#38 Understanding Signals from Your Body with Dr. Doni

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, it's Dr. Donnie, and I'm so glad you're joining me here today. I'm wanting to talk more in depth about something I posted about yesterday, which had to do with.

Really looking at the symptoms we experience in our bodies as our body, communicating with us.

And to not only think about it, you know, how to think about it that way and why, but also help you to learn how to practice listening to your body in that way and what you can then learn from it. And I'd love to.

Respond to any of your comments or questions, so please feel free to mention any of your thoughts and if I don't get to reply right away, I'll get back to you.

So again, I'm by the way, if we haven't met before, I'm Dr. Donnie Wilson. I'm a naturopathic doctor and I've been practicing naturopathic medicine for.

Over 20 years. So it's something that I'm so passionate about. And basically it's just my whole world and my whole life. You know, this is what I think about, whether I'm talking to patients or when I'm not talking to patients on my day off, this is what I think about. This is how I relate to my health and my body. So it's really.

Just to me, that's the only way I think about things. And that's been at least since I graduated in 2000. But I really think it was since before that because.

I grew up thinking about signals from my body and what that meant that I may need to eat differently or sleep differently or do differently in order to support my body. And my parents, I don't think really knew that they were encouraging that message or encouraging that behavior.

To this extent. But.

I tell them that I think it came from the way they communicated with me in my childhood and now I communicated back to them.

And they're like, okay.

This is what they wanted to know ultimately. So again, it's so much of the time we experience symptoms in our bodies. I mean, a classic would be pain.

Whether that's menstrual cramps as a pain, or if that's a headache, or if that's a joint pain, stomach pain. We can experience pain in so many different areas. When we experience pain, the question is, how do we relate to it?

Do we relate to it as.

As.

Something that's happening to us? Like is that, does it feel like the pain is happening to you and feeling like you're out of control or that you're a victim of the pain? Or you know, can you, in a moment of pain, can you find a way to look at it as, you know, in some ways you have to kind of stand back a little bit, almost separate from the experience of the pain, step back and think to yourself.

Not so much why is this happening to me, but what is my body trying to tell me? What is it that your body is trying to say, signal to you through the pain? Because we know from physiology and the body works the way the body works, is that pain is a signal of inflammation. And so then we could ask ourselves, well, why is there inflammation? Now a lot of medicine, western medicine especially, would approach pain with a pain. You know, pain reliever, you take something that's going to stop the pain. And most times the way pain relievers work is by turning off the inflammatory pathways. They also turn off the anti inflammatory pathways. See, we have natural anti inflammatory pathways in our bodies. So when you take a pain medication, you're turning off the inflammation and the anti inflammation. And it can work for sure. It can turn off the pain and it can turn off the inflammation for that moment.

But maybe some of you are finding yourselves more and more often asking why? Why is this pain happening to begin with? What is my body trying to tell me? What is this body trying to indicate by giving inflammation, creating inflammation, creating pain. And when we ask the question, what is my body trying to tell me? Then it leads us down a path of.

Looking at contributing causes. You know, was it an injury? You know, was it that you, you know, lifted something too heavy at the wrong angle at the wrong time and it caused a joint pain? Was it because.

Something landed on your foot and so now you have foot pain? Or is it say with something like menstrual cramps, Is it because.

There'S an imbalance or not enough magnesium to help prevent cramping? That could be really true, not just for menstrual cramps, but any muscle cramps in the body need magnesium to help calm down the muscles. So any muscle cramp, including a uterine cramp, could be because of a lack of magnesium. You see What I mean, so it's a matter of saying, why is this happening? Or what is my body trying to tell me? And then you can sometimes find the answer, oh, I just need to take more magnesium, or I need to use magnesium lotion for muscle spasms in your neck or your back.

So I invite you to just take a few minutes on whether you jot it down on your, you know, actually hand with a pen and paper or type it on your phone, write down notes about what has your body been telling you lately? You know, what are the. We call them symptoms. Right? What are the symptoms that you've been noticing? But maybe you don't relate to them that way. Like, maybe you have a different description than what might be the medical name of it. So write down what you're feeling. Yesterday a patient was describing to me how she gets this sensation in her feet. And it's hard for her to describe that sensation. It's not pain, it's not numbness, it's not pins and needles. So she has to really. We sit together and we think about what exactly is it that it feels like to her? And it's. Then you might get to a closer.

Idea of what is that sensation you're experiencing. What time of day does it happen? What are all the possible other variables? Is it after you eat, before you eat? Is it after you were working out or before you were working out? You know, try to look at all of the factors.

Does it happen when you don't get enough sleep? Does it happen after you eat certain foods? So you start to look at what are the factors that are influencing your body that result in your body creating that signal for you. And.

That particular patient where she told me about her foot sensation, we went, we talked it through, we went through her blood work results. One of the things that I noticed is that her blood sugar levels are a little high. It wasn't even high enough. Like a regular conventional doctor or internist probably wouldn't even worry too much about it. It wasn't that she had diabetes, but it was slightly high for her.

And.

Let'S see, I think that paused me a little bit.

And when the blood sugar levels are slightly higher, like maybe 100, 220.

When the blood sugar levels are slightly high, that can increase inflammation in the body and it can be irritating to the nerves.

So I said to her, hey, this is something I can see in your lab work that's trending on the high side for you. And it's going to be a good thing to bring her blood Sugar levels down anyway for so many reasons. But we decided, hey, what if she takes a month and focus on decreasing her carb intake at anyone sitting and watch out for extra sugar in her foods and be really careful basically with her blood sugar levels and see if the symptoms, the sensations in her feet decrease or go away.

So essentially we're taking the symptoms that she feels in her feet as a signal from her body that something's out of balance. And then we can look at different factors, including her blood sugar levels, and say, hey, let's work on that and see if we notice the difference. And I just know from, you know, helping patients so many patients for so long that a lot of times this can be a way of really discovering some, some patterns that sometimes are just right under the surface. You know, like it's not enough to get a diagnosis or, you know, it's not severe enough to be diagnosed or require a prescription, but it's just under the surface enough that better to address it now than later. Because that's the thing is a lot of times we're, you know, we're so busy with our lives and our to do lists and everything going on that we can kind of look past certain. These signals we get from our bodies. You know, we can kind of go, oh, that's just the way it is. I, you know, I just normally have a little bit lower energy or normally have a little bit of brain fog and I just have to get through it or drink more coffee. You know, that's how we kind of adapt to these signals from our bodies. But if we really stop and think about it.

We could figure it out. I think a lot of times we could figure out, oh, if I'm feeling tired, first of all, maybe that you need more sleep. That would be first thought, maybe better sleep, or maybe you need to take some breaks. Maybe you've had too much to do for a while and you need to just take it easy for a few days.

To recover. Sometimes it's something more than that. Sometimes low energy is low, caused by low iron or low adrenal function or low thyroid function. Better to investigate. And even if it's borderline, See, again, that's the thing is a lot of times in regular medicine and medical tests, it only shows when once these signals from our bodies get bad enough that it meets the qualifications of a diagnosis, then they pick up on it. But what if we could pick up on it earlier? You know, what if you could pick up on signs of, say, cortisol being a little bit too high or too low and be able to address it sooner so that it doesn't ever have to become that severe. And I think that sometimes because of our cultural views, we tend to think we're supposed to push through and we kind of ignore ourselves or taking care of ourselves is. It's hard to prioritize that. It's hard to prioritize the time and the money to take care of ourselves. But ultimately, it's only when we do prioritize ourselves that we can feel better and then be able to do more of what we really want to be doing.

For some people, they can pick up on symptoms a lot sooner. My body tends to give me symptoms really early. Other people, not so much. Some people, you don't even realize something's going on until it is more severe. And so that's why I want to really encourage you to be aware of this and to even create a practice of checking in with yourself on a regular basis, whether that's daily or weekly.

To just take a few minutes. And you know how we always say, how are you? How are you? How are you? Ask yourself, how are you? How are you? How are you feeling? And actually journal about it, meditate maybe about it, and think.

How actually am I? How is my menstrual cycle doing? How is my sleep? How's my energy? How's my mood? These are some of the main questions that I come to because they tell me. They tend to tell me the most information with patients is energy. How's your energy level throughout the day? How is your mood? Meaning are you more anxious? Are you more low mood? Are you. Is your mood variable? Are you irritable? You know, that's all mood. How's your focus? Like, how well can you focus on a task, remember things, finish projects, you have brain fog, how's your memory? That's all under focus. How's your sleep? Can you fall asleep easily? Can you sleep through maybe at least six hours and then go back to sleep for another couple hours? We're trying for seven and a half to nine hours of sleep. How's your sleep? Because that's a real signal from the body, too.

And for women, I ask about menstrual cycle, but also for men and women, we could be looking at libido or sort of any signaling that might give you an idea of your hormones.

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So maybe I would check in on those, those five and really.

You know, even make a scale for yourself. One to five. Hey, how's my energy? One to five, how's my mood? One to five. You know, and this is kind of a little, it's a nice quick check because then you're going to know right away if something's off, you know, is my energy lower than it should be? Is my sleep off? Is my mood different? Is my focus different? This can then bring us to know that we need to investigate further. Do testing for nutrients, do testing for cortisol, testing for other hormones, digestion, gut bacteria, you know, so we can start digging toxin levels, you know, we can start looking for why are those signals from your body thrown off track? And even for something like an infection like hpv, EBV.

Or any other kind of viral infections, or say you're getting bladder infections or sinus infections, those are also signals from your body whenever you have a virus or an infection is telling us that your immune system is overwhelmed and leaving you vulnerable. So.

We need to think through if a virus shows up. So if you come back with HPV positive on a Pap, or if you get tested for Epstein Barr virus early antigen and it's high, or you keep getting infections like I was mentioning, take that as a signal from your body that it needs attention because from there we can think through is it a food, is it a, you know, what is it that's leaving you vulnerable? Because as we then address those things that are leaving you vulnerable and really get good at giving you the these, you know, essentials each day. When I say essentials I'm thinking of like clean eating, healthy food, getting enough sleep, getting stress reducing activities or stress recovery activities. I tend to call them an exercise or some sort of movement on a regular basis. These are kind of.

Essentials for just being human. Things we need that we sometimes leave off the to do list. And so if you can do those things, but you may also find if you're having these symptoms or signals showing up, you might need to do those four care activities. Clean eating, adequate sleep, recovering from stress, activities and exercise. Do those things. But you might need to do a little bit more in order to get ahead of the curve, you know, to get ahead of what's making you susceptible.

So I wanted to share that because that's how I think about it. And I think that it might help you if you. The more you can become more in touch with what your body's signaling to you, we tend to kind of like, again, we tend to dismiss it or judge it or even be angry at our body. Sometimes we're angry that our body is having certain symptoms. I remember times when I'd be angry that my. I had a sinus infection again. I'd be so mad. Or a migraine. I'd be like, why? This is so maddening. And.

That doesn't really help. I mean, it's okay to feel that, but it doesn't really help you solve it unless you get motivated by it. If you're like, if it makes you so angry that you get motivated to figure it out and solve it, then it's a good thing. But feeling like it's just like your it's happening to you is very disempowering. Then you don't feel like you can do anything to solve it. You're just stuck with this situation. And I just don't feel like, from my experience, there's no reason for you to feel stuck. There's so much we can do. So getting on the other side of it, where you can think, oh, this is my body trying to tell me something. It needs. It needs attention. Now let me take steps to figure out what it needs. And the more you can pick up on those signals from your body, the better, because then you can help it sooner and make adjustments to it little by little. And I think the more of us, I mean, my dream would be the more of us who communicate this way about our health and our body, then we can communicate with each other that way. Like, instead of, you know, like, if, say, someone says, how are you feeling? You can even, you know, say, well, I. This is my mood, this is my energy, this is my focus. And so a person really, right away can get a sense of, how are you feeling? And. Or you might be able to say to Them. Well, I've really noticed, based on checking in with the signals my body's been giving me, that my energy is lower than I'd like. And so I'm taking steps to solve it so we can actually change the way we communicate with each other and support each other. If a person says to you, oh, I've been really noticing that my energy is lower, and I'm working on figuring out why that is, then it's a different conversation. The other person can say, oh, I went through that too, and this is what I learned and this is what I figured out, and maybe this will help you too. And so we're in a communication about.

About our human bodies and being human in a human body and what that means and what we can learn and what we can create. I mean, just think that, you know, 10 years ago, let alone 20 years ago, gluten free was pretty much unheard of, and now gluten free. I mean, I think most people have heard of gluten and have heard about eating gluten free. I was thinking this morning, wonder when it'll be when it's normal. You know, it's more common to be gluten free than to eat gluten. And that would tell me that this communication is shifting. And more and more people are getting in touch with the way they're feeling and noticing that, you know, not that gluten causes a problem for everybody, but I'm using it as an example that gluten is such a common food that causes inflammation and pain and symptoms for a lot of people. The more people that are putting that together and realizing it and deciding, I'm not going to eat this food because it makes me feel worse, and I'm going to choose foods that are gluten free. And then more and more companies start creating businesses that offer gluten free products. That means that this is shifting. That means that more people are becoming aware that food affects our health. That means more people are becoming aware that their bodies are giving them signals and they can do something about it to prevent it. Right? So that's, to me, is super exciting. You know, that's the world I live in, is this world where I hope that more and more people can understand the connection between food and our health and understand that they can make choices on a daily basis to benefit their health. The same is true for, you know, for stress. The more we understand, because I would include certain foods as a stress. You know, there are certain foods that are stress on our body, let alone other stresses. We deal with. And the more we understand how stress affects us, the more we can make choices to change that, to be prepared, to be resilient to stress because we can't eliminate all stress. It's just impossible. And to feel like the stress is something that's happening to you and then you become disempowered by it. But if you can realize, oh, these signals my body's giving me is because of the stress I was exposed to, that means I need to do some stress recovery. I need to take steps to help my body recover from stress. Now. It's an empowered view. You see what I mean? So we can use these signals from our body to become more empowered about ourselves and our health and our future.

Ok, well enough, enough from me. And I'm going to, I'm going to be looking forward to having you join me again next week. I'll do this weekly training at 2pm next Thursday. It'll be a different topic and I'm happy to hear from any of you if you have anything in particular you'd like me to cover and what's helping you. That's very helpful in terms of guiding me what to share next. And I was really, really so happy this morning to have a phone call with a woman who.

She'S not a patient. She didn't work with me directly one on one, but she's been listening to me and reading my articles and reading what I post about. And she said that just by implementing some of these ideas like she changed her diet, she started meditating, she started implementing.

This care activities that I talk about and she said that it's made such a difference for her. She said it created a new baseline for her health and she feels so she went from feeling disempowered to feeling empowered and she called to thank me and that just makes me feel.

So happy because that's why I'm here. That's why I'm here. Sharing is to help you. Whether you take this information and use it on your own or, or you choose to work with me in some way. I'm happy because I just feel like I would love to see more shifts and I know ripple effects can happen where more and more people are able to relate them to themselves in an empowered way to improve their health. So thanks again for being here and join me here again next week. And if you're not already on my newsletter, feel free to join me there because then you'll get emails from me and I look forward to connecting with you soon. Take care.

Thanks for listening to how humans heal. If you liked this episode, leave a rating and a review. And for more resources, visit drdani.com.