Your Anxiety is Trying to Help You by Dr. Nicole Cain

Welcome to Medical Myths, Legends, and Fairy Tales. I'm your host, Dr. Alan Christensen. Look, you know that between the latest online fads and the crazy media headlines, it's easier than ever to get confused about your health. You and I just want to feel better and live longer. We want to know what works, and we can't wait for further studies. We need to make decisions today based on the best evidence we've got. Well, that's exactly what this show is here for. So let's get to it. Hey, Dr. C. Here with you. Let's talk a bit about anxiety. This is a huge thing. You know, any given point in time, a person has about a 30% chance of having it be a big factor for them. And if you look at the span of someone's life, it's almost inevitable they'll have periods in which they're suffering from it. And I don't know. Most people, I think, fall into one or two categories. Some are aware of it, but they struggle to manage it, and others are not aware of it. And it may be managing them. It may be causing a lot of symptoms that they think are coming from other factors or making other conditions feel a lot worse. So I really wanted to bring more solutions, more understanding to this, and that's why I brought on Dr. Nicole Kane. She is a licensed clinical psychologist. She is a naturopathic physician, and she had some really cool insights to talk about anxiety. You know, one of which is what if we could flip it to where it wasn't the enemy, it was actually the friend? It was, like, helpful. You know, what if you could use anxiety to figure out what were the things that needed to be addressed and how to go about making things better? So we had a really enjoyable conversation. I got some things from it that I've not really heard otherwise. Got some good insights. I hope you find it useful as well. So please enjoy my talk with Dr. Nicole Cain. Hey, Nicole, good to be with you today.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah. This is a topic that I can think of few that are more important. This is just such a. Such a critical thing. So you have got this crazy, bold claim, and I want to just very briefly touch on that. We will go into it more detail. But so anxiety could actually be helpful. It could be your friend. Just give us a little bit about that.

Yes, anxiety is just like any other symptom that comes up, and its job is to tell you either that something needs healing or how to heal that something. And amazingly and even bolder, is that the way that you Experience your anxiety is data as to the way to heal it. And the more anxiety that you have oftentimes the better because more anxiety is more data.

Wow. I'm excited to get more deep into these details. Yeah, such an important topic. So a couple of things lay some groundwork here. So, anxiety, so I've heard, I think people have some general concepts of what that means. Funny thing is, I often hear people say the word anxious when they really mean excited. And it's kind of a glitch in language. But I also think there's a partial truth to that. I think they can almost feel similar in some ways. You know, I've heard that too too. So how would you best define anxiety? What do you think makes the most sense as a way to really bracket it?

Your nervous system is going to respond in fairly similar ways if you're anxious versus if you're agitated versus if you're excited. So what you're saying is super spot on with what we see in our studies of brain anatomy and physiology. And what's happening with your nervous system. And anxiety, in short, is when the nervous system becomes overwhelmed or over activated, which could be due to frustration or stress, then the body starts to produce symptoms, which gives us the data that something needs to be addressed or healed. So when it comes to anxiety specifically, I have something I created called the feelings diamond. And on the outside of the diamond you have all these things that we may resonate with. Like I feel overwhelmed, I feel frustrated, I feel palpitations in my heart. It's all these things that we dial in on and if we follow it into that core main human experience, we call it anxiety.

You know, I was a climber for a bunch of years. I guess I still am. But one of the first few times I was out with a guide and I was learning how to do it safely, properly and with equipment stuff. And I was, I don't know, a hundred some odd feet above him and doing my best to follow instruction, but very immersed in my own vertical world. There's a thing called sewing machine leg where your leg goes like you're on a whole sewing machine. So I was doing that and I was panicking and he couldn't. All he could see was like kind of my butt from way below. You couldn't really see a lot of like facial expression. But he knew what was going on. He was, oh, I think you're confusing fear and excitement right now.

Yes, yes.

So the funny thing is I thought about that and then I got my focus back and then I Finished what I was working on. And there was this phenomenal sense of euphoria. And it was this. The power was just like reframed or switched. So it was. Yeah, it was pretty incredible.

One of the biggest differences between fear and excitement is context. It's the way that we label that response. And especially when the context is coming from a physical reaction, when it's coming more from the brain stem or the limbic system as opposed to the logical brain. Right. So you're doing this incredibly exciting thing and your nervous system is producing adrenaline and it's producing cortisol and your blood pressure is rising. All these things that your body does when excited as well as what it does when it's nervous. And so that's an exactly brilliant answer in how we can use your logical brain to change the context of your experience of what's happening in your body.

Well, and you talked about some of the ways that this feels, and I want to come back and talk about how this can be different from person to person, the intensity of that. But before then, let's just talk a bit about some of these symptoms because I think some of the ones you mentioned most would think of, but. But yeah, there can be many and some may be a little less apparent. So. Yeah. What are your thoughts that way?

The thing I always tell my clients is that when it comes to the nervous system, that's driving a lot of the physical symptoms that we feel when we're overwhelmed or anxious or fearful. And so anything that your nervous system touches can respond to those signals. So I have people asking me questions. Everything, it's everything. Right. So really anything head to toe. So I get a lot of questions like, well, I feel numbness on the tip of my nose. Could that be anxiety? Absolutely. Your nerves go to the tip of your nose. Or someone will say, I have burning in my rhomboids. And could that be stress? Yes, absolutely. Your nerves go to your rhomboids. My heart is palpitating. Well, you have nerves that go into your heart. So anything head to toe can be a symptom of anxiety or stress or overwhelm. And what's neat about it, because we look at it from a more whole person perspective, is that that is then data as opposed to, yep, yes or no, you're anxious, or yes or no, you're in a state of autonomic arousal where your nervous system is dialed up. We say, yes, you are in that state. And then we put a comma at the end of the sentence and then we explore what is it trying to tell us.

So yeah, most any symptom, what are a couple symptoms that might be unexpected? There's some that I think people can get, they can resonate with. But what are some ones that someone would just say, yeah, but it can't be that I'm feeling this and therefore it couldn't be anxiety because it's this symptom. So what are some big ones that are real sticking points that really could be, but could be hard to be accepted as such?

Oftentimes anxiety can feel like a heart attack. And so when we think of emergency department admissions, a large percentage of cardiac admissions aren't heart attacks that they're actually a panic attack. And it can feel very similar. In fact, I did a whole blog on ways to try to figure out the difference between them. And so that pressure on your chest, that feeling of doom, you can even have the numbness and tingling radiating up into your jaw and both. And so that's one. A more zebra symptom that I've seen in two cases in the 10 plus years that I've been treating anxiety specifically is I've had two patients who've had blindness with anxiety.

Wow.

So we see that more in a conversion disorder which is where we can have neurological symptoms as a result of an activated sympathetic nervous anxiety ridden state. And again, anything that comes out of your nerves can be impacted, including your vision. I had a patient who was admitted to the ICU because she kept having seizures and they were doing the brain scans and it proved seizure activity, but they couldn't identify what it was. And after ruling out all sorts of other things, we got her in to do some EMDR trauma work and the seizures stopped going away. So the conclusion was that it was related to her emotional wellbeing and stress.

Wow. I want to hold on to this point and come back to it because this is like a really big thing. I think for the audience briefly, it seems that there are variations in how this is experienced from person to person and also within a person, perhaps at stages of their life or circumstances. So what are some differentiating factors that you think might be relevant that way?

And I want to make sure I understand your question so I can really answer it. And so differentiating different anxiety hits some.

People holder harder than others.

Uh huh. And so who's at a higher risk for getting.

What are some of the variables that might make someone have a more intense experience with that?

I think of it in three domains we have the mind, the body and the spirit. When we think about the three Domains if we're not supported on each of the three domains that can cause a tendency towards symptoms, we want to think of it in I'm a visual person. If we imagine a whiskey barrel and as we go through life, if stress is mounting, whether it's physical stress and we can go down and explore that more, or it could be emotional stress, trauma, right? And so that can accumulate and then we can have spiritual stress, that existential feeling connected to who you are, that non local consciousness, quantum physics stuff, right? So as those barrels are filling up in each of the three domains, that increases stress on that mind, body, spirit. And so the more stress that you have in each of your respective barrels, the more apt you may be to experience anxiety.

You know, in the term stress is one to where I think that people jump to a narrow definition. You know, there's a. I. I've written about this topic a bit before and yeah, often think about stress. We think about like there's someone on the road who's a jerk or that, you know, that the boss is unrealistic or my spouse won't listen, but it's hard to get past. And that's real. Those are big things, those can affect people. But yeah, you're talking about many broader definitions of that. It's a big point to keep in mind is that stress can be being too cold or hungry or being off on your sleep schedule or unsure about your purpose. All these factors. And yeah, I loved your saying how it's this cumulative amount that really matters. And it seems that it can be hard to distinguish one's capacity for resilience versus one's total load, but there's just some balance that way.

And yeah, I think of it as the humans that are more like a spider plant and then the humans that are more like an orchid. And so my mother can't keep plants alive for the life of her. The plant comes in green and happy and then inevitably a couple of weeks later, the poor thing is brought out, branded brown and wiltered and thrown in the trash. Right. And so the one plant that has survived is this spider plant. And this thing has been around longer than I have. And it will go through periods of rain and flood, AKA she over waters it, or through periods of drought, she completely forgets it's there and that thing will survive. And some people have that type of tenacity where they can endure significant amounts of stress on each of those three domains and yet they can still thrive and they don't experience it the same way. And then there are Other people that have more of an orchid constitution. You know, it's like one ice cube once a week. Don't overwater, don't underwater. Talk nicely to it, and it will grow. And so when I think about that, in naturopathy, we'll use the term vital resilience. And so what is your level of vitality being fully alive, and what is your resilience, your ability to withstand stress? And some of us have spider plants and some of us are more orchids.

It's funny. I read a fiction book recently, and it was taking place in rural Ireland, and this person was seeing these cattle outside, and it was a horrible weather day. It was just cold and raining and damp. And he was pondering as to whether the cattle had if they were just indifferent to suffering or if they had more tenacity. And I realize there's. You can't distinguish that at some point, you know, someone is just really. Maybe they're oblivious or maybe they're just tough or how you know that difference. And ultimately, I guess there's not really a meaningful distinction to draw there. But that's an interesting thing to ponder.

They've tried to figure that out. For example, in the research of highly sensitive persons, they found that there are three specific neurochemical changes. So there's a mutation on the serotonin, where there's lower levels of serotonin, which can increase a person's level of sensitivity. And they may be really responsive to SSRI antidepressants, but then they're more sensitive. And then we have elevations in norepinephrine, which for your listeners, norepinephrine is that run from the tiger neurochemical. And so these people tend to be more orchidy. They tend to be more easily activated and more sensitive and attuned. And then we have a mutation in dopamine, which may result in overstimulation. Like if maybe doc, if you go to a club and there's flashing lights and music and you're like, yeah, I'm getting this dopamine. I feel great. And then I'm over in the corner with my earplugs and I'm like, oh, this is so stimulating. We don't get that same dopamine high. So they've tried in research to figure out, like, what is that? What's going on with that cow in that field?

So I'm laughing because I've been to clubs. Probably I could count on one hand my life. And probably four of them were when my wife and I were first dating. And she wanted to go to clubs. And she had. Her grandma was this phenomenal woman who survived internment camps during World War II. And she was. And she had no hostility towards her captor. She was this cool lady. And so, yeah, my wife wanted to go to clubs. I'm like, can we just go hang out with your grandma and talk to your grandma? That was my speed.

Yeah. So you may. You may be more of a highly sensitive person. You don't get that dopamine rush, though, maybe the way your wife does. I would be hanging out with you and your grandmother.

So. Symptoms of anxiety. We've touched on this before about how pretty much anywhere, all sorts of things. So a big conundrum is that people get into a state at which these things, they can exactly mimic other health conditions. And there are so many scenarios when people have undiagnosed issues. They're symptomatic for reasons that are not anxiety, that are disease states, changes the body that are distinct from that and that just lack treatment. And people can often go to multiple practitioners, not get good answers. And at some point, perhaps they can. They're better. So it's a real scenario. But then there are also so many people to where they're. They're anxious, you know, they're suffering from that. And these symptoms feel they are. There's. My understanding is there's no measurable difference between a symptom that's generated from. As far as what's occurring in the brain. There's no significant difference between the difference generated from anxiety or generated from coming out from the body. And then people will keep trying to find solutions and in some cases, even strongly resist the idea that anxiety could be part of a culprit. So, yeah, just love your thoughts and just talk through this one a bit.

Yeah, I so appreciate this question, and I so appreciate that you're aware of this, because I've run into so many beautiful humans who have been told, oh, it's just anxiety. In fact, I'll tell you a story about a friend of mine. She's a psychotherapist. She does mental health counseling, and her whole jam is helping young women with anxiety. That's her passion. That's her. What sets her soul on fire. And she was coming into my office at the end of the day and sitting down with me, and she's like, nicole, I just feel like my office is overheated. I just can't handle it. I get claustrophobic easily. And my patients have really been activating my anxiety. What's going on? And I Was like, well, girl, you got to go see your doctor, make sure everything's okay. So she did. She went to her doctor, and her doctor's, yeah, I think you're anxious. And they gave her a prescription for a benzodiazepine. She was given Xanax. And the job of these medications is to try to calm the nervous system by activating a nerve neurotransmitter called gaba. So she comes in to see me. She's hanging out on my couch, and she's just a little bit zombied out, but she's still anxious. Her heart is palpitating. She's like, I know you're not my doctor, but could you just listen to my heart? Absolutely. So I listened to her heart, and her heart rate was really fast, which is quite surprising since she was on the Xanax. Her body temperature is really fast. I was like, I think there's something else going on. It could be anxiety, but I just. I just feel like your doctor might have missed something. Did they test your thyroid? Did they test your blood work? Yeah, you are spot on. So it turns out she had Graves disease, and she was moving her way into a thyrotoxic storm. And so I think it's really important, if you're listening to this podcast, if you deal with feelings of stress or overwhelm, is make sure that you have a doctor who will listen to you and who will do the appropriate lab work. Because it is so easy to just say, oh, it's all in your head. Oh, it's just anxiety, or you're stressed, or you need to take some time off work because your anxiety is trying to tell you something. She was going into a thyrotoxic storm, and thank goodness she had symptoms for that so that we could figure them out. We could look and say, okay, heat intolerance, heart palpitations, anxiety, not responsive to a benzodiazepine. Thank goodness we had those symptoms and we were able to catch it. Right. And so I really respect, Doc that you're thinking about that. And then there are scenarios where people have done the spray and pray testing. They've spent thousands of dollars on tests. They've gone to all these wonderful, well intended, functional medicine doctors, and no one's talking about the cycrum. And in fact, I have a right now, who's going. I believe who's going through that is she spent over $50,000 on diagnostic testing, and she has a lot of neurological symptoms. And it really seems to me like it could be a conversion disorder. We talked about that a couple minutes ago. Where your neurological symptoms can develop as a result of stress and anxiety. And she's been doing this for three years now. And no one once has asked her about her level of stress. No one has once asked her about emotional experience and what's been going on. And she lost her dad two and a half years ago. Wow. And so I think that it's really important to have a great doctor on board who can help you gauge that. Because as a, as a consumer, how could you possibly know? Because like you said, doc, is that your symptoms, symptoms of a heart attack can be almost identical to symptoms of a panic attack. So how are you supposed to know if you don't have an expert in your corner helping you?

Well, and couple of thoughts about that. So there's, there's a couple of, couple of pitfalls on both sides of this road. You know, one pitfall in that first scenario, thank goodness that you caught your friends graves. I mean, that could have been horrible otherwise. The other pitfall, though, is you kind of alluded to that in this other, the second, the second vignette you shared with us. And you talked about spray and pray testing. So to expand on that. So people think something's wrong. They have no clue what it is. They test everything. And brief, brief, brief, soapbox. This is something that I, when I trained doctors to try to discourage them to do from doing it. Seems like the better testing would always be the most thorough. But the difficulty is that I want to just give a quick example. There used to be these centers all over the place that would do CTs and MRIs as cancer screens. Ameriscan, one company was called, and they folded because it was found out that basically everyone's got lumps and bumps, you know, and 99.9% of our lumps and bumps are meaningless. But if you identify every lump and bump, you can't. You've got to follow through. You've got to. Then more scans, perhaps biopsy, perhaps more tests. And what they found is that when you spray, when you spray, spray and pray, I think that was the phrase used when you check too much stuff, there's more harm than there is benefit. And we see this in medicine with over screening. There's times at which, you know, sometimes breast cancer screening, sometimes prostate cancer screening, there can be more harm from the screening than from ignoring when it's appropriate. And that's counterintuitive. But unless the doctor really has some valid suspicions, the more random things you screen for, every single test you add on increases the likelihood of finding meaningless results. And not only can it be harmful to follow up on some of those, but it can also give someone delays and give them short term false hope. That's not helpful. That sets them back further. So yeah, it's a real delicate balance there.

Oh, it's hard to find that balance. And I really want to emphasize and piggyback on that, that comment of hope, because we've studied in medicine the placebo effect and the power of placebo, but there's also something called a nocebo. And I think hope really plays into that. One of my favorite authors, his name is Jerome Groatman and he wrote a book about the anatomy of hope. And I think that you're really speaking a lot of truth in that. Over testing, getting over results can be very negatively psychologically impactful. And Jerome Grotman talks about this where when somebody receives a diagnosis, oftentimes if it's a terminal diagnosis, they will decline very, very quickly as opposed to those who do not. And so I think there's a lot of value why I always circle back to making sure you have a great doctor on board. Somebody was able to help you kind of zero in. Thank goodness my friend was able to get her thyroid tested. That was absolutely helpful. And that data enabled us to treat. Why didn't treat her? Her doctors were like, holy moly. And they treated her right. But they were able to get the data they needed to treat her. So I always want to say, okay, would this change your treatment? And if it would, in what way? And what kind of value would this add? I think that's really profound, is like, okay, well, what is our bullseye? What are we trying to achieve? And how can we reverse engineer our way there with respect to those three foundations of health, that mind, body, spirit.

One more little layer to that I see a cycle people go through to where it seems difficult to ever call hope false. But the difficulty is when it's not valid. And the placebo you mentioned there often is like a honeymoon phase to where there's some level of improvement, even if it's not really the core issue. Someone at least is happy enough that there's an explanation. And that by itself can benefit some symptoms for a while, not lasting, not permanent. But then a person hits a state at where it's just inescapable that that wasn't it and they're still not feeling well. And the more times that cycle gets repeated, the more frustrated they get, justifiably so, the more jaded they get about the Whole process, and the less reserve and joy they have to bring forth to what really could be useful. So, yeah, that's more of the drawback.

Absolutely. Yeah. I think that you raise a really important point. And so as doctors, if we have somebody who comes to us and they've been through doctor after doctor after doctor, I think that it's really important to be sensitive to exactly what you said.

Well, it's tricky, too, because people can have symptoms that can be caused by certain conditions, and they can have that condition, but it may not be the cause of the symptom. You know, someone could be tired from. They could be tired and their thyroid could be low, but that might not be the culprit. So I think that when a doctor does well, it's best to really say, hey, look, this can be a factor. Let's see how you do. Let's address this and take care of this particular thing, make sure there's nothing else. But, yeah, it's a real art to at some point say, well, we have looked for all the causes, like the gal in the second vignette. We have looked at things pretty thoroughly. And now this can also be a factor. This neurologic, this conversion, this anxiety, everyone to label that. And the tricky part is, I think oftentimes people have gone through enough cycles of false hope, of frustration that. And I think early in their journey, there were many doctors that were too quick to bring that up. So where they're left is a state in which that's not something they're receptive to. They're often quite resistant to that idea. So. Yeah. How do you approach that? Then?

I actually meet them where they are. There's this Olympic sport. It's called curling. Are you familiar with it?

From northern Minnesota. So my hometown is like, we've got, like, all these Olympic curling trial places.

I saw this Dr. Christensen, I saw this video on YouTube that was. It was a moment in curling history, and it has forever been burned in my brain. And I teach about this now because it's burned in my brain, so I feel the need to burn it into everyone else's brains. This is how I approach patient hope. And patient care is I am the curler. And so in curling, for those who have not seen seen, it is you have a few teammates. We first have the person pushing, and it's kind of like you have a stick and a puck, right? And so you push it, and then you have two people that are just in front of the puck, and they're doing this, like, scrapy scrape. Action because they're scraping off the top of the eyes so that the puck can slide more quickly and in the direction that you want. Right. Am I getting this right so far?

You know, listeners, if you have no clue what we're talking about, you owe it to yourself to Google. It's the most bizarre looking thing. Basically, it's shuffleboard with a massive heavy weight on ice and there's two guys running around with brooms sweeping the ice in front of the big puck.

Yeah. And the video that I saw, she was like screaming, she was so into this. She's like, go. And I just laughed. But this is such a good psychological tip is our job as doctors and healers are to be the ones with the brooms. Right. We want to be just where the patient is, just ahead of where they are. Because if I'm behind them and I'm just standing back there screaming at the puck, sliding, it's not going to be valuable. Right. Or if I'm way too ahead and I sweep too far ahead and the puck hasn't gotten there. The puck being the patient. Right. If you haven't gotten there yet, you're going to slow down on all that friction that just created itself again after I swept and it was too far ahead. So we want to be right where that person is in that moment. I'd love to share a story with you if that's okay.

Please.

I have this brilliant client that I work with in Seoul, in Korea, and he has a lot of anxiety and tons of stomach stuff. So he and I are working on the mental emotional piece. We're doing the anxiety thing. That's my jam. I love that. And he's a local doctor that's trying to figure out his gut. And I'm like, well, they're probably related, but you do the diagnostic workup. Your doctor wants to do that. So they found that he had H. Pylori and they put him on a killing protocol. And so we're doing all this ego state, wonderful mind, body work. And he's on this killing protocol. Now he's having a detox reaction and feeling kind of lousy. And then once he's done with that protocol, the stomach pain is still there. He retests H. Pylori is gone, but the stomach pain is still there. And I was like, would you be willing to do something a little goofy with me? And he, he said, yes. And so I was like, okay, we are going to do an ego state session on the stomach pain. And to tell your listeners, ego state is a form of trauma informed therapy and modalities that use it would be internal family systems or ifs. Emdr, which stands for I movement and desensitization and reprocessing. And then we have ego state. So these kind of three trauma informed modalities work together. And the central tenet is that we have parts of ourselves that may be holding onto emotional or physical experiences. There's tons of great research behind it, and it really works. And so I was like, let's try this. And so what we did is we noticed the pain in the gut and he closed his eyes and I had him, because he's over in Seoul, I had him tapping on his shoulders, which can reproduce that bilateral stimulation that we see is so important in emdr. And, and he starts to notice the gut. And what ends up happening is that he goes into a younger self. When he first remembered having that gut pain, he was a little guy. And that little guy didn't know English. And so he's talking to me in English. And then as we get deeper into the EMDR state is he can't speak English. And so we have to in, in the therapeutic, we create Korean. I don't, I don't speak Korean. So we had to bring in a translator into the meeting place. So I was like, okay, invite your adult self in and I need you to translate and tell, tell me what's going on. So we had his little self, who's eight, and then we had his present self and then we had me, and we were on the meeting place and the little part told us about a really scary thing that happened and he got stomach upset at that moment. So we process through that and there's a whole process that we do for ego state work. And when he came out of it, his stomach was so much better. He's like a little bit nauseous because a lot of stuff stirred up a little bit nauseous, but the pain wasn't there. And we checked in in a week, the nausea was gone and the pain was gone. We checked in a month, the pain was still gone. And I talked to him just a month ago and the pain was still gone. And so could it have been delayed antibiotic treatment of the H. Pylori? Maybe. Could it have been that there was a mind body link that we never would have guessed, like you said, doc, is that you could, yes, have H. Pylori. H. Pylori can cause stomach pain, but so could something else be causing your stomach pain? It's not necessarily the H. Pylori. So Long story short.

That'S pretty incredible. And I think this really is just, I don't know, I want the listeners to think through this and think out how, how central this is to so many facets of health. As I've considered about just, you know, the whole nature of how the body works, how disease processes work. I'll get your feedback on this. I can think of two things that are more relevant. I'm sorry, let's put aside physical trauma, like I were to go out and not look which way I'm going when I cross the road. I mean there's stuff like that and there's infectious disease, so mostly things like that. And then like all the non infectious, non communicable chronic disease. I'll put that over here. And it seems that almost all that is influenced by two factors more than anything else. And one of them would, I would argue would be the formation of adipokines, you know, these inflammatory compounds from organ fats, not even visceral fat, but the fat in the organs. And those things drive any symptom you can imagine. I see so much of that, you know, just if any, if someone is just a few pounds above target, that by itself is a diagnosis, that by itself is a cause of fatigue, of chronic pain, of brain fog, of like all these symptoms, of depression. I mean it drives things by itself. But then the other one, and I'd like to hear your best terminology for bucketing this. So just the chronic stress load that I call that hpad, hypothalamic pituitary adrenal dysfunction, those two things, when the body has the appropriate fuel balance and the body can manage its fuel well, and when the body has appropriate resilience for stressors in the big sense, when those two things are right, I think that almost all that non communicable disease just wouldn't happen or could get better. But yeah. Just your thoughts on that.

Yeah. And I wonder if this would fall into the bucket or if we would have to add a third to that. As I'm thinking about the, the research into RNA and there's in fact I have it printed here because I wanted to share this with you. And the article is published in a leading medical journal, it's by Andrew Curry and it's patient's emotional trauma may change their children's biology. What this research is showing is that when our ancestors, and it could be up to 80 generations by the way, and this is like 80 generations ago, would bring us to King Arthur. So your, your ancestors in the time of King Arthur and the stress that they endured. And so the way that their bodies then adapted to that stress by making RNA proteins and then those RNA proteins can be passed down 80 generations.

What we know right now, that's not a separate why. That's a how. That's a how, right? Yeah. That's not a different why. There's lots of hows we could talk through about this, but I only see a couple of whys. And even those two whys, if you think through, there's obviously ways they can be interconnected, that one of those can influence the other in terms of just. Yeah, behavior, stress, eating, satiety, things along those lines. They can certainly have a lot of overlap. But I really, I can't find any two bigger whys than those two that explains so much of the rest of it.

Yeah, because they underpin everything else you're familiar with.

The ace. The ACE scores work, I'm imagine probably more so than me even.

Yeah. The adverse of childhood events studies by the CDC and Kaiser Permanente.

Yeah. So much data about early experiences, even within one span, you're talking about many lifespans being relevant. But yeah, we see this, that our experiences from the past shape how we respond to things in the future. But yeah, I think these are the core drivers and if we can in some way get a better handle on that. So we've been going all around this, but let's just go deeper into your premise about some high level ideas. We can't unveil all of your work and all the things you do one on one effectively in the course of a quick discussion, but just for the listeners to get a taste of things and maybe something they could be useful on their own, let's just talk through this way in which they could have anxiety be helpful for, for them.

So when you have anxiety, the most important thing to ask is, okay, what is my anxiety trying to tell me? And I've developed a way to do this in three minutes or less because I don't know about you, but you're really busy, you're seeing clients, you're helping people, you're podcasting. And if you're a listener and you have a 9 to 5 job, or if you have kids at home, if you don't have the time to sit down and do an ego state session like I was just talking about, you need to be able to find answers and solutions really quickly. And so there's a. And it's called the 3 Minute Hack and it's free and I can give that to you. And what you want to do is you want to get data from the anxiety. So, for example, maybe you're about to do a public speak, maybe you're an entrepreneur and you have this really big speech coming up and you're feeling really anxious about it. The normal medical model is to focus on your logical brain and talk about why you are well equipped, why you don't have it, why you're not an imposter, why you are competent and capable of doing this, and you can logically do that. And for some people, that works if the anxiety and overwhelms coming from logic, but oftentimes it's deeper. And so we want to go down and ask, what is my anxiety trying to tell me? And it may be that your whiskey barrel is full and that your nervous system is already amplified. So let's say that that's the case. Like, all your logic is on board. You're like, I got this. I'm going to do great. I'm an entrepreneur. I have value. I'm going to blow them out of the water. But why won't my heart start palpitating? And why am I having diarrhea before going on stage? Right? And so then we say, okay, my barrel is full. I don't know if it's physical, if it's spiritual, or if it's mental, emotional. So then what we want to do is, we want to do what's called a pattern interrupt, where we take that data from the anxiety and we're like, okay, thank you for telling me. I hear you. I've got you. And we're going to explore this later. So that your anxiety isn't running the show, that you are running the show, that your anxiety isn't center stage, but rather in the wings, just saying, hey, FYI, hey, your barrel's a little bit full, so you can put it in the side. We'll do a pattern interrupt, and then you can go back to that later. And when you go back to that, you can start to explore, I call it force field strategies. What are the things that keep me safe physically? I'm taking my supplements, I'm going. And I'm riding a unicycle in the mountains. That was the nod to our doc here, right? And then what am I doing emotionally? Am I doing my trauma work? Am I connecting with people that I love? Am I feeling that connection? Or does it feel very superficial? Are my emotional needs being met? And then spiritually, what am I doing for my spiritual practice? Is there an unmet need there? Is there Just continuity. Is there spiritual sanctuary, trauma there that needs worked out so that you have the opportunity to go in and figure out what your anxiety was doing so that it doesn't just keep coming up. Right. And so then in the moment to do a pattern interrupt, what we do is we want to stimulate your brainstem, because in those moments when anxiety is amplified, your body is producing all the same neurochemicals that it would be producing if you were in literal danger running from a hungry bear in caveman days. When that happens, we see that your logical brain, the prefrontal cortex, is turned down. There's less activity, so logic might not work. And we see that your amygdala, your limbic system, your emotional brain, that. That's turned way up so everything feels bigger. And then your brainstem is producing all these symptoms, like you were talking about the sewing machine leg. Right? Right. So all these physical symptoms. And so we have to speak to the brainstem. Your brainstem will respond to things like taste and touch and smell and sleep seen. So if you're in that moment, you have to speak to your brainstem. And I love making a brainstem stimulating panic pack. And a panic pack, I put mine in a glittery fanny pack, and inside of that I have a bubble wand and a straw cut in half, a plastic straw, and there's theanine. Right. And kava kava. And there's essential oils, and there's headphones, earplugs, and there's different textured stones, like a smooth worry stone. There's a hard stone. There's ice packs. So you know those chemical packs on Amazon that you can take them camping? So that's there. And so then what you do is you learn. And I can teach you. You learn to use the panic pack to activate your nervous system so that you can do a pattern interrupt. Because otherwise you're going to just be stuck in this loop because your body's like, yep, you're in danger. So you acknowledge it, you honor it, you put it in the side so that you can deal with when you want. And then you stimulate the brainstem with your panic pack. So it's kind of like a once over.

No, that's really cool. You know, and the concept that it made me think of, too, that I love your feedback on. I heard someone really talk about the distinction between even just having the anxiety as itself and letting it be what it is, versus then becoming anxious about the anxiety and about then elevating that way. So, yeah, ways to break it from getting that next level and becoming a.

Feedback loop and remembering, because anxiety feels inherently dangerous. And to know that your anxiety isn't harmful, that your anxiety isn't dangerous, that your anxiety cannot hurt you. And so you were talking earlier, Alan, about resisting versus receiving. And we see in the clinical literature that if we resist our anxiety, it will persist. What we deny. Right. Will amplify. Right? So by trying to suppress it, by saying, oh, my gosh, I'm anxious, I'm anxious. Take all the kava kava, take all the theanine, just try to suppress it. That it will likely get louder and louder because your body wants to heal. If you're unicycling through the mountains and you fall and you scratch your knee, your body is going to heal that, because your body is designed to heal. And just like if your barrels are full and your nervous system is out of balance, your body wants to heal that. And one of the ways that your anxiety is your friend is by producing these symptoms so that you can acknowledge and then start to heal. Right. So I think that you're really wise in how you say resisting versus receiving. And if I'm allowing myself to choose to like, okay, I'm going to receive those messages now. I put you on hold before that big speech. Now we're going to go back and we're going to revisit it. And I choose to receive that and I'm going to help my body heal. I think that's really the stuff of anxiety.

That's pretty powerful. So, yeah. To recap some points for some people, I like the discussion about the balancing act where you can't assume that it's anxiety and you also can't assume it's not anxiety. I think that. I don't know, our minds really loathe being in a state of unknowing and will quickly grasp and anchor onto an answer, even if it's not the best answer. And it's. I think when you're on your health journey, it's like anything else. One of my favorite things to study and think about is epistemology, like the study of knowledge, like, how do we know what we know? And as we think about that, it's important to consider, you know, am I attached to a conclusion or am I attached to an outcome? If the real important thing is to feel better, don't get attached to a conclusion along the way. The conclusions are only as good as how far they take you. You know, if a conclusion is not taking where you want to go, ditch it, let it go and be Receptive to a new one.

You know, certainty. Certainty feels safer than uncertainty. And so it's like you're saying we want to grab on. So, okay, this is what it is. Dr. Kane said that it's not a heart attack, that it's anxiety, but don't hold on to that could be a heart attack. Right. So, yeah, I just wanted to emphasize that you said that.

Well, and part of the thing, too, is that we have a cultural stigma. There was a book called Erewhon. Have you heard of that or.

Yes, okay. Yes.

So the name was nowhere backward. And to the listeners, it was a written some time back, but a person was on this journey through, I think it was the English countryside, and he stumbled across this odd village. He was lost. The village was Erewhon. And the bizarre thing about this village is that, you know, we had this idea about physical illness being no one's fault. You're not considered immoral if you have diabetes or if you got a broken arm or something, but you could be if you were substance abuse. And so in this culture, those things were reversed. The valences were opposite. So people that had physical illness, they were ashamed of that, and they would hide that. They would say, oh, no, it's not. It's actually just my drinking habits that are causing it. That was okay. Or the things that we consider shameful or bad mental, emotional symptoms, you know, they were. They were fine with that, but they were completely ashamed and withdrawn and reticent to come forth about physical illness. You know, so there's all these stories of this wanderer encountering people and just understanding their culture and seeing it and realizing how really arbitrary our views are on those things. And now we have so much judgment about, easily about mental symptoms, you know, mental health issues, when ultimately, if we think it through, there's no rational reason for it to be there.

Right. And as an ego state lover, the question that I would always want to know is, you know, it's like, go deeper. It's like, okay, what part of you feels that a mental, let's say, anxiety, Right? What part of you feels that anxiety is shameful? And where did that come from? And if we look at that part, what is that part trying to achieve for you? Because what is that part afraid of? Because if that part isn't trying to achieve this thing for you by making anxiety shameful, what might happen to you and then following that down that rabbit hole to really see what the root need or unmet need is? And I think that part of what you're Speaking of is really a systemic illness because we know we're speaking about the individual person, but the individual person is kind of like saying it's like a thyroid cell in a human body. And so if we start to look at what systemically, how are we benefiting as a society from shaming mental health or stigmatizing mental health? And I think that is the big question that we as integrative experts should be asking and trying to find the answers to is in what way is society benefiting? And I have all sorts of theories, if you will, about that, but I think it's a really important question because that's going to change what we do.

Well, and benefits can be localized or they can be globalized. I'm sure there are some localized ways in which the status quo serves elements of the status quo. But in a bigger sense, I can't imagine that society is benefiting by having people in more suffering than they need to be.

Yeah, yeah. I would love to see that pattern changed. Maybe let's meet in the middle between, you know, Erewhon and where we are right now. And it's like it's all attunement of your vital resiliency. That's all that it is. Your body is out of tune. It's out of balance. It's like the threefold constitution of man by Lynn Lar, Henry Lynn Lar, you know, springs us way back, right. It's like if you're. If the music coming out of the violin is really yucky and it's not good, well, it could be the violin. It could be the way the person players feeling or the player's competency. It's like, what is that? And how do we get to the root of making it better?

Yeah, that's great. So someone who's hearing this, I just want to make a couple of requests, one of which is that they entertain that this could be part of their symptoms. You know, they. They could have thyroid disease. They could have any number of very real things, and those things should be identified. And if there are undiagnosed problems, those should be found. And people can definitely pursue that. And at the same time, some mixture of what's keeping their whiskey barrel from being full of, you know, could be stressors, could be anxiety, however you want to best categorize that. So resources toward that. You can always just hear this free recording again, get some ideas about the pattern interrupt about some of the things in the panic packet. Was that the right phrase?

Yeah, your panic pack.

Cool. Panic pack. Okay. You know you can stock up your own panic pack and think about some things that could go inside of that. And you talked about things you do in more depth, one on one. Give us a sense about some other resources people might not know they have access to or things they could look forward to for assistance that you might offer.

I have a ton of free gifts if you go to Instagram, if you're an Instagrammer. I'm at Dr. Nicole Caine and I have the three minute hack which we talked about, which is totally free and it will teach you. So when anxiety is coming up, I'll teach you how to deal with it in three minutes or less. What is it? What is it asking? How do you solve that? So it's a three minute hack. I also have a wellness springboard that you can get to which talks about what the really successful people in the world are doing to be successful in terms of mental care, emotional care and spiritual care. So it's a beautiful one sheet for that. I do weekly Instagram lives and I reply to every comment and every dm and so if you're looking for support, we are here to do that. I also have a Facebook group that's a private group, so if you don't want it out there in the big public IG world, we have a private Facebook group and these are all free resources that are found at my Instagram.

And you do direct work people as well right now it sounds like you.

Tell us on a limited basis.

Limited basis.

So we have a client application and I'm really passionate about helping people who are ready to do the work to get to the root cause. I don't do a bunch of spray and pray testing and I don't follow the insurance model. And so it's a cash based, very limited practice. But if this feels like a really good fit, then absolutely can fill out an application at my website, Dr.nicolecane.com okay.

And we're going to get links to all these resources up for people. So that's just great to know that's out there. Dr. Nicole, this has been awesome to talk more in depth and connect and share your time with people and love to be back and have further related discussions.

Thank you. I'd love to. When we get together next time is you and I, we're just chatting about health anxiety. Yeah, I think that would be a really powerful conversation to have. Is like you were saying is that anxiety can amplify anxiety and then we get fear of the fear and it's like what do we do in that.

Yeah.

So thank you for having me. It's been really an honor.

All right. Thanks, everyone, for being with us. Dr. C signing off. And we'll see you again real soon for more medical myths, legends, and fairy Tales. Goodbye. Hey, Dr. Christensen.

Here.

Thanks so much for joining me for another episode. Is there a time topic you'd like me to cover? I'd love to hear from you. Just go to Dr. Alan Christiansen on Facebook or Instagram, write your question, and use the hashtag medicalmyths. Did you find this show helpful? If so, please take a minute. Leave us a rating on itunes so that others can know. Thanks much. I'll be back with you real soon. Bye. Bye.