When Light Opens New Possibilities: Kathleen Horstmeyer’s Story

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 today. I'm joined by my dear friend Kathleen Horstmeier. Kathleen, hello. Thank you for joining us.

Hi, I'm so happy to be here.

So I like to start by asking everybody who they are and where they're from.

Well, my name's Kathleen Horstmeier and I'm from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, where I live with my husband, Rick. But that is just a short version That answer, that is the very short version. Yes.

And so the next question I want to ask you is, you've got a really interesting story in terms of your career in health and wellness, which has now culminated in— I don't know if you would call it a second, maybe a third, you can tell me— career really in light therapy.

I don't know, kind of like a cat, I think. Nine lives.

I think nine is too many careers. That just sounds exhausting. But you, you are, you are back in action, really focusing specifically on light therapy at this stage in your life. Fair, fair. But I want to know What was the road to get there in terms of your training, your education, and your learning about health and wellness?

Oh boy. Well, many, many years ago, I started out as a registered respiratory therapist, flying around in helicopters and doing all sorts of, you know, exciting stuff that you do when you're young and you want all the drama.

How did you decide to do that? Why? Yeah.

Oh boy. Well, I found myself— boy, Leland Stillman Stillman, I challenged everything as a young person, including going to high school. I thought it was stupid. And so So, uh, I had debates with the principal and to the point where he finally agreed, uh, to let me challenge. And I think I was, I'd already been put up a couple of grades. And so you skipped a few grades. Yeah. I ended up skipping about 5 probably in the end.

Are you serious?

See, this is too loaded for this, but I love this. This is so funny.

I didn't know that about you. I skipped a grade and I thought I was smart.

Anyway, he finally agreed to let me challenge his test he would come up with, which he ended up going out to Central Arizona College, which is— I lived at the time in Arizona and they prepared a test for me. And I went out and took that. They were quite certain I wasn't going to pass. And if I didn't, I had agreed to go to regular school, which to me was incredibly dumb and a waste of time. And of course, not of course, but I did manage to pass it. And so I took off, you know, you know, too early from home, having done that. And anyway, longer story shortened, uh, just a little, is I decided I wanted to, you know, medicine just really interested me. So, um, I went to my local college and looked. What I really wanted to do was cardiology-based something, but to do that, I had to do my clinicals out of, um, the area, which I came from.

How old were you at this point?

I had a little baby at the time. I was 18.

Wow.

Yeah. Okay.

So, um, I went to, into respiratory therapy. So I went through that and—

which for people who don't know is like, that's the person in the hospital who you call to take care of intubated people, mechanical ventilators in the ICU. In the field, I don't know what the licensing is, but I don't know what it was like then, but you know, I think respiratory therapists can intubate. Okay. So you were intubating people, which means like putting breathing tubes in, you know, on Life Flight helicopters. Very exciting stuff.

Okay.

Running IVs, taking blood gases, doing all that stuff. And I even got to work in open heart surgeries on the bypass machine, which, you know, all of that at that young age was like, that's so cool.

And then what?

That fed the drama, you know? And so anyway, I went, ended up doing that and loved it. But I ended up at the University of Washington, was invited. I was over there for a conference. Conference, and I was invited by another friend to a party, and I ended up meeting Dr. Eugene Strandness, who was at that time the head of the vascular surgery department. And we just hit it off really well. And he offered me to be able to get in on his research team to study vascular ultrasound. We were, he was making diagnostic criteria. There wasn't any for that at the time. That's kind of how old I am. And so I was like, yeah, and stepped into that. And so then I ended up with a degree in vascular physics, they called it at the time, because there wasn't anything. And so I was kind of their guinea pig on what classes to take to get a degree in this. And along the way, I also met Dr. Eugene Bernstein. Both these guys are the head, they, they're the godfathers of vascular surgery and vascular ultrasound diagnostics. You know, I was in the cath lab getting cath, uh, material and correlations and all the ultrasound stuff and correlating, putting all that together. So I ended up getting an invite to Scripps Research Clinic where, uh, Bernstein was. And so. I just, you know, I just kept falling into these just amazing opportunities and people. And, you know, I was so young at the time that I didn't know what a huge blessing that it was for me. It was just like, oh, wow, that, yeah, I want to do that. Sure, sure. So, um, I, I ended up coming out of all of that with really probably as much knowledge as both those two docs in that concentrated area. And I was probably one of three people in the world that had all that information locked down.

Wow.

And then how did you get into integrative medicine?

Well, then I went, I got married to my husband, Rick, and moved to Indiana and lo and behold, I discovered Uh, at that time, which was 1994, there was no vascular anything. And they were, it was like doing new territories. And so I pitched myself to several hospitals and I ended up getting a great job with, um, one of the big hospitals there that was really a tri-state hospital and developed a program for them. And then I ended up training vascular surgeons and cardiologists, and then I started a separate company and trained people from physicians from actually around the world. And, and so that was super fun. However, along those lines or along the way, my husband and I both, my husband's a physician, hospitalist and ER doc. And I'm also a dentist. Um, you know, we spent a little too much time in the books, but we, we saw a real switch beginning to happen in medicine that whether we just started waking up to what's always been, or I don't know, but hospitals began to own doctors. There weren't any more independent doctors. It was just this weird flip that was happening. And all along the way, my whole life, I've been interested in natural stuff. You know, like I was literally taking mud and putting it on my wounds when I was little. So that was just, you know, it was a natural thing. And I just kept studying and studying and studying. I'm an avid book reader. And I started learning about neurotoxins and in the foods. And so it led me and then my husband down the path of going to get our naturopathic doctorates. Because he was also weird and off the bell curve. Like he did not have any appreciation for medications and he would rarely, rarely prescribe them. And anybody knew that if my husband told you, you should go to the hospital, they went to the hospital. It was not a small thing. So we ended up with that. I started reading vascular ultrasounds and doing correlation studies for the cath lab. And I was able to read those from home as the internet progressed. So that allowed me then to open up a holistic health clinic, which then turned into a retreat center along the way. So we did that for many years, and then I also had a horse, horses are my love, one of my loves. Well, there's one there. And I had a horse rescue for over 23 years as well.

Got it. And that's how you met Linda Perelli, who was—

That, yes, that, yes.

On the podcast not long ago.

Yeah. Yeah.

So then you and I met through the Institute for Applied Quantum Biology, which Meredith Oak, also a guest on the podcast, runs.

Yes. And I work part-time there and I get to see you as faculty on there.

I am there regularly. I wish I was there more.

We do too.

So then how did you get into now your second career or third or whatever it is with light therapy?

I was a member of your newsletter and you put out in your newsletter, hey, has anybody heard of this light therapy? And I had previously. And so I answered and said, yes, yes., you know, it's really good. And I had not been familiar with it for several years, but I had probably 10 years prior. So you piqued my interest and you were, you know, kept writing blogs about it. And so I checked into it again and ordered some of the particular light therapy and wow, changed my life. And I began ACT. 3 or 6 or 9 or whatever of my life, which I am absolutely thrilled about.

So what happened?

So along with the horse rescue comes, you know, they, they, those horses come with a lot of baggage, you know, they're, they've been through a lot of trauma. And it just so happened I went down one night, everybody was up at the house watching a movie. I ran down to give the horses their supplements. And I was outside with one of the, actually my biggest horse. And some wind came along and blew a bag up against his back legs that I happened to be there. I was like this far from his hind end.

Just a few inches.

A few inches. And boom, like a double barrel shotgun. I got both hind feet just about 2 inches below my belly button.

The horse kicked you.

Yeah, horse kick, big time. And, um, I was in and out of consciousness and I just remember as I came to at one time thinking, Lord, bring my husband to the window to see me laying on the ground or I'm not going to make it. Cause I knew I had a bleed, internal bleed. I thought as hard as it had hit me that it, he had nicked my aorta. And I, I, I thought if he didn't, I still have hit something pretty severe and I need to get, I need to get into the hospital right away. But anyway, and my husband did, he said he just got up and went over to the window and looked outside and there I was. So anyway, obviously I made it. Uh, but I ended up with this massive, massive scarring from the bleeding that went just under my skin, like it wasn't a visible scar, but just under my skin from one hip bone to the other and back around my right flank. And it was, you know, like, you know, as big around as my index finger. And then multiple, about 40 little scars that went out from there.

You counted?

It was a lot. Like you could just feel it.

It was right there. You couldn't not count them, right?

It was just ripples. I didn't count them. Okay. But just ripples of them, lots of them. And in my field of blood flow, bad news. As, as you know, as well, Dr. Stillman.

Well, what was your experience with that in imaging? What, what gave you that suspicion? Because I don't think that's generally well appreciated or believed. I don't even think most doctors know or have any suspicion that scar tissue matters, frankly.

Scar tissue is huge and it matters a lot. It impedes blood flow for one thing. That's like the bigger obvious. And in that area, it can continue to propagate and you see bowel obstructions and all sorts of obstructions in that area.

But also what we see a lot with extensive scarring like that are cancers and, um, so you noticed that in your career you would see cancers arising at the site of scar tissue. Correct. Very interesting.

Correct. Because of the, uh, obviously the lack of, uh, blood flow and the lack of energy. Energy can't pass through that. Energy being, you know, biophotons. Electrons. It's, it's stuck. So knowing that, I worked diligently to get rid of that. And for 3 years, every day I had every tool imaginable in, in my toolbox from our clinic.

Plus, for those of us with limited imaginations, can you give us some examples?

Well, hundreds of thousands of dollars of stuff. Massive, like $50,000 PEMF machines and yeah, you know, $50,000 red light panels.

Wow.

Print other tools on us.

You were selling these things short. Some tools.

Okay.

The equivalent of like a small house in—

Yeah, well, we built a big house to house them actually for our— yeah. So I used all of that and other things that I also was trained in and a couple of different techniques on unraveling scars. Cause I worked on a lot of different clients. Anyway, I did that all the time on this scar for 3 years, 3 years, every day, every day. So along comes this light therapy that you shared with me and I used it one day and honestly, I was using it like, I wonder if maybe it's going to help my wrinkles or, you know, I'm going to look younger. It was a vanity thing. And lo and behold, 10 days after I started that, I'm doing my everyday massage on that scar and it was broke into chunks. And I flew off my bed, ran downstairs and, you know, made my husband feel like You gotta feel this. It's like broken to chunks. And he's, wow, that's cool. And 2 days later on day 12, it's gone. The whole thing, all the little ones, the big one, the whole thing, it's gone. And that's when I called you and I said, you're not going to believe this story. And so for me and, and my husband, with all the stuff we've done, we have never seen the needle move like this. And we had to come out of, you know, hiding, so to speak. Semi-retirement. That's what I call retirement.

Semi-retirement.

Semi-retirement. Because, you know, you can't spend your life helping people get well and then find something like this and ignore it. And just keep it for yourself. That was an impossible thing to do. So here I am and having the time of my life and helping people just, well, you can imagine, cause you have heard the stories.

I know.

But all these stories and these people and Dr. Stillman, you know, all these things we do for people to help them and they have to change this and change that and change this.

Oh my gosh. I know. I know.

And compliance is low because it's rough on people.

It's hard work.

Don't feel good.

It's time-consuming. Requires— I had a, I had a mentor. He was very funny. He's like, don't tell the patients this before they sign up. But what we do is complex, convoluted, difficult, challenging, like detail-oriented. I was like, yeah, no, that sounds like something no one wants to try. Yeah, but this is really simple and easy.

Exactly. It's so simple.

Like I spent more on my coconut milk latte this morning.

I know. I know. Right? Hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment never touched this issue for me. And my husband, he was a marathon runner as a young man and couldn't, and he ended up, they told him, you need double knee replacements. And he's like, no, I'm not doing that. Well, 7 months later, He's riding his bike, you know, 30 miles a day.

Which he couldn't do before that. Was he hobbling around?

He wasn't moving.

Were you thinking about getting a single-story home?

Was— yeah, or getting rid of him. I was like, you know, you're gonna do something here.

That's quite something. You know, it's funny because it reminds me of somebody on the team who said to me, he said something like, you know, Well, like Dr. Stillman might, I think it was, it was, it was that their wife, their wife had slept downstairs in a recliner for like a year or two. And finally this light therapy got her walking back up the stairs. And it's just, well, you know what you were saying earlier about how easy it is? It is shocking. It is amazing compared to all the other things. You know, we'll put people on these multi-ingredient supplement protocols where everything is just right based on lab testing and And somebody will throw a light therapy patch on somebody, get the same or better results or results you're just not getting from, say, things we're doing. Not to say that they don't work well together. Part of, I think, our success in the practice is that we combine so many things, but it is so typical for patients to come to me and say, I feel better. I'm having, for example, a woman this morning, I'm having more good days. I'm not really sure if I'm better, but I'm having way more good days and I'm really surprised at how much better I'm feeling., but she's not really sure what's doing all the work right now. In your case, your case is, I mean, your, your example is very undeniable, obvious, an objective physical manifestation of past injury disappeared. Pretty, very, very exceptional. Nothing else does that that I've ever found.

Yeah.

And I don't know, you know, I, I've looked back on it and a lot, and I'm so grateful for it. Like I'm, You know, it's weird. Gee, I'm grateful that this horse almost killed me. Well, not necessarily that, but you know, it's a heck of a story.

So I think, you know, I'm, I'm now a big John Wooden fan. And one of my favorite John Wooden-isms is things work out for the best for people who make the best of the way things work out.

That's it. Exactly it. Yeah. I mean, it's just, and it got me. Like now I have helped so many people because of it, sharing it with them. It's just, you know, their lives have changed way bigger than mine. Although I do, do, not that I can prove that now, but I do believe that that could have, would have been my demise.

Obviously not something we can know, but any closing thoughts, Kathleen?

Yeah, just one is I would, if, if there's anything I could impart to you is give this a try. What have you got to lose?

It's top of my list as far as things for people to try when they start with us at the practice, when they start in general. Obviously there's other things that we do, but it just works so well. It's, I'm always disappointed when people either don't try it for long enough or they don't try it at all.

Yeah.

So, and that's in large part because of people like you reaching back out to me and saying, just like you did, Dr. Stillman, you're not going to believe this. It's an amazing product.

And the synergy with what you do.

Mm-hmm.

Yes. Right.

It's amazing. To me, it's a no-brainer. Yeah. So that's what I would just hope and pray that you would hear me or somebody else's, um, sharing and you would give it a try.

So thank you for joining me, Kathleen. It's great to see you.

Always good to see you. Thank you.