Reverse Autoimmune Disease Through Emotional Detoxification

So I told you if you haven’t met me before, I reversed my own rheumatoid arthritis 25 years ago in six months, and before I was diagnosed, I was this marathon running perfectionist who pushed herself really hard, and was a people pleaser, and had past trauma that had to be dealt with and hadn’t been dealt with yet. This is me running the Boston Marathon over on the left-hand side. And then in my very early 30’s, after the birth of my fourth child here on the right-hand side, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. And, you know, my friends all called me an Energizer Bunny because I was very, very driven. So I was able to actually not take the methotrexate that my doctor gave me that first day in her office when she found out that this was a genetic issue, that my grandfather had had it, by really going in and doing what I now call the Freedom Framework. 

Working on my genetics, my gut health, my toxic burden, and my trauma, which I realized when I started really working on this, had a huge impact on my immune system. And we’ll talk a little bit about that. Everything that I talk about in the next few days of the summit, as I do these little webinars, I did it this way this time because I thought I really wanna take you through the process, you know? This is the process of really from point A to point B to point C to point D, so that we can reverse that autoimmune disease for you. I talk about all the things that I’m touching on in these little short talks more deeply in my book, “Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle,” and again in its companion book, “The Quick & Easy Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook.” So for those of you that don’t know me, I am a Nurse Practitioner with a specialty in Integrative Medicine. 

I’m Board Certified in Functional and Ayurvedic Medicine. I have a PhD in Sexology. I am a Psychotherapist. An energy worker, a yoga teacher, meditation teacher, certified conscious dying doula. I’m a Master’s of Divinity student right now. And I’m the founder of The Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program. And at the end of each one of these talks this week, I’m giving you an offer of $3,000 off that program if you want to join us in this amazing tribe of people who are doing the very things I’m talking about here this week. And so sometimes people will write to me after summits and say, “I really wanna work with you.” And, “How could I learn more?” You know? And so we thought what we’d do is at the end of each one of these talks today is give you an opportunity with a significant scholarship for the summit. 

So I love this quote by Rumi. I love Rumi. “Don’t be satisfied with stories, “how things have gone with others, “Unfold your own mess.” And so what we’re doing is we’re talking about your stories, you know, by really taking a look at how you’ve written it over the years. And most of the time, we don’t realize we’ve written our story and that we have a cast of characters, both internally and externally, who are living that story. I’m gonna give you a little new perspective on how that perception of your story impacts your hormones and your immune system and the disease process that we call autoimmunity, and then show you some science that actually indicates how this is all hooked up. And why Ayurveda 10,000 years ago saying that autoimmune diseases, undigested anger, how they had hit on something so many years ago. And now we’re just learning the science of why it is. And we’re gonna talk about the root causes of autoimmunity and go through the Five R’s of Healing. 

So I always talk about the conventional medical model or standard American medical model is matching pill to ill. It’s evidence-based, which means what we do is when we do a research study we wanna extrapolate it to the whole population, which doesn’t work ’cause we’re all different. We have different genetics. And so it’s kind of crazy that we keep holding on to this idea that we are standardized people and that we can standardize medicine, because it obviously doesn’t work. We have these expectations that our insurance should pay for things. And it’s not a realistic expectation because standard American model of medicine is match pill to ill. So if we’re moving outside of that to, “Oh, I need to start taking responsibility “for what I eat and looking at supplementation for nutrients “that are no longer available in the soil.” Like, these are things that insurance plans don’t pay for and they also don’t pay for functional medicine testing. 

And then when we get angry about that, and believe me I’ve spent years being angry about that until I finally learned how to just radically accept what it is, then we actually make ourselves worse. And so we really wanna think about, “Okay, what are my expectations? “Are they realistic or unrealistic? “And how unhappy am I whenever I have an expectation “that’s not being met? “And how often is that happening “when in relationship to my body not meeting my expectations “and my healthcare model not meeting my expectations?” And so then you’re in a swirl of upset which then is a perception that you’re not safe, which then sends all these, you know, these lovely signals to your body that you’re a zebra being chased by a lion. 

Doesn’t work to heal when you’re in that space.All right, so there’s so many things that if we’re really going to talk about reversing autoimmunity under an insurance model, we have to address the toxic load of chemicals being dumped into our environment. We have to address public health like the Epstein-Barr viruses. We have 95% of Americans that have that, you know? We have to address our food, our agribusiness. There’s just so much, you know, that lobbyists actually are in charge of when it comes to our conventional medical model. So as long as it’s that way, we need to move outside of that paradigm when we’re talking about reversing autoimmunity and think differently. 

So this Necker Cube, I love. I put this in my book because when I first, I don’t know if any of you have ever been exposed to a Necker Cube before. When I was first asked to look at this, I thought, “Well, this is so interesting. “All I see is this,” you know? And then the person said, “Keep looking at it.” So choose a point in here where two lines or three lines meet, I use the one where three lines meet, and just stare at it. And what you’ll see is, “Oh, that corner pops out. “So it’s closer to me. “And then if I close my eyes and I look at it again, “that’s the corner that’s in away from me.” And it can keep going back and forth, this cube, how it’s presenting to me. So interesting. What that is is it’s a new perspective which is what I’m up to in this webinar is helping you have a new perspective.

So in the last webinar from yesterday, I said, “You know, autoimmune illnesses “are labeled and treated by their target tissue “rather than by the root causes.” So instead of moving the target around we wanna tap the Archer on the shoulder and say, “Hey, can you stop please shooting arrows at me?” Which is your immune system, right? We wanna treat this as your immune system shooting arrows. So I like for people to do this little, this comes from, it’s a variation that I tweaked for my health coach students and my patients of the, I call it, the Health Map Worksheet. The Institute for Functional Medicine calls it a timeline and they have it set up a little differently, but this is the one that I use in my practice. And what you do, you don’t even need this worksheet. But when you work with me on my website on drkeesha.com, where it says, “Apply to become a patient,” there’s actually, it has step one, step two, step three. One of the steps is to download this worksheet. And so you can get it. And what you do is, is you’re really looking at what is my timeline from preconception, right? Prenatal, up until birth into where I am today. 

And just fill in things that are triggers from an emotional, a mental, a spiritual, and a physical cause. So for example, if you look here down below the current symptoms that someone came to see me with. Weight problems, hot flashes, they were irritable, had insomnia, low libido, brain fog, vaginal dryness, and back pain. And then when you look at this, you can see mom’s a smoker, mom had childhood trauma, single mother entrepreneur in a man’s world, raising two little boys, work two jobs, no child support, prenatal mom smoked, stress, ate a standard American diet, prenatal care unknown. Then at birth, born in the hospital vaginally, labor and delivery unknown, father in attendance, no maternal support, and insecure attachment. So then it just goes through and, you know, father electrocuted at three weeks, lost hand, toes, and had ego crushed. 

Stress high right at this baby’s birth, right? So then age nine parents got divorced, was a latchkey kid. You can see how this is actually addressing emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical things. Walked herself to kindergarten. Had a humiliating experience. Okay, so came out as an, this is where the birth of her type one on the Enneagram, which I also work with my patients and students, came home to feed self, do homework, which was normal for her. And then when she was asked to pick the parent that she was going to live with, which is not good, right? So then in teenage years lost track of dad after he got remarried. Mother worked all the time, remarried, marriage volatile and violent, lots of alcohol, screaming, guns, knives, and police. 

A score of five. Got strep throat every year with antibiotics. See how these things are in red. At least five times started oral contraceptive pill at age 15, lots of alcohol, inconsistent pot use, smoked from age 15 to age 27. For sexual experience, age 14, which was nonconsensual and then regular sex at age 15 and an abortion at age 16. So this person had, right, so much happening over here in the emotional, mental, and spiritual, as well as antibiotic use from strep throat. Now, when you don’t do something like this, if you were doing just sort of a standard intake with a conventional medical provider, much of this wouldn’t come out. In her 20’s, she was raped in college, thought it was her fault. Didn’t talk about it. Didn’t speak out. And then wound up this weight, hot flashes, irritability. When I worked with this woman after some, you know, did some lab work and everything, she had Hashimoto’s and didn’t know it. Often that’s the case. Thyroid is one of the target tissues when things like this, raped in college, not your fault, you don’t talk about it, right? You think it is your fault. Graduated college, met current spouse. First daughter born at age 28 after 30 hours of labor and eventual C-section. 

So now we have C-section, more antibiotics. In her 32nd, child, planned C-section, brother died suddenly when she was 37, diagnosed with Hashimoto’s. That was when she came into my office at age 38. Was able to reverse it in two years. And she had to do a lot of trauma work. In her 40’s, teenage stress with her children, worry and anxiety. Mom died of cancer when she was 42. Nephew killed when she was 45. Marital stress and counseling, dad died. Menopause at age 46 was those symptoms down here below. This is so helpful for you to fill out and see like, “Oh, an ACE score of five.” We’re gonna talk about that here in a minute. But so that you can kind of look at your health story, right? What is your story? That’s what we’re going to talk about. And what is that emotional piece that’s in there that triggers the immune system to then, in this person’s case, fire off at her thyroid? Each person is unique. 

That health story is going to be different for every single one of you, and for me. And what we do when we’re writing those stories, we don’t take a look at it and start weeping and say, “Oh, I had a terrible childhood.” Because sometimes people will tell me with an autoimmune disease, “I had an amazing childhood. “I had no trauma.” And that in and of itself is great, you know? And so we talk around some things with that too. Every kid has had something where they’ve come away not knowing why this happened.  Like, why did I have a friend on the playground yesterday and now she’s my frenemy? I don’t understand, you know? There are these times that happen in human development that we don’t understand what happens. And we make meanings with an undeveloped brain. So in Ayurvedic medicine there’s the thing called the Pancha Koshas. Pancha means five, Koshas means sheaths or layers. You can think about it as your five bodies. And I love this because Ayurveda says, “We’re not just our physical self,” okay? Our physical self is the one in the middle here. 

It’s called your Annamaya Kosha. It’s got your genetics. It’s got all of your cells and your organs and your tissues and your nerves. The thing, you know, the parts that your immune system is attacking when you have autoimmunity is all contained right here in that physicality. But then you also have this next layer. It’s called your energy body, or Pranamaya Kosha. You know and in new age medicine, it could be called your aura. And so your electromagnetic energy field, according to Kirlian photography. Chinese medicine calls it your chi. Ayurveda calls it prana. Japanese medicine calls ki, like reiki. Your Manamaya Kosha is the emotional body, your mental body. And it’s the place where your beliefs and your feelings are stored. The early meanings that you attach to different events are stored right there. And those are the ones through your chakra system. You have 72,000 places where your nerves cross in your body and that forms your energy body. 

It extends beyond the physicalities like this nervous system that comes out here, and it’s that body that holds your beliefs and your meanings that stimulate those nerves and say, “Oh, we’re not safe. “Oh, I’m not good enough.” And then that creates a response in the physical body. So you can see that these three bodies are all very interrelated and interdependent. And if we have toxicity in any of these three, then we don’t get to the wisdom part, our higher nature, right? Or our spiritual body, which is Anandamaya Kosha, it’s bliss, it’s our connection to the divine. Okay? So it’s a place where we feel like we’re in flow. And if we’re toxic in these other layers and we’re constantly thinking that we can’t trust, you know, we can’t, we’re not safe, then we’re not going to feel blissful ever and our immune system is going to constantly be like the charging bull. So in Ayurvedic medicine, again, 10,000-year-old sister science of yoga, they said all those years ago that we have six levels of disease progression. 

So it takes six different levels before we actually have a disease. Now, according to them, we don’t notice in our conventional Western industrialized cultures until we’re at level four or five. But we’ve had this imbalance going on for quite some time, this accumulation of an imbalance and then an aggravation, and then it spreads. So a Vata imbalance that starts off in the colon with some gas, some constipation, some dryness, can lead to back pain when it gets into that spread place. And that back pain can move up and down our spine. And you know, so now we’ve had this spread and then that back pain can create more compensatory problems. And now we have a hip problem where it localizes, okay? And then we get an expression of disease and exacerbation. 

So that etheric body is the energy body. It’s the one between the physical and the mental, again, 72,000 channels or nadis. And when, if you’ve ever taken yoga or learned anything about yoga, your yoga teacher, you know that we have these three channels that are the big ones in the center, the central channel, which is the sushumna. And then the ida and pingala, which are these bundles of afer and efer, bundles of nerves that cross as you go up. That’s what the caduceus is, is the spine with those bundles crossing as snakes. And where those meet along your spine, we always hear are the chakras, right? Seven chakras. We have 72,000 chakras. But this big one’s along the spine are connected to the sympathetic nervous system. Okay? They’re the ones where our mind says, “I’m not safe,” and pshew, right? It carries that messaging through the body and that’s why the vagus nerve becomes so darn important. 

So we have these five physiological properties that are governed by this energy body. The Pranamaya Kosha, our respiratory state, right? How well we breathe, our elimination, how well we get rid of our toxins, whether it’s by sweating or crying or breathing or pooping or urinating. Our circulation, right? Throughout our body. Our exhalation. And then our digestion. Really important, this Pranamaya Kosha. So the flow of perception is everything. Like, how we perceive from that mental body, emotional and mental body, which then triggers the nervous system or the Pranamaya Kosha, the 72,000 chakras, to inform the rest of the body what to do next. So this perception thing is everything, okay? The channels of the mind are connected to the nervous system whether it’s rest and digest or it’s fight, flight, or freeze which is connected to the chakra system, which is connected to the endocrine system that says to the adrenals, “Are you safe or are you not?” If the adrenals say, “I’m safe,” then you can have good testicular and ovarian production of those beautiful hormones that make you feel so fabulous. If it’s not, right? If your adrenals say, “We’re not safe,” then it’s hijacking all those hormones to make cortisol which is then released and that will then break down your gut wall, your GI system. 

And if you are a zebra being chased by a lion, that zebra knows it’s not only not safe to reproduce right now, but it’s also not safe to stop and go to the bathroom. So your digestive system shuts down. Then your immune system kicks on because it’s trying to keep you alive. And then you have autoimmune disease when this is done chronically. And it all starts with your perceptions. Wow. So important. That’s why Ayurvedic medicine all those 10,000 years ago said autoimmune disease is undigested anger. So our bodies, when we’re in phase one of that disease progression, it’s just quietly telling us something’s up. And then when we don’t listen, it screams. So autoimmune disease is sort of like a toddler who has been trying to get your attention for hours and finally lays on the floor and starts screaming, okay? 

So in the cell, in your cell, this is coming back again to Ayurvedic medicine. Every cell has its own life force. We call it ojas in Ayurveda in Sanskrit. Ojas, I call it, O-Juice. It’s your life force vitality. It has its own tejas, which is digestive fire. It’s your fire. And it has its own prana, which is that wonderful energy body place, right? Prana. It’s the life, okay? Ojas is the life force, tejas is the fire, prana is that life. So ojas maintains your cellular immunity. Tejas maintains your cellular metabolic activity. So in other words, it kicks out something that doesn’t work and it brings in something that does. So the nutrients come in, the garbage goes out. That’s what metabolism is. 

Same with, you know, that’s what our body, when it’s metabolizing it’s bringing in the apple, getting the nutrients from it, and excreting what it doesn’t need anymore. That’s tejas, that’s digestive fire. Prana is air, right? It’s Vata, it’s the flow of the communication with and between your cells. So these three, ojas, tejas, and prana, have to be perfectly balanced. You can see if one is not, you’re going to have trouble. So when you have low digestive fire which is called agni, from a disrupted tejas, then ama is formed, which is digestive sludge, okay? It’s toxicity. This is what this whole summit is, is autoimmune detox. I really wanted to help explain this in a way that would make sense, because this is everything, okay? 

So when that toxicity travels into the cell and alters the function of your tejas, it interferes with cellular intelligence. That’s why detoxification is so important but it has to be intelligent detoxification, not just, “I have to keep detoxing.” Okay? Because that’s where people run into a lot of trouble. Prana is interrupted and becomes dysfunctional. Now, remember prana is communication in between your cells and within the cell. And that communication causes the cells not to recognize each other properly and then start to destroy each other. That’s autoimmune disease. Okay, so that means your digestive fire is low, toxicity builds up, the toxin gets into the cell, it alters the metabolic process, and that means the cellular intelligence, and then it disrupts communication so you start attacking self. So autoimmunity is tejas burning up ojas. That means you’re literally burning up your life force. You’re killing yourself. Undigested anger. 

So the way that we approach this then is we look at the four corners of the puzzle. We really wanna make sure we don’t leave any. I always leave the trauma one out a little bit because it’s always what I call the missing piece of the puzzle. Okay. The Freedom Framework, which I went through in the last talk, just as a reminder. We have to do all of these C’s. So we wanna uncover our root causes of why tejas is burning up ojas, why prana has been disrupted. So we’re going to look at physical root causes of autoimmune disease. Illnesses, hormone imbalances, the GI system, whether it’s inflamed, intestinal permeability, microbial dysfunction. And then, of course, those toxins that are called xenoestrogens, estrogen disruptors and reproducers. 

We wanna look at the possible medications or have there been a lot of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, et cetera, et cetera. Surgery, radiation, pregnancy, all of these things can be physical root causes of autoimmune disease. All of them. Mental root causes of autoimmunity. All of these toxic thoughts. I’m unlovable. Remember, it’s undigested anger. So then it’s a toxin that travels into the cell. It disrupts communication. It severs your connection to your essence self that knows that you are lovable, no matter what. Knows that when you were born into this world you were totally enough, a beautiful gift to the world. These are these attachment disorders that severs that. Okay? I’m sick. I’m broken. I have to be perfect. At least I’m better than this person. 

Life isn’t fair. Why me? Life is too hard. I have to make everyone happy. I have never been happy. Nobody gets me. These are mental root causes of autoimmunity. Now, remember they’re created with an undeveloped prefrontal cortex by a child. Our prefrontal cortex, the front part of the brain, that’s the executive function adult brain, is not fully developed till we’re 24 to 26 years old. So this shows like this gradual development. The only thing developed in a child’s brain that, as you see the purple and blue is a more mature area, that’s the limbic system. Am I safe? Am I safe? Am I safe, right? And then as you get older and older and older, you get more and more of your prefrontal cortex. So our immature brains create those meanings that then we carry into adulthood and they run us like a four year old that’s upset driving your car. 

Puts us into these survival mode issues that actually, unless you actually are getting chased by a lion, usually aren’t really accurately perceived by us. It’s a button that got created when we were in our immature brain and then carried forward. So this is all played out and proven in science through what’s called the Adverse Childhood Experiences Study. It was done in 1995 to 1997 by The Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente. And what they did is they conducted the study because Kaiser had had a weight loss clinic where people were successfully losing weight but they had a bunch of people that before they got to goal weight were dropping out. And the director of the clinic, luckily, was curious and decided to ask some questions and started interviewing the people that had dropped out, and found that most of them had had sexual abuse in childhood. 

So that was like, “Hmm, this must be something.” And so combined with The Centers for Disease Control, and they did the study that was 3,500 people strong. And they found that if a child before the age of 18 had experienced abuse of a sexual nature, physical, emotional, right? Any of those. Or been neglected physically or emotionally, or rejected for various reasons, whether it’s sexuality or religion or community or self or family, or had household dysfunction like a caregiver that was addicted to a drug or was mentally ill or was incarcerated or dead, or they had to watch their mother being treated violently, or there was divorce, that the more of those they checked as a yes, the higher the risk for these things that we have in our lives today. Autoimmune disease, cancer. Genetic expressions of things we really don’t want expressed, as well as addictions. 

So the higher the number of your ACEs, the higher the risk for negative autoimmune outcomes and the lower your life expectancy. If you have an ACE score of six or more, it’s 20 years less than somebody that doesn’t have an ACE. So I only, I write about this in “Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle.” You can take the quiz there. But one of the things I talk about in my book is what struck me when I was doing the research and I was looking through it was, “Oh my gosh.” And this is something a lot of people don’t talk about when they are talking about the ACEs study is the higher the number of ACEs, the lower the willingness to engage in self-care. Whether it’s a regular exercise program, regular self-confrontation, setting boundaries with myself, not expecting everyone out here to be okay and to make me happy, but me doing that for me. Failure to, you know, do anything that has to do with health. 

And so oftentimes I’ll have a patient come in and say, “I’m good and then I’m not. “I self-sabotage.” And it’s not about being good or bad, it’s about being consistent and not self-neglecting. So the ACEs quiz. You know, before your 18th birthday, did a parent or other adult in the household often or very often swear at you, insult you, put you down or humiliate you? You can say yes or no. And that’s one. Or act in a way that made you afraid that you might be physically hurt. Number two. Before your 18th birthday, et cetera, et cetera. Did an adult push, grab, slap, or throw something at you or ever hit, spank so hard that you had marks or were injured? Yes or no. And it just goes on 10 different questions around these adverse childhood experiences. And like I said, this is in my book, “Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle.” Were you ever, you know, a person that was at least five years older than you before your 18th birthday, did they touch or fondle you or touch your body in a sexual way or attempt or actually have oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you? Yes or no. I answered that one yes. 

Number four. Before your 18th birthday, did you often or very often feel that no one in your family loved you or thought you were important or special? Or your family didn’t look out for each other, feel close to each other, or support each other? I answered this one yes too. My dad was in the Navy and we had some things happen when I was a teenager that were just awful. Page or number five. Before your 18th birthday, did you often or very often feel that you didn’t have enough to eat, had to wear dirty clothes, or had no one to protect you? Or your parents were too drunk or high to take care of you or take you to the doctor if you needed it? Yes or no. Number six. Before your 18th birthday, was a biological parent ever lost to you through divorce, abandonment, or other reason? Yes or no. Number seven. 

Before your 18th birthday, was your mother or stepmother often or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or something thrown at her? Or sometimes often or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard? Or ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes or threatened with a gun or a knife? Yes or no. Number eight. Before your 18th birthday, did you live with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic or used street drugs? Yes. Or no. Number nine. Before your 18th birthday, was a household member depressed or mentally ill, or did a household member attempt suicide? Yes or no? This one was tough for me to answer at first because whenever my dad went out to sea my mom was very depressed. And so I finally realized, yeah, my dad went out to sea like at least four times for six to 18 months at a time, and my mom was depressed the whole time. 

So yeah, this was another yes. Number 10. Before your 18th birthday, did a household member go to prison? Yes or no. So what this is looking at, and this may have been difficult for you as I went through them, and you did your own yeses or nos. But what I always, you know, what I say in my book is so now you have a number and you know what the outcomes are. But that doesn’t mean that those outcomes are set in stone any more than your genetics are. So now we know what we’re working with. Now we know that, “Oh, this needs to be addressed.”These ACEs, okay? Because these emotional root causes of autoimmune disease, when we ruminate on those old hurts, go over and over and over again, we’re causing more damage. When our needs for emotional intimacy that we had as children, because we had attachment disorders, and now we’re looking for them to be met by other adults in our lives, and those adults can’t meet them. Then we’re re-aggravating this as an emotional cause of autoimmune disease. 

When we experience fear, guilt, shame, disgust, sadness, or we can’t forgive transgressions by old or current experiences in life. When we’re a victim of sexual, physical, emotional, or verbal abuse in the past or present. These are all root causes of autoimmune disease. And then spiritual root causes are when our culture, our family norms, our spirituality, our value systems negate happiness. Martyrdom is celebrated. Pain before pleasure, spiritual bypass, and perfectionism. 

Our health story is part of the root cause. And I showed you how to do that in the last one. So or a couple slides back. Childhood experience of having illness rewarded is in that story too. Like, is the only time that my parent paid attention to me was when I was sick, that’s called secondary gain. That’s important to note for yourself. Or I say about rheumatoid arthritis or MS, or rosacea, “My rheumatoid arthritis.” Like, I’m that disease. No, that’s not true. Maybe you disconnect from your body due to the prior abuse. I certainly did. It’s called dissociation. I was so good at leaving my body which is why I could run marathons so well. I never felt pain. No pain, no gain, right? Because I could leave my body when it wasn’t in a space I wanted to participate with it in. That’s a root cause for autoimmunity. And then arrested development from attachment issues. These are all things I help people heal. 

So remember, we wanna confront that data, right? Do the labs. Look at the weight. Look at the energy level, the sleep, the libido level. We wanna do functional medicine, laboratory testing. I look at all of these things. I look very quickly when I’m working with my patients at adrenals and hormones, because I wanna know about what has been the impact of emotional and mental root causes. Like, where are your adrenals now? And your hormones? And let’s get them on board, right? I wanna look and see who’s living in the gut. I wanna look at autoimmune markers and genetics. I do genetics on 100% of my patients. Sometimes I have them do fake names if they’re worried about the data being out in the world. 

We just, I have them go to the library, makeup. I have so many Mickey Mouses in my practice. They go to the library, they create a fake, a new email address to go with the IP address of the library computer. They submit all of that that way and that way, that data is private. It’s perfect. And then we can still look at it. I always look at food sensitivities. If you are a raging bull, as in your immune system is going after the red cape. And maybe it’s coconut oil because you eat so much of it and you have leaky gut. And so coconut’s making its way through your gut wall. We need to know what is your bull charging at. Food sensitivity testing’s so important. I also look at inflammatory markers, vitamin D, you know? The normal things like liver and your CVC. Connect the dots between what we find on the lab data and what your lifestyle choices are. This is the self-confrontation. 

Oh, well, I don’t go to sleep till two o’clock in the morning because the kids are all in bed and I can get stuff done. Well, that’s your body’s not doing well under that. It can’t rejuvenate. And then we create your life with intention. Do some trauma work, right? Get some of that done. So the Five R’s of Healing are to remove, replace, repair, reinoculate, and rebalance. So we wanna do all these. This is the middle of the puzzle. After we’ve done the corners and the edges, now we start working on individualization. What is it going? What’s going on for your body? What is it asking of you? We wanna remove all those old negative core beliefs and self-attributions, the toxins, the dysbiosis, the poor diet, and damaging lifestyle factors that can be causing inflammation. And negative emotions like fear, guilt, and shame. We wanna replace them with increased self-awareness, positive beliefs, and self-attributions. We wanna heal that little kid and get a good attachment going with her or him.

We wanna heal, replace unhealthy or non-existent boundaries with healthy boundaries around energy-depleting areas of your life. We wanna replace held onto emotional pain with something different. Replace physical pain patterns by practicing breath work. And we wanna replace the hypothalamus pituitary axis, you know, and your neuro-transmitter axis nutrients with amino acid adaptogens and other botanicals and nutraceuticals that match your lab data. We wanna replace a digestive system that doesn’t work very well with the ingredients it needs to do that. We wanna repair habituated pathways from maladaptive to adaptive information processing loops. I’ll show you what I mean by that in the hurt model. Repair your ability to self-confront and take responsibility. 

This idea of willingness to self-confront is the first thing you have to have for healing. Repair your blood sugar balance. The damage done by inflammation, the digestive system, your body image, your detoxification pathways, your single nucleotide polymorphisms, as needed. And then also whatever needs to happen for trauma release. And then reinoculate yourself with beneficial microbes that match your data. Mitochondrial boosting the immune system as needed, and then your cognitive beliefs. And I always say, we have to do that. We have to. Rebalance your life with stress-reducing and coping strategies like sleep. We wanna exercise. The frequency, the type, the intensity, the duration, the progression. We wanna think of those like they’re a prescription that match your adrenal and hormone testing. That’s what I teach all my health coaches. Like, here’s how you can give people recommendations for exercise. It has to go by what their body’s asking for. Also a personalized nutritional program based on your data from your body. What it’s asking for. Hydration, spiritual connection. 

And then I have different programs that I give people for healing their trauma. And then remembering that, you know, it wasn’t one thing that set you into a capsize mode, right? It was critical mass. It meant there was a lot of stuff that piled up before you finally capsized. And the more miserable you are, the more motivated you are to make the changes you have to make. But if I always tell people, “Please don’t try. “Don’t need to get to the level of misery that I got to.” I think about Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner and like, I have, I’m running around the Road Runner. And then Wile E. Coyote drops an anvil on my head from a cliff and I’m kind of going, “What? Am I supposed to be paying attention to something?” That’s how I was. And I always ask people, “Please don’t be like me.” And remembering that all the diseases go in the same bucket. It’s all autoimmune disease, which means it’s the Freedom Framework. We’ll fix all of them because it’s all individualized. 

There’s not one autoimmune, paleo protocol which is why I always say, you know, “We have to do this work on an individual level.” Which is what I teach my health coaches. And then you get to do your own work in here too by doing your own lab testing and then bringing it as a case study. And then I get to mentor you. So at the end of the day, oftentimes it’s a less expensive way of working with me because and you’re learning how to do it for other people. So for this summit series, with this URL, drkeesha.com/aimhc, we’re offering $3,000 off registration. So when you go there, you’ll see that that’s already put together for you. So it looks like this when you get in there. It’s $3,000 off and there is a payment plan in place if you want to do this. This is a six-month program with live case study calls every Monday night. 

They’re recorded, so if you can’t be there, you can listen to the recordings and you can do it at your own pace. You can do it for longer than six months, if you want to. Or it’s all open enrollment, they’re not cohorts. And so you just go through at your pace and you have this amazing tribe of people that are all incredible. So when you graduate, you’re not kicked out. Everyone hangs around and they bring back cases if they’re stumped, because I’m here to mentor you for the duration of the Academy for Integrative Medicine. Okay. I hope you’re enjoying the summit series and that day two brings you everything that you could desire. Remember, that all of these amazing talks, what you’re learning when I’m doing these webinars each day, is what you need to know to be able to individualize all the information that you’re learning on detoxification. So until tomorrow, be well and enjoy the series.