Transcript:
[00:00:00] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:00:00] Hey everyone, Dr. Derek Lawrence here. I am with Dr. Emma, and we're both at Revive Naturopathic Medicine here. Just another round table talk that Emma and I wanted to have a conversation about, because it's really, the core of naturopathic medicine, and I think a big reason as to why, or what connects patients with wanting to come and see a naturopath, particularly one that goes to our clinic. I think that we bring an important perspective to this, and that topic is treating the cause: "Treating the Root Cause" of disease and dysfunction. And what does that actually mean? I think the, beautiful and maybe challenging thing about that phrase is it can mean different things to different people. Depends on who you're sitting in front of. Right? And then as we were saying earlier, paying lip service, or actually walking that walk and talking the talk. So I do want to start this by kind of throwing over to you, Emma, because, this was your topic idea, and, I will get carried away talking if I don't let you start.
[00:01:21] Treating the root cause: what is that, like, what does that mean to you in general and, maybe specifics, and how has that evolved? That perspective, how has it evolved over your time being a doc and working with patients?
[00:01:43] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:01:43] Yeah. This is a super juicy topic and, I have a number of things to say about in terms of what it means.
[00:01:50] I think about treating the root cause as a process of walking through with a patient, the journey of going back to figuring out what the first domino was that really fell. That got the person to where they are now. Which, might sound upfront like, a simple thing, but when you're sitting with somebody who has, you know, three or four decades of life before they came to sit in front of you, quite often, there's a long history of from where things actually started.
[00:02:30] And part of that is a mindset of remaining really curious about how you got to this point, so that when you go to think about treatment, you're choosing a treatment that is supporting a sustainable solution. What I mean by that is if you don't actually go back to the thing that is causing or maintaining dis-ease or imbalance in the body, then that will just continue.
[00:03:03] Even if you suppress the symptoms that are showing up, there'll be something simmering, something that remains out of balance under the surface, and will either show up in another part of the body or just won't resolve the thing that you really want to resolve. It might not get you to feel the way you're looking to feel, which is healthy and energetic and good and like yourself again.
[00:03:27] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:03:27] Right. You know, I think we'll probably get into our individual kind of perspectives on this, but this is a... I use an example with a lot of my patients. I love analogy. I think there's so many out there in health, but like when, especially as naturopaths we start getting deep into nitty gritty.
[00:03:49] Right. We can get into some things where it's like, it's sometimes hard to like, what do you really mean by that? But like this example, I give people all the time. It's like, if you have high blood pressure, like you go to the doc one day and they haven't had your blood pressure measured. You have high blood pressure. It's 150 over 95. And then they say, well, you have high blood pressure. Here's a blood pressure medication. Right. And then you take, start taking a blood pressure medication. Now your blood pressure is 120 over 75. Awesome. Well, if you stop taking the medication, the blood pressure goes back up again.
[00:04:22] So you, never really treated the reason why that was present. We'll put a pause there for a second. Don't get me wrong in the context of high blood pressure. Like mitigating risk is important, right? I don't want my patients stroking out and getting heart disease. Like there's a, there's a reason why we do that and you can do it pharmaceutically.
[00:04:43] You can do it naturally, but it can't stop there. That, in fact, that's just the beginning and, getting our patients to a place where it's like, Oh, I don't need that anymore. This may be a very kind of superficial example when it comes to high blood pressure. But quite honestly, like these are the boots to the ground problems that people are kind of concerned about.
[00:05:06]I think it's our job to begin to introduce those other like layers, right? It's our job to say, like, alright, we've got to mitigate risk. I want my patients alive, but what's there? And. you know, you can put any problem kind of at the top of that. And I think the more kind of complex the problem, usually the more complex the root system is underneath of it.
[00:05:30]But I liked that example. Like I think it's really tangible for people to chew on, and it's simple and everyone's heard of high blood pressure. And half the people are on a medication or borderline anyways. So, you kind of mentioned something: it sounds simple. It does sound simple. It sounds like, well, why doesn't everybody do this?
[00:05:48] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:05:48] Well, I think every doctor does believe that they are treating the root cause. And I think that their intention would be to do so.
[00:05:57] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:05:57] Yeah.
[00:05:57] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:05:57] I really do. I think they all want genuinely to help people at the root so that they can stay healthy. That's why we get into this.
[00:06:05] That's why we go through the struggle to become a doctor. And I think the thing that you touched on that is another key, aspect in our philosophy that is so important is the way that we understand symptoms. So. High blood pressure is diagnosis, but it's also a symptom. It's a symptom of something else.
[00:06:29] Blood pressure doesn't just pop up on its own for no reason. Something else happened first, and the body responded with this symptom and to me, I see symptoms as the body's language. It's the body's form of communication. In many cases, it is the body's wisdom, and that is like a 180, I think from the dominant conventional model of what symptoms are, symptoms are seen as a problem because as you pointed out, if somebody has unchecked high blood pressure, they could stroke out.
[00:07:04] That's a problem, but that's also the body saying, Hey, Something's not right. Fix this address this. Support me, help me. It's the body's cry for help.
[00:07:17] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:07:17] It's a compensation, right? It's saying like, I'm trying my best. And I mean, the neat thing about some of our diagnostic tools, like a blood pressure cuff or lab tests, which can tell us some things that you may be, or, or patients may be can't articulate or feel or otherwise is they, they kind of give us some of these insights that there are compensations happening, you know, there are symptoms or, physiology that has been augmented to try to navigate as best as it can, and that, you know, it is wild to think about how, I mean you almost framed it as like a symptom as a good thing.
[00:08:00] I mean, if we didn't have a symptom, we would probably.... right? Who knows, like we were probably just decompensate and, and die, you know, that these are actually things that we kind of care about as naturopathic doctors to say, I recognize they're here. And then I want to watch those, you know, reduce in severity and frequency and intensity as we kind of work at our resolution.
[00:08:33] I think an awesome example of these ones clinically, cause you see a ton of kids: is like skin stuff, eczema, almost anything on the skin. And I can't tell you how many moms and dads I've spoken to and, you know, the kid has eczema. Right. And I tell them I don't treat skin topically. I just haven't found it relevant.
[00:09:01] And, that totally goes exact like opposite of a lot of times of what they get from a dermatologist or their pediatrician or primary care where they only get skin stuff, steroids, antifungals, whatever it may be. Right. and I mean, at an eczema standpoint, it's usually a steroid cream, but I. I mean, I could count on a couple of hands how many cases I've solely used something topical. And it's very few, really, if any, because it's exactly that one of those external expressions of, from my perspective, gut, immune system, balances. Right? And...
[00:09:37] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:09:37] If I could add here too, that there is when you do this, I mean, especially for kids and kids are going to express things really intensely because they tend to be more vital there. Their body shows it in a, in a more vivid expression often, which is actually a reflection of health. Believe it or not, but the, there is a problem with treating it only topically, right? I mean, especially when we're talking about eczema, there is a risk of treating it, just topically of taking this way that the body is expressing something and bubbling over and just shutting the lid on that and shoving it deeper.
[00:10:17] That is actually a problem. It's something. The body is, is working out and we are the stopping part of that process. And yes, they are uncomfortable. Yes, it's eczema can be awful. It's it can be so debilitating. And if we're really concerned with the kids' whole health, we have to be very careful about how hard we push symptoms back in, where they came from.
[00:10:43] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:10:43] Yeah. Like a, almost like a pressure cooker that you can't like release the steam from where you can handle a fair amount until you can't. And sometimes that has to do with amount of pressure or duration that it's lasting there and something's going to fail. And, you know, going back to the original comment, you mentioned like when did this start? Right. That I think is a really, really interesting question for almost all patients because, if you're lucky, there'll be a degree of insight into something, but like, sometimes you're, you're just, you just dig it. And you're looking for like, when did, when did you know a trigger or something like that happen? So like, how do you, how do you, cause I know how I do it, but like how do you like try to flush some of that stuff out?
[00:11:37] Or like, what are you looking to hear in a history or what are you hoping people have either reflected on before coming or, or maybe reflect on after coming to see you from that perspective.
[00:11:53] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:11:53] I always ask the patient what first there's a number of ways to answer this question. The first one is I always ask the patient what their intuition is about how this started, because I think people have a whole lot more insight about themselves and they sometimes give themselves credit for it.
[00:12:10] I listened to that. And then from there sometimes we'll keep asking the questions, keep asking: okay. So let's say that you really started noticing that as soon as you went to college, that your digestive issues got so much worse than they were in high school. Okay. Well, what happened in high school? When did this switch?
[00:12:31] Oh, this started at menarche. Okay. Tell me about that time. Okay. Tell me about before that. Oh, You know, tell me about even your childhood. Like some of these things are patterns that started early, early on either patterns in, our stress response, which is a really big one. How is it that we process big changes? Maybe there were...
[00:12:54] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:12:54] Or taught to process big changes. Or taught how to, you know, like, right. Like we model our behavior and our environment. Right. And so it's like, if you were, if your models did something in this direction and that maybe is less than desirable.
[00:13:15] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:13:15] Yeah. Like maybe, maybe, As a woman, maybe you had a mom who had a really poor self image. And when she was upset, she would pull out the treats and they would eat their way through their feelings. Or maybe she would stand in front of the mirror and talk about all the things that were, that are not right. these things are, I mean, these are picked up and these are habits and in some families they're totally commonplace as totally normal. Or maybe, maybe you'd watch your parents drink. That's how you dealt with a stressful day.
[00:13:45] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:13:45] Right? Right. That's like socially acceptable and common of like, Oh man, I had a day. Let's have a drink or, you know, and instead of it being, you know, two fingers, it's two fingers, right.
[00:13:58] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:13:58] I mean, especially during COVID, this has been an extremely stressful time. And that is one thing I'm hearing across the board is that people are drinking a lot more alcohol now than they have before. And I get it. It's so stressful. It's like how, if you, if you don't have other ways of knowing how to unwind to relax your mind to unplug, or if you really just don't get a break because of whatever situation you're in it's it's tough. I can see how that happens. I had a, I had a couple of cases that came to mind, that I thought might be good examples to share kind of how we trace back, as another answer to your question. I had a mom who was in her early mid thirties who came to me with asthma and she had, she had had asthma for years and she was exhausted, which was her number one complaint, and she was overweight and she couldn't sleep. The reason she couldn't sleep was because as soon as she laid down, she would just cough and cough and cough and cough. That was how her asthma presented as a, as a chronic cough. So of course she'd gone to her PCP and they had given they had upped her steroids. They had given her cough medicine. They had given her all kinds of things to try to stop the cough. And, this had been ongoing for three years and she had a two year old also, and she's working full time. So she's stressed out. She's tired. She can't think. She's gaining more weight. She can't breathe properly. She's got all the things going on. So amongst other things, one of the things that we did was to do a food sensitivity test, because I have seen a pattern with asthma that there, we know that in that asthma triad, the allergies, the eczema and asthma, food sensitivities can be a really big portion of that.
[00:15:56] So for her, a huge trigger, we went through that whole process and we were very specific about it. And for her eggs and dairy turned out to be massive triggers for her cough. And we worked through the process of eliminating those. We did a trial and as soon as we did took about three to four weeks for that cough to really reduce and for the phlegm to go down. But she started sleeping for the first time, like I said, in three years, and she was ecstatic. And so we got her sleeping and then as soon as she was sleeping, her energy started to go back up again. Then she was able to consider exercise, which she'd been missing. So she started walking and then eventually she started running, which she hadn't done for like a decade.
[00:16:42] And so we were able to start reducing the, the other medications, which helped her overall health. Her, clarity and her presence and her ability to play with her daughter came back again and eventually we started moving towards working with the gut and the immune imbalances, which were really at the core of that.
[00:17:05] And then the other part of the thing that we went to, if we're really talking about core causes, was she had, particular, her own particular ways of dealing with stressful responses like a stressful life. And, part of that was in reaching for sugar and then part of it was in not really knowing mentally how to be calm and still. And so that was the thing that we worked on.
[00:17:33] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:17:33] So now I've got a couple of questions for you in that case. Cause like, I mean, I love these, these cases cause they go like, okay, well these are the things that I think about. So one, I want to know what food sensitivity tests did you do because there's, you know, there's a gamut out there. So at this particular case at this time in your career, which one did you do?
[00:17:51] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:17:51] Us biotech.
[00:17:52] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:17:52] US biotech...finger prick, IgG or blood draw?
[00:17:56] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:17:56] Finger prick IgG
[00:17:57] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:17:57] Finger prick. So easy to do at home or in the office, IgG food sensitivity. I mean, probably a topic for another day, as far as like the gamut of those different ones out there.
[00:18:08] US biotech, because they actually use, very good... They use ELISA testing and they advertise it on their website. There's a lot of food testing out there and they may not tell you what methods they use. They actually test their samples twice against controls and they are much more thorough than some of the ones I've seen. That's why.
[00:18:27] Great. Yeah. And that's, that's valuable. The, I had a comment I was going to ask again. Oh, the finger pricks. I love those for the little kiddos. you know, when it comes to like testing kids, it's like, I I'm trying to, you know, I want to play good cop usually, cause I don't want to be the bad guy. but I find the fingerprint food sensitivity tests super useful when like mom and dad are like, I think it's something he's eating, but like, I just, like, it's re like, I can't fathom like doing an elimination diet with my four year old or my five-year-old's like, cool. Like, let's try to give you a little bit of insight, so it's not, you know, it's not so drastic of an intervention. It's, it's more of like alright we found these four things let's take them out and see what your kid does. okay. I wanted to know that. So thank you. The US biotech and yeah, we have those in the clinic now, now, thanks to you.
[00:19:17] Secondly, did you ever think about, and do you think that maybe the dairy and egg food sensitivity was behind like a silent reflux, like a, so a GERD, a gastrointestinal reflux. It just like didn't feel like heartburn, but irritated the esophagus trachea enough that that was prompting the cough.
[00:19:41] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:19:41] Yeah, certainly it could be. And, and if that's the case, that's a really good thing. She removed them because of their risk of having ongoing reflux. That is not good.
[00:19:53] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:19:53] Did she ever try, sorry for interrupting, did she ever try, like from her primary care or even you like any like acid blocking medications to like test that theory? If that was behind it?
[00:20:04] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:20:04] She did. I believe she did. I don't, I don't quite recall all the medications she tried, but it was a lot. A lot of different things. and yeah, that was it. It definitely could have been reflux. That was a part of it it's always possible. And in the end, whether or not that was the case, the treatment that we chose got her to where she wanted to go and allowed her to reduce the asthma medication. So there may have been two things going on and in the end of this, It didn't really matter because ...
[00:20:38] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:20:38] Well and in end in the you...
[00:20:39] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:20:39] It resolved.
[00:20:40] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:20:40] Yeah. Well, and not only did it resolve, but I could argue that in the end you treated the cause. Meaning you treated this kind of gut immune system imbalance. These foods were salt in the wound. Right. But the sensitivity, the irritability, the volatility kind of have that immunological reaction is a more of a core problem. cause we see this all the time. Where are, well, some of them like my patients, food sensitivities aren't as intense anymore. I've had that experience personally, where are you?
[00:21:14] Just like, all right. Like I'm not going to go and eat this all the time, but like a little bit, it doesn't bother me like it historically used to, and that speaks to a degree of resiliency. Right? So regardless of if it was an exaggerated immunological response, kind of causing some tracheal, bronchial inflammation, irritation, or silent reflux, but that was probably driven from some GI inflammation, et cetera, you know, that.
[00:21:41] It's kind of neat how that core treatment, because if you look at it through that lens, Can help both of those avenues, despite from a medication standpoint, those being like two very different, kind of conventional approaches there and seemingly neither of which were particularly successful, which is neat.
[00:22:03] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:22:03] Yeah. I mean, we were treating the body.
[00:22:05] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:22:05] Yeah.
[00:22:05] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:22:05] We're not treating the condition. We're treating the body and helping them find balance, which to me is really the way that you trace back and you treat the root cause and you're bringing up a great point too. So. When I talk about food sensitivity, some people are like, Oh, are you going to take away all my favorite foods forever?
[00:22:25] It's just like this, like till I die kind of a sentence? If, if you continue to do the work of tracing back to the true, cause it's not always, like some people will remain really sensitive despite extensive treatment and things. And I would argue that if the sensitivity never goes away way, then you may just never have found that root cause.
[00:22:47] You know, and most people it has to do with gut-immune imbalances, but there can be things driving the gut and immune imbalances that can be tricky to identify. It just takes time and digging and, patient involvement to do that. But, so for some people, once you take out the foods, take out those inflammatory triggers and treat the gut, then you find that either six months to a year, two years later that they can actually enjoy intermittent small amounts of those things again, without a problem. It's like they find their threshold and they don't necessarily have to be out of your diet forever and completely kind of thing. Like if they, if they get in there either accidentally or cause you're you know, at a party and there's really nothing else to eat situation, then it's not going to be a big deal. You've built up the resilience that you can handle that you can clear that.
[00:23:39] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:23:39] Yeah. You know, and the, I want to hear the other case that you have, but I want to make a comment here and, go back to that case, the, the degree at which I think we....we'll call it, like treat the root. Cause I think it's like one of these things where you need to, meet your patient where they're at too, right? Where you're going to have some people who are coming in that are kind of very foreign to things like: sleep and how it interferes with our physiology. Stress and how it interferes with our physiology. Emotional health and how it interferes with truly with our core, like blood markers, you know, and how things like our gut and our intestines move and eliminate or don't and how those things are intimately connected. I think as, you know, like even with our long patient appointments there, there's sometimes going to be just like, kind of too much education to dump all of that in at one time. And, you know, you know, and one thing I like about, you know, the way you practice and I really make sure to emphasize this, maybe even a little bit more aggressively is that I really try to get my foot in the camp that they've come from, like their primary care has looked at AB and C. Right. Cool. Like, I want to know all of that. I want to know what they did, what they didn't do. And I want to fill in some of the holes that maybe fall into that physiological realm of lab tests or imaging or, you know, something that's a little bit more familiar to them and use that as like this parlay into okay. Like. So stress exists. Not only does it exist, I can measure it. And I did. And it's terrible, you know, or, you know, or something like that. Or like, you know, from a, maybe a mood stability standpoint. And you're looking at some of like peripheral understanding of maybe their neurotransmitter levels or, or, you want to start to help them understand gut health and what that means, cause it's so beautiful and elegant, but. some numbers have an H pylori marker, you know, or a gut inflammation marker, or just like that, a food sensitivity marker helps like bridge that gap of saying, okay, this person, you know, gets where I'm, where I've come from. And I feel like confident that they can kind of like we can lead them into. Alright heres's that next deeper level.
[00:26:23] And then when you get there, you get to go even deeper and you get to go even deeper. You know, I tell some of my patients that, like, I think I'm pretty good at getting people to be weird, but they don't always start weird when they come and see me. I think they think they're normal when they start seeing me, and then there's a couple of years down the road, all of a sudden they're just like, I'm strange. And like, go like, yes, welcome.
[00:26:45] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:26:45] Yeah, Welcome to the real you, isn't it awesome?
[00:26:50] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:26:50] Yeah. It's fun to take people through that. Right. And not only is it fun to take people through that. It's fun. Yeah. It's fun to take them through it and also show them every step along the way that.
[00:27:05] Here's some literature backing exactly what we're talking about. Here's some experience that you've had, you know, proving that we're like in the right arena. And we are making this wonderful headway and like all of that just builds their confidence in, well, not only you as a teammate and helping them get well, but also themselves, because as you know, we put a lot of homework and work onto our patients and say like, I would like you to do this and if you do this, I'm expecting you to get a, B and C as a return. And then when they do, they go like, Holy smokes, I did that. And it's like, you did, I didn't, I just told you to do it. I didn't actually make you do it.
[00:27:48] I just suggested that. and, and then they gained this almost like empowerment of: oh, I can make good choices for myself. Right. and, become a little bit more in touch. And that's a really fun experience to be a part of when your patients just become better because of what they've, they've done.
[00:28:11] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:28:11] That's where I see, and this, some people I think, Have a hard time wrapping their minds around like what you're getting at, but that's where I see dis-ease and illness as an enormous opportunity. It is an opportunity to get to know ourselves and to reconnect with our body, to start trusting it, to start learning how to listen to it and how to work in tune with it and support it. It doesn't feel that way when you feel like crap doesn't feel like any kind of opportunity, but if you really are getting to the root cause it is an opportunity to see where, like, where is that initial rub? Where are things aligned in either in how we're operating in life or in how we're treating ourselves?
[00:29:03] And when the body is imbalanced, it i. Trying to show us, it's trying to tell us, trying to communicate something we have to learn to listen really deeply.
[00:29:13] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:29:13] So, so for someone who's listening to this thus far, what, what do you listen for then in a history for, you know, what kind of sets off alarm bells or triggers, you know, or we'll call like triggers of root cause or triggers of dysfunction. Like, what do you listen for?
[00:29:37]Dr. Emma Andre: [00:29:37] There's a few things I would say. I am really curious about how people see themselves. And what they think about themselves. And I'm curious about how they see themselves in the world. Like I am, I'm often very curious about what people's world view actually is. Like what, just what they believe in terms of their place in the world, because that very much determines our mindset and our mindset is what we operate from.
[00:30:15] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:30:15] Right.
[00:30:16] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:30:16] So as an example, this is kind of like out there right now. So like, as, as a concrete example, if somebody thinks... if somebody operates from a place of," I don't have anything valuable to offer. I'm worthless." or "If people really got to know me, they wouldn't like me. So I'm going to, I'm gonna just gonna keep my freaky self, like under this, this guise, and I'm just, nobody's going to really get to know me. I'm going to put up walls." That will make it hard for us to, that will make it hard for that person to ever open up. Or to share or to ever get vulnerable there's, in that kind of a presentation, there's like this sense of like a tension. Of holding in and of holding on and in different people that will show up physically in very different ways.
[00:31:14] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:31:14] Let me guess they're constipated!
[00:31:16] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:31:16] It could be!
[00:31:17] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:31:17] Right? Like I'm just, I just got a hold on. Yeah, yeah. Or like that jaw tension, right? Where like all night, they're just like, "No!" Their teeth, they're just rubbed raw.
[00:31:31] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:31:31] Yeah. It could be back pain. It can be knee pain. I mean that if you really want to get to the root of it, whenever we forget how incredible we truly are, how, from my perspective, how divine we truly are, whenever we forget that there is something inside of us that, knows that that's not right. And it can produce a kind of internal friction and our body will get us to listen in one way or another.
[00:32:02] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:32:02] Oh, that give me chills. Yeah and so what I'm hearing when I hear you say this, I go, I'm so happy to have you here. because like when I go, when I answered that question for myself and I go like, okay, well, what am I listening for in a history? Like my brain is a little more, like a little more mechanical in the way of like, I want to know. Okay. Like, did you get sick? Was there trauma? Right. Like literally things that, that, tax, like tax the physiology on the body. Right. or, or like, you know, infectious gastroenteritis. Cause I see a lot of gut health components like w like where was, or what was that trigger? Sometimes you're going back to like, Oh, it was a little kid and I never pooped and, or it wasn't breastfed or fill in the blanks. Right. But, I love that under the roof of the clinic, we, we have like those, kind of synergistic minds because, you know, while, people can actually come and see both of us. It also just helps to know that like, like we get to have these conversations and like, then, you know, you're just like in my ear, you're like, "Derek, go deeper." you know, and you know, and it's, it keeps these things on the radar so that, you know, we just don't, we don't get lost in the mechanism, and we can entertain that and also entertain, you know, other components that are like, I wouldn't say outside of physiology, but they really aren't. They're this mindset behavior way in which it kind of sets forth our physiological responses. So, I'm grateful.
[00:33:53] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:33:53] Your body....here's something I like to remind people that your body is like, it's like an obedient puppy. It will always do what the higher levels. It will always be reflecting higher levels of your mental-emotionall wellness and your spiritual wellness.
[00:34:13] The body is kind of the last place where these truths show up. And it's usually the place where we first realize and feel like, Oh, something's off. And the more tuned in we are, the more we practice. Listening. And this is not a skill. Most people are taught. So for some people, this feels really foreign at first, and I believe every person can learn to do it if they really wish to get to the root cause.
[00:34:36] And what you brought up about trauma is so important. I mean, that is a huge thing that I like to know about and that I like to ask about because there can an inciting event, whether really big. And kind of obviously big like, physical trauma or abuse from a parent or something like that. That seems like an obvious trauma use something that seems kind of small.
[00:35:03] Like being bullied at school that can have a really profound impact or somebody saying something that as a kid, when we were really susceptible, suddenly shifted our perspective of ourselves and it never got shifted back into the right spot. And a lot of people, they've done, you know, either talk therapy to try to resolve some of these things and maybe have gotten part of it or they, they haven't, and they've put it in the past and they've shut the door on it said, like that was awful. I don't want to revisit that. And one of the biggest things that I see that trauma can do, and I see this a lot in women is that, that it will, if at some point, man or woman, somebody experienced a physical trauma. Let's say it was, a woman who was raped when she was really young, when that happened the best way for her to survive. That situation was to disconnect from her body physically disconnect and to not feel what's happening. So that disconnect, though often will mean that they never reconnect. And so I've seen women come in, who, from the collarbone down, have no idea what's going on in their body, because they're so disconnected because they did it to survive an, a horrible situation.
[00:36:27] So I'll ask them, they might have digestive stuff going on. They're like, I know there's something going on. It's like, well, where does it hurt? And they're like, I--I don't know. You know? And so in order to actually treat that, it's not like I'm going to do psychotherapy. I don't do that trauma work. That's not my specialty realm. There are people who are really trained in that, and that is something different. But in terms of learning to work with the body and learning how to actually treat the digestive piece, at some point, it is really helpful to reconnect with the body. And if we actually want to be able to listen to our intuition and know what's right for us in a way that no other person in the world can know, not even the best doctors out there, because they're not that thing in your body, you need to have, you need to slowly reenter and start feeling.
[00:37:23] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:37:23] Right. Yeah. Whew.
[00:37:28] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:37:28] Yeah.
[00:37:30] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:37:30] That's a big visit. Yeah.
[00:37:32] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:37:32] Yeah. Well that is not one visit.
[00:37:36] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:37:36] That's the truth, but I mean, that's the value of a relationship, right? And I think that that is, something that I'm always trying to build with a patient is, is not, I don't want you to do what I tell you to do. I want you to learn from the experience that I've gained and the insights that I may have, and the, you know, the places where I chose to educate myself and helping me help you solve these problems and build context into why you are doing these things. And, I think it helps create better educated humans. I think it helps to create people who are a little more in touch with what's going on and then in touch when something's off and either know what to do or know where to go, go to, try to, you know, achieve that. So, let's, let's end with the let's end with a new, another like good case from like, again, the concrete example, cause these ones are really fun and digestible. No pun intended. If it's a GI case.
[00:38:43] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:38:43] They so often are, aren't they? At least that's what comes through my door a lot. I see a lot of, I see a lot of GI cases. yeah, I had a young, 20 something gal who came in and her chief complaint was that she had rashes on the front of her thighs. And,
[00:39:01] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:39:01] I want to stop you there.
[00:39:03] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:39:03] Yes.
[00:39:03] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:39:03] Okay. So rashes on the thigh from your like conventional brain or conventional medicine approach, like what does she have? Like, what's a rash. Like what does it matter if she has a rash on her you know, on her, on her shins or whatever, it, may be.
[00:39:21] It mattered
[00:39:21] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:39:21] a lot to her cause she couldn't wear shorts, but I'll say from a conventional perspective that, I would have, I would think of it as like, ingrown hairs from the physical rubbing of pants after she had shaved.
[00:39:35] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:39:35] Hmm. Okay.
[00:39:38] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:39:38] But she had gone to a dermatologist and they had given sort of "meh" advice. She tried it and it didn't help. So, she, She also had as a side note allergies, like seasonal allergies. Which most people would not think that the two are really connected, but it turns out they were. She had some, so she had that and they were the rashes themselves were kind of inflamed. When you looked at him, it was like the hair follicles looked inflamed. So, this wasn't the first thing we did, but just to make this a little bit shorter. One of the things we ended up doing was looking at the kind of, foods that she was eating and we ended up doing a celiac disease screen on her, which most people wouldn't think to do because, she was, her family was from India, which with that cultural descent celiac disease is not the first thing you think to test for. But we were talking about one of the things that she was going to trial was removing gluten. And, I don't like to take anyone off of gluten before take, trying to take celiac disease off the table because you can't test for it once you take it out.
[00:40:51] And there's a lot of people walking around, not knowing that they have this and it's a big deal if they do. So we tested her and h her antibodies to see to her gut celiac disease markers were off the charts. So what we do if we see that is we also get them hooked up with a gastroenterologist, because you have to confirm that diagnosis with an endoscopy, which she did and was positive. So, she had, so she, she ended up removing gluten because that's one of the things that you do as a part of the treatment. And then we went back and also, rebalanced her gut and helped her with her stress response. And in taking gluten out of her diet, the rashes completely cleared up and her allergies went away, which was a surprise to her, but not to me. And knowing what I know about that, the gut and the immune system, they're their buddies. They live in the same spot in the body and the gut and you treat one while the other is, is impacted. So, yeah, it was a really cool case. And. we did also talk about her mindset around, stress for one thing and another interesting theme of, how she would mentally attack herself, which is on a side note, is an interesting pattern that is not too uncommon in autoimmune diseases. It's almost like a mindset reflection of what's happening in the system. Not always there, but happens to be.
[00:42:23] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:42:23] But it can be, yeah. So do you think, I mean, so we both know that a skin condition commonly associated with celiac disease that is dermatitis herpetiformis reflecting back did it have that quality or was it truly more of a folliculitis type presentation?
[00:42:43] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:42:43] It was really more of a folliculitis presentation, but, yeah, that's, that's how I remember it. It was a little while ago, years ago, but that's how I remember it. Didn't, it didn't look like a classic dermatitis herpetiformis like what you might Google and find.
[00:42:59] Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:42:59] Yeah. Right, right. You know, the, I love that case because it has a little bit of everything in it in the way of. Honestly, I mean, celiac diseases are really important diagnosis to know about. It can be a very significant condition if left unchecked from, I believe it increases risks with lymphoma. it certainly can participate in osteoporosis and bone mineral density, especially as you get older, because it causes significant, you know, malabsorption, But on other levels too, right?
[00:43:35] I mean, it clearly was causing a large... one, kind of inflammatory burden in her body, which causes a immune disruptive burden in her body, making her more sensitive to environmental insults. Right. Which went away, it was disrupting the kind of likely the microbiome, not only her gut, but also her skin, because our skin is really supposed to be in this kind of self regulating ecosystem. And then when stuff's on it, it's not, it's just not doing its job. Right. And you have to kind of look as to why, but, and then, you know, the autoimmune nature of celiac disease and, you know, as you commented on like some of the, self-talk that can be behind that, you know, it's, it's things we dig into and it's interesting how frequently they come up, right. that's a cool case to end on. Thanks for sharing that one. I, I liked that cause it, it, it reflects all the little, like real serious medical diagnosis, the functional restoration of health, which is above and beyond just removing gluten is actually getting things like stable again. And can't tell you how many celiac disease cases like didn't do any work after removing gluten and they just still are floundering and it's like, you have to put in some work, there was years of potential damage. We've got to help repair that a little faste. Get a little glutathione and get a little, you know, like, like let's, let's, let's fix this. Right. And then on top of that, right. I think, some, probably some pretty valuable stuff for her from, one could say like, just like life coaching standpoint of how, how do we exist on this planet in a, just a little bit happier more balanced kind of way. that's or that's a good case. Good case examples. Thanks for sharing that.
[00:45:28] Dr. Emma Andre: [00:45:28] Yeah.
[00:45:29]Dr. Derek Lawrence: [00:45:29] Well, you know, for time's sake and for, Kellie's sanity's sake, let's wrap up this video, on our "Treat the root cause." I'm sure we could keep going on, cause it takes us all of these wonderful places. So yeah. For anyone who stuck around this long, I'm dr. Derick this is dr. Emma. We're at Revive Naturopathic Medicine. This is on YouTube, if you're not watching it there, you can subscribe to our channel for more of them. Not only with dr. Emma, but also with the other docs that Revive and, and will also be kind of posted on social media.
[00:46:01]If you've got any kind of questions or comments regarding anything that we did mention.I mean, we do monitor that and would love to kind of engage in a little conversation. If at all possible, if you want to hear something, you know, from my mouth or from Emma's mouth, let us know. We love doing these. We do it just for fun. A little Friday fun this week, because when you get a couple of naturopaths together, they love talking about Naturopathic Medicine,
[00:46:25] So, thank you, Emma. And, we'll have another one of these shortly.
