EP 37: WTH ?!? The prevalence of mental health and neurodegenerative disease w/ Dr. Elena Villanueva

Brain health issue. And that's really where we have a great overlap there. Alaina's expertise is in helping individuals find and address the underlying cause of their depression, anxiety and memory loss, Parkinson's and other mental health disorders and disease. After almost losing her own life to mental health disorders, with no answers or solutions from conventional medicine, she started searching for her own answers and solutions. And that's what we're going to talk about today, our topic. So first off, thank you, Dr. Elena. Welcome aboard to what the health.

Yeah. So glad to be here with you today. I love every time we get to chat.

Awesome. So the prevalence. Our topic today is the prevalence of mental health and. And neurodegenerative disease. How mental health is part of our healthcare system is the only piece of it that is not evidence based. And we're gonna discuss underlying causes and labs to find them. So with that, I wanna know you talk about in your intro. Around you it's kind of that hero's journey, right? That you kind of came into the system, didn't have resources really. In a dark space, I'm guessing. Maybe. Let's start with your story.

Yeah, I started having some different health issues that started out as just some anxiety, little bouts of depression. And probably like most people, I just thought, well, this is just situational, you know, and just pressed on, you know, and then later on it kind of came back a little worse. And you know, I tried taking some, you know, Lexapro or, you know, Paxil or just different things, you know, and eventually, when there were enough variables, everything that kind of came together, I ended up just really falling into a hole with the depression and anxiety being so bad that I was almost like not functional. Pretty much I wasn't functional. And on top of that, I also ended up losing my ability to speak, which I lost my memory. I couldn't even remember my son's name. And it was really scary. I thought I had woken up having had a stroke. I had ended up with vertigo that was so bad that I couldn't tell which way was up. So I couldn't even lift my head up off the pillow. It was just really, really scary. And all the doctors were just kind of shaking their heads and shrugging their shoulders saying, well, you know what, we just don't really know what's wrong. We've done these brain scans on you and here, take this antiviral and take this anti anxiety medicine and just go home. I was a single mom, three sports medicine practices, traveling around the world, working with Olympic athletes. I had A lot on my plate, and I was the provider. I. I was the provider. So there was so much on my plate. And so I was absolutely terrified. Not only was I terrified, because I didn't know what was happening to me. And the doctors, they scared me even more because it was like, well, we don't really know what's wrong. Take this and. Take this and go home. But I had all of these responsibilities and all of these things that I had to take care of. And so I ended up losing everything I had. I ended up losing my practices. I ended up losing my radio show. I ended up losing my home because of the stigma around mental health. I didn't really reach out for a lot of help. My son had just gone off to college. I wasn't going to tell him that we just lost the house and everything in it because I was too depressed and didn't even have the capacity to more than what I could fit in my car. I lost everything in the house, too. I didn't want to reach out to my mom because my dad had passed away from suicide. You know, probably like, I don't know, like a year before this happened to me. And she was still dealing in that, with that intense grief, and I didn't want to burden her. And so. And so, yeah, I mean, that's kind of what happened. And I got to a point where I was like, well, I don't. I don't want to live this life anymore. Like, this is crazy. Like, if this is what life is for me, I'm done. And, you know, and then some things happened right before I took my life that were very evident to me. That God had some plans for me or the universe had some plans for me. And I started just taking it one day at a time. And I resolved that with my education and my background, that I was going to find out what the answers were. I was lucky that I was able to figure out what was going on with me. It was a combination of different things. It took me about five years to completely heal myself. Now my passion today is to help.

Other people, and it really shines through. So thank you, and I'm really glad that you got it figured out for sure. So thank you for sharing your story with us. It really does make a difference to a lot of folks. You have an internal understanding of what it's like to be in those kind of desperate, dark spaces. Right. And you. You know, I think one of the components, you know, we all know someone that has tried antidepressants or anxiolytics and they didn't work for them. Right. That was the case for you. And I think a lot of times they're. They're kind of just prescribed as like we don't know what else to do for you. It's gotta be in your head. Take this, right? Like we're doing something or they experience just like the kind of the side effects or, you know, really crashed on them. Can you explain how your program might be able to help those people?

Yeah. So, you know, first of all, I just want to say that thank God we've got the medications. I mean, the medications can save lives. But I feel like we need to go deeper than that because the medications are a crutch. They're not fixing the underlying cause of the problem. And so what we do is we dig for the underlying causes. And there are many, as you know, but we can get into that whenever on our talk today. But we look at the underlying causes and we approach the person as a whole person, meaning that we don't just address their biology. We look at their environment and how their environment is playing a role in their genetic expression, which then trickles down to their biology. We look at emotional triggers or emotional events. Some people call those traumas. And some people don't like to use the word trauma. They like to use the word heightened emotional events that have happened in people's lives. Because that can, as we now have scientific proof of that, can now affect our physiology, it can affect our brain chemistry, it can affect even our genetic expression. And so we have put together a program with different specialists within the program who all work together with each individual so that we can approach all of the different facets that are contributing to the person becoming ill. Yeah.

So with that, I love that, that you say there is a place out there, right. We don't want anybody watching to run out and just stop taking some of these psychoactive medications, because that is very dangerous. The way that those are proper prescribed is for short term relief. It's to keep your head above the water. Right. But typically what we're seeing now is people are on them 10, 20 years of like just forever on it. What do you say to people when their providers have told them, well, you just have a biochemical imbalance. You have to be on these. Right. So many patients come in with that understanding, like, well, my provider said, I have a biochemical imbalance. I tried to get off the drugs and I just couldn't. I crashed. You know, how do you educate people around that?

Well, you know, first of all if somebody is having symptoms, any kind of symptom in their body, whether it's a neurological or a mental health related symptom or any other type of symptom, there is some sort of biological imbalance. Their doctor is absolutely correct, there is one. Now, which imbalance it is though, that can be debated. So, so one of the issues that we see is that most of the time these medications that are prescribed for people are based on an assumption. There's no data behind it. It's based on the assumption that they are deficient in serotonin. And if the SSRI or serotonin medication, the serotonin based medication isn't working for that individual, then they might try an snri, something to help with serotonin and norepinephrine. And so the doctors are basically just throwing stuff against the wall and they're hoping that something will stick. And the bigger picture here is that there are more neurotransmitters or brain chemicals than just serotonin or serotonin and norepinephrine or gaba, because that's another one, that sometimes the doctors will end up giving a medication to help with that as well. And again, they're making the assumption that it's maybe a GABA issue. But you can have an issue with your dopamine, you can have an issue with your GABA levels, with your acetylcholine levels. There are many different neurotransmitters that you can have a problem with. And sometimes it's a combination of them, not just one. And then the other thing to look at is that sometimes it's, it's not always a problem with the brain chemical being too low or the brain chemicals being too low. They can be too high and they can create a lot of the same symptomatology as if the brain chemical is too low. By bringing an evidence based or data driven approach where we can really look and see what's going on, that gives us a more precise approach so that we can actually help the person.

What are the areas of testing that you do to do that? So what are you looking at, like brain chemical testing? How do you do that?

So first of all, let me say that we use a combination of tests. I never just look at one test and then make a decision from there. That would be like if somebody has back pain and all you're doing is looking at an X ray and one view instead of three. But then, you know, but then even if you did three views on an X ray, if you're not finding what you're looking for, or what you're finding doesn't explain the person's symptoms. That's like trying to diagnose them just off X ray and not moving further to doing some soft tissue imaging. You want to look at a broader picture of things. But when we're looking at just brain chemistry, there are a couple of different tests that I like to use in conjunction together. So one of them is a urinary neurotransmitter test. And basically what that's looking at are urinary metabolites, or it's looking at the byproducts of chemical reactions. So just for those of you who are listening, anytime that there's a chemical reaction, you're taking A plus B or A plus B plus C. You're taking two or three or four or five different ingredients. You're adding a catalyst to the mix, something to make it change, to make all those ingredients do something. You come out with an end product, and then you come out with a byproduct as well. So whenever we're looking at the urinary neurotransmitters, we're looking for the byproducts of the production of these neurotransmitters. And by looking at those byproducts or end products like that, we can determine, we can basically go backwards and we can look at, okay, is this neurotransmitter being overproduced based off of these metabolites, or does it look like it's being under produced, or does it look like it's within range? There are also other tests that look at urinary metabolites that are often used for other, you know, to look at other body functions. And those are like organic acids testing, for example. So you can look at a lot of urinary, different urinary metabolites in an organic acids test. And you can see a lot of things like is there mitochondrial stress, Are there signs of inflammation, Are there signs of certain nutritional deficiencies? You can even look at signs of mold toxicity or candida or other certain types of bacterial infections like that. I like to look at a urinary neurotransmitter test. I really like to look at an organic acids test along with it because I like to compare the data. Then a lot of times I like to look at a genetic test on top of that because I want to see if there's correlation. Then going out to the next layer, we like to look for underlying infections because as we know, for example, certain Species of clostridia or mold can actually cause an inhibition of the conversion of dopamine. What happens is that normally the body makes the dopamine and then the body takes and uses what it needs, and then it'll convert the rest of the dopamine into norepinephrine and epinephrine, which are other brain chemicals. But if you have mold toxicity, for example, then that can inhibit your body's ability to convert the dopamine. Therefore, your dopamine levels start going really high, which can then lead to symptoms of Parkinson's, massive anxiety and other types of problems. That's why if I do the urinary neurotransmitter test alone and I see that there is a pattern of high dopamine. Well, it's not a. Just to look at that. We need to go, well, what's causing that? Is it a genetic enzyme deficiency, which we can test for that too? Is it some genetic variants that could be contributing to that? Is it mold? Is it some sort of bacterial infection? And so we like to look at the whole picture and uncover all the stones so that we can not only look at what the brain chemical levels are doing, but we can also understand why they're doing that.

Lovely. Yeah. That's a lot of information that people aren't getting. They're going into the docs provider's office five to seven minutes later, walking out with this prescription. Right. So that's awesome. You mentioned genetic testing. So how does that fit in here with regards to the discussion? I've seen the genetic testing for. On different prescriptives. Right. To maybe ensure, like, somebody's going to do better with one drug versus another. So how are you using the genetic testing?

Well, the type of genetic testing that you mentioned, the pharmacogenetics, is so awesome because that really can help a doctor to understand what would be the most beneficial pharmaceutical for that individual. And it can really prevent some bad reactions if the doctors would have that as a standard test that is ordered before they start prescribing medications. I'm a big proponent of everybody having that pharmacogenetics testing done. But a lot of the genes that we look at are genes that are driving major chemical reactions in the body. So, like major engine drivers in the body, because we have to remember, like, what tells the genes, or, I'm sorry, what tells all of the cells what to do. There's a programmer in there, and that programmer are your genes. And you've got lots of different genes and they're Programming different systemic engines and different cellular engines in the body. And whenever we have certain, whenever we have variations in some of these genes, it can affect the systemic engine in the body and how it works. For example, we have a bunch of genes called methylation genes. A lot of people are familiar with mthfr, which is one of the many methylation gen. And so we like to look at several of the methylation genes when we're looking at people that are having brain issues. And the reason why we like to look at those is because the methylation genes are responsible for driving over 250 different chemical reactions in the body, including your serotonin and dopamine production. Right. And so, you know, and so many other things too that we could talk about. But a lot of Caucasians have variations in these genes. You can call them SNPs variations, you can call them mutations, which is not as pretty of a word. It just kind of sounds scary when you say mutation. But that's just a process of evolution for us. You know, we all think that, oh, it's bad if we have it, But I think 50 or 100 years from now we're going to see that it's, it's helped us to evolve and survive. And so we just don't always have the full understanding, we don't always have the full picture in the moment. But so many people struggle with variations in their methylation genes. And what happens there is that to keep it really simple, they're having a hard time uptaking into the cell and then converting and being able to utilize folate. Something so simple. Right? Folate, it's one of your B vitamins. But if you have a lot of issues with these methylation genes and these methylation genes are mal expressing or they're not working like they should, that could throw you down a really big rabbit hole. And by just looking at that information, it empowers you to understand, oh, this could be why I'm under producing serotonin and, or dopamine. And if I just take a special of this folate at a specific dose, according to what my genes are showing, I can turn 250 engines back on plus get my brain working much better.

So are there common symptoms that you see with methylation dysfunction or you mentioned about brain working. So I'm wondering if that's like just brain fog and fatigue and along those lines, are you seeing some other things there too?

Yeah. So we'll see oftentimes a lot of anxiety, brain fog, we'll see depression like some really bad depression. We can see that as well. We also will see a lot of fertility issues in not just women being able to get pregnant, but being able to carry their pregnancies. And we've worked clinically, we've helped a lot of women with that, that they came to us because they were depressed because they couldn't get pregnant. And I mean, I'm sure that they would have been probably depressed even if they weren't getting pregnant, that they had already had a little bit of an issue with that previous to their inability to be able to get pregnant or carry a pregnancy. We would do their genetics and find out that you need to take some pretty hefty doses of methylfolate and then bam, they get pregnant. They're holding their pregnancy, they're on baby two or three by now. I just got off a call with one. She's on baby number two. We're working with her body to get her ready for her next pregnancy, but she had that exact same story. A lot of people will have variations that are unhealthy, where their body is not able to process cholesterol properly. They'll tend to have higher homocysteine levels. So, like their body is just having more of an inflammatory response. Right. And so there are a lot of different symptoms that we can see whenever people are not methylating.

Well, got it. Are there bigger, other big ones that jump out in your mind right now when I ask you, like on the other genetic components of, do you have your own program that you're using or you other use other programs? What do you. How are you testing these things?

So we've actually customized our own panels. And yes, there are many other genes that we look at. That's just one section we look at. I would say probably close to 100 different ones that we're looking at. But we also look at very specific neurotransmitter related genes as well. So there are some genes that are specific to helping your body drive the chemical reactions that will break down serotonin. And if that gene is out of balance and you've got a few other things going on, that's the perfect storm for a major depressive episode. But if you can get your body balanced and you understand how that MAO gene might be working or not working for you, then you can turn yourself from a depressive mess into almost like a superhero. So let me just explain how that works. Right? So the MAO gene, some people will look at it as like, oh, that's a sentence for major depressive disorder. But when your body is in balance, a variation in that gene on the other end of the spectrum can make you more tolerant to pain, more tolerant to stress. So like in the middle of a battlefield, you know, you would be able to just like be still be focused while bullets are flying by your head, you know, and if you get grazed, you're not going to freak out, you know, like you're going to be, you know, you're going to be the one on the front battlefield who's going to be the hero there, where somebody like me, I've got a COMT variant, a more significant one in that gene and mine has had a history of mal expressing. It caused my dopamine levels to be very high because with that variant I couldn't break my dopamine down. And it caused me to be very. A lot of anxiety, like super anxiety, a lot of mind racing. I was very, what's the word? I was very flighty. Like I wanted to pick up my backpack and run in a situation of stress because I just would shut down. And I wasn't always like that. Right. I was always like, handle stress, move forward. I was like, I could do it, but when things in my environment and in my body changed, it caused that change in the genetic expression of that COMT gene. My dopamine levels went through the roof and I was just a hot mess. And so, you know, but on the other end of the spectrum, when I'm balanced, I'm very outside the box thinker. So, you know, you, you know, on the front lines of the battlefield, being the hero, you may want me in the back end there, you know, helping you to make decisions because I can find a creative way out of the mess, you know, saying something that other people wouldn't be able to think of. And so, and so, yeah, there's a lot of different genes that we have to look at whenever we're, you know, looking at why people are struggling with certain mental. Mental disorders or neurodegenerative disease.

Wow. Yeah. And using that genetic platform and just using that information that is a little bit. Well, it's a lot more accessible these days. Right. I love how you put it all together now. I want to put put this in context now as well, because you're really, really advocating for bringing mental health into, as a brain disorder where it really should be, right? When you go to see your neurologist, you're not talking about mental health right now, right?

No, no. I mean, the message that I'm trying to send to people is, you know, you don't have a mental health disorder. And you're not broken. There are answers and there are solutions. You know, you. There's something causing it. And let's figure out, you know, let's figure out what's going on.

Yeah. Love it. And so when you start talking and you kind of. You did this already, but I want to. I want to circle back to it of like, underlying ideology or causes, right. We're talking about a round for mental health. And you're. You just went through all of the different facets of testing that we can do. And then really, I asked you specifically around the genetic testing because that is, you know, it definitely is at the table these days. So when you look at. Or help people through. I mean, this is very common, right. We're talking about anxiety, depression. You know, you put it even into neurodegenerative states as well. I mean, this is a big segment of the population is currently taking anxiolytics or antidepressants. Right. So we're talking. Everybody listening knows somebody on one of those medications. That would be my kind of venture if I had to put it out there. People know people on medications for their mental health. So how do you couch it or what's the discussion around? I mean, do you have a different way of talking about depression and why I bring it up? I think especially now, this. This day and age right now, where we're all kind of quiet and faced with ourselves. I see a lot of folks are, you know, trying to get into escapism. Like, you can't run from yourself at this moment in time. Right. We're kind of shut in. And so, like, people's stuff is coming up, right? And they're stuffing it with alcohol or pot or eating or, you know, whatever their distraction du jour is. So is there a way that you help people navigate those land of. Of course there's depression and then there's sadness, I guess is on the continuum of how I think about it. Wondering if you have some languaging around that discussion. Does that make sense?

Trying to understand your question. Exactly.

Yeah. So I guess on. Yeah, I didn't really ask a question. That's why I was like, did that make sense to so around. Sorry. Around, like a component of. There's being sad and then there's being depressed. Right. So the way that I couch that is. Well, yeah, you're sad because of XYZ occurrence. You're depressed because there's been no external thing to put you into a sadness or depression. It just is there Right. But everybody, all of the sadness always gets just glommed into depression of, like, we have to be happy, shiny people all the time. Right. Of not having that emotion. So I'm wondering, how do you navigate that discussion?

Yeah. You know, that's a discussion that I think we need to have more now than ever. Because for generations now, we have been taught to not get in touch with our feelings and sit down and evaluate why are we feeling this way? What is it in our subconscious, in our higher self, in our spirit, or what is God trying to tell us? Whatever you want to call it. What is that discomfort level trying to tell us? Are you sad because you're in a shitty relationship? Excuse me, I shouldn't have said that.

That's totally appropriate for this show.

Are you sad because of that? I had a client five years ago who was so depressed and came to me for depression. And we started talking. And yes, I was working on the biology, doing all that stuff and looking to see what I could find and helping her to optimize and this and that and the other. But you know what? It really turned out to be she was in a shitty relationship. And once she got out, once she sat down and got quiet with herself and listened to and, you know, and started, you know, exploring why she was really feeling like that, she realized because she needed to go in a different direction in her life. And right now, oh, my God, we've never seen anything like this going on before, you know, and yes, you're absolutely right. People are trying to bury how they feel. It's starting to come up. It's starting to come up. And I'm having friends and some clients and they're burying themselves in their work. They're burying. They're working harder now than they were working when they were going into their office. And they're doing it because they're having anxiety. Well, I'm just throwing myself in a mower so I don't think about it. You know what? You can't run from it. You better sit down and you better have a talk with the discomfort. You better sit down and you better face it. Because you've got to walk into the fire if you're going to come out victorious. You can't keep shoving that crap down. You've got to figure out what it is and you've got to address it head on. And, you know, that's what I have to say about that. You know, I've been through that, too. You know, when I was young, when I was really young, and I Would cry. You know, my mom would say, you have crocodile tears. And she would get mad at me for crying. Well, you know what? I'm not mad at my mom because you know what? She loves the heck out of me. And she did the best that she knew with what she was given. And this was generations. You know, this happened to her and this happened to her mother. And I'll bet it happened to my great grandmother, too. And I was just fortunate that I was able to finally resurrect that or lift that out and put it into the light and get rid of it so that I don't have to pass that down to my. To, you know, to my future generations. You know, like, I have a 27 year old son and I learned from my parents some of the things I didn't want to do, but there were still some things that I was still doing the same, right? And one of them was because I didn't understand when I was raising him, I didn't understand how to deal with feelings of sadness versus depression versus fear or anxiety. I shoved it down and I got busier. Do you know what I did? I opened a second practice, then I opened a third practice, Then I took on that radio show gig. And then I was traveling around the world with Olympic athletes. I mean, how much more can I add onto my plate so that I could not have to deal with my feelings? Believe me, when it came up, it came up. It exploded because I was so sick from burying that stuff for years. We have to sit down and we have to understand how to deal with it or else you're going to pass it down for generations. You need to stop and we need to break that cycle. This is a time when we as a world need to come together. We need to sit down and we need to face ourselves. We need to go inside and we need to elevate, right? And if we can do that, we can change the trajectory for our future generations.

Ooh, I love it. You're giving me chills over here. You know, that's awesome. I mean, you're talking on healing ancestral traumas, or heightened emotional states, whatever you like to call those things. And also, you know, I think it is the. That is the truth. The only way is through. And that stuff doesn't go away. And right now is a really awesome opportunity. So if people are struggling with that right now. So, like, I too am seeing a ton of people just bury themselves in their work or, you know, it's like busier than ever. It's like, well, how can that be everything is slowed down, right? Like, if we're listening, everything is calm and slowed down. But then there's this, you know, fear trajectory and whatnot. The blanket on the planet. So what do you suggest for folks, like, if they notice, one, they have that tendency, or two, they, they kind of know something's off and they're just kind of in that busy mode. What. Are there some techniques that you recommend for folks to. To kind of get into that?

Sure. Well, you know what? As soon as people even think about sitting alone with themselves, they get some scared. But think about this for a minute. It's you. You're beautiful. God put you on here. God put you on this earth because you asked to be here and he knew you before you came. All right? You're here for a reason. And you're here so that you can, you know, do great things. You are a beautiful being. So you first need to sit back and not be afraid to sit down with yourself in silence, okay? But you've never done it before. You've avoided it your whole life. So even if I'm telling you it's still scary as you know what? But you sit down and you do it. And when you start feeling that your heart's beating and you start feeling sick to your stomach and your mind is racing and your heart's fluttering and you're breathing harder, then go into a breathing exercise. All right? So stop putting off the things that we're all teaching you, because these things will save your life and they will change your life. Breath is everything. So sit down and breathe. There are lots of different breath work techniques that you can do. Like you can breathe in for three, hold it for five, breathe out for seven, or there's like a seven, seven, seven, I think, where you breathe in for seven, hold it for seven, breathe out for seven, but do something like that. Stop breathing through your shoulders because you don't breathe through your shoulders. Breathe through your belly. Like, let your belly just pop out. Get your little Buddha belly thing going on. It's okay, nobody's watching. And learn how to breathe. You've probably gone most of your life not knowing how to breathe anyway. You've probably been breathing shallow your entire life. This is the time to sit down and do it. And what it does is this is not woo woo, okay? This activates your vagus nerve. It's a really big nerve bundle in your body. And when you breathe like that, it activates the vagus nerve and it literally pulls you out of that fight or flight state. And Slows your brain and your heart, slows everything down. So practice your breathing. Practice your breathing and be gentle and love yourself. Love yourself. You know, would you be so cruel to your child or your pet as you are to yourself? It's time to stop beating ourselves up and it's time to stop beating each other up too. We need to be accepting of each other. We need to love each other, no matter whether we're having an angry day, whether we're having a happy day or a silly day or whatever. And we need to lift each other up because you are connected to that person that you've been criticizing. You are one with that person, whether you want to admit it or not. So we need to love ourselves. We need to love each other, and we need to sit down in some silence and do some breathing exercises, you know, and then reach out to people who. Reach out to people who can help you.

Nice. Yeah, it is really important. You know, I think I've been asking in my emails and putting out on social around, you know, hey, I'm here. How do I best support you? Right. Because a lot of folks have trouble asking for that help as well. So for folks that are listening, you know, practitioners, I know you're tuned into this, our what the health podcast. And you know, put yourself out like this is the time to show up for your community and just put it out there that you're there because you're. I'm getting some amazing responses from my, you know, just being available for folks right now because it is a trying time. I mean, I wouldn't say that I don't go into the darkness ever either, you know, and it's not a fun place to be by yourself. So definitely, you know, take up Dr. Elena on that as well. The breathing is crucial. You know, I'm actually encouraging folks to kind of quadruple down on the self care aspects and being, you know, very compassionate with themselves. And you know, a lot of times for those that are sensitive beings too, I find that they're really picking up kind of the malaise of the planet. Right. There's so much fear and anxiety going on that sensitive individuals are just feeling unsettled when there's nothing in their environment that is doing it to them. Right. Well, let's see here. So we've got 20 minutes of our what the health show left for our listeners. If you like what you're getting here, please share this with your loved ones. This is really important information and I know you hear me say that every week, but I try to Bring you the best of the best. Dr. Alaina is rocking it here today for us, so thank you for that. You know, let's talk about your program and your, you know, what you're doing out there. You said you, before the show, you were telling me about your five part program that you've put together. So what's, how did that evolve and where did that come from?

Oh, yeah, we've got, Gosh, you know, I've been really putting my head down for two years and, you know, working so hard and the reason why. And my staff can all tell you this, my entire team, even my husband, he can vouch for this. I have been telling everybody on my team that I feel like I am limited in my time. I feel like I am limited in my time. I need to get this done. And at one point I thought maybe I was limited in my time because I was going to be taken from this earth soon. Like, honestly, I didn't know what it was. And I mean, I wasn't focusing or fretting about that. But other than the fact that I want to be around to see my son grow old and my grandkids grow up, that was the part that would kind of get. That was the kicker for me because I felt this urge. Now I know why, because look at what's happening. We need to have programs out there. We need to get the word out there. We need to train other doctors. You and I, we need to get out there. We need to train other doctors. They're wanting to learn. They're hungry for this information. I know they are because I've spoken with many of them. We need to teach them this new model. But what I did back in August, I told my husband one evening, I said, I need to do a webinar. I need to teach people what a data driven approach looks like because too many people are dying, people are committing suicide. This is out of control. And I feel such a burden to get this out of. I need to unload my heart and my mind and let people see what's really going on. I need to show them all the science behind all of this and how this works. And we have so many case studies, hundreds and hundreds of them, and I need to show people they need to see this so that they can see that there's light and truth and that there's an answer. And he said, okay, go for it. I'll help you. I'll do all the back end stuff. And I said, okay. So I started putting the information together. It was over five Hours of information. So it was not going to be a one hour webinar. It turned into a five part series and we ended a five part series on mental health, Finding the root causes of mental health disorders and neurodegenerative disease. We ended up launching it and people were on and they would not hang up. They were on until the very end and staying through the end of the Q and A. And I was literally hanging up on people after an hour and a half saying, bye guys, bye. Because they would not go out. And that was their way of showing me we need this information. Thank you for sharing this information. You're giving us hope. And then some other people found out about it and now it's really getting out there to the masses and I'm just so excited. People need to see that there are answers and solutions. Clinically. What we've been doing is we will have consultations with people and we'll really get a good history and see what's been going on. And then we just talk to them about, well, this is our approach. A lot of them already, if they're already reaching us, they already kind of know what our approach is, but we'll tell them what our approach would be for them and what labs that we think we should order so that we can let the data drive a lot of the biological based decisions. Right. And then we have one on one programs. We finally launched group programs back in January. And after five years of collecting data, I've taken, I've created a diy, like a do it yourself type program with options to schedule visits. But the DIY program people will ask, well, if, you know, if you're data driven, how do you do that? I'm like, that's exactly how I was able to do it. Because I took all the common denominators of what I've done across the board for the last five years with everybody I've worked on and I've taken those common denominators and I put them into a program so that we are covering all the bases and so people, so that everybody can afford it because everybody needs to be able to get, to get the help that they need.

Yeah, love it. So what does that, number one, where do they find you? I can put that also in the show notes. And then what does that, what, what's your five step, what's your five step process there?

So what they need to do is go to modernholistichealth.com and if they go to modernholistichealth.Com they can check out our website. We're actually having. Our whole brain section of our website is being revamped right now. So you'll still see some stuff on brain. You'll see stuff on chronic illness, because we do a lot of work with chronic illness outside of mental health stuff. And then just book a consult, get on the phone or on Zoom, and you'll talk with me or one of my coaches, and we can start the process and see if what we think. If what we think we offer is going to help you. There are some times where we know right off the bat that we're going to have to work in conjunction with another practitioner. Maybe we'll know that they're going to really benefit from some ketamine therapy or something like that. And so we have other docs around the country that will collaborate with us. And so we can still bring the person into the program, but with the understanding that they're also going to have to see somebody else so that they can get these additional therapies while we're. While we're working with them.

Awesome. Wow. Yeah. That's phenomenal that you're plugging people into local practitioners, too. Sweet. So with regards to other facets of care, your mission, would you say? What is your mission? Do you have a mission out there?

Yeah, I want to save people from suicide. I want to give them their hope back. I want them to know that they are not broken. You're not broken out there. Those of you who are listening.

Yeah.

Okay. There's nothing wrong with you. Your discomfort and your symptoms are a sign. Your body is trying to tell you that something is not right, that there's something interfering with your body's ability to function normally. Hook up with a doctor like Dr. Eckel or myself. There's a whole handful of them that I'm sure that you've heard on Dr. Eckel's podcast. We can look for the underlying causes. We know how to do that. My mission is just to give you hope, to know that you're not broken. There are answers and there are solutions, and we're here for you.

Yeah. Love is that hope component. The system is really fractionated at this point, and to be able to offer some options for folks, I think is, in this day and age, really important. You know, a lot of folks are just going to Dr. Google and kind of googling their stuff. But, you know, here you've got a trusted guide who has helped thousands of people wondering if you want to share some stories of, you know, what you've seen in transformations out there for folks.

Oh, my gosh. Absolutely. So I just got off the phone with a client this morning, and we've been working with her for about six, seven months now. And when she came to us, she was having extreme anxiety, depression. She was diagnosed with two different autoimmune diseases. She had terrible constipation, brain fog, memory loss.

She.

She's 71 years old. She looks gorgeous, by the way. Like, she looks really good for 71. But she was feeling like she was 150 is how she was feeling when she came. And we reviewed her labs and all of her symptoms are almost completely gone. I would say 98% of her symptoms are almost completely gone. We've got like two of them that are hanging on, that don't want to go away, and one of them is constipation. And I'll tell you why. We believe that she's still having some of the constipation issues. She has or had very high levels of ochratoxin and gliotoxin, not to mention that she had a couple of different environmental chemical toxins going on as well. And as we've been detoxing the mycotoxins or molds out of her body, her symptoms are going away, her misdiagnoses, because that's really what it was. And she was the one who said that today, not me. Her diagnoses of these two autoimmune conditions are completely gone. And when we looked at the first follow up on her mold, the ochratoxin was over 70% gone. The gliotoxin was about 20% less. And this was after only about 90 days on her mold protocol. We couldn't start her on a mold protocol right away. She was super sensitive. And so it just took a while. We had to work on detox pathways and we had to work on strengthening up her body so she could handle it. And I mean, it's just amazing. We're getting ready to retest her again in 90 more days, and we're anticipating that all the mold is going to be completely gone. We have another client up in the north who she came to us with some really huge deficits in her cognitive function that had declined. She was declining very, very quickly. And her husband was having symptoms of asthma. Well, we ended up doing one of those urinary metabolite tests called the organic acids test. We followed it with a mycotoxin test to look for mold. And we found two very high levels of mold, two different types of mold in her body at extremely high Levels. So we had her go and have her house tested. The house was full of the exact same type of mold, so we were able to find where the exposure was coming from. She was so sensitive. We were working with her almost a year, and it took us months to even get to find the right protocol for her. But we just checked her, and her mold is 70% gone. And her symptoms are going away massively as well. Right. So those were two mold cases. There's one out of California, a woman in her 60s who started having massive panic attacks. She was having what she called brain zaps. Like, it felt like her brain was getting electrocuted.

Wow.

And I was like, wow. I hadn't really heard that one before. And I've heard of other types of body zaps, but I had not actually heard of brain zaps. And she was having heart palpitations, and she was really just freaking out at this anxiety. She'd never had a history of that, ever. It turned out that she had a combination of H. Pylori and. Oh, my gosh. What else did she have? She had two different bacterial infections. And within eight weeks, we were able to eliminate the bacterial infections, get her gut back on track. Symptoms completely gone.

Wow. In two months.

In two months, yeah. We have a patient out of California, another one in her early 50s. I think she's 51 or 52, just a couple years older than me. And she was diagnosed with Parkinson's. We've been working with her for about 10 or 11 months now, so almost a year. Her symptoms of Parkinson's are pretty much gone. She could barely walk. She couldn't swing her arm. She couldn't really move one of her legs very well. And the doctor just put her on gaba. We ended up doing some testing and we found out what was really going on with her. And now she doesn't have any more symptoms and she's symptom free. So, I mean, just really awesome, just amazing story.

Holy cow. Yeah. That is. That's radical work right there, you know, and that is, I think, you know, as we're looking at a new story emerging out of where we are at now. It's this whole person health care. I think that should emerge as kind of the standard of care for folks. That's one of my. One of my, you know, beautiful worlds that my heart knows and that exists, that people are accessing this type of care where they're not just parked with a diagnosis and medication, but really looking at underlying imbalances and allowing the body to heal itself. So we are really well aligned on that message of the body can heal itself given the right information. We just have to uncover the stones and look at, well, what's getting in the way of that happening. And thank you for sharing those three really awesome patient stories. So, you know, the I love the work that you're up to in the world. We will definitely connect up sooner than later. Dr. Elena and I have been kind of talking about some collaborations down the road. So we're, you know, we'll see where we can, what we can cook up there. Anything that you would like to share with our listeners of what the health now here we're coming down the the home stretch in the last three minutes and kind of open it up to any last sharing here.

I would just say for those of you who tune in to Dr. Echols podcast, you know, keep staying tuned to it. He is a wealth of information. You know, he is someone who I myself love to collaborate with and, and he's just going to give you solid information and these are things that you need to know. The model of healthcare that we are in, it's never been more clear than now that it is broken. It's broken. And that doesn't mean that medications are not good. That doesn't mean the surgery isn't good. What that means is that we just need to scratch the whole model and we need to come back together really using the knowledge that we have. And Dr. Eckel is providing a platform for you to get to learn this so that together we can all create the change that we need so that we can all be healthy and then make our future generations healthier as well.

Lovely. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show today. Dr. Laina, that was a pleasure. Everybody. This is what the Health. I'm Dr. Greg Eckel. You can find this podcast@naturecuresclinic.com podcast please share it with your friends and family. If you like the show, please give us some five star reviews. I'm not too much to not beyond asking for those because we got to get this word out to folks. It really is now more than ever. So thank you all. The show's on Tuesdays from 2 to 3 Pacific Coast Time. This is what the health. We'll see you next week.