How Mindset Shapes Autoimmune Recovery

Welcome to Integrative Medicine with Dr. Leland Stillman, the podcast where we explore the best of East and West, old and new, conventional and unconventional, in search of answers to medicine's toughest cases and most difficult problems. This podcast is for informational purposes only. Diagnostics and therapeutics discussed on this podcast may or may not be right for you, so talk to a qualified practitioner before taking action based on what you learn here. If you'd like to become a patient at my practice, go to stillmanmd.com to schedule a complimentary discovery call. Thank you for listening and welcome to today's episode.

Hello everyone. Dr. Stillman here with Amy Arp. We're back for another episode on autoimmunity today. Amy and I are going to talk about mindset, the nervous system, the mind-body connection, HRV, all kinds of stuff that are really, really, really important for people's healing, whether you're dealing with autoimmunity or anything else. But specifically with autoimmunity. And Amy, hello, welcome again.

Hello.

So I think this is a very important topic and what I want people to know about it, just big picture, 50,000-foot view overview, is I always come back to the concept of repair deficit in autoimmunity. Because when you look at what's all the, all the causes, root causes of autoimmunity, what they have in common is this: there's a deficit of repair. The body's not repairing enough, and this may be a deficiency of a Specific vitamin or mineral. It can be an overwhelming toxic burden. I was just excited to tell you this this morning. I have the craziest cadmium level on a new case.

Really?

I know. And it's another aircraft mechanic.

Fascinating.

I mean, I'm wondering what would happen if we actually went into like an industry and really tested broadly. I think these guys are really toxic, but anyway, so toxic exposures will increase this repair deficit because they create free radicals. They also displace minerals. So somebody who has a normal mineral level but has a very toxic metal, it can dis— displace that mineral. And so you don't see a deficiency on lab work, but you have a functional deficiency because the mineral can't act at its active enzyme site. And so you don't have adequate function of the enzymes dependent upon the mineral, right? And then you can have pathogens playing a, a role where parasites are doing things like just doing all kinds of, creating all kinds of mayhem, committing all kinds of mischief. And so there's this repair deficit in the organism overall, which then can lead to this loss of tolerance to self-tissue, which I really believe is more about the body trying to heal the tissue and detoxify the tissue and purify the tissue than it is the body just losing its mind and starting to attack the tissue. So I always come back to this concept of repair deficit and it has these very complex interactions with our minds and our bodies and our nervous systems. And so I think it's very important, but the first thing that I want to talk about and that I'm going to ask Amy to talk about is the importance of mindset in all of this, because there's one thing I see in every single episode of the Stories of Hope Stories of Healing series. The person says, I had an almost irrational belief that I would make a complete recovery and I committed to it. And even though I had my dark nights where I questioned everything and I doubted, I maintained this mindset and I believed in the ability of my body to heal. And I made it through.

100% agree. I remember when I was healing, I first met with a woman and her first piece of advice to me was to focus on my mindset and the words that I spoke out about the disease that I was diagnosed with. And so her first piece of advice was, don't ever claim that you have this disease. Say, I was diagnosed with this disease, and that is true, but you don't want to put this on as your identity. Because she found that so many people would put this on as their identity and wear it as like a badge of honor. I have this, I have this. And then it becomes subconsciously part of your identity, and then people have a hard time dissociating from that identity if they heal or if they're getting better, because Sometimes it can help them get out of things. Sometimes it can help them, I don't know, have a crutch. And you know, there's a lot of things, but it's just so subconscious. It's more than that. It's very just like intertwined in who that person is and becomes and is known as. And so she said, let's start there. Like, that's the first thing. So in the first month, that was what I did. I said, I have been diagnosed with this, but I do not— I'm not going to claim it as Amy has this or Amy, this is what she's known by. And I think that that was so powerful. And I didn't realize how powerful it was at the time. I just thought, okay, that's great. And then I started buying some books on mind-body medicine because I wanted to learn about it. I wanted to learn, is this really something that's important? And in the podcast I mentioned, I did know that your words have power. Just being in the church community that I was in, I understood that, that words have power. And then also just like when you get into, I don't know, all the physics of it, it's just really interesting that you can understand that words do have power and we don't fully understand how that all works. And I don't fully understand it. But I, I'm fascinated by it. And so I bought all these books on mind-body medicine and some of the more popular ones, but also some like more fringe books that were just like people telling stories. And it was really interesting. One of the books this guy wrote on people who had cancer, and he wrote all these different stories as a doctor of people who had cancer and the people that healed believed they could heal. And the people that didn't heal, they didn't believe it. And they often didn't make it. And so it was really interesting. And then on top of that, as I was talking to practitioners and working with people, one of the practitioners, one of the centers that I had gone to visit, one of the practitioners told me that the main medical director there asks people on their first appointment, do you believe that you can heal? And are you willing to do some emotional work? If not, I'm not going to work with you. And this is a very prominent, big center here in California. And I thought that was so fascinating because people realize it. They realize that if you do not believe it, then it, it may not happen. And, and it's, it gets kind of in a gray area because I don't love obviously all the woo-woo stuff and I'm not trying to like, you know, do the whole manifesting thing. It's just, it is very interesting that it has power, but I don't, I don't love to venture into that side of it. So you've seen this in practice. What, tell me more about that.

It's just night and day. And it's, but it's tough to, it's interesting that he, he went ahead and and got that admission and investment from the patient before working with them. Because what I've observed is that sometimes the people who make the biggest show of being ready to do the work, and if someone says, I've done my work, it's a huge red flag for me because I just, I feel like the people who have done the work don't say that.

So true.

I don't know why that is, but in any event, some people will make the biggest show of being ready to change and do the work. And they are the first to quit or not even show up in the first place. What do we do about that? Here is, here is how it sort of shakes out. I'm always looking for someone's attitude and I try, cause I don't do the initial calls anymore where people decide about a program or how to join the practice. You guys do those, but I try to teach you guys and, and make sure that you are looking for the people who are committed, who are ready to change. And I think we put out so much content that tells people what we're about. And part of why we do that is we want the right people to sign up. We want them to know this, right? I mean, listening to this. If you're not ready to do the work and do some emotional work, are you really going to sign up to work with us? I think you might've missed the whole podcast if you did that, but in any event, I try to make sure we're only bringing those people in, but then it's also about what work do they need to do? It's all well and good to change your vocabulary. And I, even though it sounds woo-woo, arguably these little things do matter, you know, saying or not saying, I have this and it it's hard because it can be a fact. Like, say you have a horrible trauma. Your limb has been amputated. You really gonna say to yourself, you know, I have been diagnosed as an amputee. I mean, no, it gets a little ridiculous. So you don't want to be outright untruthful, but saying like, I've been diagnosed with, or I have suffered a, or I've had a, is the way to say it for your mindset. And part of this has to do with how the subconscious responds to spoken word. The subconscious responds to spoken word by fulfilling the spoken word. I'm broke.

I'm sad.

I'm this, I'm that. You're reinforcing that state of being and your subconscious is always listening, always taking your directions. So my favorite story on this is my mentor Richard Brooke, who's my mentor in network marketing, and I love his book, Mock You with Your Hair on Fire, because he was, he was a horribly unsuccessful network marketer. He was broke. His car had just been repossessed, but he kept telling himself like, I'm going to succeed. I'm going to do this. It's going to work. I'm successful. This is a, And one night, because he had all this positive thinking, he drove through a snowstorm to see this guy about selling him something. I don't even remember what it was, like gasoline additive. And he sits down with this guy and the guy says, is there really money to be made in this? He says, oh yeah, lots of money. Having just had his car repossessed, he drove somebody else's car, I think, to this meeting. And he goes on to build this massive network marketing empire because he enrolls this guy and this guy then knows everybody in town and it takes off. That's just one example.. And people might say that, that, well, that's business. This is medicine. It's so similar. And we've joked about this before. You almost have to, as we say, gaslight yourself to success. And it gets a little uncomfortable because you think, gosh, am I being intellectually dishonest with myself? But then you go back to the reality that the people who get the best results all agree they have this irrational belief and they recognize it. And you can say, well, it's rational because we're just not going to do what the 999 out of 1,000 people do who fail. We're just not going to do what they do. We're going to do it the 1 out of 1,000 people do that succeed. But there's still that element of doubt of like, well, okay, but what if it still fails? Right. Doesn't matter. You just have to commit to that. What is the mind-body connection? And it's really about how is your thinking shaping your physiology beyond just the thoughts that you think and that you can articulate. And that gets into how the brain shapes the nervous system and the autonomic nervous system. And then how that sends signals to the rest of the body. Remember a very interesting anecdote from a patient who took a magnesium supplement and immediately saw their HRV jump by about 10 points in a 24-hour period. And I bring that up because there's this really interesting interplay between our environment, our diet, our lifestyle, the thoughts we think, and it's a two-way street. So you can affect your mindset and your brain and your thoughts by improving your environment, your diet, your lifestyle, making changes in how you live. But at the same time, if you don't then change the underlying thoughts that are coming out of your central nervous system, A, you won't engage in those behaviors that will result in the changes. And B, even if you do, it won't work. So I have an interesting case in the practice. I obviously won't speak their name, but this person worked with us for over 2 years, made zero progress, tried everything, and she had the worst attitude of any patient I have ever worked with. And we would say things like, hey, you know, what about this protocol? That protocol? We'd give her a protocol. She was unemployed, stayed at home, often worked, well off, traveled the world, had in many respects, like the perfect life. Not necessarily that, you know, and I maybe, maybe there were things about her life she didn't like, but there were many, many people worse off in the practice, busier, more stress, more responsibility, sicker, who got better results than she did with less effort. And I really firmly believe it was her mindset. And it's so extreme that I've accepted the fact that some people, their mindset is so toxic. Their thoughts are so bitter and angry and negative and depressed and sad and cruel that, and even I'll say it, evil. Even if I give them the best of what I have, I won't get them the results they want. And so if they're not willing to do that work of changing those thoughts, we're wasting our time.

It's so true. I see that so much as I'm working with people right now in the autoimmune program. That's a huge part we have to focus on mindset. You mentioned something earlier. It is this irrational belief because there is a reality that it may not turn out how we want it to. And we have to accept that at the same time. And so there's this tension in the belief where we want to believe for something and hope for something. But we don't know 100% if it's gonna turn out that way because we don't know what the body is gonna do. I had to wrestle with, okay, well, what if I do end up in a wheelchair? What if that is just what God has for me on this earth? And that's like a whole different topic. But at the end of the day, I still had to be okay with my current reality because I don't want this to turn into people are living in some sort of like alternate reality. That's not what we want. What we're saying is I don't want this to turn into that. But I also want us to have an irrational hope that you can get better because you can, we do see it. And so I think there's just a tension there. And I want to mention that because I don't want people to think there's just this pie— live in the pie in the sky. Like that's not, that's not what we're saying, but we're also saying have hope, people.

Yes.

I think that's the way to look at it in the end. And I totally agree with everything that you just said. When it comes down to, first of all, I think assessing your inner voice, your inner dialogue. I really like Richard Brooks' book on it. It's not specific to network marketing. It's just about self-improvement and empowerment. It's called Mach 2 with Your Hair on Fire. He's got the simplest, most straightforward book on it that I've ever read, because I've read a lot of them. And it just comes down to doing the daily work of improving and creating a positive internal dialogue. I will say it's well documented, particularly that heavy metals create a toxic mindset. No one can have a positive mindset. No one can be happy and joyful and healthy if they're overburdened with heavy metals. It's not possible. They are poisons at any dose. And so I, I do think that a big part of success comes down to not just doing the work of changing your thoughts, but also purifying the body and detoxifying the body of these things that will in any quantity over time cause your mindset and thinking to deteriorate. The other, and that plays back into what you were mentioning about being and accepting whatever your outcome is, because in the end, we joke in medicine, right? What we're really just delaying the inevitable. That was like a, you know, what are you up to today in the doctor's lounge? Oh, just delaying the inevitable. And it doesn't sound very hopeful or positive. It's this dark kind of doctor humor, but it's true. But the way I look at it is very much, well, we're delaying the inevitable so that you can get done what you're here to do. And that's very much about who are you? What's important to you? What matters to you? What do you find, you know, worth living for in the same way, you know, what's worth living for is the thing you're, you're, you're going to die doing. So it's very, I view it as being very philosophical. I get very, I love these conversations with patients.

I love that. I was going to say one of the things that I do see trips people up, and this is a huge topic and we're not therapists. We're not trying to venture fully into that world, but I will say there's a reality that people do have traumas that from their past that influence so much of their mindset. And so I think that a lot of people that come in, we would just want— we want people to be honest where they're at. And I think that's the best place to start. And recognizing that your past, whether it's your childhood or even things in adulthood, do really impact your life and the way that you— the story you tell yourself and the way you see yourself and the way that other people see you. And it's, it's huge. Tough because as much as I want to like sit there with someone and say, okay, we want to do, I don't know, some of these therapy principles, we also have so much of the physical to work on, and there's so much there. And so sometimes we do refer people out to do some emotional work with therapy or some other things. I know you really love EMDR, some of that stuff to really accelerate healing in people. And so we, you know, want to be sensitive to that as people are coming in, and we also want to help people get connected to the right things that can help them heal.

Yeah, the two things that I think are the most data-driven, evidence-backed for mind-body medicine are definitely neurofeedback and EMDR. And there are other therapies that I'm sure have a good basis in the literature, and maybe I'm, I'm wrong, but those are the two. And part of why I recommend them is they're accessible. Generally speaking, I can get anyone anywhere, at least in the United States, continental United States, maybe either of those where they are and expect them to get at least a reasonably good clinician or operator of the therapy. And I've seen that have profoundly life-changing results. Usually I try to, try to sort out if we need to do that instead of someone working with us, because the truth is I'd rather them go do that if it's the primary issue, then work with, with us. But then we'll just find people, you know, like I told you this morning, we have this crazy new cadmium level in someone in the practice. It's the record for an initial cadmium level.

Wow. I know.

And good luck getting rid of all that with just EMDR and neurofeedback. That's true. Yeah. And so there's, there's this complex interplay between the physical body, the emotional, and however you want to call it, spiritual, energetic, all these elements of our, of our being that have to be worked on in different ways at different times in different stages. Things that are clues that people are really in need of more of this: low HRV, high respiratory rate. Red flags for me are people who are too busy. They don't do the protocols. They don't read things. They're They seem rushed all the time. They seem stressed all the time. We had a patient who would reschedule sessions 6 or 7 times in a week and she never got better. This again, this chicken or the egg thing. Are they in overdrive because they're full of toxic heavy metals that are causing the brain to be overly excited? Or are they stuck in that in their nervous system and they just need to really do the work of slowing down? You know, Jim Laird is a great example of this. He talks about this and we're going to do some podcasts together again in the future. He describes that the first time he he sat still for 5 minutes, it was one of the hardest things he'd ever done. He just constantly been on the go, on the move, doing things to avoid dealing with the stresses of things that had happened to him in his life and really trying to get people to relax, slow down, to take time. It's part of why we recommend 3 10-minute walks to everyone, which Jim brought to the practice. It gets them to slow down. It should raise their HRV if it's low. If their HRV is low, we'll do other things, a lot of which Jim was the person who really brought them to my attention, like float tanks or rounding over a stability ball and breathing. Breathwork's one of my favorites. It's why we screen every patient for hyperventilation syndrome. We'll put them through the starting breathwork protocol, or we'll put them through the advanced breathwork protocol. Fun story, yesterday saw a case, reflux, several years, been trying everything. It's been with us for over 2 or 3 years now. And still hasn't had this reflux under control. Found out there's breathwork to increase lower esophageal sphincter tone and reduce reflux symptoms.

That's awesome.

So now it's a protocol to practice.

That's awesome.

I know. So you find these things and you're like, oh my gosh, it all comes back to breathwork and the nervous system. And can you slow down? And can you relax? And when we see lower HRV, when we see high respiratory rate, when we see high resting heart rate, when we get these red flags of constantly rescheduling, never having time, We know we have to really tackle this and say, hey, listen, we got to have time for you. Got to relax. I get out Dr. Stillman's late night DJ voice, relaxing, calm conversation about your labs. Everything's going to be okay. You're going to be fine. Take a deep breath.

You do that with every patient.

I know. I know. I know. And it works. I had a patient almost break out and cry once when I did that to her, because she was like, I'm sorry, I'm late. I'm busy. I'm stressed. I'm like, just slow down. Relax, take a deep breath.

That's awesome. I love that. But this is why it's really popular. I think if people are on social media and looking at different like health pages, everyone's talking about nervousness, the nervous system, calming your nervous system, doing the nervous system work, nervous system resets, like everyone is.

And this is why we have to touch the third rail of why everyone's nervous system is in overdrive. There's actually two of them. So the first third rail is people's nervous systems are in overdrive because medications, not naming any names of specific medication categories, contain heavy metals that make the brain really stressed out. Just going to leave that one there. But the real third rail is that non-native EMF, microwave and radio wave radiation.

Yes.

Cause and trigger the stress response directly. And so when you're baking your face in artificial light from a screen that is designed to activate the central nervous system, and that is simultaneously baking you in microwave and radio wave radiation, which your phone or your tablet or your computer is is using to communicate with the router or the tower or whatever it's communicating with. When you're baking your body in that, you're doing almost everything possible to increase your stress response, short of say being chased by a bear, being in a genuine life-threatening situation or watching something horribly traumatic and ugly, which is what a lot of frankly, like social media is devolving into. So this is becoming increasingly popular because people are creating the environment in which their body is maximally stressed. And I say the third rail is really the EMF. Question because I've met more people and have seen more content banned outright from social media about EMF than I have the other issue.

That's interesting.

Very interesting. Yeah. My friend Meredith Oak, shout out to her and the Institute for Applied Quantum Biology. Please go check them out. They're doing great work. Their YouTube channel, which is full of stuff on the harms and dangers of non-native EMF, disappeared overnight. No warning.

It's so sad.

It is what it is. And people just need to understand, like, The institutions have lost their way. People are confused. The people in power are definitely not watching out for you. You've gotta do your own research and you'd better make sure that you're not relying on, because we see it with like AI all the time. It gives you this totally false narrative. And if you don't know the questions to ask, you're never gonna find the right answer. And so yes, nervous system reset work, all that is important, but man, results people get when they slow down, relax, 3 10-minute walks, start putting their phone on airplane mode. I was just talking to a woman. We did a podcast on Tuesday, Emanuela Urbani. She has this podcast called The Decentralized Mind. She noticed that her magnesium requirement dropped completely when she mitigated her house to EMF and artificial light. And that's part of why the supplement industry is exploding right now. People have these high, high nutrient requirements because non-native EMF induces oxidative stress, blue lighting induces oxidative stress, it reduces melatonin levels, which is the body's main antioxidant and on and on. And so it all fits together. Like there's a reason why, you know, our content is wildly popular and our practice is very busy. A, what we do works. B, people are in this soup of causative agents of disease that they're being gaslit about left, right, and center.

But anyway, it's so true.

I didn't think we were going to get into this today, but here we are.

It's helpful. I think this is the stuff that people need to know, because I think that there's so much content out there that promises these quick fixes or you'll get better, just join us. You know, everyone has results in one month. And I tell everybody when they have a call with me, if they're thinking of joining, that I say, if anyone's selling you a quick fix, they're lying to you because healing takes time and we're going to figure it out. But it just takes time because we have to address all these different components.

Exactly. Very common for us to work diligently for 6 months before we get like a huge improvement. Sometimes it comes all at once. And that's part of the challenge we face, but it's also just part of the reality of good medicine is it's not quick fixes. It's diligent work day after day. We talk to patients about that. Cause sometimes there's a role for things that will get them quick wins, but we also don't want to compromise quality long-term for short-term results. And one thing that's, I've noticed coming up is a lot of people are saying things like, well, it's only your nervous system. You just have to slow down. It's just that you're, and they're so, I mean, this poor guy with this cadmium level I just saw this morning, it's wild. I didn't even tell you about his lead level, which is real. His manganese level, one of the highest I've seen in a long time, maybe ever. We see it every week in the practice. People have these significant biochemical abnormalities that other people are not, not finding. This guy, I saw that today, his wife works in healthcare. He's seen a bunch of doctors. He said he'd spent $10,000 on supplements. Nobody found this stuff, but here we are.

It's so true. I agree with you. It's tough also because people want to take the thing that helped them the most and then project it on everyone else. And that's helpful to some extent, but like the nervous system work, everyone does need to do some of that. But in this case, this guy has very high heavy metal levels. We need to get rid of that. We need to get that out of the different receptor sites. We need to like actually remineralize him and get him better. And so it's a, it's a both/and. And so we do want to talk about this because this is one key component of healing, but It's again, everything together and figuring out what are the underlying causes for your specific case and then making the changes necessary to let your body heal.

And I've been surprised. A lot of patients come back to me and they say, you're like my quarterback. When you're, when you need somebody, you throw the ball to them, but then I come back to you later to, to, you know, figure out what do we need to do next? And that's only obviously when it's something out of our wheelhouse and most of our patients, we never refer to. Anyone else, we just take them on, get them better, keep them well. I can't remember the last time— when did I refer someone? We've got one person who's looking into referrals for chelation therapy right now, but it's very rare.

All right, great.

I think we'll wrap it up there. We hope everyone has enjoyed this episode. Amy, thank you for joining me again. Everyone, thank you for tuning in. Everyone take care, have a great day. We'll see you next time.