 As many of you know, we've done many interviews with Dr. Jill Carnahan over the years and always exciting conversation. And as most of you know, she is an absolute leader in the functional medicine world and has taken on a rather large task of writing a book. And we're going to be talking about that book here today. So Dr. Carnahan, thanks for being with us. You're welcome, Bob. It's always such a pleasure to talk to you. You know, one of the things I found interesting in your book was one of the words was resilience, fascinating, fascinating word. So tell me why that, why that became, you know, part of the key words that you thought was important for the name of this book. Love that question because really what I wanted to give to the reader is it's my story, really. But the truth is that I wanted to be a reflection of the person reading to know that they too can overcome illness, difficulty, suffering, all the things that life throws at us. And I feel like resilience describes that best. And one of the things underneath that is finding resilience through functional medicine, science and faith. And you can kind of think of this as like the left brain, which we love to analyze and do the pathways like you and I do. But also this intuitive heart based faith side and whatever that means for you, it could look differently. But it's this both and you need the analytical brain, you need that ability to look at things and problem solve. But then we also need this heart space to love others, love ourselves and being a space where we actually fill our bodies and show up in the best of our ability. And I feel like the book epitomizes the combination of those two things. And that to me is the definition of resilience. Yes. And the main title is called unexpected. Interesting. I was I thought about those those words you put together unexpected finding resilience through functional medicine, science and faith. What what led you to the word unexpected? Why did that resonate with you? Yeah, another great question. So. Two thousand and maybe sixteen or so, I had been in a real difficult season of my life to spend through a divorce and was dealing with my own questions about different things and and learning and growing and finding resilience. And I opened a gift from my staff that was a bracelet that was a title that had a little coin on it. And the coin had an acorn in the midst of a big oak tree. And it was the idea that these seeds that we plant can grow into something bigger than ourselves if we allow it to and if we have the faith to believe. And the title of that bracelet was called unexpected miracles. And I remember just opening in it and it was touching me because I do believe in unexpected miracles. And again, whether you think of it as a spiritual thing or you just think of a very secular definition of miracles could be just unexpected occurrences that that surprise us or give us joy. And we have we all have those in our life if we look for them. And you could look at my history and say, Jill, you had cancer, you had Crohn's disease, you had mold related illness. You suffered a lot like you're you're the guinea pig of these illnesses. And then the INUS and the Carnion reaction with Bob Miller. So you could look at my life and say, wow, that's tough. That's difficult. And it was. But how I feel like that reframing. And for me, it was looking for the unexpected miracle so that the real titles, unexpected miracles, but we shortened it to make it concise. And the real idea there is that you yourself as the reader can also find in your journey, even when they're struggle, even when there's difficulty, you can find the unexpected. And what that is, is the joy, the miracle, the teaching that comes in those processes. And they're not we wouldn't wish them on anyone. But in the midst of those, we can all find the unexpected. And in my case, it was unexpected miracles. Absolutely. You know, when you think of a book written by a physician, you normally think of labs and all these other kind of things and diagnosis. But as I as I looked at your list of titles, I was I was pleasantly surprised how much of it was related to how we think. And one of the things you said was the first trust your intuition. Tell me just a little bit more about that. Yes. So Bob, like you, I was an engineer background, like the problem solving the pathways. That's why I love talking to you because I've been an engineer in the sense of I did bioengineering undergrad. And then I went on to medical school and I became a really good analytical problem solver. I love pathways. I love pattern recognition. I love using the analytical side of my brain. But in medical school, we are taught to not trust our intuition that only science is truth and only analytical, you know, brain. Left brain is truth. But the problem is we both have right and left brain. We both have, you know, science and faith we all have. So we have these parts of ourselves that are dichotomous. And when we bring them together, we have such a more enriched way of viewing the world and problem solving and helping ourselves heal and helping our patients heal. And what I had to learn after medical school was not only did the left brain have value, but the right brain, the creativity, the intuitive part, the spiritual part, the emotional part had value, too. So I had to relearn to trust that intuitive sense as a guide. And then I would prove it with science like you still need both. But for me, that journey of integrating left brain and right brain, creativity and science and all of these parts was really powerful because now I can come with a patient and sit in the clinic and I can solve really complex problems. But I have a much more depth of understanding if I follow those gut instincts and truly those gut instincts over time only come from experience. So it's our experiential, you know, pattern recognition and data collection that populates our subconscious and allows us to have an intuitive feeling. So it really still is based on science. But to me, it's fascinating because I didn't have that right from medical school. I was using purely analytical and I have a much better ability to see and understand problems by using both parts and also to heal myself. Absolutely. Now, one of the things you spend a lot of time on in the book is all the toxic things were exposed to you talked about when you were on the farm and just all the things that were exposed to right now. To what degree do you think some of the illnesses that we're seeing today might be related to the toxic world we're living in? Yeah, Bob, that was such a theme because I looked at my own 25-year-old breast cancer diagnosis and I said, well, why, why did that happen? Well, granted I had some genetics that made my toxic load my buckets ability to bring down that water level a little impaired. But on the other hand, I had lots and lots of chemical exposures that had endocrine disrupting effects growing up and there's no doubt that those two played together to create this toxic load. And then it's exponentially increasing. I think the study on cord blood of infants in 2001 which is over 20 years ago, that same year I got diagnosed with cancer was there was 200 known toxic chemicals in the cord blood of babies that were just born. So they're starting at this disadvantage and it's only gotten worse. And then with wildfires and all kinds of other exposures and mold and so I think that toxic load in environmental toxicity is the elephant in the room that triggers all this dysfunction of pathways because it starts to overload a system that should work most of the time but we become overloaded and our immune system can't function. And then we're dealing with auto immunity and our immune system gets confused. But toxic load in all of the chemicals that we get exposed to on a daily basis are a huge part of creating this dysfunction that we're seeing today. Absolutely. Interestingly how the care of people in traditional medicine has changed. I mean, the old days, if you had a bacteria you took an antibiotic and everything was just fine. But now as you said, this toxic load that we're being exposed to is changing the dynamics. And that's why something like functional medicine is becoming so important. If someone just has heard the term but not quite sure what it is could you briefly describe your definition of functional medicine and how that may differ from traditional allopathic? Yeah, so back in the day of course we have allopathic medicine which typically gets to a code or a diagnosis. The whole goal is like how do we differentially look at all the possibilities of what someone might be suffering from and get to one unifying theory that says this is the name of what you have. That's kind of the starting point. And then with that name of what you have which is a diagnosis, we say, okay, what drug or surgery or treatment can we pharmaceutical do to alter your metabolism or alter your physiology and change this? And that's not a bad way especially if you have a stroke or a heart attack or some trauma, you need those allopathic very precise and typically pharmaceutical based interventions. But what we do in functional medicine is we go to the root. We say what's under the hood of that car? What's the metabolic dysfunction? What's the genetic predisposition? What's the physiological imbalances? What's the nutritional deficiencies? What's the environmental toxic exposure? What are all these inputs into a very complex system? And then we actually walk backwards and say what thing led? What antecedents, triggers or mediators? What things led to this dysfunction? And can we reverse that trajectory? And the exciting thing is many times with functional medicine as we look at toxic load, infectious burden, genetics, metabolic processes, we can use nutrients, not just drugs to alter and push pathways in the right doses or botanical products or homeopathic products. So there's these layers of things that have physiological ability to alter the course of the disease. And then in functional medicine, we see things that are considered crazy by conventional medicine like reversible autoimmunity where you actually see an autoimmune disease regress or reverse because you've found some of the root triggers and you've gone and addressed each of those. Absolutely. Now, one of the quotes in there that I found quite fascinating, he said addiction is simply a way for us to deal with underlying unresolved trauma. That's an interesting thing to be putting in a, what we consider it's coming from the medical world. Tell me about how you came to that conclusion. Yeah, so this is fascinating because I will never forget the day. And I talk about this in the book, I was sitting with a group of health entrepreneurs, all super successful people. I kind of felt like I didn't belong at that point in my life. And this leader was talking about addictions and he had gone through his own addictions actually with drugs and alcohol and was addressing, having compassion for the addict instead of just judgment and trying to go to the root. And I kind of tuned out because I haven't done drugs and I don't drink alcohol on it. I was like, I don't have addiction, right? I just so, you know, silly Lee in my head was like, this is not related to me. Well, then he paused and look at all of us successful entrepreneurs in the room and he said, all of you are addicts. And he said, your addiction is work and you use it because it's socially acceptable. So that addiction to achievement or that addiction to work, he was basically saying that we're still covering up if a true addict in his first realm was, you know, drugs or alcohol, they're using a substance to cover up pain or trauma that they're not dealing with potentially. And what he was saying is he was calling all of us out and saying, you're using work to do the same thing. And it kind of hit me because I love to work. I love what I do, but I had to question, was I using that as an escape in any way, safe or form? And what I realized was, I think we all have some sort of addiction and it can be good thing. It could be going out and running two miles a day and your addiction is that runner's high and that gets you kind of away from the reality of your life or your world. That's some of the difficulties. Or if we work all the time like I do, which I love and I think it's productive, but could I be covering up some because if I just sit still and I'm not productive, I was uncomfortable with that. And that to me was how I knew that there was some sort of an addiction. If I just worked in, then I could play and relax and never think about it. That's one thing. But I would notice when I would be still or unproductive, I'd actually get really uncomfortable. So I had to deal with that piece because that was the trauma behind me always being busy, moving, working. And again, I dealt with that. But it allowed me to see many people in my space I think have this socially acceptable addiction to work and all of us can continue to grow and learn in those spaces. Absolutely. And not only do you get into all of those emotional things, you talk about some basics like clean air or clean water, clean food. Why did you include that in this book? Yeah, well, I think sometimes when we talk about environmental toxic load, I remember years ago here in King Bob, Bob Raunchy would talk about toxicity and he made it funny, but it was a depressing lecture. And even me talking about now when he really realized all the chemicals that are in our air and our water supply, in our food supply, it can be incredibly depressing. He was like, how in the world can I live in this toxic world and survive and not get sick? And the truth is it's hard. But what I wanted to do is say, okay, you don't have to visit an expensive functionalist and doctors spend a ton of money on testing or do a ton of expensive supplements because a lot of people it's out of their range. But what we can do is we can all choose clean air, clean water, clean food. So it's not only a really practical way to start it's very effective. And it's something we all have access to some of these things. And so what I talk about is clean air 80% of our environmental toxic load is from the air that we breathe. And so when we choose to have air filtration, open our windows or do things to get clean air or avoid toxic smoke, avoid highways or airports or places where there's VOCs from the off-gassing of combustible fuels. That's huge. So that's clean air, clean water, making sure we choose to drink not out of plastic water bottles, if possible, mineral enriched water from the earth or from springs. And if not, at least reverse osmosis or filtered water and trying to drink from things that aren't BPA plasticized. And then clean food. And again, you can have these choices. And even if you can't afford all organic, at least you can look at The Dirty Dozen, which is published every year by Environmental Working Group. Typically on the top of the list is strawberries and celery and red and green bell peppers. And those are also my favorites. But if you do choose to eat those foods, you wanna at least choose to eat those organic so that you can decrease the toxic load. And then of course, whatever possible unprocessed, fresh types of food. And we know more and more people with gluten sensitivity. And I really believe nowadays with the autoimmunity, most of us should be off gluten. So taking those kinds of things out that are triggers. And those basics empower the reader because you don't have to go and spend a ton of money on those things. Absolutely. Well, I'm sure by now people are realizing this has gotta be on their must read this year. So where can they purchase this book? Thank you, Bob. And thank you for sharing this. I so appreciate it. Readunexpected.com is the book landing page. And the really fun thing is if you do buy the book, you can come back there. I put together a ton of free, really cool things. One is a coloring journal. So coloring was something that helped me go back to that right brain kind of creative, childlike and curious self. And here's a quote, Bob, you'll love this. Curiosity is one of the highest predictors of genius. We get back. And one way to engage that curiousness is go back to something that we playful behavior, whether it's running, jumping, dancing, doing a sport, or for me it was coloring. So I bought it online. I've got a coloring journal for you for free there. I've got a lecture on mass selectivation and mold and how that affects so many people. I recorded a secret chapter that wasn't included in the book and all that is free if you come back to Readunexpected after your purchase and you can download those immediately. Excellent. Anyone who will be shipping? March 28th is my pub date. Okay. And people can pre-order now? Yes. Great. Great. So I would certainly encourage everyone to get it because I was pleasantly surprised at how it wasn't just about labs and all those other things and although you talked about environmental factors, so many emotional things that I think some people are gonna have an aha moment because I think we're only beginning to learn how much our thoughts controls what happens as well. In traditional funking, it's like a chemical thing. And I think you're beautifully tying together all aspects, the toxicity, the thoughts, traditional medicine, functional medicine. So I think it'll be viewed as a best seller, I'm sure. I wouldn't be surprised you're gonna get on the best seller list here. Thank you, Bob. Thank you so much as always for your support. Okay. One more time, the website. Readunexpected.com. Okay, very good. Well, everyone go out and order that book right now and we'll be putting this at a couple of places on our Facebook page and all. And after you've read it, feel free to comment what you thought about it. Okay. Best of luck with this and we expect great things out of this that Dr. Huckornahan's gonna be making a big impact on the health of many people. Thank you, Bob.