Two Mold Toxicity Causes You Must Address

Lisa Koche, MD

Thank you. I’m so excited to be here with you.

Ann Shippy, MD

Oh, thank you. Thank you. So the first one has to do with mitochondria. So I would love it if you just really explain to our audience about mitochondria what they are and what they do.

Lisa Koche, MD

So one of my favorite topics, because we’re taught about mitochondria, honestly, more in high school biology than we are in medical school. And hopefully, that’s changed. Hopefully, that’s changed. But right, you know, as far as when we were in school, that was we just didn’t learn much. And the truth is that it is the key behind most illnesses, not just molds, not just even symptoms of common as fatigue. So they are our little batteries are powerhouses of the cell, and essentially they’re small parts of the cell that take oxygen from the air that we breathe and electrons from the food we eat or the earth and turn it into through a complex set of reactions into ATP, which is our energy or gas for our body, for all of our cellular functions to occur. So these powerhouses, I always thought we were kind of given our share or given our allotment at birth, and we just had that. And if we lost them, then we weren’t going to feel good. And that was about it. And it wasn’t honestly, until about 10 years ago, through my own journey and healing, which has been what’s constantly led me on my path with a complex medical history of childhood leukemia and heart failure from the chemotherapy, it led me to constant research into the heart muscle, which is by far other than the brain, obviously what requires the most energy in the body. So mitochondrial function for optimal heart function is really important. And through studying that and looking outside of the box, I was on a lecture, I was listening to a lecture where a researcher answered, you know, not only can we impair and heal our mitochondria or, you know, repair and heal our mitochondria, we can actually trigger the production of new ones. And I remember stopping and saying, Wait, what? We can make more of these guys. That has got to be the secret magic elixir right there. And that set me off on a journey to really dive deeper into understanding these magical organelles and batteries to help us repair and increase them.

Ann Shippy, MD

I’m going to be so interested too for you as we go along, to share how this has helped you personally, because it really is through these personal stories that we can gain some hope.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yes, absolutely. And mine’s been quite the journey. But I, at that point, I remember right around that time my daughter was in biology in high school or in eighth grade. And she would always ask me in school in general to quiz her when she had an exam and when she said, “Mom, can you quiz me?” I said, “Please don’t let it be history.” And she’s like, “No, it’s biology and it’s mitochondria”. And I was like, “Oh my God, I’m in. Like, I’m dying to study this. I can’t find great resources for this”. And so she handed me the packet and the first five pages were about the leaf and it was a plant and the chloroplast. And I was like, “Oh, I thought you said it was on the mitochondria”. And she was the one who looked at me and said, “Mom, the chloroplast and mitochondria are exactly the same. What’s the big deal? They’re the same”. And there was a diagram of them sitting next to each other and they really do look very, very similar. So that was followed by listening to another podcast where I heard this more revolutionary doc, Dr. Jack Kruse, who studies a lot of light and things. He’s a neurosurgeon and he was talking about how his constant quest for weight loss through paleo and other things would not take him very far. He was 100 and something pounds overweight. And then he finally realized it was the O.R. lighting, how it was damaging his mitochondria through the eyes. And he went back and tracked these pathways. And how he had been able to finally be successful by studying light and mitochondria. And he made a quote like, people wake the H up or F up, you know, the plant. And he literally said the chloroplast mitochondria exactly the same and almost crashed because I was driving. I was like, oh my God, that’s what I. So I started like ravenously studying like what makes the plant happy. And it’s very similar to what makes us happy as, as humans having more energy.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, and I think this is such an important topic because as we now know, mycotoxins and other toxins are damaging our mitochondria every day. So we really need to be it’s such a, I’m so glad we’re talking about this because it really is one of those foundational things. So is there anything else other than the OR lights and mycotoxins that you want to share about how the mitochondria get damaged?

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, there are so many things I would say definitely mold, mold toxins, but also other infectious etiologies. So anything that’s kind of ravaging the immune system parasites, chronic viral infections, but also toxins of all sorts. And one of the things I think people forget a lot about is medication. So any kind of drug, whether it’s an antibiotic or medicine for diabetes or high blood pressure, can actually damage the mitochondria. And then the original illness that you’re taking it for in the first place, you know, it’s is going to be impacted in a negative way. So medications are a big one. The food that we eat, and especially eating too much, just caloric overconsumption along with processed obviously, and sugar, and all the things we know are bad for us. But I think understanding them in the context of mitochondrial function is really interesting because there’s a chain reaction that happens with electrons. And when you’re pouring in, more of those electrons than you can process, they kind of spill over, and then they cause more internal damage in the mitochondria itself. So it’s kind of a vicious cycle, which is why we see fasting and caloric restriction also helping with healing the mitochondria. 

Ann Shippy, MD

Beautiful. That was very concise for something that we could probably spend the whole, the whole whole hour on. So let’s move into like obviously avoiding mold. And some of these things are a really important part of helping our mitochondria to not get damaged. What else do you like to recommend? 

Lisa Koche, MD

So I think when we talk about how to heal the mitochondria, I look at it from two angles, at least two angles. But you know, the first, like you said, is removing, and removing will not just involve taking care of the mold and toxins and the environment or cleaning up your skincare and your food or trying to get off medications when possible. But it also will involve things like healing your gut and doing all the basic functional medicine things. Because when you have leaky gut or, you know, poor bacterial overgrowth and all of that, it’s going to secrete toxins but also continue to drain mitochondrial function. So that piece and then I look at the second part, which is how to trigger mitochondrial biogenesis, which is that big fancy word that just means make new ones. We want that to happen. So I look at the plant, first of all, like we started out talking about and how what helps a plant can help us with making new and cleaning up the old. So, yes, light is a big topic and we’re still uncovering the photoreceptors which are literally receptors on our cells that respond to light so photoreceptors. Understanding the impact of both negative lights being things like fluorescent and the healthy light with wavelengths in the red and near-infrared ranges, and also the early morning sun. 

So one easy hack for everybody that’s watching. If you don’t do this already getting outside, especially first thing in the morning, you can establish a routine where you hit on a couple of the things that the plant loves, which is early morning sunlight. Ideally, it enters the body through your eyes, which I didn’t realize at the beginning either. So you don’t want to be out with sunglasses or contacts. Ideally, if you wear contacts, you have your glasses on and then just take them off when you get settled and you can get some sun exposure through the skin, and through the eyes for about 10 to 15 minutes, not staring at the sun. That’s never a good idea. But just being out in that light, usually before 10 a.m. But I tell patients pretty much any time for 10 to 15 minutes is going to be a good idea and getting grounded. So that’s another thing that the plant is obviously in the earth and we are still learning that as well. In terms of the frequencies and how the plant that actually emits frequencies that are supportive and healing the mitochondria especially are sensitive to them. So the mitochondria were their own bacteria on this planet existing on their own. And so in addition to thinking of them like chloroplast, you can also think of them like an individual living organism because that’s what happened before humans hijacked them. So they’re sensitive to their environment. They know to retreat and stress. They feel good and happy environments. They sense the light, they sense the earth’s frequencies. So those basic things will help in the grounding. Sun gazing first thing in the morning is something I get every patient doing right at the beginning. There’s also clean water because plants like water, they like to be talked to nicely. So whenever you’re wondering what else can I do for my mitochondria that’s going to support them. Lovingly, I think about the plant and then the entire. 

Ann Shippy, MD

You know, this is where we get into that. We’re right there to actually have good research to back up. Like when you said to plant positive energy, it actually helps it to heal. It can help it to heal if you talk mainly or send negative energy towards it, it actually causes it to be damaged.

Lisa Koche, MD

Same with water. Yeah. So Masaru Emoto studies on crystal and water and how and that’s something everybody should look up if you haven’t seen because that’s pretty mind-boggling. And so what it is, is that when you look at it’s droplets of water under a microscope and when you speak mean things to it like I hate you, it looks very disruptive. And when you say I love you and this is over a period of time and tracking, but then it becomes beautiful crystals and lattices and those things are directly the mitochondria that need water, use as water responds to this similarly, just like the rest of our body. It’s not just the mitochondria that respond to nice thoughts. So then there’s one other big category in regards to mitochondria, which is that hormesis. So if you want to talk about that, it’s another way. Okay, So that’s another way to really trigger and a little bit more focused, purposeful way the production of new mitochondria. And what that word means is microstressors. And I give another plant example whenever I speak about hormesis, which is you can look at olive oil and you can look at wine, and the olives and the grapes that make the best olive oil and wine are those that have actually been through stress. 

So they will have had droughts or, you know, some kind of infection come through the crop and the plant knows with stress to produce more antioxidants and to kind of branch out, find new ways to grow. And that production makes these crops more valuable. They taste better. They are higher packed with antioxidants. So the truth is that humans have that same capacity. And we’re not taught that nobody talks about it. And we because we’re lazy as a job in general, in a good way. It’s not necessarily wasn’t meant to be. It’s just when we’re hungry, we typically have food. When we’re cold, we put on a coat. If it’s raining, we come inside, you know, these things, and maybe in our ancestors, they would be outside producing new mitochondria. We are not. So that’s why you’re now seeing a plethora of cold therapies and light therapies and fasting and all of those types of treatments can be considered stressors to the mitochondria. The old, not you know, the frail mitochondria that are not doing so well will die off. And you can it will trigger the biogenesis, the production of new ones. When we do some of those biohacking slash or hormesis slash or micro stressing on a regular basis.

Ann Shippy, MD

So-called late fasting or your favorites.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah. There are some of the easier ones. I think also what’s interesting is emotional stress. You know that’s one of the fascinating ones, and I know we love again the will but that resiliency that when you handle your behavioral patterns you go deeper into yourself is a type of stress as well. And I truly believe in the future we’re going to be able to document what it’s doing to our mitochondria, which is helping it become stronger.

Ann Shippy, MD

It’s like a fun little segway. I’m aware of a company that’s developing some new technology to develop or it’s so you know, it’s not ready for market yet but probably within the next year and to measure mitochondria pretty extensively but let’s talk about what our favorite ways of measuring now so that you just even know like how are my mitochondria doing.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah. Well, you know, it’s funny because I tend to have this knack, I think because of my own personal illness. And I was lucky enough to be a patient before I was a doctor, and that’s very rare. So having that gift, which didn’t feel like a gift when I had that phase and a wig in high school and then lost all my hair again in college right after it all grew back. But it was a gift because I, when in asking why I’ve had this internal knowing, intuitive knowing of things about 10 years before they happened. And this has happened throughout my career. So ketogenic diet and tapping into that well, when it was still in the lab, and then mitochondrial optimization, same thing. And I  really have been asking and searching and there’s been nothing for mitochondrial testing. There were extremes for genetic mitochondrial diseases. And there have been tests that I’ve played with. There were swabs that were kind of interesting for different complexes in the mitochondria I played with a little bit, but they and I’m not sure how reproducible and it just didn’t feel like it was giving me enough information. We do a lot of muscle testing in my practice. I have a natural path who has done it for 40 years and I utilize it as well now. But for those of you who don’t know what that is, it’s a more scene in the chiropractic and naturopathic worlds, but you can utilize muscle response. It’s actually a nerve response, but you use a muscle typically in the arm and you can tell things that are out of balance and get a lot of information on the body. And so I’ve been bugging.

Ann Shippy, MD

Our body speaks when you ask questions.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, and I’ve been bugging my naturopath literally for 10 years. Why can’t we tell this mitochondria? What is it? Because he didn’t really have a great way to muscle test it either. There are ways to look at organic acid testing and get an idea, but even that I don’t feel like is overly helpful, to be honest.

Ann Shippy, MD

So see when things are pretty sluggish but as far as like what’s the cause and really how well is the body making ATP? There is a lab in Germany, I’ll share with you that can actually measure the ATP, but it’s very expensive and it has to go to Germany.

Lisa Koche, MD

And that’s what I found. You know, I haven’t been it hasn’t been worked into. So I’m very excited to hear about this company you’re talking about. But what I’ve relied on is clinical symptomatology because it’s pretty, when you start tapping in, it’s pretty similar across the board for people that wherever the mitochondria are the most concentrated namely brain, heart muscles, and eyes, and reproductive organs you’ll see symptomatology in those.

Ann Shippy, MD

What are your top four or five symptoms that you hear that you automatically think, oh my gosh, this person needs immediate resuscitation for their mitochondria?

Lisa Koche, MD

Well, I think the one everybody has, you know, it’s going to be fatigue, but there’s also brain fog. So I would say most of you listening, especially since you’re seeking out a summit on mold toxicity are going to be suffering from that. And could it be a direct effect of the mycotoxins but I would say it’s probably through their damage of the mitochondria that you’re feeling that. So brain fog, fatigue, and then one of the ones that help me dial it in a little more specifically is the post-exertional malaise that after exercise, I could have, this is one that helps me diagnose people really early on because it could be an athlete or somebody who seems relatively healthy and they’re the I’ll get that clue and then I’ll know to kind of dial in the resuscitation were more focused on the mitochondria

Ann Shippy, MD

So let’s get back to diet because I know you find nutrition and diet are just foundational for healing. So if you could share a little bit of your thoughts on that.

Lisa Koche, MD

So I have been passionate about food and the right diet for my entire career and chasing it, you know because that’s what we do. And patients take chase that they may have one diet that works for them for a few years and they go back to it. And then we see that frustration. And actually, early on in my career, I was doing all the work pre and post-op gastric bypass patients. I was screening them, following them up post-op in the hospital and outpatient. And I’ve really been intrigued by the usual obvious things you know how staying away from sugar and white carbs and watching overall trans fats and the things that become sort of boring for people because you’ve heard it so many times. But I would watch as patients were being pretty meticulous with all of that stuff, and they were maybe having success in doing their chicken and, you know, grass-fed beef or fish with vegetables. And there were times it was working and times it wasn’t. So I’ve been through utilizing fast intermittent fasting, utilizing a ketogenic diet. And I think today, if you ask me, I’d say as we see more and more the need for muscle maintenance and, or building muscle, it requires healthy mitochondria. I think food-wise, if you’re stable enough from a stress standpoint to handle intermittent fasting, that’s a big if there. A lot of probably your patients and the patients listening here may not be because when you’re really sick with muscle toxicity or other chronic illness, fasting is going to be a bit of a big stressor and I see people crash from it vocally. So, I don’t I’m not a big proponent of just saying that across the board. I do like trying a six-week or so, four to six-week ketogenic to train the mitochondria on flexibility. It’s not good long term and the types of fat that people choose to eat to keep satiated is often not the right type. So you have to be very, very selective about what you’re eating. You can get satiated with protein too. So I think some balance of that where you’ve got a little bit of the good fat, lots of good protein, and really only whole foods for the rest of it.

Ann Shippy, MD

It’s like we’re really aligned with how to implement a keto diet where I think a lot of people are kind of giving some information that may be harmful is pushing the fat so much so I think most people can start to train their bodies to get into keto without doing enormous amounts of fat, just moderate amounts of fat, and then really being careful with the carbs. So it sounds like that’s exactly what you’re saying, too.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yes, absolutely. And I think it’s the healthier you get, you have a little more flexibility with the food, but cleaning up just the, you know, what you’re drinking and having it really just be like clean water. I usually charge it with lemon and sea salt just because I find that healthy and that really tastes good and then really protein first, having a little bit of good fats if you need extra help with being satiated or full, and then, you know, some fruit and a little bit of carbs that are clean, that’s pretty much where I go with that.

Ann Shippy, MD

If you like people to monitor whether they’re getting into that keto state.

Lisa Koche, MD

I used to have people monitor it a lot. I don’t think they need to, to be honest. I tend to go more off of appetite. So if patients are satiated, I don’t think especially if they’re losing weight and we’re that’s one of our goals. I don’t think they need to be monitoring ketosis so much. It is fun when you haven’t tried it before. Yeah, I think when you’ve done it before, it starts to get muddier because the body adjusts and then you get frustrated when the ketones aren’t going up as high as you’d like. And then people taking exhaustion as ketones can mess with that result. So it’s not really something I recommend around the clock. Instead, I prefer monitoring glucose.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yes. Awesome, great. Let’s move on to the second topic. Unless you have anything else you want to share about mitochondria.

Lisa Koche, MD

I think we got this.

Ann Shippy, MD

I think we did too. We have everybody inspired.

Lisa Koche, MD

Well actually there’s one, there’s one other thing I would say is that that we didn’t talk about, which is supplements you know treating with the supplements, and even now peptides it’s become really exciting. Like I said, I’ve been looking at this for 10 years and there was nothing I was there. That’s not right. I have been looking at this since I was 20 because that’s when my heart gave out. And at the time this is a very interesting side story. My uncle was a podiatrist, he has been a podiatrist, he’s 90 now, but he was sending me and this was a time when my parents weren’t necessarily into supplements. I mean, they had a sick kid. I was at Sloan-Kettering, like it was whatever the doctor says. And then my uncle started sending CoQ10 and L-Carnitine on autoship.

Ann Shippy, MD

To me it’s amazing.

Lisa Koche, MD

And so I took it from it.

Ann Shippy, MD

Saved you?

Lisa Koche, MD

Yes, it may help because my heart rebounded pretty quickly. We didn’t know if it was my age or whatever, but so there have been supplements around for mitochondrial function since then, you know, since even before that. Now, people didn’t necessarily make the connection to it. So I was just lucky enough that he must have read a study about the heart and those supplements. But in addition to those, I’d say over the past 10 years, we have had an explosion like in a playground for me of things that we can take and use ourselves and use on our patients that we never had before. So everything from the Urolithin A that’s been found that helps maintain muscle and helps mitochondrial function to things like folic acid, which has got a charge in it that seems to help from mitochondria to PQQ. You know, there’s there’s numerous ones that we could include, but that along with the newer peptides that are some direct injectable, they’re very expensive still, but that like something called MOTs C, that particular peptide can really help with my, with salvage of mitochondria and production of new ones. So I think just letting people know that if you’re fighting mold toxicity and you’re doing a lot of the other stuff and you’re still really struggling with brain fog and fatigue and post-exertional malaise, that you want to look into a lot of the different supplements out there.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yeah, I’m with you. I really think to heal from mold the mitochondria need that extra food. I just think about it as food for the mitochondria. They really, really need it. I have not used MOTS-c this sounds interesting, so that’s some good experience with it.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, I haven’t used it a ton on patients because it’s still like seven or 800 bucks a month for it’s about a month. Yeah. So it’s not, it’s one of those where maybe people would use it for a month or two, but the, the, the path of physiology and how it’s helping to activate the, the, the cascade and just waking up the mitochondria plus things like NAD and NMN which are sort of directly feeding in as fuel to help the process crank over a little bit faster. Those are a little bit less expensive. They’re not technically peptides, but those I do see a lot of really good success with as well.

Ann Shippy, MD

I’m a huge fan of NAD and all the different forms, so yeah, that really seems to be a good, good resource.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yes, and we, we have a place, we get it where patients can use it rectally, they can use it subcutaneously in the belly and, and NMN, you can even get compounded is really powerful as well.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yeah. Awesome. These are great tools to put in the toolbox.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, definitely they can make they can be a big game changer. Yeah.

Ann Shippy, MD

All right. And the next thing that we get to cover is I would sum up, like, our ways of being kind of our personality or thoughts, our beliefs, our stressors and the role that that plays in mold toxicity.

Lisa Koche, MD

And this is you and I have and have bonded over this before, just knowing the importance of this and not just mold toxicity, but just in life and in others and all illness and.

Ann Shippy, MD

Everything about life.

Lisa Koche, MD

This involves pretty much everything. Your relationships, the way that your career is going, your abundance, whether it’s financially or in health. And that is something for me personally, especially over the last seven or eight years when I had to deal unexpectedly with my heart having an issue again. I had I’ve had issues like I said, when I was 20 and then with my pregnancies. So nobody even knew if I could get pregnant. Got pregnant on the first try with my daughter and my heart gave out a little bit from the, you know, the nine months and the fluid overload at the end. But it seemed to rebound. And I give the example I could run up I could run a 15K even after my episode at 20 and then yeah, and then when I because it went back to a normal ejection fraction, which is how the pump squeezes, it went from 20, which is really bad. Normal is about 60. It’s not 100, but it’s 60 to about 50. So 50 is considered low normal. That’s kind of where I sat and I could run the 15 K and then I had my daughter and I was like, yeah, you know, maybe it was 50 to 55 before that was like 45 to 50. It hung around 50. I could run 15k, I couldn’t ever run a 15k again and I didn’t care because who needs to run a 15 K You know, you’ve got time for that, but gave it by and I just went on my merry way and then as time went by I wanted another kid and I was having trouble getting pregnant and I also crashed after I delivered my daughter with Hashimoto’s. I did have mold issues in my sinuses, and psoriasis, and they told me I needed eye surgery. 

I was a mess at that point. And that’s when I really got into muscle testing. And all the functional stuff I had learned wasn’t helping in addition to the traditional. So I was really continually pushed outside of the box and as time went by, eventually it was kind of crazy, but I was able to get pregnant with no fertility one ovary because when I was 20 they took one of my ovaries out because it had the cancer on it and five years of chemo at 40. And so I delivered my son, but it was under emergency. General cardiac anesthesia because my F was 20 at the right at 34 weeks or so. So that was a bit of a journey. And then after that, I could only walk, and run, I could never run again. And I’m still working back towards sustained running. But I did well for a few years. And when I say I did well, I did well even on the outside, right? I had a daughter who was playing competitive soccer. I had a baby, I had a crazy practice that was building up. I had a very kind of doing canning stops. And all of a sudden and this is now over seven years ago I went into early menopause and my heart gave out around the same time.  So that was pretty severe. It was my F at that point was 15. And the heart transplant.

Ann Shippy, MD

It’s hard to even if the heart had hit 15.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk. I couldn’t. I couldn’t walk on. I was on the beach with my daughter’s birthday party and I had to go to the ER and, and they wanted me on the, in the ICU with, on the transplant list and my cardiologist was fighting with the transplant cardiologist saying I know her heart, we can, we can get this under control with, with a pace, a certain type of pacemaker. So all of that aside, to answer your question, that was what set me up to fully understand that the healing I needed at that point because I was there, I was, you know, laying in the bed saying all I do is serve. What else could you possibly want? I keep learning about my body and helping my patients with everything I’m learning. And I keep healing myself like, what is it now? And the answer that came crashing through was you don’t help yourself from that. So yeah, yeah. So that was a pretty big turning point, both in terms of introducing even newer modalities like stem cells into my toolbox. But it was the stepping in and understanding of the people pleasing accommodate our frequency that so many healers and women especially, but many people, all people, but it’s more pronounced in women and even up a notch in healers. We just are so gifted in some ways at giving and fixing. And just because you can doesn’t mean you should. So I had to learn that. And it’s a constant evolution and learn boundaries and learn to feel safe speaking my own truth and my own needs. And that’s something I spent a lot of time actually coaching my patients through.

Ann Shippy, MD

So I think for our audience listening, I think hopefully you won’t have to get to the point of being in the ICU with your heart shutting down too.

Lisa Koche, MD

Definitely not.

Ann Shippy, MD

To take a peek in where it’s kind of like you’re just draining out, right? And there’s not enough for placement. So a lot of it comes from the place of should like what should we be doing? A lot of times it is just we want like, we just want so much for our children. We want so much for our family. We want so much for our patients that it’s just that innate desire. But I’d love it if you’d explain a little bit more about your next steps, like how.

Lisa Koche, MD

Do you how did you I mean, so I have it down to a couple of great tips that will really help everybody listen. So I do view our energy allotment or frequency as a give-receive balance. And if you are over-giving and not taking in an equal and balanced amount, you’re going to drain yourself. And I think it does primarily drain through the mitochondria, which is something we haven’t quite been able to prove yet.

Ann Shippy, MD

But total sense to me.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, that’s where I see it, where I see it happening. So what I coach people through is kind of three stops when you’re first acknowledging that you may have this over-giving, people-pleasing type thing, which by the way, is just cultural, especially for women. And it’s kind of topical with this new movie, Barbie movie that just came out, but they hint on this if you haven’t seen it. They talked about that. But I tell people first to tap in and allow yourself to take a minute when you have a decision whether it’s something as simple as returning a text or deciding to take a trip. And I give an example of me wanting to go to certain conferences and the old me would be like, you know, yeah, I really want to go to this trip. And this happened. I really want to go on this trip to San Francisco, and then it immediately would kick in. You’re going to have a book out too many days. The kids need you to pick them up. Your husband’s going to be annoyed. You, you know, it was like this whole, it’ll be too expensive. Whatever it was, it’s too many days away, it’s too far away. And that it would just pass. It would just be gone right? And so I, I started instead trying to trip, like, trick my brain to go into my heart instead of the chatter that was often not even rational. So I would literally just click the purchase button before my brain could. And I found and I hear this from a lot of my patients, they, you know, I walked out and was like, I’m going to San Francisco. And I was nervous about that. And nobody cared but me. You know, it was like everybody kind of adjusted to it. And so it’s that tapping in and saying, yes, when you really want something, but it works the other way of saying no as well. 

So an easy question Is this going to nourish me or drain me? And I would like to start saying, well, no, I don’t want to do that, but I will do this. So when you’re first starting on this process, just do the easier knows, like don’t return the text right away or take, you know, take a day to call back your mom if she always drains you those types of things to just give yourself that space and to connect back into self and start to get to know what actually is going to nourish you and what is it. And then once you start saying yes and no, the next step is I call it the hurricane of reactivity. So once you’ve said that those people around you who have benefitted from you not having needs and not having boundaries, they tend to react that often in a hurricane-like frequency and learning to use, find the eye and just become a little bit more of an observer while that reactivity is happening. That’s a big ninja skill. It takes time and it takes practice and I’ve become very incredibly adept, like almost freakishly so. But it’s taken me a while so you can turn it almost into a game where we all have sort of that one or one or two people that we know are going to react to you in our lives and getting excited to see how far your body has gone. Like, can you stay in neutrality? Can you stay in a space of self-love and a balanced nervous system and you’re not going to at the beginning, you know, you’re going to get sucked in. Sympathetic is going to take that rumination and spinning that we all do, and over time try to bring it back into the center, stay in that parasympathetic state. It becomes easier and the people around you will adjust. But the third step, and there are probably many more steps to this is kind of the three that I teach right now. The third step is what I believe is the hardest, which is learning how to stay neutral and this observer or self-love space while you have your own reactivity.

Ann Shippy, MD

I can give an example of that one. I’m good.

Lisa Koche, MD

Well, like just about anything where it’s, you know, you’re trying to have boundaries, let’s say, with your kids and you think cultural expectations or your mom did it this way where you know, you should be helping them with their assignment or you should be they want you. They’re kind of bossing you around to get their laundry done quickly because they have to leave to go somewhere. And you’d rather just get it done than deal with it. Right. Any of those types of scenarios where maybe cultural expectations or your own programming has been saying you’re a bad mom, you stink, you’re just lazy, whatever, that kind of spinning. And that’s just a simple example. But there’s limitless learning to just kind of try to stay in your heart and feel and have your own boundaries and say, if you want that, you need to go to the laundry. But the trick is not so much saying that and making them do it, because I think a lot of people will do that. It’s preventing it from sending you on a ride at once you do. And the ride is typically something we do all alone and nobody knows about it. And we spend round and round and we drain our mitochondria during the process.

Ann Shippy, MD

It takes a lot of energy. It’s up to us to do that spinning or to actually be in the place of self-judgment or criticism.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, and the self-judgment runs deep because we are taught there’s a really good book that I’m reading right now called The Woman’s Guide to Power Unbound. And it’s a really interesting author because she spent some of her life studying to be a Dallas nun and the other part of her life being a dominatrix. So she has brought. Yeah, so she knows how to read people and she’s had to learn boundaries. But one of the things she says early on in the book is whereas women especially, are programmed to be good girls. And then there’s Good Girl 2.0, which is independent. Woman Screw it, I’ll just do it all myself, which is almost more damaging than the good girl alone. So we’re going up against everything from cultural expectations to, you know, the just that the society in general that we’re into our own families and how they may be run and how we need something different in the society we’re in today.

Ann Shippy, MD

Beautiful. And, yeah, I’m on a similar journey within our conversations and oh my goodness it’s so worth the effort to do the work around this because I feel like my whole stress response is totally different than it used to be. There are always levels of improvement, but I’m so glad you brought up this topic because if we’re staying in that cycle of giving when we don’t have anything to give and we’re still being and then we’re being hard on ourselves about it, it’s really hard to heal.

Lisa Koche, MD

It’s really hard. It’s almost impossible. And I think this personally, I think this is bigger than all the fancy peptides and stem cells. And you know, there’s the kits to measure mitochondrial function. I think this is where the true healing can happen, is when we learn to become at peace with our own decisions and we allow ourselves the clarity and the time and respect to kind of figure out who we are and honor that. And it’s a journey.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, and I love the example that you gave with, you know, getting to the point of having to be hospitalized before you could start to see this. And it really feels like a true heart healing and a true soul healing to get to be in this whole different relationship and conversation with yourself. It’s so beautiful. Sorry, it got to that point.

Lisa Koche, MD

Thank you. Yeah, well, it’s I always this apparently my lot in this particular lifetime has been to kind of go to the extremes so I can prevent everybody else from having to do that. So I’ve always sort of known I was going to be okay, which is really interesting. And I have taken action once I figured out what the lesson was because I’m really good at connecting dots and helping to share and impart whatever I have to experience. So it’s helped a lot of my patients and I’m bringing it to more people, kind of an online space to help just reach as many people as I can. Because this message, again, to me is so important and how it can tie in with our immune system since it’s about susceptibility to mold toxicity and our mitochondrial function, those are probably the areas that it impacts the most on a physical level.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, I’m so grateful for your courage to speak your truth, and to be such an early adopter for everything from the hard-core science to what we laughingly call the womb. But that ends up having scientific data to back it up too. You really are so courageous. And I am. I have so much love and respect for you, for all that you do.

Lisa Koche, MD

Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that. Sometimes we get wrapped up in the rat race and we forget that we’re all just humans here trying to have love and be healthy. And that’s really when we can release all the rest of it and just connect from our hearts. And one of the things I’m really working on is a new course I’m creating that is heart-centered healing. So it’s exactly along this line of optimizing the mitochondria, but also really tapping into things like the masculine and feminine in all of us and the self-love and releasing the people pleasing.

Ann Shippy, MD

That sounds very exciting. I’m so glad you’re doing that. Let’s let people know, let our listeners know where to find you.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah. So I’m Dr. Lisa Koche on Facebook and Instagram, and then I have drlisakoche.com and I’m going to be I have already a course that is one of my main passions, which we didn’t directly address is understanding how broken the medical system is. And you and I also bonded over that. And I think that was really highlighted over the past three years. So understanding not only is the medical system broken, but I believe it’s intentionally being held in the dark ages. And so one of my other super big passions is just being a guide and a light for people that are starting to wake up and realize that. So my one course that is that’s done, that’s been out is called the  LIT Journey, and it’s helping people take back control of their own health. It’s all online-based. To walk people through what I believe to be the healing pillars, some of the basic functional medicine into more of performance, which are some of the things we’re talking about now, whether it’s mindset or peptides or, you know, there’s some emerging things in the stem cell world where there’s so specific. It’s very exciting. So that’s going to be a really, you know, we just keep having more toys to play with in the toolbox.

Ann Shippy, MD

Yeah, I think we’re getting to do this work at just the right time for us where there is this intersection and so many tools to be able to help our patients. And then adapt them uniquely for each one.

Lisa Koche, MD

Yeah, Yeah. And bringing in that, that whole spiritual side of the self love so beautiful.

Ann Shippy, MD

Well, thank you so much. I can’t wait to cross paths again soon.

Lisa Koche, MD

We will. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Ann Shippy, MD

Thank you for joining me.