#170 Getting Rid of Joint and Muscle Pain For Good with Dr. Josh Levitt

The information provided in this podcast is educational and not intended to diagnose or treat medical conditions.

Dr. Donnie Wilson struggled for decades to solve her numerous health issues and heal her body. But with focused determination, she healed herself. And in doing so, she discovered the Dr. Donnie stress recovery Protocol. On this show, you're going to hear from doctors, nutritionists, and Experts along with Dr. Donnie, who will give practical advice and wisdom to help heal your body. This is how humans heal. Hi and welcome to how humans heal. I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson, and today I'm really looking forward to introducing you to my friend and colleague, Dr. Josh Levitt. Dr. Josh and I were training together at Bastyr University in Seattle over 20 years ago. I mean, we graduated, I think, 23 years ago. Right.

So hard to believe, isn't it?

And you've been practicing in Connecticut all these years, and until recently when you. You're kind of transitioning away from seeing patients one on one as much. And I'm nearby you in. In the tri state area, so it's like, it's kind of cool to talk to someone who has been on such a parallel path with me over these years. And I'm really excited to have you on how Humans Heal. So thank you for being here.

Yeah, I'm excited to be here, too. I've been on a lot of podcasts, and I got to say, this is like the one that I've sort of been the most excited about. You know, nothing against any of the other hosts, but to sit down and talk with you, like, this is a treat.

Oh, thank you, Josh. Thank you. And I'm I'm so, you know, you're, of course, your wife Amanda and I always love to hear about your kids, but today we want to talk about muscular musculoskeletal health, especially, like, what people experience in terms of joint pain and not only why they're experiencing joint pain, but then the frustrations and. And sort of navigating the medical system related to joint pain and joint issues, because this is an area that you've worked in a lot and help people a lot. And so I'm really looking forward to talking about that with you today. I think a lot of people are, including me, experience joint pain, and it's worth having this conversation. I think you're all going to learn a lot to start with, Josh, I mean, if you don't mind sharing with us a little bit about, like, what brought you to have this interest and specialty in helping people with their. With their musculoskeletal health.

Yeah, let's start there. It's a good place to start. So for me, I, I was a rough and tumble kid. I grew up in Southern California and I'm a surfer and a skateboarder and I used to get myself all banged and bruised all the time. I, much of my childhood and early adolescence I was in like casts and braces of various sorts, lots of X rays, lots of broken bones. And so like I had an early interest in orthopedics for very personal reasons. Right. And I was also one of those kids who just always wanted to be a doctor. And so it just seemed like it made sense. Right. I figured probably when I was a young boy, like I would be an orthopedist or a sports medicine doctor or something like that. And then that kind of changed. I went to UCLA as an undergraduate to study neurophysiology on that path in pursuit of that sort of orthopedic education or career. And, and my dad was training medical residents at UCLA at the time. I had kind of, I guess you might say backstage kind of access to doctors who were actually surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly, really discouraging of career in medicine. Medicine was changing a lot. Increasing influence of like insurance companies and all the things that have actually come to pass. And so they gave me pause on this, this idea that I was going to go be a doctor. And so instead of going the conventional route, I took a year off after college and I went traveling around the world. One of these, kind of put a backpack on, hitchhiking, traveling on buses and trains and sleeping on beaches and stuff. Anyway, during that time I got sick with cellulitis, the skin infection, a rapidly spreading, really bad skin infection. You probably never heard this. I never told, I didn't tell many people this story back in the days in school, but this is what happened. And I was in Switzerland at the time and I needed antibiotics desperately. I had a very serious medical problem. I had a fever, it was like a limb or maybe even life threatening problem. And it was scary. Yeah, absolutely. Very scary. And I was alone. I was just a kid, you know, in my early 20s. Anyway, I, I called home, I got a prescription for antibiotics, called into a pharmacy in Switzerland. I went into that pharmacy and inside that pharmacy there was all this herbal stuff. There was like nutritional things, there was homeopathic stuff. I didn't know anything about any of that. And I needed the antibiotics, right? So there's no question about it, I, I, I took the antibiotics, I took Keflex. It cured the infection. I still have my leg, everything's fine. But it opened up my eyes and my mind to this idea that medicine is not just pills in a bottle, like antibiotics. I'm okay. I needed those antibiotics. But I also opened up this other. It lit a spark for me. And that spark right now is still. Is still burning really hot, you know. And so I came back from that and, and learned about Bastyr, I learned about naturopathic medicine. And here we are, what is close to 30 years later now, something like that. It's shocking as a naturopathic doctor, and the interest in orthopedics and musculoskeletal health remains. As my body gets older, I start to feel the effects of those things. And then in clinical practice is just by necessity, right? Patients come in and they have pain. I mean, it's very rare, actually, to see somebody that's above 40 who doesn't have something that hurts. And so, yeah, here I am. That's the story.

Awesome. Oh, thank you for sharing that. And of course, this is, the thing is, in nature, public medical school, specifically, where we trained at Bastyr University, it was very clear that we were training in the conventional approach, like the antibiotics or the pain medication or when does a person need surgery? But at the same time, we were learning about the dietary ways we could help a person. Nutrients, herbs, homeopathy. And so we had this really broad education like you're mentioning, you know, being able to be able to use these tools when needed. But I know that it's, you know, sometimes it's hard for people. They're not used to thinking about it that way. They may be thinking either or. What are your thoughts on that conversation?

I mean, I totally agree with you. You articulated it really well, I think, like, like so many things in, in the, in, in life, in health and medicine and lots of other areas that they exist on a spectrum. And it's, it's weird to me, and I, I, it's, it's, it's weird to me that people don't understand this better, that like, or can't wrap their heads around this so easily, especially in Western medicine, that there's this thing called medicine. And within that thing, there's a bunch of different domains, right? You have nutrition and herbs and laughter and community and love and gratitude and what, you know, and, like, and, and surgery and neurosurgery and medications and, and, you know, we could go on and on and on and list a long, you know, a long list of things that could qualify as medicine in that context. And to me, it just makes sense that we should use the lowest amount of force that's necessary. This is a fundamental naturopathic principle. And I don't think that it should be like a us versus them or east versus west or any versus of any sort. I just think that there should be a health care system that uses the least invasive or the least forced therapies to get a person where they need to be. And if that's an herbal medicine, great. If that's neurosurgery, that's great too, you know. And so that's, that's where I'm at. And my career, a lot of it anyway, has been spent applying that philosophical construct into the practice of orthopedic or musculoskeletal medicine. So I'm with you on that 100%.

And when you think about sort of like, because there's a lot of different possible health issues that follow under that category. So what are you, what are some of the most common, Just so people listening can say like, oh, is this relate to what I'm experiencing? So what are some of the most most common joint or muscle related issues people you would see coming in with?

Yeah, great, great question. Because I say orthopedics and musculoskeletal medicine and people are like, what's that? Well, let's, let's make it really practical for people. So number one is, I think the most common complaint in primary care offices across the country. And that is low back pain. Right? That's number one. And that's a huge one. And then we could kind of like go out from there and say low back pain, mid back pain, neck pain. So pain in or around the spine is a big one. And if we want to get in detail here about what those diagnosis might be, it might be a bulging or herniated disc, it might be sciatica, it might be degenerative disc disease in the neck or back. So that these kinds of spinal complaints, the sorts of things that people might go to an orthopedist for, but also might go to a chiropractor or an acupuncturist or a naturopathic doctor like me for, and then from there, other joints as well. Right. So rotator cuff problems in the shoulder, tennis elbow or carpal tunnel syndrome in the upper extremity, hip pain from all sorts of different diagnoses, knee pain, very, very common, foot pain, plantar fasciitis, this sort of thing. And there's so many different diagnoses in that category, but this is people who have something that hurts, some, some joint or multiple, that, that, that hurts. That's what we're talking about here.

And the thing is like in the conventional medical system, which of course we're saying it's not either or, it's not good or bad. It's just that when a person goes to a conventional practitioner, I think of it like their tools are probably going to be a pharmaceutical or a procedure or a surgery and the pharmaceuticals, when you're in pain are going to be pain relieving medications. And so unfortunately, of course that means that a lot of people are dependent on some sort of pain relieving medication for a lot of their lives.

Absolutely. There's a very like predictable pattern of prescriptions that happen for people who are in pain. You know, let's take knee pain or low back pain, either of them would apply. And it's just very common. Yeah, it starts with over the counter pain relief or anti inflammatory medications. It goes up from there to injectable forms of those sorts of drugs. It goes up to the up from there to steroidal medications, actual corticosteroids, and then it goes out from there to some kind of surgical intervention. And that's just a very, very common and predictable pattern. When a person finds themselves in pain, goes to a primary care doctor, gets referred to an orthopedist, gets an imaging test like an X ray or an mri and then here we go, that, that that train has left the station and very often these folks wind up with some kind of surgical intervention at some point. Either a lumbar fusion, a microdiscectomy, a laminectomy, an arthroscopic knee surgery, or a full blown knee or hip replacement. These surgeries are extremely common. And this is something that I always say this cautiously, but it's really important to point out, and this is not a naturopathic thing, this is published in conventional medical journals. What I'm about to say. There are hundreds of thousands of surgeries being performed in this country on spines, necks, backs, knees and hips that are outright unnecessary or totally inappropriate. And that is a very provocative thing to say. I know, and I'm going to say it again. There's hundreds of thousands of unnecessary surgeries happening every year in this country. And that's a crisis. To me. That's a tragedy.

Yeah, I think it's a crisis. And I also think the overuse of pain medications is a tragedy because you and I have so many tools in our toolbox that people could use in, in between, maybe before they get to that point. Or like you're saying if, you know, like, hopefully to prevent the need for men for medications or surgery.

Yeah, absolutely. And that's the thing that's so frustrating. It's like, why would we use such a powerful invasive tool when another less powerful, less invasive, less toxic, less forceful intervention would do the trick? And, and, yeah, that's where the tragedy is. It's not that. And people misunderstand this a lot. It's not that surgery is bad. A knee replacement in the appropriate patient in the appropriate circumstance is a beautiful thing. In fact, it's almost miraculous what we can do right now with surgical interventions. But it's only miraculous when you do it on the right person in the right situation. If you do it on a person who doesn't need that level of intervention. That's. That's. That's almost criminal, as far as I'm concerned.

Is true. And, and it's very common. Like you mentioned, the degenerative joint disease is really common. Like, there's, I think, some numbers in terms of how many people, if they actually had imaging, would show some degree of degeneration. Right?

Yeah, you're absolutely right. And this is. This is shocking information. And it kind of helps. Helps people understand what's going on here, which is that if you look at people who are in their 40s who do not have back pain, okay, this is asymptomatic people in their 40s, they feel fine and take MRIs of their backs, you will find that 40% of them have. Have bulging discs in their lumbar spine. 40% of asymptomatic people, they feel fine. If you do similar with knees, with meniscus tears, chronic degenerative meniscus tears in the knees, about. About the same thing. In their 40s, 40% of people have. Those whose knees feel great. And then you go up every decade from there. In the 50s, 50% in the 60s, 60% of people who are feeling good have evidence of these degenerative problems in their spine. So here's the problem. As soon as somebody has pain and they go to a doctor to evaluate their pain, they get that mri, they see that disc or that meniscus tear. And all of a sudden, we link those two things together in our minds, right? Oh, you have pain, you have a meniscus tear. It must be the meniscus tear that's causing the pain. Now here's the problem. It's not true. A lot of the times, it's just not true. There are other things that are causing the pain. And that's, I think, really what we. What we probably are talking about, you know, what are those things? You know?

Yeah, absolutely. Let's do. I mean, I. I get tempted to share a little bit about my. My health because I. I don't know if this is something about me that I'm not sure, you know, that I've diagnosed myself with Ehlers Danlo syndrome a few years back. So I have joint hypermobility, which makes me more likely to have joint pain and joint issues.

I follow you online, Donnie. I do know this.

You do know this.

Yeah. I follow you. I watch.

Okay, good. And then I also found that rare arthritis called Sappho S, a P, H O, which is arthritis of the clavicle and sternum. And those are, as you. Those aren't even joints you mentioned because they're really rare to have arthritis, something.

That comes up very often.

So I. Because of that, I've had some imaging, and what I can say is that, I mean, definitely when they image and they get any kind of imaging of my neck or my lumbar spine, it definitely shows signs of degeneration. But I know then that that's not addressing that directly is not what gets me out of pain. What gets me out of pain is to address the muscles that are being inhibited and not functioning right, to protect my joints and the inflammation that is in the joints from other sources. So, yes, let's talk. I mean, and if. Whether you want to use my case as an example, I mean, I know there's always. There's so many patients in the same situation as where really it's the muscles and the inflammation that's setting us up from pain. But tell us your version of that.

Yeah, I mean, your story is a case in point. Right. And although yours is an unusual one, because it's not usually, you know, the sternoclavicular joint, it's usually something more common like a knee or a hip or a low back or a neck. But. But the same thing applies here, right? Which is that, you know, just because we see something that looks deranged or degenerative on an MRI or an X ray does not mean that that thing that we see, that abnormality that we see is the sole cause of the pain. And we see so many examples of this. You know, a lot of times we'll take a person who has right knee pain, for example, in the right knee, and take x rays or MRIs of both knees. It's a good practice to do that just to kind of get a, you know, a side by side comparison. And very frequently in a situation like that, you'll see that both knees look equally bad, but only one of them hurts. Right. And so it should be pretty common sense when faced with that scenario, one knee hurts, they both look terrible on an mri. Well, whatever it is we're seeing on the MRI must not explain this, right? Because one, the left knee feels fine, the right knee hurts, so it can't be that because, you know, that hurt, both knees would hurt. Right. So yeah, so this begs this question. And the question is, well then what is it that hurts? You know, why does it hurt if it's not what we're seeing on the X Ray and MRI? And in, in my 20 plus years now of observing patterns and people who are in this situation, I've identified a few things. And, and, and you mentioned two of them actually already. Number one is excessive inflammation. More inflammation than there should be in that person given the stimulus. Right. And we can talk in more detail about inflammation because that's a hot button issue. So more inflammation than there should be excessive inflammation. That's a big trigger. And you can't see that so easily on an X ray or an mri. Number two, you mentioned as well, which is muscle tension or some strength versus flexibility imbalance, right? Muscles that are maybe pulling on the joint or squeezing the joint or allowing it to be overly stable on one side and not stable enough on another side, that sort of thing imbalances in muscle tension and strength and flexibility. So that's a huge piece as well. Number three, especially in people who have chronic problems, is fibrosis. The accumulation of scar tissue on a microscopic level or even on a macroscopic level in a person who's had old injuries or had trauma or surgery in an area where the scar tissue starts to develop and restricts range of motion, restricts blood flow, can entrap nerves and create pain. Another thing that you can't see so easily, especially if it's microscopic on, on imaging tests and then the last one, and I know this is a subject that's, that you've probably covered, I'm sure. I know it's close to both of our hearts too, which is basically the psycho emotional piece, right? Pain is a lot more than just a physical experience. Right. It brings up all kinds of things for us. You know, it's wrapped up in the stories that we tell ourselves. It's wrapped up in our own life experiences and the life experiences of people that we've seen who've had problems after A surgery or who have become immobile or whatever. And so, you know, and when we see evidence of degeneration on our own x rays or MRIs, it gives us this head trip, like, oh, I'm broken, I'm falling apart. I'm going to be just like my dad or my mom or my grandparents. And those stories are extremely impactful in terms of our experience of the pain. So those are the big four, right? Excessive inflammation, muscular tension, fibrosis, and then the psycho emotional piece. And when we address those four and we can talk about that, people get better and they don't often need surgery and drugs. You know, when we address those comprehensively.

I love that and I like your point that these are not things you're probably going to see on imaging. So you, you know, say you're okay, you have whichever pain you go in, you get the. And the imaging is important. So we can rule out things that we can see on imaging. But then, you know, you have to also be realizing there's some things we can't see on imaging and it's important to take them into account. And, and sometimes that is, you know, a hard concept for us, to us humans, I think, is to how do we work with something that's sort of like not invisible in the usual way we're used to seeing it. Let's talk about inflammation, because this, you and I talk about it so easily, but I think for a lot of people it's like, what is inflammation? What are you talking about?

Yeah, yeah, let's start there. It's, it's a great place to start because it is such a problem. I, I like to start this conversation with the, the idea and the truth really, that inflammation is named after fire in Latin. Latin it to inflammo. It means to set ablaze. And so inflammation and fire are really similar in terms of we need them both, right? Like, fire is very important. It's probably part of civilization as we know it, right? We use it to cook, we use it to stay warm. Fire is part of our lives, right? And when it's contained and controlled, it's great. And we use it. And fire is awesome. But when fire escapes, the fire pit or the candle lets the, sets the curtains on fire. You have a big problem and it becomes maybe one of the most destructive forces in nature. And inflammation is very similar. People think, oh, it's just bad. I want to suppress inflammation, take it all away, right? You can't do that. Inflammation is absolutely fundamental. It's a biological imperative. It's how we heal. You know, you have a podcast called How Humans Heal. One of the answers is inflammation. That's how we heal. Right, but just like fire, when that inflammation is excessive, when there's too much of it, more than there should be, given the stimulus, it becomes destructive. And so it's another one of these nuanced sort of things. So yeah, and excessive inflammation is a massive problem in our society and it is a major driver of chronic disease and painful syndromes across, across the board.

And it comes down to, I mean, this is the thing is sometimes for us as naturopathic doctors, it comes down to some of the simple things like diet, what we're, what foods we're putting in and how our bodies are metabolizing them. But tell us, you know, tell us more about that. Like what are the tools to drop inflammation besides taking a, anti inflammatory medication?

Yeah, yeah, and it's a great question, right? So yes, we need inflammation. If you get stung by a bee or stub your toe or something, you want an inflammatory response. You just want it to be normal, you want it to not be excessive because that's when it starts to be a wildfire that's so destructive. And so the key thing, and this is hopefully not news to I imagine most of your listeners, is your diet, right? What you eat determines the health and the fluidity and the overall construction of your cell membranes. The membrane that encases every one of our cells, including our immunological cells. And when that cell membrane is healthy and composed of the right kinds of fats, cell membranes are made of, made of fat, then the inflammatory response is more likely to be contained and controlled and appropriate in terms of its, in terms of the, the level of the response. The diet is number one and probably the most important thing. And where most Americans have gone astray. And then there are all sorts of other factors as well, right? There's environmental factors. I would put this broad umbrella over this thing called lifestyle, which includes like environmental exposures and stress, something that I know you talk about so, so brilliantly. Sleep and all the other movement and exercise and community exposure in nature and all these sorts of things that also have an impact on, on the inflammatory response as well. And so we want to address all of those things that try to control foundational levels of inflammation and keep them contained. And then if a person is having an excessive reaction that persists or while they're waiting for those kinds of changes to kick in, we can use next level therapeutics, herbal medicines, and we can talk specifically about those as well.

Oh, I love it. Let's, let's do. I mean, I'd love to hear some of your, your favorites. I mean, and this is the thing is there's also a lot of research on herbs that are, that can help. I like how you're really pointing out that it's this balance, by the way. Like, it's not that we want zero inflammation, it's just that we want optimal. And I think that is a concept that's hard to grasp. A lot of times as humans, we want like black or white. You know, it's, they're on or off and it's like, no, we want to just have, if you have an injury, your, your body's trying to protect you. That's why the immune system is making these inflammatory molecules to help it heal. It's just when it gets out of hand or over that it's not able to have that on and off itself and manage that itself, that it, it starts to become chronic pain and inflammation. So, you know, and it can. Sometimes I think when a person's been in pain for a long time, it becomes overwhelming. You start to be like, well, where do I even, even start? Because I'm, I'm in pain. I need to feel better yesterday. But decreasing inflammation and bringing it back to optimal can take some time. And this is where, I mean, some of the herbal approaches can help work a little bit more quickly. But, you know, I think that's another part of this is how to help people understand how it's right. Like, what can you do right away to start the ball rolling and what are you going to do to, in the long run to prevent it? Right. Does that make sense?

It makes, it makes perfect sense. And it's, it's the, you know, I think in an idealistic way, and maybe 25 years ago, you and I might have thought, you know, oh, you know, and when we were, you know, wide eyed, you know, naturopathic doctors are going to go heal the people, you know, right. That, that the vision was going to be that we were going to help people make these dietary changes and we were going to work on their lifestyle and clean up their toxic exposures and minimize their stress and help them sleep. And then you have, then you face the reality of a person who's standing in front of you and their knee is puffed up the size of a grapefruit and they can't walk and they're in terrible pain and they don't want to hear about eating more carrots or wild caught fish, you know, or something like, sure, that's great, I'll do that. But like this thing is a problem today. And so I think of like the job of the physician in that context in a twofold way. Number one, inspire and educate so that the person understands, you know, all the dietary things that you're, that you're doing wrong. If we fix those, you'll be, you'll have less problems. But that's going to take a while, you know, that's going to take months even, right, to change out those cell membranes. We're talking about a month long project here. But we need to find some way to provide relief today, tomorrow, you know. And yeah, I think that you're right, that, that herbal medicines can fill that gap in very powerful ways. Actually, maybe not quite as powerful, but also not as toxic as some of the conventional drugs. And before we get into the specifics of the herbs, you reminded me of something which is that when you suppress inflammation aggressively, like with steroids, which do that very, very well and efficiently and powerfully, or, or with non steroidal anti inflammatory drugs, what you do is you're suppressing inflammation with this very powerful tool, very laser focused. And it's known and well established that if you do that, especially for extended periods, the problem will be worse over the long term. Right. Those things impair connective tissue integrity and you will be more likely to require more medication and more interventions over time. So this is a classic example. If you suppress the inflammation aggressively, you won't get the healing that you need because the inflammation's part of the healing response and you'll wind up paying for that later. I sometimes say it's like winning the battle but losing the war, you know, and there's a parallel in fever, right? If you, if you lower your fever, your fever is a response, it's a response to an infection and it's making your body inhospitable to a virus or a bacteria. If you suppress the fever, you'll feel better, but so will the virus or the bacteria. And it will likely, you know, get its hooks into you a little, a little bit longer, stay a little bit longer because you didn't let the fever do what it does. And it's very, very similar with inflammatory response.

I'm so glad we're talking about this because it's, it's really such a valuable information from people to understand how the body heals and how we can, how if we can support it in the healing process, it's actually much more efficient and strategic and effective in the long run than trying to go for these short term wins that are actually long term losses. And also just to point out that a lot of the medications actually, you know what they're doing is they're. Because we have in our, what maybe would be called like our inflammation system. We, our body makes sort of bad inflammation and good inflammation and the medications just turn off both the good and the bad. Whereas a lot of the natural approaches keep the good version of inflammation and just help reduce the bad. I don't know if you have a better way to explain that.

Yeah, I, well, I don't know if I have a better way to explain it. I, I struggle with a metaphor. I'm really keen on metaphors and maybe we can work on, maybe we can work on one here. I haven't, I have an idea for, for, for us, but I think, I don't love it and I'll tell you why. The, I think that the conventional approaches, whether they're steroids or non steroidal, they tend to target a specific enzymatic reaction in inflammation. Whether if we're talking about Advil, like ibuprofen type of drugs, non steroidals, they target cyclooxygenase. And so it's very laser focused intervention and there's a lot of other anti inflammatory drugs that target specific players or actors in this pathway. Almost like a sniper, right? Like a very laser focused kind of thing. Whereas the naturopathic therapeutics, and we'll get into the details here. Now things like herbal medicines often have multiple targets. More like a shotgun which is a scatter, right. Like you know, kind of smaller hits in each area. Now I like the metaphor because it explains it well, but I don't like it because it's, it's violent, right? It has guns. Like, I want a better way to describe it that's not about like snipers and shotguns because that's just not really part of my, I don't know, just not part of who I am. And I'd like to come up with a better, maybe more peaceful.

There we go. Because we're trying to be in, you know, peaceful with the body, right. We don't want to be in a battle with our own system. That's the whole point. We want to be like how can we support the system? But I, I think it's a good way to just let people know that whenever you swallow something it's, they don't all work the same, you know, like some of the herbs, let's say curcumin doesn't work exactly the same as Advil. So let's talk about that. Like, because I think that might help people when they're in pain, thinking, okay, do I want to take this pill that does this or do I want to take this pill that does this instead? And they both can reduce pain and inflammation.

Yep, absolutely. And you mentioned curcumin. And I'd like to, I'd love to help your listeners get into like the details of like the approach that I would take to, to a situation like this where someone's in pain, whether it's their back or their clavicle or their knee. And I want to just like address the elephant in the room, conflict of interest, whatever you want to call it. So I formulate products, you mentioned my company of wellness and I formulate products. I take what I've learned over many, many years and put them into capsules and then use those for people. And I've had, I've had a lot of, you know, great success in my career and also great success helping people manage these problems with, with this approach. That's exactly what we're talking about here. Now this is not for anybody to sort of go and buy those things. I want to just tell you, based on my experience from where I'm at as a person who, you know, has a warehouse full of hundreds of thousands of bottles of these things that this is what I, this is what I know and this is what I want to share. And you mentioned ingredient number one already, which I'm not surprised. Which is, which is curcumin. Right? Curcumin is the, the active ingredient, if you will, in turmeric and turmeric root. If you take the turmeric root and dry it out, put it into a powder, about 2% of that powder will, will be curcumin. Only. Only 2%. It's not very much. So yeah, it's, it's there, there's a bunch of other stuff in curcumin and turmeric as well, but there's 2% of it is, is curcumin this active ingredient that has that shotgun like effect? Right. It targets many of the different actors inside the inflammatory cascade. The good ones, the bad ones, all of the above, and modulates the inflammatory response in a very powerful way. And there's been thousands of studies on turmeric and curcumin having these, these beneficial effects. I'm a big fan of a particular type of curcumin called BCM95, which is one of these proprietary extracts high Potency, really clean curcumin. And that's ingredient number one, I think in, in the toolkit that I use to help address the inflammatory response. That'd be number one. Can I go on to number two?

Yeah, I mean, just talk curcumin. I was just saying that like some people will say, can I just. I know, I'm sure they ask, if they ask me, they ask you too. You know, they're like, can I just have turmeric? And the thing of, one of the key pieces about it is that yes, turmeric is wonderful and beautiful and definitely use it. However, it's important to know that only 2% is going to be the curcumin part that has all this research that shows it to be anti inflammatory. And also there's an absorption issue, the curcumin. Even curcumin needs help being absorbed from our intestines into our bodies, right?

It does indeed. Yes. And I totally agree with you. Turmeric is beautiful. It's great, it's yummy, it's great in curries and it actually has therapeutic potential as well. There's been studies on turmeric, but we're now talking again about that person with that grapefruit knee, right? That big knee, it really hurts. And so we've leveled up here and we've taken modern science and ancient wisdom and natural products and combined those two found out that that curcumin inside of turmeric is very bioactive. And if we can give it that little assist with absorption and we can talk more about that shortly, we can use this herbal medicine which is extremely safe, very well tolerated and powerfully effective. And so yeah, I'm 100% on board there. I love turmeric. I think people should eat more turmeric than they do. I love it myself in my, in my food and even as a supplement. But when we're talking about aggressively suppressing or modulating that inflammatory response in someone who has acute pain, I go for BCM 95 curcumin.

I'm really excited to open enrollment in my new 14 day detox program. It's based on my experience spending 16 days in the Amazon. And I realized I really want to be able to support all of you to safely and effectively detox from home. The 14 day detox includes a kit with protein powder, including antioxidants to support liver detoxification as well as an anti inflammatory diet plan, daily videos and tips from me, as well as my self care notebook and lots of encouragement to spend time in nature to reset your circadian rhythm. I want you to be able to detox your mind, body and spirit so you can get back to balance and move forward in your life with resilience. I can't wait for you to join me in this transformational process. And then in. There's different formulas out there. You mentioned the one from Up Wellness. And I can share others too, you know, through within the podcast Notes. Just so people have a sense of, like, here's what you're looking for. And the dosing can really be broad, you know, like, I don't know. I usually tell people, you know, with most things I say start with a low dose and then work up because you want to get a sense of how it's working for you. But the dosage range for curcumin is quite broad.

It's quite broad, and it's. Because of its extremely good safety profile, you can go very, very high without getting yourself in trouble. So, yeah, and there's. There's two schools of thought there. I agree with you that, like, I like the less is more approach. You know, use as little as you need to get the effect that you're going for. And you could either get there by scaling up, right? Like, let's work our way up. And then. And this probably is where medicine sort of becomes an art, right? Like for some people, maybe they're a little bit anxious and they're scared or maybe they're taking a medication or their stomach isn't so great and they're worried it might not react well with them. So we start low and, you know, it's maybe just 50 milligrams or 100 million. And then work your way up. And then other people are like, I'm a horse. You know, just give it to me hard, Doc. Bam. Six pills, you know, thousands of milligrams at a time, and then work your way down from there. But it's really nice and comforting to work with a compound that has such a good safety profile because the therapeutic window is so wide, right. We can use, you know, we can. We can use it in. In large doses or small doses. So I also find, though, that curcumin is one of those things. And this is maybe not surprising because if you think like, of Indian food, like a curry, yeah, there's turmeric in there, that yellow powder, but there's other stuff, and it's like a synergy. It's like a harmony, like an orchestra. And I find that herbal medicine formulations a lot of times work better when we take advantage of these other, this entourage of other compounds that, that, that, that work together. And I think that's where the experience and the art of medicine comes in. And we can talk about some of those other compounds as well.

Let's do. Because it's, it's true. Like a lot of times I see people who are like just really focused in on the curcumin, but they might be like, I tried it, but I'm not feeling any better. And it may be a dosage issue or it might be that maybe you need to use something alongside the curcumin. So. Yeah, tell me, what's your, what's your next favorite next one?

Yeah, yeah, totally. I'll get to that. Number two right now. But I also, I would totally agree. Like, it's hard sometimes because our scientific Western minds, we want to study just curcumin, right? It's like, it's easier to study and control for variables and do a study just on this. But in the traditional way or like if we think about these as foods because they really in many cases are as safe as foods. You're rarely just eating like a single food, right? You usually like combine it. There's a little sauce, there's a little spice. There's, you know. And so I think herbal medicine can be artful in that same way and make it in this case not taste better, but work better. And so that brings us, I think, to ingredient number two for me for musculoskeletal pain is boswellia serrata frankincense, the ancient and biblical herb. It's a resin from a tree and it is also anti inflammatory. It hits different targets than curcumin does, although there is some overlap there and even has some literature that demonstrates its usefulness in. I'm going to be cautious with my words here, but resurfacing cartilage, improving the integrity of cartilage surfaces that have been damaged by wear and tear or excessive inflammation. And so boswellia is, is ingredient number two for, on my list.

I love it too. And it's so great when a formula has those together because then we're like, okay, we can get, get sort of the combination of the two, the synergy of them working together. And then what would you, what would you say next?

My next one would probably, in no particular order, I'd put bromelain on the list. I mentioned fibrosis, the scar tissue formation problem which can entrap nerves and restrict range of motion. Bromelain is an enzyme that is Extracted from pineapple and it's anti fibrotic. It's actually for your listeners, it's kind of a funny thing. Um, bromelain is the active ingredient in meat tenderizer. So when you sprinkle meat tenderizer on a piece of tough gristly meat, if you, if you do that, the way it works is it's a chemical. It chemically digests fibrin in that tough steak and makes it more tender. And so bromelain does the same thing. It gets absorbed intact when you take it in a pill and it will circulate in your bloodstream and have a fibrinolytic, a fibrin digesting effect in your body. And that's a good thing when you have fibrin or fibrosis that's restricting blood flow, nerve activity or range of motion inside of a joint. So I'd put bromelain up there high on the list, maybe number three.

And, and you're kind of saying that it's covering a couple of those issues. We talked about it covering the inflammation, inflammation and it's also covering the, the fibrosis part of it. I love bromelain too. The tricky thing sometimes is we get the most benefit from bromelain when we swallow it away from food. Because when, yeah, we take it with food and digest our food, which is not a bad thing. But yeah, we're not going to get as much of the anti inflammatory effects. So I always like to point that out to people like that's the, that's the key part of that bromelain strategy is just figuring out where to insert it in your day so that it's not at the same time as there's food in your stomach.

Totally true. And I would just piggyback on that and say that, you know, it's fibrinolytic. And so if the food is like, and not that I'm advocating people do this, but if it's a more starchy kind of carbohydrate laden meal, you have less of a problem. Right. So if you're eating like a tough steak with your bromelain, Bromelain is literally meat tenderizer. And so it will go work on, work on that steak in your stomach before it ever gets to your knee or your clavicle. Right. So yeah. So bromelain is best dosed for therapeutic purposes as a, as a, as a joint pain treatment in, away from meals. Absolutely. Or at least away from high protein, animal protein type of meals.

And what do you think in terms of hitting on the muscular part of the pain. What are, what are you suggesting there?

Yeah, so I mean, if we're talking about herbal medicines, obviously there's, there's a lot of things that can be done and I, I spent much of my career using my own two hands to address those muscular things. Right. People would say acupuncture needles would be useful for those, for those things. Trigger point release tools, stretches, strengthening exercises. So all of that. Right. Needs to be in place. And that's all structural stuff. That's maybe another podcast we can do another day. But in the, in the, what can you put in your mouth to address those muscle things? My number one pick, and I, I'm guessing yours is the same, is magnesium. Magnesium is not an herb. It's a, it's a mineral. It's found in the crust of the earth and it is a very important mineral for physiology, for all kinds of, you know, hundreds of different biochemical reactions, including those that drive muscle tension and muscle relaxation. And it's, it's, it's unfortunate because so many people are deficient in the mineral magnesium in their diets because they don't eat the foods that contain it. And they eat food. Even if they do eat the foods, the soil that those foods are grown in is, is depleted from magnesium just because of our agricultural practices. And so there's a lot of people running around who have not enough magnesium in their system. And then when they get a problem, a little car accident, a little sternoclavicular something or other, you know, the muscles get tight and they can't relax because there's not enough magnesium on board. So magnesium is my go to tool for the muscle tension piece of this equation.

And just to, of course, with magnesium, there could be a whole nother conversation because there's so many different kinds of magnesium. But I, I think you'll probably agree with me that it's like magnesium glycinate or malate is the ones that are going to be really helpful for the muscles versus citrate and oxide, which are probably not going to be as beneficial there.

Yeah, they are, There are, there's all these different chelates and yes, and they all have their, they all have unique personalities. Right. And yeah, that's again, I mean, probably an hour long conversation on just different chelates for, for, for magnesium. So yeah, you're looking for absorption, you're looking for GI tolerability and you're looking for that muscle relaxation effect, at least in this, in this case. So yeah, that's. Magnesium is a, is a, is Just a powerful tool. It's a, it's a great one.

And I love magnesium topically too. That's the one that I've used a lot for myself is like, if I feel these, my muscles tight in my neck, I'm like, okay, where's the magnesium lotion? Because it can actually absorb through our skin also through Epsom salts, right?

Yep, it can indeed. Yeah. The Epsom salts, you know, usually the magnesium lotions have some kind of like lipid carrier in there that allows it to penetrate in. And there are some studies now, you know, I know that the. The jury. Epsom salt's not something that like, there's a lot of funding for research on. Right. Like, because it's just like this cheap mineral. It's magnesium sulfate is what that is. And people love Epsom salts and I'm an advocate of them for, you know, muscle relaxation in, in a bath or healing injuries and whatnot. And. But there's just not the kind of like western medical literature that you're looking for showing, you know, this sort of thing. Why? Because there's no funding for such a thing. You know, this is just a simple cheap mineral from the earth. But there is some literature that shows that topical magnesium products, especially with lipid carriers, do, do get absorbed into the bloodstream and can be. Can produce measurable increases in serum magnesium levels, which, which is good news, you know. And so, yeah, I'm a fan of those as well.

And I'm so glad that you mentioned, like, I mean, acupuncture has really saved me when I've been in, when I've been in pain and I get, you know, my joints get injured very easily and, and yeah, like, I'm in that situation and like, like the list, like those people listening and the things we've been talking about where you're like, okay, am I going to need to take more, you know, non steroidal or steroidal medications for pain? And then, oh, but what if I, or you know, do I need a surgery? Hopefully not. But if I did have to have surgery a couple years ago. So I'm like always saying like, yeah, it got to a point where for me there a surgery was necessary also for ignite diagnostic purposes. But one of the things that really has saved me is acupuncture, especially acupuncture with electrical stim on the motor points. Literally, like really actually pretty quickly got me out of pain. And so I really want, I want to emphasize that and anyone who's listening, especially if you do have like, me Joint hypermobility and tendency toward pain like that, that definitely encourage you to check out acupuncture with electrical stim especially. And so anything else you wanted to add to that piece? Josh, please.

I agree with you 100%. I don't practice it myself. I'm not an acupuncturist, but I have multiple acupuncturists in my office, including some that double as naturopathic doctors and acupuncturists. And so being just in the proximity of those practitioners for so many years and watching patients come in and then leave and then come back weeks later, you know, we're in a clinical context and we worked together for decades, decades. And it's sort of like you, you get to a point, right, And I don't know if you've gotten to this point too, where, like, there's, there's literature, medical literature, there's what the science says and then there's what the real world experience is, you know, and it's, it's hard for me, you know, regardless of what the science might say about acupuncture, which is actually quite positive in many different studies, although there's some conflicting papers out there. Just watching a steady stream of patients come into an office on the regular for decades, you know, and every day, you know, I'm there, I'm watching this. I'm like, this is, these people are benefiting from this. It doesn't matter what the science says. They're coming in in pain, they're leaving without it. You know, they're coming back two weeks later as it started to come back. This is an incredibly useful tool. And. Yes, absolutely. And I would put it in the category of one of those minimally invasive, minimally expensive kind of tools. And yeah, if you can get out of pain from acupuncture, you should, you know, rather than going up the, the, the, the ladder, the rungs of the ladder into something that is more toxic, that is more forceful, that is more dangerous. So, yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's great, great stuff.

And I, I wanted to ask you about something that I'm finding myself having conversations more and more about with patients, and I'm sure you are too, which is along the lines of, of cannabis and hemp, you know, using CBD and THC for, for pain and inflammation. What is your, what is your, what do you usually tell people about that?

Yeah, so. Right. Cannabis certainly is having its moment, isn't it? Yeah. And, and, and psychoactive about that.

Twenty something years ago, when we were in school, this is becoming something more as a tool that we can use as practitioners.

Yeah, yeah. It's. It's funny that you ask and you just brought back this flash of a memory, Donnie, and you'll maybe remember this or appreciate it because you. I know you remember her. We were. We had a botanical medicine teacher named Lisa Schuler, who I love and still love to this day and respect greatly, one of my favorite people who taught us botanical medicine. And during her botanical medicine class, we had to create a monograph of. Of an herb, medicinal herb. I picked Cannabis sativa. That was my. That was the one that I wrote about. So.

Yeah, so you were ahead. You were studying, in fact.

Yes, So I was ahead of the curve. Yeah. I went to a lot of Grateful Dead shows back in the day, too. So I had my reasons, you know, where I. Why, why. Why I chose that. I was curious. Curious back then. And it's interesting, and I think it's. It's great to see that plant kind of rising the way that it has into the therapeutic context and. But. But I also think, you know, we get overly excited about these kinds of things in. In. In our Western world here. This is a good conversation for another whole show. I think, brief, simply stated, I think of cannabis as an herb very much in the same way that I think of echinacea or turmeric or bromelain or any of these other plants that we're talking about are plant extracts. It's a plant. It has its place in the pharmacopoeia, in the herbal medicine pharmacopoeia. And that's kind of where I would leave it. You know, from there, I would say this plant, because of its psychoactive potential and getting high or stone, has become the darling of horticulturalists who have figured out how to concentrate the THC in it and manipulate the different cannabinoid concentrations and create these products that are now much, much more potent than cannabis is in its native natural form, where it grows out where it naturally grows. And now we're talking about, you know, kind of similar in a way to curcumin versus turmeric. Right. These cannabis products. And can they be powerful? Yes, absolutely. Like, there's a lot of literature on CBD for muscle tension, for pain itself, both topically and orally. There's. There's a lot of literature for THC for all kinds of different medical problems. And I am a fan of it, no question about it. And I think just like other herbs, just like drugs, just like surgery, it should be used in the right patient, in the right circumstance. And that's, that's sort of where I'll leave it there. Unless you have any more specific questions.

I just wanted to mention that what I've found for myself is, and I like to point out, because it's not often known that you can, I mean a lot of times you'll see CBD in a topical salve. But I also like to point out that you can also get THC in topical forms. Just like we were talking about with magnesium. You can get THC in a lotion or salve. Now of course it depends on your location and the legality of these substances, where you are located. And you might have to get a medical marijuana license to get access to it. But if someone's in pain and saying to me, what else can I do? I would say, hey, it's worth considering getting a medical marijuana license if you need to, where you're located. And consider at least the topical thc because you don't, it doesn't give that psychoactive component. It just gives the anti inflammatory, antispasmodic effect.

Yep, it's a, it's a great and useful plant, you know, and I'm really glad that it's having its moment. You know, it's a, it's, it's a really good thing. I, I want to just because of sort of more not personal to me, but personal because in my small nucleus, my sphere kind of point out one thing that's I think increasingly common and concerning related to cannabis. And that is this condition that's called CHS and, and cannabis, it's what that stands for is cannabis hyperemesis or cannabis cannabinoid hyperemesis syndrome. CHS and hyperemesis means non stop vomiting. And so people who habitually use high potency cannabis are at risk. It's a fairly new, newly described condition. It was only described in the medical literature in 2004, so only about 20 years ago. But now we're seeing increasing numbers usually of young people showing up in hospital emergency rooms puking their brains out, not able to eat. There's a weird kind of almost homeopathic symptom with this. I'm not sure if you're aware of where they want to take hot showers. The hot shower, really steaming, burning hot showers. The only thing that makes the nausea and the vomiting go away. And this is a syndrome that I think we need to be on the lookout for. I've seen it personally. It's horrifying and I'm Hearing now because I became personally invested in this because of some close proximity to people in my life that I care deeply about who are suffering with this, that I started to study it and say, wow, okay, you know, this is not as benign, I think, as, as, as. As you might think now that we're seeing these dispensaries and, and, and. And pot shops show up all over the place. So I think, you know, we'll. I think right now cannabis is on this heavy upswing, and that pendulum is really swung in its favor. It's going to swing back a little bit, and then I think we'll get to a comfortable spot with it in the next few years. But overall, yes, just like any herbal medicine.

Useful plant when used appropriately.

Yeah. And thank you for saying that. It's so important. And that's where I think working with a naturopathic doctor can also be so important, because a lot of times people are. I'm glad they're getting more curious. They're trying these things, and some of these substances are becoming more available where you can just get them on your own and dose them yourself. But when you're working with a naturopathic doctor, that's one of the things we can help with, is to guide, like, what is, like. Like Josh and I are doing here. What's the first thing we're going to try? What's the next thing we're going to add? What are we going to add next? What's the next consideration if we still need help? So we're looking at a ladder of intervention, and then we're helping to figure out what's the best dose. And is this person having their own individual response to it that we need to take into account? That's where naturopathic doctors, you know, can come into play and help guide you. You don't have to be all on your own with this.

Yeah, absolutely. And there are many times and many situations where doing DIY style is perfectly great. Right. Like, I'm a big, firm believer that people should have some purchase over. Over their own health. Right. It is your body, your health, after all. Right. So you should have the autonomy there. And there's lots of room, you know, for you to experiment. But then there are times and there are points that we reach where it's good to have some expert guidance. And I think this is just. You could use the homeowners analogy. Right, right, right here, the metaphor. There's lots of projects that you can do around the house, but then there's a few that you should Call the pros on and, you know, everybody has a different line where their comfort level lies. And the same should be in healthcare too.

Yeah, that's a good way to say it. I see. There's a, that's a great analogy. So I know we're. Oh my gosh, you, it sounds like you and I could just talk and talk and we can, we can do some more of this another day. There's a couple of things I guess I wanted to just come back to before we wrap up. Up. One is, is I guess to say that there's, there's so many other now tools out there for joint issues too. And I, you know, like whether that's like people are doing, you know, prolotherapy, stem cell regeneration, you know, like when should people consider that and, and where should they go to start to explore that as a possibility as well?

Yeah, this is a great question. And I think those are one of the rungs of the ladder. Right? You described this ladder that has those low force interventions, the diet and then the herb stuff and the minerals and, you know, stretches and exercises. Acupuncture was on that list. And, and we had drugs and surgery up there. And there is this newly forming set of rungs in there that are these peptides which can be taken orally or injected. There are, you know, this started with prolotherapy, was one of the early regenerative therapies. And then we, then we saw prp, which is platelet rich plasma injections coming on the scene, hyaluronic acid injections, stem cell injections, all these different regenerative therapies. They are absolutely on the list. Unfortunately, I think right now, because of the state of reimbursement and insurance, these things generally speaking, are out of pocket expenses in most places. And you know, we're talking, usually if we're talking about prp, a series of PRP injections in a knee or a spine or something like that, usually thousands of dollars, at least a couple thousand. And if you're going up to stem cell injections, you're looking usually around $5,000 per joint here. And so we have to have these honest conversations with people about whether or not that financial outlay fits into their budget, you know, for their, for their health care and if it does. Yeah, absolutely. Those are things, those are a place to go before you get a more toxic injection, before you get a surgical intervention. So, yeah, I'm a big fan. I've seen some remarkable resolutions of where people had maxed out the herbal interventions Maxed out the physical therapy and acupuncture and then got profound relief from a PRP and, or stem cell injection. So those should be on the list. Absolutely. With the caveat, unfortunately, if you can afford it, you know, that's, that's where we're at with those.

Yeah, yeah. And I agree, and thank you for sharing that. And I wanted to also come back to this fourth source of, of pain, which is coming from a psycho emotional place. And even from my story, like when I was going through the diagnosis of this sternoclavicular arthritis, I didn't have any idea that it could have had a psycho emotional source. And it was only through just really sitting with it and going through the diagnostic process and really asking myself what all is going on in my life. And I think that to me, that sometimes is how it shows up, because some people are like, well, how could this possibly have anything to do with my psycho emotional state? But for me, it became clear when I really started to take a closer look at my life and, and what was happening and what, what emotions were coming up. And I, and also through some of my work with psychedelic medicine, it became very clear and even through meditation, became very clear that this area of my body is also the heart chakra. And so it made sense that, wow, this is related to needing to heal the heart chakra or heal what we would call our heart on a emotional level. Right. So to me, that was really like eye opening to realize, wow, there is a psycho emotional component to this health issue that I'm dealing with on, in a joint level. So, yeah. Share more about that. Like what have you observed with your cases?

Yeah, that's a, it's a beautiful, that's a beautiful story. And, and what a powerful observation. That's so fortunate that you were able to have that window open up in front of you that way, you know, because I don't think, you know, we've talked a lot about like, spectrums, right? Like the spectrum between alternative or natural medicine and conventional medicine and this spectrum of inflammation, you know, and, and, and here we are again, you know, talking about spectrums. I, I think that there's no. And the way I'm thinking about this is that, that, you know, to your question, the body and the mind aren't two different things. They're the same thing. They're all part of this big spectrum again. And so it's impossible to have a physical malady, you know, a sternoclavicular arthropathy or a degenerative meniscus tear or bulging disc in your spine without having an emotional or psychological, psycho, emotional, even spiritual component to it. We are, you know, physical, emotional and spiritual beings. And so any insult or impact upon our, any of those systems will affect all of the others. And so first we just have to acknowledge that that's a reality and then get into the specifics, right? So yeah, on a, on a, on a level like you're describing here, there can be blockages or restrictions or suppressions from other things in our lives that can kind of seat themselves in various parts of our body. You describe that, I think, very beautifully. And then there's also the piece where we. These things hurt, right? Like these musculoskeletal things are very crude level. When you have a problem in your knee or your back, it hurts. It's just pain. And pain is a messenger. It's a messenger that tells us that something is wrong and that, that your behavior needs to change because if you don't, something worse is going to happen. Right? I think that I, I, you know, you know me, I speak in metaphors, right? If your hand gets too close to the fire, it hurts. And it hurts so that you move your hand away from the fire because if you don't, it's going to get burned and that's going to be a problem, right? And this is very similar. What happens if your knee hurts, your back hurts, something hurts, you tend to protect yourself away from it, right? We don't want to go there. We want to get away from that pain. Do whatever we have to do to limp or to change our position or change our posture, to do something that allows us to not experience that pain anymore in the same way that you move your hand away from the fire. The problem is that very often those behavior changes are actually counterproductive. This is the problem, right, that like people don't lean into the pain, they don't go on that discovery, what's this about? You know, and instead they just shield themselves away from it in all sorts of ways, psychological, physical, structural ways. And when you do that, you wind up perpetuating the problem. And so a lot of the work I think that needs to be done with people with musculoskeletal pain, especially chronic, ongoing, long term pain, is to help them understand that in most cases, not all, but in most cases it's not dangerous, it just hurts. And this is actually kind of like a mantra that I use with people sometimes because it feels dangerous and it feels scary. And very often when your back is going out, it's like oh, my gosh, I'm going to be in a wheelchair. Oh, my gosh, I'm going to be like my grandma, you know, I'm not going to be able to walk. Worst case scenario, I'm not going to be able to work. I'm not going to make money. I'm not going to be able to play my sport, whatever it is. And that fear, it just winds up perpetuating, you know, that train starts going faster and faster and faster so we can pull back from that and really own. And I don't mean just say it, I mean own it. Right. Like in a meditative kind of way. It's not dangerous. It just hurts. That can be very liberating, you know, or work around that mantra can be very, very liberating for people.

Oh, thank you for sharing that. And I agree. I think that is when I really learned the most about my body, is when I, yeah, got like, took the time and the space to just be curious and just be present and say, okay, instead of being in fear and running away from it, how can I be with it and learn from it and listen to my body? What is my body trying to tell me on? And so, yes, hours and hours of. Of meditation and insight later, I would say it was so worth it, you know, what I learned from my body through that arthritis. Now I feel grateful. Like, I feel like. Instead of. Because sometimes I think we're almost like angry that we're in pain, but actually now I can say, hey, I'm grateful for that pain because it really showed me what I needed to see that I wouldn't have. I couldn't see otherwise.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, that. That's true. And I think that the psychedelic work is another whole piece. And I know you've talked a lot about that where, like, that makes it. Maybe it makes it a little bit easier to allow a person to face those demons, you know, to open up that door where you're not sure what's going to be behind it, to go down that dark staircase or whatever that metaphor might be for. For somebody. And that's sort of what we're talking about here, is to. Is to try to take off those shackles or those shields that are. That make you want to just protect and stay away from that pain and kind of explore it in a. In a little bit more depth. And in that exploration, you're bound to find something that will help you heal. Right. That's what that part of the work is.

And I think for me, a lot of it was finding Myself, you know, like, I think that whether, whether physical pain or psycho, emotional pain, we're, we're, it's, it's really trying to say to us, how do we come back to ourselves? How do we start to really let go of the things from the past or let go of whatever's distracting us enough that we can really know ourselves and who we are and what we need?

Yeah, great. Hope this was helpful to people. It was certainly. Yeah, this was a great, a great conversation. I think we covered a lot of ground and I feel like we, you know, really kind of got into some core, core issues there.

Absolutely. Thank you so much for joining me, Josh, and sure, I'll put links. So anyone who's wanting to get in touch with Josh and continue learning from him, he does all kinds of amazing videos. As you can tell. He's great at explaining things. And he has his, his clinic called Whole Health in Hampton, Connecticut, where he has a whole clinic of practitioners, nature bathic doctors, acupuncturists, as he mentioned, who have trained with him. And so this is, you know, this area. If you're wanting to be able to access what we're talking about, that's one way to go. But, Josh, what else? I mean, there's Up Wellness, which is your supplement company. How. What else do you recommend? If someone wants to learn more from you and connect more with you, where should they go?

Yeah, thank you. Yes, the. My clinic itself, my personal practice, I'm not taking new patients, but Whole Health in Hampden, Connecticut, you can, you can look there and there's lots, lots of other doctors there that can help you if you're in our local area. We do telemedicine too, for the people locally as well. And yes, Up Wellness is. This is the, the name of the company where I formulate products and that's. We have a website called upwellness.com and then I also do a lot on Instagram. There's maybe, I don't know, 70,000 people around on Instagram right now that are following me in this sort of content that I create, podcast type, type of interviews, talking about these various issues. And that is at Dr. Josh Levitt, my name. And you'll put links in the show notes here for that. And that's a good place to connect. I've been making tick tocks too. Donnie, did you ever think, awesome, right? I mean, I like, it's like we were in Medical School 25 years ago. Of course, we didn't think we were going to be doing tick tocks or Instagram because it didn't exist back then. But here we are, you know, making tick tocks that get hundreds of thousands of views sometimes. And, and I think to me, it's a beautiful thing, actually. I mean, it's fun, but it's a great way to spread this word. Right? We're still, I love that both of us, and there's many of us out there kind of got the, that spark lit about naturopathic medicine and what it can do for ourselves personally and for the world and our patients. And it's still burning really hot. And now we have this cool opportunity to talk on podcast and can go on Instagram and go on TikTok. My TikTok handle, by the way, is at upwellness and, and, and, and, and spread that word. And so those are all good places to connect with me.

Awesome. And yeah, I mean, I, I agree, like, over the past 25 years, I mean, the awareness for natural healing and naturopathic medicine in general has increased so much. And I think it is because we have this passion to keep talking about it and, and then more and more people are doing the same. So, so I'm with you. It's, you know, I'm hoping that anyone listening feels inspired and also educated about now. If you're in pain when, whether now or in the future, you have a structure to help you think through your options. And that alone can help people decrease their fear and their pain because then you don't feel like it's. You're so alone in the darkness of, and wondering what you're going to do. You actually have a way to think it through and know there are effective solutions.

I hope that's, I hope that came through to people. And yeah, I think it did. I think we did provide a template for that, for that, for the comfort. And I think there's so much medicine in that kind of reassurance. Right. Like, that's one thing that we didn't talk about, which is like, we talked about inflammation, muscle tension, fibrosis, and the psycho emotional piece. But there's also like something to be said for I'm going to be okay. Whether it's internal or someone that you trust telling you you are going to be okay. And that, that kind of reassurance I hope that we were able to, to, to provide today because there's powerful medicine just in that.

Absolutely. Oh, my gosh. Well, thank you again so much for joining me, Josh. I look forward to connecting with you again soon.

Yeah, absolutely. This is a real treat.

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