How Humans Heal

In this episode, Dr. Doni is joined by Cynthia Thurlow. Cynthia Thurlow is a globally recognized expert in nutrition & intermittent fasting, highly sought after speaker, CEO and founder of Everyday Wellness Project. She's been a nurse practitioner for 20+ years, is a 2x TEDx speaker: her 2nd talk on intermittent fasting has been viewed nearly 6 million times. She has been featured on ABC, FOX5, KTLA, CW and in Medium and Entrepreneur. She's also the host of Everyday Wellness podcast, which was listed as "20 Podcasts That Will Help You Grow in 2020"  by Entrepreneur magazine. https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/343590

In this episode we talk about:

- What is intermittent Fasting

- What are the benefits of intermittent fasting

- How to prepare your body for intermittent fasting

- What to look for to know whether you are over-doing it and how to fine tune for your body

- Reasons you shouldn’t intermittent fast

- How having the support of a practitioner is important

Connect with Cynthia:

Website: www.CynthiaThurlow.com

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IG: https://www.instagram.com/cynthia_thurlow_/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/_CynthiaThurlow

FB- https://www.facebook.com/CHTWellness/

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In this episode I'm going to be talking about birth control pills (also known as oral contraceptive pills) and the information that I feel is important for everyone to have, especially those of you who are considering taking the birth control pill or are already taking a birth control pill. This topic is important because a lot of this information is often not shared by the providers who are prescribing these pills. It's really necessary to understand everything before you make any decision about what to take for your health.

One of the things I want to talk about are the risks related to taking the birth control pill, including risk of HPV related cancers (like cervical cancer) and nutrient deficiencies associated with the use of “the pill.” I also want to help you understand how it's possible to feel good and balance your hormones and ovarian function naturally if you have reached a point in your life where you don’t want to take the birth control pill anymore.

It is estimated that more than 10 million women in the United States alone are taking the birth control pill. These are prescription medications, and they are synthetic hormones. When these pills are made, they're made with chemical versions of estrogen and progesterone. You can get a birth control pill that's only a synthetic form of progesterone, but most people take what are called combined formulas that contain synthetic estrogen and synthetic progesterone.

When we make a hormone synthetically it signals to our bodies, but it doesn't signal exactly the same as natural hormones or bioidentical hormones. So, I want to emphasize that when I'm talking about birth control pills, I'm referencing synthetic hormones and the risks associated with those types of hormones versus bioidentical or natural hormones, like naturally produced estrogen and progesterone, or bioidentical estradiol, for example, or estriol, and progesterone formulas that are sometimes used for fertility and perimenopause.

Our bodies recognize bioidentical hormones. They know exactly what they are and they know how to respond to them in a healthy way. When we take a synthetic hormone, it can have a slightly different effect in our bodies and that's why there are side effects and risks associated, especially with longer term use.

If you're taking synthetic hormones on a short-term basis, the risk of health issues is lower and as the length of time increases, the risks increase. Sometimes you may need a birth control pill for a short period of time and that may not be as concerning. It's also known that the risks tend to decrease the longer you are off the birth control pill.

Why Are So Many Women Taking Birth Control Pills?

What I find in my practice is that for most women (I would say definitely greater than 50%), the pill is not just being used for birth control. They're more often prescribed by gynecologists for regulating the menstrual cycle in some way.

Most women, when they go in to see a gynecologist, it’s usually to get help with irregular menstrual cycles or maybe perimenopausal symptoms, PCOS or endometriosis, or perhaps you have PMS symptoms or even PMDD, higher anxiety or depression and fatigue, bloating, severe cramps or heavy bleeding and acne during your period. All of these symptoms can happen because of hormone imbalances related to the menstrual cycle. And often times the first thing a gynecologist or other practitioner will prescribe is a birth control pill.

What the birth control pill does is it takes over for your ovaries. It literally turns off the ovaries, so your ovaries are not making estrogen and progesterone on their own. You are relying solely on the synthetic estrogen or progesterone that you're swallowing in the birth control pill. This is why if you miss a dose, you could have breakthrough bleeding or other symptoms like headaches, nausea, etc. because these hormones are signaling to your body every day.

Birth control pills can regulate the menstrual cycle, decrease bleeding, pain and acne for a lot of women, which can help them keep up with their daily life. At the same time, it’s absolutely false to think that the only option to help with menstrual related symptoms is to use a synthetic hormone pill.

There are a lot of things we could do to help with those symptoms and support your body naturally to address them without necessarily having to use a synthetic hormone pill. Now, if your priority is to prevent pregnancy at this point in life, maybe the birth control pill is a good option, but there are also other options for contraception that don’t require to take a synthetic hormone. I’ll discuss them more later in this episode.

What Are the Risks of Long-Term Use of Birth Control Pills?

Nutrient deficiencies:

Birth control pills can end up depleting our nutrients. This is especially true of some of the B vitamins like B2 or riboflavin, B6, B12 and F...

In today’s episode I get to introduce you to my friend and colleague Dr. Josh Levitt. He is a Naturopathic Doctor who graduated from Bastyr University like me and also holds a degree in physiology from UCLA. He is also the author and creator of several popular books and is a clinical preceptor for the Yale School of Medicine.

Dr. Levitt draws upon the science of both conventional and natural medicine and artfully combines the two into a “best of both worlds” treatment strategy. He employs a unique blend of nutritional therapy, herbal medicine, and physical medicine to treat a wide range of common and complex medical problems.

Today we talk about musculoskeletal health, especially what people experience in terms of joint pain and not only why they're experiencing joint pain, but also the frustrations navigating the medical system related to joint pain and joint issues.

His interest and passion in helping people with their musculoskeletal health, and pain in general, comes from being a surfer and skateboarder as he was growing up in Southern California. Being in casts and braces of various sorts and going through lots of X-rays and lots of broken bones he developed an early interest in orthopedics and musculoskeletal health. Later in life, after going through a very serious skin infection while travelling through Europe, he discovered a new world of natural and herbal remedies and was instantly drawn to the naturopathic health world.

Conventional Medicine vs Naturopathy. Are They Mutually Exclusive?

Like so many things in life, health and medicine exist on a spectrum. Within that spectrum there are different domains, you have nutrition and herbs, and surgery and neurosurgery, medications, laughter, community, love, gratitude, etc. There is a long list of things that qualify as medicine in that context and conventional medicine and naturopathy should not be seen as mutually exclusive. In Naturopathy, the philosophy is to use the lowest amount of force that's necessary in order to promote healing. That is just one way of looking at medicine and what it means to heal. Using the least invasive or the least forced therapies for what a person needs is what Dr. Levitt uses in his approach to treating orthopedic and musculoskeletal health issues.

What Are Some of the Most Common Joint or Muscle Issues?

The most common complaint in primary care offices across the country is low back pain. We can go from there and say low back pain, mid back pain, and neck pain. So, pain in or around the spine is a big one. A common diagnosis is a bulging or herniated disc. It might be causing sciatica, and it might be degenerative disk disease in the neck or back. These kinds of spinal complaints are the things that people might go to an orthopedist for, but also might go to a chiropractor or an acupuncturist or a naturopathic doctor.

Other common causes of joint pain are rotator cuff problems in the shoulder, tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome in the upper extremity, hip pain, knee pain, foot pain, and plantar fasciitis. There are so many different diagnoses in musculoskeletal category, but they all relate to people who have something that hurts and are looking for a way to heal.

What Is the Conventional Medicine Way to Treat Joint and Muscle Pain?

There's a very like predictable pattern of prescriptions that happen for people who are in pain. It starts with over-the-counter pain relievers or anti-inflammatory medications. It goes up from there to injectable forms of those drugs, to steroidal medications and corticosteroids, to some kind of surgical intervention. That's just a very common and predictable pattern we see in conventional medicine.

A lumbar fusion, a microdiscectomy, a laminectomy, an arthroscopic knee surgery, or a full-blown knee or hip replacement. There are hundreds of thousands of surgeries being performed in this country on spines, necks, backs, knees and hips that are outright unnecessary or totally inappropriate, and that's a tragedy.

In naturopathic medicine there are so many options and tools that could prevent the need for medications and even surgery. Why use such a powerful invasive tool when another less powerful, less invasive, less toxic, less forceful intervention would do the trick?

A knee replacement in the appropriate patient and circumstance is a beautiful thing. In fact, it's almost miraculous, but only when done on the right person in the right situation. If you do it on a person who doesn't need that level of intervention, that's almost criminal.

When we look at people who are in their 40s who do not have back pain and take MRIs of their backs, you will find that 40% of them have bulging discs in their lumbar spine. Same with knees with meniscus tears or chronic degenerative meniscus tears in the knees - 40% of people have those and their knees feel great. And then you go up every decade f...

In this episode I'm going to be covering how I guide women to get HPV virus to negative and keep it negative. I feel is extremely important for women around the world to know that it is possible to support your body to clear HPV.

What is HPV?

HPV is the human papilloma virus and it's a very widespread virus. Most all of us will be exposed to it at some point in our lives, and it’s associated with risk of cancer - cervical cancer, vaginal cancer, anal cancer, oral cancer and in men, penile cancer.

More and more women around the world are finding out that they're positive for the HPV virus. I think that the standard medical system is not doing enough to help these women to address this virus and prevent it from causing abnormal cells.

Right now, what's happening around the world is medical practitioners will do a pap smear to test for abnormal cells on the cervix, which is important because this way we can identify abnormal cells hopefully before they turn into cancer. Then, if severely abnormal cells are present, practitioners will remove the abnormal cells or remove the area where the abnormal cells are located.

The issue is that these procedures don’t kill the virus so it can continue to cause abnormal cells over and over again. Many women are going through years of addressing abnormal cells caused by HPV without practitioners being able to help them prevent it.

This is really upsetting to me because for more than 20 years I have been helping women address this virus and get it to negative so it stops causing abnormal cells.

Through many years of practice, I have been able to identify a protocol based on what I find to be effective at successfully helping women eliminate the virus and be free of the risk of cancer caused by HPV.

You Need a Strategic Plan to Get Rid of HPV

What I find helps is to make a very clear and strategic plan. A plan that can guide women out of the state of stress that is caused by HPV and into a heroine’s journey of healing and supporting their bodies to protect them from the virus.

We know that the human body can fend off HPV. This has been shown and proven. So, what I find is helpful is to start with the question: why is it that for some women their body is not fending off the virus? And when we ask that question, we start to uncover susceptibilities. These susceptibilities are leaving women vulnerable and if we don't address them, the virus can remain positive for years.

Studies show that having a diagnosis of HPV increases the level of stress for women. This is because there's so much misinformation and lack of guidance around this virus. Women are then stuck in a state of fear and stress, and that stress actually ends up increasing the risk of cancer.

What we need to do is understand how stress impacts us each as individuals so that we can then reverse those effects.

For me, the best way to identify susceptibilities is to think about it in terms of how stress, trauma, and potentially abuse in a person's lifetime has then had an impact on their mind and body, which is then leaving them vulnerable because of the imbalances caused by stress.

If we can identify those imbalances, nutrient deficiencies, and other effects of stress, and address them, we can rebalance and give the body what it needs to heal. Then the body can fend off HPV. I've seen this in my patients time and time again.

What Are the Common Susceptibilities to HPV and How Stress and Trauma Play a Role

Let's start with stress. When we're exposed to stress and trauma (even from our childhood and not just psycho emotional stress, but also physical stress, toxins, infections, injuries, etc.) we are exposed to a whole cascade of reactions in our bodies.

We do have a healthy stress response system that helps protect us from stress, but the issue is that often we're exposed to ongoing stress and so our stress response system never gets a break. We are living in a constant state of stress or what I call stress mode. We're going from one thing on our To Do List to the next. We have work, we have family responsibilities, we have financial responsibilities, we go from waking up in the morning to going to bed at night and we hardly have a chance to do any kind of stress recovery.

What happens in that situation is it disrupts our stress hormones (our stress hormones get stuck either too high or too low) cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones are made by the adrenal glands and what happens is our adrenal glands go into a state of dysfunction which has a negative influence on our bodies.

If cortisol or adrenaline are either too high or too low, your body is experiencing it as if you're still in that stressful situation because the hormones are reflecting a stress response. So, in order to heal we need to get the cortisol and adrenaline back to optimal and effectively erase all traces of the i...

In this episode, I want to help you be prepared to fend off viruses so you can get back to doing what you love faster. This includes cold viruses, flu viruses, COVID, and other viruses causing issues like sinusitis, laryngitis, bronchitis—any inflammatory issue in the upper respiratory tract or lungs.

Especially now, during cold and flu season, these are the things I make sure I have on hand when traveling or at home. I want to prevent catching a virus, but also help my body fight it off quickly if I do get sick. Here are several reasons why:

First, I want to recover faster to resume my usual daily activities. When you feel congested, have a headache, sore throat and are tired, it’s hard to do your normal routine even from home. I want to recover faster to spend time with loved ones. When sick, I can’t be around my granddaughter or go to dance class. I want to get better to do what I love.

Also, I want to try to prevent needing antibiotics or steroids if possible. Antibiotics disrupt gut bacteria, causing leaky gut and susceptibility to other health issues. It’s better to avoid them unless the infection is bacterial. Steroids like prednisone disrupt blood sugar, metabolism, immunity and adrenal function. If necessary, we need them, but better to avoid side effects using natural anti-inflammatories to heal faster.

My third goal is to prevent the next infection. Catching one virus makes you prone to more. Patients tell me they get infection after infection spending winter sick. I want you to recover fully the first time to avoid getting sick again. This includes what to do after to prevent the next infection.

So, our main goals are:

· Recover faster to resume daily activities and time with loved ones

· Avoid antibiotics and steroids if possible

· Prevent the next infection

Recognizing the First Signs of Viral Illness

It’s important to pick up on your own body's typical first symptoms that a viral illness is starting to take hold. Common early symptoms are sore or scratchy throat, sneezing, congestion, feeling feverish, and fatigue.

When these symptoms first appear, it's a sign your immune system is ramping up and fighting off an infection. The earlier you take notice and start to support your body, the milder the illness will be. Delaying just a few days allows the virus to proliferate and prolongs recovery time.

Some people may not show obvious early symptoms however. If your immune system is sluggish, the virus can multiply for days before you feel sick. In this case you can take immune-enhancing supplements preventively when you know you have had viral exposures. This compensates for a slower immune response.

How to Take Action at the First Sign of Illness

Pay attention to symptoms—your body’s first signals. Think back to when you last got sick—you likely had less sleep, more stress, sugar and alcohol. Immunity decreases, infections increase.

We tend to go into denial, wishing we won’t get sick despite a sore throat and congestion. It’s better if we notice the symptoms quickly so we can act fast. Take action at the first inkling of illness, even if exposed to someone sick. Delaying worsens and lengthens it.

When sick, immediately prioritize how to get more rest. At the first sign, cancel plans saying you caught a virus and need to heal. Then care for yourself using these steps to recover faster.

Get some sun for vitamin D, even 10 minutes helps. Sauna with red light therapy is great. Light signals aid immunity. Have remedies on hand versus ordering when sick. Start immediately at first signs. Quick action is key to shorten recovery time. Contact my office if you need help with dosing.

Choose healthy foods—chicken soup, bone broth, chicken, turkey for protein. Salads, veggies, fruits contain antioxidants and vitamins. Avoid dairy and gluten which are inflammatory. Consider pre-made organic soups if you don’t feel well enough to cook. Protein shakes work well—pea or bone broth protein.

Eat small meals every 3-4 hours, even if appetite decreases. Stay hydrated.

Avoid sugar and alcohol which decrease immunity. Get outside for some sun if possible, Sleep more because your immune system works while you rest. Cancel plans, focus on healing. Then get back to a normal routine faster and avoid spreading your illness.

Understanding Viral Symptoms and Fever

When your immune system creates congestion, it’s in an effort to get rid of the virus. Sneezing and coughing is also to move the fluid and virus out. Sore throat is inflammation, which is your immune system fighting the infection.

Fevers help— viruses can’t survive high heat. If you feel feverish or have a 99-100 degree fever, that’s good. Rest and allow yourself to be hot to help your immune system. Take a hot shower or bath and sleep to heal.

Stay hydrated to prevent high fevers. Drink wate...