qEEG & MCAS: Hidden Keys to Healing

Introduction and guest background 0:00

Through. Welcome back to this episode of Reversing Marcel Activation Syndrome and Histamine Intolerance Summit. I'm your co-host, doctor Tom Moorcroft, and today I am really pumped. We have a great conversation coming up with my friend Doctor Chang Ron. He is the founder of the Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine. And he's been treating brain health for patients in Texas for, quite a long time. He's the creator of TC, lm university.com, which is a self-education program for the public on functional medicine principles.

He's been featured in, a lot of really big places, like Forbes magazine, and he's spoken internationally on the topic of brain health, CBD and environmental health. Doctor Ron sits on the board of multiple health information technology companies and, helps to deliver valuable integrative medicine, tactics to the insured Medicare population. And today, we are going to really deep dive into a lot of the topics that have been core to the work that I've done, and so many people have helped others recover from mast cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance.

So, Doctor Ron, thanks for joining us. How's it going? Thanks for having me on. This is one of my favorite topics and a lot of myths. Dispels. I'm super pumped. I'm here. Thank you. Yeah. Me too. Yeah, it's one of these things, as we were kind of getting started today, I was just mentioning to Doctor Ron that, as an osteopathic physician, my background has a lot to do with sort of the structure and function of the body. And we're always looking back to that piece. And so as we dive in, I mean, one of the most important things that comes out of all areas of functional medicine, and just like life in general to me, is breath.

And so I thought maybe we could just dive in and say, you know, what's that relationship between breath and histamine? Man, there's such a huge relationship is actually the fundamentals. So let's define breath. Right. So breath is more than just like in taking air is the exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the lungs. But how did the air get into the lungs? It's actually a more important story for mass activation than what happens in the lungs. So most people know like the lungs job is to get air in our body, extract oxygen right.

And then it delivers to our body in exchange, the carbon, the oxygen which we breathe out. But in reality, there's a lot more that goes on from the air, that goes into our nose or mouth and then eventually into the lung. So all mammals, all mammals have these things called sinuses. And, sinuses are exactly what you think they are. They're in the face and they're little holes and caves everywhere. And these sinuses, are actually really important, as it turns out. What we found out during Covid 19 is that there's organisms that live within the sinuses, and these organisms dictate how well people do with Covid 19.

And these are the same organisms that correlate with people with mold issues and mold toxicity and other mast cell activation syndromes as well. So what's up with that? That's that's weird. How are sinuses affecting that as well? So as it turns out, as air goes in to the nose and it gets filtered through the site as cavities and all the structures within it, and as it goes through these things, there's receptors. And these receptors are its job actually is to activate different signals. So one of the most important signals is something called nitric oxide.

So nitric oxide. Yeah some nitric oxide. The job is to help deliver blood flow to the brain so you don't get brain fog. It's helped to lower blood flow to the gut. So you don't have chronic intestinal malabsorption or constipation and stuff like that.

Breath, sinuses, and nitric oxide 3:34

Its job is to provide blood flow and er, it's all the places that the body thinks are optional. What the heck's optional spaces? So optional means that if you don't have that particular thing, you can still live. For example, you don't need most of your gut to live. You don't need your joints to live so well, especially with nasal issues. These people tend to have a lot of joint pains and gut issues and stuff like that, and that's actually from a depletion of this much of oxide. So the actual air that comes into our body filters through our sinuses, is involved in suppressing histamine.

It's suppressing muscles and elevating serotonin, which makes you happy. And elevating melatonin at night, which makes you sleepy. Right. And so it is like the primary function breath is actually the primary function of how nasal works. And I cool I love it, man, because it's like, you know, the whole thing. It's even like, you know, let's hear mentioned as Covid came out, we're kind of saying like, hey, this nitric oxide can help, you know, turn off some of the inflammation from Covid, but it's so much more like you're saying.

And I see a lot of people with like Raynaud's type of things or they're they have poor circulation in their extremities, all those other things that you mentioned. And I mean, I think that these are just like critical areas that people need to be aware of. And how do you how do you work with it, though? I mean, like, you know, like telling everybody, hey, breath is good, but what what should the folks be looking out for and doing to to help optimize that and to improve nitric oxide? So, you know, I work in inflammatory mental health space and the brain health space.

So whenever someone comes to me with memory issues or Alzheimer's or Parkinson's and, anxiety, schizophrenia, depression, no matter what it is, we kind of start with breath, right? And the reason behind that is that and all these pathologies, there's a recognized decrease in magic oxide activation. And so, lo and behold, most of these people have, airway issues. So, you know, in answer to your question, I tag in people who are smarter than me. Right? And so these are actually, biological dentists and EMT surgeons, you know, those surgeons and there is a subset of us that we get together and we go over these cases.

We kind of recognize that. So there's there are roles for each of these, people. So I'll give you example. Right. So, we had a patient, with actual diagnosed and I saw activation by a allergist, which is really rare. And most people just, you know, from, from, other diagnoses for other functional medicine providers, but there's a tremendous amount of histamine. And as it turns out, one of the things that was sequestering the body's, production of nitric oxide is periodontal disease, which means that there's there's tooth infection. Right.

And when nesting care of an EMT friend of mine actually showing the CT scan, I was like, hey, this is a super, like narrowed airway. And then the sinuses are also super low, just barely in space for air to go through. So this person would having to go, get a sign in plastic, which basically is the these little balloon that dilate up, it's like a two millimeter balloon, but they dilate up in these different areas. And then all of a sudden for the first time in 15 years, a lot of the idea is that in the bloodwork and eosinophils, they start going to zero for the first time in year, asthma goes away for the first time in years, starting to recall memory.

And, and a lot of the attention issues talking a lot better. And so that's one of the many. Moments, right, where we realize that there's a lot of things to optimize in the skull. Right? You know, I'm not a skull doctor, you know, but dentists are, you know, the teeth as part of the skull. Yankees, you know, stuff like that. But we really need to focus on this thing called airway. Our entire airway as a primary function, not just to suppress mast cells, but it's life. It's breathing, you know, air literally into us.

So we don't need the mast cells to put our brain in fight or flight, you know? Right. Well, I think so much of what we've been covering in this summit two is bring the information. The mast cells have a role. And like you said, we don't want to just suppress them. We want them to be able to self-regulate and have them working when we need them to, and have them calm down at other times, you know. Exactly, exactly. Mast cells do have a role. Mast cells are there for a reason. We got to be thankful for our mast cells because if we don't have them, we don't know that we can't tolerate something or something's wrong.

You know, our spidey senses go away. Mast cell. I call people mast cells. Your super spidey sense. You know, it's. I think things are all the time. You know, there's a role for it, but we just have to meet it halfway, right? Our body has these mast cells, and we have to get to the root. Cause that's exactly what's operating in this. Why is your body kind of going to persistent fodder slide. Yeah. You know yeah. And you know it's like Beth who's you know Beth O'Hara running this whole amazing summit.

She talks so much about them being sentinels that are out there. And they're just like, they need a break, right? They don't need to be on all the time. So it's so critical. And I'm just so happy that we can all be talking about this using different language. But same idea, you know, and one of the things, a lot of people who follow the work that that I do and who are looking at mold and Lyme and the interaction with mast cells, know that we talk a ton about the need to work with our airway, work with the biologic dentists, and also see people who are skilled in cranial osteopathy and such.

And it all goes back to what Doctor Ron saying is like it opening up the face, allowing the breathing to go. And, you know, so I think that that's a big part in like you were saying, that mask helps. So what in your role in the work you're doing you're really looking like you're saying it. Mental health, cognitive things, reversing Alzheimer's, the whole nine yards. What are you seeing in people with brain disorders? And and as it relates to histamine intolerance, I mean, are there particular patterns of things you see?

Are there things that people should be looking out for? Yeah, we'll get real specific. You know, every day I read, these brains brain mapping is called quantitative edges. And these are basically the electrodes that we put on the brain. And we ask you look at patterns and we take this information, and the artificial intelligence literally computes it, puts it into a 3D imaging. So it lets me know, like what some disease states or what symptoms these are correlated with. So if I were to look at somebody with a lot of like nasal issues, their brain looks like it's on fire.

They have a lot of high power. It's called a beta region. And beta is like it's like an anxiety state, right? It's a good extinction. We're excited or free, like something's revved up or something like super revved up. Now that that revved up state also looks like somebody's brain who's had infections, whether it's gut infections, periodontal infections, chronic sinus disease also looks like something with major histamine issues and more toxins or other environmental toxins. All of the brain patterns look the same and they all correlate with anxiety, insomnia and depression.

Right. And so, and then 2008 was my big moment where, we were asked by the VA hospital here to do a project to scan military veterans with PTSD. And the PTSD veterans all had the same issue as well as like what's what's what's going on here? What's going on here is that depending on who you talk to and depending on where the patients go for their doctors, they're going to have different diagnoses.

Airway, brain health, and root causes 10:42

But they have one sort of same thing. It's the brain is always on fight or flight or alert phase, right? Yep. Fight flight or freeze. And as this turns out, a lot most of these military veterans have some sort of medical issues, or they have sleep apnea that's causing, a huge amount of cytokines, a huge amount of histamines to be released. They got something that's going on. And the physiologic, like the physiologic type of body that they have, are these people with airway diseases. And so that's where really I kind of fit all those in together.

So that's why we just start with airway. And we find so much pathology there. And by the time they get that treatment things get a whole lot better. We stopped using the words Maslow anymore. Right now it's it's like a little bit here and there becomes a whole lot easier. So I think this is just such a key point. Chang. Because like every it's a it's a lot of the medical system is like data might not buy into mast cell or chronic Lyme or chronic mold because a lot of it look is overlapping. And I think what I hear you saying, and I really want to drive home for everyone, is we're really looking at what is the true root cause.

And I hear you say that the like I mean, in medicine, we talked about ABCs. Right. And the number one thing we look at in medicine is airway. You're like, yeah, yeah. And so if we start with those basics and then we start and we follow it down, then maybe there's some muscle leftover, maybe there's some mold left over. But these are. But I think I hear you going back to the fundamental structure of the body and how it functions is paramount to what maybe external toxin is coming in to essentially attack it.

Exactly. If you work on that and magical things happen. Right. But that's not necessarily a short road or easy road. You said to someone, guide you through it so that the flip side of that is it's not just about toxins coming in, it's about the ability to detoxify. Right. And you know, as well as I, body structure is so important for detoxification. Most people think, oh, it's my liver or it's my kidneys or it's my skin. I got to sweat with infrared sauna. No it's symmetry. Symmetry is first. If you're walking around your shoulder lopsided or your neck is crooked, that's the impairs way for detoxification.

If you have obstructive airway disease. And then this this little thing right here called the sternocleidomastoid or the answer scaling where they meet is like, oh, this is super like painful and tender. My massage therapist, my neck is always tight. Well, that's fast as fashion tightens. You're not able to detox from here. And so a lot of the environmental toxins, somebody gets stuck up there. They can't go into the detox pathways like the lymphatics in the and all this stuff. Right. And so and so people get stuck in that phase.

And they ended up saying that, oh, I have all this stuff going on, I have moles and I have Lyme, I'm heavy metal toxins have X, Y and Z. I was like, well, it's it's really one structural issue. And yes, we have tests that tests for all these things. We don't necessarily have them individually. You're just like what a detox from them. So we still start with like symmetry and fashion and airway and breathing. One of the things you're reminded me of, man, is like, you know, we have so many people with that head forward posture.

And like when you're talking about the that connective tissue. Yeah, yeah. I mean we're on this on the phone and the screen, but we've got like this on like the fascia guys. So it's like almost a Saran wrap that all of our muscles and our other tissues and our blood vessels throw in and are supported by. So as we put stretch on this, we're actually collapsing things like lymphatics. And I love talking about the Glimt system, that brain detoxification pathway. But everybody asks you, hey, what's the best like brain detox supplement?

And I'm like having an open drain. Yeah. So true. Yeah. You got you got to have the faucet loose a little bit, you know, and, and I think, you know, supplements are kind of an easy target right. But I've used supplements like have you medications too much is also bad. Right, right. And we don't want to be dependent on supplements. Or if I don't take the supplement, I don't feel. Well, that's that's not how our of our diet should be function. We really have to have a progression towards the return of function.

But as you said, you can train this stuff. You know, you got to like. Yeah, look at, you know, cranial sacral release, myofascial therapy. If you have obstructive airway disease, maybe mild functional therapy, which is basically a tongue related, issues and tongue ties. And those are things that have to be dealt with. And guess what? We find a lot of these and, brain disorder patients, mostly in Alzheimer's disease. And it's really rare to find someone with progressively aggressive like memory loss and Alzheimer's and not have some airway issue that's really there in the neck, always look the same as well.

I'm like, you know, it's kind of dressed up first. So I agree with you. Yeah. I mean, you hit on a couple of really emotional things from my personal life and like, you know, it's like my, my father had this longstanding obstructive sleep apnea. And when he was on top of the machine, he was doing pretty good. But as he got a little lax with it, cognitive function went way down because his airway was collapsing. Right. And he's not draining. And then on the opposite end of the age spectrum, my little one used to every time she went to sleep, she was like three at the time.

Every time she fell asleep, she'd be drenched in sweat. So everybody I know was like, oh, it's busy a doctor time, because that's what you do, you know, you cheat. And I'm like, no, it's not. But you don't only have the busier malaria when you go to bed. Right. But it didn't matter lying down or sitting up. And she actually got my functional therapy and went to a functional biologic dentist. Right. And put in a functional appliance and immediately. And this is the really, I think what I love about what you're hearing and I and the reason I'm sharing this, I would love to get your feedback on this, is she had a functional appliance put in and that night she stopped having the sweats. Right.

So it wasn't just changing the airway shape, but there was a piece of the nervous system that was being supported. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what you've seen, not just from the physical structure, but when we're working with the nervous system and things that calm down the nervous system and maybe some of the tools that you use to calm the nervous system down, because I think that's also another key piece. Yeah, that is a very important thing. And, you know, and it's not just in kids, you know, a lot of, women who are or who are, I hate to use the word middle age.

Let's say they're a model Perimenopausal period. Right. Tends to have like, oh, I have these night sweats, while other nice ones are not necessarily just from hormonal changes, they're actually from worse than the obstruction, which also happens sort of perimenopausal period. But let me let me kind of give you, my $0.02 on what's really going on. So the sweating okay. Whenever someone sweats, there are certain things that has to happen to allow the sweat glands to sweat. And that's called the sympathetic parasympathetic system shift.

So the sympathetic system sort of the fight or flight parasympathetic is like kind of rest and digest. So whenever you're going to sleep, you're supposed to be like a just sort of parasympathetic niceness. Right. And unless the brain thinks something's wrong. So so you can see the brain slip in from like the nice, like theta region, like deep sleep all of a sudden beta, you see the brain doing this on the, on the EEG literally can't see it. And as that happens, it's there for a reason. So not only do your mast cells upregulated, your cortisol gets released, your melatonin gets suppressed.

So you don't get good quality sleep. And then your progesterone decreases. And progesterone sort of one of the master hormones the precursor to testosterone in men and estrogen and then woman and then your thyroid starts being inhibiting the conversion of therapy because we inhibit inhibited because all of a sudden your brain's trying to protect your life, you know, and I have this, my five year old, too. So I identify. And so what happens is that why would the brain perceive some danger that's really there?

And as it turns out, for a lot of people, it's the sort of airway disease. And it's maybe the tongue is a little too big for the width of the mouth, or maybe the person is born with the really high arts, really crowded palates, really large adenoids. Maybe the person's born either missing. We have been born with missing sinus cavities or really small sinus cavities, especially in one of the hereditary disorders. It was the syndrome that's really, really common. So there's there's something physiologic and there that's physically there, it's not mysterious at all.

And there's therapies now that can deal with this. Right. So oral clients, one of them mandibular advancement devices, that's another one called Romeo block which actually shapes the entire upper airway. So there's a lot of advancements in the biologic dental field at this point to support that. And what's really cool is I have before and after brain maps of people on these appliances with like, diagnosed like Alzheimer's disease. Right. And you're able to see that and cognitively their imaging looks better.

Right? Their function looks better, their speech is better, their attention is better. Like, oh my goodness, you know, do we take some magical supplement? And the answer is no. We restore symmetry. We turn that faucet on for detoxification to allow the lymphatics and gland facts to drain. And so in pediatrics this is called in adults. It's called Alzheimer's disease. If you look at the diagnostic bits here they look pretty darn similar. It's because there's the disease pathological pathophysiology.

Disease is actually very similar if not identical in a lot of patients. Well it's interesting because like here we are talking about ADHD and Alzheimer's and dental things and facial and the airway and the mast cell summit. And I just want to like go back and just re highlight like what you're saying is like you see the EEG changes and this is like so critical you actually have objective evidence in the brain that shows that mast cell

Detoxification, posture, and nervous system support 19:48

and Lyme and PTSD, along with ADHD and Alzheimer's, have very similar findings in the brain. And they original trigger may be different. But if we get underneath of it and we look at how the body functions, we can make a change. And so now think about this, guys. You're working on your mast cell activation syndrome by doing the work that Doctor Ron's talking about. You're improving your your Marseille regulation your tolerance of different foods. And oh by the way, your brain fog goes away and your attention gets better.

And now you're helping to prevent future Alzheimer's. Like, but it's all the same system. And this is the part that gets me so, so stoked is like, you know, the whole dang system is set up for you to succeed and to live a healthy life. And there's so few people I hear actually understanding that. So I just wanted to like super props, man, because this is what this is the kind of medicine people need. Yeah, absolutely. And you know what? And you know as well as I do that if someone goes on Google right now and types of mast cell activation syndrome, there's all sorts of different like integrative medicine forums and stuff on it, but there's very few on exactly.

We just talked about now, which is airway and stuff like that. And people are searching. I have this great antihistamine you should use. Yeah, exactly. That's once again covering up symptoms right now. Like, oh it's okay. You can use, you know, either nasty or stinging nettles or some sort of nasal stabilizer. But that's still a supplement that stabilizing something that should be there in the first place. Your brain is on alert. Right. And we can't. And this is what I, what we tell patients. So in my in my practice we have with Jenny Marino, she's a mind body medicine practitioner and she works with a lot of vassal patients.

We can't establish a great amount of success and massive activation without dealing with the mind body, without looking at the cycles of social emotional trauma that's been there. You know, we can't do it without breathing techniques of Wim Hof breathing and also the nostril breathing and stuff like that, and is so difficult in that population. And so, you know, I think insurance. Right. And we, we have Medicaid plans as well as Medicare plans in our, in our, in our company, which means that we see people who can't really afford supplements, stuff like that.

But breathing is fruit, right? And when we started teaching those people in groups. So these are like virtual zoom groups about breath and what we really see, that group outperforms our conventional groups. So just, you know, taking, you know, doing Lotus now truck selling or to Tiffin and stuff like that. Well or timeout timeout. So can we just like not prescribe these things and put everyone into these Roth groups. Because you know, we did this because people couldn't afford a lot of these things.

But now this group is actually outperforming our original group. So, in my part of my job is to make sure there's cost savings for the patients, too. That's that's what I do as a medicaid Medicare practitioner. Right. So we want to make sure to like what is the biggest benefit we have for the least cost and breathing is there? No, not saying there's no place for supplements or medicine. There actually is. There's there's a huge place for it, right? You know, even CBD and stuff like that. But you can't overstep that, that primary like foundational.

You know, I did this is like you're like preaching from my book to. Right. It's like, I love it because all of the things have a time and a place potentially. But the most important thing is the stuff that you guys can all do at home that is free or next to free, and you can do it all the time. Like it's not only that breathing is free, but you have to do it. And in the work that we've done, so much of it is mouth breathing. Well, how do you not breathe through your mouth when you close it? Or you tape it while you're sleeping, but you have to breathe through your nose?

And I heard you mention a few breath techniques, and I have a question about one of the ones that we also use. But what what kind of is like the role that you see for things like exercise, meditation and yoga? Like where do they get better results? But but why? Like what? What is that in our relationship? What do I start, my friend? So let's talk about exercise first. Right. Which is going to be similar as yoga and similar to qigong and teaching whenever the body moves lymphatic news as well, right.

Your detox mechanisms move. Whenever the the body moves, you're able to sweat and detox from that as well. That can in turn lower the ability of of, of your body to, to produce, you know, hyper produce, like, mast cells, but also creates a whole lot of balance. Exercise increases nasal breathing, Who would've thought? Right. Which means that you get to increase and also don't exercise, which suppresses histamine. Yeah, that's that's another one. Right. And then the, What did you say? Exercise. Yoga and what?

Oh, meditation. So you said. Yeah. Meditation believes like all of it. Like I want it all right now, man. We want the massage class. This this is the cool part about meditation. And you guys want to know about this? It's actually on my website. W-w-what university.com. Which stands for Texas Center for Lifestyle Medicine. University. There's a midway down. There's a class called Mind sculpting. That's the workshop. We actually built this whole thing in significant detail, with genuine mind body medicine practitioner.

Let's tie in meditation for a second, because people think meditation and they think it's like, kind of woowoo. But let me tell you the actual science behind meditation. So if I were to get someone to meditate and we have a EEG on which we do all the time, and I get them to close their eyes, so those people with a lot of, brain firing, the beta frequency, a lot of the mast cell releases, they kind of get stuck there. But the minute we tell them to do like breathing, mindfulness and meditation, you see the brain patterns like go into like instead of the high frequency regions of the lower frequency region.

The minute they do that, look at the face. They may be the before they may be able to ghastly waves. They're always in fight or flight. You see the blood flow will return to their face. And the second thing that it's really, really common and you're going to laugh at this is that people start wanting to poop. And the reason behind that hold is because that upregulate. Yeah, they're nitric oxide. Right. With the the mindfulness and meditation actually redirects blood flow to the liver to the gut for the healing process.

And all of a sounds like the guts, like, oh, I need a new detox. Can I, can I just poop? Right. And so a lot of times, some in our courses, people will kind of have to excuse themselves in the middle to go poop. And now it's it's funny because we all cheer each other on, like, you have chronic constipation from resolutions, right? You know, poop. You can you can have some detox now. So actually becomes a bit of a running joke. But that's how powerful like meditative processes are. And what's really cool, it's free.

And the more you do it, the better you become at it. And that's the really cool part about all this. Well, and I think that's a really key point too, is like, I hear a lot of people say meditation is not for me. It's too hard. It's this or that, right? And I've found the same thing. But so you're just saying that we should just start, and no matter how good or bad we feel we are at, we're at it. You can get objective measurements on your legs that show in real time. Even if we think we suck, we're actually doing a better job than we were a minute ago.

Yeah, yeah, we do this thing called home neurofeedback where we use this program called Mind lift. And then, there's, there's a device called the muse two, headband. You can send people and we can actually ask people who are doing these meditative things on my software, no matter where they are in the world. Me and my my, my colleague, a, behavioral neuroscientist by the name of Francesco Amico in Dublin, we're literally seeing what's happening, and we can see each area of the brain start improving this.

In fact, this is one of the first things that we do to show patients, especially with massage deviations like, hey, you just in 90% improve since seven days ago and all you did was three minutes a day. That's that's really good. And that correlates that. It has a significant correlation with downregulation in that like cortisol surges, mast cell activation and stress reduction in clinical outcomes as well. But yeah, there's a lot of objective evidence here. I think that's the thing. Like so many of us sit down and and think that 1 or 2, 5 or 10 minute meditation sessions or breathing sessions, we're going to just notice this massive shifts in our physiology.

And you're stuck in a mindset, right? That these things have to be quick. And like Doctor Rohn said a little while ago, like, you know, some of this stuff, it's not a short, easy road, but it's so, so worthwhile. But you can actually see them changing, which I just think is so key because even if we don't feel like personally, we're changing objective measurements of our brain show we are. Yes, exactly. And, and these objective measurements can, you can see these things before you kind of feel it yourself.

But over time, though, as it becomes more and more, there is correlation with with with patients feeling them themselves as well. Right. So the change starts before you actually can feel it though, or before most people will notice it right away. Yeah. And let me tell you why. You know, I think most people watching this have suffered some sort of trauma in the past, and most of it actually comes from medical, because the medical world doesn't necessarily recognize that what we use as a thing. Right.

So and so there's a lot of PTSD, right? Right. There's a lot of, people that are just not validated by the medical system. That's why they're watching the summit in the first place. So what they have to do, and if you're watching this, what you have to do is battle for yourself to become your own caregiver and find all this information,

Meditation, trauma, and mind-body healing 28:30

the end up on the summit learning all these great things on the summit. So if you're one of those people, what's what's happening is that you are now or doer, okay. And if I tell you to, to meditate, well, that's also doing something. But instead of objectively doing something in meditation you have to like sit there and technically do nothing. Right. So a lot of people will try to meditate, have too high the expectation instead of saying, oh my God, I can't get into a meditative state, I'm thinking of all these things.

Well, that's that's meditation. You're actually taking thoughts and you're thinking about them, and then you put it over here, take another thought and think about you. Put them over here. That that's meditation. Meditation. Not necessarily. Just turn your mind off. Think about nothing. It's really hard to do so. So for people who says, I'm a poor meditator, I just like me just so hard on yourself. You're just too hard, right? But just like exercise, it takes time. You know, you can't go out and run a half marathon without without training.

You know, it's just it's really hard to do. You can break the joints. The same thing with the brain. The brain has to recognize, okay, there's a meditative process. And through meditation, you're allowed to cry. You're allowed to laugh, you're allowed to be pissed off. And that's meditation, right? So if you think about it as that and accept the feelings that we have and love them as our own, that's meditation. The self appreciation session, meditation, dude, I love it. It's like everything you're saying are these things that I feel is so true because we're getting down to that root cause.

And for me, meditation, one of the definitions I really like is to become familiar with. So I challenge people to become familiar with the state that they want to be in because like you said, you're moving those thoughts and you're recreating a way of thinking. But the first time, like, if you're not feeling well and you want to become familiar with feeling well, maybe you don't remember how to do that. So just get used to it. And the part that really gets me because this, this totally with me, like you literally just summarized me like that pissed off part.

I didn't try much at meditation, but man, I got why can't I do this? I'm like, I achieve everything. And it was like literally like the part that I sat down and worked on meditation and I got pissed off was my ultimately in, in hindsight was a my signal that I was actually changing my physiology state, changing my belief systems because I was challenging my status quo. And for me, I didn't cry or laugh about it, I got mad. So whether you're doing any of the things that, you know, changes said, you know, crying, laughing or being mad or whatever your variation is, that means you're challenging your comfort zone and you're moving into that place.

You want to go to. So that's a sign it's working. So dude, just brilliant, I love it. So as we kind of bring all this together, you know, you've kind of talked we've kind of touched a little bit, on where trauma and, and even betrayal from the medical system or even the thought that our body might betray us is there. So could you talk a little bit more about that? And then maybe what kind of belief systems should we be focusing on, and how can we accelerate this process at home? Oh yeah. My favorite topic. And, and this is something I talk to patients every day about in a lot of different disease systems.

But, if you were to go to a movie and you will watch the movie and a scary scene would come up and, if that scene is super scary, you have the moment of fright. During that moment of fright, you're nitric oxide just shuts down. You stop breathing, your face goes ghastly white because your blood flows down the right to fight or flight muscles instead of your face and your gut, and you might feel queasy. Your, your stomach might feel not so great martial nauseous after that, that fear. And same thing happens when you have trauma.

But then when you have a trauma that occurs once in your brain, plays it over and over again, it can't tell the difference between real trauma and what it just created. Physiologically, it's the same. You still have the same methyl activation, right? And your brain can tell a difference between a movie and not a movie. You can't tell the difference between something that happened once versus something happened 10,000 times, because 10,000 days in a row, you're thinking about it for decades, right?

And so what happens is that this a lot of the mast cell activation, gets primed and the more primed it gets, the easier it is to release. And we have to thank our bodies for that is because our bodies are trying to protect us. That's how we survive. If we didn't have these mass cells, we would not be existing. We would have gone extinct a while ago, you know, and so recognize the fact that a lot of the mindfulness that comes in is us dealing with the fact that this event happened once, but that's it. Okay?

But it happened once. It sucks. I'm going to process that. And then as I process that, bring it into my subconscious instead of letting it linger in my I'm sorry, bring it into my conscious state instead of let it linger in my subconscious. Yeah, I can deal with it. And that's what the process of that meditative process is. So instead of that start becoming a trigger for mast cells, that thought can become a trigger for serotonin. Let me give you a really cool example. When I was young. So I was born in China.

And one of the most painful thoughts I ever had was so, well, in China, there's government out foods for students. My mom was a medical student at the time, university. I remember just kind of holding her hand and waiting for youtiao, which is basically like fried dough and rice porridge from the university. And I remember one of the things is that, you know, I, I like to, like, roam around a little bit, but my mom always, like, pulled me back into the line and I thought she didn't like me every time I did that.

But this is a thought I hadn't thought about in, like, decades. And it came to me during a meditation, and I'm like, you know, why did I think about this? And it's because my mom recently said something that made me didn't feel so great about myself. But it's not her fault. It's actually my fault. Because what I did is I internalized it and then tied to the subconscious thought of me waiting in line with everyone else. 3 or 4 years old, right? And then now and then during my meditation thought process, I'm like, you know what?

She's just protecting us. And she does not want the authorities down there to see that there's a kid flailing around and then pull me away from her, because my mom wanted to keep me close to me. And that pulling her, pulling me close to her was an act of love. So instead of now that thought being something that triggers me, that thought triggers me is like, wow, I really appreciate my mother. Right? So you kind of get to flip it around. There are people with these thoughts in their subconscious mind, and they can't identify that unless they go into sort of this meditative state in dealing with it.

They don't realize that, that something is there. So when I if I recognize that I talked to my mom about that, and then we had a really great conversation and our relationship was even more elevated. So something that used to be a mess or trigger now is a happiness trigger. So that makes sense to that. So rad. Because like even like you touched on and I and I think about this so much is how much of how we experience our health journey is whether or not our symptoms are validated by the medical system, have our practitioners accidentally or hopefully not, but potentially even purposely betrayed us.

You know, how do we feel like our body's betraying us and what I'm hearing and and and and in my experiences, our bodies are never betraying us. They are always trying to do the very best they can in that moment. And that might be overdoing it from an external perspective. So bring that back in. Love it. Dude. The external perspective, is an expectation. That's set by someone in your early life. That's always the case, right? And sometimes we're the 1 or 2 generation separated wave from a war torn country, like like myself.

You know, right now, if you look at Ukraine, there's a lot of things that happens in Generation Zero, the original one. So there's a lot of generational trauma that occurs. So that's why a lot of people these vessel activation is having similar issues with the with the mother or father. And then you know, the grandparents and etc., etc.. And it actually comes from a time of war. Right? So if we look at genetics, well, we know that, looking at the studies of Holocaust, we know that the grandchildren of those people, that or in the Holocaust have significantly higher cortisol reactions to sound like a loud sound, like boom, you know, and we're finding that in other war torn countries as well, two generations down, even though the grandchildren never experience actual war.

So a lot of that traumatic event, the signaling of our brain or body, is inherited from multiple generations up. And I challenge people to think that it really start with you. Or did it start multiple generations off? And I guarantee you, if you ask around some more, you'll notice it started multiple generations up. And if we start thinking about that in that regard and building relationships with multiple people in our, in our, in our family of different generations, we can have that conversation, you know, and that's what creates a lot of power in resolution so we can stop this generational trauma.

It's like in our generation, it's just so crazy having this conversation with you, because every time we talk about one topic or the other, another piece comes up, like even from my own world. And after my father passed away, like we had had an okay time, and then he had some pretty significant. There are a lot of really rough times, and he had a lot of trauma from the past and his generational stuff. And it was it was a tough time, right? Like there were times where we didn't speak for a while.

There were times where there's yelling and screaming and all this other good stuff, like many people experience. Right. But then he passed away and we were kind of on good terms. But, and so there wasn't really that bad thing, but it wasn't until 3 or 4 years later where I had this moment, just kind of like you were just talking about with your mom, where it came back to me. And I was like, my dad always did the best he could for me, right? He was trying his best, but it didn't work out. But what was really wild and made me think about sharing this right now is when you say you can change it.

My relationship with him has continued to get better and better every day since that realization, even though he's been dead for like six years. Yes. And so for all you guys listening, when Doctor Ryan says you can change this generational thing, it happens like this. And then it continues to improve. So it's the aware, at least for me, it was the awareness and then processing what it felt like inside of me. So that's what I'm really hearing, what you're saying is it's like you're not going to go back and change the war, but you can change the generational impact on you, which changes it for everyone.

And you know what? You can see it in labs. That's the cool part. There's people trying to get inflammatory markers down forever interleukin one, interleukin 17in CRP. And then when they go through some sort of emotional shift, right, or relationship shift, all of a sudden their lives get better. There's people who are diagnosed with autoimmune diseases with positive and A's and all these different things, and bloodwork all of a sudden that goes back to negative and they don't necessarily have these autoimmune disorders.

There are people who who are basically transformed. And even the way they look, they had a lot of white hair and they start growing out darker roots after after a relationship change. So these are these are common phenomena that that we see. And you know, I'm a data nerd. So whenever I see something like that I'm like, what is the variable that change that, you know, in the practice? And it wasn't really until 2019 that we realized it was actually working with like mind body medicine that people were having like all these big major relationship change that these these occurred.

And, and then even cancer, like cancer growth out so occurs as well. And it's fascinating how and and my mom was an acupuncturist. And so, you know, it's the only thing I tell her, she's like duh duh duh. You know. And so it's fascinating how I went through med school, did my residency, you know, chief resident attending ship and all that medical training. I kind of went back to my roots of traditional Chinese medicine and say healing occurs with a mindset. And that's the primary function of the brain.

It can take you any direction you want. It can primary mast cells or it cannot. And so and we have to be able to to really honor that. I love it man. What a great way to kind of bring this all together because it it's like data driven mindset and breathing medicine. I mean really going back to the root. And it's not even, you know, the one thing

Closing thoughts and resources 39:54

I really want to highlight about what I'm taking away from our conversation is it's not just about root cause medicine, but it's more like root cause health. Like you're going back to the basics of how the body actually optimally functions and when it when you feed and nourish that all these other things just fall away. Brilliant, man. Yeah. And that's why your patients get so much better, so much quicker. And you have the data again to prove that it works. Yeah. And, and, the hardest part is to sometimes convince our patients that that's the foundation.

I'm not going to talk about anything else but that. And I see the trauma that's there. Sometimes they're saying things I'm like, you know, just hold on a second. I just want to label that I can feel that you have some from behind this, and we talk about that. And that's not my line, man and my mast cells. You got to give it. What do I need to do for that. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah whenever you, you know people come out of mast cells. And so let's just take a step back like before mast cells, I just came into the room and you were sitting in a chair and it turns me like this, which means you can't move your neck.

Let's talk about that first. That's more important for your mast cells then, than any supplements or anything that we can give right or medications. Right. And so all this comes together and this is the concept of healing from cells is the entire premise of integrative health. You know, and we have to honor the way that we integrate all the information together to help the patients. And that's what that is. And it's and it's a beautiful thing. Well, Doctor Ron, thanks so much for sharing all this stuff with us.

I'd love to give you an opportunity to just, like, close up with anything we may not have touched on. And make sure you let us know where people can reach out and, get in touch with you. All right. For those of you who are listening. So, reach out to me on Instagram, and Facebook. So my name is chain Ron Kenji. Lessons are you again? There's a MD at the end, and you can find me on there. The website that I really want that we worked really hard with my entire team is, Auckland university.com. It's an educational series website.

And it's very low cost, for people who just don't have the funds to, to, and who can't afford to go to the doctor to learn a whole lot more about all the disease states, not just about muscles, but there's mind body medicine, there's brain health, cognitive health, cancer. There's, our cancer courses quite robust. There's there's dis autonomy and parts which a lot of people listening on this forum have this on omega parts as well. And how to navigate that and how to speak with your doctors and etc..

So it's a great website to, to have. So, so the last thing that I really want to leave, people thinking about is that, there's a lot of great speakers on this summit. There's a tremendous amount, but the one that's going to benefit you the most is a conversation with yourself. It's yes, you have this information, you have all this stuff like that. And, and whenever you're thinking about, you know, decreasing Maslow's and stuff like that, there's definite mind body experiences to be had, whether that's through a meditative journey or working out or yoga or something like that, something that you can do.

There's always something I can do for, for, stabilizing themselves and getting rid of the trauma that there really is. And I want you to really honor that and all of your self and all of the relationships that you have with people as well. Brilliant. I love it, brother. Well, Doctor Chang Ron, thank you so much for joining us for, this episode of the reversing mass cell activation syndrome, and histamine intolerance Summit. I'm your co-host, doctor Tom Moorcroft. Until next time, everybody. Thanks for joining us.