 Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us on this little bit cloudy Saturday afternoon here in Boulder, Colorado, but hopefully where you're at, it's sun is shining. I am joined by not only a colleague who I highly respect, but a dear friend, Dr. Chalice Pratt. And just so excited to have her on today to talk about naturopathic medicine. And if you have maybe experienced that before or you haven't, hopefully you'll learn a lot more by the end of this Zoom call. I would love for you guys to share if you find this interesting and write your comments because we'll be either during the call looking at those and trying to answer your questions or we'll come back later and answer questions, give resources as much as we can. So just know that those will be read and we will be answering those. So I'd love to just start by introducing my friend formally and then we'll jump right into the conversation. So Dr. Pratt believes in integrative and holistic medicine. We totally share this mindset. Her practice in clinic are focused on neurology and complex medical conditions relating to metabolic disease. She is so brilliant. I know you guys will notice on this call. I know when we talk pathways and stuff, it's so much fun but I'm always impressed by her ability to really look at all this stuff at the complex level that we need to when we have these kind of patients. She uses functional medicine and her expertise in biochemistry and methylation and physiology to help patients get to the root cause of their symptoms through a strategic approach. The modalities she uses, we're gonna talk about, you're gonna hear a little bit more about what she does are nutrition, diet, nutritional supplements, botanicals, environmental medicine, classic homeopathy and hydrotherapy. Many patients come to her office after seeing other doctors and are scared, frustrated and looking for answers that no one's been able to figure out. She's a detective like I am. She often tells people that she looks at medicine like a detective. She looks for clues that have led to the current health situation and looks for a strategy to find, figure out, no matter how complex your illness, what the root cause is. And as you can see on her website, we'll be sharing this to all of our, both of our social media outlets. She's been featured on some really great other interviews and I'm just delighted to have her. So thank you for joining me today. Chilise. It's such a wonderful experience to be here and it's so much fun to spend time with you again. So I look forward to it. Yeah, it's kind of like us having coffee, only live. Exactly. We're just missing a few of our friends that often join in. And I'm just gonna be, before we proceed, I wanna make sure that I see this on the page. It looks like we're live, but I was like to double check before we get in too far. Sure. Everything is on board and that you guys can see us and hear us. And yeah, we're on. Okay, cool. So I'd love to hear, well, first of all, I just wanna tell people a little bit about how we met. And I'm trying to remember, I mean, we've both been in the Boulder area practicing and I know from my perspective, I heard your name and I always had great respect because what's funny word of mouth really is our best advertising. And I would hear from if, you know, patients families that maybe have saw someone for you and me and we do a little different things which we'll talk about today. So we do have some patients in common at times that get benefits from both of our tip for different approaches. But I just remember like having this great respect and thinking you were not just a great practitioner and brilliant, but I loved your spirit and your heart and the way you approach medicine. And I remember us having coffee at my office and kind of getting to know you and the kind of kids that you saw and really all ages, but a lot of the kids on the spectrum and that kind of thing and just being really impressed. And then later we've gotten together for coffee and become very close friends. And what I love the most is we really not only think about mind, body and spirit which you'll talk about in a few minutes but we live that like on a spiritual realm it's really important to kind of incorporate that into who we are and how we practice. And it was such an encouragement to me to share on that level with you as well. So it's been a real world joy to call you friend and someone I respect so much. So I'd love to hear first before we talk about naturopathic medicine I kind of want to hear everybody loves stories of like why did you get into medicine? How did you get called into it? I'd love to hear a little bit about your background and how you got into naturopathic medicine. Sure. So how I got into naturopathic medicine was I started out, well, I started with some health concerns early on in life we had a cat in the house and my mother thought that I had lots of allergies seasonal allergies to many things. Well, later we found out it was the cats that we had in the house but I had had lots of allergies and then in my later teens around 19 I developed pretty sincere severe asthma where it really started taking away the function of my life at 20 years old just walking up a flight of stairs was I would put me out of breath and I would get every cold and flu that came through I was constantly sick and I remember one day being on so many steroids to manage the amount of asthma that I had and these respiratory infections that I just couldn't shake and I was really frustrated and so I started looking for other answers and I read a book by Andrew Weil. Oh yeah. Spontaneous healing and in it he talked about naturopathic medicine and for me it was like a light bulb went off because I had been looking into medicine I had thought about maybe a DO or going to MD but I was feeling frustrated in the paradigm that I was in I remember being on so much prednisone that I broke out in shingles and when I asked the doctor, why do I have shingles? They said, do you have a computer? And I said, how did my computer give me shingles? And she said, no go look it up and she walked out of the room and this is just primary care like they don't have a lot of time I understand that now but at the moment I was like I want a kind of medicine that's going to help me understand how this happened why am I so sick all the time? And slowly but surely I did regain my health I kind of left all the things that I grew up to believe that I needed to do like take a lot of anhistamines take albuterol I mean, eventually I didn't need those things I didn't go off of them until I had other symptoms that had abated I didn't have the asthma problems anymore so I no longer needed it but I changed my diet that was a big part of it I found out at just my early 20s I couldn't eat gluten and dairy I couldn't eat soy and that made a huge impact of me recovering just being able to breathe deeply I also needed to look at I had wonderful amazing parents who wanted to keep me close and I needed psychologically, mentally, spiritually to understand the feelings of being a little bit repressed like I wasn't allowed to go away to college and I think that played into my asthma as well so I started going down all these avenues preparing myself and healing myself in the process before I went on to medical school at National in Portland so that is kind of my journey is I started changing my diet I started thinking differently I started really blossoming in my ability to fledge after college and I did like going to Portland, Oregon was probably one of the best things personally that I could do in order for me to have confidence and know that, A, I really wanted to help other people that had illnesses like I did that didn't know what to do I wanted to be a voice of compassion and love and encouragement and let them know your body can heal but I hold that in my heart for you so that's how I got there Oh, I love it and we've never really talked about this over coffee but it's so fun to hear your journey and what's interesting is I have such a parallel journey because when I was a child on the farm I had horrible allergies I didn't have asthma but the same mechanism of atopic diseases I had eczema and allergies you had asthma and those are the three things in this whole and you also mentioned something really important as I've looked at my past there's a piece of this I think we came into the world as very intuitive sensitive souls and that's why we want to be healers like I was called into medicine as I know you were too we maybe didn't know it but this is a calling it's not just a job for us and part of that is this sense this nature that is actually very sensitive and with that comes a great ability to connect with people and understand complex detective work which we totally align with but at the same time so that's the gift side of it we are sensitive, intuitive souls and we bring to medicine a ability to really look into the patient at the soul level and at the whole environmental level and then to really understand at a deeper level because we see details that other people will miss like you people have seen a lot of other people before they get to you they're looking for answers but on the other side of that the blessing and the curse is that we are super sensitive to our environment so whether it's chemicals or allergies or asthma and any of you listeners out there if you have struggled with allergies or asthma or atopic it's probably because you're gonna be one of the canaries it's also more sensitive to environmental chemicals and even emotional stuff like I'm a little more sensitive but it's so interesting because there's no coincidence about the fact that we both had these allergies and atopic conditions and then the calling into medicine and even though that was tough as a child it's been a blessing to the things that we do today because we have this gift of being able to really see at a deeper level Yes, absolutely so I'd love to hear as we've told everybody like tell us a little bit more about what is for those who don't really know about naturopathic medicine and naturopathic doctors what's your training? What are some of the principles of naturopathic medicine? So we have six principles in naturopathic medicine that define us and the first one, I mean, in functional medicine you've adopted many of these so some of them... Kind of stolen them from you really Right? Yeah It's beautiful because lots of people are getting really wonderful care and it was born out of a lot of this nature cure and these principles so the first one is the healing power of nature and the body has an intrinsic ability to establish, maintain and restore health so we as NDs believe that if we put back into balance what's in excess or what's in deficiency and bring you into balance then your body can restore itself through physiology, through biochemistry So that's the first one is healing through the power of nature and using less invasive means we try to use the least invasive means possible so that may be through nutrition and diet it may be sunshine, it may be clean air all of the environmental medicine you'll see is part of our mainstay of how we look at medicine So we identify and treat the cause that's our second principle and symptoms or expressions of the body's attempts to heal itself we see if you start to have a symptom it means your body's trying to show us we need some things out of balance some things not working correctly and so like Jill we go to the root cause and that may be all the way down to a cellular level on how nutrients are shuttled across a cell membrane or how genomics are functioning within our body so treating the cause first do no harm all doctors I think have this one this principle but my first and foremost and my patients all know this is I'm a fairly conservative ND and that I don't wanna do anything that harms you so that could be even be a side effect of a nutrient or a supplement or homeopathic so that's the third is do no harm treat the whole person so as Jill alluded to earlier we look at the interaction of the physical the spiritual, the mental emotional genetic environmental and social factors all of it together makes up your health and we're gonna dive into some of these other some of these individually I'm sure in this talk but we believe that all of these parts are your health your mind, your body, your spirit all need to be healed and have healing and then we have doctor as teacher so my first principle and oath to you is if you see me in my practice I wanna empower you, I wanna teach you I want you to walk away knowing how to take responsibility and making different choices that heal you on all of these levels and then prevention, right? How do we prevent whether it's through epigenetics like finding ways to prevent health issues that have plagued your ancestry or whether it's you didn't even know something in your home like toxic mold was making you so sick and it could end up really harming your health in years to come, 10, 20 years from now so it's finding all of these principles and treating on all of these levels gosh thank you for explaining that because I have been around a lot in naturopaths I have such great respect what's neat is our alapathic we call it training I remember at least I don't know if you know this or not but before I was in undergrad and then looking at what professional schools and I knew I wanted to go into a healing profession and kind of like you I didn't know exactly what and I remember actually applying to naturopathic school applying to chiropractic school applying to traditional Chinese medical school and then applying to the alapathic schools and it's funny because I always like didn't really quite align with them and when it came down to it my decision was only based on the fact that sadly our system as we clearly can see nowadays is so predominantly and say I wanted to do mission work it's still more alapathically minded to go overseas and do that kind of work or even just the reimbursement system and stuff and sadly you guys are getting more and more accreditation ability to practice in any state and all of that and you're considered a physician which is awesome but I know it has been a hard battle and I remember my decision was just like okay if I want to change the system I'm going to actually go into the system and infiltrate and I jump because I'm like I have the heart of a naturopath like I feel more aligned with you and your training and how you view the world and patients you just said like hopefully how I practice as well but it's not common and so what I get excited about is if we can train and educate not only patients to know that they can see someone like you and get great benefit and then second just even other doctors like allopathic physicians to know what else there is it's almost like my toolbox gets to be a lot bigger and so we can hopefully bring that today so thanks for sharing all that background. Of course and that's the beauty is we are integrative right whether you're functional I mean I've studied a lot of functional medicine as well like the level which I went to with biochemistry and methylation specifically you know just starting with Jill James back in the early 2000s you know that set me up to have like really wonderful conversations with any discipline of medicine and I truly believe we're all working for our patients right we're all my heart is that if I'm not if I don't have the tools in my toolbox which I'm very confident of the ones that I do have but if I don't have that I want them to have it and that's the reason why many many we've shared several patients over the last probably 15 years or at least 14 I remember going back just us being in the same I think you were with Bob Rountree back then and Bob Rountree I remember him saying that too I remember him coming to meetings saying I have the heart and soul. Exactly and so there is going to be like you we were like we want to we really want to be like you but you're you're absolutely right it when I remember my my graduation my keynote speaker he basically sent us out on our graduation day knowing we were climbing a mountain for the rest of our lives so it takes a certain personality to not take offense to know that we are doing good work and even if we have to educate people so doctor's teacher is really big in my and the medicine that I use because we're constantly teaching we're teaching about our education we're teaching about our licensure we're teaching about our you know the authorities that we have we're teaching about how we are we are we should be integrative we should work well play nice in the sandbox with everybody which I'm I'm committed to doing that when I first got out of school I actually went around to some of the most allopathic old school practices like the Rocky Mountain Cancer Treatment Center I spent two weeks with with a doctor there and you know from the moment he was he just knew my mother and I just I wanted to get to know the other side that sometimes didn't believe in my education or didn't know about my education and by the end of those two weeks whether it was him or at the pediatric center or some of these other very traditional practices they were all comfortable with referring to me so it's building bridges not building ravines so gosh I love that because even though I was out in alphabet medicine I was back in Illinois for many years practicing and I remember I got out of residency went to the CEO of the hospital and said hey you need integrative medicine I'll be your director and so they hired me I don't know what they were thinking but created a center there and I remember like the doxin town the gastroenterologist and the rheumatologist and all the specialists were like what in the world is she doing and they did not they just didn't they weren't sure and what ended up happening I definitely had visits but even more and I'm sure you've had this as well the patient with arthritis from the rheumatologist would come to me and they'd get better and they'd go back and then the gastroenterologist I'd see a Crohn's patient and they'd come to me and they'd get better and they'd go back I didn't really have to say anything but after a few years they were calling and saying what are you doing over there we don't understand this we weren't taught in medical school that Crohn's is reversible or that arthritis is reversible or that autoimmunity in general so it was interesting and I'm sure you've had that too where it's just you live your practice and your life and you do the right thing and you help people heal and the proof is in the pudding because these patients will essentially like our best advertisement for both of us is word of mouth because people get well and then they tell their friends and family and that's exciting so I want to shift gears just a little bit because I know there's something we share and I often do talk publicly about it but it's like we talk about the mind-body sphere and especially nowadays with what's going on to me it's so hard to imagine if people don't have some connection to a higher power and a spiritual belief system and you and I both know we're super open-minded anyone out there listening doesn't matter if you don't believe in a God or you do but this piece of who we are and what we bring to medicine is actually really important and we don't necessarily we might ask patients questions to find out where they're at we don't always share what we believe but I would love to know a little bit about how your spiritual practice and beliefs have flavored who you are and what you bring to the table because I think that's so important for us to be real and authentic as practitioners and how it's in our life because for me it's the most important thing in my life is my faith and the power of prayer and all of those things yeah so I was raised Christian Catholic actually Roman Catholic and I still am a very devout Catholic um so when I very first started my practice I remember getting very discouraged when the the the plan didn't go as well as it should have gone and I remember at one point having a conversation with my mother and my mother basically said who are you to believe that it's you and in that moment she shifted my whole perspective of what I was doing in medicine I'm in service I'm in service to my my faith and the grace of God and so anyone that sees me it's it's their higher purpose to get better and it's God's plan and I'm just holding space giving them information and knowing that they're going to get better and I hold in my heart and pray in my heart with for every person I've ever seen that that what we're doing is going to bring them to their highest purpose right that that God can can help them and and and bring that through and I get to be in the front seat of all of these amazing miracles I've seen over the last 16 years and I I don't take credit for a lot of it even though a lot of times I will get credit but it's not really mine it's really my faith and it's really that I'm serving through my spirit their spirit so I I and like I said before in my and in this medicine as an ND we believe that your spiritual help is just as important as your physical and mental health and it provides us with so much a richness in our life if we have a faith tradition it doesn't have to be a religion it doesn't have to be executed one way or another but finding a finding a moment where we can surrender and get and get a touch of grace is is so important to our health especially in times when yes this virus is out there and yes there's lots of suicide and alcoholism and pain that's come to it or that has come with this social distancing right we should really call it physical distancing but but this is it's really hard on our psyche it's really hard on our spirit to be away from our loved ones to be away from our friends and the encouragement in the way in which we embrace each other both physically and emotionally and spiritually and we're not able to do that right now and so I think this conversation is really important to have today while we're still in this situation how do we foster more grace in our life how do we foster surrender and as you talked about I've watched several of your wonderful interviews that you've given with other people and what I've noticed is is this idea of resilience and I believe that it's our faith and whatever tradition that is that brings us resilience I know for a fact that's true in my life some of the hardest situations I look back on and I truly think you know God for the reason why I got through some of that with the resilience that I did because yeah and same with you know whenever somebody gets through something you know I want to I just want to celebrate with them I want them to know like you are you are being watched over you you aren't alone my heart is with you and I know that there's there's something whatever you believe in that's also with you yes oh gosh this is so beautiful and thank you for being so if there's ever time for us to show up and be so authentic and real because a lot of times this isn't really talked about and yet it's so critical I mean I remember in the pandemic first started and a lot of the stuff was new and there was so much fear and there's still fear right but if you think about our health is at risk we don't know if we're going to get sick or die finances for many many people listening out there they've lost jobs they've lost security they've lost their relationships are in jeopardy not that they're going to lose their family but they're not in connection like they might be used to or their dear mother who's older they might not be able to be with her because she's at risk for getting the virus or so and children might be separated or there's just so many different things here and pretty much on all level of what we perceive as our security it's all shaken up and for me I realized oh my goodness if I didn't have a belief that there is purpose in all things and there is good things that come even through suffering and difficulties like I have such a strong I know you do too a belief in that through any adversity or through any circumstance there is good and there's purpose and meaning and it's almost like what you were saying too resilience really if we tried to define that word it would be about finding purpose and meaning and suffering and I didn't realize that 25 when I had cancer but when I started to see the pattern shortly after I had cancer I realized oh goodness my life is supposed to be about experiential suffering and then sharing the lessons I've learned and so now I'm like bringing on God I don't know what's next but I'm not afraid I mean you could I shouldn't say I'm not afraid we're all human right so there's like oh that might be hard or might be painful but I know I know now suffering cancer Crohn's mold illness loss of loved ones pandemics there's nothing that my God and I can't handle and the same with you out there it's like this beautiful the sense that after having been through this pandemic whatever I've been through cancer I've been through you know I know I can handle this because I have a sense it's almost like they talk about you know a ship that's tossed to and grow about the ocean and if there's an anchor plugged into some source that's greater than the purpose of just our own lives and ourselves then you can stand strong amidst the waves and the storms and and I love that we can bring that to our patients because you know as well as I so many people who walk in they're at their last with end they've been other places and they have symptoms that no one's been able to explain and I know you share this with me when we just bring love and hope like we just sit there and give them space to be heard and look at them and sometimes I'll cry with patient time let's not even shy about that I'll look at them they'll be shedding a tear I'm like yeah I feel you I don't like wiping tears away and it's funny because in medical school they're like you should be objective and you should not shed a tear and you should you know remain and like screw that because they're not because I really I mean we're human beings and so when we can feel and interact on that level that starts the healing and then when I can say you know what I'm not perfect I don't have all the answers but I will do everything in my power to help you and to facilitate healing and I loved what you said too because it's not really about us we're just creating the space and this environment and often it's like taking out toxins or adding back in nutrients it's really simple that's a funny thing people think it's complex it's not really complex and if we get it if we get those things those basic things right the body will heal it's like miracles every day we see because we just allow and then I do believe both you and I bring love and hope and our faith which we don't ever push on anyone else but we just bring a place there where we know where we stand and we know our purpose and our calling and we know that for that time we are there with you and holding space for you wherever you're at and even if you don't believe or don't have that's okay there's no judgment but it does not have to be one way it can be it can be multiple ways but I want to encourage people right now you know with the amount of stress that we're in of all the things that you talked about earlier whether it's economic or whether it's this social isolation that we're in it creates you know quinolinic acid it creates our Mao A creates more peroxides right for it just being in stress makes us more you know susceptible to disease and our and our inflammation goes up and our detoxification system start to crash and then our immune system isn't working so well so we're I'm talking about the importance of just simple things of having gratitude and knowing that's that you are taking care of you know or or finding ways to tiptoe into that grace if you're if you're not so comfortable with it and it it doesn't have to look like one way or another but yes my heart and my and my giant spirit want want everyone to to feel better and I I think what I get criticized the most for from my family is I really don't like suffering just I really want to help in some way so people don't need to suffer but we've got some pretty amazing tools in our tool bag and and this is one of them you know that we bring our heart into our practice and we truly care and we would never ask them to do something that we couldn't do ourselves so I love that because that's the thing too the model the teacher has that I mean we we both same thing we need to actually live and model what we you know practice what we preach or teach our patients about let's talk more practical then about I definitely want to talk about fever because that I know naturopath let's talk about that and then I want to go into a little bit of the immune system and so that everything from my body's spirit of how we can actually support immune function during this time but let's first talk about the enigma of fever so what does a naturopath believe about fever and how would you treat it or not treat it or tell me more about that so we look at fever as a as an a vital force in your body that raises up so children often can run really high really fruitful fevers if given the opportunity against any kind of virus or bacteria or infection and so there are parameters right and you should work with your doctor to know what those parameters are I'm going to say a fever over 103 we probably should manage it and I'm going to give some examples of how we we would look at that so if you're running a really high fever or even a 100 degree fever that's still considered that's a low grade fever we often use something called hydrotherapy which one of the one of the ones or one of the treatments that I've used on in my practice gosh for 20 years now is you take socks cotton socks and you put them in tepid water not cold not super cold not warm at all just tepid room temperature water you ring them out really well you put them on your feet this is if you have a fever and then you put wool socks over them and then you get into bed and what that will do if you have a head cold it will bring the mucus down the inflammation out of your head it will go to your feet and warm up those socks and until those socks are dry it brings down the fever and it helps congestion and inflammation in your head and your upper respiratory system so that's one way we would manage a fever if it gets really high sometimes we put people in tepid baths to bring down the fever and then we also use homeopathy right so some of the best remedies to use for really high fever it would be belladonna for a lower grade fever it would be ferrum floss but these are these are different techniques that you can do to manage a fever rather than just giving ibuprofen or Tylenol which can really deplete us of our glutathione which is our master antioxidant so we usually encourage fevers to a point right and at that point we don't want a febrile seizure we don't want we don't want elderly people having really high fevers either so we will we will use whatever means we can to bring down that fever but the importance of letting the fever run which I don't think I've discussed but I think you know is that it disassembles that virus right or it kills bacteria when we are when our cytokines and our body can run that inflammatory response so what most people don't know is a lot of times the virus or the bacteria isn't making you feel so bad it's your body's reaction to it and we want to manage that reaction but with with the intent of it's doing a good job of dismantling or killing bacteria dismantling a virus and that makes so much sense as I was in switzerland the last two years with their biological medicine and they I love that their typical allopathic physicians really incorporate homeopathy and so it's almost like a combination of the US it's almost like if you and I had both of our trainings combined that's what typically the german swiss physicians do is they bring this all together and one of the treatments they have there's something called hyperthermia it's basically causing a fever and I've had many of my patients who have gone to europe who've gotten treated for Lyme disease or tick-borne infections or viral chronic viral infections that are almost in a curative state afterwards after they get several sessions of hyperthermia and of course it's controlled it's under medical supervision because they'll go very high at like extremely high but they're watching blood pressure they're watching vitals they're watching oxygenation they're making sure that it's safe but it's penetration yes and hydration exactly it's been profound to see that and we don't typically in our US hospitals have hyperthermia but in Europe standard of care for some of these patients so it's actually makes sense to me they've used nature cure in Europe for centuries so yes sauna you know helping people initiate because some people with chronic epsom bar virus right this is we're just trying to find a way to help the body again get rid of the pathogen the best way it can when sometimes our immune system we need to support it right with either nutrition or diet or lifestyle or reducing environmental toxins or all of these things help the body be able to handle how the immune system is going to create an antigen and then the antibody to manage these infections and so we manage fevers we don't discourage fevers and yes it is a little uncomfortable and to know the whole other conversation as a parent to have to tell you your child is not going to feel so great when they have a really decent fever and I just had to explain to my son when he was little we're going to do these socks you're going to feel better real soon just wait here's some homeopathy and and we got through it and he he definitely didn't feel well when the fever was really high but when we managed it and put the you know the warming sock treatment on and used ferrimfoss that was the remedy that always worked for him you know even at 17 he'll come to me and say mom I'm sick I need these things I love it wow oh let's talk about like practical ways so immune system obviously that's the big thing now and and I'd love to just talk about like people listening what are some practical ways that they can support their immune system in this time well I think you've covered it but it's really important I think you had another ND the one that's in your office come on and talk about stress you know managing stress is key right now really important most of my patients they're coming to me in the last couple of days and saying I'm starting to come down with something had something really stressful that made them feel that way so because when we get really stressed our immune system goes down our natural killer cells go down we just can't fight infection as well diet is really important sugar do you I know that there's a study out there saying something like your immune system goes down for six hours after a significant amount of sugar so staying away from sugar right now is probably a really good idea and it doesn't mean forever more I'm I'm all about moderation meaning if you have a birthday coming up do all the other things to support yourself but maybe you can have a piece of your favorite whatever with sugar in it just don't go eating that cake for seven days right some you too I was just and you read my mind on sugar because I was saying in sugar such a toxic thing for the immune system I mean like you said the study show natural killer cells go dramatically down for the time after in interesting just this morning I saw someone post something on cereal cells like a box cereal cells are up like by 24% and as people are home and I'm like oh gosh box cereal is probably one of the most if you have breakfast box cereal please please find some alternative because it's not only GMO crops like corn and soy there's glyphosate sprayed on most of those and then it's refined and it's high sugar there's so many things about most box cereals that are just like not a good breakfast in addition to all of that there's also a film that they put on the inside of your cereal bag that's I think it's a flame retardant that actually creates a lot of toxicity for you too so it drives your insulin to wacky levels it brings down your immune system so it might be a good time to break up with cereal I know it's a comfort food but and I say that with love you know like I know that it's comfort people are looking for any kind of comfort let's just find other beautiful ways to getting up first thing in the morning and going and going outside and hearing the birds you know maybe that would bring you more than the cereal but I understand why people are eating more cereal but yes so so it's it's eliminating or reducing sugar intake is going to really help immune function staying away from foods that you might be sensitive to right if if for instance I can't eat gluten and dairy I will end up with sinus I'll start getting a tickle in the back of my throat with just even eating a little bit of dairy I have a friend that whenever I'd stay at her house in Connecticut if I had dairy she'd call me out she's like you just had dairy I can hear it in your nose because it happens so fast for me so it's avoiding those foods that we're sensitive to because they cause inflammation through our whole G.I. track which then spills over to inflammation throughout our body do you want to speak a little bit more than that I made people with dairy it's a mucus producer so not everyone but for you for me as well I completely way that when you get that mucus produced in your sinuses or your gut it's actually harder to clear pathogens like viruses so you're actually putting yourself at a disadvantage from the immune perspective too because you've got all this gunk sitting there that can kind of trap the particles trap the viruses and it makes it harder to clear and I would love to just talk really quickly about like what's a typical breakfast for you and I'll share mine too because maybe some people are wondering well what in the world if I can't have cereal what do you do Dr. Pratt for breakfast you know I try to switch it up I am a true believer that we should have different nutrition rotating through our diet but like anyone else my life gets really busy and I fall back to certain things and one of those certain things is I have metaclare by thorn research and I take two scoops of that I add some coconut milk or almond milk or hemp milk and then I add a mixed berry just some mixed berries with that and that usually is great and it has my multivitamin in it it's just a great it's just a great way for me to start my day otherwise it it would be I can do eggs so I'll do eggs with some sauteed vegetables if I have time in the morning or every once in a while I do I am also sensitive to histamine so I have to watch how much histamine I can take in but if I if I do have something that's higher histamine I may do like a chicken apple sausage or something like that too what about you what's your that's good good good well I love the use of the variety because I get and I get in habits where I'm eating the same thing every day because it's easy and um I've gone I love the smoothies I haven't done them lately but I've been in the past have frequently done I like the thorn begalite but I like the medically that Dr. Pratt is mentioning is kind of like a detox shake so it's really great because it has all the anestetal cysteine and the glutathione and all the precursors it's chocolate flavor well it comes from vanilla chocolate there's chocolate so much better I take a vanilla yeah yeah either way but I would often do the that was some leafy greens and then some chia flax like you said very similar coconut milk what I've done lately is I'll do a grain free cereal that's very low sugar and there's one that's sprouted from I think lark ellen farms and the other one I like is purely elizabeth which now cost co-carries so it's so cool and they're both organic grain free cereals and I'll put a little coconut milk on them or just eat them plain if I have time it's that's my simplest go-to and and it works I sadly can't do eggs so and a lot of you out there you might be doing more ketogenic or you might be doing more intermittent fasting so some of you might do like a bulletproof coffee a clean organic coffee with some brain octane or some MCT oil or or just I like my coconut creamer in there that's super clean from my vital proteins makes a really good coconut creamer so all those things are great and if you're intermittent fasting a lot of times you won't eat breakfast when you first wake up but you'll have your first meal like 11 and that works sadly for me personally is I've never done well in a high-fat diet I'm one of those two people I have pancreatic insufficiency so I I can't really do a super high-fat diet so I have to kind of balance the lower glycemic carbs I often do berries as well so organic berries with whatever other protein and fats that I'm eating but a lot of you listening might do well with the breakfast it's fat and protein based like eggs and organic turkey bacon or sausage or those kinds of things tend to keep people going really well and I often say especially with adrenal issues to have more of a fat and protein in the morning and have your carbs in the evening like rice or quinoa or sweet potatoes as a side versus our sugary cereals in the morning they just set us up because if you start with a sugary cereal your insulin spikes up your blood sugar spikes up that insulin tells your body to store sugar so three hours later your ravenous and you're looking for the brownies so in your cortisol gets messed up right and then your cortisol is also in there playing tricks on you and lowering your immune system so that's one of the reasons why I think we're talking about fiber and protein and good fats are so important to balance that blood sugar so that people's and it'll help your immune system dramatically how often people are following all day long that and they understand when you tell them aren't you know how three hours later are you like ravenous looking for like yeah you know what's up with that it all depends like really your first meal of the day whether you're fasting or not is the most important meal for both cortisol and blood sugar and insulin and even if you want to lose weight or be metabolically active and healthy that first thing that you put in your mouth in the morning is really critical to think about so cereal sadly not a great idea yeah but chia pudding chia pudding would be a great you know with some berries I think you you had a recipe too with avocado avocado chocolate it's like chocolate pudding it's so good and it's actually healthy so on the website we'll have to find that and post it because it's so it tastes like chocolate pudding and you're basically eating avocados it's so good so this lifestyle doesn't have to feel really restrictive in that way when you start to to gain an appreciation of different kinds of sweet right using some of these alternative just the berries become sweet yeah what's your favorite recommendations for sweeteners for patients that they're making a recipe or doing something what would you usually tell them for alternatives I mean I still believe honey and and maple syrup are still a good idea unless you're really restricting carbs like on a specific carbohydrate diet or gaps but monk fruit would probably be in their xylitol you know that also helps kill yeast those would probably be my favorites what about you I totally agree I do use stevia a lot because it has had some studies it's a biofilm disruptor in chronic infections and things and it tends to not affect the gut microbiome which is really important xylitol love that's probably my second favorite I do agree with you with honey and maple syrup if you're going to use sweeteners use real use real if possible just don't use the refined cane sugar totally avoid that one and monk fruit and palm coconut palm sugar tend to be a little lower glycemic but there's still all those things if you have prediabetes or really watching blood sugar even the honey or maple syrup is going to affect but it's still more natural and nutritive it has nutrients than your white table sugar and then like someone who's really low glycemic for either diabetic reasons or otherwise the stevia the xylitol don't have as much effect on the blood sugar so that's kind of the range and they're all available. I do notice with the sugar alcohols if someone has underlying gut dysbiosis until you treat it they tend to get gas and bloating because those sugar alcohols stay in the lumen of the gut and they don't get absorbed so the bacteria have a party and you'll have gas and bloating if you have like these xylitol brownies and need a lot of them you're going to be like what happened to my gut right the whole FODMAPS kind of idea right you can have gut let's tell me a little bit about how you per I mean we both like gut is the core but how does that relate to immune system and what are some core things people could do have healthy guts well first is probably finding out if you have any kind of infections whether it's in your oral microbiome your nasal microbiome your GI you know in the large intestine you have do you have a small intestinal bacterial overgrowth in your in your small intestine so finding those infections are really important to work with a doctor like Jill or I because 80% of your immune system is it is 80% isn't it Jill 80% of our immune system comes off of that lymphocyte those lymphocytes all through our GI tract so we need a healthy microbiome whispering right that's what it does it whispers and it gives it gives feedback to what the environment is it what kind of environment we're building in that GI so if we have you know things growing in our garden that weeds growing in our garden they're going to take nutrients they're going to create inflammation they're going to create a different environment that's going to invite other things in so I don't know Jill if you see this but a lot of people will have some dysbiosis they'll have bacterial overgrowth or maybe some yeast overgrowth and all of a sudden it invites in a protozoa right that they get exposed to that normally you might not hold on to that protozoa so when I see a protozoa and somebody's you know GI workup I'm thinking wow we've probably had some leaky gut and some some dysbiosis going on for a while so what what are the things that I do you know probiotics are important but knowing which probiotics as Jill speaks to beautifully for microbiome labs and some of these other companies knowing the right kind of probiotic is pretty important if you have histamine or SIBO you're going to need a different kind of probiotic than if you have just an overgrowth of some bacteria in your large intestine so probiotics are really important managing the diet right eating the right things that are not going to feed these overgrowth are going to all help the immune system in the GI and then something that naturopathic doctors like myself do a lot of is dry skin brushing to help move the lymph system because that lymph if you move it all over your body with just short little strokes with either a luffa or a or dry skin brush that you can get at any of the natural food stores all of that moving that lymph really helps us detox helps the GI actually and then also castor oil packs I'm a huge fan of castor oil I don't know about you Jill but I love castor oil and specifically over the GI and over the liver and all the way up if you have fibrocystic breasts or if you have ovarian cysts you can actually get a cloth that goes all the way from your clavicle bones right here all the way down to your pubic bone and you really want to saturate it in castor oil and I have all of this on my website that I can share with you and you lay with that on and you can either meditate or say your prayers or do deep breathing exercises and you lay for that for 45 minutes and what it does is it brings down inflammation in the GI so it's an old major cure great and not expensive and practical and so simple and I know the dry brushing I've recommended to patients again we've kind of stolen that from our naturopathic friends and if you've been around lately you've heard me talk about coffee enemas because I'm such a fan this requires a little more equipment and training but when I was in Switzerland I just saw patients doing so well and they were not necessarily young and healthy and part of the treatments there in the biological medicine center was coffee enemas and I think of it as really really simple because what you're talking about with with detox we have excretion of toxins and or mobilization of toxins and excretion and so basically when we mobilize whether we're doing glutathione or IVs or any of these things and we can excrete we start to get sick and a lot of people have heard of a Hexheimer reaction all that is these things aren't in balance and we're pushing the mobilization so hard and we're not getting excretion or we're killing off organisms that are causing toxicity and you're not eliminating that from your body and what I love about naturopathic medicine is you have a lot of things for excretion it could be the castor oil it could be coffee enemas it could be colon hydrotherapy it could be epsom salt baz it could be all of these things because just taking another pill won't necessarily help that binders might help a little on that side but a lot of other things like giving glutathione giving anesthetal cysteine giving some of these agents that push and mobilize toxins that could make them worse if they're not excreting so I love that you bring a lot to the table on those therapies we call that the we have to open all the homuncturys love it and so do you have you ever heard this term before it's very not from you but it's not common vocabulary for me so so the homuncturys would be how are we at elimination it's all elimination the homuncturys are elimination so whether it's through your breath or whether it's through your sweat or whether it's through your urine or your feces it's all trying to move things out and we have to open up those homuncturys and so a lot of the treatments that we employ are to open up those homuncturys and yes we do we give we give things like bitters to help the gallbladder move better we give all these antioxidants or anti you know anti-inflammatory herbs or different herbs to move toxicity the more you know about what kind of toxicity or what your exposure has been the more specifically Jill or I can you know help you to what homunctury do we need to work on in order for you to move that out and so yes so deep breathing is so important even for detoxification hydration so important for detoxification through the kidneys right fiber so important for detox phase three detoxification now we call it but as NDs we've been thinking about that the whole time like how do we get detoxification how do we get that homunctury of the colon working to your benefit right how do we get your kidneys to work to your benefit how do we clean your blood and get and get all of these things out yes that reminds me there's some of the you know gurus on television talking about these ice baths and there's other you know there's all these things with hot cold water therapy from a naturopathic perspective tell us a little bit more about that whether it's use in the shower like going hot and cold water or going into an ice bath what does that do for the body so what it does is it increases circulation which is really going to help you both detox and get vitalized meaning your cells just get more nutrients when we circulate our blood better so one of the one of them is constitution or hydrotherapy going from hot to cold so you'll if you were a patient of mine you know this about me I tell people to always end their shower with cold and it would be best you know or sit fast where you go between hot and cold or even in the shower you can go between hot and cold and so sometimes I'll say you know three three minutes hot and then you want to turn it as cold as you can I don't want to shock you but you would be you would be amazed at how invigorated you feel afterwards because all of a sudden you're going to feel this throbbing in your body and so what we do is if you have a certain area that we're trying to increase circulation to we focus on that area or it can be a whole body experience you know if you have the ability to go from a whole immersion of hot to a whole immersion of cold that's going to give you a whole body treatment and what it does is vaso dilates you when you're in the hot and when you get in the cold that vaso constricts and pumps your blood through all those little tiny capillaries in your fingers and your nose and your toes so we're increasing circulation to get these nutrients to get all of the things that we need for vitality moves throughout our body right our chi moves better so and it sits best so if you have pelvic issues let's say you have you have reoccurring infections in your pelvic area or you have pelvic floor dysfunction or you have bladder infections on a regular basis or you have gi problems you can sit in hot water and then you want to go sit in cold water and again it's the contrast if you can make it as cold as you can take it and then go back to the hot for three minutes back to the cold for a minute back to the hot and you always want to end on cold because that's where you get the good when you when you vasodilate you're going to pool blood so if you just take a hot bath and you don't end on cold sometimes you can you can be a little bit more swollen after a hot bath so it's this idea of pumping your blood through your body more efficiently by using contrast hydrotherapy and colon hydrotherapy is fantastic too and that's that's what Jill was talking about before where we use coffee enemas or different things to create this basically a new microbiome and also help pull out toxins so and then of course drinking plenty of really great clean water we forget how important to all processes of the body you know it's being really well hydrated that's going to help your immune system immensely as well yeah thanks for explaining that because I've always known I do feel invigorated with that cold at the end there but it's people I know want to know and it's something to do at home you know it's really practical I can't believe we've been talking an hour and we we could talk another hour this is so much fun I wanted to ask you two things before we we end and the first one is just what would you leave like what if there were one piece of advice what would you leave listeners with on advice for this time like to find a beautiful rhythm again in your life so many people are struggling right now for a rhythm and our hormonal system our immune system our nervous system thrives on structure so the more we can get up in the morning and go out into our backyard nature anywhere we can to get sunlight on our face and help our melatonin because that's how our melatonin knows we know to make melatonin at night is because of sun exposure in the morning and then you know trying to focus on the best possible messages you know find or tiptoe back into exploring with wonderment your spiritual self your your ability to connect with your higher with something higher that is watching over you that loves you that will sustain you that will give you resilience at this time and end your day by watching the sun go down just letting your body know like the day is over and now it's time for rest like we're not going to turn on our blue lights we're not going to turn on all of our lights and over stimulate ourselves and watch really pretty horrific news outlets that are going to make us stress so then we can't sleep well you know just watch the sun go down have some a beautiful cup of tea talk to people you love in any way that you can and just know that you are connected oh that is such beautiful advice and where can people find you Dr. Pratt where can they find you we'll link this up too but sure so I have a website called the Pratt clinics with an s on the end so my name and we can put a link in this for them too I am here in Colorado but just like Jill we see people all over the world so we're lucky enough to do telemedicine and and be able to help lots of people in lots of different places yeah oh this has been so fun thank you all for listening and thank you Dr. Pratt for joining me today and we'll have to do this again because there's even more stuff we didn't get to cover I'd love to