be a surgeon, and you wanna save lives, then you probably, pretty happy with where you're at and feel very fulfilled.

But there are a lot of frustrated doctors out there that feel like they're handcuffed. And nurses and just healthcare practitioners and in general that they're just as frustrated as us and they've left the system. They've gone back to school, you know, these, the, doctors, practitioners, nurses, they start getting into. You know, other fields of functional nutrition, uh, functional medicine of, you know. Looking at the different ways to come in and actually make a difference in getting people healthy from the inside out.

And that takes more education case coming out of that perspective and that curriculum that you came from. So I, where, the rubber meets the road is. The ones that say, oh yeah, we're, you know, a lot of people say we don't have any nutrition education and you, know we, don' have their best interests in mind, but I really care about getting you healthy just like everybody else. But nobody, no, when people come into my office, nobody wants to change their diet or change, their exercise, this, that, or the other.

I don''t have time for that. So I have to just use the medications because nobody wants to do anything else. It's like that is not, that's not truth at all. Absolutely. You've created a space that doesn't allow for them to get the attention and the overall accountability. And you're not also aligning with their values. want to get people healthy and they're in that emergency care system, you have every right and potential and possibility to out of that system to go back to school, to a different education that will exemplify what you've educated yourself previously to the degree of getting to root physiologically of some of these issues and then helping people in the frame line.

That that's where, you know, they, I never give them the excuse of saying that, that they are there to actually get people healthy. Um, but there is a wide open door that can leave to be able to join the team of actually getting people. You know the science didn't fail us the culture did. And so when we step into this other space, Loria really wanting to change people's habits. We have to look at the biology and the physiology and start working back from there. And that's the worldview and a cultural belief of what we truly believe in and what will take action from those beliefs.

That's what can never exist within the healthcare system today. Right. and that why healthcare can't ever really exist there if we're dealing with belief subsets that will turn into habits. Yeah, for sure. I mean, cause we've sold out to comfort, right? Absolutely. And I really think that that's slowly killing us because we're all about, we don't want to be uncomfortable. You know, if anything feels off, We're like, how do I band-aid it? How do i medicate it, How Do I fix it. It's so true. We've normalized dysfunction, and we we have embraced it and then we embraced the band aids to go on top of that.

So I was thinking about Like my great grandma, she would every single day, and she lived to be 101. And she, I mean, would go to the doc every now and then, right? But she had two teaspoons of her homemade brandy every day in hot water. She thought that kept everything away. Like her world view was, you know, She ate lard, sugar, You know, you look back and you're like, okay, it wasn't super healthy, but it was, pretty healthy. Right? I mean, her foundation was really, really good and she had her brandy every day and, she made her dumplings and all those kinds of things.

And she was just content and happy with life. I feel like we've lost the simple content worldview. We're so driven, driven driven and we weren't created for that. Absolutely. And you think about back in her time, what were hospitals like back then? Like what was the overall responsibility of health on the individual versus the health of the system?

Culture, comfort, and the loss of stewardship 12:40

We're responsible for your health. Absolutely and hospitals, I mean, think sometimes we're like, you know, frogs that were being boiled alive and just really slowly. But if we think back, the first hospitals emerged really in the fourth century, funded and staffed by monks and nuns. You know? These were people that we were just passionate about helping others. You know, the council of Nicaea and 325, like bishops, but you know established hospitals in every city with a cathedral. Like it was, we had healthcare was in direct alignment with the church because it service to the community.

Right. It was providing care. If you had tuberculosis, if you've had something like that, that's what they were dealing with. Absolutely. They weren't micromanaging comfort. Yeah. So, so when, when that's totally saying change within the modern healthcare system, it really, It really grew out of Christian charity and it turned into more of like a corporate profit model. You know, now 90% of hospitals in the US, you know at some point in time were church run, but now we're only dealing with 15% and now, we are dealing insurance and And insurance driven systems and, and that in and of itself funded by the government and other aspects, just it doesn't service.

It turns into this capitalistic model that, that really forces down a non-service to people's ailments and really there's no rehabilitation whatsoever. There's, no cultural call you hire. You're responsible for your health coming here when you're broken, but then go out and service yourself. And that's where it. It really breaks down the history lessons like that. If we can go back to design and then walk back, let's never settle for what today offers. We have to keep an open mind and, and that leadership to drive us back.

God's original design. That leadership is the leadership of healthcare. And that's what we're totally missing. So many people are focused on what they can't control. And they're being sold something for that versus focusing on what they can control, like their movement, their relationships, family communication, what the put on their plate, how they move their bodies, emotional health, all of these things, the community, they glaze over and focus on the things they cannot and that's the leadership we need in healthcare.

Absolutely. Why do you think that is? Because if we're focusing on movement, we are focusing in communication, you know, like our family culture, it takes a lot more work than if were focusing something that we can't control. Because there's something we cannot control you know, well, whatever it might be, they're spraying our skies or whatever. We can't control that, right? And we can talk about that. Well, we could go down that whole rabbit hole, but there's nothing that I can do about it today.

What I CAN do is, you, know feed my family well. Move with my, family love my. Have a peaceful environment for my my-family to thrive in. That takes a lot more work, Dusty. Oh, absolutely. You know, what I always said, you know when I was living over in Norway, there was somebody that was telling me that, look at this craziness down in Africa where there's no laws and there is no democracy and no nothing. And there, is this sense of, oh wow, Norway with the sense, of laws, and order and what we have here.

I turned to him and I said yeah, in places that have a lot more freedom, that has a more responsibility. And that in and of itself, you look at America with so much more responsibility. When we have more freedom, You have to think about your insurance. You Have to Think about all these different things. And as what people start complaining about and they want more control from the top down to tell them what to do or make it simpler. and this is where we start to lose that, that that overall freedom or that Overall establishment of our own independence.

And when we see that within the culture of the family, there's no difference because what we really see is the cultural that we prepare ourselves is going to be separate from what the world has to say. This is where this type of health care, you have to have skin in the game, which everybody listening to this knows that you to skin and game. You have those habits and you see the way that your grandma lived, right? And in that situ in those situations, she had her habits. She had, her morning routine, things nailed down.

And that consistency is the way that the body's designed. You see the physiology and how things really work through all of these systems. Uh, the more we have those systems and the that we really come back to healthy habits, those are all rooted in our beliefs. So if our family doesn't have an establishment of belief. And there are so many different cultures out there that have different beliefs. And I'm not speaking for all other beliefs, but when I am speaking on behalf of a Christian family, you know, when we look at our beliefs our belief have values and those values are very important to us.

You know they should be. So through that those value we start to prioritize those. Let's say faith, family and health with like a subcategory of finances, right? So faith, family and health at that time, we prioritize things and actions and thoughts and family interpretations of faith family health in a way that we prioritized time for them. And then we take that that prioritize time turns into action. On those topics and those turn into habits and that's what we saw your grandmother prioritized xyz and when work through that and everybody's looking back to say I don't know what the success of me hitting being a centenarian is, you know, but because it all looks different for everybody else.

It's a personalization, But there has to be a root in an identity that comes back To a belief subset that you have for your family that will ultimately determine what your actions are and what you're actions aren't And it's going to look different from different culture to culture. But in this healthcare system that we have in the sub, not emergency care, but creation care. Right. Your family's either going have an, uh, a belief subset system, or it going sway with the way that the world is going drive it.

So how do we get into this creation, care? How do solidify that into our families? I mean, creation care in and of itself, similar to the history lesson, we have to go back into understanding how God created the heavens and the earth, how god created our soil, how God created vegetables or roaming animals. We have to look at the original design of physiology and cellular structure. Our emotional health and what we were designed to be and how those nutrients will play a role with an absorption. We have, we have to understand that there was a designer and there's order to all aspects and the more we come in because of the little bit that we know and try to control it.

the more we're going to run into issues later on in trying to fix it. And that's where we are at right now. There's so much chaos going on and it baffles me because whenever I try to explain something to somebody like infertility, And they're always saying like, Oh, you know, oh, I, and I need to be on this injection or any of those hormone replacement, or I needed to do this on the other end. And then I explained all the dissonance and they were like Oh why, what can I do with any that? I mean, my air is tainted.

My water is Tainted my, You know my relationships are taint the way what I eat like on every corner is painted. Like I can't do anything anyway. So I just have to succumb to the solutions out there. and this is the biggest issue is. in order to understand where we're at, we have to, understand what we came from. Right. And then, then we, have, to work hard at creating a difference and saying what, what our boundaries are for our families and showing and teaching our kids, the next generation, What the overall interpretation of God's design is, and not allow the world to define that for, our future generation.

but allow us to be able to have enough knowledge. And you're going to to that leadership to say, this is not of God's design. You understand these peptides have this and help educate and understand that what the world is trying to do is control and at times manipulate. But the overall fostering really takes leadership, to help you decipher whether or not you are stewarding your bodies well. Or you're trying to control your bodies to have an outcome that you wish to. Yeah. It's so interesting because it's, so easy to get caught up in the cultural war, the culture.

Conversation because I feel like chaos sometimes just feels easier. Instead of going back to the rhythms that God actually created, I was talking with a lady the other day, and she's not a client of mine, but we were talking about infertility. She was saying that her doc said, well, you're not going to get pregnant until you actually slow down and sleep. And she's like, it can't be that simple. He goes, It really is. And this was just, you know, a mainstream doc. This wasn't a functional guy. this.

Was this, was, um, You know an endocrinologist and she was there for infertility and he's, like you have to sleep. She's very driven woman. she slept like six hours a night. Let's start by sleeping more first. And she goes, well, because I wanted to see my firstborn's face, I said, OK, fine. And so she started sleeping eight hours a night. Amen. Just basic general care got better for herself, and she got pregnant. Hey, friend, just a quick break to remind you, if calming your brain is the missing piece in your practice or in you home, my Mind Thrive certification course teaches you exactly how to do that with targeted amino acid therapy.

So it's real science, real results, no band-aids. Enrollment is now open. Link is in the show notes. So back to the. Yeah. Amen. You look at that.

Rhythms of health: sleep, food, and family boundaries 23:00

The more, the more we the, more that we realize we know nothing. And what's, what the irony in this whole situation is, you know, it's so easy to get into, as doctors to. Know enough to feel like we, we have the power to control the body and manipulate it the way we want. We know enough information to be able to change the biology and create an outcome. Um, but ultimately where, where science is going, if it's not information, this isn't an information war in healthcare. The future of healthcare isn' driven by science.

It's driven. Right. And, and so if we're looking at. There's so many doctors that I've talked to recently and even in this situation that we know enough to realize that no, this isn't a pill thing. This is actually just, we need to slow down and realign back to God's design, but they don't say God. And I think that this is the point where we needed to stand up as Christians and start declaring. of God's glory and we, cause we've gone so far, it's gone full circle. Now we know so much to realize that we.

And then now we come back to declare God. Beautiful. Instead of giving that woman a pill or progesterone injections, what we're doing is telling her to slow down and sleep. And that's what we, that God's designed for life in rhythm, right? Light and dark, work and rest, feast and fast, community and solitude. Let's get back to God design, but while we do it, why don't we give him the glory that he deserves? Like that, you know, trying to blame it on X, Y, Z, or trying call it sapient care or different things like that.

No, it's time to declare God glory and it is time bring healthcare back his design. And then when we realign that people start getting pregnant again. people lose their anxiety and their depression. Their families stay together, they nurture, their next generations are healthy. Because right now, Christian families, the future is dismal at best. I mean, we're looking at multi-generations of sickness and decay. And I know that this does not have to be like a doom and gloom talk, but If we don't start focusing in on our values of faith, family and health and realizing what the system has for us and what it doesn't, and we define it in a way to help us have the awareness to change our perspective and our boundaries and start changing the way we communicate to our kids about what they put in their bodies, what They put around their Bodies and What they Put on their body.

And that includes mental emotional health. It includes relationships. it includes talking about sex and talking About different things that if we Don't define It, the world will and this This will determine what our transgenerational health will look like, Laurie. And we need, this is why this talk is so important because it gets brushed under the rug over and over again. We need to come back to this topic to be able to, and every culture is going to different. You know, I'm not going speak to everybody, but you know whatever your culture, is align with that and fight back against what the world has to offer.

I love it. Let's dive into some of those rhythms that we're bringing up. What are some those rhythm that God designed that, we can start implementing as a family? Yeah. So you think about when waking up in the morning, what is your morning routine? Is it chaos? Does it have order to it? When we are stepping into this type of healthcare, talk about the gal that got pregnant or that was trying to get pregnant and the doctor told her to slow down and sleep. When we sleep and we come back into that normal rhythm, our hormones regulate.

You know, our circadian rhythms lock in, uh, we have our normal cortisol awakening response that then shifts down to be able to allow for a serotonin to build up more melatonin within the pineal gland. And then the, the meletonin is released in the evening. We have like this deep rest and sleep and that, then stimulates our brain and the rest of our body to get into a parasympathetic mode for rest, digest and healing. And so these rhythms are so important to be able to put our families in with expectation.

And I think that this is one area that it can get really sensitive and really challenging. I see a lot of parents and I'm not going to get on this topic and go into it. But we just got to be careful about with sleep training or not sleep, training, or all of these different things. We just have to at least do our best to stay healthy. Right. And, and what, what I've seen is that in this search of health that we're, it's, like all or none in one direction. And then all, all of a sudden, like we are sacrificing our sleep because of mental health for our kids.

And, and next thing you know, it's like, there's a catastrophe on mom and dad can't sleep, because well, they got to get up and they gotta take care of so-and-so and so and. So, then they break down and then their hormones are off and their hair starts to fall out and thier thyroid starts get lumps and the start to feel pain and cancer starts show up. They're wondering, oh, what was me? There has to be awareness. in all facets and those rhythms need to be honored back to God's original design to allow for things to function optimally.

And that leadership is so important to being able to step in and say, hey, sleep is important. That's a great rhythm. Hydration is an important, that's great. Making sure that you have a proper well-rounded whole food diet that allows for the nutrients to come in, magnesium, sodium, potassium, all the things that zinc that allow us for, um, the balance out, making sure you that have Your amino acids and the diversity of your amino acid attack on on beef and a lot of other proteins out there and what that looks like.

And when we, when. We start to calm down into the basic principles of creating that alignment and rhythms around those alignment, then it doesn't feel like a chore. It just feels like, Health just feels like normalcy. It's like we're eating beef that that was designed to be eaten, not manufactured and stuffed up and gotten fat with a whole mess of omega sixes from corn or soy. Right. But. What we're trying to do is realign our family's health back to God's original design. If you use that as a litmus test, that will create the rhythms and the overall structure for your day.

And you look at it biblically, there are so many different rhythms within the Bible that we can adhere to and that can learn from. That will help you along the way. Yeah. And then we're not trying to be dogmatic either. So anyone listening, you know, it's not like, this way or the highway, but taking a look at your family and going, okay, let's start with one thing and maybe it is the sleep thing. A lot of times I see families that are, they're just constant. They've got four kids and everybody's in 27 different things, right?

So each kid has three different sports and they have music and then they They have to go to school and the school says, hey, you have come in on Sundays because we don't have any. The week is full, so we have take over your Sunday as well. And we're so afraid. We have this FOMO generation of fear, fear of missing out. Our kids are just not going to experience much at all if we let them try everything. I know in our family culture, we had definite things that the kids got to do. And sometimes it did feel a little overwhelming or maybe a bit busy, but it wasn't, I think that's just life.

Like sometimes there's a ton of stuff going on depending on the season of life that you're in. But we have to step back and take a look and go, is this really worth it? Is it really, really worthy that we're spending every single weekend at a tournament or even in our life, a horse show? How many horse shows do we really really need to do, right? And are we sacrificing our life? Like our biology, and I know you've said this before, is like wired and even, right? We're such an Amazon Prime culture right now.

We are such a Chick-fil-A culture. And I always tell people, you know, Christian chicken is still toxic. So, I mean, we have to make the decision because it can be labeled well. It looks pretty. But the inside of the cup is still super dirty. And I think that's where our health is falling down because the outside looks really fun and great and we're doing it all. We're not missing out on anything. But we are missing on so much. Yeah. I mean, you nailed it. We're praying over chicken deep fried in seed oils, and we're calling it sanctified.

Right. Yeah, yeah. And just the awareness. You touched on a thing with legalism. This is something that I feel can sink the ship. Yes. Oh yeah! And I really, really want to emphasize this. There is a big difference between legal and stewardship. I love that, yes. When we're talking about stewarding our families well and setting up boundaries, this isn't legalism. This is about seeing God's original design for, like when we were talking seed oils, we are talking fats, why do we have to say good fats?

Why do have say healthy fats. Why are bad fats there? I mean we should just have fats I want somebody to go out to look up healthy fat. Healthy fats are just fats found in nature. Okay, and, understand the physiology and how the body processes fats as energy and the overall not eating all the time and allowing for our bodies to get into a fasting state, which then, then utilize it, you know, liver producing ketones to be able to break down fats for energy. And we use that for. Through that process that helps clean the brain that.

Be able. To decrease inflammation, it helps regulate out. autophagy and breaking down cells and creating new cells, and it cleans house. You know, we have spring cleaning. Why do we spring-cleaning? Because, you know things build up. That is the natural rhythm of the human body. And when we take it away from that, We see the disarray and we see that the buildup and the chronic disease coming from the inside out. and that's what we need to have the proper leadership and proper information to be able to see.

But then from, that we needed the personalization to come in and say, hey, Like here's some good healthy rhythms. Here's really instead of before we before, we start with the pill before. And now I'm not talking about like pharmaceuticals. It can easily be an herb. it can be easily a supplement. Then you realize, I mean, So many discussions with large corporations that are out in the world right now that literally selling their pharmacies or putting their pharmacists through functional medicine school to be able to push supplements over pharmaceutical drugs.

Because there is a culture right where people want a more natural option. But let me warn you, there's no difference in taking an herb for an ill. or a pill for an ill. You have to be able to still take the responsibility of stewarding your body well. And this is the same topic. that I find all the time with this topic of, of legalism or stewardship is, is oh no, like I break down and I'm praying for my body to heal. And I think that that's a beautiful thing. I Think we need to incorporate more, absolutely more faith into our healthcare system.

Yes. Because of the church has been hijacked by institutions and overall insurance companies and all the faith has left the church, we need to start bringing health back to church. But through that process, when cancer arrives, and when these different things arise and we start praying for health, And if we don't, if, If we allow for the grayness of stewardship to gray out with legalism and we have excuses of why we say no to things or why that that chicken that's deep fried in seed oils and We pray over it to make it sanctified.

Like that is not a good enough excuse. We have to take the responsibility for realizing that, that Is not of God's design and the way that we're raising our cattle, the Way that were raising Our food and our vegetables and Our herbicides and pesticides. All of these different things, we have to take responsibility over how we're taking care of God's ecosystem, the way that He designed it and what we are putting in our bodies, around our body and in out brains and our emotional health.

Legalism vs stewardship in Christian health 35:40

All that has to come into play and that needs to be stewardship and separating God design from the world's design. Absolutely. Cause we've allowed the government, cause we'd taken a step back as the church and allowed government to, to shape that culture, just shape what our health is supposed to look like. You know, the food pyramid and, you know putting fluoride in the water, all those kinds of things. Like we're doing all of this for you. And there was a generation that stood back and said, okay, yeah, that's great.

Because I don't want to deal with this. We came out of world war two and we need somebody to take care of, because everything was such a mess. Dope deeper even into that I feel like right now because we're on such a mission all the time and that mission keeps us so distracted and so then we just, you know, advocate. And what I want to say like we. just kind of turn over our health care. We outsource it, right? We out source it to somebody else. And so you and I are on the same pages, like we don't want to outsourced our education of our kids, we want keep that in our home, in not for control, but for facilitating how we want our kids to be raised and what we And so that there's nobody that understands your family better than you, if you take the time to understand it, right?

There's, nobody cares about your kids more than, you. Right. And, so we get frustrated with all these systems. What's instead of being frustrated, with the systems, let's not participate in them to the degree that we currently are. Spot on. Yeah. I would say with that. You know, when we're looking at, you know how families are responding to, they want to live longer, right? But are we doing that out of vanity or are doing out that of, um, stewarding the body as well and setting a boundary on what that looks like, how to life better?

Like what is that, of service? And that is, we are measuring success by survival, not stewardship. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. And stewardship. I mean, it is so important. My husband's going to have a knee replacement soon, right? Not necessarily on the same page about it, but he's like, Laurie, I just want to live life. You're like I'm not going worry about all those details, you know, about the metal in my body. Like he just, he goes, if I worry him, then all that stuff's gonna happen. He's just so true, so he was just like this is just the way that it and this just what I do and we're gonna move on because he is not worried about longevity of everything.

his quality of life and what he's able to do with our kids and our grandkids and all those kind of things. So, you know, sometimes we may not agree on the choices of, everyone in our life, but look at the heart behind it. And it still aligns. Absolutely. It still lines with. Our family culture, right? It's still aligned with, we're doing all these things so that we have the longevity of our family. We have Yeah. The generational health legacy, you know, where we can just enjoy them, love them and make the most out of everything that we have with them without compromising.

No, no, it gets really complicated. I mean, I just had a family member that had open heart surgery, an ear replacement, shoulder replacement. This is becoming commonplace. And I think that, we need to step back and realize that there's only so much that can do with our unbroken bodies. Right. We didn't, we didn' have the awareness when we were younger of what we put in our bodies. Our parents didn have. The awareness we did. They didn, they didn. And we're not going to put blame on them. But the more we understand, the.

More we dive in, when. We look at our education, it's the same kind of thing. There's no difference between our faith disciplines, our spiritual disciplines and our family disciplines. Right. And we look at those disciplines too. There's no difference between those and our health disciplines. Yeah. I guess you could push that into financial disciplines as well. You know, but you know when you look At our education and the way that we are intentional with that, we have to be just as intentional With our faith, be Just as Intentional with our family, to Be just As intentional, with Our health.

And it doesn't have To be overwhelming. We didn't make it overwhelming, The world made it Overwhelming. Right. And, and through that, the process, especially the, process of creating products for making life more comforting and easier has led us down this path. And that's the same thing with knee replacements and shoulder replacements, which is part of life. You get into your fifties. Um, you get in your sixties, y- you're probably due for that knee replacement or that shoulder replacement, but guess what?

Our kids can have a different future. And this is where we're seeing the loudest voices, is we are seeing younger kids that are saying their parents break down and they're saying, no, I don't want to be that when I get older. And irregardless whether or not their parent are helping them understand that and leading out of empathy and humility. To be able to say, Hey, you, what I did in my past, I can't change, but let me tell you what i've learned and what would do differently and how I better lead you and, and.

Lead you up in a way that you shall go. That will allow for your next steps to look brighter than mine and that selflessness. and the ability to see where the world is going and what they're doing to all of the different aspects of God's design that will ultimately lead to their children to have a better life forward. But it might mean that their child will have to say no to what other family members or friends or community are doing or saying. And we have be able to raise them up in a way to that resiliency and that boldness to be to believe in something hard enough and strong enough that they're willing to stand up to the status quo.

And we're not just in a health crisis here. We're in values crisis. If we can be able to change the values of our next generation, they will have a brighter future than us. And this goes, we see this, you know, I don't want to necessarily jump topics here, but you, know if we look at fertility, this is a perfect example of how God's design is truly breaking down and this a sensitive topic for a lot of people. Yeah. Oh my goodness. But you know, Lori, of all topics, this is probably one of them that I'm super passionate about.

Do you think about all the, with as far as what we value, faith, family, and health within the Christian community, we want to have kids. And yet other people don't really care about kids and it's like, you now, the healthcare is abortion and at the human right, like that. So, so of. Subcultures that should really be having babies and should be. be able to take care of them and in a structure and a framework of biblical principles that allows for them to feel loved, heard, seen, and loved. I mean, they should be having kids.

And the problem is, is that the church is not participating in healthcare anymore. They have literally exercised, like they have excised health from the congregation because it's the devil has come in and said, Oh, that's legalism. You can't talk about that because people are frustrated with their weight or this out of the other. And it has become very vanity driven and they can lose weight. They've tried all the diets, they tried everything else and, and nobody is leading them in a way that helps them understand their body's physiology in the way God's designed them.

and they don't have any leadership within stewardship. This topic of infertility, we have to get into the details. And when we start to see a topic like infertilty, and we help people understand God's design with it, then we can really understand how far we've strayed. And then families can start to come back to their foundation of belief subset and see the impact that it will have on the next generation. Because if you don't get there now, it'll never be there. We're talking about not your kids, not our kids but our kid's kids.

Kids that we're affecting. Yeah, for sure. So let's dive in a little bit about fertility because a lot of people think, well, it's just genetics. But really it's environmental, it is our behaviors. It's the lack of the rhythm, the discipline, and the stewardship because we haven't been taught it. I meet with a lot of women, that's mainly who I met with. And I have a handful all the time, they want to get pregnant. What do we do? We talk about their rhythms. We might do some testing. We work on the things that they might be deficient in, but we're not trying to mimic what they would receive from the doctor.

You know, um, we weren't designed to live with plastic. I mean, plastic wasn't in the Garden of Eden. It's convenient. But there's definitely things that you have control over there. Stop drinking out of plastic water bottles. You don't use plastic for your food. All those kinds of things. We're so focused on recycling and saving the world and all those kind of thing. took another step back, right? And we looked at like, why do we even need to recycle? Why do even we need, you know, X, Y, and Z and like worked on that positioning.

And then, then we would, we'd be a step further. It's kind of the root of root, like we were talking about at the beginning, but to kind dive into the infertility, what are things, some things that we really need pay attention to that? We've lost the rhythm for. First, I would say it's very easy to take a victim mindset here. It's easy. To also be put into a position where people feel like they're broken and, or they, they are just frustrated. Like, why me? Yeah. You know, um, like some, some people don't have to try at all.

They just do, and they get pregnant and then other people, it was like, we try really hard. We really want to have kids and we can't. And just understand that, that. This isn't like a victim mindset. It's just, it doesn't exist here. We have to really what all, all of what we're about, what I'm about to talk about. it's going to feel like, Oh my goodness. Yeah. Like overwhelming. And what, I want to preface before I go into this is everything that I am about go through the reason why we go though it, because we have go down to see the beautiful.

very detailed, organized design of God's hand in every aspect of our lives. And so the more we try to control and the More we have environmental behavior and lifestyle shifts, the different products that can cause a lot of different issues within our body and around our bodies and relationship issues and this, that, or the other. Realize that we have to go down to figure out what that's caused and then walk it back. So as we describe it, we're describing, oh my goodness, like all these different things.

But I want you to take, I wanted people that are listening that might have fertility issues. See, just say, wow. Wow. Like God's design is so amazing. Right. And it's beautiful. When we start to realign that, a lot of these things start come back into normal rhythms, like we've always talked about, and things starts to detox, things started to balance out.

Fertility, environmental stressors, and root causes 47:40

We have to have the awareness. Some people. since we haven't had the intentionality have gone so far that there might need to be intervention. There might to need be supplementation or different things because we've gone downstream so, but if we can get upstream and start seeing how these things are affecting us, then we could be able to have power over it. And this is where I think that before I get into this, is like, I want you to feel powerful. I Want people to Feel powerful i want people To feel like we're in relationship with the creator of the universe and of all physiology and Of all creation and all everything this is creation care when we get back to his original design we see the masterful design And we should feel empowered by that.

We shouldn't feel broken and that we need to intervene. What we see is how we've become broken because of our environmental behavior, lifestyle, comfort crisis that have. And then we can be able to declare, no, I will not participate in that, will steward it well and then you can start to reap the benefits and hopefully we catch it early enough. that it doesn't need that intervention. And we can start to be really surprised and in awe at how much God's physiology can adapt when we actually start just steward it well.

So yeah, I hope that aligns, but now I just kind of, and I don't want to do too much in here because it can feel really defeating. But if we look at like you were talking about the plastics and we looked at pesticides and synthetic chemicals, like all of these things, they distort our hormones. when we don't sleep well and we're staying up late at night or we are on screens and those blue lights are creating circadian rhythm issues. All of these can disrupt our endocrine system and that in and of itself will disrupt your estrogen production, your progesterone production.

It will destruct your overall hormone binding receptors and it will create dissonance within the system to allow for your period and egg production as well as testosterone from, and not just females, we're talking about males. We're taking about a sperm pound going down 1% per year since the seventies. It's down over 50% in 50 years. Yeah. 50 Years. You take somebody that's 50-years-old when they were born. sperm count was up by 50%. So we're not just talking about females here, we are talking across the board, human physiology, God's design is totally disrupted.

We look at nutrient deficiency, the way that our soil used to be rich in zinc and magnesium and a lot of the different things that were that were necessary for sperm motility and overall immune health. Our diet is calorie rich, but it's micronutrient poor. And we have to be able to look at things like selenium omega-3s and fiber and diversification to allow, and we don't have think hard about this stuff. No, we're not. You know, it's not like we have to list out these things and we had to make sure that we get all these in order or like our macronutrients on our plate.

We just have eat whole foods that aren't sprayed with a whole mess of chemicals. That's the reality is we can laugh at what we've done. to our food and our production, because it is really that simple. When we don't spray it with chemicals and we do not manufacture it and don not genetically engineer it, and do we not deplete our soil and monocrop, we can be able to have God's original design and it actually creates healthy bodies. All of that dissonance really comes up with chronic inflammation.

It comes with adrenal stress and mitochondrial exhaustion. And this, it's all fueled by process of food, stress, sleep disruption. That goes into, not to bore even more, Lori, like I have a couple more points like gut brain connection. Like so many people hear about that, but the gut, brain and hormone disruption, so HPA and HBG axis disruption that's microbiome damage, and then we don't have estrogen. Clearance so we have estrogen dominance and then you look at epigenetic silencing and this is an attack Even not with with peptides as well that so many people are hearing about these days.

It's like Oh, well, I would you know, i was born with these genes No, it's how we surround them how, we bathe them god doesn't create junk god and create something that's just there that broken initially. It's it's looking at how those genes express themselves. What are we bathing them in? What's our environment? And as we add all of these different things that I've talked about, those jeans will express ourselves in an unhealthy way. And then we're more predisposed for breakdown. The devil is in the details, the devil can't create anything new.

He's not going to create Genetics, the devil can't do that. What the Devil can do is he can take genetics and he, can layer it with a little bit of like, you know, I can change it when you become unhealthy and you start to do X, Y, Z. I'm just going to allow for this to express itself and it will be able to cause dissonance. He's done that in every aspect. he he. Can't change agriculture, but he Can change how, how they're fed. He can change how the manipulation of the finances of how people will get paid better if they weigh more.

You know, all of that will play a role. So the devil's in the details. It's not, you weren't born with bad genes or you were born not being able to be fertile in a sense that you just have to allow for your genes to be bathed in an environment that will allow the expression and the healthy expression of turning on the good ones, turning off the bad ones. Right. We have have remember that everything is connected. Everything is all woven together. It looks messy on back of the tapestry, but when you turn it over, it's just this beautiful masterpiece.

And God created us to a masterpiece, right? It tells us that in Ephesians that we are His masterpiece And so when one piece is out of order, when there's lots of missed stitches, the whole view, whole picture of everything looks a little bit distorted. And that goes to the physical health, which we forget a lot as the church. We really focus on the spiritual health. But then we have some camps where they're just focusing on physical piece of all of this and fixing, getting all the bad stuff out and, fixing your deficiencies and doing that But then we have to go into the spiritual alignment as well.

And so I think fertility, I Think health in general has a lot to do with, with our spiritual health. and if our Spiritual health isn't in alignment, then, and there's this whole state of disease going on. Absolutely. I mean, fertility is the canary in the coal mine here. Yes. It's a mirror of culture, not science. If we look at infertility as the hero of infertilty is this modern medicine that comes in to inject progesterone into your back end. That is not the Hero. No. The Hero is awareness of the culture that says no to things and removes things, doesn't add things.

It removes things. It says, oh wow, we're going to connect as a family and we are going slow down at least one day a week and were going be able to have that connection. That right there can make a massive impact on the next generation just by having a little bit of that intentionality. And so the true hero here is really homes that slowdown and start to say more no to things, not an not in a legalistic way, but in stewardship to honor the things that they value of faith, family, and health. And that's how we restore future generations.

If we want to have future generation, you look at this canary in the coal mine of infertility, then we have to start saying no to things. We have start bathing our genes with things we're going to allow for and our women that are What is being crossed across that placenta? What are you nourishing that body with? And, and don't take this in the wrong way as if like, oh, I've damaged my kid because I vaccinated my kids or I damaged. My kid, because look, look actions have happened. What things have happen in past and with the way that, that mothers, what you might've been eating or what might have been doing at that time.

I mean, there's, uh, There's there. 50, 60 year olds that are getting knee replacements, they're getting shoulder replacements is not, woe is me. They understand the consequences of the separation of design, but then we can teach the next generation of how to avoid that in the future. So don't take the victim mindset. You knew what you knew. And then you move on to focus on the things that you can control. And this should really feel like hope. It shouldn't feel, like, oh my goodness, we're just so broken.

Everything from our air to our food or our soil to everything is just broken and there's just no hope, no, We should feel. Like, wow, have the awareness. We know what to do. we can have. The leadership now that will align with our culture, that we'll align. With our values. and that direction will allow us for a better future and hope for the future. Our next generations can be, I truly believe, Lori, that the healthiest, most productive, the most vitalistic and powerful families, this side of eternity should be Christian families.

Yeah, a thousand percent. Yeah. They're going to change the world, but they have to have another generation. Yes. they. Have to be able to produce, they to honor what they, have now so that there's two generations ahead are going have a better, we're gonna have four generations before we really see the turnaround of the church. And if the Church doesn't invite health back into the pews, then we are gonna to a massive issue with having children or even having a church in the future. Yeah, and while I think we're so focused on, you know, this is the end times, okay, fine.

And he's coming back for a glorious church. The word tells with that, that he is coming for glorious Church and I firmly believe it's a healthy church, You can't have a glory if you're not healthy, right? Body, mind and spirit. So when we are thinking about this culture war, You know, you keep saying, don't, Don't go into the doomsday, and it's because he's coming back for that glorious church. He's come back because the church is thriving and the impact is affecting generations and there's still going to be people saved in the end times and all those kinds of things.

And so right now, like all of you adults listening right, now this is the generation that is we have to, what I want to say, the vision begins at home, right? We're teaching our children, it's spreading out. I always talk about the ripple effect, you know, I talk to a lot of moms, they're like, You are the heart of the home. Right? we are The heart Of the culture right now. And so when the family is in alignment with who God created them to be, um, What they are eating, and what theyre doing, And what their thinking and What their viewing, all those things, when we Are in Alignment, It is this huge ripple Effect.

right? And so we don't have to worry about all of the details. We don t have the things that we can't control. What we need to be worrying about is, are we creating that ripple effect? What does our family look like? A lot of people come to our house, they're like, I just want to stay here. Can we just move in with you for a little bit? It's because it's peaceful, right. And we've got good food. I pray over them when they come see me, all those kinds of things. But It's because there's a peaceful feeling, it's not chaos.

And so we don't want chaos in our home. We want this love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness and self-control. we want the fruit of the Spirit that constantly ripples out from everything. When people walk past us, they're like, ooh, she feels different. and that's, because of The Holy Spirit. Amen. Amen. That's exactly it. We are in relationship with the creator of the universe. Do you believe that? Yes. Jesus Christ changes hearts.

Hope, conviction, and rebuilding health at home 1:00:00

When your heart is changed, your actions change. Your emotional state changes. Everything changes in our belief subset of having a relationship with Jesus Christ because he's a heart changer, right? And then that changes culture, it changes community, changes what your family looks like, and changes addictions, that change everything because when the heart changes, everything follows. And when we look at the world, what the word sells, the words sells fear because fear keeps us dependent. Yep. Okay.

But, but stewardship, small faithful actions really builds the freedom away from that. And that the overall heart change and the Freedom and Stewardship, the way that God's called us to be able to honor our bodies and we'll honor the temple and to look at that, we look the world differently. We look at our food differently, we look our actions differently. We'll look in our education differently but look out our family differently we'll get our community differently all those things because the heart change.

That's the culture driver that is health care and the moment we bring health back to church and put it back in the pews is the movement that we be able to see Christian families take back their future generations that they can actually have pewds filled with kids. And this rebuilding the culture at home is exactly what you're talking about. Rebuilding those foundations and taking back control over what is already theirs. Instead of the world on TikTok or Instagram or YouTube or looking at pretty much any article out there focusing on the fear of what can't control.

Yeah. All of those different things that are constantly like, oh, well, it's this tuition here. You need a supplement with this, or you need to do this. Or you needed to have this kind of crazy diet. All these different that people are being sold in this niche market of kind how capitalism has taken over the healthcare industry and niching all these, you need a, even think about it from a perspective of a gym, a movement, as simple nutrient that the body was designed to move and resist things and lift things.

And we've built buildings that we walk into with machines to create resistance of different muscle groups. It's embarrassing when you start to have a litmus test of God's design, and then you started looking at what we've done to it and to try to. Create something to be able to supplement that it is laughable, but that should be that. Should really drive our energy for our families to Yes. To have hope. We're in a relationship with the creator of the universe. When we understand his design and we start to rely, we have HOPE.

Because when we just bring it back to the original design, and when you steward that well, then what we raise is CONVICTION, not CONFUSION. You know, if we teach our children why these things matter, they inherit conviction. They'll carry clarity into a confused world that's trying to sell them a whole bunch of things. This is the education we need to pass on to the next generation. It's a culture of care doesn't start in institutions. It starts in families who live differently and those sacrifices aren't easy.

It's a culture that begins around the kitchen table. it spreads, it's spreads from your family tree. And when faith leads health follows because faith is led from a. Culture of care. and this creation care is really the future of healthcare and leadership is culturally driven, not scientifically driven. All right. Preach it, preach it. I love it! So good, Dusty. Hopefully everyone is thinking this is eye-opening. This is amazing. Is there anything that you want to leave the audience with? Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.

You get me going and the next thing you know, it's like I'm rolling down a hill and I am a snowball. But, you now, this topic, especially of any other topic I just super passionate about because it just breaks my heart when there's another Christian family that can't get pregnant and have a kid. There's another Christian family that's falling apart that has chronic disease. And getting to the root of the route, like you said in the beginning, I think it was a great way that you communicated it. So many people are focused on the things that they can't control.

When they have a symptom or they're broken down and they are looking at how am I broken? What do I need to do to be able to fix it? It's hard to have hope. It's like you have hope because you figured out what's broken and you need to fix it or what is disconnected rather and how to reconnect it. But what I'd hope that people could leave from this podcast with is really simple. Stop focusing on the things that you can't control and focus on things you CAN control. The things YOU CAN'T control don't allow them to control you.

focus on the things that you can control, realign your family's health, rhythms, emotional, physical, spiritual health back to God's original design. Focus on things you value, declare what your families is all about, and come back into those healthy rhythms. All those things, you CAN control. You could literally wake up in the morning instead of wake-up time, morning time. You set your rhythms, you set like a day where you have family time you don't get too busy. you can say no to things, You have control over all of that.

What you put on your plate, what you purchase and when you re-establish that and you Re-Establish your finances to be able to honor put your Finances and things that you truly do value you notice that it balances out you will always have the abundance to Be able To provide for what You can control and if you focus on what? You Can control you're going to find that You feel more powerful, you feel like you have more control, and you start to see the fruit of that. And don't allow every item and every product and so many people out there to tell you that Here's how you're broken.

This is how the things that you can't control. Here is a product for that. You need this colostrum for your gut because your, your guts is lacking the colustrum. you need the Colostrium. Let me tell you about this Colustrium, it is amazing. And it's not about what you. Can't. Control. Focus on how to nourish it the way that God's designed it, put you back in the driver's seat and focus on the. Things that can and hope is so, so. So there for you, you just have to honor it. Awesome. Dusty, thank you.

Thank you, Thank You for being here. I love this conversation. You're going to have to come back and we're gonna have chat again. If you want to find Dustie, you're, gonna find him at UpstreamHealth.com. Um, so make sure you check everything out there. thank everyone for listening. And I appreciate each and every one of you make you like, subscribe, and I know you know somebody that needs this message. So share this with them. God bless you I will see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to Take Back My Brain.

If today's episode helped you connect with hope or direction, I want you to follow the show, leave us a review, and share it with someone who needs it. And if you're ready to start your own healing journey, explore our courses and our coaching programs at lorihammer.com backslash store. So until next time, remember you cannot medicate away a nutrient deficiency and healing your brain isn't just possible, it's Powerful.