This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

Three horses stand with me in a paddock in rural Wiltshire. One is dappled grey, muscular and beautiful. There is a little Shetland pony with a thick coat that reminds me of the woollen fur of a love-worn teddy and there is a third horse, dark chestnut, with a rough coat. Most of the time, he is preoccupied with eating – his beautiful long neck, like a dragon from a storybook, bent to the ground. The only sound is the constant ripping of grass by teeth. I have never been a rider, and have found horses intimidating in the past – but I’m curious to find out about their therapeutic value, having read about how it’s been used to treat everything from PTSD in war veterans to childhood trauma and suffering in all its forms: depression, anxiety and relationship problems.

In the field with me are Nina Thomson, who runs Track Clinic, an equine-assisted therapy centre, and her partner for the day, an integrative psychotherapist named Paula. ‘Equine-assisted therapy is more widely used in the US than here,’ says Thomson. ‘But interest is growing in the UK. Therapists and clients who are unfamiliar with this way of working are often sceptical at first but, once they try it, they are surprised and inspired by the insights it can generate.’ Thomson puts this down, at least in part, to the way that horses can sense our intentions and inner states.

‘They are highly responsive, sensitive creatures who tune into human beings. Research shows they have the ability to synchronise their heart rate with ours, even from a few feet away.’ She explains that equine-assisted therapy needs to happen in a setting with ideally more than two horses: ‘Horses are herd animals and, in the herd setting, they respond to human participants with the same “palate” of emotional and physical responses they use to express themselves. This reaction, and the human client’s perception of it, reveals a lot about the psyche of the client.’

In the three years since she set up her clinic, Thomson has been moved and surprised by the unusual responses of her horses to a range of clients with a spectrum of psychological profiles.

‘I have seen my therapy horses respond to people in ways that I’ve never seen horses respond before,’ says Thomson. ‘I’ve seen them lie down in a circle around a client with a terminal disease, run alongside a client who needed to feel connected and empowered, nudge a client from one side of the paddock to the other as a way of bringing attention to their boundaries and personal space, stand stock-still next to a fostered child with a head wrapped around their middle so they could feel a sense of stability. Their reaction is always purely instinctive and seems, without fail, to generate a reaction from the client that is meaningful.’

At the start of a session there is a gentle invitation to spend some time with the horses with no agenda to achieve anything in particular. ‘We often find that the first few minutes of a session are very poignant, revealing the dynamic at play and highlighting the blocks that need shifting,’ says Thomson.

She puts me in touch with a client of hers who illustrates the point. Jo was struggling with a combination of challenges in her personal life when she came for her first session. ‘When I got close to the horses, I had an immediate urge to sit down in front of the biggest horse with my back to him. I’m experienced with horses and everything told me this was a risky thing to do, but I just needed to do it. I asked the therapists if it was OK and they reassured me that they would stop anything they felt was unsafe, telling me I should trust my instinct. No sooner had I sat down, when I felt a warm, heavy muzzle resting on the top of my head. Tears started to flow and I stayed in this position – as did the horse, despite other horses moving around him – until the session ended. I left with a profound sense of self-trust during a time when I felt vulnerable to the core.’

This sense of deep and simple self-realisation seems to be a common theme. ‘Lots of people find that when they get stuck in conventional therapy, a few sessions of equine-assisted therapy can get things moving,’ says horse-led therapist, coach and author Pam Billinge, who offers horse-led interventions and retreats in the UK and France. ‘There are many scientific reasons why horses are good at helping us learn about ourselves: they are prey animals, so are finely tuned to pick up on the most subtle of emotional and energetic signals. When we learn with horses, we enter into a unique, vibrant and dynamic relationship with them.

They help us connect with our creative emotional brain (the right brain), instead of relying on our rational left brain, which is where our stories, anxieties and negative thinking lie. They help us to be fully present in our body and it is this felt sense of our emotional experience in the moment that can be transformational.

When we learn to honour and communicate with horses, it helps us reframe our perception of ourself and others, moving beyond blame and guilt.

Horses also get straight to the point, says Billinge. ‘They have clear boundaries and say what needs to be said, when it needs saying. This honesty helps us reach our own truth very quickly. Horses enable us to access the full range of our emotional experience and connect us with a sense of our true self – in a peaceful, joyful and safe way. They are non-judgmental.’

In the field, I can see what she means. Horses are living metaphor. Thomson has advised me to approach the session with a few questions and thoughts in mind. I’m feeling stuck and fed up with my anxious over-thinking, so I choose to focus on that.

To me, the small horse is myself (I have always had a private notion of myself as a Shetland pony trudging along, whatever the weather). The grey horse approaches me a few times, but I’m convinced it is because he thinks I have food for him, and that he’ll be disappointed when I don’t. I also think he’s more drawn to the other people in the field (especially my friend, Helen, who is visiting with me). Every time the grey approaches, he puts his nose to my heart. At the end of the session, the dark horse stops eating and comes up behind me, wrapping me in his body in what feels like a protective hug.

I have a sense that the grey horse is communicating with me by cutting through the automatic negative thinking that tells me he only wants to be friendly in exchange for food. His nose is pressed onto my chest and he seems to be saying: ‘Here you are, this is what is real. I feel you. You know it.’ It feels like a powerful communication and, driving home afterwards, I’m emotional. It reminds me to zone out the anxious thinking and to focus on what I feel at an intuitive level.

‘You can’t hide what is going on from horses, the truth comes out,’ says Anna, a mother of two from the Cotswolds who tried equine-assisted therapy with her children after a bereavement. It’s a thought that reminds me of Virginia Woolf’s statement: ‘Blame it, or praise it, there is no denying the wild horse in us.’

At a time when the wildness within us all is under constant attack from the ‘civilising’ forces of technology, it seems more imperative than ever to do what we can to open our ears and hearts to it.

The Science

Much has been written on the use of equine-assisted psychotherapy in addiction recovery and in the therapy of children with ASD and ADHD. A newly published study in the US, which looked at the impact of equine-assisted therapy on 25 children with ADHD, ADD and autism, found that a year on, children saw improvements in motor skills, behaviour, academic performance and social and communication skills. Similar studies show that equine-assisted psychotherapy reduced the violent behaviour of psychiatric inpatients and improved the psychological functioning of adolescents who had suffered sexual abuse.

Next Steps

WATCH: The Ted talk ‘Wisdom of the herd’ with Ruud Knaapen, a Dutch equine-assisted coach, is a moving account of his professional and personal experiences.

LISTEN: The Boy, The Mole, The Fox And The Horse by Charlie Mackesy, resounds with the depth of feeling and healing horses offer. Listen on vinyl, available from charliemackesy.com.

READ: The Spell Of The Horse: Stories Of Healing And Personal Transformation With Nature’s Finest Teachers by Pam Billinge (Blackbird, £9.99).

Words: Zoe McDonald

Photograph: Getty Images

This article was originally published by psychologies.co.uk Read the original article here.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

Any type of psychological injury can cause many problems for people across all areas of your life. The end of a romantic relationship or a professional dismissal can lead to isolation. Also our objectives (career reorientation, abandonment of planned projects within the couple, etc.) can change. So what can you do about it? It is known that any type of injury psychologists can assist you greatly.

At The Psychic Level

The end of a romantic relationship calls into question the couple’s temporal “planning” and puts an end to an imagined future overnight. You may feel lost or as if you need to put your time immediately into another relationship. The same goes for a professional career. A dismissal or a reorientation puts into perspective the time to invest in a new training or the search for a new job, which can also be terribly destabilizing.

How Do You Get Over An Emotional Injury?

Here are 3 tips for coping with an emotional injury period as well as possible, which in my opinion can apply to both physical and emotional injury:

1. Make an experience heard – Make the anguish and sadness less burdensome by verbalizing them. Avoid isolation and maintain a strong social bond and enjoy talking about it as much as possible with the people you trust around you.
2. Acceptance – Accepting your situation by calmly analyzing it and looking for the causes of this injury. What could I do better next time? What behaviors led my partner to leave me / my boss to fire me? What can I learn from this experience?
3. Prepare for recovery without urgency – It is important not to consider this time as “wasted” time, but to use it to invest your energy positively in other areas of your life. If your relationship or your job left you with less time to see your friends, enjoy seeing them more now. Take advantage of your free time to discover new activities, learn new things and work on new skills!

The main thing is therefore to use a “negative” experience to get as much positive as possible. Learn from mistakes and defeats, accept the “hard knocks” of life and take advantage of them. This will help you to strengthen your social ties and reinvest your knowledge.  If you repress your injury, that is to say wanting to avoid it, to flee from it, you will set up an opposite behavior by trying to be noticed by others, to take up a lot of space. If you sublimate your wound, you turn it into a strength rather than a weakness. It is therefore essential to be aware of them and to either sublimate them or heal them when they push us to inappropriate attitudes or actions, because even if these reactions look like automatisms, your consciousness feels pain. Awareness also allows us to accept that we all make mistakes. The therapeutic approach through therapy and cognitive behaviour techniques, you can certainly heal your wounds and dig deeper into why you’re feeling this way.

*collaborative post

This article was originally published by artofhealthyliving.com. Read the original article here.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

This podcast is sponsored by Joovv red light therapy. I’ve been a fan of red light therapy since researching it years ago, and have been really grateful for my red light devices the last couple of years as I get older and want to be proactive about keeping my skin looking young! With stress and travel, I felt my skin getting less smooth and elastic than it used to be, so I upped my red light use to help my skin feel its best! I also notice the benefits for recovery and sleep as I’ve gotten into more intense workouts. Light is such a vital part of the cellular energy equation in the body and red light therapy is an easy way to get this vital piece. Since many of us spend so much time indoors, we often don’t get enough light. Spending some time outdoors each morning and using red light at night are my go-to’s for making sure my body’s light exposure is optimized. Learn more and see the light I use at joovv.com/wellnessmama. And they’ve built in an exclusive Wellness Mama discount at above link!

This episode is sponsored by Levels Continuous Glucose Monitors. I have been experimenting with this continuous glucose monitoring system for the past few months, and I’ve learned so much personalized data about my body’s own response to different foods, even to workouts, to sauna, and to when I don’t get enough sleep. I’ve been using Levels, and this has made a significant difference in the way I track my glucose data, and especially as it relates to diet and fitness. Levels is cool, because in addition to providing you with the continuous glucose monitor sensors, their app interprets your data, scores your individual meal, and allows you to run experiments across different inputs like diet, exercise, or even fasting protocols.
They’re backed by a world-class team, including Stanford-trained MD, top engineers from SpaceX and Google, and a research team that includes legends in the space like Dr. Dominic D’Agostino and Dr. David Perlmutter, both who have been guests on this podcast before. Health is so personalized, and this has given me a way to know the best foods for my own body, and it’s helping me get enough protein and carbs while still maintaining weight loss. Levels is currently running a closed beta program with a waitlist of 100,000 people, but, as a listener, you can skip that line and join Levels today by going to levels.link/wellnessmama.

This podcast is sponsored by Joovv red light therapy. I’ve been a fan of red light therapy since researching it years ago, and have been really grateful for my red light devices the last couple of years as I get older and want to be proactive about keeping my skin looking young! With stress and travel, I felt my skin getting less smooth and elastic than it used to be, so I upped my red light use to help my skin feel its best! I also notice the benefits for recovery and sleep as I’ve gotten into more intense workouts. Light is such a vital part of the cellular energy equation in the body and red light therapy is an easy way to get this vital piece. Since many of us spend so much time indoors, we often don’t get enough light. Spending some time outdoors each morning and using red light at night are my go-to’s for making sure my body’s light exposure is optimized. Learn more and see the light I use at joovv.com/wellnessmama. And they’ve built in an exclusive Wellness Mama discount at above link!

Katie: Hello and welcome to the “Wellness Mama” podcast. I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com. That’s Wellnesse with an E on the end. And this podcast goes deep on things like pain and trauma and the inner work we do for health and healing, taking a holistic approach. And I’m here with Aleks Rybchinskiy, who is the co-founder of Primal Fusion Health. And they specialize in wellness education and primal integration, and especially how all of the areas of life, physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual, all interact for health. And he’s a master C.H.E.K. practitioner and neuro-semantic therapist, with over 15 years of clinical experience. He’s worked with celebrities, pro-athletes, and people in all walks of life. And he guides his students to live in harmony with themselves and with others addressing all of those areas at once.

In this episode, we talk about his own experience of actually medically dying and what perspective he gained from that. We go deep on the mind-body connection, how this relates to things like pain and movement, and talk about something I mentioned before, the book, “The Body Keeps the Score,” about how trauma and pain can semantically store in the body, and so much more. Definitely, a wide-ranging episode, and there will be a round two with him that goes into some of the deeper stuff we didn’t even have time to touch on today. But without further ado, let’s join Aleks. Aleks, welcome. Thanks for being here.

Aleks: Thanks for having me.

Katie: I have a feeling we’re gonna go in a lot of directions today. But to start, I have a note in my Google Doc that you died when you were three in a hospital in Ukraine. And I would love to hear a little bit more of that story.

Aleks: Well, Ukraine is all socialized. And so you know, that’s you know, a fun benefit of your parents being able to you know, take time off to take care of their kid. So it turns out, I got laryngitis and that laryngitis spiraled into my lymph nodes being extremely swollen. Then they took me to the hospital. And I have no recollection of this. Up until I did a lot of inner work and started seeing glimpses and snapshots of moments of that, and also combined with…so my parents won’t tell me the story. So Sara actually prised information out of them in casual conversation. And I found out through her telling me more information.

So I was in the hospital and they gave me sleeping pills. And when my mom asked the doctors why they gave me sleeping pills the answer they gave her was, “We wanted to let you get some sleep.” And my mom was like, “I’m not here to sleep. I’m here to make sure my kid is okay.” And so a couple hours later, they found me completely blue and they had to take me to the ER. And actually, the story would have been left there if my grandmother didn’t work at the hospital, because in Ukraine, things are a little bit different.

How it works in Ukraine is once you go into the ER, the parents get sent home. So it’s not like people’s experience of the ERs here where, you know, they’re able to stay in the waiting room, wait with their kid to make sure everything is okay. No, this is like, “Hey, we’ll call you back when you get home.” So the moment they got me back, what ends up happening is they find me with a trachea and I talk like a robot. And I can only imagine what went through my parents’ minds.

So while I was in the ER, no one really knew what happened until after my parents were curious why I came back with trachea, why it escalated to the way it escalated. And so my grandma went and started…who actually passed away in November. And so she started digging and found out they gave me sleeping pills, they had to trach me, they had to give me adrenalin to the heart because I flatlined for several minutes.

And yeah, my parents would never have known because that’s how the system is over there. And if it wasn’t for my grandmother being nosy and wanting to really find out reading the paperwork. And so yeah, that’s how the story has been written so far. And I almost drowned when I was one so that’s a whole other story. I almost drowned in an ocean on vacation so that was fun.

Katie: Wow. And even though it sounds like those things are maybe pre, like logical memory, I know that they can be like a very much an emotional impact from experiences like that. Do you feel like that shaped your perspective later on, especially now that you’re unpacking some of those things as an adult?

Aleks: One hundred percent. I’ve wondered why my perspective has been different than most people’s. I’ve gone through a lot of I don’t even wanna call them mental health issues because I feel like that’s like a big buzzword that gets leaned on a lot. But I went through a lot of struggles mentally to grasp why I feel different when I communicate with other people about their experience.

And so dying gives you a whole different level of being on this planet where every breath you take is amazing. You know, people get up in the morning and they arise and they go, “Oh, it’s Monday.” I’m like, “I’m glad to be alive,” you know. From knowing the story I’m like, I should have died back then or you know, but tides turned to my direction. And I’m like, every time I’m breathing, everything in my body is happy. And so even during the hard times, I know that too shall pass and then I keep moving through because I remember…actually, an interesting thing that I’ll share is dying is very peaceful.

Dying is one of the most pleasant experiences that you will ever go through. So when people are afraid of dying, that actually act of disconnecting from your psyche and your body and being everywhere and nowhere at the same time and feeling the presence of everything is overwhelming and it’s so beautiful. So now I’m patient. I’m like “Oh, there’s always time to die.”

So that’s been my biggest takeaways how interesting life is. Knowing that it could have gone in any direction, but I’m here now. And yeah, I think that’s how it shaped it. And bringing back a lot of the things from the other side I would say where my brain tends to be tuned differently.

Katie: I share a little bit of that experience in the birth of my third child. I hemorrhaged and he was born via emergency C-section. And after he left the room, I like flatlined for a minute and had that kind of indescribable experience you mentioned of just like being aware that I wasn’t in my body at that point, and the kind of that…and I actually now have the words memento mori on my wrist, which means remember that you will die.

And there’s actually some interesting data about how, you know, we are afraid of death like you mentioned, but actually thinking that and keeping that in our awareness tends to actually bring happiness as well. It’s kind of a contradiction there. But thank you for sharing that story. That’s a beautiful perspective.

And I feel like from there to jump into some other topics that won’t be quite as deep, at least to start with. You come with a wide variety of expertise. In the researching for this podcast, there are so many topics that you can speak to. And I’d love to actually start with the idea of biomechanics. Because a recurring theme on this podcast in the last couple of years has been very much the mind-body connection.

And I ended up processing a lot of trauma by using somatic therapies and reprocessing through my body things that I thought were just emotional. And so that’s something I’ve heard from a lot of other people that they’re kind of in that similar place and trying to understand. And I know this is also an area that you do have quite a bit of expertise. So to start broad, can you kind of walk us through…I have a quote from you in my notes about “When you unkink the hose, the water flows.” But walk us through the idea of biomechanics and we’ll use that as a jumping-in point.

Aleks: So the whole body osteopaths…and I’m pretty sure it’s osteopath, so I’m gonna stick to that for now until someone corrects me on it. But there are certain ranges of motion that the body functions better in and in neutral. And when I say neutral, I mean, not a flatline. So there’s 15-degree curvatures that happen through the body that come from the base of your skull all the way to the coccyx in your tailbone, as they call it. So there’s 15-degree curvatures happening at all times. And that should be maintained when we are in our resting position or standing position.

And because the foramen where the holes where our nerves come out of and our arteries and veins come out of, that’s the optimal opening for them to function. So that way, when you move from neutral to the position, let’s say it’s picking up your child or putting something on a shelf, or it’s moving the couch, you’re not staying there for a long time. So the same analogy is we’re not sitting behind a desk at all times. That’s why ergonomics are extremely important to restore our biomechanics, so that way everything flows correctly.

And a lot of times people are trying to fight this idea of time, they’re running out of time. And so they start moving improperly and then their body develops impingements, nerve pain, musculoskeletal pain. And they go try to get those treated, but no one ever addresses that their curvatures need to be addressed. Their pelvis needs to be in the proper alignment, their neck, and even their cranium, everything has a little hole that it passes through.

And so if those things are squeezed, like for example, I like to use the example of the vagus nerve. A lot of people have studied it, a lot of people know about it, and how it controls the digestion. Well, the vagus nerve is part of your cranial nerve. Your stomach tells your brain what’s happening. Most of the time…everything outside of the cranial nerve a lot of people may have experienced this where they put their hand on a stove, and then they lift their hand, and then the brain goes ow, hot. But it’s not the simultaneous action.

So that’s because there’s relays that go okay, well, before we tell him it’s hot, we need to make sure that his hand leaves the stove so we don’t burn ourselves. But the cranial nerves go directly into your brain and the vagus nerve being…I can’t remember if it’s the eighth or the 10th one goes…I think it’s the eighth goes through your atlas which is your C1 vertebrae, which is your very top spinal segment that your skull sits on.

And if your atlas is rotated and misaligned, what ends up happening is it impinges the way the current goes to the organs that it controls. Because your vagus nerve controls your digestive system, amongst other things. And a couple of other quirky things like your gag and your burp reflex and can’t remember what other like choking reflexes.

And so if you have a misaligned atlas which is your C1 vertebrae where your skull sits on, even if you’re organic food, you’re detoxing, you’re drinking enough water, you’re doing all of the things properly, taking the right supplements, let’s say, you’re not getting enough current to start those systems. Like the same way as if you don’t have enough current in your battery power in your battery to turn that start over, turn your engine over, your car’s not gonna run because there’s not enough current to start that car over.

And it’s the same way. A lot of people suffer with digestive issues, and different nerve pains, and all kinds of unexplainable things because of the structure. The bones are very unforgiving. And your bones will literally lay on your nerves, veins, arteries with no remorse. Because they’re inanimate, everything else makes it move, your brain makes your muscles move and pulls on your musculoskeletal structure.

So if you unkink that, you’re gonna notice that your body is delivering nutrients, oxygen, and it’s circulating at a rate that it’s actually allowing itself to repair versus staying stuck and building up lactic acid, and building up toxicity. And building up…almost like going to vacation, and then coming back and now you have twice as much paperwork because you didn’t get it done before you left.

And then people become confused as to why their bodies aren’t functioning properly. Well, it’s they’re getting backed up. And because they’re inside, we can’t really see it versus like if you’re in a house that someone’s hoarding, you can clearly see all the junk in the room. But it translates into things like your hands are going numb, or your skin is not the way you want it, or your tummy is bloating, and your back starts hurting and you can’t quite control certain muscles and your body will lock up. So it shows up that way if you keep it stuck for a very long time.

Katie: That’s so fascinating. And it makes sense in light of that. And I love the idea of the car starting and not having the energy to turn over. What is the process like to begin to unpack some of that? Because I feel like often, especially the conventional models of care, things are addressed sort of in isolation. And this seems like very much a whole-body approach. How would someone begin to start to unpack that?

Aleks: That’s tough because you know, there are so many practitioners practicing many different modalities. And there’s a big scarcity mindset that I’ve noticed in the practitioner world where it’s like, I need to keep my client because then if I don’t, then they may not come back and I’ll lose this thing. And there’s just always thought around loss versus how can I help the person? And you know, that’s why I’ve been studying Paul Chek for almost 12 years now. And he has…that I found one of the best approaches to looking at the body holistically.

And what I mean holistically, I mean mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically being stones unturned. And so you have to be well-read to be able to see certain things. For example, people will ask me, “Why is no one talking about dental stuff,” to make sure…well, if your mouth has to be in a specific alignment, and have enough forward growth. And you know, a lot of us weren’t breastfed or we don’t eat right and that’s gonna stunt our development of our mouth. Which is a whole other conversation. I don’t know if you wanna let me get into that.

But we need to make sure that whoever you’re looking to get help from is looking at other aspects of your life as well. But most people if they don’t know that there are practitioners out there that can literally grow your whole jaw floor without cutting it open. And there are dental implants work as an example. You’ll go well, I don’t know what to do with this so I’m gonna pretend like it’s not there. And then when someone comes around, you’ll go well, yeah, it’s a problem. And you sound almost like a fatalist. Like, your life’s gonna end. You know, sorry, we can’t do anything about this.

So the best thing to do is treat your care like you would a mechanic. Because if you take your car to a mechanic, they don’t fix your car, and they go, “Actually, you know, let us try again.” And you’re putting money into a mechanic that isn’t making progress, that’s where you have to try someone else. And a lot of people get stuck behind I really like this person or, you know, we have a relationship or something is like…you know, they’re giving me something, they’re giving me a friendship or I like their family.

But what they’re doing is they’re also spending money in a place that’s not returning a service. And I’m constantly telling people that I don’t care if you like me, I know you will because I’m a very likable human being. But it doesn’t matter if you like me to me or not as long as I’m giving you the truth, and making sure that you’re getting the best care possible and then you’re moving in the right direction so one day you don’t need me.

So it all depends on where the person is coming from. Like, there are so many resources on food. Like, you have to make sure you’re eating the right food, you’re getting it right, correctly sourced, and in the right quantity too. So playing with all those things is not being afraid to you know, try a little bit more, try a little bit less. Research about detox symptoms. Hey, I’m feeling this way. Does anyone else feel this way? A lot of this is gonna take more responsibility to take care of your health because as most of us know that we can’t put our responsibility into another person’s hands until we find that person that can fully take care of what we need, but also not take our power away is most important.

A lot of practitioners and a lot of people want to give you the answers, versus teach you how to not need a person anymore. And that’s huge for me. I wanna make sure that even if the process takes three times as long, I know in the long term, I’m thinking about this person. When they’re 60, 70, 80 years old, that they’ll be able to grasp their health when I’m doing something else. Or they’re in another country so that way, they’re constantly not relying upon me to be their answer.

So for me, this is more of also an educational system. So finding someone that…here’s a good cue, if you ask a question, and someone gives you a firm absolute no, with no explanation, that’s usually a red flag to me. That’s saying that this person doesn’t wanna look into an area of their life, or study, and they’re sticking to their modality.

And when I refer people to other practitioners, I always get to know the practitioner, or I give them a disclaimer, like, “Hey, I don’t know this person. So tell me what your experience of them is.” And if they do other things that could interrupt my clients’ or patients’ progress, I have to be very specific. You’re going there for this and here’s why. And everything else that they’re doing is wonderful, but it’s not for you right now. And you can dabble with it if you like, but I don’t recommend it and I give them reasons. And then I try to educate the person as much as possible.

So looking for someone that is willing to take the time to explain, and not only would their explanations make sense. Because people aren’t stupid, really. You know, they have a inherent sense for truth, even if they deny some of it, but inherently they know the truth. And that’s what we’re really looking for.

And you should be able to see a result within a week, of two weeks, of three weeks, depending on the circumstance of, you know, if someone has potentially a herniated disc. Like it could take 500 days to treat a herniated disk. But the person should be seeing progress through this, you know. Or the other thing is…this is where I’m all over the place because you should be able to explain the pain because you’ve seen it so much.

Like a herniated disk when someone comes in and they’re in pain, I go, “This is gonna hurt real bad because there’s gonna be a point where,” I describe it to them as like, “Your hand is stuck in a rock between two rocks. And for you to pull your hand through those rocks is gonna hurt. And then once your hand is free, your hand stops hurting.” They go, “Oh, that makes sense.” So as we centralize their disk, it’s painful but then there’s a moment of ease where everything becomes painless. And they’re like, “Wow, oh, I see what you mean now.”

So, like doing something for 15 years now over and over and over again, you’re able to speak on it a little bit. So those are some guidelines as to how to find someone good. And don’t be afraid to…because you like someone you wanna support someone. If you wanna support someone donate. But if you wanna really get help you have to find the person that’s willing to look at you as separate from themselves and make sure that your care, and your success, isn’t a reflection of…isn’t a validation to the therapist.

I’m gonna explain that again. Make sure whoever you go to see that they’re not being validated by you getting better because I see that a lot. They’re so willing to give you the answer to make sure that they look smart. I’m calling a lot of people out and this is a good shadow time.

Katie: And that’s such an important point. I’ve talked about that before in relation to just like physical healthcare. And I’ve used the term you know, we are each our own primary healthcare provider, and we should find practitioners who can be good partners in that. But at the end of the day, the responsibility, the ownership lies with each of us. We can’t outsource that.

And I think to your point, this is a really good point. It also applies to mental healthcare providers, to spiritual healthcare providers. We each have to take the ownership of those things and find those pieces that are gonna work for each of us, but also be willing to step away. Or I’ve said, you know, I fire a doctor, if they’re not a good partner in that.

And in any of these cases, you’re hiring someone to help you. And so to your point, like if they’re not helping you, find someone who is going to help you. And I love that you brought up all the aspects of that because I think in the western model often, they get talked about in separate pieces. And there’s like the physical side of healthcare, there’s mental health, and then there is spirituality.

And I think my lesson has been in the last couple of years learning just how intricately all those things overlap and how we have to take a whole-body kind of whole-person whole…all of those aspects approach. And I have a note also as well about like, pain being a teacher, and pain arriving with increasing volume if it’s not addressed. And I think maybe that ties in here as well. But can you talk about, like, you mentioned pain in the aspect of like, there can be acute pain when someone is in that process of healing, but kind of like pain as a teacher and it reoccurring?

Aleks: I mean, pain shows up whenever we’re not in alignment with what we’re supposed to be doing. I remember being a kid and trying to put a fork in an outlet and blew the fuses out of the house, and caused me some pain and pain to the house as a silly example. But it was telling me that this is not a good idea. But if we’ve spent years collecting and ignoring pain in our bodies, to unwind that is going to be also painful. Because these tissues are so ischemic, they have no blood flow moving to them. And that repair process hurts.

And I tell people a lot. Your first day is gonna hurt probably the most because these tissues haven’t been touched maybe ever. And everyone gets their shoulders massaged so they’re used to some pressure. But when you start working on muscles in the armpits and the thighs, and the calves, or inside between bones that people have…or the front of the neck, for example, that have never been touched before, it’s like trying a new food where you’re like, I don’t know how to process this. I’ve never tasted this taste before.

But after the first time, people go home and they come back, and there’s a chance for blood to go in and do its work and clear up some of that lactic acid and toxicity. A lot of people for example you know, they may not poop for a couple days, and then they’ll have the best bowel movement of their life, and then it starts up again. So there’s like there’s a process to it.

But to speak on the pain again, this happens mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, right, if you’re doing a squat and your back hurts, okay, we need to change something probably shouldn’t push through it. Or we’re compounding these issues and making things worse for our body as long term because we’re building something called n-grams. Which are basically, each muscle has its own sequence of movement, and to fathom how everything moves in perfect unison with each other.

And so when you take all those sequences of movements and you put them into one pattern and we label them, squat, deadlift, bench press, or pull up, we have them all labeled, and our body takes those words and it sequences our muscles to create those actions.

So if you have pain in your life, or in your squat, let’s say as an example, your body will always try to avoid pain. Whether it’s good for you or not, your body will tell you hey, when there’s pain, we’re gonna move, which changes your n-gram and that is gonna be the fastest thing that will change your patterns in life. And I see that a lot in the spiritual movement.

What’s happening now it’s hey, everything has to be good vibes or I’m moving away from this pain. Instead of looking at it, understanding it, or even better inner standing what’s going on with the situation in your life. And when you do that you become the creator of your life versus a saboteur, or a victim, or a child who doesn’t want to participate with their lives because it does take work.

It does take time to lay on a foam roller. It does take time to research about what things…I mean, people spend time listening to these podcasts to make sure they’re getting the best information every week and it takes time to do so. And if people don’t take that time to invest into themselves, no one’s gonna do it for them. Because as we’re talking about, you’re gonna go to someone, and if you don’t know how to pay a good practitioner, you’re gonna either get more pain, or you’re gonna get pain in your wallet from having to spend all this money. And then when you finally find someone that’s really able to take care of you, you can’t afford them.

And I speak to this because this is what’s happened to me many times with people. And pain is another way of looking at what in your life needs to be changed outside or inside. Sometimes you can’t change what’s happening outside so you change what’s happening inside. Sometimes you can’t change what’s happening inside right now because there’s too much chaos so you change what’s happening outside.

Okay, maybe I find a new separate group of friends and then realizing that you are the emotional blanket, the sponge for all of your friends and it’s taking a toll on your mental health. And you know, I constantly say you’re the product of your five closest friends. So whoever you surround yourself is going to be who you’re going to become. If you’re not stable and secure enough in who you are to be able to overstep your boundaries.

And that’s ultimately what we’re trying to create a person that is so solid and stable in their own values and dream that no matter where they show up, they won’t bend to their environment. Because they are the creator. They have so much responsibility in their own self and will to carry out what the beauty they see in the world. Hey, let’s go out to a bar. I actually I’m gonna go paint because that creates less pain in my life. So that’s how I see pain and I always have to look at it and most of us don’t wanna look at it.

Katie: I think often their reaction is to move away from it rather than to lean in and learn from it. Certainly, definitely instinctually for a lot of people. And from researching you, I think something else that’s really unique in your approach that I think is super interesting to delve into is kind of looking at the…as you put up macro to micro to macro. And so I’d love for you to explain what that means and how you integrate this into your approach.

Aleks: When you look at things from only a microlens. So let’s say you go to a general practitioner, as an easy example and they say, hey, you have this. We need to refer you to a specialist, which is a micro. So they only focus on your knee, or your bowels, or your elbow, or whatever the case is. But they don’t end up talking to each other. Then something else goes wrong after let’s say…then you get a medication to have this subside. But then you go back to your general practitioner to re-evaluate and they go, “Well, how’s your knee doing?” Well, knee is doing great, but now my back hurts.

Okay, well, then let’s take care of that. And then hey, now your back hurts. Let’s send you to a PT. And then none of these people talk to each other which is a shame. They take notes, but they don’t have a conversation. They spend you know, 10, 15 minutes with someone and they’re like all right off the door. Because how the system is created it’s almost like a revolving door and they have to or else the doctor or practitioner can’t sustain the business. And it’s tragic that that’s how they’re set up.

They have to see 30, 40, 50 people a day, in an 8-hour window or a 12-hour window to make their practice work so they can pay off their bills and all the expenses, and feed their family after all that. So when you’re looking at like…let’s go back to the body. When you’re looking at a emotional level, you have anger. You look at it as anger, and you look at it on a macro level which it’s how it’s affecting your body, it’s affecting my personal relationships. Unless, let’s say unless I workout. Oh, that helps. I can work on my anger…I don’t have to work on my anger, all I have to do is work out.

And then your body goes hey, but when we work out we have pain. Yes, you emotionally feel better but now your knees hurt because you’re overdoing it. And then you do that enough and then you find out, huh I actually don’t feel better unless I work out. So what happens if I take a vacation and they don’t have a gym? Oh, anxiety, anger, pain comes back. So by looking at things on micro levels, and not seeing how they act at a whole level.

So the idea behind this is going okay, well you have anger, you’re angry about something. Now you have to dissect all the areas in your life. Okay, well, where am I angry emotionally? Where am I angry mentally outside and inside? Where am I angry…is there something in my body I’m angry at? Is there something in my thoughts? Are my thoughts angry? What am I angry about?

And you look at everything on a microscopic level, and then you bring everything back together and look at how they impact each other. So then you go back and you go, well, how is me exercising and letting go of my anger, how is that helping me with my knee pain? Hmm, actually, it’s making my knee pain worse. So that’s looking at on a macro level.

On a micro-level, anger I can manage with exercise. Okay, cool but after I exercise now my knee hurts. So now if you go to a knee specialist that you keep sticking to the micro-level. And now let’s say you go hey, my knee hurts I don’t wanna exercise, but now I’m angry. Okay, we gotta zoom out and go what else can we do? If I keep exercising, my knees are going to get worse. And my doctor or my physio or my trainer says…or my massage therapist says you can’t sustain this long term.

And the other option is now we go to take some meds or some anti-inflammatories or some NSAIDs and I feel better short term but I can’t live like this forever. So that’s when we have to zoom out and go okay, well, is everything that I’m doing coherent with each other, in harmony with each other? What can I do to supplement some things that make everything work together swimmingly because that’s how I practice. Going okay, well, how does this…what’s a biohack? Does this biohack interrupt any other things? And if it does, then we have to reevaluate this biohack. Does this supplement interfere with other supplements?

I’ll give you an example like Kombucha is wonderful for your gut. Micro-level, you go great, I’m gonna stick to that. Macro-level, you zoom out and you go, oh, this person has a terrible fungal infection or a yeast infection. And now they’re sitting there going Kombucha is good for me because they’ve only studied micro levels and they’ve not associated the two together. Thinking that if I pour Kombucha, which is fermentation and sugar on top of an overgrowth of fermentation and sugar in my body, it’s going to create problems.

So we have to look at things from a macro level and go well these two don’t interact right now. When this one is gone, then we can introduce…you know, when the fungal infection is gone, we can introduce Kombucha. Okay, what do we need to do to get rid of the fungal infection? Oh, Kombucha has to go for now but I like the taste. Well, the fungal infection has to go first.

So it’s constantly almost like a gas pedal where you press the gas, but you have to hit the clutch, hit the brake, you gotta slow down, and you gotta back up, you gotta look around, stop at a stop sign. So there’s constant…it takes a lot of work, and it’s constant but eventually, your body gets into harmony.

And then you’ll notice your body becomes more sensitive. And that’s when you’ll hear oh, it’s a blessing and a curse. But it’s not a curse. It’s the awareness that you asked for. Most people ask for awareness, an increasing of their consciousness, and then realizing that they’re seeing all the pain that they’re ignoring. And then they call it a curse. It’s not a curse. You know, it’s responsibility knocking on the door.

And a lot of people don’t wanna hear that because you know, they have a lot of busy lives and you know, it’s tough. It’s tough to not have the resources being taught to you right away. It’s tough to process that these things are hidden from us. Or maybe even not intentionally, but overshadowed by so much bad information, and misinformation, and micro information that don’t relate to the macro of your health, of your existence, of your know, your human experience.

And it’s almost like one of those toys. I see this visual of a toy in my head, I’m sure you’ve seen this where it’s like three different sections. And there’s like a head section, a body section, and the feet section. And you’re kind of swapping out different sections and like an alligator body with hippopotamus feet, with the stork body. And then you’re kind of switching between animals and you’re not really in harmony with who you are itself because you’re looking at each specific thing too long without zooming out and seeing how it affects the big picture.

Katie: That’s such a good analogy. And two things that came to mind in what you were just explaining is the first being like you know, everybody wants higher consciousness and to expand and all this. And then inevitably, they then become things that you’re more aware of and/or test. And I had a mentor recently when I was kind of frustrated with some of those things, he’s like, “Oh, well, that’s cute. You thought you were just gonna upgrade and not get tested? Like strength is built under load.” Just like with physicality, you don’t just get muscles you build them and like, this is part of that process.

But also, I love that you brought up that idea of personalization. And I think that goes back so much to the idea of each of us has to go on this journey of figuring out, like you just said, the micro and the macro for ourselves because there are so many confounding factors. And it will be difficult for any one practitioner to know exactly what we need, we have to take responsibility in that process, as well. And I very much hold the belief that we can learn something, I say from every interaction, every person, every approach.

And especially in the health world, there are so many people with so many approaches and I think there’s wisdom in all of them. But also an understanding that at the end of the day, often those people figured out what worked for them and that’s wonderful. But now they’re trying to give that approach to everyone else. And there’s going to be adjustments there. But often, I feel like practitioners can get very attached to that outcome, like you mentioned, and think that it’s gonna work exactly the same for everybody. Whereas we each have to start then the personalization process and figuring out which of those pieces…

Aleks: Spot on.

Katie: …yeah, exactly to build. I also think that there…I have a feeling you’re gonna have a great perspective on this. But there is this very big component of the unseen side and the inner emotional side, and even the spiritual side when it comes to health. And that was certainly an area that I ignored for a very long time. And I had the diet dialed in, and exercise, and supplements, and all of those things. But there was this huge emotional component that I wasn’t addressing, that ended up being an underlying core thing tied into all of my health problems.

I think we’re at a wonderful time where this is being talked about more. And we’re starting to understand at a deeper level like the mental-emotional connection to health. But I think also, it’s an area where there’s still a lot of learning to be done. Because so much of what can deeply impact us, perhaps impact us the most are things we can’t see. And we can’t necessarily quantify or put data to, or measure with a wearable. But I know from what I know of you that you do a lot of inner work with people as well. And I would guess that often those are the things that maybe have the most profound impact.

Aleks: What I like to start when I say…before I even have this conversation is if we take a pie chart, to kind of like prep the audience for this. So we take a pie chart and we cut it into four pieces, and we label it mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. And we agree, okay, there’s 25% of each. People can grasp that. Then we go okay, well, when you look at physics past Newtonian physics and the atoms are 99.9 to the six or seven decimal percent space, and so they only contain about .00 to the sixth or seventh decimal matter. And we are atoms which make molecules which make up cells and so on.

So then when you take that pie chart and you actually implement how much physical matter actually exists, and we participate with, it’s less than a percent of our whole existence. And it’s hard to you know, see the emotions on a screen. You can tie yourself up to a or hook yourself up to an electroencephalogram, or some kind of EKG, and you can think about how it impacts you and you can see it show up on a piece of machinery.

But you can’t really cut someone open and find their love, or how much love they have for their children. Or how much insecurity they had, or how much pain that they carried from their childhood, you can’t find that. You can’t open up someone’s brain and find their mind. Their mind is separate from the brain but the brain is what allows the mind…it’s almost like a conduit for it to function. Like the same way, you can’t cut open a dancer to find the dance inside of them.

And it’s really important to…you know, we’re conditioned to be in this physical world. And everything is physical, everything is…you know, we’re conditioned to authorities, you know, A equals B, you know. If you need to learn something you go to school, and then the authority is the teacher. You know, you get pulled over, the authority is the officer. You go to the doctor, the authority is the…or you go to the doctor, the doctor is the authority.

And so we’re constantly conditioned to receive a result. We speed, we get a ticket. We go to school we get a grade. We go to the doctor, we get a pill or a prescription, or a referral. And they’ll take care of your problems instead of looking at it from our perspective.

So especially if you want entertainment, what do you do? You go to Instagram where you get an Instagram of dopamine every time you log on. And TikTok watching your time go away. It’s told to us right to our faces and it takes some practice to be able to operate in this world without being you know, consumed by it.

And so you have to have that conversation before we even start talking about how your organs are actually the vessels that process your emotions, and they’re stored in the body. And I don’t know if you’ve read the book, “The Body Keeps the Score.” I mean, that’s Gabor Ma Tei right.

Katie: I don’t remember who wrote it, but definitely that was a really profound book for me.

Aleks: It’s something Score van der Kolk it might be him, or he is writing…he wrote the…..

Katie: Yes, Bessemer van der Kolk, yes.

Aleks Yeah. him. Okay. So most of what we experience on a moment-by-moment basis truly doesn’t exist. We perceive it through the way the light hits and reflects the matter and that we interact with the matter because it’s slowed down enough that we can’t pass through it.

But the same way, as…I know a lot of people can relate to this. How many times have people left the relationship and felt amazing? How many people have experienced a breakup and they felt like their heart was falling apart? It’s even built into our conditioning of how we speak. When we get butterflies, where do we get them? We get them in our stomach. Anxiety lives and processes through the stomach. Anger processes through the…and joy process through the liver. And it’s funny how it’s calling the liver because you live, it’s either your joy or you interrupt that enjoy with anger.

So if we live only on the physical model, we’re gonna ignore 99.9% of our existence. But that can’t be seen through a physical lens. We have to be able to feel it. And the more we get in tune with who we are, the more we will project onto the world. And the more we have success with finding out who the person in front of us is, and how we can best guide them. Because if you’re…you know, if someone’s going through mental-emotional stress in their relationship, and you go to them, and they’re gonna give you the relationship they wish they’re able to take. They wish they were brave enough to go through.

Versus that’s when we talked about in the beginning, it’s really important to have the practitioner know who they are and not be reliant on your success. To add in what you were talking about how someone does let’s say veganism, or carnivore, or keto, and they’re like, this is the best thing, I’m gonna tell everyone. Even though if they’re not doing well it means you’re not doing it right, obviously.

And it’s getting past our own conditioning and finding out what works for us, and getting past our own emotional heartaches and our own emotional pains. Because I don’t know how many people I’ve seen with shoulder pain that also have anger issues. I can’t even tell you how many people I have had with back pain that have fear issues because your kidneys they process fear. It’s the adrenaline. You know what happens when your kidney processes all the water? And this is a nice little timeline, the kidneys process all the water in your body.

What happens when you’re scared out of your mind. What happens? We all know about the sympathetic nervous system fight, flight, freeze. What happens when some people get scared so bad they urinate themselves? Fear overrides your kidneys and bladders natural function and it goes, “I’m consumed with fear and I need to show that to who I’m in front of.” Maybe they’ll have some empathy because I have no words for them. So it lives through us every single day.

And like we were talking about macro and micro, it’s completely separated from the system of health. And if you want to get your mental health treated you go here and they have a system. And if you want your emotions treated, you go here and that takes care of that. If you want your body treated, that goes here. And if you want your spirit well go to a church. That’s where that gets treated, or wherever your religion sends you to. So they’re all separate.

But when you go to a church, they’re not asking you about what you’re eating. If anything, you go to a church, you’re gonna find a basket of doughnuts sitting right there. And then you’re wondering you know, why you’re all hyped up and anxious. Well, the analogy I like to give people is when they’re in the office, and I go, here’s how food impacts your emotions.

You know, you’re sitting here in front of me competent, and clear-minded, and present and they go, “Yeah.” I go, “Okay well, what if I gave you 20 teaspoons of sugar what would you do? And I told you to calm down, would you be able to come down?” They go, “Probably not.” I go, of course. So now if we drip that in through our system and our blood sugar’s up and down all day because we don’t know what’s harmonizes with our body, because we don’t know what gas we’re putting into our system, of course, we’re not gonna be able to manage our emotions. Of course, we’re not gonna be able to manage our thoughts.

For diet, I use the same analogy with if you were a big diesel believer and you told everyone that had a gas car to put diesel in the car, everyone that has a gas car is not gonna have a good time, their car won’t work. It’s a different fuel source. But they’re the same belief systems, right? Gas is gas, fuel is fuel, but it’s not all built the same. And we all need it in separate quantities with different tanks and different times.

And it impacts how everything that we can’t perceive because our physiology is cluttering our non sensory organs, which is the feeling of how we love our hearts. When we interact with someone’s field, I feel that they’re a good person. But if you’re too hopped up on sugar, or you’re too hopped up on, you know, your back hurting, you’re not gonna be able to use your heart because it’s a more subtle system to be able to feel what you can’t put your hands on, or taste, or smell, or hear, or touch. I think I missed one, it’s okay.

So we need to be able to clear our system of static and manage our body before we can even perceive. But even people when they’re at their heightened senses, they can still feel something is like this person is not safe. But how do you know that without knowing that? So then we start to dive into that because if we’re seeing our world as fear, and as panic, or as a perpetual pattern that’s reoccurring, even though it’s not because we haven’t observed it anymore, but we’re projecting it onto the world as we’re observing, then life becomes a little bit more challenging. And then, as we talked about the pain teacher shows up. So if you don’t clear what a person’s dream is, or their values are or where they’re moving in life, it’s going to impact your physiology 100%.

Katie: “The Body Keeps the Score” was such a really enlightening book for me. And it helped me start to kind of unpack some of those things. And since sharing my own story of trauma actually on this podcast in Episode 309, I’ve received so many letters from listeners who have gone through much more difficult things than I had been through and just heard so many stories from people. And I think like, there’s such a key here when it comes certainly to health but truly to all areas of life.

And I know you’ve talked about this before kind of the journey of healing trauma and how that actually can be such a gift and have a positive crossover into so many other areas, as well. I’m curious, like how you help people with that, beginning in that process of processing trauma? Because certainly since sharing my story, I’ve received so many questions from people who want to go on the same journey and to start to unpack and are willing to sort of shine that light now on their own trauma and start to unpack. So where do you have people start for that?

Aleks: I start where they’re ready. So if you end up working with us or anyone works with us, we give people like 200 pages of paperwork. I mean, it’s a lot. It’s intense. But we take all that paperwork and we start seeing what’s not being written, what is being written. And through conversations with someone you can see based on the structures of where they are, where they identify with society, how they see themselves, how they see the world, you can slowly introduce certain things by allowing them to talk about them with curiosity.

It always has to be in a room where there’s no judgment. There has to be no judgment because anytime there’s judgment, you need security to share what you’re feeling. But if you’re not secure, that’s why you have trauma in first place. You’re not secure with what happened and you’re trying to hide it from the world, yourself, or you don’t know how to hide it and it’s everywhere. So depending on what trauma it is, it’s learning how to actually…Paul Chek called it surrounding the dragon. If you can’t face the dragon head-on, well chip at its heel, chip at its back, you know.

Sometimes people cope with trauma with eating and that’s their coping mechanism. So what do you do? Like that analogy we used a second ago or a little bit ago where we talked about hopping someone up on 20 teaspoons of sugar, and not being able to think straight. First, you know, they come in and they say, “Hey, my back hurts.” And they go okay, even though you’ve read through their paperwork, they’re telling you things that they don’t even realize they’re telling you because you’re a space where there is no judgment, there is no criticism about this.

And they start telling you things. And how many times I’ve heard, “I don’t know why I told you this. I’ve never told this to anyone in my life” is I probably could…if I got $1 for that I probably would never have to work again. So you start by going okay, well, this may be too tough to talk about because you might say you know, hey, how’s your relationship with your dad doing? You know, and they may react in a not pleasant way. And you go, okay, note that is a button that we need to pin later. We need to work on other things. And then so okay, what are some obvious things?

Once again micro, you look at their macro, they’re in pain. Micro, okay, what can affect their macro? Okay, well, we need to make sure that anything they’re eating is not increasing their inflammation. So finding out what kind of food intolerances they have, making sure they’re cutting out foods that don’t serve them, making sure we play with rhythms and timings.

And yes, we look at poop and make sure their poop is, you know…well, without telling you all the different stages of poop and getting graphic with it, making sure they’re nice, brown logs at least removing a foot of material a day that’s brown and healthy. And we start paying attention to their poop you know, hey, focus on that.

Okay, your goal,…and usually we meet where people are excited. So if they’re excited about managing their diet, cool. Focus on that, focus on that. And then we start over time implementing hey, this could be…you know, let me tell you a story about my life. And they start identifying with the story. Oh, this story is happening to me. Ultimately, I know what they’re going through and so I used all the different ways except going at it directly.

Some people are better at it than others, some people you can ask them straight to their face. Is this something you’ve experienced? And they’re like, yes, that’s why I’m here. But a lot of times, I would say 80% of the times it’s the deep-seated trauma that they have conditioned to themselves that they can’t talk about or else they can’t function, we have to work around it many, many ways over and over and over again. And it takes time. It could take a year, it could take two years.

But ultimately, when they face that dragon without us telling them what to do, telling them what their problem is because that disempowers a human being completely. If you come to me and you’re like, hey, how do I do this? And I put it together for you and you’re like, great okay, now, what’s my purpose in life? I guess I’ll go do this thing. Oh, what’s my dream again? Oh, here’s your dream. Okay, I’ll go do that now. And what are my values again? Okay, here are your values, okay well, it’s kind of no fun stuff to life anymore.

And hey, my body is not reacting the same way anymore. You know, my poop is off, what do I do? My breathing is off, what do I do? Hey, my relationship isn’t going…what do I do? Do this. So instead of teaching the person how to go through certain steps, and go through the process, and show them that the pain actually is the gift to be able to see the beauty in life. How can you empathize with love and how would you be in love without knowing pain first?

Or you don’t appreciate love, maybe you grew up with love, and your parents were love and your surroundings were love. And then you find a perspective of the world being harsh, and the world being mean, and the world being difficult. And you’re living in that and succumbing to that. And one day, you’ve had enough and then you remember how pleasant love is, and how much you valued and appreciated when people did good things for you and shared that with you. But before you were like that’s life. You had no perspective. So pain gives you empathy, pain gives you compassion for those who are struggling, who need help. And you remember you were there at one point, you remember that you were struggling. And without that pain, you could never really, truly connect with other people.

Katie: Yeah, that’s such a good reframe. And there are still so many directions I wanna go with you. I’m hoping you’ll be open to a round two sometime soon. Because like we didn’t even get into like shadow work, and archetypes and so many areas I wanted to go.

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But out of respect for your time and for the listeners’ time, I would love to ask a couple questions I typically ask toward the end. The first being if there’s a book or a number of books that have had a really profound impact on your life and if so, what they are and why?

Aleks: One of the first books that I’ve ever read was “The Alchemist.” Actually, it was “1984”, which is one of the first books I’ve probably…was the only book I read cover to cover in…what’s it called? In any kind of school. I’m not a big reader which it blows kind of people’s minds are like “How do you know this stuff that you know?” And I’m like…I used to tell them I’ve read like four books up until like I don’t know five years ago and now I’m making it an effort to actually read books and sit in the morning. Because I learn better from interactions like this. You tell me about your life and while you’re talking, I am absorbing things through my consciousness, through my psyche. But another book that…do we only say one or three books? How many books do we say?

Katie: Any that have had a profound impact?

Aleks: “The Law of One,” it’s an intense book, I almost hesitate saying because it will kind of blow your psyche apart as to what you perceive in life. And a book that reaffirmed a lot for me after I died was “One Mind.” I think his name is Larry Dossey. And he shows how so many different experiences in life, how they are actually, we’re actually one mind, one collective consciousness. And he’s showing it over and over again in the book. And so I’m like, how am I thinking about something and then I see it?

And so it helped me affirm like, okay, I’m not going crazy. We are actually a collective network of consciousness. Even the internet is an externalized mind network. Everything that’s in our brains is on the internet now. And you can tell if you go on Facebook or Instagram, and you have people’s thoughts plastered all over it. So those several books were very profound to me or either affirmed to me what I’m doing is…I’m not going crazy, which is great.

Katie: “The Law of One” is a new recommendation on this podcast. I’ll make sure that’s linked in the show notes as well as the others you mentioned. And “The Body Keeps the Score” which we already talked about earlier. I think a great one and a starting point especially for anyone who knows and is aware of trauma, that’s one I would highly recommend as well.

Aleks: Have you heard of “It Didn’t Start with You”?

Katie: Yes. In fact, that has been one of my recent reads. I’m glad you brought that one up as well. I’m just starting to delve into that world. Can you give a quick overview for anyone who’s not familiar with that one?

Aleks: Yeah, it shows people how your trauma…I’ll give you one of the most profound examples in the book. And it shows how whatever you think you’re going through, actually didn’t even start with you. It started with your mother. But how did it start with my mother? That you can grasp. But then how did it start with my grandmother? And how is that passed down from so many generations? What is this karmic trail that’s following me from the way we perceive the world?

And so in that book, they talk about how when you’re in your mother’s womb, or in the eggs, your mother… Let me start over. When your mother was in your grandmother’s womb, at about…I can’t remember if it’s five weeks or five months that the woman has developed all of the eggs that she’s ever going to have in her life. So while she is in…your mother’s in your grandmother, you are one of those potential eggs inside of your mother which is in your grandmother.

So while your grandmother is experiencing life imprinting on your mother, also imprinting on your mother’s eggs, which you are gonna be here one day, on top of that now when we look at…since if it’s your grandmother being pregnant, then how many of us have grandparents around here right now? So that means she’s also being imprinted on by her parents and also her grandparents.

So there’s five lineages right there of trauma experiences being passed down through our mental emotional states, through our psyches, and being imprinted on the generation before almost five generations previous. Because when you get raised in a tribal society, you get raised by your grandparents.

So your mother while she’s you know, having…is pregnant with your mother, while you’re in the egg in your mother’s body she’s also probably being helped by your grandparents while your parents are working her parents are working. So it gives you like, a working concept of how you can start addressing karmic ancestral traumas that have occurred through our lives. It’s a beautiful book, it’s intense, especially if it’s a new concept to you or to people.

Katie: I’m really glad you brought that one up. That will definitely be linked in the show notes as well for you guys listening. I highly recommend it also. Very, very fascinating and definitely deep worth delving into. And you mentioned people working with you. I will of course have that link in the show notes as well but just give us a quick overview of where people can find you online.

Aleks: They can find us at primalfusionhealth.com, they can find us at the primalpride.com which is our community site. Our Instagram is health.performance.engineer or at primal_fusion. And then feel free to reach out we’re very accessible. And we enjoy making sure that people get taken care of and are linked to the right area and making sure that their care is at the utmost. And yeah, we have a…Sara and I have a bleeding heart for people. So whatever people need, they can reach out and we’ll do our best to make sure we can help.

Katie: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time today. I look forward to hopefully a round two. And you guys check out wellnessmama.fm for show notes with links to a lot of the things we talked about, as well as to your site so people can find you. But thank you for your time.

Aleks: Thank you.

Katie: And thanks to you guys, as always for listening and sharing your most valuable resources your time, and energy, and attention with us. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of “The Wellness Mama podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

This article was originally published by wellnessmama.com. Read the original article here.

Child: Welcome to my Mommy’s podcast.

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Katie: Hello, and welcome to “The Wellness Mama Podcast.” I’m Katie from wellnessmama.com and wellnesse.com, and this episode goes deep on brain inflamed and healing these new childhood epidemics that we’re seeing. I’m here with Dr. Kenneth Bock who is a leader in integrative medicine, who has accumulated over 35 years of direct experience in a lot of these areas. He founded Bock Integrative Medicine in response to an increasing need for board-certified medical providers who take a whole-body approach. And he’s now well respected for his work with autism, with PANS, PANDAS, tick-borne illnesses, and adult conditions like chronic fatigue as well as a lot more. And we go into some of the roots of all of these as well as a whole lot more, all centering on the idea of inflammation. Super, super informative, very practical episode I know you’ll enjoy, so let’s jump in. Dr. Bock, welcome. And thanks for being here.

Dr. Bock: It’s my pleasure to be with you, Katie.

Katie: I think, well, you have so much wisdom in so many different areas. And I think this is gonna be such an important episode for a lot of the moms listening because, unfortunately, it’s no secret that a lot of chronic conditions are on the rise. And the really sad part is, especially in children, which is a semi-new thing, to see this drastic of a rise in chronic conditions and acute conditions in such a young population. And I know there’s a lot of things going on that can contribute to this, but I know this is also an area of both clinical practice and research for you. So, to start broad, can you kind of walk us through, A, why we’re seeing a rise in some of these things and then maybe that gut-brain connection that we’ve probably potentially heard about, but maybe don’t fully understand?

Dr. Bock: Well, I think, firstly, that we’re seeing the rise… I just wanna say what it’s not. It’s not genetics because you just don’t see a rise in incidence like we’ve been seeing based on genetics. I really think it’s the environment. And, you know, it’s environmental triggers coupled with genetic predispositions. So, that’s the first thing. And I think if we look at our kids… And I think you’re right. I think there’s a rise in chronic illnesses in children, teens, and adolescence. But if I say children, I’m kind of generalizing is more striking than even the rise in, like, neurodegenerative disease like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, which is also a huge problem. But when it hits our kids, I think it hits us that much harder and is harder to explain or at least maybe grapple with, you know, on a visceral level.

So, yeah, I do think it’s our environment. I think when we talk about the gut-brain-immune connection, I think that’s a fundamental area that those of us like myself in integrative medicine always consider. You can’t really look at chronic illness without at least paying attention to the gut and the microbiome. And I think in my field, we’ve been interested in this for so long. Basically, I’ve been… This is my 38th year of practice. So, I’ve been into this for a long time. But I am happy to say that what we’re seeing is this huge burgeoning interest in the microbiome in conventional medicine with more and more research and more and more relatedness to many chronic conditions, including neurologics, which is really…it’s great because I think it offers the possibility to really make progress in healing some of these chronic difficult disorders.

So, let’s maybe start with that. So, when I talk about the microbiome, for the moms who are listening, we’re talking about the microbial flora in the gut. These are in trillions of bacteria. And there are other types of organisms a little bit. There may be a little yeast and various things, but in a healthy balance, not when you have an overwhelming yeast infection, so to speak, or an overgrowth, but there’s tons of bacteria. And the important thing is there’s more bacteria than cells in the body. So, in a lot of ways the influence of the microbiome. And the interesting thing is the microbiome is really the genetic material of the microflora, but we refer to all those microbes in the gut as the microbiota, but a lot of times we interchange the microbiota and the microbiome. So, I might use the microbiome and not strictly be talking about the genetics and the DNA as much as the microbes.

One of the key facets of a healthy microbiome is diversity. We know that, that a diverse microflora is very, very helpful. And we’re learning more and more about how to nourish the microflora. One of the ways we don’t nourish it is eating lots of sugar and sweets. That is one way that we don’t nourish it and that we actually promote the growth of more dysbiotic or, you know, organisms that cause imbalance and problems whether they be pathogenic or just an imbalance.

So, we pay a lot of attention to that. And part of that is because the microbiome also influences the permeability of the gut. One must understand when we look at the gut, think of what the typical American, we call it the standard American diet, which, unfortunately, has the initial SAD, what they shovel into their mouth on a daily basis. And your gut has to deal with this. And if you could try to think of this, it’s got all these… These are antigens. These are things that it’s getting exposed to. And 70-75% of your immune system is located just under that one cell layer lining of the gut. And you might say, “Why? Is this a coincidence?” No, it’s not coincidence. It’s because you are confronted on a daily basis with all of these foreign substances coming in from the mouth down the esophagus, stomach, etc., into the intestines and your immune system has to make these instantaneous decisions as they sample things. And this is…

I actually talk a lot about this in the book “Brain Inflamed” in terms of the immune system and the microbiome, how the immune system actually kind of samples this and has to make these decisions. “Is this friend? Is this foe? Do we have to react to this? Can we just ignore it?” And so it’s a very, very important process. And the important underlying thing is immune tolerance, that we learn to tolerate that which is not harmful to us like a food, for instance, and not tolerate or respond appropriately to something that is a problem like a harmful microbe, for instance. And the immune system has to make that differentiation. And that’s why so much of it is concentrated there. It also maintains the integrity of the gut lining, which is another barrier. It’s a physical barrier to having certain things enter that shouldn’t that could cause inflammation. And a lot of what we’re talking about these days, not only inflammation in adults in terms of some of those neurodegenerative disorders and heart disease, but in the kids now, there is so much inflammation including what I talked about in terms of brain inflammation.

And a dysbiotic or an altered intestinal microbial flora will allow that lining of the gut to get more permeable and allow larger molecules in that shouldn’t get it that the immune system then sees as foreign and reacts. And it gets into the circulation, it causes inflammation, maybe even in the gut, but also even it can get in the circulation, get up to the blood-brain barrier, which is this cellular dynamic sitting there interface between the body and the brain to keep these toxins and foreign substances and inflammatory mediators out of the brain, very, very similar to the lining of the gut. Now, one is an epithelium. The other is an endothelial cell in the blood vessels, the very tiniest blood vessels in the brain, but they really act together. They have tight junctions that really kind of seal it up and only allow these small kind of nourishing nutrients and molecules to pass through.

Well, if that also gets all these inflammatory mediators pass through the gut, get to that blood-brain barrier, they open that up and allow these inflammatory mediators to get in the brain, and then we get brain inflammation. So, there is this direct gut-immune brain connection. It’s really essential and it’s something that one must always understand. And hopefully, I tried to simplify it. But I did spend a lot of time talking about that in the book because it is so, so important. And it’s sometimes hard for people. They say, “How could my gut affect my brain?” We all know how the brain can affect the gut because we know when you’re really stressed and you have, like, an irritable bowel, you can get diarrhea. You can get that rumbling in the stomach because of the vagal nerve. There’s a direct connection between the brain and the gut. But it goes both ways. So, the key to understand these connections that I just spoke about, it’s almost like you have a triangle, the gut-immune brain triangle with bi-directional arrows, arrows going in both ways because each one affects the other. And in the middle of this pyramid or triangle is the microbiome with effects on each leg of the triangle. Is that helpful?

Katie: Absolutely. And based on what you said, I would guess we’re seeing kind of overall a decline in gut diversity. I know I’ve read a little bit about this that due to things like we’re not eating as varied of a diet as we used to, we’re not interacting with bacteria in the natural world the way we used to, even sleep, sunlight, all these things can affect gut diversity. So, I would guess maybe that is maybe a factor here as well. And I would also love a little more detail on, it makes complete sense we’ve got inflammation in the gut. It’s causing inflammation in the brain. There’s that two-way street happening. What are some of the ways you’re seeing this exhibit especially in children, but I guess in adults as well? I know there’s a tie here with certain mood disorders, for instance, but what are some of the ways that you’ll see this exhibit?

Dr. Bock: Well, I mean, some of the more obvious… Well, maybe it’s not so obvious, I shouldn’t say that. It’s not obvious, but it exists, is in kids’ mood disorders. We’re seeing more and more mood disorders and anxiety. Basically, a third of adolescents experience anxiety, and that anxiety can be generalized anxiety, social anxiety, separation anxiety, panic, you know, subset panic disorders, etc. So, approximately 50% of children by the time they reach 18 will meet the diagnostic criteria for at least one mental health disorder. So, that is profound. And we’re finding out in this last decade more and more that a lot of these mood disorders, anxiety, depression, etc., are related to brain inflammation, which then, of course, you can circle back to inflammation in the immune system and ultimately kill the gut. So, that’s how it manifests.

But it also manifests in, you know, more maybe episodes of, you know, arthritis, that these are the more frank episodes of inflammation, arthritis. And in terms of the psych, it gets more hidden. It’s harder to see that the inflammation-causing psych problems when that’s all you see. And I think it goes across the generations. It’s kids, it’s teens in adolescence, it’s young adults, and then it’s into adulthood. And it’s not just… Because when you have inflammation causing these things, especially mood disorders, the one thing you wanna do you, and that’s part of why I do a lot of this writing and teaching, is you want people to get it as soon as they can because the longer you let inflammation sit, the more of a chance you have to have it move into neurodegeneration, which means that it’s harder to reverse. It’s easier to fight inflammation, but once it really sets in, there are times after, you know, 20, 30, 40 years, you don’t know what you can reverse or not. It’s harder. So, I really think it’s very important to diagnose these kids earlier because that’s when we can really, you know, kind of turn it around and get them walking on the path to more normality.

Katie: That makes sense. And can you also explain in a little more detail the PANS and PANDAS? I’m hearing from a lot more parents who seem to be working with a child who has some of the symptoms of that. So, can you explain what this is and what that connection is?

Dr. Bock: Certainly. So, that is one aspect of brain inflammation that can be the most striking. And what I mean by the most striking is you can have a child, and I have many examples in my practice and I’ve written about some of them, who is, let’s say, a 10-year-old, who is a great athlete, you know, soccer, what have you, a great student, has a lot of friends, very popular, a great kid in the family with sisters, brothers, and the parents, the whole works, and then one day wakes up like an alien. Like, I mean, anxious to the point where they have separation anxiety. They won’t leave a mother. They won’t go to school. They’ve developed maybe a tick, you know, a blinking tick or a head moving tick or what have you. And they may lose their ability to write or draw, which can be pretty profound. They have cognitive dysfunction where they may lose their ability to do math. They have OCD. They may be doing rituals, handwashing. They can have panic attacks and mood dysregulation where they can get, like, intense episodes of screaming and hitting and aggression, sometimes self-injurious, sometimes harming others. It can be so frightening.

And what that’s coming from is that they had a proceeding infection. PANDAS refers to a proceeding strep infection. PANS or what I like to refer to as ITABI, infection-triggered autoimmune brain inflammation, which is really what it is, that the organism that causes the infection when the immune system goes to fight that infection, there’s a tiny piece of that organism, let’s say it’s the bacteria, you call it an epitope. It’s a tiny, tiny piece that is exactly similar to a piece of the brain, especially in the basal ganglia, which controls emotions and movements and can be responsible for these ticks in OCD. So, when the immune system goes to fight the bacteria and they circle up in the brain, they see this piece of the brain that looks just like the bacteria. And they attack it and they cause inflammation and ultimately autoimmunity. And so that’s infection triggering brain inflammation and autoimmunity. That is the essence. It’s a misdirected immune response to an infectious agent. And it’s not just PANDAS. That was very limiting. It can be Lyme. It can be tick-borne disorders, Lyme, Bartonella. It can be mycoplasma. It can be a herpes virus. It can be various things. A sinus infection can sometimes do it. So, the key is to recognize it and do the medical detective work to find out what it is that’s triggering it so that we can then remediate it.

Katie: Yeah. So, it sounds like with anything, this is a complex topic. It’s not a single cause, single effect by any means, and probably not a simple single diagnosis criteria either. So, you’ve mentioned tick-borne disorders, which I’m hearing from a lot of people also very much seem to be on the rise. I’m hearing from a lot of chronic Lyme patients. Even you mentioned herpes strep. I would guess, also, Epstein-Barr gets lumped into this. I’m curious. When people come in to see you, how do you start unpacking that? How do you start getting to those roots? Because this seems like a relatively complex topic.

Dr. Bock: It’s very complex. It seems like my practice has migrated. I mean, I’ve always been interested in difficult problems. It’s just the nature of my brain, I guess. I really enjoy it kind of. And you used a great word. I’ve never used that word. I like it, unpacking it. Sometimes we use the word unraveling it, but it is. It’s like peeling an onion. It’s like unpacking it. I think the key is a number of things.

First is to be aware that it exists because awareness is the beginning to solving things. And you’ll be amazed at how many people either are not aware of it or I actually hate to say even deny its existence, which is really unfortunate because it prevents people from getting the diagnosis and the treatment. And for me, I wrote this in my first book in 1997 called “The Road to Immunity.” If you don’t look, you won’t see. And if you don’t hear…if you don’t listen, you won’t hear. And so I think the key, to me, is to look and listen.

This is, you know, something that I would share in terms of my medical upbringing, so to speak, not when I was a kid, but in medical school, I had a mentor by the name of George Engel who actually was the father of, basically, biomedical psychosocial medicine. And he really started with us from day one, had a very, really, big influence on me. And he taught us the open-ended interview, which was not the kind of interview that happens, unfortunately, in the 10-minute visit with the doctor. It’s that you don’t fire questions to get these very short answers so you could come to a quick diagnosis and give them medicine. You actually let the person speak. And the truth is if you let a patient speak to you, 90% of figuring out is the history. The physical exam is obviously important, but obviously, if there’s psoriasis or something, it’s extremely important. I mean, in terms of a lot of these complex things, the history is so, so essential. And I listen. I mean, I spend an hour and a half, sometimes up to two hours with a new patient because they’re so complicated, so I hear it from them, I listen, and look through all the records that they bring.

It’s like sometimes you get a hernia from picking up those records. And sometimes I have to actually, unfortunately, even do it after hours because it’s so much, but I do want to see it. But that is the key. The key is to be able to look at it all, recognizing what may contribute. And there are a lot of clues. There are a lot, a lot of clues. And that is one of the things that I think I tried to make really, really as clear as I could in “Brain Inflamed” at the end of each chapter talking about various entities that can contribute to brain inflammation and mood disorders in the kids is that there are clues that can… In terms of Lyme, you know, do you live in an endemic area where there’s a lot of deers and ticks and Lyme? I am in Dutchess County, New York, or Ulster County, New York, the Hamptons, the Berkshires of Massachusetts, the Northeast, Connecticut. And it’s all over the country. So, if somebody tells you they live in a state and they don’t have Lyme, it’s just not true.

Have you had a tick bite? Have you had the bull’s eye rash? Do you do things like play sports, like, is your kid a soccer player? Do they go into the woods to get their ball? Do they like to play in parks, go for walks, and hikes? These are all things. Does your family go camping? And then there’s things that lead you to the tick-borne whether they have recurrent strep as a child where that can lead the way to this kind of thing and other things in terms of thyroid, their symptoms. Are they constipated? Are they tired? Are they overweight? Do they have trouble losing weight? Do they have dry skin? All these kinds of things. And there’s many more. But these are clues that can direct me because it’s not one-size-fits-all. I don’t have a protocol. It’s almost like individualized medicine or now it’s being called personalized medicine where you deal with each patient as an individual. I use the knowledge base I have as a foundation, but I try to listen to them without prejudicing it by that, but actually, you know, obviously having the knowledge to try to put it together and let the patient or the parent, in this case, of course, speak and tell their story. That’s the basic way.

Katie: And that alone should not be so groundbreaking and incredible, but, unfortunately, in today’s world, it seems like it often is because I had that experience with doctors who I felt like weren’t listening at all and just kind of minimized my symptoms and gave me five minutes and wanted me out the door. And I hear from so many listeners who have had that experience where they feel like doctors aren’t listening to them at all or that they’re trying to communicate those things. And I think that alone is a tremendous thing when a patient can find a practitioner who becomes a partner with them and is willing to actually spend the time and start. And on a practical level, I know from hearing from parents, like, these, especially when a child is going through something like this, it feels so overwhelming and oftentimes a little bit hopeless. And it seems like the conventional answer often points to just pharmaceutical intervention, which, unfortunately, these conditions from what you’ve just described are not happening because of a deficiency of a pharmaceutical. So, I’m curious from the practical side, like, what are some of those first steps that you take someone through when you’ve identified one of these inflammatory conditions? And, on average, how soon do they start to see a change when they start implementing these things?

Dr. Bock: Well, firstly, it takes a while. I mean, sometimes you get lucky and the change is fairly quick. But I think, you know, we have a certain, you know, preceptor principle in the medicine that I do where if something has been going on for years, you can’t… It doesn’t mean it’s gonna take years to get it better, but you cannot expect it to get better in a couple of days. And if anybody tells you then it’s really being unrealistic. So, we like to make sure we give it enough time. First, you gotta figure it out. And it’s like you said, unpacking or peeling the onion. So, time is really it, especially if it’s a chronic infection like tick-borne, which, you know, unfortunately, in a lot of these entities, there’s what I say maybe polarizing approaches, which is unfortunate. In Lyme and in tick-borne diseases, it’s clear to me that people can have chronic cases. Yet, there are, unfortunately, some doctors, and I’m not saying they’re bad doctors in any way, they probably mean good, they believe this, that you give two to four weeks of an antibiotic and Lyme is done, and everything after that is post-treatment Lyme syndrome. And it’s just not the way.

There’s a lot of evidence and publications that support that Lyme and other tick-borne disorders can be more chronic and less. So, the point is if that’s the case, you have to recognize that you may have to treat longer. And unfortunately, with all these treatments like even, you know, we were talking about PANDAS, PANS, or ITABI as I say, if it’s strep, you just can’t treat for 10 days. If the immune system has been dysregulated, you need to treat for at least a month with an antibiotic. And just like in rheumatic fever where kids get penicillin for up to age 18 or 21 sometimes, you may need to treat for much longer, months, or even longer. And the key is to be open to what’s necessary and not limited just because that’s what you’re supposed to do. I think what you’re supposed to do is treat the patient always being aware that there are potential side effects with antibiotics.

So, when I treat tick-borne and strep-related or any of these things with antibiotics, I always protect the gut with co-biotics, which would be probiotics, Saccharomyces Boulardii, some prebiotics, and recognizing that you have to monitor the safety labs. So, we check liver, kidney, blood counts every month to make sure that they’re okay. It’s not enough to just throw somebody on an antibiotic. I mean, if it’s helping them, it’s great. But you always have to be cognizant of potential side effects. And I think that is one of the things that I teach doctors a lot and I think is very important and why it’s really helped me, you know, be able to do this. And listen, when I started, Katie, in medicine 38 years ago, a lot of what I was doing, the kids I was taking care of had recurrent ear infections. So, I was dealing with food allergies and yeast problems and trying to get them off antibiotics, right? And now to find myself using antibiotics in a more prolonged fashion for tick-borne disorders and for these, you know, PANS/PANDAS kinds of patients, it’s not what I would have preferred to do. But yet, you know, we do use, you know, herbal and nutraceutical antimicrobials and all that as well. Don’t get me wrong, but you must do what works to help these kids. And hopefully, thankfully, after thousands of kids, I’ve come up with, you know, ways that do work for them.

But it always interests me how somehow if you listen and you look and you let the patient really tell their story and you really figure it out and you treat them as they need to not with preconceived notions that you can really arrive at it. You really can. And that’s what’s so gratifying for me. It’s very complex. It’s very hard work. But, I mean, when you treat these kids who have been sick for so long, you’re not only helping the kids, you’re helping the families. You’re helping these kids that have mood dysregulation with aggression and don’t go to school for three years. I have kids that have been out of school for three years. You help the families. You help the siblings, the parents, the grandparents. So, for me, it’s very gratifying when you can really change that trajectory, so to speak.

Katie: And I think that’s an important point as well to realize. I think a lot of the people listening tend to the more natural side of wanting to use natural alternatives whenever possible. And certainly, I myself am kind of in that camp as well, but realizing there is also very much a time and a place for things like antibiotics when they’re needed. And I think that’s an important point that maybe isn’t talked about enough when it comes to some of these conditions. And you’re right. There’s almost these polarizing camps, and I’ve wondered if that actually gets in the way of patient outcomes at times because, like you said, at the end of the day, it needs to come down to the individual person and what’s best for their specific case.

But I feel like often it gets kind of turned into a protocol or people will get, like, kind of a pet protocol that they prefer to use and default to. And at the end of the day, it truly should be about patient outcomes and what’s gonna help these kids get better. But I definitely have seen that resistance to using antibiotics even in pretty severe cases like this. But it makes sense what you’re saying is, look at the patient individually, use them when they’re necessary, realizing that they have side effects as well so that you’re working to kind of actively mitigate that at the same time. Are there any commonalities that often exist across the board? I’m guessing with an inflammatory connection, you’re gonna wanna remove inflammatory foods or at least certain ones for a while removing inflammatory lifestyle factors. What are some of those starting points that you work on with families?

Dr. Bock: So, I’m gonna get to that in one second. I do wanna emphasize to you that people should understand the whole antibiotic thing, that it’s always… You’re using it. You’re trying to use it when needed, have additional herbal and nutraceutical antimicrobials and anti-natural anti-inflammatories. And we’re gonna get to the diet and other things right now. So, it’s not that you just jump to antibiotics and that’s your only modality. That would not be good. And that would… I would say in my treatment programs is always gonna be dietary modifications, nutritional supplementation, detoxification, protection, etc. But the people that are adamantly opposed to that sometimes won’t get better because they really do need it. So, I think you made a very good point and I wanna have people understand. I mean, I think there’s a balance that you have to come to, and I would say it’s a grounded balance. And I think sometimes I’m looked at as somebody that hopefully has that, that is not a cowboy or a cowgirl out there just, you know, but that does what’s necessary. And, of course, I use lots of nutrients.

So, we get to this other question, is, you do have to mitigate inflammatory triggering things like diet and supplements. So, let’s say the diet. So, what’s inflammatory? Well, sugar is definitely inflammatory and sugar feeds, you know, Lyme and other dysbiotic bacteria. So, the first things we do always dietary is cut out sugar, you know, or at least for some of the teens. It’s not easy when you work with teens. I mean, this is something that I really honed over years in, you know, hundreds or thousands of kids. You have to communicate with them. You try to really have them know that you’re on their side because they’re sitting on my couch with earbuds in and basically looking down and, you know, maybe barking at their parents because you know what’s going on in the adolescent teen. So, you try to help them understand. And if they’re in enough pain, not always physical pain, psychological pain, if you can help them, that maybe they’ll get to do that.

Gluten and dairy are two generally foods. Gluten and casein, but certainly gluten and dairy foods can be inflammatory, not in everybody, but generally, it can be in a lot of people with inflammation. So, we do frequently advise and try or at least to have a gluten-free and dairy-free diet. There are things I can do to look at and see if there are allergies or gluten sensitivity. But most of the people don’t have celiac. It’s a very small amount. And a lot more people have gluten and dairy sensitivities. And getting them off of sometimes soy. And we look at specific foods because if there are certain specific foods, it could even be eggs, which is a healthy food in my mind, but, you know, if you’re allergic or sensitive, it can cause inflammation. Grains, certainly.

So, a lot of times the treatment that we certainly may start on if they can move to this. This is the thing about how to implement it is a modified ketogenic diet, which is kind of like a paleo-type diet, which is, you know, protein, good fats, you know, avocado, olive oil, even coconut oil. Veggies, veggies, veggies, veggies, is really a key. And you avoid the grains. You avoid gluten. You avoid dairy. And in some of the diets, we don’t even want a lot of sugar. So fruits, you may limit it, maybe more berries and stuff that is lower in sugar. You want the lower glycemic ones because, you know, even fruits, if you eat a lot of high glycemic fruits, it’s like eating sugar. And certainly, no fruit juices, which we grew up with thinking, “Wow. I’m not drinking soda. At least I’m drinking fruit juice.” But drinking apple juice and orange juice, unfortunately, is like drinking a lot of sugar.

Katie: Yeah, it’s interesting, definitely. I used to have Hashimoto’s and I went through a lot of the same things trying to figure out my own inflammatory response. And I agree with you. Eggs are, I would consider mostly a healthy food and I definitely reacted to eggs for quite a while until I was able to calm down that inflammatory response. And then for a while, I was good with duck eggs and now I can handle all eggs pretty well. But I think that’s a good point as well is there’s foods that are kind of easy to put in that inflammatory category. And I agree with you, like, especially when we’ve got any kind of inflammatory response like refined sugar, any processed food, vegetable oils, those things we can lump into a big group and get rid of those entirely. But then there’s also that personalized component, like you said. And unpacking is something that could still otherwise be good causing an inflammatory response. You also mentioned before, like, when the vagal nerve connection, even just stress, it’s, like, what we perceive as stress can cause an actual physical change and physical reaction. So, do you work with patients on strategies to reduce their stress or perceived stress?

Dr. Bock: Totally, because… It’s good you said that because stress creates systemic inflammation. And there are studies to support this. So, clearly, if you have a lot of stress, that’s gonna promote inflammation. And it’s very interesting, Katie, that, you know, I talk about this immune kettle, this kettle that different layers, it starts with genetic predispositions and then you layer it up with nutritional deficiencies, insufficiencies, and environmental exposures, toxicants, and infections, and hormonal imbalances and allergies and sensitivities. And when you get to the top frequently, the thing that might throw you over the top into symptoms is a large amount of stress. And people will generally view that as only stress. You can’t forget all the other layers in the kettle that you have to address to get somebody as far down in the kettle that they can be as healthy as possible. But stress is a very important component. And it must be addressed for sure because it clearly contributes to systemic inflammation.

Katie: That makes sense. And that would line up with… It seems like we often see… If those underlying other factors are there, someone may not be perceiving them because their bodies are resilient. And so, like you said, you may have all these factors, but then some stressful event like a loss of some type or even I’ve seen pregnancy seem to be a catapult for a lot of women into actually starting to see symptoms, which even though pregnancy is a wonderful thing, it is a stressor on the body.

Dr. Bock: It’s a stressor on the body. It has immune system ramifications, which may be the reason and also hormonal changes. So, there are additional things in addition to the actual stress in the body in terms of the immune system and the endocrine system. Yes, definitely.

Katie: That makes sense. Okay. So, I think another kind of jumping-in point that’ll be really interesting here is we talked about this a little bit off air. I love to ask the question of a few things that people don’t know or understand about your area of expertise. But I think some lines got crossed when my team sent it to you and you didn’t get the part about your area of expertise. So, you actually got to delve into things people don’t know or understand about you. And if you’re willing to be vulnerable, I would love to hear that because I have a feeling there’s a crossover into application here.

Dr. Bock: Yeah. That’s great. Well, thank you. I know. Listen, I actually love questions like that. Some of the best interviews and podcasts I’ve done have been people that we just jumped off various things. So, what some people probably don’t know about me, I’m sure most people don’t know about me, is I have old close friends from kindergarten, public school, junior high school. Actually, I saw two of them last night. One is single, the other one is married, so their wives were with us. But it was great because one of them just came up from Florida. So, I really value close, long-term friendships. I think I’ve hopefully talked about that to my kids. And, unfortunately, many people don’t have that in their lives. And for me, they make up what I would call chosen family because we all get family… You had that sort of smile. We all get family and, you know, listen, it doesn’t always work. It’s a real opportunity to have real closeness with your family, but sometimes siblings, unfortunately, with all the issues, etc., etc. It doesn’t work. So, we will have Thanksgiving and, you know, various of our holidays with chosen family and extremely close and they’re really like family. And there’s, you know, a guy from kindergarten, a guy that I know from kindergarten I play golf with every Friday. We meet halfway between where both live. And so these things are very important to me. So, I would share that as something that really is I think some of the people don’t know.

The other thing is, you know, when you get to family, I have two kids who are adopted from Colombia, which has been, you know, a real joy and it’s just been amazing for me and my wife. And they’re 26 and 31. Actually, 32, sorry. He just turned 32. And one of them just got reunited with the birth family in Colombia and we all went to Colombia to meet them. And it was amazing. They have become part of our extended family. And a birth brother came here a few weeks ago, got vaccinated, stayed with us. And it’s just unbelievable. So, it’s just… Again, it’s that whole thing about family. And this is a family in Colombia that’s never had as much opportunity. That’s why they had to give one child up, unfortunately, because they are poor. And it’s been so great to share with them and the love and everything. So, that is something I think, yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s an unbelievable story.

Yeah. So, those are a couple of the things. And I guess the last thing when I thought about, “Okay. What do people not know about you,” I do integrative medicine, but interestingly it dates back to my college days where, you know, I became a vegetarian. I’m not a vegetarian anymore because I felt like I needed more protein myself, but for 26 years I was. And I was into nutrition. And I actually majored in American Studies and I was gonna study ethnobotany, Native Americans, because that was my interest right before I went to medical school. So, it’s very interesting that in my medical career I incorporate nutrition, nutrients, and herbs. So, it’s kind of a full-circle thing and I feel like… The nice thing is I feel like where I’m supposed to be and my staff sometimes worries about me retiring, and I say, “Why would I retire? I love what I do and I get the opportunity to heal many people with chronic complex problems that may not have gotten that healing.” So, I’m gonna be around for a little bit.

Katie: That’s good to hear. And I’ll make sure I put links in the show notes at wellnessmama.fm for you guys so that you can find Dr. Bock’s practice, especially if you are anywhere close, although you work virtually as well. Is that right?

Dr. Bock: Yes. And nowadays, of course, we’re allowed to work virtually even more. So, people used to have to… But we have to see people from all over the world and we used to have to fly in at least for the first time, but now because of COVID they’ve relaxed that and I think they’re gonna keep that going. I think it’s working. So, I can see people virtually. We do it just like this on a video. And I can get the labs and I can actually treat, not just with nutrients before, but I can actually… if I need to use medicines and things like that. So, yeah. So, basically, they shouldn’t feel constrained. And I have a wonderful nurse practitioner with me. She’s been with me since last October, I think. And she is phenomenal. And her name is Jennifer. And so, you know, people can always get into see her and she presents each case to me. We talk it over so people, you know, can get in easier and she’s… I think people love her. So, she’s great.

Katie: That’s a silver lining. I guess over the past couple of years of craziness, I feel like it has been helpful in helping doctors and practitioners connect more directly with patients. I’m glad to hear that’s likely gonna stay.

Dr. Bock: I think it might. I don’t know. And I certainly hope it does because I think it’s allowed certain populations, especially rural populations, but, I mean, it allows people to get care from someone further away that may have expertise that maybe is not in the local community. So, I do think there’s a value to it.

Katie: Do you have any advice for parents on how to find a good practitioner or doctor, even if it’s in a different area of expertise? But are there good questions that they should ask to kind of see if the doctor is gonna be a good partner in working with them on their health or their child’s health?

Dr. Bock: Well, I think you have to try to just not be scared to ask. And if a doctor intimidates you and doesn’t let you ask that, it may not be the right one. You may be labeled as a, you know, “Oh, my God. This patient is gonna be a pain or too much,” you know. But you may present that. “Hey, I’m looking for somebody who can be a partner in my health. I recognize you have a lot of expertise. I may have questions. I’m intelligent. I like to research. I’d like to be able to talk to you about things. I’d like to make decisions.” So, I think the key is communication. If you don’t communicate, you know, you may not be able to. You may try, but that may be the clue. The other thing is, if there are things going on, you want to make sure they listen. And it may sometimes behoove a patient to say, “Listen, I need more time.” And I know not everybody can afford it, “But I’m willing to pay a little more to have more time for you not to run out of the room. I want you to be able to hear my story.” And so that’s another thing to make sure they get enough time.

And also one thing in the book “Brain Inflamed” at the end of every chapter, there are clues and questions that you can bring that you can ask yourselves, but that the book is not meant for you to diagnose yourself. You can bring them to the doctor and almost answer and say, “Hey, this is what’s going on with my kid. Is there a chance you can check for thyroid problems like low thyroid, or you can check for adrenal issues, or you can check for tick-borne?” And so I think the key is for a parent to be able to recognize that they have the right to ask these questions if they’re put down. Maybe it’s not right. You know what I mean? And you want the time, but you also have to recognize that in the constraints of insurance medicine, if your insurance is gonna cover a small amount for a quick visit, it’s difficult for the doctors. It’s unfortunate. So, you may have to take that next step and say, “Listen, I understand I need more time. I’m happy to pay for that extra time, but I would like to get the care that I need.” That’s a suggestion.

Katie: That’s great advice. And I know you’ve written about this. I’ll make sure your books are linked as well. But like we kind of talked about in the beginning and like you talked about with your immune kettle is that we have so many more negative inputs going into our bodies and our lifestyles right now. It’s no secret. Like, we’ve talked about all the reasons inflammation is on the rise. Even for people who are listening who hopefully don’t have themselves or their child going through a really acute condition, do you have any good general guidelines for keeping inflammation lower since this seems to be a pretty much population-wide problem at this point?

Dr. Bock: Yeah. So, I would… I mean, it’s not always easy to implement, but as best as you possible, you know, you deal with stress. You try to… You try to be a little more, live in the moment. Don’t let the… It’s almost like don’t let the little things bother you. There’s books written about that known as “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.” When you would ask me about one of the favorite books, I was gonna say one of the ones was “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind,” which I read years ago and I used to actually meditate with a friend and we used to read a few pages or every time after we meditated. And it basically tried to get you in a space of not being as distracted, being in the moment, but also having a kind of fresh, open perspective, almost like a child, to each thing so we don’t have all these preconceived judgments that keep us from really experiencing the world. So, it’s a way of living life. You eat a healthier diet. I mean, like we talked, it doesn’t have to be extreme. You try to moderate it so that you can do it, but certainly, you decrease the sugars and the sweets. You increase whole foods. Try to eat organic as much as possible because, you know, it is… I know it’s, like, more expensive, but if you can, it really does make a difference in terms of even, you know, chickens. You don’t wanna eat chickens that, you know, may be artificially raised in some way with a lot more pesticides. You wanna try to use natural cleaning products, avoid pesticides. And you want to eat veggies, veggies, veggies, veggies I would say.

And then I would say, there are nutrients that can… You wanna keep your microbiome in a good place so you can take probiotics, prebiotics. I take a lot of these things on a daily basis, for sure. And I would just say and nutrients. There are various anti-inflammatory-type nutrients. There are fish oils. There’s Vitamin D. So, you should get your Vitamin D level checked and take a dose of Vitamin D that’s appropriate, and then get a recheck to make sure you don’t overshoot and that you’re getting there. There are some herbal nutraceuticals like curcumin, which is an excellent anti-inflammatory, and other things like green tea. So, there are resveratrol. There are nutrients that can actually help tighten up that blood-brain barrier, restore the integrity. Resveratrol is another one of these nutraceuticals, polyphenols. So, those are just… And there are many more, but those are a few I think for people who are really experiencing inflammation. I use a lot of CBD, you know, pharmaceutical-grade CBD. It doesn’t have any THC, especially the ones for kids have no THC. You’re allowed to have up to 0.3% THC without any problem, but we like to use ones without any THC for the kids. And it can be very helpful as long as you get up to the right doses.

And so that’s the thing I would let people know is another principle is right nutrients, right doses. A lot of the nutrients out there maybe put in these multiples combinations and they have very, very tiny doses, but they make… Hey, mind you, this has got everything in it, but you look at Coenzyme Q10 and it should be 100 milligrams, and maybe it says, you know, 100 micrograms or 1,000 micrograms, which is just really 1 milligram because the microbiome is 1,000 centi-milligram, but it looks like, “Wow, this is loaded.” So, you have to be aware of that. And in my practice you may use pharmaceutical-grade nutrients that are, you want high quality, especially for probiotics, very, very important. A lot of the higher dose probiotics we use are actually individually wrapped and they’re nitrogen-packed. So you don’t have to refrigerate them because they maintain their potency because the key is not what you put in them. It’s what is in them when you take them. And also fish oils. Fish oil is very important to get really high quality, no Mercury, no toxicants. And that’s very, very important. So, out of everything, Vitamin D is generally Vitamin D, etc., etc. So, I think between diet modifications, and, of course, gluten and dairy, it depends, you can look at how that affects you. But you wanna do it in the context of a healthy diet.

Sometimes people go gluten-free and they come back to me and they say, “Yeah, I’m gluten-free.” And I look what they’re eating. They’re eating tons of gluten-free chocolate chip cookies. Well, that’s not the gluten-free diet that we’re talking about. And I’m sure you understand that. And then, you know, there’s certain things we do for detoxification. We actually check people’s MTHFR status. So, if they have a problem with methylation, we wanna support that with methyl B12 and methyl folate. So, there are a lot of things to be aware of in the context of the more toxicans that we experienced in the world, for sure. And we can do it.

So, in “Brain Inflamed” although I talk about a lot of stories and some of them are dramatic, some of them less so, there are also interspersed places of how you can be more preventive with your kids, like some of the things I’m saying now. I mean, I take… If I showed you the packet of nutrients I take every day because I know what they do for me and I take them. But if you’re gonna try to give some very basic nutrients to kids, you might think of…and you talk about inflammation, probiotics are anti-inflammatory, Vitamin D and fish oil. So, let’s say you’re talking about… And if you give fish oils I like to give a little Vitamin E to prevent it from oxidation. So, if you’re talking about… You know, I call that the Holy Trinity. There was a friend and patient of mine, Chris Carr, actually, came up with that with me, the Holy Trinity. Fish oils, Vitamin D, and probiotics, I think those are three things that I think can be considered for most people in terms of promoting kind of anti-inflammation, so to speak.

Katie: So many great tips in there. I was taking notes.

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And you mentioned you take a lot of supplements daily. I do too. I rotate a lot of things. But what would you consider your personal, like, 80/20 of the things you do, the 20% of things you do as part of your regular routine that have the biggest benefit?

Dr. Bock: These are just a few. I already did my morning ones, but these are just… So, when you say my 80/20, do you mean…

Katie: So, like, the idea that pareto principle that like 20% of inputs usually drive 80% of output. So, what are the most impactful things you do? For instance, meditation is one of mine, things that provides the most result for time input.

Dr. Bock: Well, I think meditation is a great one. And although I used to meditate every day, I still meditate, but it’s not, unfortunately, every day like it used to be. But it should be. I think exercise. Exercise is a key. We didn’t talk about exercise, but exercise… Regular and moderate exercise for the long-term is definitely anti-inflammatory. Severe exercise actually is inflammatory. So, you have to be aware of that. And that’s why sometimes you’ve heard stories of people who, you know, the weekend warriors that go out and have a real problem because they go crazy one day a week. It’s just too much. So, the regular exercise actually increases your antioxidant capacity and is very helpful.

And for me, you know, in answer to one of the other questions that you asked to consider when you think of maybe one of the most important things I would like people to know, I would say that love and laughter are two ingredients that are essential to life and the health of the immune system. So, I was on one podcast where I said that and I said… I was playing a game. “Okay. What do you think are the two most healthy things for the immune system?” And everybody always says, “Vitamin D and Vitamin C and probiotics.” I said, “No, no, no.” And then, obviously, everyone… I say, “No, love and laughter.” And the person just freaked in a good way. It’s like, I really believe that. So, I love to surround myself with family and close friends, I guess the chosen family, and also laugh. I’m a guy that might kid’s kid me about laughing in a movie theater. If you can hear me, and I laugh a lot. You know why? Because I think, first of all, I just, thankfully, enjoy life, but I love to laugh.

And I think laughter is so important. Not having to do stand-up comedy, but, you know, joking or a little fun teasing, not putting people down, but just sharing laughs is so, so important and for your immune system. I mean, there are studies to show that. And love as well in a home. You know what I mean? I may sound corny now, but you’re asking me for very… Quote little things that can have great benefits. Well, a hug. What was one of the most difficult things during COVID? For me, it was you couldn’t hug your friends. You couldn’t hug. I mean, you could hug your pod, but you couldn’t hug the people that you do. And I found that very difficult. I think a lot of people I know also found that difficult because hugs are really important. I mean, that’s really… Those are the small-time commitments, but big payoffs.

Katie: Yeah. I’m glad we brought it back to that community aspect because, I mean, we can say that’s a small thing, but also I really firmly believe that’s actually a big factor in Blue Zones is the very strong relationships and community that they have. And we know from the data that having those solid relationships and regular in-person time with people that you have strong relationships with, it’s actually statistically as or more important than exercise, than quitting, smoking than your diet. As social human creatures, we absolutely need that for health. So, I’m so glad we got back to that as a wrapping-up point. You already answered the question about a book that had had a profound impact on your life. Are there any others that come to mind that you’d want to share as well?

Dr. Bock: That was the main one. I mean, there’s… That was the main one. Over the course of years, there have been others. But when I was thinking of it, that’s the one that jumped out at me because that was the one… It was many years ago and it was actually meditating with somebody who was an old friend. Actually, it’s somebody in Peabody. He’s a basketball coach, Phil Jackson. We used to meditate every morning. He’d come to my house at 6:30 in the morning. This was before he coached the Chicago Bulls and he lived in Woodstock. And we’d meditate and then go off for breakfast afterwards. And it was just a very wonderful thing. And we’d read a piece of “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” So, that just jumps out much more than any other book.

Katie: What a cool story and a perfect place to wrap up. I love that we get to delve into the science, but also that so much of the advice came back to the quality of your relationships, your meditation, your friendships, and the daily choices that you make for your own health versus sometimes the more extreme measures that are also very much necessary. And I will make sure, like I mentioned, that your books are linked in the show notes for you guys listening, wellnessmama.fm. All of his books will be linked there, also your practice. Are you taking new patients for anyone who wants to work virtually?

Dr. Bock: Totally. Totally. And also, they can go to the website braininflamed.com because there’s a place that they can actually download… I made some templates and one is a blank template. So, if your kid’s having issues, you can look at some of the mood disorders. You can look at some of the symptoms and kind of make your own graph, compare it to some of the templates. Obviously, they’re not exactly good templates for some of the other things that I talked about. And then you can maybe map it, you know, monthly or so, and watch the progress. Hopefully, some of the peaks go down. And so that’s something they can get on braininflamed.com.

Katie: Perfect. I will make sure that is linked as well. I know how busy you are, so thank you for your time today. This was so informative, and I’m so grateful.

Dr. Bock: No, it was my pleasure. You were great and it was really fun.

Katie: And thanks, as always, to all of you guys for listening and sharing your most valuable resources, your time, and energy, and attention with us today. We’re both so grateful that you did. And I hope that you will join me again on the next episode of the “Wellness Mama Podcast.”

If you’re enjoying these interviews, would you please take two minutes to leave a rating or review on iTunes for me? Doing this helps more people to find the podcast, which means even more moms and families could benefit from the information. I really appreciate your time, and thanks as always for listening.

This article was originally published by wellnessmama.com. Read the original article here.

This article was originally published by mindbodygreen.com. Read the original article here.