Understanding Fungal Infections: They May Be There To Protect You

Sharon Stills, ND

Hi.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m so glad to have you here. This is going to be a fun talk because we always have fun when we talk, but it’s going to be an informative talk about fungus and Candida and all those strains of fungal problems that you can have in the body and why they’re there and how to get rid of them. We’re going to break some myths today, and we’re going to share some of what people don’t understand or know in the general functional medicine space about fungus. Before we jump into that, let’s just chat a little bit about who you are. You’re a naturopathic medical doctor. You have extensive training and background in European biological medicine and pro-aging therapies. You founded and ran one of the largest and most successful naturopathic clinics in the country for a decade.  I happen to know you’re about to do it again here. You’re birthing a huge clinic right now in Arizona. you’re going to be back in the brick-and-mortar business again. You’re the host of the Science of Self-Healing podcast. One of your biggest passions is helping perimenopausal and menopausal women stay strong, healthy, and sexy while aging backward. I’m excited about this conversation as we get started here, let’s just start with myths. Let’s start with the common myths about fungus. What do people think is causing it, and what are people doing to treat it that isn’t working?

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, it’s lovely to be here and be with you, as always.  I love purple and you. That is a beautiful color. Thank you.  Yes, myths. We’ve kind of just been taught that if we have anything going on with our gut, we must have Candida. I should take sugar out of my diet, and I should take some antifungals. If I’m more into a natural strain of things, I’m going to take some oregano oil rather than a fluke or something more harmful to the body. We stop to kind of just go, or we forget to stop, is what I should say, to just go, like what is going on here?  Where is this fungus coming from? Who are we concerning the fungus and all these bacteria? I look at it from a very different perspective. I look at it from a Pleomorphic perspective and a terrain-based model, which has served me very well over the last 22 years in practice now and yes, diving back into another brick-and-mortar, I feel like everyone is swimming away from brick-and-mortar, and I’m swimming into one.  It’s just the cycle that I’m in as a physician.  I say cycle because everything in life is cyclical. To me, the fungus is just the result of a cycle, and it’s a cycle of not having a balanced meal, not having a balanced terrain, and not being in harmony or symbiosis with our microbes. So it’s kind of become like the microbiome, it’s having its heyday, which is awesome. I love the microbiome. So we’re learning more and understanding that, yes, we are more bacteria than we are human cells. These bacteria have a very fast rate of turnover in the body and are constantly changing. But if we step back to just who we are as human beings on every level, then we start to think about organisms that have become symbiotic with us for their survival and also for our survival.

Like in the first myth, we have to kill. We have fungus, and we’ve got to kill it. I’m not about killing things in the body. I’m about finding out why they’re there and then inviting them to go somewhere, if that’s what’s needed. So we have these organisms, and one of the main ones that have parasitized us for millions of years is  mucor racemosus. Mucor racemosus, needed us to stay alive. We also need it because it is responsible for all flow in our body for oxygenation, hemoglobin, fibrin, and clotting or not clotting. All the cardiovascular issues, and we’re seeing a ton of cardiovascular issues now post-COVID and post-COVID shots and things. I always am like, I was just in Germany, and I was like, We just need to, instead of like contrails that we see in the sky, I just want to go up in an airplane and just drop mucor racemosus to remedy mucus kill all over the entire continent because everyone needs it. How do we get it? Where is it? We have this organism because your question is about fungus.  So this organism lives in symbiosis with us, and it lives in a terrain, in a milieu, if you will.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m going to ask you to define some things for us real quick because you threw out some terms that may be new to people, so pleomorphism, terrain, and milieu—if you could talk about milieu and terrain right now, we’ll get back to your pleomorphism in a minute. But define those for people who might know what that is.

Sharon Stills, ND

Milieu, terrain, I kind of use those interchangeably. You can say the ground matrix; you can say extracellular space; you can say passenger space; these are all different words for talking about the soup that the cells are bubbling in. So these are the spaces around our cells. we’re very focused on cellular health, but we forget that the health of the cells comes from where they live. The typical analogy you could use is a river and the fish are in the river and they’re all happy and they’re jumping and they’re playing, and then the river gets polluted and the fish all die. So you have to clean the river.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’m thinking of a Dr. Seuss book right now. I’m thinking of The Lorax and the fish jumping and being happy. 

Sharon Stills, ND

I may have been thinking of that, too, but. I love that. In the human body, the terrain is impacted by numerous things. It’s impacted by our fatty acid levels; it’s impacted by trace minerals; it’s impacted by our flow and fascial restrictions and lymphatic flow. It’s impacted by our protein, either too much protein or not enough protein. Often, it’s too much protein or protein that’s not being utilized properly. It’s impacted by our emotions, our energies, bile, and photons, and it’s impacted by our pH. There are a lot of things that go into impacting our milieu. Of course, it’s harmed by heavy metals, viruses, toxins, and other things that are allowed to set up. But how do they come? Is the answer to what Pleomorphism is?

We have these organisms; we have this mucor racemosus that is within us.  when the pH is balanced out, when there’s flow, ample minerals, and all of these things that I talked about—all the good things in health—mucor racemosus lives with us and helps us—helps us clot, helps our heart speed—all these important things with which without we would die. But if the train is impacted negatively, if the PH starts to go off, then mucor racemosus goes through a pleomorphic cycle.  so our whole science, our whole medical field, is based on monomorphism. That’s because they will take the bacteria, stabilize it with some stain, and put it on a microscope under a microscope.  you will just see it in its one form.  then we’re taught to take an antibiotic, and it will kill it, and you can go on your merry way. We could talk about all the harm that comes from simple antibiotic use in a second. But so we have it there, and it’s living, and it’s happy.  if the milieu goes off, it goes through an upgrade. It’s the same symbiotic organism that’s helping us live—that’s helping our cardiovascular system, our liver, and our gallbladder—just not cardiovascular. But that’s the main focus. Then it will start to become a bacteria or a virus.  Ultimately, the ultimate pathogenic expression of these organisms is a fungus.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Let me just unpack this, because people’s minds right now are like, What did she just say? What you’re saying is that pleomorphism is a process where something starts as one thing and transitions into something else. At a simplistic level. Is that the way to describe it?

Sharon Stills, ND

Exactly. It’s like a caterpillar to a butterfly.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, great. There must be a purpose for pleomorphism in our body because it’s so intelligent. Why would something pleomorph into, like, a bacteria pleomorph? 

Sharon Stills, ND

It’s the organism; it’s mucor; it’s the organism’s way of staying alive. So if the hotel’s getting dirty, it’s like I’m getting out of here and it’s climbing out, and as it climbs out, it’s getting more pathogenic. So when someone has a fungus, the first thing I do is ask, What’s going on in your terrain? What allowed that fungus to grow? I don’t kill because when we kill, we leave debris, and this debris becomes a metabolic hazard; it becomes metabolic stress. Ultimately, this debris is going to go through its own pathogenic and pleomorphic experience, and it’s going to become another disease process in the body. I have patients who are like, “I just took an antibiotic.

I had a sinus infection, and I didn’t want to deal with it.” I’m like, and I understand, like, we’re a quick-fix society. We take an antibiotic; we have a urinary tract infection, whatever. But we don’t realize that when we take an antibiotic or an antifungal, these harsh medications that we’re taking are just killing the expression of what’s going on that’s allowing this to happen in the body. Then, for instance, using these kinds of medicines, we don’t always kill off. We hear about super bacteria, and some of the bacteria don’t get killed off. So then what happens? We, the bacteria, become the antibiotic. We’ll take care of the cell wall, but then we have cell wall-deficient bacteria. Now our immune system can’t even flag it. It can’t see that these cell wall-deficient forms are like, What’s this? It’s party time. This is where a lot of autoimmune disease grows. This is where super-infections grow. We just have to think, like, when we’re looking for that quick fix, what that’s going to do down the road, it’s the same. I talk a lot about it because it drives me crazy to suppress our fevers, and we suppress our fevers because we don’t want to feel achy, hot, sweaty, or whatever it is. But we don’t realize that we’re telling our immune system that you don’t matter, you’re not important, and you don’t need to work for us. Then we’re growing cancer, or we’re growing autoimmune disease, or we’re growing other chronic illnesses. It’s all from back when we were kids and weren’t allowed to have a fever.  our immune system has never learned how to respond to anything.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I want to take it back to the point that you said that the fungus is kind of the ultimate expression of what I would say about being unwell. There’s an underlying reason that you have fungus. And in the Western medicine world, we give antifungals, anti-candida, and drugs to kill fungi. But we’re not looking at the underlying reason that this fungus is there in the first place. In the functional medicine world, many functional practitioners just trade one medicine cabinet for another or one prescription pad for another, and they’re giving botanical antimicrobials and telling people to be on a low-sugar diet. It’s not solving the problem because they’re still not getting underneath it. The whole purpose of this summit, Silent Killers, is to talk about what’s underneath chronic health and health problems and inflammation, and those categories that our speakers have been unpacking are things like toxins, chronic hidden infections, nutrient deficiencies usually caused by the first two, and then hidden traumas and stress that are unresolved. in terms of the fungus, pH, what is the root of the root? what is underneath that? Screwing up the terrain, the mildew that’s creating the pleomorphism into a fungus that’s now hurting us?

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, it’s many of those. It’s different for everyone. So, just before I answer that I just want to say that when I’m dealing with fungus in a patient, I’m not killing. I’m giving remedies that reduce the high valence, the high phase of the mucor racemosus. For the Aspergillus niger, the candida parapsilosis, or whatever organism it is, I’m giving remedies that are reducing it back to a symbiotic and out of the pathogenic phase.  While I’m doing that, I’m getting to the root.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Is that like a reverse pleomorphic, isn’t it?

Sharon Stills, ND

It’s technically called its disc. It was discovered that it’s copulation. it’s like they have sex, and then they reduce to the bottom.  all this was discovered that I started to say about my microscopy. This is all based on Gunter’s underlying work in the dark field microscope, and so using dark field microscopy, which is not staining, which is looking at live blood and allowing it to go, you can see the pleomorphism is happening, and we all have these or we have these organisms in us. Like they are affecting us whether we pay attention to it or not. I hope that at least now you’ll be like, Oh, I need to know more about this because this is happening in my body.  So what is the root of the root? It can vary things that I see very commonly such as heavy metal toxicity. Mercury is a big one with fungus and candida, and it’s often the body’s protective mechanism because the body’s pretty wise. That’s a big one. pH, and diet, overconsuming protein, not eating healthy proteins, and not digesting proteins. I see a lot of patients. It’s like such a super protein.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Interesting, because most people aren’t even eating enough protein. sarcopenia— muscle wasting—will happen, especially in women as they go through menopause. So, it’s interesting. Are you speaking about the carnivore diet?

Sharon Stills, ND

No, just over protein, like not good proteins, not grass-fed, finished, not chewed, not metabolized. not enough hydrochloric acid, not enough bile acid, and not enough pancreatic enzyme activity so that the protein is becoming like it’s just metabolic stress to the body and mucor racemosus like protein; they feed on protein. If there’s too much protein, it will cause an upregulation of that towards the fungal. I’m not saying don’t eat protein; I just see a rash like almost everyone who doesn’t have enough hydrochloric acid is not chewing their food properly. Over in Europe, they do Mayr M.A.Y.R. fasting, and I went to a lecture on it. It’s always been something that’s fascinated me. It used to be the bread diet, where you just thought they would give you bread, but when you break it down, I was talking to the guy, and it’s that people don’t have the digestive capacity.

We don’t have hydrochloric acid, and we’re not chewing our food. it’s such a simple thing. But seriously, everyone is like, Are you chewing your food? Are you chewing your food to where it’s liquefied or are you gobbling your food, my man? Two bites in it. Just the act of slowing down, chewing, and liquefying your food—it sounds like it sounds so silly, but I challenge you, like, I bet you’re going to try to do it and you’re going to fail at first because it’s so foreign to what we do and how we eat. But if you did just that, it would change your life. They even have you chew your liquids. It’s like learning to, and our whole digestive process starts in the mouth with chewing with hydrochloric acid kicking off. We talk a lot about being alkaline, and yes, you want to be alkaline in a lot of areas of the body for good health. But acidity in the stomach is what allows that alkalinity to happen. We need to have that acid in our stomach, and most people don’t.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

The Western world has demonized stomach acid. Everybody thinks they need to be on a proton pump and hit an inhibitor or an H2 blocker. In my opinion, one of the most dangerous things that has ever happened in the history of the world is to put these things over the counter, like, let’s just set the world up to have disease. Let’s make it so they can’t digest anything.

Sharon Stills, ND

Well, it’s good for the pharmaceutical companies. It’s such a simple thing. We could talk more about other, more complex underlying root causes. But sometimes these simple things are just like huge game changers. Sometimes we overlook the simple fix. It’s like, well, it can’t be that easy right now. I need something complex. So I’m thinking that most people who are taking it need hydrochloric acid. It’s the opposite that burning your feelings is undigested protein. It’s not that you have too much stomach acid. It’s just one of the biggest fallacies out there.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Oh, my gosh, this is why I love you so much. I should be transparently telling everyone watching right now. Sharon is my doctor too. I met Sharon at a functional medicine mastermind group and then started mentoring her in bioregulatory medicine. One day she said, can you be my doctor? Can I just require you to be my doctor? One of the reasons I want you to listen to the first part of this talk is because we’re going to go even deeper. But I want to make sure we package something up for everyone. This is the mucor racemosus. Did I say that right?

Sharon Stills, ND

Mucor racemosus

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay. I need to understand a little bit more about this: where it comes from, how it gets into our bodies, how we get more of it, and how we support it. Like, I feel like this is kind of an on, like, this is a big question mark for people watching right now because I never heard of it and know most people listening have never heard of it in public. What is this? They want to go look it up. tie that up in a package for us before we end the first part of our talk.

Sharon Stills, ND

It’s something that’s been within everyone for millions of years. It has parasitized us. It’s what we call the endobiome and it lives within us. If found it could come and be part of us, just like we have all the bacteria in our gut, it’s just part of who we are because we are nature. So this is our connection with nature, with the cycles. It’s very like, from an anthropological point of view, it’s straight-up buildings. It’s what grows us. That’s what keeps us healthy. It’s from an Ayurvedic perspective; it’s related to Kapha from a homeopathic miasma or just a homeopathic perspective; it’s related to carbs. There are these characteristics of it, and it’s like anything. In balance, it’s helping with the flow. It’s helping with our arteries when there’s too much of it; it’s like the Goldilocks effect. Too much of anything is no good.  So when we get too much, when it becomes unchecked when the home we’re in is not healthy, it starts to go to these higher valances, and that’s when it becomes pathogenic. So the remedies I’m using are isopathic remedies. They’re specific remedies. They’re homeopathically prepared, but they’re not homeopathic because homeopathic remedies are just energetic remedies; they just have an energetic frequency or have physical constituents. There is a company in Germany that has the organisms and makes these remedies.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

So it’s always Germany. Always Germany. They have all the good stuff.

Sharon Stills, ND

That is true. So that’s how you’re reducing them. But it’s not just so much. We can talk after the break. It’s not just so much about taking the remedy and reducing it. It’s about, like you said, why it got there in the first place and what’s going on in our milieu overall.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What I’m hearing is that we’re born with it; it’s with us. When you say it’s parasitized us, it’s not a bad thing, but it uses us as a host, and it’s something that we need. When people hear parasites, they’re thinking badly.

Sharon Stills, ND

Now I want you to think—yes, I want you to think well, yes, it’s good. 

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

There are some animals I can’t think of right now off the top of my head. But some animals in nature require a parasitic relationship with another animal, to survive.  I can’t think of them right now. Something’s coming up about a shark or something like they’re in my mind. I’m trying to think of a good example, but some animals require parasites to live.

Sharon Stills, ND

The organism is very closely related to hemoglobin.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What we’ve learned today so far is that when this pleomorphism because of something upsetting—the terrain, the milieu—and those things could be toxins, heavy metals, environmental toxins, emotions, infections, whatever—then this can become something that makes it harder for us to thrive and feel good.  Now tie it to fungus.

Sharon Stills, ND

What I’d also just like to leave those of you who are leaving us with is that if you walk away from this without the like, I’m going to strap on my semi and kill the things that are not working in my body that you realize that they are an expression of the fungus which is that highest level of imbalance of the pleomorphic expression that it is just they’re saying to you, there’s something out of balance, like, don’t kill me, work with me and become curious, inquire why I’m here, and see what you can do as the host to make me want to downgrade, to make me not want to be here. Because if you have a balanced body to live in on every level, then you’re not going to have this explosion of fungi that are pathogenic and harmful to you. If you take nothing else and if you’re a little confused,  just to kind of have that, what they’ve taught us is that bacteria are bad and we have to kill them is B.S.  And monomorphism, which is what science and antibiotics are based on. You can go back and look; it was like Louis Pasteur, and it was Antoine Béchamp. They were like the two conflicting, and Pasteur and antibiotics and monomorphism went out, and they say that he said on his deathbed that he was wrong. The terrain is everything. But, I wasn’t there. I don’t know if I said that or not.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Look over my body. I feel like I was wrong. All science is predicated on this concept at this point. It’s like, and people have knockdown, drag-out fights about this. 

Sharon Stills, ND

And from a humane perspective to yourself, like,  these things are in you. There’s good and bad.  so, not to come at it with, I just got to get rid of this. It’s like. “What do I have to do here? What? Where am I so out of balance that my body is spiraling?”

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, we’re going to pause right here before we keep going, Dr. Stills. I want to thank you so much for joining us today for this talk on fungus terrain, and pleomorphism, just blowing everyone’s mind to our audience. I hope you found our conversation insightful and helpful. If you’re a summit purchaser, stay right here because we’re about to dive even deeper into this discussion with Dr. Stills. If you’re not, click on the button on this page to get access to a continuation of this conversation and many others, and get the tools you need to reclaim your health. 

If you’re watching this continuation of my talk with Dr. Stills. Thank you for being a valuable member of our community, and we’re going to dive right back into where we left our minds blown. Okay. Since we’re not going to be killing things, killing is not going to solve the problem. You’re killing fungus. It’s there to serve us. It’s there to help us. It’s there because something else is deeply wrong. That’s what needs to be repaired. For our community of viewers here, thousands and thousands and thousands of people, not everybody can come and work with you and your clinic in Arizona. But we’ll tell people how to get a hold of you.

Sharon Stills, ND

Okay.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

We need to give people some tools here and some hope on what to do. Can we start to talk about what are the things that people can start doing right now that can start shifting this and get the reverse pleomorphism? What did you call it?

Sharon Stills, ND

I can’t think of a word for that. We usually just say it’s downgrading. 

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Downgrade. How do we downgrade that fungus back to a benign state, little innocent puppy?

Sharon Stills, ND

Looking at your heavy metals is super important, as is doing pre- and post-heavy metal testing with a challenge in your urine collection after the challenge. In the end, the reason why we do pre and post is because the pre is just a urine catch to see if you are getting exposed.  Unfortunately, I see a lot of patients who are just getting exposed to things daily. The newest thing I’m seeing a lot of is cesium and thallium, which I learned is put into the water they use for fracking like spraying the green veggies in agriculture as they’re harvesting them.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I just did a test. I haven’t done a toxin test in a while. Cesium and thallium showed up on my test.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, it’s like,  I’ve been doing this so long, so it’s like, I see the trends, and this is like a new thing that I’m seeing all of a sudden. It’s like, they’re just always finding different ways to get toxins into us, and then doing your post-test after you do a challenge, we use DMSA as our challenge to see what you’re storing and then to realize that if, let’s say, your lead was five before the challenge and then you did the challenge and your lead was 28, and now it’s like in the red range and significant to just realize that like that is the gold standard way of checking for heavy metals. But there are limitations, even within the gold standard, that we don’t know, like that post-level. Is that your whole iceberg, or is that just the tip of the iceberg? So when you then start detoxing and pulling these metals, that number I like to check patients like every three months when they’re detoxing, that number may go higher initially.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

That’s something important right now. I just want to focus on this. You like to test people every three months when they’re detoxing. What you just said to everyone is that this is not a two-week or three-month process. This is a longer process. Every three months. strap in, put your seatbelt on, and get ready for the long haul to undo everything that has accumulated in you since you stepped foot on this planet. This is not a quick fix. I have to say that.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, no. I’m glad you said that because heavy metal detox is not something you do on the weekend or in a five-day cleanse. It isn’t. You don’t want to overwhelm the body. You want to make sure the amongteries are open. You want to make sure you’re.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, tell everybody what amongteries is.

Sharon Stills, ND

That’s an old-time naturopathic word for your alimentary organs. You want to make sure your lymph is flowing, and your kidneys are very important when we’re doing heavy metal detox, you’re giving them drainage remedies and support, and you’re staying hydrated, which is appropriate. You want to make sure your liver is okay, your gallbladder has good bile flow, and you’re breathing. If you’re a menstruating woman, then your uterus and your monthly shedding are another way of detoxing that we often forget about. You want to make sure you’re pooping, so you just want to do all these things, like focusing on them. Like, people feel a heck of a lot better just from doing all that, but you want to do that before you, especially if you’re new to this you start pulling metals, and you don’t want to pull them quickly, you want to encourage your body to detox at a comfortable level.  Yes, the other thing I just also want to say, because I see this a lot in practice, is, that I always talk about the teeth, even though I’m not a dentist.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

If they bring it on, we have a biological dentist here.

Sharon Stills, ND

Oh good.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Sanda Moldovan came on and did a whole biologic dentistry talk.  

Sharon Stills, ND

It’s good for people to hear it from a doctor because you’re like, well, of course, the dentist is talking about the mouth. But as a physician, I will tell you that part of, I don’t know, 60, 70, maybe 80% of chronic illness is all happening here. I just brought this up because we’re talking about heavy metals. So a thing that I have seen frequently is that a patient will come in and say, Yes, I had my mercury removed, and hopefully they had it done with a biological dentist and not just with a well-meaning family dentist you’ve been seeing for the last 40 years. If you’re listening and you’re new to this and you’re like, I have Mercury, I don’t want to have heavy metals. I’m going to get my mercury out. Make sure you do it with a dentist who is Smart certified, a member of the OMT, and who is the biological dentist who preps you. He uses the right drills— interview them—because I’d rather you keep the mercury in your mouth. I don’t want that, but I’d rather that than have it improperly removed and get a whole lot of exposure.

But one of the things I see is that after people have their mercury removed, they’re like, Oh, good, I’m done.  no one ever goes in and does a heavy metal test after that. You’ve taken the faucet out; you’ve turned the faucet off. But what about all the drippings that were happening over the five, ten, 15, 20, 30, and 40 years? You must go back in and do a pre- and post-heavy metal test because, pretty much all the time, there’s going to be a body burden that still needs to be addressed. Just like you said,  even before we step foot,  while we’re in the womb, we’re being fed through the umbilical cord. It’s heartbreaking. But all of these toxins, and so I had a patient a couple of weeks ago who I did a pre- and post-heavy metal test on, and the post-test didn’t show any mercury or lead. My initial response as a physician is, wow, their detox pathways must be shut down. Yes, clogged.

Because, like, we were just talking about cesium and thallium. But everyone has mercury and lead. It’s just a matter of how much you’re taking steps to get rid of it, to keep you informed, to keep detoxing because it’s a toxic world, and it’s just, what are other things that are affecting our terrain that we often don’t think about? It’s the invisible. It’s the dirty electricity and the EMFs and that whole barrage that’s coming at us that, because we can’t see it, we don’t think it hurts us, but that, taking steps to have good EMF hygiene and to protect your house and to maybe get like legalized separation from your phone. All these things are. Important. There’s all this stuff that we didn’t have to think about even 20 years ago. Plus, when I started practicing, EMFs had just exploded, and I don’t even think I had a computer when I first started practicing.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

When we had paper charts, I can remember when I very first started, we had a paper chart and a pen and paper. There were no computers. There were no phones.

Sharon Stills, ND

I went through my school. I went through medical school without Google. I’m like, How did I do that?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I typed my term papers on a typewriter.  You could have a computer.  I don’t look old enough to have typed on a typewriter. That’s how I learned how to type and went through college. The Internet didn’t exist.

Sharon Stills, ND

We just have to be. I was thinking about those things. And of course, our diet— we,  and sugar, you know—there’s not a lot of places for sugar in our diet. This is not to say that’s silly advice and you should disregard it; it just needs to be taken in the context of looking at the big picture.  so you do need to get it,  so what can you do? Don’t go, so I’m going to go see a biological dentist and get your mouth cleaned up, which is how it works in Europe. The dentist is in the clinic. They work together. You get, I was taught that when I was still in medical school, have your patients get their teeth cleaned up because it will make your job a lot easier, and if you’re seeing someone who is, doing the body stuff, but this hasn’t been addressed, you’re never going to get to that level of cure or healing that you’re looking for.

If you have, we’re looking for what blockages are healing and what’s blocking the terrain. This is one of the biggest blockages I see time and time again. Of course, we have scars. So scars are a huge area that blocks cellular membrane potential, the flow of energy, the flow of meridians, toxins, and emotions. When I look at a patient, I’m kind of looking at, how are we going to clear the field so that we have the best possible way to go in and then do the herbs or do whatever it is we’re doing so that they’re going to be utilized effectively? So, make sure you don’t have nutrient deficiencies. If you have heavy metals, the metals are, competing. for your selenium, your calcium, and things for your zinc, so often, these metals are taking over and displacing the minerals. So you are de-mineralized when you have heavy metal loads.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

What about radioactivity, uranium, radon, and all of this that’s in the environment? That’s huge. When you think about it, is Chernobyl and the people living in that area. If you go to that area now, the thing that’s living there is fungus. It will grow in a radioactive environment. It’s the one plant or fungus that will grow. it’s there for a reason. Because it thrives on radioactivity, and the same is true of the human body. I’ve worked with people who lived in Eastern Europe or near Russia where this occurred, and they have very high levels of Candida in their tests, in their organic acids. They have high levels of. Did I freeze for you?

Sharon Stills, ND

You did?

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, we fixed that. they have high levels of candida in their bodies.  so the first thing that we do is start opening up their drainage pathways and start creating support in their bodies so they can start to get the toxins out instead of just going for a straight kill for candida.

Sharon Stills, ND

Yes, I like them for uranium. Colon hydrotherapy is beneficial because some of these are harder to get out than others. Also, what we’ve seen, which is a weird thing, but it works because I’ve seen it and done it, is constitutional hydrotherapy, which is another old-time naturopathic. We talk a lot about today, like hot and cold, doing a cold plunge, doing a hot sauna, and constitutional hydrotherapy, which is an old-time naturopathic treatment. It’s just using like ten stimulations on the adrenal glands, and then it’s just using hot and cold and wrapping you like a mummy, but it encourages detox. Part of that is also balancing the nervous system. We haven’t mentioned the nervous system, but all of this is nervous system regulation and making sure that you have parasympathetic network capacity that you’re not stuck in sympathetic, which is where most especially, you’re watching from all over, but I have patients from all over, but definitely, certainly the Americans are stuck there. That’s a whole other thing, but that’s important. You can’t heal if you’re stuck in the stress response.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, we have speakers coming on to talk about the stress response. I’m glad that you brought that up and how important it is as part of this healing process. We had about five minutes left or so. I want to make sure that we cover anything else that you think is critical here.   people tuned in to listen to this. Okay. I’m going to learn how to get rid of my candida, and we just completely leave their minds on. No, we’re not going to give you an antifungal. Nope, oregano oil isn’t going to solve it. Nope. A sugar-free diet is not going to do it. You got to do the detox work, and you got to go searching for the problem.

Sharon Stills, ND

I always say symptoms are sacred messengers. it’s just your body saying, “Hey, there’s something out of balance here, and if you kill it, it will either come back or it will just burrow deeper into your body and show up in a different manifestation.” Killing doesn’t work. It just kind of kicks the can down the road. We know that from things like Han’s recordings like the coma toxicology chart and looking at the body and how inflammation and fever and puking and pooping, this is the body excreting, and these are good things. When we shut that down, we start to march towards disease processes. killing something, not addressing the root cause, it just,  a typical example of that is a baby has eczema.

We put a corticosteroid cream on the eczema, and it just suppresses it. It doesn’t cure the eczema. It just suppresses it in the body. Then two years later, that same child now has asthma because it’s just found another place to express itself. So that happens in our bodies as well.  then, the other thing is that we didn’t talk a lot about emotions, but I feel that the emotional, energetic lives we have and again, that’s our, sound and light in both biophotons and things that we don’t see. But we’re going to be having in my clinic in Scottsdale, we’re going to be doing Kirlian photography, which comes from Germany, where you can see biophoton emissions on the fingertips and the toes, and you can read the story, the journey of the trauma. When it happened, was it pre-conception, prenatal in the womb, one-year-old, three years old, or nine years old? You can see. What’s happening? That’s a whole. We’re like a few minutes left, but I just want to throw that in there because, again, what I see is that that’s everyone. So it just depends, like, what is your relationship with a chronic illness going to be, and are you just going to constantly be trying to fight against it, or are you going to get curious and become open to why this is happening?

What is my body trying to tell me? What’s the lesson here? What’s the gift? What’s the deal?  Why is this? When we shift that, we can shift to that. You want to talk about doing the nervous system regulation work—just shifting from killing to understanding and being curious. Just as I’m talking about it, I can feel my body relax differently. So we have to change the way we deal with and look at illness. We have to relax into it. It’s very difficult, and I have been chronically ill myself. So I understand what it’s like to not get out of bed for three months. I’m not, if you’re listening and you’re struggling, you might want to punch me in the face right now through the screen. I’m not discounting what you’re experiencing. I’m just saying bring this piece and bring this slice of an organic gluten-free, dairy-free, grain-free pie in, that this is important how we do it. what’s that saying? How we do anything is how we do everything. So how do we act or behave as patients or someone who’s suffering?

It sets the tone for how we live our lives when we are feeling better, and, there is always hope. I guess I just want to end with hope. There’s always hope. There’s always an answer. If you haven’t found it yet,  maybe you just haven’t asked the right question, haven’t found the right person, or haven’t been connected to the right things. Don’t give up because, I see patients who are told they’re going to die and, they don’t. So we have to leave open the door for miracles. But even just for, maybe you’re told you’re never going to get better because people aren’t looking at the right thing. My teacher in Switzerland always says you can’t; you have to see differently to treat differently. So if you don’t see these things, you’re not going to think about them. Find someone to work on your dentistry. Find someone to doctor in the field of microscopy, find someone to inject your scars. All of these things are going to help open up your field.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Or end right there. Tell me, is there and so what we’re looking for in our audience is you because you’re online, you have a virtual practice. And you are opening after how many years out of the brick-and-mortar practice? Ten years on, 12 years off. another ten years.

Sharon Stills, ND

Then my cycle. I believe that life is a book, and every ten years is like, okay, let’s do a new chapter.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Okay, so this chapter is opening, when does your clinic open and does our audience get a hold of you?

Sharon Stills, ND

drstills.com is my website which makes it look like I just do menopause but I do everything. The clinic is going to be a full service where you’re going to have so many fun toys, and they’re from diagnostics to therapeutics to living in Zen Gardens that you can regulate your nervous system and so on. But it’s probably not going to be open until, like, the fall of 2024. It’s truly birthing. I was saying before we came on air that it’s like birthing quintuplets. I can’t wait.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

I’ll be there as much as I can.

Sharon Stills, ND

On delivery day, it will be a lot of fun.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Yes, yes. Until then, I’ll see you at your house— in January for a treatment—so I can’t wait for that. drstills.com D.R.S.T.I.L.L.S. dot com is where people can find you. Yes, you are a menopause specialist, but you do everything. Thank you so much.

Sharon Stills, ND

We’re just kind of happening in a terrain. Everything needs to be looked at from a terrain perspective.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

It does. Thank you so much for just being so fun to interview and so open. Like, can we talk about this? Absolutely, we can talk about it. Thank you. This has been an enormous benefit to our audience to have this eye-opening experience. I’m sure they love you as much as I do at this point. Either that or they’re like, I don’t know about this.

Sharon Stills, ND

This is a lot, do it again. Again,  do you research? Sometimes when we hear something so opposite or,  we resist, and I often say whatever we’re resisting, we probably need to breathe a little, step a little, and see what that’s about.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Exactly. It’s the right direction. If it pokes the bruise a little bit.

Sharon Stills, ND

Knock the bear right? All right.

Laura Frontiero, FNP-BC

Well, until next time, everyone, good care. Bye, Sharon.