The Synergee Podcast 2024 Recap

Foreign welcome to a very special episode. Today we get to take a moment, we get to look back on this amazing year of 2024. We've had lots of learning, motivation and really some extraordinary conversations. We've had a tremendous lineup of guests, we've had trailblazers in functional medicine. We've had dedicated coaches, we've had experts in the field that have really shaped the way that we view how we thrive in this modern world. Lori and I are excited to share these moments with you. We've laughed, we've learned, and we've gained tremendous insight from our generous guests that's just been able to offer all of their wisdom to our podcast listeners. We also want to take a moment to celebrate you, our listener. You guys have been tremendous. You have given us insight, you've been a suggestions, you have connected us with guests that we've been able to actually have on the podcast and you've been sharing our podcast with your friends and your family. You're building a vibrant wellness community and we could not be more thankful. Keep it going. We really appreciate you more than you'll ever, ever know. I want to take a moment now to just bless you for this season. Take some time, find joy, connect with your family and really think about the lessons that 2024 brought to us. And better yet, get ready for an amazing year in 2025. So go grab your tea, cuddle up and let's take this time together to dig into all the things, all the special moments that 2024 brought us in the Synergy podcast.

You know, we always say so as you think you are. So if you truly believe you can, you can. And if you can't, you can't. So mindset is key. It's that decision, right. To change, you've got to have that decision. I want to change. Not I need to change per se, I want to change. So in saying that we have recently found and I'm so happy and excited because I do feel like, you know, algae is a superfood. It was around long before we were here. Right. And there's a lot of benefits to it and it really incorporating it earlier in your plan I think will have long term benefits on many levels of not feeling like you're having to replete as much. Sure. So I definitely wanted to go back to that on foundational.

Yeah, it'll be. We're kind of new to adding that back and I can't wait to see kind of the results that we are able to glean from adding that to a foundational program. But I do think it has its place there because, again, we're looking at food first. We're looking at that as a food that we're adding to the diet versus just a supplement.

Absolutely.

So it's science based. It's also been grown and used daily in Asia for 60 years. It's grown as an agricultural crop. So what you're going to learn today when the most important things you'll need to learn is that spirulina and chlorella, or algae in general, is a food, it is not a supplement. And we grow ours in Taiwan and you're going to see that there's. These are farms. So spirulina chlorella are algae, and algae is everywhere, but we grow ours in fresh water. This is a spirulina farm. This is a chlorella farm. So it's grown hydroponically, like lettuce and tomatoes. So when you take algae, you are taking food. Now, the best part about all of this is that it comes in these tiny little tablets. They're about the size of a baby aspirin. And each one of these tablets has so much nutrition in it.

And I will say this, I have several dentists in my practice currently that I'm treating, and all of them are super interested in ongoing education as it relates to environmental. And one of the things that I tell them is I don't want you exposing yourself or your team. Think about all the things that you've been exposed to throughout your career. I want to make sure you're protected as the dentist. Right. And that your team's protected because you guys are exposed every single day. And so making those changes within the practice, they're not easy changes, but there's plenty of courses out there. Dr. Stewart Nunnery, I mentioned him earlier, he does some training in his office in Marble Falls. So Dennis can actually go out there and get trained in some of these environmental. Environmental techniques. So we count on you. Dental health is so important, and we need an environmental dentist on every corner. 100% for sure. Yeah.

And as you say, we're stronger together. Right.

And I think we. It's going to take doing shows like this, us getting that word out about, hey, there are ways to do this so you can actually recapture your life and recapture vitality and create a path to where you feel great and you're empowered with your health and you're not just sitting there saying, well, time for my weekly injection. It's the only way I can keep my weight down.

When we think about supplementation and we think about how do we know what to take. There are certain things that Lori and I consider foundational. There are certain things that we figure if you live in America, right, and you eat out and you travel and you do life, which I hope we all do those things and enjoy those things, then there's a certain amount of supplementation that's just necessary today in the world that we live in today. Would you agree with that?

I do. I do. And I think, how do you know? It really starts with one fundamental principle, which is test, don't guess. And if you've been around with us long enough, you kind of know that's permeated in all of our educational curriculum, is that we need to test. We need to understand where you are. So that's key. And what kind of testing? Let's talk about that a little bit.

Yeah, there's some pretty standard testing, serum testing, blood testing that we do in our offices that we can glean a lot of information from.

It's been very exciting to see the research on pectisol just skyrocketing. And this is research that we, as a company, Ekinogenics, has nothing to do with. We only find these studies in the published literature via Google Scholar alerts. And it's a new study on modified citrus pectin, Galectin 3. And of course, the materials and methods are listing pectisol by Egogenics. So it's so exciting to see this interest explode. And it all has to do with the mechanism of pectisol in being able to inhibit this protein, which we'll talk about, Galectin 3.

That's one of the steps that we'll go through with patients, is making sure that we correct that gut microbiome as much as we can, that we get those lipopolysaccharides down. And that can be measured in blood that's easily measurable. But to your point, because of chronic stress, that permeability in the gut lining is there, and it's allowing those lipopolysaccharides to wreak havoc on the immune system and create inflammation.

And it very well can be also why you get the brain issues, right? Because LPS crosses the blood brain barrier, and as that goes up, your glial cells start fir off in the immune system and kind of that thought process moving through, like, why do people with diabetes have more dementia?

Right, right.

It's because as that lipopolysaccharides going up, you've got to make a compound called galectin 3, which is another marker that I. I look at. And that Galectin 3 is what's wreaking havoc across those neurons. Right. And causing all the damage.

At the end of the day, it's really about the long game. And so reminding myself of that, one of the things I did this year was I wrote out kind of a plan for myself in the front of my calendar. And when I say plan, it's a very loose plan, but it really just gave me anchors for clarity and the things that I really wanna focus on this year. And so every morning I try to read that, you know, do some scripture reading, I do a little meditation and then I read that. Because if I can stay true to my compass, then I don't let the other things that are gonna intrude on my day and my life and all the things, I don't give them as much power. And it's easy to give those things all the power and not stay focused on what it is we're really here to accomplish. So that's been helpful for me this year. So what happens to the oral ph when you are a mouth breather? And why is that important?

Drops. It'll drop significantly. So then your microbiome is decrease. So I tell the patients it's like the bad guys outnumber the good guys. And so we don't want them all killed out, which is what mouthwashes and chloride does. It kills out all the microbiome in the mouth. But we want a good symbiotic relationship with those bacteria and that microbiome. So we want a lot of good guys and not so many bad guys.

Yeah. So one fun fact is the first place we'll gain fat is actually in the tongue. So speaking for small females, even a small amount of weight gain can lead to some obstruction. So they don't necessarily have to be overweight to see some of that happen, especially if they already have a neurofunction. Yeah.

So if your liver isn't draining correctly and you'll have a toxic buildup in there, in your tongue and in your brain. And also underdeveloped jaws is a big. The biggest deal I see is we have underdeveloped jaws because we're not breathing through our nose and we're not producing nitric oxide.

But wrapping our head around, you know, the honest facts are when you didn't get this way overnight. So if you're just starting your journey, facts are you're going to have a lot more nutrient deficiencies and insufficiencies and you're gonna need to replete more. It's because you're on products to replete your nutrient deficiencies. And in addition to it, you're on products to heal or repair what got you in that situation to begin with. And so just lean into that kind of understand it. The goal isn't to be that way.

Long term and always ask questions. We never get offended when you ask us, why am I taking this and how long will I need to take this? Sometimes we don't know how long. Sometimes it's like until I assess you again and we'll determine that at that point because it has to do with your ability to heal and repair. As to how long this repletional supplementation will be necessary.

And we talked about serum and intracellular and then really talking about the quality of supplementation too. We can't have a conversation like this without talking about quality because you could find yourself in a position that you're taking a lot of things. But we really have to get down to the key, the key nutrients that we need and in quality forms.

And we want to make sure that they're pharmaceutical grade, meaning they're testing that product, the raw ingredients that they're using in that product, and then they're testing the end product to make sure potency and purity are adequate for consumption and beneficial for the patient. And I would say with probiotics, I'm super cautious there because a lot of the probiotics on the shelf are genetically modified organisms. And I think the message, I'm hesitant to say that everyone needs a probiotic. I think that most Americans do because of our poor food quality. We've gotten to the place where our gut microbiome is not very diverse and we need diversity. But we also, in trying to create diversity, probiotics are something that we need to be mindful of rotating. We don't want to get on one formula and stay on that formula for extended periods of time. So that is definitely a situation where you want to be working with a qualified provider. There are ways to assess your gut microbiome so that you know that that probiotic is benefiting you and you know when and how to rotate those probiotics.

And I think that's a key point too, in getting back to quality and shelf life. They are live organisms and it is extremely important to be storing them in the proper way, taking them at the right time.

I wanted to go back just quickly to the idea around, you know, our lifestyle and addressing our stress and really the importance of, you know, being able to manage that. And just this, there's a really fascinating study with Galectin 3 showing that regular meditation or other stress relief practices doesn't have to be meditation. Like listening to calming music can, over time, bring down your Galectin three levels significantly. But it takes practice.

You know, I would dare say that the average American female does not go unscathed with the, you know, byproducts the result of chronic stress over time. By the time we hit perimenopause, things can get a little. A little ugly for some of us who haven't been paying attention. Right? So itchy, bitchy, sweaty, sleepy, bloating, forgetful, all dried up. All of those things. Right, all of those things. Those are the seven dwarfs of perimenopause and menopause. I mean, who wants to live like that? In 18 hours, we're experiencing autophagy. And that's a big word, right? But autophagy is so important. Inside our bodies, we have aberrant proteins. We have proteins that are misfolded, and they stimulate our immune system in an abnormal way. They keep inflammation going. They can turn into cancer cells if they're left unattended, because that immune system is distracted doing other things. So autophagy is a way of letting the body offload cellular debris. It's like taking out the garbage.

That's right.

Take it out, Take it out. And so 18 hours is kind of the perfect fasting window for someone that's looking for longevity strategies, especially longevity in the way of health and wellness. So when we chew our food, we are stimulating our digestive system to go into action and producing key digestive enzymes that help with the breakdown of our food and the absorption of our food. And when we're not chewing our food, we do not get that benefit. And so, you know, a lot of people, if they love smoothies, and they just get in habits of doing maybe two smoothies a day, and then they're not chewing, and we wind up seeing deficiencies in enzyme production with lack of chewing. So chew. Chew your food, even your smoothies.

The only way they discover something like that is they're doing a procedure in an adjacent organ, let's say the liver, and they notice an abnormality, and then they biopsy it and they go, oh, we found pancreatic cancer. But when they do, which is rare, it happens on occasion. At stage 1, pancreatic cancer is broken into 1a and 1b. Survival at 1b is 85%. Survival at 1a is 92% CTCs begin to disseminate and shed from a primary tumor as early as stage zero. If you can start to detect that at stage zero, survival will be north of 99%. Cells will be very big. They'll be like 30, 40 microns for examp instead of 8 or 10. Tumor cells will have multiple nuclei, they'll be multi headed, 5, 6 nuclei rather than 1. Tumor cells will have a very high what's known as NC nuclear to cytoplasmic ratio, which basically means the nuclei will take up 85, 90% of the cell instead of 15 or 20. They will be hyperchromatic, which means they have too much DNA because they have too much nuclei. And so these features of these tumor cells are very specific to them. So you don't want to introduce something into the bloodstream, that tumor cell because of some aberrant event like the surgery. And that's why you have to be careful with those restrictions and for various reasons.

And we don't want false positives, you know, so, you know, being clinicians like ourselves, helping patients make decisions, taking all of those things into consideration is extremely important.

About the hippocampus, since you said the big word, the hippocampus is a little bitty tiny structure in the brain that allows you to store memory. And what happens when we have high cortisol is your brain is really smart in that it understands that cortisol is very destructive and it'll start doing dendritic pruning of that hippocampus. So the hippocampus actually gets smaller. It shrinks to protect itself. It's self protecting your body is amazing, it's protecting itself, but it gets smaller. And so for you, you people that are struggling, and I say you people because I've done this before myself with memory, you know, like you're just not processing memories very well. That's the hippocampus kind going into survival mode. So how has your life journey changed as it relates to the, the, the research that you did for your book? Like what were things that you uncovered doing that research?

Women's health is like a whole spectrum of different things having to do with our hearts, our lungs, our everything. And yeah, just as an example, heart disease oftentimes shows up in women very different than men and they're often misdiag diagnosed because well meaning physicians, I mean it's not like they're not trying their hardest, but they don't recognize the fact that women show up with different symptoms of heart disease than men do. And it's not just you know, people say, oh, walk 30 minutes a day. Now, for sure, that is a great place to get started. But, you know, we all know it's. It's about muscle strengthening. It's about. Some of the scientists that I spoke to said that muscle mass should be a new vital sign, similar to our blood pressure or our heart rate. And losing muscle mass can start as early as in your 30s. So you want to do those strength training exercises, and it can actually increase the size of your hippocampus. And that's where we store memories.

So in our practices. Maddie, you'll be happy to know Lori and I both use body composition as a vital sign.

Oh, that's amazing.

Every single visit, we're looking at that body composition because we know that muscle mass is money in the bank for both men and women. So changing that verbiage, even just changing little words that we use, can be so powerful in keeping us embraced in our wellness journey as it comes to resilience. And so there are some key, like core concepts for mindset, and I think if we could frame that out for people, I think it would help give them a little bit more bounce in their cushion, if you will, so that they can really understand and embrace what they're doing when they embrace mindset.

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