This is a multi-speaker YouTube interview with Dr. Payam Hakimi and Shiva Hakimi from Body of Harmony discussing clinical and mind–body approaches to health. Payam outlines functional-medicine diagnostics and treatments for persistent gut problems (testing for enzymes, beneficial vs. pathogenic bacteria, fungi/yeast, parasites, and leaky gut), traces many chronic gut issues to repeated antibiotic exposure and lifestyle factors (processed food, caffeine, alcohol), and describes personalized repair strategies (diet changes, food-sensitivity testing, supplements, herbs, or targeted pharmaceuticals). He also frames adrenal dysfunction as a spectrum (fatigue → burnout), explains cortisol and DHEA/testosterone interactions, and notes cholesterol’s role as a sex-hormone precursor. Shiva emphasizes an ongoing consciousness/awakening process—mind expansion beyond 3D form—not limited to days of formal practice.
Chapters
And I think it is such a wonderful complement you both to each other and that you're such a dynamic powerhouse of knowledge and alternative modalities. And we're really interested, Shiva, in your understanding of the mind and body.
The awakening process happens when we realize that we are more than just 3D form. Not just the days that we sit in meditation and days that we don't. It just stops. Consciousness is energy, and energy moves forward continuously. This is an important perception for us to know that the human mind tricks us into thinking that days that we're not doing well, we're not moving forward. Simply not true.
I'm more and more finding that people are suffering from gut issues that don't seem to resolve. I see it with my clients. I see it with family members. I've even had situations like that. Laura's had situations like that. So is there any specific testing that you do to determine what's wrong and then what protocol do you follow to treat it?
Yes, we have two or three different tests to figure out the amount of enzymes, amount of good bacteria, bad bacteria, fungi, parasites, if there's leaky gut syndrome, and then how to treat these things based on what we find in reality is a conversation with our patients to figure out exactly do they want to sort of stay more with the functional medicine, they want to take herbs and supplements that will take care of this thing, or do they want to go directly to antibiotics and antifungals and everything else? You brought up a really good point. Remember, a lot of our issues, what we say in functional medicine starts as a kid when we start taking those antibiotics and we start, you know, killing our good bacteria. So you have someone who's had antibiotics as a kid, and then let's say if they're a female or. And they get yeast infections and UTIs, and they take more antibiotics, and then, you know, they have a travel somewhere and they get, you know, sick as well, and they get food poisoning. And then add to that our diet, which is, you know, has a lot of toxins in it and different issues with our diet, with our processed food and everything else. Add to that caffeine, add to that alcohol, and you create a situation in the digestive system where a bad bacteria or fungus or yeast can actually grow. And once they start growing, what happens is the good bacteria, the amount of good bacteria in the body, in the digestive system, starts decreasing because now there's not enough food for the bad and the good to live together. Right. So as the amount of good starts decreasing, there comes inflammation and leaky gut syndrome, and then it sort of becomes this cycle that just continually gets worse. And what we do, we go to a gastroenterologist who gives us another antibody, and it just makes things. And I'm not saying that that happens all the time, but most of the patients that end up in our office, this has been the history that we have seen. And then things have just gotten worse and worse progressively. And we have to rebuild everything sort of from the begin, sort of change everything and change the diet, do a food sensitivity, figure out exactly what they should not eat, balance out the good bacteria, kill. I call the yeast the beast, and then sort of move on from there. Adrenal issue is a spectrum of problems. It's not, we call it adrenal fatigue, or we call it adrenal burnout, but there's a big difference between fatigue and burnout. Adrenal fatigue is where your body is sort of going through this issue that I'm going to talk about. And then adrenal burnout is sort of the end of it, where things have already changed and it's really hard to bring someone back. And if someone is in adrenal burnout, it might take two to three months of supplements, IVs and everything else to bring their physiology back. Right. So it's a spectrum, and we all sort of lie somewhere in this spectrum.
Sure.
Cholesterol is the building block of our sex hormones. Our estrogen, progesterone, testosterone, dhea, pregnenolone, cortisol, and aldosterone. There is a condition called cortisol steel, or general adaptation disorder, where our body needs more cortisol. Cortisol we all know as a stress hormone. So as our requirement goes up, we use up more cortisol. So the cortisol amount drops, and then this whole sex hormone pathway has to shift a little bit. So the DHEA starts decreasing, testosterone starts decreasing, and then the estrogen progesterone ratio starts changing. Now, for guys, DHEA and testosterone, very important. It's important for cognition, it's important for sleep recovery, healing, libido, energy for sleep. And for women, obviously, the change in the estrogen progesterone creates the hormonal, the menstrual abnormalities, the pms, the headache, everything that goes along, the acne and everything else that goes along that line. So again, it's a spectrum that needs to be treated properly. The way we treat it is it's about harmonizing the body. It's about harmonizing the DHEA and testosterone pathway and the cortisol pathway to make sure everything in the body is sort of fine tuned so that your body has the amount of cortisol that it needs whenever it needs it. So it's sort of adrenal support for a while. We have another supplement that's amazing called adrenal supplement that we use. But then once we do the blood work, we figure out exactly what needs to change. Is it, do I need to add dhea? Do I need to work on testosterone? Do we need to work on cholesterol? So my motto has always been, we don't do cookie cutter medicine. Eat something. What do. How do we feel? If there's anything that we feel that's what's causing the problem, we should take that away. We should put aside coffee and alcohol. Wait, what?
What? At least coffee you can take the alcohol out of. I don't care about that, but not the coffee. Come on. This is probably the most beautiful couple I've seen in Beverly Hills lately.
Shiva and Dr. Hakimi are married. They are a couple and they both work at Body of Harmony together. And I think it is such a wonderful compliment you both to each other and that you're such a dynamic powerhouse of knowledge and alternative modalities. And we're really interested, Shiva, in your understanding of the mind and body and that experience.
I like to talk a bit or redefine what we call the awakening process. Sometimes our perception or definition of what awakening should be is the problem. Awakening is not something that we do and all of a sudden we're awakened. The awakening process is really the mind expansion or consciousness expansion. We're continuously expanding the mind because we're in constant motion and constant expansion. So the actual expansion never really ends. So the awakening process, therefore never really ends. The awakening process happens when we realize that we are more than this 3D form. Not just the days that we sit in meditation and days that we don't. It just stops. Consciousness is energy. Always remember that consciousness is energy. And energy moves forward continuously. This is an important perception for us to know that the human mind tricks us into thinking that days that we're not doing well, we're not moving forward. Simply not true.
