Optimizing Glyphmatic Flow for Brain Health

Introduction to Lyme, Brain Detox, and the Glymphatic System 0:00

Welcome to this episode of the Reverse Alzheimer's Summit. I'm your host, doctor Heather Sanderson, and I'm so excited to introduce you to my friend Doctor Tom Moorcroft. He has been treating some of the sickest, most sensitive patients suffering from chronic Lyme disease and take warning co-infections also mold illness. Children. He's really taken on the most challenging patients. And I got to meet doctor Tom at a conference recently, and in talking to him, I realized that we realized together that kind of what he does with his patients is very similar to what I do with my patients taking on these chronic, complex conditions.

And we also realize that there's a lot of overlap in the conditions that we're treating. Of course, we know that tick borne infections can contribute to cognitive decline, brain fog, and even dementia. And so doctor Tom has given, incredible lectures at very high level conferences, speaking to the medical community about the lymphatic system and how we detoxify your brain. So that is what I have invited him to talk about here today. Welcome, Tom. I Heather, thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and looking forward to our conversation.

Spam. So let's just get into the weeds. What is the glimpse matic system? Yeah, I mean, in short, it's the way our brain detoxifies. Right? And, I remember going to medical school and they were like, oh, there's cerebrospinal fluid around. And through this, like magical diffusion or something. They didn't really even clarify what it was. The brain would get clean. And it was really around 2012 or so where people started to, with advances in imaging, start to be able to figure out that there's actually a very, systematic way that the brain detoxifies itself.

And it has a lot to do with, flow of the cerebrospinal fluid from the arterial side through the brain over to the venous side, as well as sleep. So there's a lot of places where as practitioners and patients, we can intervene and work on our own. And you have a really personal story about how you came to support people with this. Can you do you mind sharing with our audience what you went through? Sure. Yeah. I mean, it's weird. It's funny when you look back. I mean, I was, you know, 23 years old.

I was working at this place called the Institute of Ecosystem Studies. It's now been renamed the Carey Institute. And it's a place that does a lot of actual Lyme research and landscape ecology research. Now, I was attracted to it. I got an AmeriCorps scholarship to go because I was like, how do we save the planet and how do we get people like, I love playing outside and all this. And I was like, I talked to adults and they were so set in their ways. And I was like, I want to teach kids, right?

Tom Moorcroftu2019s Lyme Journey and Recovery 2:56

So I said, you know, I get this AmeriCorps scholarship to teach kids. And and the guy who started the place had discovered acid rain. So it's like right up my alley. I'm like, you know, just old school, like, tree hugger type of thing, you know? And so I'm out there working with the kids and one day, like, my boss comes up to me and, like, has to, like, shake me. And, she's like, what's going on? I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Right? And she said, you've been literally, I left you an hour ago, and the cursor is in the same place in the computer screen and look down at your shirt.

And I actually had this puddle of drool on myself. So I was like. And as I started to look back, it was like, you know, I've been over the couple weeks before that I had some joint pain and fatigue I had never had before. And cognitively I was just kind of like, not all there. And so I ended up getting a rash literally the next day, got diagnosed with Lyme, got treated for ten days, and I felt better for a little bit. And then over like the next 6 to 8 years, I was just like the brain fog was just just getting worse and worse and worse.

And I really couldn't think. At one point, literally, if you asked me to do three times two, I couldn't do it. Which is a little scary because I was in medical school at the time. Yeah, I don't know how you get through medical school with those symptoms. It was hard the first two years, really hard when I got in with people and I got to do things with my physical body, and I was moving a lot, and I was kind of doing more procedure things and talking definitely a lot easier. And so what was interesting about the whole thing is I've got this joint pain and this chronic fatigue.

I've got this terrible brain fog. And so I go to all these doctors and they're like, oh, you're depressed like your dad. It was, I'm like, no, I'm angry because you're telling me I'm depressed. But really, depression doesn't cause me to have all these symptoms, right? I got irritable afterwards because I kept going to people who told me it was all in my head. And so then they diagnosed me, the bunch of things. And then later I had ADHD and I was like, well, big surprise with that one. If you know me, I mean, it's like my superpower.

And then ultimately they just said chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia, which is kind of like the straw that broke the camel's back. I mean, like literally I went in, I said I had brain fog, fatigue and joint pain, and they were like, you have brain fog, joint pain and fatigue. So I'm like, thanks for that. Something different. Yeah, yeah. And yeah. So anyway, I at this point I, I was just like, all I know is that I had this I remember exactly the room I was in in Southport Island, Maine, and I looked at the wall and I just had a vision of my future.

And I was like, I have shit to do. I'm going to. I'm going to have a family, a kid. I've got, you know, I had a dog and I'm going to continue to have dogs. I love playing outside, skiing, mountain biking, riding the road like ultimate frisbee. And I just saw, like I had a life to live. And at that moment I was just like, whatever is happening, I'm going to get to that point. And then a friend of mine a couple days later hands me a yoga DVD, and I started doing yoga, like on a regular basis. And then all of a sudden, soda and all kinds of the, the sweets and stuff that, like we grew up on didn't my body didn't want.

And so I started to heal. And, you know, what's really interesting is I didn't sleep much, because I was in so much pain. And then I started to sleep. It took me about ten months from the time I decided to sleep eight hours a night, and I could physically get to when I had some energy. But, you know, ultimately, through this entire journey, I was like 70% better before I actually started working with a physician who knew what was wrong with me. And I ran into these people, this amazing couple, a naturopath and an osteopath who diagnosed me with Lyme, NBC.

And they helped me get that other 30% of the way cured. And it's been over 11 years symptom free, feeling amazing. That's incredible. And then now you guide not only patients, not only your patients, but also their providers so that they can help diagnose and treat these. Tickborne illnesses. Yeah, exactly. And so then, so going back to the lymphatics, the this is so critical, right, to getting there. And I think in both having patients and providers understand how important this is, you already mentioned sleep and sleep is a big time.

This is the most important time when we kind of do that brainwashing that that cleansing. So tell me a little bit more about like what sleep would look like to get the most out of that detoxification. Yeah. And, and my personal story that's like the number looking back that's probably that and a little bit of yoga. Probably the most important things I did. Right. And so sleep when we look at sleep, the lymphatic system seems to mostly be functional. While we're sleeping.

Sleep as the Foundation of Brain Detoxification 7:56

And it's probably more like deep sleep. And it's been estimated that 70 to 90% of all brain detoxification through the lymphatic system happens when we're sleeping. So I, basically, when I started to learn all this, I decided to become a competitive sleeper. And I was just like. And it's just competitive. It's friendly competition with myself. But I'm my goal is to monitor my sleep and make sure I can really sleep. And so for most adults, it's recommended that they get 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night.

I really say it's got to be over eight. I mean, if you do that, if you look at the research, it's interesting. Less than six hours of sleep compared to greater than seven hours of sleep. Massive difference in the clearance of amyloid beta, which is one of our primary drivers of developing Alzheimer's. So, you know, what's really cool about it is if Seven's not that hard, right? And we know that above eight way better. So but all these folks like I, I know a lot of people who are like, oh, I can get by with 4 or 6.

I'm like, well, you might feel you can get away with it. But when we actually study the development of, or the deposition of amyloid in your brain, that's not true. And you just can't shortcut it about a third of your life you should sleep. And one of the people who always ask, well, why do I sleep? Well, now we have a couple of reasons. We think you need to sleep. And one is we can consolidate memories and be able to retrieve them. The other one is so that we can actually clean out the brain so that it actually can function.

It doesn't suffer filled with tau protein and amyloid. So I always recommend people make sleep a priority and a couple things they can do would be one is cool dark room. When you're an adult, your bed's for sleep and sex and nothing else. There's no TVs in your room. Sorry to break the news to everybody. And electronics need to be like, 12ft away from you, you know? If you happen to keep your phone in your room just because, like, you feel like you have to use that as your alarm clock, which I do when I travel, turn off the Wi-Fi and the Bluetooth on the phone, as well as turn off all Bluetooth devices in the room.

And whenever possible, turn off your Wi-Fi. Because all of these things are going to be trying to connect to each other at night, and they're basically pinging your brain, so you don't want to be doing that because that will arouse your nervous system. And then also when you're exposed to Wi-Fi, they're they'll there's this really cool thing called Rouleau bodies where your red blood cells stack. So it's very similar Wi-Fi can trigger, like a hyper ability and an inflammation picture very similar, like if you have rheumatoid arthritis or an acute infection.

And, I know people who live in apartments and they're like, oh, well, I can't turn off my neighbors. And like Wi-Fi is about distance, so and or proximity. So turn yours off. Put it on a timer. 10:00 it's off 6:00, whatever the time is for you. So you don't even have to think about it. But there's some ways to really help. And one of the ones I, I found out, or I've incorporated more recently is, within an hour of bedtime. There's no intense conversations. So all the negative stuff, all the talk about work, all the watching, like action movies and stuff, turn all that stuff off so your brain can actually calm down and you can actually get really good sleep.

Because as we're finding the more deep sleep you get, the better your brain clears out. Well, you were sharing with me that you have this very simple kind of gratitude, process. And I love that because I think people ask them, well, within, what do I do for that hour before bed? And I, I love to read, I, I, I read to my daughter, you know, we do her whole bedtime routine, the teeth brushing in the bath and that takes an hour. The pajamas and the books. It's great. But for people who don't have little ones.

And, like, there's this bedtime routine and being disciplined about that and what that looks like. Yeah. Give us a little more insights there. Yeah. You know, and I think it's so key because for me I was just like never had the, the I was just like get up and go. And he'd drop right. And clearly that didn't help me work, you know, be resilient to infection or have a functioning brain. But yeah, now, I mean, it is about that routine and then the other thing so that I remember to share too, is if you have to be on the screen in the last like 2 or 3 hours of your day, definitely use some blue blockers or have your screen turned down.

So if we if we backtrack for just a moment before we go to bed, I prep going to bed in the morning and I'm going to prep my morning at night. And so we'll get to the night in a second. So in the morning I want to get up and whenever possible, get outside, get some fresh air and get some sunshine. It's going to do a couple things. One is it's going to get you moving. And typically the temperature in your bed is a lot more comfortable than outside. It's going to be cold or hotter and it'll get you moving right.

And but part of it is the sunshine triggers, release of serotonin, but it also triggers our pineal gland to start creating melatonin, which is our hormone of sleep. And so the cool part about melatonin is it's anti-inflammatory. It's anti-cancer. It's a great antioxidant. But most importantly it helps to sleep. So we want to start it in the morning, you know, and getting it going. And then at night when we get darkness, that's when the melatonin starts to come out and actually gets utilized. So that'll help us sleep.

So I start my night in the morning by getting up and doing stuff that actually does it. And then I exercise and move a lot throughout the day so that I can clear out. Like, and I, I think of the lymphatics as being tied to the brain or tied to the whole body detoxification system. So in our arms, in our legs, we need to move and have muscle contractions to clean out the toxins in our abdomen and our pelvis and our chest. It's all about pressure gradient changes. So that's where we need to be doing like that.

Nice deep breathing, calming the nervous system. But it's also detoxifying. And what's really important about that is the Glenfiddich system is going to drain through a few pathways, which we can talk about. Well, one of them is actually into the it'll drain through the, spinal column in or the spinal cord into the gut, as well as a lot through the nose and the cranial nerves coming out through the base of the skull. So we want to have like, good muscle movements. We have good posture. And that all allows that.

So that's kind of during the day I'm going to kind of be a chronic mover. And also get my exercise. And then the last part like you. Yes. Well this is night time. And so I try to start doing all these things we talked about. And then that practice, which is so critical, I, as I was telling you before, like I, I overcomplicate things chronically. Right. So I decided to simplify. I heard a great practice and at the end of your day, and this is what gets you very much into the gratitude and the parasympathetic calming the brain down, getting ready for sleep.

Just write down three wins that you've had. And so if you've had a great day, it's probably going to be really easy. But even in like the on the outwardly appearing the most, the like the worst day you've had, you can find three little lessons. So it doesn't matter how big or small. It's the practice of just writing down three wins. And then what we do is we write down three wins that you're planning to have for tomorrow. Because when you do that, you start to immediately like my when I started this, my brain would go, oh, well, that's not how this is going to happen, you know?

And it starts to get critical. What's beautiful, beautiful is when you say the when you want, and then you sort of get ready and go to sleep. You dissociate from your conscious mind. That's telling you how it can't happen. And it allows your super conscious, you know, to really just start to tap into all the unlimited possibilities in the universe and come up with answers you may never have thought about. And what I found was within literally the first time, and it just gets compounding every day.

My winds get bigger and bigger and easier and easier because I just said what they're going to be, and then I don't limit them because I go to sleep and I get out of my own head, literally. So it's a really great practice to just, you know, prepare for tomorrow, this evening and then in the morning, prepare for the evening, because your whole life just is, is this one cohesive thing where you're just planning and getting that gratitude because that calms your brain down and it comes and it uplifts your heart, which ultimately allows your your nervous system to chill.

AKA your brain is going to detoxify better when you're sleeping. I think we all can get so caught up in like the just the day to day and like

Evening Routine, Gratitude, and Parasympathetic Calm 16:48

focus on the things that we're not happy with or like you said late, of being critical and overcomplicating things. And when we get when we create that discipline to really focus on what we're grateful for and what we want rather than what we don't want, it can be completely transformational not only for our physical, our mental health, but also for our physical health. Right. You also talk about other things that we can do to kind of uplevel this fantastic detoxification, right. Let's just keep going down the list.

So hydration. Yeah. Right. Well, so the system is, it's, what we see is that along the art, the, arteries along the brain, it this is where this organized system travels, and then it goes across the surface and then dives deep, and then, like I said, it goes, we have cerebrospinal fluid coming in, and it makes it kind of like intermingled with interstitial fluid. And then we push it out along the veins and they go from deep in the brain to the surface and then out. You don't have to know what any of that means other than cerebrospinal fluid and interstitial fluid.

Both of these are more than 99% water. So if we're chronically dehydrated, you're just starting behind the eight ball. So I want to optimize hydration, which, you know, for most of us is about a half an ounce of water per bottle of pure drinking water per pound of body weight. So most people, you know, 60 to 80oz a day and maybe a little bit of electrolyte to help you absorb it, you know, but that's a really great place to start. And then there's a whole it's so interesting. Everybody asked me about alcoholics.

You know, everybody wants to. And it's like, you can actually, if you in mice, if you were a mouse, if you have, like a half of, half a milligram per kilogram of body weight or half a gram of alcohol per kilogram of body weight, it actually will improve lymphatic flow. But if you go a little bit more than that, it won't. So if the research pops over in the humans, that's like 1 or 2 alcoholic beverages per adult, you know? Okay. So yeah. Total. Yeah it's crazy. But the thing is, all right, most people I mean, it's not like you can like not drink all we can have ten on Friday and at work it's like literally like literally like a glass of wine or, or a beer a day.

Now, granted, we haven't looked at this in, in people to see that it actually works, but at least in mice. But it tells us to like it. There's really no benefit to like ultra benefit to drinking, but if you do it just it really suggests that we have to follow that 1 to 2 drink rule and not making one drink like this, like, you know. Yeah. A little self-control. Yeah, yeah. And if there's, if there's trouble with dementia and cognitive decline, I am just always so hesitant to add any alcohol because it is poison.

Right. And it's going to bring me here. So maybe if it makes blood flow a little better, it's still is going to create some more liver stagnation or more, more burn in there. And it's interesting too because I know that this is I just figured I'd throw this one out early in the discussion of the different things, because it's one that everybody has about. The problem is like when I, when I do my slideshows, I'm like, okay, I tell them that and then I go, oh, but chronic alcohol use leads to gut dysbiosis.

So imbalance of the gut bacteria leads to leaky gut inflammation. And directly through the vagus nerve leads to the, inability to recall memory. So it's like the ones that the vagus communicates with part of our limbic system called the hippocampus. Right. And then that has to talk with our prefrontal cortex. And that gets all blown out if you're drinking alcohol all the time. So the the problem with medical research is we we go, oh we improved lymphatic flow. But we also did not at the same time study whether that actually led to better cognition.

So it's like, you know because you could have memory loss from other reasons. So you one treatment might not work. So I definitely don't recommend it if you already have cognitive dysfunction. But if you are someone who who does consume alcohol, most of us probably need to ratchet it back a little bit, at least within the recommendations. Yeah okay. Good point, good point. And I what I love about the science right is like pretty much anybody can find a scientific paper that will support whatever bad decision they're making.

Oh for sure. Right. You know, it's interesting and even more papers to support these good decisions I know. And it's like it's it's so reductionist. Right. And I think that like the conversation you and I had that I love so much about your work is that you're not looking at it as an isolated thing, like you're like, immediately called me on the one study that everybody wants to hear, which is drink alcohol. You know, it's like, let's put it in the big picture context of who you are so that we can help you heal and get that and and not just treat you as like a widget, which is what we're doing in these studies. Right?

We're, we're we're doing it to get a piece of information. It's really hard to study 17 variables at once. So whenever anyone is reading a medical paper, one is I can interpret the data to to say what almost whatever I want. And also we have to reduce it to have like to be able to make a conclusion. But that doesn't mean it's the right conclusion for you. Like, when we look at intermittent fasting. So so if I step back for a second, there, what happens is there's a, there's astrocytes are type of our, our, you know, cells in our brain and they have feet on the end.

So it's like this little, you know, round thing. And it's got all these feet almost like tentacles sticking out. And on the, the end feet they have these what's called aquaporins four channels. And there's Aquaporins four channels lined up, both on the arterial side and the venous side, which allows the flow to happen. So if you have buildup of amyloid, if you have a traumatic brain injury, mild or worse, or other sort of, you know, even post stroke and stuff, those can change position and then that's it.

And it basically they just get all convoluted all over the place. And then we don't have proper lymphatic flow. They found with intermittent fasting that, you can actually get them to repolarization.

Hydration, Fasting, Exercise, and Autophagy 23:08

The polarization is just meaning lining back up on the end feet. And but then they define it and they define intermittent fat. Well, they said they you do intermittent fasting every other day. So alternate day fasting and the fastest 12 hours. That's like I didn't even write. That's so doable. Give a write for me. Like, like all the biohackers, all 16, you know, hours not eating, eight hours eating. Or if you want to go crazy, make it even, a bigger fasting window. But what we're finding is that's what everybody's putting out there is what's necessary.

Well, we're seeing in the Glenn Paddock system, at least you don't have to do an extreme fast to get really good results. They've also shown that, regular exercise will re polarize. And so if we get a blend of resistance exercise and cardio, we do a couple things. Our, you know, endurance exercise. One is we're moving or detoxifying the body. The other one is we can re polarize the end feed of the astrocytes meaning lymphatic system works better. And then also for those of us who want to clean out our cells on an even deeper level, exercise and fasting both will help, increase the thing called a Ampk.

Fancy way of saying it's like a reverse gas gauge. So, like in the car, it goes down in the body, Ampk goes up and it says your fuel source is low, and that turns on, like our mitochondria, our energy factories. It helps us make new ones. It helps us detoxify intracellular Lee. So a lot of times we're getting all the stuff like the lymphatic system is moving through and pushing stuff that's sort of in between cells out. If we want to get the stuff from within the cells out, will there be infection or other toxins?

We want to use a process called autophagy. And basically we can turn that on by exercising by fast, B by being hungry basically. So I tell people it's like you don't even necessarily have to fast, but just get used to actually being hungry before you eat, right, right, right. And then there's another piece around when you're eating right. So a lot of people want to skip breakfast, but then they might be eating right before they go to bed. So that's in that in that evening routine, you really want to give yourself three hours between your last bite of food and then lying down to go to bed so that you get that improved sleep.

And that's not true for everyone. There are some people with adrenal things and, or blood sugar dysregulation where maybe having a little bit of food right before bed is helpful. But for the vast majority of us, skipping that food in those three four hours, in that three four hour window before bed, it will lead to improved sleep. Yeah, I think and I think the important, the most important part is there's a lot of different information out there right. Fine. Work with your practitioner because like like what?

I just it's like if you have preexisting cognitive dysfunction versus your brain is great and you want to maintain it, you may have a different path that you need to take to do that. Right. And it's very individual. And I've changed my diet and my feeding window so many different times. Based upon new research about what I've learned about my physiology. And then it's like there's these crazy things called seasons, right? And it's like winter, spring, summer and fall. And it's like, I think a lot of my patients think that you're supposed to just like, health is like this, and you should always should feel great and better and better.

And if you're not, it's bad. It's like my energy levels still fluctuate throughout different times. And if I'm, you know, if you're under certain stressors or you're exercising a certain way or something happens, like, you know, several years ago, my father passed away and it was like a good I mean, it was, you know, but again, this is actually I hadn't even thought about this. We were talking like severe, severe dementia. And what it really started out was, was drinking and smoking. And it was like back in the day where everybody said smoking was good.

So we got addicted, eventually stopped that, had sleep apnea. So if any of you all have sleep apnea, you work with your clinician and get this fixed rate work on it. It is so critical and it was just like you could just see the path. And it was like then the smoking had led to all this vascular disease, and then the vascular disease led to repeat catheterization and stent placement. Ultimately we had contrast induced kidney disease. And after that, the Alzheimer's just was like, boom. It's just like out of control.

And, you know, and it could have simply if, if, if and I don't I love to celebrate what happened and what life was and what we can learn. And big things are, you know, the alcohol and the smoking. You got to cut back on or none. I mean, smoking should just be thrown away, like, don't do that. Right. But it's like they never really fully focused on the sleep until a lot longer down the road. And what I know now that I didn't know when I was younger was like the snoring and the apnea and then needing to nap all day long.

These are clues that you I mean, it's not just your booze and yellow lights. It's like there is something wrong. And you've described the importance like this critical nature of getting enough sleep and enough quality sleep to take the trash out of our brains that trash is accumulating. It's going to trigger inflammation. And later, amyloid plaques, Tau proteins, all of these signs that our brain is basically fighting off whatever's getting in the way of it functioning optimally. And you know what's really also interesting about this?

And now that I'm recalling about my whole my father's story is, total mouth breather. Right. And so a lot of people are like, oh, well I breathe through my mouth because I can't breathe through my nose. And I would step back and say, the reason you're breathing, you can't breathe through your nose is because you don't breathe through your nose. Right. And so a lot of times if we have, like, young children, we can have them do, tape their lips close with paper tape. Not because we want them to not open their mouth, but because we want to remind them to breathe through their nose.

And it's like the more you breathe through your nose, the more open it will become. And mouth breathing is definitely not helpful for lymphatic detoxification, primarily because the more you do that, the less your nose is patent and open. About 20 to 30% of all the dirty water or the trash, as you say, coming out of the brain is actually through the nasal lymphatics. So in my world, I see a lot of people with chronic sinusitis. I see a lot of people with mold illness, and I see a lot of kids with recurrent, strep infections.

We also know that chlamydia, pneumonia, which is just a community acquired, pneumonia pathogen, can move in your nose and literally just,

Sleep Apnea, Mouth Breathing, and Nasal Detox 30:18

there's studies showing that it can it'll it'll like self proliferate. It'll just keep going. Going just doesn't go away. Some studies 90 days, even a, year of antibiotics in a, in a petri dish. Don't knock it out. Which is a little freaky, but it loves to get in the nose. And they found with the chlamydia pneumonia studies that, the longer it goes, the more and more and more you have amyloid buildup in the brain. So they didn't the the research subject, like the little mice didn't have it. They got this chronic infection with this chlamydia, pneumonia in their nose.

And then they have built rapid buildup of amyloid. And it's treatment failures are suggested to be 20 to 30% in the the tip in the conventional medical literature. So even if it's only we're curing 80%, that means about 20% of people need to go see someone like you or I to make sure it's not still going on, actually get rid of it. And how do they bring a dentist on board as well? Right. There's a lot of structural pieces. If you're breathing through your mouth at night, it might be because your airway is closing because of your jaw and falling back into the airway.

And so discussing with the dentist how to approach that. Also, breathing through your mouth at night is going to lead to more dental decay. And then those infections and develops can also start to trigger inflammation in the bloodstream and then in the brain. And also put your cardiovascular risk. So this is this is complex. But it's it's some of these foundations of health of like seeing the dentist making sure you're you're treating sleep apnea. These are really really important things. And if you look at sleep position there's actually a fair amount of study on this in the lymphatic drainage in particular.

And then also in people. So which because a lot of the research is in in mice you know, or rats. So anyway, if you take a rodent side lying is by far the best. Lying on your stomach is horrible. It basically turns it off. And think about what's crazy about that. Is the mouse or the or the the rat kind of being on their stomach with their head up is their normal posture, as if we were standing straight up. So for us, if we lay on a back and kink our head back, it's gonna be way worse. And so actually in in both rodents as well as in humans, if you sleep on your back for more than two hours, that's associated with cognitive decline.

Oh, wow. So side lying like they, you know, is is at least from a glimpse and a brain cognitive perspective appears to be a better way to do it, left or right. Okay, I guess my next question, because the lymphatics are not symmetrical. So it does. But it doesn't matter if we land or left side or what we know so far, right? Yeah. What do we know so far? But yeah, I mean, if I were to guess for my brain, I would probably lie more on my left side and how my, my right up and open. But yeah. So we enjoyed an amazing meal, last weekend at a conference together.

And it was such a pleasure to get to know you there. And, we talked a little bit about food and good foods, but I want to get your professional opinion about the best diet for lymphatic drainage, of course, but also for brain health and healing from chronic complex disease. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a again, that's one of that our, our favorite loaded, topics, which is food. I want to share one other thing. So I make sure that I added in, for anybody who does have some issues, maybe breathing through their nose, there is a taiko breathing technique that actually will, help you create more nitric oxide in the sinuses around your face.

Okay. So sure, it's a beauty e y k ko. And if you look it up on like YouTube and you just go, you taiko unblock your nose, they show you the basic way, which is a little head nod approach. And then the same thing they show with the head nodding for if you need to be. If you're somebody who needs to be more sedentary, you can do the same thing. But walking very, very effective and it allows you to not only open up your nose, that nitric oxide will go throughout your body and open up other blood vessels and detoxification pathways.

So I just wanted to make sure we added that. And with that, it just like the food that we're going to talk about in a second. When you do it once or twice, it helps for a little bit like 5 or 10, 15 minutes when you do it kind of regularly. It just really makes a massive, massive difference. And so check out Blue Taco. And then when you look at, food, I, you know, there's so many different diets out there. And for me, the, the this a couple of things is I generally start off in saying like cut out the process crap and all the simple sugars.

I mean, this is like so much a no brainer. I thought, but it needs to be said. And then I'm just like, I like to look at my diet as, as, as a whole food plant based diet and then adding my favorite protein. So I'm going to start with, you know, my rainbow of veg. And I'm going to certainly get my healthy fats and I want it to be less processed. I wanted to make as much food at home as I can, except when we're dining at a sweet restaurant, you know, and you know, I used to be a vegetarian and I was a quite good vegetarian.

Like, I followed all the rules and I was not healthy. And for my body, red meat works really well. But I know other people were a dozen. So this is where I think a couple things. One is you have to listen to your body, which is what I learned through my healing journey. The other one is to understand that, like, there's different foods available because there's different types of people. And depending upon your medical condition, work with your provider to know what you should do. I do do, keto several times a year just for like 4 or 6 weeks because I like the way it feels.

It optimizes detoxification and it's like rocket fuel for my brain. So I have a very fat forward diet and my carbs. I, you know, I'm probably in ketosis most of the time, you know, so, you know, when we had paleo stuff like that. But but it's like but it's more like, you know, the term metabolic flexibility I think is like really important is find out where you need to be for you and get to a place where your body's used to it. And then the the healthier you are, the more leeway you probably have.

But don't go crazy because then you end up right back in the same place. And the sicker you are, maybe you have to try a little harder in certain areas. So I don't have a lot of rules, and I know I'm supposed to say like, gluten and dairy free and stuff like that, but I find that a lot of my patients, they're so sick, they've read everything they can't do, and they focus on what they can't do and what's wrong. And I'm like, let's take some of the stress off. And if you need no dairy and no gluten, let's find that out.

Let's really focus on that. But obviously Dairy Festival, the gluten festivals and sugar festivals probably aren't good for anybody. Just like booze festivals are good, right? That that binging. It's really a it's better than habits right. They you can go enjoy a meal with your family or your friends or celebrate a birthday you probably want to skip the cake and ice cream and have, you know, like berries or sorbet or something. Something that's not so over the top.

Diet, Metabolic Flexibility, and Tracking Health Data 37:48

And what I certainly have found over and over again is my salivating, just so you know, when you I bet on right. As, as over the years as my diet has improved and changed and I've experimented when I do, when I do go to a some sort of birthday party and I'm like, oh, I'll try my cake. It tastes disgusting. It's like, so overly sweet. So, it just tastes like poison. And I think we, we, we sensitized ourselves again to the salts and the sugar and the fat. Will we not restrict them? But when we moderate our intake of them and, and create this flexibility, this metabolic flexibility about by restricting some things for a little while and then adding them back slowly.

I actually was thinking this morning, I have another continuous glucose monitor that I'm going to put on, because I'm ready to get back into ketosis for the next 6 or 8 weeks for this. Basically, I'll probably go through the summer, and just getting that feedback. Do you have it? I know you said you measure your sleep. Do you wear an oring or like do you, do you do you do any of these and of one kind of tracking fun things. Yeah. No, I definitely I mean, I have an aura ring that I wear, I have these, like really bony knuckles, so it's kind of like, doesn't always pick up.

Great. I'm actually, talking with like, Garmin too, because I have some friends who use that to track more metrics. I'm not a big watch person. I don't really like wearing stuff at night, but, I'm going to grab my EMF testers and make sure that it's all good because I, you know, but yeah, I mean, I think the aura rings really interesting or any kind of wearable where you're getting data that's objective, right? Even like if it's not perfectly like accurate, it's at least you get a consistent measure from that device.

And after you have a couple weeks or a couple months. Very helpful. I keep thinking about in our clinical trial, we use the Garmin Vivosmart four is what we use it. It gets O2 levels, which the, the the ring does not. And so it gets some of your different sleep. It gets your sleep cycle and your REM and your deep and it, it measures that and then it'll give you as for based on the night before. And then you can see what changes you might be implementing like a new mattress or getting on a c pop or using an oral device.

How does that change the quality of sleep you're getting? And then of course, the time, like, are you getting? Are you oh my gosh. And what you know, Heather, the coolest thing I found out like was I used to go, I'm sleeping for eight hours, but I started to go to bed at say, ten. And with the plan to get up at six and I'm like, well, I really didn't get to bed until like 1115. And then I'm getting up at like six, you know, and you're like, oh, so I thought I was getting more sleep, right? And so what I find is for me with the aura ring, it's like it'll be the middle of the night and it'll just stop registering and it'll tell me I didn't sleep for an hour, but I know I was asleep.

But when I'm light and stuff or I'm a little restless, it shows, right? And I can start to go back and go, oh, what did I do the night before? Oh, right. We we went out to somebodys, party and I did have pizza. Right. And it's like, oh, maybe my body doesn't like that. Right. Or maybe, you know, yeah, maybe I have an extra glass of wine or whatever, and you can really see the effect of what you're doing and how it affects your sleep. But learning that, like I need to actually, if I want to go to bed for eight hours, I actually have to start going to bed a bit earlier.

So there's a lot to learn. And, and and again, if you look at the data, it's so much more objective than we can be looking at ourselves. Right. Yeah. Yeah it absolutely our experience of it and also sleep. There's a lot of energy associated with sleep. So we don't always remember what happened. And then connecting those dots about like what was my routine the night before. So you can you can adjust and get that most optimal sleep for you. And that little quick, wins at night thing. My, my deep sleep has gone up since I started that practice.

It literally within a week, week and a half increased by like 30 minutes, which I didn't think you could do because I was already over 20% deep sleep. Like, I'm not. So, it's really interesting when you make it more simple and you don't stress out about it, that's how you can really optimize your brain detoxification as well. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit more about just like getting into parasympathetic states every day. You've discussed this a bit, but I'm curious. You have like a stretch or some organized way of being like, all right, this is how you relax.

So follow this protocol and you'll be chill. No, I'm. You know, part of it is, you have to just be aware of your mood, you know? So I like when I think about how do I promote longevity, how do I really, optimize brain detoxification? I think of sleep, I think of food, I think of movement. And then I go in and that's my top three or my first three. But then I think about mood, mindset and heart set. And the mood is really this part where it's just part of it is becoming aware, becoming aware of two things.

One is the state you're in and maybe even. And then equally important is the state you want to be in. So I find that a lot of my patients are like, what do I have? How do I treat it? And I'm like, what do you actually want to really clear on it? Because most people are doing this negative meditation all day of, like you were saying, focusing on what they don't want. So find out what you want and then why do you want it like because like, you know, working out, being healthy is like the lamest thing.

I mean, it's cool, but not really. It's like, what do you like? I have a lot of people who have joint pain, right? And they have severely, impaired mobility. And I'm like, well, what do you want to be on to do? It's like, well, I want to have better mobility and I want my joints to hurt like, why do you want that? Well, I want to get on the I want to be able to get up and down off the floor and I'm like, okay, well, okay. That's really so boring to me to, you know, it's not really long term motivation.

I'm like, why do you want to be able to get up and down off the floor? Oh, because I have two new grandkids that I love playing with. And it's like their heart lights up, their eyes light up, and I'm like, all right, cool. That's what you want. So you you want to focus on what you want, which is that mobility. But why get emotionally behind it so that it gets into your heart rather than just your brain. And then so being aware of the state you're in, in the state you want to be in, starts it. And then making yourself a priority, like determining that you're worthy of healing is.

So many of us are like that. We're like, I grew up in the martyrdom system where you help everyone else and it's not okay to receive. So I spent a lot of time in helping people learn how to receive

Mood, Mindset, Heart Coherence, and Closing Remarks 44:28

and know that you're worthy of it, because then, like, because if you're trying to accept relaxation and love and gratitude, but you're not worthy of. It's really hard to fight that battle. And so just the awareness of it allows a crack and an opening for the light to come in and then the simplest thing I find is just sitting down and becoming aware of your breathing, you know, whatever the hell that means to you. You know, like there's all these, like, in the body, not in the body, all these things.

And it's just like what you're breathing. Become aware of something, whether it's in your nose, in and out of your mouth, your chest rise and then just allow yourself to be aware. And then once you're kind of comfortable with that, you know, breathing into your chest and specifically thinking as if you're breathing into your heart, right? It just such an easy way to do this. And then it's like, I would guess for you, maybe the next step might be thinking of your daughter and holding her in your heart as you're breathing.

Think of someone or something that you're so emotionally attached to. It's so amazing, right? And just do that. And what's really cool is if you're measuring with like a heart math or any of these other devices, like even a garment, your heart rate variability will increase, which means that you have better control over your autonomic nervous system and a better balance between the sympathetics and the parasympathetic. In English, we're bringing down the stress response, and we're improving the relaxation response, which then allows us to get into that state.

If you do this. So what I love to do is do my three wins for today, three wins for tomorrow, and then you can sit on your the end of your bed. You can like lie down in bed and just do this breathing and be open to this gratitude. And it's one of the simplest ways. And we know that by improving heart rate variability, we're going to see improvements in brain detoxification, in general. So that's a simple way to do it. And there's so many practices we I, a partner and I have created like a meditation community for patients with chronic illness so that it speaks to them in their language.

And I think it's really important for everyone listening is I have some ideas that work for me, and I know that Heather, you have yours. Find something that resonates with you so you're going to do it just like I was saying, find out what you want to do and what the real why behind it so that you're actually going to do it right and then simplify. Pick one. You know, because I can give you 100 relaxation techniques. The best technique is the one you're going to do. Yeah. That you can actually execute.

This is incredible. So informative, so so helpful. For our listeners. I want to make sure everybody knows how they can find out more about you and your practice. Yeah. So my practice is called Origins of Health. And it's just simply origins of health.com. You can reach out to us there and certainly you know look that up on you know, YouTube, Facebook. We've got information there or just Tom Walker Ofcom for all the other non-medical stuff. Thank you so much for joining us, sharing your wisdom, your expertise and and use your heart and enthusiasm for this.

It's it's really a pleasure to be getting to know you and to be able to share this great information with our, our attendees. Yeah. Thank you so much. It's an honor. And I mean, I just what you're doing in the world and what you're sharing with people through the summer just amazing. So I'm just want to say thank you so much for what you're doing. And you know, honored to be here. Thank you.