The Better Question: What’s Really Driving Endometriosis?

Introduction to stem cells and regenerative medicine 0:00

So the reality is our body came from stem cells. So originally, not happy for a lot of people to think, but it's basics. Every one of us started with an ovum, an egg from mom, a sperm from dad that made a whole cell, and then it started to multiply and produce. We've got stem cell throughout the body. many of which are dormant, they get turned on at different times, make more stem cells become dorment, and make new tissue. This is what regenerative medicine is about. How do we turn on dorman stem cell to make parts of our body?

Yes. Very important. Know that we are capable of doing that. It doesn't have to come from outside to actually achieve repair, right? We can actually facilitate the increased supply of that as a foundation for repairing and regenerating. Absolutely. 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.

What if I told you that my years of grand mal seizures were actually connected to undiagnosed endometriosis on my spine? Yeah, you heard that right. Welcome to the Resiliency Method, the Truth About Healing podcast. I'm Dr. Erica and today's episode is going to blow your mind. And sitting down with Dr David Wigenheiser, a naturopathic physician with over 30 years experience. We're diving into endometric, but not the way that you've ever heard it explained before. We're challenging everything conventional medicine teaches us about this condition, exploring a revolutionary stem cell theory and uncovering why this is one of the most missed diagnosed conditions affecting women today.

If you or someone you love has struggled with mysterious pain, hormonal issues, or unexplained symptoms, especially at cycle time, you need to hear this conversation. Welcome back to another episode with the Resiliency Method, the Truth About Healing podcast. I'm joined today with Dr. David Wickenheiser. He's a licensed naturopathic physician. he's on a mission to share healthcare information that will improve your life. Dr Wikenheisr has over 30 years of clinical experience in natural and regenerative medicine and he believes that better health comes from better choices that are made possible by better health care information.

Hallelujah to that, David. And he shares his health information on his website, drwik.com, and with his newsletter, The Natural Facts podcast as well, as a guest on other health-care podcasts, with the other patient, of course, that he works with too. He's practicing currently in British Columbia. And we're going to talk today about an interesting and kind of near and dear to my heart topic because it's something that I've actually dealt with myself. And that's endometriosis. So David, excited to hear what you have to say on this topic.

I can start just by sharing some of with the audience, my personal experience with this as a patient, if you will. For me, it went very undiagnosed. I really never got a formal diagnosis from it, but I definitely appear to have my body dealt with it at a certain point in time. And we were discussing before the recording started here, just the nature of how endometriosis can look. So I'd love to get your thoughts on that today, David, too. But sharing with the audience, this was something that was present for me very missed in my whole healthcare picture, but also had a significant impact on my hormone regulation, which downstream affected how well my brain was in balance.

And the audience knows that I have a history of grand mal seizures. They onset when I hit puberty and then any time after I would have or complete a cycle, I always had a little bit more of a propensity to have a seizure and definitely a lot of the majority of my seizures were actually around cycle time and post-cycle time in particular.

Endometriosis as a missed diagnosis 4:20

And I didn't really understand why I went on birth control one time during my life and had a breakthrough seizure. So I definitely knew that there was a correlation between what was going on with my seizure patterns and my hormones. I don't know what the link was until years later and uncovered that I had endometrial tissue being stored on my sacrum. That's the lower part of the spine. And in particular, that material was interfering with the signaling to my brain. So I know you're very heavily educated and have some ideas on the correlation between those two, so I'd love to hand over the mic to you for a moment to just kind of explain what your experience has been with endometriosis.

Before I do that, I also want to for the audience, this is kind a big deal. A lot of people can get a diagnosis of endometric. I think it's more prevalent these days. My mother had endomic that admitted her to the Mayo Clinic. and they were really hard, difficult diagnosis for her to get. She was in so much pain, she had horrible digestive issues. At one point, the material collapsed her lung. A pretty significant case. So I knew I had the propensity, but I think this is a condition, would you agree, Dr.

David, that's pretty undiagnosed in general? In general, of course, because it's cyclical by nature. With a woman's monthly hormone cycling, it comes and goes. And the number one statement in healthcare is I thought it would just get better. Yeah. So a lot of people don't get full diagnoses because they just want to live their lives. And they're hoping that they get. Of course, through a cycle, they will get a bit better, but the underlying problem still exists and until it gets really bad and it's internal.

and so without a of high quality diagnostic imaging. and tracking hormones and all those other relationships in the body. And having a doctor that would even be willing to do that because most, and you know, we're all familiar that people want quick service. So they tend to give quick answers and get them in, get him out. having people to really dig deeper and even be trained for the possibility of deeper discussions. So I've got certain ideas and I wondered about it because when we went through training, and this is years ago, I graduated in 95 and so we were doing gynecology classes in third and fourth year.

And I was confused. Not that I'm off on the weeds totally, but I was confused because the dogma at the time was that, and I am not into magical thinking. Okay. I've very scientific linear. Uh, I mean, there are times for magical, thinking, usually it's reading stories to a six year old. But anyway, fair. Fair. You want to do that. So that's what Disney is based on. What we're looking at in what we were taught was. the cells endometrium, the lining of a woman's uterus, that those tissue, those cells would somehow migrate to the aligning of the abdominal cavity.

And then there in that location respond each month to hormones being regulated through the brain and through ovaries and different hormone centers of woman body. Then it would grow and cause problems. Sure, maybe, but I'm questioning it because the blood supply doesn't go from the uterus to the lining of the abdominal cavity, it goes to liver. I am so with you on that, David. Right. That does never made sense to me. First of all, I operate too from that the paradigm that body is perfect in design.

So, let's say that's true. Why? Why would the body do something so stupid? Right? Like, what's at play that would have that scenario unleash itself inside the body? So I have never bought that. That is definitely how it was explained to my mother. Sure. You know, and that's how she explained it to me as growing up. But it's a scratch your head. And that was a simple mechanistic description. We've got tissue that we know under the microscope we've looked at. They've scraped it, took samples, look in the mic.

Oh, this is endometrial tissue. Well, how did it get here? Will it magically migrate? Now, yes. The uterus in a woman is like, you know, half an inch away from the abdominal wall. Sure. But stuff doesn't just move that way. Yeah. Okay. So here's what I thought. I have an idea. And I was taking stem cell training in 2012. At the time in British Columbia, it was a gray area. There was number of naturopathic doctors that were doing stem-cell treatments and I wanted to get the training. And I decided ultimately not to do it.

It became a black and white issue and the answer was no, but the information was really important. So my thought was with stem cell activation. so if a woman is cycling through hormonal push, so the areas of the brain that regulate hormones throughout the body and stem cells. expression. So stem cells dormant throughout the body, they can express in different ways. You can get a certain stem cell to express and become other tissue. Can we stay on this for just a second? Because I want this is sounds like at the basis and of what your thinking is on.

This whole picture. I definitely want to delve into this, but I wanna pause for a 2nd, because I think a lot of times in the way that we've talked about stem in terms of functional medicine is that they're, they kind of like start outside the body. And I want to just make this point, drive this home for a lot of people, because there's ways that we can actually, like you're saying, fire up, ignite, initiate, whatever word you want use, the stem cells inside our own bodies. Can you expand on, on your thinking on that and what you've noticed from, and your experience in using stem cell too, from an exogenous or outside perspective inward and you notice there?

So the reality is we have a lot of our body came from stem cells. So originally not happy for a lotta people to think, but it's basics. Every one of us started with an ovum, an egg from mom, a sperm from dad that made a whole cell. And then it started to multiply and produce. In that process, your liver came form a single cell, now we've got stem cell throughout the body, many of which are dormant. They get turned on at different times, make more stem cells become dormant and make new tissue. This is what regenerative medicine is about.

How do we turn on dormants stem cell to make parts of our body? Yes. Very important. Know that we are capable of doing that. It doesn't have to come from outside to actually achieve repair, right? We can actually facilitate the increased supply of that as a foundation for repairing and regenerating. Absolutely. And that's where a lot of people in our commercialized medical world believe that it won't work unless I paid somebody and got a delivery in a package. Tens of thousands of dollars. Well, yes, well, that's what a large part of the economy is based on.

So what we're really looking at is how do you actually turn on your own ability to regenerate? And that is feed clean, balance the energy. Are you eating enough of right food, not too much of wrong food? Are getting rid of toxins? are you balancing the energies through your thoughts, through actions, your emotions? Absolutely, yeah. And then there's acupuncture, many other parts of this, but all this is really important in terms of getting stem cells to turn on in the right place. So I had an idea that women are cycling through hormonal ranges and there is a feedback mechanism, as we know, in is regulating hormonal balance by regulating how centers in the body like your ovaries are producing hormones.

And the hypothalamus is measuring what's in blood and giving feedback. Now the challenge is parts of our body, and I'll get into why and how we create it, there's areas of body that aren't listening.

Stem cell theory and dormant tissue expression 12:40

The feedback loops are incomplete. So the brain's trying to push a woman's ovaries, endometrium to respond throughout her monthly cycle in a normal way. So the door is being knocked on, but nobody's answering. But the neighbor answers. Oh, the neighbors answers, good. And the neighborhood is the lining of the abdominal cavity. I'm at this stem cell course and I put it to both the woman MD who was the clinical side and the women PhD candidate who later became a PhD taught 100 stem cell experts in the world.

And I put it to them and said, well, my thought is that the cells didn't migrate from the lining of the uterus. They existed as stem cells in a wall of. The abdominal cavity or the sacrum in your case, and the body was not responding to the push by the pituitary, the ovaries in, in lining, of uterus were not corresponding, but the abdominal cavities did. Interesting. So you got expression of a dormant stem cell to make endometrial tissue in the wrong place. Okay. I put it to the doctors and I said, well, this is an idea I've got because that makes far more sense to me.

Their reply was, we're not gynecologists, We don't know about that. We do regenerative work with stem cells. But what we do know is that stem Cells are variably expressed by viruses. Oh, now who the heck doesn't have viruses throughout their bodies? Right. I mean, it's not whether we have them and it is not this fallacy that I can avoid them. We all have. It's a question of our underlying health as to what gets flourishing and what expresses our stem cells. Well, hello. This is just rational. Now here's the next part of this.

Let's talk about looping. Okay. Okay, so I took courses with Dr. Marty Hintz, H-I-N-Z, and he's into how the brain works with serotonin and dopamine. So serotonin balances with dopamine. Serotonine, if you don't have enough, you're at risk of anxiety, depression, poor digestion, core sleep. Yes, all of us. Then, with you, don' have a enough dopamine, You don''t stop. If Parkinson's patient, they don ''ve enough Dopamine, They're in resting tremors and people have got Restless Leg Syndrome. Marty Hintz, it was his opinion that everybody's pre-Parkinsonian because we're under so much load of stress today.

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Dopamine is sabotaged by sugar. Yeah. So when you give someone a whole bunch of sugar, whoever they are, even if they're self-dosing, they will sabotage their dopamine. They will loop both emotionally and physically, repetitive thoughts, dysregulation of hormones. So if you've ever driven or seen someone drive an old truck with a loose steering box, They're kind of moving the steering wheel all over the place to try and stay straight. And if don't steer right, there in the ditch. For many people without enough dopamine, because they have too much sugar in the diet, not enough good amino acids, they land up dysregulating.

And it's not that it is their fault. It's their nutrition. So in areas of emotions, I mean, do you know anybody who has had a failed romantic relationship who just can't stop talking about it? We all do. And so, you know, I have a mirror, so it's a brain nutrition issue, B6, good amino acids, all that. But I started getting, now there's another part here, mucuna. is a herbal product which is 40% dopamine. It works far better than just giving dopamine, which we can prescribe, but the mucuna works better to feed the brain to make more dopamine and have people come out of their loops.

So I took my endometrial patients, put them on dopamine supplements along with B6, So they start regulating the hormones better because their feedback mechanism was working better than that steering box for the old truck, you know, putting you off in the dick. So in real-time regulation, their stem cell activation normalized. Interesting. Yeah. That's part of regeneration. It's not just can you regenerate something, it's can regenerated what you want when you wanted. Want to regenerates, yeah, that makes sense.

Talk to me about the great connector of the brain and the gut, which is the vagus nerve, and how you might think that plays into this scenario. Okay, let's talk about that vagas nerve. Yeah. And we're going to talk some funky stuff because I'm looking at your neck too. So, the Vagus nerve is a cranial nerve meaning it comes out of a skull way up top. Now, it innervates the middle ear, heart, diaphragm for breathing, stomach and liver, everything in between. Why does someone, when they eat dry crackers, hiccup?

The vagus nerve. Now, it's called the vagas nerve because it is a vagabond. It's all over the place. So, the Vagus nerve is irritated in the stomach of the drycrackers and so it starts spasming the diaphragm. You start hiccupping. What is the biggest problem with the Vegas nerve? It is that if we have a big trauma, we will pinch it in neck and it will affect everything. You look in the mirror, people with lateral lines, they will have nerve pinches in back because they've had some trauma at some time.

And I can see it because it affects the skin. Some people have got smooth skin, other people got complex lateral line. I have an ultrasound machine diagnostic, so I'll look at their neck tissue and I see where it's torn. That's part of what we do with prolo therapy, proliferating connective tissue to hold their neck in place. Yeah, well the vagus nerve is a weak link for me. In what way? Something, you know, big surprise, grand mal seizures in history, right? We know that in the most, I never had to do this, but some of the worst seizure cases, the way that we're managing some those now is by putting in devices inside of chest, thoracic cavity to actually help stimulate the vagus nerve.

So part of my process of getting my neurologic, my brain fixed essentially is in fixing my vagus nerve. So right now in particular, it's very much under construction doing some vagous nerve stimulation. But what you're saying to me right, now it sounds like you are kind of diagnosing or assessing me. Go ahead and expand on that a little bit further in my neck and the lateral lines. So I suspect that you've had some fall, some trauma, and you're pinching your nerve at the back. Now what we, what I've learned from orthopedics...

What's through your right side? Both. Okay. It's more pronounced than your rights side though. Yeah. Let's pick up with the lateral lines. So in your spine, you have nerve roots, bundles of nerve coming out of the spine and then going to the tree of your body. Those nerves, along with all the nerves throughout the body, are subject to irritation. So through trauma, through infection, something, you'll get swelling. Now, why is there lateral lines? Within each bundle, there's three bundles. One bundle at each level of the spine.

one goes to internal organs, one go to the skeletal muscles, and one to goes the skin. Irritate one, the other two go. Okay. Now understand that nerves now is taught this by Dr. Thomas Clark of MSK US. So musculoskeletal ultrasound, ultrasound trainer.

Brain chemistry, dopamine, and vagus nerve regulation 22:00

And he's saying teaching that irritated nerves, exquisitely irritated will swell as much as three times normal diameter. If you remember your anatomy, nerves are a certain size. They're going through bony areas and all the rest. When they swell that much, they'll pinch themselves. Now, if you've got torn connective tissue in the back of your neck, that doesn't give full support. So the muscles try to adapt and they will pinch nerves. And so if got pinched nerves in a certain area, you will not get full transmission up or down.

So your brain is going into dysregulatory states because there's a pinch somewhere. Now, it's wonderful that you're getting stimulation down below, but you absolutely have to look at compression patterns in your neck. Well, definitely, well, so I'm also the daughter of three of a chiropractor. So I have been practically adjusted since I was four years old. And definitely after post seizure, I would have, you know, atlases and everything out. Yeah, completely out, But what we've seen, and actually the pattern you're describing there with the nerve compression is real, because I've see this not only in myself, but other patients that I have that are having vagus nerve issues.

And mine was really on the right side more of that compression pattern. I was just thinking this morning how, oh my gosh, I haven't felt that pain in so long. because of what we're doing with the vagus nerve and trying to rebuild it with using, you know, amplification of stem cells inside the body and dealing with that. But it's a process, and definitely in the healing process you have an inflammatory state at different times as well. So I would say, sometimes we tend to look solely at inflammation as just this bad thing that is, it is going to cause you symptoms, et cetera, what I've seen clinically is that inflammation is how the But the caveat and the differences is inflammation that is a controlled burn is useful for you.

Inflammation that isn't raging out of control forest fire is going to present you with debilitating symptoms and nuisances in your life. So definitely, I always say that, you know, swelling isn't necessarily bad. Assuming some of those deviations in tissue actually can be a sign of progress. And especially if it's coordinated well. So let's talk about inflammation for a second. Inflammation is a symptom pattern that is pain, redness, heat, and swelling, any or all of that. That is the outward...

That heat pattern in Chinese medicine. Yeah. Yes. So that is the outward symptom pattern that tells us that cytokines, the chemicals of healing are in play. Now, if you injure tissue, you'll release cytakines. So it's injury through trauma or infection. The cytocines come out, there's about eight steps to get them to turn on the cells that lay down more tissue and and heal connective tissue. They often get hung up at three, four. And so there's a backlog. Now, one of the therapies that I use is ozone therapy, which is energized oxygen.

So I inject it into tissues that are inflamed. It activates inflammation, which is a good thing. You cannot heal without inflammation. The mechanism, right? It's the process. Now, if it's out of control, like you said, a control burn has to be productive. So you energize it, it goes through. There's other ways of doing it as well. Ozone I love. They're getting into more ozonated, instead of ozone gas, they're going into ozinated glycerin, Which is really cool. Oh, interesting. Oh yeah, I was at a training last March, March 2025, and it was highlighting the use of ozonated glycerin.

Okay. Creates ozenides that modulate the cytokines. So kind of pulling the burn. Yes. Modulation. Balancing the natural process. Love it. And so instead of jamming it or I don't wanna criticize anybody, but there are a number of doctors who really like anti-inflammatories. Instead of controlling inflammation, they wanna turn it off. Let's turn off the steroids, yeah. Well, many choices there. And so you get rid of the pain. Now you have a falsely supported patient who thinks they're fine. They didn't go to finish that eight step process.

they went back to the start without realizing it. And now that's why many doctors who use steroids, cortisone injections and all that, they only do one, and they don't want to do two or three because they know the person's stuck in a loop of not healing. We don' want a beating in the loops. Let's talk about those steps. Will you go through each of those step and then where you think the reasons why you step three and four are tending to break down for most people? How do we get that natural process to actually work?

Well, first off, you've got to supply nutrients. And so is the person eating good foods? Are they digesting? And if they're not digusting, it digestivates. Are the eating foods that bug them? Stop it. But a lot of that is because of underlying infections. So we may have to use antiparasitic formulas to keep them balanced. Yep. Then from there, do they get fed? Well, I really like the topic. Well MSM is really important, methyl sulfonamethane. It's a white powder nutritionally in a lot of joint formulas that nutritionality supports the growth of new tissue, connective tissue.

But I like really the topical formulas of DMSO, dimethyl sulfoxide. Now it gives you garlic breath and it smells harsh if you don't have enough green in your diet there's ways of managing it but nobody cares because it feels better and it actually feeds so if you put on your neck it will actually feed the tissue to regrow because a lot of it didn't grow because at the time of injury it got swollen and the circulation wouldn't bring enough nutrition there so you form scar tissue so to get rid of scar tissues they're even using it in eye formulas for eye drops now 10 solution but still DMSO is really a popular product for me with my patients because it helps to calm down irritated nerves, get connective tissue to regenerate.

So that's really important. Now, the next part of all this is energy. Yes, now we get into some funky stuff because you're into acupuncture. Yeah. Okay. I won't have all the details, but there was a, close to 25 years ago, there who actually photographed acupuncture channels. Oh, yeah. So in acupunture, we've got all these fancy charts with meridians going through odd things, through bones, though organs, and everybody, nobody could see it because... Well, it turned out they were doing cadavers, not living people.

Uh-huh. This particular medical doctor took pictures Emotionally, or politically, he had a side opinion to the dictator of North Korea. Apparently he disappeared. We don't know what happened to him, but he has written six books, really three books twice released, talking about these channels that he photographed. Now, the tragedy of all this was that was taking photographs of dissected living people. But so, yeah, exactly. Not happy about that, but happy with the concept. So these actual meridians are actual open channels that transport stem cells and energy.

Yeah. Makes sense. Yes. Well, you don't practice. Let's try to drill down on energy even further. Electrical energy? Okay. It's electrically measured, But it's not just electrical. In Chinese medicine, there's four fluids. There's blood, sweat and tears. There is Qi, Jing and Shen. Qi is the energy that moves through your meridians. Jing is what resides your life essence in your kidneys. And Shen is your spirit. Now, we don't know exactly. What Chi is, we can measure it electrically. We know the effect.

And a lot of people that I've studied under practitioners, when I, same thing as you, I want to know more details. Is it at a quantum level? What is it? And they kind of look at me funny. They always have. and they say, why would you care? We do this, they get better. Right. right. we're just practical. I just got five more people. That need my care. But I still ask questions. Yeah, very practical. And that's very valid. I always like to point out to people too that because I think sometimes where we get a little twisted around in terms of Chinese medicine, talking about meridians and channels and such.

is that people think that you have to adopt a whole new paradigm, a way of thinking of the body to make it make sense. And it's not really so. It's just, like you mentioned, the Chinese, ancient Chinese Eastern cultures were really good with human dissection and really just like documenting and mapping out how everything was connected to everything else. So that's ultimately what we're dealing with is the study and the then practical application of a therapy. based on that knowledge, that information, and leveraging, again, the innate intelligence that's there to heal.

Exactly. And coordinating the effort of the healing process, right? So let me give you another angle on this that is really cool, because it gets good results. You're trained in acupuncture. Do you do much moxibustion? I don't. Want to know my theories on it? Yes, go ahead. Okay, so matzo bastion is really funky because it puts energy. So there's a particular herb called mugwort that when you put it into what looks like a cigar, light it on fire, it burns, its smolders with an ember that supposedly, I think it's true, but supposedly it vibrates at a certain harmonic when it burn.

Now you hold that over acupuncture points and supposedly its a third of Chinese medicine. It's not just moving energy through the meridians but actually putting more energy in. Yes. So the problem with all that is I'm not really a smoke person. I don't agree with smoke in recreational substances or forest fire. I dont like smoke. And yet to do moxibustion and not burn the person, you've got to get it right down, like just over the meridian point and put the energy in.

Inflammation, ozone therapy, and tissue repair 33:00

There's plumes of white smoke and it kind of smells like pot. So I'm just not going there. Im certainly not doing it in my office. My landlord will ask me to leave. so I love the idea. i'm not gonna do it until I got a premium 10 unit. which is an electrical moxibustion stick. Okay. So it's got an element that puts out energy. Yeah. No smoke. And heat everywhere. Heat and harmonic. Right. I'm using it on abdominal points for women and getting prolapsed uteri to draw back up into their bodies. Nice.

Turning on core energy and people are more energetic because they have more energy to move through their meridians. Yes. So what's your theory on all this? Well, I think we see less use of it probably because also our patient populations are so toxic and inundated with a lot of pathogens that there's already self-generation of heat happening on the regular inside their body. Now, if you bring that heat and that inflammation down, then you have an opportunity to clear, we call that clearing excess, right?

Clearing the excess pattern. And then, you an have opportunity for a bit of time to tonify. And then you'll tonify and the body, because it's perfect in design, will then want to go in to a deeper level of healing. And so oftentimes what it will do is start the excess pattern again. It'll create that self, you know, modulated inflammatory state to heal the next bit of whatever needs to be healed kind of thing. So now you're back into the heat scenario. I think that's also that plays out into a lot of my patients are like, can I do sauna therapy?

Not right now. Not yet. Because you're already generating a lot of internal heat. Yes. because of unchecked inflammation and undealt with root causes of that inflammation. But once we quell that, get that under control, then we'll bring in those more what we would call that a tonifying or building therapy, which, you know, we can see that that looks like, increasing mitochondrial function, just helping the body to do that repairing and regenerating piece of it. Very cool. Now, a big part of Chinese medicine, as you know, is stagnation, which is congestion and lack of flow and irritation.

So when we're irritated, we make things like mucus, so-called biofilms where bacteria hide and hang out. And so to get all that, what I like to say is before you sweep the garage, open the door so the the cloud of dust leaves. Love it. You got to open up the among trees, make sure that you're eliminating and then tonify for sure. Now here, let me give you one. I believe one of my saints, I believed that all illness is based on a pronunciation error. Fair. The inability. Yeah. Got some thoughts on the medical language here.

So the inability to say no. Okay. Right? Boundaries and expectations. If you get pulled into an unsafe, reciprocal adult relationship where you're just being abused. That's not good. Now that relationship could be with food that's stagnating your body. It could underlying infections that are allowed to flourish because of the wrong thoughts and energy flow. There's so many interrelationships here that when we get down to the core, people are not surprised. They're kind of shocked, but they thought that they could just put up with it.

Yeah. And when the it becomes 10 different things, it's like, I don't know why you're putting up with any of it. It takes two to be friends. If you can't eat wheat, It's not your friend. I Don't care if you like it, maybe the bacteria in your gut love it but you don' Why are you eating? Now I'm not saying all wheat. Cause a lot of my patients go back to Europe for holidays or for trips and they eat everything wrong there, but there's no GMO and it is locally produced. They're eating wheat that agrees with them.

Now, is that because the wheat's different or their bacterial balance is different? There's difference considerations for each person. But the bottom line is, we all have the ability to be better. If we control our infections, control emotional states, there's even a discussion that many of our choices in emotional state are based upon the neurotransmitter hormone-like substances being put out by bacteria in our intestinal tract. So if you eat garbage food, you'll make certain realities happen biochemically in your body that makes your brain go.

Yeah. What I'm seeing too is there's that, we're talking about that phlegm piece, right? And so I've seen where that actually is withholding a lot of, it could be parasite eggs, bacteria, fungus-line bacteria. Things like that that are hanging out in that material. And for lack of better, you know, description, I don't necessarily think this lines up like my definition of mycoplasma would be more of that nature. Whereas look up at the theoretical, definition, of microplasm is just bacteria because that's designed or probably viewed in the light of more a biomedical system, which is really focused and overtended on antibiotic therapy, right?

Right. So, I think that's a piece of it. But that piece, that material, when is properly moved, we've seen clinically will actually reverse the food sensitivities with a little bit of assistance of stem cell initiation and improvement will do nicely to heal the gut. And then all of a sudden, the foods sensitivites are reversing. I had anaphylactic gluten sensitivity. at one point, served a bun in a restaurant and literally had to take my friend across the park and say, here, can you tap on my back?

You know, I'm thinking we might need to go to the hospital. It was so bad, David, that eventually I was like, what is going on here? My immune system, my nervous system are reacting this strongly to what it's supposed to be. And I, you know we can debate all day about how toxic, certainly the wheat in the US is and I wouldn't say that's a debate. That's an agreement. Right. but not universally. Not everybody's affected. Yes, exactly. Why is not everybody affected universally on that? I've seen where, I think it's more, and you might know more about this too, based on which genes are at play here, but I there's certain genetic profile that has us not being able to detox glyphosate specifically.

Once I go in and take the glyphasate burden down to on those real sensitive food sensitivity people, that also helps reverse the food sensitivities too. So, I don't know, there must be some kind of component I think genetically that's either studied or not studied yet that is correlating to that too because of... Always. Yeah. So there's another part to this. We talked about earlier cytokines being chemicals of healing. So within that group, there are chemicals, thymus regulator cells. Thymous is regulating the immune system.

What's out B cells and T cells? B Cells tune the white blood cells to what to attack. That's the B cell, the T cell. T helper cells rev up your whiteblood cells, and t regulators bring it down. So those are to be modulated in different ways, but there's also what's known as TH1 and TH2. So that, have you ever wondered, I wondered until I learned, how can shingles, chicken pox virus, hide in a cell? Why don't our white blood cells just eat them? Right. Why? Well, because that TH one is cellular immunity, it down-regulates cellular and immunity.

And as a direct consequence, you bring down TH 1, TH 2 goes higher. TH2 is I've got a rash, I can't eat wheat, and I have foggy thinking. All these outward symptoms are an indicator that the TH1-TH2 balance is not. Now, this is where we get into things. I don't really want to go with pharmaceuticals. Hey, if they work, we use them. There is something called naltrexone. Have you used that very much? So what we're doing in our process in the resiliency method is actually identifying what is dysregulating the thymus gland in particular, giving it whole food protomorphogen to help repair it.

And so we've seen great success with actually taking that angle on route for the Thymis gland. Thank you for bringing up the Thomas clan. It is such an underplayed and misunderstood deal here. Can we talk about the time slam for a second? Because I get so passionate about this. Because we were told that that's supposed to shrivel up and just be nonchalant. Who cares? You know, we don't need a long-term immunity. What? We don' t care about it. We do n't understand it, so ignore it That's in the same vein of thinking, which is totally misdirected, that if you're a woman and you' re over 50 years of age, you are not going to have children.

Just take your uterus out. Right. No, so your thymus gland really important, but also so there's different areas like even your thyroid for energy. It's highly susceptible autoimmune to certain Yersinia bacteria. it'll have a cross reactivity to. Now, why do people with thymus gland know different? It's part of your immune system, but it's susceptible to certain bacterial infections when it is not fed well, and it very important for self-image. So, now, does a poor thymos gland give you poor self image or does the poor image affect your thynos gland?

The answer is yes. Work it from both ends. feeding it, getting it to balance out the immune system throughout your body to make enough thymus regulators. Now we use homeopathic remedies. I was taught a low dose immunotherapy through the American Academy of Environmental Medicine.

Meridians, energy, and Chinese medicine concepts 43:00

They're looking at all the allergies being underlying infections. So you've got to handle the infection, but you also have to rebalance the energy patterns. And you can't do that if the person's not ready. Like you said, they're too stagnant. They're backed up. they are not well fed. Their emotions are sideways. Getting all that taken care of, which is a process. And what about a person why? Why are they doing anything? So dealing with their why, giving them meaning in life. That's community, that's connection, to other people.

Get their, why? Why do they even want to be alive? Because it can be fun. Come on, get back to it. Right. And then they can get rid of all the rest. So is stagnation, infection, poor digestion, are all these symptoms of a person who's not really involved with her life? Maybe. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I like how you bring in into your whole purview too here, David, how your talking about the emotional aspects and how they show up and play because I think also a lot of times we're being taught or we are kind of being told in our society and our culture that emotional experiences are happening to us.

And I love that you're looking at it from more of a biomedical standpoint. I look the same way to you. A brain, a nervous system that is balanced and is adaptable to its environment not only shows up as being more resilient to it's food and its diet and such, but it also has increased adaptability to emotional experiences, which come as a part of being a human on this planet, walking in this body. And rather than always seeing emotional experiences as being something that are, like I said, kind of brought on to us, how some of the physiological imbalances in the body can sometimes contribute to your ability to process emotions.

And in particular, if you know anything about this, this is one that I was putting together recently. clinically is the vagus nerve coming back to the Vegas nerve and the ability to let go effectively. And seeing how that has an impact too, like you mentioned too like, you know, some of our biggest heartbreaks and intimate relationships, intimate partnerships and such, and how sometimes some those physiological imbalances can actually have an effect on your ability process, the ending of a relationship or whatnot.

So I'd love to hear some thoughts on some of the ones you see clinically and what you know about that aspect. Well, people are looping too often. They're eating way too many processed sugars because it's joyful at a level. And I heard this yesterday with a patient says, well, I love and she's being realistic. She says I loved my addictions, a particular type of coffee. It's confusing because I have a whole bunch of joy, but I don't feel happy. Well, the joy is a certain chemical release. And the not happy is that it is an overview, you know, as a person that, it's not going to go in the right place.

You're going be in a loop and you're gonna have to repeat that coffee every two hours because you are getting such a boost or your bacteria in your gut are such. So to look at nutrition and tough it through good nutrition. first week and a half, two weeks, get the gut bacteria to alter. That's huge. And then looking at stagnation. What is stagnations? Well, it's a response to irritation. So you're making mucus to buffer yourself. Yeah. Yes. Liver that's not draining well, detoxing well. Kidneys that aren't clear and flushed enough to eliminate bowels that are stodgy.

Those are definitely also pieces of that stagnate. But then yeah, actual emotional stress and such from a Chinese medicine perspective will stagnate, like you said, the cheating in energy. And then you get stuck in general processing too. Some people actually like to self-medicate with memories. Okay, yeah. So they like a certain memory. More pleasurable periods of time, absolutely. A lot of that's projection. It's not even reality. Yeah, yeah. Instead of living their life, moving ahead, making relationships, interacting with people, which we can't, and that's social media.

People have reduced interaction which they need. We all need social interaction. They reduce it down to a couple of words and texts. And if they don't get the cue back to them, their world is destroyed. Now that is expected with a 12 year old, but how many of us are older than that but not? Yeah. Absolutely. And marketers know this. In that developmental level, engaging in those types of, yeah. So, you know, it's well known that there's 12 year olds that think that they're 30 and there are 50 year old who think they are 12. Yeah.

and so getting a balance there and not looping back, getting fed, get rid of some of their held emotions that are only causing more phlegm in their body and their brain. The brain phlem is a really interesting thing. Yes. Can we talk about that for a second? I could talk to you all day about this stuff. I love that we're kind of doing a smorgasbord here. We started with endometriosis. Well, it's all regulation. It's about feeding your body so that it has enough building blocks to move ahead, enough energy.

Then detox, which means get rid of what isn't, now what's a toxin? The toxins is any substance or even a thought pattern that limits or blocks normal activity in your. Detoxification is processing and elimination of those chemicals or thoughts. This is life, this is normal. but most people are avoiding it because, again, they're not saying no. So a lot of people I talk to say that they are confused, and I don't believe them. And I put them on the spot and say, no, you're no confused. You know exactly what you need to do and what your body needs.

Your confusion is coming in is that you don' want to disturb another person by going against their wishes. Yes, right. Every one of us is the average of our five closest associations. And if there wasn't, we'd leave that association or we would get different friends. So we're stuck in our loops. Not being accepted or belonging to the group, that's significant. To fit in. They'll smoke, they'll drink, consume recreational substances to fit even though they know it's destroying their body. Actually figuring out their why.

Why are they alive? What will fulfill them? And that why If you clear on that, that's goal setting. That's all those things. Then you'll be committed enough to eat the right foods, to have the, right to do all the stuff that you know you should do. No, there's no surprise. When I have patients come in, maybe there are some details that they've never heard before, but they know the basics. They're not living right. We've got to change all that. Now they have a decision to move ahead and I'm not going to sugar coat it.

I'll tell them, don't eat this food. Don't engage in this activity. Move ahead. Are they actually going to do it? Well, that's their decision. I'll help them. They can't force them to it. It's not my purpose. But if they really are committed to doing, and some are, some don't want to, they'd rather die their way. Yeah. What would be the one thing, David, that you think, Dr. David? The better question that a patient could ask themselves or a provider that would essentially give them more power back in their world of health.

Would you say? the most important thing that they can know is what's possible. They have to know what has happened with other people just like them. We need to know what's even possible because there's a sequence of thoughts that everyone goes through. They wanna know, is their health condition knowable? This is what I'm experiencing. Have you heard of this or seen this before? So they're talking to a healthcare professional.

Gut health, immune balance, and emotional loops 51:20

So, they have to no a clear thought of what they are experiencing that's not serving them. Then they need to know if it can be solved anywhere. Yes, I understand what you're going through. This is the dysfunction. We need deal with this problem. They need know, is there a solution in the world? Is there a solution near where they live or where their connected on the internet? And will it actually work for them? So they need to know their possibilities. And that's what podcasts are all about. What are the possibilities?

Now it's not just pie in the sky, here's some theory. No, this is what I've actually thought and this how I applied it to people and these are results I'm getting. Now, it may be different for you, mileage may vary, they all say, but it what is even possible and then they can aspire to having good health. Now here I'm gonna give you the next part. I threaten people. Now I know I must strong beta, I am not an alpha aggressive person, but still. How long are you gonna live? You need to figure out your life expectancy because, now I know that's God, that all spirituality, all that stuff, it's your destiny.

Because we all know people that stepped off a curb, tripped, and died. What the heck? How'd that happen? Other people I literally know got run over by a truck and did not die. It wasn't their time. Now, we're all gonna to live as long as we live. That's our destiny, the question is are we gonna do it right? And that's my threat by taking charge of your health. Now, by figuring out what can be done and taking of charge your life and maybe not doing everything tomorrow, but starting to move there.

Know your possibilities, map it out, set your goals. Start eating right, integrate slowly if you have to. Be a big project person if really must, but really it's time. We talk about detoxification. Two weeks of diarrhea taking heavy herbs is not detoxication. It's drinking enough water, eating enough fiber, getting enough exercise, all those natural things. That's detoxifications. So what we really need to have people know is what's possible, get them attached to it and not be disabled for the end of their life.

You don't want to spend 20 years disabled. We want it to be independent, active and moving ahead. Oh gosh, we need that overhaul so badly. I talk to patients about that all the time. Look around right now and see what you're witnessing in terms of how people are living the last of their life, and you have to make a clear decision if you're on board with that. And if not, you need to start taking action now. Because no decision is still a decision. You're delaying the inevitable. It's not changing the world, it's just changing your perception, which is not enough of a reality check.

I'll just ignore it until it matters. Yeah, but it may matter for the last 20 years of your life. Right. Exactly. We got to get people off of being oriented to here and now and how they're doing day to day and really take a step back and come up with a strategy. Be realistic. I mean, nobody's surprised when I tell them they have to take natural medical steps. Drugs and surgery have their place. They're fantastic, but not for everything. And when people go back to their medical doctor and say, I'm on 10 different drugs.

What can I get off of? What I can do? How come they're not doing everything that was promised? And the common response is, well, what did you expect? Well, expected the ads to be my life. Yeah, but maybe that really was just an ad. You need to take charge, look around, and look at your family. What did and didn't work for your genetics? Right. Exactly. Also, yeah, it's great research is in looking, examining the family history and what's happening. Absolutely. And I always say, tell my patients too, you have to also consider that if mom or dad started showing dementia, issues with their brain, like such as dementia memory loss in their seventies, account for the fact that you're probably going to start to show those symptoms perhaps a decade earlier.

In a modern world, yes. Because every generation seems to advance an earlier expression of those symptoms that we're seeing that are lined up on a genetic level. And to think that just because mom or dad had that, I think we are getting past this now, but to just think because just mom and dad have that year just basically, well, that's just your path. That's the way it's going to be is horribly disempowering and is definitely paralyzing. get attached to those types of things. Well, that's defeatism.

Expect more and move towards it. Yeah. We've covered a lot of ground here today. Thank you so much. This has been incredible to just get so many topics covered. I love the discussion today and we want to have you back on this podcast too, because I can tell we could probably go on for hours. Looking forward to it! Yeah, I'd love to give the audience one more recap of where they can find you. Okay, so podcasts, the Natural Facts podcast. So wherever you get your podcast, I'm working on my website.

That'll be thethenaturalfacts.com. I'll have lots of different pieces of information up there that people can go download or download audio, video. There's all kinds of reports there. So it's been a real pleasure because I've got a kindred spirit. And it is not just the information, because that will change next week. It's the openness to consider information and make sense of it. Don't just give up. Yes. Sure, today, but maybe tomorrow, new information comes out of a new study and it all makes sense.

A new discussion, a conversation. Absolutely. So be open to possibilities. Love it. The only way to really improve health outcomes is to just continuously be in inquiry. And that's how we advance this for the whole common good, which is really what we're driven by. Cool. Thank you, Dr. Erica. All right.