What’s Making You Sick? Understanding the Causes

Hi, everybody. I'm Dr. Sandhya Moldovan, periodontist and nutritionist. Welcome to the Holistic Dentistry Podcast, the show that gives you the tips and tools to detoxify your mouth for a healthier body as we explore together the root cause of disease. Remember, you're not healthy until your mouth is healthy, so take care of it in the most natural way.

Hi, everyone.

Welcome to today's show. We're going to uncover why do you feel sick? What are the causes? So with me today, I'm very excited to have my friend and colleague, Dr. Shilpa Sayana.

Welcome. Thank you so much for having me again. Yes. Excited to be here.

Yes, I'm excited that you're here. You own Cyana Medical and Wellness in Sherman Oaks. That is correct right now on location. But I'm sure there's more to come because more people need functional medicine completely.

You know, when I started Siena Medical 10 years ago, the functional medicine was not very known, but now there's much more awareness and there's hope. Unfortunately, in traditional medicine, we just don't test enough. We don't look deep enough as to why people are truly sick.

Yes, exactly. So with that, I want to talk about your programs, because I think it's so genius that you did this. I know one of your missions is to spread functional medicine to as many people as possible.

Correct. We really are trying to disrupt medicine and making functional medicine more accessible. So what happens a lot of times is you have to see a provider. You have to assess you and then decide what tests you need. However, we are kind of told patients, whoever, if you are curious as to why you may be sick, and especially if conventional medicine is saying all your labs are normal, however, you're exhausted and you wake up each day saying each day is a chore and you can't stay sleeping through the night, or you look at your closet and nothing really fits you anymore. Then it's like, why am I feeling this way? And you may go to your primary care doctor, and they're like, all your labs look normal, but the sense of normal is very wide. First of all, if you look at a blood work and traditional medicine, the blood work may look normal but isn't optimal. That's what functional medicine is. Optimizing what's good and minimizing what's not. Yeah.

That's why I only work with functional medicine with my patients, because it's so important. Oral health with overall health, to make sure that you know that your doctor and dentist are on the same page and they Collaborate together. And for those of you that didn't hear you on your last podcast episode, did an episode on how functional medicine fits with biological dentistry and some of our patients that we have in common. You cannot be healthy until your mouth is healthy. And the other way around, I cannot get your mouth healthy until somebody's healthy. Like you mentioned, somebody with a chronic fatigue, if they're fatigued, I can't treat the mouth, have it be pristine, or if they have gut inflammation, their gums are going to be inflamed, so.

Exactly. I think the biggest challenge we see is when we look deeper. Think of an iceberg in the ocean, and the tip of the iceberg that's peeking out of the water is what really regular medicine does. You go in for your physical once a year, we check your kidney, complete blood count and cholesterol, and say it's good. But the big chunk of that ice underneath the ocean is really where your hormones are, which your inflammation is, where your gut health is, where your epigenetics is. So a big challenge we have in balancing hormones is high levels of mercury. And mercury mimics hormones, it causes inflammation, it impacts how fast you digest, and it's very difficult to get rid of the mercury if you have the silver fillings, if you have amalgams. And so for those kind of patients, which is actually so many people had hidden mercury toxicity and just don't know about it.

Yeah, absolutely. And actually a lot of people don't know that it can impact their hormones.

Correct. And so mercury seems to mimic more, is more estrogenic, and so it can be a hidden cause of resistance. Weight gain can be a hidden cause of insomnia, hair loss, as well as just like a loss of vitality. So it's really important to look deeper as to what's causing your hormonal imbalances and treat that. And just by treating that one thing in that puzzle, everything else will get better.

Yeah, absolutely. And let's talk a little bit about your background, because you had functional medicine to start off with, right?

No, I wasn't. So I am an internist by training. And how I even got there was working. I grew up in Southern Africa, which had a lot of hiv, HIV pandemic at the time of my teenage years. And at that time I was like, I really want to do HIV medicine. Went full force into that, traveled globally. But then I was doing a lot. I had many, many hacks. I was working as a full time clinician here in LA with HIV patients. I was traveling globally, teaching Other practitioners how to treat hiv. And at the same time, I was a wife, a mom to an 18 month old and a daughter to aging parents. And I was like myself. I was burning out, running on the treadmill, trying to keep all these balls in the air and got sick myself. And that's when I discovered root cause medicine, which is functional medicine. And it's completely changed my life, lifes of my family and friends. Because it's about really listening as to why and addressing that, then just giving people a prescription and if they have a side effect of the prescription, giving them another prescription for the side effects.

So go a little bit deeper into that story and what exactly happened?

Yeah, so what exactly happened at the time I remember, I'll never forget the time when I was about 34 years old and I was waiting for the results that would determine if I would see my daughter turn four. Well, it was a very scary time. I realized how lonely medicine can be on the other side as a patient, because when I was doing one of my travels, I noticed I had a lump in my neck. And I was like, what is that? And given my travel, a lot of people were concerned. It was like an infectious disease process, could have gone to many developing countries or it was some sort of gastric cancer. And getting the biopsy and waiting for the biopsy, I realized that patients, really people, humans, need to partner with a doctor at the time of these uncertain, uncertain episodes throughout our life, which I'm sure we all have. And it's important to partner with somebody who's compassionate, who understands where you're coming from. It can also give you hope. I feel a lot of medicine right now can be hopeless in terms of why you're going through this. We don't know, but our labs are normal.

Did your doctor give you hope at the time?

No, actually my doctors and my colleagues were like, this could be cancer. And it was, it was.

They left you with that?

And they left me with that. Wow. I remember having sleepless nights. I was sweating, thinking like, why am I sweating at night? Is this lymphoma? It's actually just high cortisol looking back at it. And I just couldn't stay sleeping. So I had a young child. Was I going to live to see her get older? And after going through this experience, I was like, I am going to make sure that my patients never have to do face whatever they have to face alone. Yeah. And then having functional medicine has really opened my mind and given me so many more tools to really get them.

To optimal health so now I'm sure everybody listening is really curious. How did this, you know, continue with the show notes?

Yes. So my tumor ended up to be benign, which I'm so grateful for. But it's a reminder to me that I need to have balance. Like, it's sitting there right on top of this big vessel that feeds my brain in terms of blood, and it can grow at any time, but I feel like monitoring it regularly reminds me that, am I taking time to support my own cortisol, my stress hormones, Am I taking time to balance my own life? And so I have to keep checking it, but I'm so grateful that it's actually shrunk and hasn't.

Well, so it's your reminder of balance, of life.

Completely. And that's why I chose that it wasn't something that could be taken out. Kind of sit there and remind me, as I try to remind my patients, I was like, it's not worth it. I feel like so many people feel like they wake up in the morning, they run on the treadmill sometimes, maybe they go to the gym sometimes they don't. They go to work, they come back, they pick up their kids, they make dinner and repeat, go to bed and rinse and repeat. And there's no, like, joy in life, and there's no balance by really having a reminder of why, you know, why are we doing this? And so much of it is unconscious exposures in terms of toxic burden. And mercury is the number one toxin that we see in our practice. And so it's important for patients to actually find a holistic dentist and want to work with someone like that, because a lot of times traditional dentists don't even think it's an issue. And then I don't remove them. They're in there. And I was like, I can't do a detox without you. All the silver shining in your mouth.

Exactly. And, you know, the problem is some of those dentists saying that are the most toxic and they themselves need treatment.

Yes. I have a lot of dentists as patients, and I can't second that, because it's the only thing they even recognize that the only reason they actually come to us is because they've exhausted a lot of conventional medicine out there. Like this really be my teeth. Yeah, exactly. Yes. A lot of times it is. Yeah.

So you're mentioning, you know, running on a treadmill and doing all these things, and people end up with symptoms.

Yes.

So how did you decide to kind of put together? Because I think it's genius what you did with these programs to kind of help everybody with that that maybe doesn't have access in California to come see you.

Completely what we were finding was that patients would come and see us with these individual appointments. But then it was paying for the blood work, paying for the supplements, and trying to figure out what was the path as to how long this is going to take. Is this an expensive process? And a lot of people just kick the can down the road. They're like, I'll figure out later. I'll figure it out in my 30s. I'll figure out my 40s. I'll figure out in my 50s. By then, disease just keeps going. And once you have one autoimmune condition, you're more likely to have the next and the next. And people don't realize they're walking around with multiple autoimmune antibodies, which may be causing simple symptoms like slight hair loss, weight gain, maybe some dizziness. And they just chalk it up to, I'm dealing with, it's just stress. But when they look deep enough, they would find lab abnormalities that in conventional medicine, we don't look deep enough. Because how we work in as an intern is you come in with symptoms, and I test. But if you're just trying to see if there's something even off with you, nobody's testing. So we offer programs where you could come and see us. You can decide what lab test you want, and we'll give you choices based on a survey you can fill out. Do you need hormonal testing, depending on your age? Do you need other lab testings such as toxins and gut health, depending on your symptoms? Come and do all that testing and then come and see us, and we'll explain what that means to you. And then you could either come and.

See you physically or can it be remote?

It could be remote, and we could tell you what those labs mean, and you can decide what to do with it. You can either join a more extensive program on how to improve things like make an autoimmune disease go into remission, get off your medication, or lose weight or feel better with hormones, or you can just take that information, percolate with it, and then decide to do something in the future. Hmm.

I didn't realize that autoimmune disease is so undetected today.

Super undetected. But just, you know, from my own personal life, last summer, I was the first time I had my first autoimmune antibody show up. And just the background of that is I had Covid a few months before, and I Had gone to Italy and I'm vegetarian and I eaten a ton of gluten.

And it wasn't because it's so good.

So good. Italian gluten is yummy.

Pizza, pastas week.

But on the fourth day, I woke up with all these mouth sores and they were painful. And I was like, I'm kind of relaxed. I can't go to it all over. And I said, it must be the gluten, because I see it all the time with my patients. So I gave up the gluten at 110%, don't eat it all, and took some supplements. And then my ana, which is an antinuclear antibody, super common. If you test for it, a blood test. Blood test, super common, it completely became negative. And why it's so important. Again, as an internist, ANA can be positive in many people, but we don't do anything until a patient has a lot of symptoms. And then we would give them something like a steroid or a disease modifying agent that has a lot of side.

Effects in traditional medicine.

Correct. And medicine, we want to get rid of that antibody because one antibody is painting the canvas at the second auto.

So you can do it via supplementation?

Yes, you can do it via supplementation. Natural supplements, you can do it with foods, you can do it with. Figure out what those toxins are, remove your fillings, get detox from that mercury.

Improve your blood health.

Like most of America is constipated. And you know, it's like, are they constipated because they just don't have the time to let their bowels go in the morning? Are they constipated because of high stress and cortisol? Are they constipated because of high mercury from their teeth? Yeah. So it's important to figure out the why. What's the root cause? You can address that as opposed to giving somebody 40 supplements and saying, you know what's going to stick. So you need the data. And it's important because every one of us, the epigenetics is different. Like, you come in with these genes. Just because you have the genes, it doesn't mean they have to be activated. They activate it by your exposures and by your stress perception. We see so much anxiety in our patient population. And if you trace it back to the why, a lot of it is gut imbalances, hormonal imbalances, or toxicity. And I haven't had a patient. We haven't been able to help by addressing one of those areas or even if they need conventional drugs. And medication. As an internist, we just kind of throw different antidepressants at them which one's going to work. But we do have a very good genetic test called Gene Insight. Many like it. That'll tell you for your genetics which of these medicines work the best, as opposed to just say, try this and try that. So a lot of technology out there, and I just don't think we offer it to patients in a way that it's digestible and helps them make an informed choice.

You know, the problem with anxiety is I have a lot of patients also, especially after Covid, with such high levels of anxiety. And I like that in functional medicine, you want to go to the root cause and figure out why you have anxiety. Is it just the environment or is it deeper than that? Because antidepressants, they cause dry mouth. They can predispose somebody to a lot of cavities. And also we have some information actually that antidepressants, they prevent implants from adhering to the bone. Yeah. So it actually affects bone metabolism, but we don't know exactly why yet or how.

And I think another thing with medication, patients like that, if not to the doses that were studied, are studied for a very specific population. And my, like, tiny Eastern European patient may not really that that level of that dose may not be appropriate for her. So we really start with tiny doses and to see is it tolerated and is it efficacious?

Yeah.

And then is it needed? Yeah.

And maybe eventually, once you detoxify and kind of get on.

Yeah. And that's a kind of a promise and a goal with lots of patients is once you can get rid of your toxins, optimize your hormones, improve gut. How much of conventional medicine do you actually need?

So how did you decide when you look, okay, how can I help people outside of my practice? How do people know what program to take?

Yes. So basically what they do is they would call our office and they could meet with that discovery call person who works with us, and she could explain about, depending on their symptoms, whether they should do the lab consult, where they do all the labs before and come in and see us, or they should come in and see us first, go through their symptoms, and we can curate an actual program for them in terms of what to test. Some patients just are like, I want to test and see what's there. And I'd like that first appointment to just be all about what you're finding. And then some other patients are like, I want you to hear my full story and tell me what exactly I might need based on my symptoms. So it's just really about where they're at.

That's good. That's really good. Because, you know, some people, you know, especially some males that I know.

Their.

Own pace and do their own thing and not maybe be so much in touch one on one with the doctor.

Is that right? So both of you. Yes, absolutely. So we have most of our male patients come. A majority of our patients, patients, I would say around 60 or 70% of female, and then the rest are the male patients who either really interested in their health, which unfortunately they're not that many, and then the rest come in because they're the spouses of our current patients. And what's nice about what we try and do is we try and hold them accountable. So we have a patient coordinator, we have a health coach. Just in terms of wrapping our arms around these patients and saying, hey, we're doing this for you. What's your why? I think it's really important to talk to patients about why they want to get better. Why do they not want these symptoms? What's the why that's going to keep them gluten free? Or what's the why that's going to make sure that they're flossing their teeth every night? But what is that why? And once you can actually connect with them about that why, it's very easy to get them to stay with behavioral change. But the only way you can do that is by really common touch points, by having a team of people who can say, hey, we got you. We realize this month's really been busy, but when are you going to schedule that stress test or when are you going to schedule that colonoscopy? Because it's important and you're the correct age.

Yeah. I actually just interviewed somebody earlier on my podcast using myofunctional therapy. This. And she was mentioning, oh, yeah, my friend died of a heart attack in his sleep, you know, and so it's, it's very sad. So, you know, looking at somebody like that, like he could have done some. Something a lot sooner.

Yeah. And I think that's what, that's what's so misleading about our conventional medicine is like, hey, your wellness visit is normal. Your wellness labs are normal. However, if you had to take an objective look at that person, like they're overweight, they're telling you they're not very active, they're telling you they're not sleeping, they tell you their stress is very high, so you automatically know that they're inflamed. And not looking for those sources of inflammation. I think it's just really bad medicine. And we really have to be proactive because once you come to your 40s and 50s, that's when stuff happens. And you could start doing things that are preventative, that you'll see benefits for in your 60s and your 70s, especially with memory loss. We have a lot of patients who complain of brain fog and memory issues in their 40s, late 30s, 40s and 50s. And then it's important to discern is it hormones, is it toxins or is it inflammation, like what's causing their memory trouble. And a lot of times it's tied to sleep.

Interesting.

You don't value sleep enough. And the idea of actually switching off and that's where mindfulness or some sort of practice where you realize that it's just important to do nothing. The idea of just doing nothing is foreign to our current population.

So true. I mean, I know for myself, you know, sometimes I feel guilty for my sitting funny. I think I should be doing something right now. No, no, no, it's actually okay, take this down.

It's so important. And we've so we've been inculcated in our culture despite the history of the United States as you know, doing nothing. Time is money. How we can divide the eight hour time of sleep, of rest and of work, but there's a lot of pressure to make sure you're productive at all hours of the day. But the concept of just doing nothing and taking maybe an hour a day to do nothing, where you're not just not efficient, not producing anything. But that concept is very foreign because a lot of my patients are overachievers. They achieve, achieve, achieve, but at the expense of their hormones.

Yes. Their health.

Yeah. And just being aware of it and knowing you can do something about it. We're just trying to give patients, the people, the power back that you can know what's wrong with you by doing this deeper level of testing. Right now you could do a lot of tests direct to consumer. Like you could go to Quest and do your own labs. You could go to different companies and do your own labs. But what you need is the guidance. Like what do these labs mean for you? And is this symptom really because of this hormone? And that's what we provide, is that we will provide a lot of the functional medicine testing that's harder to find in an individual one off space. Mix it with the conventional, not say okay, this is probably why makes sense.

So somebody listening, like who's this program For. Is it, like, for somebody that's maybe just starting to see symptoms? Is that the best time? Or somebody who's, like, already really sick?

Yeah, it's really for everyone. So a lot of our patients who come to us, I'd say the most common patient is somebody who has some symptoms she has, but she. Usually it's a woman. She has fatigue or she has hair loss, or she has gut symptoms. Another common one is she's gone to her primary and they're told that she doesn't need hormones. And that's when we do a lot of testing and figure that out for someone. But it's also for people who are like, I feel good, but I want to know what can I do to feel better and what's going on with my body? So we'll really kind of tell you what your body's saying, and then you can take that information, say, what can I do about it? And then we have people who are pretty sick who are on one or two medications, and I really try to get off those medications or. Or need to lose £80. And we offer a program for them, too. Because it's never too late to incorporate some sense of functional medicine. Because a lot of things, lifestyle, a lot of it is just realizing that you have a bunch of feelings that need to be changed that you've had since your teenage years and never realize that that was one of the root causes for three autoimmune diseases that you have.

Yeah. Or sometimes even. Right. For brushing correctly. Brushing and flossing properly. Yeah. It's a huge part of lifestyle.

It really is. And I think a lot of people neglect them out because they're like, is it medically necessary because it isn't covered under convent insurances, taking out these fillings, or medical necessity. And that's where you have to realize that you need this for optimal health and wellness. Medical necessity, I think, is a misleading term.

Yeah, I agree. Because everybody's so different, as you said, like with the epigenetics.

Yes. Whatever is necessary, person is not for the next. Yeah. And people are always surprised that the number one test we do if we're considering hormone replacement in women is a gut test. And they're like, wait, I just need hormones.

Yeah.

When I get testing on anybody, even if they don't have symptoms, because they. We want to make sure they don't have something called small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, which is. Can cause, for some people, bloating. Some people it can cause excessive gas. But for many people, causes no symptoms.

Yeah. I had that.

Yeah.

So actually.

Too common and super under diagnosed. Yeah. And probably for you, your health was. Your diet was so exceptional, so your levels were high. But for a lot of people, their diet's not as impeccable. And when you have sibo, you can't get rid of inflammatory estrogen. So when we give women hormones or men hormones, we want to make sure that the liver can tolerate it and you can make space for tomorrow's hormonal doses. But if you have things like sibo, your liver is inflamed, dealing with all that dysbiosis of the bad bacteria, and so it's not able to manage. It's inflamed, and can't get rid of that excessive hormonal hormones, specifically estrogen. Interesting, because as we process estrogen, two are very good. Two parts of the metabolites make your skin glow, make your skin lubricated, make you look younger. But two are inflammatory, causes your breast to be fibrocystic. So you get like, abnormal mammograms, can cause variances. So to get rid of that inflammatory estrogen, your gut has to be in working order. So a lot of people get frustrated. They're like, hormones, skin, the hormones. We have to look at your gut because we also see where. What kind of vessel are we putting these hormones in?

So how many times, you know, when you're treating these patients again for hormones, how many times do you have gut issues?

Like 99%. Wow. And people don't often, 50% of them say, I do not have gut issues. And then when we touch them, and then we human, we don't recall as well. As well as we think we do. And then when we look back at the car, I do kind of have bloating with this, or I do have this with this. But they so good about keeping their diet so strict, and they don't realize they have gut issues.

I think they've probably gotten so used to the state they're in that they don't even realize that it's not normal.

Exactly. And so somebody finds patients like, well, I didn't realize I was so sick. But those are symptoms that can completely go away if you look at the root cause. Yeah.

And you know what's impressive about sibo, now that I had it and you helped me treat it, is that the natural supplements that you gave me worked so well.

Completely. And prescription medications with SIBO, only 30% effective. Yeah. And they have side effects. But the natural supplements, placebo, not only treat the gut, but help with insulin Help with satiety. So there's so many natural options. You just have to be open to taking the medication, taking the supplements.

Yeah.

And the thing with medications is that they short. It's like a few intense pills that would be for short duration that can cause severe side effects. Problem with supplements. And this is a trouble for many people. It's like so many pills. But most of our supplements have an endpoint. So even I take these things forever.

Yeah. That's what I liked about it too. It's natural.

Yes.

So in your programs, obviously that's going to be. It's personalized, which is great for people that need hormones and gut. And you first always start with a gut.

Yes, Typically we always do some gut testing. And even for people who are like, I really don't have any gut symptoms, that's great. We just do it in the blood and just confirm that they have no yeast levels that are high, no bacterial levels that are high. And we look at. But we check toxins in every. That's something. Again, they just don't have that ability to check yourself. So.

So true.

And you just don't know. And another big thing we see in L. A is mold. So mold exposure and to seeing. Do you have mold exposure? And I've seen a lot of patients when some of the mold showing up in the urine is zeleron. And Zelon is the kind of mold that mimics estrogen. And the husbandry industry uses Xylaron to help animals kind of go into precaution puberty sooner and so makes estrogen. And people, especially women, have that. Now you're giving them exogenous estrogen. They're going to have an abundance of estrogen and have symptoms. So it's really important to check toxins, look at their gut before things like hormone replacement. Because we're not all equal. Like a lot of. In my previous training, we would give the same hormonal dose to every single woman or. And we wouldn't have to check hormones. I think that's a frustration with a lot of patients. Nobody ever wants to check because they don't understand. Yeah, they don't. And we're not trained that way. In functioning conventional medicine. It's the same hormone for this, for everyone. Each of us are different. Different in terms of biology and different types of experience.

And I know some people are like scared of hormones. Oh my God.

But yes. And hormones have gotten a bad rap because it was one big study that showed there was a percent of women who got breast cancer at a higher.

Rate of that study.

Yeah. But if you look at it further, you realize that the kind of hormone they were using were not bioidentical. And it was a very small percent of women who actually got of breast cancer. And then. And then I would say knowing that it's super important to know what you. What kind of vessel you're putting these hormones into. If they gots inflamed and you're giving everybody the same hormonal dose, you are going to get some negative consequence.

Yeah, makes sense. And by the way, there's estrogen receptors in the guts.

Wow.

Yes. And actually. Yeah, when the estrogen is higher. Yeah, Estrogen dominance. We actually see gum inflammation. Just like when somebody's pregnant, they get pregnancy tumors and gums are inflamed.

Yes. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And we know that estrogen, a lot of times, just like eating more separate vegetables and eating healthier foods to get rid of that. But I don't think people even realize the connection with the gut and the mouth. And gut.

Yeah, it's much easier than you can see.

You can see the tissue because it's probably a reflection of what the gut lining is.

That's exactly right. Yeah. So usually when I see inflammation in the mouth, I will refer them to you, check the gut, because I know something's off there for sure.

And then. Same here. But if lot of times I'm like, well, we've done all this, but your biggest thing is mercury. And a lot of patients just like, really? I'm like, you've had these feelings for a long time. And if you look and correlate your timeline, you had these feelings from the time you weren't feeling well, and they're like, oh. And you have to get rid of them and you have to do it in a safe way. A lot of people are like, why do I need to go to a holistic dentist? Why can't I just go to my own dentist? He said he'll take them out for me for a deal. And just in terms of educating people about how you need to go to somebody who knows what they're doing is a challenge.

Well, they're going to become more toxic and you're going to have more work if they're going to take them off unsafely. And that's the problem is the vapor coming off the mercury when we actually remove them.

Yeah.

It's 2,000 times higher or more than it needs to be. You know, when you're in your mouth, it's actually way above and beyond the epa. What? EPA allows in the atmosphere.

So you protect yourself and your stuff while you're doing this.

Absolutely. Yeah. We actually wear gas masks. Wow.

That makes sense because it is pretty toxic.

Exactly. And if. Let's say your dentist removes them unsafely, like it happened to me.

What happened to you?

So I actually had my 16 large mercury fillings removed unsafely.

Oh, wow. 16.

16 of them.

Wow.

So after I had them removed, I didn't feel well and I didn't know why and I had them removed in four at a time with a couple weeks apart.

Wow.

So it's relatively. In a short period of time.

Yeah.

Because I wanted beautiful teeth. I remember I was in my residency, I knew nothing about, you know, I would just finish my residency. I knew nothing about functional medicine or biological. And I started having blurry vision, headaches, I wasn't feeling well, gut issues. So I was a naturopath that actually did a urine challenge test for me. Yeah. I was like off the charts.

That's so many people are just doing that without even realizing. And a lot of people like, oh, well, in all the thick. Dentistry is so much more expensive than traditional. Do I really have to invest it? There's. I really encourage them and tell them that they need to do it properly because it's going to be really hard. Just help wise to pull them back from a whole flood of mercury than to actually do it in a safe way.

Exactly. And mercury loves to latch onto fatty tissue, neuro tissue.

And that's another thing is when we. This whole popularity of the GLP1 medications where they work and you lose a substantial amount of weight. So a lot of times, a lot of that mercury toxicity, mercury stored in the adipose fat tissue is. And they get released and so when we measure levels, they're going up. But I don't feel good. And you're just losing weight.

Yeah. That's all the mercury ends up in the bloodstream.

Yes. But these. Exactly. If you don't check it, how do you know?

Yeah.

And you know, my conventional colleagues still are like your patients. You know, we see them and the specialists that I refer to, they're like, they just don't want to take any medication. They always seem to get better. Yeah. And a lot of things like fibromyalgia or chronic pain syndrome, these things that we jump in medicine and we just don't know what causes it is linked to things such as gut health and toxicity.

Yeah.

If you have to treat those, it kind of gets better.

So let's say somebody does the testing and what does that program look like? How long is it?

Yeah. So if you just want to say you just like curious and be like, do I have something that's off in my lab in terms of toxins and gut health, you could come do all the testing. It'll probably take you about a week to do the testing. They'll all be back in about three weeks. You come back and see by myself or one of my colleagues for two hours, two to two and a half hours. We would go through all your history and all through all the blood work and say, this is what I've never ever seen someone who would be like, it's all normal. Because usually there's something there that people can optimize. And then we could educate them on what they need to optimize. And then the patient at that point could decide whether they want to stay and do a program with us, either two month program, four months or six months. And then from then, or they want to take this information back to naturopath they're working back to a primary care person that they're working with. But it's just the convenience getting the testing and the information. A lot of times people just choose to stay with us and look deeper. And a big thing that we do a lot of is helping people reverse autoimmune diseases.

That's pretty amazing. So how does. You were mentioning autoimmune disease manifests as hair loss.

Yeah, Hair loss can be dizziness, can be weight gain. And things is. It's like this weird constellation of symptoms. And if you look at it, it isn't like a physiologically it's hormones or it's very, not very clear. And that's when it's more of a systemic issue of inflammation.

So basically somebody that, let's say gain some weight, gain some weight, cannot lose.

It, cannot lose it. Having some hair loss, hair thinning, having fatigue and maybe plus minus joint pains, dry eyes, dry eyes, dry mouth, plus minus. And then a lot of symptoms, it's kind of discounted. But when you test them and like, oh, your ANA is super high. And they're like, oh, nobody ever tested that for me. And if we can get that A and A to zero, I would say 90% of their symptoms just resolve.

That's pretty amazing.

And it's, and it is hard work on the patient side in terms of cutting out inflammatory foods, big ones, the dairy, it's so ubiquitous to our environment. Ben, you introduced me to that amazing bakery right up the street. Was it modern bakery? Yeah, modern Bagel. Just in terms of if you have a real craving for a bagel navel.

You could go there.

But I just feel you can't even tell us. Especially living in Southern California, I think it's easy for us. But a lot of patients, when they're very clear on their why, it becomes easy for them as well.

That's so true. It's really like nobody wants to live in pain. Nobody wants to live with aches, with inflammation. Like I, I remember watching, you know, my grandparents like moving. So like even my parents now, you know, like aches and pains and swollen joints, when you can avoid all that. So I don't want to teach like that.

No, absolutely. And I, I mean, just recently I've seen a patient like six months ago, all you want to do is pay catch with the sun. It's like I'm only in my late 40s, but I can't do that anymore because I've heard everywhere you see the primary care person, he said into a neurologist, they told everything was normal and all he had was a positive ANA that was like two fold high. And I was like, you know, to give this up, you have to kind of give up gluten. And he had mold toxicity. So we worked on those two things. I just saw him recently and he said, I can play catch with him.

Oh my God.

And he was like, saved your day. It really did. And he's like, you know, it's so not, it's so worth it not to have bread when I can do that. So those kind of stories really make it so worthwhile. Or I have a lot of African American women as patients and a lot of them, when you look at their health care, they, when they bring their labs, a lot of them haven't been told that they have a positive DNA or they have inflammation or their quality of health isn't the same as some of my other racial counterparts. When I talk to patients, I'm like, this has been going on for a long time. Or a lot of them have things like fibroids. And I was like, you've been in an estrogen dominant state for a while. I think really partnering with patients, especially populations like them, to be like, this is what's wrong, this is how you can fix it. They just suck that information up. I recently had a patient again with a positive ANA who we were able to reverse it. And her biggest issue was she's had eight miscarriages.

Oh my goodness.

Now she's six months pregnant.

That's amazing. You see that's the thing when you fix the core issues. Because so many women nowadays, you know, fertility is a huge problem.

Yeah, absolutely.

But instead they go through fertility treatment without checking anything else to try to force that baby into their body when their body's not ready completely.

And she's, you know, she's like, she's. What has I think changed the most for her is mindfulness. Like she meditates every day. She's really, she thought she was, she was vegan and she was eating all the sugar and like these gluten free bars change radically, changed her diet and she did a gentle detox. But I think the biggest thing for her is the ANA went from high positive to zero. We have traditional, traditional medicine data that if you have an ANA that's positive, you high risk for miscarriage. But nobody cared to tell. Wow.

See that's, that's a good message that you're giving everybody here. There's hope. If you were diagnosed with autoimmune disease, it doesn't. You have to be stuck with it for the rest of your life. You can actually try functional medicine and do something different. I know I have patients with Sjogren's, which is dry mouth, dry eyes and you know, I think really like you said, looking at their toxin level, really gut health.

Yeah. And also like, you know, hormonal. As you age, it's natural for women in their 40s and 50s to just have lower hormonal levels. But it's kind of like done nature parts maybe had appropriated or not. But at that point to optimize your hormonal levels can really help with vitality, with preserving muscle. That's another good thing we see with women in their 40s and 50s losing body muscle and in sarcopenia. And how can you reverse that? Because if you have enough muscle, you'll really help with any kind of future bone loss. You'll help in terms of strength and you really want to stay physically fit so you can be independent.

Yeah, that is so important. Okay, so how can somebody find out more about your program so they can.

Go to our website? I can give you a QR link for where you can click on it and book any kind of appointment with our discovery call person. You can call.

Is it a free call?

It's a free call. I would probably estimate around 20 minutes to 30 minutes.

Right.

Just so we can get a good understanding of what you need and if we are right fit for you. And then once that happens, she sets you up with a two hour appointment with myself or another Provider. And we can either tell you if you've done a bunch of lab testing, we can tell you what they mean, or we can kind of curate those labs for you.

Yeah, that's really amazing. So for everyone listening, we are going to put a link to Dr. Cyana Medical, the programs down in the show notes so you can schedule a call, especially for those of you that don't feel well. You've been to other doctors, they've told you there's nothing wrong with you, but you're still feeling horrible.

And a lot of patients are like, well, what's included in the program? And it's really four things. It's all our care, as well as a lab bank and a supplement bank because the labs, such as toxins, are not covered by regular conventional medicine insurance. So we do the labs, the bank of that and supplement banks if you need it. We're not of the mindset to give you a bunch of pills. If you need someone who's doing sibo, it's included. And then the fourth thing, which is part of that program, which is super important, but people don't even utilize it as much, is the ability to message back and forth with me or another provider at any time during the day.

That's amazing.

Yeah. So we really found that we keep ourselves available because a lot of healing has to happen between appointments. So if you're like, I not feeling great, what should I do while I'm taking the supplement, having a side effect, or I am eating gluten and I know I shouldn't, but if you can communicate with them between visits, we really get great. Get great results. Of course.

And I think one of the biggest things that I hear is like, oh, I just can never get a hold of my doctor or my primary care.

Yes. So at the end of our program, we give patients the option to join us Whole Health Wellness, which is primary care and functional medicine. Or if they want to go back to the original primary care, we just give them the tools so they can always be thinking in a functional medicine root cause approach.

Yeah. That's really amazing. And you know, unfortunately, right now your program is only available in California.

We have a lot of demand for people here. Yeah. Once we meet that, we have to figure out ways to expand and really disrupt medicine everywhere. This kind of medicine should be accessible for those who are curious.

Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like you're gonna have to train more doctors.

Yes. And do that so people can have access. Yeah.

Yeah. That's huge.

Okay.

Well, I, I thank you so much for being here and educating us.

Having me, it's such a pleasure. Always great to talk to you.

Yeah. Okay, everyone, until next time, look at functional medicine. Look at Dr. San on medical and wellness and stay healthy.

Thank you so much. Take care, everyone.

Thank you so much for joining me this week. Please make sure you check out the show notes for any links mentioned in the show. If you like today's show, please invite your friends to listen as well. That would mean a lot to me. Do you have a question you'd like me to answer? Message me on Instagram. DoctorsAnda. This is Dr. Sandha. And remember, your mouth is the gateway to your health. So take care of it in the most natural and best way possible.