It may take six months or up to a year and a half for people to start seeing improvements in their cognition, but if they get off the program, it could be two weeks before they start relaxing. Weeks. Yeah. Which is no way that's fair. If it took you, say, eighteen months to get better, why is it that it only takes you two weeks to get worse?
I am sitting down with doctor Myrto Ashe to talk about her new book, The Simple Science of Wellness, 60 unusually effective and accessible practices to restore your health and vitality. In this episode, we're talking about her book, but also the powerful work she's been doing to help people with chronic illness actually start to feel better, not just manage numbers or manage symptoms, but to truly find healing. We are diving into why so many people feel dismissed or stuck in the conventional medical system and how we can utilize a deeper and more root cause approach to finally start to shift things. She shares her years of personal and professional insight and experience to help us understand what really makes a difference when it comes to symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, autoimmune issues, and so many of the vague and debilitating symptoms that women can experience. This is going to be a really valuable conversation, so I hope you enjoy it.
You will notice that this episode was recorded when I was recovering from a terrible case of laryngitis. So thank you in advance for your patience with my voice as I try to get through this episode with enough voice, and I hope you'll still find the information helpful. We'd love to hear from you if you like it or if you have ideas for future episodes. Feel free to reach out anytime. Here we go.
We have more tools so we can fix some things that you would normally use medications for, and also then we're gonna ask you to do the difficult thing that's gonna get at the underlying cause and that hopefully you will not need our little party trick either at some point. And that's kind of the that's where the hard and the easy come in. Well, Myrto, thank you so much for coming on. You have been a mentor to me, and I'm so I've learned so much from you. So I'm so excited that others get to learn from you today.
Well, thank you so much for having me. This is, I'm looking forward to this. Thank you. Well, we are going to talk today primarily about healing from chronic illness. This is something that you are instrumental in helping so many patients to do, and I know you'll have tons of insight.
Will you tell us first a little bit about your journey from being a conventional family doctor to having this experience of, transitioning into integrative and functional medicine? Sure. Yeah. I think that actually is not an uncommon story. I actually graduated, from McGill University in in medical school and went to do my residency in The States at to do family medicine residency.
And I really loved the idea of family medicine and I was a family doctor for twenty years in community health centers. And that was I really felt like that was my thing. I love I love doing that. And at some point, my kids were a certain age and my husband was, just starting his practice and it was too much and so I decided to quit. I've had less than twenty years by that time.
But anyway, but then I mean part of the reason why I was quitting is because my kids were presenting with some issues and someone had to focus on that and I it was too much to try and do everything. And so I had time and started doing what everybody does, Googling around to see what else there is to treat these conditions that I was, so I guess ADHD is the condition that we were dealing with and the way that it was presenting. And so we moved. I I had known I knew Mark Hyman from before who has been, you know, a big figure in in functional medicine. And, I was at the library one day and I picked up a book.
I wonder what Mark is up to, you know, like literally, like I don't know what he's doing with his functional medicine anyways. Some probably made up thing that Mark has come up with. You know? And, I, just stumbled across this, like, this table that showed that where he said that ADHD was caused by neuroinflammation. And it was a little irritating because I never heard of neuro inflammation.
And I consider myself a person who does a lot of reading, and I was reading General American Medical Association every week. And how is it that I hadn't, you know, I didn't even know the word. But we have the Internet. We have I mean, our computers are linked to the Library of Congress, and so I was able to study this and, was really excited to try Mark's interventions given that he had come up with a diagnosis that I thought was correct. So, I put myself on his elimination diet, and, that's when the little miracles happened.
I used to have joint pain. I used to have asthma. I used to, you know, have an extra 15 pounds from my, three pregnancies and, all of that evaporated without any effort on my part other than really following the diet and taking some vitamins. I even found myself with more energy than before. It was kind of obvious because the end of the day, the kids were, like, the ages between five and 10.
And, the end of the day, I would be able to finish the dishes and clean the kitchen where before I had been putting it off to the next day. So it was really like an obvious transformation. And I thought, well, it would be fun to do this. If I had to go back to to to to being a doctor, this is what I would wanna do, but but could I? Right?
We always like, it seems like we have to be so smart to do this. Like, could I really learn how to do this? Like, it would be pretty cool. So I did. I tried, and it worked out.
So I'm pretty happy to do it. I opened a a practice that was kinda modeled a little bit on a psychiatry office, so, like, much simpler than a medical office. Like, just one person. And eventually, I got, you know, part time assistant. And that's pretty much what it still is.
I never had the food and vision to run a a multiple provided place. Well, I love that story. I love the simplicity of it. You know? I think oftentimes and I think this is getting worse and worse, the the longer functional medicine exists, the more we complicate it.
And it's really the perfect intro into what we're talking about today and your approach because one of the things I respect most about you is how, number one, you mentioned you used to work for the community clinics, and it's so obvious. You are so compassionate towards people and helping people, you know, start where they're starting and and be able to make these changes with what they have instead of being the fanciest, shiniest, you know, most ex expensive model out there. You've really focused, I think, on doing the doable. So I appreciate that about you. And along those lines then, one of the things that you're also very good at is really staying with the data and not doing things willy nilly just because you heard it from some other functional medicine doctor.
You've really focused on scouring the data and staying up on the data. And if if you're going to do something, making sure that there's either data behind it or that patients understand that we're veering from that for a good reason and there's theory and and wisdom behind it and letting them decide. And I think you've combined these years of experience into this excellent book. Will you tell us a little bit more about your book, The Simple Science of Wellness, and what what did what went into writing that book? And then we wanna, of course, dig into your approach and what you share.
Yeah. Sure. So so thanks for that. And I think, what I learned from community health centers also from, growing up in Canada and going to medical school really where medical care was is is free at the point of of receiving services was that you can do so much good with that, and and that's a starting point. And, like, I was able to help people, who didn't have insurance with we would we had limited we have limited tools that we had and that don't work in that setting anymore.
And then we went to is sort of this idea of ancestral wellness that the book was gonna be called ancestral wellness at the beginning, which is sort of my my reason why they are as good as they are is because they they are they go along with a way that the body was already structured. So, you know, it's obvious, you know, depression is not caused by Prozac deficiency. Therefore, when you're introducing something that wasn't the root cause, then you have a chance of of causing problems. And even the ones that we, you know, we have accepted over years, let's say, aspirin, for example. Right?
We have this idea that aspirin was preventing heart attacks. And sure it was, but it took, like, a couple of decades to figure out that, yes, but it was also killing some people and the trade off actually was not worth it. And so this is, you know, forty years into this right now. I mean, this is really the theme of of of conventional medicine. We have helped people in so many ways and we have not known of some of the harms at the same time.
So having gone from that system to deciding I'm going to adopt something brand new that involves completely different tools, I was really feeling a little peeved. Like, I have worked really hard on the four years of medical school, the three years of residency, and the teen years after that of practice. And I absolutely do not want to get rambozled or or, you know, biased into a type of of number of practices that are actually also ineffective or have side effects and so on. And what are what can I do then? You know, can I use each practice and start thinking a little bit about it?
First of all, does it get at root causes? Why might it get at root causes? So and also, I guess, at the same time, maybe it's me being practical. Sometimes, you know, we joke as functional medicine doctors that we're not we're not sure we can afford our own care. You know what I mean?
And it's funny not funny. Mhmm. So anyway, maybe it's the practical side of me who who was like, okay. So wait. This is a free tool.
Does it have validity? Does it have ancestral relevance? Does it have, you know in that case, why wouldn't we prioritize that one then? But what if I don't necessarily make money from it personally? Like, maybe that's not doesn't factor as much in my equation because I don't have a big center and I don't have people to support other than myself and my family.
Well, tell us a little bit. I what I want to do in this episode is I want people to leave feeling very hopeful. You know, there are definitely a lot of people who have struggled for so long. They've seen every doctor. They've gone through everything.
Many of them have even seen multiple functional medicine doctors and they've tried buckets of supplements and they've done all the things. So first, if you'll tell us a little bit about the types of patients that you see, what are they coming in for? What are the types of symptoms and this this constellation of things that you're seeing so often from patients? And then we'll move on to how you approach it. Yeah.
So early on, I realized that who would be coming is people who weren't happy with the conventional system because they're still looking for an MD. So they, are not, they're they they haven't given up on conventional medicine and and this type of training and this type of knowledge. So it's all the people who really aren't happy with what their doctor said. Either they don't wanna take the pills the doctor recommended or the doctor said there's nothing wrong with you. The doctor said there's nothing I can do to help you, and that's pretty much who I see.
These days, the ones I feel the most excited about are people with GI issues because it feels like I have a good system for them. And also I'm interested in the whole longevity aspect and trying and this is my family medicine training sort of coming out to the fore, my public health training. You know, what are some things that we can do to be healthy long term. And, cognition has been really interesting because there's a fairly large number of patients that can improve their cognition. And it's a little magical trick because we're if it feels like we're cheating, it we're not supposed to be able to help them.
We're talking about dementia. Cognitive decline is irreversible and nothing could be done. And there's plenty there's a fair plenty of research really that that's not true, but it's not it's taking it a little while to seep in. So anyway, those are yeah. But I'm not always sure that I can help a person with cognitive decline.
But with GI, it's almost always that we can get a whole lot better even if we don't get a % well. So that's exciting. So I think that, you know, you need to be sort of, you know, listen carefully and see if there's something maybe that has been missed. It might be different in different people. Maybe go through things again systematically and and make sure, and see if they wanna sometimes they iteratively, they have to repeat some steps that maybe helped a little bit, then they need to do more of that.
So there it's more about listening. And in fact, I have an initial half hour, strategic strategy phone call, and part of that is because I wanna make sure that I do have something to offer. Some people really have tried everything, and I'm gonna be honest with them. Who wants to have, you know, two sets of frustrated, parties working on something that, you know, if I if I don't have something for it? Yeah.
For sure. Well, tell us, when you sit down with a complex patient, how are you starting? What are the top things you want to know, to help them understand kind of where to go next? Do you have an order of operations that you use when you're saying, you know, with these functional medicine patients, what I see is they'll go to another practice and that practice will often order tons of testing and then they'll say, there are 18 things wrong with you. So here's a different supplement for every one of those 18 things.
And oftentimes, people don't get that much better or they get overwhelmed or they they're they're having side effects now from all of the supplements. What has been your approach when you say, like, yes, there are 18 things, but there are some that matter more than others? Yeah. So for me, the ones that, the tests that I'll that I'll prioritize over others are the ones where I have either some evidence that they work or a lot of experience and and have seen them to work. And I tell people which is which.
And so the I do three things when I start so first of all, listening to the of course, taking the entire history often takes ninety minutes to figure out everything about someone. Sometimes forty five depending on the age, like a teenager might be forty five minutes, but, 70 year old is gonna be ninety minutes. And trying to see in that timeline that we that we develop in functional medicine, if I can figure out what are the trigger what sets this person off when they've come down with a a diagnosis or a problem, what preceded it? You know, what is the sort of thing that that triggers this person? And also, you know, what seems to have helped them over time and what are they still stuck with.
And so so what are some sort of recurrent themes? And then I have a few things that I call party tricks. Like, there are some things that I can improve easily, and I'll I'll do that. It doesn't necessarily always work, but it's so fun when it does. People who have terrible sinus issues will get better with a sinus probiotic and, a a nose nasal probiotic.
And that's like it's so nice to take one take one thing out of the off the problem list, and you didn't you didn't cause any illness. You didn't cause any additional side effects. Oh yeah, there was a cost, you know, but it's not a large cost. Or, you know, sort of put some things in place to think about the future like if we know those recurrent UTIs, I have a UTI protocol and it works it it works really well to maybe prevent eighty percent of the need for for antibiotics. So think ahead, like, are we gonna need to prevent, you know, yet another impact on your gut biome?
So there are a few things like that that I will do just to alleviate suffering, but they're sort of more to me, I think they're more entertaining than deep medicine. And then I'll do three things at the same time. I'll test people's nutrients. And for each nutrient, I've gone through the literature to see if we have data that not only of what might be an optimal nutrient level, but also data that if you supplement, you can get a health change, outcome change because that's not always the case. Right?
We know that people with higher vitamin d do better but vitamin d doesn't fix all of the things that correlate with doing with health anyway. So in medicine it's always complicated like that. Just because that low the higher level is better doesn't mean that that coercing the level higher will actually fix the problem. So I wanted to look for both of those. So I have a a low my little list of nutrients that I I check on everyone and, tell you the most common deficient nutrient is omega three fatty acids by far and away.
There are some people with with omega index of of there's one person who had, I think it was one percent, a vegan teenager. She hadn't been near a fish or also probably was eating low fat. I don't know. But it was, yeah, one percent. Just recently, I had one at two percent.
Just a regular What were you aiming for? Eight to eleven percent is what we know to be the optimal level and that we know that adding omega threes does have an impact. And the stuff that you read in the newspapers is somewhat biased or incomplete information. So, yeah, so I'll prioritize the things where I have studies. So that's one of the three things I do when I start.
The second thing is glucose regulation. People, you know, we need to see if people are prediabetic. They're having very large glucose spikes because those things are inflammatory. And then the third thing is doing something to optimize the gut bacteria, the gut biome, and that's like a bigger deal. I usually combine three or four things at once.
This is one thing I learned to do in functional medicine that I think conventional medicine does differently. It's this idea that a lot of the things that you do have a two to 3% improvement, so you can't just do one or two or three. You may have to do more than that. I didn't I don't think I had my that kind of mindset before. And so so I do those three all at the same time.
And it's it works because people come in with a lot of energy and hope. And, they they in their minds, they they were going to prioritize this. The initial visit is expensive, so they are already, you know, in that mindset that this is gonna be top of mind for them. And we get the biggest impact, which is, you know, by doing all of these things at once. I expect an impact within two to three weeks and that people will notice and then that brings its own improvement.
Hope is its own healing ingredient. Yeah. It's everything. Yeah. Especially for a lot of these people who have lost hope, you know, who say, like, this is gonna be the same as I've experienced anywhere else.
But but I'm so impressed by humans because most of them don't give up, you know. They may be frustrated, but they keep coming and they keep trying and they keep looking for the next practitioner to help them. Absolutely. No. That's something from even actually from conventional medicine and from community health centers.
The this is sense that you're keeping me you're meeting these humans and that you admire them. And it's, you know, this whole hierarchy thing that we have, you know, the white coat and stuff. But we're, you know, we're admiring them, and I don't think they know this. Many of them, I tell them. I'm like, you know, you guys, like, because they're like, though they'll, like, you know, in those strategy phone calls, they'll be like, oh, my doctor said this, but I thought to myself, I don't know.
I don't think that's all there is to it. Like, what do you think? You know? And I'm like, yeah. You know, it took me, like, twenty years and a lot of education to come to your conclusion.
And it's really impressive to me how people have sometimes intuition that there's more to it. So anyway, I'm impressed. Yeah. No. People are people are really incredible.
And and getting the lens that we get to view as providers and healing support, you know, it's it's pretty wonderful to see what people do for themselves. I wanna I wanna talk about your book. Your book lays this out so nicely, and I wanna just read some of the chapters because as I read through even just the chapters to start with and I'm so bummed I'm I left it at home. I wanted to show people who are watching the video on YouTube because so many functional medicine books or these books that we've seen out there that are like how to get better, you know, how what are some things you can do now to get started? They're like this thick, you know, they'll be two inches thick and you're like, gosh, that feels overwhelming.
Like, that's gonna give me the whole history of functional medicine, and then it's gonna tell me all the things that I'm doing wrong and all the things that are gonna kill me that I'm already doing. And I really appreciate that your book is just directly to the point. These are the doable things you can start doing right now. So let me read a couple of the the chapter headings. You talk about fasting methods.
You talk about free and low cost interventions. You talk about, no cost practices that require some learning, premium interventions that are worth the investment. These are so important to differentiate because I think often when people seek out healing, the only ones that they get are the the premium investments, and a lot of practitioners will say, this is worth it. Do you wanna get better or do you not wanna get better than do the really expensive thing? So I love that you differentiate it.
Talking about tracking your progress, maintaining motivation, what will you expand on kind of how you have utilized these things in your practice? And then we'll get into some of the, you know, gold nuggets here, some of these things that people can really start applying on their own today. Sure. Yeah. So as I started to write the book, I started making these lists.
I had a, you know, as I was working on other things, I would list these interventions that I had learned, I mean, as tools that I was using in functional medicine. And, I I real I noticed that they could, you know, a lot of them were absolutely free. In fact, fasting is, you know, money saving, not only free. Negative negative negative cost intervention. And if you have something that costs nothing or even saves you money and that is fairly easy to learn, for example, shifting your eating eating window, for example, early in the day, let's say, because we have some data around what that does to glucose regulation.
We have research showing the impact of it. Would anyone want to absolutely start there? And we have some ancestral thoughts around it that humans are in fact, you know, prey animal to a point, and that maybe running around in the dark trying to catch something to eat is likely not the way we evolved. And so that's probably it actually probably makes sense to eat when it's light out than to eat early in the day and so on. Yeah.
So as I was writing them down, this is why they ended up in these in these different chapters. And then I realized that some were actually difficult to learn and that I would want to warn people as they go through the chapters and maybe start with the really easy ones. Hopefully, get some impact from them, like, get out in the morning and expose yourself to sunlight. Anyone can do this. You hopefully have at least a balcony or a window you can open or a little walk you can go on.
And there's good data or reason to believe that doing this improves the ability to fall asleep at night, which is something that so many people struggle with and that there are so many supplements and medications and so many drawbacks of the medications that we have available. Right? So this is something that's a very serious problem. If you can even improve yours by getting out and and in the morning in the light, which is free and easy for anyone to do, then that should be your bedrock. You know, that really ought to be your bedrock.
I think that in, you know, it's it's clear that in in in a regular clinic, you don't have the time to explain and describe all these things. It's been a real luxury of working in functional medicine. I remember my days in the in in the last clinic I was at. I had 11 patients per half day. They all came because they were so excited that there was someone with an integrative, you know, point of view to to talk to.
And 11 meant that I had ten minutes per person, and ten minutes means that as you enter the room, the only thought allowed in your brain is how will I get out? So I was, you know, increasingly aware of that. You can do some good that way and obviously, some you know, I'm not seeing the low income patients anymore. So that's that's sad. You know, I'm glad I did the twenty years because it's important that they have healthcare as well.
So anyway, I don't know if that's the reason why or if it's just because people are more enamored or more of more technological things. There's also a way that you set into motion some healing mechanisms via paying money. Paying money for for us is a statement, right, in this society is a statement that something is important to us and that we will give it our attention and our energy. But anyway, if people can get passed out a little bit and try some of the no cost, low cost interventions, I think they'll be really excited. Well, I think you bring up a really good point.
When we're talking about, you know, someone trying to heal from chronic illness, you talked about a couple of the things that you start with of blood sugar and nutrients and healing the gut. But you also suggested some of these other things that are important. One of those is being invested yourself. I think in the conventional model, we create a model of I am I am the doctor. I am the hierarchy.
Like, you have come to me and I am above you. Right? And when you come to me, I will heal you by giving you a medication or by doing a surgery. And it has its place. But for for healing from chronic illness, it really does require a paradigm shift for the patient.
You know? The patient really needs to take on that ownership, and and I tell my patients, I'm your teammate here. I'm not I'm not in charge. Like, I don't know what's right for your body. You know what's right for your body.
I have a list of interventions, but I don't know exactly which one is gonna be right for your body. Now, I have lots of experience that I can help guide you, so I'm not just saying I give you a list and you choose it. But it's really a big paradigm shift, and a big part of that can be in payment, you know, recognizing that you have to be invested, you know, financially, but also emotionally and physically into this healing journey. You can't show up and have someone heal you. And then I also think invested in learning.
This is something I think a lot of people get already, but I think there are times when we're like, I don't want to learn that. I don't want to learn what I should eat. And if you really want to heal from chronic illness, I think you do have to be prepared to learn about your body. And I tell people, it's almost a college degree. I mean, it's almost like you went and did this additional fellowship or this certification just to learn about your own body because it is it is very involved, but it's worth it.
But there is there are these other aspects to healing from chronic illness. Is there anything you wanna say to add to that? Yeah. And I think that the only reason that that's true is because we have a world that's set up against that. Yes.
Exactly. Right? And so if you walk into a store without any knowledge, you will not end up with the with the kind of food that will support your body's health. And so for the only things you could eat were what supported your health. Well, as roots are in that, you didn't have to go to school to learn how to eat because roots and shoots were the only thing available.
Yeah. And, you know, whatever animal somebody in your tribe could catch. Absolutely. And same with exercise. You know, like, why do we need to understand how to do strength training and, like, the right way to do high intensity interval?
Well, because otherwise we sit at a computer all day or in front of a little tiny screen and scrolling. And the same with strength with with with stress reduction. It's like why? That's the same thing. Like, because otherwise, you know, in the past, I don't know, there was some kind of tribe, you know, get together and I don't know what it was, but we don't have that anymore.
And, you know, why do I need to be so afraid of all the products in my house? Because, there hasn't been enough, you know, enough, control around what's what's safe for humans. I came across something interesting recently because one of my recommendations is for air purifiers and so I was writing an air purifier newsletter. I have a newsletter actually inspired from the book. It's called Simple Science.
It's on on Beehive, b e e h I I d, Beehive. So I was writing my air purifying newsletter and somebody said to me, why would I want to to breathe artificial air? I was like, how which is those is artificial air? What is artificial air that comes out of a purifier? And this person actually is an educated person.
So it was like, look at the different ways of looking at things that we think are obvious. So, yeah, indeed, why would you want to be so, careful or why would you, you know, is this what is over the top? And I think each person decides for themselves what's over the top. But the only reason that even comes up is because we don't live in our normal environment. Yeah.
It's such a good point and it's annoying, frankly. It's it makes life kind of hard for all of us because there are so many evolutions of of life with technological advances and, you know, in food and the way that food is manufactured and all of these things that are really working against us. And I think that we skate this very fine line in functional medicine of taking people and helping them to leave out the parts of our culture that are toxic, you know, whether that's people or food or light or, you know, whatever it is, like, helping them leave that part behind and then keeping them here in the middle and not letting them go all the way to the other side where you're terrified to even go out in the day or what are you gonna buy or what is this gonna do to your body or, you know, we shouldn't do this. And there's lots of things that I that are kind of in the middle that are not great for us, but if we cut them out, then are they good for us? And then I think you have decisions that we're making based on society of, like, fluoride, for example, that, you know, to take fluoride out of water.
Utah just passed the law that fluoride will be removed from our water source, which has some really good sides about it. But there's also lots of people living in Utah who may benefit, you know, from that, who aren't brushing their teeth regularly. I know that's funny. Right? You know, why is it right in there in the first place?
Who is it benefiting? And what's a better way of those people being healthy? And are they are they going to do that? Are they going to do that? Yeah.
Yeah. And I I don't think there's any big answer there, but it's I guess I say that just to highlight. There are some really complex and complicated issues, and we want to empower people to understand as much as they can. And at the same time, I've told my patients before, like, stop listening to podcasts. Stop reading books.
Stop. Like, go get a hobby. Go dancing. Go hiking. Like, go live your life.
This should not take over our lives. How do you help people skate that line especially when they're chronically ill? I think there has to be a graduation. You know, I think you have to be a little more strict at first and then graduate. What has been your approach with helping patients kind of navigate that from needing to be quite strict when they're chronically ill, but then having it not become their identity that they're so ill that they have to avoid all the things.
Right? Does that make sense? So I think that yeah. That's interesting. And I think that I I'm I'm just thinking this now that I think over time, this thing has been correcting itself.
A lot of people come in to see me at first with that kinda attitude. Like, they really don't know, you know, what they're allowed to do. Yeah. Yeah. And often when it or or they're afraid that that what I'll impose is gonna be too restrictive.
Yeah. And so often what I'll say is, look, you know, let's see if you can try it my way. If you're willing to do that, try it my way, and we're gonna do this for, like, two months or three months, and we'd pick a time. It's a fairly long time. I'm not saying two weeks.
I know I've been functional medicine was like, eliminate the foods for two weeks. Yeah. Two weeks, a little short. Try this for three months. I know it's a lot of supplements.
I'm sorry. I know the foods are gonna be complicated and it means that you probably can't go out, like, you have to bring your own food for two months or, three months maybe. And then at the end of that, you'll have to make a list of the symptoms and which ones disappeared, which ones are better, how happy you are with the solution, and then you will decide out of those changes which ones are worth keeping and which ones you're going to give up. But see if you can give them up on the stair step kind of way because if you get a symptom based on one of the, you know, giving up one of the practices, then maybe you'll know and then oh, and also decide on a flare protocol. If your symptoms flare up, what do you think of the things that you did were the most impactful, you know, using your intuition as well as using what you learned from reviewing labs and so on.
What do you think was most impactful? Have them written down so that three years from now, if your GI issues come back or your joint pains come back, you have a flare protocol. So I think those are the two things. I I think that people are not gonna be able to keep all the balls in the air their entire rest of their lives. It could take up their life.
I think this whole question of, you know, you you will live longer, but it will feel like you died or whatever. I Yeah. I don't subscribe to that. No. Usually, it's a win win.
You give up something that it turns out wasn't that important. Like You replace it with something else. Yeah. And it's not like most of us could probably, like, this one, I'm gluten free. Okay.
Croissants cannot be replicated with other flours. Alright. Fine. So a couple times a year, it's I'm not it doesn't bring back my entire issues that I had. Right?
So in most cases, it's quite doable and doesn't it it it's hard. It depends. I mean you know, you probably have those. I have a older man who was with Parkinson's. His wife was trying so hard to minimize his symptoms and glucose was one of the important things and sugar and junk food in general.
So they would go out to dinner with friends and friends would slip cookies into his pockets because they felt sorry for him because they knew he was keeping him away from desserts. It's like, ugh. She's working on it. He sort of accepted it. Like, really?
Do you need to undo it? But on the other hand, these are people who care about him. He he doesn't wanna cut them out of I mean, one would not want for him to cut him out of his life. So It's just complicated. It's you can't get it perfect.
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Click that five star button and let us know what you love about the podcast. Your support means the world to us. Now back to the show. One of the other questions that comes up along these lines is, I think one of the things that I hear from people is I do a pretty good job. You know, like, how's your nutrition?
I do a pretty good job. How's your movement? I do a pretty good job. How do do you go to bed on time? I do a pretty good job.
Right? Talk to me about with chronic illness, there are some people who we really have to do more than a pretty good job to get them healed. How do you help them address that and help them keep that imbalance where they don't become obsessive about it, but also saying, like, this takes more than doing a pretty good job. Yeah. I think that's complicated.
I talked to someone recently. He he had mild cognitive decline six or seven years ago. And then this and that happened, and now it's not that mild anymore. And so from what we know, there's no time to lose now, and he has to do all the things. And so, yeah, he walks, but he needs to do intense exercise.
And, yeah, he eats healthy, but he needs to go ketogenic. You know? So everything he needs to really dial up. So yeah. You know?
And the thing that the prednisone protocol kind of shows is that it may take six months or up to a year and a half for people to start seeing improvements in their cognition. But if they get off the program, it could be two weeks before they start relapsing. Weeks. Which is no way that's fair. If it took you, say, eighteen months to get better, why is it that it only takes you two weeks to get worse?
Yeah. I do think this is some of what makes it difficult for conventional medicine to accept some of this. I think conventional medicine doesn't like things that are hard, for patients to accept. One of them was I remember when there is some data that came out in the OB world about Tylenol during pregnancy, about maybe being linked to poor outcomes. And and in the in the OB world, it was like, nope.
We refuse to go there. We're not going there because we have to have Tylenol. And I think, like, I respect that because I think in conventional medicine, we just want people to get better. I mean, really, I think conventional medicine can get a bad rap when we talk about functional medicine, but, like, truly, most doctors just want people to get better and feel better and they just have the tools that they have. But I do think sometimes there's like same thing with like PPIs.
Right? With with proton pump inhibitors and omeprazole with gastroenterologists. A lot of gastroenterologists will be like, well, do you feel better on the omeprazole? Well, yeah. Okay.
Well, then stay on it forever. And you're like, what about those warnings that say it's gonna decrease my nutrients and give me osteoporosis? Well, if you need it, you gotta stay on it. And so I think that the conventional world sometimes doesn't like hard things. And I think we pride ourselves on saying, like, we're gonna give you the answers even if it's uncomfortable and even if it's hard.
Conventional medicine does plenty of hard things. Like, they'll say, like, we're gonna replace your joint. We're gonna do a surgery to replace this joint, or we're gonna put you through chemotherapy. And, like, it's not that conventional medicine doesn't do hard things, but they do prescribed hard things. And I think a lot of what we do in functional medicine is relying on the person to make these lifestyle changes, and that's something that sometimes I miss, honestly, like, being able to give a pill and being like, this is gonna make you feel so much better.
You don't have to change anything. Just take this pill and it will fix you. Like, I I miss that sometimes when you're like, oh gosh. I think that's why I like those party tricks. Right?
I know. Right. I actually have something for that heartburn and it's not gonna be negative. You know? I actually have something for your curcumin works for my joint pains.
You know, if I go hiking or whatever and I have an ache somewhere, you know, first of all, it was it was kind of funny about podcast. I was listening to Peter Attia the other day. Actually, he has a podcast on pain, which is really interesting. And at the beginning, I I I think I learned a lot from Peter Attia, but I love poking fun at him. So here it goes.
So he's talking at the beginning about how bros all like to say that they're really, you know, they have a high high tolerance for pain. So he's like, yeah. And, you know, I did some of those tests, and I really do. My wife too. We really have a very high tolerance for pain.
And later on in the podcast because, you know, they're, like, also two hour podcast. So later on, he's like, yeah. You know, I do take this when I have a muscle ache, and I do take that, you know, when I have joint ache and I do take that. And I'm like, Peter, I'm older than you are and I don't. I don't speak anything or anything.
Okay. So that hurts a little bit. Let's see what it does tomorrow, you know. Or, yeah, I guess when I went backpacking, I brought magnesium and curcumin oil curcumin along with me, you know. So, like, that's I did not bring baclofen or some kind of medication or nonsteroidal or even Tylenol for that matter.
We, in fact, were so old that we brought aspirin along just in case someone had chest pain on the trail. Thinking ahead. Yeah. No. We're like, wait.
At 60, are you supposed to go up with the back pack up Yosemite? Yeah. You are if you're living your best life. It's a combination. We have more tools so we can fix some things that you would normally use medications for, and I think heartburn is a is an absolute excellent example of something we can erase just as quickly but without the side effects.
And also then we're gonna ask you to do the difficult thing that's gonna get at the underlying cause and that hopefully you will not need our little party trick either at some point. Yeah. Exactly. And that's kind of the that's where the hard and the easy come in. Or, you know, sometimes it is all hard.
Like, I had someone come in recently for rheumatoid arthritis and, we we did everything. We did the nutrients, the glucose, the she wanted to avoid one pill. Right? And I have to say, we didn't get it. We got some of her pain, but we didn't get enough of her pain that she was able.
Now she's going to get the meds after all. But at the same time, she's healthier than she was. We know because we got at least, one of her complaints, but not the other. And, hopefully, that'll protect her from that pill. And she also knows that she did, you know, as much as she could have and she didn't, you know, she didn't take the easy way out or, you know, she didn't.
So I think that there's a benefit still there. Yeah. Functional medicine is definitely the long game. Yeah. And without fail, you know, when you're treating things, they they come in with a constellation of symptoms.
And as you're doing these basic foundational things, without fail, someone says like, oh, do you know what? I had this symptom. I've ignored it for years and that one went away, you know. So That one I love. Are such great wins.
Or when they say, you know, I forgot to tell you that I had this thing and it's gone. And it's kinda interesting because sometimes they joke that actually I really need to know what's wrong with you. Yeah. Because it kinda becomes some similar things and but actually I do because there's cautions to be had and also because as doctors having the, training and experience that we have, sometimes we clue in on a symptom. Right?
Sometimes someone says something and you're like, yeah. I've listened to hundreds of people and this is a little bit out of the ordinary. Why don't you go get a, you know, something and it turns out to be correct. Yeah. Exactly.
Well, will you go back to your book and tell us what are some of the pearls that that we can get from your book? What are some of your favorite of the 60, I think, are they? Yeah. 60. The 60 different, practices that can help.
What are some of your, like, don't miss practices that you share in there? Yeah. So my favorite practice of all times is the fasting mimicking diet. There's no question. It's a five day vegan, low protein, very low calorie five days.
And most people can do it. Some people do get dizzy, even dehydrated. So so it's good to have someone to bounce ideas off of if when one tries it. But it is the far ranging renewal diet. The sort of ancestral idea behind it is that, in fact, our ancestors probably were faced with periods of famine.
Let's say a five day period where you really couldn't find very much food. You might chew on a few leaves and a couple of roots, but actually did you not have, you know, the amount that, you know, a person would need. And so that potentially, the human body actually has almost like a program that starts running when you encounter one of these times. And that this program downsizes the body so that you can live on less temporarily, but downsizes it in an intelligent way. Let's get rid of the sick cells, the misbehaving cells, and so on.
So we emerge from that five day period with better mitochondria, better set of gut bacteria, and so things that improve for anything to do with autoimmunity, glucose regulation, cholesterol, also gut health. And interestingly, fasting mimicking, which still involves somewhere between 700, a thousand calories depending on the day, is better than water fasting, which would involve zero calories. And to understand that, you can go back again to ancestral, like, okay. So there's no food. Does that mean zero?
You're drinking water all day? No. It means that you have a little this or that. You're chewing on some grass. You're eating something.
I mean, a lot of things are edible out there. They're just not very nutritious. And will you share because there's good data for the fasting mimicking diet as well on the types of things that it helps. Tell us what it helps with. Yeah.
So specifically, they they do, three episodes, so monthly, five days, and then repeat a month later and then repeat a month after that. So three times, five days each time, was shown to improve insulin resistance. So insulin resistance is a root cause of prediabetes and diabetes, and so that is improved by doing that. Why? Because it changes the communication between cells, the health of mitochondria.
Yeah. It just does all those things. How does it do those things? Yeah. Well, this is kind of interesting.
I think this is what they're looking into. Ulcerative colitis also had a big impact from a fasting mimicking diet. I think they're working on psoriasis right now because I know I observed it with my patients, and then I saw that there was a study. My patients who were coming in doing fasting mimicking, let's say, for GI issues or for prediabetes issues, and they happen to have psoriasis, then they would say, oh, by the way, my psoriasis is much improved. And that wasn't even the goal, like, we were talking before.
Other things improve and you didn't didn't know what they were going to be. You like it in general for autoimmunity too. Right? Just autoimmunity in general? For colitis, right.
And so initially they were saying that they thought that with autoimmunity what was happening is that there were misbehaving immune cells that would get down regulated by the diet. Now they're talking more about maybe it's just that we just alter gut bacteria. Gut bacteria are regulated by bile that comes out of the gallbladder. And if you're going to be eating a lot fewer calories, you're going to be eating a lot less fat because fat has so many calories. And so there isn't gonna be as much bile and so there isn't going to be the same kind of policing or regulation in and so you're going to end up with different bacteria and those turn out to be beneficial in some ways.
Mhmm. That doesn't mean that you should continue that diet going forward, of course. It's a very low calorie diet. Just because you can do it for five days doesn't mean that it's healthier to do it for fifty days. That's not Right.
Yeah. You have to be smart about these things. But this is my favorite intervention because I don't know of anything else that's so far reaching. People say that their joints immediately feel better, that they're not as stiff in the morning, that some people feel clearer. And so it's really been amazing to watch people do that.
And men, especially, will lose sometimes over 10 pounds in those five days, and you just have liberates, you know, for them. And I wanna say one more thing. Women, perimenopausal, sometimes get this thing where they're gaining almost a pound a day. Do you have those patients? Oh, yes, oh, yes.
And they call in a panic, they're like, it's been two weeks, I've already got 10 extra pounds on me, Where is this gonna go? You need to do something for me right now. The fasting mimicking diet will stop this cold and then you'll be able to get a breath, try to figure out what's going on, with the whole thing. And, yeah, there's a kit that you can buy. Prolon is, the name of the kit, and the company is called l dash Nutra, n u t r a.
And so on their website, you can buy some buy kits and just do the diet yourself. And also they have educational materials and things. Yeah. And you have a DIY you you sometimes help people do it on their own, I think, as outside of the Yes. There's programs online.
Sometimes we joke. We call them fasting with food. And, the company does not recommend them. I'm sure they have, you know, whatever their reasons. Personally, I, have an intolerance to rice and, the the these kits have rice powder to thicken the soups.
And so I personally haven't been able to do a single kit ever because of the rice would give me joint pains and I don't see why. So I've always done my own and sometimes I really, really, really, you know, at the beginning, I used to spend hours trying to figure out the diet for the day, and now it's like, yeah, it has to be about ten, nine, 10 percent protein, about, you know, 750 calories. That's not that hard to to get to. Yeah. I can I know how to do it?
Some, you know, nuts could yeah. Yeah. Certain nuts have more carbs, certain nuts have more fat. You can play with that depending on what it is that you're low on. Yeah.
Well, thank you for sharing that. Is there anything else you hope, people will get from your book, especially our audiences, mostly women? Is there anything else you you wanna point out that your book covers or share with our listeners as regards to healing chronic illness, but also just all of the little hacks in your book? Yeah. Yeah.
There's so many different ones that are related to mood, anxiety, and depression, which is something really common that we see. Also, heart rate variability, people talk a lot about that, but to get a little bit of a handle on that or to have some tools to, impact heart rate variability. So heart rate variability is really your brain gathers information from your entire body and the environment and puts it together as, like, a little summary of it and sends it down to your heart. And this then determines the beat to beat variability. Are you gonna beat, like, super rigid or are you gonna have a certain amount of give?
And you do want a certain amount of give. You do want heart rate variability to be fairly high. And this turns out to be a predictor of of severity of all illnesses. Be any starting with mental health but also autoimmune, cardiovascular. It's just a really strong and and it's a modifiable risk factor.
And it's modifiable with things like breath work and tapping and, some really free or inexpensive interventions. So that's another one I think that are is good for people. Some of the journaling ones, really, I thought were incredibly powerful and also fascinating. You can impact your immune system by doing certain types of journaling. So I think those are really tools that people can learn fairly easily, and they're completely accessible, and they're well researched.
So for me, that's, like, the joy. Yeah. So wonderful. How do you hope, people will use this book? Is it sort of a read it cover to cover and just kind of highlight what you want?
Is it looking for, help with a certain condition? I think it's it's a really good resource guide because you can just sort of flip through it. But how do you picture people utilizing the book? Yeah. I think that that it's interesting for people to read it cover to cover exactly and circle some things that they think might apply to them.
And then, unfortunately fortunately, there may be more to learn about some of the, practices. So for example, I mean, I think fasting mimicking guide is an obvious one. Like, while you may just well, that's it. That's one that everyone should try anyways. You don't have to wait until you have a condition to do that one.
And so then once you've tried it, then you know if it's for you, what you might be able to use it in the future if it turns out that your cholesterol goes up or your glucose goes up. But other ones, I was thinking to myself as I was writing it, like, you know what? I want this to come out right now. I'm not going to make it into a tone. Tone.
There is a lot more to know about, you know, doing this or that, but I don't I don't this is gonna delay this book for decades. So you may have to get more information on how to do some of the practices, especially around exercise, you know, strength training and all that. I guess so. That's another one where it's going to give you the health benefits, but probably everybody should be doing it. So, yeah, I think each person would have, you know, some it's it's useful to read it and then think a little bit.
Like, if I wanted to apply this in my life, suppose this came around for me and I wanted to modify my symptoms, what would it take? And, you know, if I think that I might need to use this, how would I find out more about it? Most things have a lot of information online, you know, or you can reach out to some practitioners and see who has, who has experience with them. Well, I actually like that it's not exhaustive because I have some of those books and they sit closed unless you're looking for something specific because you don't read it cover to cover. And I think I think for people to kind of go through this book and highlight what stands out to them and then make their own list of, like, working towards.
Like, eventually, I want to incorporate these different practices into my daily or weekly routine. And this month, I'm gonna focus on this one. And next month, I'm gonna focus on this one. But making it so approachable and so usable, I think, is really where the beauty in it lies is that it's like I said, so many functional medicine books are so overwhelming because it's like, well, gosh. I just have to I have to revise everything.
But this is like, just start adding good things in. Just start doing these good things and try it. See what you think. Come back to it if you like it. If you don't like it, move on to the next.
So I I'm so grateful that you spent your time and energy doing it, and sharing your wisdom. And I think you have so much experience. You're you've shared it in this book of, like, these are the things that work because you wouldn't have include included them if they didn't work. And I think I've like I said, I've read so many of these books and so often you hear the same thing over and over and over. And I think yours is different.
I think it really breaks it down into, like I said, really doable straightforward things and people can utilize that as a list of, you know, things to try and come back to it and try the next next grouping of things and keep working towards it to feel better. Well, thanks thanks so much for for all the kind words. It was it was fun to put together. It was fun to go back and look at, you know, yes, but can I support this with any kind of, articles and then sometimes an article would lead to another and you would discover something that you you you didn't know, you couldn't have imagined? You know, I've been working, against, you know, to try and reduce pesticides in the environment for so many years now, but there was literally a study showing that they were really following and now I I keep forgetting how the whole thing went, but they were really looking at sort of bats and deaths that and and that can be correlated to pesticides, but there was also a correlation to pregnancy outcomes and, and, I think it was premature births or small for gestational age babies.
And so this is where, you know, you sort of stop and you're like, I was thinking that this could be the case, but I really actually didn't have the proof. And it's out there and we don't, you know, we don't know. Or the opposite, like, you know, it's not as easy to find data that water purifiers are a big deal for health. There's some, but air purifiers were really blew me away. Cognitive improvement, sleep improvement, of course, allergy improvement, blood pressure come down.
You know? It's like, you know, air purifier. I mean, okay. I mean, that's doable for a lot of people. So, anyway, it was really, really exciting, and I'm I'm hoping it's gonna be like that.
Like, let's let's put these practices upfront for people. Let's see how many people are actually start to use that as a as a basis. It's like, alright. I'm gonna be at least this healthy, you know? And then if I need help with whatever I'm still needing help with, then perhaps, you know, that's more affordable or it'll go faster or better or maybe even I won't need to reach out to a doctor.
And the and the opposite, like, if you've done all the functional medicine work, you should have a flare protocol. You should have enough learning that you don't, you know, we're not like a regular doctor that you need to go back to for a prescription every single time you have a UTI. Like, no, this is not this. This is like, here are your tools. Here are your precautions, you know, and here's a person you can call or email, and we'll we'll support you in being as healthy as you know how to be or as you wanna work out.
Yeah. Well, thank you so much for sharing all of this, Myrtle. Would you tell people where they can buy your book and also where they can work with you and also where to sign up for your newsletter? Sure. So my website is unconventionalmedicine.net, and it has a link to the newsletter, Simple Science, and also to the book, The Simple Science of Wellness.
And the book is at Barnes and Noble. So it's the only place really where you can buy it at this time. The book is both an ebook and a print book, but I wanted I absolutely wanted to be a print book because I think that it's one of the ones that when people might wanna write write in And get their highlights. Highlight some things. Yes.
Yeah. For sure. Well, thank you so much again for coming on. It's been such a good conversation, a delightful, time to chat with you. Thank you.
I really loved it. And thanks for doing this. Oh, for sure. Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. A huge thank you to our guest for sharing their insights and time with us.
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