The Better Question: “Can a Toxic Body Age Well?”

lifestyle that’s constantly draining you. Chronic stress, constant high-intensity output, never actually downshifting. In that framework, a slow drain on the exact reserve you need to protect for long-term vitality.

Qigong and Tai Chi were designed as a counterbalance to that. Restore before you deplete further is the approach. 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.

You can take the best supplements in the world, follow the most optimized longevity protocol on the planet. NAD, repamycin, red light therapy, peptide stacking, all of it.

And if your body is sitting at a load, it never fully cleared. Old toxins, old pathogens, causers or igniters of inflammation that are tucked away in tissue deep inside your, well, you’re working against a headwind the whole time.

Welcome to the Resiliency Method, the Truth About Healing podcast. I’m Dr. Erica. The better question we’re asking today is, before asking what you can add to your longevity routine, are you asking whether your body’s tissue is actually in a state where it can use what your giving it?

Today we are breaking down why the kidneys are the most underrated organ in the entire aging conversation and why a protein they produce called Clotho is now one of the more talked about molecules in longevity science.

Why encapsulated toxins sitting in brain tissue, joints, fat cells and organ tissue quietly drive the decline most people just accept as normal aging, and why the thymus gland is the clearest research-backed link between immune resilience and how fast you age.

Now, if you’ve ever thought longevity was about adding more to your routine, well, this episode is going to challenge that idea. To explore our foundational approach to aging well visit www.ericaonline.com forward slash longevity.

And if your enjoying this podcast, we’d be so grateful if take a moment to leave us a quick five star review. Welcome back to the show. Today I want to talk about something I think gets overlooked in almost every longevity conversation that’s happening right now.

So go anywhere in the longevity space and you’re going to hear about NAD, repamycin, red light therapy, cold plunges, the latest peptide stacking. Look, some of these stuff is, you know, genuinely interesting.

I’m not here to trash supplements or biohacking. But I want to ask a different question today. Not what I can add to my routine to age better, but instead, what’s actually happening inside the body that determines whether any of that works in the first place?

All right. Well, let’s talk about this because here’s what And what I’ve really come to believe, quite frankly, is that, and I want you to walk through this with me today, you can really take the best supplements in the world.

You can follow the most optimized protocol on the planet. And if your body is sitting on a load of stuff it never fully cleared, old toxins, or pathogens, all the inflammation tucked away in tissue, well, your probably working against the headwind the whole time.

And today I want to talk about the reason why we built the resiliency method around that idea and why I think every organ, gland, and tissue level restoration really is the actual foundation of everything else that sits on top of it.

So let’s get into it! All right. So here’s the thing about most longevity programs. They’re additive, meaning they add a supplement, they added habit, the add device, add protocol, and there’s a place for that for sure.

But our approach with the resiliency method really starts somewhere else entirely. We start with a question, is the terrain, actual tissue, organs, glands in a state where it could use what you’re giving it?

So think about it like this. If you’re trying to grow a garden and the soil is compacted and it’s depleted, you can buy the best seeds in the world and they’re still going to struggle.

Most longevity approaches are actually handing you great seeds. We’re not doubting that. we’re just asking a different question. What’s going on with the Soil itself?

And that’s the whole promise behind why we focus so heavily on restoring function to the organs, glands, and tissues themselves, the kidneys, liver, spleen, thymus, joints, even the brain’s ability to clear what it doesn’t need.

In our experience, when we prioritize that over foundational, or that foundational level first, then everything else people are already doing, their diet, exercise, supplements, actually seems to work better.

That’s the order of operations we believe in and it’s why I think of this as foundational work rather than one more thing layered on top of a longevity stack.

So let’s get into this a little bit more in terms of encapsulated pathogens and toxins. Here’s a piece of what I really think is genuinely different about our approach and I want to be careful how I explain it because this is more our clinical framework and lived observation than something you’re going to find summarized in a mainstream textbook.

The body is remarkably good at protecting itself in the short term. So when it encounters something, it can’t fully process right away, a pathogen, chemical exposure, byproduct of inflammation, heavy metal.

One of its strategies is to really contain it. And containment is the name of the game for body. It walls it off, isolates it, really gets it out of general circulation so it cannot do damage.

acutely. And that’s really, if you think about it, pretty smart. That’s also short-term biology. The problem, though, is what happens over years and maybe even decades.

Those walled-off pockets don’t necessarily get revisited and they don�t get cleared later. They can just sit there and tissue and fascia are sometimes deeper than that.

From where we sit, that�s a big part of why people plateau. If they’re eating well, they�re exercising, and sleeping fine, but they still feel like something is off or they hit a wall with a certain symptom, That never really fully resolves.

And this is the piece we spend a lot of time on that I think sets our approach apart. Going back into the body and actually working to release and clear that older contained material rather than just supporting the bodies day to day detox pathways.

Liver, kidneys, lymph, most of which wellness programs out there you talk about. We’re not, again, supporting those pathways. In fact, we do, and especially in earlier phases of our process.

And we start at that level one, or surface level of detox first. We always have to do that. You can’t jump to this deeper level that I’m describing right now.

But we think you have go deeper, you need to deal with what’s been sitting there, sometimes for years, before those everyday pathways can really keep up long term.

Because otherwise, they just keep getting inundated with underneath the surface. And I’ll be upfront about this. This is our clinical model built from years of hands-on work and client outcomes.

It’s not a claim I’m making on behalf of mainstream medicine. And it’s a substitute for medical diagnosis or treatment. If you have a real infection or a diagnosed condition, that’s the conversation with your medical doctor.

What I am describing is the framework we use for the deeper foundational restoration work that we embark on and why we think it matters for long-term aging, not just symptom relief.

Okay, so let’s get into the work. I think is a single most underrated piece of the entire aging conversation. And this is really informed by my background in ancient medicine, and that is the kidneys.

So in a lot of modern Western culture, kidneys barely come up unless there’s something gone wrong, a kidney stone, or a bad lab result. But go back and actually look at traditional systems of medicine and you’re going to see, especially that traditional Chinese medicine which is what my doctorate is.

And so I’ve had extensive research or study in that particular field. But it’s a great example. And the kidneys aren’t an afterthought in Chinese medicine.

They’re actually considered the root of the body’s deepest reserves. In traditional Chinese Medicine, the kidney’s are said to store what’s called the quote unquote jing, J-I-N-G essence, your foundational life force.

the thing that you’re born with that was really in a fine amount of and that governs how you really age. So strong kidney energy in that tradition is directly tied to vitality, to hearing, bone strength, hair, how gracefully you move through the decades, brain health.

Weak kidney is often tied premature aging, even down to graying of the hair. So kidneys are below the ancient medicine model when it comes to aging well.

And you’ll see that a lot of therapies and even approaches to exercise and wellness movement therapies, especially Qigong, Tai Chi, they’re very much centered around using the breath to help increase the activity and the support of the kidneys themselves.

Now, I find it fascinating that thousands of years before anyone had a microscope, these traditions landed on the kidneys as central to aging because modern research is actually starting to catch up with that in its own way.

There’s a protein made largely by the kidney is called Clotho, and it’s become one of the most talked about molecules in aging science over the last two decades.

And here’s what the research actually shows. Clotho was discovered in mice in 1997, so not that long ago. and animals engineered to have less of its age rapidly and die young.

They have shortened lifespans, they have more vascular problems, and they’ve cognitive decline. Well, animals, engineered, to live more of it, actually live measurably longer and stay healthier longer.

In humans, we see the same patterns show up in actual observational studies. Clotho levels decline steadily as people age and lower levels are associated with reduced kidney function, cognitive decline, and a number of markers of age-related disease.

Now, researchers have even called it one of the few genes with genuinely demonstrated effects on lifespan in both directions. Now to be fair to the science, this is still an active area of research.

Some studies looking at genetic variation in the clotho gene haven’t really found a clean link to human longevity, and researchers are still working out much of clothe’s effect on the brain and body as it’s direct versus how much runs indirectly through its role in kidney function.

It’s not a settled simple story and nobody’s turned it into an approved anti-aging drug yet. And, you know, that’s worth mentioning too. You know the sometimes the reductionist standpoint we take in the longevity pathways is to identify like a protein or a substance like this and prove out its role in aging process and then sometimes overly in an oversimplified way try to just supplement with it.

And I’m also seeing where that’s a very simplified approach to the aging process, very reductionist in nature, oftentimes not necessarily accounting for really how the body would use a particular substance or uptake a particularly substance.

So sometimes when we just jump to identifying something in the science that shows it has a role or particular you know, important role in the aging process.

We try to just decide that, well, let’s just reproduce that in a bottle and give it to somebody and that should do it. And that’s a really simplistic viewpoint on that whole thing.

But that is kind of a sidebar. The real through line though here is consistent. Kidney health and this kidney-produced protein sit right at the center of how the body ages.

Are you tied to treatments, protocols and gurus who promise results but don’t deliver? You’re not alone. For years, I struggled with my own long-term illness and I know how frustrating it feels when nothing seems to work.

That’s why I developed the resiliency method. It’s a science-backed approach to combine the best of Western and ancient medicines to restore your body’s natural intelligence.

Patient after patient has discovered what’s possible, living stronger, brighter, and more spiritually connected than ever before. Whether you’re facing autoimmune issues, hormonal imbalances, weight struggles, or just feeling stuck, you don’t need another quick fix.

You need a clear path forward. take the first step with a discovery call at drericaonline.com forward slash discovery that’s d-r-e- r-i-k-a online. com forward source discovery or dive deeper with the full initial consultation at doctor erica online dot com board slash initial dash consultation because your health your clarity and your freedom cannot wait Now, which is exactly why kidney restoration is such a core pillar of our process, the resiliency method.

We’re not really treating the kidneys as a filter. And we go way beyond that. If you really think about that, something really breaks. doing okay kidney-wise, or we’re gonna have to consider serious treatments like dialysis for you.

We really treat them the way those older traditions did, as foundational. So when we go in and we do focus restorative work on the kidney tissue and the function, we believe we are supporting the exact biological territory that produces clotho in the first place.

Again, not just by like trying to supplement with clothe itself, but actually repairing the structure that produce the clofo inside the body. Now, we can’t promise you a lab-verified Clotho boost.

That’s not really a claim we’re making here, but we cannot tell you that in the traditions this idea comes from and in outcomes we see in our own work, the kidneys are really treated as a root, not an afterthought.

All right, so let’s get into this a little bit further. This really connects something else, those same traditions figured out a long time ago. The difference between practices that build and preserve energy and practices So modern fitness culture is almost entirely built around expenditure.

Push harder, burn more, leave it all on the floor. That’s the real value in that kind of training. But don’t get me wrong, Qigong, Tai Chi come from a completely different premise.

I mentioned this earlier. They slow deliberate breath-driven practices that are built specifically around cultivating and conserving internal energy as a key strategy for aging well.

It’s more about preservation, not more expenditure. So we really want to start to think about our trading routines in that context. when you’re younger you have more what quote unquote young energy in your body and so you get away with expenditure as a form of exercise and let’s face it you know those those methods pay off but the number of times somebody’s come to me and said I am doing all the things that I used to do in my 20s and it’s not working anymore I just seem to be gaining weight even faster and that’s a reflection of the fact that really the body starts to shift more into that yin period of time in your lifetime, where you really need to focus on more conserving of energy, not expending energy.

All right. So what these traditions really are referring to this as, you know, Qi, the life force, your energy from day to day, we can sort of simplify into this word Qi.

And it’s really important to build it rather than to plead it. And when you connect that back to the kidney conservation, it really makes a lot of sense.

If the kidneys are considered the storehouse of your deepest reserves, then a lifestyle that’s constantly draining you, chronic stress, constant high intensity output, never actually downshifting.

Well, in that framework, a slow drain on the exact reserve you need to protect for long-term vitality. Practices like Qigong and Tai Chi were designed as a counterbalance to that.

Restore before you deplete further is the approach. And that’s a philosophy we think about a lot in how we frame the resiliency method, too. It’s not about pushing the body harder.

it’s about restoring capacity at the root level so that the buddy can actually have something to reserve and to draw from as you age instead of running on empty and calling it discipline.

All right, so let’s talk about the brain for a minute because I think this is where the encapsulated piece we talked about earlier becomes most relevant to people.

Neurocognitive decline is one of the things people fear the most about, the aging process. And let us face it, look around, it’s really for good reason.

You know, there’s a ton of people that are aging and their brains are ageing and we’re kind of like, you know in my opinion, over normalizing it. You know, we just say, oh, well, that’s just what happens when you get old.

And it’s these stories that we collectively agree to oftentimes that can sometimes get us in trouble, especially as it comes to our health. We really want to look at that with more of a critical lens and ask the question, why is this happening?

And then why’s this is happening maybe even a decade earlier than it did for like, you know the generation that was a little bit older. So, it, for good reason that we’re looking at.

Most of the conversation around brain aging focuses on things like blood flow, inflammation markers, amyloid plaque, that kind of thing and all legitimate areas of research.

What we focus on in our own framework is really a layer that’s not as talked about as much. And that’s really where, whether there’s old material, inflammatory residue contain like toxic load that, you know, kind of sits there and we, as we discussed earlier, sitting in the brain tissue itself, quietly contributing to that inflammatory burden over years.

Interestingly, Clotho itself shows up here too. It’s found in the small amounts in brain, and researchers have specifically been studying it as a possible therapeutic target for neuroregeneration, or excuse me, neurodegeneration, separate from its kidney role.

But lower Clotho has been linked in research to cognitive decline in older adults, again showing that correlation between the brain and the kidneys we mentioned earlier.

And that has been a longstanding understanding of ancient medicine, such as traditional Chinese medicine. Our belief, based on the work that we do, is really that supporting the brains’ ability to actually clear what’s been holding onto it is a meaningful and under-addressed piece of protecting cognitive function as people age.

Now, I want to be clear that this is supportive foundational wellness approach. It’s not a treatment for dementia or a diagnosed neurological condition.

Anyone dealing with cognitive symptoms should absolutely be working with a physician or neurologist. But as a piece of proactive long-term brain health strategy, we really think it deserves a lot more attention than it gets.

All right, let’s shift a little bit more into metabolism and looking at that more specifically in this context of aging. Because this is where a lotta people actually feel aging most acutely.

The weight that won’t move the way it used to, the energy that isn’t there, The liver is blamed to enormous quiet work every single day, filtering, processing, supporting immune function, regulating the blood.

In our framework, when we go in and do deeper restorative work on these organs, specifically rather than just supporting them nutritionally, we believe we’re actually addressing the actual processing capacity of the system itself, not just its inputs.

Okay, let’s talk about that a little bit more. There’s a, let’s look at that, there’s fat issue and a fat tissue example for itself. It’s become pretty well understood in recent years that fat cells are just passive storage.

They’re metabolically and hormonally active, and they actually have a lot to do with communicating with these other organs in the body. And they can also hold on to stored toxic load over time.

That’s the big part of why we don’t just focus on organs, in a traditional sense. We actually consider detoxifying fat tissues itself as a piece of the metabolic puzzle.

Our belief is that the fat cells carrying an old toxic burden don’t function the way that healthy fat tissue should, and that this can make weight management and metabolic health harder as people age, independent of diet and exercise programs alone.

Again, this is our clinical framework, not a claim I’m presenting as settled science, but it’s a big part of why we don�t treat metabolic as a numbers in, numbers out equation.

Quick but important is really joints and bone. And as people age, mobility and strength are also a forefront as well. They’re two of the biggest predictors of independence, quality of life, and that part is well established in the research.

Where our approach differs really isn’t that we don’t just look at the joints as a mechanical wear and tear problem to be managed with strength training and anti-inflammatories.

As important as those are, we look more deeply. We look the joint cavities themselves. In some cases, the bone tissue. And what those might be serving a purpose for in terms of the degenerative process and what can accelerate that.

And, what we’ve seen is that, again, once again old toxic material, inflammatory material can settle in and really contribute to the stiffness, the reduced range of motion and the chronic discomfort that happens over time.

that we just, you know, again, say is just part of the aging process. And clearing that, in our experience, is a real big piece of mobility puzzle that pure strength and mechanics work doesn’t fully address on its own.

And then there’s a couple of other best kept secrets inside the context and conversation of aging well. The last organ I really want to touch on is the thymus.

Now, if you’ve been following anything that I talk about the Thymis gland a lot, probably just some in an eye roll fashion. But it is one, it’s really actually been well documented in the mainstream research.

It hasn’t always been that way. I do want it to be clear about that. And I mean, I was onto the things gland as being important just from a common sense perspective years ago.

Because it just doesn’t make sense to me what it used to, the way the diamond scan was always talked about, if you’ve heard me say this before, is that it’s just like, you know, like gland in your chest that just kind of shrivels up and dies somewhere around adolescence and it is really not vital.

Well, that’s the conversation away something that is in our bodies, it being contextualized and the same In the same vein, our autoimmune rates are increasing rapidly, or cancer rates, are increasingly rapidly.

We have some of the worst health outcomes for any industrialized country in the entire world. And so it just doesn’t make sense to downplay. Quite frankly, if you think about it, I just don’t think we were made to to have an organ that was not useful.

I think we’re, in any time a doctor talks about that, and let’s face it, even my mentioned one earlier, the spleen has been oftentimes talked about it like that.

These are important organs, glands, tissues for your immune system to function properly. If you are under the notion that some body parts are optional, that’s more of a reflection of the lack of knowledge and understanding that either you or a medical professional or scientist, quite frankly, have in terms of understanding the body.

Where we look at it, things from a more traditional standpoint, everything’s useful to the body and there’s a reason it’s there. So don’t let your understanding or lack of understanding of a particular area of the buddy dictate or even, you know, sometimes we get these stories around things that are useful or not, based on what we’re doing with our drug therapy models and what kind of drugs we have available, et cetera.

Anyway, I don’t wanna get too far down that tangent, but the thymus is starting to get some attention, guys. The thimus where your team cells mature, it’s known to shrink and lose function with age.

That’s a process that’s been named, is called thiamine involution. It’s real measurable driver though of immune aging and researchers are actively studying ways to restore thamic function because of how central it is to keeping the immune system sharp and inflammation in check, especially as we age, Now, we treat restoring thymus function as a foundational, pivotal piece throughout all phases of the resiliency method programs.

For exactly that reason, it’s really one of clearest, the most research-backed links between a specific organ and immune resilience in the aging process itself that really exists.

So if your immune system’s running inflamed and under-resourced, that shows up everywhere else in a body. Supporting the thynus gland in our view is one the highest leverage things you can do for the long-term immune health.

And if you keep aging in check, or you It goes, it pays evidence for you as you’re age, aging as well. So let’s zoom back out. Every one of these, the kidneys, brain, liver, spleen, fat cells, joints, thymus, they’re not separate problems in our approach.

They’re all part of one foundational question. Is the body’s actual tissue at the deepest level clear enough and restored enough to support everything you are trying to build on top of it?

And that’s the whole promise behind the resiliency method. It’s why we think of it less as one more longevity protocol and more as the foundation to the rest of your longevity efforts that you need in order to actually work.

And you can buy the best supplements on the market. You can follow the most cutting edge protocol out there. But if the body is still carrying old unresolved material and running depleted reserves at the organ level, you’re really building on unstable ground.

And really, that’s the piece we think gets skipped in most of this conversation about longevity. And it’s a piece that we built our entire approach around.

If this resonated with you, I’d love for you to share it with someone who’s been chasing the latest longevity trend without addressing the foundation underneath it.

Thanks for tuning into The Resiliency Method, the truth about healing podcasts. If this episode spoke to you, follow, share, and leave us a review. Are you ready to go deeper?

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