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Podcast Episode 54 Transcript

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and we’re going to continue the conversation with Dr. Jessica Franco Chavez. So welcome back, Dr. Jessica. 

I want us to talk about, we were off camera talking about a little bit about what are some ways that as nature paps, regardless to the state that you’re in, that we can get more involved politically and with helping support some of these changes, not just in general, but really to help our naturopathic field to really get out there because yeah, there’s all this functional medicine, integrative medicine.

I get a lot of people who ask me, Well, what’s the difference? And there’s a huge difference between naturopathic medical doctors, functional doctors, integrative doctors, just our whole philosophy, the whole foundation of how we’re taught through medical school. It’s just very, very different. One of my big pet peeves is that I see nurse practitioners and physician assistants having way more rights than we do in many states. It may involve working with insurance, accessing Medicare or Medicaid plans in their state, and being considered a primary care physician to perform tasks that a medical doctor can perform. Here in Arizona, we’re fortunate to have a wide scope of practice, as do many other states. There are still some things that we are not allowed to do. I know my audience always hears this from me, but what is your take when we’re looking at, well, it’s a two-point question, I guess. What can we do as naturopaths to become more involved politically and pass legislation that will allow more naturopathic doctors to practice in the way we do? That’s the first question. Then the other is how do you distinguish functional, integrative and naturopathic doctors? I’ve found that many naturopathic doctors are hesitant to identify themselves as naturopathic medical doctors and instead market themselves as functional or integrative doctors. That kind of hurts my heart a little bit. I’m going to be honest.

I agree with you on that point. It’s curious and beneficial from one standpoint in that, at least, conventional medicine is aiming to understand that they don’t always have all the tools in their bag and the right approach to chronic disease and prevention. In that aim, they’re wanting and urging their other practitioners to understand functional medicine. For me, functional medicine is about understanding lab results in a different framework and way than traditional allopathic doctors. The ranges are sometimes broader, narrow, depending on what is being drawn, don’t really appeal to the naturopathic side of things when we’re aiming to be preventative. Sometimes it’s like they’ll check off, oh yeah, your cholesterol, your TSH, thyroid levels, everything looks great. But then, if you handed it to a naturopathic doctor, we’d say, ‘ Wait a second, I’m a friend here. ‘ And really truly, if your thyroid levels look like this and you see patterns and we recognize patterns and we’ve been trained to look at all of that, then you say, wait a second.

You are this reservoir, beautiful reservoir of this water, and you’re starting to overflow off the top of this reservoir. Some of you’re starting to get cracks in the side and a little bit of water’s leaking out. How can we calm the system down so that you can hold all the water, that beautiful life water and not be pressurized because of inflammation or some chronic disease that is starting to manifest itself? More times than not, we can help calm the body, bring it to balance homeostasis, and then also with a lifestyle medicine approach, say, okay, well we know you shouldn’t have these types of foods or you need to be doing this instead. Or maybe taking, in certain instances, some really good quality physician grade three tier vetted supplemental approach is necessary to help fill in those gaps or plug those holes up so the body can breathe and say, okay, I’m going to start this healing journey and this is why and how I can do it.

Functional medicine, from my experience, also aims to be in that category of understanding labs in a holistic way of the body’s functioning. They really look at the cellular structures and the mitochondrial structures, the energy powerhouse of the cell, and I think they do a fine job of it. They’re looking more into Dr. Hyman’s functional medicine certification program, which I believe he holds, and they’re really starting to explore food medicine. What does it look like? Preservative-free, anti-inflammatory, different types of diets for various kinds of people. Fasting is a huge one. We do all of that, but that’s their bridge, if you will, into the surgical, mostly surgical and emergent and urgent response of traditional allopathic medicine. Then integrative medicine, like complementary medicine, is a little bit more unclear because I feel like it’s an older nomenclature, an older term for a more of integrative approach of bringing a lot of things together and trying to fix it. But it’s more complex and complicated. There are integrative physicians, but it’s like, okay, but what do they really do? We need to know the niche. We need to know the focus. There may be an area of specialization. So for me, integrative is one of those more loose terms that doesn’t really mean so much to the average person. You need to know what you’re trying to integrate. 

Exactly what are you trying to do? So I feel like your point on let’s be proud, an actionable item for those listening and for other naturopathic doctors, practitioners, please empower yourselves and each other and get with one of us in the community. Start by proclaiming, ‘I am a naturopathic doctor,’ and make sure that’s at the forefront. I’m not perfect. Sometimes I’m like, oh, yeah, I do. I practice naturopathic functional integrative medicine in my aim to capture their understanding and knowledge, but then I always make sure to explain, ‘This is what I do.’ And so taking the time, being proud of it, saying it with that gusto and gumption that you spent. We’ve spent a lot of time, we worked on what’s off in school?

Yes, we do. We have invested the time, our biomedical science background, our undergraduate degree, and the clinical rotation hours. I mean, those are very complimentary to other professional school programs. Then, some people, because we need to know physical medicine, homeopathy, botanical medicine, clinical nutrition, as I discussed in the earlier series podcast, and then some energy medicine. Some people also explore environmental medicine and other related fields. We’re trained on all that. We go for four years all year round. We do not get a break. We are indeed able to fill that space appropriately, so take pride in it. Then from a MAHA Commission initiative and how we can help be a part of this movement, and I’m not even saying be a part of MAHA, if that doesn’t resonate with you, but there is something happening. People are aware. They’re paying attention, they’re seeing what’s happening in the media. They’re listening to RFK Junior, whether they resonate with him personally or not, or some of what he’s said in the past or not.

I, too, am not one hundred percent certain about everybody I’ve been working with, but for this, I am, for the health of our children, the health of our people, and the options, informed consent, and medical freedom. I am a hundred percent about that because we all should have medical sovereignty and the right to choose what is best for our own health, everybody has a different health platform. Everybody has different things that they’re having to battle daily that should be between your doctor and the doctor, and that patient should be able to make that choice. And so I say in order to do so, naturopathic doctors need to have a seat at the table. That’s what I’m really pushing for at the legislative level, is making sure that we have a seat at the table within this framework that’s happening right now, and that we can continue to have a voice as experts and that we can be able to understand how to talk to our congressmen and congresswomen.

Often, there are more things that you can influence at the state level than even at the federal level. Sometimes, that can be intimidating for people. You walk into Capitol Hill and there’re marble floors and there’s people everywhere, and you have to go and talk to this congressman or woman and you’re thinking, oh my gosh, what do I say? How do I frame it? DC fly posted by an NP is a great place to start. I have to give a shout-out to their admin team, the executive director, Laura Farr; they have really transformed this program and the education that you receive for a whole day. Then we as some of the more lead, I guess, experts in being able to speak to some of these initiatives or congress, go in with a little team of students and we present to congressmen and women or their team and we say, Hey, these are our asks. The asks are this time around, it was for Medicaid inclusion into the states that naturopathic medicine is licensed. And then two would be for recognition and having HSA and FSA for nutraceutical and dietary supplementation, because 75% of Americans use supplements and they’re not covered. The IRS doesn’t recognize health and wellness benefits, and they are not considered pre-tax savings or expenditures.

So, Dr. Jessica, my understanding of that is I had to look into the laws because patients have F-S-A-H-S-A accounts, they come to the office, they pay for their visit, and their supplements. And it was never a problem before; after 2020, many of my patients’ companies were asking for a letter or justifying the supplements they were taking. So I had to look into the laws. So right now, the way the laws are in is that if you’re using an F-S-A-H-S-A account to pay for supplements, it has to be recommended by a doctor for medical purposes, which pretty much nature paths we do, we put in our treatment plan, we’re using these nutraceuticals or herbs for medical reasons. There is a reason behind that. And so we can justify that. Oftentimes, though, it makes practitioners like me write letters, which takes time out of our day, just so that they can cover. But they want to do this every time they make a purchase. So, what you’re saying is that you’re asking for legislation to allow these F-S-A-H-S-A accounts, allowing people to buy supplements online or from any store without needing a doctor’s approval, right? Is that correct? Yeah. Okay.

Correct. So over the counter being able to take, say I always have patients, they have their staples, they have a fish oil or a multivitamin, something that maybe it’s not physician recommended at the time or they’ve been taking it for, but hey, is that not within this whole perspective of trying to be a healthier people and do things preventatively, even on a fiscally responsible scale and trying to tame down the 4.5 trillion of healthcare expenditure per year. 90% of that goes to chronic disease.

The proof is in the pudding. We just need to have an army of experts, not just a few of us. We had double the number of students that we’ve ever had for this last DC fly. However, getting out there may be intimidating. Don’t worry about it. We got you. We’re all learning. Also, none of us are experts when we come out of the door. Sometimes you get questions that you really don’t know and you just say, I don’t know, but you know what? I’m going to get that information for you and I know where to get it. We have a team behind us and ANMP and our lobbyists are phenomenal. Start there. Look into DC fly. You do have to apply because a lot of people are applying nowadays, and there are, it’s kind of like a little entrance exam online just to get you, nothing intimidating, but just so that you are in kind of that wheelbase knowledge base of what does legislative advocacy look like?

What are we doing? What are we asking? What should and shouldn’t you do? That would be a huge actionable item. The second is kind of one that I’ve created for myself, and I’ve really made it a point to know my senators and the House of Representatives here in New Mexico, and I make meetings with them. They’ll call on me, Hey, I want you to come into my office. And I’m like, awesome. Will you be my expert witness? Will you look at some of this information, whether it’s a wellness program going into the schools or I’m helping usher a few bills at the legislative session. My goal for myself, once I started to get a little bit more comfortable was like, Hey, I should make sure that these legislators have my cell phone in their phone and whenever they need to call on somebody within my expert capacity, I hope that they choose me or ask, or at least I can be part of the conversation.

I’ve started to do that. And so I urge others. We are the constituents. They work for us. They are also serving humanity. A lot of ’em don’t get paid at all for what they do. Listening to people and you hear some of the stories of constituents arguing with their leadership or their senators or whatnot, and you just think, oh my gosh, these people are doing the best they can. They don’t hold the golden key in the end. But if you approach them in a reasonable and amicable way, the majority of them do want to help. I say really get involved at that state level MAHA Action Network online, I think it’s MAHAaction.org. They are a nonprofit and they say that they’re nonpartisan. Again, whatever your perspective perception is, but they really do have a good platform for the nationwide legislation.

If you have something ongoing in your community that you want highlighted for more of the MAHA community to know about and support, they’ll put your information on there for free or they’ll put your bill or whatever you’re working on for your state. Then, also, op-eds are a great, great way to get some information out there. So an opinion piece in one of your newspapers or magazines or journals in your community, if you write something and it has this health type of feeling to it, right? Wellness, health, naturopathic, I would urge naturopathic doctors to start writing op-eds. They get noticed. They circle around the nation, and then you can also send them to me or we can figure out how to get them into the MAHA network, and then they will showcase them and they can publish them online. And so those are other ways to start appreciating who we are and have a voice to what we do, so that they know, Hey, I need to call on somebody to be an expert on this clinical nutrition piece as it relates to these food diets. Yeah, I’m going to call on Dr. Jessica because she’s been here nagging at me. She’s been talking to me about all these things. So this is what we need to do. My husband always says the squeaky wheel, so be the squeaky wheel for our squeaky wheel gets the oil, the grease, right? That’s true.

Those are really great points that I’m taking myself personally. So that’s why I asked. That way, I know what I can do on my part. Also to encourage other colleagues to really start getting serious about getting more involved politically at the legislative level, even if it’s just what kind of influence we can have. And you’re right, I do have experience working in that field, specifically with our state senators and legislators, who are people and many of whom have good intentions to help everyone, regardless of their politics. They’re there to help. And when we reach out to them and we sit down and get to know them as people, and they get to see us as well, and they get to learn what we do, we have an excellent opportunity to educate them. They become lovers of our medicine as well, supporters of it as they understand more of it. I think that has a much better impact, that face-to-face relationship versus just putting junk on social media and being so critical about the opposition. So those are great points. So you go to DC fly, this is every year, right? 

It is every year.

You’re seeing more, including medical students attending naturopathic programs. That’s really good.

Yes. Oh, this last time, I feel like you say you educate, right? It’s just this compounded understanding and awareness and ability to be able to speak to some of these legislative asks or tasks or information because you want to impart who we are. I remember when first or when I first went, they did not know what naturopathic meant. They couldn’t even say it.

They couldn’t say it.

Now, people, you’ll get one or two people. Ninety percent of the people I encountered knew what naturopathic medicine was. I have to say that’s because of our compounded efforts through the years and being proud of who we are. Even just a side note, even if you’re like, that’s not for me, that’s too much time and I just can’t do that. Hey, you can find your legislator online. It’s super easy. Even the federal, at the federal level, it’s congress.org, I believe. But even in your statewide Google Chat, GPT it and send a letter. Just send a letter, send an email, say, Hey, I’m here. Naturopathic medicine, naturopathic medicine, naturopathic medicine. The more they hear that, the more comfortable it becomes for them to have these conversations. Then when we do have really big asks like, Hey, we need the rest of the nation to be supported in naturopathic medicine. Let’s start this effort. It obviously has to be statewide. It can’t be federally led, but at least we can have the support and people can start to recognize and be able to talk about and talk to our medicine.

Because the reality is these politicians also have a physical body, they have a body, they have families, and their health matters to them too. I have patients who are working in that sphere of politics, state government, they’re under a lot of stress through adrenal fatigue. Their hormones are out to the door. I mean, because they’re working so much and they’re stressing so much and they can’t sleep. Their own physical health is impacted. I think that when they’re listening to us speak, they’re not only hearing but also listening for what they can implement for themselves. What can they do differently for their health and wellbeing, whether it’s physical, mental, or emotional health, and how do they balance that out? Also, how do they raise children in this kind of environment? In my opinion, this is not a political movement. If you are a human walking on this earth living, you should be interested in passing laws, a support, a healthy lifestyle.

I always say that as naturopathic medical doctors, what we really do is teach a healthy lifestyle. It’s lifestyle medicine. I always talk about on this podcast and to my patients about the four pillars of health. These are the four legs to the table. It’s a must. Yes, there’s other things that are important, but this is the foundation and that’s nutrition. That’s first and foremost. What are you eating? We are what we eat. What are you eating? How much? When is it quality? What’s in there? How is it impacting your body? You could eat broccoli and I can’t eat broccoli, and that’s a healthy food. But also, how is our food being our farms? How is it being grown? All of that matters, right? And there’s way more science, and we’re not going to go into that discussion right now, but when it comes to farming and these farmers, they are sacred.

We need to protect farmers. We need to encourage that as a profession, too. My father always said, we bless the people who grow our food because of them. We can put it on our table to eat it. We need to support that industry as well. So nutrition’s first. The second one is in no particular order, but nutrition, making sure we’re sleeping at the right time in enough hours. Some people work grave VR shifts. We can’t do anything. There are things we can do to support that. But most people are not sleeping because they’re on their technology. They’re distracted with other things. Exercise. We know the importance of physical movement. It’s medicine. Our bodies were created to move. When we don’t move, we create disease, we create stagnation and other factors, it just degenerates. The other is stress management. When we lack tools or ways to regulate ourselves and minimize the stress response our nervous system is experiencing, we will deplete ourselves over time. Excessive chronic stress leads us to making poor decisions in our lives, such as eating unhealthy food, skipping meals, struggling to sleep, and not exercising because we have too many other things to do. These are the four things that I tell people. It costs you nothing In addition to do these things, I have a whole podcast on the four pillars and then an individual episode for each of those pillars. How many people are listening to that and following that free advice people.

If you can’t do it on your own, that’s when you need to reach out to someone like us, a naturopathic doctor who understands the importance of that and can then help guide you. Because the other component of our training it’s like the whole MINDBODY medicine that, let’s be honest, medical doctors don’t get that. Nurse practitioners are not doing that as well unless they are learning that separately. But as part of their program, they’re not integrating this mind body component, which is huge. If we don’t align ourselves mentally and emotionally, how our physical bodies are being impacted by that, people get stuck in their behaviors, in their mindsets. And that sometimes leads to disease.

Oh man, I tell you, once you’re a practitioner for a while, you start to see the trends of your patient population. I noticed front and center that the mind-body aspect was something that I couldn’t ignore. Did I want to rush into a gastroenterology appointment and just treat the GI system and help them digest their food or the acid reflux they were having? But more times than not, if you skip that mind body connection, the lock and key don’t hold, and it just reverts back to here I am with this acid reflux again. That’s a perfect understanding of making sure that we are whole body aware and we are treating whole body medicine, and the mind is so miraculous. Just able to help you click into that space to say, I’m committing to this. I’m doing this. And so, yeah, I now do more frequency and energy medicine, balancing first with the patient and making sure that we can get them to a place where, again, balance and homeostasis can be achieved at a level of frequency, because we’re all frequency. Different organ systems vibrate at different frequencies.

In order to tune into a radio station or a podcast, tune in with yourself. That should be something that you can understand and recognize. Just tune in and start to learn, oh, this doesn’t feel right, and this is what it feels like when I do feel right. And again, that’s some of that training. Once you get that in motion, reversal of disease and those obstacles to cure won’t be obstacles anymore. I absolutely believe that the MAHA movement, encompassing everything you just mentioned about the four pillars, is what the MAHA movement stands for: preventative medicine, nutrition, sleep, diet, water intake, and environmental considerations. To your point earlier where you’re like, people can go overseas and they’re totally fine in Italy eating the bread and the gluten and the pasta and whatnot. Well, what’s happening here? Well, what’s curious here is that we are spraying our crops.

There are a lot of people, especially in the National Health Federation movement, and one gentleman, whose last name is Ger. He really has a beautiful concept, and it’s simple; I’m sure we all know it and intuitively understand it. Still, he’s like, listen, we have soil poisoned, and the poison goes into the soil, the grain or that crop grows that livestock, eat that grain or that cereal, then they start to get sick. So, they are taken to the vet, who prescribes a pharmaceutical. However, this pharmaceutical starts to imbalance or dysregulate their hormones, so more hormones are added to the livestock. Then we eat meat that has these added hormones that we don’t need, and then we get sick because these hormones are all over the place in our body, can’t regulate it, don’t know what to do with it, toxin response. And then we go to the doctor to get on a drug to help regulate.

It’s a vicious cycle. It’s a vicious cycle. And it all starts with the soil. What are we growing. And our food, like you said, for the executive orders, one of the pillars, I’ll just say within that document, for those that have read it or that are aware of it, they talk about food medicine, they talk about prevention, they talk about chronic disease, they talk about having a relationship with agriculture and making sure that we’re supporting our local farmers and our farm community. Again, awareness is everything. Wherever you’re spending your money, you’re spending a vote, you’re spending a choice. Making sure that we’re choosing with our money and our voice, and saying, ‘ No, I would prefer not to spend money on these things because I want to support local farmers. ‘ And I think it’s 1% of Americans who go to their farmer’s market or their community garden, have 1% of us. It’s as if we would completely deflate if we didn’t have that agricultural sector in our economy.

That’s very true. That’s very true. I grew up in an area that was all, it was a community, but there were a lot of farms around. I remember in the eighties, I can age you myself here, but in the eighties as a kid, I remember seeing how the ice cream truck goes by the neighborhood. Well, this was a food truck and it was open on both sides, and it was from a local farm, and it was all fresh produce, fruits and vegetables and nuts and seeds that they would grow in their farms. And it was all local here in Phoenix, all along baseline in South Phoenix. I mean in Levine, these trucks would go through our neighborhood and they would weigh it and we would buy it. It was literally food, naturally grown food coming through our neighborhood instead of the ice cream.

Man, I wish that would happen again. You said something that I think is very, very key in all areas of our life, and it’s the word awareness. We need to become more aware of what’s actually going out there and not put your phones down, stop looking at the tv, stop listening to the media, all of that of that. Just get out and really find out what’s in your area. Find out what’s in your soil. I mean, if people were to really do a deep dive into the quality of our soil, the microbes, the lack of nutrients, one of the things that we’re finding in our soil in America is that it’s very depleted in the nutrients and the microbes that we need for the food to grow there and have all the nutrition in there, all the minerals and the vitamins that we get that from the soil.

If we start with depleted soil, our food is not going to, yeah, you’re eating the vegetable, but you’re not getting the full nutrient density that say, a hundred years ago, people used to get from their food. And that’s a concern to me for many of us, because we realize we’re eating these organic foods, but is it really nutrient-dense? However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t eat it. That doesn’t mean don’t eat it because the processed food in a packaging in a box, in a container. That’s not good. As we get ready to wrap this up, I’m going to tell you that one of the things that led me to become a naturopathic doctor, as I was healing myself in 2011, I was struggling with going to finding a doctor who would listen to me, that would get me the results. The labs were normal, so you’re normal.

But I didn’t feel normal. So, I knew I had enough awareness and intelligence to continue investigating and digging deeper. I recall a time when I was meditating. I prayed and I meditated because I was desperate. I was like, what do I do? God, what do I do? In my meditation, I heard God tell me to eat the food that grows on the soil. I was not on the internet. I was not on social media at the time. And I thought, what does that mean? Even at that time, I was like, what is that going to look like realistically? So I’m eating only fresh fruits and vegetables, nothing in cans or boxes. At that time, I thought, Is that realistic? So I did implement that. I implemented that principle. I only ate fresh produce, nothing that was frozen or in a box or was processed.

That’s when I saw my transformation just by that one move. So I tell people, you don’t even understand the power of food, real food that it has in your body, because you’re removing all the junk, all the stuff, all of that, and you’re just sticking to the foundations of what your body needs. That was my journey into really healing and recovering and restoring very quickly too. It didn’t take years. It was like two, three months. I had all these results, not just physically, but on labs that my doctor didn’t even believe me. She actually said, what did you do to make all this change? And I said, I changed my diet. She’s like, no, really? What did you do? So even the medical doctor couldn’t comprehend that food in itself was enough to change, to transform my health around. And I remember laughing and saying, ‘I don’t know what it is about you doctors that you just don’t get it.’

That the foundation of what we’re built, our bodies, are physically being constructed by the food we eat. Of course, it’s going to make an impact. Dr. Jessica, I walked out of that office thinking if she could be a doctor. That was what encouraged me, but I knew it had to be something different. I couldn’t become a medical doctor, not because I couldn’t able to, because I didn’t want to. I wanted to treat people in a different way. I really want to encourage our viewers. I know some naturopathic medical students watch the show and other medical doctors, naturopathic medical doctors, watch this. I hope this encourages them to stand firmly on those principles. There’s a lot of high-tech technology, sexy things that people are doing to treat illness, peptides and all of this and all that.

Get your diet, just teach people the foundations and then build on that. Is it really necessary to spend two, $300 on all of these new innovative technologies? Is it really necessary to put people on Ozempic and cause other negative side effects for them to lose weight? No. Let’s address all these things that, all the tools, because as naturopathic doctors, we were given a bunch of tools. We have a toolkit like a mechanic does. A good mechanic has what, probably hundreds, thousands of dollars in tools. The more advanced the mechanic is, the more tools he has. But I always say the mechanic is never attached to just one tool. He uses them all. So

True.

He uses them all.

So true. And there are better mechanics than there are doctors.

People leave opposite, right? Think about it. People leave doctors’ offices without a solution after months and months on being a medication. They still have the same symptoms. They’re not improving a mechanic. You take your car, if your red engine light is on and you pay him a thousand dollars and you still leave with the red light on, that’s not going to happen. You’re not going to take your car to a mechanic and say, well, it’s still broken, but you owe me a thousand dollars. The standards need to change for doctors, too. We need to be held to standards of we’re not completely responsible for the outcome of the patient, but we are responsible to do a thorough assessment, do the right evaluations for labs and so forth and so forth. There’s so many other things, but I know for sure I want to be more involved politically here in Arizona to get my feet wet a little bit and find out how can we create an influence here. We already have a great state with a lot of, like I said, wide scope of practice here in Arizona, but there’s still a lot of things that I know that we can further support these changes that are happening at the federal level. But like you said, really we have a bigger impact or a greater opportunity to make an impact at the state level. Absolutely. You had some things you wanted to share with our audience, some little opportunities. So go ahead and share some of those things you wanted to share.

Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to say that it gives good context and appreciation to who you are and why you are here. And again, you’ve just been a beautiful colleague and friend and partner in health, and I always say partner in health because we teach each other and we teach our patients, and we can’t go home with our patients at the end of the day and say, you’re eating wrong, you’re doing this. We can only advocate and empower and spread that awareness forward. Within that light, I decided to become a naturopathic doctor, specifically because I had this biochemistry professor in my pre-med years and my background, my father’s whole side, all conventional medicine, my mom’s side, all indigenous medicine. And so I was destined to become a doctor in some capacity, and I was following the traditional route. I was a tutor for a biochemistry doctor in the class.

He came in one day and he had a stack of papers and he threw ’em across his desk and he goes, I’ve been vindicated. He starts scribbling all these molecular structures. At the time, of course, you’re like, what is this gibberish? Because these molecular structures were new to me. I knew a sugar molecule, but these were different. And he was probably one of the only people at the time, scientists at the time that were studying artificial sweeteners. So it was aspartame. And he says, ‘I have to tell you, this is going to be detrimental to the human body.’ So I’m obsessed about it. I go through all my family’s food pantry drawers and I’m like, Chuck in the low fat, sugar-free stuff and Diet Coke and all that. During that time was all the rage. And I thought, you know what?

Something is calling me into the more traditional, indigenous side of medicine. That’s where I found the complement of what naturopathic medical school and license could be. I thought, that’s what I’m doing. So I go to my professor and he had already written me my letters for traditional school, and I was already seven interviews deep. So it wasn’t like I was just starting out. I was already committed. This was a significant transition for me, and I thought, ‘You know what?’ Something that voice, that creator God, you’re just like, I know that something inside of me is just tickling me in a way that I can’t ignore it. I went to him and I said, I need another letter, but this time I need it addressed, and it has to be for naturopathic school. And he puts down his glasses and he doesn’t say anything.

And he goes, You’re better than that. I didn’t know what to say. Is that good? Is that bad? Huh? That’s scary, too, that I’m even considering this. You who I just admire and adore don’t think that this is the right path. So I prayed and meditated on it and I thought, Nope, I will not be happy with myself if I don’t at least explore it. And so I did, and I was just, the more I started finding out about what naturopathic doctors do, the more it spoke to my soul. The ironic thing is that the reason I really even got into advocacy looking back is that he really was a musing point for me of that he was a traditional scientist, was curious in exploring alternative foods and preservatives. He was really trying to bridge that understanding between food, medicine, what is a food medicine, what is not a food medicine, right?

Aspartame does not appear to be a food medicine. We need to start really having conversations about this and researching it. And he was, and I think how curious, he’s in a traditional setting yet he’s thinking traditionally and he’s still can’t appreciate that I want to do more of the untraditional role and explore or teach my patients that no is not the solution to a sugar-free lifestyle. That’s been a point of advocacy for me is making sure that I continue to teach people like him that naturopathic medicine is the way forward for true rehabilitation of health and wellness and to help us live stronger, healthier lives. I just wanted to say that because when you’re considering being an advocate, you need to know why. You have to be able to come back to your why or else it can be intimidating, it can be tiring, it can be sometimes you’re doing it out of the kindness and goodness of your heart and spirit, and you want to make sure that you have that foundational understanding of I’m advocating for those that cannot advocate for themselves because 60% of Americans have a chronic disease that sometimes is so debilitating that they cannot advocate for themselves.

That’s the other actionable ask is the Confucian-inspired quote that RFK Junior had said recently: is A sick person only has one wish, and that’s to get healthy.

That’s true.

And it’s true. It’s as if you have all these wishes and dreams, but when you’re sick, your only wish is to get healthy and well again. I just wanted to inspire everybody to think beyond themselves and to really help us promote our medicine because our medicine has such value and we really need to lean into that community aspect of it.

Wow, amazing. That’s powerful. Thank you for sharing that. So we’re going to get ready to wrap up here, provide links if people want to reach out to you, learn a little bit about you. You also wanted to, was it the first five people that follow you or DM you on Instagram that they’ll get a MAHA hat and a sticker? So, can you provide that information and I’ll put it in the description notes to the episode as

Well? Yeah. So I have, again, this is from MAHA and the Mahaaction.com. I think I said .org earlier, excuse me, MAHA action.com. Some of my teammates provided great caps and stickers. So for those of you that are interested, I want to give away some of those goodies. So the first five people, if you want to DM me and follow me on Instagram, give me your address and I will ship you a few hats and stickers.

And just make sure to note on there that you heard this on the Physician Heal Self podcast, so she knows who to send it to. So thank you so much, Dr. Jessica, for sharing your time, your expertise, your knowledge, and experience. I always appreciate you and we will catch up again before our audience. I want to thank you for listening to this episode of Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. Please make sure you share and subscribe to the channel. And until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

The post Part 2: The Future of Naturopathic Medicine and MAHA with Dr. Jessyca Franco-Chavez, NMD appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

Website: www.thehealinghouseconcepts.com, The best way to stay in contact is through @doctorinthehealinghouse and @thehealinghouseconcepts on Instagram, or Dr. Jessyca Franco-Chavez on LinkedIn, regarding my Naturopathic practice and businesses.

Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Consult your doctor for additional guidance.

Podcast Episode 53 Transcript:

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and today I have a special guest, Dr. Jessica Franco Chavez. She’s a naturopathic medical doctor and she is the Chief Medical Officer of the Healing House Concepts. There are many special things about Dr. Jessica. We are colleagues. We went through medical school together, and so I actually am going to bring her on so that she can share a little bit about herself before we proceed to our conversation about the future of naturopathic medicine and the movement to Make America healthy again. So welcome, Dr. Jessica.

Hi. Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, thank you for, I’m really Excited. 

Thank you for taking the time. 

Yeah, absolutely. I am so privileged and honored to be here and sharing information about other ways that naturopathic doctors can be of service. Now in this MAHA movement that we all hopefully have heard about and recognize, I say health doesn’t take a side, so we’re not promoting a slogan of any particular party, but it’s more of awareness and integration of more wellness and natural healing ability and talking about food as medicine and how we can prevent disease and combat some of the large percentages of illnesses that are happening to our people here in America and our children.

My platform has kind of evolved. As Dr. Lara mentioned, we attended naturopathic medical school together at SCNM, now known as Sonora. Although people might recognize that name a bit more, we had a great experience there and integrated our classes well. I was the class president at the time, I think you were the class president of your cohort. We had integrated that, and that really kind of sparked my appreciation for more advocacy, I’ll just say. Listening to people and really having to be bipartisan in a medical school setting, classroom, taking in what people had to say, really trying to reflect and register how I could portray that information to the higher ups, the deans or the president or whomever we were having a discussion with. It really gave me a profound understanding for multiple personalities and multiple avenues of thought.

Then being able to kind of dissect that and break it down and being aiming to be graceful and mindful at the same time that I’m not just representing my opinion, but I am really the spokesperson for a larger body. I soon then started with the Student Government Association, SGA, there at the school. I was lucky enough to go to a DC fly event hosted by ANMP, which is the American Association of Naturopathic Physicians. It’s a yearly legislative effort for lobbying days in the spring. It was a really cool experience then because it was my first time going to DC and having these asks to go into these congressmen and women’s office and have a formal meeting with people that can actually impact change at the federal level. So that really was something that I kind of bit me of, huh, this is interesting.

This is where healthcare and policy meet that fork in the road. Then what does it look like afterward and how can we continue to pursue having a voice and advocating for our medicine? Because our medical history has shown since 1910, Flexner report, Rockefellers, it has been suppressed to a large degree. Within this kind of MAHA structure, I again feel that it has been imbibed, this whole recognition of our medicine. Whether you want to call yourself a MAHA doctor or not, there are very profound similarities when you take the movement, this grassroots movement that was really a slogan and for whatever purposes that parties have, they used it, but it has melded into this more appreciation for prevention, whole health, chronic disease awareness, and food as medicine. Then of course, looking at some of the things that people may recognize in the media right now are the petroleum-based food dyes and all of the things that RFK Junior now is Secretary of Health and Human Services is aiming to reduce the cost burden of these artificial foods, but also on our grander scale, reduce the chronic disease that we see associated with these types of preservative laden foods.

That’s where my story evolved. I went back after we graduated in 2017. I’m from New Mexico, and so I thought, well, of course I’m going back home. I have to serve my people and this is where I belong. But I recognized that the state is not licensed for naturopathic doctors. So for those of you that may be aware, we are licensed in 26 states and territories as of today, but that hasn’t always been the case, right? It’s been state by state. In 2019, I was part of a small group of naturopathic doctors who moved back to New Mexico and they were really excited and up for the challenge of getting us licensed. I was part of that cohort. After a few years here and there doing what we needed to do, talking to our local health and human services, talking to the New Mexico Medical Board, the pharmacy board, chiropractic board, all of the committees, whether it be on the Senate side or the House of Representatives, countless meetings with the attorneys and our lobbyists.

I just, again, this blossomed another understanding of, whoa, this is how complex that legislative effort and politics can be. We got our state licensed with a robust scope of practice as a Naturopathic Practice Act bill in 2019 under the New Mexico Medical Board. That was a game changer for all of us. There were a few of us in the state, and now to date, there are 33 and I think we’d have a lot bigger of a population of naturopathic doctors here. But the COVID era slowed us down for obvious reasons and transition efforts and advocating and whatnot. Soon after that, however, we also became credentialed for Medicaid, which is particularly important in a rural state like ours. That took a while to do, but we got that under our belt. And so obviously able to serve our Medicaid population of patients.

We are one of only five states that are licensed in naturopathic medicine that actually have credentialing for Medicaid. This past DC fly that was one of our asks is to say, Hey, in the states and territories that we are licensed, please, please help us serve our people. Because one of the top priorities of the MAHA Commission executive order signed by President Trump in February of this year was to address the primary healthcare practitioner shortage. To help fulfill these initiatives and these pillars of health, we obviously need the population that microcosm from that federal initiative to be able to serve these people, our people, the population. That was one of the asks, and it was beautifully aligned that we centered it around, ‘Hey, if we’re aiming as America to help propel this MAHA – Make America Healthy Again initiative, then we absolutely need help.’

Naturopathic doctors should be at the forefront. As chronic disease experts, we offer the most robust and highest level of clinical nutrition hours. So we take plus or minus, depending on the school, right? 220 clinical nutrition hours and other, I’m sorry, other MDs, DOs or nurse practitioners. MDs and DOs, I think take zero to 10, and then nurse practitioners can take somewhere around 70 to 80. And so of course, that still varies right from wherever you come from. However, the key takeaway is that we are truly the experts in clinical nutrition, and we should have a seat at the table when it comes to recognizing the impact of these federal initiatives and executive orders. That just again propelled me into serving my people here in New Mexico. I started the Healing House of New Mexico Wellness Center, and it was a five-acre healing facility.

I had everything from a food medicine cafe to a medical apparel store, a big apothecary with all kinds of herbs and oils from New Mexico, and local honeys and things that people would bring and we would sell altogether. Then, of course, I had my naturopathic medical practice, so I saw a lot of patients just as a primary care practitioner. That was challenging because you want to see, I don’t know if you’ve had this fork in the road of who you’re trying to serve and how you’re trying to do it and what you want to focus on. To be honest, generally, I have the utmost respect for gps, general practitioners or doctors who see everything in everybody. In my aim to do that, I started to kind of understand, okay, I need to step back and I need to really get concentric on what it is.

I mostly resonate with the idea that I would love to stitch everybody up and do all these other things, but it was taking a lot of time and energy. That was a recognition and realization the first time around. I was the chief medical officer of over 21 practitioners. So I had every practitioner imaginable under the healing house, and everybody had their room and focus. Some were master fire Reiki practitioners, while others were nurse practitioners. We’d have gong ceremonies, we’d have yoga therapy sessions. We had a Himalayan salt therapy room, and we shipped over 4,000 pounds of Himalayan salt from Pakistan. My husband built a beautiful cave out of Himalayan salt, and this was a kind of craze in early 2018. So, yeah, we created this beautiful complex where people could come and stay. I would have patients coming in and staying with us for anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks. We just really kind of give them a schedule of what their daily, they’d go in and they’d see me in the morning, and then they’d do yoga in the afternoon, and then we would create a whole menu. So I created everybody’s menu for them, food, medicine, so wild, whimsical foods, but it was all with the holistic approach in mind.

Some would be vegan. So we catered to them in that regard, and we had a great run. Then we sold the medical center during COVID. That was a challenging time. But nonetheless, the silver lining is that we moved closer to the city. Now we’re in Corrales, New Mexico, and that’s kind of the green belt of Albuquerque. Albuquerque is our major city here in New Mexico, and it’s a farming community. I always joke that there are a lot of dirt roads, but the main paved road is still 30 miles an hour, because we have horses that share the road with vehicles. So it’s a really great place to serve people. This is where we were meant to be all along. We bought another fairly large property, and we just had my practice, my office building, completely rehabbed, a 200-year-old Adobe.

The walls were crumbling off, and this is where I’m sitting. I have a couple of exam rooms and an apothecary again, and then another couple of practitioners working here as well. That’s what I’ve been working on over the last couple of years on the personal front. But on the advocacy front, about a year and a half ago, I had an intuitive dream and thought come into my mind, and it was like, ‘You need to reach out and figure out what RFK Junior is doing.’ And this was out of the blue. I mean, I had known about him. I gained a thorough understanding of environmental policy. He was the one who had sued Monsanto, and I really had an affinity for some of the understanding he had around autism and autism research and the autism community, specifically guided by moms, because I have a couple of family members who have autism that they’re living with. That was something that I was really aiming to understand a little bit more, and kind of see what about now.

Dr. Jessica, with the moms and I, work with this population as well. What was their experience when they noticed a change in their child? Were they able to identify? Yeah, it was after getting this round of vaccines that I noticed a change in my child.

Yeah. From some of the autism networks and the founders of these organizations, hundreds of families are part of their community, and the mainframe story unfolds within hours to the next day. My child was no longer my child. There was a drastic shift. The moms are like, Don’t question us. We know our child better than anybody. We saw this drastic change and shift going from being maybe talking, depending on if it was a toddler, if it was an older child, talking to completely nonverbal within hours, and then having irrational emotions and tantrums and screaming fits. It was something we now know there’s this neuroinflammation that needs to be studied a little bit more and to kind of highlight what HHS is aiming to do. His RFK Junior really has had the background to explore this.

So he’s saying, Hey, because we have all these questions, we need to start investigating and trying to help frame some of these answers. If we need to start studying, and it’s not just, I think he gets pigeonhole into, oh, it’s just vaccines, vaccines. Now, it can be many things. He has mentioned that there are many other environmental factors, causative factors, and inflammatory factors that may be contributing to the child’s methylation or detoxification issue, and they’re unable to absorb everything that’s entering their body. Maybe it’s the food, maybe it’s the quality of food. Maybe they’re living in a home that has some type of mold or a perpetuating environmental toxin. He’s saying, Hey, well, if we don’t know, and we’re seeing the rise of autism. So in the 1950s, 1960s, unfortunately, we have to do retrospective studies to try to understand what the percentages were back then, because we didn’t have the DSM-III that categorizes clinical autism until the 1980s.

In these retrospective studies that they’ve done with what we have today, they say two to four children out of every 10,000 children had autism back then. Well now as of 2025, it’s one in 31 children in the United States who has autism. I like to highlight California because, as California goes, so goes the United States, one in 12.5 male children have been diagnosed with autism. And so looking at the profound incidents, you have to consider what we are paying attention to and what are we not paying attention to? If vaccines need to be studied a little bit more and we need to give effort and time and attention to a potential causative factor for some children, then that’s what we need to do. And I’m all for that. People should have the choice, in my opinion, as long as there’s true informed consent that we can stand by and that we trust our agency to be really doing the double-blind placebo controlled studies, then let’s do what we can to help our healthcare system along. Because right now it’s not there.

It’s not there. Unfortunately, parents are not getting true informed consent at all. It’s just, this is a vaccine schedule. Your child is two months, we’re going to pump them with these vaccines. And that’s it. And it’s disturbing to me because we know as naturopathic medical doctors in our training, we did learn all of these things. We learned what true informed consent entails and what it comprises. And there is no medical clinic out there that’s doing that. As a mom, when I first went to their office, they never gave me consent. My oldest daughter is 15. I was already informed and educated before I came in. I knew what my decision was going to be, and my decision was going to be, I’m waiving all vaccines, examine my child, just do the wellness check. Most parents don’t take the time to inform themselves. More parents are educating themselves and reading on what are the ingredients, what are the potential effects of it? And the doctor, the pediatrician, was really nice. After the first couple of visits, she said, absolutely, we’ll respect your choices.

They made me sign a document stating that I understood the risks I was taking by not giving her a vaccine. So then why don’t doctors do the same on the flip side and say, these are the vaccines they’re getting? Here’s the ingredients, here’s the inserts, here’s the potential side effects, risks and so forth. They don’t because they know that their patients are probably going to be freaked out and not do it. I think as naturopathic doctors, we are the experts in lifestyle medicine that we have a lot of training, a lot of education on how to raise healthy children. When I get parents in my office who are choosing not to vaccinate their children, I support them. Then at the same time, we talk about the importance of how important is it for them to eat a healthy diet for the mom to nurse, because we know that breast milk is going to be, that is where they’re going to develop their immune system the best way, and they’re going to develop a lot more, just better overall.

They must also understand not to introduce food coloring and processed foods to their child’s diet. If you start from the beginning with a clean slate, they’ll develop healthy behaviors and patterns as they become adults, and they’ll understand why they eat this way. One of the things that I’m really excited about this movement, most people who know me would think that it’s the vaccine part, which it is, but it’s cleaning up our food. It’s so important that we have real food. I’m sure you’re aware of this. You hear it from your patients or other people, but we have a patient here in the country who can’t have gluten, dairy, or anything else. They’re very sensitive. They have all these side effects from what the foods they eat. Then they go to Italy and they eat bread and pasta and all the pastries, and they have no side effects of the food they’re eating.

The moment they arrive back to the country, they’re at it again. They’re experiencing bloating, gas, diarrhea, and so forth. There is definitely something that is really off with our food here, the quality of our soil, our air, our food, what’s allowed in our food. I’m excited about the legislative changes that are going to come, and we’ve started already to see some of those, the legislation come through of getting rid of the food dies. But what I hear Dr. Jessica is when it comes to implementation, how realistic and at what pace do we anticipate seeing that? Have you gotten any perspective on your experiences working at the legislative level?

Yes, so I started to give a backstory of how I’m connected to the MAHA movement.

I started working with RFK Junior about a year ago, and I was initially involved in grassroots efforts. What can we do in New Mexico to support this independent candidate? I’ve never been in that political realm where I’m like, oh, I’m Republican or I’m Democrat or I’m this or I’m that. I’ve always been very open-minded and self-reliant on what makes sense to me at that time. But knowing him and his history, I thought, okay, I need to explore this. I’m having this intuitive pool. So I started doing all of this data analysis and ballot access stuff in New Mexico, and then soon after, they interviewed and they wanted to hire me as a New Mexico director. I was like, okay, of course I’ll do it. I’m already kind of engaged. I’ve started this movement here in New Mexico just by happenstance. Then they interviewed me for a regional position.

I became the Southwest director for the Kennedy campaign, the Team Kennedy campaign. That’s when I really started to be involved and have weekly meetings with the higher-ups and RFK Junior would come on these meetings. It was just a whole other understanding of how we get from point A to point B with a political candidate and him being on the more understanding functional medicine, preventative side. There was a naturopathic thread in there, and we ended up hosting him here in New Mexico for his Recovering America premier. It was this last July of 2024, and it was on his personal experience with addiction. It’s on YouTube. It’s a great documentary for those who are interested in looking at it. But really what the highlight was for me is that when I presented and I was there during that whole thing and I presented and we were talking about healing farms, and that’s really where he’s going at it with this whole addiction.

Addiction has taken over so many of our people in our communities and on a daily basis, I can’t remember the number, but the numbers are crazy, and these are things that can be prevented. He’s like, if we have these healing farms and we’re able to integrate these people into a community that is a way of life. They’re working on the farm, cleaning up their act in food, social life, and all these aspects. It makes sense to have these in rural America and to explore whether this can become a staple. Well, huh, interesting. My healing Center was very focused on that. We had grown our own herbs and food and had our food medicine cafe. That spoke dear and near to my heart. It’s kind of like before MAHA had a name, we had already begun these conversations about Maha at this level.

And so that’s where my effort or efforts at the legislative level can be seen through MAHA. To kind of go back around to your question, the executive orders that President Trump put together really highlight what that platform and commission embodies, and it is chronic disease prevention, having a comprehensive strategy, what they have put in place. It’s not just a matter of, ‘ Okay, let’s see what can happen. ‘ No, they have strict assessments that are ongoing a hundred days for what it’s looking like for children in their schools and their school lunches. Then at 180 days, just about September, which people may have heard in the media, that’s where they really want to have a strong hold on what the autism spectrum looks like from a, not just preventative standpoint, but from the causative factor standpoint and being able have a little bit more knowledge and understanding to speak on the scientific method and scientific approach of why we’re seeing such astronomical percentage growth in autism yearly.

They’re putting all of these together, but really within this whole framework of HHS, they’ve created what’s called AHA. And it’s the administration for a Healthy America. This agency along with C-D-C-N-I-H-F-D-A, and of course RRFK Junior, who is kind of the ringleader of all of it, they’re charging forth with making sure that these pillars of health are enforced and followed through by a MAHA caucus. And the Maha Caucus was just announced recently by Senator Marshall, and I believe there’s five senators and about 12 House of Representatives that are collaborating on this. They’re really in charge of ensuring that all of this information flows from federal to state to other agencies, empowering others, and mobilizing legislative priorities across various health agencies. That’s kind of how we’re going to ensure that some of these things can happen and that we are being as advantageous and proactive as possible in making sure that we are structured enough so that these things can happen at the micro levels of government and the micro levels of community because we, the people have a voice and we can make change and we can talk to our patients.

We’re just seeing this ripple effect of understanding. Anybody who goes into such a high-level position or who has that level of responsibility, it’s hard to criticize. You don’t know all of the other behind-the-scenes things that are happening and really who has their hand in a controlling factor of it. However, I do believe that we’ve made significant progress thus far. And even with the petroleum-based synthetic food dyes that Dr. Marque had announced a couple of weeks ago, by 2026, there will be five or six food dyes that will hopefully be completely removed from some of the American food diet.

So will these diets be completely illegal for manufacturers to use in their products that make, is that the goal that’s making it like you can’t even use this?

Then, of course, there’s the who’s overseeing that. You’re absolutely right when there’s a change; anytime we want to make a change, it does have to happen at the legislative political level. That’s where you make an impact for everyone in a positive or negative way. We’re not always careful, but creating change is a very involved process. So you have these leaders at the top making decisions, signing policies that they’re moving these, they’re creating these changes, but it takes time and it’s a process of getting things properly through. What are some of the things that you’re seeing Robert F. Kennedy getting pushback on? I’m sure there are many things he gained, pushed back and challenged on because he came in with a list of things he wants to do that we’re in agreement with. And of course, we know that there’s going to be the opposition, right, the adversity, the challenges that he has to fight through. What are some of the top things that you’re seeing that he’s struggling to get his points across?

He has to be very neutral when he’s explaining certain things. I know he’s had data on vaccine injury. I think the COVID vaccine has been kind of a bone of contention or confusion in the nation and throughout the media, and whether you believe whoever spins it a certain way based on their agenda for your perspective. But I do think that he has had the most ridicule about the COVID vaccination to date. He was kind of one of the ones in the beginning saying, Hey, I’ve seen some of the VAs reporting and the adverse reactions and deaths that I’m hearing from people in my cohort, and this is of concern. That’s something that even when he was vying for the position and he was going through all of the committee hearings and whatnot, he had to play it safe. I do know that more evidence and research are going to be coming out in the near future, as it’s already available. It’s so astounding. I think he has to be a little bit conservative on that approach, just so that he doesn’t turn people off and that he can just kind of see himself in a way where he’s starting to be looked at as an authority and not as somebody that’s just still holding that conspiracy theory flag.

Now, if we have so many doctors and scientists that are speaking up, at least on social media platforms, whether it’s on podcasts or YouTube, and of course all the other platforms, I hear so many of these experts like doctors who are very well versed in immunology and even vaccine production, and they’ve seen the trend of what it caused. Are any of these doctors making these legislative calls? Are they making themselves known to these politicians and explain, I know there are some, but are there enough people that are saying, this is what we’re seeing clinically or in labs, there’s a correlation here that should be looked into and do more research, have more people come forward on the political aspect?

That’s a good question. So he has different kinds of levels of his supportive network and group and the people that have been appointed to HHS, of course, a little bit more well-known like Dr. Barria and Dr. Oz for CMS. And Dr. Barrio was one of the, I guess it would be called founders of that declaration during COVID where he was saying, Hey, the Barrington Declaration that, Hey, we deserve to have a little bit more understanding before you roll out these different levels of pharmaceuticals, whether it be vaccines or whatever the approach may be. We need a little bit more informed consent and safety provisions. He has been kind of highlighted since the beginning as one of the people who were standing behind the curtain, saying, wait a second, is this safe? Is this safe? Is this safe? So now it was great to see that he got appointed and the other couple that are kind of more behind the scenes but are still really working on the clinical aspect of it, Dr. Robert Malone.

He was one of, for all intents and purposes, one of the inventors of the mRNA technology. And so he is indeed one of the dear advisors to RFK Junior and is ensuring that things are brought to light in a certain way. Then Dr. Ryan Cole was really one of the first physicians doing the autopsy reports after COVID deaths and kind of seeing there’s some oddities and curiosities that we’re seeing that just don’t line up. So of course, all of these people, and then Dr. Peter McCullough, he is one of, I think, the world-renowned when it comes to cardiac research and Radiology. 

Yes, exactly. And in Texas. So, his chief researcher is always bringing new research and saying, Hey, we need to look at this. We need to look at that. So they’re at the forefront. I know for a fact that they’re all collaborating and making sure that all of this from whatever level of government, even if it’s universities, right, because the NIH and the funding and the grants, and most universities do most of our research, that they’re all in talks and making sure that we’re not missing anything when it comes to a lone scientist or doctor in the corner researching something and then it not being able to be brought to light. So I think it’s a more comfortable environment for being able to speak to the science, whether science should be debated and deliberated. If it’s repeatable, then that’s where I think HHS is really trying to change that people can have in Switzerland, let’s just say, they come up with a curious signaling that is something that needs to be researched more, maybe because it could cause harm.

All of these signals in the scientific community, just because some community discovers it, the scientific community doesn’t, HHS and FDA and NIH, and all of them don’t just need to sign off on it. They need to actually do reproducible, repeatable research within their own environment. If that can be done and we can start assessing the efficacy and safety, then we go. That’s where the scientific method and the standard of science comes, and people can debate and deliberate and question, and science has always been founded on questioning. You should question it, right? You should be able to think it through and question it. That’s how we learn, that’s how we collaborate, that’s how we get better. I just hope that people can reflect and step back and say, Hey, instead of shaming it like, oh, this is taking too long, or It’s already been FDA approved. Why would you go back? Well, we have to go back. Some of these studies weren’t ever placebo-controlled, or maybe the placebo itself was tainted in some way. And so, again, being able to go back in time, we need to ensure that the products we put out are the safest and the best that we can guarantee. And we’ve done everything that we know how to do.

I think we’ll wrap up this episode, and we’ll continue the conversation in the next one. However, what is truly necessary is the restoration of the integrity of these scientific institutions. Suppose we do not restore that integrity, a lot of Americans. In that case, a lot of people all over the world are not going to be trusting of our political, our governments, our scientific community, our medical community, because there’s been, trust has been shattered amongst people, especially in the last five years. By establishing these processes in place and ensuring the integrity of the research is maintained, they’re conducting the research and reproducing it to verify its safety and effectiveness. This is really the bottom line: is this safe? Because if it’s not effective, but it’s not going to hurt me, I’m willing to try it, but if it’s going to hurt me and it’s not safe, then so we need to go back to the priority is this product or therapeutic safe for us to provide it to all people who might be in need of it.

So, Dr. Jessica, thank you for this segment of the conversation. We’re going to continue the conversation with Dr. Jessica, as it relates to the future of naturopathic medicine and the Maha movement. So, thank you for listening to this episode. Until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website at raicesndmedcenter.com. Until next time, be blessed.

The post The Future of Naturopathic Medicine & MAHA w/ Dr. Jessyca Franco-Chavez, NMD Pt 1 of 2 appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Speak to your doctor for further guidance.

Podcast Episode 52 Transcript: The Power of Spiritual Authenticity and Emotional Healing

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I am your host, Dr. Ana Llara.This is episode 52. Guys, it’s been a whole year of recording episodes, and it’s been a fun and a pleasure to share information. In this conversation, we’re going to keep it very real. 

I’m going to really try to pretend that you’re right in front of me and we’re just having this conversation today. I want to discuss the power of authenticity and its implications for our spiritual, physical, mental, and emotional lives, and what sparked this conversation. I’d like to start by sharing a story that happened to me this past weekend, as I’m recording this. It’s Tuesday, April 29th and over the weekend I was at a naturopathic medical conference and this is a group of people that we have something in common, something alike.

It’s a great group, and the information being shared is excellent at the conference. The first two days, guys, I found myself feeling depleted; something was just sucking the life force out of me in this room. I would get home after each day on those first two days, just exhausted, not caring to eat, just wanting to lay down and sleep, and I did, but it was a disturbed I couldn’t rest. I was disturbed in sleep. On Sunday, I wake up to attend the third day of this conference, and I think to myself, Lord, what’s going on with me? Why does this happen to me? Some of you listening to this might relate to this. There’s a whole talk about highly sensitive people and people who are introverted. Their social battery is drained when they’re out with large groups of people, but this doesn’t happen all the time in every social setting.

So here I am, having this conversation with God, asking what and why. Why is it that I cannot be around large groups of people? I feel depleted afterwards. I have to sleep. It doesn’t matter if it was after church, I would have to go home and sleep for two to three hours every Sunday. Or, if I’m at a conference or a specific group gathering, I have to go home and recharge my batteries. Now, mind you, I can go hiking in the desert for hours in the heat and be energized by it all. I can go to the gym and do a killer workout, walk out feeling on top of the world, full of energy, and physically and mentally feeling great. But here I am in a group of people. The topics are interesting. No one’s doing anything eventful there that’s causing any harm, but my body just isn’t liking it.

On that Sunday, I’m having this conversation with God in the morning, and I’m like, okay, I am going to sit myself in the very back as far as I can, and the very back of a corner away from everyone else. I noticed that on that day it wasn’t as bad, right? My energy was a little higher. I also did what I could to seclude myself from the group during breaks and lunch to avoid interacting with so many people. I noticed that my energy was a little bit better on Sunday. The next day I had to spend all my Monday. Thank God my assistant reminded me like, Hey, remember the next day after a conference, just block your schedule because you’re always exhausted. My Monday was off, and I slept. I’m not going to have any shame in saying this.

I slept almost all day on Monday. That was yesterday, and I really needed that. I love my sleep, and I recharged myself. I purged myself of whatever was going on, but I spent time with the Lord asking Him, ‘What is it about these social environments?’ I enjoy interacting with people. I’m not antisocial. I’m not afraid to speak and engage with others, but why is it that in some environments I’m depleted? Maybe you’re listening to this and thinking, ‘ Me too. ‘ That’s me. Why is it? I want to discuss this because several of my patients, as well as many of you listening, may relate to this, and it has nothing to do with being introverted or extroverted. It has to do with your nervous system. I also believe, because that’s what the Lord was really pouring into me, that God designed us to be a certain way.

If you look back at the stories of prophets in the Bible, many of these prophets didn’t necessarily enjoy being around large crowds. Look at the story of Elijah. He would run off away from everyone into the mountains. He wanted to seclude himself from everyone because he just wanted to hear God’s voice. I find that people who have a true prophetic gift often enjoy being alone, not because they’re lonely; actually, they feel more connected when they’re alone because they’re connected to the Spirit of the Lord. They’re connected to Holy Spirit and they’re fulfilled and satisfied with his presence. Now, some of us have very sensitive nervous systems. People call it intuition, whatever. I think we have sensitive nervous systems and our soul picks up as well when someone is being fake, when someone’s not authentic and it’s subtle cues of that person, maybe something they’re thinking or they’re feeling about you and you’re picking up on that energy that person is putting out, but your mind is trying to make sense of it and it’s not quite registering, you’re not able to make sense.

It takes a lot of energy for your nervous system to try to figure out what I always say; your nervous system is always trying to figure out, ‘Am I safe?’ Am I not safe? Even if there’s no violence or anything, it’s just a social interaction you’re having with someone. The safety part that comes into this conversation is, am I safe to be myself in this moment? Is it safe for me to express myself as I please? Of course, being respectful, right? I’m not talking extremes here. Can I express my thoughts and emotions in this situation? Can I be myself, or am I too much for that person that they’ll think I’m too much, I’m too intense, or that I’m not good enough for them? These processes are all happening very quickly in our brains and nervous system, and they require a lot of energy.

Our brain, our nervous system in general, just takes up a lot of energy for it to function when we have this extra emotional information to process these unseen, unheard conversations that people are having that are not telling you, but they’re there. Some of us are feelers and we feel what you’re thinking. I can tell you, I’ve been to church many times where someone will hug me and say hi and do all that stuff, but I know they don’t like me. I know they don’t like me and maybe they’re jealous or they find me annoying or they think I’m a know it all. Whatever it is, I can sense your thoughts and emotions. That’s some of you feel people’s thoughts and you feel their emotions, but they’re not intelligent to where you’re able to make sense of it. It’s very obscure, it’s not clear.

You’re trying to make sense of it. This is why some of us are drained to being around, excuse my language, but we don’t like being around fake ass people. We don’t because if I cannot be who I am, because I don’t want to overwhelm you, I don’t want to make you feel less of, I don’t want to offend you or whatever it is, even if I am going about it the right way, it takes a lot of energy on my part to try to dilute myself so I can fit your mold of what you think I should be like. And that’s very exhausting. As a woman, I’ll tell you, especially in church environments, I keep going to the Lord and saying, ‘God, you told me to be a doctor.’ Did I not hear you right? You told me, go help my people this way and go do that and go do this.

Was that not you? Am I wrong? Because the church world is making me feel whether it’s indirect or not, that I’m wrong for the choices that I’ve made to become a doctor, to have a business, to do these things that I need to make everyone else a priority, but these things and so authenticity, what is it more importantly, this authenticity we have to be living honestly before God? First and foremost, my power of being authentic is I am being myself. Am I being honest with God more than anyone else? I’ve told this to people before. As I went through my healing journey, I found myself telling my doctor at the time, who was amazing. She’s an amazing doctor. I said, you know what? If I cannot be myself in any environment, just be authentic, then what’s the point to living if I have to put a mask on to be a certain person, put a different mask with a different group of people?

What was happening in this moment at the conference was that, although we share the same profession and similar values in medicine and healthcare, this group is very unique. We are focused on the foundations of natural medicine, the vitalistic aspect, which is true to the medicine. There was a part of me that I did not feel resonated with. It wasn’t anything that anyone did; it’s just that within me, I did not fit into everything they were saying. There was a sense of holding back on speaking because I didn’t want to offend anyone. I’m keeping myself small, invisible, right? Without realizing it, I find myself wanting to say and share things that I know have power and meaning. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a desire to say them. So, where in your life are you holding yourself back from being authentic out of the fear that you’re going to offend someone, or they’re going to accuse you of something, or that they’re going to think you’re too much, or you’re not good enough?

These are things that we should start reflecting on. I want to share a scripture because God desires the truth in our innermost being to come out. So in Psalms 51:6, David says, Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts and in the hidden part, you will make me to know wisdom. One of the things I admired about David was his genuine and authentic approach to his Psalms. He was pouring his heart out to God, not seeking to perform, not because he was perfect, but because he was raw, broken, and honest. I love that. I find that when I’m around people like my patients are, they’re raw, they’re broken, and they’re honest and they’re vulnerable, and they’re putting it all at the table because they want help. Needless to say, when I have long days in my clinic, dealing with challenging cases, or when people share and pour out their hearts, their traumas, and their hurts, I am not depleted.

My energy’s okay because we were able to have an honest conversation with each other. If you’re my patient and you’re listening to this, you know that I have most likely shared some of my hurts and my pains with you. The reason I do that is not to take away from your experience. I want you to see the human in me. That’s something that in medical school they tell you not to do. They advise you not to disclose your personal information to your patient. They discuss setting very rigid guidelines and boundaries between you and your patient. Then, how does a physician build trust? How do they create an environment of safety and let the patient know that I understand where they’re coming from? I’m not perfect. I am not perfect, just like you, and I’m an imperfect person.

I’m an imperfect doctor and I’m working on me and I’m helping you work on you. Maybe I’m several notches up in the ladder of healing and I’m just trying to give you my hand to pull you up so that you can be where I’m at. That’s a very different approach in medicine that you don’t see. Unfortunately, medical doctors put themselves on this pedestal like a God. They know better than anyone. This is why I don’t like it when doctors tell their patients, If you don’t do this treatment, you have six months to live. Who are you, sir or ma’am, to say to another human when their life is going to end? You’re not God. No matter how brilliant you are as a doctor or as a scientist or whatever career you have, you are not God and you do not have the ultimate decision in someone’s life and outcome.

The same thing in churches. We all, not me, but a lot of people, pretend like they have this perfect walk. And let’s be honest. I know you’re in traffic, driving angry, cursing at the person in front of you. It’s okay. I won’t judge you for it. Some people will. I’ve had patients in my clinic who are in so much pain and they’re cursing up a storm. Then at some point, the patient will apologize and say, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t be cussing so much. I’ll say, why not? You’re in pain. You’re frustrated. You haven’t been heard. You haven’t been provided any solutions to your problems. You have every right to be angry. So what if you cut him in my presence? I’m not offended by that and their expression of me sharing that I’m not offended and I’m not judging them because they decided to throw the f-bomb in front of me. That’s how they authentically feel. Now I know I get to see the internal part of who they are and how they truly feel in that moment. And I’d rather they express their emotions and hold them inside. They’re not projecting their emotions or their cursing towards me. I don’t take it personally.

What if we had the ability to sit with people who are having the raw experience and brokenness as David did, and they’re being honest? What’s wrong with that? It’s a reflection of the power in authenticity and the freedom that comes with being authentic. You don’t have to worry about which mask to put on when you enter a particular environment. I tell my patients, and I tell my friends and anyone I meet, the way I’m talking to you right here is the way I talk to everyone. I just want to be myself in different settings. It’s easier for me. Sometimes I am a little naive and I go into an environment thinking that I can be myself and everyone else is being themselves and I’m hit with this wall of reality that no, everyone has a front.

I could feel that, and it’s uncomfortable. So I’d rather be alone on top of a mountain where I’m not feeling that ickiness. In our Christian walk, Jesus didn’t expect us to be perfect. He’s not expecting perfection out of us. When Jesus came, he came to the imperfect, to the broken, to the sick. He wants us to be honest with him. He wants us to be genuine with him, and God is not going to be impressed by our highlights or all the good things we’re doing. He’s impressed when we can be honest with him about, I’m angry. I am so angry at this situation. He’ll be the first to tell you, feel it, and let it go. Surrender it. But you’ve got to feel it. A pet peeve of mine is when I hear people say, ‘Ignore your feelings and emotions; just don’t listen to them.’ They’re oftentimes misleading. They can be misleading. They’re not always misleading. God gave us emotions and feelings for a reason. We have to use our intelligence to discern, Why am I feeling that way? Just like I did this weekend at my conference? Why am I feeling this way? There’s no parent threat. No one’s doing anything to me. Why am I feeling this way? What is it that I’m picking up and sensing? Lord, help me.

We need to be able to filter through what process, the feeling that comes up, and not avoid it. If anything, I tell people, feel the emotion, feel the feeling. Ask God to help you discern where this is coming from and what to do with it. He’s going to walk you through that feeling. If you’re feeling grief and you feel like crying, cry and cry your way through that grief, not over the grief, not around the grief, not suppress the grief, not bury the grief. You walk through the grief itself. You walk through the anger, you walk through the emotion of sadness or joy, whatever it is. In my studies and education, one thing I’ve learned from examining the anatomy and physiology of the brain, as well as its mental and emotional aspects, is that when we suppress one emotion, we suppress them all.

The amygdala, which perceives emotions, is not selective. If you are sad and grieving and you don’t want to feel the pain of sadness and grief and you suppress that by running around and keeping yourself busy and keeping yourself distracted, that was me keeping myself distracted from feeling the sadness, feeling the emotions. You’re going to suppress all of them, even the good ones. If you suppress all the emotions, how are you going to feel the presence of God? How are you going to feel his joy and love and all of those good feelings? You can’t because you’re they’re all suppressed. So now you’re pretending. You’re pretending to be happy through the grief. Don’t get me wrong, there will be moments when you experience happiness, but when sadness comes along, acknowledge it. Walk yourself through that. Get through it, not trying to suppress it.

I think people need to be very cautious about sharing with others how they suppress their feelings and emotions. Instead, discern them, feel them and discern them. Try to understand. Sometimes, there is no logic to it, and you let those go. Sometimes there is logic to it and you take it up and you do something with it. But we have a culture that we’ve been told to suppress, suppress, suppress. Then we have this extreme side of feel it all and stay in your feelings. Well, no, you don’t want to do that either. We want to move through it. We want to be able to move through those emotions and feelings, rather than getting stuck in them. That’s the problem. That’s the extreme right of if you don’t process things well, you will get stuck in that anger. You will get stuck in depression, you’ll get stuck in sadness, and you won’t be able to move past that and not really fully, authentically enjoying your life because you’re stuck and nobody likes to get stuck. So Jesus, when we look at his life, Jesus never wore a mask. He never pretended that something was okay when it wasn’t.

He spoke with grace and he spoke with truth. I’ll be honest, I’m still learning to speak with grace. I am heavy on the truth and I’m learning to speak with grace as many people are. But Jesus, he ate with sinners. He wept openly. He cried. He mourned the loss. He also flipped tables out of anger of righteous anger when he saw in injustice, and he spent hours alone with his father. There’s nothing wrong with taking time to be alone with the Father and have God show you what is it that you need to know. What’s the next move? What’s the next step? What do I need to do? Tell me about me. That’s an authentic conversation. Look, I didn’t grow up in church. I don’t attend church, but I know how to have a relationship with God. Well, and my conversations with God are no different than this conversation.

Often, we’re like, ‘ Oh, Lord Jesus, please. ‘ And we’re praying to a God that’s distant, not realizing that God is here present within the inside of us in our presence, and we’re praying to someone like they’re distant and he’s sitting here, talk to him like He’s sitting here. God, what should I do in this situation? I feel stuck. I help me guide me. You don’t need to pray and make it a performance. God doesn’t want that. He knows when you’re being sincere in your heart. In Matthew 11:28, it is one of the most beautiful invitations in Scripture. It says, come to me all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. God himself is saying, come to me. Are you weary and burdened like I was this weekend? I was dying guys. I thought, what is wrong with me? Lord?

Why can’t I keep my eyes open? I felt like I was a hundred years old nodding my head, and he gave me rest and he had to reset my nervous system, and I couldn’t think clearly until it was all done. Then he poured into me and showed me why God doesn’t tell you. Go fix yourself and then come back when you’re better. No, he wants you to come to him when you’re burdened and weary. He says, Come as you are. That is the true power of being authentic. He’s saying, Come as you are. It can’t get any more real like that. He’s not expecting you to stop doing drugs. Stop drinking. Stop sleeping around. Stop cussing. Clean up your act. Get your act together, right? He’s not expecting for any of that. He’s saying, just come to me as you are.

Let me pick up your burden. Let me lighten that burden for you. Fine rest in me. I will restore your soul and I will show you who you are. That’s where repentance comes. When we’re in his presence. We no longer want the old self. I don’t want to pretend I’m okay when I’m not okay. When people ask me, how are you doing? And I’m not doing okay, but let’s keep the conversation on something else. If it’s not pertinent, if it’s not the appropriate time to have that conversation right now. But I can still say I’m not feeling well.

The heartbreak of this spiritual authenticity is coming to God without pretense, knowing that He already sees, and He sees everything. He sees everything: your brokenness, your mistakes, your fault, all of it. He sees it all. You can just lay all of that, those expectations that you think God has of you or other people have of you, and God sees it and he still loves you that way. That is the reality: God still loves you the way you are, even through your sin, even through your imperfections. He still loves you. Just like a parent, I always tell my daughters that they don’t have to perform for me. They don’t have to do anything to deserve my love. They had my love from the moment they were in my womb and I held them and I looked into their little eyes.

They had my love. It’s given. It’s not something they earn, not something they have to deserve to have. They have it. And yeah, there might be situations that they do things that upset me, but I still love them no matter what. And God is the same way, even greater than that, his grace in his mercy supersedes the grace and mercy that any human can give you. He sees you for who you are and he still loves you that way. This is what has helped me get through my life. I tell this to my patients, especially young people. I tell him, Look, if there’s one thing you can learn from me today, just take this one thing. That’s the same for you listening to this conversation. That is that no matter who you are, no matter how rich or poor, how beautiful you are, how talented and skilled, it doesn’t matter who you are, what age, what you’ve accomplished in life, you will never, ever, ever please all people in your life.

You just can’t. It’s not possible. There’s something you’re going to do or say or not do or say that will offend someone and will upset them, even if that wasn’t your intention. Because you can be mindful of what comes out of your mouth and how you say it, how you communicate it, and say it very kind and just with poise, right? And grace. People can still take that statement the wrong way. It’s none of your business how they interpret what you said. It’s none of your business how they receive that message. If you did your due diligence and delivered that message with grace and they’re upset about it, there’s nothing you can do about it. You just got to let it go. Let them feel that way and think that way about you.

We were not designed to please other humans, nor were we designed for other humans to please us; instead, we were designed to please God. All he wants is for us to be authentic with him and to walk with him and come to him when we need help and give him our gratitude, not just when we need his help, but show gratitude of that. There is a cost of hiding behind a mask, especially in our faith. It’s going to cost us intimacy with God and with others. Authentic intimacy, really getting to know people for who they are without judgment. The cost of hiding also leads people to deeper sin. When you think of Genesis, where Adam and Eve sinned, what did they do? They hid from God. Why did they hide? Because they were ashamed, they were naked.

Shame will often tell us to cover up and hide. That’s the price of hiding, of not being authentic. I’m not telling you to go and tell everyone about your business. I’m not in that belief camp either. If you’re going to share anything about yourself that’s deep, hurtful, or painful, you want to use discretion about who you’re sharing this information with. Even church people, I’m going to tell you that, because some people just love to gossip and run their mouths, telling everyone else your business. I’m not okay with that. Just because you’re in an environment that you assume that people would be respectful of your privacy and would give you grace and would do all those nice things, they’re human. You still have to use discretion with who you’re going to share these things that you’re ashamed of, that you’re covering.

Find someone who is safe, find someone who’s trustworthy, and more importantly, someone who can actually help you, who can guide you through that. Don’t just say it to say it. Say it to someone who shares these things with someone who’s able to help you get through that, right? So, it is a very powerful thing. This authenticity and community are where I find the struggle that I know from the book of James, James 5:16, which tells us to confess our sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.

But I will say as a precaution, to be careful what you are confessing to whom even in a church setting, I have seen people who are not respectful of people’s privacy. There is power in this vulnerability, especially when it’s done with the right people in the right setting. All right, man. So this living authentically is a process for some people. I really think that the reason many people are not willing or able to is because they still have a lot of healing to do for themselves. There’s still a lot of processing that they need to go through, and it takes work and people don’t want to take the work. However, this will eventually show up in your life. It’ll start to affect their relationships. People will start to notice that you’re wearing a mask and that you’re not being your true self.

Then there are a lot of people like me who are just very sensitive to the fake. We feel it. We see it. We might not call you out on it. That’s us giving you grace because we don’t want to make anyone feel ashamed or embarrassed about it, but we feel it and it’s uncomfortable. As I wrap up here, I just want to share some simple reminders of that are powerful. Spend time with God without performance. So pray, honestly, read your scriptures, not to check a box, but to hear his voice and bring your real emotions. He can handle your emotions. Trust me. Step two, let go of spiritual perfectionism. So God’s love for you isn’t based on your record; it’s based on Christ. That’s freedom, because nothing that we could do to ever be perfect. So just give up on that perfectionism.

The third point is to invite safe people into your story. So find trusted believers that you can be honest with, and you are might just give them the courage to be real, too. I hope that through the interactions I have with people, it gives them the courage to be authentic. I’m not asking for perfection. Just be yourself. I always say, unless being yourself is being a jerk, then keep your mouth shut because some people are just jerks. That is not truly the essence of who they are. People who are jerks are the hurt version of what God intended them to be. They’re hurt, and the pain they spill over is their behavior, but the healed part of them would not act in such a way. So hey, I want to encourage you to take a step to living more authentically with God, with in your relationships with everyone you interact. Just be yourself and be comfortable with who you are. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation. Until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

The post Episode 52: The Power of Spiritual Authenticity and Emotional Healing appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

Men! Please listen to this episode and understand your wife’s health! Many women feel like they are losing their minds; they are losing themselves in this transition, and men can be a critical support to women during this time if they understand what is actually happening and do not take things personally.

Ladies! Dr. Lara discusses the transition women experience through menopause. We talk about the hard facts and truths that occur in a woman’s life as they transitions through menopause, also taking into account the mental, emotional, and spiritual significance of this beautiful transition. Beautiful? You question? Our American culture has lost sight of the honor and beauty of this powerful time in a woman’s life. The culture has demonized aging, projecting a false idea of what true beauty is as women age.

She shares various cultural perspectives from around the world and in ancient cultures of the Power of the Pause, menopause. Dr. Lara will discuss the common signs and symptoms of menopause in women, not just physical, but also mental, emotional and spiritual impacts. What are you feeding your body and soul? Dr. Lara will also share some ways to thrive through menopause, including lifestyle, life decisions, identity, which tests to do to assess your hormones, and creating a safe community for support. Remember, it is okay to slow down and prioritize yourself. Ask God, “What am I being invited into in this season? What is new for me? What is my identity? How did God create me to be?”

Please share this episode with everyone who can benefit from a different perspective.

Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Consult your doctor for additional guidance.

Podcast Transcript Episode 51

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ana Lara, and this is episode 51. I want to dedicate this episode to a topic that’s very much in the news right now: menopause. We’re going to discuss the power in the pause and thriving through menopause, and I want to offer a different perspective on what you might be accustomed to hearing. I hear a lot of things on social media on how women are struggling through menopause and we focus on all the bad things about it. We don’t do a lot of educating for the women who are not there yet, who should be preparing for themselves for such a transition in their lives.

That’s exactly what it is. It is a transition, and so I will discuss it from a cultural perspective. I’ll speak from both a spiritual perspective and about what this transition means for women. Unfortunately, there are some very hard, known facts and truths about what happens to women’s bodies as they are transitioning through this. Once again, I encourage men also listen in on this conversation because if you’re married to a woman or you plan to be married to a woman, you want to understand what she’s going through when these changes occur. Or even better, how to do some of the preventative work upfront before women get to this age so that they have a smoother transition through menopause. So we’re going to go ahead and get started on this conversation. So many women are going to experience very common symptoms that show up as hot flashes.

This is not just feeling hot. It is an internal heat inside of her that she feels she’s burning up and she immediately will start to sweat and that will make her feel a little panicky, night sweats, and I mean, they’re leaving the pillow soaked with their sweat. Mood swings can vary from feeling irritated and angry to sad, depressed, having anxiety, and brain fog, right? They can’t remember that their short-term memory is compromised. They can’t think. They’re just struggling a lot with cognitive function. And of course, sleep issues. You’ll find that a lot of women going through menopause cannot fall asleep and stay asleep. The downside is that they’re tired all day and at night they’re wired up and they just cannot fall asleep. There’s a lot of other symptoms that go along with it. People don’t want to talk about this in the open, but women will experience vaginal dryness and because of that, they will experience pain with intercourse.

So if your wife doesn’t want to have sex, it’s because her hormones are low and there’s discomfort down there. So when estrogen is the hormone that gives the elasticity to the tissue in that area and it’s low, there’s vaginal dryness, there’s no secretions that help lubricate this area. It makes it very difficult for women to have sexual intercourse. These are adult conversations. So if you don’t want your children to hear this, then don’t have them listen to it. But the reality is that women’s bodies go through a transition. Here’s another thing that women don’t find out until they’re later on in their sixties, and that is that women in their sixties and older have a higher risk of developing urinary tract infections, UTIs. It doesn’t matter what you eat and how clean you are; you just happen to be at risk of developing UTIs more frequently.

Those UTIs can sometimes go unnoticed without symptoms and make their way to the kidneys. Oftentimes, women end up in the hospital with a kidney infection, and they had a UTI and had no signs or symptoms of it. So the reason is the vaginal bacteria changes. The urinary bacteria change, and that gets compromised. Look, women who have children are always going to have a lot more symptoms through menopause than women who’ve never had children. Women are carrying all that extra weight in their pelvic floor. Oftentimes, women are not taking care of and resolving and getting physical therapy or doing pelvic floor exercises to strengthen all those fine muscles down there. Ultimately what happens is women, because of pregnancies and childbirth, they’ll have a higher risk of vaginal prolapse, urinary prolapse, and they’ll have issues. These issues are not easy for them to deal with.

These are the silent things that women do not discuss with their husbands, rarely share with their friends, but they are happening. This is why one of my big pet peeves is seeing pregnant women running and lifting super heavy. Even if you had been working out before the pregnancy and you have a strong pelvic floor, if you’re doing any jumping motion, anything that’s pushing that uterus down, you already have a lot of weight. You have a baby inside of you. If you’re doing all these crazy exercises, you won’t see the consequences of your actions until you’re later on in life, usually in menopause. Anyone who’s listening to this, any woman who’s listening to this episode who has experienced vaginal prolapse, you know that is not something to play with. Sometimes, if it’s very severe, women have to undergo surgery to lift the uterus.

Basically, it’s a uterus exiting. Yeah, it’s very traumatic for women when they go through childbirth and they have a full vaginal prolapse, and so they’re having to do surgery to pull this organ back in its place. Unfortunately, a lot of women just don’t do enough pelvic floor exercises, which I think is very important. Many women experience a range of symptoms and physical changes. But let’s talk about just the mental and emotional changes that women are going through, where they find themselves experiencing an identity crisis. There’s this identity shift and they start to go through this emotional rollercoaster because the reality is that the end of your reproductive years, it’s coming. It’s coming to an end. The menopause is a period when the body starts to slow down. And women feel that shift. And even though they could be in their fifties, late forties and they have no intentions of having a pregnancy, but there’s that reality that in their mind and in their soul, they realize this is it.

I won’t be making any more. I’m not going to have any more children. My body’s going through a change. There’s almost a grieving process, even for this old person, this old self. There’s a grieving process of even in your youth. We see that the media constantly reminds us of what beauty is through various representations. Natural beauty is one thing, but beauty is not about injecting your face with Botox and filling your lips, or undergoing all these invasive surgeries. This is a desperate move to preserve your youth. But the reality is that the deep fear that women really are experiencing that is not talked about is the fear of aging and, ultimately the fear of dying. Because ultimately, that’s what we are all going to go through, is that transition of dying, of this physical body dying.

If you’re only pouring into your physical body and not into your soul, you’ll find yourself living a very miserable life. I highly encourage that you take a holistic approach, meaning you take care of yourself in all of these areas, but there is a real physical shift that is happening here that is not to be ignored, because as these hormones come down, women start to feel like they’re losing their minds. It’s very common for me to hear women say, ‘I feel like I’m going crazy.’ Do I need to go to a mental hospital? I don’t feel myself because your body is slowing down saying pause. It’s not saying to stop, it’s just saying, slow down. We are going to slow down. There’s a point here that we’re going to pause because there’s a rebirth that is happening in you and it really is a beautiful experience if you shift the way you think about it, if you shift the way you perceive things, you’re going to see that there’s beauty and there’s power in this pause in menopause.

A couple of things that I want to talk about. Like I said, let’s talk about that power of the pause because the worldview of menopause is that you are really slowing down, but in this phase, it’s not a passive pause that you’re having. It’s actually a very active and intentional and very powerful process that a woman is going through. During this pause, I wrote down a few things. A pause is where we reconnect. A pause is where we hear ourselves. Again, a pause is where something new begins. And so oftentimes women, as they’re going through menopause or after menopause, they report these things. They report that they have found their voice; they now have a stronger voice and a clear sense of self. Some boundaries are put in place. Now, maybe areas that you used to struggle, things you used to have a hard time saying no to, you are not setting boundaries and you’re able to say no without guilt.

Let me be clear about that because we say no, but then we feel guilty for saying no to that thing, because sometimes there are good things out there that we want to be a part of and we want to help. However, if you are overwhelmed with family responsibilities and other life situations, you may not be able to say yes to everything. It’s important to find your voice and be able to use that power and say, unfortunately, I cannot be part of that, and just say no and not feel any guilt. Also, saying no without feeling the need to justify it is a no, and that’s it. And that’s it. No, I won’t be able to make it. You don’t have to explain yourself. Why. I find that women have an overneed to explain themselves why they can’t do something. You start to live in this deep state, developing a deep desire to live authentically.

It’s not that you weren’t living authentically before, but often, women are being wives, being moms, being somebody to everybody, and they frequently put themselves on the back burner. It has been passed down through generations. I’ve had conversations with women who were older throughout my life. As a matter of fact, I was one of those peculiar kids who would prefer to sit around with the older women and just listen to their conversations. I found it both entertaining and enlightening to hear the stories of the lives of older women. That right there is the gift of women when they go through menopause; that transition turns them into something much greater. In this next segment, I want to discuss the various ancient cultures around the world and how they viewed women as they entered menopause and transitioned through it. These are world, this is world wisdom, ancient wisdom, ancient views. It’s not nothing new, but our culture has shifted things to make it seem like you’re drying up and you’re dying and you’re not beautiful anymore because you’re old. You’re an old hag.

But many cultures saw women who were going through this transition as elders, as spiritual leaders, as healers and truth tellers. Listen to this again; it’s so empowering. They were elders and spiritual leaders. They were healers and truth-tellers; these women would pass on their knowledge to the next generation. That’s what I received as a young girl, as a young teenager, as a young woman, when I was around older women. And by older, I mean in their sixties, seventies and eighties, I would hear their stories, their life, the things that they learned from the good and the bad and the ugly. That is the gift that they gave to me. Some of them were not even related to me. Let’s take a brief overview of what other cultures around the world are, and how they honor women during this transition. So in Native American tribes, they often honor postmenopausal women as spiritual leaders and believe they carry wisdom, no longer distracted by the moon cycle.

In Chinese culture, menopause is not viewed as a loss, but it’s a rebalancing of energy, a shift towards inner cultivation. In African traditions, elders were venerated and the end of the menstrual cycle for them was it marked a transition into leadership, not invisibility. In African cultures, once again, they viewed women who were going through the menstrual cycle as a transition into leaders, the true leaders, because now they’re sages, they have experience and wisdom is knowledge that you apply without even thinking about it because now it’s internalized and you know better. In many indigenous cultures, this time is when a woman becomes a wise one, the keeper of the stories, and the mentor to other women and men. In our modern culture, we’ve lost that reverence. We have lost the respect and honor that women deserve. It’s sad that we even have to have a damn debate about what is a woman?

Because if you don’t have a vagina and you don’t deal with these issues, you’re not a woman. You’re just not women who go through menopause and have these vaginal atrophy and these vaginal prolapse and have all these issues. Unfortunately, that is the price that we pay as being women and being the birth givers in this world. It is an honor. I don’t see it as a sacrifice. Sacrifice. A sacrifice is when you don’t want to do it. However, when you go through the process of being a mother and then experience menopause, it’s a devotion. Our devotion is very different than sacrifice. Women who choose to become mothers are devoted to being mothers to our children. We’re devoted to raising them, to being healthy and happy and wholehearted people.

It sends me to see social media depicting what a menopausal woman should look like. You’re not going to look like you’re 20, you’re just not going to be 20 years old. And it’s not cute. It’s not being judgmental. You don’t look cute, acting like you’re 20 years old. There’s so much more value in you when you acknowledge your identity, who God created you to be, who he designed you to be. What is your assignment in this world? And understanding that when your children, women, when your children grow up and move on and build their own lives, what are you left with? What are you left with, and who are you? This is where women go through that transition. Who am I? Who am I without my children? Who am I without being a wife? Who am I, not being a daughter to someone, a sister to someone?

These are questions that you should ask early in your life. So if you’re 20 or 30 years old, start seeking that. So, when you reach menopause, it doesn’t just suddenly happen. I have a quick story to share here. When I was going through my medical training, I was working at this clinic and this beautiful woman in her early fifties came in and she was going through that transition of menopause. A lot of people ask, well, when do you transition through menopause? That’s different for everyone. Ask your mom what age she transitioned to menopause. If you don’t know, then that makes it difficult. But usually the age at which your mother transitioned through menopause is the age at which you will as well. So typically it’s been the fifties to mid-fifties that women start to transition. The way you’re really inactive menopause is you haven’t had a period for 12 months, but usually you don’t start to have a period, but you have all these other symptoms as well, right? There is lab work that you can do to confirm if you are going through menopause. Those two tests that you want to make sure are checked are F, s, H and lh. They’ll be super high regardless of when you do them. That’s the sign that the brain is telling the ovaries to make more hormones, but it’s not receiving the signal. The body is saying, we’re slowing down. We will not be making any more. We’re done.

But that’s what menopause is. But unfortunately, we do see some women who can genetically, that’s just the way genetic makeup is, can start in their mid to late forties as well. But we’re seeing women younger and younger going through menopause, even as young as in their mid to late thirties. In my opinion, that’s too young to start going through menopause. So those hormones keep you feeling good and keep you feeling young as well. I had this woman present. She was in her early fifties, a beautiful woman. All her kids were grown and out of the house and she had what she claimed was a wonderful marriage, and everything had been happy. Then she began experiencing these hormonal changes. She wasn’t even sure it was that, but she started to, the reason she came in, because she felt unlike herself, she, she was going through an identity crisis and she alluded that to her children now being out of the home and on their own.

She tells me with such sadness in her tone, ‘I don’t even know what I like for myself.’ I’ve given everything to my family, to my husband and to my children. She was a stay-at-home mom. I never worked. I just dedicated my life to them. Now they’re grown and moved away and my husband’s always traveling for work and I find myself being alone at home and I’m trying to find things to do for myself and I don’t even know what I like. We would brainstorm ideas and we would pick something out of that list for her to go try something new. She was like an 18-year-old girl who was just leaving her parents’ home to explore who she is.

Now I’m grateful, and she was grateful to have provided and devoted her life to her family. But now what about her? Here, she feels disconnected and alone. Now these hormones don’t make it any easier. They make her feel crazy and she has no identity of who she is without those roles in her life. The reality for women, especially if your children are young, is that your children will grow up and move out just like we did. It’s just the cycle of life. This is why I encourage women to find one or two things that they really enjoy doing. Whether you’re a stay at home mom, whether you work and you take care of your kids, whatever it is, find something that you are excited about to do, whether it’s working out, whether it’s painting or drawing or writing and reading a book, whatever it is that your interests are playing an instrument, singing something, dancing, you have to have something that you do for yourself.

I know what some women are saying, yeah, but you don’t understand. I don’t have time. No, you do have time. You need to make the time. You need to make the effort and communicate that to your family by setting those boundaries and saying, ‘Hey, these days, Mommy is going to be doing these things for herself, just like that.’ And oftentimes right now, I am in my mid-forties and I do have school-aged children. I’ll tell you that. Part of the problem is that we need to be the ones who set boundaries with our children’s schools, with their teachers, and with all the activities our kids can and cannot participate in. The wisest thing I heard a family say, share with me one time, they had an annual meeting at the beginning of the school year, and they would sit their kids down and the kids had to decide on one or two activities that they wanted to do throughout the school year, and that was it.

Everyone had to agree on that. They had to review the schedules and ensure that they worked cohesively with the family, and all parties had to approve the schedule. So it was like a little business meeting where they had to okay it, and no one was allowed to add all these extra add-on activities as the school year was going on. Because that teaches children to know that yes, we want to consider your gifts, your skills, your interests, but you’re not the center of the world, honey, I tell my girls that all the time, I love you, however, I’m not going to kill myself doing all these things that are not important. So pick the one or two things that you absolutely love that you are good at, that you love and you enjoy doing and do that. But I see moms running to the soccer game and the baseball game and the basketball game and all of that, and they’re overweight and they’re like, I don’t have time to work out.

You know why? You don’t have time to go out because you’re prioritizing your children. You’re not making your marriage; you’re not making yourself the priority in that. You’re not even making God the priority in that. We need to stop glorifying our children and putting them on these pedestals. It’s okay to say no to our children as they get older. They can do all that stuff. Plus I’ve seen, I’m not trying to be mean here, but I keep it very real with my girls, my oldest dances and she’s beautiful dancer, but if she tried to sing, she sucks at it. I’m not going to waste my time on an activity that she doesn’t enjoy and isn’t particularly good at. That teaches them to be real. You got to be real with them, which is why this authenticity part through menopause is so important because you haven’t said the things you really wanted to say and you’ve been holding on to saying those things, but now you’re going through this transition and you just don’t have the ability to compose yourself through this.

I’d like to discuss a few things that will help you thrive during this transition. What are some things that you can do aside from doing the blood work? If your doctor isn’t going to do it, find someone who will check a full panel of your hormones, starting from pregnancy alone, DHEA, your total testosterone, free testosterone, estradiol, E2, your progesterone, and cortisol levels in the morning. If they can measure all cortisol levels throughout the day from morning to nighttime, that would be ideal. But you want to get an idea of where your hormones are. Then I had the previous episode on what to do, Hormone Myths and Mistakes | What Every Woman Should Know.’ So, go back to that episode and listen to it, which covers the diet, ensuring you’re getting enough sleep, engaging in regular physical activity, and managing your stress. However, there are other things that you can start taking a closer look at and acknowledging, as you go through this menopause transition. It’s okay to rest and reflect.

These hormones are coming down, and it’s slowing you down for a reason. It doesn’t mean you stop, it just means you slow down to rest and reflect. And so honor this shift journal how you’re feeling. You’d be surprised what journaling does if you were to journal for 20 minutes, uninterrupted, four times a week. You’re going to start seeing a trend and a pattern in what you’re writing about, and you’re going to start discovering a lot about yourself in your journaling. It’s also a way to purge mentally and emotionally without the fear of someone judging or criticizing. You can just journal it down, but be okay with the idea of slowing down and prioritizing things in your life. I always ask women as they’re journaling or as they’re going through this process to ask God, What am I being invited into in this season?

What’s new for you? There’s a rebirth. What’s new for you? There’s nothing wrong with asking God, Who am I? Who? What’s my identity? How? Who did you create me to be? There’s so much power in these questions and sometimes you have to sit with it. It’s not going to come all at once, but you have to sit with this question and explore it, letting God pour into you during this time. Another key to thriving through menopause is the importance of having a supportive community. Don’t isolate yourself. Other women are experiencing what you’re experiencing. That’s one thing I will say: women are, on average, pretty good about reaching to other women and talking about these issues very openly. Find your people who are your tribe. Talk to them. Laugh through this. Laughter is medicine. Some of these things that happen are, what can you do about them?

You can cry about it, too. It’s okay to cry if you need to. That’s the other thing about the emotions that are coming up as you go through menopause, because it is a wild rollercoaster. It’s okay to acknowledge those emotions and feelings you have, and just surrender them to God, allowing Him to help you and carry you through that. But if you truly do have very severe symptoms, now that you don’t have to suffer with that, there are natural things that you can do. If hormone replacement therapy is for you, do it just to maintain your sanity. So there’s a lot of power in your stories. So, once again, I’m emphasizing the importance of community. Find your community, even if it’s one other person.

The third point is to support your body. This includes everything from nutrition and herbal support to physical activity, even if you’ve never exercised before; maybe it’s time. Now, let me tell you how many 70- and 80-year-old women and men have said that if there was one age they could go back to, it would be their fifties. If you’re in your fifties and going through this transition, movement is still something you should consider, whether it’s walking, hiking, or any other activity you enjoy, such as dancing. And then sleep. Making sure that if you’re having difficulty with sleep, which most women who are going through menopause are, I’m telling you that progesterone at night is going to save you. It will help you calm down and fall asleep. And so, take care of your physical body the same way you did when you were pregnant and ate healthy, taking care of your body; it’s no different going through menopause.

It’s a season, a transition that we should support ourselves physically. Then the fourth step is to redefine your self-worth. What does that mean to you? Not what the world is telling you, but what does self-worth look like to you? Oftentimes, through menopause, many women who have not healed through trauma, unhealed trauma will surface at this time, really bringing it to the surface, making it seem like it’s really in your face now because your body is saying, Hey, hey sis, we’re tired of carrying this around. When will we face it? When will we heal from this? So honor your body and yourself to heal through those things. You will be valuable regardless of what you produce. You’re valuable. No matter whether you’re pleasing or not pleasing, you’re valuable. Even if you’re not able to reproduce a baby anymore, you are valuable simply for being who you are.

God created you with worth, and you’re valuable. What you’re able to offer to other people does not determine your self-worth. And sometimes we need to hear that from others. You need to hear that from others because you think that your value is attached to the number of activities that you’re doing throughout your day. I have had women who show me their calendars on their phones, and they’re back-to-back with activities; they see the value in themselves in how many activities they have on their calendars. So when your physical body can’t do that anymore, can’t support all those activities, you start to feel like you’re worthless. That’s a lie. So slow down, pause and reclaim your worth. Step number five is one that I love. I found that in my forties, I didn’t have to wait till 50, but that’s to claim your voice.

Claim your voice. This is the time to speak your God-given truth, to stand in your story and to lead and however that looks like for you. This is an interesting thing. We grew up in our families being told who they think we are, right? Whether it’s been directly or unconsciously, they’ve been projecting to us who they perceive we are. Schools have told us who they think we are. Religion has told us who they perceive us to be and the government and the news and the media. Numerous direct and indirect messages tell us who we are. This is a moment. Really, I don’t want women or men to wait till they’re older. You should be doing this when you’re young. Like pause, slow down, go into a meditative state and ask God, Who am I? Who am I?

Who did you create me to be? Is this part of my identity, or is this from the world? Is this identity from you, or is it from my family, from religion, from the world of what they’ve projected to me to make me believe this is who I am? It’s a beautiful time to be able to claim your voice and your identity is through this process of menopause. As I’ve said before, this pause is holy, mighty, and it’s yours. It’s for you to take it to honor that and to slow it down. So I’m not talking about this conversation on menopause. I’m not addressing whether you’ve noticed that I haven’t discussed which bioidentical hormones are better than others or other related topics. You know what? All social media is plagued with all of that. There’s a lot of noise around menopause with do this hormone and do that hormone and do this thing and all of that.

However, no one is really talking to women, speaking life into them; in reality, this is a time to honor yourself. It’s okay if you do the hormones. I’m not against it. I help many women with hormone replacement therapies. But take the time to really honor this transition because eventually, with or without hormones, you are going to go through the process of menopause. And it is a privilege to be able to go through the process of menopause because women who don’t go through menopause usually die before they go through menopause. As we age, it is a privilege to grow older. I want to refer to some scriptures about how aging is not equated with a decline, but it’s equated with honor and authority and wisdom. In Proverbs 16:31, it says, gray hair is a crown of splendor, and it is attained in the way of righteousness.

It is a rite of passage for women to enter this new season of womanhood. You should walk into it with power and authority, not like a whimpering cat, not whimpering, not being whiny, not feeling like a victim. You should be honored to be able to go through this transition because some women don’t get to go through that transition, especially when they die young. Titus 2 speaks about how the older woman is. They see older women as mentors guiding younger generations in love and self-control and godly living. What if you learned all the lessons and focused on your goals? You’re reflecting on the lessons you’ve learned in your life up to this point. What things have you learned that you can turn around and teach your daughters, your granddaughters, or other women? Let’s be real. Let’s have a very real and genuine conversation, because I’m often unsure whether to delve into this topic. Maybe it’s best to save it for another time, but I often encounter women who pretend like they’ve had perfect lives.

Not just in my clinic do I hear these conversations. But often, when I’m outside meeting people, they start telling me their life story. They start sharing with me what has happened in their lives. They make it seem like the marriage was great and raising the children was great, but I’m telling you, they end up at a point in their life where they’re less resistant and resilient to putting up with people’s nonsense. I heard it was real on social media, and the title was How Menopause is causing a Rise in Divorces. I laughed. I listened to it. I’m like, this is baloney. Menopause does not cause divorces. Menopause is not a person who’s coming in and interfering with divorce. Chances are that there were issues in that marriage to begin with, far back that were never addressed. Some women try to address problems early on, but then they give up and surrender, and they stay married.

They just go through the motions. But here’s the thing about menopause: those hormones that allow that woman to have more self-control like progesterone, keep us calm, cool, and collected. It’s not there anymore and she’s not feeling it. She is less likely to tolerate the nonsense of other people, including their spouse. If there are unresolved issues in the marriage and this woman gets through menopause, yeah, you better believe you’re going to see something come out different from her. This is why it’s not uncommon for women in their fifties to end up filing for divorce. Men and women, if this is you, take care of the issue before it gets worse, because something is happening in her brain, body, and soul that she’s just not willing to tolerate anymore. Oftentimes, women who do continue to put up with especially abusive behaviors, right from their spouse, end up developing cancers.

I’ve seen a number of women who had healthy lifestyles. They seem to have had no medical conditions. All of a sudden, they develop wet breast cancer, uterine cancer, and ovarian cancer. It’s not familial, meaning it’s not genetic in their family for women to have that condition. So, yeah, there are many components to it, but the relationships we have on a day-to-day basis significantly impact our health. So it’s not menopause that causes a divorce, it’s the lack of communication and not resolving the issues. Before you reach that point, I want to emphasize the importance of slowing down and taking time to care for yourself. I always refer to a good book that I loved. It’s called The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the habits of Highly Effective People is to stop and sharpen the saw. Meaning that you can’t cut a tree with a dull blade.

You need to sharpen the saw. So if you don’t stop to take care of yourself and sharpen yourself, you’re running in life with a dull blade. You’re running through life being dull and not fully energetic. So if you’re in your forties and you’re like, I’m not in menopause yet, but I see some of these red flags, start addressing them because it’s better that you start to taking care of them sooner than later and start having those real hard conversations with your family, your spouse, your children, to ensure that you are not stressing because this stress causes excess cortisol and it’s going to steal from all the other hormones. So, I hope you enjoy this conversation. It’s very different, right? It’s not what to do, but rather how to adopt the mindset that you need to shift into the lifestyle you want to achieve.

Find what works for you; what works for you is not necessarily the same for me. What works for me might not work for you, but find what works for you. Just remember that pause is holy, it’s powerful, and it’s yours. It’s your time to slow down and invest in yourself, in your wellbeing. I hope this message has brought you some joy and shed light on the topic of menopause. If you know any woman who’s struggling with menopause, share this podcast with them. Until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe to help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

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Website: https://raicesndmedcenter.com/

The post Thriving Through Menopause appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

At Raices Naturopathic Medical Center, Dr. Lara does work with teens and young women, and does hormone testing and evaluations, and uses natural approaches, nutritional guidance and natural remedies to help hormones regulate.

Schedule your FREE 15 minute phone consultation Website: https://raicesndmedcenter.com/

Podcast 50 Transcript

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. This episode, I want to dedicate to talking about hormone health in teenagers and in young women by young women. I’m talking about women in their twenties. So 20 to 30s.

It’s very sad for me to see young women coming into my office, these teenage girls, and they are telling me how they feel, and they are showing signs and symptoms of low hormones. So I’ll start by saying that it’s not common in medicine for a teenager who’s 15 or 16 years old or a 20-year-old woman to have their doctors do hormone testing on them. First of all, insurance won’t even consider that. Sometimes, even women in their thirties say, ‘You’re too young.’ It’s not an issue. It’s not that. I don’t believe in turning, turning away from looking at hormones. I always offer the option to my patients, especially parents, when they bring in their young teenage daughters or sons. But usually what I’ll give them an option is a cash pay option to check the full panel of sex, female hormones in their teenager or young 20-year-old so that it’s affordable and they know what their out of pocket’s going to be upfront instead of getting a $3,000 bill for labs that their insurance is not willing to cover.

Why Are Low Hormone Levels in Teens and Young Women Being Overlooked?

According to the standard of medicine, they are too young to be assessed for hormone imbalances. Let me tell you, when I get these values back, it is scary to see the number every single time. There has not been one time that my medical brain says we need to check hormones in this 15-year-old. The parents say, Okay, let’s do it. Every single time when I get their hormone results back, they’re low, their progesterone is low, their estrogen is low, and their testosterone is low. Sometimes DHEA is low. And so that’s a huge concern, huge because this is the most optimal time in their life, and it’s not normal for 20-year-olds to have low hormones like this. Oftentimes in a joking way to encourage these young teens and girls, women, I tell them I’m 46 years old and my hormones are optimal, not just for my age.

They’re optimal. My hormones are better than your hormones, and you’re 15 or you’re 20 years old. Do you see the concern there? That’s not normal. What I see is this very common trend. In the last episode, we discussed common mistakes that women make, and men make them as well. However, the common mistakes that people make are often repeated by teenagers who start making them very early on, establishing those patterns. Women, you need to take care of yourselves because your daughters are watching you and following your example, not just because you told them to. You know how it goes with children. You tell ’em to do something and they don’t do it. But the things that they do are the things that you don’t ask them to do. It’s the things that you model for them.

If they see mom burning the candle on both ends, not sleeping, not eating, not exercising, or being extreme about their body image, they pick that behavior up too. And it’s early on. We have to model these healthy behaviors for children as they enter that pre-puberty stage and that preteen stage and into their teenage years. This is the time for young girls to start making healthy decisions that will impact the longevity and quality of their lives. It’s when they’re young that they acquire these very poor behaviors. I don’t know about you, but I didn’t exhibit these behaviors that these young girls are displaying. It seems to be a trend, and I know it has a lot to do with access to technology. They have a phone glued to their hand and are constantly on it, going to bed with it, and are exposed to all this stimulus. As a result, they’re not going to bed early enough to regulate their hormones.

This conversation is geared to these teenage girls and these young women. I want you to share this episode with them because I need them to hear what I’m about to share. Some of these behaviors that many young girls exhibit are also being practiced by their mothers, and sometimes by their fathers. This seems to be an issue in our country, where people wake up, get ready, and are out the door without needing anything. They get to school. These young girls, who are still in high school or college, arrive at school, but they don’t have lunch there. They don’t like the lunch, and they’re too cool to take it. They starve themselves and then they get home two, three o’clock, they’ll snack on junk chips and whatever’s there. And then whenever mom makes dinner, that’s when they eat.

How are you going to make hormones if you’re having one real meal a day? Then you wonder why you’re stuffing your face with carbs, with chips, with cookies, with junk food, because at the cellular level, you’re starving. Your body wants food, but you’re not giving it what it needs. Now, if you’re a student, whether you’re in high school or college, you really need food because your brain is going to be processing more and it needs energy to process more. Therefore, if you’re not getting the protein and the healthy fats, your brain is starving. It cannot learn. It cannot focus, it cannot function. It can’t remember what you learned in class. So, now it’s affecting you cognitively. Your energy’s low. Then what happens is I get these young teenage girls in my office that have really bad acne, have low energy, feel depressed or have anxiety, can’t sleep, and this should be the most optimal time in your life.

You have so much energy and have such a positive outlook on life. But I’ll tell you what, this right here, these cell phones, what’s the problem? These young girls are on social media comparing themselves to other people’s standards and what they’re saying. There’s too much noise in our world, and we’ve got to shut it off. We’ve got to shut it off, and we’ve got to get back to living life. With these young girls, I see this very often. The symptoms they’re telling me are that they’re missing periods. Now, I know through medical school, we were told that when a young girl starts their menstrual cycle, they could experience irregularities here and there. They might not get it every month. They might miss periods. It might be until their body regulates. But there is a point at which your body will find its normal cycle.

What I’m referring to when I say missed periods is five or six months without a period. And that could be a teenager or a 20-year-old. That’s not normal. Oftentimes the reason they’re missing these, they’re not having a period every month, is because, like I said, they’re not eating enough. They’re starving themselves. If you don’t have the building blocks, you cannot make these hormones. They’re super tired, and their parents always tell me about the mood swings. They’re irritated about everything, and it’s because their brain are still being developed. Whether you’re 20, 22, 25, your prefrontal cortex is still developing, and it needs these building blocks, especially the healthy fats. So, mood swings, they can have acne, and like I said, then they start having anxiety, panic attacks, they can’t sleep. It is the same common cycle that you see in women who are going through menopause. So, a 20-year-old is not going through menopause, so their hormone levels are off, but they’re not going through menopause yet. They’re too young. Then we know it’s because they’re not eating enough food and they’re not sleeping well and they have too much stress. They’re stressing about things like social media, technology, things that are not really significant stressors. It makes it more difficult for them to navigate that.

Once again, the estrogen and progesterone. Progesterone. Let’s talk about progesterone because progesterone does not get enough light on how important it is. Progesterone is really important in the process of someone trying to conceive and get pregnant, and maintain a pregnancy. Progesterone is really important to maintain a pregnancy, and it grows. It increases really high in a pregnant woman. This is the reason why women,, when they’re pregnant, especially those first three months, are so exhausted, they fall asleep everywhere. They just want to sleep. Oftentimes, women want to bring up their energy, but progesterone is doing its job. It’s actually saying, go to sleep, slow down, rest, because you’re building a baby. The effects of progesterone on the body, on the brain, and on the nervous system have a calming effect. Now, when you’re not pregnant. So, in a young woman who doesn’t want to get pregnant, you still need to have a healthy level of progesterone.

The luteal phase, which is days 19 to 21, is the ideal time to look at the levels of progesterone because this is the one time of the month when it will peak at its highest, and we need to see what that level is. When women have healthy levels of progesterone, they’re going to feel cool, calm and collected. There could be a lot of chaos and stressful situations in your life, but because this hormone is in your body, it’s going to help regulate your nervous system. When it’s not there, look it up. If you don’t believe me, just look it up. Low progesterone can give you anxiety. It can cause panic attacks. How many young girls are experiencing anxiety and having panic attacks? Grown women are having anxiety and panic attacks. They go to their doctor and they say, I’m having anxiety and panic attacks, or they go to the emergency room, I’m having anxiety and panic attacks. And what do they do? They give them medications for anxiety. That’s not the solution.

The only way to know is to get tested. There’s a lot of talk on social media, like you don’t need to do a lab test to tell if your hormones are off. Just follow the symptoms. Well, how do you know how far off your hormones are? Lemme just give you an idea. The ideal range of progesterone in a female during the luteal phase is between 15 to 23 units of progesterone. Men have 0.2, very little; they don’t need a lot. But for women, that’s a lot, and that’s the optimal range. So 15 to 23 is optimal. When I’m checking the hormones of these young girls, they’re coming at 0.1, 0.2, 0.3, 0.4. If they’re lucky, perhaps they have two points, two points during the luteal phase, when they should be closer to 23 units of progesterone. Do you see how concerning that is? If no one is checking these young girls for hormones, how do you know they’re not having hormone imbalances? They are, and it’s an alarming rate. I mean, I’m just one clinic. I can just imagine across the country how many other girls are experiencing low hormones, and it’s because of their lifestyle choices. They’re not eating enough, they’re not sleeping enough. Chronic stress over petty things.

That’s where the modifications need to come into play. Don’t wait until they’re later on in life to address them. Address them now, because they’re young, they’re more likely to adapt to change and understand how this is important for you to get a good handle on your lifestyle behaviors early on, versus when you’re 30 and 40 years old. Here’s why it’s critical for young people. So, in women, when they go through menopause, I’m going to have an episode on menopause, so stay tuned for that. But the adrenal glands are supposed to kick in to make a little bit of hormones, of progesterone and estrogen, when women are going through menopause. Now, if women have lived all their lives in chronic stress, they’re tapping into those adrenal glands all the time, and they deplete their adrenal gland function. So when they’re going through menopause, those adrenal glands cannot make those hormones anymore.

They’re on empty. They’re empty all the way through, and that’s why they experienced the hot flashes. They experienced all these other symptoms. Well, if we don’t teach young teenage girls and young women to regulate their stress response, to eat better, to sleep better, to get their bodies moving, and to eliminate hormone disruptors, they’re going to be tapping into their adrenal gland function very early on. By the time they won’t even make it to 50, by the time they’re in their thirties and forties, their adrenal glands are crashed, maybe sooner than that. So, when they are going through menopause, the symptoms they will experience will be greater than any. I know this is true. I’ve spoken to my mother and women in her generation who are 70 and older. Many of the women who led moderate lives didn’t experience excessive stress.

They ate well and slept well during the transition through menopause. They don’t have the hot flashes. My mom said, I didn’t have any of those symptoms. I don’t know what women were talking about. So, my mother grew up in a time and place where poverty was a real stressor. Were present. Are we going to have food? Will there be enough money to meet our basic needs? Instead of worrying about comparing yourself, how another female looks on social media and getting all the pressures of the world on you of what you should do, what you should look like, what you should be doing in life, those are pressures and stressors that we can shut off by limiting our time on our phones. You’re not worried about whether you’re going to have food on your table for the most part. Those are real stress responses and the stress that we have now, it is just in our minds; it’s not a real threat.

That’s what I’m seeing in young girls is this constant chronic fatigue and burnout when they’re just teenagers, irregular periods like the mood swings and just feeling depressed. I really encourage having this conversation with your teenager or young adult female to help manage their lifestyle, start eating breakfast, and take a quick protein source with you for lunch. But we need to start breaking some of these behaviors. If you notice that your teenager is experiencing these symptoms, such as a hormone imbalance, with a lot of cystic acne. They’re not sleeping well, they’re low energy, they’re moody, their menstrual periods are off. Get them help find a doctor. You can reach my clinic and ask how I work with teenagers, but you really should get those hormones checked for them, because you will be surprised that these young people’s hormones are running low.

I hope this information has brought some value to you, but I just want to shine some light on this topic of young people and low hormones, because these young women and men also are going to have a hard time when it comes to fertility, when they’re married and they’re wanting to conceive. You’re going to see a lot of these young people having a hard time conceiving and maintaining a healthy pregnancy because their bodies are not making enough hormones. So I know when you’re 15 and 18 and 20, you’re not thinking about conception of getting pregnant, particular family, but don’t wait till you get to the point that you are wanting a family and then you’re struggling to get pregnant because of the lifestyle choices. On the flip end, I see a lot of girls too who are over-exercising, like I said in the last, so they’re over-exercising and they’re not eating enough food.

Those two things have to match. If you’re going to put more demand on your body, it will need more fuel. It’s energy. Your body needs protein, as well as healthy fats. It requires energy to lift that weight and endure that kind of physical activity. Otherwise, over-exercising and undereating is going to create stress in your body. And those stress responses can create autoimmune conditions in cancers and other nutrient deficiencies and issues. So, you want to ensure you’re getting the right blood work done for these conditions. I hope you’ve found this information helpful. Share it with someone who has children, young teenagers, young adults, or who is a teenager and a young adult, to start taking their health seriously. I’m not your mama, but maybe you should listen to your mama when she tells you to eat your breakfast and to go to bed early.

It’s for you. A lot of women are focused on anti-aging, and they’re injecting their faces with things and doing all these invasive therapies, but what you should really be doing is eating well, sleeping well, and exercising. That is your anti-aging. That’s how you can preserve your youth. So I hope you found this message of great value. And until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to listen to it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

The post Low Hormone Levels in Teens and Young Women: Signs, Causes & What to Do appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

If you are interested in learning how Dr. Lara can help you with your hormones, schedule your FREE 15-minute phone consultation to learn how we can help you. We don’t do high-pressure sales calls. We believe in mutual interest in working together.

Podcast Episode 49 Transcript

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast today. I want to make sure that first of all, whether you’re listening to this or seeing it on YouTube or any other channel that you’re listening to, I want to make sure that you like this, that you share it and you subscribe to the channel so that we can reach a larger audience. Today’s conversation is one that I commonly see and experience in my clinic, and we’re going to talk today about hormone myths and mistakes, specifically what every woman should know, because these are the top mistakes that they’re making as it relates to their hormones.

Now, before I go into the conversation on hormones and the mistakes that women are making, I also want to speak to the men listening to this because I want you to listen to this conversation because either you’re married or you will be married, or you have daughters, you have women in your life that are impacted by this very thing, and I really feel it’s important for you to understand what’s going on with women and also to be encouraging and supportive of the lifestyle behaviors and habits to encourage them to do better for themselves. It’s really important because oftentimes men think that their wives are going crazy, that all of a sudden they’re being lazy, and they’re emotionally unstable. They look like they’re being psychotic, and that’s most likely true, but it’s because of the hormones. It’s impacting them to feel in such a way. So what can we do about it?

I also want to talk about how right now there is so much hype in talk about hormones, about perimenopause, about menopause. There are so many sources of information out there, some of them credible and many are not. I want to caution you regarding the sources of information you are using to get these facts, right? TikTok is one of those platforms that are very trendy for talking about these things. It’s not uncommon that men and women will see a short TikTok on hormones or hormone therapy, something as it relates to health, and they take it as a fact. There’s so much information right now, we’re in the age of information. There’s so much information at our fingertips 24/7, and it’s sometimes hard to discern what’s credible, what’s true, what’s not true, what’s applicable to you, and what’s not. I really want to caution you because even if it’s, for example, if it’s a scientist talking about hormones and research or physical activity, whatever it is, they’re researchers, they’re not physicians, and there is a difference between someone who’s doing research and someone who’s in a clinical setting seeing patients as it relates to certain topics.

I am a practicing physician, and I look at the research, and some things are true that we can say, yes, I do see that in my patients, but there are so many variables that we need to consider. It is the physician’s job, whether it’s a naturopathic medical doctor like myself or a medical doctor or an osteopathic doctor, the role of the physician is to get to know their patient, to ask the right questions and dig deep down to get the information as it relates to their patient, develop a relationship where the patient’s being heard, they’re being respected, and then they’re given the appropriate labs to assess and also the appropriate solutions to address their concerns. I know that’s very involved, and I know not every doctor works that way, but that is truly the art of medicine, and that is what a physician should do to develop this kind of relationship, to get to know their patient so that we can make informed decisions and give them the best choices going over the pros and the the risk and the benefits and all their options that they have.

That’s the ideal. When we look at what the internet has to share and talk about, there’s a lot of information, and I just want to say for you to be cautious, I get a lot of women in my office and men as well that are always there may be addressing a video they saw on social media and they’re asking me about that. We will talk about these common myths and common mistakes that women make. So let’s go ahead and get started. We know that hormones matter. They matter, not just when you’re going through menopause. They matter from the beginning when you start going through puberty. Unfortunately, we don’t have enough people who truly educate the ordinary person to understand how their body works. I did a previous episode on hormones. I’ll make sure I include it in the notes to this episode, but this one’s going to be different.

We’re going to talk about the common things people make and why they end up in hormone imbalances. We know that hormones have a huge impact on how we feel. It impacts our energy, our mood, our sleep, our weight, and even how we handle stress in our lives. So it’s not uncommon that I get women in my office and they don’t feel well. They say they feel off, they don’t feel like themselves, and it happened suddenly. However, that all of a sudden is an accumulation of years of behaviors that the person has done that have led them to this point of feeling off. So women are not sure where to go and where to get information. I understand that they turn to Google, social media, and YouTube to find out about this.

While there’s a lot of good information, there’s almost too much information. Some people say to do one thing and someone else will knock that one option to say, that’s not good, don’t do that. So I’m going to tell you right now that the common trap that people get into is that they start diagnosing themselves by using the internet. It’s very difficult for you as an individual to determine what you need because you are not trained to look for all of these different areas. So as we talk about hormones, I want to talk about some of the common myths that I see or hear about when it comes to hormones. So, myth number one, hormones only matter during menopause. Well, not true. The problem is that women wait till they’re going through menopause, where there are cycles, they’re making less hormones, so they’re not having a menstrual period every month or they’re skipping it or there’s just irregularities.

In this sense, it happened for some women in their mid-forties to early fifties that they started to experience this. But it doesn’t just matter when you’re going through menopause, you should be worried about hormones from the time you’re going through puberty as a teenager, as a young woman in their twenties. Hormones are always going to be working for you or against you. You need to take the precautions and take the proper measures to ensure optimal hormonal health. These hormones, like estrogen and progesterone, are the hormones that women just thrive in. That’s what makes us feel really good. It’s not just about reproduction either. Yes, if you want to get pregnant, these hormones are key players in getting pregnant and maintaining a healthy pregnancy. However, it’s also going to have a huge impact on your mental, your emotional health and your physical wellbeing.

Also, hormones like testosterone, insulin, cortisol, and thyroid hormones are also hormones to take into consideration, as if they’re low, they can really start to mimic the other hormones that may be low as well. These hormones impact your energy, your mood, your metabolism, and so much more. Younger women can absolutely have hormone imbalances, and it is not just for women when they’re in menopause. If you really want to worry about hormones early on, take preventative measures to ensure you have healthy hormones. Myth number two, birth control fixes hormone imbalances. Well, that’s a lie. Birth control does not work well. It manages symptoms. It doesn’t fix the root cause. I see this happen in teenage girls and young women, where they’re just given birth control and in hopes that it’s going to help their hormone imbalances, but it doesn’t really help.

It’s just masking symptoms. I see this in women with PCOS or endometriosis. We really need to dig deeper into what’s causing these hormone imbalances, and we’re going to talk about that. So just hold onto that for a moment. But birth control, make an informed choice. There’s a time and place for it, but it’s not going to fix your hormone imbalance. It’s actually going to create more hormone imbalance, especially in the long run. Myth number three is that my hormones are fine if my labs are normal. I’m just going to pause right there and say, when your doctor says my labs are normal, you as an individual might not know what the labs are that are important for me to have my doctor check? And then, what time of the month are women checking these hormones? Especially as we’re talking about sex, female hormones, women menstruate, they have a menstrual cycle and every week of the month, hormones fluctuate for women.

Now, in men, they have the same hormones. They don’t really fluctuate much throughout the month. But for women, women have what I call the four seasons in the month, the same way that we experience spring and summer and fall and winter. Women experience that in a month. So men, listen, if you see different aspects of your wife throughout the month, it’s because she’s going through all four seasons in every week. Spring could be right after a woman’s period, she feels refreshed, energized and happy. Then the summer comes along that second week when they’re in that ovulation phase and they feel good and energized and great and a little bit extending into the L teal phase, they start to still feel good in summer. But as the hormones drop, they start to go through the fall season. They might have less energy, just mood, just mood wiser off.

Then, during the menstrual period, when they’re actually having a period, this is their wintertime; they’re tired, and they might not feel like going out. Their mood is off. They might feel a little down. That’s kind of the average of what you see. But I’ll tell you this, in a healthy female whose hormones are regulated, they won’t really feel much of a difference from one week to another. If anything, they will notice a difference in muscle strength and maybe energy, but mood-wise, if they’re healthy, eating well, doing all the right things, they’re not going to feel much of a difference. So I want to address this. Myth three. If my labs are normal, then your hormones are fine. Well, first and foremost, most primary care doctors or even OB-GYN doctors are not doing labs to check your hormones. They don’t believe it’s an issue.

If they’re not checking hormones, then what is coming back normal? What are they actually testing? When I do get patients who tell me that their doctor or OB-GYN doctor checked hormones, it’s usually insufficient. It’s a couple of hormones and then they’re not checking them at the right time of the month. You want to check it during the luteal phase, which are days 19 through 21 of your menstrual cycle. Just so you know, day one is the first day that you start your period. So you would count 19 to 21 days from there to identify where your progesterone and estrogen levels need to be during this peak time. Most of the time, if they’re doing them, they say they’re normal, they’re not doing the right labs, and they’re not doing them during the right time of the month.

When women are told that everything’s normal, however, they still fill off, they didn’t really check because I’ll let you know, 10 out of 10 times when women start telling me their symptoms and how they feel, I already know they have low progesterone definitely, and I know that they’re low in estrogen, so it may be low in cortisol. I know what tests to do based on what they’re telling me. You definitely want to work with someone looking at functional ranges of labs and not just clinical ranges and doing the tests at the right time. We’re going to talk now about a lot more myths, of course, that we can go through, but I really want to focus on the common mistakes that I see in my clinic. I know that other practicing physicians who practice similar to me will agree with what I say when I get a female that’s coming in and they’re complaining, not complaining, like whiny complaining, but their chief concerns are, I don’t feel like myself.

I feel like I’m losing my mind. I have tons of anxiety and panic attacks, and I never had those before. I cannot fall asleep, and I cannot stay asleep. I have no energy. I’m falling asleep throughout the day, so I can’t wake up in the morning with energy. They’re dragging throughout the day, and then they can’t fall asleep at night. They’re having palpitations sometimes. These are very odd symptoms that are not commonly talked about, but they’ll have sensitivity in their scalp. All of a sudden, they notice a sensitivity in their scalp, and that’s a sign of low estrogen. So estrogen has this neurogenic effect on us and starts to affect the nervous system. So they have this sensitivity to their scalp. They can also have headaches on their forehead or the top of their head. They’ll have headaches. The symptoms go on and on.

Vaginal dryness, low sex drive, the memory concentration is out the door. There are a lot of symptoms that present, and I know this is a hormone imbalance, so we do the proper test and we confirm it. But when I go through an assessment with a new patient, I immediately ask, Tell me what you are eating? Start from the beginning of the day, are you having breakfast? I would say that nine out of 10 people, including men, say they’re not having breakfast or skipping breakfast. The common thing I hear is, well, I’m just not hungry when I wake up. The truth is no one is hungry with it when they wake up because cortisol is high in the morning. What wakes us up? I say cortisol, it’s our internal alarm clock. It wakes us up. Once that is up, it puts out insulin.

It puts a little bit of glucose, so you have energy to get started in your day, but about two to three hours after the time that you wake up, these cortisol levels begin to come down a little bit and that’s when we should eat. So you should be eating two to three hours after you wake up. Unfortunately, what I see a lot is they’re skipping breakfast and they’re getting to lunch maybe between 12 and two o’clock. Most women are having their first meal. So just think about this: the typical female is a mom. They’re married, they’re working, they get up, they’re going to get kids ready to go to school and dropping them off and then getting themselves to work. You start your day busy running, running without having to eat. You haven’t eaten anything. Your tank is empty from the night before, when you had your last meal.

Skipping this breakfast part is critical. I see that this happens a lot. Once again, social media, thank you, social media gods, for infesting the minds of humans to think that everybody needs to be intermittent fasting, and I highly disagree with that. These types of situations need to be looked at on an individual basis. I don’t care what the research says; don’t do it if it doesn’t work for you. You know how many men and women I’ve had in my office, they look healthy, they look fit. They’re eating nutritious foods. They’re not eating high-carb, refined sugars or processed foods, and they’re exercising and look very healthy on paper and in person, they look fine. But when I run their test and I looked at insulin fasting insulin levels, and I look at eptide levels, which is what the pancreas is doing, and I look at hemoglobin A1C and I look at the glucose levels that morning, what I commonly find is that they’re either pre-diabetic or they’re insulin resistant or full-blown diabetic.

I mean, I’ve had men in my office who are intermittent fasting and they feel good, they’re doing well with their diet and exercise, but the labs show like, man, you are pre-diabetic and you’re insulin resistant. This kind of way of dieting or eating or lifestyle, however you want to refer to it, doesn’t work for them. It doesn’t work for everyone. The word in itself, intermittent fasting, is that you’re not supposed to do this daily for the rest of your life. It doesn’t work. I’ve heard many debates on this, well, in the caveman days, people were hunting and didn’t eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s more modern. These people were also moving a lot and had a different lifestyle. They were in the sun. They didn’t have all the contemporary things that we do. We have to adapt to our lifestyle, which will vary from person to person.

I am not a fan of intermittent fasting. I use my brain a lot. I consult with patients. I need fuel in my body. My brain needs fuel to function, and I start by ensuring that I have the right amount of protein and some healthy fat. Let’s get going because eventually the body will begin to demand these things. It’s just that we ignore our bodies most of the time. I recommend that, like I said, women are not eating enough. They’re skipping meals, and sometimes think they’re doing this because they want to watch their weight. That’s not the way to lose fat. That’s not how to manage your weight, eat the right foods, and keep your body from starvation. Then, hold onto every carb and every calorie that you eat. It’s not going to save it up.

I commonly see that because I want you to remember from our last conversation on hormones, to make these hormones like estrogen and progesterone and DHEA and all of that good stuff, all of the sex hormones, including testosterone, they all come and are metabolized from cholesterol. Cholesterol is a healthy fat, right? We’re talking about omega threes. Everything is made from cholesterol and it’s from cholesterol that it starts to make the hormones. So cholesterol enters the cells in the ovaries, in women and is fermented. It’s in the testicles, and it’s also from our adrenal glands. We make some hormones there, and cholesterol enters the ovaries’ cells in women. Inside the cell, cholesterol is transported into the mitochondria, which are the powerhouse of the cells. In these mitochondria, there’s an enzyme called P four 50 SCC.

This enzyme is what’s going to cleave cholesterol. It’s going to break it down into a smaller form, and it’s going to make a hormone called pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is known as a mother hormone, and this is true for both men and women. From here, we make all of the other hormones like DHEA, testosterone, estradiol, estro, progesterone, and cortisol, all of which are made from cholesterol, for pregnant women. Most doctors do not check pregnant women alone. So if that bucket is empty, it cannot make the other hormones. Doctors are just looking at testosterone in men and estrogen and progesterone in women, and that’s not sufficient blood work, which is why I said, if the labs are normal, what are we referring to as being normal? Did they do the full panel? We do the whole panel as nature passes, we look at pregnenolone and every other hormone that falls under that cascade.

So nutrition is really important. If women are not eating enough, they’re not getting all the nutrients and all the things that are the building blocks to making these hormones. No matter what you do, you’re not going to be able to make them, and you’re going to be deficient. Obviously, I tell women to aim for fats anywhere from 44 to 78 grams of fat a day in divided doses. Then, you should eat about a gram of protein per pound. If you’re 180 pounds, you’re not going to eat 180 grams of protein. Most women aren’t even eating 60 grams of protein a day. It’s really interesting. When I take into account a day of what they’re eating, they’re not even getting close to 50 grams of protein. It’s no wonder you feel tired and can’t remember anything if you don’t have the energy to put in what you’re trying to accomplish here.

So, aim for 90 grams of protein to start with. Work your way up to 120 grams of protein daily and divide those into three to four meals daily. Don’t skip breakfast. You can delay it a little bit in the morning, but get in there. The other thing related to nutrition is that many women will say, Well, I’m just not hungry. The thing is that our body will adapt to whatever lifestyle and behavior you have. If you haven’t been eating breakfast for years, of course, you’re not going to be hungry. Your body adapted to that. You have to start introducing food, and then your body will adapt to having that food unless you have digestive issues. I really encourage that you look into what your digestive problems are because people who have digestive issues are going to have hormone issues, they’re going to have mental health issues, they’re going to have many other health issues because the gut is the first place that food arrives and gets metabolized, and it’s absorbed and integrated into the body to be utilized to do what it needs to do.

You’ve got to address the gut issues if those are there. So nutrition, nutrition, nutrition, you can do all the hormone replacement therapy. It’s still not going to fix the root cause. If you’re not eating well, you still need to get fueled up. So the second mistake, a common mistake that I see women make, is not sleeping enough or not sleeping the right hours. I get it, women have a lot of interrupted sleep, whether it’s due to their menstrual cycle or pregnancy. Then, even after that, raising children, sleep gets disturbed a lot, and then they create this unhealthy pattern of depriving themselves of sleep or staying up. I call this a lot from women where they say, the kids are in bed, everyone’s asleep, and I just need a few hours to myself, and they do this at night when everyone’s sleeping. I highly discourage that because the studies show that the optimal time for women and men is between the hours of nine and 10.

You should be asleep by that time because this is when we get the most significant surge of growth hormone, melatonin and other hormones, is between nine and 10 o’clock. If you go to bed at 12 at night, one in the morning, you’re missing that surge of hormones. When you do this day after day after day for years, it starts to wear on you. The studies show that for women, you need to sleep between eight and nine hours to have optimal hormones. Like I said, be in bed, be asleep, at least by 10. Still, really before 10:00 PM, the studies show that as long as they sleep six hours, their testosterone levels are not affected, but anything under six hours for men, you start to see hormones come down in them as well, so men can sleep less and women can’t.

Don’t feel bad about sleeping. I encourage you to start changing your mindset about sleep and improving the quality of your sleep, getting into bed earlier, and trying to stay asleep. I know when you have children, it’s very different. Your brain are just scanning to see what your child is doing, if they’re okay and safe. But sleep has a huge impact on our hormones. We need time to recover, to regenerate and for the body to make these hormones while we rest. The third common mistake that I see, and these are hard, I mean it’s stress and it’s chronic stress sometimes in life. You just have to pick your battles and start reducing activities that are just not that important. Women are great at creating stressors in their lives that are not really important. Let me just give you an example.

In the wintertime, as we enter the holidays, right, October, November, December, the body really likes to move along with the seasons as we change. So in the wintertime, we’re designed to slow down and enjoy life during this slowdown, but this season is usually the busiest for most people. Women get carried away. I mean, God bless your hearts. I don’t consider myself part of that group because I’ve learned my lesson that I am not going to stress about holiday decorations and all the gifts and all the wrappings and all these things. It doesn’t really matter. If I am stressed, it will rob me of my joy, so it’s not really joyful for me. Now, if you can manage those situations without causing excessive stress, and you find joy in that, then do that. That’s your personality. That’s your desire.

You find joy. It’s fun for you, you should do it. But unfortunately, I see a lot of women who stress themselves overly during this time of the year. They’re forcing themselves to interact with either family where there are issues and don’t really care to interact with them. That kind of stress has a huge impact on their hormones. Why am I talking about stress as it relates to hormones is because when our bodies are making higher levels of cortisol, which is a stress hormone, that the body will release during stressful situations, that high level of cortisol during any period, it’s going to start to steal from progesterone, from pregnenolone, from DHEA, from testosterone, from estrogen, but primarily from pregnenolone. Pregnenolone is a hormone that, aside from maintaining a pregnancy, does so much more. It helps our nervous system and brain be calm and navigate stressful situations.

It helps us with sleep. It helps our heart to be at a reasonable resting heart rate. When we are depleted in progesterone, you’re crazy, you’re stressed out, you have anxiety. You can experience panic attacks as it relates to very low levels of progesterone. Oftentimes, women go to the doctor and they say, I’m having anxiety, I’m having panic attacks. They’re like, here, have some medications for your anxiety and panic. What they actually need is they need to get their hormones checked and they need to do the lifestyle modifications so their progesterone levels can come up naturally. So chronic stress is always going to deplete us of our hormones, especially. It’s chronic, right? A little stressor here and there, not a big deal. But if there’s a big stressor in your life that you’re not facing, I suggest getting counseling. I mean, like I said, cutting back on things that are not a priority and just prioritizing your life differently.

Pick your battles. The fourth mistake that I see women make, which could be one direction or another, but usually more often than not, is that women are not exercising. So they’re losing a lot of muscle mass. Ladies, you do not want to lose muscle as you get older. You don’t. You want to retain muscle. You want to build muscle because there are a lot of longevity and anti-aging benefits, a massive benefit to your nervous system that you wish to exercise. But more often, women are not exercising because they’re busy with life, family, etc. But in a small population of women, I also see women who are over-exercising, they’re over-exercising, and their nutrition plan does not match their physical activity. The good thing about exercise is that it’s excellent in many ways. It helps your hormone production, but you must also have the building blocks to make those hormones.

Some women get into this, I want to lose fat, but they’re lifting weights and your muscles need food to build those muscles to regenerate, to recover those muscles so you can work ’em out again. You want to make sure that you’re getting enough protein and healthy fats, a good amount of healthy carbohydrates as you’re working out as well, and give your body, listen to your body. There are two extremes of some women are not exercising and some women are over-exercising and their nutrition plan and also their sleep patterns do not align with the physical activity that they have. Look, I weight train almost every day or have some kind of physical activity every day. Now, I modify the activity from one day to a couple of days later to give myself time for my muscles to heal before I go back and work out that same muscle group.

But my meals have to match my physical activity. For women lifting weights, you’ll notice that you cannot lift as much when you don’t have enough protein that day or the day before. Now, here’s the other thing, too. This is very interesting. This is what makes us different than men too, is that if you are a menstruating female, your strength is going to vary throughout the month. So, usually during ovulation and the luteal phase, we tend to be stronger, so we can use this time to lift heavier. But if you noticed a week before your period or during your period, you’re like, I can’t lift the same weight that I did a week ago. Why not? It’s because these hormones are not there. That’s really it. Instead of beating yourself up over it, modify your activity, and do lower weights, maybe higher rep counts.

What you can do during those two weeks of not being able to lift as heavy is to really maximize on endurance activities because women’s endurance will be greater during that time versus the times that they have greater strength. The benefit of women with higher estrogen levels than men is that estrogen helps muscles recover faster during, like I said, that ovulation and luteal phase is about a two, two two-and-a-half-week period. You can really work out your muscles every two days. If you’re eating well, sleeping well, and hydrating yourself well, you can work the same muscle group every two days because your recovery time is much faster than any other time of the month. So maximize on that. So those are four points that I brought up on mistakes. The nutrition is now sleeping right, and there is excessive stress, either not exercising or over-exercising.

There’s a bonus one I want to throw in here. Those of you who are my patients, you know this about me and I talk about it all the time. I talk about it to my friends, I talk about it to my family, I talk about it to everyone. I want to talk about it to people at the gym because they’re the ones who annoy me the most when it comes to this one thing. One thing is using perfumes, colognes, fragrances, and all of these chemicals you spray on yourself or put on your body. These are massive hormone disruptors and have a huge impact on nervous system regulation. I know you want to smell good, but most of the time, these things you’re using disrupt your hormones. There are so many stories in my clinic of situations where I’ve seen women doing the right things.

We got the diet right, and the sleep is fine. All these other things are being managed, great supplementation that they’re taking, and they’re seeing some improvements, but they’re still having irregular periods. By irregular, let me just be very blunt here, what I mean by that, when a woman tells me they’re having a period for 45 days, actively bleeding for 45 days, that is not normal. A woman has a period and it’s lasting for two weeks, which is not normal. A woman who has a period for a week has a week or two off and then starts her period again; that is not normal. Being debilitated by the symptoms of hormone imbalances during a period that is not normal, a regular period. I know some of my readers disagree with this because you haven’t experienced this, but for women who are healthy and are well-regulated, a menstrual period is really non-eventful.

You won’t have many symptoms, you won’t even feel it coming on. No bloating, no abdominal pain, no cramping, no headaches. It starts, and you feel fine and can go about your activity. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for most Americans. It’s just not. Most of the women in my office have never had such an experience as that. They don’t know what normal is, right? But these chemicals we spray and put on our bodies are causing a hormone imbalance. I have often told women in my office that they come into my office and sit across from me, and I could taste their perfume in my mouth. That’s how much they’re wearing or whatever fragrances they have. When they leave my office, it still smells like that perfume, and they left it everywhere. It’s lingering. Not only is it impacting them, but it’s affecting everyone around them who’s smelling this, whether it’s a man or a woman.

This is why I hate that at jams, people just douse themselves in perfume and cologne, and you’re breathing heavily during this time because you’re working out and you’re inhaling all of these fragrances that are also being hormone disruptors to you, even if you don’t use them. When I tell these women, I need you to clean up your environment, meaning get rid of all these fragrances, what you’re personally using on yourself or spraying on yourself, I want you to change the type of cleaners that you’re using in your home for laundry, for cleaning the house, the dishes, all of that. When they clean out their environment from these chemicals, guess what? They come back a month later, and they’re like, I can’t believe that just removing those chemicals, my menstrual period, like the menstrual period, is better. The symptoms are diminished. They’re gone. Every month that they continue to just remove those chemicals, they regulate their hormones.

As I said, I don’t need to research to prove this is true. I see it as evidence in my patients and myself because I practice these things. I don’t use these chemicals. I’m not saying this to brag, but I know what a healthy period is, and it should not interrupt your life, but unfortunately, it does for many women. My goal, because I want to help women feel better, is to help you understand that if you’re not going to go to a doctor and do all those things, then at least follow these things right here for free. I’m not telling you to do them. This is for educational purposes. I don’t know your history and all of that, but this is just common sense that anyone can think through. Oh, yeah, I should eat more. I should start with my breakfast, my lunch, and my dinner.

Get more protein and healthy fats. Let’s start there. Find out what works for you. I’m not telling you specifically what and how much to eat, but figure that out for yourself. Make sure you’re sleeping. Make sure you’re managing stress. Get moving. Your body was designed to move and get rid of these chemicals in your life that are hormone disruptors. Just by doing those five things, just watch every month. Be consistent with it. That’s the thing. Give yourself a month, be consistent with it daily, and you’ll see the difference in your menstrual period. The hormones will be regulated just by doing these things. I am not a fan of throwing hormone replacement therapy for all women. There is a time and place for it, and I know when the time and place for it is because when women are not functional. Their hormone tanks are all empty, so I do recommend letting’s get you on some hormone replacement therapy so you can sleep better, so you’re not stressed and have all the anxiety. You’re feeling better to make better decisions on nutrition and sleep and exercise and managing stress.

There’s a time and place for it. But if someone comes in and they’re 33 years old, I’m not going to give you hormone replacement therapy because now we’re making your body lazy and producing those hormones that it should be doing on its own. We haven’t really addressed the root cause, giving you hormone replacement therapy. It’s not fixing the problem because the problem is that it’s in your behavior and your decision-making. And ladies, please understand my tone and what I’m saying. I’m very passionate. I’m very fiery and mean this from a really good place in my heart. I see so many women suffering and struggling through something that they’re causing themselves to go through. Now, this is not for everyone because there are women with actual situations like PCOS and endometriosis, and those are much deeper. Many greater conditions are causing imbalances that need further help and assistance.

For the majority of women, whether they’re in their twenties, thirties, or forties, oftentimes it’s their day-to-day decisions and behavior that have to do with food, sleep, stress, physical activity, and all the chemicals you’re putting on your body. Those are the common things that I see. I’m so tired of hearing all these conversations on social media about hormones and perimenopause, but no one’s really talking about what to do. I don’t want you to get on herbs or hormone replacement therapies. You really need to change your diet, eat more, and start eating real food. Starting your morning with breakfast, coffee, and a piece of toast is not breakfast. It’s not. Somebody needs to shake you up, wake you, and tell you the facts. If you’re not eating enough and you’re not sleeping at the correct times, just those two things by themselves will create a hormone imbalance.

You have no business looking at taking estrogen and progesterone as a hormone replacement therapy if you’re 35, because they guarantee you that if you make these changes, your hormones will come back up. They just will. I’ve seen it time and time again in my clinic, and I’m going to do another episode. The next episode, you’ll want to stay in tune with this because one of the everyday things that I see that’s very concerning to me is the number of young girls, and maybe specific teenagers, 20-year-olds, that are coming in with very low hormones. It is disturbing, and it’s not just women; it’s also young men and young teenage boys. There’s a truth, an epidemic here of hormone imbalance issues, and a lot of it is attributed to our lifestyle choices. You have the power in your hands to make the changes in your day-to-day life and take control of not just your hormones but also your overall health.

This message reaches you so that you can make lifestyle decisions here. There’s no need for you to be suffering and struggling through life. Get to bed early. The bottom line is to put your phone down and get to bed. Stop looking at all these TikTok videos on health and just get to bed. Go to sleep, go to bed, rest. If you’re struggling with sleep, then we need to address that. That’s the other thing: these things are cyclical. If you’ve been making poor decisions for many, many years, now your hormones are down, and you can’t fall asleep, stay asleep because you have low progesterone. Now we have to backtrack and try to help you get to sleep so your body can make the hormones. If this is not where you’re at in your life, don’t wait till you get there.

Just be consistent with life and understand that sometimes life throws you curveballs, so we have to navigate and make the best of it. But don’t make yourself, or you should make yourself a priority when it comes to your physical health. Don’t drive yourself to the grave too soon and this burnout, it’s not the way to live life. So, hey, I hope you’ve enjoyed all this information as I talked about the top things, the common mistakes that women are making that have a huge impact on their hormones. Guess what? You can change all that for free. You can start making these changes if you need to consult with your doctor. But these are common sense things you can do for yourself to improve your hormone health overall. Stay tuned for the next episode because, like I said, I’m going to talk about the impact that I’m seeing in young women and young teenagers as it relates to their hormones. I hope you’ve taken great value from this hormone conversation. And until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share, and subscribe to help this message reach more people who may need to listen. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

The post Episode 49: Hormone Myths and Mistakes | What Every Woman Should Know appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

James shares his journey with depression and other ways he found helpful to his healing, including his spiritual walk and the impact on his family.

Podcast Transcript Episode 48

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician, heal myself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and we have James back with us. In this episode, we will talk about men’s mental health, depression and some strategies, some things that we can do to help more men get help. So welcome back, James.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, thank you. In the last episode, we talked a lot about men’s physical health, but I wanted to talk about mental health and work through some of the stigma that comes from it. And there’s a fine balance. There is a fine balance because I don’t agree that men should be weeping and being vulnerable and to everyone. There’s a time and place and I respect that, that men are strong and they want to keep that perception of themselves as being strong people, but getting help is not a sign of weakness.

It’s definitely not. I think quite the opposite and the mindset needs to shift because, as I had mentioned earlier, generationally we’ve been told, handle it on your own. Figure it out, suck it up.

Suck it up. Don’t cry, quit. Quit being a baby. Wait, girls cry.

I have to admit where I’m at fault, and I sometimes do find myself falling into that with my son and my daughter where I’m telling them, don’t cry, suck it up. Be a man. But that’s, it’s not fair. It’s not fair to do, and there does need to be a mental shift in that because seeking help is not a sign of weakness. I think quite the opposite. Seeking help is a sign that you recognize there’s a problem and you want to fix it. I think that’s strong. I think that’s brave. I don’t think that’s cowardice. I don’t think that’s taking the easy way out. I think that’s you really stepping up to the plate and understanding I’m not doing okay, and I want to be doing better and I don’t want to keep suffering, so what can I do differently?

There’s a reason in the Bible, in the book of Genesis, when God created a man, he said, it is not good for man to be alone. God created a helper for him. So in this, I essence, if men were to start understanding how they’re created, the purpose of their existence and that there will be times that all of us men or women, we will need help from someone else in this life, it is impossible to get things done completely on your own. This podcast, there’s a team of people, Bill, my producer, who helps me a lot, but I have my social media person who helps me. I have my marketing person, who helps me, and my assistant. There are other people who help me, and just in my business, and I did have the mindset of just I got it on my own and did it for myself for a long time, but it doesn’t work mentally and physically, to wear on you. Men have this, and some of it has been their upbringing, been the upbringing of both moms and the dads of how they have the experience that they’ve grown up in their home, tells ’em a lot about what’s okay, how to behave and what’s okay to interact. What has been, I know you’ve shared before, your experience with depression for a long time.

Yeah.

What was that pivotal point for you that you realized that you were experiencing depression, or did you even have the word depression in mind?

Without getting too deep, I was unhappy with myself. I was unhappy with the choices that I was making. I was sad. I didn’t feel like I was in the right place at the right time. I felt very selfish and I realized that my selfishness and my self-centeredness were causing me to be sad all the time, constantly, and I hated how I felt. Although I can’t pinpoint an exact time, I’m sure there were intrusive thoughts in there, intrusive thoughts of you’re not enough or good enough. You are a terrible person. And so I realized I don’t want to continue to feel this way. It’s affecting me, it’s affecting my relationship, and it’s affecting my daughter, who was very, very young. I don’t think that it affected her because I wasn’t such a clinically depressed case where I couldn’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It was just very faint.

I sought help and got on a myriad of different drugs over the years. I think it was on Wellbutrin for probably the majority of it; they threw in some Zoloft in there. They threw in a couple of other ones I don’t even remember. And I was always scared to get off of it. I was always afraid, well, if I get off of it, I’m going to backslide. I’m going to feel worse. I always made it a point to ensure I took it, but probably in 2023, I started getting this sense that I don’t think I need to be on this anymore. As a guy in a guy headspace, it was okay. When this happens, that will be the event that will cause me to stop doing this, or this will be the event that makes me start doing this. I kept waiting for that event to happen, and it never happened. Then in 2024, I made a kind of mental decision that I was going to wean myself off of it.

We’re on a Disney cruise with my family, and one day I don’t take it intentionally and the next day I don’t take it. And the third day, I kind of forgot. I kind of forgot on the fourth day, and then a week went by and guess what? I was still alive, and I wasn’t depressed, and I didn’t want to jump off the boat. And one week led to a month. A month led to two, and now here we are, almost a year later, no antidepressants, completely cold Turkey. I think a large part of that is due to a couple of factors that we spoke about before. Eating right, exercising, supplementation, and finding a group of people that I could connect with. When you feel like you have a sense of purpose, when you feel like you are intentional about the actions that you’re doing, I think you’re less likely to backslide.

You’re more focused on how to keep pushing forward and not so concerned with how I will backslide? So I think a lot of it had to do with mental space and I think a lot of it, shout out to my company, they took a huge chance on me. I had no pharma experience at all, and I said, I can do this, guys, I can do this. I started doing what I now do, and really, I began to make an impact and I started to see my numbers grow and I started to see my providers come back to me and tell me, Hey, what you suggested was really good. This product that you have, which doesn’t need to shout it out.

We do, it’s great.

But I think doing something where I felt I was making a difference put me in a different mental space. I didn’t have time for the nonsense. I didn’t have time for those intrusive thoughts. I was too busy doing things and pushing forward. I didn’t allow myself to slide backwards. I think that’s really important for men and women to understand is to find a community, find a group, find one or two people you connect with, and have them be your support network. Once you have that, you can always rely on them to give you a boost. When I’m feeling down, I’ll reach out to the guys. My best friend will always send me something highly inappropriate, but always exactly what I need to hear. People on my team will send me things. Hey, you’re doing great. Keep up the good work or go get after it today. You’ve got this. Sometimes, just those simple words of affirmation can totally change your mindset, and I think it’s really important that guys have a consistent flow of that.

Yeah. You said something that I always think is very important in our life, and that’s purpose. Having a purpose, knowing what your purpose is. Everyone has a purpose in their life, so it’s really important for you to identify that and maybe you’re 30 and 40 years old and you haven’t identified what that purpose is, but there is one, I think it’s really important to maybe whether it’s anxiety or depression that a person’s experiencing. I always say, if it’s not your physical body that’s telling you something’s wrong, then it’s your soul that’s screaming at you. There’s something we need that you need to feed us spiritually. Many medical conditions can cause depression and anxiety, including thyroid and blood sugar dysregulation, hormone dysregulation, and that could be it. But if you fix that or you’re someone who you are eating healthy, you are exercising, you’re doing all the right things, and you’re still feeling that, then I tell people, then you’ve got to look further inward

Look at what my soul needs right now. Is it healing from the past? Because of depression, I always like to explain what depression is and what anxiety is, besides the feelings of it. Depression really is us being stuck looking at our past, looking at our past decisions, and yeah, the voices creep in, and you start thinking, you still hold shame and guilt for some of the things, and that will become depressing. It pushes us down. It makes us feel small and insignificant. We’re not good enough. We’re bad because we did those things. Forgiveness, which is an episode I’m going to do or talk on, is that the important thing is that we learn to forgive. Forgive ourselves the same way that we have to learn to forgive others. We also have to give ourselves grace and mercy and forgive ourselves for our mistakes when we were younger.

In this world, no one is perfect, and no one has figured it all out. Everyone makes a mistake, and I always tell people, if you were 20, 15 years old, whatever age, and you made a lot of mistakes, a lot of foolish mistakes, the point is that you learn from them. Now, what did you learn from it? Reflect. Reflect. But don’t get stuck there and forgive yourself and give yourself grace. That’s what depression is. You keep looking to the past without really a resolution, without bringing closure and not being able to move forward. You’re stuck there.

I feel like we could do an entire you and I episode on exactly what you just said on that because for years I carried such a heavy burden of guilt and regret and remorse and sadness and shame for how I lived my life, and it took a lot of grace from myself. It took a lot of grace from the people that I hurt and forgiveness from the people that I hurt. It still bothered me. I think for me, at least, and I know that this is true for you, faith has now played a major role in that. Because what I can’t control, what I don’t feel like I have a handle on, I just have to give it up to God. And I’ve really been relying heavily on my faith to keep me in the right mindset, to help me to make good decisions, to do the right thing, and to be a leader and not a follower. Help me to unburden myself from guilt, shame, regret, remorse, sadness, and less-than feelings that I carried around for so long. Remove that from me, and I will feel so much better. I pray with my kids every night. It’s the same prayers over and over, but they have come to really like them. Now my little one will say, Can we do the three?

She wants me to tell her a story. It’s a made-up story. I ate 15 pizzas. I got fat. I climbed on top of a house. I was a hot air balloon. Then she wants to hear, I love yous, which we do our I love you. Then, both my son and my daughter want to say prayers. Now, they’re usually sleeping by the time that we get to it, but we do our prayers and now they’re asking for it. So I know that faith is coming off of me and going on to them. Hopefully, they can have a close relationship with God where, if they do make mistakes, they don’t have to live with it for as long as I did, because unburdening yourself frees you so much. I still feel bad about the things that I’ve done, but I’ve made my amends and I know that the people that I’ve hurt have forgiven me and they’ve moved on and so have it never really goes away. It just gets diminished to the point where you don’t notice it anymore. I’ve come to terms with the fact that I made bad choices and I’ve done bad things, but God knows God.

He knows what I’ve done. He knows what I’m going to do, and I just have to put faith in the fact that I’m an imperfect person. I’ve made imperfect choices, but God still loves me and I’m thriving. So faith played a huge role in that. For me,

The best gift you can give your children is faith and teaching them his word, God’s word. That is the best gift that any man, any father can give to their child. It’s not just in words, but it’s in your actions, in the way you carry yourself. And you’re right, we’re not perfect. I want to read this scripture. I just happened to have it. Look at that. It was not part of this conversation. That’s how it works. 

That’s how it works. I bet you that if I open up NLT right now, there’s a verse that both you and I know is Matthew 11:28, 38. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble and heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. And those are the words of Jesus. Forgiveness is a process, and I’m going to pray for you. I’m going to pray that God delivers those cuts that are off of you because the past is the past and that’s not who you are. It’s like when a snake sheds their skin, it’s done. They’re not that skin anymore. They’re outside of that.

A thousand percent.

A snake is not like, oh my God, look what I left behind. They’re done. They move past it. But as humans, we have a conscience; we have a subconscious mind. We have a soul, we have a spirit. We’re a little bit more complex than a snake, a little bit more, a little bit more. The enemy will always use those past experiences, the mistakes we’ve made to throw it in our face, to get us to feel bad because God is not a God who does that. God, when you forgive and you move, he forgives you and he wants to see you live out your life. He knows that we’re going to make mistakes, but I know that your soul is not going to make the same mistake that you did 2010 years ago, however past it was. You’re just not. Your higher spirit won’t let you do that.

Completely different person, completely different. 

You’re not that person anymore. You’re this new version of God working in you to help transform you. Not just transform your mind, but transform your spiritual heart, transform you from the inside out. We have this thing, not all nature paths believe it, but I do that healing comes from above, below, into our bodies and from the inside out. That makes sense. It makes sense. It makes sense for physical or mentally emotional stuff. 

Agreed.

Go ahead.

So today he will listen to the prayers of the destitute. He will not reject their pleas.

We are heard, you’re burdened to be unburdened.

If your child, let’s say your 4-year-old, drops an expensive vase, he breaks it. You don’t stop loving him. You might be upset,

I might be mad.

You might be mad, but you don’t stop loving him.

It’s a vase. It’s replaceable.

It’s replaceable.

Oftentimes, and not to upset our parents or anyone in our ancestry, but sometimes people hurt the child because they made a mistake, like breaking something, and they don’t understand the ramifications of how we talk to and feel guilty. There are times when I’m not doing well, I’m tired or hungry, hangry, and my child does something, and I might yell at them and then I feel bad. But the good thing is I can go to my child and say, I’m sorry that I yelled at you. I’m sorry that I said that. I love you. I love you no matter what. They need to hear that too, because when our children hear us humble ourselves and apologize for our mistakes, our children are willing to forgive really quickly on the spot.

Really quick.

Isn’t that amazing?

Why is it that children can do that? Not us. We can still be thinking about it, I still feel bad about what I did 10 or 15 years ago.

That’s the beauty of childhood. It’s a beauty of children that they don’t hold onto those things. We get mad, we snap if we’re smart, if we’re good people, we recognize that snapped and we can immediately go and try and correct the situation. I’m very guilty of this because my father raised my sister and I under NYPD, strict Italian Catholic upbringing. There wasn’t a lot of nonsense that we could do and get away with. My father did everything that he could, and he’s an amazing human being and an amazing father, and I love him. There were things that he did that I hated, that I have found myself doing or almost doing, that I’ve had to backpedal and remind my kids, listen, I’m sorry I was in a bad mood. My sugar’s high, my sugar’s low. I was frustrated with mom, whatever the situation was, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you. I knew it was an accident. Look, you’re not in trouble. Dad made a mistake. I love you. No matter what, always, always and forever, can you forgive me? Usually you don’t even have to get to the do you forgive me part before my son has his arms around you and he’s cries. It’s okay, dad, you don’t have to cry. Don’t get upset. It’s okay.

There’s such purity in children. They’re innocent.

It’s incredible. It’s absolutely incredible. 

I always say children are our greatest teachers if we’re willing to listen and learn. They are our greatest teachers. My daughters have definitely raised me up. So I heard someone many years ago, before I had kids, say that our parents raise us, but our children finish doing the job.

That makes sense.

And it does, because being a parent is just a whole different experience. You see all these people who want to grow and enlighten and grow spiritual maturity. I’m like, go have some kids. That’s the test.

It’ll definitely change it. 

It’ll really test you. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I definitely agree with what you’re sharing. When it comes to men specifically for mental health, I’m glad that you brought in this spiritual aspect because I find that you see this in churches where women attend and the men are not, and men were called to be in leadership. How important has your relationship with God been in your journey of mental health?

If we’re going to be honest, not big as of recent, very big long-term. My strategy for mental health was to medicate.

Medicate, find what works. 

I have some statistics here that I think are pretty powerful. Men are four times more likely to commit suicide than women, and it’s the eighth leading cause of death. Men are less likely to seek help and self-medicate with substances. Men are more likely to binge drink and are two times more likely to die from an opioid overdose. In terms of therapy and getting help, only one in four men with pronounced mental health issues actually seek help. So, where does faith come in? If you’re already faithful, that’s a journey that you have to walk. For me, my faith was not strong enough during, we’ll call it the height of my depression that I felt like I could lean on God. I thought I’ll just medicate with whatever it was, whether it was Wellbutrin or Zoloft or I can’t even think of the other ones. But those were the two main ones. 

That’s why I can’t remember.

As of late, I’ve realized that without the use of pharmaceuticals, I need to get my relief differently. I like to go to the gym. So for me, that’s a huge mental relief. I go to the gym, I work out. I feel better, I look better. I see gains. I see changes. That’s really motivating. So I keep doing it, but now I’m seeing that same effect spiritually, where I’m reaching out to God every night, every day, sometimes multiple times a day. Sometimes it’s just to say thank you. Thank you for getting my daughter home from school today. As of recent, spiritual health has really taken the place of pharmaceutical help. For me. It’s huge and I really like it. I like it. One, because it’s easy. It costs me nothing to close my eyes and fold my hands, nothing.

It takes two seconds. I sit here right now, I’m praying right now. It doesn’t take much. But for me, the relief that it gives me is so much greater than what I got before because one, I’m not clouded by anything. I don’t have any antidepressants running through my body. I don’t have it systemically coursing through my veins. What I have is my health and my faith, and it’s gotten me to a really, really good place.

I always approach this cautiously. I really think it’s an individual thing. I always see people as an individual, it’s hard to just generalize everything for people and say the right thing because there’s so many different components and moving things for that men are experiencing specifically whether it’s a physical situation, if it’s mental health, is there something going on with your brain? Men who’ve, sports who’ve had concussions, histories of concussions that can still have a lingering effect on the brain. If you’ve been on substances, whether it’s drug use or alcohol use, all of that has an effect on the brain. Now, I’m a believer that the brain can heal, that any part of you can heal and repair itself, doing the right things, giving it the right things physically, whether it’s getting the mental help or the spiritual help. I get to see these two different worlds of the Christian viewpoint and any spiritual viewpoint, and then the medical side, and I’m trying to marry the two because we are all of it.

You can’t separate the human experience from the physical, mental, and spiritual. We are spiritual in body, period, whether you want to believe it or not, it’s there. There are different ways to approach people, and there’s no cookie-cutter approach to mental health. So men might be watching this, and if they grew up in a very toxic home environment where they didn’t have a male figure, a positive male figure, or maybe they did have a male figure, but they were just toxic anyways, or they did have a good mom or they didn’t have a mom, or sometimes they didn’t have either parent, whatever it is, all of that has an impact on you, whether you want to believe it or not. I’ve had many men in my office say, Yeah, but that happened long ago. They’re in their forties. It happened a long time ago.

I’m like, yeah, but that inner child in, you never received what it needed. This is going to be a whole different conversation in the future, but there are different forms of attachment styles that we form early on, from conception to two years old, but really into the eight years we really form. We have a certain attachment style. If it wasn’t a safe and loving attachment, which lemme be honest, the majority of people haven’t had a safe, loving attachment style. It’s either that they’re an anxious attachment or that they’re avoidant. I’ve learned that there are two types of avoidance. So there are these categories of what kind of attachment style you have that when you get older, it shows up in everything. How we communicate in our work with other people, with their children, with your spouse, with yourself, how you handle situations, do you run away from, do you avoid stressful situations? Men tend to be in a lot of avoidance. You just avoid the problem.

I think that’s why men tend to avoid the mental issues, the physical issues. They just keep avoiding it, thinking it’s going to go away and it doesn’t go away and the problem just gets bigger. I would love for men to at least start exploring options. There are so many resources online. I’ll probably put some notes on this episode or link it in there because there are so many references to assessments you can do online to see which attachment style you have or what kind of different areas of mental health do you need. Is it something that you need medication for? Because if you do need it and it’s going to keep you from committing suicide, then yes, then do that. But that should be just to give you time to get the rest in place. And so there are mental health experts out there who are working more holistically too. They’re not going straight to the medications. They’re saying, let’s do these other therapies, let’s do these other things and see if that works. They’re the experts, so they know when someone needs to be medicated if it’s severe. Because what happens ultimately when men do suppress emotionally or they don’t get the help, is that it starts to impact their marriage

It starts to impact the relationship they have with their children. They get to be older and they’re disconnected from their children. I hear this all the time. That’s what I’m telling you. I have women in their fifties and sixties. Kids are all out of the home. Even as having adult children, the mom will say, My husband’s upset because when the kids call, they call me, they don’t talk to dad. And dad is like, How come no one calls me? Then I’ve had men say in their fifties, I made a mistake. I worked all my life thinking that my only priority was to work, to pay the bills, to provide, and I missed out on having a relationship with my family, with my children. And now they’re grown and they don’t want anything to do with me. If younger men in their twenties, thirties and forties would understand that, yes, we appreciate you working. We appreciate you being the provider, the protector, but they also want you. Your family wants you, your children want you.

Everybody wants you to be present. And, again, we touched on this generationally speaking. I mean from the dawn of men, men have kind of fallen into this. We are the provider. We are supposed to do X, Y, and Z. We are not supposed to show emotion. We are supposed to be strong and stoic. We’re supposed to be the disciplinarians in the house. We’re supposed to be the breadwinner. All of these labels are put on. But I think that in those examples of the guys that look back and they say, well, I should have done this, you can do both. You can still be a strong dad and be a disciplinarian, but still show up for your kids’ soccer games. You can still be the breadwinner and still read to your children at night. It doesn’t have to be either or. I think that when we start looking at the decline in mental health, it’s guys feel burdened that they have to do everything. I have to do everything for everybody. That can be really cumbersome and it can be really tiring. I think that as a society, we need to appreciate dads a lot more.

One of the silly things that I noticed is the changing tables. Changing tables are primarily in women’s bathrooms. They’re not in men’s bathrooms, but there’s a really big push right now for dads only. Dads, right? Instead of OnlyFans, it’s only dads. There’s girl’s dad, cheer dad. There are all of these dads that I think are now starting to realize that I don’t have to be X, Y, and z. I don’t have to be a hard ass. I don’t have to be some super tough, macho guy. I can be a cheer dad. I can put on my pink shirt. I can wear my pink watch, and I can do these girly things. It doesn’t have to be an either or.

I think that getting caught up in that mental trap is where we start to really see that decline, where you’ll start to see men who want to medicate, self-medicate, and they drink themselves into oblivion. They don’t want to feel the burden that they’ve got to put food on the table. They fall into addiction, or they fall into these really detrimental vices, because they feel alone. They’re trying to unburden themselves from that feeling of having to do everything by slipping into these vices. And I think there needs to be a major monumental shift in that. And I think it really starts with words of affirmation. So if you know a dad out there that’s doing really good, who’s showing up for games, who’s putting the work in, who’s playing with his kids after he gets home, give that dad a shout out.

It’s really, really, really nice to hear when we’re doing well. Why didn’t you do this? How come you didn’t do that? Why did I have to do X, Y, and Z? A little bit of praise goes a long way, but then again, I’m a Leo, so I mean, stroke my ego. Tell me I’m pretty, you could still set me in the corner for another couple of years and then just take me out and stroke my ego and tell me I’m pretty and I’m good to go. But it’s really nice, generally speaking, to hear you’re doing good. I always try and praise my wife overly praise her because it’s tough. She is a boss at her job. She is an absolute alpha and dominant, and she’s a super mom. Sometimes we don’t get the praise that we maybe not even need me. I need it. My love language is words of affirmation. So I need to be told that I’m doing good, which is why I love my job, because every week I can see if I’m doing good or not. James,

You’re doing very well. Okay, you’re doing well. Then it’s important too to understand what your love language is. I’ve learned that there’s not just four, there’s a little bit more, and I’m like, yeah, the one that I really act of service. I’m an acts of service person. It’s like the little things that people do that just make me excited, but also being heard is a big act, big time acts of love for me. When someone is listening to me, I know we’re engaged. That to me is a sign of love and respect. Wow, you said so many great things, just overwhelmed. But no, you’re right. I think that more people need to speak positivity into each other’s life and acknowledge the good things that they’re doing, not just, I think it could get very routine in life, and you get caught up in the busyness of life, which is why I tell my patients, slow down.

Just slow down, including men. Women get crazy with doing things that are not important, and it takes away from time and energy from you, but it’s okay to slow down and just go through your life and prioritize, right? Prioritize what’s most important on your plate. So I’m going to tell you just because my dad passed away on Father’s Day last year, and I’m not bitter about it because my father gave me a gift of faith of God in such a beautiful way without it being forceful. He was a man whose actions showed his faith and his love in us. I always said, I knew my father loved me, not because he had to tell me, but because I could feel his love. He showed it through his patience, through his kindness. I still have yet to meet someone with that amount of patience that he has. That’s how I knew he loved me. If there was a miscommunication on my part, a misunderstanding on my part, he just would smile and laugh like, oh, it’s okay. To me, that was the greatest demonstration of what Jesus is like, that he’s a loving father.

Hey, you made a mistake.

It’s okay. It’s okay. My mom was a different story. But that’s the story for a different time. So I think that slow down, prioritize what’s important to you. God, you and your family and your health, your wellbeing is a priority because if you’re not feeling well, you can not perform in your job. You cannot be present with your family.

I think that it also ties into mental health to really bring it back to mental health, because if you’re not in a good mental place, I think you’re less likely to want to pursue something that is more of an unknown, right? Faith is a complete unknown. We don’t know. We think we do.

But we don’t know.

But we don’t. We don’t. Getting yourself into a good mental space is really important. I did a presentation at our national sales meeting on the power of positive thinking. Studies have shown, and I don’t have the data, but basically studies have shown that you live longer, you accomplish more, and you’re more successful if you’re in a good mental head space.

Absolutely.

So I think positioning yourself to be in a good mental head space opens up the doors for a closer relationship with whatever your higher power may be, whether that’s God, the universe, or any other religion out there. Getting yourself into that mindset, I think is really, really helpful, and it opens the door for even more. Being rooted in faith, I think definitely helps with recognizing where your head’s actually at. So when you’re spiraling, slow down, slow down, slow down, okay. A car is not going to crash through the living room and kill the family. That’s an insane thought.

We don’t even live near a road. Stop thinking that the plane is going to crash into the Alps. You’re not even on a plane right now. Let those thoughts go. Give those thoughts up to God. When I started doing that, not only did I mentally feel better, but I felt more complete. I feel whole. For the first time ever, all the boxes that I needed to check in my life are now checked. I think it’s the first time I realize that all those boxes are checked. My children are safe. My children are healthy. My wife is healthy, our relationship is healthy. My job is healthy spiritually. I’m healthy mentally. I mean, I’m still insane.

Work in progress.

It’s always going to be a work in progress. Like everything. It could use improvement, but just doing better altogether. And that is where mental health really needs to shine a light or that we as a society need to shine a light, if there are resources for you to be in. This space that I’m in doesn’t take money.

Quite the opposite. It doesn’t cost anything, which is another reason for you to do it. I’m sorry for all the sins that I’ve committed. God forgive me for what I did. When I close my eyes, let me wake up in the morning and I have a new start. Cool, done. Boom. Maybe it adds relief to you. Maybe it doesn’t, but it’s not going to hurt. I think that what we really need to be looking at is outside of substances. Yes, there is a place for pharmacological intervention. However, I think that we can circumvent that by getting people involved in the community, giving people a sense of purpose, and having them feel like whatever they’re doing is making a difference. That’s huge. And that really doesn’t take a lot. It really doesn’t.

Well, as we wrap this up, men, take away the thank you for sharing all that and being on this episode. Of course.

Thank you.

We’ll have to see what other future ones we can get you back on here.

I’ll clear my schedule anytime you

Need. Absolutely. Thank you. Well, for men watching this, or if you’re a woman with a man in your life, share this with them and just remember that in order to heal, sometimes you have to slow it down. Just slow it down so that you have time to reflect on what your priorities are, to find balance in your life, find purpose, and find a community. You don’t have to do this alone. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here to help each other out. I hope you’ve been blessed by the message in this episode. And until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

The post Episode 48: Depression and Men’s Mental Health appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Speak to your doctor for further guidance.

Episode 47 Podcast Transcript

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started.

Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ana Lara. Today I have a guest. His name is James Monty and he’s a top pharmaceutical rep with IBSA. He specializes in thyroid function and endocrine optimization and is passionate about helping others. He’s a dedicated family man, a husband with three children, ages 16, seven, and four, and he’s been a type one diabetic for over 35 years. In his free time, he coaches his son’s baseball team and is his youngest’s cheer dad. He has extensive knowledge of the mental health space as he was diagnosed with depression in 2011 and was on several depression medications throughout the years. In August of 2024, he quit his medications cold Turkey and is thriving without the use of pharmaceutical drugs. Please help me welcome James. Hi.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Welcome. I invited you on the podcast for many different reasons. We naturally have great conversations.

I agree.

Now what our audience should know, and you already know, is that I befriend everyone who walks into my office, most of them.

Okay, that’s fair.

I do. I don’t care if it’s a sales representative or the UPS guy. I treat everyone with kindness and respect completely because I know what it feels like to be on the sales end of things from my past experiences, and I just don’t believe in being mean, cold and nasty to people. I always want to be welcoming.

It’s one of the reasons why I absolutely love coming in to see you.

Yeah, we enjoy, me and my assistant, we enjoy when you come. We have conversations and I know it usually is not even geared towards the product or what you’re there for. It just winds up happening organically, which is really nice.

It is.

It’s a nice break from always being on the clinical side of things to just come in and be able to sit with you and talk. It’s really nice. It’s really, really nice about life and experiences. You’ve had kids and everything.

One of the things, James, that impressed me the most was being a man, being a married man with family, how open you were to being open and transparent about who you are, and what your experiences have been in life. We’ve talked a lot about mental health and physical health and many other things. I want to dedicate this episode to men’s health, the top reason men are driven to see their doctor. It blows my mind that men will wait to address health issues and they wait to go see a doctor until they have sexual dysfunction. 

That doesn’t surprise me at all.

The moment they have erectile dysfunction, that’s when they’re like, something’s wrong.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

I have also had many conversations with men and their top reasons of not going to the doctor, which I understand most of them will say, I don’t like doctors. The other reason they say they won’t go see a doctor is that they don’t want to know what’s going on.

Okay. Ignorance is bliss.

Ignorance is bliss. But the sad part of that, James, is that men will live life not seeing a doctor, not getting help, not working on the prevention side. Then when they do have to see a doctor, they’re forced to go.

They end up in the emergency rooms, having to do invasive therapies.

Absolutely.

But at that point, you have to do this forever.

Well, I think that one of the issues is that generationally men have always been told basically suck it up, deal with it. You’ll figure it out on your own, rub some dirt in it, you’re going to be okay. And so there’s this stigma of getting help and I don’t subscribe to that because for me, I don’t want to wait. I don’t want to wait until it’s too late until I need those invasive procedures. So I’ve been very big for years on as soon as something is going on. If I can’t do it on my own, my next step is always to get professional help, which is basically what I’ve done over the years is not weighted. I think also being diabetic, my knowledge of waiting for things to exacerbate is critical. I don’t have that luxury of waiting. I have to act. That’s really from a medical side and then also just from a personal side, professionals are there to help and we shouldn’t be, men should not be embarrassed to go and get help. I mean, it literally could be the difference between life and death.

Absolutely. Tell us a little bit about your experience when were you diagnosed with type one diabetes?

Sure. So I think I was two when I got diagnosed. 2, 3, 4 like that. Very, very young though. My father was in the pharmaceutical space very, very, very early on. He worked at a drug store. This is back in Brooklyn. Over the years he saw a lot of the same symptoms come in. Kids were coming in, they were constantly thirsty, always had ear infections or some type of virus, rapid mood swings, hunger all the time, and wetting the bed. On a vacation, my dad started noticing that I was exhibiting those symptoms and immediately just put two and two together. We left the vacation, flew home, went to Cedars-Sinai, and then I remember for hours getting poked and prodded until they came back with a diagnosis that I was diabetic.

Wow. Because that’s often an assumption people make, they just don’t know. There are all these symptoms and I tell people signs and symptoms are a way that your physical body is alluring, that something is often inside and times are changing where people are more, they’re more aware of what signs and symptoms are. But back then, I mean, you’re still pretty young, but even back then, it wasn’t something. So the fact that your dad was able to put these things together was lifesaving for you because absolutely.

Had you gone any longer without realizing you had type one diabetes, which is different by the way, guys type one diabetes, you’re not making insulin, you’re probably looking at him and he’s like, he doesn’t look diabetic. That’s the other the issue is that people think assume that diabetics are overweight and there are two types. There’s type one and type two. Type one, oftentimes the pancreas is not making enough insulin. So that could be detrimental over time where type two diabetes, which is what we call the one that you can reverse, is usually induced by diet and lifestyle.

A hundred percent.

But this is not something that you did.

I’m not reversing this, and this is not going away. I appreciate the compliment. I do try and take very good care of myself, but to I said earlier about my dad recognizing the signs and symptoms, it wasn’t something that he was willing to wait for. I’m glad that he didn’t wait because it again could have been the difference between life and death. For me, getting professional help early was pivotal to my life. I got that comment quite a bit when talking about type one and type two. Well, you don’t look like you’re diabetic. I appreciate that. But there definitely is a misconception where people seem to think that you have to look a certain way to have something and that’s just not the case.

Are people surprised when you share that you’re type one diabetic?

I think they are because I think that there is such a misconception in society and in the community that diabetics are overweight and don’t take care of themselves. That’s just not the case. It’s not the case for me, it’s not the case for many people. It is the case for some, and I understand where people come from with that, but I think that that needs to change

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune. There are different causes of it, and there’s still a lot more research to really do on this. Like with anything, we don’t fully understand exactly how the body works and what causes these things. But there are certain viruses that can affect the pancreas and then it starts to affect the production of insulin. There are autoimmune conditions that can affect the function of the pancreas. It starts to detect the beta cells of the pancreas, and that’s where the insulin is made. That’s why a person with type 1 diabetes might not be able to make enough insulin. Some people make some, not enough, and some people don’t make any at all.

My pancreas has just taken up space in my body right now.

I’m fine with it. 

It’s space for you.

I’m fine with it.

Thank God for medical interventions.

I’ve had this for so long that it’s just become second. It’s part of my life. I don’t know anything different. For me, it’s just maintaining it, which is relatively easy. When I was younger, I had wanted to write a book and the book was going to be, diabetes is a disease, not a disability. So I see a lot of people say, well, I can’t do that. I can’t do that because I’m diabetic. But that’s just not the case. I’ve done everything.

You should write that book.

I don’t know if I could.

I think you can. I believe in you.

I appreciate that. The blue engine that could.

They think they can.

It’s not something that is debilitating. It’s only debilitating if you let it evolve or devolve into that. Diabetes is very manageable. With technology and a continuous glucose monitor, I have the insulin pumps that have all this great technology and it just keeps evolving. So it’s not something that I think was a death sentence. I think now with all of the medical interventions and the technology that we have, it’s not as scary as it used to be. Not at all. My sister and I, who are also diabetic, and so is my mother,

Are they type 1 diabetics also? 

Also type 1. So we’re all types of fun.

So we used to go to a diabetes camp and you’re surrounded by counselors and med staff who are diabetic and you’re surrounded by kids who are also diabetic. You think that you’re the only person in the world who has this disease, where you’re not supposed to eat sugar and you have to count carbs and you’ve got to take shots. Then you realize there are millions, millions of people that have this exact same situation and they’re out there and they’re having fun and they’re playing sports and they’re jumping out of planes and they’re playing professional sports and everything. So it’s not a disability or it’s really not. It’s a disability. 

If you let it be, it’s your mindset, your perception of that thing, is not going to overpower life and how you control your life. 

Yeah, if you’re an uncontrolled diabetic, you’re probably going to be overweight. You’re not going to want to do things. You’re going to have vascular issues. You could have edema. There are all these myriad of other things that come from uncontrolled diabetes, but with controlled diabetes, you should have a problem doing anything.

You still work out. 

You manage your well, how you eat, work out, live life, and all those things. Yeah,

I’m a normal person. I just have to take shots. That’s it.

Different types of shots.

Definitely different types of shots.

Yeah, got to correct that. So I’m like, oh, he’s taking shots. Good. Growing up, was it difficult for you to manage that?

When I was really young, and I think that this is probably fair to say on a holistic level, the entire diabetic community, when you’re a young child, your parents are maintaining your diabetes, they’re managing it for you. As I got older, it became more manageable because the responsibility could then be put on me to check my sugar, to take the correct insulin, to eat the right things. But early on, I didn’t think I had a big say in it. I think it was my parents controlling it until of course, I was old enough to really grasp what I needed to do, which took some time.

I mean, it definitely took some time before I think my parents were comfortable with me taking over the disease state. Still, I think it also relieved them that it was no longer something that they had to really helicopter over me. Of course, as a parent, they’re still very concerned with ensuring my sugars are in range and I have the right snacks. There are some scary moments in there. Blood sugars drop in the middle of the night, and this was before continuous glucose monitors and alarms. So there were several occasions of me passing out and waking up to the fire department standing over me or paramedics injecting me with D50 and glucagon. But as time has gone on and I’ve gotten a little bit older and wiser, I think it has become more manageable.

Yeah, it is no joke when your blood sugar drops.

No, it’s not.

You are dying. It feels terrible. Unfortunately, it happened to me when I was pregnant with my oldest and I could never forget that feeling. It is a terrible feeling. It’s panic. It is. That’s your nervous system alerting that something’s wrong. We don’t have enough glucose in the brain. You’re dying and people can go into a diabetic coma and not make it out of that. So it is a very serious thing. What are some things that you would say there are many men out there. I’ll tell you this, though, I will disclose just in my practice, which does not depict the whole world or the country.

But I have seen more men, especially after COVID, start taking their health more seriously. That fear of I don’t want this virus to take me out, really shifted many men, not just to take themselves physically but mentally. We’re going to have you on the next episode, and we’re going to talk about mental health. But on this one for physical wellness and wellbeing, where do men start to feel safe to move in that direction of finding the right? I always say you’ve got to find the right doctor. I get that they’re afraid of being judged. From a male perspective, what do you think men tend to fear about going into see a doctor?

It goes back to what I first said is that there’s a stigma that if you go and seek professional help, you can’t handle it on your own.

There is a level of onus that men have to want to be able to handle things on their own. I don’t need anybody’s help. I can do it on my own. I find myself doing it with projects around the house. My wife gets mad at me because it’s jig rigging things together, but I can do it on my own until I can’t and then I need to call in professionals. The body of men in general feel very much this way. I can handle it on my own until I can’t. They may be getting outside influence. Maybe it’s their significant other that’s telling them, why don’t we go to the gym? Why don’t we start a fitness program? Why don’t we start eating better? And that’s great. Sometimes it takes an outside factor to really make you flip that switch, where I need to start doing something different.

You could go to a doctor and you get your labs back and they say, your LDL is super high and you have high cholesterol. Now we want to put you on a statin or your TSH is really high. We need to get you on a hypothyroid medication. Sometimes those things factor into it. Other times, guys just realize on their own, I’ve got to do something different. Maybe they wake up in the morning, they look at themselves in the mirror and they’re 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 pounds overweight and they don’t like the way that they look anymore. Maybe they’re fresh off of a breakup. What’s the best way to overcome that feeling of loss or rejection? Let me get in the best shape of my life. Sometimes it takes that.

Something that I’ve never heard anyone say, but men are designed to figure it out. I mean, you’re the head of the house. You’re the leader. You’re supposed to be, even if women don’t like it. I mean, there are just men and women who are designed differently and we’re not going to get into the whole gender identity, none of that. This is just real talk about men are wired to figure it out. I don’t want to be married to someone who can’t figure it out. But there is a fine line between when you’ve done things on your own to a point, like you said, I’ve done this, I tried to do this on my own and now I just can’t figure it out. I’m not a man. Maybe because I grew up around boys a lot, my brothers, I feel the same way. I feel it. I can figure it out.

I got this, I can figure it out. But once I can’t figure it out, then I have to look for someone that can help me. But you can be stubborn in that, get stuck in that and be stubborn that you don’t need help from anyone. I got this. I’ll push through. But what happens, unfortunately, like I said, I see this too often is that as men get into these older ages, 50, 67 years old, even younger than that, they start to develop serious chronic conditions. Now their kidneys are failing. Now you need dialysis, and you’re having serious heart issues. Now you’re having to go see the cardiologist. If you don’t want to work with those doctors, if you don’t want to take those medications, then take them before. One of the things that I like in working with men and health is that I can be straightforward and direct with them, and they’re not going to be sensitive about it either because women are different. But I can use a lot of analogies. I grew up around my brothers a lot being on cars and things like that. So I always use car analogies and I always say the fatigue, the weight gain, that you not able to sleep, all of these things that you’re experiencing, these signs and symptoms that you’re experiencing, it’s like the red engine light in your car turning on. You wouldn’t avoid that, would you?

Some people would. Some people would.

Some people put a piece of tape over it.

And then they just keep driving their car and then their car breaks down. Now they have a five, seven, $8,000 bill to fix that car. Had they.

The cost to repair is always more than the cost to maintain.

Yes.

If there is one thing that is taken away from this, it is the cost of repair is always going to be more expensive than the cost of maintenance. Always.

Always. One of the things that I tell patients, and both men and women, young, old, it doesn’t matter. You pay the price now or you pay it later with interest.

Absolutely.

So you might as well make the changes now. Start eating. Well move your body, sleep well get rid of the vices, things like that. Those are things that you could do at home for free on your own. But the problem is that many don’t.

No.

I remember having this Hispanic male, James, in my clinic about three years ago. He hadn’t been to a doctor in years. He owned his own painting company, painting houses, and he’s like, man, I’m really worn out. I cannot function. He’s been pushing, pushing, pushing. He can’t push. He can’t do it anymore. So finally, the wife made him come in. He’s a very Mexican male chauvinist, you know what? I tell him, okay, well, here’s the blood work. Do the blood work. He comes back, he’s like stage four, kidney disease, super diabetic type two, just all these issues. So I go through the diet and he disclosed to me. I’m going through a diet recall. What are you eating throughout the day? He is eating 20 tortillas per meal, which is 60 tortillas per meal. I calculate it, the carbs for him. I’m like, this is a lot.

This is why you’re diabetic, this and all the other stuff. So I told him, look, if you want to live, this is how you will eat. You can still eat two tortillas per meal, but not 20. You got to add more protein. So I started telling him how he had to eat, what he had to do, what he had to take, natural things to take. I told him, and it’s up to you if you want to live because you still have an 8-year-old daughter, you want to see her grow up and all of that. Then, if you can’t do it for you, do it for her. But this is what it is. You can reverse this. I’m giving you hope that you can reverse this, but you’ve got to come into the change. He said he was funny. He made me laugh. He said, for the first time in my life, I will listen to a woman. I said, so you haven’t been listening to your wife? I said, do you realize if you die, she’s the one who’s impacted most when you go through a health crisis. She’s the one impacted the most.

Her and your daughter. So I’ll take that as a compliment, but let’s get on board. He made the changes. Hemoglobin A1C was dropping, sugars were normalizing, and kidney function was increasing. The problem with men like this is that once they see progress, they stop and fall off the face of the earth. It didn’t help that it was the holidays either. So I couldn’t get in contact with him. I told him, you are steps away from dialysis. If you don’t do this, you will be on dialysis.

Terrible.

Time went by. Maybe nine months later, I get a call from him. Hey, it’s me. I’m in the hospital. I’m getting dialysis. Is there anything you could do to help me? I’m like, that ship has sailed my friend.

That ship has sailed.

It’s like a heart. My heart is just punctured with a knife. I don’t want to see people get to that point, men or women. There’s that stubbornness in men.

It takes those outside forces to push you to make a change. Some guys are very good at doing it independently for whatever their reasons. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of reasons why somebody would self-change. Sometimes, though, it does take a catastrophic event for you to realize what I’m doing is not working. And sometimes at that point it’s too late, unfortunately it’s too late.

What are some key things that men should consider, whether it’s changing the mindset around their health or things they can start doing health-wise for themselves? What are things you do?

That’s a great question. It starts with activity. And I’ll preface this by saying that this is something that I do. These are not the beliefs of anybody else. This is just me. That activity and getting moving is really helpful. The next show, when we talk about men’s mental health, this’ll be a big factor in that, but getting your body moving, lifting weights, has been shown to increase your life expectancy significantly. Cardio is wonderful, and fasting is great. I don’t do that. I can’t really do that. But exercise, I think, is pivotal. Exercise plays a major role in your health, in your mental health, in your even spiritual health. So being active, moving around, lifting weights is essential. Supplementation is really, really good. I’m really, really big on Gary Brecka right now. So, shout out to Gary Brecka, your hydrogen water, and your Baha gold salt. So supplementation is really important too. One of the things that I noticed was that one of the products that I sell is B12 and D3, and I was suffering from some really, really bad migraines. And as soon as I started supplementing with B12, D3, EG1 or any of the super food, super greens, I haven’t had a migraine in a long time. So supplementation moving around, obviously, diet plays a big role in health. Not everybody can do the ultra-organic shopping at Sprouts, shopping at whole paycheck or Whole Foods, and it’s no dis to them. Still, everything that is healthy, typically, again, speaking in generalities, is a lot more expensive.

But I think that there are ways around that you can cut certain things out of your diet in lieu of putting things into it. So you can cut out super sugary foods, you can cut out high-density carbs, you can cut out all of the really, really, really high saturated fat foods. All of these play a role if you can afford the organic, healthy stuff. My family has pretty much made a switch to a lot of the nonchemical component foods and my kids seem to feel better. My kids are acting differently. I’ll have to get back to you on exactly what it was that we cut out, but I think it was either folic acid or folic nitrate. I forget what the compound was, but we were told that by taking it out, the kids would respond differently. And I have to say, shout out to my wife. You were absolutely right.

The wife is always right.

My wife is always right. My kids have started acting differently. The sleep regression, which was really big for my son, who’s seven, is not really the case anymore. He’s sleeping better cognitively, he’s doing a lot better. He understands deeper and in a more mature context. So food moving around, supplementation. I think that those are all the key things. 

Then on top of that, I think social. We need a community. Women have a lot, and again, I don’t want to be chauvinistic but it seems as though women have a lot more connectedness than men do.So we’re usually kind of by ourselves. And it’s important to have a network of people that you can call up, Hey bud, just want to tell you I love you. Hey man, how are you doing today? What’s new? What’s happening when you are in a community of people or you’re surrounded by your friends, typically, you’re feeling pretty good. Men need that.

Guys need to have a community around them. We need things we can do as guys that bring us together. That sense of community really bolsters mental health and physical health.

I agree. I agree. That’s one of the big differences between men and women, which is that women, naturally, want community. I do see more men creating community. I think it’s still something that needs to be almost given permission. It’s okay. My parents, they grew up in Mexico in a very, very small farm community. I remember the first time I went to visit, I was six years old and every year in the summer we would visit, and I remember there was a community and men there. So I don’t think it’s a male. It’s like a male is not okay. Not for men to do that. 

I think it’s a cultural thing in our country because they called it the four corners. And men would work their fields and at the end of the day and the evening, they would meet at that corner, the four corners, and they would sit around and they would talk and it was just men and it was known that was a community little hub. They would meet there and talk and you will arrive whenever you wanted to. You’d leave whenever you wanted to. That was their circle. And you’re talking about it. I’m like, there’s something very different in this country. I’ve traveled to other countries, Peru, I’ve traveled to a lot of Central South America and some of the communities that are not in the city, they’re in the more smaller towns. There’s a lot of community that happens in these cultures that we don’t have that here. It’s always work, work, work. And we just consume our time with things that don’t really feed into us physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually. There is about having that community, that person or people. I say at least have one person that you can turn to, that you can talk that’s outside of your relationship, that is needed. And it’s okay. 

I would prefer my husband to have someone to talk to and process whatever it is, instead of just feeling like he doesn’t have any friends or social circle. 

A thousand percent. I had a community college course with a guy, and I’ll make a long story very short. I’ve been friends with my buddy Dennis for more than 20 years. Dennis is a leader in the community, but more specifically, he’s a leader in men’s awareness and that kind of community feel. So Dennis started something called Real Talk Men’s Club. It’s all guys all walks of life. There are probably 20 or 30 members. We have members who are in different countries.

Oh wow.

We’re all part of a big group chat and we’ll just chat with each other. We’re just checking in. More than half of us have never met the other half. We don’t even know where they live. But it’s a community of guys that at least locally meet up, try to about once a month we just shoot the breeze, just hanging out, just surrounded by each other. No preconceived notion. It’s just us with other guys. We could talk about any issues we want, but it’s really nice to have that sense of community. Even in a really, really small confined group of let’s say 10 to 12, you still feel like just feels really nice.

I think the misconceptions sometimes with people is that they feel like community is a large group, and actually the larger it is, the more you tend to see the quiet people just there.

They stay quiet.

They stay quiet. And the point of a small group, even if it’s one or two people, is that it makes you speak. You just like you’re going to share. You’re going to talk about something. And I agree. You mentioned earlier how a lot of it is culturally, and I know this kind of touches on the mental health, and it’s hard to separate the two, though. Physical health and mental health are all one body.

Whatever’s going on physically can impact our mental health. So if you’re not eating well, because eating a lot of sugar and crappy food, it’s going to make you feel icky and you start cleaning up the diet, you’re going to feel better now. The brain has the right food and the body has the right food to help you feel optimal. Moving your body. That’s medicine in itself. It’s not even about physical appearance. It is mental health. For me, it is spiritual. It just makes you feel like you emotionally and mentally detox. And whether you work out in the morning or in the evening, I tell people, figure out what works for you. Don’t worry about what anyone else is doing because not everyone will be able to work out at four or five in the morning. It just doesn’t work for everyone. Find out what works for you. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Just those two things can really shift men physically and mentally, and emotionally. 

What’s really sad, James, that I’m really concerned is I see people of all ages from newborns to geriatrics, men and women. I purposely set up my practice. I didn’t want to just work with women. I didn’t just want to work with one population. I wanted to work with the whole family. I see this in both genders. Still, really young men, their testosterone levels are dangerously low compared to, I mean, yeah, some men in their forties and fifties might have lower testosterone. Still, it’s concerning when you have a 20-year-old with testosterone of a 50 or 60-year-old, but then you have the 50-year-old that has naturally better testosterone than the 20-year-old. And once again, it’s the diet. It’s what they’re eating. They’re eating junk. They’re not moving. Men have more muscle. You need more protein. You need activity, physical exertion to maintain your muscle mass. When those testosterone levels start to drop and estrogen comes up in men, you don’t feel well. So sometimes your mental health issue is really a physiological issue. Change the diet, move your body, and balance out your hormones. You’ll feel better that it could be just that. It could be just your hormones.

It’s all interconnected to what you just said. It’s mental health that plays into the physical. The physical plays into the mental. When your mental health is good, when you’re happy or in a good mood, you’re more likely to want to go out and do things. Conversely, if you’re physically active, you tend to feel better post your workout. Absolutely. And again, you’re in a good mental headspace, feeling good, and ready to tackle the day. Whether you can get it in the morning or you can get it in the evening, it doesn’t need to be some two or three hours.

You’re not training for Iron Man, or maybe you are. God bless you for doing that. But 30, 40 minutes of just moving around is really good. If you can lift heavy weight in that 30 or 40 minutes, do it. Your joints are going to thank you later in life. There’s so much they will, scientific data that supports lifting heavy things. You’re going to live longer. It’s just going to happen.

Fasting and lifting weights has the same effect on the body when it comes to anti-aging. So it’s happening at the cellular level. It’s the same thing. So I like to eat food, so I would rather lift heavy.

I agree. I’m on that same boat. 

Yeah, there’s a lot of intermittent fasting. There’s a time and place for that, but I’m not typical. It’s spiritual reasons.

Nothing. And anecdotally, lifting fasted versus lifting with a carb load, it’s night and day different. It shouldn’t even be. It’s not even apples to apples. Nope. You’re comparing rocks to fruit.

The other thing is that when people lift heavy, they start to realize how important what they’re eating, how much they’re eating, what they’re eating, how much it matters. Because you cannot, especially as women, we cannot lift. If we don’t have enough protein, you’ll feel weak. We don’t have to say muscle mass. We don’t have to testosterone the way men do, and that gives us strength. But you’re right; as you get older, your body will thank you for doing this right now. And there is no, it’s never too late. So if someone is 50, 60, 70 years old, I see many people that are 60, 70 and they start their fitness journey and wow, what a transformation. I think one thing that I really want to share with men is not to feel embarrassed or ashamed of where they’re at because that fear, that shame, that embarrassment, you’re going to get stuck and not taking that next step.

A thousand percent.

Oftentimes, you’re your own worst critic. You’re judging yourself. I do tell people to find the right doctor. If you find the right doctor, they’re not going to make you feel bad. The moment they make you feel bad, guess what?

That’s the wrong doctor. 

That’s the wrong doctor. And you can fire them. So if you go in with that mindset that if my interaction with this doctor is not kind and respectful, I can fire them. I just won’t come back and just go find another one until you find the person. There’s nothing wrong with you communicating with the doctor about what you’re looking for.

You might have to teach them as a sales professional. I don’t want to say I’ve taught because that would be inaccurate. I’ve shared my experience in pushing back against providers sometimes, at least in the sales world, and it all ties together. Trust me.

We see an MD, right? We see an MD and we think, oh, this person knows more than I do. So we blindly trust what they say. But that’s not always the case in the healthcare system that we live in. Your practice is very different. But generally, providers have about seven minutes or eight minutes with a patient. They go in, we listen to what they say, we trust what they’re going to prescribe to us, and that’s it. Then we leave. But we need to be able to push back. We’re in an age of technology where we can do much of our own research and go there with an informed decision. I call it suggestive medicine, where you go in and you tell your provider, Hey, I think I might be hypothyroid. Hey, I think I might be diabetic. This is what I’m looking for. Can you run this test on me? Sometimes a provider’s not thinking that route, or they come in there and are so slammed, and you present them with symptoms, A, B, and C. Well, A, B, and C mirror this disease state. Let’s treat you for that.

We don’t always have to listen to what the provider says, and I’m not trying to shoot us in the foot here, but I think there needs to be a responsibility in the population to do some research. I’ll give you an example. My dad has had multiple hip surgeries, but my dad does all the research ahead of time. So when he goes in to see the providers, he’s already talking their language. He’s already saying, Can you aspirate the SI joint? Can you go in and do this? Are we going to go posterior? Are we going to go lateral? Are we going to go medial? Are we going to go anterior? And providers oftentimes appreciate an informed population. It also takes some of the guesswork and the clinical work out of what you have to do. If you come in and somebody says, here’s A, B, and C. Here’s why I think it’s A, B, and C, you may look at it and say, oh, you’re absolutely right. I don’t need to run additional testing.

You’ve already shown me that these symptoms align with what I had initially thought. So I think part of it comes down to us pushing back on the provider. They’re not always going to be the right fit for you.

And they’re not always going to have the answers because MDs have such a short time to be with people, and sometimes assumptions are made. One of the things that I really encourage people, primarily through this podcast, the purpose of this podcast is for people to advocate for themselves. Before I take on a patient, I interview them, tell them how I work with them, and let them know that they’re in the driver’s seat of their healthcare, not me. They’re responsible for the decision-making and how they want to proceed. I am guiding them. My job is to listen, take their history and make based on what’s presenting lab work, all that, make suggestions off of that. But at the end of the day, it is their choice. And I do that because I remember being on the other side as a patient not being given the options.

Naturopaths do this in general. We present options and let the person pick for themselves because they feel heard, respected, and empowered. I’ll tell ’em if there’s something, and you got to be careful because there’s so much on social media, but there’s something you did research, not because you saw a TikTok, but you did some research and you think that might resonate with your situation. You want to get tested. I am all for it. When people come to my practice and present options of testing or looking into that, they will know more than I do about their body. James, I’m not in their body. I’m not experiencing the symptoms that they’re experiencing. So my job is to listen, be curious and say, yes, this would be a good thing to do, or Let’s wait to do that. But either way, if it’s something that makes sense, let’s do it. It is going to save me time. They’re already coming in thinking that this might be something to look into. Let’s do it. What’s the big deal of running a full thyroid panel on people?

There’s no harm in doing it.

Back in 2006, it was like wrestling with the doctor for me. I couldn’t get them to do more than a TSH, but that was many years ago, and things have changed and evolved. Technology. There’s way more information on thyroid health now than ever before.

Agreed.

And there’s information on a lot of things, but I agree. You don’t believe everything or anybody. The best advice that one of my older brothers gave me when I was in kindergarten, I think I was in kindergarten, he said, Don’t believe everything that people tell you and everything you read.

Sure.

You can question things. Think for yourself.

A hundred percent.

Advocate.

And if you don’t know, ask the same thing. If you have questions on your lab work on the diagnosis you’ve got, ask the doctor. If they don’t have time for you in that visit, then say, okay, I’ll make another appointment so we can make time for that conversation and they will do it. More doctors are more open and flexible to doing that. As we get here. To wrap up this episode, are there any takeaways that you want to share with men that might be watching this and they know they need to change, they’re scared. What would be the loving kind nudge that they need?

The loving kind, or maybe you just need to punch them in the face, get out there.

Some of them may need a punch in the face.

The biggest takeaway is your body. You know what you’re experiencing. If you’re not feeling right, and whatever you’re trying to do to mitigate that feeling is still not working, stop wasting time. Go and seek professional help. There is nothing wrong with getting professional help. They’re professionals for a reason. You specialize in these things. If your foot broke, you would not just wait for it to heal. You would go and you would seek out an orthopedic surgeon. The same thing holds true to every other facet of a man’s body. If we’re not feeling right, go and get help. Again, it goes back to what we were saying before. The cost of repair is always going to be more expensive than the cost of maintenance. Go and get your blood work done, eat healthy, drink a lot of water, but don’t wait for the problem to be so bad that you’ll have to go and get those invasive procedures done. If you recognize something early on, attack it early on. It’s like life. Don’t wait until it’s too late.

Yeah. Don’t wait until it’s too late. I like that. Well, I will be tagging some past episodes on the pillars of health and nutrition, exercise, stress management, just the importance of the pillars of health and how you can do that for free. It’s free education. So if men or women are watching this video and you feel your husband or partner should hear this conversation, please share this video with him. And I think, James, I believe there was a special shout-out. 

There is a special shout-out for any doctors, physicians, PAs, MAs out there who are single and successful. I’d like to shout out my sister, Gina. You can find her on Instagram at lil LIL, MISS, Monty, M-O-N-T-E. She’s beautiful, she’s talented, she’s single, and she’s ready for you.

Oh, wow.

Shameless plug.

There you go, sis. You’re going to get hit up. Well, thank you, James. We will continue this conversation in Men’s Mental Health in the next episode, so you want to stay tuned for that. Until next time, be blessed guys. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

The post Episode 47: Men’s Health and The Top Reason Why Men Are Driven to See a Doctor! appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

Podcast Episode 46 Transcript

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Ana Lara. Today I want to continue the series that I started a couple of episodes ago on healing and healing the soul. Today, I want to talk about the power of forgiveness. This is probably not something you hear many doctors discussing. Still, I’ve had several cases of patients where God really was revealing that the underlying root cause of their disease was unforgiveness. So I want to talk a couple of speaking points and at the end I’ll share some stories that I’ve witnessed on forgiveness.

Forgiveness is a path to healing and peace. I know that doesn’t sound like something you think is true, especially if the wounds, if the offenses that someone has caused you right, the hurt that someone has caused you is big. Before I continue on this conversation, I just want to say that this conversation, I am generalizing and I am very aware and being mindful that people listening to this have experienced different situations, different levels of hurt, and the depth of hurt that you’ve experienced is going to vary from person to person and experience to experience. Oftentimes, the deeper the wound is, the bigger the hurt is, the bigger the pain, the harder it is for people to forgive, especially when we haven’t been taught on what forgiveness is or we don’t know this. Understand this from a biblical standpoint, it can be very difficult for people to want to forgive.

There’s an immediate desire to want justice, to be served for those people that have hurt us, that have hurt you for them to be punished for their crime. With that in mind, I am mindfully aware that some people here in this episode may have experienced severe trauma in their childhood or in their life, whether it’s been physical abuse, psychological abuse, sexual abuse, and those wounds are deep and they’re all going to vary. So those are big offenses, right? Big areas of pain and hurt that people have experienced. We should be sensitive to that and respectful of that. I just want you to know if you’re listening or watching this, that I am sensitive to those particular situations. Then some offenses are not as deep and big, yet many people still have a hard time forgiving those offenses from others.

I first want to discuss what the Bible says about forgiveness. The definition of forgiveness is to release, or dismiss of something, encompassing both God’s forgiveness of our sins and our responsibility to forgive others, mirroring God’s mercy and grace. God’s forgiveness and the Bible emphasize that through Jesus Christ, God offers forgiveness of our sins and releases believers from the penalty of our transgressions. A couple of scriptures that I want to read as they relate to forgiveness are Matthew 6:9 – 14. The word of God says in this manner, therefore, pray our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. Do not lead and do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. In Matthew, Jesus is telling his disciples that this is how we should pray in this manner, it’s asking that we are for our own forgiveness and that we are also led to be able to forgive others. So that’s a good scripture that reminds us the importance of forgiveness. The other is Matthew 18, I have several for you guys today.

It’s Matthew 18 verses 21 through 22, and the word of God reads. Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me? And I forgive him up to seven times. And Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven, that’s a lot of times we have to forgive. And sometimes we find ourselves that we feel we’ve forgiven someone for something they’ve done that has hurt us, but then sometimes goes by and we realize that we haven’t completely healed from that. We haven’t completely surrendered and forgiven. So then you have to go back and forgive again, and you forgive again and you forgive again. We’re going to talk about some of those very, like I said, very sensitive topics and forgiveness because I know that someone’s watching this and they’re like, yeah, it’s easy for you to say to forgive when someone has killed your loved one or you were raped by someone.

I completely understand. We’re going to keep talking about the topics of forgiveness here. The second one is Ephesians scriptures, Ephesians 4:32. It says, “be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another even as God in Christ forgave you.” Trust me, there are times that we have done things to others that have offended others and hurt others, and we want to be forgiven. So that for us to forgive, we also need to exercise forgiveness for others. Forgiveness is like a muscle. The more you do it, the easier it gets, especially on those very easy offenses. The fourth scripture is Mark 1125 through 26.

The word of God says, Whenever you stand praying, and if you have anything against anyone, forgive him that your father in heaven may also forgive you for your trespasses. But if you do not forgive, neither will your heavenly father forgive your trespasses. Once again, the biblical importance of why we should forgive others who’ve caused offense to us or hurt and pain. Remember that every time, what’s really important in a lot of those moments that Jesus heals someone just as a point of reflection, as he heals someone, he also forgives them for their sins. You’ll see these in different stories like the paralyzed man, the woman caught in adultery, the woman who was anointing his feet, the prodigal son. These are all situations where, as Jesus healed them, he forgave them for their sins. Oftentimes, he would tell them, Repent, turn away from your sin.

You’re healed. Repent and turn away from your sin because God’s mercy was on them, and he was willing to heal them regardless of their sins. And remember Jesus, he was on the cross, he prayed and said, father, forgive them for they not know what they are doing. So even Jesus himself, as he was being crucified, he’s asking God the Father to forgive those who were hurting him, who were doing this to him. Some of the benefits of forgiveness, there are benefits of forgiveness to us spiritually, most importantly because you want your soul to be cleansed of any unforgiveness, but also mentally and emotionally and physically. There are benefits that I have seen in patience when they go through the process of forgiving those. Forgiveness is obviously going to help us connect more with God, with God’s heart because God’s heart is one of mercy and one of grace and kindness and compassion and love.

In all of that, he forgives us for the dumb mistakes that sometimes we make, the hurtful things to others. Sometimes we need to take inventory of the things we have done for others, forgive ourselves, ask for forgiveness, and then forgive others. Sometimes that process of forgiveness, which we will talk about more, is not all going to look the same. There’s not a cookie-cutter approach to this, but forgiveness is really going to be a surrendering of whatever you believe should be the outcome of this person for what they did to you. So this is going to allow by you forgiving, it’s going to allow us to learn to mirror God’s mercy and foster a closer relationship to God. By obeying, by forgiving, we’re obeying his commandments and we open ourselves to receive more of God’s grace and mercy mentally. What mental forgiveness does to you is that it’s going to significantly reduce stress and anxiety that you have, depression, whatever emotions that are icky in your body, it’ll help to release that.

So holding onto grudges will create resentment and bitterness, and that will weigh heavily on you mentally and emotionally. I know this from firsthand experience that if you hold onto something for too long, it starts to become unbearable and it starts to affect you the most. Sometimes that forgiveness is for you, not so much for that person. Still, it’s for you to surrender that, like I said, emotionally is another area that will help you release this burden that you’re carrying by not fostering and resentment. I’s going to allow empathy to come in. Sometimes, it takes a lot of spiritual maturity to forgive. So we’re going to continue talking about that. I want to talk about the consequences of unforgiveness. We talked about the benefits of what it does for you mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically, but what are the consequences of unforgiveness?

This is where I want to talk about some of the stories I’ve seen in my practice and what unforgiveness does to you spiritually. First and foremost, you don’t want to get stuck there. There are spiritual complications of not forgiving others. Still, relationally, if it’ll start to affect your relationships, even if it’s not the person who hurt you, you begin to spill over your pain and hurt onto others who love and care about you. It could be you’re spilling over your pain to your spouse, your children, your coworkers, just strangers, and it’s not even their fault what happened to you. They don’t know the hurt that you’re carrying. This is what unresolved grief and pain, unresolved trauma, that you’re stuck in unforgiveness, it’s going to spill over eventually to other people. So, as I said, relationally, there will be consequences. Still, also your physical health, and this is what I find so interesting, how many people who’ve experienced injustice, injustices, serious violations of their anatomy, both physically and emotionally, that they carry this unforgiveness. They start to manifest disease at some point in their life.

A lot of autoimmune conditions can be associated with trauma, especially unforgiveness. Then, there’s been connections of unforgiveness there as well. So things like emotions like bitter. When you have unforgiveness, you’re going to feel bitter, you’re going to have resentment, you be angry, there could still be grief over that experience that’s overpowering you physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Unforgiveness can really take a person captive. You become a slave to this, you become a captive to it. You are imprisoned, and it’s just torture. It’s complete torture. It’s mental, emotional and spiritual torture that you’re living out by not forgiving the person who’s hurt, the person has offended you. This does show up, like I said, physically in diseases, obviously mentally and emotionally, a lot of issues there, and it spills over into your relationship. Living with fear because you’re living with fear of being hurt again and your nervous system.

If you’ve heard any of the past episodes, when I talk about stress and the nervous system, our nervous system is designed to say you’re safe or you’re not safe. If your body is stuck on I’m not safe, and it’s because something seriously happened to you, you haven’t healed from that. There’s still unforgiveness, resentment, anger, any of that, your nervous system gets stuck and I’m not safe. Then, soon before you know what, nothing is safe going out. Relationships, everyone is just not safe. So, living with this fear of being hurt again, there is a physiological change that’s going on in your body, chemicals that are hormones and stress hormones that are being put out that shouldn’t be put out, but because we have this unresolved trauma and this unforgiveness there. I know, like I said, it’s easy to tell people to forgive, but the deeper the wound, the bigger the wound, the harder it can be for people to forgive.

There is a process of going through that and everyone’s process is different. The timeline is different for everyone as long as you get there. That’s really the goal. It’s easy to feel that the person who has hurt you doesn’t deserve or earn your forgiveness. I know I have been there where they don’t deserve to be forgiven. They did wrong. Sometimes you’re right, their actions were wrong, but forgiveness is not trying to justify. It’s not excusing them. It’s not saying that they were right and you were wrong. The forgiveness really is a surrendering that you’re saying, you know what, God, I don’t understand why this person did this and it’s hurt me a lot, but I can’t carry this burden with me anymore. So I’m willing to surrender this. Leave it in your hands. God is the one who is responsible for bringing justice and righteousness in all situations.

Sometimes it’s a process to surrender, but it is so worth it when you surrender it to God. So I want to talk about a couple of scenarios where I saw that my patience, this particular patient, her root cause of disease was linked to unforgiveness. Now you have to understand, I’m not saying that I’m an expert at this by any means, but I am very good at observing situations, analyzing things and connecting the dots. I feel like I am spirit-led in situations where God reveals something to me for a higher reason, a higher purpose. Oftentimes, it has nothing to do with me. It has to do with the individual in front of me. So in 2021, I had this patient who was very young, she was about 33 years old and came in, had cervical cancer and has spread metastasized, and it was pretty severe. The doctors had done as much as they could, and they pretty much told her there was nothing else they could do. When the patient came to me, she very debilitated.

I greeted her and she was with her husband and also her sister, one of her sisters accompanied her. We would do treatments and so forth. Still there wasn’t any real resolution. Something was off. Because several people were in the room, it was hard for me and the patient to just have a conversation between her and me. So at some point, she got to be very debilitated, wasn’t coming in anymore, and a couple of months went by and I thought maybe she passed away. I hadn’t been in contact with the family. Then I get a call months later from the husband and says, Hey, would you be willing to do a home visit and maybe do treatments here? She still wants to try. I was blown away that she was still alive because her condition, as severe as it was, there was no way that she could have lived an additional three months in that as bad as she was.

The doctors had told her that was it. It had been so aggressive, the cancer was so aggressive. So I felt in my heart that I had to say yes, though in my mind I didn’t want to. So I said, yes, let me go. Let me go check her out, see what her condition is. I haven’t seen her in months. I don’t know if we were able to do anything at this point. So as a courtesy, I just did a quick stop and visit her at her home and she was lying there very sedated, but she recognized me and she was very happy to see me, and she asked me if I could do this IV treatment on her. I said, sure. I said, I’ll have to come back later this week and do it, but I could do that. So I go back later in the week and get everything set up.

I start to set up the IV, do the IV, and she begins to have pain. It’s exactly in the area where her cancer started, which was in her uterus at this point. I told her it’s really up to you if you want to continue with this IV or not. I am going to leave it up to you. It’s your choice. I don’t want you to be in more pain. Because she decided for herself in that visit that she was not going to take any of the pain medications so that she was mentally present. When I was there, she told me that, and she did look very alert. So we were having a conversation. Her husband had left, the sister was in the house, but she was somewhere else on the other side of the house. The woman began to open up and say, I don’t know how I got here.

She had a very weak, feeble voice, very weak still, but very mentally present. She says, I don’t know how I got here. I used to eat healthy. I used to exercise. I did all organic. How did I get here? I was dumbfounded myself and I said, I don’t know. How did you get here? What happened that led you to this point? What was going on in your life before you were diagnosed with cancer? She started to just cover her head and agony and just agonizing and just started to cry. Now I’m going to stop right there because prior, before her husband left, I noticed that when he would enter the room, there was a complete shift in the room.

I could feel anger coming from her against him. I could feel it, I could see it. I witnessed every time he came in the room, she just hated that He would walk in and leave, and there was a complete shift of emotional energy in that room, palpable. We’re talking now and she’s telling me her story. She started to tell me about the abuse, the infidelity, how she caught her husband and her sister having an affair in her bedroom, and how they completely tried to make her think she was crazy. She was delusional. She was seeing things, and she started to feel manipulated mentally. She said, I thought that I was under a witchcraft spell. She, well, she was part of it as part of a narcissistic situation there. She couldn’t say that, but I could see that through her telling me the story.

I was there for three hours, three hours, and she’s telling me her story and sharing her pain. Immediately, the Holy Spirit, within the first 30 to 40 minutes of having a conversation with her, I immediately felt Holy Spirit tell me to help her, walk her through forgiveness, that this is where she was stuck and God was giving her time. God was so gracious and merciful to give her time to heal from that before she died. I thought she was holding on to life because she had children. I thought she was just holding off for another day in life, but actually God was giving her grace to work on the unforgiveness and she was talking. I could feel the bitterness, the resentment, her anger in all of that, and also the grief, right? The grief of all of that, the loss that she felt like she was just abused, and she was now, was this man okay for doing all that?

Absolutely not. He came across to me as the husband who loves and takes care of her, and he’s willing to do it all to ensure she’s alive and healthy and can make it through. That’s what he was projecting to me. But what this person was telling me through her story was that he and her sister hurt her deeply, deeply wounded her, and she could not let go of that anger of that resentment, right? The bitterness. And I started immediately once I felt in my spirit that you need to forgive them. She went in complete agony, was just tormented by the idea that I’m going to forgive this man and this woman for what they’ve done to me and look at me where I’m at. I started speaking to her, saying, This is why you need to forgive. Because our father, who died on the cross, Jesus, forgave us.

He died on that cross for our sins. He wants you to do when you leave this world. I know that’s really hard to tell someone, but that’s what the spirit was telling me, he wants you to be healed in this area before you go. He wants you to go in peace and you need your soul to be restored and healed and forgiveness is for you. It was a process. We spent about two hours. I was praying to her, praying for her, and helping her through the forgiveness. Eventually, she did. There was a shift in her. There was a shift in the room, and I could feel this peacefulness when it was set and done; she was peaceful about it. I didn’t expect this woman to do what she did, and that was that she blessed me by praying for me. She’s on her deathbed. She was full of anger and hate and this bitterness and having a difficult time forgiving. But it was as if God used her to return a blessing to me and pray for me, this is not the first time it’s happened where someone’s under a deathbed and I’m praying for them and they end up praying and blessing me. This is how good God is: his mercy will spread and touch everyone. And I knew that that would be the last time I saw her.

I thought, what just happened here? I told her that until we met again, my friend and I remember her telling me that I parted ways, just her expressing her gratitude. I sat in my car and cried because I was like, God, what did you just have me do? I am not supposed to be doing this. I felt weird, but God had allowed me not just to witness, but to be an active participant in the life of someone else struggling to forgive. I’m telling you that some of you are really struggling to forgive, and these wounds are old. They’re very old. They might be 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years. They’re old and some of them are recent and they’re fresh wounds. The Lord has told me before that when I find myself stuck in forgiving someone, there was one time the Lord said, you can carry this burden for five days.

You can carry this unforgiveness for five weeks, for five months, for five years or 50 years, but you decide how long you want to carry that burden. When God told me that in that moment, I was like, I don’t want to carry this another hour. I’m ready to surrender it right now. Lord, take it off my hands. Lift this heaviness and this unforgiveness and anger off of my heart, my soul, my mind, and every cell in my body. I surrender it. I don’t want to carry this. I let it go and I let you take over it. Fill me with your peace. Fill me with your grace and your mercy. Because in that situation, with this particular situation, it had to do with my daughter and a teacher who was very inappropriate with my daughter, a female teacher, and had hurt my baby girl and I didn’t like it.

So in my mind, I wanted vengeance. I wanted to punish this grown woman for hurting my child, and it was hurting me physically. I could physically feel ill. I could feel it in my heart, in my soul. I didn’t want to carry that anymore, as I forgave her, and this burden was lifted. Then I asked for God’s spirit to fill me with his peace. His mercy is grace. Then I ask, Lord, you speak through my mouth. You let me lean on your mind and your understanding, speak through me so I can handle this situation the best possible way, the way you would handle it. Jesus, I want you to help me handle this situation the same way. Let me walk away with respect, with honor, with kindness, with compassion. It happened exactly that way. Not because I’m perfect or I’m a superhuman.

Nope. Because I wanted to go into that classroom and grab her by the hair. That was my flesh. That’s what I wanted to do as a mom. But I knew that that’s not what God was calling me to be that way. So sometimes we are the ones who really need the work to forgive. Sometimes God will put you in situations where you are meant to help others, lead them into forgiving those, even if it’s big offenses. Look, I work with a lot of women and some men as well who have confided in me their sexual abuse, the sexual trauma that they’ve experienced when they were young or maybe as teenagers. Let me tell you, those are heavy, heavy burdens. It is not just a physical trauma, a physical assault. It has been the soul of that child that has been wounded, and that kind of wound God needs to heal.

But we, as a community, can help people like that by praying specifically into those points of pain. Where’s the pain? Is it that situation? I’ll tell you, in working with a lot of sexual assault victims, oftentimes that resentment and that anger and that unforgiveness, it turns to them, I was surprised. I thought they were upset at that person for what they did. And they are. But they start to feel the guilt themselves. They start to resent themselves and be angry. I should have done something. I should have said this. I should have told someone why. What if I had done this? They start to take it out on themselves and blame themselves for what someone else did to themself to them. They start to blame themselves. They had control over that. Then now we need to help that person to forgive themselves for blaming themselves for something they didn’t do.

See, when you’re a child and you experience trauma in that time in your life, you have limitations of what resources you have access to. You had limitations of understanding what was going on. You didn’t have the way to handle that situation. But now that you’re older, you have more awareness, tools, and resources, and you can heal those wounds from childhood. Then when we turn to God for guidance to heal those wounds in our spiritual heart, the wounds in our soul, we can be freed and delivered from that pain. Sometimes it is a process. Can I tell you that healing is a process? It is sometimes not a one-time event.

Some people get a miracle and that one-time prayer or deliverance, that one-time experience it, they’re free from that and praise God for that. But for some people, it is a process. That’s okay. Be patient with yourself. Give yourself grace. Give yourself mercy and allow God to work in you. Allow God to continue to heal you, to get to the point of forgiving those who have offended you and forgiving yourself for holding yourself hostage to something that happened long time ago. There is freedom in that. I have seen it. I have worked with many women who’ve experienced being able to forgive and being freed from those traumas and men as well.

You could see it in them. They carry themselves in a whole different light because God’s light is in them and they’re freed from that, so that they’re not going to be held back by those experiences. This is just one of the many stories of where people were; they had a certain medical condition, and I could see that the root really was this unforgiveness, whether it’s to someone else or for themselves. If anything, forgive others for your own wellbeing, your peace of mind, your soul, your health, and your physical wellbeing, because it is not worth it carrying that pain. It just isn’t. You’ll be freed from that. You want to live a life that’s free. And if that happened when you were a child and now you’re 40 years old and you could live another 30, 40 years, why would you want to live the next 30, 40 years as a hostage to that experience?

Sometimes, there is some emotional release work that needs to happen in the physical body, emotions that get stuck in the physical body need to be released. That can happen in many different ways. We’ve talked about that in other episodes. Here are some steps on where to start with forgiveness that I have found have been helpful for me even as of recent. So the very first thing is to acknowledge the pain and the hurt. Acknowledge your emotions associated to that situation or that person. When you give attention to this and feel and release, it enlightens the burden a little bit. So forgiveness is not, like I said, about excusing or justifying or condoning someone else’s actions. Instead, it’s a reflection of the mercy and love that God has shown on us.

Therefore, we must learn for ourselves to do the same. If you give yourself permission to feel the pain and the emotions, it’s going to lessen, it’s going to make it easier to surrender that, to release it, and let God carry that. So it’s okay to acknowledge the injustice that this person has caused you in your life. I always say that unforgiveness is like holding a knife, right? You have the knife in your hand, the blade part on your hand, and you’re squeezing it tight. It’s hurting you. That person might not even acknowledge that. They might not even realize that they did harm. They might not be admitting that the action that you had against you is harmful because some people will justify their wrongdoing. We don’t have control of what other people think, say or do. So when we forgive, we let go of that knife, that blade we’re holding onto, and we stop allowing that to hurt us.

We let go of that experience. I know some of you’re saying it’s easier said than done. It’s a process and it works. Acknowledge the pain and let it go. The second step of working on forgiveness is to consider how the hurt and the pain has affected you. We can learn and grow from all experiences good and bad. How has this pain changed you? How detrimental was this person’s mistake to your life or someone else’s life? So someone I know, people who, their son, their daughter, their loved one was murdered by someone else. And so man, you’re talking about ending a life prematurely, and that’s very difficult to forgive. But when I hear the stories of individuals who have forgiven those that took someone else’s life, there’s so much freedom in that. There’s so much power in that. For me, whatever offend someone said to me or did to me, it’s easy for me to let that go.

How has this experience built character in you? How has it shaped you to bring something good into the world? So how can you transform, use this experience to transform you and more importantly, to transform other people’s lives? You hear people who were victims of certain crimes or certain situations and they get healed from that, and they go on to educate other people on how to prevent that from happening to their children or their loved ones or whatever the situation might be. So how can you turn that terrible experience and transform it into being a positive experience for yourself and for other people to grow? And I’m going to tell you, when you heal from whatever trauma and you forgive that experience or that person no longer has power and authority over you, you’re freed from actually what happens is that you are empowered by forgiving.

Now you can speak about that experience. You can speak about that trauma with power and authority to bring awareness to other people and to bring healing to them because you could heal through it. So that gives permission to other people to heal through that. So take into consideration consider why this offense has affected you in such a way and understanding that some experiences, like I said, some experiences are going to vary of intensity, whether it’s rape, murder of a loved one versus someone cussing you out. There’s a huge difference in that at this point in my life, if someone cussed me out, I wouldn’t care. I would just let it slide off of me and move on with my day. Those offenses before 20, 30 years ago would really upset me, but now I don’t hold onto that kind of stuff. The third step is to accept.

Accept that you cannot change the past. There’s no point of you ruminating over it, going back and dissecting that and tearing apart. No matter how much you wish this pain could go away, you cannot go back to the past and change it. The only way is to surrender it and forgive, to allow this kind of relief and surrender, right? The fourth step to help you move towards forgiveness is the word determine. Determine whether you’re ready to forgive now or do you want to hold that burden, like I said earlier, for five days, five weeks, five years, 50 years? Determine how long do you want to hold onto this unforgiveness. Or is it time to start healing through that? That might involve getting others to help you, whether it’s a counselor, a friend, getting some professional help, a pastor, or having someone help you through this. You might need help from someone else, but determine if you’re ready to surrender this and if you need help to surrender and forgive through that situation. Because like I said, and also in this I want to say before I move to the next step here is that some situations you can resolve, things you can repair, resolve this relationship. In some you just can’t. I never encourage people to go try to repair the relationship with the person who raped them.

You can forgive them. There’s some situations also that you can forgive them without having to tell them verbally. You can forgive them, and that’s enough. There’s some situations that if you do tell them and tell ’em, I forgive you, you might be surprised. They might not see that they did anything wrong, and you might be even triggered more so and upset because they don’t acknowledge that they even did anything wrong to begin. You have to determine whether to talk to that person about it or just forgive and let go. The fifth step is repair. So like I said, if appropriate, will you repair this relationship with the person who hurt you? If it’s something, maybe they stole something from you or they spread some gossip, is it repairable? Can you repair the relationship? Do you need to set new boundaries or set boundaries?

Maybe you failed to set boundaries with this person and now you need to set boundaries with them. Is this person even willing to repair the relationship? Maybe they don’t want to. This is going to really be up to you. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad of or make you feel like there’s something you have to do. You decide for yourself. The sixth step is to learn what is forgiveness. What does it mean to you? What does it look like? What does forgiveness mean to you in this particular situation? Each situation may vary a little bit, right? Learn the benefits of forgiveness. It’s really for you, that’s the greatest power there. So seven is the actual act of forgive for forgiveness is going to start with you and God, that’s it. If you decide to take it there further, that’s up to you.

But the forgiveness starts with you and with God, ask God to help you to surrender this pain and walk you through forgiveness. Forgiveness is going to free us all. It’s going to really, like I said, it’s just going to empower you to keep moving on in life. I always have to remind myself that in my walk with Jesus, I have learned that if that person knew better at the moment that they did the offense, they would have done better. We have to, like I said, I’m not excusing their behavior, but even the person who raped someone, it makes you wonder what was their life like that they think this is okay. Yeah, that completely shifts your perspective of having compassion for the one who caused harm for you. Yeah, that is really difficult to do right there. That is a sign of spiritual maturity that we are all working on because it’s very difficult to have compassion to someone who deeply hurt you and wounded you, especially if it was continuous hurt.

But if their spirit, their human spirit, this higher part of who they are, knew better. If their conscious mind knew better at the moment, they would not have done what they did to you. I truly believe that. But because we live in a world that is full of broken people, unhealthy unhealed wounds that are instilled in people, and people keep passing on their pain and they’re hurt onto others, they don’t have these wounds that are healed, they’re passing that pain. And so because of that, their hearts and their minds are deceived and they do wrong. If someone is fully healed from their wounds, they would not pass on that hurt to others. You see this continuous pattern, a young boy is sexually molested or raped by another male when they’re five or six or seven years old, and oftentimes that young boy grows up and he’ll do the same thing to another young boy.

It’s an unhealed wound that wasn’t healed, and they justify the behavior and pattern. There’s so much psychologically happening, spiritually happening there, and they keep passing this hurt and pain, but have that boy who had that trauma experience to begin with, have received the healing and understanding that this experience that happened to you was not okay. It was wrong, and we need to heal through this and forgive. They would never have passed that pain onto others. It takes a real act of compassion, and only God can help us do that. So just remember that if people knew better, they would do better. And I want to leave you with this scripture from Matthew 1128 through 30. Come to me, all you who are weary and burden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me. For I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. I love this scripture where Jesus is telling his disciples this as his yoke is easy and his burden is light, and that if we find he’s gentle and humble and heart, and we will find rest for our souls in him, there are some moons that are so deep that there’s counselors, there’s other people that are not going to help you get there, but God can. And so I want to leave you with this. There’s going to be more depth, other episodes on forgiveness and the power of forgiveness, how to get there, and maybe bring in some stories of people who have forgiven deep wounds, right? Or maybe it’s forgiving themselves in that process. How do you get there? It is a process. It’s not going to happen overnight. And if it does, great, give God the praise and the glory that you’ve been healed.

It does happen, and it can happen. I truly believe that a lot of our illnesses, whether it’s physical or mental, it stems from this place of unforgiveness. Is there someone that you have been holding a grudge, anger, or resentment that you haven’t forgiven? Maybe it’s time to take it up to the Lord and ask to help you to heal, to take you through the process of healing so that you can’t forgive and surrender all of this, because none of us should be walking around in this world holding on, carrying so much pain. Just let’s surrender it and let’s move on. Hey, I hope that this message has brought some value to you. If you liked and enjoyed it, like the video, share it with someone who can really benefit from hearing this conversation, and we’ll continue to talk on different ways to heal the soul. So until next time, everyone, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

The post Episode 46: The Power of Forgiveness appeared first on Raíces Naturopathic Medical Center.

Disclosure: This content is for educational purposes; this is not intended to treat anyone medically. Speak to your doctor for further guidance or mental health assistance.

Podcast Transcript Episode 45

Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, naturopathic doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body, we are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal th Self, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and today I have a special guest. His name is Bill Brasso. He is the owner of Pod Works Studio here in Mesa, Arizona, and he’s actually the producer who helps me with this podcast. So help me welcome Bill.

Hi. Thank you.

I invited you on the podcast because we always have such great conversations.

We do.

Obviously away from the mic, away from the camera.

Before and after I started recording and from the beginning, I’m like, I should have you on the podcast. And the last time we were recording, you mentioned some ideas about what we should talk about, mental health, and how there’s a rise in mental health issues over the past years. I thought, yeah, that’s so true. Why don’t I have you come on board and let’s continue that conversation we were having off-camera now in front of a camera. But before we do that, Bill, tell us a little bit about you because you impressed me a lot, knowing that you’ve done it. So, tell us a little bit about your background.

Okay, well, God graced the earth with me on February 12th, 1975. 

Your Birthday is February 12th.

Yeah, it is.

Mine is on the 13th.

I grew up in church, so you and I share a faith and have learned a lot. I grew up as a Lutheran and I have a funny story about that later on. I was a terrible high school student. Absolutely terrible. I did not like it. I didn’t like the structure of the learning and it just wasn’t me. So 17 days after graduating high school, I found myself in Navy Boot Camp in Camp Orlando. We called it nothing camp about it. It was extremely hot in Orlando in the middle of June. 

Served in the military for 10 years. Learned a lot, learned a lot of responsibility, gained a lot of lifelong friends. Some I still stay in good touch with over Facebook and whatnot. And then I got out of the Navy after I married my high school sweetheart, I went on to one deployment and she really couldn’t handle me being gone too well. The Navy had kind of run its course for me. So we decided that I was going to get out and I got out. Then I held five jobs in four years trying to figure out what on earth it is I wanted to do. Worked at the University of Phoenix, which is where I ended up getting a business degree that has done me absolutely nothing.

Then I got into a company called Eaton, which is a large electrical manufacturer. I did pretty well there and had a good time, but I was finding myself not doing so well with the corporate world. So I ventured out on my own. Backtrack. While I was at Eaton, I started a weekend warrior business video production called Second Star Productions. My wife and I are, well, she’s a Disney fanatic and she kind of pulls me along with it. So second Star to the right from Peter Pan is where we came up with that name. We thought it was pretty cool. The reason we did it is because I have two girls, one of them, Madison, who has my grandbaby now, so she’s all excited about that. When she was born, she was not the most graceful child, so she was a little clumsy. She was pretty tall for her age.

So she was a little uneven at times. A little off balance. We were like, okay, we need to teach this kid some grace. Well, I’m not going to teach her grace. My wife is very graceful, but I don’t think she knows how to teach a kid grace. We decided to put her in dance classes and it worked. She’s one of the most graceful human beings I know today. But while she was in dance, like most involved parents were buying all the pictures and the recital videos, and every time we’d get a recital video back, it’s like a little Sony handycam sitting at the back of the auditorium just as wide as that lens could go. I’d send the video to my parents in Florida and I’d have to say, yeah, the fifth dance and the fourth blip from the left, that’s your granddaughter. She’s doing great. I know you can’t. So I was like, okay, we can do this better. We got a nice camera and a tripod, and I jumped on YouTube University and started figuring it out.

Oh wow.

And then here I am today.

So you self-taught yourself?

Yeah.

Wow.

Yeah. Yeah. Me and YouTube. That’s right. 

You can learn a lot online.

Yeah, you sure can. Yeah.

How long have you had this studio here for?

I’ve been in this location for over four years, but I just went a little over 18 years in video production.

So if anyone is watching, listening and they want to start a podcast, you can come started at Pod work Studios. 

That’s Right. 

You come talk to Bill.

That’s right. Come talk to me.

There are many options. You have some, not just in studio, but now you can help people who want to set up their own studio at home. Tell us a little bit about that, how you can help people with that.

So at Pod Work studios, we have three different studio options. We have a mobile studio where we come to you. If you’re local to Phoenix, we will bring our equipment out to you and find a nice spot in your office or house or whatever it may be, and set up a multi-camera podcast production and record and leave, and then go on our day. Then we have our in studio, which we’re in the studio right now. We’re in Studio Two. We have two studios here. Then we have a mobile studio. Our mobile studio is basically an online platform. So, if you have a recording area at home or at your office or whatever it may be, and you have some equipment or we can sell you equipment if you need it, you can just log in virtually and record. And you can do it one of two ways.

We can either log in with you as a virtual producer, where we sit there and kind of walk you through the steps of recording your show. Make sure your sound and your video, and your lighting is good. Same thing for an online guest. If you bring ’em in or you can record on your own. If you’re dialed in with the tech and you don’t really need our help, you can record on your own. Just send us a message, say, I just recorded episode 22 and we’ll jump in there and edit it and upload it. But the big thing is that when we created the studio, I created it with business owners in mind. Being a business owner myself, I realized how valuable our time is. I wanted to create a system that was cost-effective and high-quality and that took as little time out of your day as possible. So at our studio, we do bulk recording. You can come by twice a month for 90 minutes and record two episodes each. Or you can come by once a month for three hours and record all four episodes. That’s not that easy. You leave here and your brain’s a little bit like oatmeal, right? It’s very effective. We do all the editing and we upload all of your main content and we create social media clips for you. We do transcripts, and we do the custom YouTube thumbnails for every single episode.

Yeah, this has been very helpful. I wanted to start a podcast four or five years ago, but I didn’t have the time to figure out all of the technical stuff and uploading. I just knew I would drop the ball. I remember when I was a colleague of mine who said, Hey, I met this guy who does this, and I was in contact with you, and from there got started. But I love the system that you have in place for busy people because I don’t have time to edit. A lot of people ask me, How do you do it all? You’re running a clinic, you’re seeing patients. You do a podcast, you have a family, you’re working out. You do. How do you do it? I’m like, well, if you have a nice system in place, it helps. You have a really good system here where we’re consistently recording and you’re doing everything else. I don’t have to worry. It gets posted, uploaded and keep going. So this is episode 45.

Yeah.

That’s a huge achievement for me.

You’re almost at a full year of 52 weeks.

Absolutely. Almost there.

Did you know that 90% of podcasts don’t make it past episode 10?

Wow.

90%. They say there are 4.4 million podcasts,

4.4 million podcasts,

Of which 90% of them don’t have more than 10 episodes.

Wow. It’s hard work

It is hard work. It is not just the content, but also trying to get it out to a larger audience. It takes time. It does. I’m grateful to you. I’m grateful for the many conversations that we’ve had. So let’s jump into the topic that we wanted to talk about. You mentioned that you see on your side, and I always like to get the perspective of someone who’s not in healthcare, who’s not in the mental health field, and they see this perspective from the outside, because then it’s not just me as a doctor seeing this trend. Other people see it. You mentioned that there’s a rise in mental health issues. Why did you say that? What is it that you’re perceiving right now in our world?

I think it’s the reaction to it that I’m seeing, that’s making me know that there’s a rise in mental health issues. Obviously, as a business owner, I’ve done a lot of networking and I’ve connected with a lot of people and friends with them on Facebook. All the time, I am seeing posts about not losing focus. Be the best you can be. You’re the only competition that you have and things like this. And while it is great messaging, it’s good for the mindset, but then it veers into this whole, there’s a concern out there. Everybody knows somebody with a mental health condition. Everybody. I know several people with mental health conditions. I didn’t know that many people. I thought maybe it wasn’t so prevalent, but I don’t think so. People seemed to be pretty emotionally stable, I would say 10 to 12 years ago. But in the past decade, maybe 15 years, things seem to be off. To me, that’s my completely nonclinical evaluation.

And it’s hard to tell. Is it because more people understand the human experience and the human psyche, and they’re giving permission? They’re giving themselves permission and others permission to talk about their feelings, to talk about the mental health aspect? Or are we bordering on becoming victims of this? Is that too much?

So there’s this theory, and I can’t remember. There’s a doctor who talks about the theory. I can’t remember who it was, but they said, Are you more aware of a mental condition that you may have? Because there’s more awareness around it. If there wasn’t all this awareness that people have now around mental health, would you even know if you had a mental health condition? Are we creating a society based on what it is when mitochondria, right?

Yeah.

A bunch of mitochondria in the mental health world. You hear all these different conditions with mental health. Now, do we think we have a mental health problem simply because there’s more awareness of it? Then is that a good or a bad thing?

It’s hard to tell which one is what’s really happening. What I can say is that there might be a combination of both. As you’re speaking, I’m thinking of my maternal grandmother and how, I mean, their generation, she’s passed away, but she was like 96 when she died, and this is almost 10 years ago. So, in her generation, talking about feelings, expressing feelings, and showing emotions just wasn’t the case in that culture at that time. It just wasn’t something that was acceptable. It was looked at as a sign of weakness. But I can tell you, looking back at the few times, the interactions that I had with her, I can see that she did have mental health issues and probably because the home environment that she grew up in, experiencing a father who was very abusive, verbally, physically, that there is probably some health concerns. But Mexican moms would never be depressed, get to work. What do you mean by depression? They don’t understand the word depression or anxiety. It’s just in your head, get moving and you move on.

Yeah. Oh no, I grew up in South Chandler, which, for those who don’t know, South Chandler has a heavy Hispanic population. I went to Chandler High School, so I’m very aware of the culture. Well over 50% of my friends were Mexican and or Mexican American. Yeah, I was very, very well aware that the men were the same way. Very stoic, very stoic.

Very seldom showed information other than maybe anger.

Anger, yeah.

But the white culture isn’t far off.

That’s what I’m saying. It really, I have learned to look past. There might be some cultural differences, but everyone is the same. There’s a lot of white culture that I’ve heard, like Scandinavians and just other, they’re just very cold and rigid and they don’t show emotional expressions. I’m like, yeah, this is true. African Americans, native Americans, it’s not a race issue.

It’s everyone. 

We might experience different challenges, but there are still challenges at the end of the day. I will say that from my end of the table, what I have seen clinically is definitely a huge rise in mental health. And people aren’t even saying, I’m depressed or I have anxiety. And it’s young people.

And after Covid, that really, I remember Bill, so Covid Lockdowns here were sometime in March, right around this time of the year in 2020. By the time the lockdowns lifted, I was seeing, so it was around summertime, I was seeing a lot of 10, 9, 10, 11, 12-year-old girls in my office. It was just like I was busy with them. That’s crazy. I felt like I was a counselor, and I’m trained to do mind, body, mental health, some of the stuff, but I’m not a licensed therapist. I think, naturally, I just like to guide people. But I had these young girls and not able to verbally express themselves and say, sometimes people can’t say I have anxiety or I have depression. And so they’ll explain. I just feel down, or I feel like my heart is racing all the time, and I am not calm. It’s anxiety. They were describing the anxiety, they’re describing the depression. But what was most concerning was that almost all of them were suicidal.

Wow.

Yeah. And so I also worked at that age.

Yeah. So what’s interesting is that same year, that same summer, I started seeing a lot of nurses, a lot of registered nurses that worked at the big hospitals here, children’s hospitals. One of them was a psychiatrist or psychologist there. She would evaluate all the children who would come in. Well, she started to share with me, there’s such a rise in mental health in these young children, not teenagers, children. She says, I had never seen anything like this, a 6-year-old who tried to commit suicide. I know there are a lot of factors. It wasn’t just that it could have been. These kids were home. Some of the kids were safer at school than they were at home.

That’s true.

Because let’s face it, we live in a world that’s broken, where parents are hurt and they have so many wounds that they need to heal themselves and they’re passing their own trauma to their children. You have these lockdown parents. I mean, I remember I was stressed. What am I going to do with my kid? I’m going to bring her to the office and sit her there. Hopefully, she does the work. I don’t have time to do both. It was just stressful. 

And schools were figuring things out. So I can imagine someone, a parent who is not in the right state of mind, how violent that person can be with the child at home.

We could have a whole other podcast about our reaction as a society to covid. Right. Part of what we’re seeing right now is the repercussions of poor decisions around that.

Absolutely. 

Alright, so there are a couple of things that I think are going on. One thing that makes me think that mental health truly is a problem. It’s not just, what was the term we used? Hypochondriac.

Hypochondriac, yeah.

There are more people in the mental health professions than we’ve ever seen before. Every time you turn around, somebody’s a counselor, somebody’s a psychiatrist, somebody’s this, somebody’s that. But also we have never seen worse mental health, especially in our youth, in the country’s history. I think Covid had a lot to do with it, but I also think it’s the social media.

Absolutely. 

If I can give a shout-out to another show that records here really quick.

Absolutely.

So there’s a show here that is called the Dope Dad Podcast. Shout out to my boy oj.

Okay.

It is a fantastic show. And he talks about being a dad in today’s society, brings on other dads, and one of the things that they bring up quite often is the role of social media in our children’s lives and how can’t even imagine what it’s like growing up, constantly being evaluated and judged and this and that. These kids think that one little comment or one little mistake in a post that they put on Instagram is going to ruin their life. But that’s the perception they have. So we’ve created this world while trying to connect the world together. I’m looking at it like, we shouldn’t have done this. Some of them, he says, I love the technology, it’s cool,

But I have to agree with you, even as an adult, it has such an impact on us. Earlier this year, from January to the end of February, I was off social media just because I needed a break from it. It was such a great benefit for my brain or for my mental health that I’m like, it’s too much. Having created this podcast, we do a lot of work to put a lot of great content here for people, but people will still listen to the stupid shit online.

Yes, they will.

It amazes me. 

Yeah. It’s unbelievable. 

It amazes me that people are drawn to the nonsense, and young people and adults do the same thing. There’s so much information that there’s an abundance of information coming at us, and we’re taking all of this in. The thing with children and young people is that their subconscious mind is receiving billions of pieces of information, whereas the conscious mind is not. All of this information is fed into the subconscious mind, which contributes to their emotions and behaviors. That’s what they act out is it’s all that subconscious information that they’re receiving from social media, tv, whatever technology they’re exposed to. Technology has a big role in most of the mental health issues. There are many different things that factor into an increase in mental health. You said something about counselors. What’s interesting is that there’s such a great number of people going into the field of counseling, but there’s even more who are leaving.

Really?

Yeah. Brenda Cochrane, who is a Christian counselor and she now has her own practice, but prior to that, she managed a huge practice of counseling and she had a hard time hiring people. I remember she would tell me, man, there’s such a turnaround. Counselors are quitting. They’re going into different fields, they’re just burned out. They don’t want to do this anymore. It’s hard to hire new counselors. So there’s a shortage in that aspect as well, as there are not enough people to help with some of these practices. There’s a one or two or three-month wait list, depending on the practice, but there’s two three month wait list to get seen.

Yeah. Oh yeah. There’s a 10 or a 12 to one patient to doctor ratio in a lot of them, too, right? Or more than that, probably. Right? Yeah. You go and see a counselor for 30 minutes and then now they’re seeing 16 patients a day, five days a week. I don’t remember when it started, but there was this trend that started and it seems to keep going on that everybody should see a counselor. That’s not true.

There are people who should seek out professional help. Absolutely. There are. But all the people who do it just because they think they need to or something, I don’t agree with that. There are a lot of people who are very mentally stable.

If I tell people, be part of a church, that’s a community. Oftentimes, churches, especially big churches, have counseling groups. Sometimes, there are counselors there, but there are different groups for different types of grief and addiction.

Whatever issues.

Marriage. 

And those support groups, that community, that’s a real community.

That’s real community.

When you’re in person.

That’s right.

That’s real community. There’s a lot going on online and all these things are being online and there’s a time and place for that. But I think we really need to get offline and get in person in your community.

Find a local community church in your area, where you are doing life with these individuals and where you can talk about your issues and you’re not going to start off talking about your issues, but you get to know people and you build trust. Through doing life together, that’s when you’re sharing life and have relationships with people who are older and wiser than you.

Yes, absolutely.

Because you’re going to learn from their experiences and people outside of your circle, outside of your comfort zone.

Yeah. You want to get real. You brought up church. Right. Okay. So, another trend I’m noticing is that the more we push God out of this country, the more problems we have.

Absolutely.

I don’t see how people can just look past that. It’s clear and evident that the more we push God out of this country, the more problems we have. I think mental health is one of those

Problems. Absolutely. During Covid, I am not going to say it didn’t have an impact on me, but I wasn’t losing my mind. I was still living life. I was still doing things. And actually, you know, one of my goals was, Bill, I was pissed off for a whole year. 

You’re pissed off.

 I was pissed off here and there because I’m like, how can people not see this? That’s a whole different episode, different topic. But I was upset, but I didn’t lose my marbles.

The other thing is I didn’t want to push the fears that everyone was telling us, you need to mask up, you need to do this. You need a social. I wasn’t projecting that to my kids. I was like a shield. I remember going to Target, and my daughter was four or five years old, four around that time, three or four years old. She didn’t have a mask on. I never made my daughters wear a mask out in public, whatever. God gave us an innate immune system. You’ve got to figure it out. I’m not going to do that to my child. So we went to Target, and we were at the self-checkout, and there was another little girl the same age as my daughter. Oh, mind you, my daughter’s twirling around dancing at the store on the floor, turns all over my head, and the other little girl’s like, mom, look, she’s on the floor. She’s getting dirty.My daughter doesn’t care. She’s just swaying around dancing and why doesn’t she have a mask? 

Another little girl her age whom this agenda was pushed onto her, the fear that you are not safe to be without a mask to dance and twirl around and be on the floor. Now, my daughter is a whole different beast. No matter how many times I would tell her, don’t be on the floor. She was on the floor doing her little dance.

And I’m like, I’m just not going to fight her on this. I’m just going to let her be. But you know what? She was happy. She was a happy little girl

Living in her little world. They didn’t care who was wearing a mask.

Absolutely.

So I look at them now and I’m like, yeah, I don’t see that they were impacted as much as other children were because I didn’t make it a big deal at home. So, as parents, it is a responsibility to be informed and to be able to guide our children in a safe way and for parents to have an ongoing conversation with their children. Because if they’re not having a conversation with these topics that they experience that we experience in life, someone else is.

Yeah, absolutely. And it’s the entering kids into their classes that are projecting all of this agenda onto them. 

But I agree. I had a lot of friends who would ask me, Why are you so happy? How are you getting through this? And I’m like, man, let me tell you why. Because I have God in my life, and I cannot live my life without turning to his word, turning to him for guidance. I don’t know how else to do it. Because even with that, I find myself in moments of struggling. So imagine not having, not being rooted in his word, not having a relationship with God, not making God the center of your life. It makes life very, very difficult.

It makes mental health issues even more difficult. Now, it doesn’t mean that people who believe in God don’t have mental health issues. They do. Usually, there’s a much deeper rooted reason for that. There’s trauma that was never healed through, but there’s a solution for that. I always believe this. I believe that healing can happen in many different ways. It might be through a counselor, it might be through church, someone praying for you, having deliverance. Am I just you be seeking God out on your own? There are many different ways that you can find healing physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, right?

Yeah.

So you just got to find what’s your jam? What works for you.

I believe that there is a time and place for drugs. There are certain mental health conditions and pharmaceutical drugs, right? 

Pharmaceutical drugs, not illegal substances, suggest that there’s a chemical imbalance in somebody’s brain that’s causing whatever. I don’t know the science, but I think we are a way overdrugged society. Ritalin. Let’s talk about Ritalin for a second, right? Gosh. I mean, growing up, we boys were just rowdy all the time. We were allowed to go outside and just wreak havoc during recess because the teachers knew we got to go out and get all that energy out and this and that. Now it just seems that, well, let’s just drug them up so that the energy doesn’t exist in them. That’s creating problems. The whole ADHD/ADD thing, I have a hard time really buying into so many kids being diagnosed with that.

That’s just strange to me. I think it goes back, I think it goes back even farther back to my time when kids were being diagnosed with this. The pharmaceuticals are there to rescue everybody. Pharmaceutical companies should work to put themselves out of business. If you want to give people drugs, you should be working to, okay, you give ’em a drug and guess what? They’re going to get better and they’re done with it. Not beyond it for the rest of their lives or create other problems. I don’t know. 

I am going down a rabbit hole, but it doesn’t heal people. The pharmaceutical is not going to heal them. It just keeps them in this vicious cycle. So I’ll tell you, I do get a lot of parents who bring in, almost all of them are boys. I have never had a parent bring their daughter because they think she has ADHD. It’s always boys. I look at them, I interact with them, I assess them from the moment they enter my clinic, I’m interacting with the child and I’m like, no, they’re fine. They’re boys. I have to explain the biology. Biology, they may have more energy. They have more muscle mass. They’re going to make more testosterone. They’re wired,

They’re more aggressive. Yeah, exactly. 

They’re just meant to move more than a girl will.

Even some girls are active too. So I do a neurotransmitter test on these children, and the insurance doesn’t cover it, but I tell parents, if you really want to see if there’s a chemical imbalance, a neurotransmitter imbalance in them, let’s do this neurotransmitter test. It’s a urine collection. You collect four collections throughout the day. You send it into the lab. It’s like $250 test to 70. They do the test, they send it to the lab, I get the results. And that lets me know all the neurotransmitters, including norepinephrine, epinephrine, like your adrenaline cortisol numbers in there. So then that gives me an idea, are they really hyper? Are there neurotransmitters that are super excitatory that are elevated? Or are the inhibitory neurotransmitters too low? Those two are supposed to balance each other. So most of the time they’re normal. I’m like, they’re just normal kid. There’s nothing wrong with them. Sometimes it is a matter of correcting and just guiding them. Not so much correcting but guiding them. There’s a time and place. But I think the problem is schools also, it’s too much sitting down. I mean, I find myself at my age going to conferences that are 6, 7, 8 hours a day, three, four days back to back. And I am overwhelmed. I’m like, how did I get through medical school? That’s a lot of sitting down.

But I’m older and I can force myself to get through that class to sit through that. I know I have the permission to get up. I can get up and go to the bathroom, move around, do whatever I want at these conferences. And in schools, children don’t have that autonomy to get up and move around. So I think the part of the problem is the way the schools are structured; it’s too long. That’s why other countries delay children starting school until they’re about seven years old. They start later in the day. Our brains are not really on until about nine or 10.

Yeah. And these kids are starting at 7:00 AM and stuff, it’s too early for them.

They should still be asleep between two and four o’clock or cortisol drops, it doesn’t matter who you are, what age, or when cortisol starts to drop, because it’s getting ready for us to go to bed. That’s the other thing, that they’re in school longer during a time when they’re not very productive. I once said they study. I just thought of that. I once read a study where they looked at what were the peak times of performance. They looked at all these companies and the best time that people performed the best was between 10 and 11:00 AM. And production would fall at three o’clock. So I say we should work between 10 and three, man.

Yeah, absolutely.

That should be our work day.

Yeah.

Can you imagine everyone working that though? I mean, it’d be great.

Yeah. How much would get done? You’re

Super productive.

Probably more than an eight-hour day.

Absolutely.

You know what I mean?

Yeah. So I think that’s so many things that contribute to mental health. A lot of it though, from being in practice and interacting with people, it’s unresolved, unhealed, child trauma and big trauma. Not like my parents didn’t buy me the shoes that I wanted. No big traumas that they’ve experienced, whether it’s physical abuse, mental abuse, or sexual abuse, those traumas have really impacted them. I can see that that is truly impacting people’s mental health as they get older. The big stressor that I hear from adults is their work, their work, their work situation creates a lot of stress for them, which is sad. It was sad

Because you’re there 8 to 10 hours a day,

A third of your life at work.

Therefore, the environments in these companies are not healthy.

Sometimes they’re very toxic. Management always seems to be the problem.

There’s those that work hard and those that hardly work.

The ones that hardly work get away with stuff.

This is what’s cool. So in the industry I’m in, I’ve noticed this growth in the coaching industry, there are a lot of business coaches out there and all of them are talking about company culture.

They know there’s a problem. It’s inspiring to see all these people out there trying to do something about it. They’re studied, they’re certified, they’re whatever it may be, they know what the answer is. They just have to get into these organizations and help them change. Because I think the organizations, one, when you’re looking at your own place, your own company, it’s hard to see the issue, right? Because you’re right there. You’re not at a 20,000-foot view. Somebody who’d be a coach or a consultant or somebody comes in to evaluate your company culture. They come in and they’re not emotionally attached to it either, right? So they’re going to give you the raw deal, man, this is what’s going on in your company. This is why your employees keep leaving. This is why they leave bad reviews on LinkedIn or whatever is for you as an employer because of this, this, and this. And I know you don’t want to hear that, but you got to change this. You got to change it. So I do appreciate that. I like that reaction that we’re seeing because organizations, they’re not in, they don’t think they’re interested in fixing it themselves, or they just don’t know how.

It’s hard for them. I think you’re right. If you bring someone from the outside who has neutral eyes, a neutral approach to it, they’re observing the behavior and it makes more sense to do that. Early. When I was in my mid-twenties, I was working for a financial institution and they brought someone in and evaluate the company. We had, they called them affinity groups. They took people from every department, every branch, to create these groups. We would brain dump, brainstorm, give input, feedback, and then the person who was evaluating, I dunno what they would call them, but it was an outside company that would come in, gather this information, report it to the upper management, and then from there kind of look at what’s working, what’s not working, what can we change on all different areas? 

What was really interesting about this company is that this financial institution has been one of the best places that I worked for and that I experienced top exceptional leadership. The CO, It’s Arizona Financial Credit Union. It used to be Arizona Federal Financial Credit or Arizona Federal Credit Union, but it’s now Arizona Financial Credit Union.

I think the CEO is still the same CEO. I was very impressed with this man. I remember when I started, I went through training. He asked me something and I shared it. Months later, six months later, I was part of this affinity group. And I remember he asked me, Hey, how was that class that you were in? I was in college. I was doing my degree in finance. He asked me specifically about the class that I mentioned to him like six months ago. The fact that he remembered my name from one conversation that I had with him was like, you’re senior heard that you’re valued and appreciated. They continue to have these affinity groups. Every month we would meet together and bring change, bring cultural change, bring changes to processes, and also the members, because not customers, they’re members of the institution. So we would interview and survey the members of the institution, what was their feedback or opinions on different things. We would implement the changes. If they said, The deposit slips, the lines are too small, we want this on there, we want that on there, we would change it. I always say that as a company, the best place you can get information is from your customer. Ask them what works,

Ask them what doesn’t work and don’t take it personally. Just evaluate and see what changes can. Because sometimes you don’t want to change what does work. You want to keep that the same, but you want to change what doesn’t work. And employers should do the same because as a business owner, as business owners and even a big corporation, their number one customer is their employees.

Their employees have to be happy, their employees are not happy. They’re not going to be happy to serve the customer.

That’s right. You can tell when you walk into a company and there is a good company culture there, and the mental health of those employees are good or is good because I’m trying to think. Costco, every time I go into Costco, everybody in there is so helpful. I actually worked there. I worked there for four or five months. That was the first job I had of the Navy. They’re a phenomenal employer. They’re really good. I still walk into the Costco I used to work at, and I see guys in there that worked in there 12 years ago now almost maybe 15 years ago when I worked there. They’re still there. You find that you also find yourself being more loyal to the company that you work for.

Yes, absolutely. My accounts, all my accounts, are with Arizona Financial. I refer people to that institution. I speak good things about it. I learned so much through that company. So what they invested into me, it’s really, believe it or not, but the fruits of that labor show up in my practice with my patients because of what they invested in me, the education, the training, they invested in me. So I think that’s what good culture does, and that’s applied across the board to any institution, whether it’s a church, and I know some people don’t like to see a church as a business, but it does kind of have the same nuts and bolts to it.

It doesn’t have to feel like a business, but there are a lot of leadership components that get passed down. If the leaders, I always, one of the big things, once again because of that, CEO was CEO was that leaders lead from the front. And whatever happens in leadership at the top is going to trickle down to the bottom

For sure.

If you want the people who are following to be the employees or whoever it is that you’re delegating work, you want them to be happy, then you have to make the change. Then you’ll see the change on the bottom trickling down.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. Just a lot. But that’s one of the things that I see is a lot of my patients are work Stress is up there. And it shouldn’t be that way.

No.

Company culture is very important for mental health. Like I said, you spend a third of your life at work, you should enjoy it. 

You should enjoy what you do. And some jobs suck. Let’s just face it. Some jobs suck, but the job can suck. But the culture at the company can be great. And it can be a culture of, Hey, we know this job sucks, but this is how we’re going to make it better for you to come to work and show effort in that. And it’s kind of crazy these days. It’s a wild world we live in right now. Right?

It is. I guess the takeaway from this, what would you say the takeaway you would want our audience to know about mental health being on the rise?

Oh man, that’s a good question. I think the biggest takeaway is mental health; it’s important, but focus on God. You know what I mean? You’ve got to find something that’s bigger and better than yourself and let that be your compass. And for Christians, that’s God. When God is your compass, your life is better.

Yeah. He’ll guide you.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that it’s good that we’re aware of mental health. I think it’s important. I have a hard time trusting some of the medical acuity right now about things. And so that

Me too,

I’m a doctor.

No, me too.

You’re my doctor. Yeah, that’s right.

There’s a balance. There’s a balance in this. And discernment is very important.

And that balance is hard to find right now. 

Balance is hard to find. That’s why I will say not as a doctor, as a person, is that when I put my faith in trust in God and I pray and I meditate on his word, he does give me guidance on what is the next step is. That’s sometimes as far as you need to go with patients. I tell him, don’t worry about the next five years, 10 years, or the past. Just think about what is the very next step I need to do. God will reveal what that next step is. He is the compass.

One foot in front of the other.

One foot. Exactly. If God is the center of your world, he’s going to navigate you and tell you, guide you where you need to go and what you need to do. And there’s just so much in his word, and I understand that a lot of people don’t want religion. Well, don’t get religion. I’m talking about have a relationship with God because he’s a great physician, he’s a great surgeon, he’s a great counselor, he’s a great healer, and God will provide the direction of where you need to go. He’s not going to do it for you, but he’s going to guide you what that next step is. And he might tell you, get a counselor.

Yeah.

At this point you do need a counselor. Suicidal, absolutely.

At this point, you do need some medication because you’re suicidal.

If you have any suicidal thoughts or you’re thinking about hurting somebody else, go see a doctor and go get help.

Professional help right now, right now. And there are so many avenues. Even if you’re dirt poor, there are services out there for you.

I’ll make sure to provide some of those places here, at least here in Arizona, or some of the hotlines that people can get access to. So if they are at the bottom of the pit and they can’t find the way out, they can have a resource to turn to.

Yeah.

Well, Bill, thank you so much. My pleasure. For joining me in this episode. We’ll have to do some other ones in the future, some hot topic ones.

Yeah, we’ve talked about a lot. Yeah,

A lot. Lot Covid ones. We’ll do that. Alright, everyone, well, thank you for joining us on this episode of Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. Make sure you share and subscribe to the channel. And until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share and subscribe, help this message, reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.

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