
Dr. Keesha Ewers, PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc – How To Recover From Post-Election Blues

Medical Director, Holtorf Medical Group

Founder and Medical Director of the Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program
How To Recover From Post-Election Blues
Dr. Keesha Ewers, PhD, MSN, ARNP, FNPc
Full Transcript
Introduction to Dr. Kesha Ewers 0:00
A lot of stuff you can't hope to work with another episode of the Peptide Summit. Today we are pleased to have, Doctor Kesha Ewers. She's going to talk about how to reverse emotional trauma, induced autoimmunity, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. With peptides and really kind of, a spectrum program, on how to help everyone. So many people have these, you know, past emotional trauma that you may or may not know. And, then just kind of doing some background research on it. And I was just fascinated.
I'm like, man, a lot of people need this help. So I really think it's going to be a really educational, time here and, and so I'm so happy to have, that Kesha with us. Thank you. Oh, thanks for having me. Yeah. Great. Great. So, to to, as, integrative, medical experts, doctor and sexology. Family practice, and, she's a psychotherapist and psychotherapist and or biologist. She's board certified in functional medicine and aromatic medicine and is founder medical director of the Academy of Integrative Medicine Health Coach certification program.
So, that's a hot thing right now. And she trains people for that. She's been in the medical field for over 30 years. After conducting the heart study in 2013, which is healing unresolved trauma, she developed the heart model for understanding how past childhood trauma and tax help. This led to the creation of the new, unbroken, lines program for patients to heal their own trauma. And, in the mystic medicine deep immersion healing retreat, she leads at her home in San Juan Island, Washington. She's a popular speaker, including at Harvard.
From the TEDx talk stages and bestselling author solving the autoimmune puzzle. And to really put together how, you know, we say like psychological, you know, and your emotional is different than physical Ed I mean, it's it's neurons firing and all that. Everything is a vicious cycle. And we'll get into that. And again, it's, she vessel out there solving the autoimmune puzzle, the woman's guide to reclaiming emotional freedom and Vibrant Health. The quick and easy autoimmune, autoimmune Paleo cookbook, anti-inflammatory recipes with, seven ingredients are less for busy people.
And your libido story, a workbook for women who want to find sex and create our sexual desire. Perked up everyone's ears. They're, you can listen to her, mystic Medicine
Personal Autoimmune Journey and Root-Cause Medicine 3:00
radio show and finder programs at WW. Dot dot. Dr. Kisha dot Dr.. K e s h a.com. Well. Thank you. Thanks for having me. You've got a lot. It sounds like you've helped a lot of people. And again, and we'll get into this, like, mentioned as your background reason to look at some of the studies and this, and it's, it's very clear how, you know, childhood trauma just affects, future health and emotional, well-being, and everything's a vicious cycle and, you know, break in families and, the cycle is just such a big problem.
How how did you get into this? What what led led to this? Well, I started out at the age of 19 as an RNN in the intensive care unit and was humming along for ten years doing that, having four children, raising them, running marathons. I was I was quite, my friends called me the Energizer Bunny and very busy. And then this is how my patients describe it to all of a sudden. Right. And air quotes. I got sick and it was one morning I woke up. I had 10 pounds of extra weight over my joints. They were red. They were inflamed, swollen.
I was in so much pain and it was like someone had taken the batteries out of the Energizer bunny. I was just flattened, so I got in. Yeah. Got it. And my, my doctor said, so how is there any how do immune disease in your family history? And I said, yeah, I think my grandfather had rheumatoid arthritis. In fact, I'm 55 now and my grandfather died at the age that I am with. It was in a wheelchair. Yeah. And she said, well, rip two prescriptions off her pad. You know, one was for methotrexate, one was for a nonstarter.
Two anti-inflammatory drugs said when you get worse, not if come back, you know, change your meds. I mean, that was it, right? I said, well, hang on, hang on, hang on. I actually, you know, cook my own food. I'm very disciplined. I run, I'm very healthy. What what else is there? I'm sorry dear, you have drawn the short end of the genetic lottery, right? This is it. And just kind of close the book, put it on the shelf. So on my way home, I remember thinking my model of medicine has no answers for me, but there must be something out there.
And so I went into PubMed and started looking for research. And I found an article on yoga, an autoimmune disease. And, and, you know, really good outcomes. And so I went to my next, you know, the next day to my first yoga class. And the yoga teacher during that class actually said this one word. And enough about it that I got curious and went home and looked it up and it was either Veda and I or Vedic medicines, the sister science of yoga, these 10,000 year old sister science out of India. And when I went and looked it up, I thought, oh, this explains so much, because all those years ago, they actually understood that we're not all the same, that every medication that you take is not, you know, that you give is not going to behave in the same way in every single body.
But we can't all be on the same diet, you know, like all this is started unfolding. And I thought, oh, this is why this person died in the ICU, and this is why this, you know, like, this makes so much sense. And and then I read the IRA. Mehta says the autoimmune disease is undigested anger. I remember sitting back in my chair and looking at the computer, kind of pissy like, why? No, no, not an angry person, okay? It's just you got an anger management course in Berkeley and makes them too angry to go.
Right. And so, so I, you know, I thought, oh, maybe this is the problem, that I don't allow myself to feel angry. I go running instead. You know, I don't actually digest my feelings. This idea of digesting your emotions, your memories, your feelings, your experiences was completely alien and foreign to my way of thinking. And of course, that's not the way we think in our culture and in our model of medicine. So I thought, And so I learned how to meditate while I was taking yoga. And one day I was sitting there thinking about the word autoimmune, and I thought, gosh, you know, auto immune means I'm attacking myself.
I am actually, killing myself in a societally acceptable manner. I a lot of people do that. You're making me think. Yeah, yeah. And I thought so. So why do I want to die? Because in this moment I don't. So when's the first time I wanted to die? And this was a very, very important question. Instead of how do I get out of my suffering as quickly as possible? I started asking this question when is the first time I wanted to die? Why do I want to die? And I started tracing my memories backwards, looking for this undigested anger root cause.
And I found this ten year old little girl version of myself who was being sexually abused by the vice principal of my elementary school. And I looked at her sitting in Key West, Florida, on this balcony and Navy housing under a palm tree. And she really wanted off the planet, did not understand anything that was going on, had no language to convey what was going on, just didn't, you know, didn't understand anything. And I remember thinking, that has to have something to do with this disease I have right now.
And sure enough, science tells us that. And when I started really working at that level, my RA went away within six months. I never did go on those medications and it's never been back in 25 years. What did your rheumatologist say? We'll see. We'll see what these medicines have. Right. They're just not good. Yeah I never took them. Yeah I mean that's what I'm saying. Yeah. You go back to her and tell her. Hey, now, are you just, like, moved on now?
Trauma, ACEs, and Brain Changes 9:00
I just moved on. Yeah, because I was already in, I. I signed up and applied for graduate school, started learning about Vedic medicine. You know, I, I thought, gosh, you know, I've worked in the intensive care unit and then hospice and, and then these two arenas of medicine. It's actually a pretty darn good care. But the average person does not get that kind of integrative model. And so I want to go back to school and bring that so that you're not on a ventilator or in your last six months of life that we can actually address this piece of it and heal it.
And so I started on a journey back to several graduate school programs, as I learned how the skills to be able to do exactly that. And that's what I do today. Wow. Well, that's really neat. And it's kind of a shame at the same time when I, you know, talked to so many so integrative, I don't know what we call ourselves, you know, and it they have to get sick before they realize it's same with me. I, you know, it's ingrained in medical school. Anything alternative. It's quackery. It's no evidence.
And so the opposite. And you said, you know, that, hey, everyone's different. The whole system now is getting away from everyone being different where it's, you know, big data. You know, there's evidence base. So if that doesn't work for you, then it's that it's your fault. And the studies are funded by the pharmaceutical industry, so it's in that, in that model of match pill to ill or just symptom management, instead of really getting to the root of why the nervous system is firing and categorizing this breakdown.
Yeah, yeah. I think anything that isn't standard dogma, it's boring. You can get a post like, see, there's nothing published. Well because that what are the what are the journals funded by the drug companies. They do the ads, you know. Right. But yeah. So in doing our background, you I just became more and more amazed. And I have this picture, so many patients that I have, and people I know, you know, really having these issues. And I think it's like two thirds of kids have had a significant traumatic and one third, like, multiple.
And it seems to me like that on going would be worse. And also it does seem and what seems to fit in real life for me, like patients that have been sexually assaulted, seem to be have the worst symptoms. Is that true? Well, that's where the Aces study. The Adverse Childhood Experiences study came out of was, the Kaiser Permanente had a weight loss clinic, and it was a really good program. People were losing their weight and getting, you know, getting what they needed out of it. But a certain percentage of them were dropping out, even though they were successfully losing weight before they got to the end.
And so the clinic director decided to take a look at that and call people back in and ask why they'd stop. And a large percentage of them had sexual abuse in their past. And so, you know, the thing of it is, is there are capital T traumas, adverse childhood experiences that are capital T's, and those are the ones that you're mentioning violence, sexual abuse. But there are also lowercase t traumas that actually have the same exact changes in brain architecture. Other words shrinkage of prefrontal cortex or adult brain and growth in the volume of the amygdala or our limbic primal reptilian fight fires exactly.
And so, you know, that's really interesting. There was a study that was done by mall and and group. And what they found is people that identified as being chronically overwhelmed on a perceived stress index have the same exact brain changes. And as someone that had PTSD from any of the capital T traumas of abuse, neglect, abandonment and childhood. So that's alarming because I don't have a patient that doesn't identify as chronically overscheduled and overwhelmed and stressed out. And then I think to it seems to matter how they perceive it.
Right. That's it. It's all about perception. Yeah. Like you have the worst thing happen to you, you know. Well I'll move on. You know, again. So we have this cycle that actually changes brain not only chemistry but architecture like you're saying. Yeah that changes the, the, the actual brain structure by shrinking and putting holes in the very part of your brain that is in charge of executive decision making and impulse control. So yes and yes. So much for sticks and stones, right? Yeah. Yeah. Wow.
And so yeah. How does this typically manifest itself as children get older. Yeah. So according to the Adverse Childhood Experiences study, which was done by Kaiser and the CDC or center for Disease Control, you know, it's the largest study of its kind over 17,500 participants that were Kaiser enrollees. They asked about before the age of 18. Did you experience any of these ten capital T traumas and, you know, if you said yes to one of them, you had an ace score of one. If you said yes to two, you had an ace score of two, and so on.
And what they discovered is the higher the number of aces, the higher your risk of any of the chronic illnesses we see in our culture today, including autoimmune disease, which is now the number one cause of death in the United States. Now, heart disease still holds the prominent position, but now we're starting to relabel some of the parts of heart diseases, autoimmune. So it's like, wow, right. We're finding that so many things even osteoporosis. Autoimmune. Exactly. Yeah. Type two diabetes used to not be thought of as autoimmune.
Now it is you know, so you know we have over 150 kinds of autoimmune diseases, 80% of which are diagnosed in women. Wow. And and that's how we see it. I see such a commonality. And when I was on your summit, we we talked about this, how, you know, it really shifts the immune system and, where normally there's, you know, basically one which gets up inside the cell to of outside this other balanced. And we look at autism, autoimmunity kind of kicks in in five major chronic Lyme, really even just aging to some degree, cardiovascular disease is that it shifts this one is too low to too high and it's just inflammation, you know, so like, oh, you got some inflammation.
But the key is so they treat it up here. You know, they treat the end point instead of fixing the underlying problem. Exactly. And and the thing of it is, is so much of this is about the way that your nervous system is set up to respond to the things that are happening in your external environment, and that happens in childhood, no matter if you have sexual abuse or you have had an experience and every single human has of rejection or betrayal or not feeling like you're good enough, which is what my study show the Healing Unresolved Trauma study actually went through.
These distinctions of, you know what, it doesn't matter if it's not sexual abuse or violence. There are these other things that also make a difference because it's about your perceptions. Yeah. Some of the people I've done therapy on, like the very worst thing that happened to I remember a woman one time who came to me with Hashimoto's thyroiditis. She was the third in Three Sisters as she was growing up, and she never got anything new in her perception, in her memory. Maybe she did, but she didn't feel like she ever did that.
She wore hand-me-downs the entire time she grew up, and that was this major trauma for her. And now and and so it so people do this comparison of. Oh, well, what I had a pretty good childhood and I'm always so glad to hear that. But I always say everyone's had trauma because, you know, we've all had these places where we've been rejected or felt betrayed. And as a biological being, we are programed to understand that in tribal days, if you were put on the outside of the firelight circle rejected from the tribe, then that meant the sabertooth tiger could eat you.
And so it was experienced as a very big trauma. So that's the thing is, is really understanding
Perfectionism, Stress, and Meaning-Making 18:00
that these moments, these hurts, you know, they actually start the way that your nervous system responds or they're associated with the feeling, a meaning you made up. And here's the thing is that we don't have our prefrontal cortex completely formed until we're 24 years old, 24 to 26. So the meaning making that we're generating when we're small children were small humans trying to discover how to be okay in a world dominated by big humans who are telling us how to be a human. And so the meaning making that we generate was we're growing up is done with a brain that's not fully formed.
So it's going to be very self-centered because children are self-centered. They're supposed to be. They're trying to figure out, like, how do I fit into all of this? What does this mean about me? And, you know, then we're going to create a belief, and then we put a behavior to that that's adaptive for that belief and meaning that we created. So for me I always track mind because it's easy to track it. You know, I'm sitting in a fifth grade classroom. The speaker goes off in the corner of the classroom several times a day, but that intercom is the one that calls me to the vice principal's office every once in a while.
Not that often, but it doesn't matter if it's the Pledge of Allegiance, the Secretary making an announcement or, you know, the thing crackles to life. And I go into the Pavlovian response of freeze, panic, terror. Right. And so every single day I'm having this response. And so the meaning I made up is I, you know, I'm not safe. And adults who are in authority can't be trusted. Right? Which was true for that little kid. Here's a vice principal saying, I've got your back to the whole school. You know what?
The person who they are. Yeah. And he's telling me I'm a bad kid, and that's why it's happening. I was one of two white girls in an all black school. So they call me white trash and tell me I was a bad kid. And then. And then. So from there, the meaning I made up was, oof! I better actually really be perfect if I'm bad. And this is happening. So the behavior savior that I put to that as an adaptive behavior response with the wise mind of the child at age ten, was to be a perfectionist. And so I always tell people, like with with autoimmune disease, there are three P's in place.
You're a people pleaser, you're a perfectionist, and you are holding on to poison of past pain. And so those three things I have never seen them not there in any of the hundreds of people that I've treated at this point with autoimmunity, helping them reverse it. Well, and then that's I can imagine other people have different methods of coping with that goes, guys, it's a yeah, awesome student and smart like that's right. Even as being good, you know, other people have other behaviors that are considered bad.
You know. Well. And who wants a medical provider who's not a perfectionist. And so, you know, the whole thing around perfectionism actually served me really well until I got sick. There was no reason to change it. Yeah. Then I got RA and I had to start really looking at all of this and tracking it and figuring it out. And it's not a tenable way to live a life, actually. Turns out that's that's that's incredible. How do you find it? It seems to me like that modern times makes this worse. You know, it's like, you know, growing up, everyone compares themselves to others.
But you got this. You get a leeway because it's not, you know, now it seems objective. Oh. How many lights do you have on your. Oh, yeah. It's so true. And everything moves so fast. Social media has one of the four reasons that deaths of despair are increased in the United States. Right now, we have a whole division of death in our country that's been called by Princeton researchers deaths of despair that have to do with addiction, cirrhotic livers and overdoses and suicides. So, you know, this is this is where we've gone steep on the curves for deaths of despair.
And as I started looking at these, I started realizing, my gosh, also narcissism has gone up. There's a really great, a couple of researchers have looked at called the Narcissism Epidemic. And it's talking about this very thing that social media, the feeling of being left out. Right. Comparing and despairing is one of the reasons we have increase in narcissism, self-centeredness. We're not moving into compassion and empathy. We're actually moving into a competition for resources. So it's it's just giving us a girlfriend lament.
And I'm like, is everyone a narcissist? Like, yeah, wow. It's that's that's crazy. Yeah. And, you know, when we're talking before it's like, you know, and looking at the studies like, you know, you get early childhood trauma, but even the stress of the mother basically plays a part in how that baby's brain develop. Absolutely. In utero trauma, right, of a stressed out. So you can't even get out. Yeah. It's right. You know. Yeah, it's it's, it sets up microbiome. It sets up like, as you said, nervous system reactivity pathways already in place.
Brain like everything is epigenetic. And you know, and that is I think one of the biggest kind of breakthroughs. And we're moving more and more in that direction. And just, you know, we have all these genetic tests which people think are the end all, but really they play a much smaller part than the epigenetic, the environmental. As if you have a particular gene, you can it can be turned on or turned off. So I do genetic testing on all my patients. And the reason I do that is because genetics are one of the four root causes for autoimmune disease, along with trauma and how you deal with your stress along with toxic load and burden, and along with your digestive health.
Everyone with autoimmunity has leaky gut. But the reason I look at it, I explain to my patients, like your your genetic test is kind of like a pirate's treasure map. It's where we can find the snips, where X marks the spot. When you go to the X on the map, the treasure is not sitting out in the sand. You have to dig to go get it. And so it actually shows us where to dig a little deeper. When we look at genetics, we never treat the snip. We never look at it that way because we're looking at so what snip is being expressed when you are eating gluten with your genetics, you're saying is actually you have a high intolerance or absolute celiac, you know, so we can look at neurotransmitter snips and we can say, so when you aren't going to bed by 10:00, you're actually flipping this one on, you know, and this is why you have so much anxiety and this caffeine that you're guzzling down.
This snip is saying that you're not metabolize it very well. So it really helps us to make those connections between lifestyle choices and factors and what the snips are that are coming into play that are causing problems. Yeah. And I'll tell patients it's really, a predisposition. Yes. You're more likely to get this because of your genes if you do this. Like, some people can eat all the sugar they want. They won't get diabetes, but. Sorry, you have the snip that if you do that, you're going to get diabetes, you know.
And we see it with so many things. No snips are really good or bad. It depends on the environment you know. Right. Right. If you're I am loaded in with snips for breast cancer and rheumatoid arthritis. And guess who's had both and turn them around naturally with the lifestyle choice thing again. So you know it's really fascinating that that this the trauma component actually generated both of them for me. And being able to do that work, flip them both off. No meds. So wow that's that's really neat.
And that's what you know, peptide seven is as we talk about the peptides they work so much in epigenetics. Yeah. And in in that it's much like you know the microbiome is such a big deal. And we haven't explored even, you know, exponentially bigger is the viral nothing micro viruses that are ten that, you know million times more of those. And we're 45% viruses. So yeah. Yeah.
Epigenetics, Genetics, and Autoimmunity 27:00
And and I also think of and it's maybe a little cruder analogy, but it, it seems to be like with let's say you get a feral cat, you bring it in and you love it immediately. It's fine. But if it's out there for more than a month or so like that, it's so hard to get that cat to chill out and calm down. Yeah, yeah. No, it's just amazing. But the genes haven't changed. But the expression of those genes have changed. Well, in and when the when you're perceiving yourself as in danger or not getting your needs met in some way, that perception then says to the adrenals, okay, you know, we've got a lion on our tail, we're about to get eaten.
Go right. And that cortisol that gets released breaks down the gut wall. There's leaky gut. So it doesn't matter how many supplements you're taking to heal your gut wall, if you keep generating the perception that you're not okay. I don't care how many supplements you take. It's just like a hole in the bottom of the bucket. Right? And I think we're we're moving past, you know, it's like gut brain axis, everything you hear, the guts affecting the brain, but they forget the loop. Right brain affects the gut.
And and in going through with that, a study and I, and they mentioned that the children with the, adverse health care that they had shorter telomeres. Yes. And and so for the audience, the telomere is basically a capsule of your cells. I think some of the downside of. My husband just got home, and so am I doing some big deal. Hey, my dogs are alerting me. Now they sound like a big, big dog now, I love that it's all good. And so there caps on the ends of the, major chromosomes that whenever the cell divides, they get shorter and shorter, shorter and other things will shorten.
And once they kind of get shorted off, they can't. Cells can't divide. So they basically can't regenerate. And they don't function well, and causing problems. And so it's a way to kind of gauge your cellular age, you know, you could be, you know, 50 years old, but you could have a cellular age of 80 or 30. But it's all right. And with peptides, this is probably the like number one, anti-aging peptides are the pineal peptides, which, the pineal gland basically secretes melatonin. That and we thought, well, it's in charge of sleep, but also has a lot to do with, you know, it's right around everything else amygdala and fear.
And also we're finding it seems to control everything else. It's like this little guy that was sitting behind the the curtain and we thought it did one thing, but it's doing a lot more. And so if you take these peptides which decline as we age or stress or inflammation, you know, all these things, it makes everything a vicious cycle. You know, one very magical thing. It brings back your melatonin levels, back to youthful levels. And it's one of those things, you know, sleep is so key. And it is, basically allows the, the body to, digest it, bring that up.
It's kind of objective measure, which helps you sleep, but also affects it, differently, as you know, it allows you to get deep sleep. And so we love that, and it's shown to have improved sleep, especially when you give it with another peptide called delta sleep inducing peptide. But it then affects your thymus gland which affects it, stimulates that and rejuvenates it, which declines as we age, which then can fix your immune system, which is causing the autoimmunity and the inflammation. And they're even finding it resets if you have like a low thyroid and fixes that, your renal problems fix.
Is that the growth hormone deficiency? Wow. You got, levels. It just went up. And it's kind of this, you know, ultimate anti-aging. Hormone. They even had rats who were menopausal. They gave it to them. They started menstruating again, 80% of them and 25% of normal births. And they gave it to humans for 15 years and followed them. They had significant cardiovascular disease, the ones on standard treatment, you know, they got worse. Cardiovascular killer, system basically function got worse. The ones on the Italian, basically the cardiovascular system got better and they live significantly longer.
They live better, a better quality of life and dramatically less cancer and, less cardiovascular events. So it's kind of like and no side effects that have been found, you know? So it's really kind of neat stuff. And but then again, it's not like, oh, you're you've had your here, take this here. You know, I mean it's so far from that, you know, everything's a piece of the puzzle, you know, right. Tool in the toolbox. But and yeah, so it goes along with, you know, you look at people that are, you know, overweight, sedentary stress is just such a killer.
Yes. And I lecture on that and I found and I just kind of just from, from researching it kind of like, oh, stress. Cause everyone stress, you know. And what are you gonna do about it? You know, it is hard. What do you do about it? But it is it's not stress. That's the killer. That's the interesting thing. Like I teach for the Institute for Functional Medicine, I'm on stage teaching doctors how to do this. And I always say it is, please don't tell your patients. They have to reduce their stress. That's not like, what about the person with the special needs child or the one that's having to care give elderly parents or the one that has a job they love.
But it's really stressful, you know, like you're not throwing away your stress. Yeah. It's you. It's changing your relationship to your stress. I think that's a much better way of putting it, is how you deal with that. It's how you perceive that it's not actually strapping on your running shoes and going and running it off or running off cortisol. That's what I used to do. Yeah, I used to deal with my stress that way. It does not work. You have to actually look what how you're perceiving your life.
What is the meaning you're still making around it? You know, I think you know what? I think that that's really helping me to communicate to patients because it's really true. And I see it with my brother. I hope he doesn't watch this. But is it is this a kind of like the light bulb goes off every time, like he sees everything as the worst thing that ever happened to him. And it's like, let that have that one you got. You didn't get the job. And I'm like that, you know, oh my God, I can't get, you know, in bed for a week because of it.
And yeah, it's how you deal with that stress. I think that's the meaning you attach. Right. So why do you go to bed? Because you didn't get the job? Because I'm not good enough. I can't catch a break. Right? Right. And so he's the worst. No one likes, right genes, you know. And so the behavior that he uses, an adaptive strategy, if he goes to bed is to go hide. And so you know, it's to, like, go under instead of actually saying something different. Right. And so that's where all of all of our meanings and our beliefs and our adaptive so-called adaptive behaviors that we had as children are still running us until we get a challenge in life that we get run up against.
And then the hurt model, this has two pathways that you get a choice to take as an adult with a fully developed brain, and one of them is over here. You don't self confront, you keep blaming the outside world, which is what you're treating. Your brother is right. Yes. And then it's yeah, everyone else does it to him, right? Everybody else is to blame, including God and including life. And so what you do then is you start ruminating on those negative meanings and beliefs that you had when you were a child, and you wind up getting sick over here.
The other option that you have, when life hands you a challenge that you can't deal with, is you get an opportunity to finally notice, like, oh, every time I'm upset, I'm present. Maybe I have something to do with this, and you start having this willingness to engage in a compassionately curious inquiry of self confrontation. Of what your own patterns of thinking you're doing, and so what I do is I teach my patients how to track their heart, how to really look at what implicit and explicit expectations they have of life, their bodies, themselves, God, the people that are in relationship with medicine, you know, and be able to see which ones are serving them and which ones are unrealistic and that they need to shift.
And we start doing that, like how to create a different meaning
Healing Framework and Trauma Work 36:00
and then create a different adaptive behavior strategy. This is why just deciding not to eat sugar doesn't work. If there's actually some part of that as an adaptive behavior that gives you comfort because of the meaning you created around trauma. It's not about willpower. Yeah. If it's not willpower, you might as well forget. I mean, your life's miserable, you know, just a small example. But I think about these things. It's like like, let's say someone cuts you off, right? Yeah. Oh, screw you over to follow that person.
I swear it would ruin my day. I just think about it and I'd be, you know, just adrenaline, just going all day and anxious. And I found that if I wave and go, thank you, you know, and and it's like, what good did it do trying to chase God and look at them bad, give them a bad luck. Fright wrecked my day, right. And like why would I say I learned that in my 20s, I actually got in a race in my Honda Accord with some big white pickup truck in Texas because I got I was so angry about this road rage he was demonstrating, and I got angry to the point where I was actually trying to keep up with them, you know?
I mean, it was ridiculous. And that's when it hit me too. Oh, yeah, this is ridiculous. And if that other person power. Yeah. That's right. And that you, you put with it like if you're the, if that's the worst thing you happen to see all day, it's a great day. Likely. This is why the young don't have wisdom can this is why it takes some life experience to have wisdom. And I don't want to try and stay out of politics. But it seems to me that they're making like, you know, people say, oh, that's offensive.
I don't know what that word means. I've never been offended. I don't know, it's either if someone says something, it's either true or it's not like, okay, you know, and I think it's like we're making a bunch of victims. It seems to me like, oh, you can't make it because of their keeping you down, you know, and see there, see what they said right there? That's Betsy. You are offended by that. You're offended by that. I'm wondering if that's why we're having the well, you have concerns over it. One Wednesday during one of the political elections, many, many, many years ago, I live in the Seattle area, and I was starting to document post electoral depression.
That's what I was calling it. And, and one day I started talking to my patients about this, and I would say, so what's happening for you? Why are you depressed right now? Well, this and this and this and this and this, you know, and and I said, so you're afraid and you're angry. Yes. And isn't that exactly why you don't like this candidate that just got made president is because of those things? Oh, yeah. So I said, every time you become that which you are angry at, when you become angry, like my example, you know, our examples of road rage, right?
Chasing someone now we become the person that we are. That's exactly true. Yeah, right. And so I said, you know, you're actually intolerant of people that are intolerant and so then you become intolerant. That is exactly what seems to be happening, I think. I mean, I like it's just that it does seem because I just I've learned with like my brother, like he's the ultimate victim and I've learned the worst thing you to someone is to make them a victim and it's bugging you is what I'm pointing out.
Well, it really affects my life because it, I have to hear of and take care of them. And he can't work because of it, you know? So I see what it does to somebody to become a victim. And it seems like although it's in I and people are doing it out of love and, you know, they're trying to do the right thing, but it seems that it's making the people like doing one of the worst things you can make a person, you know, is then and that's all they think about. But, I don't think we make anyone anything, you know, it's just really about being willing to self confront our own patterns, you see what I mean?
And that's the work that I do is helping people really look at what is triggering me. What's what's getting me bugged. What what is it that sends my biochemistry off? And then being able to work with that from the inside out. And, you know, because nobody makes another person feel anything, see, and and I think you said a couple of times and I think that's, that's the key and I totally agree with you is, you know, self introspection and, looking at yourself and say, wait a minute, what part am I playing right now in this?
And instead of like, hey, it's environment controlling me. And that's that's hard. That's stressful. You have no control, right? You don't. We never did. We never will. Being done to you. Yeah, right. Yeah. It's really the only control we have is how we respond. And if we respond with anger and fear and anxiety and depression, then we're going to get sick. And that's just how it is. Right. And so it's it's your relationship to stress. And it doesn't matter what's going on. Like what the presidential election looks like, what the environment looks like, like all of that.
It does matter obviously on so many different levels. But it's not responsible for how you feel. You are responsible for how you feel. Yeah, yeah. And you know, that's he made, you know, look what you did. You know. And yeah, I think very true. I, a little trick I, use for myself is whatever. But, you know, I get broken nose and I do get knocked down in the scooter accident I was talking about two weeks ago and say, oh, my gosh, I thought, hey, it could be always be worse, always. You know, I get it from my neck that that, you know, basically traumatic brain injury I get I got.
Okay, like, you were very lucky. Oh I got a tooth that is good in from the hand and and and it's like it's surgery. I got to go back again. But he has broken eight, eight places. But wow. It's it was stupid. Did my on my part. Right. And scooter and I got lucky so. Yeah. Grateful. Yeah. Yeah. I really did. Yeah. And, so what type of therapies do you do. You do. So you you assess them. So you're doing, you know, psychotherapy and, and just because I have a whole program that I do, like for autoimmunity, where we address genetics, we address toxic burden, we address a digestive health and how people are digesting their memories, their feelings, their experiences, and also trauma and your relationship to stress.
And and I just I work on all four of those corners of the puzzle at the same time because they each are interrelated, you know, like, yeah, they're each things connected. They're each affecting one another constantly. And you really want to if you're going to move the dial and really reverse autoimmunity, which is totally possible. I'm 25 years free. You know, I don't really have to do it this way. And so that's that's how I do it. And, and we have different like I'll do emotional healing packages.
If people have really dialed in the other parts of the puzzle and they come to me, a lot of times people anger me on a summit and say, oh my gosh, I heard you. And I realized I have not dealt with my trauma. Let's do this, you know, and I'll just do the trauma healing component, and that just dials it in for them and, know, one patient comes to mind. She even said she knows. I don't know if I want to get better, because I don't know if I'll be able to deal with it. Horrendous. Like radical. That.
I mean, it's like I'm label and she was I like I can deal with that. So you don't have to dig into this is the really interesting part. A lot of people are afraid of that. And I'm really appreciate you saying that, because I probably wouldn't have remembered to mention it. And we don't have to dig up the story. We have to go to the meaning that you created. Right? Yeah, yeah. That's the the that's the most important thing. And then we have to look at the behavior that you used as an adaptive strategy.
And then we need to shift those. So in and I have a whole program for doing that. And it's very amazing. It works really well. So that's the thing is you're not having to actually dive and dig in to and get into, you know, the, the horrible so many people have. And that's what I think people are able to make the step because true, they just want to bury I don't want to talk about it. Exactly. Yeah. And then the other thing they don't realize is, I always think I have this on my desk.
Peptides, Immune Support, and Closing Thoughts 45:00
I always think about everything as a spiral. You know, that that they've. Oh, I've worked on that. And yet they're sitting in front of me with an autoimmune disease, you know, and I'll say, well, it's not one and done. You know, it's like, we may have to take this a little tighter into the spiral and circle back around again and, and take it in a little deeper. So, you know, people say, oh, I've been working on that for years. In, in talk therapy or with one therapist. And, and I always say, like, if you still have your inflammation, if you still have everything happening, then it's not done, you know.
So yeah. And that's what we do, you know, from the other side is like look at their labs and hey, I don't know what's causing this. But then we kind of start with looking at the immune system and. Right. And it really helps people. I'm I'm fine. Doctors check that. Well, why is this, you know, the doctors say, well, that's, you know, nothing we can do about it, you know, and but there's something causing it. So we get get down to that and that's why we really like. And I mentioned obtaining an opinion in which you can actually orally which is nice and kind of resets.
And then because so much has to do with the immune system, fix that immune system. But if you have this constant, you know, and the, the, you know, in the brain, the neurologic system is the biggest influence on that. Yeah. And also like, you know, memory or Marcel activation syndromes, a big a big deal. We're seeing more and more of that. And you know, in these Marcel cells and histamine intolerance, those are big time nervous system issues. Oh, totally. And that's it. I'm on these masterminds and they're just the most brilliant, you know, caring people.
They're treating this patient, but they're stuck on. Look at the mast cell. Look at the mast. Exactly I'm like look upstream ups. Exactly. Yeah, but I posted something. I said, you can kick me out, but I guess I'm here, you know, and we love, you know, some of these peptides like, you know, dimer, some beta form TB, tb4 frag where the five peptides that will modulate that immune system, you know, it, it gives you, you know, kind of a tool crutch a little bit, you know, it help that, but I agree you need to fix still the underlying problem, but it gives you a little over time in the meantime and then, body rich compound.
157, like, lowers that, you know, that, H2 and you'll see the autoantibodies, come down. But the key is fixing what's really causing it. Well, this is getting much more at the underlying cause, but it's not getting at the core cause, which takes a long time. Right? You know, whether it's a chronic infection. But I, I think this whole psych psychological, I hate saying psychological because it makes it, you know, to love people like, less real or something, but, which is totally wrong. But there's other stuff under underlying it that's, that's driving it.
But the way medicine is now, it's just, you know, all compartmentalized, right? Or, you know, and we aren't we aren't little compartments, you know, and that's the thing when when people think, well, are you telling me it's all in my head? I'm like, yeah, why has that been so demonized? Because how we perceive is exactly what it is. But you're not imagining it. That's not, you know, so. So yeah, no matter if it's there or not, we have to actually work with that. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. And we like, you know, the big, I actually have another meeting right now.
Okay. Oh, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it's been great. Yeah. We'll use, just like in terms of brain, you know, cognitive dysfunction, cerebral ice. And I want to mention that now we can you can take it oral, but, yeah, just in an ending, I, I think you're doing such a great service and thank you. And again, how people think if I go to just the, the doctor, Dr. key sitcom Dr. Kisha accom. Yeah. Awesome. Thank you for being on. It's enlightening. Enlightening. And it it I think, like myself, I think everyone will kind of make them think, after, after they watch this.
So thank you so much. You did your job, and, I think you really helped some people maybe take a, take a step forward in healing. Appreciate you. Great. Thanks a lot. All right. Take care. Bye bye.
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