Mitochondria Matters: The Cellular Key to Healing

Introduction and Guest Background 0:00

I think it's a good way of looking at it is take the time. A lot of people make smart financial decisions and have something to show for it, but what better investment can you make than your own body and being there for your family and being there for your loved ones and your kids, your friends and your coworkers and all that. You and I, we have to kind of practice what we preach, don't we? This is Doctor Talks, real talk from real doctors on the issues that matter to you most. Welcome everybody to another episode of the My MD Unscripted podcast where we talk about all the things that wish your doctor had time and the ability to talk about with you in a regular visit.

We love to talk about how direct primary care has given us the freedom to get outside of the insurance box. and move into the areas that really help people feel better, be healthier, live longer. And today is no exception. It is my honor and privilege to get to talk to Dr. Michael Brown, who is a PhD, psychologist, dual, dual, uh, PhDs where, you know, he was recently, he just got in late last night. So if, you know, if we act tired, it's cause Dr. Brown just got in late last night from Florida, where he was given a talk at NASA on how to incorporate these cellular health components for helping astronauts and athletes and everybody else in their daily lives live healthier and happier.

So. You know, the question that's really kind of starts us all off is, you know, what if the key to overcoming anxiety, fatigue, and even chronic disease isn't in your mind, but in your mitochondria? So Dr. Brown, tell us a little about yourself and what we're even talking about here. Well, thanks Dr. Carter. I appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity to share a little bit about what we do. I think the way to kind of understand functional and integrative medicine is it's kind of emerging of traditional and integrative technologies where we take some traditional and some less traditional ideology and mix it together.

And so we do some unique therapies, have some neat, you know, toys in our office that we utilize to improve people's health. But at the end of the day, it's about looking at root cause. So looking at the root cause and when we get to the root, oftentimes we get down all the way to the cell and we find that we've got dysfunction at the cellular level. And this is really, as you alluded to, this is kind of the root cause of most illness, whether it's mental illness, physical illness, it's cellular dysfunction.

And so kind of our primary thing that we do is look for root cause and help patients kind of navigate their way through the different modalities merging traditional and non-traditional together. and help them get well. I mean, it seems almost crazy to talk about mitochondria in chronic disease. When I was in medical school and not once was that brought up in any way, shape, sort or fashion. It's a, to me that's novel. Now I know it's kind of become a little more in the information age is becoming a little more popular.

And I know some of the, um, the movement has begun, but why I would cellular health have anything to do with. How I feel on a day to day or even, you know, disease going forward. Yeah, that's a good question. So think of your cell as a battery. It literally has a charge. It has a little structure inside called the mitochondria, which is kind of the powerhouse of the cell. You've got negative and positive ions floating around and they're creating some polarity and some charge. A normal cell. Has about a 75 millivolt charge to it.

So it's like a miniature battery and you get trains of these. That's awesome. So these things are doing their job of building and repair and you get injured or you get ill, your cells go into action and start working. And where dysfunction comes from is where we've got an injury or an illness or something going on in the body. And we're constantly drawing the energy out of that cell, but we're not replacing it. We're not getting well. As you get an illness or an injury, your body goes through normal processes of healing and if that process gets completed, you get well.

But if it continues to get disrupted, then we get mitochondrial dysfunction and we never truly get well. We go in this endless cycle of symptoms until it turns into something more like Crohn's disease or IBS or autoimmune disorder. It may have started with an ear infection as a kid or chronic strep throat. chronic stressors on the body that cause the cell to be damaged.

Cellular Health and Mitochondria 4:17

And so that's why it's so important to focus on the cell. It's, it's, it's the battery of the body in a sense. I mean, that's, I mean, I, you know, obviously the body's made of cells, cells make tissues, tissues make organs, organs, you know, add up to, to make the body. But, you know, I guess it makes sense in the end that the energy has to come from somewhere. It's just, I think it's still. a little bit new for most of the listeners to think about how running out of energy in your cellular battery over time results in feeling exhausted, getting sick easily, getting chronic disease that's hard to cure, autoimmune, like, you know, it shouldn't.

sound crazy, but it's just not what we've been taught all this time. Um, we'll get into some lifestyle pieces to this puzzle, but I can't imagine that the American diet and lifestyle plays well into our body's ability to heal and rejuvenate its energy sources, et cetera. Well, we find so many stressors in life, whether it's work stress or physical stress or illness. Maybe we get poor sleep because we're overworked and we have bad hygiene with our sleep and we have bad food habits and all those things relate to more and more stress on the body.

You know, here's the thing about those stressors, they manifest themselves whether like, let's take, you know, severe anxiety, depression. Those things create such a toll on the body that this emotional trauma ends up turning into physical. Because so much stress on the body in the form of emotional trauma, fatigue, whatever we're going to call it, that it manifests physically over time. It's the diathesis model of stress, you know, in medicine. Those repeated stressors that are untreated lead to things that you're predisposed to.

And so you're basically turning on that. I mean, people that are depressed hurt much more with the same amount of injury as someone who's not depressed. You know, anxiety, PTSD, the stressors, you're, you're less able, you have less bandwidth. But what you're saying is also like, you're turning on different genes to make different proteins that lead to worse outcomes. Yeah. Yeah. What if that you have this, you alluded to this earlier when we were talking before the podcast about some of these gene mutations like MTHFR and COMT gene mutations that there's a methylation issue.

So the cell doesn't break down nutrients into usable form. Well, so you're deficient. You're already starting behind. And a lot of times the things we see like anxiety, depression, ADD, ADHD, autism, all have a root in this gene mutation because there's deficiencies not being met in the body. And so you combine that with poor diet, poor lifestyle, chronic stressors, you know, in the environment from heavy metals and mold exposure. This is a time bomb. You don't have much left in your cup. Your cup's already full.

That's crazy, man. I mean, and think about it. You got your NTFHR genetic mutation from your parents. So they were already depressed and anxious and having a hard time being, you know, less than perfect parents like the rest of us. And so that adds on to your stressors, which plays into your genes. And it's a bit of a cycle here, plus the lifestyle pieces. It's, man. So tell me about, tell me about how you take this information and help your patients. So, I mean, to be clear, so I run a membership based direct primary care practice in Tyler, Texas, you know, Dr.

Brown is actually just like a block away and he runs a, you know, integrative clinic where they do lots of cool things, lots of cool toys, some of which we'll hear about today, many more that we won't. But what I love is that there's so much that I cannot do from here, even with time and attention and energy and prescriptions and supplements that I'm aware of, that we send them over to Dr. Brown and they get a completely different complimentary experience. Tell me a little bit about what you're doing for your patients and how you're taking this information and changing lives.

What is it like to go see you and what does that patient experience look like? Typically, we start off with a good long assessment looking at history, current lifestyle, diet, exercise regimens, looking at medicines they're taking, laboratory work that they bring in, which is vitally important is getting regular lab work. someone like yourself, Dr. Carter, where they come in and get the regular lab work and get the primary care doctor that's part of their team. We're all part of a team. Our primary goal is to help our patients live better lives and live their best life, right?

So that's something we all share in common. So I'm taking things from Dr. Carter's office, laboratory work, and the things that they're doing, combining with maybe some less traditional methods and kind of looking at the whole picture. Okay, what can we help with? How can we change some lifestyle behaviors? How can we use the technology that we have and combine it with what they're doing with, with like Dr. Carter and get really good outcomes. And so that first time we sit and meet together, we're gathering information and we're letting our patients talk and share their story because a lot of times I think they get frustrated when they go to a doctor and they get three to five minutes with the doctor and they don't get enough time.

And I think what you've really capitalized on in your practice that I've seen is you give patients a lot of quality time. You spend enough time with them, you explain laboratory work. I mean, I've seen patients that are patients of yours and they're like, you know, Dr. Carter has this big screen he looks at labs with, and he goes and explains them to me in a way that I can understand. He doesn't just hand them to me and say, I'll see you in six months. And so that's something I really appreciate because you're educating your patients.

And that's, you know, the word doctor comes from a Latin word called and it literally means to teach. And I think that you've done that very well. And we benefit from that because you're helping bridge the gap between traditional and non-traditional medicine. So I appreciate that about what you do with your patients, but that's just what we do.

Stress, Genetics, and Root Causes 10:10

We got- Hey, I appreciate the free commercial, man. That's that. Yeah. You're welcome on this podcast anytime, man. Well, it's true. I mean, it's, it's a breath of fresh air. a position like yourself who cares about the actual quality of life and the time you get to spend with your patients. And we try to model that what you're doing. Well, and it's, you know, there's a lot of pressure on me when I send a patient over to you because they're going to learn a lot of stuff that I may or may not even know.

So I got to get them as ready as I can. You guys know they're going to come back to teach me something, which is great. And then I just go. I'll go ask you, tell me about some of the toys you have over there. I say toys, of course they're, they're much more sophisticated than that, but they're, um, so impressive, uh, that I can't hardly keep up with the science. Tell me what you have in this, uh, that helps this, this group of patients that find themselves in a, a bit of a mitochondria hell with some, with the symptoms that go along with it.

Yeah, one of the primary things we use for the majority of our patients that are coming in is we find that oftentimes they're full of a lot of garbage in their cells. You know, they've been eating poorly. They've had a lot of stress. They've not slept well. They've taken maybe too many medications. They've had exposure to heavy metals, whatever it may be. We find that detoxing them is a very vital important, vital important part of good health. So we put them in a machine called the Hockett. It's a hypothermic ozone and carbonic acid sauna.

It literally draws the toxins out of their body, stimulates the lymphatic system, supports their immune system and helps to regulate it. So it's really good for people with autoimmune dysfunction. It uses ozone and steam and infrared, which heats the body kind of from the inside out. It allows the body to actually pull out some of these toxins and get them out through the lymphatic system. And so they sweat them out and they get them out through their kidneys and as they, you know, urinate and things like that.

So it really is pulling those deep seated things out of their cells that have been stored in there since, actually since birth. There was a study back in 2005, it showed that newborns, they took their umbilical tissue from newborn babies and they had over 287 toxins at birth. This was in 2005. So imagine how many we have as adults in our system. So we can get that where cells can function properly. So you're in a sauna type machine type situation, you're sweating. What's that like? What's the result?

What do you see? What do you feel? What's that like? It's comfortable. It's not like a traditional infrared sauna where it's, you know, 130, 140 degrees and you're just pouring sweat. It's a comfortable 98 degrees to 100 degrees. So it's just enough to open the pores in the skin and allow the ozone and the red lights and everything to penetrate the tissue. So it's really comfortable. It's strong therapy, believe me, but it's comfortable. It's doable. I do them every week. We have our staff getting in.

I'd say 90% of our patients are using Hawket as a part of their care and routine care. There was a recent study that showed that people who do regular sauna work have a 40% decrease in all-cause mortality because of circulation. So they get benefits and improve circulation, lower blood pressure, cleans out their arteries, removes plaque out of their body, gets rid of plastics, dioxins, metabolic waste, heavy metals, mold, parasites, and you literally see it. You mean you can, the sweat's not clear?

Like what do you see? It's milky, it's discolored. There's things floating in it. You get some dark brown residue and dark black residue coming out of folks with like mold. And so you actually see the result almost immediately with people, there's stuff coming out of their bodies and they're shocked. Oh my gosh. The result is like, they're like, oh my gosh, I feel better. I'm like, yeah, your body can breathe again. Sorry about that. You absolutely have to get me on this machine. I absolutely, I bet it would come out like, you know, swamp water.

I can't imagine. We had a patient that had chronic Epstein-Barr Lyme disease. He's been struggling for years. He's tried everything. Nothing's worked. And we did a round of treatment with him and he said, you know, I've never felt better because ozone has been proven to deactivate Lyme and deactivate Epstein-Barr. And so it helps to keep those viruses, those really harmful viral properties down. And so people can function well and their bodies can start to heal again. If you give the body what it needs, it's really incredible how it can heal.

Yeah. I mean, you know, so often I'll try to, I'll fix something on someone's skin and you know, I'll quote unquote fix it, but it was what the body thought was normal. And the next thing you know, the cyst is back or, you know, the body, the body found a way to heal what I thought I had fixed. You know, in this case, you're just removing the barriers to healing, which is, that's one thing. Like I can, I can, you know, philosophically swallow that, but to get to see it coming out of your body, that's something that, that I'm going to have to get, go get a try of.

I've got several patients that I'm sending your way that I keep. They keep just delaying. And I'm going to tell them that, listen, here's what you're missing. You know, your chronic Epstein-Barr, your ability, your fatigue, all of this other stuff. You got to go sit in the hot kit, man. Just go talk to Dr. Brown. That's crazy. What else are you all using over there in this realm of mitochondria and cellular health?

Patient Assessment and Integrative Care 15:30

I was going to ask you, Dr. Carter, how many patients do you see that complain of chronic fatigue, even though they sleep all night? They get it. They get a full 100%. Like, I mean, not a hundred percent, but seriously, 50% of my patients, all we talk about is how tired they are. And, you know, I start with sleep and I moved to exercise. Obviously we do hormones and the like, but at some point everybody's tired, man. Yeah. So why is that? We think about, do we just need supplements to turn something back on that's dysfunctional or do we need, is it truly our body is not getting the nutrients it needs because the cell is so gumped up that it can't receive the nutrients it needs so they're deficient in certain things to help them maintain their sleep cycle?

And what happens when you don't sleep well? It leads to more pain. It leads to more illness. It leads to more anxiety and depression. It leads to more heart disease. You name it. And sleep is key. And so if someone's chronically fatigued and they're sleeping all night, something's wrong. And we got to help them figure that out. that these new age technologies that we have are helping patients transform their lives by clearing out their body in a way so its body can restore itself. If you fix the cell, the body gets well, right?

So that's the whole goal of the Hockett. Well, you know, and there's no pill for that. And quite frankly, half of what you're washing out probably has something to do with the pills they've taken over the last, you know, decades of their lives. Tell me about some, tell me, tell me another cool, tell me another cool one. Cause you, you sold me on Hockey. What else you got? Something else we're using that's pretty unique is something called CellSonic. CellSonic was developed by a doctor over in India, Mumbai, India, and he saw that chronic dysfunction of the cell led to illness, whether it was heart disease or diabetes, cancer in particular, something that he really, Dr.

Andrew Haig, really focused in on was what's the deal with cancer, how their tumors operate. He found something really shocking about tumor cells and metastatic cells is that We talked earlier about how a normal cell carries a voltage of around 75 millivolts. What they found in their research, which is now common knowledge with oncology, in most oncology circles, is cancer cells have low voltage, around 11 to 12 millivolts. So cancer is drawing the energy out of that cell. It becomes really dysfunctional, and that causes the cells to look for more energy, basically, and they spread looking for energy.

How can we turn the energy back on in the cell and take it from a senescent cell that's not functioning? and a antibodies and things to clean up the wreckage and then you dispel it all through your lymphatic system. And so we find it works really good for chronic pain and it also works good for support during cancer therapy and it works good for organ tissue, you know, kidney function. Wherever we stick this thing it seems to get a good result. So it's a fairly localized area, like a lithotripsy.

It's sending pulse, ultrasound-based pulses of energy, but it's actually shaking the cells in that area. Yeah, it's actually pulsing them with the amount of energy that causes the cell to fire properly again. It's like literally like sticking a car charger on, but a very strong one. It shoots about 25,000 volts into it, but it's safe in the way it's administered. So it's like a young Frankenstein movie when the lightning strikes. Yes. It's literally like lightning in a, in a lightning in a handle.

So it's, you do feel it, but it's not. That's crazy. Well, how do you know where to, so I'm just, how do we know where to, where to put it? It's not uncut. Sorry. Yeah. How do you know where to put it? The doctor in me is like, okay, now, yeah, we, we cut out a little, I think it'll fix it on the backend though. Tell me how do you know where to put it? Yeah. Let's start there. Yeah. So we have ways in our office of measuring polarity of a cell. So when we find low voltage. in a cell and a tissue, we're able to focus, okay, we mark that down, okay, that's an area of low voltage, and then, you know, we know what normal voltage looks like.

So we find the areas of low voltage and we compare them with things like, you know, PET scans and MRIs and use those as kind of guiding us as well where there might be like a cancer cell or something like that or a tumor. And so we use modern technology and then we use some of the technology in our office to find low voltage in the cell and we target those areas and treat them until the voltage changes and we don't stop until it changes and holds that positive charge back in the cell. And once that happens, then we just let the body heal.

How often do you need to do that? Is it a once and done? Is it the kind of thing that tends to slip back into its old ways and it needs to be, you know, stimulated every once in a while? You know, that's a good question because it's different for every patient. There's a lot of circumstances how well they're adhering to their nutrition plan and keeping themselves healthy? Are they staying alkaline so their body can heal? Are they doing other supportive therapies that allows their body to hold the therapy, hold the treatment?

It's incredibly effective for cancer therapy. We're seeing cancer markers come down incredibly quickly with this. It's a wonderful treatment for that, and it's not available. you know, very many places. I think there's 14 of these systems in the United States. Oh my gosh. Find everywhere.

Detoxification with the Hocket Sauna 21:00

But usually in the neighborhood of fun to five or six treatments at the most, most people are starting to see the results in three or four sessions and they're good to go. But it's different for everybody, as you know. That's awesome. Man. So I've never really thought of the cell as having a polarity, as having a charge. And I've been missing out, man, because apparently that matters a lot. That's crazy. Not only is the mitochondria creating that energy and with using that polarity, but also the charge of the cell dramatically apparently affects the function of the cell in general, which makes sense why cancer is trying to spread, because it's starving.

Yeah. And it feeds on things like cancer or it feeds on things like sugar, obviously. Yeah. So we obviously want to support with nutrition and supplementation and IV therapies, things that support the body's immune system. People going through cancer, their body is really struggling. So we have to support all their organ systems and their immune system. We have to focus on detoxing so their body can get rid of the die off that's happening, especially if they're doing things like chemotherapy and radiation.

It's very, very difficult on the body. Yeah. Support their bodies with therapies that help them tolerate those treatments better. We're not trying to replace those therapies. We're trying to make them work better. Well, and help the patient tolerate them well. as well, right? You know, help need less chemo and tolerate the chemo better. I could see the hawket coming in handy there as well. So the trick question here is, you know, tell me about what nutrition principles, you know, guidelines that you typically recommend.

I know everyone's relatively individualized here. Everyone wants to come to me and ask me the the answer to weight loss. I'm like, there's no the answer, man. Let's, let's talk about you and let's dig deep. How do you approach nutrition and, and, and, you know, as you move into this whole, um, area of cell health and therefore patient health? Another good question. I think you just alluded to something, you know, people are always looking for things. We can get into maybe peptides and bioregulators later, GLP ones, if you want to.

Cause that's another thing people ask about a lot, I'm sure. So they've done some unique studies on food. They've studied centurions in these areas called blue zones. And you've heard of these, you know, they've got them all over the world in Singapore. There's one in California. That's a blue zone. These blue zones are areas where people live to be under or older. And they started looking at things because you have, you have blue zones where people are eating nothing but meat. You got blue zones where people eating vegan.

You got blue zones where people are eating fatty fish. Get blue zones where people are eating pasta and bread. What's the key factor? If that's the case, because people always ask, they're going to ask you, they're going to ask me, what kind of diet should I be on? It looks like they work, doesn't it? the fifth So they put enriched. So if you say enriched, it means chemical. And so that's not a whole food. And so the key for long life is eating whole foods. And I'll give you a good example of a great whole food.

And it's pomegranate. Pomegranate is literally mother nature's pharmacy. Pomegranate has something in it called the laggitannins. The laggitannins cause the gut to secrete mucus. Mucus keeps you regular. Well, mucus also contains bacteria. Yeah. Specifically, one called acromancia. Acromancia keeps your immune system healthy and it lowers inflammation. Well, even more brilliant research being done where they can see this stuff now, there's a particle inside acromancia called P9. P9 activates the body's own GLT-1, just like OZIP.

Never heard of that. I think it was pharmacy. in a pomegranate. So what do you do? You drink six to eight ounces of pomegranate juice every day, or better yet, eat the fruit. So you get the benefit of the fiber in it too. So there's something about nutrition. We all need to educate ourselves the benefits of whole food. I mean, Hippocrates said, let food be your medicine, right? Yeah, right. So why not learn more about whole foods? If we eat whole foods, I mean, what a great start. They don't have to eat paleo or carnivore.

They can eat a variety of wonderful foods and have don't have to feel like they're dieting and starving. Let's just eat more whole simple ingredients and whole foods. And that's our approach. Man. Well, I mean, that's a simple enough approach. In theory, it's just, there's almost nothing at the supermarket that's whole foods. That's not in the produce section or the butcher's section, right? Like there's nothing left. You know, you always wonder is that that's got to be on purpose. It's like, is that gosh, why is there so much bad food in this country, but other countries don't allow that stuff.

you know, what is it about this country that's allowing all this garbage in? So I think you really got to start learning to read labels. And we talked about, you know, the new, the new regime, maybe trying to gradually, you know, chip away at the stuff that they are allowed to put in our quote unquote food. But, you know, in the meantime, for the most part, an apple is an apple. Maybe you should go organic and make sure it's not sprayed with a bunch of stuff. But at the same time, eating whole food, that when you look at it from across the room, it looks like food.

That's a good start. Right. Simple ingredients. Yeah. So that's what you alluded to earlier. When I say, you know, lifestyle changes, we were talking about that earlier, you know, food, nutrition, implementation. Those are things that are primary.

CellSonic Therapy and Cancer Support 26:45

We need to use these wonderful technologies. But honestly, you know, what's available to everyone is food. Yeah, clean food might be a little bit more difficult to attain sometimes, but if you put in the work, the good food, it's going to reward you because food is code, food is information. You eat good food, you get good information in your body, your body responds well, you eat bad food, that's bad information, bad code, bad performance. So I see food as info, information. Well, it dictates which DNA gets turned on to create the, which proteins and you know, it matters because then you're going to want to go, because ideally you want to turn that energy into exercise and movement.

What's, what do you, you know, there's a thousand different strategies and theories out there on exercise as well. Where do you start with your patients? Well, there's a couple of non-negotiables for long life. I'll go back to that earlier study we talked about with the Millennials and how they lived so long, and not Millennials, the Blue Zones. There's another thing that they share in common that's a non-negotiable. That is a sense of community and purpose is essential for their life. The second thing they found in their data was movement.

So people are like, I can't exercise. I can't do this. I'm like, yes, you can move. You can do deep breathing exercises. You can do some chair exercises. You can do some yoga at home. You can do, you can go for a walk. It's not always going to the gym and training five, six days a week with weights and trying to bulk up and build muscle and all those things. And that's fine too, for some people, but other people just need to focus on movement. It doesn't have to be anything crazy. So we just recommend that people start moving again because you start getting sedentary, you're starting to decrease your lifespan.

So this is kind of how we approach exercise, just move more. And again, that sense of purpose and sense of community is so good because that lifts your spirits and that gets you more motivated to want to go and do these things. Yeah. So you can go moving and move in groups. And, you know, my wife has talked to me into going on walks together. And it's like, well, what a novel idea this has become. You know, we're, we're solving life's troubles and we're moving at the same time. It's, it's a little bit like magic.

I love it. I agree. And when you move more, what, what's the, what's the positive of that? You're, you're lowering your blood pressure. Like, like you said, the example of you and your wife going for a walk here. You're improving your circulation. You're lowering your blood pressure. You're temporarily raising your heart rate, but you're indeed lowering your blood pressure over time. You're stimulating your lymphatic system. You're balancing out your chemistry in your body. You're going to sleep better.

You're going to be in less pain. A lot of benefits to just movement. And so I'm a proponent of doing some resistance training to keep some lean tissue on, because the more lean tissue the healthier we are, the more we can fight illness and things like that. And then even deeper than that increases your bone density. So our bone density starts to lessen. So we take good supportive supplements for that, like magnesium and vitamin D and vitamin K and things like that to support the uptake of calcium into our bones, essential amino acids.

And then we move. Well, and there's so many patients that can't, they don't think they can because they hurt. And you're like, well, why don't we start with what you can do? And miraculously, what's going to happen is it's, you're going to be able to be able to do a little bit more and a little bit more, and you're going to feel a little less pain and you're going to start feeling a little better because joints motion is lotion. I mean, there's obviously a point where your joint is bone on bone and it's difficult, but for most of us, when it's, you know, my patients, they, They literally say, I can't exercise because I hurt.

It's like, okay, let's just move. Let's start with walking inside your living room and with whatever assistance you need, but let's, let's start moving these joints. Let's start waking up these muscle groups. Um, and it, it changes. It's a, uh, It's a little bit of a life hack that, you know, if you don't use it, you lose it. It's not, maybe life hack is way overshooting it actually now that I think about it, but it seems impossible to them. And then six months later, it's night and day. And I think too, that opens the possibility for some other therapies, like maybe some laser pain relief or maybe some.

Yeah. that the peptides and bioregulators are becoming organ specific and system specific. And so the peptides and bioregulators are different. They're not supplements. They're not medicine. These things are messengers. They signal your DNA to do something different. They signal your tissues to work better, your glands to do something like a specific example of like something called ifamoralin, which is the growth hormone, you know, from your pituitary. So you're making more of your own. And there's multiple things that They're so effective.

So we start getting into the realm of peptides and bioregulators. You can get organ specific and system specific. And so that patient who comes in with severe inflammation, you can put them on some of these things and really get inflammation knocked down so they can start to move. So integrative medicine is really moving at lightning pace with the things that are available now. It's unreal the things that are available. the modalities, the supplementation, the therapies, the types of testing that you do in your clinic with things like Emsculpt and Emsola, you know, supporting muscles that you can't get to on your own.

I've done the Emsola chair in your office and I know that works that pelvic girdle and those muscles are amazing and everybody, and I say that, I don't say that lightly, everybody can benefit from doing Emsola. I agree. No matter what you're dealing with. your pelvic floor is everything and you better take care of it now before you get burned and it's bad so men do it for your prostate women do it for your pelvic girdle your health bladder support and sexual support all of that do it now don't don't wait till it gets so bad that you then you got to go in and get really healthy well and you know we use it on our our aging population where they're starting to get unsteady You know, and they're, they're, they're trying to get some exercise.

I'm like, listen, you're weak. All your stabilizers are terribly weak. Your core and your stabilizers, you can only do so much. So yeah, I mean, I've got gentlemen, I've sat on that chair and they're not interested in the erectile dysfunction. and not interested in the prostate, they just want to have strength and stability. The core to floor, I can strengthen their core, I can strengthen their pelvic floor.

Nutrition, Whole Foods, and Blue Zones 33:00

Muscle is the currency of longevity, especially in your core. I mean, even to the point that your grip strength at a certain age correlates with your life expectancy, but your Core strength is what's going to protect against that fall. It's what's going to help you get back up off the ground. It's going to allow you to play with your grandkids, all those things that really matter. If you can't move, you can't strengthen, you're dying pretty quick. And that's what we're trying to do is make people feel better now and keep them that way.

for a long time and longevity is, is pretty much everything. Like life expectancy without quality of life is, it's a mythological hell. So no, thank you. Yeah. And I think, you know, you alluded to a lot of good points about your core strength and muscle being kind of the currency for one life. We recently saw Dr. Lyons, you know, in Dallas, as you was talking about the benefits of Yeah. Increasing your, you know, your lean muscle tissue and all the benefits of that. Her research is really profound in the area of muscle.

And so, you know, something you have at your office again, the M sculpt and people think of it as just aesthetic. It's not just aesthetic. It is for people who maybe have difficulty moving and they've got bad knees and they're like, well, I can't exercise my legs because my knees hurt. Yeah, you can. We can get you in the M sculpt and we can put these up to your quad muscles and give your quads a workout when you happen to use your knees and we can start strengthening. the muscles, the connective tissues and all that and get them ready to get back to an exercise program.

Right. I mean, those things are putting on your core and getting a full core workout and just, you know, half an hour. So those modalities, those are things that we don't have that I refer over to you, you know, because those things that we don't have. So we kind of. We kind of stay in our lanes a little bit and we stick to the things that we're good at. I think that's how we team up together with the same common purpose, right? You know, nobody can do everything well. And so the ability to work together in more symbiotic, synergistic ways, I think that's It's beautiful.

You know, their joints hurt. Well, we can strengthen the muscles. We can treat the joint with M sculpt as well in a functional setting. We have PRP, but we don't have cold laser. We don't have ozone. We don't have, you know, like there's just so many things that we, where we're limited at. And yet that's what's going to make the difference in the next, you know, decades of life for these, these patients. What you alluded to earlier when you opened up the podcast about anxiety and depression was just a couple of key things.

We exercise our muscles for long health, but how do we exercise the emotion, the brain? How do we exercise the psychological components that contribute to depression and anxiety? And so we're using these tools like neurofeedback, theta chamber technology, RTMS technology, to stimulate areas of the brain to create neuroplasticity again. And when we do that, we actually can help the brain regulate its neural pathways and regulate the neurotransmitters. And so we get decreases in anxiety, depression, insomnia, PTSD, autism, ADD, ADHD, you name it.

These little therapies that we do are exercising the brain. So we can't remember, we can't forget the brain part, right? Amen. body through exercise and good nutrition and all that supports the brain as well. But how can we directly change the brain? Those are trans-cranial magnetic stimulation, theta chamber. Those are some other therapies that we use. You've experienced some of those as well. Yeah. I mean, our son for sure, he loves that, you know, his sympathetic Tone was so high, you know, ADD, just, just, just, just, you know, anxiety, depression, all the whole thing, you know, you know, he comes by a lot of that naturally, of course.

And then we'd get those stickers on his head or put him in his theta chamber and he just exhales. It's night and day. It's crazy. Fight or flight mechanisms so well, and gets the body out of that stress state and gets you back to that parasympathetic, you know, that rest and digest state. finally relax and the body's like, okay, I'm out of danger now. I can, I can recover. It's such a vital part of good health. We got to remember it's not just exercising in the gym. We got to do things to support our brain or our emotional health too.

Well, and to, you know, to the folks that are, they're not in our area and they don't know anyone nearby that can turn their sympathetic tone down for them. But you know, it's, if it's a pretty day outside, go outside, get in the grass, get in the sun. So I'm like, you know, take a deep breath. You know, there's, there's ways that we can, you know, you can't be to some extent, you can't be in flight or flight and box breathe at the same time. It's one of those things that your body just, it's not wired that way.

And so there's certain things that, you know, we cheat, we go to you and let you fix us, but anything else you advise for homework for your folks, whenever they're not with you. Yeah. So we really encourage that. And this sounds so simple because it's something we do every day, almost unconsciously, and it still is a conscious thing. We have to breathe. but breath work and deep breathing. We know from research that that stimulates the vagus nerve. What does the vagus nerve do? Well, it regulates your parasympathetic and sympathetic activity.

It helps with digestion. Stimulating the vagus nerve lowers blood pressure and heart rate. It improves digestion, your food, your minerals. and it improves cognitive function. And so we know that deep breathing, and you mentioned this just a second ago, box breathing, where you take four seconds in, hold for four seconds, exhale for four seconds, hold for four seconds, and gotta think of that as a box style of breathing.

Movement, Muscle, and Brain Health 38:30

But we're talking deep breathing where your belly is swelling up, you're laying down and you can see your belly expand, you're getting a deep breath. How often do we actually do that every day? I know I've heard. So I encourage my patients to focus and take time out of their day for deep breathing. You will get a benefit from doing that. You will support your body in a good way. You'll stimulate that vagus nerve. And like you said, if you don't have all the technology, you can get outside and get some sunlight.

It doesn't take anything to go out and get some sun and go for a walk. Get your feet in the ground, some deep in the grass and get some, do some grounding. There's things that we can do on a regular basis. You don't need a, you don't need a gym to exercise. You can do push-ups, sit-ups, body weight squats at home. I mean, we can find excuses all day long. At the end of the day, we can, we can do a lot at home if we want to. Well, you know, our, our brains are wired to avoid discomfort and be attracted to comfort.

And that was great when it was keeping us alive, but now it's acting counterproductive. We're going for short-term comfort and it's costing us long-term discomfort. It's with so much comfort at our fingertips, we're having to go against our instincts to delay gratification and be uncomfortable. Go for the walk when you'd rather stay in the chair. Eat that's food that's more expensive and hard to prepare instead of the pre-packaged, uh, you know, chemicals and carbs and, and all the things that, that are, they're easy and cheap.

And so there's, it's really education. It's not, it's not a lack of desire to be healthy on most people's part. We haven't been taught that for a couple of generations now. Well, health and wellness is an investment, right? What better investment you could make? You can invest in your health today or pay for your illness tomorrow. I think it's a good way of looking at it is take the time. A lot of people make smart financial decisions and have something to show for it, but what better investment can you make than your own body and being there for your family and being there for your loved ones and your kids, your friends and your coworkers and all that.

You and I, we have to kind of practice what we preach, don't we? Yeah, it puts a lot of pressure. It does. Absolutely does. Yeah. I mean, today I, in the last two and a half, three days being in Florida and rapid traveling, I didn't get to do my workouts and I didn't get to eat my regular food and long day at work. And I was like, you know what? I just can't do the gym today. And, uh, I just decided, you know, it's probably good that I go ahead and rest and then tomorrow full commitment back on, back on to the food and they exercise.

So I fail brother most of the time, right. I've been traveling, giving talks, doing, you know, visiting clinic. It's, it's so hard and missing workouts. I'm missing, I'm missing, you know, you're eating on the road. It's just so hard. So I love, I love being home and in a routine. I think, you know, we're kind of routine creatures, but especially when our routine is more healthy than the alternate, you know, then when we're. than the exceptions, but if you, you know, to close it up, if you were to, to give, I mean, I guess we've already given a lot of practical advice, but what's one of the most important things you would want our listeners to walk away from that's simple, easy, that they should start doing on a regular, if not daily basis, where, how would you rank it?

What's one thing that you would kind of say, okay, if nothing else start here. Gosh, that's hard to define in just one thing. It is. Do the best I can, but I would probably say really start to look at your food and start eating more whole food. I mean, if you just make one change starting tomorrow, eat more whole food, drink more water with electrolytes, focus on that nutrition because whatever your journey is, your journey is weight loss and you can't outrun your fork. So you got to get your food right.

If your goal is to get well, your body needs nutrients and you need good quality food. That would be, I'd say, the most important things to start with. And then I heard this saying from another doctor recently, and I think it's kind of something to leave people with. No matter where you're at in life, whatever struggle you're going through, it's physical, it's emotional, it's psychological, whatever it might be, and you find yourself in a really dark place, you're not buried. You've just been planted.

So I think that's, it's, it's a mindset. It's like, I'm in this thing and no, I am going to make it. And so you're just, all you need is a little water, a little nutrition, and you're going to grow into something more beautiful. And so wherever you're at, take that with you. And I, and I, you know, if I were to add the, you know, one, one, a is the food and, and the, the outlook one B would be movement. Right. One, one C to me would be, you know, spiritual health, you know, where we're not, we're not meant to just strive for comfort.

And, you know, the more you invest in your future, the more you invest in others. Um, more you live like there's a God that loves you and created you and, and wants the best for you, then it sort of completes the package a little bit.

Breathing, Mindset, and Closing Advice 43:30

And, you know, that's not, that's probably a different podcast for a different day, but I love, we're going to get down to the, you know, what matters. It's hard to skip that. What's very pertinent, you know, if you just take the greatest commandment was love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. and then love your neighbor as yourself, right? And so, Jesus gave the greatest commandment to his disciples when he ascended. He said, you know, love one another as I've loved you. By this show, all men know that you're my disciples.

And so, that's how we share the love of Christ with people, right? We just love one another and help people get well. Quality of your relationships goes up right away. I love it. Well, hey, man. Thanks, Michael. What, I mean, should people just hit you up at your website, call the office? How would you like people to get a hold of you? What do you think? We've got our website, you know, brownintegrative.com is our website. We're in Tyler just down the road from you, of course. And, uh, you can look us up online, get our phone number, get our contact information.

Right. And, you know, call us schedule for the consult and we'll sit down and talk about what things we can do to best support you. Absolutely. Thank you so much for being on Michael. This was great. I got to get over it. I got to sit in that pocket, man. That's no, I don't know that I want anyone else to see what comes out, but it's coming. Yeah, this is fun. I love doing this. We're friends and colleagues. So this kind of stuff's fun. Well, we'll do it again. Well, you've got so much, you've got so many things to offer.

I'll quit saying you've got so many cool toys. You've got so much to offer at your clinic that we can't possibly cover it in one. Anyway, we'll have you back. We'll get some updates and, um, uh, thanks again and have a great night and we'll talk later. All right. Thanks doc. Thank you for tuning in to Doctor Talks. We hope today's episode has enlightened and inspired you on your path to optimal health. Each day is a new opportunity to make choices that empower your well-being. For more insights and strategies, subscribe to our podcast and visit our website, www.doctortalks.com.

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