The Diagnosis She Never Expected

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 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, and today I'm excited to welcome JD Azavari to the podcast. She is a patient of the practice and I've invited her to tell her story of hope, story of healing, to share with you all what she's learned, what she's experienced. Hopefully it will help many of you no matter what your struggling with. JD, thank you for joining me.

Thank you so much. I'm really happy to be here with you.

And we're also joined by her husband, who we will refer to as the peanut gallery. So I like to start by asking everybody who they are and where they're from.

We currently live in Asheville, North Carolina. We've been here. I've been here for about 14 years. I grew up in Michigan, which does have an interesting piece, I think, of my history and my health. So that's why I'm bringing it up. And what was the other question? Who we are?

Who you are and where you're from.

Who we are. Well, we're parents first and foremost. We are people that like to challenge the system, go further always. Sometimes that can be a little overwhelming.

Mm-hmm.

And a little bit to one's detriment if they're not careful, which I can see echoed in my story. But you know, that's partly my work to do. This time around.

And you're also a practitioner yourself. You're a midwife.

I was a practicing home birth midwife and I taught midwifery for over a decade. Then moving to North Carolina, home birth midwifery is illegal. So I taught mostly and worked more with perinatal mental health, nutrition, parenting.

Did it occur to you not to move to a state where your profession was illegal?

Yeah, it did. But I had a job teaching, so it felt important. And there's still, I mean, I had 2 home births here myself with illegal midwives. So it happens. It's been going on for as long as history.

Well, I have to admit, I've always felt that the idea of making home birth illegal, it's like, okay, we're going to throw the girl who stays home in the blizzard in Montana in jail because she didn't drive to the hospital to have her baby. Like, come on, you're really going to make things illegal in their natural setting. Like we're going to ban cows eating grass when it's a lawn, like really? It's, this is silly, but I'm not, not consulted on these matters. So, um, so it was illegal and I'm curious, most people who come to us as practitioners have some kind of, a lot of them go into healthcare because they've got their own journey, their own health issues they're curious about. Was that the case with you?

Knew that I wanted to be a mother for as long as I could remember. And when I became pregnant at 23, for whatever reason, there was no doubt in my mind. I wanted to have a home birth. I would breastfeed. I would not vaccinate. And I, I can see snippets of how my mom raised me when I was young and different pieces, but ultimately I sit with that a lot and wonder like, how much is, you know, our destiny or the reason God brought us here already designed before we arrive?

Oh, indeed.

Oh yeah. 3 years ago today, I became a mother for the first time, actually. Wow.

That's so exciting. I love that. That's really, it's really interesting that you had that really strong feeling so early and then you became a midwife. And then when did you first start to have health challenges yourself?

Well, it's interesting. This is one of the things that Jay and I were talking about that I don't see until I maybe hit 30-ish, mid-30s, that what was driving my almost addiction to health was because of my own needs versus like my own health needs, if that makes sense. Mm-hmm. So from, you know, the teens until early 30s, I was, my health like focus was driven by more of a perfectionistic like mentality, psychology, personality. Mm-hmm. Where I was like, I was vegan, I was raw, I was exercising, I was seeking the best and ultimate aspect of how to be healthy that matched the moment of society during whatever time period I was in.

Mm-hmm.

You know, paleo, primal, keto, went through all of those things. And I look back on it and I didn't necessarily follow the status quo. So I think there was a part of me that felt like I was doing something balanced and healthy, but I was still being driven by an internal system of perfectionism. And it was when that drive and the adrenal fatigue and all of that kind of pittered out and there was nothing left that the same mechanism showed up in health, like to the detriment of my being, which then started me on a, how do I heal myself journey?

What specifically did you notice first as far as symptoms?

It was I would say first it was hormone and gut. Like I, I really, I had a big crash that I didn't know what it was for a long time. How long ago was that? Like 11, 12, 12 years ago. And ended up self-diagnosing myself with SIBO. And at that point, most people didn't even know what SIBO was. I had to order my own test. I was advocating. I said something is not right with my gut. And I was just told I was fine. And over and over and over again, we went on like a year-long pilgrimage around the country trying to find practitioners in Oregon and Florida and all over the place.

What were the symptoms you were dealing with specifically?

Specifically, it was like bloating and just not digesting anything. And I could tell that the minute food hit my stomach, there was a reaction and that I was eating, but my body wasn't getting any nutrients.

Were you exhausted?

I was exhausted. I was losing, losing weight. I had losing hair, so much fatigue. I could hardly walk up the steps. And it was a visceral feeling of there's food in my belly, but I can't access it because whatever is going on with this reaction.

How was your sleep at the time?

It was bad. Like everything was just bad.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm going to assume you felt very depleted at that time.

Very depleted.

Yes. So then what happened next? You did this long journey.

Yes.

What did you find?

Ultimately at the end, a practitioner in, back in Asheville that tested my thyroid.

Mm-hmm.

And I had thyroid testing done just on more of a routine basis before that. Mm-hmm. And everything was fine. But after a year or so into this initial digestive issue, my thyroid was virtually gone. I was at that point told my hormones were similar to menopause. It was like my whole body just stopped.

And how old were you then?

I would've been 34, 35.

Interesting. Okay.

And so she started me on thyroid medication and I started to slowly get healthier, but, and then we had, I had my last baby, like at that point I hadn't had a period for over like almost that entire time the gut thing was happening. I didn't know if I'd ever be able to have children again.

Did you see conventional doctors along this journey? I did. None of them caught the hypothyroidism?

Nope. I don't think it wasn't there at first. It happened over time as my body declined. And so I don't know when in that picture that that happened as far as my last thyroid test that was normal versus the next one that wasn't.

Yeah. I have to unpack that for a minute. Cause I think it's really important because a lot of people identify with this journey that you're describing of I'm fine, but I'm a highly driven individual. And then sort of the bottom falls out of the tub. Apparent reason. And, and often people are sort of wandering around in the wilderness, so to speak, trying to find someone who can figure out, well, what's the real cause behind all this? And there's so many different causes that play a role, which is why of course we have a very comprehensive approach. We try to take a look at all of them and find out what's really driving things. But then I find that people over those months can— their thyroid function that may have been normal at the beginning may decline over that period of time to become then a major contributor to, and it can keep them kind of stuck too. So I've also observed that patients will often do better when you kind of kickstart things with a little bit of thyroid hormone, even if they don't need it long-term. And we have had patients start and then taper off later once they'd achieve their health and wellness goals. So yeah, it's a very common story to me, but I, I always, you know, it's, it's such a shame when someone, cuz some patients do wander around for months or years and, and no one notices that it's their thyroid. So you changed that and then started, things started to come back.

Mm-hmm.

Across the board?

I would say maybe like a 40 to 50%, but it was such a big jump from where I had been. I was, was satiated for a while.

Great.

I had a baby, which I really wanted to have one more baby, so I was super happy about that. But then after a year out postpartum, when I felt like things should be getting more normal again, comparatively to how all of my other pregnancies had been.

Mm-hmm.

Therapist, hormones coming back online in a more normal fashion. Mm-hmm. All of that, it really didn't. So then I was like, okay, my baseline isn't going to go back up as I had hoped.

Mm-hmm.

And I continued on for a number of years then on thyroid medication going into eventually menopause early. Nobody could really tell me why this was creeping into like age 40. How old am I now? 42. Like for the next 3 or 4 years it was like, well, I guess this is where I'm at. It's kind of a bummer. But I, nobody could really give me answers. So I just kind of kept going.

I'm sure that coming from your background as a midwife who'd focused so intensely on her health, it must've been very disillusioning to have your body sort of quit on you in this very dramatic way.

It was, it was really hard and sad and it was better than I had been when I was really, really sick. So I kept, I had that to reference and be grateful for the improvement I had made. And I think that we both maybe just decided this was as good as it was gonna get. And I would keep working on my own with diet and exercise and tweaking things because I am really health-oriented and mm-hmm. Wanting to, I focused so much more than on nourishing nutrition.

Mm-hmm.

Versus what all of the years of my twenties and early thirties, which I feel was more of like a depletion nutrition. Mm-hmm. Which I think was huge in supporting me being as okay as I was. But it was then 44-ish, cuz I'm 46 now, when I had come off of the thyroid medication cuz I actually felt like I was improving enough. But within a couple months I was diagnosed with melanoma. So the coming off of thyroid medication, I bring that up because that's one thing that you and I talked about that I did go back on. After I met with you as far as a potential support to keep any melanoma mitigated a bit.

Yes.

Having the melanoma happen and then feeling like I was in another huge health crisis and have brought everything back to the surface as far as what do I do? How do I heal myself? Where do I go? Being really lost because I'm not going to initially just jump into what the modern or the systematic medical system told me to do when I was diagnosed with melanoma. And that really began my next, like, immersion into health options, which brought me into circadian biology, quantum biology, met you through that course.

Mm-hmm.

And ultimately added some things to the repertoire of what I was doing to keep myself healthy that I hadn't really had before, which was circadian health and minerals.

From where you are now, what's your perspective on why you got sick in the first place?

They're like, nothing else.

You didn't live next to a nuclear reactor.

Okay. So I got to go back.

You didn't live at a Superfund site.

Mm-hmm.

You didn't, you know, walk me through. I'm really curious.

Yeah. So my personality completion coupled with the world at large and women and how we think we need to show up, be body image, all those things. However, I grew up in a very toxic environment by Flint, Michigan. Dioxin capital of the world.

One of the most toxic places on planet Earth.

Yes.

The Flint River. The Flint River. Right behind my house.

Where she grew up.

Yes.

Yeah.

And then a ton of mercury in my mouth at a very early age, which then resulted in mercury breaking down. My mom worked in a dentist office. Like she used to play with the mercury before they put it in my mouth. I have memories of it.

Oh, interesting.

Yeah. So along the way, not really knowing better in my twenties, getting 4 root canals because Mercury breaks down even if you care for it really well and your teeth continue to, um, just not work very good if they're broken apart when you're a young child.

Uh, yeah.

So that was something that along the way I was addressing. I did get all of my mercury, all the mercury removed before the melanoma diagnosis. However, in going through the process of melanoma, I chose to get all my root canals removed, which I, which I do feel were a contributing factor to. Mm-hmm. What was going on that triggered an overproduction of melanin in my body, which is how I view melanoma, is something that was literally just trying to detox me and help me be healthy.

Yes. Right. The difference between looking at the body as something that's broken and needs to be fixed and looking at it as something is looking at it, at it as something that is trying to do the right thing and just needs help to get back on track. So it's so funny that you bring up the amalgams because in all of our conversations we've been so focused on other things that I think I I had forgotten that you had amalgams, which you obviously had out before we even met. And then just looking at your hair tissue mineral analysis levels, I've never even seen you eliminate mercury, which makes me wonder if you've got more to get rid of. But that leads me to my next question, which is what did you do or did you do anything to get rid of the mercury that you had accumulated?

I know I did some protocols that the dentist that took them out told me to do.

In this moment, I don't really remember, but no chelation or very intensive sauna at any point.

I've done a lot of sauna. I have, but I didn't ever do a specific chelation protocol. Yeah.

Sauna is one of the best things for that. And dioxins. There's actually some really interesting literature on dioxin detoxification in first responders after 9/11. Yeah. They did some very interesting studies on them and the levels in their blood and the illnesses that they had. And a lot of their illnesses resolved with sauna therapy, which is why we're so enthusiastic about it. Okay. So then you were, where would you say you were with your health before we met with the new diagnosis of melanoma? And I'm thinking more in terms of your, your energy, your mental clarity, your focus, your gut, your skin, most of the things people come to see us with.

Yeah.

Well, actually with when the melanoma diagnosis happened, I felt like I was in the best health I'd experienced in years.

Yes.

It was, I was off the thyroid medication, but I hadn't, I was fully in menopause as far as I could tell and had accepted that. But I was eating really like high nutrient. I was exercising, I was weightlifting, my fatigue was pretty normalized and I felt good. So that, that's also been an interesting thing to contend with and wondering if maybe finally my body got to like a healthy enough baseline to start eliminating things more fully, or that like opened up something where stored mercury then came out or stored toxins, which then triggered more melanin production. I mean, this is all my theory trying to make sense of my health and not just saying you have cancer and you're sick and there's a problem.

Right.

So a lot of it is my speculation, but—

Well, I would say though that the years, like the 3 years leading up to the melanoma diagnosis, we were very active with a lot of things having to do with health and there was a lot of external stressors that were—

Yeah, there was.

At a level that I would say was beyond where things had been prior to those 3 years.

It's watching the stress and the drive and the depletion and the push without rest is just, it's so hard.

Those years would have been COVID, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. And we started, which I don't know how much we talked about before, but we started an alternative, like nature-based children's program against the COVID narrative so that children could be together, not have masks. Not have vaccine regulation, not have contact tracing, not have all the things. And we, you know, stepped into a pretty intense, like even public profile position against that stuff. And it was really stressful. It was really stressful holding that amongst over 100 parents for a number of years, being, you know, in a position that many people didn't like, but we felt very important to speak to and uphold.

Yeah, I couldn't agree more.

So yeah, there was stress. Yeah.

So you came to see us and I'm really curious to ask why you decided to come see me.

Well, after, after the melanoma diagnosis, so there were different things that the medical system wanted me to do. They wanted to do sentinel lymph node removal. They wanted to do multiple PET scans and things like that, that I, I declined. And I just said, you know, I don't have palpable lymph nodes. I'm not feeling really good about putting all this stuff into my lymphatic system at this point. I feel like it's already taxed. Why would I do that? And of course I didn't get a lot of, you know, happy responses to those things, but I felt strong in, in that position. And we spent a couple months going to a number of different alternative cancer centers in Arizona and California. I got the root canals out in Tijuana. That was a crazy experience. And felt though at that point, which was shortly before I came to see you, that things had stabilized enough where I didn't need to be actively seeking cancer care, but I wanted to still look at my health, look at like the basis of what's going on in my body, root cause, and continue to have a practitioner that would help me maintain and get healthy as time and years continue to unfold. I also, as I mentioned, took the Applied Quantum Biology certification course cuz in learning about melanin and sun and melanoma, I just went full into quantum and circadian health, which was so supportive and helpful for my melanoma journey. And saw you as a teacher there. So putting those things together, wanting somebody that could look at melanoma with a holistic lens and also not just tell me I need to be afraid of the sun, because I knew that you wouldn't tell me that.

Correct.

And additionally, the aspect of Christianity. So those things are what brought me to you.

Thank you. Yeah, I think that it's a really challenging situation that you were in, and I've actually had atypical nevis, nevi, myself removed by dermatologists, and I've talked to them about the risk-benefit ratio or profile of, of this procedure. And the tough thing about melanoma and any skin cancer is that yes, it's visible, but they can be very sort of sneaky.

Mm-hmm.

You know, a, a seemingly benign looking nevus can turn into a melanoma and invade through the skin and then be metastatic, and then it can be rapidly fatal. I think the real tragedy of dermatology research, I mean, maybe this is just one of many, is that this is a solvable problem because what the reason they recommended sentinel lymph node biopsy, PET scanning, all these things is Well, if we're not aggressive enough, the patient could say, well, you should have been more aggressive. And then it turns into a lawsuit, right? And so doctors have really been powerfully shaped by the trial lawyer, I don't know, the, the court system, the justice system to be overly conservative. And then you combine that with a lack of time to truly walk patients through the risks and benefits of these things. And you wind up with a perfect recipe for patients being unhappy, doctors being unhappy. And then the doctor's response is, well, I gotta You know, cover my behind and doctors will literally call it CYA, you know, cover your ass. And it's sad that that's where the sort of corporate oligarchs have taken medicine. But I also hope patients understand that doctors don't mean ill, they just don't have the time. And in the case of the data, you know, the, the kind of trial to do or to answer this question would be, okay, we're gonna take two groups of people and some of them have to do no or less monitoring and another group has to do more. And even if you separate them, I can tell you that there's going to be different psychographics and demographics to those groups. So you're still comparing apples to oranges. And if you randomly assort them, then arguably there's an ethical problem because, well, you know, one of these is going to be safer than the other. Who are you to decide to randomize people? But what happens as a result of this is no one does the study. No one has the answer. And so if you ask somebody a pointed question, like, Because this is the real question. What is my risk of death from refusing the surveillance that you're offering me? And I didn't really put that together until I was out of my training. But as I counseled more and more and more patients, because patients very frequently seek me out because they want my opinion about a procedure, because they feel like the proceduralists have this perverse incentive to overoperate, which they do. And this is why, you know, you know, the dermatologists have a good thing going. Why do research that will reduce the number of operative cases you can take on? Right. And I'm not saying that there's like an active conspiracy of like, oh, we've got to make sure we've got operative cases. It's just people get paid to do what they get paid to do. But I look at it and I think this is a solvable problem. And, you know, never in training did anyone say, well, here's the risk of doing nothing. And in some cases it was actually just this sort of catastrophizing, like, well, of course, if you don't do what we tell you, of course you're going to get sick and die young. It's like, why, why do we assume that, you know, this is such a, seems like such a, it's a hypothesis, not an absolute, right? Anyway, that's probably a whole nother story for a whole nother podcast when it comes to, particularly to cancer. So what did we do? And because, well, actually let's give people a little bit of context. One thing that I notice about in cases like yours is that usually you come in and you already have a very, very, very optimal diet and lifestyle. And I share that with people because where we're going to go next is what we did. And I need to share that context with everyone because, you know, your results are not typical. They're exceptional. You had much more remarkable eliminations of heavy metals, which we'll get to, than most people do. Now, that doesn't mean that most of our patients don't feel much, much, much better, but I find it very interesting that we have this trend in the practice of graduates from the Institute for Applied Quantum Biology coming through the practice and getting these kinds of results and having significant eliminations. In fact, we just saw another one this week. I mean, this was like, I was like, Kenna, you gotta take this. You gotta de-identify it. This is like the perfect teaching case. These, this before and after is like a, this is what should happen for everyone. But I don't think people get, and part of why I have this podcast is I want them to hear that the fundamental daily habits that you integrate into your life really set the stage for healing to actually be significant when you introduce things like hormones, peptides, pharmaceutical drugs, herbs, supplements, right? So I'm really curious, when you came into the practice, what did you already incorporate from all the years of, of learning and practicing yourself in terms of your daily routine and your lifestyle and your habits?

Can I go back to the cancer thing a little bit more first?

Yeah, of course.

Okay. So I feel like I should explain with a little bit more detail the choices I made and why. So during my time as a midwife, it was very important to always be considering what the test results are going to do and how they're going to change your course of treatment.

Yes.

And having the ability to pause in those extremely intense emotional moments when somebody could be holding over you life or death and to, you know, build up whatever that is inside of oneself to be able to know you have a moment, you have a moment to think, and you don't just need to jump into what's being told of you from this like incredible place of fear. Or, and so I didn't flippantly just say, I'm not gonna have my lymph nodes removed and I'm not gonna do this PET scan. It was, it was very intense to make those decisions and it took a lot of presence within my own self and weighing out what I could decipher between my risk and benefit. And for example, had I had palpable lymph nodes, I probably would have had my lymph nodes removed. But I'm asking questions of what is it that you What would indicate you to have me as the doctor to recommend this thing? And what are the nuance and the variance in that recommendation? Yes. And from there, I didn't just not do those things and do nothing. I had the ability to then go to Invita Cancer Center and get extensive testing done.

Mm-hmm.

To go to another cancer center in California and get more testing done. To circle back to my root canals that I had I think 3 cone beam X-rays, 4, that all said I had no issues and I shouldn't get them removed. But then deciding to still get them removed and having one of them be incredibly black and totally disgusting. That was like on my meridian line to where the melanoma spot was. So it's, you know, this, this stuff isn't easy. I'm not like saying it's a piece of cake to navigate medicine and our own health, but there is, you, or you have something to say, so I'll pause there.

I wanted to just add in that. During one of the doctor's office visits, you, in this process of questioning and starting to unravel what's being offered, you know, it's not really being offered, but it's being told as like, this is strongly suggested as what needs to happen. In the process of questioning some of those things and holding that position you were talking about, there was a, a point where one of the doctors was wavering on the severity of the diagnosis. Yeah. Like if, you know, what classification of melanoma it was. She started to actually say, well, maybe it's really not that bad. Maybe it's actually—

I mean, I can clarify that. Yeah. I had all of the initial testing done in Asheville at a cancer center here, and they were very aggressive. And I said, well, I'm actually gonna go to Duke. So I went to Duke and this appointment I had with one of the top melanoma specialists, whereas was diagnosed a certain grade with all the subcategories. After I sat in that appointment for over an hour and really asked these questions of her and had her pause and had her think with me. About different options and, well, could I, instead of a PET scan, what are the risks and benefit of potentially doing an ultrasound? You know, and it's more like, we don't really do that anymore. Well, I'm like, well, can we look at my case and see if there are other courses of action? And by the end of that, she was looking at paperwork and she said, you know what, maybe this isn't even, um, the classification, maybe it's less. And it's just so fascinating cuz it points to everything that you were just saying. That there is a lot going on under the surface with diagnosis and then recommendation. And I literally watched before my eyes, my diagnosis potentially change from something more serious to less serious through a conversation.

Yes. And it really bothers me how medicine, despite the fact that it's gotten more complex and we know more than ever, the average, particularly outpatient doctor is expected to just know everything coming out of residency and just churn through 30, 40 cases a day, you know, hey, routine stuff. Sure. Doesn't take a lot of thinking, but the vast majority of people are not going to the doctor with routine stuff, particularly in the age of ChatGPT where it's like, you can really, I mean, I'm not encouraging anyone by the way, like this is education, not medical advice. I think I say that. I say that at the, in the intro and the outro, I think, I'm sure it should be there, but it's, you know, it's never been easier to kind of be your own doctor. And I'm, I mean, I, and I'm using AI to do research, but I have to say, I don't, I see patients, you know, 4 hours a day on average. And honestly, between all the things I'm doing to write notes and then research, you know, so that I'm staying current and also not just staying current. One thing I find fascinating as I practice is that it's not just about going, keeping up on medicine. It's about remembering what's in danger of being forgotten. Because some of the most important things I've ever learned were from physicians who were, I mean, pre-deceased my ever, you know, pre-deceased me. Or I should say they died before I was even born. And yet, you know, these things get forgotten largely because, and I'll bring it back to what I said earlier, it's because doctors don't remember what they don't get paid to remember. That's one reason why I think it's really the future of medicine is absolutely going to be members-only practices where membership dues allows doctors to take the time to think and research and look into things. And I've had cases where patients pressed me. They said, look, how does this procedure change my risk of death? And I would do, I would actually go back into the literature and read some big meta-analysis or compare it with other things, other papers, smaller series or whatever. And, you know, it's like, oh my gosh, it's like, this is a 1.6% difference in your risk of death. So it's, it's really interesting being out of training and having the opportunity to do this kind of research because of the way the practice is structured. And, you know, I'm curious what you did as far as your own research. Like, what did you look into? What did you read? What did you put weight into? Because it also sounds like a lot of this was sort of searching your own self for what you thought was right.

I, well, I have a history in my family with cancer, so cancer and researching and knowing even of various places offering alternative quote unquote care was not too far from the surface for me. And then really specifically though, with melanoma, it was reading books on that and mitochondria and metabolic health and learning then about circadian health and quantum biology, I guess would probably be the most specific things that shifted from where I was before the diagnosis.

Yeah. By which I mean though, you didn't, did you look at like any outcome studies of melanoma? Like try to get deep into the literature?

Oh yeah. Yeah, I did.

Yeah.

It often felt more like that was scary. That was honestly hard. And I would have to, you know, pull back from that or ask my sister to look at it for me and then make the decisions because of the intensity of how fast melanoma could progress and finding stories of people dying that I didn't want to find.

I know.

And yeah, continuing, but at the same time it was the opening into Christianity. Followed with the melanoma. And I didn't expect it. I wasn't anticipating it. I could say it was percolating a bit for a number of years, but when the melanoma happened, it was like full on God everywhere I went. And that, with my own journey through it on a more like nuts and bolts worldly level, guided the decisions that I made in a way that I, like I said, I didn't anticipate. And so I just continued to go deeper and deeper into the world of prayer and asking for support from spiritual people as much as I was from doctors. And I think that really was the thing that carried me on to the next step and the next choice and still is.

Fascinating. Excellent. Do you mean that you weren't practicing Christians before that?

And then not really, I mean, full on like New Age until about 3 or 4 years ago, you could say.

What's your perspective on that now?

That's an interesting one. Yeah. I, I think one of the first things that hit me was ungodly self-reliance. Like I would say that from a place of like theology and psychology and spirituality, like these moments of something unraveling that were so big that everything in my world changed. I was like, oh my gosh, like it's not up to me anymore. I have, I can relax. It was like the first time in my life that I could remember that I could relax when I shifted from what I see now as secular, new age. I mean, new age isn't the best way, but it's easy. It, you know, you get a picture in your mind when you say that, that it's all predicated on self. Like, what can you do? What can you achieve? Oh, you didn't meditate long enough. Oh, you didn't like get the right green juice protocol today. Like, it's all what you can do, which ultimately is going to result in depletion. Like, there's no other way out of that. And so it feels like that was one of the first major things that I bumped into that was like, Wow. Okay. I can see that. I can see that with majority of all the people I've lived my life with before where we are now. And it gave me the biggest sense of relief that I have ever experienced.

Wow. Thank you for sharing that.

Thanks for asking.

So all that being said, what were the top things that you'd already incorporated into your diet and your lifestyle before we started working together?

Circadian, circadian, circadian. Like it's so, it feels so important that there is this fundamental that even the healthiest of us are still really missing. And it's hard. However easy it should be to get up and see the sun every day, it's still hard. But I think that without that relationship to the sun, which I also then, my final project in QVC was Christianity and circadian health because that also just came together over and over again that like we were designed to be present to the sunrise to pray. And we were designed to not just on this biological level, to be present through all of the different aspects of the day and like the sun on the horizon and all this stuff. But there is a direct relationship to our life source through that process that I feel like when without that being considered and working to become optimized, you're always going to be working against something.

You were up every single morning, whether it was 10 degrees out or 60 degrees out, drinking some tea. But sitting out and looking towards the sunrise. So that was really, she really took that and committed full on to that as a practice. And then, you know, adjusting our light environments.

So the variations in that world, which there's a lot of—

unpack this a little bit for people who are not familiar with all this lingo. Circadian, meaning the day-night cycle that humans operate on. We're supposed to be awake during the day and asleep at night. Very important to get bright light during the day. It's a whole nother story how that fits in with sunlight and melanoma. I'll have to, I'll have to talk, talk about that another time because, and I've written about a lot about that in my various books. But so honoring your circadian rhythms by going to sleep when the sun goes down and limiting artificial light at night, which disrupts sleep and is linked to worse skin cancer, cancer in general, shorter life, chronic autoimmunity, inflammation, heart disease, that you name it, right? So having an optimal daily routine in terms of your light and what else?

Well, you named all of the basics. I do think the light at night is equally as hard and the light from screens. Mm-hmm. And then making sure that you're mitigating that with glasses or ways to adjust your screen light or not being on a screen at all, or yes, hacks in your house for making sure that all the lights are below waist level. After dark because even your, the light above your head, your, your brain, all your stuff is going to think that the sun's up versus it's a fire on the ground.

Oh my gosh. I've never heard that one. That's next level.

Right?

Did you guys mitigate?

I don't know where I heard that one from, but.

Did you guys mitigate EMF at all?

We, we actually live where there isn't EMF and we have, we started hardwiring. That would be a thing that I wish I could tell you we have completed, but we only have one router in a very big house that we shut off. At night, and then we are out in the mountains where we're not surrounded by EMF, like our other people, people's routers or anything like that, which is, you know, that all of that's really difficult. We, we do have like the EMF shield fabric stuff that you, we put up in certain places, or if we go on a trip, you know, to try to like cover the bedroom with EMF fabric. Um, a variety of different little things we've done, like phone cases and pendants. Stuff like that, but really like the syncing of the light at day and the darkness at night.

And obviously eating a whole food, natural, and then mineral as possible, local diet. Yeah.

Yeah. It's like the hydration piece. I have struggled with histamine and never fully been diagnosed with mast cell or POTS, but I know that that's also been a part of my profile picture my whole life. And like overly flexible, not Ehlers-Danlos, but kind of inching into some of that stuff and then histamine reactions. So learning the connection between exclusion zone water, circadian health, mitochondrial function, and histamine, and working with the minerals and proper hydration, which a lot of that has come with working with you. Additional, like even the root vegetables at every meal that had a big change. I'd already, as you mentioned, like I'd already been eating really healthy and eating, right? Not healthy raw food vegan, like healthy whole meat, you know, all the things. But adding root vegetables at every meal in the last few months has shifted my hydration significantly.

Well, the minerals, the hydration, and the minerals and, and the dietary stuff was demonstrated because we went camping like what, a month ago?

And everybody there was like having allergies, all this stuff. And I didn't, I was like totally fine. I'm like, they're all like, what is up with you? I'm like, yeah, I'm not on any Benadryl, guys. And I like, so first time in my life.

Really? So tell us the story, cuz you started with us about a year ago if memory serves. Tell us the story from like first appointment. What did we do? What did you see? What happened?

Well, I, I did start thyroid medication again, which we did, and I actually think that's a really solid choice for me. However much I might wanna not be on it at this point in my life.

Talk more about that in a minute. Yeah.

Energy, hair, everything. It just feels like my body needs that to function. And maybe it does. I mean, I do think there's a lot to do with the mercury and even the childhood vaccines I had and the issues with my thyroid and trying all of that stuff, which is again, like a whole nother conversation. But yeah, the thyroid medication and then the mineral balancing were the first things that we did. And feel, I feel like right away I didn't have a lot of detox symptoms, but I had some, like I had one, some random things where I was just like throwing up when nobody else in the house was. And I'm like, I know this is. This is mineral balancing. It's strange, but that's what it is. And hydration, like I mentioned, like having really good water. We have good water, but having like mineral water and salt and trace minerals in addition to like the HTMA protocol makes like, if I'm drinking trace minerals and salt in my water all day long, I'm not having any allergy symptoms at all. Like ever.

You were having them before?

Still are. And you know, it started with, the Quinton, with using Quinton, and then I felt like I needed more and it was like, expensive and all the things. So I'm like, I'm just gonna get trace minerals and salt, really good salt, have it in my water. And that's always in my water. And I haven't had any allergies for like 3 months.

Yeah. I mean, you had struggled with allergies all your life, all your life. Like she could pop a Benadryl.

However much I don't wanna admit, I took Benadryl after I like, you know, bottles of quercetin and bromelain. I still couldn't function sometimes out of the year, but the minerals and the salt and then, you know, the HTMA. And just building all of those things back up in your body. The root vegetables with the potassium hooked into the hydration, you know, then adding hormones, which we did. This is not a very straightforward answer to your question. I apologize. But I do think the hormones were, have been really key too in just eliminating, like finally feeling like I'm eliminating hot flashes, feeling like there's easier exercise recovery, better sleep. I do think there was improved sleep with progesterone.

Impossible not to, unless you have a paradoxical effect. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So let's unpack all that. So we have, I see a lot of women in your position where you've done a lot of things right. You've been very careful in terms of your diet, your lifestyle, highly educated, driven. Then one of the big questions that often comes up is why is this happening to me? Why not my sister or my mother or. And a lot of the times it's impossible to say. Sometimes there's something that you go, well, maybe it was the fact that you had more mercury amalgams than them, or maybe it was the fact that, you know, and this gets into like, well, maybe you lived in a moldy house and you didn't know it, or maybe you were on a contaminated well, or, you know, what was in the tap water when you didn't know you needed to filter it. And so it just becomes a sort of, I don't know, academic questions about what made this person sick. When I see patients, I have to immediately step into what is the clear and present threat hazard or problem in the environment. You didn't have anything that I saw in your diet, lifestyle, environment that I thought this is the, this is the problem, right? You did have a picture of some combination of exposures and choices I've made depleted the system plus or minus introduced a lot of contaminants. And that has resulted in this clinical picture of very severe hormonal imbalances early in life. Now we do see this happening a lot, and you mentioned, I think vegan vegetarian, plant-based eating. We see that a lot with women and men who go that route. We often end up with very significant mineral imbalances that take a long time to solve. And why I got into mineral balancing was that I was in the world of integrative medicine, tried different protocols, had many different mentors, and started to look more and more as I treated patients at the body as being very much like an ecosystem. It is, it is a system in which there are many different energies and resources. And it isn't just a matter of you just go throw some fertilizer on the lawn or you just spread some lime over there. When you actually amend soils in, on a farm, in nature, it can take huge quantities of minerals or other chemicals, compounds to actually change the fundamental soil of, of the field, the ecosystem. And so I got into mineral balancing because I kept seeing this trend where patients would start low or some minerals or vitamins, they would get a little bit better or they would get much, much, much better, but then they would, they would slide back. And so what I realized was these patterns over time, decades of depletion, decades of exhaustion, decades of, you know, stress or the wrong diet or whatever, that time would end up creating a clinical scenario that was so like the depletion was so deep that it wasn't just Oh, we, we just give you some supplements and do some basic labs and just send you on your merry way. Like you described, you saw this gradual, slow improvement over time that was very consistent, but it wasn't just, you know, one or two rounds of lab testing. It was a whole year of the minerals and you stuck with them. You were very diligent. You did all the testing on time because you were seeing all these benefits. And I mention all this because I, I see a very strong trend in my world for people to, you know, sort of like take a multi or take some zinc or take this or that. But what's really interesting is you don't see the same types of results as if you have a really sophisticated mineral supplement protocol and vitamin protocol that's based on the hair testing.

Yeah.

Or even a combination of blood urine testing, which I've also used many times and is very effective. You don't get the same results if you don't pay attention to those micro minerals and micronutrients, the vitamins.

Mm-hmm.

And a lot of people are reaching for just hormones and peptides. And I'm a big fan of hormones and peptides for the record, but part of why I was excited to have you on as a guest is that you had the diet and lifestyle pieces very much dialed in. You then took the supplements after the testing. You had some very significant eliminations of heavy metals. Interestingly, you didn't eliminate any mercury, and that makes me think that there's probably, or certainly some left in your body, but you had these big eliminations of metals that also coincided with very significant normalization of minerals in the hair. And I look at the hair as being sort of the same as the soil. Like it's the easiest body tissue I can sample that tells me like what's going on at a biochemical level and also what's coming out in terms of toxins and not just snapshot in time. Blood is a snapshot in time. You'll see levels vary by 20%, 200%, 300% day to day, which gives you a lot of misleading results. The hair is put down over months and that allows us to then infer a Here's what's been going on with this person for the last 60, 90, even 120 days. Totally different picture than this is what your blood said at 7 o'clock on Tuesday. Right. And then we stack on top of the minerals and the vitamins, hormones as appropriate. And I want to mention that we attract a lot of patients who are very focused on natural, doing things naturally, which we respect and honor. And what I always end up telling them is part of our natural life cycle is for us to decline as we get older. And hormones are what keep us in addition to proper diet, lifestyle, and nutrition and all those good things from, as I put it, turning into little old people. So then the question is, hey, listen, just real talk. If we don't use these hormones, we will turn into little old people. And if we take the hormones and optimize them to youthful levels, that process will be mitigated and it will be slower and you'll have a better quality of life. And based on much of the literature, if not the overwhelming majority of it, you will also reduce your risk of many significant primary endpoints like heart attacks, strokes, cancers, et cetera. Which is why in your case, I, I looked at melanoma and I thought, okay, we have a melanoma, which is a cancer predominantly of people as they age. You see the vast majority of them in later life. That doesn't necessarily mean that the hormones play a critical role, but it sure suggests it. So the last thing I would want in somebody who's coming in with a prior diagnosis of any cancer that's linked to aging, and not all of them are, like some leukemias are much more common in young people. Well, I would want to be really sure that I had the hormones at a, at a high level, not overdosing anybody obviously, but at the, what I would call the maximum therapeutic level before we get into side effects or problems with levels being too high for the body tissues, right? Because that in my view, plus the minerals is, if you're asking me all the evidence, all the scientific literature I've read over the years, all the mentors I've had, what are the most important things for people to do? And again, beyond the diet and lifestyle and nutrition, the daily choices we have to make to be healthy. Those are the things that I deal with in practice every single day that I see, A, getting patients the best results and B, insulating them from future illness and issues regardless of what type we're, we're talking about.

Yeah. Very well put. It's essential if we aren't looking at these fundamentals that just keep our body running, that do get depleted, even if we're living optimal lifestyles, just because you're alive and you're going to be dealing with stress and we can't eliminate all toxins because of the world we live in, all these things.

Right.

There may be decisions that are outside of, you know, you pointed to a little bit, but like how I mentioned of like, I don't wanna be on thyroid medication, or do I really need to be on hormones? Well, I pushed myself and I chose a diet and a lifestyle, I think like vegan and raw food during the time when I was having the most children that I, however much I don't wanna admit it, I feel like I really just completely drained my system of what it needed to be in a relatively good place still right now. And so I'm facing whatever, if you wanna say consequences or not, to then potentially choose or to need to supplement with hormones.

Yeah.

So if zero's where we were when you started and 10 is where you'd like to be, where are you now?

I would say like 8 or 9.

Yeah.

What are the biggest concrete shifts? Energy, mood, focus, allergies. What are the biggest shifts you've noticed in terms of your ability to perform and function?

Energy, allergies, confidence, like confidence in myself to be able to heal. Like even though there's been ups and downs and everything that I shared, I honestly feel like I've landed someplace where it's finally working. Like this is how really we're supposed to eat. I mean, sure, there'll be nuances. This is really how we hydrate. This is really how we're supposed to be present in nature, in sunlight. There's a sense of like satisfaction, safety. Landing somewhere that I don't think I've ever felt before.

Despite having traveled all over the place for everything.

Yeah. Being a very curious person that wants to try lots of things and, you know, be ahead of everybody else.

Mm-hmm.

But I, and I do think that there's an aspect of coming into Christianity that's offered that too. And I again wanted to find a practitioner that would, and we've never really talked about that in any depth, but. I knew that you would accept that and you would honor that and understand, you know, what I would have to share around that. And it would be important to you to hear where I don't know how often that is present in healthcare relationships. I can say even in a lot of my alternative ones, it has not been there. So that feels really essential.

Yeah. I mean, the more I practice, the harder it is to think about practicing without, you know, Christ and God and my theology. Partly because, you know, the devil is just so real and his mischief is just so deep in medicine. So the idea of trying to heal the sick without the Almighty is like, I don't feel like I have much. Let's just say I don't like my odds. And we pray about our patients every day, my wife and I and our son. And I really believe in that. I believe in that a lot, very strongly. That's being said, we have plenty of patients who are not practicing Christians, you know, patients of all kinds of different ideological, theological backgrounds. But I do, I do talk about it and I do bring it into the medicine we practice. In part, I'll tell you, because, you know, I've met pastors over the years who, you know, they just, they would have these experiences with people who had cancer or who had serious chronic illnesses and they would get miraculous results. And, you know, it's not like a faucet you turn on and off, right? There's not a miracle ATM around the corner, but you know, I just, there's so many stories. It's not just a bunch of coincidence or placebo. There's something, there's so much there for us to, to know and learn. So I like to ask people what gets the credit. If you had to divvy up the credit for the improvements you've seen with us, how would you divvy it up in terms of percentages?

Minerals would be first.

What percent do they get?

Oh gosh.

Everyone responds that way, by the way. So I would, well, I think of everything you've said, you said minerals, thyroid.

Yes.

Bioidentical hormones.

Minerals are like 70 and then thyroid and hormones are divided between the rest.

Wow.

Yeah. And that's incredible. You've asked me this before and I didn't feel like that.

Mm-hmm.

I think I was probably more on the hormone track or even thyroid, but really as time has gone on and I've continued to see the results of the using the mineral blends, you know, directly that's related to the HTMA, but also with having like salt and trace minerals and the root vegetables, which have been emphasized through you to continue on and to continue to see how much I can tolerate. Yes. I feel like it's, it's added like this salt and light piece, you know, it's added like the, the counter to the light in this way that I'm like, you have to have these things. This has to come first.

You do.

And from there, the other things will have the ability to affect you in whatever degree they can kind of based on that core.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I expressed some surprise at how much you thought there, or now think the minerals have done this for you. In many respects, I feel like the minerals have this— there's a subtlety to them that I think people can miss. And it actually saddens me because they're nowhere near their full potential because of the subtlety of it. And that's part of the beauty of minerals is that it's really hard to hurt people with them. Now, that being said, we see a lot of bad practices out there in the integrative health space, all of them well-intentioned, of course, but we just, we get these really minerally imbalanced people coming in because they've been making these small, seemingly inconsequential choices with regards to their minerals, like cooking in certain types of cookware or, you know, drinking out of certain types of drinking vessels or eating certain types of food or preparing it a certain way. And they just don't realize that these tiny little adjustments to the steering wheel of the car don't result in any noticeable changes right now, but 100 yards down the road, you're in the ditch and the connections. And I mean, I have to say, like, I'm not some kind of genius. I didn't like figure all this out. It just became glaringly obvious after hundreds and hundreds of cases where I took care of people, not just for one or two visits, but like months and years. Oh my gosh. The minerals are really important in addition to everything else, the light and the circadian rhythms, the EMF, all the other stuff we talk about, but I'm so glad you've seen it now. You've really felt it. Like, and that's one thing that I, you know, I just, I hope it comes through in my content because it's part of why I'm making podcasts and writing blog posts is like, you play around with hormones and peptides. Great. You'll get great results. People will feel good. They'll function well. You're going to change a lot of lives, but if you really double down on optimizing the mineral system that all of that rests upon, it is just like, that's the next level. That's why I'm so passionate about what I do because I wake up every single day and I feel really, really, really good. And I didn't feel that way for a lot of my life. And so I want everyone to feel this good and have the level of ability and the options available when your physical vessel is capable, right? That I and patients like you experience through enacting this framework that we've created, that we bring people through.

Yeah.

Thank you for—

I mean, those are good too.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh, wow. Wait, wait a minute. Hang on. We're, we may be running out of time, but I mean—

I'll just say that at the end.

What was your experience with them?

I immediately felt them when I put them on.

Mm-hmm. X39 patches, what we're talking about.

X39. I used X39, Eon, and Elevita a lot because of still the melanoma and trying to work with some kind of like protocol that only, that I completely created. Yeah. To support my skin and inflammation. Um, but I, I definitely feel like they had an impact on my skin, on energy, on inflammation. We used them a lot over the winter. Didn't have sickness.

Mm-hmm.

Like especially with my kids, tick bites, my son, we have ticks. He's gotten bit by ticks this, this year. It's happened 2 or 3 times already and I've put 3 different patches on him and he's had no reaction where typically he would get maybe a fever or some swelling. And I mean, this is all somewhat anecdotal, how are you gonna say? But I'm like, I'm seeing things different.

Yes.

Yeah.

Well, I have to say as well, you know, I, we, we got really into the minerals and so on. I do put the X39 patches on everybody and they do work through the mineral system, but they're light-based, you know, light and peptide-based system in and of themselves. So you gotta revise your percentages now.

Now I just like gonna put the patches in with the mix of the thyroid and the hormones, and I'm keeping minerals at 70.

Okay. Fair enough.

Yeah.

Any words of wisdom, advice you would wanna give anyone who is on a health journey? Similar to yours?

Pray.

Mm-hmm.

In however way that feels right. See what happens. See what comes to you. Take moments to mitigate fear in those really intense, scary moments. Develop whatever practice it could be to be able to know that there can be a pause before having to jump into decisions. But yeah, that self-reliance versus surrender piece and how that plays into praying and trusting and fear. Then we didn't talk at all about deliverance either. Which is— or a lot of the conspiratorial things, which is, I think, really important for everybody, but not for today's con— well, you could talk about that when you come on our podcast.

I would love that. I was just thinking that.

Yeah, we'll talk about conspiratorial aspects, your book, deliverance, things like that, which I feel were like, for me with the melanoma too, and the Christian piece was looking for anything. Like, I have cancer, I'm gonna try anything, I'm gonna do anything, I'm gonna go for it. So it took me into, well, maybe there's vows and deliverance and demonic things that are happening in my life, I'm going to look into that too, because why wouldn't you? I don't know.

Absolutely, why wouldn't you? So where can people subscribe to your podcast and stay in touch with you?

The Rising Sovereign Podcast. It's on Spotify, Apple, iHeartRadio, risingsovereign.com, Substack, Rising Sovereign Podcast and Substack.

What's the Substack? A URL?

Rising Sovereign Podcast, pretty sure.

Oh, okay.

Yeah.

But if they look that up on, on Substack, they'll find you. Great.

Yeah.

Thank you for joining me. This has been a great conversation. And for people who wanna know more about what we ended up the last 5 minutes teasing about, you'll have to tune into my podcast with JD.

Oh, and I will say, sorry, I do think that you need to find a very skilled practitioner like Dr. Stillman if you're going to do HTMA, because it's all in the results. Or in, you know, interpreting the results. Cuz I do think that that's something that so many people are doing and I didn't do for a long time because I didn't feel like I found a practitioner that was skilled enough to truly read it and know what to do with that information. Again, it's like, well, what are you gonna do with these results? And I wanted to say that earlier, so I wanna make sure that I put that out there cuz I do think anybody listening, it's really important to find a very skilled person to read and interpret the results. Cause it's very easy to get the test done. Yeah.

Yes. So couldn't agree more. And thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Thanks everyone for joining us. We'll see you next time.