The Seven Essential Pillars of Total Wellness

And you were just asking me. I live and practice in Port Jefferson as well as I also have practices in Manhattan and I go over to Stamford, Connecticut. So I've been in practice for about 11 years. I did my nature's ethics training in Seattle, Washington at Vastier University. Can you hear me? Okay.

Just let me know. But I. No, this is, this is fun for me because it's great to just get to have a nice group and we're gonna get to what my goal is. You get to learn something about yourselves and a little more clarity in terms of what's going on in your body and what some next steps might be for you to stay healthy and, or get healthier.

So that's what that seven essential pillars is all about. And Katie is my assistant. Hello.

So you can go ahead.

So this is an overview of what we're going to cover. When I say whole body view, what I mean is that, you know, looking at our bodies as a whole versus what we're used to in medicine, which is, you know, going one doctor for each body part, so to speak. And most patients, what they say to me is, you know, it seems to me that everything's interrelated somehow. I might be having digestive symptoms, I might be getting headaches, I might be having hormonal changes, but it seems to me that these things are related or they started at the same time. And yet there's not really one practitioner that's going to help to explain that or help how to write. If you could fix all of them with one thing, that'd be better than band aiding in three different places. And so that's what I'm calling a whole body view, which is a very naturopathic philosophy. That's this site signature to nature pathetic medicine. That is what naturepathic doctors do. Are some of you familiar with nature papping medicine already?

We're going to talk about what I call the seven essential pillars, which are going to give you a view into your bodies and how all these systems are interrelated. Then we're going to talk about how I look at healing the body to give you more of a sense of my approach. And then we're going to talk about some getting started, things that can take away tonight.

And this picture, it's a little hard to see here, but what I wanted to do is find a picture that would really help us in a mutual way identify with this concept of, you know, we can hone in on one small part. Sometimes you think you're just looking at that one part, but if you go back a little bit, all of a sudden you see that it's really part of a bigger picture. So this is a picture of a quilt, and I have some pictures of quilts throughout the presentation where it's, you know, like in quilts, you know, there's a greater pattern. If you go in close, you know, you can see there's a pattern, but then as you step back, you see how those patterns interrelate right into a whole. And that's. That's what I'm. That's the analogy I want to give you work with tonight in terms of looking at our bodies that way. Go ahead. So let's start by just taking a minute and, you know, each of you, you know, however that feels to you, just, you know, if you want to close your eyes and if you want to take notes, you're welcome to anything to just help you kind of get a sense of what are the different sensations in your body in different areas that you've wondered if these are interrelated, you know, or even just in this moment starting to wonder, could this be related? You know? You know, sometimes I'll think of it like a. Almost like a body scan from head to toe, you know, starting with your head. Any head pain, any sinus congestion, Maybe some of you have lung issues or shortness of breath, thinking about your joints, any joint pain, digestion, whether it's bloating or reflux or anything that, you know, you just. And that's actually oftentimes the thing that, you know, makes you really know that something needs to change. And when your digestion is acting up, right, it's like, I'm not going to handle this. I can probably handle joint pain for a number of days, but as soon as the digestion goes off track, it's like, oh, no, something's gotta be fixed here. And think about whether it's a hormonal shift.

And I'm just trying to think maybe something to do with when you're eating or blood sugar fluctuations or how your body's handling stress. Maybe it has to do with mood changes or anxiety, but just kind of think through your body, what are all these different things that are going on so you can really make it relevant to you.

Actually. Go back. All of the above. We were thinking all of the above. Okay. Yeah. And that's. Yeah, okay, perfect. That's perfect. Because. And you can see this is even the bigger picture of that wilt, right. We're kind of standing back further and like, you go, oh, my gosh. As I stand back. There's a whole lot of things here that, you know, I was identifying them each individually, but actually they're. There's a lot of things going on among multiple systems. And you know what? Maybe they're interrelated. Okay. This is a more scientific picture just because I really want you to know that the research is being done to demonstrate that our systems are connected. The digestive tract is connected to the immune system, is connected to the hormone system, is connected to the nervous system. And scientists are looking at that. And I call these. What they show in these in between arrows are what I call these invisible messengers. You know, they're invisible to us. We kind of have a sense sometimes that they're there. Like when there's something hormonal that changes, either a menstrual cycle changes or a hot flash happens, or, you know, you get all this, and you're like, oh, my gosh, there's something invisible in my body doing something to me now. And these are these invisible little messengers, and they talk to each other. Other, for example. You know, a lot of times we think estrogen and progesterone is all just dealing with the pelvic area. But once you. If you've been pregnant or if you've been through perimenopause, you know that it's not just the pelvic area, it's throughout the whole body. Right. These hormones don't just talk down here. They're talking everywhere. And that's how this happens with the. Those hormones. And that's a good way to really illustrate it, is to show, you know. Yeah. When estrogen and progesterone fluctuate, you're gonna feel it on a mood level, on a digestive level. Right. It's like every level gets impacted, sleep level, everything. You start to go, oh, wow, these things are talking to me. That's an easy one. But there's also messengers in the immune system, and they don't just stick to, you know, say, when you get cold, you think of our immune system, or if you get an infection of some type, you go, okay, now I can feel my immune system. But really, our immune systems are working all the.

From immune system reactivity in the digestive tract to inflammation. Anytime you experience pain or achiness or puffiness or even fatigue, back to your immune system, most likely sending little invisible messengers to do something, and they connect with each other. So the immune system is talking to the hormone system, it's talking to the nervous system. They're all connected.

So when we look at the seven pillars. This is what we're looking at. And this is when I sit down with a patient. These are the questions I'm asking because these really give me a good indication of what's going on in your body. Where is your body getting impacted? Is it getting impacted in the digestion? You mentioned sleep. Is sleep getting impacted because of sleep? If you're either not able to go to sleep or you're waking up, or when you wake up and you can't get back to sleep, those are all signs to me that there's something in the. That's out of balance and that leads me to know where I need to help sweep things to get back on track. Energy levels, I think you find that either you're exhausted when you wake up or you're halfway through the day and you feel like you need a nap at 3 o'. Clock. You know, those are. That's what I'm talking about with energy levels. And that's a common one. Right. A lot of times people will say, I feel tired all the time. But I went to my doctor and had my blood work done and it's all basically normal. And they said, you know, maybe there's a little bit of something like a little bit of low iron or a little bit of explanation, but you're like, wait a minute, I'm still tired. And the doctor's basically saying to me, you're normal, you're fine. And you're like, but I'm not fine. That's where. That's what we're talking about. We're talking about that gray area before there's something diagnosable, really. Sometimes there's something diagnosable, but a lot of times there's not something that, you know, like, not a diagnosis that you can. You almost sometimes wish you could have one. You're like, I wish someone would call this something. But a lot of times there's not. It's just that there's changes, mood changes, maybe menstrual cycle changes. And actually, when it comes to. We're going to go a little more in depth with this. But when it comes to perimenopause and post menopause, what I find is that that's exactly the time where you're going to be predisposed to symptoms in your body. It's going to be when the hormones are changing because again, they're interlaced and they're talking to each other. So someone's prone to, if it's migraines or bladder infections, whatever it is. When you're in perimenopause and postmenopolis, that's when you're going to get those symptoms. We're going to talk a little bit more about diet and stress and how those are also pillars of understanding your wellness and your health.

So let's first talk a little more about digestion. When I think of digestion, I think of it in three areas and you can imagine it as if you were swallowing a piece of food. Like if I handed each of you, I've even thought about doing this hand you each at raisin or something that you could chew. And even before you put it in your mouth and chew it, just the thought of it, you can sometimes even feel the saliva starting to happen. And you can kind of see your digestive tract is activating just because your brain heard something about food or saw food or imagined food. Those are the digestive enzymes that start in the mouth and then it's in the stomach and then in the pancreas creates enzymes. So that's the. You've probably noticed, right, if you're racing through the day and you just know you need to eat and you just grab something quickly and you don't really experience the food, that's when you're more likely to not digest it and have symptoms versus if you have a day where you like relaxed and you get to sit down and not do anything else and just be right, eat one bite at a time. You've probably heard this too. When you do that, it really gives your brain and your body the chance to send the correct messengers for digestion so that the enzymes get released and you digest your food well. And you see what I mean? The whole process moves along. But if you're in a stressed state, then the digestion is actually turned off. So when you eat under stress, you're not going to digest well and very likely it's going to lead to more symptoms down the line. So that's the beginning part of digestion has to do with being able to digest the food with enzymes and one solution. If you know you're under stress and your digestive enzymes are probably low, then that's one time that we'll recommend taking digestive enzymes with your meals to make sure you get.

The next area is in the small intestine once it's food gets down here. Now by the time the food gets to the small intestine, it really should be digested and only be nutrients down there. You know, like it should be broken down to amino acids and sugars. And the nutrients and then be absorbed through the cell. But what can happen is, when the food's not digested well is that by the time the food gets down to the small intestine, it still. Sometimes pieces of food haven't been fully digested. And if there's inflammation in the intestinal lining, that's when you're really prone to developing food intolerances.

Are you familiar with food intolerances or something called leaky gut?

No. Oh, good. I get to tell you that. You mean celiac difference. Well, celiac is an example of an extreme of a food intolerance where basiliac. A person has an extreme gluten allergy. Where actually what happens is the gluten causes the. It just basically is a. I call it a lawnmower effect. It's like a lawnmower through the small intestine, and it causes a lot of damage and a lot of symptoms. But that's the. So that's the one out of 100 people, 1% have that celiac situation. But there's many more people who have food intolerances that are much more, I would say, sneaky, like, maybe subtle, but they can cause a lot of symptoms throughout the body. Because what happens is. Remember how I was saying, like, a healthy intestinal lining has cells that are nice and lined up next to each other, and the food has to get digested before it can come down and go through the cell. What happens in a leaky gut, in medical terms called intestinal permeability, what happens is welcome. That the cells are no longer nice and healthy and sitting right next to each other. Now they have little space between them. So food that's not as well digested can get between the cells to where the immune system is. And then the immune system attacks the food because it thinks it's something foreign. That's the immune system's job, is to attack foreign things.

I imagine it like my own. In my house, there's a hedge in my front yard. Like, as I look out my office windows, there's a hedge, and then the street's on the other side, right? So I think of the hedge like the intestinal lining. Now, this is what happens in the naturopathic doctor's mind. I know, but it can be used for an analogy, which is like the hedge is this protective intestinal lining. And as long as those cells are healthy and the food has to be digested before it can come through to get into your bloodstream, everything's good. You know, that's good. You're Gonna feel good. But as soon as there's damage in the intestinal lining and those cells are not protected anymore, the food that's not digested well gets through. And now the immune system jumps on it and attacks it, which sounds good at first, but then what happens is it creates this cloud of inflammation which spreads throughout the body. And just now, this inflammation we were talking about earlier, how immune system mediators, these invisible immune system messengers, they spread from the digestive tract throughout the whole body. So this is when now a person who doesn't have celiac disease, but maybe has a more mild food intolerance. And it's not a food allergy either. Like, you know, you've heard of people who have, say, a peanut allergy. In that case, it's a different immune system, different part of the immune system. And what happens there is it's an immediate reaction, right? They're like, they get a peanut, but they need an EpiPen or go to the emergency room. That's an IGE mediated reaction. What I'm talking about is called IGG. That's okay. The IGG reactions are just more subtle, but they're significant because they can spread this inflammation throughout the body and create symptoms anywhere. So a person could have headaches, fatigue, achiness, bloating. It could be digestive symptoms, but it could really be any symptoms throughout the body. And it can also lead to more significant conditions like low thyroid function, bone loss, you know, and say, interstitial cystitis, which is sort of bakery bladder inflammation. So it can create inflammation anywhere in the body based on a food that came in.

And it's not. It's not really tested for in conventional care, so it gets missed a lot. But it is something that I pay attention to because I find that when we can figure out which foods the immune system is attacking because it got into the wrong space, and eliminate those foods from the diet, then you can start to really feel a lot better. So that's one thing that I do in my practice is really figure out, help you to know which foods to eliminate from your diet so you can allow your body to heal. The third area in the digestive tract is again, further down into the large intestine, where there's the healthy bacterium. That's what's sometimes called acidophilus or probiotics. Those are the healthy bacteria that we all have. And if they get disrupted, which often happens with this inflammation and leaky gut we're talking about, can also happen with recurrent antibiotic use, or if you've had other types of infections in your digestive tract. It throws off the healthy bacteria so that either unhealthy bacteria or yeast can grow in your digestive tract. And that causes symptoms and it perpetuates this vicious cycle of inflammation that is not just in the digestive tract, it spreads everywhere. You guys are getting that point, right? So you start to see how the symptoms we were connecting with earlier could be connected. Let's go to the next one. So with sleep, let's just have you check in with yourselves. How many hours of sleep do you get? Do you get eight hours of sleep? I kind of count between six and seven. Yeah. Good. So I mean that's. So you want to get closer to eight. I love. And sometimes it's a matter of like, you know, you gotta get yourself in bed earlier and it's hard because if you have an early wake up time, then you're like, you know, you have a sort of predetermined time you have to work with. And it's hard sometimes because evening is oftentimes the time we get to actually get stuff done. But you know, that's that first question. Am I getting eight hours of sleep? Is it something that I can do something about? Especially, especially if it's where you can't fall asleep when you're waking up, then we want to address it right away. Because getting eight hours of sleep or close to that is key to healing. As long as you're not getting sleep, your system is going to have a harder time healing. You're going to be more susceptible to infections, more susceptible to, you know, all kinds of different symptoms. Right.

All right, so let's go to the next one going to be talking, I mentioned earlier, we're going to talk about energy levels throughout the day. How's your energy related to consuming sugar? Like if you were to. Right. Can you kind of imagine, you know, a lot of times when we feel tired, the first thing we think of it, the first thing is usually caffeine, but then we think of having some sugar. Right. Because it's going to give you at least a short term energy increase, but really it's a short term energy. And then, then it dips again, then you crash and you know, you're starting off the whole roller coaster of sugar.

So, you know, just really identifying that. And to me the answer is not to just say, okay, you need to just stop all caffeine, stop all sugar. Because then you're going to be tired and what you're really going to experience is the Extent of the fatigue in your body. And that's when you, you know, so what we really need to do is help heal you from the inside out. Help look at, why is there fatigue? Not just, okay, you shouldn't have sugar or you shouldn't have caffeine, but why are you tired? You know, let's look at that. What can we do to help with sleep? What can we do to understand that fatigue? Is it related to a food? Is it related to adrenal function? So that we can help create energy from within your body and you're not having us, you know, sugar cravings in the middle of the day for them.

And this is a question of just to kind of ask yourself, you know, just to check in. What are the ways you stimulate yourself? You know, what are some of the choices you make to kind of get yourself through the day? And just kind of looking at that, you know, okay, yeah, that's, you know, how is that sort of working out for me? What are the things I tend to do? And, you know, of course, being, you know, embracing it and accepting of yourself. Okay, yeah, no wonder that I'm having to find ways to stimulate myself. I'm pretty exhausted. And now what can I do about that? Because you don't have to stay exhausted.

Mood changes. Can any of you relate to that?

I know some patients will say to me, oh, my gosh, I don't know who. Who this is, you know, like, someone took over my body. Sometimes it feels that way. It's like either irritability or anxiety or, you know, sometimes it's also low mood where you just like, I can't get out of this slump. What is going on? And you usually patients have a sense that it's like they'll say to me, it doesn't feel like me. Like, I don't feel myself. Maybe all again, all the labs could be normal in the world. I don't feel like me. What can I do about that? And what I did here is I look into the neurotransmitters, which are the invisible messengers in the nervous system. A plastic is serotonin. And that would be, you know, like, if you think of the medications used for depression or PMS would be ssri, a serotonin BMT inhibitor. Now, what those are doing is they're preventing the breakdown of serotonin, but it's only working with how much serotonin is currently there. So in some ways it's going to have a limited effectiveness to the extent that it's only working with what your body's making to begin with. So what I'm doing is I look at the neurotransmitters, I can measure the neurotransmitters. We can actually find out exactly how much serotonin is in your body. And then if you. If we find that it's low, all these neurotransmitters are made from amino acids, which is the building block of protein, right? So it's like, wow. If the neurotransmitters are made from amino acids and amino acids we can get from either a diet or supplements, then how useful. That's so useful. As soon as we know, say, serotonin's low, we can give the precursor nutrients to help your body make more. And it's one of these areas that tends to be, you know, mysterious, right? You kind of go, oh, my gosh, this seems like a very far off, mysterious thing, the nervous system, right? It's only the, you know, the brain surgeons that know anything about it, but it really doesn't have to be. We're learning so much more about the nervous system, and we can actually find out exactly the levels of the neurotransmitters in your nervous system so that we can address them using the.

A common one with fatigue. We were just talking about. Fatigue is to look at the adrenal gland. You guys heard of adrenal glands? They're. Sometimes we don't even think about them, but they do amazing things for our body. They're both the kidneys, and they're our main stress responder.

If you go to the next slide, I think it shows. Yeah, there we go. Stress.

So. And stress is something, of course, that we're all exposed to, right? It's like, you know, you name it. Whether it's emotional stress, it could be, you know, and it doesn't have to be things like a car accident or somebody dying. Those are, of course, major stresses, but we're under daily stresses all the time. If there's a deadline or even I consider not getting enough sleep to be stressed or not getting something to eat for four hours is a stress, you know, so there's some little things that we tend to just kind of take for granted that are actually our bodies are responding to in that moment. Like, if we don't eat every four hours, our body has to do something about that. So that's a. The body goes into a compensation mode to make sure that our blood sugar stays balanced. Even if we're not eating or if we haven't gotten enough sleep, our body has to go into a stress compensation.

So as you start to add it up, you start to realize, wow, my body is doing a lot, all the time to keep me moving. And it's these adrenals that are doing it. The adrenal glands make cortisol, which is the main stress hormone, which is actually a normal. We need cortisol. That's what wakes us up in the morning and gives us some energy throughout the day. But it's also also if the cortisol gets stimulated too much and is too high, or if cortisol is. If the adrenals become exhausted and kind of worn out and they're making too little cortisol, that can also cause symptoms. Now, in conventional care, they only pay attention to the adrenals when they completely stop working. So they're either. It's either Addison's disease or Cushing's disease. That's the extremes of adrenal issues. Again, we're going to. To look at the gray area and go, what's what? Right? I mean, it makes sense that the adrenals could be maybe just under functioning, and you're going to be feeling symptoms from that, but it's not going to show on a blood test, and it's not going to have a drug to treat it, but it's going to feel. Usually it's going to. If the cortisol is too high, it can be overstimulating. Like, it can create anxiety or not being able to sleep if it's high at night, or it can cause mood issues. Low mood happens with both high cortisol and low cortisol. So this is what I do is I have cortisol. We can. I like to check in saliva. So I have you spit in a tube, which is like, everybody's like, oh, my gosh. It's like I say, you're going to surprise yourself. You know, how well you can, you know, spit in a tube morning, noon, evening, and bedtime. And we'll measure the cortisol and be able to see what is your cortisol level doing throughout the day, what is your cortisol in the morning, what is it at noon, what is it in the evening? So we can see, is it on a healthy curve where it's high in the morning and gradually comes down, or something other than that, in which case we can use nutrients and herbs to balance it again. And for me, because it would be easy to just give you more cortisol, you could take a pill that has cortisol in it. But to me, it's like, while some people that a necessary temporary solution. The goal for me would be, let's get your adrenals making cortisol again in a healthy way. Because there are ways to do that. And that way, you know, it's really about healing your system and it's possible to recover that adrenal function.