The Better Question: What If Healing Starts with Adaptability and Resiliency?

Intro to the Resiliency Method 0:00

This all culminates into where we're getting into some of that deeper level of brain and nervous system detoxification. And so phase three actually does have a part of it that's detoxification. But it's where the encapsulations of toxins have been held deep inside the body. And that's where a lot of us are missing that because I didn't understand why. When I've done all this cleansing and such, why am I still showing high-level markers on heavy metal tuffs and things? Welcome to the resiliency method, the truth about healing.

I'm Dr. Erica and we are here to uncover the root causes keeping you stuck. Together we'll restore your energy, your focus and your resiliency so you can finally heal, regenerate and feel truly alive again. This episode is a special one. I was interviewed on the Longevity Leaders podcast where we dive deep into key conversations around health and longevity. I'm excited to share it with you here. In this episode, I share a story of being so sensitive to gluten that an accidental restaurant slip-up left me choking and scrambling for emergency treatment.

Today, My body can handle environmental exposures without breaking down. I'm Dr. Erica. And in this episode of the resiliency method, the truth about healing podcast, Dr. Beashley Beckham and I are revealing why true healing isn't about more restriction. It's about building and increasing adaptability. We're exposing the material left behind by parasites that keep you food sensitive forever. Why your C-section scar is disrupting your body's electrical system. and the detox phase that actually reverses reactivity.

So if you're tired of being fragile, this episode is for you. Let's dive in. Welcome to the Longevity Leaders podcast. I am Dr. Ashley Beckman, and I'm here with Dr. Erica. How are you doing today? I'm doing great. Thank you, Ashley. So tell us a little bit about your signature process. The resiliency method. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So the resiliency method is something that I came up with out of my own personal experience and my own personal health journey. I had been on for probably over 10 years. Started when I got to grad school.

You know, you can appreciate the training for, and we're both trained in Chinese medicine, acupuncture. It started there when I left a corporate career, went back to school, Chinese medicine, acupuncture, saw four long years ahead of me and my health went into the tank. And I knew that I needed to do something. I've been feeling the inclinations that as I was getting into my mid thirties and I was time to take my health a little more seriously than I had. And I knew that I wasn't going to make it through that rest of the program if I didn't do something.

Dr. Ericau2019s Health Journey and Origins 2:56

So it tanked the first year. I heard of a practitioner who was doing some nutritional testing, clinical quantum applied kinesiology-based testing, which otherwise sometimes is known as muscle testing. She was using a particular method of it. It was really getting to a root cause level for a lot of people and in a very specific way. So it started with that and experiencing that, it was like a miracle, quite frankly. I went from thinking I wasn't going to make it through the rest of that program to being inspired to learn everything that I could about nutrition.

So I was fortunate enough to be in a town in Austin, Texas. where there was also a training center for a whole food-based supplement company called Standard Process. And that's where I went and learned everything I could. I washed dishes while they piped in the education. So I went from not thinking I was going to make it through to being so inspired that I had to learn everything about functional medicine, functional nutrition, and that's where it started. So by the time I was, I think, a year into that learning process, I learned the the method that my practitioner was using on me.

And I started to practice while I was still in grad school doing nutrition, nutritional testing. Yeah, so that was a good start. Saw great results with that for a long time. But having been injured as a child, I had stepped on a rusty nail in my backyard. I got a tetanus shot and within a year I had shingles on my face. They were taking pictures of me for medical books because I was 10 years old. And then within a year of that I had my first grand mal seizure. And it was kind of like set off the pattern, which I was genetically predisposition to, but still, you know, allowed my body that level of exposure and toxicity kind of was the straw that broke the camel's back and, you know, set off this immune, what I call is really an autoimmune process of the brain and the nervous system.

The more that I did work on my health over time, I started to see some of the things like diet and exercise and doing some of those things that were like parasite cleansing and even heavy metal detox were all helpful for a bit of time. But I also started to see that I needed to go a little bit further. And that really set off really what became the resiliency method. Yeah, it's amazing. So actually, one of my friends had a similar story, and he created a documentary called Trace Amounts. So Eric is a good friend of mine.

Yep. And he had that similar experience as a 30-year-old male, right, with the tennis shot. So, again, the heavy metals can be a big piece, right? So, it sounds like you look at genetics as well? Well, actually, it's interesting because we do a clinical application of an assessment, right? So, what we can do is we can identify where a toxin might be stored in an organ, tissue, or gland. So, we'll do the blood tests. We'll do some of those great functional medical lab, we have tests that we can run out there.

And certainly those things give our patients a big and broad perspective on what's really going on for them, and it's a great place to start. What we do though is a little bit different in that we will use supplementation. Once we see that, we'll get the lay of the land, but we'll use supplementation for what we call facilitating a healing response in the body. So what we're doing is we're going after, well, really starting with the premise that the body's perfect in design. And it knows how to heal itself.

It's just that when you are talking about multiple generations of toxin exposure, and then where you've had now this period of time with multiple generations of those people coming together and breeding, and then having children, and then it's kind of this multiplying compounding effect. And here we are today with some of the highest autoimmune rates and increasing neurological diseases, neurocognitive decline diseases and disorders as we get older. And those disorders, you cannot wait until you're 70 to 80 to start working on.

You got to get your brain healthy today. to offset that. So if that's in your genetic picture. So yes, we look at genetics, but we see it more in terms of we take into account what is it that is in your family. But also when we're going through our process, we'll start to see how they're testing what's there. So I'll actually say to a patient, you have this in your family. Who has this in your family? Because I can see where the toxin is being stored or the stealth pathogen is hanging out. And I know that's their weakest link.

And that's where all of these show up, right? So there is a genetic component and that's inside of that. And they're like, how did you know? And it's like, because you've got this showing up there and that's something that we need to go work on next.

Genetics, TCM, and Pattern Recognition 8:14

So for us, it'll start with them coming in because of their symptoms. And then what it ends up being is, Oh, let's look at the things that you're going to age into as well. So something you mentioned that we both share in common is the Chinese medicine. So one thing that's also, I think, very fascinating and what I love about it is how we see constitutions or looking at an organ and looking at the emotions associated. So that helps us a bit. uncover possibly some stored trauma or stored emotions when we're seeing, for example, they keep, let's just say even with Lyme, for example, and it keeps attacking the joints.

then we look to the liver, right? And so it's one thing I think that's probably drew both of us to the Chinese medicine theory is how we can apply it today. Absolutely. Because these stealth pathogens, they attack or love to hide or live in certain organs, and it's always interesting of what it chooses, right? We have people that always have gut issues or always have headaches or always get joint issues or brain fog. But it's through our TCM lens that I think gives us extra insight. Absolutely. Yeah.

And those things usually do add up to the genetics. I think we're still learning. I think it'll be interesting to take genetics and actually put into the context you're talking about in terms of patterns of illness. And that's really where we come from too. And we look at our patient is, We're not just seeing an organ or a part of the body. Our training is in how everything is connected to everything else. And I don't know about you, but it always drives me crazy when you hear people talk about Chinese medicine and it's like almost in this way.

And we were kind of taught this too, like almost in this way that like, you know, it's you got to take on a whole new paradigm or way of looking at the body in order to like even conceive of it. Like it's this like strange esoteric separate thing. And I always boil it down for people. I'm like, It's really just the study of how everything is connected to everything else. Like the Chinese were meticulous about opening up and dissecting human bodies and mapping where every blood vessel, vein, artery, and that is what becomes the channels, the fascia planes, the channels, the meridians.

It's that little roadmap. Yeah, and it's kind of interesting how things are spoken about now as the fascia and the lymph and all these things, and we have an organ for it. We have a whole process and a whole system for looking at that. Yeah, so again, I think it's really interesting though and shapes a lot of, I think, the way we both practice and look at things. What I was saying is I think that it's really interesting, too, because we are all connected as well to other people, but then even within our own system, you know, you can't just work on one area without looking at the paired organ.

And we often see these patterns that are very much connected. And a lot of it just goes back to nature, too. Absolutely. With the seasons, eating foods in season, but again, people get sick more in the current season and especially if it might be your weaker organ system. Right, true. Yeah, and I also see as well that like if the terrain and the body itself isn't optimized then, and that's why I called it the resiliency method, is because I started to see that, you know, you could plateau in your health journey.

Right. And when you got to that point, I started also, this is really around 2020, and a lot of healthcare practitioners I was hanging out with, I started to look around and I realized, you know, talk about a time when, you know, fear is being like mongered at you. And, but I also saw that we were kind of creating that inside the space of getting healthy. In other words, what I mean is, is there's a lot of restriction, constriction, control, you know, colleagues bringing extra suitcases into the hotel rooms so just so they could sleep in another room and get a good night's sleep and having to do all these extra things.

The opposite of resilience. Yeah and I thought you know maybe we should be playing a different game. Maybe we should be playing the game of let's get this as healthy so I don't have to worry about what our government's doing or what the next thing is that's coming down the pike. Like, let's just put our attention here. Optimize that as much as we can to the extent that we can. Share knowledge on how we're doing that. Let's create a community of bodies that it doesn't matter what we're up against.

We're going to be the strongest and we're going to undo the last century of what's been done to us and our bodies. And we're going to get in the driver's seat. And I think that's the thing, too. There's so much fear about specific pathogens, toxins, food. And while a lot of it's completely valid, because we see this all the time with labs, right?

Resilience Over Restriction 13:27

Some people, it's just off the charts. They're storing a ton of toxins in our bodies. Yeah. And then, again, you still have someone that just a little bit of gluten will throw them very much off. So it's not that we're saying, like, I'm not a big 80-20 rule fan, but at the same time, we don't want to be fearful of everything. And this is something I think we both see, but like with mold, for example, people are afraid to travel, worried if they've gotten exposed, right? And then that heightens our nervous system so that there's so much perceived threat over all these things that we come in contact with.

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Do you want to go into a little bit how you do that? Yeah, sure. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, that's kind of always explained to patients. I'm like, you know, if your body is the castle, the nervous system is the knight standing at the castle door. We got to make friends with the nervous system because that's how we get to get into the body in more depth. And yeah, and the topic of mold and food sensitivities, I'm glad you brought those up too because what we saw and for many years I was, I got to the point where I was anaphylactic gluten sensitive.

You know, I had accidentally served a bun at a restaurant, a gluten-free bun that was glutenless. And I was, like, choking up. And my friend, you know, we went out to the park across the street. I didn't have a red laser on me, so I was able to treat it. So I didn't have to go to the hospital. But I was like, whoo, I really am not resilient. I'm not very resilient, like, you know, reacting. And it really didn't occur too much to me at the time, but I just kind of figured that was just where my body was at.

But as we had to, you know, I mentioned the plateau that I was on myself. I started to do a little bit more exploration for my own health, and then I started to see that there were things that all of us were encountering, parasites, probably some of them you talked about, ropeworm, that's definitely a big one, right? And we started doing more work in that area, and that helped a lot. But then I was also seeing, and you'll appreciate this too, the endless merry-go-round of parasite detoxes and heavy metal cleanses.

And you know herbs, I know herbs. We study, as part of our training, we study the temperature of herbs. Yeah, exactly. And food. Yeah, and food. And we study temperature and we study patterns of excess and deficiency. And one of the things I realized is, oh my gosh, I keep on taking these cold, harsh herbs into this system and it never ends. Right. And so I started to inquire more on that perspective.

Food Sensitivities, Parasites, and Mold 17:28

And what I started to see was there was this material being left from behind by a lot of those things. And if you cleared that out, then when we started to do that in our second phase of our program, we actually saw that people's food sensitivities were reversing. including my own. Oh, you know what, when I do parasite cleansing regularly, I can eat gluten again, which, or dairy, sorry. Dairy, yeah. Quite the gluten. Yeah, well, there is a piece in our process that takes it to the next level. So then, one, you get off the repeating endless cycle of parasite cleansing.

And then if you clear this material out and think of it from your perspective as phlegm, there is a phlegm material, there's a specific way we can clear that out. Clear out that phlegm, that residual that's left behind where all the eggs are stored and such. And if you do that work, then oftentimes that brings up the nervous system and the immune system enough. to where not that you want to eat necessarily gluten all the time, but that you could and you wouldn't be taken out. And that's a sign of better adaptability and better resiliency, right?

If you don't react to your environment as much, right? And your food, you're not supposed to react to your food. That's the bottom line, right? And with that too, it's like a lot of the times what happens is almost like the cleaner we are, right? And the more your lifestyle is, we find and patients find this that they're more reactive. And so Ideally, though, we should be able to handle, you know, someone with perfume walking by or things like that, or an accidental gluten at a restaurant. Like, your body should be able to handle those things.

And so it's a tricky place, right? Absolutely. And then on the mold topic we started to see, too, was if we did a little bit more cellular detox of mold. at the cellular level from our ancestors that lived in moldy conditions, we actually started to see people tolerate their environmental mold a little bit more effectively too, which is kind of cool to see that start to happen for people because that's a real trigger for a lot of people. It is for sure. And so do you have in your process? Do you want to explain a little bit?

Is it a six-month program? Is it customized? How does it work when someone's coming to go through it? It's three phases. You know, the first phase is what I call like similar to maybe what a lot of other foundational nutritionists or practitioners might be doing. Some functional medicine doctors are getting into the parasite cleansing, heavy metal detox. Not all, but a good portion of them at this point. So we do something similar in that respect. We'll identify if there's food sensitivities, take them out for a period of time.

We'll actually assess for if there's any interference from scar issue. And we, as TCM practitioners, this is a big thing, right? Can we talk about that? Because I know a lot of people. Sure. That C-section, one of the biggest ones that cuts through most of the meridians, right? On the front of the body, it cuts through multiple. It's at least six, right? Seven. disrupts the chi flow in your body permanently since you've had the surgery. And so we have therapies. Do you do them in person? We use like red light scar therapy and then we'll use a combination of like a pure source of vitamin E oil or sesame oil if they're great and sensitive at that point.

And then we've seen even the tares, because the terror, the episiotomies are right along the central meridians as well. And treating those sometimes are helpful, because that's the nervous system dysregulation. Because when you're talking about meridian, she not going through, basically she's saying the electrical energy is not flowing. And I like to describe it as like, you know, if you have a river, right? And you've got the rivers running a certain way, and then all of a sudden a beaver comes in and builds a dam.

Now the river is going to flow a little differently. The water is going to flow a little differently in the river. But eventually, that scar actually will start to send off. So it goes from a lack of communication to then the scar will actually act like its own electrical capacitor and actually start to send its own electrical signals off. And then you've got lack of communication to miscommunication. And that can really interfere with the nervous system. And then a lot of toxins build up the scars too.

Yeah, just like they would in a dam or a river that was getting polluted. Huge one. So yeah, so we assess for those things. Lyme, you know, mold, fungus, bacteria, all the stealth pathogens and such. I do find when we handle the rogue worm, if we do it correctly, it will oftentimes take care of a lot of those co-infections. I see bacteria and fungus a little bit differently now. they really are allowed to peripherate when there's even a deeper stress going on. And then as soon as we take that out, then they recover finally.

And then with the heavy metals, getting that down too helps obviously with recovering from candida and mold and fungal diseases and disorders.

Scar Therapy and Phase-Based Healing 22:40

But then phases two and three are kind of like where we go. And I tell my patients with this state, I'm like, okay, this is where you almost have to shut down Instagram because all the advice that you're hearing out there is not going to fly to you anymore. We're in a new terrain. And this is where we're going to take your body to another depth of healing. So phase two is really, I call it this insurance policy where we'll ensure that the parasite infections don't come back. The second part of phase two is getting into that cellular mold where we're holding a lot of those toxins.

But we've earned the right to do that. We didn't get to just start phase two. We had to do phase one. It was really important because you can't go to that depth of healing. And that's the thing people don't realize is... And that's when they get very sick and hurts and they tried something too fast, too quick, too Or on the wrong order. Yeah. In the wrong order. In the wrong order, at the wrong time, in the wrong amount. It's not customized. And that's where we specialize. It's like, there are a certain population that will respond beautifully to protocol approaches.

And where our expertise is, is in the non-responders or the people that are like, you know, I don't really have time or don't want to get started. Like high performers are like, I don't have time, it hurts. That's where we can really come in and customize it enough to where they can get that more organized and less variable. approach but phase three is where it's like that's our our area where okay now there's been all this damage right yeah or we're back to the castle yes and we can't just get the keys to the castle and just go in and start putting up new wallpaper and paint colors like we know we have to rent a dumpster and fill it up for a while right But then in phase three is where we are picking out the paint colors and things and everything's tidied up.

But there has been some level of deficiency that's been created by all the excess of all these things that we cleaned up. It's time to build and rebuild. So we'll use a lot of PMGs, protomorphogens at that point, whole foods. They're accepting whole food nutrition supplements way better than they did in earlier phases. We'll use herbs, homeopathy in the earlier phases, typically, because that's sometimes what only a body can do is homeopathy. But at the third phase, they're really accepting a lot of the whole food nutrition, which is how we were designed, right?

We were supposed to eat to heal. And they're not as sensitive to their diet or they're not sensitive at all at that point. And we start to rebuild those organs, tissues, and glands that were really beat up. And we find that more natural, innate ability to be resilient and adaptable. And then that's where we're seeing like, this is a longevity. So we'll give the body a really great source of liquid bioavailable collagen that we'll use as its source for increasing stem cell supply. We'll also use a lot of times mitochondrial support to help because we're such a depth of the body and with a lot of these areas at this point that we need to boost the mitochondrial function for a bit.

And then we just keep reiteratively like cycling through that. And then this is the crazy part, you ready? This all culminates into... where we're getting into some of that deeper level of brain and nervous system detoxification. And so phase three actually does have a part of it that's detoxification. But it's where the encapsulations of toxins have been held deep inside the body. And that's where a lot of us are missing that because I didn't understand why. done all this cleansing and such, why am I still showing high-level markers on heavy metal tuffs and things?

And I started to see it was because there's actually encapsulations of these toxins deep down inside the body. And most of these toxins we were exposed to very early, either in utero or for a lifetime. And the body's smart. It says a toxin like that and it goes, I'm putting that in bed. Yeah, and that most of that's done in the nervous system in the brain and the adipose of the body. Yes. Right. So this is what has unlocked a lot of weight issues, especially for females that are middle aged.

Deep Detox, Encapsulation, and Rebuilding 26:48

Yeah, they get that white perimenopause like the body is actually doing that because there is a certain level of toxicity in your body by 40. 50 that your body is like, yeah, if I don't put it in the fat cells, then eventually, and I've seen this too, where you know how we go through that phase during perimenopause, but then ultimately, if we don't take those toxins out there, it can go right into their bones and their skin. So that's one of the reasons we see the osteoporosis and the skin cancer rates as they're aging.

Intensely. Yeah, it's not the Sun. It's the toxins inside your body Yeah, you know react that create is creating a damp heat toxin environment, right? Yeah, so phase three you'll appreciate this actually is blood stasis and damp heat toxin Yep, because the blood stasis patterns. That's the senescence the, you know, senescence patterns that we're dealing with the zombie cells that have accumulated over time from so much of the Life, exposure, trauma, yeah, all the things. So yeah, we start to move those out.

Body starts to heal even more depth and more foundationally, and then that earns us the right. The body will eventually go, oh, it's safe enough around here now. I'll start to open up some of these encapsulations where I've held these real deep, and I'll start to eliminate that from their brain. And the biggest one is the aluminum we're finding there. And what do we know about Alzheimer's and the plaques that are accumulating in the body? And that's phlegm. That is the body's intelligence at play saying, there is toxicity here, and I want to put a blanket over it.

And then that happens year after year. You got more and more accumulation. You got plaque. You've got encapsulation, lipomas. You got these little pockets everywhere. Fibroids. Fibroids, yeah, cysts, tumor nodules. And then what happens when you have those encapsulations over time? Well, you have a lack of fresh blood with all the nutrients and the healing properties that is not available to those areas of the body. And now you're talking about more serious diagnoses and such, right? Well, it sounds like your program really hits a lot of layers.

It does. Yes. It's a very in-depth process. It usually takes some time. Yeah, of course. You don't do that overnight. No. Or in a three month. We don't do it in three months, sadly. If we did, I'd probably be retired on the island. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's always fun, especially to, again, chat with somebody who loves toxins, TCM, homeopathy, and functional medicine. Thank you for sharing this time with me. Yes, of course. It's a pleasure. Likewise. Thanks for tuning into the resiliency method, the truth about healing podcasts.

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