EP 71: WTH ?!? A talk with Dr. Doni Wilson, Stress Recovery Protocol, HPV, MTHFR

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Mobile Contact Talk Radio. Welcome to what the Health an independent approach to your health span. Have you noticed how our healthcare system may not have your best interest in mind? Join Dr. Eckel in this fun and sometimes disturbing exploration of the state of healthcare and what it means for you. Now here's your host, Dr. Eckel. Alright, welcome back everybody. I am Dr. Greg Eckel and this is what the health and our topic today is what's stress got to do with it. I threw in a couple Alphabet soup after there HPV and MTHFR and other facets of care. I want to give you a great warm welcome. This is Dr. Donni Wilson. She is a naturopathic doctor, certified professional midwife, certified nutritional specialist and graduated from Bastyr University in 2000. Dr. Donny believes it is possible to be healthy even when we are stressed. She experienced severe migraines for 25 years, was determined to find a way to resolve them and, and in the process of Solving her migraines, Dr. Dami developed her stress recovery protocol which identifies how stress uniquely affects each individual, then uses epigenetics to re optimize health. She helps patients reverse challenging health conditions including fatigue, anxiety, autoimmunity, fertility and recurrent miscarriages. MTHFR issues, insomnia as well as HPV and abnormal Pap smears. Dr. Donnie is frequently called upon to discuss her approach in the media as well as both public and professional events. Again, I want to welcome you on the show. Dr. Donnie, welcome.

Thank you so much. Oh my gosh, I've been looking forward to this for a while.

I know, super excited. This is kind of that hidden underlying link to a lot of those conditions that I just listed there. And I'm excited to have this conversation. We've known each other for a while and we're just commenting on, you know, this is like the 13th month still of 2020, but we're, you know, we're moving in here and you know, I think this is, you know, really apropos. I don't think this topic ever goes away. I'm excited to hear even in the second part of our discussion around HPV and what you're discovering there, which is human papillomavirus. But let's start with stress and you know, maybe in particular, just to give an intro to my listeners and viewers. What led you to be interested in naturopathic medicine? And stress.

I think I became interested probably during my childhood. Right. We all have certain stresses in our childhood that we start to go. I mean, I just happened to be one of those kids where I was like, what is this stress thing and what is it doing to me? But then I went on to have these migraines that you mentioned, and it really. I wanted to solve them. I really was like, I had previously solved a digestive, like reflux issue for myself by changing my diet. This is back when I was getting my nutrition degree and I was like, well, if I can solve reflux, I should be able to solve migraines. And. And I really, even though my father's a pharmacist, so I essentially grew up in a pharmacy. You know, the thing that was most consistent in my childhood was being in the pharmacy. And so you would think I would have been more in line with pharmaceuticals. And of course, I recognize the importance and value of pharmaceuticals. But what I took away from my father was the possibility of preventing the need for medications or being able to improve our health so that we don't need medications whenever possible. And so it really stuck with me, this possibility that what we eat and what we do in our day to day can influence our health. And so that is where some of my interests started. And then this interest in stress came in, especially when I was studying midwifery. I was studying, not only learning how to help women deliver babies, especially at home, I was a home birth midwife, but also I was very interested in understanding how stress affects women in labor. And the thing is, is that I studied women who had a history of abuse too. So they had a history of stress, and now they're, you know, most women, if you think about delivering a baby already, you're like, oh my gosh, this is going to be stressful. So it's a classic kind of thing that we consider stressful. And what was interesting that I found in the research is that we need a certain amount of stress and stress hormones like cortisol and adrenal. We need a certain amount of cortisol and adrenaline in order for labor to happen, in order for the baby to come out successfully. But if we have too much cortisol and adrenaline, labor comes to a standstill. And if we don't have enough cortisol and adrenaline, labor doesn't work either. So it's a matter of finding this perfect amount of cortisol and adrenaline in order for our body to do something like deliver a baby, which is a normal thing that our bodies know how to do. And so it led me to think, hey, if we need a sort of a balance of cortisol and adrenaline for labor to happen, what about when? When I graduated from Bastyr University, I moved to New York and it was right after 9 11. This is November 2001. And this was one of the most stressful times in, in the United States, let alone in the New York tri state area. And so I then started implementing this same way of thinking for all the patients I was seeing who were super stressed from the situation going on. And I thought, how can we be healthy when we are stressed? How do we navigate the stressful world we live in? Of course, now we have this whole new stress in 2020 and 2021. How do we navigate this stressful world and still be healthy? And what can we learn from the body's natural physiology and ways we can support our health with nutrition and lifestyle? How do we use all of that to help ourselves be healthy even though we are stressed?

Yeah, I love it. So, you know, oftentimes stress gets connotated negatively and what you are saying in childbirth as like the gateway that you have discovered how to talk about and optimize this. We do need a certain level of stress, right, for a natural, healthy childbirth. So some stress is good.

Well, we choose to be parents, right? You're a parent. We choose to be parents, which, you know, we know is going to involve some stress, but we want to be parents. And that's natural for humans to, you know, have children. But it's we. So we know we're going to have some stress. We know we want to have a job, we want to have, we're creative, we want to have projects we're developing. Like we automatically are going to choose some things that are inherently stressful. I mean, even just being able to find food and shelter, right, could be a stress. So stress is not something we can eliminate. It's not about eliminating it. It's about what are the stresses. We want to choose on purpose, with intention, and how do we help our bodies stay healthy through that. It's almost like if you think about an athlete, right, they choose to, let's say, choose to run a marathon. But they also know that if they're going to choose to run this marathon, they're going to need to train, they need to bring some water, they need to eat the way, like they're already in a mindset that they're going to have to take care of themselves in the process of running this marathon. But here we are all running marathons in our life every day. And we don't automatically think about what we need to do to support ourselves through that.

Yeah. So how do you define stress?

I think of stress as not just. I mean, there's psycho emotional stress. Right. There's just the stress of unknowns or stress of like a move or a divorce or a death or, you know, there's these stresses that we kind of know, our big major stresses. But there's also stresses that we don't always think about. Stresses like not getting enough sleep or eating foods that are inflammatory or say, high sugar foods that cause our blood sugar to fluctuate. That's even a stress. And even sometimes things that are stress reducing, like exercise, if you do too much, it becomes a stress. So it's a matter of, you know, like when we talk about homeostasis and hormesis, where sometimes we want to do something that's a little bit outside of our comfort zone. But if we overdo it, it can actually be too much of a stress on our body and kind of backfire on us. So a stress can be anything that kind of causes our body to have to adapt a little too much, and then it ends up working against us.

Got it. So we're all exposed to stress, and some people handle it better than others. So what do you. What is that piece of the puzzle here?

Well, and there is some genetics at play. You know, like there are some genetics that interplay with, first of all, how we even choose stress. Like the genes Mao and Comt Are known to people who have genetic variations of MAO and Comt, which I and a half. We tend to be better at responding under stress because we tend to have a little bit higher adrenaline levels. But that also means we're more likely to choose stress in our lives. And sometimes also if a person had stress in their childhood, they kind of grew up around stress, and they're more likely to continue choosing stress going forward. Like, those of us who are good at being stressed end up choosing more stress. And so to be mindful of that, you know, to be mindful that there's a piece that's about how we respond to stress, but it's also those people also should really be prepared to do more stress recovery because it ends up affecting us in the long run, too. There's a genetics piece in terms of how we respond to stress. But there's also your past stress exposure that comes into play. You want to be thinking about all these different factors. I'm so glad you're asking Me thinking about all the different stresses we're exposed to without stressing yourself out. I mean, that's the thing. As soon as we usually think about our stresses, then we're like, now I'm stressed about my stress. And we know from research that doesn't help either. So you want to always come from some self compassion and acceptance. And that's why I think sometimes looking at the genetics helps. Because when you can look at your genetics, then it's validating. You can go, and if you look at your past stress exposure, you can say, oh, no wonder I'm feeling stressed. No wonder I'm choosing stress in my life. No reason to be critical of yourself. But then from there you can say, okay, based on my genetics and based on my past stress exposure, what do I need to do? What steps do I need to take to help prevent that stress from causing health issues?

Got it. So let's talk about that genetic piece there. So for folks that may be watching, listening, that aren't so tuned in to those letters that you just threw out there, the MAO and the COMT in particular, those are big genes. And when you're talking about the genetics of stress, so what are those? Or you know, we don't have to go into detail, but just on the grander scheme, like those enzymes.

Well, and that's the thing. I mean, speaking genetics is like speaking another language. When I, when I learned all this a few years back, I'm like, okay, this is like learning a whole new language. And I don't, you know, doesn't, you don't have to learn the whole language to understand it, but you start to get a sense of it. And I think one of the important things to know is that genetics play a role, but they're not 100% of it. So you can have certain gene variations, but they might not actually be expressing, they might not actually be affecting your health. So we can do a gene panel and look at your gene variations. And usually when they're named by the way, it's a big long chemical name. And then they give it like MAO for short or MTHFR for short because. But it stands for a big longer metabolic name or scientific name. And really we're naming the gene the same as the enzyme. You see, our body is really run by enzymes that are making and breaking down proteins. And so if we, you know, if we have all of these genes controlling our enzymes and protein production, that's what so much determines our health. And so it can sound very complicated, but it's actually the simplicity of it is amazing, you know, amazing that our. That this is how our bodies work and that we can have this, what's called gene expression. If the gene. When stress comes along, it shifts the gene expression. It can turn on or turn off a gene, and that stress is what then results in that genetic predisposition to, let's say, autoimmunity or allergies or diabetes or cancer, you know, or dementia. Right. This is. It's this stress that then leads these genes to come into play. And even with, you know, like say, MAO and Comt that I mentioned, I mean, those are two genes that manage adrenaline. So we usually think of when our body makes adrenaline, but MAO and Comt have to do with breaking down adrenaline. So if you have gene variations that are expressing, then your body might not. It might either break down the adrenaline slower or faster. And so the only way we know for sure is to measure your adrenaline levels, which we can do in urine. So we. I'm always looking at the genes, and then we measure, okay, what is your adrenaline then? Is your adrenaline high or low? How are these genes influencing the actual level? From there, then we know we can use nutrients to shift that. We can smooth out the metabolism of adrenaline so it's not so high or so low, but we can do that all with nutrients. I mean, because the cool thing is these neurotransmitters and adrenaline are all made from nutrients in the body. So by understanding biochemistry and by understanding nutrition, we can use, say, amino acid therapy and nutrient therapy to rebalance. Because I think a lot of times people get the message that, you know, once. Once things are out of balance, your body's broken and can't be fixed. Or. Or that the only way to address neurotransmitters is with psychotropic medications. But that's not true. You know, we can address these imbalances many times with nutrients, herbal approaches. But definitely by coming back to how do we help our bodies recover from stress on a daily basis? Again, back to that marathon analogy. How do we help ourselves on a daily basis? So that, first of all, we can turn off some of this gene expression or prevent the gene expression, and then we can help these metabolic processes work more to our advantage.

So. Right. So having those. So let's go into then how does stress affect the adrenal gland and cortisol? So when we get into the. But the actual neurotransmitters in our blood, right? So there's that genetic platform that you're talking about that maybe you're A fast metabolizer or slow metabolizer. And so knowing that information is really good to know because that's kind of the platform which may or may not be playing. And then you're actually measuring the hormone in the, in the urine. And I also, I like that urine test too. So I'd be curious, you know, which, which tests are. Do you run and, and, you know, kind of value, because we've been in practice about the same amount of time and so, you know, there's some great information there. We've got a lot of practitioners that watch the podcast and, and so would love to share that with them.

Of course, of course. I mean, in terms of. So adrenal glands, of course, are stress responders. So stress. You know, our brain, I say our brain has kind of like a constant stress radar. You know, it's. Our brain is constantly observing not only like the major stresses, but again, even changes in sounds, like an alarm goes off or light. You know, our brain is picking up on, is it night out, is it daylight, is there bright lights in your face? You know, your brain is always pricking up on all of these potential stresses. Our bodies are basically like built stress responders, you know, like this, you know, when you start to think about it like that's what we are, that's how we survive in the world we're in, right? Is because we're really good at picking up on stress and responding to it. And we have this built in stress response system that goes from the amygdala and the HPA axis, we call it the hypothalamic pituitary axis. So it goes from the brain to the adrenal glands, which are here above the kidneys. And the adrenal glands make a bunch of different hormones, but they specifically make cortisol and adrenaline. This is when you think of a fight or flight. Your heart's racing, you're sweating, your mind's racing. That's adrenaline, because it's trying to help you get out of danger and respond to the stress. And the cortisol follows close behind in the stress response. And so we want to have a healthy response to an immediate need or an immediate danger. But what happens is when we're under constant stress, this stress response just keeps on firing. And actually the turnoff, like what should happen is cortisol comes and then the brain turns off the stress response because it can see that cortisol is happening. But when we're under constant stress, that feedback loop stops working, right? And we end up kind of going into this disrupted cortisol and adrenaline. Now, there's different theories, of course, you know, from Hans Selye and looking at how stress affects our adrenal glands and you know, how we talk about usually these phases of adrenaline disruption. I call it adrenal distress. And because this is just from, you know, over 20 years of analyzing people's cortisol and adrenaline levels, I've found that it, as a practitioner working with patients, it works much better. When I think of it as, how is stress affecting, And I would say this even for myself, how is the stress affecting me at this moment in time? That's what I really want to know. Where is my cortisol and adrenaline right now? Because that's what I'm going to want to address. That's what I'm going to want to now bring it back to optimal. Because cortisol, it's not like we want zero cortisol or zero adrenaline, right? We want cortisol to be high in the morning and gradually decreasing through the day. And we want adrenaline to be kind of a steady pace all the time, ready to respond. But we don't need these to be zero. We want them to be at a healthy level. So when we're doing, say, a urine test or saliva test, that's what we're looking for is that cortisol following that nice awakening response and then downward curve. So it's lowest when we're going to bed. What I found from my research is there's at least five main scenarios that can happen where a person has either high cortisol most of the day or all of the day and high adrenaline. Or it could be they have high cortisol and low adrenaline, or it could be that they have high adrenaline and low cortisol, or they could have low adrenaline and cortisol. You see what I mean? So I'm looking at these patterns and I go, okay, from here now, that's that person's stress type. That's where they are right now. That's what I call. They're in stress mode or adrenal distress. That's their stress type. Now, how do we recover them from that stress type? And so it's very individualized. Not everybody has the same sort of what their stress mode, what my stress mode looks like is probably different than what your stress mode looks like. When we look at the cortisol and adrenaline. And see, this is the thing is a lot of practitioners are only looking at cortisol. Some practitioners, first of all, some are not even looking at Cortisol at all. Like, you know, most times when you do regular blood work, they're not testing your cortisol. And then if you do cortisol in the blood, you're only getting one time a day. So now you only know, like, the morning or whatever time you have your blood drawn. That's not going to give you the full picture of cortisol. If you do urine or saliva and you do a sample morning, midday, evening, bedtime. Now we know better what your cortisol is up to. Is it high or low at different times of day? But if we don't have adrenaline, we still don't know enough about your adrenal glands. I would say we need adrenaline levels, too, which is going to be dopamine, norepinephrine, and epinephrine. Once we know that, now we have a much clearer idea of how stress has affected you at this point in time. And from there, I can guide you through a systematic process of recovering it. Because it's tempting, right? It's tempting. When you see someone's results, say you see a low cortisol, it's like. And I tend to lower cortisol. So believe me, I learned all this by doing it to myself. I'm like, oh, let me support my cortisol. But if you jump in and you start supporting cortisol before the body's ready for that, it's like pressing on the gas pedal without any brakes, then the person. I would get hard palpitations. I feel worse. I'm like, it's not working. I feel worse. Why do I feel worse? And then I'd give up. And then I'm like, okay, I got to figure this out on my own. And I finally figured out, well, I can't. You can't support a low cortisol. If the. If you have depleted neurotransmitters or you have high adrenaline, because you're gonna end up making it worse, which is what happened to me. So I'm like, okay, Once I tested my neurotransmitters, which can also be tested in the urine. Serotonin, gaba. So it's like, okay, we gotta support the serotonin and GABA first. Now we have some brake pedals, we have some brakes in the system, and you've got to. If the cortisol is high or the adrenaline is high at any point, we got to drop that down. Then we can address a low cortisol in the morning and be successful at gradually helping the adrenals heal. But it has to be in this process or else we're just kind of spinning our wheels.

Got it. So on. Boy, you just unpacked a ton right there in those sentences. So with, okay, so all of the different patterns on cortisol in particular, what does it have to do with the rest of the body?

Oh, that's a great question. I mean, the thing is when. So this HPA axis is hitting the adrenals and the cortisol goes out, right? It's having this stress response. It's hitting on, I call them four major systems. You know, this is just based on reading all the research. I'm like, I'm always looking for patterns. So I'm like, what's the pattern here? Oh, it's four major systems are hit by cortisol. The digestion. Right. And if you think about it, when people are under stress, that's one of the first places it shows up. Reflux ulcers, irritable bowel syndrome. You know, like a lot of times it's, you know, the butterflies in our stomach, even we have a term for it. Like digestion is one of the first things that gets hit by stress. And then the second is the immune system. So people will find, oh, they have, they keep catching different infections or we'll talk about HPV activates, Epstein Barr virus activates, or allergies or autoimmunity. This is all the immune system under stress is like, you know, it doesn't work right. It gets disrupted. And then there's the nervous system. We start getting anxious, depressed, can't sleep. You know, the nervous headaches, neuropathies, you know, it's is because the nervous system's under stress and the neurotransmitters get thrown off. And then the fourth system is all the other hormones in the body. Thyroid is not working right anymore. Blood sugar and insulin are thrown off. Ovaries are not functioning right. Or even for men, testosterone production gets disrupted. Right. It's like these hormones are all disrupted by stress via this cortisol effect. And so, yes, we can work on each of those individual areas. We can work on healing digestion, we can work on the immune system, on balancing hormones, but if we don't address the cortisol, it's just going to scramble it all up again. So we have to, we have to balance these four core systems, but we also have to get the adrenals recovered in order to be able to really achieve long lasting recovery.

You know, I think this is what is so frustrating for so many patients out there, is that in the western approach, they're going for those four areas. They're going to the neurologist, the gastroenterologist, the immunologist. You know, they're not, who are not addressing underlying root imbalances. And what you're putting here is the program and plan that you've discovered and also has been, you know, really in a naturopathic functional medicine approach is really crucial. This aspect of having the brakes on for the, for our stress response, but then also having enough juice in the tank that we can stay alive so the saber toothed cat doesn't come to eat us. And it brings up a story of the. There was a psychiatrist, TED Talk a while back, and she comes out on the stage saying, I've been killing people for 30 years. And you're thinking like, what is this doctor saying? And that component around she was always putting a negative connotation on stress. And the research showed when the provider or the expert in the room said this is a negative, it was like 10 to 100 fold worse.

Right.

And I love how you frame this in childbirth, which everyone knows is a natural process. And that's how we got here. We were born to a stressful situation, but that was what brought life into the world. Right. So this cortisol component related then to all of the other hormones related to the gut. So what do you do then when you were talking about the. Because I still want to unpack a couple of those paragraphs that you put out there around the neurotransmitters like the dopamine and the epinephrine, norepinephrine. So on maybe an organic acid panel. So I see a ton of folks with neurodegeneration and Parkinson's and their dopamine is through the roof for the majority of those folks. Now, most of them are on dopaminergic blockers like Sinemet, Carbidopa, Levodopa, etc. So most of it is just coming from medication. But I do see folks with that diagnosis that have not been put on medications and they're still having a high dopamine response in the urine. What do you tell those people?

Well, one clarification I want to make too, and you had asked me before about this test that I use.

Yes.

You mentioned organic acids. Now, organic acid panel is really for some of you who may not be familiar, it's about looking at the metabolites from these metabolic processes. So we have the genes making these enzymes that run our metabolic processes. And we're looking at, in an organic acid Panel, we're looking at the end metabolite that comes out in the urine and trying to make decipher what that means. It showed up in the urine, where did it come from? And so the thing with dopamine to clarify is if we see high level of metabolites of dopamine in the urine, it could really mean two things. It could mean that the body has high level of dopamine and that's why a lot of it's coming out. Or it could just mean that the body's breaking it down, a lot of it, and pushing it through fast. And so you can't, you always have to keep in mind from organic acids that what does it really mean, what really is going on in the body. And so what I would do is I would want to do a neurotransmitter panel. You can do a urine neurotransmitter panel and actually see what is the dopamine. Because maybe this person might actually have low dopamine that's just being broken down a lot or they, or maybe they really do have a high dopamine. Or like you're saying maybe they're on a medication that's causing a lot of processing through that pathway. And then neurotransmitter panels. Now I use a lab called Senesco, but there are other labs that also do your neurotransmitter levels. Now I just like the way that Cinesco does their testing and their reporting. And they can also do a urine, I mean, excuse me, a saliva cortisol, four point cortisol panel. So it's nice because you can get saliva cortisol at the same time as a urine neurotransmitter. And so you're getting a lot of good information in one place and then, you know, you can, you know, start to decipher, hey, what's really going on here? Now when I see I've just also been helping with basically what's called amino acid therapy, targeted amino acid therapy for balancing neurotransmitters for over 15 years. It just happened that I, because I was so interested in stress, I was researching this right when that testing became available for clinical use. And so I just was like, okay, I'm going to figure this out. And I've written, I published a paper on that and then I've published books too since subsequently on that because it's, I think it's tricky and there's a lot of times patients and practitioners end up giving up on amino acid therapy because it Is so tricky. And it can. When I guide someone through amino acid therapy, I work very closely with them and I give them a lot of instructions on how to do it. And they really have to be able to understand their own body signals and be able to give me that feedback. And we go very carefully in a systematic way to rebalance the neurotransmitters. It's not any kind of quick fix, but it is possible. It's been life changing for patients and myself to be able to say, oh, the serotonin is low. Let's figure out how to gradually help the nervous system make more serotonin. But the tricks are, again, the body gets used to the way things are. So the body gets used to having a low serotonin or a low dopamine for that matter. And so the body's kind of creating everything on a daily basis to maintain that. Even though it's not optimal, it's maintaining that. So if we're going to try to shift that, I see this with patients who have high and low dopamine too. When we want to shift these neurotransmitters, we have to do it very carefully because the nervous system is going to notice, it's going to react. It could cause more anxiety, it could cause sleep disruptions, it could, you know, so you have to go about it very carefully. And I'm happy to go into more detail about that, but just to emphasize that, to not give up on that as a possibility, to know that it's possible to rebalance neurotransmitters with nutrients and herbs and lifestyle changes. But it does require really individualizing it and potentially even looking at the genes as well, so you really understand how that person's body is metabolizing. And I think also to know, and this is true of MTHFR too, For those of you with an MTHFR gene variation, as tempting as it is to just put in more nutrients or put in more amino acids, the thing is it works way better to stabilize the system first. So that's why what I call care, which is clean eating, adequate sleep, stress, reducing activities and exercise, we have to have care as a foundation first. So I always guide people to first figure out what foods might be inflammatory or a stress to them, balancing their blood sugar. So that's no longer a stress. Like we're trying to remove the stresses that we can. Let's remove the foods that are inflammatory stress. Let's remove, let's eat organic. So we're removing pesticides as a stress. Let's Eat in consistent ways without a bunch of sugar. So our blood sugar is not a stress. Let's, you know, sleep enough so that we get our stress recovery. Let's do our stress recovery activities like meditation and journaling and mindfulness. Let's exercise. So we have this foundation of self care. Then when you're going to go in and balance neurotransmitters or optimize methylation, it works so much faster and easier because you've eliminated all this stuff, all the stress that bogs down the system to begin with.

So. Well, you brought up a good component that I do want to address there, is that how does stress affect folks with the mthfr genetic and other genetic predispositions? Because that, you know, we had our colleague Ben lynch, that educated people about mthfr. And I've told him on the podcast, I said, I'm really grateful that you wrote your book because at the beginning people were just running in like, I've got the gene. Like, you know, and that's all they knew. And they were all taking methylated products and just worse for the wear. So what, what's the wild card here of stress in on top of that platform and maybe a little bit background for about methylation too.

And I did all of I went to. When Ben was like offering trainings and conferences, I went to every single one of them. I'm like. Because I have two MTHFR genes, so I'm like. And I, you know, started. Also, I help a lot of patients with recurrent miscarriages, which when you have MTHFR genetic variations, you have increased risk of miscarriages, you have increased risk of abnormal Pap smears. And I help a lot of women with that. You have increased risk of fatigue, anxiety, you know, some of these same health issues that headaches, migraines, which I had. And so these are these health issues that I'm already helping people with. And it turns out, oh, MTHFR has something to do with it. So I just dove in deep and in learning about it. And again, that's why I say that again, it's tempting to just throw in more methylfolate. I use this analogy that would be like a sink where the drain is clogged. And you know, if you give a bunch of methylfolate, it's like turning on the faucet, but the drains clogged. So now the sink's gonna overflow, you know, and that's gonna make the person more anxious, more headaches, you know, feel worse. So we need to unclog the drain. First we have to figure out what's the stress. And that's the stresses. I would say the stress is, you know. Yes, psycho emotional stress. It could be food inflammatory foods that are stressed. It could be chemicals or alcohol. That's a stress. Or metals. You know, it's these stresses, all the stresses that clog the drain. Now, methylation isn't going to work well because it's like all stuck in this drain. And even if you turn on the faucet with more methylfolate, it doesn't help. We have to first sort of clear out the things that are a stress on the system. And then many times, like I see patients where they're homocysteine. Homocysteine in the blood is the main way I would monitor for methylation status. And I'll see patients with their homocysteine at like 20 or 24. And without giving any methylfolate, we go through a process of clearing out the drain, so to speak. The clog in the drain, you know, decreasing inflammation and healing leaky gut and balancing gut bacteria because those imbalanced gut bacteria that make LPS toxins also clog the drainage. So we have to get the gut healed, get their. Them, you know, get their system balanced, and then we recheck their homocysteine and it can be back to a seven just from that without ever adding any methylfolate. Because it's. It's really the methylation, which, by the way, the way I think about methylation is, I call it the B vitamin cycle. It's how our body uses B vitamins. And we, a lot of people have a sense that B vitamins are helpful for stress. It's because B vitamins, it's all these B vitamins get together in the methylation cycle and they make this stuff called SAM or Sami. And SAM is what does all the good stuff. Protects our genes, makes healthy cells, makes neurotransmitters, breaks down neurotransmitters. You know, SAM does all this good stuff. But in order to make sam, we need enough of the B vitamins and we need them to work, you know, the system to work well to make the sam. And if that, if, if our system's stuck, if we can't effectively turn our B vitamins into sam, then we see all these repercussions down the line in our health.

Wow. Yeah. So love that. Because that is such a big thing that our listeners and viewers are tuned into on the genetic component. And so that pathway is really important here as well, because it's high numbers of folks that have some methylation difficulties. So you can do it without just methylating products. Right. So it's that cleaning the draining the swamp or the cleaning the drain, I think is the analogy.

There we go. Cleaning the drain out. There we go.

Excellent, excellent. So, you know, how do you recover from stress? So let's say maybe you've got some genetic predispositions, you're leading a high stress lifestyle. You know, you have a lot on your plate. It could be good stress. You've got vacation come in and you got to get your work done. And you know, the kids organized, you know, all of the 10,000 things that we all juggle these days. Throw a pandemic on top. Sure, why not? And then, so what do we do with it? What do we, you know, how do we respond? How do we kind of set the stage in the marathon? Like, how do we make sure we're prepping for this event?

And I think that it is that it. You know, sometimes we're so. We have so much going on. We get through the day and we're like, what just happened? I didn't. It was just morning and now it's night again. You know, it's like, it's just like we're in this loop, you know, and we're like, oh, wait a minute, I did the same thing yesterday that I did today and now I'm feeling worse. You know, it's just. You feel like you're just stuck on this hamster wheel, right? And. And I think a lot. I know sometimes I wake up to that and I'm like, what the heck, I got to get out of this loop here. And, and it's the thing is, it's one thing to know what we need to do, you know, like, we can go, oh, I know I need to eat healthier, I know I need to exercise, I know I need to meditate. But it can feel like this abstract thing. It's not really integrated into our routine. You know, it feels like an extra. And then even the good stuff can feel stressful because, like, how am I supposed to also find time to exercise or meditate? Like, I, I don't have any time. So I would say it's a matter of how do we integrate this self care again, I'm calling it self care, but like, how do we integrate in the healthy eating and the sleeping enough and the stress reducing and exercise, how do we integrate that into our day to day so it's normal. So that's just Our normal way of doing things. And it's practice. It's a practice, you know, it's a practice of becoming aware of it, of figuring out what works for your body, of having the intention and the guidance to really integrate that in on a daily basis as if you're a training athlete, you know, as if you're a, you know, you're a professional at being human, basically.

Professional human. I love it. Yeah.

How to become a professional at being human. Which means, means doing enough stress recovery to counterbalance the stress we're exposed to.

Yeah, no amateurs here on what the health. Okay. We have all professional listeners and viewers. I love that. Well, so what are the things that we can put in? I mean, what do you recommend? Somebody's feeling overwhelmed, they're like, oh, come on Dr. Donnie, I can't do another thing. And now you want me to like change my, my whole setup here? You know what, where do you, how do you address that?

You know, again, I think it, it, it's about kind of knowing your body and knowing where to start from. Now. Yes, we can start with some of just integrating self care in little baby steps again. Don't try to, because as soon as you expect too much of yourself, now it's a stress again. So just start with baby steps. And these little small steps can add up to big changes. So just pace yourself and go. Okay, let me do, let me just stop every hour or at least once a day and take a couple deep breaths. Let me just start with that, you know like, because when you take a couple deep breaths already you're turning on the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the calming part of our. We actually, we not only have a built in stress response system, but we have a built in anti stress system that's called the parasympathetic nervous system. And we can purposely trigger it with even just taking a couple deep breaths. So you just have to kind of become aware of that and then choose it. Go. Hey, you know, whether it's on your device, you're, I'm thinking a watch or a phone that says you, oh, another hour went by. Stand up, take a couple deep breaths. Right. And that's why these devices are telling you that is because they're trying to remind you to purposely trigger your anti stress system. And so if you start to do this on a regular basis, it's going to make a difference. But you can also think about like if I was going to say one nutrient, I think I would choose magnesium. Because first of all, so many of us are depleted in magnesium. But also magnesium helps to metabolize adrenaline. So if you're feeling high anxiety, heart racing, mind racing, likely you do have some high adrenaline, you might as well add in some magnesium to help process out that adrenaline. And plus, magnesium is calming to the nervous system in general. It relaxes our muscles. You know, it's like so many good things in terms of being able to hit the brakes. And so that could be a good starting place. Although, of course, that gets a little complicated because there's different kinds of magnesium. You know, magnesium citrate and oxide are going to be more. I'll use those when people have constipation and need to get their bowels moving. But we're in this situation, I'd lean more towards a magnesium threonate or magnesium glycine to be more active at calming the nervous system and relaxing the muscles. And so that can be a really good place to start in addition to, hey, let's, you know, eat amount of food we can digest in increments of time that, you know, works well for our blood sugar and not overwhelm our digestion. You know, so you just start to implement these little steps that, you know, because each day is a new day, right? Like, I know, I know our brains can want to be hard on ourselves and like, oh, I can't believe I did all of this wrong for so many years. Why. Why bother now, right? But actually, this is not true. You know, our. We got to let go of that past stuff and just be like, today's a new day, and your body will respond in a new way if you give it different information, you know, so you can start this and do this anytime. And even if one day you're like, oh, shoot, I completely messed up today. You're going to start again tomorrow. Our bodies are very forgiving. That way they can pick up and, you know, reset at any point in time.

That's awesome. You know, I really encourage that because, you know, you don't fail until you quit. And so we're. This is kind of the. This physical form is kind of our. We're supposed to fail. We're supposed to mess up. That's how we, you know, find our equanimity. And our center line is knowing. It's like in yoga. You have to, like, really push yourself to be out of balance, to find the balance. And it's the same thing calibrating for health. I really like the way that you put that is, you know, just leave it. Every day you're new so that's a, that's a great suggestion there and great mindset too. So we're coming down to the end here and I'm making a decision for us both. So you have a whole component around HPV and human papilloma virus and abnormal paps. I'm going to have you back on and we're going to talk more specifically about that because I don't want to, I don't want to fly through all of that, but I do want to talk about it in kind of as a side note in that you said in the four areas that stress affects us is our immune system. You said when we're highly stressed, we tend to get sick more frequently. You know, Epstein Barr virus, hpv, some of these low grade viruses can surface again from our past. Maybe will you speak into that a little bit here at the kind of towards the end of the show?

Well, I think it's so common, especially with having gone through such a, you know, like you said at the beginning this, we piled on a pandemic on top of our usual stresses. And so I'm seeing more and more women who are getting their Pap smear coming back with positive HPV and they're like, hey, I didn't, this wasn't going on last year or five years ago. Why is this HPV showing up now? Or, or other people might be having other, say Epstein Barr virus or why are my allergies worse or why is my autoimmunity flaring? And this is when you start to go, oh, it's because there's been more stress out of balance with your anti stress. And that's what happens with hpv. I mean, it's tempting with HPV to want to blame someone else for exposing you or feel mad at yourself or ashamed for getting exposed. But the fact is that HPV is quite a common virus. One out of two of us has HPV at any moment in time. It's such a common virus. Just like Epstein Barr virus is so common, it's not about the exposure so much. It's about what's leaving you vulnerable to this virus. And that's what we want to address. We want to get it so that you're not vulnerable anymore. And that's the whole approach I take with health issues. And my stress warrior program is let's get it so that we can get your immune system working for you and be able to fend off these viruses and other health issues. Because now you're resilient to stress.

Boy, now more than Ever on that front for so many people. So, you know, then it comes right back to looking at the ways that we can aikido the stress, bolster our own reserves. You gave to adequate rest and sleep and magnesium wondering in the grand scheme because it is so ubiquitous for people. And you know, it's interesting you're seeing that in your practice. I'm really happy to hear, you know that there are still annual exams happening. You know, the stats for last year is people stopped going in for fear of being in public. Right. So so many screenings aren't occurring anymore. So. So here's my public service announcement for you all listening is go get your annual exam with your blood work, get checked out, get screened, because those screenings are really important. That's how a lot of prevention can happen. And then you come to see a doc like Dr. Donney where she's addressing all the facets of you as a professional human being and really, really preventing through diet and nutrition and lifestyle along those lines. Not just in a kind of precancerous front. However, HPV does fall into that camp when we get into it. So what other components are you finding with your patient base and the folks that see you? Because you've got an international presence at this point, so you're seeing interesting trends and tracking that. What else are you seeing on this stress front?

Oh, in terms. Yeah, in terms of health, Health issues that are popping up. I mean, definitely anxiety is, you know, I mean, and this is the thing is there's anxiety for many, for many reasons. As you mentioned, people can feel anxious about, should I, can I go get my blood drawn? Should I go to the doctor's office, let alone go to the grocery store or go to the restaurant? You know, like all of a sudden these things that were normal for us, we're feeling like we have to think twice. And even patients who us see patients who have COVID virus and help them it. I'm finding that they have a huge anxiety component because now they have a virus that everyone's afraid of. So it's anxiety producing to have that virus. And you know, I guide people through recovering from it and you know, successfully. So that's been really exciting. But it's interesting to me, this anxiety piece of, you know, we're anxious about getting the virus and afraid to get the virus. And then we're anxious when we get the virus. And so this anxiety is ever present. And I really shows me that the stress system is engaged, you know, that this adrenaline and cortisol is engaged. And I'm seeing when I'm testing more than ever, I'm seeing high cortisol and adrenaline levels. Before, that was only, you know, a small percentage of time. Now I'm seeing way more often high cortisol and adrenaline levels. And so it really does say to me that a lot of people are in stress mode, what I call stress mode right now. And so we more than ever need help to, you know, with tools to help our systems get back out of stress mode. Because it's stress mode that ends up creating the other things, whether it's autoimmunity, which I see a lot of, too, or fertility issues, you know, trying to get pregnant, that that's going to be harder when you're in stress mode. So, you know, these other things come as a result of how that stress, you know, we get stuck in that stress mode.

Yeah. Wow, that's a lot of stress. So we're coming down to the final. The final heat here. We got three minutes left. Wondering if there's anything that you would like to share with our listeners and viewers.

Well, thank you. Thank you so much. I mean, it's so much fun to get to chat with you and, and to see you. So that's awesome. And I'm so glad that everyone is, you know, really interested in learning this, interested in learning how your body works and what's going to help you stay healthy in the long run. I mean, I think that's one of the things I see most in, again, seeing patients for over 20 years, is that I really believe that the more you understand your body and you understand how stress affects now, it's not like, like you mentioned earlier, the studies that show that if we stress about stress, that it works against us. But on the other hand, there's also studies that show that the more you understand stress and the more you understand your body, the more it's beneficial for your health. So this is what I'm really hoping from listening to all of this, is that you. I don't want you to feel stressed now about your stress. I don't want you to walk away from this feeling stressed. I really want for you to walk away from this knowing that you have a better understanding of how stress affects your body potentially and the things you can do to help to counterbalance that and to, you know, help your body to become resilient to stress or who you can contact to get more information about that, because it's so worth it. I mean, when we think of, you know, the major health conditions that affect us, everything from diabetes and cancer and heart disease and dementia. And, you know, these all have in the research, right? Even autoimmunity, the research says there's this underlying stress as a causative factor. And sometimes people even go to the doctor's office and the doctor's like, you know, sometimes the doctor is like, oh, well, everything in your lab work is normal, so you must be okay. But the person doesn't feel okay. Or the doctor says your health issues caused by stress. And out the door you go, and you're like, well, if everything's caused by stress, now what am I supposed to do? Because now I'm just stressed about my health and my stress.

Use your antidepressant, right?

Yeah. Now you need an antidepressant. Yeah. So to just know that there's a whole different way of thinking about this that allows us to actually solve it. And I know that that can seem too good to be true if you've been not feeling good for a long time. But what I can tell you is that it's possible. I see it all the time with my patients. And it just really helps to have someone to guide you on the path because otherwise, you know, you can do a bunch of searching and reading online, but ultimately it's a lot of information. And how, how could you get that experience already? It's much better to work with someone who has that experience to help guide you through so that you can more efficiently recover and get to where you want for your vision for your health sooner.

Awesome. Thank you, Dr. Donney, for coming on. What the health We've got all of your connections and contact information. Your stress book will be in the show notes. So tune in there, folks. What the health Dr. Greg Eckel. If you like today's show, please share it with your loved ones, your friends, your family, your community, because that is how we make the change we are looking for. So thanks for tuning in. We are here on the contact Talk radio from 2 to 3 Pacific Standard Time on Tuesdays. Thanks for showing up.