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Jodi Cohen: Hello, I am Jodi Cohen, your host, and I’m so excited to be joined by my dear friend Jana Danielson, where we’re going to talk about all things like mobility, pain, and her fabulous cooch ball product. Jana is an award-winning wellness entrepreneur who through her own experience with physical pain, turned her mess into her message, which has now become her mission. She is an Amazon international bestselling author, founder of Lead Pilates and Lead Integrated Health Therapies, and the Cooch Ball, the world’s first pelvic floor fitness tool for women that you can use for three minutes a day and have amazing results. So welcome, Jana.

Jana Danielson: Jody, thanks so much for having me here. I’m excited for this conversation.

Jodi Cohen: I’m too, and I want the listeners to know how did you talk to me about how you came up with…

Jana Danielson: This? Yeah, so as you alluded to in my bio, I think that those of us that are in the world of healing now had some sort of experience with pain or something that was gifted to us in a former life, and that brought us to where we are today. That’s exactly what happened to me. I was in my early twenties. I had a lot of undiagnosed digestive pain. I spent about two years going from doctors to specialists with no diagnosis and just the next prescription, the next piece of paper to go to the pharmacy to fill. And so I found myself at 21 years old on 11 different medications every single day, just to be told by my doctors one day that they believed the pain was in my head and I was seeking attention.

I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me. I thought that my whole life I was newly engaged to my high school sweetheart, and I was questioning why would I go through with the wedding. Because why would a partner that can’t even get up in the morning, I wanted to be a

mom, how would that even possibly happen? And so through this series of events, I actually found Pilates, and I love that you mentioned the word mobility because what actually happened for me, six months after being told that the pain was in my head, I went to my first Pilates class and 16 weeks after that date, I was off all my medication. I had no idea what had just happened. How did movement heal me? How? And that’s exactly what happened. I thought I was fit. I used to teach aerobics in university to pay for my tuition, but what I didn’t realize was the importance of breathing with my diaphragm, moving my spine in beautiful ways, what that does for all the organs, and how we optimize their functionality, our mindset, how critical it is when you can be, like I always say in Winnie the Pooh, there’s ior, the little donkey, and I really was living like an Eyor.

 

Jana Danielson: I was feeling sorry for myself. I thought that others should feel sorry for me. And it wasn’t until I kind of turned things around and became more of that Tigger for myself, a cheerleader for myself, believing that I deserve to have a healthy life. That’s when things turned around for me. And so anyone that’s been in pain knows that if you’ve been in pain long enough, it’s not just the pain where it started, your whole body succumbs to the pain. And in my early twenties, I found myself having a lot of pelvic floor pain, hadn’t had a baby, and was not in menopause. And I was wondering why, what is happening here? And so I shifted my world from the corporate, climbing the corporate ladder to wellness entrepreneurship, and I got certified in Pilates, opened my own studio, and expanded five years later to include an integrated health therapies clinic.

And the one thing I found that was so interesting was as I would teach Pilates to women and would talk about pelvic floor through the breath work, they would stop making eye contact with me. They wouldn’t be asking questions. And I was like, Hey, what’s happening here? They trust me. We have a relationship and yet we can’t talk about this part of our body. And I figured I was onto something and I did some work with a urogynecologist out of the US who had just released some new research in the mid-20, around 2014. And his research said that in a woman’s body, 90% of pelvic floor dysfunction is actually rooted in lack of mobility, poor posture and fascial restriction. And I was like, wait a minute, if that’s really true, I can help nine out of 10 women as a Pilates instructor. And that’s literally how the cooch ball was born. I was a mom by then. I went downstairs to my boys’ toy box. I sat on their mini basketballs, their floor hockey balls just to see what would this feel like if I brought blood flow to the area. And that’s the story.

Jodi Cohen: Well, you know what? There’s also trauma down there, the women that have been raped that’s really involved in it. I love what you said though, a couple of things. The victim mentality, I always talk about ER too, and I’m not, my goal is to be poo because I am a little bit too bouncy, floy, Tigger. If I can just be chill, that would be great. But mobility really helps. I also love what you said about moving the spine to open the organs. Can you talk about that a little bit more and how breathing, because I think everyone, they hear breathing and it’s almost like, oh, that’s too hard. Or they hear pelvis and they’re like, Ooh, don’t want to go there. We have all of these. It’s like me with pigeon pose, the things that we avoid that we probably need. Can you talk about that?

Jana Danielson: Absolutely. So Joseph Pilates, who is the gentleman who invented the whole system of movement around Pilates, said that the health of our spine dictated the health of our body. And so there’s five ways, it’s kind of like a recipe.

Jana Danielson: There are five ways every day to simply move our spine. So if you think of the spine, if it’s like a Christmas tree and all the lights are plugged in, if there’s that one bulb that’s not working, sometimes a whole section of lights doesn’t work. It’s the same thing, right? When our spine doesn’t move, think of what happens in our body when we have small little bones in

our hands and our feet and our spine. Those bones are meant to move. When we have long bones, like the bones in our arms and our legs, those bones are meant to hold us for stability. And yet because we sit so much during the day, those little bones in our spine start to take on the personality of being a solid bone. And so the five spinal movements are simply spinal flexion. And you know what, I’m just, I’m going to just shift my camera. I want to just show really quickly, oh, I love this. Thank you.

A little movement here. Okay. So spinal flexion simply means if someone was going to poke you in your belly button, you would create a little tuck. Oh, okay. So it’s not this. So too many of us are like this already at our desks. So the spinal flexion or the rounding of the spine actually comes from the lumbar or the lower back. It’s a little tiny tuck. Okay? You’re sitting at your desk. If you do a little tiny tuck, you almost feel like if you were wearing a belt, that belt just got cinched up one notch tighter. We start to actually massage our organs. It’s an internal massage. And so for those of you who are bloated or constipated, that also is a pelvic floor issue. It’s rooted in the pelvic floor, the pelvic floor being dysfunctional, either too tight or lacking tone. Okay? So that’s spinal movement number one.

The opposite of flexion is extension. So it’s kind of just sticking the booty back, creating a little bit more of an arch in your back. So we have flexion and extension. So sometimes when I’m sitting at my desk on a Zoom call without people even knowing I’m doing these, this little tailbone tuck, and then I’m sticking my booty back, and if you do it with good posture, do you even see how my blinds have those lines? You can’t really even tell that I’m doing these little tucks. And that is what really starts opening up or massaging those organs. The next two spinal movements are simply bending to the side lateral flexion. You want to make sure those bony bones in your butt stay grounded. Kayla, I don’t want you to lean all the way over, kind of like in yoga when you, yes, here’s the one watch for, okay, you want to make sure that your pelvis like those bony bones in your butt.

They’re like the roots of a tree. So if you’re in a chair doing a side bend, you want to make sure that as you’re bending to the side, you don’t let go with that butt. You keep the butt nicely grounded. You want your spine to be moving, okay, nice spinal rotation. You do a shoulder check or even if someone calls your name, you turn. So rotation is also very important. And when we twist our spine, the organs get to again, massage on one another.

Jana Danielson: So there’s this yummy just interaction between the tissues and they actually start talking to each other like, Hey, how are you? I’m kind of tight today. And so there’s this beautiful kind of communication system. And then the fifth spinal movement, you would have to lay on the floor, but if you laid on your back with your knees bent and if you lifted your butt off the floor into a little bit of a bridge, we call that an inversion. So your tailbone is a little bit higher than your heart. Spinal fluid gets to work against gravity in a different way, and that really was Joe Pilates recipe for a healthy body was moving your spine that way, and it literally takes minutes a day. So that’s the correlation between spinal movement and the health of our organs.

Jodi Cohen: I see yoga and all of those, that’s amazing. And I love Pilates. Also, talk to me now about the cooch ball and how you bring the ball into the practice.

Jana Danielson: So let’s quickly do, I’m just going to grab an apple. Okay.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you. And by the way, I love that this does kind of remind me of the little kid basketballs. I don’t think they’re allowed to play dodge ball anymore. People could get hurt, but these were like the dodge balls.

Jana Danielson: They were the dodge balls. They totally were. And we’ll talk about what makes this different from a dodge ball. In a second, I want to use an apple. So here I have a basic apple. Our core is exactly the same as if we were to eat the fruit of this apple, we would have the apple core left, right? The core has a top, the core has a bottom, and the core has the 360 degrees cylinder, the diaphragm muscle, which is our main muscle of respiration. It’s sits in our rib cage like an open umbrella or a mushroom cap that sits here. That’s the roof of our core is our diaphragm. The floor of our core is our pelvic floor, okay? The pelvic floor is made up of 14 little muscles that create this beautiful hammock inside of our pelvis. And the pelvis is the bones of our hips that come.

Basically this band here is our pelvis. Okay? Yes. So we have a roof and a ceiling, and then the cylinder is made up of four different abdominal muscles. The deepest set of abdominals are the transverse ados. And what we don’t understand is from a fitness perspective, we believe we have to chase the six-pack, right? If you have a definition in your six-pack, that means you are fit. But actually I’m here to tell you that that is such a myth because the six-pack muscle called the rectus ados is actually the least functional of all your abdominals. It doesn’t give your waist shape, it doesn’t support your spine. It is the muscle of the abdominals. That’s the first. It goes to the skin and then the rectus abs. So if you have a low enough body fat percent, yeah, you’re going to see those lines. But if you really want health and vitality and longevity, you’re looking in the wrong spot.

Jana Danielson: The deepest abs, which are the transverse abs that wrap this entire core, start at your back, and they wrap to your front. And when you breathe diaphragmatically, ladies and gentlemen, you are accessing that deep, deep abdominal muscle. So here’s something that a lot of people don’t know. When you stop using your diaphragm, when you watch a newborn baby breathe, what do you see their belly doing? That belly rises and falls with every breath. We become young women and all of a sudden we’re sucking in, we’re trying to look really narrow. We wear fashion that kind of cinch us, and takes away space at the expense of this muscle losing its ability to breathe. And because our body is so smart, the body just sends the breathing work into our neck. These muscles, the scales, and the sternocleidomastoids already have a job. They hold this bowling ball up on the spine.

And so we’ve taken away this big muscle and we’ve replaced it with these little muscles. And about 21,000 times a day, we’re asking these muscles to breathe, and we have neck tension, jaw tension, low-grade headaches at the brow line, at the hairline mean. And then you have to start using Jody’s fascia release oil to start to get some relief because that’s what’s happening is you’re just getting so locked up because you forgot the first act of life, which is breath, and we forget how to do it. And when you breathe diaphragmatically and you can figure out if you breathe with your neck, I call you my little gold fishes, right? Because you’re breathing with your gills essentially. So the way to really quickly find out, are you a goldfish? You want to put one hand here on this flat bone called your sternum, and one hand on the belly button. And when you take in a big breath of air, which hand moves more?

Jodi Cohen: I’m actually surprised my belly does. I thought I was a…

Jana Danielson: Okay. You thought you were a goldfish?

Jodi Cohen: I did. I was thinking I was guilty of being a goldfish.

Jana Danielson: Okay, so that’s how you test that. And your top hand is moving more. You have conditioned your neck to be your breathing muscles, and it’s just about relearning. If you’re bottom hand move more on that inhale, then that’s amazing. That’s what you want. But here’s what people don’t realize when the diaphragm goes to sleep, when we don’t ask it to do its job, because of its location, it lives right above the pelvic floor and it has a direct line. These two talk all the time. So if this muscle stops functioning, this muscle is also going to stop functioning. So all we need to do is start to breathe properly and we start to improve our pelvic floor health. The one piece that I felt was missing as a Pilates instructor, and in my clinic, I would work with my pelvic floor physiotherapist on this too, as we know that any muscle that is lacking oxygen, rich nutrient rich blood is going to be dysfunctional.

Jana Danielson: It’s like a plant without sunlight and water, right? Yeah, exactly. So my challenge was I knew if I sent my clients to my pelvic floor physical therapist, at my clinic, that they could get an internal exam, they could do some internal work, and get blood flow. They could release trigger points. But I wondered what I could create that I could use in my Pilates classes that people could throw in their suitcase or throw in their gym bag and do for minutes a day that could bring blood flow to that area. And then when they did go to see their pelvic floor physiotherapist or their massage therapist or their acupuncturist or their chiropractor, they would be like, what are you doing? It seems like you have a whole different body. And that’s really how the cooch ball was born, was when you sit on it and the goal is three minutes, but your breath is your guide.

So what do I mean by that? If you get on this ball, and there is something called the ouch factor, I am going to be totally honest about that. The ouch factor is correlated to the health of your pelvic floor. So if you get on this ball and it’s like, wow, I don’t think I can stay for more than 10 seconds, it’s telling you with confidence that it’s like the desert. There’s a lack of blood flow. We can’t start to change the neural network, the paths in your brain without the environment for change. So when you sit on this every day, it’s every day you wouldn’t brush your teeth once a month. What you start doing is you bring that beautiful, consistent supply of blood flow to the pelvic floor muscles so that you can melt through fascial restrictions. Because fascia will do that. It’s like that bo constrictor snake that doesn’t lead blood flow through to muscle fibers. And once you can melt through the fascia, the magic starts to happen. Do you tell

Jodi Cohen: People to do it on a hard floor, on carpet, on a chair? What do you recommend?

Jana Danielson: So it’s not a one-size-fits-all. First of all, I want to show you my ball. Do you see how it’s a little bit squishy? Oh.

Jodi Cohen: Yours is Okay. Mine’s too, too pumped up with air.

Jana Danielson: So I want it to be a little bit squishy. Four. I don’t want the sympathetic nervous system, which is the fight flight freeze. I don’t want the alarm bells going off, so I want the body to be able to melt into this. So you know what? I don’t have a pump by me, but…

Jodi Cohen: So the pump comes with the ball, the little top is in this side, and you put it on top. So I pumped it full of air. How do I, yeah,

Jana Danielson: So you, you’re going to unscrew the needle from your pump first.

Jodi Cohen: Okay? Oh, I’m so glad. A lot of my people have questions, so this is really good.  Jana Danielson: So unscrew that from the pump, and then simply it totally. Jodi Cohen: Messed up on purpose.

Jana Danielson: Yeah, well, it’s a teaching moment, right? Yeah. So take that off, put the pump down, take the needle, and slide the needle into the valve.

Jodi Cohen: Oh, okay.

Jana Danielson: And then you’re just going to squeeze it and…

Jodi Cohen: You have to push a little bit, right? Oh.

Jana Danielson: Yeah, there then. So when I squish mine, do you see how it kind of goes just to the top of the word cooch? That’s how I know. That’s how I want. Okay.

Jodi Cohen: Oh my God, I’m so glad I made that mistake. Okay. And…

Jana Danielson: You know what? Yeah. I’m so glad you made that mistake. That’s perfect. Okay, and I know we saw the other side of the ball too. So men, you also have pelvic floors. Ladies, your men have pelvic floors. So this is the Gooch ball for men and the cooch ball for women, because in a man’s body, pelvic floor dysfunction shows itself as chronically tight hips, low back pain across the entire back, cold, tingly feet, constipation, erectile dysfunction, that is all post prostate cancer or during prostate cancer treatment or post-surgery. Guys have pelvic floors too, and it’s really, and are…

Jodi Cohen: Are the symptoms similar for women?

Jana Danielson: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, in women, I think one of the most common symptoms is incontinence. And there are two kinds of incontinence. There’s urge and stress. So the urge is we’re having a conversation. I don’t have to go pee, and in two seconds from now I’m running to the bathroom, undoing my pants. It’s that urge I have to go right now. And oftentimes we correlate urge incontinence with a pelvic floor that’s lacking tone. We call it hypotonic. So lacking tone, weak, and then we have stress. So you might cough or sneeze or laugh really hard and find yourself wetting yourself a bit. That’s called stress incontinence. We tend to relate that to a pelvic floor. That’s…

Jodi Cohen: Trampoline, jumping, incontinence.

Jana Danielson: Yes. Well, yeah, that’s what it is. And here’s the thing. I heard this stat lately that in women, 70% of women who have incontinence issues, their pelvic floor is too tight. It’s like a rock wall. And yet we’re told to do Kegels, right? We’ve all heard, oh…

Jodi Cohen: Yeah, after the babies, of course.

Jana Danielson: Okay, but here’s the problem or here’s the disconnect. Is that a Kegel or I’ll ask you. So Jody, when you learned about Kegels, how were you taught? How do you do your Kegels when you do them?

Jodi Cohen: It’s basically like squeezing. Yeah, it’s clenching. Kind of.

Jana Danielson: The way I was taught after I had my first son was it’s like you’re stopping the flow of urine. You got to…

Jodi Cohen: Start.

Jana Danielson: The flow of urine. Okay? But let’s think about that. If you already have a tight muscle is not a strong muscle. If my biceps are tight and I can’t completely straighten my arm, that’s not a strong muscle. That’s just a tight muscle. So we now know that tightness does not equal strong. And yet if you already have a too tight pelvic floor, it doesn’t know how to rest, it doesn’t know how to relax, and now you’re saying to it, stop the flow of urine, stop the flow of urine. You’re just actually exacerbating or making that tightness more because you’re adding

more tension to it. And like you said before, we already hold the pelvis as the number one area in women for tension, anxiety, and trauma. That’s where we hang onto it. It could be childbirth, it could be slipping and falling. It could be sexual trauma. It could be the clothes we wear, right? Like the jeans we wear or the shoes we wear can create trauma in the pelvic floor. A lot of women don’t realize that tight fascia in our feet like plantar fasciitis and a lot of tension in through our jaw. Those two areas are directly related to tension in the pelvic floor. So if you have a lot of jaw TMJ stuff going on, for sure you’ve got pelvic floor.

Jodi Cohen: I just learned that because my hips are super tight and I thought it was trauma. I used to carry Max on my hip chasing after my older kid, and I’m like, oh, it’s that trauma. And I wasn’t kidding. I do not like pigeon poses. All the hip-hitting is hard for me, and I do grind my teeth. And someone just pointed out that’s correlated. All right, so tell me, what should I be doing every day for three minutes?

Jana Danielson: Okay.

Jodi Cohen: I och ball. That’s now properly inflated.

Jana Danielson: Yes, now that you’re ready to go. So the breathing is really key. Alright, and I want to just quickly just, we’ll walk through this and I should say that we do have a special offer that we’re going to talk about for your community. Take the time, ladies, just take the five or 10 minutes to just watch the get started videos because it will optimize your experience and it’ll boost your confidence. The biggest question is, am I doing it right? I don’t know if I’m doing it right. Well, have you watched the videos? No, I haven’t watched the videos, right? So think about this. When you inhale through your nose, your lungs are filling with air and your lungs actually end just above your collarbone. The lungs are quite large. So when we inhale, the volume of the lungs fills up. That diaphragm muscle actually has to duck out of the way because the lungs are leaving no room.

Alright, so when we inhale, the diaphragm melts, it contracts, it gets smaller. Remember earlier I told you the diaphragm and the pelvic floor have a direct relationship. So as the diaphragm descends, the pelvic floor is also going to descend, which means as the diaphragm is contracting and getting smaller, the pelvic floor is going to be expanding and melting in the same direction. They go in the same direction, but they’re doing two different things. One is contracting, one is expanding. Alright, when we exhale out of our mouths, the lungs empty. There’s no room for the diaphragm. So the diaphragm comes back up, it expands into that mushroom cap shape and the pelvic floor follows it contracts. It’s almost like picking up a grape with your vagina. So there’s this beautiful melt and float, melt and float, melt and float. So when you’re sitting on the ball, and I was talking to Jody before we went live, I love using the fascia release oil.

If it’s at night, if I’m doing my cooch ball at night, I love using the circadian rhythm oil while I’m doing my breathing, it becomes like my gift to myself. Those three minutes, I turn off all auditory stimulation, I close my eyes, the visual stimulation, I have the smell of my essential oils, and I’m sitting on my ball and I’m connecting with my body. I’m checking in with her, how are you today? Geez, this feels a little bit different than yesterday. You know what? Haven’t been filling my water bottle as much today. I’m going to make sure I have this inner dialogue with myself. And just check in. And that’s what you’re doing. If you find yourself holding your breath or your breath is a bit erratic and your timer on your phone hasn’t hit three minutes yet, just come off the ball and just continue your breathing until the three minutes is done. And then maybe tomorrow you can stay for an extra 20 seconds. It’s not like the tortoise and the hare, it’s not like winning the race. It’s the process and the beautiful learning that comes along with a little bit of TLC every day.

Jodi Cohen: I love that. I love that. So it’s as simple as just sitting on it. It’s not complicated. You’re not doing any movement. Okay, that’s

Jana Danielson: Fabulously easy. Just start with that. I mean, when my husband is on his, he does, I was showing you that spinal movement, he kind of does move a little bit on it. It’s not like you can’t move on it. The biggest thing to remember is that if you are sitting on your yoga mat and you’re like, the ouch factor is impacting my breath, then sit on your couch or go sit on your bed because the mattress or the couch cushions will absorb a little bit of the ball and it’ll be a little less intense, right? Take more air out. Stay for me, I have some women that really, seriously, they started 15 seconds. That’s all they’ve got because it’s like Alcatraz, it’s a rock. They need to learn how to chill out and relax. And then do you feel coming off the ball when you get off the ball Over time, you want to feel warmth and tingliness.

That’s how you know with confidence, the blood flow is getting through those fascial restrictions into the musculature. You might feel like almost like you’re sitting in your chair or into your floor. Things will feel quite wide open. Your hips will feel like they could take a breath of fresh air for the first time maybe in years. And you’ll just, because it feels good to feel good. You don’t even know that you’re restricted until you learn how to really release. I love that. I love that. This has been so incredibly helpful. Do you want to share your special offer for the community? Yes, I do. Alright, so Jody will have the link to this offer. So what it is is the cooch ball bundle. So you get the cooch ball, you get your pump, you get a little get-started postcard with it as well. I think Jody, yeah, you have that too. And yeah, there it is. Okay.

So that’s what you get. And then you’ll be a part of my community. You’ll get an email that’ll get you access to your student dashboard where you’ll find the Cooch Confident Training System, which is 10 minutes to get started. And then I also have a fun half-hour workout with the Cooch Ball called Cooch Ball Tone. So we get down on the mat and I show you how to use it to get some glute work, to get some great ab work to work on your posture and alignment. So that’s in there as a bonus of being part of Jodi’s community. We’re also going to gift you the, we call it the Cooch Fix Pack mini. So this little thing is not just a one-trick pony. I’m going to show you how to use it for upper body wellness, breast health, the health of neck.

Neck is huge. Yeah, it is huge, right? There’s one video where we do together lower bodywork and then one on gut health. And I should mention that the design patent of this ball and why it’s not like a dodge ball you can buy at an apartment store is it’s what you can’t see. It’s like you can’t see the pelvic floor, you can’t see the magic.

Jana Danielson: But in between, there’s three layers of this ball, the bladder, no pun intended. And then the outer core between those two layers, we found some really cool nylon thread that is quite stretchy and we wrap that nylon thread in a really unique pattern around the bladder of the ball. And then we put the blue outer covering on it. That’s why as an adult, we can sit on this ball and it doesn’t just get squashed down. The magic happens.

Alright? And we have another bonus as well because I just think Jody is fabulous. We’re going to add into this offer two months of my brand new membership called Koch School. So you don’t have to do this on your own. We talk so much about DIY. This really ladies is like DI we. And I think in the process of girl power and being independent women, we have simply forgotten that we are meant to be in community. The divine feminine is meant to be in community and support and dust each other off and not compete. And my success is independent from yours. And so Koch school really is about supporting you to make this a part of your lifestyle. We’ve got live q and as. I’ve got amazing guest speakers. There’s something in there called a Pilates playground. So you’re going to learn how to use your Koch ball through some really amazing movement, and we’re going to give you two months of that for free as well.

Jodi Cohen: No, this is amazing. I am so excited to get started on this. And I will keep you posted because my hips are painfully tight. I’m excited for this. Oh, I have a quick question. How soon might people start to notice results?

Jana Danielson: So I’ve had women in as little as seven days be like, I’m only waking up once at night. But what I say is to be consistent for 30 days. Give yourself 30 days of consistency and there will be some change. Either you won’t be running to the bathroom as much, or you’ll have more control.

Jodi Cohen: This helps with nighttime waking to pee.

Jana Danielson: Well, for sure it does.

Jodi Cohen: Oh, a lot of customers for you. Okay.

Jana Danielson: Yeah. So I like to say give it the 30 days because it and consistency is key, right? You can buy it and then it can become…

Jodi Cohen: A dog. It can go in your supplement graveyard. And here’s another question for the overachievers out there. If once a day is as good as twice a day is better.

 

Jana Danielson: Twice a day is totally fine. I like to do my morning and night and sometimes I’ll lay down and just put my mat on the floor and I’ll lay on my belly and I’ll do my SOAs, right? I’ll lie down. So some of those things from the cooch fix pack, lay and do a neck release, do your breastwork, right? There’s just, if you have more time, use it on other parts of your body.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you. Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to add?

Jana Danielson: The only thing, or what I would like to leave your community with is that I feel like for those of you that are here, you’re here for a reason, right? You’re looking, you’ve been searching for maybe answers or you want to uplevel your health and wellness. And sometimes this can feel like a lot. And because we’ve been very muted about pelvic floor health, we think we’re the only ones going through it. And in fact, one in two women in the US is dealing with some sort of pelvic floor dysfunction. So first of all, you’re not on your own. Not at all. And anything that I mentioned today, if it’s resonating with you, that information becomes education. When it resonates and you take, so maybe you’re like, oh, maybe I should be moving my spine in a different way, or I didn’t realize that breathing diaphragmatically gave me all these benefits.

And then once you live that information and it becomes education, share it with someone because that’s when it becomes that innate women’s wisdom. And that’s how because I’m on a mission. I’m on a mission, Jody, the incontinence product industry is a 21 billion industry with a B. Do you know how many women on this planet believe that pads are the solution to their pelvic floor problem? And if I could get the help of any woman watching this today, and men, right? Men rise up too, because the erectile dysfunction industry is a $9 billion industry and 90% of erectile dysfunction is actually rooted in pelvic floor tension. Just that would be huge. The more people that we can spread this message to about the simplicity. I think sometimes we think health has to be complicated and it doesn’t.

Jodi Cohen: No, I actually was asked to write a blog on nighttime Waking to Peace. So I’m going to give this one a try and this could be part of my solution. Thank you so much for your time and your brilliance. This was fabulous. I really appreciate it and your generous gift.

Jana Danielson: You’re welcome.

La desintoxicación (o la movilización y eliminación intencional de toxinas) puede provocar síntomas físicos y emocionales incómodos, incluida la irritabilidad.

A medida que las toxinas se movilizan y liberan, es posible que usted se sienta peor antes de sentirse mejor. A medida que liberas toxinas intracelulares profundas, también puedes liberar viejas toxinas emocionales. Como resultado, pueden surgir emociones fuertes a medida que las toxinas se escapan lentamente de las reservas de las células y a través del cuerpo.

Pero no tienes por qué sufrir.

Los aceites esenciales pueden ayudar a aliviar los síntomas emocionales de ira, irritabilidad y… miedo, estrés, tristeza, soledad y ansiedad.

Por qué la desintoxicación causa irritabilidad

Cuando comienza la desintoxicación, las toxinas almacenadas en las células grasas y otros tejidos comienzan a liberarse en el torrente sanguíneo. Este es un paso importante para eliminarlos de su cuerpo. Sin embargo, esta liberación puede aumentar temporalmente la concentración de toxinas, provocando síntomas físicos como dolor de cabeza, fatiga o náuseas, junto con síntomas emocionales como irritabilidad.

Es más, el hígado es el principal órgano de desintoxicación y está asociado con la ira, la irritabilidad, el resentimiento y la rabia. A medida que el cuerpo limpia y elimina los desechos tóxicos viejos, el hígado puede estresarse, lo que lo hace más propenso a la irritabilidad.

De hecho, la salud de su hígado es fundamental para cómo experimenta y responde a las emociones.

Verás, tu hígado es un filtro que procesa, neutraliza y elimina toxinas físicas y emocionales. Energéticamente, el hígado es responsable de mantener la armonía y el flujo fluido de energía (conocido como chi) por todo el cuerpo, incluida la transición fluida entre sentimientos y emociones a medida que las situaciones cambian a nuestro alrededor. Esta energía del hígado respalda su impulso, planificación, resistencia, perseverancia, intelecto rápido y claro, ambición, paciencia y capacidad de organización.

Cuando la energía de su hígado está equilibrada, es probable que se sienta amable, benevolente, compasivo y generoso. Cuando su hígado está sobrecargado o estancado física o energéticamente, puede experimentar fuertes sentimientos de ira, irritabilidad, resentimiento, frustración, rabia, impaciencia, celos o incluso depresión. De hecho, en la medicina tradicional china, la ira se asocia con una mala función hepática.

Toxinas emocionales

Cuando las toxinas físicas se acumulan o se reciclan continuamente porque se reabsorben y no se eliminan, el hígado tiene menos energía y vitalidad para procesar y liberar toxinas emocionales. En estos momentos, puede resultarle más difícil controlar o dejar de lado sus sentimientos de ira.

La frustración, la rabia y la ira tienden a acumularse cuando se acumulan las toxinas. Su hígado comparte un conducto biliar común con su vesícula biliar. Estos conductos biliares pueden obstruirse y obstruirse, lo que reduce la capacidad del hígado para eliminar sustancias tóxicas del cuerpo. Una acumulación de venenos puede provocar cambios en el cerebro que afectan su estado de ánimo y su necesidad de control.

Cuando te embarcas en una desintoxicación física del hígado, también es común experimentar una liberación de ira y rabia. Cuando el hígado tiene más ancho de banda, es capaz de procesar y liberar tanto sustancias químicas tóxicas como emociones tóxicas que pueden haberse acumulado en el cuerpo. A menudo, cuantas más toxinas físicas libera una persona, más emociones almacenadas libera.

El estancamiento prepara el escenario para que las toxinas físicas y emocionales se acumulen y contribuyan a la ira o la rabia. Cualquier estancamiento, congestión o compromiso de la función hepática saludable permite que se acumulen y acumulen sustancias químicas tóxicas en el cuerpo. Por ejemplo, los sentimientos fuertes que no procesamos ni liberamos, como la ira, el miedo o el dolor intensos, no expresados ​​o reprimidos, también pueden acumularse en nuestro sistema.

Estas «toxinas emocionales» pueden presentarse como:

• Sentirse irritable o impaciente
• Ira inapropiada, incluidos arrebatos de ira.
• Hiperreactividad, pérdida de control o dificultad para dejar las cosas
• Sentirse no escuchado, no amado, no reconocido o incapaz de ser honesto consigo mismo y con los demás.
• Experimentar resentimiento, decepción o amargura.
• Ser crítico, demasiado crítico, encontrar fallas o quejarse
• Sentir la necesidad de controlar situaciones; ser autoritario o autoritario

Reprimir las emociones puede funcionar durante un corto período de tiempo. Pero, en cierto punto, estas emociones reprimidas comienzan a desbordarse de una manera que a menudo no podemos controlar. Un buen ejemplo son las náuseas matutinas. Su cuerpo literalmente elimina las toxinas para que no pasen al feto. Cuanto más desintoxices físicamente tu cuerpo antes del embarazo, menos probabilidades tendrás de sufrir náuseas matutinas.

Las toxinas en la sangre contribuyen a la ira.

Cuando su cuerpo se desintoxica, elimina las toxinas sacándolas de las células, hacia la sangre, a través del hígado y hacia la bilis, que luego transporta las toxinas a los intestinos para eliminarlas en las heces. Siempre que las toxinas fluyan en la dirección correcta, podrán eliminarse.

Si hay un bloqueo en las vías de desintoxicación, como un conducto biliar bloqueado, los líquidos que transportan toxinas desde el cuerpo no pueden salir del hígado y entrar a los intestinos para su eliminación. Cuando se bloquean las vías de desintoxicación, las toxinas regresan al torrente sanguíneo y deben eliminarse a través de otras vías de desintoxicación (la piel y los riñones) o permanecer en la sangre.

Cuando las toxinas transportadoras de bilis fluyen hacia el torrente sanguíneo en la dirección equivocada, incluso en pequeñas cantidades, se genera irritación, ira y sentimientos de frustración. Es entonces cuando hablamos de una naturaleza biliosa, una persona que tiene bilis rebosante.

De manera similar, cuando el hígado o los conductos biliares están bloqueados, los nutrientes no llegan a las células del cuerpo en cantidades suficientes, lo que priva a las células de nutrición. Cuando no se proporciona suficiente glucosa, oxígeno u otros nutrientes a estas células, las células se frustran y se enojan. Esto puede suprimir y reducir aún más algunas de las funciones saludables del cuerpo.

Aceites esenciales para las toxinas emocionales.

Los aceites esenciales pueden ser herramientas poderosas para ayudarlo a superar sus emociones y liberar la ira y la irritabilidad. Su sentido del olfato se conecta directamente con el centro de control emocional de su cerebro conocido como amígdala, donde se almacenan las emociones y los recuerdos emocionales.

Su sentido del olfato es el único de sus cinco sentidos que está directamente conectado con esa área inconsciente de su cerebro conocida como lóbulo límbico, lo que hace que el sentido del olfato y la herramienta de aceite esencial sean la ruta más directa para curar emociones como la culpa. , vergüenza y culpa.

Los aceites esenciales inhalados a través de las fosas nasales permiten un acceso inmediato a las áreas del cerebro que contienen estas emociones intensas como la ira y la rabia para que podamos integrarlas y liberarlas. La palabra «emoción» puede traducirse como «energía en movimiento». La emoción es la experiencia de la energía que se mueve a través de nuestros cuerpos. Esta energía emocional en realidad opera a una velocidad mayor que la del pensamiento, y los aceites esenciales pueden ayudarnos a limpiar los residuos energéticos de la culpa para que no permanezcan en nuestros patrones de pensamiento, impactando negativamente en nuestro campo energético o nuestra salud.

Mezcla Liver Support™ para apoyar la salud emocional de su hígado

Según la medicina china, la ira que no procesamos y liberamos puede almacenarse en el hígado. Creo que la ira puede ser la más intensa y dañina de todas las emociones reprimidas debido a su intensidad. Cuanto más tratamos de reprimirlo, más asoma su fea cabeza de maneras que pueden socavar nuestra salud, nuestro crecimiento y nuestras relaciones personales.

Energéticamente, el hígado es responsable de mantener la armonía y el flujo fluido de energía (conocido como chi) por todo el cuerpo, incluida la transición fluida entre sentimientos y emociones a medida que las situaciones cambian a nuestro alrededor. Esta energía del hígado apoya su impulso, planificación, resistencia, perseverancia, intelecto rápido y claro, ambición, paciencia y capacidad de organización.

Cuando la energía de su hígado está equilibrada, es probable que se sienta amable, benevolente, compasivo y generoso. Cuando su hígado está sobrecargado o estancado física o energéticamente, puede experimentar fuertes sentimientos de ira, irritabilidad, resentimiento, frustración, rabia, impaciencia, celos o incluso depresión.

También puede sentir la necesidad de controlarse a sí mismo y a otros que pueden ser muy obstinados, hambrientos de poder o demasiado ambiciosos. Básicamente, buscas poder para que nadie tenga poder sobre ti. Las dinámicas de control también se manifiestan como culpa, vergüenza y culpa.

La energía del hígado trabaja en conjunto con la energía de la vesícula biliar. Si se bloquea la energía de la vesícula biliar, puede regresar al hígado, provocando una congestión energética que se manifiesta como rabia, ira o sentimientos de frustración.

Soporte hepático™ ayuda a liberar la ira, incluyendo irritación frecuente, impaciencia, resentimiento o frustración, ser crítico consigo mismo o con los demás, problemas de control, no poder expresar sus sentimientos, sentirse no escuchado, no amado, no reconocido o evaluado.

Formulado para ayudar a mover y liberar la ira y las emociones negativas asociadas con experiencias traumáticas desde las células del hígado para promover una curación óptima. Los aceites de esta mezcla ayudan al cuerpo a reconocer, procesar y liberar la ira, el miedo o la frustración causados ​​por experiencias traumáticas para que no lo abrumen.

Le permite liberar suavemente las emociones negativas, incluida la ira reprimida, que puede crear energía estancada e interferir con la capacidad del cuerpo para sanar.

Simplemente coloque la botella debajo de la nariz y respire profundamente, inhalando completamente el aceite durante 3 a 7 respiraciones. Te ayuda a respirar y superar la emoción. También puedes aplicarlo alrededor de los tobillos, ya que esta suele ser una zona donde tenemos resistencia a seguir adelante en la vida y bloqueamos la capacidad de recibir alegría y placer. Comience en la parte posterior del tobillo y trabaje debajo del hueso del tobillo en el frente y detrás debajo del otro hueso del tobillo mientras se permite liberar emociones desafiantes. Para obtener más consejos sobre cómo desintoxicar las emociones, lea este artículo.

Aceites destacados:

Referencias:

Jodi Cohen: Hello and welcome to Essential Alchemy. Alchemy is defined as the power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way. My hope is that the information in this podcast can help you transform your mood, your energy, physical health, or even some dots to help you shift your mental or emotional state. I’m your host, Jodi Cohen, a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, lifelong learner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, a company that sells proprietary blends of high-quality, organic, or wildcrafted essential oil remedies designed to help you return to your ideal mental, physical, and emotional state. You can find out more about me and my company at vibrantblueoils.com. And with that, let’s get started with today’s episode.

Hello, I am Jodi Cohen, your host, and I’m so excited to talk about Coherent Water and the Amela Juan today with the founder of the company. I’m going to butcher your last name, so I’m going to have you say your name for everyone.

Eric Laarakker: Laarakker. Eric Laarakker.

Jodi Cohen: Eric Laarakker is a veterinary acupuncturist, a holten ballistic veterinarian, a teacher and the founder of Healthcare Academy. He’s involved in the International Research Institute water and Light, and performs investigations on health and the quality of crops and food for humans and animals. Welcome.

Eric Laarakker: Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

Jodi Cohen: So I’m so excited. I live in Seattle and know Gerald Pollock, so I’ve been obsessed with structured water, coherent water for a while, but it’s really hard and can be quite expensive. And so this fabulous product that you’ve created is incredibly affordable, incredibly easy to use, and really allows so many more people to access the healing benefits of coherent water. So I would love it if you could just first explain what is coherent water and what are the benefits of coherent water?

Eric Laarakker: Well, first I need to explain that the name Coherent Water is a theory. It comes out of the quantum physics and because actually nobody knows exactly what water is, what does, I can tell you one thing, water is the most intelligent thing I think on this planet, and I consider this a living creature by itself. You have to look at it this way. I mean, we look at water as H2O molecules who just move at randomly in a glass of water. But the truth is it’s completely different that when the molecules they move at randomly, there’s not a lot of power in it.

Eric Laarakker: So you need a lot of water. But if you manage to let all the molecules work together, they move in the same direction in the same way, then it becomes a lot more powerful. Let me explain you by, it’s not the same, but just for explanation, the difference between light, normal, ordinary light, and a laser.

If you have a normal ordinary bulb, then it gives photons, which gives you some light. Suppose you will have a five-watt lamp in your house. It just gives a little light. But if you would manage them to walk all the waves together, then it becomes a very strong thing, which is called a laser. A laser fire port can burn through the table if you know what I mean. So in the same way, that’s how we look at it. If you manage that, all the molecules work together, they form like a kind of crystalline structure, and this crystalline structure is capable of receiving and giving a lot of more energy. It’s like constantly in tune with everything around us compared with the first crystal radios, you had a Kalina crystal in it, which makes sure that you get the right frequencies out of, well, the ether, all the radio frequencies which are there. So if you manage to put all the molecules in a certain crystalline form, and then it becomes a lot more powerful because all the energy of the cosmos, all the good energies, I’ll put it that way, the positive frequencies will be enhanced. And so when you drink that, you get a lot of more energy inside of your body.

Jodi Cohen: No, a hundred percent. And when I looked at what ag was calling structured water, and Gerald Pollock’s fourth phase of water, he points out that water is, we are mostly water. And then also water is really not designed to sit still. It’s designed to be flowing in streams and moving and not flowing through metal pipes and not having weird chemicals added to it. So our water is really not the water that the earth kind of intended for us to consume.

Eric Laarakker: No, most waters that we drink, almost all the water have been damaged in their perspective. True.

Jodi Cohen: But I love what you were saying, that water, I don’t know what water is either, but it is intelligent and it can be restored to factory settings for lack of a better way of explaining it. So can you talk a little bit about, for those of us who are listening who are like, gosh, my water has fluoride, it is been processed. How do I try to do the best with what I have if I don’t live near a spring? How does this tool kind of help us?

Eric Laarakker: Well, first of all, I mean the two steps in it, and I personally like to clean it first on a chemical base, take the toxins out with a good filter, et cetera. Although after using this stick, the chemicals become less harmful. I still would not like to drink polluted water. But after that’s done, there’s one issue, that’s what we think, and that the memory, the structure of all these chemicals are still inside. So on the chemical point of view, bacterial point of view, it’s out, but still the memory of all it is still inside. And the alem one is a beautiful way.

Eric Laarakker: If you swirl it, then it becomes more or less neutral in this coherent state. Like I said, getting more beautiful information instead of all the chemical information, which is still inside. But I would like to emphasize that some people think that this Alem wand is good enough to drink dirty water. If you steer it, then it’s good enough. No, it’s not. I wouldn’t drink it out of a lake or something like that because you still have to first clean it with beautiful filters. There’s a lot of it on the market, so we like to use it after that or even before the cleaning system. So then you have the best of both worlds. You have beautiful cleaned where all the chemicals are, but also well structured. So there is no place for information on the toxins of the bacteria anymore.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah, someone kind of explained our body like an aquarium. If you think of an aquarium, if the water is clean, the fish thrive. If the water is dirty, they get sick. And so the more we are cognizant of what we put into our body and really drink, not just clean, I mean clean’s a factor. But you kind of mentioned coherence. Can you speak a little bit to how would you define coherence and what have you found between the correlation of coherent water and health?

Eric Laarakker: Like I said before, it’s the non-coherent water. That means all the molecules that just do something, which they look the same, but it just moves randomly, we call it dead water. There’s no energy into it. And the main important thing is what we think is all the molecules that work together, so they’re in the same phase, they move in the same direction, and it’s not like there’s and dusty form line form when you have a beautiful mountain crystal, it attracts a certain information, gives a certain information. Silicates do that. And that’s also why we use silicates anyway from the wand itself. It’s not normal glass because normal glass doesn’t work for it. But we think in one glass you have multiple, maybe thousands, maybe millions different types of crystals. So all day are in tune with different frequencies. And that makes a lot of difference in your body.

Because first I need to explain, your body is actually not 70% water. What we learn at school, it is in mass, but in molecule wise, actually 99% of the molecules in your body is water. So water is the main ingredient in life. All our body, I mean we’re just like a sea inside of us actually. We have all have the same mineral account as in the sea. So we are just like with a sea, with a skin on it. And when you drink non-coherent water, your body needs to work a lot. It needs to work a lot because that’s maybe the reason why people say you have to drink one and a half two of water. But in my opinion, it’s a little bit nonsense because if you drink good, coherent water, you don’t need a lot. Your body knows a lot more what to do with it.

Eric Laarakker: So you need to pee less out of it. I mean, if you drink a couple of glasses of water, you know, have to go to the bathroom very soon, and it’s because there’s a lot of waste in it. Yeah. But if you think about it in the old times, 10,000 years ago when you had to travel from one place A to B, and suppose there was no water down the road. So if you would travel for 10 days, you have to carry about 20 liters of water, which is a lot in the desert especially. You see the people and animals who live over there, they actually drink coherently by eating plants. Plants are capable of making coherent water out of water. It’s more in this crystalline structure, it’s far more efficient. Also, I see it over here. I have a couple of horses over here.

When they go outside in a pasture and you have a little bit of good grass over there, they drink far less water because it’s a lot more efficient. So the benefits of it all, I mean, is almost endless. There is no process in your body where water doesn’t play a key role in everything. I mean, the DNA structure has been held together by water structures if movement from inside of the cell,

outside of the cell, and reverse. Everything has been done by water. Water is the mean, the most important ingredient of life. If you drink coherent water. We did a lot of tests, a lot of tests, as you may know, first of all, in the beginning we started doing research on plants. Actually for years. We started off to do with biophoton research about 15 years ago when the famous professor, Fritz

Pop, who invented that in our body admits light biophotons.

And he made all kinds of measurement tools for that. We took over the whole laboratory, we brought it from Germany to the Netherlands, from Roy to the Netherlands with all the people who worked over there. And well, actually we were not even busy with water when we came together with, our main goal was what can we do, which is easy to help this planet further because chronic sickness has become a norm on this planet. I dunno over there, but I think in this country, 43% of 20-year-old kids already have a chronic disease. I consider that not normal evolutionary. That’s quite strange. So there’s something happening. I think it’s worse in us. Yeah, I think so too. We were just looking for what is the mean in grid. What can we do as cheaply as possible to give as many benefits for the health that we can find?

So then we thought, okay, we start to check out first on plans because it’s easy to have a faster turnover if you want to check it on humans and animals, they have a longer lifespan and it’s not so easy to test in it. So first we want to be sure. So we changed all kind of parameters. Well make a long story short, we ended up in the water. We even bought a whole greenhouse, a six-acre greenhouse just for testing just to see what happens. And then we found that one of the most important thing actually, besides energy in as broader sense frequencies, the microbiome is a very important role, but all of it is ruled more or less by water. So when we were very confident, we saw that the plants which we fed on like tomatoes, which we fed with the al lemon water that we saw that we had an increase of 50 to sometimes 100% of biophotons.

Eric Laarakker: So that means there’s a lot more life, a lot more energy in that tomato. They look the same though if you look from the outside, they look the same, but they taste a lot better. There’s a lot more taste in it. And we are not even used to the normal taste of vegetables anymore. And if you grow them with alma water, if you don’t use any toxins, they taste completely different. So then we made the huge step into testing and soil, and we saw that actually the microbiome, which is the amount of bacteria and other viruses, fungi, et cetera in the soil, that actually we could restore them after being used with glyphosate and stuff like that, that we could restore the soil very fast after using the ana lama water. So…

Jodi Cohen: Wait, you mean remineralize the soil?

Eric Laarakker: No remineralize but the microbiome. So put the right bacteria, fungi, and everything in the soil. I mean, this is the most important thing in your soil. You have the Issa, which are fungi, which are in the soil, and they help the plants to get more nutrition out of the soil. And you see that also there will be more nutrition in the soil because there is something which we don’t look at a lot, but it’s called biological transmutation. That means that the microbiome can change minerals into other minerals.

Jodi Cohen: What? Oh, alchemy of minerals.

Eric Laarakker: Yes. Did you ever think about how a chicken gets so much calcium inside to lay egg every day? They need to eat a lot of calcium. Actually it changes the silicates from the soil into calcium. So there’s not much known about it. But also we think that in your gut, these bacteria, now I’m going to change to your gut. So then we thought, okay, let’s do research on that level because we are a microbiome, as you may know in your gut, when you have a healthy gut, there are more than 1,200 different species in a gut. And all of them have their function and we know just a little about what their function is. You have like 1000 species on your skin. You have 60 species of bacteria in your bladder, 600 plus in your lungs, and they read somewhere that even now they found over 1000 species in your brain, and on your skin you have 1000 species.

Actually, we are a colony of bacteria. And the funny thing is that when we tested it on people by drinking the water, we saw an 83% of the DYS index in the ALMA group. So what we did was a double-blind placebo-controlled research on gut bacteria. So people had to deliver the stool, send it to the laboratory, see what the microbiome levels are, the differentiation in it, and then we saw that 83% of the enhancement in the VS index in the alma group and 36% of this vs index in a better situation in the placebo group. But, and 80, 62% got worse or stayed the same. So that means that there’s a lot of improvement in your gut bacteria just by drinking different water.

Jodi Cohen: If it resets the terrain. And what you’re saying is when the terrain is in balance, it does not need to take all these calcium supplements, it just allocates resources to give you what you need. That’s amazing.

Eric Laarakker: Yes. The issue is that I worked a lot with vitamins, minerals, and stuff like that, and it’s good to take them, but if your microbiome is not good enough, I mean a lot of it will go to the toilet if you know what I mean.

Jodi Cohen: No, I agree.

Eric Laarakker: But if you have a good microbiome, I’d like to explain it in the following. If you have a bucket, you open a tap, and when there are a lot of holes in that bucket, you get a put a lot of water in it to keep a little bit of level of water in it. But if you close the holes, you just need a little of it. So yes, I’m convinced that if you drink the right water, so if you have the right microbiome in your body, you don’t need as much vitamins and you can take a lot more good vitamins out of good food. And of course, good food is the most important thing in that way is even better than swallowing all the minerals and vitamins. And so a healthy gut equals a healthy brain, equals a healthy immune system equals almost everything in that perspective.

Jodi Cohen: You’re setting up the terrain because the terrain is 99% water. And if we can set up the water for ideal function, then you set up the body for ideal function.

Eric Laarakker: Yes, yes. So from that moment on, we started to do a lot more research on the human body. We did a glycan H study, and I dunno if you know what it means, but glycans are sugar molecules attached to proteins and the main antibody protein of the human immune system, the immune globulins, they can be marked with different glycans, which determines whether a protein of the immune system will be anti-inflammatory or pro-inflammatory. Now the balance between them is very important. If it shifts to the pro-inflammatory glycans, it’ll lead to low-grade systemic infections and that which underlies faster aging and disease in a body. So what we did, we had a group of people and they started drinking the water for I think it was two months, and we did a glyco age test before and after. And out of the 2120 of them, the Glyco age changed dramatically. So they had a reversed aging from between one and 12 years and an average of four years. So only by drinking that al lamb water, they had a reversed age biologically for four years.

Jodi Cohen: So basically what I hear you saying to simplify, there are a lot of manmade toxins that are kind of disrupting our natural terrain. This is basically allowing us to put water, which is the primary, it’s foundational for us in a structured way that kind of restores the terrain. It puts the body imbalance and then the body starts. Okay. So…

Eric Laarakker: Also on all levels, maybe I can mention one other research that we did, which I think is very special, is that about a TP and the mitochondria and almost the mitochondria did determine everything. Actually all the food, what you eat, the glucose has been changed into a TP and that’s the food of your body. Your brain uses a lot of TP, and your muscles and everything in your body use a lot of TP. And we found out it was also a double-blind placebo-controlled research that by only after two months of drinking the water, there was an enhancement of 23% of a TP in the blood. So even these little mitochondria inside of your cell, which used to be bacteria also. So from all sites, it’s very beneficial for your complete health, like you said, on the terrain. And that’s your microbiome. That’s the water. These are mitochondria, et cetera, immune system.

Jodi Cohen: So here’s what I love and what I want to talk about a little bit. You’ve made this an incredibly easy tool. Talk to me a little bit about what this wand is and how people use it so that they can start adding structured water to coherent water to their lives.

Eric Laarakker: What we created is what we call kind of mother water, and it takes over several devices and up to a year to get all the information in it. That’s why we call it Alma. Alma is the movement of the sun to the earth. And we have a season where we found out that even the frequencies of your liver today are not the same as tomorrow. It’s a living system. And so it takes us over a year to create the mother water, but that mother water wants to copy itself because that’s the way nature intended it to be. So it took us a while to figure out how we tested different materials, and then we came up with a quartz crystal. And quartz crystal actually is amazing. Those silicates, they can receive information, store it, and give it to the next level. So actually what you do is because of the model water, which is inside, when you stir in a glass or a jaw or whatever, then all the water will get almost the same structure as inside of that wand.

Jodi Cohen: Amazing. And you have people activated it in sunlight for a minute?

Eric Laarakker: To be honest, it’s not even per se necessary. The funny thing is we tested a lot of water devices and the biggest problem is stability. And that makes also the alma water completely different from almost all the other waters that we tested, is that usually, you have a lot of devices that swirl, that use magnets, crystals, and stuff like that. Nothing wrong with it, but the memory is gone after half a minute or a maximum of one and a half day. But this will stay for you to know all the tests that we did was with old water in a laboratory with human beings in the soil, everything. Sometimes we even use nine months-old water. And that’s extraordinary that water stays in that stable position. That’s why you can use the w. Well, actually mine, which I use now is three years old already, and I still have the same one. So that will make it stable in your glass if you know what I mean.

Jodi Cohen: If listeners are going to buy this, we’re going to have a link below and receive it in the mail. They’re so excited. They have their wand. How do they get started? What do they do?

Eric Laarakker: Just roll the water.

Jodi Cohen: Does it matter if it’s in a plastic container or a glass container?

Eric Laarakker: No. No, it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter, of course. I mean glass, I don’t like plastic containers because I don’t like plastic. Especially not the soft plastic bottles because you get this weak, this stuff in the chemicals inside from the plastic, but for the coherence, it doesn’t

matter. But come back to your question, do you need to put it in the sun? I love to do it sometimes, but it’s not strictly necessary to do it. It gives it a plus. You know what I mean? So it gives it just an extra energy. It’s not necessarily necessary. I mean, in the wintertime, we don’t have a lot of sun in the whole wintertime, so otherwise, I could not use it. But no worries, you can use it.

Jodi Cohen: Okay. And then another question we get often is just for water. Can people use it for their coffee for any liquid or just water?

Eric Laarakker: No, no. For any liquid. If you like wine, use it for your wine will taste a lot better. Jodi Cohen: Amazing.

Eric Laarakker: A friend of mine, loves beer, so he uses it in his beers. So it doesn’t matter as long as there is water inside. Okay. I have to correct myself a little bit. I mean, be careful. After you cook your tea, of course don’t swirl too long with it in the hot tea because it will heat up and then it will explode for being practical. So usually for coffee and tea, what I advise is to make a coherent before…

Jodi Cohen: The water.

Eric Laarakker: And then when it boils, it takes a little while and then it will go back to his coherent position. So maybe after that, you can swirl again very fast. That’s also a possibility. But to be honest, in my farm where I live, I don’t use it because we have a whole house, Alma, which is built in. So all the water for showering when I have a bath with all the water over here is coherent.

Jodi Cohen: Oh my gosh, that’s amazing. That’s the next level. The other question that we get often for, there’s a lot of 5G, a lot of frequencies in the states, and this seems to kind of help people mitigate the impact of that. Can you talk a little bit about how near water might help you be less affected by S.

Eric Laarakker: I’m a little bit careful to say too much about it because it’s also of course a political agenda in it. But first what we did was actually we did a lot of brainwave tests and when people drink lemon water, the funny thing is that straight after drinking the water in a couple of seconds, you see the brainwaves changing and that goes very fast. And I think it’s through the nerves vagus, which have a straight communication with your brain. So we saw a huge more coherence in the brainwaves. We even did it on twins, we tested it, a lot of tests on it also double-blind. And what we found is that every time the brainwaves change, then we let them call with a cell phone, put a cell phone on their head, and then you see a complete change in the brainwaves. It’s a little bit scary, to be honest.

I mean, everybody uses this cell phone, but if you look at it how the brains change after putting a cell phone on your head, it’s amazing. The good news was that immediately after drinking a glass of water, even when the cell phone was on the head, we saw the brainwaves changing back to normal. And so at least for the brainwaves, we dare to say that it’s very beneficial. And 5G, I’m very careful because it’s not even rolled out all the frequencies. So we’re not sure what all of this is going to do, but we know for sure, I mean, we’ve been testing the water on biophotons and plants and everything, which has been standing next to a wifi router for months. And still after using that, it thought that we had the same results, not using the wifi in it. So for most EMFs it helps a lot.

It means that you don’t feel it anymore. Right? Sometimes I even have the idea that you feel it a little bit better, but it makes you less sick. And why? I mean, the funny thing is when you start drinking the Alem water, you will notice that you become more sensitive, more or less, your body knows better for you what is good and what’s not so good for you. Your body starts rejecting some kinds of food which is not good for you. And people get more consciousness. That’s quite funny that people change in their behavior, everything. And I think it’s due to, because you get all the right good cosmic information in your body, so you’ll become far more conscious. And so like my children, they’ve been grown up with this water and they still like to play of course on a computer and stuff like that, and we let them, but if I put, unlike the Bluetooth of my phone, they feel it immediately in two seconds. You put on the wifi or the Bluetooth, and they nodes immediately. It’s less harmful. But it’s not that you don’t feel it anymore. I mean that’s the differentiation. But as far as I’m concerned, you should feel what is good or not good for you.

Jodi Cohen: No, I agree with you. And I’m wondering, for people who are listening, is there a way that they can see the published research that you’ve mentioned? Can they go some…

Eric Laarakker: More? Yes. Yes. On the website of Anem, most of it has been published over there on the research. I mean, we just finished a beautiful research in agriculture and actually we found that the CO2 uptake implants enhance a lot and they start giving more oxygen. They need less water, have far better resilience, and far better immune systems. And it’s got to be published in this study soon. So on any level, well, we see a lot of benefits for it. And it’s like you said, it’s easy to use. I mean, you can carry it. And that was our goal. It must be easy to use and it must be accessible to everybody.

Jodi Cohen: Carry it in your purse. Yes. Is there anything that I haven’t asked that you would like to share?

Eric Laarakker: Well, I just want to share that actually our main goal when we start doing this, I go back to what I started with is that we wanted to get something on the market, which helps and which is beneficial for all and not only for happy few, but it’s beneficial for the soil, which is beneficial for plants, which is beneficial for animals, for everything. And actually our main goal somewhere at the end of the line is that we want to get all the waters on this planet coherent again. So think about what would happen if, how everything would thrive, if all the lakes and rivers will be coherent again, the plants start to regrow and everything will be a lot healthier. So actually that’s our main goal in the future, that we don’t have any business anymore, that all the waters on this planet will be coherent.

Jodi Cohen: Amazing. And you can even do this in your pet’s water bowl, correct? Oh, like my dogs have a…

Eric Laarakker: Water. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yes. They have no issue. No issue. I mean, even people would use it for the cows tables, pick tables, whatever. I mean, especially with the whole house on a lemon, you can do a lot more. One thing I would like to say is use it in your bathtub.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah, I was thinking that. But with the…

Eric Laarakker: It’s amazing what happens. I mean, we’ve been in the midst of now of a huge research with people with cardiac problems. We just soak them in water and we see amazing results. Just lay down for half an hour in the alma water. And how I usually do it is when I open my bath, you put it just in your bath and leave it over there if it’s not too hot and swer a little bit and then take it out dried well. And then all the water in your bathtub will be coherent. And that even gives a surplus. And the reason why is I think that because it makes these harmonic tones around us, harmonic water is capable of making these harmonic tones harmonic. So all the information with an body comes out of your body will be a lot more harmonic. And of course, you have an uptake of what, half a liter? Liter, I think in half an hour. So from both sides. So I love to use it internally, but also externally. Also on our plants now, we just created a garden and LA so you can spray your plants with it. It’s beautiful. Amazing to see plants. Love it.

Jodi Cohen: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for your time, for your brilliance, and for this amazing, easily accessible tool. We are so excited to share this with our community. And thank you for everything.

Eric Laarakker: Thank you for having me over here. Thank you so much.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you so much for listening. I hope this podcast empowered you with some useful information and takeaways. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing a positive review or subscribing. I would also love to offer you my free parasympathetic toolkit as a gift just for listening. It will teach you how to activate the most important nerve in your body to turn on your ability to heal. This free toolkit includes a checklist, a video, and a detailed guide. If this podcast prompted any questions, you can always find answers at my blog at vibrantblueoils.com or my book Essential Oils to Boost the Brain and Heal the Body. Until next time, wishing you vibrant health.

Al tratar de sanar el mío cierre vagal dorsal – una respuesta al estrés iniciada por el sistema nervioso parasimpático que redirige su energía limitada a funciones esenciales como la conservación y la autoconservación – Sigo descubriendo nuevas formas de utilizar los Aceites Azules Vibrantes para apoyar mi propia curación.

Durante décadas, he abogado por la aplicación del parasimpático sobre el nervio vago para estimular el sistema nervioso parasimpático de arriba hacia abajo: desde el cerebro hasta el cuerpo.

Mi experiencia con Dorsal Vagus Freeze, donde el cuerpo está congelado pero la mente permanece activa, provocó un cambio a un enfoque de abajo hacia arriba: estimular el revestimiento intestinal del intestino para activar la ventral (o rama de seguridad) del sistema nervioso parasimpático.

Dorsal vs. vago ventral

Como sabrá, el nervio vago tiene dos ramas, dorsal (posterior) y ventral (frontal), que están asociadas con diferentes estrategias de comportamiento adaptativo.

El abdominal El lado del nervio vago responde preguntas de seguridad en su entorno e interacciones. Apoya sentimientos de seguridad física y conexión emocional segura con otros en nuestro entorno social.

El vertebrado El lado del nervio vago responde a las señales de peligro. Nos saca de la conexión, de la conciencia y nos lleva a un estado de autodefensa. En este estado de inmovilización o cierre, el cuerpo desencadena una cascada de respuestas fisiológicas destinadas a promover la supervivencia, incluidos sentimientos de entumecimiento, disociación y desapego de uno mismo y del entorno.

Así como puedes quedarte atrapado en una sobrecarga simpática de «lucha o huida», las experiencias traumáticas pueden mantenerte en un estado vagal dorsal (también conocido como congelación funcional), ya que te ayuda a adormecerte del dolor de la vida para que puedas experimentarlo. Te apaga tanto emocional como físicamente. Literalmente apaga tu cuerpo, almacenando emociones crudas en tu cuerpo y sistema nervioso.

Estimulación del nervio vago de abajo hacia arriba

La administración parasimpática local detrás del pabellón auricular sobre el hueso mastoideo es una estrategia de estimulación del nervio vago de arriba hacia abajo que funciona bien para activar el estado parasimpático vagal ventral.

Para calmar la inhibición del vago dorsal, un enfoque ascendente para crear seguridad y espacio en el intestino ayuda a enviar señales de seguridad al cerebro a través de la conexión bidireccional intestino-cerebro que envía señales entre el sistema digestivo y el sistema nervioso central.

Las bacterias que viven en el intestino también participan en la conexión intestino-cerebro. Según una investigación, los microbios intestinales producen o ayudan a producir muchos de los neurotransmisores químicos que transmiten mensajes entre el intestino y el cerebro.

Por esta razón, la mezcla de moco intestinal, cuando se aplica tópicamente en el sentido de las agujas del reloj alrededor del ombligo, ayuda a estimular las fibras nerviosas sensoriales periféricas en la piel y el tejido intestinal, lo que luego proporciona retroalimentación correctiva al sistema nervioso para ayudar a enviar señales de seguridad al sistema físico. cuerpo. y calma la respuesta de inmovilización vagal dorsal.

Mucosa intestinal

El revestimiento intestinal cubre la pared intestinal y alberga la flora intestinal, ayudando a mantenerla sana e intacta. Un revestimiento intestinal sano es el pegamento que ayuda a que la flora intestinal (o los probióticos que alimentan la flora) se adhiera al revestimiento intestinal.

La flora intestinal sana alimenta las células del revestimiento intestinal conocidas como enterocitos. A su vez, los enterocitos son responsables de la absorción selectiva de nutrientes beneficiosos, lo que los hace fundamentales para una adecuada digestión y asimilación.

La flora sana compite con patógenos potenciales por el espacio y los alimentos, lo que ayuda a mantener un equilibrio saludable de bacterias en el intestino. Si las bacterias intestinales sanas ya están consumiendo todos los recursos disponibles, no hay nada con qué alimentar a los malos. Esto también ayuda a controlar las bacterias oportunistas. Cuando se agotan las bacterias beneficiosas, los patógenos oportunistas pueden proliferar y multiplicarse. (Más aquí).

Un microbioma intestinal (o flora intestinal) saludable también puede ayudar a modular la respuesta inmune inflamatoria y neutralizar las toxinas. En su libro Gut and Psychoological Syndrome, la Dra. Natasha-Campbell-McBride señala que “una flora intestinal autóctona sana tiene una buena capacidad para neutralizar sustancias tóxicas, inactivar la histamina, quelar metales pesados ​​y otros venenos. Las paredes celulares de las bacterias beneficiosas absorben muchos carcinógenos, dejándolas inactivas. También suprimen los procesos hiperplásicos en los intestinos, que son la base de todos los cánceres. En otras palabras, si el revestimiento intestinal nutre la flora intestinal para mantenerla sana y funcionando correctamente, básicamente neutraliza todas las demás amenazas a la salud.

Además, un desequilibrio de la flora intestinal, conocido como disbiosis, puede provocar un crecimiento excesivo de insectos, bacterias, moho, hongos, levaduras y/o parásitos. Este desequilibrio hace que los alimentos fermenten en los intestinos en lugar de ser digeridos, lo que genera gases e hinchazón. La flora intestinal saludable ayuda a que el intestino sea más ácido y hostil a las bacterias invasoras.

Si se reduce la función de la mucosa para proteger las paredes intestinales contra patógenos y daños causados ​​por alimentos y desechos, se reducen los efectos beneficiosos de una dieta rica en nutrientes y probióticos. Es casi como intentar pegar papel tapiz sin pegamento. No se quedará donde quieras.

Aceites esenciales para la mucosa intestinal.

Los aceites esenciales pueden ayudar a mantener suavemente un revestimiento intestinal saludable y calmar la inflamación en el intestino.

Mucosa intestinal™ Está diseñado para penetrar suavemente de forma tópica a través de la piel para regenerar y fortalecer el revestimiento del intestino delgado para aumentar la absorción óptima de nutrientes y calmar la inflamación.

Mucosa intestinal™ contiene una mezcla patentada de aceites esenciales terapéuticos orgánicos y/o silvestres que incluyen:

Abedul Se sabe que un aceite esencial extraído de la corteza de los abedules blanco y plateado reduce la inflamación, aumenta el flujo sanguíneo y alivia el dolor, especialmente el dolor de los tejidos. Las investigaciones muestran los beneficios antiinflamatorios de los extractos de corteza de abedul.

El aceite de abedul tiene un alto contenido del componente analgésico salicilato de metilo, que es un precursor de la aspirina. Los salicilatos son compuestos muy potentes que penetran en la piel e inhiben la formación de prostaglandinas, reduciendo así la inflamación y el dolor. También se sabe que el abedul tonifica la piel y ayuda a eliminar las toxinas acumuladas y el líquido linfático y a suavizar los tejidos.

Cardamomo El aceite tiene un alto contenido de propiedades antiinflamatorias y antimicrobianas que ayudan a mantener la salud intestinal, aliviar problemas digestivos como indigestión, gases e hinchazón, y combatir ciertos tipos de bacterias y hongos.

Debido a su naturaleza cálida, el cardamomo puede ayudar con la circulación sanguínea y aliviar el dolor y la inflamación en los intestinos. El cardamomo también tiene un alto contenido de compuestos fenólicos que favorecen la actividad antioxidante.

Ciprés El aceite esencial tiene un alto contenido del compuesto α-pineno y se ha demostrado en investigaciones que tiene actividad antiinflamatoria, lo que ayuda a mejorar la circulación y contraer los vasos sanguíneos, facilitando la estimulación del flujo sanguíneo y la liberación de la inflamación intestinal.

El ciprés también ayuda a equilibrar y calmar el sistema nervioso y actúa como antiespasmódico. Además, el aceite esencial de ciprés tiene efectos diuréticos y desintoxicantes y puede ayudar a estimular los intestinos lentos y eliminar las toxinas del cuerpo, lo que ayuda a promover un mejor flujo sanguíneo y circulación, relajar los tejidos y liberar la constricción y la congestión de la fascia.

Nargarmota Soporta problemas estomacales e intestinales. Es conocido por sus propiedades calmantes y puede ayudar a aliviar la inflamación intestinal, el malestar y los problemas digestivos cuando se aplica alrededor del abdomen. Extraída de la raíz de una hierba perenne, Nargarmotha puede ser muy reconfortante y es conocida por sus propiedades antiespasmódicas que pueden ayudar a aliviar los dolores menstruales.

Para utilizarlo, aplique 2-3 gotas de Mucosa intestinal™ con movimientos circulares en el sentido de las agujas del reloj alrededor del ombligo 2-3 veces al día, idealmente antes o después de las comidas.

La aplicación tópica es un agente potente y calmante para el sistema gastrointestinal y es bien tolerada por clientes sensibles con indigestión que pueden tener dificultades para digerir, absorber y digerir nutrientes a través del proceso digestivo. Las personas muy sensibles que a menudo no toleran los aditivos alimentarios pueden utilizar aceites esenciales sin provocar una reacción negativa.

Mucosa intestinal™ La mezcla, aplicada alrededor del ombligo con movimientos circulares, es increíblemente calmante para el sistema y ayuda a aliviar la inflamación intestinal y calmar el cuerpo y la mente.

Como técnica de aplicación más avanzada, puede comenzar en el ombligo y aplicar tópicamente con un movimiento circular en el sentido de las agujas del reloj, dando vueltas y haciendo el movimiento cada vez más grande a medida que recorre todo el sistema intestinal, luego invierta y regrese en la otra dirección. Esta estrategia de aplicación ayuda enormemente a moderar la respuesta dorsal vago y ayuda a salir de la inmovilidad y la ansiedad.

La estimulación del estado parasimpático también dirige un mayor flujo sanguíneo al intestino delgado, lo que permite la curación de la pared intestinal y una actividad enzimática y una absorción de nutrientes óptimas. El estado parasimpático también desencadena la peristalsis, las contracciones musculares que mueven los alimentos y los desechos a través del tracto digestivo, conocida como «ola casera». Si la motilidad se ve afectada, la incapacidad de los alimentos para moverse a través del intestino conduce a una fermentación anormal, bacterias intestinales, crecimiento excesivo de levadura o condiciones digestivas poco saludables como el SII y el SIBO.

Aceites destacados:

Referencias:

Jodi Cohen: Hello and welcome to Essential Alchemy. Alchemy is defined as the power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way. My hope is that the information in this podcast can help you transform your mood, your energy, physical health, or even some dots to help you shift your mental or emotional state. I’m your host, Jodi Cohen, a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, lifelong learner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, a company that sells proprietary blends of high-quality, organic, or wildcrafted essential oil remedies designed to help you return to your ideal mental, physical, and emotional state. You can find out more about me and my company at vibrantblueoils.com. And with that, let’s get started with today’s episode.

Hi, I’m Jodi Cohen, your host, and I’m so excited to talk about nervous system regulation and all that it impacts, including love and money with my very dear talented friend Kate Northrup, who is an entrepreneur, bestselling author, mother, and she’s built a multimedia digital platform called The Origin Company that reaches hundreds of thousands globally. Like me, Kate is committed to supporting ambitious women to light up the world without burning themselves out. Kate teaches data and soul-driven time and energy management practices that result in saving time, making more money, experiencing less stress, and inviting in receiving love. Welcome.

Kate Northrup: Thanks. Thanks, Jodi. I’m so happy to be here.

Jodi Cohen: I’m so excited to talk about your approach to nervous system regulation is more in the, obviously it’s physical health, but it’s really about how you interact in the world. And I’m so curious, how did you kind of discover this and get started with this?

Kate Northrup: Well, it was actually through our fellow trust member indirectly. So what happened is I was part of a mastermind with Raw Goddess. I don’t know if you know raw, but she’s phenomenal. And at one of our mastermind retreats, she just handed me this book and she was like, I feel like you need this book. And I read the title of the book and I was like, whoa. And the book title was Patriarchy Stress Disorder. And I had this instant knowing that this book contained something very important for me in my personal work and in my professional work. And it’s by Dr. Valerie Rain, who we both know from the trust. And I inhaled the book and started telling absolutely everyone, and it is about the nervous system and it is about the way that our personal traumas and our ancestral traumas and our collective traumas, especially as women living in patriarchy impact our nervous system and our ability to go for our big dreams.

Kate Northrup: And so Dr. Valerie Rain is the first person who I learned about this from. And then I also studied the work of Milagros Phillips, who is the race healer, and she talks a lot about ancestral trauma and epigenetics more in the realm of race, powerful, powerful work. And then I’ve gone on to just do a bunch of certifications, read every book under the sun. I’m obsessed. I’m obsessed with the nervous system. It has made such a profound difference in my life in terms of my marriage, in my parenting, in my ability to run our business, which is a multi-seven figure company without burning out. And so I tell anyone who will listen.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah, and let’s delve into that a little bit more. I talk a lot about kind of how physically your nervous system, when your body doesn’t feel safe, it really prioritizes survival and shuts down healing. Can you talk a little bit about emotionally, how when you don’t feel safe, that impacts your ability to receive love, to receive money, everything?

Kate Northrup: Yeah. So my understanding is that, and I love talking to somebody like you about this, who also is such a student and steward of the nervous system. So please interject if there’s anything that I’m either getting wrong or that you want to add. And so my understanding and my experience is that our nervous system has a thermostat, and that thermostat is set according to mostly the environment we were raised in and not in terms of the facts of the environment. So I was raised by two doctors in a small town in Maine. On the surface, everything looked pretty perfect. However, the feeling of what was going on in my household was really different than the content. What was happening was really different than what it felt like. Our nervous system is a network of neurons that includes our brain and our spinal cord the vagus nerve and all.

It’s a whole body. There’s nothing in our body that our nervous system does not impact. And those neurons communicate through electric impulses. And another way of saying electricity is saying energy, it is the same thing. Our entire body is run on electricity. It is the very mechanism by which we are alive. When someone’s heart stops beating, how do we resuscitate them? We pump them with electricity to get the life force going again. And so our nervous system speaks the language of energy, which means how did it feel? And so our bodies are storing all these experiences that we didn’t necessarily have the capacity, the support or the strategy, the strategies to fully metabolize in the moment. And so they get stored because our body has no sense of time. And so there are parts of us all stuck throughout our entire body in time at those stressful moments.

Kate Northrup: And our nervous system wants to keep its thermostat set at a narrow band of experience that matches what is familiar and what is familiar. What I mean by that is the energetic vibe of what it felt like to be us growing up. What our nervous system learned about what it means to be alive and be human is how our nervous system developed. So our nervous system imprints are essentially a perfect reflection of what the energy was like in our childhood home. And so what will happen is our nervous systems will recreate that energetic vibe forever in our adult lives because according to the nervous system, that which is unfamiliar is unsafe. So we can have two kinds of stress, and those stresses are negative stress, terrible things that happen, and positive stress, wonderful things that can happen. But the thing is, all of our desires for loving relationships and romance, vibrant health, more money and abundance, successful businesses, healthy parenting, all the things we desire for the most part are things that we’ve not experienced before.

There are also things that our ancestors didn’t experience, and there are also things that many times our family who’s alive and our community has not experienced. So our nervous system is going to do anything it can to prevent us from experiencing the things that we desire because it

thinks that we are unsafe when something new is happening to us, which is why despite trying to change our thoughts and change our behavior, we often find ourselves in the same reality over and over and over again with just different details. But same church, different pew. That’s how I like to explain why sometimes it can feel really hard to get what we want because our nervous system is doing everything it possibly can to prevent that from happening.

Jodi Cohen: One quote that I love from you is we’ll pick the familiar hell over the unfamiliar heaven.

Kate Northrup: The nervous system will, and I think it was Brit Frank who originally said that, I think I should go look it up, but it struck me so much because it’s so true. We want all these things and our past band of experience, it doesn’t necessarily feel good, but it feels like home. And we will always by default, unconsciously gravitate to what feels like home even if it’s not what we want.

Jodi Cohen: Yes. And one of the things that I love about you and all of your is that you teach people how to reset that so that they don’t need to work so hard so that they can start receiving. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Kate Northrup: Yeah. Because then it’s like, okay, well great. This lady, Kate told me that my nervous system is going to prevent me from having everything I want. Awesome. So inspiring

Jodi Cohen: How to reset it Exactly.

Kate Northrup: So to know that that is our default unconscious. And most people, no one told them about the nervous system. I didn’t learn about this until I was 38, and I grew up in an extraordinarily active household in terms of personal spiritual, and health development. So if I didn’t know, nobody knows. So I’m really wanting folks to understand that this is a missing link and it is also the root cause of the vast majority of terrible behavior going on in the world. If we look at what’s going on behind war and abuse and addiction, it’s trauma. Where does trauma live in the nervous system? So if we all learned what it is that you are teaching and what it is that I am teaching, I believe in fact, I know that we would heal the major problems that ail us as a human race. So this is really, really important.

Jodi Cohen: I a hundred percent agree with what you’re saying about the nervous system. I think it’s the nervous system, the amygdala and then the heart. And when you get those three in alignment, you can’t be grateful and loving and also be hateful and hurting.

Kate Northrup: You cannot, cannot feel safe and hurt somebody at the same time, at least not on purpose. And of course, we’re always going to hurt people, but not physically. And sometimes we say something by accident, but the repair is very powerful. And so circling back to how we reset it, what we are discussing now is repair. And so we have wounding. We have wounding from any number of things, and the layers that impact our nervous system are traumas that are big T traumas that happen to us, tremendous losses, divorce, really awful things, and then little t traumas that maybe aren’t like those major, major things, but they’re being bullied at school. Could be a big T trauma, or a little T trauma. We don’t know. We can’t judge what’s traumatic to other people. That’s not the game. But what we do know is that the things that we experience imprint our nervous system.

And then we also know through the study of epigenetics that the things are ancestors, experience impact our nervous system and our thermostat setting is also set by our ancestors’ experiences, most of which we will never know about. And then we have the collective imprinting that happens from other people. When we watch the world, the media, and our communities, when stuff happens to other people whom we identify with that we think is scary, our bodies do not believe the lie of separation. Our bodies register that as though it happened to us. And so it’s so important to understand that. And then we can say, okay, so I have these layers of wounding. What do I do about it? Well, not to overly simplify, but basically you just need to learn how to help your body feel safe. So when you can learn to signal safety and speak the language of your nervous system, which is not thought, it is not changing your beliefs, you cannot think your way out of feeling.

Kate Northrup: You cannot think your way out of a way your body feels. You have to feel your way out of it. What we can do is practice ways to signal safety in our nervous system. And then I love that you also bring in the amygdala and the heart because when we combine those things, it is very powerful. And when we can signal that we are safe, our body relaxes in the parasympathetic and it can expand what I call our range of resonance or our range of capacity or our range of tolerance or our range of regulation, meaning we now have a greater ability for life to come washing over us, both negative stresses and positive stresses and to approach them and meet them with a healthy conscious response as opposed to an unconscious reactivity that just recreates wounding after wounding after wounding in ourselves and in others. And so the name of the game is to learn how to signal safety to your nervous system and practice it over and over and over again. Notice the signs of dysregulation and then learn how to regulate yourself as you are expanding your reality so that you can go beyond living in this narrow band that’s just totally based on safety and what your ancestors experienced.

Jodi Cohen: Let’s talk a little bit about how sometimes really good things can make you really overwhelmed and terrified and anxious. The success in my business, I’m in a very happy relationship, and there are times when I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s almost like I accidentally sabotage or I start to doubt, or it’s like that old program starts to creep in.

Kate Northrup: Yes. Well, so here’s a practical example. I know you love going to Jackson Hole. I was in Jackson Hole this summer and my husband and I were staying at the most expensive hotel we’ve ever been to. We had just had a launch that was our biggest launch in our entire careers. So we had more money in the bank than we’d ever had before. Our children were safe and happy. We’re staying at this spectacular hotel. It is a gorgeous crystal blue day in the Tetons. And I’m sitting next to him at the pool and he’s like, what is going on with you? I can literally feel your energy. What is happening? And what was happening inside myself is I was in deep judgment and criticism of my husband, like deep, toxic, awful. And I said to him, I’m having an experience right now, and I just need you to know it has nothing to do with you, and I’m going to excuse myself and go handle it and just I’ll come back. So I left the pool. Can I

Jodi Cohen: Commend you? That is what happens to all of us whenever we’re having a conflict. So much of it is us. So congratulations for being regulated enough to not pick the fight.

Kate Northrup: Well, we’ve had some practice in some years of therapy, so with wonderful therapists who understand the nervous system and are unconscious patterns. So I’m like, okay, this couldn’t possibly, yeah, sure. My husband’s not perfect, but the level of toxins in my thoughts was like, Ugh, this is so gross. So I go to the bathroom in our hotel, I lie on the bathroom floor, and that was partially just grounding myself actually in that moment. I didn’t specifically do a nervous system regulating process, but I did pray and for myself, that’s one of my practices. And so mine as well. Yeah, I laid on the floor of the bathroom, which always is where the best stuff happens

Jodi Cohen: Or the shower.

Kate Northrup: Just talk to God and I just said, Hey, this is awful. What’s happening inside me is awful. It feels like I’m torturing myself basically. I need help making it stop. And I really know that when we can turn something over to a force greater than ourselves, we don’t feel so alone. And we welcome everybody I know who’s like a spiritual teacher who talks to the other realms. They say that all of our guides, all of the angels, they are here at all times, but they can only help us if we ask. We have to ask. And so asking for me is one of my practices. So I just asked for help, and what I received was so profound and I burst into tears, which is actually very regulating for the nervous system. It releases all of the excess estrogen and all of these stress hormones.

So having a good cry is so good for you. Cry. Yeah. Yeah. So that happened, and then I really, really heard from inside, you are experiencing something that is something you have only ever dreamed of. And because it is unfamiliar, your body feels unsafe. So it has gone into a fight response, which when we go into judgment and criticism, it is a fight response. So I had gone into a fight response because I was experiencing my current level of positive stress, of experiencing a level of abundance and joy and connection I’d never had before. And people in my lineage haven’t had it before. I’m going first. And it felt terrifying. And so unconsciously, I was in an internal fight with my husband and it was awful. And so as soon as I could have a good cry and recognized, oh, I am dysregulated, that’s as simple as a come.

I’m just dysregulated. I’ve gone outside my range of regulation, and now I am in a sympathetic fight response. And so then I was able to really feel the gravity on my body, have a good cry, go swim in the pool, get into my body, feel my five senses. Because if I were an antelope on the Serengeti plane getting chased by a lion or some other kind of animal, maybe I’m a tiger, and I would fight with the lion to use a fight response, and then I win. Let’s say I’m the tiger and I win. I don’t know if that would actually happen. So I win the lion’s out. You survive. I survive. Right? So what would happen is in an animal, which we are, that tiger would then shake. Yes. Anyone who walks the dogs, the dogs bark at another dog. Yes, they do. They shake, do the shake thing.

Kate Northrup: It also happened to me after I gave birth both times my whole body just involuntarily shook. Yes, yes. What is happening at that moment? What’s happening is our biology is so beautifully wired to metabolize all the stress hormones, because if you have the capacity to stand and shake or to have a good cry or to do a bilateral oppositional rhythmic movement, these are so many things that are regulating or do EFT tapping or EMDR or swipe on some essential oils. If you have the capacity to do that, you are safe. And so you’re updating your body to say, Hey, the threat has passed. We are safe now. And that was what I did on the bathroom floor and then getting in the pool, getting in my body because if I have enough capacity and bandwidth to be embodied and in my somatic experience of my five senses, there’s not a threat. So I can just let my body know like, Hey, staying at a fancy hotel with your wonderful husband is not a threat. Like you are actually safe right now. And then we just had the most glorious rest of our vacation and reached a level of connection and joy that we had not experienced before, but that was only available because I could recognize I was dysregulated and my body didn’t feel safe, and I knew what to do about it at that moment instead of trying to take my husband out.

Jodi Cohen: And one of the things I wanted to add, what you were saying about praying, it’s interesting. I’m reading, I’m really obsessed with limbic system, retraining with that and smell. But Gupta has a program and one of the things that, oh, I’ve just

Kate Northrup: Heard about it.

Jodi Cohen: It’s amazing. He talks about this idea of when you’re trying to regulate, when you recognize those intrusive thoughts or negative patterns that are kind of popping up, one of his things he says is to kind of imagine that there’s someone there that’s supporting and loving you. And it can be odd.

Kate Northrup: It can be your pet.

Jodi Cohen: It can be your husband, it could be any supportive person. And I’ve been noodling that all morning. And what I really think it is is it’s not just regulating your nervous system. It’s feeling safe if the higher power makes you feel safe, if your best friend, if your dog being in nature, whatever makes you feel safe. It’s almost like if you want to lose weight, you can change your diet and you can exercise or you could do both at the same time. Everything that he said that I really loved is movement, that it’s hard to make a change in your standing still. So get, it really is cool and you were moving all these things that we can do to kind of keep the momentum going towards regulation and change.

Kate Northrup: Yeah, I love that. And there are times, depending on which end of the spectrum of dysregulation we go into, there’s the hypo end of the spectrum and the hyper end of the spectrum. So the hypo is when we get into stasis and we can’t get ourselves going and we just function with the functional freeze, we are in bed with the covers over our head, or we’re just kind of like, it’s subtle. We’re overwhelmed. We can’t prioritize, we can’t get going on our day. So that’s the hypo response. It’s more of a depressive end of the spectrum of dysregulation. Then there’s the hyper response, which is more of the anxious end of the spectrum when we’re dysregulated and we’re just taking a bunch of random actions, but it’s not necessarily getting us the result. I am actually really scared, but what I think I need to do is clean the bathroom, grout with a toothbrush, that sort of thing. I tend to be more on the hyper end of things

Jodi Cohen: As do I

Kate Northrup: Many people, especially because in our society responding to anything with action and especially massive action is really celebrated, but actually it can be a sign. So going back to patriarchal distress disorder around that time. I also read a quote on Erica Chitty Cohen’s Instagram, and I don’t know if you know her, but she’s the founder of Loom, which is a maternal wellness company in Los Angeles. She’s just incredible. She just posted on Instagram that productivity is a trauma response. I just was like,

Jodi Cohen: You know what? When Max died, I decided, I’m like, I’m going to be a workaholic so I don’t have to be an alcoholic. Exactly. Yeah. It serves a purpose until you’re able, because feeling so intense, and I think a lot of us are kind of stuck in fight or flight because the anger, the grief, and the sadness are running in the background. And as women, we don’t want to feel them Totally. So just suppress them. But it’s almost like the tabs in our computer are all open, even though we’re not leaning into it, they’re kind of silently running. And so we just stay so busy that we’re so tired. So we don’t need to feel

Kate Northrup: A hundred percent. I’m so glad you said that because we think like, oh, I’m not resting and I’m not slowing down. I have too much to do. No, you’re not resting and you’re not slowing down because you don’t want to feel because it’s so uncomfortable. I mean, in that moment and on the bathroom floor, even though that was kind of different, what came up was so much grief about my relationship with the masculine and the imprinting I’ve had around not being met and not being supported and not being provided for by the healthy masculine. It was really sad and painful, and I just stayed with that part because it was a lot of leftover feelings that just needed to be felt. I didn’t need to really get too much into the story of it, but part of what we can do is just be with the parts of ourselves that need witnessing in their grief, in their anger, in their fear, so that we can, like you said, close that tab.

Kate Northrup: It’s like we have this browser window open with 3 million tabs from all the stressful situations that we didn’t metabolize because any number of reasons, we were shamed for our emotions. We would blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So every time we lean in and have a good cry, go for a run, have a good laugh, have an orgasm, do breath work, movement, sound, breath, tears, and laughter are five of my go-tos because they close those stress tabs in my energetic and nervous system browser, and it frees up capacity. And

Jodi Cohen: All of the things you mentioned like EMDR, tapping, all of these things, I think the problem that people have when we don’t know what to do, we do nothing. I think they’re afraid to have to relive it and feel it again. And that’s actually why I like oils. I think there are ways that you can process it and release it without having to go. It’s almost like watching the movie through the window. Yes. You don’t need to jump into the frame and feel that all over again. You just need to observe. And it helps if you pray or if you think of your best friend, if you smell something because smell gets, the smell is the easiest way into the brain. There are so many ways to. You don’t need to be afraid to feel those uncomfortable feelings. You can just witness them and release them.

Kate Northrup: Yes, you really can. You really can. And it’s also, we live in such a fixing society. So one of the things that’s been really helpful for me is because I think heart’s work, and internal family systems work are very related to nervous system regulation. And the way I think about it is that all these stressful moments that created our nervous system thermostat are all of our parts. And if anybody is not familiar with internal family systems, work is basically the idea. It’s a school of therapy. And the idea is we have all these different parts of us that are taking the lead at various times, and so it’s not really our conscious adult self. Often that’s running the show. It will be a part. And we have protective parts and we have defender parts, and we have little child parts. And so one of the things that I do is I work with, I’ve been doing this long enough and I did some training around it.

I’m not a therapist, but I certainly know enough to facilitate for myself and in my group program. So every time I do that, what’s been so helpful for me in our society, that’s always about how can I fix that. I have to do something about it. It’s been so relaxing to realize that all I need to do is go in and witness the part and just let her say what she needs to say or show me what she needs to

show me, and that’s it. I don’t have to make it better for her. I don’t have to explain it away. I don’t have to, whatever. And it really helps me as a mom, because last night, my daughter Ruby, she’s five. Last week we went away on a trip, just the two of us, and we missed a day of school. She didn’t realize mostly that’s great with her, she’d prefer not to go, but we missed a big day at school, which was the cultural fare where you go around to all these different booths that the parents set up.

Kate Northrup: I live in Miami, so 75% of the population is not from the United States, so it’s really cool. At the cultural fair, the parents from Hungary and Switzerland and Venezuela and Argentina and Columbia and all. So anyway, she missed the cultural fair and she was hearing about it from her older sister who went, and last night at bedtime, she was in tears and she was like, mama, I missed the cultural fair, and I didn’t get to go and I didn’t get to get the flags. And she’s just bereft about it. And I just was like, yeah, that’s sad. I can see why that would be sad for you, and I could just hold her and let her cry. Whereas I feel like the conditioning is that I would try to talk her out of it and explain like, oh, but we got to go on this other trip that was really special that your sis and you’ll get to go to the cultural fair next year. And oh, it’s not, we can get you other flags. No. It’s just like, yeah, babe, that’s sad. It’s okay to be sad. And we just were  there for us emotionally. All of us have that little five-year-old crying about something as small as the cultural or as giant as abuse or abandonment. And those parts don’t need to be fixed. They need to be witnessed. So I’m so glad you said the piece about we don’t have to dive full in and relive the story. We can just witness and that’s it.

Jodi Cohen: We know it’s interesting with, so my parasympathetic blend, I basically call it wait till you get to the teenage years. It’s really fun. It’s like they’re constantly on a roller coaster and here’s the deal, you can’t get on the roller coaster with them because then it’s all downhill. So my daughter, normal teenage stuff, and the more I could regulate myself, the more I was able to do exactly that, just hear her. The other trick is I noticed if I sat on the floor, if I was lower than her, then that kind of calmed.

Kate Northrup: Down. That’s great. Okay. I love that

Jodi Cohen: Lot of research on that, but just kind of submitting and tell me more. And I think as women, that’s…

Kate Northrup: Part of it is

Jodi Cohen: That once you’re so upset, you call your best friend, you tell them the whole story, they just say, I’m so sorry, that sucks. And you feel better.

Kate Northrup: You do. You totally do. You just need to be witnessed because I think this is just coming to me right now, but I think part of the pain of our experiences is feeling alone. And so what our bodies need on some level, probably from a co-regulation perspective and a mirror neuron perspective is just simply the feeling of I’m not alone. I’ve been witnessed, I’ve been seen, and now I feel safe because I’m not alone.

Jodi Cohen: And that’s a perfect tie-in to your program where people can feel completely supported and have community. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

Kate Northrup: Of course. So one of the most easy, I mean I hate to use the word hacks, but quite frankly, this is a hack. This is a nervous system hack. Being in a positive, safe community, it is one of the easiest ways to heal and expand your capacity without really having to do anything other than show up. Now, if you do the work, it really helps. There are so many people who just heal and expand by showing up for my live programs, even if they’re listening to the replay. So I teach two times a year, a free workshop, and it’s only two times a year just because it takes a lot of energy, but I love it. And so this one coming up, I always change it a little bit. This one’s called wide receiver. And one of the things we know about the nervous system, and you and I were talking about this a little bit before we started recording, is that we can only receive what feels safe, and what feels safe is going to be based on our previous experience, which is why a lot of us block the abundance and the love and the blessings that are actually right there available to us.

But we have closed off our receptor sites. What we know actually now, and I’m so excited to get into more of the science about this in the workshop, but what we know, we used to think we like I’m part of the scientific community, but anyway, people Sure. So we used to think that receptor

sites in the body were like a lock and a key where it was like, okay, so I’ve got this hole and I’ve got the right size key and we’re going to get in there. And then that receptor site, whether it’s with a protein or an amino acid or whatever, it’ll go in there. What we now know is that receptor sites are vibrational, and so there’s actually, it’s energetic. It’s like a vibrational frequency match that allows things to get matched up to open up the receptor site to open up parts of your body to receive.

So it’s the same thing physiologically as it is energetically as within, so without, and what we know is that we have to learn to feel safe to receive more financially and otherwise, otherwise we will unconsciously keep a ceiling on our receptivity, and our receptivity, meaning certainly our income, but also our ability to actually experience abundance. Because having a lot of money is not the same thing as experiencing abundance. I know plenty of people who have tons of money who constantly feel like it’s not enough. Is it because they’re terrible people? They don’t…

Jodi Cohen: Spend it? No

Kate Northrup: Exactly. Or they hoard it why they don’t feel safe. And so what this workshop does is it allows you to take the practical steps in those three days totally for free to open your capacity to receive. And always in my live workshops, people experience incredible money miracles. It happens every time, and it is a freaking mystery. And I love it so much because when we put loving, caring, safe attention on our money, it shows up for us in ways that we couldn’t have possibly orchestrated on a human level. So we tap into the practical, we tap into the magical, we tap into the emotional, the energetic, the physical. It’s a full holistic financial health workshop. And

Jodi Cohen: It’s so funny, I’m remembering when I was in grad school, there was a trip to Japan that looked amazing. Eventually of my friends were planning it, and it was like $3,000. And I remember sitting in the meeting thinking, this is amazing. I guess I’m going to have to find some way to manifest $3,000. I won an award and a journalism award. I had applied for something and it was the exact amount of the trip, and it was like, this is so perfect. Look, I’m supposed to go there.

Kate Northrup: It is

Jodi Cohen: One of the best months of my life. But yeah, that’s so cool. No, but I think that potential is possible for everyone. And I was telling you before we got on, I had been divorced since 2018, had wanted to be in relation, and started working on receiving. I was doing it with fascia oil on the back of my heart and heart on the, and then regulating the nervous system. And then once I was kind of open to receive this amazing person showed up. So I wonder how many of us are kind walking through life with all these opportunities that want to support us.

Kate Northrup: Yeah, totally. They’re everywhere and they’re infinite. So also just know that you definitely missed opportunities and there’s plenty more where that came from. Exactly. You’re never going to dry up.

Jodi Cohen: Exactly. Tell people how they can find out more about your program.

Kate Northrup: Yeah. So if you go to kate northrop.com/wide, you will be able to just get yourself signed up totally for free, join in. If you can’t come live, you’ll get the replays, but there is an extra magic and an extra transmission that happens when you come live.

Jodi Cohen: Amazing. Is there anything that we didn’t talk about that you’d like to share?

Kate Northrup: Oh my goodness. I mean, we could talk about anything, but I will just say this. One thing that I think really screws us up about money is conflating our inherent worth with our net worth. And having this idea in our society that more money makes you more valuable or that less money makes you more spiritual. These things are super ingrained. So I just wanted to say in closing that our worth is inherent and infinite and ineffable. There’s nothing we could ever do to become more worthy. There’s nothing we could ever do to become less worthy. Our worth just is. And then anything we do in the material world is just kind of a game we’re playing while we’re here in this incarnation. And I see so many people hold themselves back by conflating their worth with how much money they make. And I just wanted to mention that.

Jodi Cohen: Well, the other thing I wanted to ask you, you were telling me that you’re an oil fan and that people talk a little bit about the oils and how you use them in your program.

Kate Northrup: So I know about the science behind the olfactory system and the way that essential oils work as a quickening agent to be able to help us to access a deeper state of nervous system regulation and a deeper state of change and transformation. And I love how you were explaining, for example, how you can use oils to be able to heal traumas without diving all the way into the trauma. Because there’s a way in which the essences of the plant, and this gets me coal going on, the metaphors of nature and the way nature is our greatest healer and the vibrations of nature and the frequency just brings us home. It’s just so beautiful. But anyway, the essential oils and their frequencies allow us to feel safe. And my theory on that is because when we connect with nature, which is our true nature, we are home.

And so we feel safe. And so we created a relaxed money blend that combines all of these different essential oils that are good for abundance or passion and activating the second chakra or calming and relaxation into this gorgeous relax money blend. And everyone who joins the paid program relax money gets the blend in the mail so they can use it as a quickening agent along with the practices that we’re doing. Because as you said, when you combine and roll that over your heart and then it’s going right to your amygdala and you’re doing a nervous system regulating practice at the same time, it just enhances all the effects.

Jodi Cohen: It’s interesting. Smell is the most important. Survival. You smell

Kate Northrup: Water.

Jodi Cohen: You smell food, you smell predator odor. When you age and you lose your sense of smell, you can die from eating spoiled food. And also, in terms of the blood-brain barrier, I totally believe I’m completely aligned with you with energetic resonance, but the lipids are so small, they can actually, the nasal passageway is where blood-brain barrier is the thinnest. It’s really hard to get remedies into the brain. So smelling things goes directly to the brain and goes to the amygdala and sends that signal, you are safe.

Kate Northrup: That is so cool.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah. No, I love it when smart people kind of stumble upon the same thing that I, yeah. Isn’t

Kate Northrup: That cool? I know. It’s like, oh, we must be right.

Jodi Cohen: We must be right. Well, at least we know it works for us.

Kate Northrup: It only works for us.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah. Okay. So remind people again where they can find you and where they can find your program.

Kate Northrup: Yes. So if you head over to katenorthrup.com/wide, you’ll be able to access the free workshop, and then that will take you to invite you to the paid program if it resonates. So katenorthrop.com/wide is the best place to go. You can also head over to Instagram. I’m at Kate Northrup. That’s the place I’m the most active online, and I do send out a weekly dispatch, which is my best tip on healing your relationship with money delivered to you weekly. So you can sign up for that too.

Jodi Cohen: And your Instagram’s adorable. Your children are so cute. They look like little minis. Kate Northrup: They’re pretty great. My kids are great.

Jodi Cohen: Yeah, no, they are. Thank you so much. This was wonderful.

Kate Northrup: Thanks, Jodi. This was fun.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you so much for listening. I hope this podcast empowered you with some useful information and takeaways. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing a positive review or subscribing. I would also love to offer you my free parasympathetic toolkit as a gift just for listening. It will teach you how to activate the most important nerve in your body to turn on your ability to heal. This free toolkit includes a checklist, a video, and a detailed guide. If this podcast prompted any questions, you can always find answers at my blog at vibrantblueoils.com or my book Essential Oils to Boost the Brain and Heal the Body. Until next time, wishing you Vibrant Health.

 

Jodi Cohen: Hello and welcome to Essential Alchemy. Alchemy is defined as the power or process that changes or transforms something in a mysterious or impressive way. My hope is that the information in this podcast can help you transform your mood, energy, and physical health, or even connect some dots to help you shift your mental or emotional state.

I’m your host, Jodi Cohen, a bestselling author, award-winning journalist, functional practitioner, lifelong learner, and founder of Vibrant Blue Oils, a company that sells proprietary blends of high-quality, organic, or wildcrafted essential oil remedies designed to help you return to your ideal mental, physical, and emotional state. You can find out more about me and my company at vibrantblueoils.com. And with that, let’s get started with today’s episode.

Hi, I am Jodi Cohen, your host, and I am so thrilled beyond thrilled to share one of my very, very dear friends Dr. Elisa Song’s new book, which if you are a mom, if you are a grandparent, if you’re an auntie, you have to get this. It’s going to be fabulous for the kiddos. So Dr. Lisa Song is a Stanford NYU and UCSF trained integrative pediatrician, pediatric functional medicine expert, and most importantly, a mom to two adorable kiddos. You want to say their names and how old they are now?

Elisa Song: Bodhi is now 12 and a half, and Kenzie is 14. They are still adorable.

Jodi Cohen: They’re still adorable, and good job mama. She is the bestselling author of the Healthy Kids Happy Kids Integrated Pediatrician’s Guide to Hold Child Resilience, and she’s on a mission to revolutionize the future of children’s health. She’s dedicated her career to helping parents and practitioners bridge the gap between conventional and holistic pediatrics with an evidence-based, pediatric-backed, parent-sponsored approach. So welcome, Elisa.

Elisa Song: Oh, thank you. I always love chatting with you. I mean, you’re one of my dearest friends, so thank you for having me on.

Jodi Cohen: No, and I’m just so excited because you really do, you’re very elegant and you’re very thoughtful and you’re very balanced. You are that voice that I wish I had when my kids were slightly younger because you look at all sides and you back everything up with research, which I’m so excited about this book, especially because you delve into my absolute favorite topic, the vagus nerve. So can you share a little bit about how you picked what you included in this book and how you prioritize things?

Elisa Song: Well, as a functional medicine pediatrician, and many listeners may who have heard of functional medicine or practicing functional medicine or seeing a functional medicine practitioner that one of the foundational principles is that all disease starts in the gut. That is Hippocrates centuries ago. But then when we look at children and I thought, well, we’re seeing this rising tide of worsening increasing rates of chronic disease in kids. And so it’s not just enough to say that all disease starts in the gut. We have to figure out how do we proactive as parents.

And so that means that we can also flip that statement and say all health starts in the gut. So for the past 20 years, I’ve really been focused on kids’ microbiomes and how do we help their gut-brain, gut immune system connections, gut hormone, gut gene connection, and how that really and truly is. I think once we can master that, that is one of the best and most important ways that we can help our kids thrive and build that resilience for a lifetime. So that is why yes, it’s one of your favorite topics. It’s one of my favorite topics, and it is a whole chapter in the book. It’s that important.

Jodi Cohen: I know, and you have great graphics. Good job.

Elisa Song: Thank you.

Jodi Cohen: What I love is that you’re catching them young and you share a little bit about, I know what happens in grownups, what kind of disregulates, the vagus nerve in kids.

Elisa Song: Well, it’s interesting because the vagus nerve is that two-way information is super high between the gut and the brain. And most of that communication actually occurs from the gut to the brain, something like 80 to 90%. So when we think about dysregulation to the vagus nerve, we still have to look at the gut, even though we think of the vagus nerve as, oh, feel calm and zen. Well, guess what? If your gut microbiome is not in optimal health, there’s no way that communication through the vagus nerve is going to result in a healthy mind, healthy brain. And there are so many factors in our modern world that really almost on a daily basis, or I will say on a daily basis, are working to disrupt your child’s microbiome, which is why as parents, we have to be super savvy and know, wow, okay, these are the first of all, why is your child’s gut microbiome so important to protect and preserve? Number two, what are the factors that can disrupt your gut microbiome? How do we minimize those? Number three, really importantly, what are the factors that help to nourish and optimize your child’s gut microbiome? So all of those, and then of course, we know with the nearly one in two kids today diagnosed with a chronic disease, a lot of kids’ microbiomes, a lot of adult microbiomes are disrupted already. So a whole section of my book, part three, is really focused on how do we restore and recover a disruptive microbiome.

Jodi Cohen: Half of the children? That’s so sad.

Elisa Song: It’s startling. And I’ll tell you another paper that I read just as I was starting my functional medicine career. This was in 2005. I had started my integrated pediatric practice in 2004, and then in 2005, there was an article in the New England Journal of Medicine highly respected article, and I can’t believe that this did not get press headlines like, what are we doing right now? We need to do something different. So in that article, the researchers took estimates of how our health was progressing as a population and estimated that over the past thousand years, our lifespans have been getting longer and longer medical advances, healthy living. All of that article, those researchers predicted that for the first time in history, our children are expected to have shorter lifespans than us, their parents, all due to diet and lifestyle-related factors, all due to the way we’re doing things and eating and living in our modern world. And so we love our modern conveniences. None of us want to go back to the stone age. And yet at the same time, we need to realize a lot of these modern conveniences are contributing to this rise in chronic disease. And if we don’t really raise the awareness flags and help parents and children navigate this modern world, we’re not going to be in any better shape 20 years from now when we really should have been sounding the alarm 20 years ago.

Jodi Cohen: That’s one thing that I really love. I mean, having the perspective as both a pediatrician and a mom and a mom whose kids are normal, whose kids get sick occasionally, yes, in the er, you really get it. You really know how hard it is as a mom to execute on it. So let’s talk a little bit about your magic, your five things from magic. Can you share what you recommend?

Elisa Song: Yeah. I wanted to make this really simple for parents and kids to understand and to really implement, because of course, as a mom, we’re all way too busy and we don’t want to make things more challenging than we have to. And so I also, I know this works from a practical standpoint because I had the opportunity to create a six-week curriculum for my daughter’s third and fourth-grade class. So for these eight to 10-year-old, and it was all about their microbiome, but we call it healthy belly happy you, and taught them all about the hundreds of trillions of tiny, microscopic friends in their tummies and all the benefits if we take care of our tiny friends, they take care of us. And why it’s so important to care for this ecosystem in us, just like we care for the world’s ecosystem. Earth Day didn’t pass too long ago.

And so this ecosystem inside us is really one of our, it probably is our most important ecosystem to take care of. And so the five things for microbiome magic that we can do every day are five things that your kids and you are already doing every day. And so in the book, I just talk about how to make those simple shifts so that we can learn how to do them like a gut hero.

Elisa Song: And so those five things, of course, we need to eat every day. Well, unless you’re doing a fast, but kids shouldn’t fast. So first is eating. We are eating every day. So how do we mindfully think about ways to what to get in to nourish our gut microbiome and also equally important, what kind of things do we want to keep out that are not nourishing to our gut microbiome? Three other things that are more lifestyle-related, how can we move our bodies?

And so those five things, of course, we need to eat every day. Well, unless you’re doing a fast, but kids shouldn’t fast. So first is eating. We are eating every day. So how do we mindfully think about ways to what to get in to nourish our gut microbiome and also equally important, what kind of things do we want to keep out that are not nourishing to our gut microbiome? Three other things that are more lifestyle-related, how can we move our bodies?

It’s like all of this everyday surge, surge surge. And that’s a normal response to stress. Yes. What’s not normal in our society is we are not consistently able to engage our nervous system, our vagus nerve to get out of that stress response not healthy. So the idea isn’t have zero stress. The idea is you know what? There are stressors in life, and that is actually a normal part of our makeup to feel that stress. But we should also be able to engage our vagus nerve to get back into the parasympathetic rest and digest state. Remember the parasympathetic, the vagus nerve is really the major component of our parasympathetic nervous system. If we do that and engage our vagus nerve and improve something called heart rate variability, which is a measure of how well our vagus nervous functioning, there are studies in children that have been found that that alone can improve their microbiome diversity and function independent of what they’re eating. I love that. I mean, I love it because for some parents who have really picky kids to come in and say, just get more fiber in their diet, that can be a little more daunting. But if we can sit and practice gratitude with our kids or really practice diaphragmatic belly or walk in nature and do these activities mindfully in a way that we are purposefully engaging our vagus nerves so that your kids can do that anytime they want to, we will have a steady, recurrent way throughout the day that we’re supporting our gut microbiome.

Jodi Cohen: No, I love that. And one of the things, especially for my community, they’re going to be so excited about you. Were generous enough to mention vibrant blue oils in your book and more generous to really detail reflex points. I joke, my son would never eat kale. It was really hard for him take supplements, but oils, he was all over, especially he was a sensory seeker, topically apply them, oh, whatever you want, mom. And so I love that. I feel like there are a lot of kids that are complicated. They’re picky eaters, they’ve got sensory issues. It’s hard. So I was hoping you could share some of the points that you share in your practice where you encourage moms and definitely by the book, because there’s a lot more information in there, but how to topically apply essential oils points that really.

Elisa Song: I love essential oils, and I mentioned Vibrant Blue Oils is one of my recommended brands because you have to know essential oils are therapeutic and you want to treat them like medicines. You want to treat them as therapeutic as having therapeutic benefits. They’re not just to smell good, and we can overdo them, and we can use the wrong ones that they’re not going to do harm, but they may not have the intended purpose that you want. And worse yet, if you buy any old essential oil in the market, you don’t know what’s inside. I mean, there are many, many synthetic oils that smell amazing. They smell exactly like what you expect them to smell like, but being synthetic, it has none of the therapeutic properties that are going to be, oh, it just smells nice. So when we’re using oils, we’re not using oils as air fresheners.

We are using oils. We are using oils as medicine. I mean, this is really and truly, and it can be powerful. And one of the ways I love to use essential oils is I teach parents acupressure points, these reflex points that have also therapeutic benefit. In Chinese medicine, there are various points that can help when your kids have a fever or when they have anxiety, or when they’re having trouble sleeping. And I love using these acupressure points and holding pressure while applying some essential oils. So you can do that. And you had your heart blend, which I thought was a perfect idea. I mean, there are some.

Jodi Cohen: For kids with anxiety or for Max was like this, the kids that run a little hot.

Elisa Song: So there are a couple of points that I think would be really helpful to know, and I’d be So to even correlate with some of the vibrant blue oils, right? Yes. So this point that I just pointed out here, it’s on the inner wrist crease or your pinky side. Now you’ll feel a tendon there. If you move your wrist back and forth, you’ll feel this tendon here. Yes. And then there’s just right next to it. Okay, that point is called hurt seven. Okay, heart seven. It’s also in Chinese medicine. It’s called the men or the spirit gate. We have a corresponding point in our ear, which you could also put a little dab right in the top part of your ear, exactly the very top part, just in that inner, if you look, there’s a little triangle in depth. And so right there, now that point, this, she men just calms the nervous system.

So you could rub heart seven on there, and then just when you’re done, you just hold pressure and just breathe into that point again, belly breathe. And when your belly breathes, we’re keeping our shoulders down and not moving. And we’re, as we’re inhaling, there’s a balloon in our belly inflating. And as we’re exhaling, the balloon is deflating all while we keep our shoulders down. So that’s a great point. Another point that actually I just thought of as we’re speaking, you have a liver blend. Now, in Chinese medicine, the emotion that goes along with liver is anger, right? Yes. It’s you’re tantruming kids, your angry kids, your kids who tend to get aggressive when they’re upset, or the kids who are like zero to 60, right? They’re like that, right? Maybe your partner, right? Anyone, or maybe it’s you. And so I think that would be perfect on liver three.

Elisa Song: Now I’m going to show you because I don’t want to lift my feet up right now, but if you imagine this is your foot, okay? Yeah. And your foot, okay, your big toe and then your four other toes. Now it’s a mirror image. So pretend this is the top of your foot, this point here in Chinese medicine, on your hand, in the web space between your thumb and your index finger is called large intestine four. When you look at on your foot, that web space between the first toe and the second toe is called liver three, liver three. So that’s really good for those emotional outbursts. It’s also really good for. I mentioned liver three in the book for helping with eye symptoms like pink eye conjunctivitis. It’s also, yeah. So that’s a really good one.

Jodi Cohen: A lot of questions about stress in the eye.

Elisa Song: And I’m like, yeah, any eye thing, liver.

Jodi Cohen: In your eye, but that’s okay. That’s great.

Elisa Song: Is actually, don’t put the essential oils in your eye, please. But this is the point, right? Go ahead and put liver, liver essential oil on liver three. And then if you’re having any immune issue, whether you’re fighting a viral illness or I’m just thinking for kids, if they have a cold or a flu or a fever or headache, sinus pressure, this on your hand, large intestine four, that’s good for getting out any of that, getting rid of any of that. So this, you could do your immune blend, you could do parasympathetic because we think of the vagus nerve and parasympathetic as more of an emotional calming, but it really is a calming of all of your body’s responses. So when we’re sick and we have inflammation as an appropriate response to being sick, because we need inflammation to fight infections, but once that infection is done, we also need the vagus nerve to kick in and say, Hey, inflammation, you’ve done your job. Let’s get back into a steady state now, not have too much inflammation, not have chronic inflammation. So I think parasym

pathetic would be amazing for that. In fact, for people who have problems with postviral, chronic fatigue, whether it’s from Epstein-Barr virus, or let’s say long covid, vagus nerve stimulation can be a very powerful healing tool. And in fact, in Health Canada, there is a vagus nerve stimulating device that’s approved for the treatment of long. And so that’s why vagus nerve so important, not just to feel zen and great, I want your kids to feel calm.

Jodi Cohen: And you.

Elisa Song: But it is also to calm our nervous system and immune system at the same time. Really important.

Jodi Cohen: Do you have any points that you like for when kids get tummy aches or just I’m thinking all the issues that we used to.

Elisa Song: Get? Yeah. Well, and it’s interesting because tummy aches can be if it’s from a tummy bug or a tummy reflux or that kind of a tummy issue, then there’s a point, you can look this up, there’s a point called CV 12, Conception Vessel 12 is what it stands for. And if you take, okay, I have down here, I used to teach infant massage, so I have a baby here.

Jodi Cohen: My baby.

Elisa Song: Okay, so if you have your baby, and I’m going to show you. So if you imagine this is her belly button, and this is the end of her rib cage, right? Where your ribs meet in the middle. So halfway between there, halfway between perfect is Conception Vessel 12. So you could just put some parasympathetic right there. And…

Jodi Cohen: Is that good for constipation too? Yes, constipated.

Elisa Song: For constipation, any digestive issue, you could use conception vessel 12. But I would also add for constipation that the large intestine four that I was talking about just now, and for nervous tummy, if it’s more like, mommy, I don’t want to go to school, which Bodie gets a lot, Bodie a lot of times in the morning, my tummy hurts. And so it’s really, we have to really assess, okay, going on, scan your body. Is it like a thick tummy? Is it a nervous tummy? Right? But nervous tummies are really common. And so there’s a point, again, if you go to the inner crease, I’m going to hold up my baby here.

Jodi Cohen: Okay.

Elisa Song: If you go to your baby, the baby handy inner crease, and just a little bit above, right in the middle there, exactly right in the middle there, that point is called pericardium six. And that point is really good for calming. It’s really good when your brain is going, going, going, and you’re having a hard time sleeping. That’s a point for kids who are having trouble sleeping on, just have them hold onto that while they’re going to bed and…

Jodi Cohen: Or if they’re in school, if they get anxious in class, this is great. No one needs to know.

Elisa Song: Nobody needs to know. Well, I mean, that’s the beauty of the acupressure points is nobody needs to know what you’re doing. You can just be under the desk just holding shemen, and with your thumb Duchenne men, and with your second finger, your index finger, hold heart seven. So heart seven here.

Jodi Cohen: All of the introverts out here.

Elisa Song: Pericardium six here.

And then it could be on your desk and you’re just sitting in class and then getting ready for your test, getting ready for whatever it is. So there’s so much you can do from a home mama doc standpoint, which is why, I mean, really all of part four in my book is teaching parents how to use acupressure points, homeopathy essential oils, herbal medicines, supplements for when kids are sick. And in the book, it’s really the top 25 most common acute childhood conditions like sore throats hand foot of mouth, and strep or pink eye, we mentioned fevers, colds, coughs, vomiting, diarrhea, all the things that are super common and that your kids tend to get in the middle of the night. So if you have this resource, you can look at it. It also tells you when there are indications that you actually want to go to your doctor or maybe go to the ER. So that way you’re not just left hanging. Is this okay to wait till the morning to call my doctor? Or maybe I should head into the ER right now.

Jodi Cohen: And you’re not Googling and thinking they’re going to die because I’ll Google.

Elisa Song: Yeah, no, it’s a way to avoid Dr. Google because Dr. Google, usually, sometimes it’s helpful, but a lot of times it’s not.

Jodi Cohen: Worst-case scenario thing. Yeah. I’m so excited for you. I’m so proud of you. This is so beautiful. Is there anything I didn’t ask you that you’d like to share?

Elisa Song: Gosh. Well, so we spoke about the five things for microbiome magic and that children who have any chronic health concern, or even if they haven’t been diagnosed, even if they haven’t been diagnosed with any particular thing if you’re like, I don’t know if their worries are if they’re in the normal realm or if maybe they have more going on or maybe the sensory issues or just getting sick really frequently. So there’s nothing diagnosed, but you know that something’s not a hundred percent, we can suspect that they have some element of gut problems, gut dysregulation. And so really part three of the book is all focused on how do you identify if your kids have this gut disruption. And more importantly, I’m not one to just spout out the scary facts. Sometimes you need a little jolt of awareness to realize, oh my gosh, our kids are not okay.

Elisa Song: What’s happening right now is not okay. But then we can’t just live in fear and doom and gloom and say, wow, this is our kids’ destiny. So what I always provide as a pediatrician and really as a mom is, okay, now what can we do? And so that’s where I also include my gut restoration program, the plan that I use in my practice. And even if you don’t have an integrative or functional medicine pediatrician to work with, it’s a starting point. You may still need to find one, but at least it’s a starting point so that you can see the gut reset plan that I recommend for my patients. And you can incorporate some of those things and also know, okay, if things are getting a little better, but not all the way, when is it time to find a functional medicine practitioner?

Jodi Cohen: That’s so great. I wish I had this when my kids were little. This is such a gift to so many moms. Thank you for everything you do. Thank you for putting this out in such a fun, happy color. Let people know where they can find you and where they can order the book.

Elisa Song: So you can find me most easily on my website. That’s ww.healthykidshappykids.com and on Instagram, that’s Healthy Kids, Happy Kids. The book is available wherever books are sold pretty much. And you can find out more information at www.healthykidshappykids.com/book. And that lists many of the different places you can find it. And of course, most of us buy an Amazon, but if you have a local bookstore, support your indie bookstores. We got to love our brick-and-mortar bookstores too.

Jodi Cohen: This is amazing. It’s full of really good topical application points for oils. You are amazing. Thank you. Thank you for joining me. Thank you for everything you do.

Elisa Song: Oh, thank you for having me.

Jodi Cohen: Thank you so much for listening. I hope this podcast empowered you with some useful information and takeaways. If you liked this episode, please consider sharing a positive review or subscribing. I would also love to offer you my free parasympathetic toolkit as a gift just for listening. It will teach you how to activate the most important nerve in your body to turn on your ability to heal. This free toolkit includes a checklist, a video, and a detailed guide. If this podcast prompted any questions, you can always find answers at my bl**@vi*************.com or my book Essential Oils to Boost the Brain and Heal the Body. Until next time, wishing you Vibrant Health.

Jodi: Hello, I’m Jodi Cohen and I’m so incredibly honored to be joined by Dr. Neil Nathan, who I have admired for years. He is a board-certified doctor who has been treating chronically complex medical illnesses for over 30 years, and he’s also the author of several books, including his bestselling book, Toxic: Heal Your Body from Toxic Mold, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Chronic Environmental Illness. And his upcoming, much-anticipated book, The Sensitive Patient’s Healing Guide.

He has noticed in his practice, that many patients who like you, through no fault of their own, have become unusually sensitive to normal stimuli of light, sound, touch, food, chemicals, EMF, and they can no longer really tolerate this stimuli without significant suffering. And I’m so excited that he’s finally talking about what is causing that and what helps. So welcome Dr. Nathan.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Jodi: It’s such an honor. I’m so curious. You’ve seen this in clinical practice, you’re sharing this in your upcoming book. Why are patients becoming more sensitive? What are you seeing?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I think the bottom line, there’s several answers to that question, but I think the bottom line is that our world is becoming so polluted, not just with chemicals but with EMF, that our bodies have not evolved to the point that we can handle that. And so the patients who are becoming extremely sensitive, I think of as the canary’s in the coalmine, we’re all going to be this way pretty soon if we don’t clean up our planet and really come to our senses as to what we’re doing to the planet and how we’re not honoring it. I mean, there are 350,000 chemicals in our environment now that did not exist 50 years ago. It’s just extraordinary what we’ve done. And we’ve done it by honoring the chemical companies, but not human beings, so that we’ve tested 500 of these for safety.

So we’re putting all of these chemicals in the environment and not checking to see, oh, is that safe for human beings? Because we’re being silly about this. I mean silly to the point of being, forgive my language stupid, and that we have horribly polluted our planet. If we add EMF to that, we just keep thinking that it’s safe and we’ll just bombard people with more and more and more. So when we changed from 4G to 5G, oh, it sounds like we just up the ante by one. We just went from four to five. No we up the ante by 1000 fold of exposure. And with the advent of 5G, we began to see, again, an epidemic of folks who are reacting to what they were getting exposed to. And we combined that by making every man, woman, and child on this planet reliant on their cell phones and computers to function. So kind of like a double whammy.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So I think the underlying issue, Jodi, is the toxicity of the world we live in and how it has affected our nervous systems. And there’s one more piece to it, which is the fear that has been promulgated in our world since Covid, which is still existing, which is the way the media has handled this, which is what they’ve been doing actually for 20 years, which is to provide news to us that is scary so that we’ll tune in and listen to more news. Oh, this is a scary piece of information. I better check this out. And so we’ve been scared for the last 20, 25 years by media. And Covid was a field day on a global scale. We were all terrified that if we didn’t separate from our neighbors by six feet, which is a very silly concept, and wore masks, which we know don’t work very well, then we would be safe. If we gave ourselves all of these vaccines, which we now know don’t work very well.

So all of this was a media-driven scare process, which is still going on. I mean, I still walk around and there are people with masks on driving in their cars with their masks on, and I’m going, what do you think you’re protecting yourself from? So it’s that fear, and we’ll get into it I think when we talk about the limbic and the vagal system here, has pervaded all of us. The isolation that we went through had a profound effect on our whole civilization if you will. So if we take this perfect storm of fear, and toxicity and look at it, I think that’s driving a lot of the sensitivity that we’re seeing.

Jodi: Yeah. No, I love that. And I have heard that called the perfect storm. It’s the combination of the mold, the EMF, the metals, the parasites, and the glyphosate, which kind of causes the gut to be more permeable. There are so many factors that are kind of attacking us, but let’s really dive into the safety response and what happens in the body when we think we’re in danger.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure. Where do we start?

Jodi: You said something to me that I thought was so brilliant. One of the things that I noticed in your book is that you’re really good at kind of connecting the dots of the puzzles. And I think maybe when you started practicing 30 years ago, if you did one thing, if you healed the gut, then everyone got better. But now it’s a combination of things that you need to address.

And you specifically mentioned the vagus nerve, which is kind of the safety gauge, the limbic system, which also plays into your sense of safety, and then mast cells and histamine response. And I’m wondering if you can elaborate on those factors and how they kind of coalesce to cause these really over reactive sensitivities.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure. So what we’re about to talk about, just to put it in context for your audience is how does someone’s nervous system become sensitive? Why does one human being become super sensitive to light, so sensitive that they have to wear sunglasses inside or so sensitive to sound that the slightest excess of sound will make them jump or startle like a newborn baby would with a sound like that, or especially chemicals, exposure to chemicals of any type? And by chemicals, I mean scents, smells, odors.

So we’re talking cigarettes, diesel fuel, perfumes that people wear, et cetera, where an increasing percent of people on the planet can’t be around that or they have a profound immediate reaction to their nervous system that can either shut them down, they can become fatigued, and some people will even have neurological events like what looks like seizures or things that are called dyskinesias, which there’s a twisting writhing movement that they go through.

And it’s not rare. And the rest of the world looks at them of, well, what’s wrong with you? I’m sitting in the same environment as you are and I’m not having any reaction at all. So this must be in your head. And if I don’t communicate anything else, being sensitive is not in someone’s head. It’s in their physical body, it’s in their nervous system, and it’s in the cellular system of the mast cell.

So I want to increasingly, again, talk a little bit about EMF sensitivity, sensitivity to touch, and sensitivity to anything that has increased dramatically in the world that we live in. And so I wrote this book to help everybody understand that there are reasons for this. It’s not in anyone’s head. And so what you’re alluding to is, I call it the trifecta of sensitivity, which is the limbic system, the vagal nerve system, and mast cell activation are the three things that are involved in sensitization.

And keep in mind, none of these are psychological, they are neurological and they are biochemical. So I think what you’ve asked for is to talk about the limbic and vagal and mast cell systems and understand that they’re totally interconnected. They’re not separate things, but the vagal system connects to the limbic system, both connect to the mast cell system. And so when we talk about getting better or healing sensitivity, if you only approach it from one perspective, if you only work on the limbic system, the way I describe it as what happens to a nervous system over time is it becomes increasingly hypervigilant.

And so we have a hypervigilant sensitivity to stimuli. If you work on just the limbic system and you don’t work on the vagal system, you’re going to stay hypervigilant. And the same is true of mast cells. So patients need to understand that they have to work in all three areas to settle their system down to become less reactive.

Jodi: I love that. And I know, I’m curious what you recommend for each component, for mast cells, for vagal nerve training, vagal tone, and then also for the limbic system and how you combine those so that they can do all three at the same time.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, that’s what the whole book’s about, how to understand it and to understand that once you understand what’s causing it, then you can understand how to treat it.

Jodi: Exactly.

Dr. Neil Nathan: But before we go there, I want to communicate how these protective safety systems of our body get out of whack because it happens over time, gradually, slowly in fits and starts. So from the moment that we are born, in fact, in our mother’s uterus, we are subjected to different kinds of stresses. They vary. Some people minimal stress, some people extreme stress.

But as a child, if you have had recurrent ear infections of sore throats and needed antibiotics, if you have required surgery, if you have had an abusive childhood with either sexual, emotional, or physical abuse, if you have had recurrent infections of different types, whatever the stresses have been, our brain in the form of our limbic system and vagal system is looking at these stimuli, these stresses, these events and going, whoa, this is a pretty scary world we live in. I need to protect you better by becoming more alert, more vigilant, more aware of incoming stimuli so I can protect you from the next threat that comes down the pike. So throughout our lives to different degrees, all of us have had to work with this hypervigilant system to deal with the world we know.

Jodi: It just confirms that.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Yeah. And as I mentioned as an example with Covid, that affected all of us to different degree, again, making us hypervigilant. The message to all of us from our nervous system was, uh oh, world’s not safe. There are things out there that can kill you, and I don’t want to die, so I need to protect myself more thoroughly. So within that context, which affects all of us, if you have other new threats, this can trigger the emergence of a more severe reaction. And what I mean by that is within that context, a number of other things that we’re seeing right now, particularly mold toxicity, Lyme disease, other types of infection, Covid is included.

Those things can then be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And you can go from being, I’m kind of coping to, I’m swamped, I’m overwhelmed. I have these stimuli coming in, light, sound, chemicals, EMF, food, different stimuli and I can’t deal with it.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So that’s the overall context of safety that the limbic and vagal systems operate with. The limbic and vagal systems are very simply the parts of your brain that are designed to monitor you for safety. And if they don’t think you’re safe, they’re going to shut you down. When they do that, that’s when we see the emergence of this type of sensitivity, which is not rare.

For example, a study that was done in England a few years ago showed that 1% of the population was so chemically sensitive that they were disabled and couldn’t work. And up to 35% of the English population had enough sensitivity that it affected people’s lives. So we’re not talking, and this is just chemical sensitivity. So,-

Jodi: Well, I would even throw anxiety in there as a symptom, anxiety and social anxiety and overwhelm with people. And I think almost every child at this moment in time has anxiety and that,-

Dr. Neil Nathan: I agree.

Jodi: Yeah.

Dr. Neil Nathan: I mean, I’ve said for years that the curriculum of our schools really needs an overhaul so that every child in this planet needs to have meditation or methods of how to quiet their nervous system so that they can start rewiring themselves from this avalanche of stimuli that we have to deal with so they can start normalizing their body early on and will be much less at risk for having the straw that breaks their camel’s back because they’re going to be safer and their nervous system will be more improved. That’s just me. I just think that that should be an integral part of what every child learns to do on this planet.

Jodi: No, I agree. And for all the parents that are listening, that’s why I would like them to buy your book and to kind of figure out how they can, it seems like the straw that breaks the camel’s back used to happen later in life when people were older. Now it’s happening earlier and earlier because these adverse childhood experiences are hitting them harder and younger.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the kids went through an incredible isolation period during Covid. I mean, it affected everyone.

Jodi: Affected everyone.

Dr. Neil Nathan: You couldn’t emerge unscathed from that event, and it’s not over yet. So I mean, we’re still wrestling with how do we cope with this safely but also have a life?

Jodi: Correct.

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s not healthy for human beings to isolate themselves and shut themselves down from the rest of the world. It’s not a healthy strategy.

Jodi: No. Well, your friend Dr. Stephen Porges talks about how facial recognition is one of the calming factors of the vagus nerve. When you can’t see people smile, when you can’t touch people, that makes you feel unsafe. I love how you explained the vagus nerve and the limbic system. Can you talk a little bit about the role of mast cells and the histamine response to safety?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure. So mast cells are one of our immune cells, in the same family as white blood cells that the immune system uses as a bridge between our immune system and the nervous system. Their role also is protective in that although there are mast cells in every tissue of the body, the largest collection of mast cells is the parts of our body that are most connected to the outside world, our sinuses, our GI tract, pelvic areas, but the parts of our body that are in direct connection to the outside world where the threats are coming in, where the virus is, bacteria, parasites, toxins, whatever the threat happens to be.

So the body stations a larger number of mast cells in those areas to monitor our body for safety. When those mast cells don’t think we’re safe, they get what we call activated. And an activated mast cell is poised to release hundreds of biochemical mediators into the body that sets off the alarm response. It’s literally, danger, danger.

And it does so in such a way that it’s not trying to hurt us just as with the limbic and vagal system, but it’s trying to alert us. And it does so by giving us symptoms which will look a lot like allergy. So for example, if you eat something and your mast cells are activated within seconds of eating it while you’re chewing, sometimes a little bit later, you can suddenly have sweating, hives, itching, severe abdominal cramps, sinus congestion, difficulty with focus, memory, fatigue. These are symptoms that get your attention immediately.

And it’s your body’s way of saying you just put something in your body that I think is a threat, so stop what you’re doing.

Dr. Neil Nathan: It looks like an allergy, but it’s not an allergy. It has to do with how activated the mast cells are at that moment. And that fluctuates with what’s causing mast cell activation.

The things that cause mast cell activation are primarily mold, mold toxicity, Lyme disease, especially Bartonella, EMFs, and a wide variety of other environmental toxins as well. So that the key is we used to think that mast cell activation was rare. It was a rare disorder, never saw it. And then in 2016 with the publication of Larry Afflein’s book Never Bet Against Occam, we suddenly realized, whoa, this is not rare at all. It’s now known that 17% of the population has mast cell activation. We’re not talking rare here.

Now for some people, it’s relatively minor, but for some people, it’s so intense that they’re afraid to eat because every time they eat, they have this horrific reaction. And if you don’t know what that is, it’s mast activation, then you don’t know how to proceed. And this is a fairly new concept in medicine, so a lot of physicians still don’t know anything about it.

And unfortunately some of the people who should know about it, like many of the academic medical centers are stuck on, well, I can’t make a diagnosis until I have a piece of paper from a lab that proves this. And the testing for mast cell activation is notoriously horribly inaccurate. When the mast cells release their hundreds of biochemical mediators, this is fleeting, it’s transient, it’s a fluke. So if you don’t test someone while that’s happening, you’re not going to get a positive test. But once those mediators are released, they will have a domino effect on the body and those reactions can go on for hours or days afterwards.

So the testing is notoriously inaccurate. And unfortunately, I’ve had, I can’t count, hundreds of patients who’ve been seen at major academic centers by experts supposedly in mast cell activation and been told, “No, your tryptase level is normal, so you can’t have mast cell activation.” These people are suffering horribly with it, and this is a diagnosis of clinical input. So if I hear from someone that they react within seconds of eating something, you have mast cell activation, nothing else causes that. So to me, it’s a travesty that untold numbers of people are being told, no, you can’t because you don’t have the right labs. That’s horribly incorrect, that if you think you have it because you react to food that way, yes, you could. Food allergy takes longer to come on.

So there’s a distinct difference between having an allergic reaction to food. Now this looks like an allergic reaction. We’re talking hives, itching, things of that nature, but it comes on so quick that it’s not an allergy. And I think that that helps people understand if you’re having that kind of reaction, find someone who knows what they’re doing to treat it because it’s really treatable. And that’s again a travesty. I’d like to, okay, go ahead.

Jodi: No, no. I was just going to ask about the interplay between the limbic system, the vagus nerve and mast cell activation, how it seems like it’s a perfect storm. They maybe get activated by the same thing like possibly mold or stress or other things, but I’m curious how they combine to kind of make it really hard to untangle.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, there are three systems that are all doing the same thing. They’re all trying to protect the body by dealing with safety.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So whatever gives the body a signal of, I don’t think that’s safe for you to be doing or to be near, or then all three systems will shut you down. So you literally have to reboot all three systems in order to restore normalcy. And here’s the message, my take-home message to everybody out there, every single thing we’re talking about today is treatable. You don’t have to suffer with it. We can figure out what’s going on, and we have the tools now to treat it and treat it effectively.

Jodi: I love that. I really appreciate your offering that message of hope, and I’m going to encourage everyone to read your book and unpack that. Is there anything that you can share about some of the ways that you do kind of treat these three systems simultaneously?

Dr. Neil Nathan: It depends on how sensitive someone has become.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: When they’re super sensitive, I usually start by combining treatments for the limbic and vagal systems first. Many of my patients are so sensitive that they can’t take the materials we want to give them for mast cell activation until they’ve quieted down the limbic and vagal pieces. So I typically start with treating the limbic and vagal system concurrently, then treating the mast cell system, and then going into, okay, well what’s triggering all of this?

This is all fine and you can make a great deal of improvement doing these three things. But it begs the question of what set this off in the first place. What caused it? And again, for most patients, what I want to communicate is mold toxicity is in my experience, the number one medical condition that triggers it. You may not have heard about mole toxicity, but I assure you it’s a very real thing, again, like Lyme disease, which is the second on my list for what causes it.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Both of those conditions are still not household words in the medical community. There are still doctors who don’t believe that we have an epidemic of Lyme disease for example, even though the CDC has recently admitted that there are 675,000 new cases of Lyme disease every year. This is an epidemic. It is estimated that there are 10 million people in this country currently having symptoms of and struggling with mold toxicity. These are not rare. These are really common, and unfortunately, people don’t know about it. Worse, your doctor may not know about it, and they may look at the symptoms that you’re having and go, oh, this has got to be in your head. Nobody could have those kinds of symptoms. Nobody could be experiencing anything. What they’re really saying is, I don’t know what’s causing it. And so if I don’t know that, then it must be psychological.

Jodi: Well, as we know, it’s a little hard to test and people, it requires remediation, which is a lot for people, so that sometimes,-

Dr. Neil Nathan: But we have very simple tests for mold toxicity.

Jodi: Which one do you like to test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Of the labs, and I’ve extensively used all of the labs that are available, the RealTime Lab has been the most consistent and accurate of the tests that are out there. Now, this is a very simple test, and if you are on Medicare for example, that test is free. Medicare covers it but,-

Jodi: It’s a real-time lab. And what’s it specifically called so that people can find it?

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s simply called RealTime Labs.

Jodi: What do you think of the vision test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I’m sorry?

Jodi: That $15 vision test that you can do online?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, the visual contrast test, which you can do online is a very crude test, and it is not specific for anything. So it will be abnormal with mold, with Lyme, or with mercury toxicity, and probably some other conditions we haven’t figured out yet. So it’s a tip-off that you are inflamed to the point that your vision is impaired in ways you might not anticipate. So it has uses just to tell you, yep, you’re inflamed, this is not in your head, but it doesn’t tell you where to go with how to treat it or what’s diagnosing it.

Jodi: Okay, cool. Thank you. So I loved that system. So you start with kind of the limbic and the vagus system simultaneously. I know you’ve worked with thousands of clients. What protocols are the ones that you, kind of that you start with for people?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, in the book that I’ve just written that I’m really excited about, which is called The Sensitive Patient’s Healing Guide, I have 20 guest authors and Annie Hopper wrote one of the chapters on the limbic system, and Ashok Gupta wrote another chapter on the limbic system.

Jodi: Right. They both have great programs.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Right. Both of them have really good programs. Annie Hopper’s program is called DNRS, which stands for DyDr. Neil Nathan: Both of those conditions are still not household words in the medical community. There are still doctors who don’t believe that we have an epidemic of Lyme disease for example, even though the CDC has recently admitted that there are 675,000 new cases of Lyme disease every year. This is an epidemic. It is estimated that there are 10 million people in this country currently having symptoms of and struggling with mold toxicity. These are not rare. These are really common, and unfortunately, people don’t know about it. Worse, your doctor may not know about it, and they may look at the symptoms that you’re having and go, oh, this has got to be in your head. Nobody could have those kinds of symptoms. Nobody could be experiencing anything. What they’re really saying is, I don’t know what’s causing it. And so if I don’t know that, then it must be psychological.

Jodi: Well, as we know, it’s a little hard to test and people, it requires remediation, which is a lot for people, so that sometimes,-

Dr. Neil Nathan: But we have very simple tests for mold toxicity.

Jodi: Which one do you like to test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Of the labs, and I’ve extensively used all of the labs that are available, the RealTime Lab has been the most consistent and accurate of the tests that are out there. Now, this is a very simple test, and if you are on Medicare for example, that test is free. Medicare covers it but,-

Jodi: It’s a real-time lab. And what’s it specifically called so that people can find it?

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s simply called RealTime Labs.

Jodi: What do you think of the vision test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I’m sorry?

Jodi: That $15 vision test that you can do online?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, the visual contrast test, which you can do online is a very crude test, and it is not specific for anything. So it will be abnormal with mold, with Lyme, or with mercury toxicity, and probably some other conditions we haven’t figured out yet. So it’s a tip-off that you are inflamed to the point that your vision is impaired in ways you might not anticipate. So it has uses just to tell you, yep, you’re inflamed, this is not in your head, but it doesn’t tell you where to go with how to treat it or what’s diagnosing it.namic Neural Retraining, and Ashok’s is called the Amygdala Retraining program. And there’s one other that is more recently developed that I like a lot, which is called Primal Trust developed by Cathleen King. Those three systems you can all get online and they’re self-explanatory. Annie, and Ashok, and Cathleen do a great job of explaining what the limbic system is, how important it is to healing, and they then have a specific way of approaching it so that they can literally reboot the limbic system and make it less sensitive. So for people who become sensitive, I’ll toss this out.

The limbic system primarily works on monitoring, regulating, and controlling two main things, emotion and sensitivity. So if you have sensitivity to anything, light, sound, touch, chemicals, food, EMFs, limbic. If you have any emotional shift in your body so that if you weren’t anxious, or depressed, or had OCD, or depersonalization, or derealization, or mood swings, if you weren’t that kind of person and all of a sudden you are now okay, that’s also limbic.

So either or both emotional or sensitivity issues, slam dunk, you have a limbic issue and it really would benefit you to get that treatment. Now, working hand in glove with the limbic system is what we talked about, the vagal nerve system. Now, it also monitors the body for safety by scrutinizing the stimuli in our environment, but it does so with a different spin on it. The vagus nerve controls amongst other things, intestinal motility, so any symptoms that you have in the GI tract, constipation, gas, distention, bloating, and pain, almost always have a vagal component to it.

The vagus nerve is also a key component of what we call the autonomic nervous system, which is the part of your nervous system that controls your autonomic behaviors, heart rate, breathing, appetite, food, and sleep. So many of our patients have what’s called temperature dysregulation where they’re either too hot or too cold and they can’t get their temperature.

Dr. Neil Nathan: That’s from the vagus nerve dysfunction, what we call autonomic nerve dysfunction. So again, other symptoms are a tip-off that the vagus is involved, and most of my patients have symptoms in both of those arenas. So as a smorgasbord of vagal treatments, if you will, there is a wide variety of ways you can work on the vagal system. Relatively new is the introduction into our culture of things that are called vagal nerve stimulators, which are devices that can help to reboot the vagus. Many of the recommendations from the manufacturers of those devices don’t take into account the sensitive patient. So my one caveat about using those devices is if you are a sensitive patient, please do not use it the way it’s directed. For example, one of my favorite devices is called Apollo Neuro.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s a band you can wear on your wrist and you can program it by an app on your phone, and it’s a very nice device, but the company says to use it for five to eight hours a day.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Please don’t do that.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: That would throw almost all of my patients under the bus, so.

Jodi: It throws me under the bus. That’s why I do the oils because you can kind of pick and choose when you use it, and it’s gentle and plant-based. No, I 100% agree with you.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So if you’re going to use that kind of device, start really slow, three to five minutes once a day.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: And then slowly nudge up from there. And that’s true for all of these devices.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So that’s one. I’m a huge fan of osteopathic cranial treatments. They’re fabulous for helping to reboot it. I’m a huge fan of another medical device called Frequency-Specific Microcurrent,-

Jodi: Oh, I love that.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Which has a ton of uses. They have a great program for the vagus nerve. I’m also fond of a device called BrainTap, which uses light and sound to reboot the inflamed parts of your brain. With that one, you’ve got to be a little careful because if the patient has a sensitivity to light and or sound, that might backfire. So that’s only for people who are sensitive, say to chemicals or EMF, but not to light and sound. So you need to be a little bit careful with it.

The bottom line is the more of these things you can do limbic and vagal, the more quickly and effectively you’re going to reboot those things and patients will feel better, almost guaranteed within six to eight weeks of starting those kinds of treatment. So again, here’s the good news. We can treat that, but I want to emphasize many of my patients have responded beautifully to that and they think, oh, okay, I did my retraining here for two months. I’m much better now. I feel so much better. I don’t need it anymore. And the answer is, you’re going to need to keep doing that until you fix what’s triggering this in the first place.

Jodi: Exactly.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Be it mold or Lyme or any of the other dozens of things that can trigger that. So that’s a very brief discussion of the vagus piece. Again, in my new book, I have a chapter that I wrote with Steve Porges, who is the researcher who put our understanding of the vagus nerve on the map. And Steve has a new book, by the way, called Our Polyvagal World, which is an exceptionally readable book about how our nervous systems have become so vagally challenged to really help people understand, yes, this is a global issue that we all need to be aware of.

Jodi: It’s a great book. His son is an amazing writer. He makes it really clean and accessible. I love that. So basically, you regulate the nervous system and the limbic system so that patients are stable enough to then tolerate support for mast cell activation and for unpacking whatever is driving it. So you stabilize them first before, because if you just jumped in with the mast cells or the mold remediation, it might be too, they couldn’t handle it.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, it becomes really clear. A lot of my patients have tried some of the mast cell treatments and are very frustrated that they can’t take those things. They need them, but they can’t take them. The body cannot heal if it doesn’t feel safe. And I can’t emphasize that as being super important to understanding it, that you could do all of the right things, but if the body doesn’t feel safe, it’s basically going, Hey, I’m on survival mode here. I can’t deal with that yet. I’ve got to get out of survival mode first before I can actually utilize what you’re trying to give me.

And I think that for some practitioners don’t fully understand that. They’re going, oh, I’ve measured that your hormones are low. I think you have mitochondrial dysfunction. Your methylation isn’t working well. I’m going to give you those supplements and that’ll reboot you. They will if the body is ready to receive them. But a huge percentage of my patients, when they try that, they backfire and they get worse. So the main reason for that is we haven’t timed our treatment properly in terms of when we’re giving them these materials. So again, even if you understand what a patient needs, what they really need is to get safe first, then those treatments will have an incredibly better effect on the body.

Jodi: What an incredible gift you’re giving to the world. Please, please share the name of your new book, where people can find it, and how they can find out more about you.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Okay. It’s called The Sensitive Patient’s Healing Guide. Okay. It currently exists, and by the time this podcast airs, you can get it on Amazon. It’s available from Amazon either as an e-book or a printed book. And hopefully we’ll have an audiobook out before too long as well, that’s in the works, but it doesn’t exist quite yet.

So I would, if this resonates for you or for your loved ones or people in your family or for friends, my hope in writing this book was to help you understand what’s causing this sensitivity. Then you can understand how to treat it, because we haven’t gotten into mold toxicity, Lyme disease, and there’s a bunch of other issues that will trigger this sensitization. For example, there are structural issues in the body that will trigger it, uniquely jaw discomfort or jaw pain.

Jodi: Oh, so anyone who has TMJ.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Many people with TMJ, but not all.

Jodi: Okay.

Dr. Neil Nathan: The body puts an incredible emphasis on wanting the teeth to occlude properly, that if the teeth don’t occlude properly, more than many other things going on in the body, the body freaks out. And it goes, this is not right. Your teeth aren’t fitting properly. This is not right. You have to deal with this. So that’s another neurological process in which you need to get the teeth to occlude properly in order for them to feel safer so that they can move forward. Although it’s not super common, I have had dozens and dozens of patients who couldn’t move forward, even with limbic or vagal retraining until they got their jaw fixed first. And again, not every dentist knows how to do it, and not every dentist knows how to approach it. And so again, there’s a whole chapter in my book by Tasha Turzo, who’s an osteopathic physician who specializes in working with dentists to get the jaw to fit just so, so that people can then make progress.

So that’s a little piece that some people don’t know about, but other structural issues, a neck that’s not balanced properly, particularly at the base of the skull here, there’s a joint which we call the OA joint, the occipital atlantal joint, where the base of the skull connects to the first cervical vertebrae. If that joint is a little bit, if you don’t mind the pun, out of joint or out of whack, again, the body puts a huge emphasis on that and cannot relax and cannot get comfortable until that gets treated properly. Now, to tie this into mast cell activation, there is a concept, a new concept, and again, there’s a chapter on this in the book in which mast cell activation releases a number of these biochemical mediators into the body, which specifically makes the ligaments looser. So that the structure at the base of the skull becomes distorted. Has a fancy name, which goes by the abbreviation of CCI, cervical cranial instability.

And many, many, many people are now also dealing with what we call Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in which the ligaments get looser. What many people don’t understand is it’s not just genetic, is that mast cell activation can trigger that, triggered by mold toxicity and Lyme again. So that can improve greatly if we understand the trigger and how to work with that. So again, these are structural issues that can be helped by osteopathic manipulation, which I’m a huge fan of. But again, not everyone understands that. Mold toxicity, I’m going to tie some things together. Mold toxicity can trigger an elevated oxalate level in the body because mold makes oxalates. And so you can get oxalate issues in the body, which adds to the inflammation and often needs to be treated in sensitive patients, and if you will, on and on and on. So there’s a whole host of triggers, which we discussed in the book in detail, so you can understand what should I be looking at, and if certain chapters resonate for you as, oh my goodness, I’ve never looked at this before. Maybe I should be looking at that. That’s really the point.

Jodi: Well, no, and you also, I know you and Jill kind of mentor practitioners. Do you want to share for the practitioners that would like to work with you more deeply where they can find out more about that?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure, absolutely. One of the best decisions I ever made in life was I was already leading a mentorship group for, I don’t know, 70 or 80 physicians and after hearing Jill speak a couple of times, I decided, wouldn’t it be wonderful to combine my medical knowledge of how to treat mold and Lyme and these other inflammatory conditions with Jill’s profound knowledge of the naturopathic approach? And so we have teamed up, and for the last four years, we’ve had a mentorship program, which now has almost 200 physicians in it in which we teach what we know about mold toxicity, Lyme disease, other infections, and environmental toxins.

The underlying theme here is the inflammatory processes that lie pretty much behind almost every chronic illness known, we now know that inflammation is the primary driver of almost every chronic condition, and what’s causing inflammation in those conditions. So Jill and I have this mentorship, if you’re all interested, please go to my website, which is very complicated. It’s simply Neilnathanmd.com. And there’s a little video explaining what the mentorship program is, and I certainly welcome every practitioner who has what we call prescriptive authority. So not just MDs and DOs, but also PAs, nurse practitioners are also very welcome to, and naturopathic physicians are very welcome to join our group. We welcome that. So I hope that is of interest to some of you.

Jodi: Well, no, and I’m so excited for your book to come out and for all of the hidden gems so that people who are kind of trying to heal themselves can see their blind spots and practitioners can also see better ways to help people. Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to share?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I think we’ve covered the major points. If I wanted to sum it up it’s if you have any chronic condition, I’m going to go beyond the sensitivity process, if you have any chronic condition, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, you have a child with autism, on the spectrum, any neurological issue, MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, all of these are inflammatory processes, and we have linked them to an inflammatory process triggered by most often mold toxicity and Lyme disease and some others. So if you have that, dig deeper, and learn more. Again, my other book, which you alluded to, which is simply called Toxic, goes over those in more detail. Learn more. Find a practitioner who knows what they’re doing, and if you haven’t been helped, there is help available.

Jodi: I love that. That’s very inspiring. Thank you for everything you do and for your time today. This was so wonderful. I really appreciate you.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Okay, you’re very welcome, Jodi. Take care. Have a lovely day.

Jodi: You too.

Jodi: Hello, I’m Jodi Cohen and I’m so incredibly honored to be joined by Dr. Neil Nathan, who I have admired for years. He is a board-certified doctor who has been treating chronically complex medical illnesses for over 30 years, and he’s also the author of several books, including his bestselling book, Toxic: Heal Your Body from Toxic Mold, Lyme Disease, Multiple Chemical Sensitivities, and Chronic Environmental Illness. And his upcoming, much-anticipated book, The Sensitive Patient’s Healing Guide.

He has noticed in his practice, that many patients who like you, through no fault of their own, have become unusually sensitive to normal stimuli of light, sound, touch, food, chemicals, EMF, and they can no longer really tolerate this stimuli without significant suffering. And I’m so excited that he’s finally talking about what is causing that and what helps. So welcome Dr. Nathan.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Yeah, thank you for having me.

Jodi: It’s such an honor. I’m so curious. You’ve seen this in clinical practice, you’re sharing this in your upcoming book. Why are patients becoming more sensitive? What are you seeing?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I think the bottom line, there’s several answers to that question, but I think the bottom line is that our world is becoming so polluted, not just with chemicals but with EMF, that our bodies have not evolved to the point that we can handle that. And so the patients who are becoming extremely sensitive, I think of as the canary’s in the coalmine, we’re all going to be this way pretty soon if we don’t clean up our planet and really come to our senses as to what we’re doing to the planet and how we’re not honoring it. I mean, there are 350,000 chemicals in our environment now that did not exist 50 years ago. It’s just extraordinary what we’ve done. And we’ve done it by honoring the chemical companies, but not human beings, so that we’ve tested 500 of these for safety.

So we’re putting all of these chemicals in the environment and not checking to see, oh, is that safe for human beings? Because we’re being silly about this. I mean silly to the point of being, forgive my language stupid, and that we have horribly polluted our planet. If we add EMF to that, we just keep thinking that it’s safe and we’ll just bombard people with more and more and more. So when we changed from 4G to 5G, oh, it sounds like we just up the ante by one. We just went from four to five. No we up the ante by 1000 fold of exposure. And with the advent of 5G, we began to see, again, an epidemic of folks who are reacting to what they were getting exposed to. And we combined that by making every man, woman, and child on this planet reliant on their cell phones and computers to function. So kind of like a double whammy.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So I think the underlying issue, Jodi, is the toxicity of the world we live in and how it has affected our nervous systems. And there’s one more piece to it, which is the fear that has been promulgated in our world since Covid, which is still existing, which is the way the media has handled this, which is what they’ve been doing actually for 20 years, which is to provide news to us that is scary so that we’ll tune in and listen to more news. Oh, this is a scary piece of information. I better check this out. And so we’ve been scared for the last 20, 25 years by media. And Covid was a field day on a global scale. We were all terrified that if we didn’t separate from our neighbors by six feet, which is a very silly concept, and wore masks, which we know don’t work very well, then we would be safe. If we gave ourselves all of these vaccines, which we now know don’t work very well.

So all of this was a media-driven scare process, which is still going on. I mean, I still walk around and there are people with masks on driving in their cars with their masks on, and I’m going, what do you think you’re protecting yourself from? So it’s that fear, and we’ll get into it I think when we talk about the limbic and the vagal system here, has pervaded all of us. The isolation that we went through had a profound effect on our whole civilization if you will. So if we take this perfect storm of fear, and toxicity and look at it, I think that’s driving a lot of the sensitivity that we’re seeing.

Jodi: Yeah. No, I love that. And I have heard that called the perfect storm. It’s the combination of the mold, the EMF, the metals, the parasites, and the glyphosate, which kind of causes the gut to be more permeable. There are so many factors that are kind of attacking us, but let’s really dive into the safety response and what happens in the body when we think we’re in danger.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure. Where do we start?

Jodi: You said something to me that I thought was so brilliant. One of the things that I noticed in your book is that you’re really good at kind of connecting the dots of the puzzles. And I think maybe when you started practicing 30 years ago, if you did one thing, if you healed the gut, then everyone got better. But now it’s a combination of things that you need to address.

And you specifically mentioned the vagus nerve, which is kind of the safety gauge, the limbic system, which also plays into your sense of safety, and then mast cells and histamine response. And I’m wondering if you can elaborate on those factors and how they kind of coalesce to cause these really over reactive sensitivities.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure. So what we’re about to talk about, just to put it in context for your audience is how does someone’s nervous system become sensitive? Why does one human being become super sensitive to light, so sensitive that they have to wear sunglasses inside or so sensitive to sound that the slightest excess of sound will make them jump or startle like a newborn baby would with a sound like that, or especially chemicals, exposure to chemicals of any type? And by chemicals, I mean scents, smells, odors.

So we’re talking cigarettes, diesel fuel, perfumes that people wear, et cetera, where an increasing percent of people on the planet can’t be around that or they have a profound immediate reaction to their nervous system that can either shut them down, they can become fatigued, and some people will even have neurological events like what looks like seizures or things that are called dyskinesias, which there’s a twisting writhing movement that they go through.

And it’s not rare. And the rest of the world looks at them of, well, what’s wrong with you? I’m sitting in the same environment as you are and I’m not having any reaction at all. So this must be in your head. And if I don’t communicate anything else, being sensitive is not in someone’s head. It’s in their physical body, it’s in their nervous system, and it’s in the cellular system of the mast cell.

So I want to increasingly, again, talk a little bit about EMF sensitivity, sensitivity to touch, and sensitivity to anything that has increased dramatically in the world that we live in. And so I wrote this book to help everybody understand that there are reasons for this. It’s not in anyone’s head. And so what you’re alluding to is, I call it the trifecta of sensitivity, which is the limbic system, the vagal nerve system, and mast cell activation are the three things that are involved in sensitization.

And keep in mind, none of these are psychological, they are neurological and they are biochemical. So I think what you’ve asked for is to talk about the limbic and vagal and mast cell systems and understand that they’re totally interconnected. They’re not separate things, but the vagal system connects to the limbic system, both connect to the mast cell system. And so when we talk about getting better or healing sensitivity, if you only approach it from one perspective, if you only work on the limbic system, the way I describe it as what happens to a nervous system over time is it becomes increasingly hypervigilant.

And so we have a hypervigilant sensitivity to stimuli. If you work on just the limbic system and you don’t work on the vagal system, you’re going to stay hypervigilant. And the same is true of mast cells. So patients need to understand that they have to work in all three areas to settle their system down to become less reactive.

Jodi: I love that. And I know, I’m curious what you recommend for each component, for mast cells, for vagal nerve training, vagal tone, and then also for the limbic system and how you combine those so that they can do all three at the same time.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, that’s what the whole book’s about, how to understand it and to understand that once you understand what’s causing it, then you can understand how to treat it.

Jodi: Exactly.

Dr. Neil Nathan: But before we go there, I want to communicate how these protective safety systems of our body get out of whack because it happens over time, gradually, slowly in fits and starts. So from the moment that we are born, in fact, in our mother’s uterus, we are subjected to different kinds of stresses. They vary. Some people minimal stress, some people extreme stress.

But as a child, if you have had recurrent ear infections of sore throats and needed antibiotics, if you have required surgery, if you have had an abusive childhood with either sexual, emotional, or physical abuse, if you have had recurrent infections of different types, whatever the stresses have been, our brain in the form of our limbic system and vagal system is looking at these stimuli, these stresses, these events and going, whoa, this is a pretty scary world we live in. I need to protect you better by becoming more alert, more vigilant, more aware of incoming stimuli so I can protect you from the next threat that comes down the pike. So throughout our lives to different degrees, all of us have had to work with this hypervigilant system to deal with the world we know.

Jodi: It just confirms that.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Yeah. And as I mentioned as an example with Covid, that affected all of us to different degree, again, making us hypervigilant. The message to all of us from our nervous system was, uh oh, world’s not safe. There are things out there that can kill you, and I don’t want to die, so I need to protect myself more thoroughly. So within that context, which affects all of us, if you have other new threats, this can trigger the emergence of a more severe reaction. And what I mean by that is within that context, a number of other things that we’re seeing right now, particularly mold toxicity, Lyme disease, other types of infection, Covid is included.

Those things can then be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And you can go from being, I’m kind of coping to, I’m swamped, I’m overwhelmed. I have these stimuli coming in, light, sound, chemicals, EMF, food, different stimuli and I can’t deal with it.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So that’s the overall context of safety that the limbic and vagal systems operate with. The limbic and vagal systems are very simply the parts of your brain that are designed to monitor you for safety. And if they don’t think you’re safe, they’re going to shut you down. When they do that, that’s when we see the emergence of this type of sensitivity, which is not rare.

For example, a study that was done in England a few years ago showed that 1% of the population was so chemically sensitive that they were disabled and couldn’t work. And up to 35% of the English population had enough sensitivity that it affected people’s lives. So we’re not talking, and this is just chemical sensitivity. So,-

Jodi: Well, I would even throw anxiety in there as a symptom, anxiety and social anxiety and overwhelm with people. And I think almost every child at this moment in time has anxiety and that,-

Dr. Neil Nathan: I agree.

Jodi: Yeah.

Dr. Neil Nathan: I mean, I’ve said for years that the curriculum of our schools really needs an overhaul so that every child in this planet needs to have meditation or methods of how to quiet their nervous system so that they can start rewiring themselves from this avalanche of stimuli that we have to deal with so they can start normalizing their body early on and will be much less at risk for having the straw that breaks their camel’s back because they’re going to be safer and their nervous system will be more improved. That’s just me. I just think that that should be an integral part of what every child learns to do on this planet.

Jodi: No, I agree. And for all the parents that are listening, that’s why I would like them to buy your book and to kind of figure out how they can, it seems like the straw that breaks the camel’s back used to happen later in life when people were older. Now it’s happening earlier and earlier because these adverse childhood experiences are hitting them harder and younger.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the kids went through an incredible isolation period during Covid. I mean, it affected everyone.

Jodi: Affected everyone.

Dr. Neil Nathan: You couldn’t emerge unscathed from that event, and it’s not over yet. So I mean, we’re still wrestling with how do we cope with this safely but also have a life?

Jodi: Correct.

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s not healthy for human beings to isolate themselves and shut themselves down from the rest of the world. It’s not a healthy strategy.

Jodi: No. Well, your friend Dr. Stephen Porges talks about how facial recognition is one of the calming factors of the vagus nerve. When you can’t see people smile, when you can’t touch people, that makes you feel unsafe. I love how you explained the vagus nerve and the limbic system. Can you talk a little bit about the role of mast cells and the histamine response to safety?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure. So mast cells are one of our immune cells, in the same family as white blood cells that the immune system uses as a bridge between our immune system and the nervous system. Their role also is protective in that although there are mast cells in every tissue of the body, the largest collection of mast cells is the parts of our body that are most connected to the outside world, our sinuses, our GI tract, pelvic areas, but the parts of our body that are in direct connection to the outside world where the threats are coming in, where the virus is, bacteria, parasites, toxins, whatever the threat happens to be.

So the body stations a larger number of mast cells in those areas to monitor our body for safety. When those mast cells don’t think we’re safe, they get what we call activated. And an activated mast cell is poised to release hundreds of biochemical mediators into the body that sets off the alarm response. It’s literally, danger, danger.

And it does so in such a way that it’s not trying to hurt us just as with the limbic and vagal system, but it’s trying to alert us. And it does so by giving us symptoms which will look a lot like allergy. So for example, if you eat something and your mast cells are activated within seconds of eating it while you’re chewing, sometimes a little bit later, you can suddenly have sweating, hives, itching, severe abdominal cramps, sinus congestion, difficulty with focus, memory, fatigue. These are symptoms that get your attention immediately.

And it’s your body’s way of saying you just put something in your body that I think is a threat, so stop what you’re doing.

Dr. Neil Nathan: It looks like an allergy, but it’s not an allergy. It has to do with how activated the mast cells are at that moment. And that fluctuates with what’s causing mast cell activation.

The things that cause mast cell activation are primarily mold, mold toxicity, Lyme disease, especially Bartonella, EMFs, and a wide variety of other environmental toxins as well. So that the key is we used to think that mast cell activation was rare. It was a rare disorder, never saw it. And then in 2016 with the publication of Larry Afflein’s book Never Bet Against Occam, we suddenly realized, whoa, this is not rare at all. It’s now known that 17% of the population has mast cell activation. We’re not talking rare here.

Now for some people, it’s relatively minor, but for some people, it’s so intense that they’re afraid to eat because every time they eat, they have this horrific reaction. And if you don’t know what that is, it’s mast activation, then you don’t know how to proceed. And this is a fairly new concept in medicine, so a lot of physicians still don’t know anything about it.

And unfortunately some of the people who should know about it, like many of the academic medical centers are stuck on, well, I can’t make a diagnosis until I have a piece of paper from a lab that proves this. And the testing for mast cell activation is notoriously horribly inaccurate. When the mast cells release their hundreds of biochemical mediators, this is fleeting, it’s transient, it’s a fluke. So if you don’t test someone while that’s happening, you’re not going to get a positive test. But once those mediators are released, they will have a domino effect on the body and those reactions can go on for hours or days afterwards.

So the testing is notoriously inaccurate. And unfortunately, I’ve had, I can’t count, hundreds of patients who’ve been seen at major academic centers by experts supposedly in mast cell activation and been told, “No, your tryptase level is normal, so you can’t have mast cell activation.” These people are suffering horribly with it, and this is a diagnosis of clinical input. So if I hear from someone that they react within seconds of eating something, you have mast cell activation, nothing else causes that. So to me, it’s a travesty that untold numbers of people are being told, no, you can’t because you don’t have the right labs. That’s horribly incorrect, that if you think you have it because you react to food that way, yes, you could. Food allergy takes longer to come on.

So there’s a distinct difference between having an allergic reaction to food. Now this looks like an allergic reaction. We’re talking hives, itching, things of that nature, but it comes on so quick that it’s not an allergy. And I think that that helps people understand if you’re having that kind of reaction, find someone who knows what they’re doing to treat it because it’s really treatable. And that’s again a travesty. I’d like to, okay, go ahead.

Jodi: No, no. I was just going to ask about the interplay between the limbic system, the vagus nerve and mast cell activation, how it seems like it’s a perfect storm. They maybe get activated by the same thing like possibly mold or stress or other things, but I’m curious how they combine to kind of make it really hard to untangle.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, there are three systems that are all doing the same thing. They’re all trying to protect the body by dealing with safety.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So whatever gives the body a signal of, I don’t think that’s safe for you to be doing or to be near, or then all three systems will shut you down. So you literally have to reboot all three systems in order to restore normalcy. And here’s the message, my take-home message to everybody out there, every single thing we’re talking about today is treatable. You don’t have to suffer with it. We can figure out what’s going on, and we have the tools now to treat it and treat it effectively.

Jodi: I love that. I really appreciate your offering that message of hope, and I’m going to encourage everyone to read your book and unpack that. Is there anything that you can share about some of the ways that you do kind of treat these three systems simultaneously?

Dr. Neil Nathan: It depends on how sensitive someone has become.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: When they’re super sensitive, I usually start by combining treatments for the limbic and vagal systems first. Many of my patients are so sensitive that they can’t take the materials we want to give them for mast cell activation until they’ve quieted down the limbic and vagal pieces. So I typically start with treating the limbic and vagal system concurrently, then treating the mast cell system, and then going into, okay, well what’s triggering all of this?

This is all fine and you can make a great deal of improvement doing these three things. But it begs the question of what set this off in the first place. What caused it? And again, for most patients, what I want to communicate is mold toxicity is in my experience, the number one medical condition that triggers it. You may not have heard about mole toxicity, but I assure you it’s a very real thing, again, like Lyme disease, which is the second on my list for what causes it.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Both of those conditions are still not household words in the medical community. There are still doctors who don’t believe that we have an epidemic of Lyme disease for example, even though the CDC has recently admitted that there are 675,000 new cases of Lyme disease every year. This is an epidemic. It is estimated that there are 10 million people in this country currently having symptoms of and struggling with mold toxicity. These are not rare. These are really common, and unfortunately, people don’t know about it. Worse, your doctor may not know about it, and they may look at the symptoms that you’re having and go, oh, this has got to be in your head. Nobody could have those kinds of symptoms. Nobody could be experiencing anything. What they’re really saying is, I don’t know what’s causing it. And so if I don’t know that, then it must be psychological.

Jodi: Well, as we know, it’s a little hard to test and people, it requires remediation, which is a lot for people, so that sometimes,-

Dr. Neil Nathan: But we have very simple tests for mold toxicity.

Jodi: Which one do you like to test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Of the labs, and I’ve extensively used all of the labs that are available, the RealTime Lab has been the most consistent and accurate of the tests that are out there. Now, this is a very simple test, and if you are on Medicare for example, that test is free. Medicare covers it but,-

Jodi: It’s a real-time lab. And what’s it specifically called so that people can find it?

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s simply called RealTime Labs.

Jodi: What do you think of the vision test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I’m sorry?

Jodi: That $15 vision test that you can do online?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, the visual contrast test, which you can do online is a very crude test, and it is not specific for anything. So it will be abnormal with mold, with Lyme, or with mercury toxicity, and probably some other conditions we haven’t figured out yet. So it’s a tip-off that you are inflamed to the point that your vision is impaired in ways you might not anticipate. So it has uses just to tell you, yep, you’re inflamed, this is not in your head, but it doesn’t tell you where to go with how to treat it or what’s diagnosing it.

Jodi: Okay, cool. Thank you. So I loved that system. So you start with kind of the limbic and the vagus system simultaneously. I know you’ve worked with thousands of clients. What protocols are the ones that you, kind of that you start with for people?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, in the book that I’ve just written that I’m really excited about, which is called The Sensitive Patient’s Healing Guide, I have 20 guest authors and Annie Hopper wrote one of the chapters on the limbic system, and Ashok Gupta wrote another chapter on the limbic system.

Jodi: Right. They both have great programs.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Right. Both of them have really good programs. Annie Hopper’s program is called DNRS, which stands for DyDr. Neil Nathan: Both of those conditions are still not household words in the medical community. There are still doctors who don’t believe that we have an epidemic of Lyme disease for example, even though the CDC has recently admitted that there are 675,000 new cases of Lyme disease every year. This is an epidemic. It is estimated that there are 10 million people in this country currently having symptoms of and struggling with mold toxicity. These are not rare. These are really common, and unfortunately, people don’t know about it. Worse, your doctor may not know about it, and they may look at the symptoms that you’re having and go, oh, this has got to be in your head. Nobody could have those kinds of symptoms. Nobody could be experiencing anything. What they’re really saying is, I don’t know what’s causing it. And so if I don’t know that, then it must be psychological.

Jodi: Well, as we know, it’s a little hard to test and people, it requires remediation, which is a lot for people, so that sometimes,-

Dr. Neil Nathan: But we have very simple tests for mold toxicity.

Jodi: Which one do you like to test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Of the labs, and I’ve extensively used all of the labs that are available, the RealTime Lab has been the most consistent and accurate of the tests that are out there. Now, this is a very simple test, and if you are on Medicare for example, that test is free. Medicare covers it but,-

Jodi: It’s a real-time lab. And what’s it specifically called so that people can find it?

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s simply called RealTime Labs.

Jodi: What do you think of the vision test?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I’m sorry?

Jodi: That $15 vision test that you can do online?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, the visual contrast test, which you can do online is a very crude test, and it is not specific for anything. So it will be abnormal with mold, with Lyme, or with mercury toxicity, and probably some other conditions we haven’t figured out yet. So it’s a tip-off that you are inflamed to the point that your vision is impaired in ways you might not anticipate. So it has uses just to tell you, yep, you’re inflamed, this is not in your head, but it doesn’t tell you where to go with how to treat it or what’s diagnosing it.namic Neural Retraining, and Ashok’s is called the Amygdala Retraining program. And there’s one other that is more recently developed that I like a lot, which is called Primal Trust developed by Cathleen King. Those three systems you can all get online and they’re self-explanatory. Annie, and Ashok, and Cathleen do a great job of explaining what the limbic system is, how important it is to healing, and they then have a specific way of approaching it so that they can literally reboot the limbic system and make it less sensitive. So for people who become sensitive, I’ll toss this out.

The limbic system primarily works on monitoring, regulating, and controlling two main things, emotion and sensitivity. So if you have sensitivity to anything, light, sound, touch, chemicals, food, EMFs, limbic. If you have any emotional shift in your body so that if you weren’t anxious, or depressed, or had OCD, or depersonalization, or derealization, or mood swings, if you weren’t that kind of person and all of a sudden you are now okay, that’s also limbic.

So either or both emotional or sensitivity issues, slam dunk, you have a limbic issue and it really would benefit you to get that treatment. Now, working hand in glove with the limbic system is what we talked about, the vagal nerve system. Now, it also monitors the body for safety by scrutinizing the stimuli in our environment, but it does so with a different spin on it. The vagus nerve controls amongst other things, intestinal motility, so any symptoms that you have in the GI tract, constipation, gas, distention, bloating, and pain, almost always have a vagal component to it.

The vagus nerve is also a key component of what we call the autonomic nervous system, which is the part of your nervous system that controls your autonomic behaviors, heart rate, breathing, appetite, food, and sleep. So many of our patients have what’s called temperature dysregulation where they’re either too hot or too cold and they can’t get their temperature.

Dr. Neil Nathan: That’s from the vagus nerve dysfunction, what we call autonomic nerve dysfunction. So again, other symptoms are a tip-off that the vagus is involved, and most of my patients have symptoms in both of those arenas. So as a smorgasbord of vagal treatments, if you will, there is a wide variety of ways you can work on the vagal system. Relatively new is the introduction into our culture of things that are called vagal nerve stimulators, which are devices that can help to reboot the vagus. Many of the recommendations from the manufacturers of those devices don’t take into account the sensitive patient. So my one caveat about using those devices is if you are a sensitive patient, please do not use it the way it’s directed. For example, one of my favorite devices is called Apollo Neuro.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: It’s a band you can wear on your wrist and you can program it by an app on your phone, and it’s a very nice device, but the company says to use it for five to eight hours a day.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Please don’t do that.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: That would throw almost all of my patients under the bus, so.

Jodi: It throws me under the bus. That’s why I do the oils because you can kind of pick and choose when you use it, and it’s gentle and plant-based. No, I 100% agree with you.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So if you’re going to use that kind of device, start really slow, three to five minutes once a day.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: And then slowly nudge up from there. And that’s true for all of these devices.

Jodi: Right.

Dr. Neil Nathan: So that’s one. I’m a huge fan of osteopathic cranial treatments. They’re fabulous for helping to reboot it. I’m a huge fan of another medical device called Frequency-Specific Microcurrent,-

Jodi: Oh, I love that.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Which has a ton of uses. They have a great program for the vagus nerve. I’m also fond of a device called BrainTap, which uses light and sound to reboot the inflamed parts of your brain. With that one, you’ve got to be a little careful because if the patient has a sensitivity to light and or sound, that might backfire. So that’s only for people who are sensitive, say to chemicals or EMF, but not to light and sound. So you need to be a little bit careful with it.

The bottom line is the more of these things you can do limbic and vagal, the more quickly and effectively you’re going to reboot those things and patients will feel better, almost guaranteed within six to eight weeks of starting those kinds of treatment. So again, here’s the good news. We can treat that, but I want to emphasize many of my patients have responded beautifully to that and they think, oh, okay, I did my retraining here for two months. I’m much better now. I feel so much better. I don’t need it anymore. And the answer is, you’re going to need to keep doing that until you fix what’s triggering this in the first place.

Jodi: Exactly.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Be it mold or Lyme or any of the other dozens of things that can trigger that. So that’s a very brief discussion of the vagus piece. Again, in my new book, I have a chapter that I wrote with Steve Porges, who is the researcher who put our understanding of the vagus nerve on the map. And Steve has a new book, by the way, called Our Polyvagal World, which is an exceptionally readable book about how our nervous systems have become so vagally challenged to really help people understand, yes, this is a global issue that we all need to be aware of.

Jodi: It’s a great book. His son is an amazing writer. He makes it really clean and accessible. I love that. So basically, you regulate the nervous system and the limbic system so that patients are stable enough to then tolerate support for mast cell activation and for unpacking whatever is driving it. So you stabilize them first before, because if you just jumped in with the mast cells or the mold remediation, it might be too, they couldn’t handle it.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Well, it becomes really clear. A lot of my patients have tried some of the mast cell treatments and are very frustrated that they can’t take those things. They need them, but they can’t take them. The body cannot heal if it doesn’t feel safe. And I can’t emphasize that as being super important to understanding it, that you could do all of the right things, but if the body doesn’t feel safe, it’s basically going, Hey, I’m on survival mode here. I can’t deal with that yet. I’ve got to get out of survival mode first before I can actually utilize what you’re trying to give me.

And I think that for some practitioners don’t fully understand that. They’re going, oh, I’ve measured that your hormones are low. I think you have mitochondrial dysfunction. Your methylation isn’t working well. I’m going to give you those supplements and that’ll reboot you. They will if the body is ready to receive them. But a huge percentage of my patients, when they try that, they backfire and they get worse. So the main reason for that is we haven’t timed our treatment properly in terms of when we’re giving them these materials. So again, even if you understand what a patient needs, what they really need is to get safe first, then those treatments will have an incredibly better effect on the body.

Jodi: What an incredible gift you’re giving to the world. Please, please share the name of your new book, where people can find it, and how they can find out more about you.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Okay. It’s called The Sensitive Patient’s Healing Guide. Okay. It currently exists, and by the time this podcast airs, you can get it on Amazon. It’s available from Amazon either as an e-book or a printed book. And hopefully we’ll have an audiobook out before too long as well, that’s in the works, but it doesn’t exist quite yet.

So I would, if this resonates for you or for your loved ones or people in your family or for friends, my hope in writing this book was to help you understand what’s causing this sensitivity. Then you can understand how to treat it, because we haven’t gotten into mold toxicity, Lyme disease, and there’s a bunch of other issues that will trigger this sensitization. For example, there are structural issues in the body that will trigger it, uniquely jaw discomfort or jaw pain.

Jodi: Oh, so anyone who has TMJ.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Many people with TMJ, but not all.

Jodi: Okay.

Dr. Neil Nathan: The body puts an incredible emphasis on wanting the teeth to occlude properly, that if the teeth don’t occlude properly, more than many other things going on in the body, the body freaks out. And it goes, this is not right. Your teeth aren’t fitting properly. This is not right. You have to deal with this. So that’s another neurological process in which you need to get the teeth to occlude properly in order for them to feel safer so that they can move forward. Although it’s not super common, I have had dozens and dozens of patients who couldn’t move forward, even with limbic or vagal retraining until they got their jaw fixed first. And again, not every dentist knows how to do it, and not every dentist knows how to approach it. And so again, there’s a whole chapter in my book by Tasha Turzo, who’s an osteopathic physician who specializes in working with dentists to get the jaw to fit just so, so that people can then make progress.

So that’s a little piece that some people don’t know about, but other structural issues, a neck that’s not balanced properly, particularly at the base of the skull here, there’s a joint which we call the OA joint, the occipital atlantal joint, where the base of the skull connects to the first cervical vertebrae. If that joint is a little bit, if you don’t mind the pun, out of joint or out of whack, again, the body puts a huge emphasis on that and cannot relax and cannot get comfortable until that gets treated properly. Now, to tie this into mast cell activation, there is a concept, a new concept, and again, there’s a chapter on this in the book in which mast cell activation releases a number of these biochemical mediators into the body, which specifically makes the ligaments looser. So that the structure at the base of the skull becomes distorted. Has a fancy name, which goes by the abbreviation of CCI, cervical cranial instability.

And many, many, many people are now also dealing with what we call Ehlers-Danlos syndrome in which the ligaments get looser. What many people don’t understand is it’s not just genetic, is that mast cell activation can trigger that, triggered by mold toxicity and Lyme again. So that can improve greatly if we understand the trigger and how to work with that. So again, these are structural issues that can be helped by osteopathic manipulation, which I’m a huge fan of. But again, not everyone understands that. Mold toxicity, I’m going to tie some things together. Mold toxicity can trigger an elevated oxalate level in the body because mold makes oxalates. And so you can get oxalate issues in the body, which adds to the inflammation and often needs to be treated in sensitive patients, and if you will, on and on and on. So there’s a whole host of triggers, which we discussed in the book in detail, so you can understand what should I be looking at, and if certain chapters resonate for you as, oh my goodness, I’ve never looked at this before. Maybe I should be looking at that. That’s really the point.

Jodi: Well, no, and you also, I know you and Jill kind of mentor practitioners. Do you want to share for the practitioners that would like to work with you more deeply where they can find out more about that?

Dr. Neil Nathan: Sure, absolutely. One of the best decisions I ever made in life was I was already leading a mentorship group for, I don’t know, 70 or 80 physicians and after hearing Jill speak a couple of times, I decided, wouldn’t it be wonderful to combine my medical knowledge of how to treat mold and Lyme and these other inflammatory conditions with Jill’s profound knowledge of the naturopathic approach? And so we have teamed up, and for the last four years, we’ve had a mentorship program, which now has almost 200 physicians in it in which we teach what we know about mold toxicity, Lyme disease, other infections, and environmental toxins.

The underlying theme here is the inflammatory processes that lie pretty much behind almost every chronic illness known, we now know that inflammation is the primary driver of almost every chronic condition, and what’s causing inflammation in those conditions. So Jill and I have this mentorship, if you’re all interested, please go to my website, which is very complicated. It’s simply Neilnathanmd.com. And there’s a little video explaining what the mentorship program is, and I certainly welcome every practitioner who has what we call prescriptive authority. So not just MDs and DOs, but also PAs, nurse practitioners are also very welcome to, and naturopathic physicians are very welcome to join our group. We welcome that. So I hope that is of interest to some of you.

Jodi: Well, no, and I’m so excited for your book to come out and for all of the hidden gems so that people who are kind of trying to heal themselves can see their blind spots and practitioners can also see better ways to help people. Is there anything I haven’t asked you that you’d like to share?

Dr. Neil Nathan: I think we’ve covered the major points. If I wanted to sum it up it’s if you have any chronic condition, I’m going to go beyond the sensitivity process, if you have any chronic condition, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, you have a child with autism, on the spectrum, any neurological issue, MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, all of these are inflammatory processes, and we have linked them to an inflammatory process triggered by most often mold toxicity and Lyme disease and some others. So if you have that, dig deeper, and learn more. Again, my other book, which you alluded to, which is simply called Toxic, goes over those in more detail. Learn more. Find a practitioner who knows what they’re doing, and if you haven’t been helped, there is help available.

Jodi: I love that. That’s very inspiring. Thank you for everything you do and for your time today. This was so wonderful. I really appreciate you.

Dr. Neil Nathan: Okay, you’re very welcome, Jodi. Take care. Have a lovely day.

Jodi: You too.

Fat is a crucial macronutrient that the body needs to function properly.  It is essential for hormone production, brain function, and the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins like Vitamins A, E, D, and K.

Fat is also the most efficient form of energy, providing 9 calories per gram – more than double the energy provided by carbohydrates and protein..  Historically, fats were the predominant macronutrient.  Fats are critical to the health and function of:

• Blood Sugar Regulation – Helps to regulate blood sugar as fat gives more energy per molecule than sugar.  Fats help slow the entry of sugars into the bloodstream which helps you avoid blood sugar spikes. 
• Cardiovascular Health – Saturated fats are the preferred food for the heart
• Inflammation – Calms Inflammation
• Structure – Fat is a source of energy for many tissues including the muscles, brain, and heart.
• Skin Health – Supports healthy skin and moisture retention
• Endocrine Health – Fats are precursors for hormonal health
• Cell Membranes– Every regenerative process and every longevity process needs fats in the cell membrane where cell communication happens. If you don’t have enough fats or the right fats, the brain can’t communicate from one cell to the next, including communication down the spine to the muscles, and to the organs.
• Bone Health– Saturated fats help the body put calcium in the bones. 
• Liver Function  – Saturated fats protect the liver from alcohol & other poisons.
• Detoxification– Supports the body’s detox mechanisms, including healthy lungs, liver, and kidneys
• Immune System – Enhanced by saturated fats

That said, fats can be challenging to digest, absorb and assimilate.

Inability to Digest and Absorb Fat

Many of us are unable to properly digest and assimilate fats and increasing the amount of fat, even healthy fat, in the diet only makes the problem worse.

A few years ago Vibrant Blue Oils attended a Paleo conference where we offered free health assessments expecting to find a very healthy population of attendees.  Much to my surprise, almost every person we assessed showed signs of poor fat digestion and assimilation.  While they were eating this pristine, nutrient-dense, whole-food paleo or keto diet, much of the fat was not being properly absorbed and assimilated.

When fat assimilation is not properly working the following problems can present:

• Fats and their corresponding fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E, and K are not properly emulsified, digested, or absorbed. This robs of the body of the building blocks it needs to create healthy hormones and cells.
• Undigested fats rancidify creating an additional toxic burden for the body – Undigested or rancidified fats can be especially damaging to the mucosal lining of the small intestines and the damage to mucosal lining will inhibit fat digestion, creating a vicious cycle.
• Poor fat digestion contributes to bile stagnation and toxins, waste and old hormones that were stored in the bile for elimination via the intestines do not exit the body and are therefore reabsorbed further adding to the body’s toxic burden, contributing to hormonal imbalances and gallbladder challenges.

When you are unable to digest fats, it impacts your ability to digest other nutrients, including carbohydrates and proteins. 

Malabsorption of the fatty acids means that fats are not being absorbed into the body but instead linger in the intestines contributing to gut inflammation and feeding pathogens like bacteria, yeast, and fungal overgrowth and that start injuring the inside of the intestines. 

Symptoms of Poor Fat Digestion

• Dry skin and brittle hair
• Hormonal imbalances (fat helps synthesize new hormones and eliminate old hormones)
• Low levels of fat-soluble vitamins like A, D, E, and K despite ample supplementation
• Gas, belching, or bloating after meals
• Mild headaches over the eyes
• Greasy, smelly, light-colored, and/or floating stools.
• Gallbladder pain (right side, under ribs), Pain between the shoulder blades, or Gallstones
• Nausea or diarrhea after eating

Fat Regulates Blood Sugar 

When it comes to blood sugar regulation, fat plays an important role in slowing down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream. This means that when you eat a meal that contains fat, your body will release glucose into the bloodstream more slowly and steadily, preventing spikes in blood sugar levels.

Fat doesn’t break down into glucose during digestion, so it doesn’t directly cause blood sugar levels to rise. In fact, eating a balanced meal or snack that includes some fat can lead to more stable glucose levels. Fat slows down the digestive process resulting in a “delayed” rise in glucose levels as it takes a longer time to digest.  This regulates glucose absorption and helps us to feel full for a longer amount of time.

Research on the “Effect of co-ingestion of fat on the metabolic responses to slowly and rapidly absorbed carbohydrates” found that “Co-ingestion of fat resulted in a significant flattening of the post-prandial glucose curves.”

How You Digest Fat 

Healthy digestion, absorption, and assimilation of fat require that lipid molecules be broken down both chemically and mechanically and absorbed into circulation, and transported around the body.  This digestive process for fat begins in the mouth, with saliva helping to break down lipids.

Mouth: Chewing mechanically breaks food into smaller particles and mixes them with saliva. An enzyme called lingual lipase is produced by cells on the tongue (“lingual” means relating to the tongue) and begins some enzymatic digestion of triglycerides, cleaving individual fatty acids from the glycerol backbone.

Stomach: Cells in the stomach produce another lipase, called gastric lipase (“gastric” means relating to the stomach) that also contributes to enzymatic digestion of triglycerides. Lingual lipase swallowed with food and saliva also remains active in the stomach where the mechanical mixing and churning helps to disperse food particles and fat molecules.  As the stomach contents enter the small intestine, most of the dietary lipids are undigested and clustered in large droplets.

Small intestine: The majority of fat digestion happens once it reaches the small intestine. This is also where the majority of nutrients are absorbed with the help of bile, a yellowish-green fluid that is produced in the liver and stored concentrated, and released from the gallbladder and digestive enzymes released by the pancreas which is delivered to your small intestine through ducts where it all works together to complete the fat breakdown.

Gallbladder:  Stores, concentrates, and releases bile into the first section of the small intestine – known as the duodenum – to help emulsify and digest fat.  Bile salts have both a hydrophobic and a hydrophilic side, so they are attracted to both fats and water. This makes them effective emulsifiers, meaning that they break large fat globules into smaller droplets. Emulsification makes lipids more accessible to digestive enzymes by increasing the surface area for them to act.

Pancreas: The pancreas secretes digestive enzymes, including pancreatic lipases into the small intestine to enzymatically digest fats.  Some of these enzymes, called lipolytic enzymes, further break down the fat and allow you to absorb it.  Lipase works together with bile to help you digest, absorb, and assimilate the fat consumed in your diet. If you don’t have enough lipase, your body will have trouble absorbing fat and the important fat-soluble vitamins (A, D, E, and K)

Intestinal Mucosa:  The small intestine is where most fat digestion takes place, and the lining of the small intestinal mucosa is highly specialized for maximizing digestion and absorption. The lining is highly folded to form microscopic finger-like projections called villi, which increase the surface area to help with absorption.  During the digestive process, fat and cholesterol are packaged into tiny particles to allow them to enter into circulation so that they can be used by cells around the body. Bile helps with this process by clustering around the products of fat digestion to form structures called micelles, which help the fats get close enough to the microvilli of intestinal cells so that they can be absorbed. The products of fat digestion then diffuse across the membrane of the intestinal cells, and bile salts are recycled back to do more work emulsifying fat and forming micelles.

Once inside the intestinal cell, short- and medium-chain fatty acids and glycerol can be directly absorbed into the bloodstream, but larger lipids such as long-chain fatty acids, monoglycerides, fat-soluble vitamins, and cholesterol need help with absorption and transport to the bloodstream. Long-chain fatty acids and monoglycerides reassemble into triglycerides within the intestinal cell, and along with cholesterol and fat-soluble vitamins, are then incorporated into transport vehicles called chylomicrons which contain an outer membrane that makes them water-soluble so that they can be more easily transported through the lymph to the bloodstream.  Chylomicrons from the small intestine travel first into lymph vessels, which then deliver them to the bloodstream.

Lymph: Unlike other nutrients, fat cannot be absorbed directly into the blood from the gut because fat molecules are simply too large to be taken up by the tiny capillaries that line it; it would simply clog them up. Instead, it must be absorbed by another route – the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system absorbs fats from food through lymph vessels in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract. After fat has been digested, fatty acids are passed through the lymph system and then assimilated throughout the body via your bloodstream to be used or stored for energy, cell repair, and growth. Your lymph system also absorbs fatty acids to help fight infection.

Essential Oils to Support Fat Digestion

The following essential oils can be topically applied to help support the following organs of fat digestion and assimilation: 

Parasympathetic®: Your body needs to be in the parasympathetic nervous system “rest and digest” state to promote optimal digestion, absorption and assimilation of fat.  It is in this optimal parasympathetic state that the pancreas releases digestive enzymes and the gall bladder releases bile to emulsify and break down fat. To ensure optimal digestion in the parasympathetic state, you can apply the Vibrant Blue Parasympathetic® blend to the vagal nerve (behind the earlobe on the mastoid bone) before meals to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system “rest and digest” state.

Liver™:  The liver produces bile, a yellowish-green fluid that aids in the emulsification of fats and the digestion and absorption of fat-soluble substances, like vitamins A, D, E, and K.  The liver also stores fat-soluble toxins, including old hormones (like excess estrogen), in the bile for transport out of the body through the digestive elimination process.  This means the liver needs to be functioning optimally to both produce bile and filter and store old hormones.  You can support optimal liver function by applying Vibrant Blue Oils Liver™ over the liver (right side of the body, under the ribs) 2 – 3 times daily.

Gall Bladder™:  Once the liver produces bile, it is stored and concentrated in the gall bladder.  When we eat a meal with fat, the bile should flow freely into the small intestine to break down the fat, so we can absorb it.  Unfortunately, stress, hormones, and excess fat consumption can make the bile thick, viscous, and stagnant which impedes its ability to flow.  To support the optimal flow of bile from the  Gall Bladder, apply Vibrant Blue Oils Gall Bladder™ on the right side of the body under the bra under-wire or along and slightly under the right rib cage, can help ease bile flow for optimal fat assimilation and absorption.

Pancreas™:  The pancreas secretes digestive enzymes into the small intestine. Some of these enzymes, called lipolytic enzymes, further break down the fat and allow us to absorb it.  To support optimal enzyme release for fat digestion, apply 2 – 3 drops of Vibrant Blue Oils Pancreas™ on the fifth rib (2 down from where the bottom of your bra) on the left side of the body.

Intestinal Mucosa™:  The small intestine is where most fat digestion takes place, and the lining of the small intestinal mucosa is highly specialized for maximizing digestion and absorption.  The Intestinal Mucosa blend was designed to gently permeate topically through the skin to regenerate and heal the mucosal lining of the small intestine to increase optimal nutrient absorption.  Intestinal Mucosa™ protects the cells and nourishes “good” bacterial flora which in turn feeds the lining of the small intestine keeping it robust, healthy, and able to support the final steps of digestion, allowing only appropriately digested food particles to be absorbed.  Topically apply 2- 3 drops in a clockwise circle around the belly button.  

Lymph™: The lymphatic system absorbs fats from food through lymph vessels in the lining of the gastrointestinal tract.  Lymph™ is uniquely formulated to increase the circulation of fats and white blood cells within the lymphatic system for optimal delivery of nutrients to cells and removal of waste from the cells.  Topically apply 2- 3 drops in a circular motion around the belly to access the ileum where the Peyer’s patches – or the lymphatic area in the gut reside, right before the ileocecal valve.  Lymph™ blend is designed for liberal usage.

Featured Oils:

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