 Good evening, everybody. So excited to be here with my friend, Dr. Schaeffner. I just have such great respect for all the work she's doing. And if you've followed her or seen any of the things she's doing, she's been prolific lately too with podcasting and sharing the world of lymph. Today that's gonna be our topic. So super excited to have her. I think we did some other interview for a program she did. And I just really resonated with what she's doing. And I think we have the same kind of purpose in the world to help people with healing and continue to bring the information out. So just a little housekeeping. You can find all my blogs, resources, anything you need, send it for the newsletter at jillcarnahan.com. Any products we have at drjilhealth.com. And you can find this recording wherever you listen to your podcast, iTunes or Stitcher. And also on my YouTube channel, where we have now like over 80 interviews. All the videos are there and you can watch them if you just search Jill Carnahan on YouTube. Be sure and subscribe there so you don't miss any episodes. But today I wanna introduce Dr. Christine Schaeffner. She's a board certified naturopath who has helped thousands of people recover from chronic and complex illness. I think that's one of the things I realized when we first talked is a lot of us in this deal deal with these most complex chronic patients. And I love it. I know she does as well, but it tends to be the ones who've tried other things and been in other places and really not always had the best luck, especially with our conventional system, which serves its purpose. But when it comes to complex chronic mold and lime and some of these things, I don't think it does us a great service many times. So I'm super excited to pick her brain on lymph drainage and some of the remedies and things that we can do around that. She's done online summits, her Spectrum of Health podcast. If you haven't caught that, please be sure and tune in on her podcast as well. And I think we're gonna do a recording so that I'll be on your podcast in a few months as well, which is exciting. She goes beyond biological medicine, pulling from all systems of medicine and healing modalities, helping patients reclaim their wellness and reveal their brightest light. I love that, because it's really about that. She's got a lot of credentials. I won't belabor the point, but you can find her at DrChristineChefner.com and you can find her bio, you can find her resources, but welcome Christine. It is so glad to have you here today. Thank you so much for the warm welcome and I just have a lot of gratitude and admiration for your work. And I'm so excited that we get to do this interview today. Me too. So I love to start kind of with story and I would love to hear just a little bit about how did you get into medicine and naturopathic medicine? How did you get your start? What was your, what's your start? Yeah, absolutely. So I grew up in Virginia and I was really raised in a family of medicine. My dad's an oncologist and hematologist and my mother has a nursing background and she went through the education route. So she did a lot of teaching and she was a director at a hospital. And so I was really exposed to the world of medicine and I always like loved science and loved biology and I was really good at it and I can never rise everything. And so I just had that affinity and I started especially in my high school year is really trying, when we used to go to bookstories, go to the Barnes and Noble section of the spiritual wellness type section. Can you hear me Jill? I'm like, of course of right now when I'm doing this, there's like this leaf blower out the thing. So that was just, just making sure that it's not recorded too much but can you hear me okay? I can hear you okay. Yeah, there's a little sound in the background. I know, I was like, okay, it's like for blocking someone's leaf line. But anyway, back to the... Yeah, so I know this is live, right? This is real... Exactly, it's totally... Yeah, so anyway, so I had this really curiosity for what we would call the mind, body, spirit, right? And so that led me to an exploration and meeting different people. And I found out about naturopathic medicine through a family friend. And when I found out about it, it just really clicked. It felt like this is the medicine I've been searching for. And I had to go through a little bit of my own process and journey. I graduated from University of Virginia in about 2003 and I went right out to best year, 22 years old. And they thought I knew things about health and it was just like complete culture shock and so much new information. And I did something very not like myself. I actually decided I would take a year off because I just was trying to, you know, my ego, my East Coast ego was still like, should there be a medical doctor, should I be naturopath? Like I couldn't really quite settle in. And it was really interesting during that time that I took off, I was actually spent time in Colorado and I lived in Aspen for a little bit. And in that time, I met like, it was almost like foreshadowing. Like I, you know, when I was in my 20s and working like four jobs to be able to live there, right? So I connected with the Aspen Center for Integral Health at the time. And they bring in all these wonderful people and it's like a very thing to take that community. And so, you know, I learned about mercury in the mouth and I had learned about, you know, colon cleansing and raw food at the time and detox and just different innovative strategies. And so it was just all this foreshadowing. And so I found my way from, you know, going from naturopathic school, taking a little break and coming full circle and really coming back in 2007 to best year and kind of everything, it was timing for me. And everything clicked and I felt very passionate that I really wanted to find a path to really help the true cause of why people are sick. And when I was at Bastier, one of the first weeks we had this brown bag lunch and Dr. Louisa Williams. She was there and she had just come out with her book, Radical Medicine. And I just was like, you know, whatever she's learning or whatever she's, you know, teaching I want to learn. And that's what I want my practice to be. And so her book, it was before Kindles was like that big and I would just cart it around. And you know, it's really the, you know, the textbook of how I practice a lot. And, you know, she talks about biological medicine and the parents fields and, you know, all of these, you know, things. And so that just sparked me on my journey. And, you know, at a school, I got a great opportunity. I've learned a lot about complex chronic illness. And as I'm sure you're very well in touch with our patients, teaches every day, you know? And, you know, I think this is, you know, really important time to bring this medicine to the forefront. So people don't have to suffer so much and people don't have to spend decades trying to figure out what's wrong and going to, you know, dozens of doctors and spending tens of thousands of dollars. Like I really admire your passion as well to just like, how do we just get this information out to more people? So they really understand like there's, it's not a random event that's happening in their body. There's many reasons of why we end up with imbalances and just make that more of a mainstream conversation. I love that. And I love how you can, I love hearing people's stories because we all talk about it like there's this sole healer piece, right? And clearly out of family history, I had no medicine in my family at all. I come from farmers and nurses. The nurses, I guess my mother was a nurse but not no medical doctors at all. But they're still like, now I look back. I'm like, oh, I was a healer. I intuitively and same with you. And what's new is we come to this path and now my training, very different conventional medicine, which is great for foundational for trauma or heart attack, but then it fails us a lot in most every other area. And again, like I said, I have such respect for my naturopathic physician friends because you guys teach me so much about lymph and about bowels and about colonics and we'll talk about all that today. And even the fact that there's energy outside, I mean, obviously we measure EKGs with energetics so we know this is real. It's science-based, but there's a lot of energetic fields that affect our health too. So I'd love to talk a little bit about that. So first of all, what kind of patients do you mostly see? I'm sure the complex chronic, but give us a little framework and then let's go into kind of how you would address that. And of course we're going to get to the lymph system. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I see like my average patient who's seen a dozen doctors, they've tried a lot of things and they really have these multi-systemic illnesses, right? So they are unfortunately plagued with a list of symptoms of insomnia, anxiety, depression, brain fog, chronic sinus issues, a lot of digestive issues, a lot of circulatory issues. So like cold hands and feet are kind of stagnation in that area. There's just feeling of being unwell, and you and I, and I know that you have your health journey and I'm so in awe of where you are today with that journey. But we do, like you and I live a life like a dream, like I do things that I love every day. And the thing that breaks my heart about a lot of my patients is these amazing souls, but they really, their bodies are so sick that they really can't do much other than survive each day. And so that is really what keeps me going is really holding them in the space of our medicine and really having that vision for them to not only recover, but also to live a purposeful, meaningful life that I think we all are on the planet to do. And so I think that really is kind of the why, again, it's very rewarding to treat people and get their suffering alleviated. But I think it's like we need to think about like the more people who go through this journey and this understanding of how we're really wired to heal and how we're so connected to the natural rhythms and nature and the planet that just has such a ripple effect, right? And those are the people I see. So I see those people again, and they're not one label, one pill, and they're better, that's not what we do. I love that. And two things that you mentioned, I think so key. Number one, it's not just healing, which we can do, but it's getting them to thrive and find their purpose and meaning. And there's such a difference in, I know I've been doing functional medicine for about 20 years, but in the last maybe five years, I've done my own personal healing in trauma work and somatic work and some of that. And that's been more profound than any sort of even supplement or diet or any of those functional basics that we do, even lymph drainage, right? Like this awakening, we could call it. And you talk about, that's another way to say what you just have been saying is, how do we allow that patient not only to get well, but to awaken to their real purpose and calling in life. And that's where it gets so exciting, right? And honestly, I feel like exponential healing happens when patients start to realize, you know, why am I here? What is my purpose? What's my joy in life? How do I serve in what I've been called to do? So I love that you mentioned that because that's really like the next level of healing. And sometimes doctors just stop it, okay, the physical healing's done, it's been done there. So love that. What do you start with? Do you start with the detox? Do you start with drainage? Do you start, give us a little like map of kind of how you might start with a complex chronic patient in the clinic. Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. And I think my answer always evolves. And, you know, just as you, I know are well aware, you know, everyone that comes in the office, we treat really individually, right? But we have kind of a map and a thought process. And it really depends where people are at. But, you know, I look at it from a couple of different ways. You know, we do all the lab work and all the functional medicine work. And then I do a lot of bio energetic assessment, which allows me to connect with their physical body and their energetic body to see really where to prioritize. And I find that a lot of patients, depending on where they are, we look at and identify what we call interference fields. That's a term in bio regulatory medicine to look at. Okay, they've seen all these doctors. They're really smart people. They tried a lot of things. Why aren't they recovering? Why aren't the things clicking? And often a layer that is often overlooked and underdressed is this idea of interference fields. And interference fields can be a scars. So scars can actually affect lymphatic drainage. They can affect the fascia. They can hold emotional trauma. They can affect the nervous system in the energetic body. And believe it or not, scars can really impact our ability to heal. And they can be this island of turbulence in the body. So we look at scars and we look at what we call foci or these hidden infections in the body. So these reservoir of infections that are silent and often not like the typical like hot red swollen infections. They're the silent in the background brewing reservoir pathogens that are kind of holding our patients back. So that can be in the mouth. So a lot of dental issues we address. I don't know about you, but I see in a lot of my patients what we call like a tonsil interference field. So the tonsils often become chronically inflamed, infected. And they are such a big part of the lymphatic system and our immune system. And so that can be a big... Bigly a pocket of pus sometimes. Yeah, totally. I know. You look in there and you're like sometimes, oh wow. And so that can be a focal infection. The sinuses can be a focal infection too. And so these are areas that are the body of infection that the body cannot clear. And they tend to be a home base for different opportunistic pathogens that then have, you know, just the kind of they can enter the rest of the body through the lymphatics and the circulatory system and the nervous system. And so that's a big place of where I start is like, okay, have interference fields been addressed? And then we of course look at, you know, are they in a toxic home? I also, you know, we don't necessarily start there unless it's a very unique situation. So just opening up and understanding is there a significant trauma history? And from childhood to even, you know, the trauma being sick too, you know, we think about all these past experiences, but you know, these things, it sucks, you know, and it's really traumatic, especially if you've been... Oh, illness can be one of the biggest. And I love that you're saying that because my history was like trauma was like for those people who had been horrifically abused and were very stoic German kind of family. I grew up and so I was like, go talk about that. Now I realize we all have trauma, right? We all have and we can have wonderful childhoods and we still have trauma around just growing up and being kids and being, you know, in parents, no one's perfect and no child is perfect. And so I love opening this up because if we open it up and make it less stigmatized, we can deal with it. And we all have little bits of that that affect our health. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, trauma, you know, I think the more that we learn through, you know, our mentors and our, you know, these pioneers studying how it affects us, it's, you know, I think it's just as much as like mycotoxins and, you know, Borrelia and Bartonella affect us, you know. Trauma really is, you know, a toxicant or it has an effect in our physiology and not to go down that rabbit hole, but an aptitude. It's like, you know, the trauma affects all these parts of us, right? So it can make us, you know, can affect us epigenetically. It can live, I believe, you know, a lot of these memories that often are not conscious anymore can be stored in our fascia, you know, in the connective tissue. I mean, that's why somatic therapy can be very helpful. That's why neural therapy can be very helpful. And, you know, it's like the mind can be somewhere, but the body, as the both of you know, the body keeps the score. And so that's a big one, you know, I think that's a really big piece of the puzzle that as you said in your own process, and I see that in patients, it's like the supplements are important and all of it's important, right? But the real work, I believe, is that work, you know, is really to... I couldn't agree more. I think I'm really opening people up to that piece. And like for me, it was exponential healing in that realm versus all the other stuff I had done for the previous my whole life. One thing interesting, I want to hear how you assess bioenergetic fields, but I just want to mention for a personal story, we talk about these hidden things because for me it was profound. I remember when I talked to an acupuncturist and realized the meridians or the two teeth I had root canals in were related to the pancreas and the breast and the colon. And I looked at my history, I had breast cancer at 25, I had Crohn's at 26, and I had pancreatic insufficiency a couple years, maybe five years ago. So my whole health history was in these root canals as far as meridians. And when I realized that about five years ago, I thought, oh my goodness, I need to have them pulled. And while I do believe those affect most people, not everybody, if you have a strong, robust immune system, it may be a minor issue. I unfortunately don't. So it was, and I just wanted to say, because I had psoriasis prior to pulling these two, within seven days of getting the last tooth out, my psoriasis went away, never to come back. So like that for me was a big a-ha, like, oh my goodness, they were affecting me. Now the other part of the story is I had two cavitations from my wisdom teeth. These just last year I got done. And I had always struggled, especially around mold with cystic acne, like I always, my skin just was always manifesting the liver and let's talk about that too, because I wanna know the liver and detox the skin, but my skin, I could never hide. And I looked horrendous at times with the mold and the acne. As soon as I got those cavitations done, I don't know if I've had one breakout since, like I have the most clear skin I've had my whole life. And I realized that those dental things were massively affecting my system. Oh yeah, no, thank you for sharing that. And that's a really common that I see in my patients too. It's like the, you know, these infections and the toxicants and the oral microbiome have so much to do with our physical health. And so if anyone is listening out there and they feel stuck, like look in your mouth, you know, that's not really, like what else have we thought about this? Yeah, I know, that's what, that's actually what Louisa had said at the brown bag one. She's like, what is the first thing you, you know, do with a patient and we're all like, you know, clean up their diet or whatever. And she's like, look in their mouth, you know? And so that always just, I feel really fortunate to have that imprinted. And I had my own dental journey as well. You know, I had, I fell on my face when I was in second grade and broke my two front teeth. And, you know, when they were capped and then in high school or college, I realized that there was a little abscess and they were ruking out. And when I looked at, you know, all of these things, you know, I had some thyroid stuff. I had some, you know, the pituitary kind of hormonal access, you know, kidney stuff. And, you know, I just had this awareness that if I don't, you know, get this taken care of, it could really lead to other problems down the road. So I'm just hoping the other ward and gets more of this, yeah. Oh, I love that. So by way of energetically, how do you assess someone? Do you have biopines? Yeah, what kind of technology or ways do you assess? Cause I'm so fascinated by that. Me too. And I feel like a student, but I, you know, have learned so much. And again, we get the feedback from your patients, right? That's like, why we do this is cause it works. And so I use a couple of different tools. So I use autonomic response testing. So that's something I've been using for 11 years. And then I also use a tool in the office called the AO scan. I've only honestly been using that for about two years, but I feel that it is really clinically relevant. I've been exposed to a lot of Russian bioressonance technology in the past. And so when a friend brought this to me, I was like, okay, I'll just look. Yeah, let me see. Yeah, let's just see. And like, you know, you just kind of, you know, you have that fun, like, okay, scan. And then I have all my patients scanned just in the beginning, just to see like, okay, like what, what is, what's the pattern there? And it was, it was really wild. I mean, I really saw, you know, a lot of significant markers that were in balance from the AO scan that I could see in the lab work too. You know, so they, they correlate. Yeah, so I've learned to trust that tool. So I have all my patients scanned, which is really nice because you can do that remotely. So in the realm of telemedicine, it's just a Russian bioressonance technology. And it basically sends resonant frequencies to the body. And then the body says, okay, what's in balance with out of balance. And then they give healing resonant frequencies. And then says, okay, what is still in like, what's been balanced and what's out of balance. And then you kind of see what the key issues are. It also has this really cool thing, Joe. It has a program called inner voice where you talk into the machine. And essentially it's this program, it's an algorithm that finds high and low tones in your vocal cord and your sound. And they've matched that with different subconscious themes and patterns that people tend to have when those vocal tones are out of balance. And then it gives you music to essentially balance and create more healing where those deficits are. And so it's wild. And again, I know that sounds moving. I love, no, I really like my mouth. You can tell my mouth is a game. I was in about five years ago, right from my divorce, I called the awakening when I really had to deal with my own stuff and really went deep. And I worked with the neurolinguistic programming coach. And one of the things she did was she treated me somatically. And I saw changes in my voice. Like I have recordings in my facial expression and in my voice. And even now, if I look at old recordings or if anybody who's a voice expert looks at that, I am dramatically different in tone and musicality and still changing. But I realized then, oh my gosh, these trauma patterns affect our voice. So what you're saying makes perfect sense to me. I'm personally like even speaking voice, I'm like, this is crazy that that NLP could change my voice. But if you look at my old old stuff, you can see it's very different. Yeah, no, I love that. And Erin, our voice is sending out this beautiful sound and frequency of our inner essence. So of course, that's going to change as we get on and become a whole, no, I love that. I love that. And so I use AO Scan. And it really goes down even deeper. And I really feel that's the future, Jill, just to, the future is if we can have more of this in conjunction with all that we do. The thing that I love about the AO Scan is people can have it at home too. And so when you're dealing with a chronic illness, it's the confusion and uncertainty of the day in and day out of like, what to do, why am I reacting to this, how do I do, you know, that kind of takes some of the mystery out of it. So I've had a handful of patients who start, who've started to use it at home. And I'm really, really excited. They have a little thing that you can put supplements in. And then you can send the supplements you need. So it's just, yeah. So that's, I'm just in this passion. Oh, loving this. You know, we know, okay, here's a, and I don't do protocols either. I do individual, with an individual that I think this should work, this should work, this should work. But there's this million of variables with the genetics, with the environment, with their energetics and things that should work don't always work. And I don't have the ability energetically to tune in like that machine or like you maybe to say for you, you know what, what does your body want? So I love this system and what you're describing. And I'm sure the autonomic training that's part of it, like before. Yeah, yeah. You know, kind of like my processes, like people do lab work, you know, we'll do specialty lab work, we'll scan them. If they're in the office, I have a bio-weld camera as well, Dr. Beverly Rubick. I'm introducing to that. And it's a bio-field camera. It's a gas discharge visualization camera. And so it uses curling photography and this technology to map the bio-field and see kind of where there's imbalances and you know, the field of energy that we emit. And so that can look at patterns, not only physically, but also emotionally. So we have all those tools. I also, I kind of consider it a bio-energetic tool even though it's more kind of in the realm of biological medicine, but I have the regulation thermography as well. And so that's looking at the autonomic nervous system. So you know, I don't always do all of those with everybody, we have all of that access. And then I take all that information in and of course the clinical history. And then I do autonomic response testing. And that's a way for me to hone in with that individual and to find out where the priorities, where the plan is. Cause you know, and ART and any other type of either applied kinesiology or some type of biofeedback exam, there's of course you can perceive what stress and how to unbalance, but it's only as good as like the information we have to, right? Like we have to be the computer to digest it. And so all of that information helps me to really, yeah, try to hone in cause as you know, there's like 30 things to treat the biodex. Like, okay, well, you know, let's see which one is going to be the best. Exactly. So I love that cause this is a really personalized approach. Now what about, this is maybe, I don't think it'll be a hard question for you at all. I 100% understand what you're saying. I believe in it. I think it's the future. Like I am all in and I love that you're doing this cause in my practice, I don't have as much access to those tools. So love it. But what I've run into even in my realm of understanding this, trying to explain to people, skeptics, right? The engineers, the scientists, and there's nothing wrong with that. I'm an engineer by trade, but how would you explain to a person who's just like, this doesn't make sense. Now, you and I know, and I'm the biggest believer of any that you're going to hear. So I'm all in, but I want to hear, how would you, cause I'm sure you've come across a vision like, what is this? How does it work? We know it works. And how would you describe that in layman's terms of how the energetic feels and how you can actually test this, like the autonomic response stuff tell, like, what would you say to a skeptic? Cause I know that I've had patients that are like that. And I want to, you know, better know how to explain it. Totally. And there's like the short version, the long version, I think maybe just to kind of like, out for a minute. I hear you. And even I was, you know, as I shared, I was like, open the energy medicine or all this. And then you kind of get delving to practice and be this way, like, does this work? Does that work? Yeah, yeah. You know, cause you have a healthy skepticism. You do. Yeah. You get that reinforcement of seeing the results, timing and time out. And, you know, I think we have a lot of understanding ideas of why and how it works, but I think we have to always be open to like, we probably know this much. And there's only going to be more and more information to understand like why, you know, why and how this is working, maybe it's more about the body. But, you know, I look at it in a few things. I always love to use this term biofilm, Joe, when we're talking about this, because, you know, you can search it in PubMed, you know, it's definitely a, you know, it's a documented phenomenon. And, you know, it kind of combines all of this, right? So we know, as you mentioned, we have the EKG and EEG. Yeah. You measure this. All these gap fields. And, you know, the heart has the strongest electromagnetic field in the body. So it's generating this, you know, field that's measurable. And the biofield is essentially this toroidal shaped field of like, it's electromagnetic, but it also, they say it's the subtle energies too. And I think those are the, that's the bio photons that is the light body, you know? And so I think that it's the summation of this electromagnetic energy. So the electrical fields and the magnetic fields and that information, and then, you know, the bio photon field. And so we know that all of our cells emit light and we can receive light. And that is also very well documented. The fun part too, show them how to skip ahead is that we also emit and respond to sound. So there's a term called bio phonons and people are studying the music that cells make and actually cells that are healthy make beautiful music. Like a really resonant kind of beautiful music. And then cells that are dying or cancer cells make this screeching music, this researching the CLA found this out. So why I share that is that there's all of this like biophysical nature to our structure. So we know we have this biochemistry and then we have these fields of information and surrounding us. And I think there's almost like this tipping point too that people can hold this information a little bit more because our cell phones work. Start to exactly see. Yeah, so it's like, okay, it's not a far stretch. I mean, how do you think your cell phone works or how you know it's fields of information, right? And so I try to set that out. And then I also not to get maybe two out there, I also what helps me to understand this is that within, okay, we have this biofield of all the things I shared and then there's this whole idea of what we call the electric universe. And the electric universe is a different viewpoint of the universe that we have this like spaces in an empty vacuum, but it's this fourth state of matter called plasma and then there's this ether and this kind of describes how you and I are connected even though we're far away. So this information travels through this unified field or however we wanna, whatever we wanna call it it's the unified field, it's quantum field but we're sitting in the sea of energy and information. It's just what I wanna say. And then we're highly interconnected, right? That's such a it's a spiritual message and it's a really a physics message too that we are all interconnected. So when I work with a patient, there's a lot of things happening. So yes, we can perceive a change of muscle strength based on a physical substance coming into the field of the patient that creates a stress response in the body that can tighten up and create muscle contractions or affect the fashion. So that's a lot of the premise of these forms of testing. But there's all these other interactions that I am curious of always exploring. It's like when I test them, when I actually use a surrogate arm and then when we think about it, we have three people. We have three bio fields. We have that connection to the unified field and there's this openness of information that we're connected with. So not only am I reading, it changes in muscle strength in this pattern that is tested and reproducible. But we're also opening ourselves up to this other way of informing us what the patient needs. And like you, I'm sure, you're typing, you're like, okay, the patient needs this and this and then you get out of your brain and you go over to there. And then my assistant or my resident will be thinking the same thought at the same time, and you're just like, where is that coming from? I'm not saying you're saying that because I've realized again, I've done this a long time and I'm very analytical left brain dominant by nature. But as I've embraced it, and feminine masculine could be any, it does not male or female, but I think we can also think about it as masculine or driven analytical energies versus feminine creative and use like those kinds of things. And what I found again, which is what you're saying, it sounds like with your story, you've been very in touch with both. For me, I was very, very driven analytical and I had to actually shift, but what happened was the most profound insights, understanding and basically miracles as I've embraced that. Now I still use the analytical, I love that, but that's like actually an old analog computer compared to the supercomputer of the intuitive, right? And when I open myself to that, and then I always back it up with science. So it's like beautiful, it's just like you, but the intuition, what it brings me as far as information for the patient's well-being or what they might need, I don't even know where it comes from most of the time. Like, thank you. Yeah, totally, totally. So you're like, you can talk even in this whole other thing. Exactly, and I just, and I now trust it. And then again, I use science and I make sure they're getting, you know, I mean, there's all kinds of checks that are still analytical, but what I find in that field of subconscious and intuition, and again, if we call it feminine masculine energies, that's just one way to think about it. It's so powerful, it's so powerful and things that I could never come up with in my analytical brain, the insights and the healings and things, it happens there. And I'm always just like, wow, how lucky am I to get to be part of this? It's not about me. It's just letting myself be a conduit to that wisdom from the divine, you know? Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. And I am, yeah, no, I'm so aligned with what you're saying. And I think, you know, as we sit with our patients who've been, you know, struggling for so long and we talk about these complex chronic illnesses and how it takes time to heal it, which is true, you know, it's just what it is. But why I also am really passionate in bringing more and more of this work into my clinic and into my realm is like, I want patients to get better way quicker and way faster and way easier, you know? So it's like, you know, that's where I really feel, and I've seen it, you know, and I've, it's not my everyday experience, but I see a lot of it and more of it. And I wanna invite more of this conversation and more of this awareness within, you know, the clinical setting. So, you know, we can be open to, you know, not to sound whatever, but like more of the miracles, the more of the, you know, spontaneous healing, the more of the, you know, what I know that we're capable of. Exactly, and I love what you're saying too, Resonate, so deeply. And I'm sure those of you listening because back in the old day when I was super analytical, I felt like you had to struggle, you had to push, you had to strive, you had to beat yourself up. This old mentality of the force and the struggle that it took to achieve something or to heal or all those things, when you go into this other quantum realm or this more creative energy or this intuitive, again, for me, it's a very spiritual practice. It happens with such ease that it's almost like really, it's that easy. And again, it's just amazing to me like if we could really tap into that space and teach our patients to do the same, it's so much easier, right? Yeah, totally, totally. Even if you're, because we all have our stuff that we have to go through to get here and it's like, even if you're like, I'm not sure, it's like, there's no harm in just exploring, just like try life and this awareness, just try it on and see what happens. So no, it's really, again, I feel it will evolve as I evolve and as my... It's really a trust and surrender, you're right. Because when we have to hold all the control, all the struggle, all that comes from feeling like we have to force or we're way in the future, way in the past, but if we're present this moment, you and I, and then we're trusting that whatever we need is going to happen in the right time, it's so easy and it really does happen, the things we need, the resources we need, that if we trust in our ability to when things come our way, know that we can figure it out, it's just so much easier. So let's shift to lymphatics in our last, because this is, first of all, I love this conversation. Love, love, love it and some comments rolling in, as you guys are commenting, lots of people are loving it too, so this is great. Let's talk about lymph though. First of all, give us just like a real quick, two-minute crash courses in the lymphatic system, why it's important, and then we'll talk about strategies to actually address it. Yeah, absolutely. The lymphatic system is another passion of mine. And again, my patients teach me every day the importance of this. And many patients who walk in our offices, they have congested lymphatics, that's just a really big part of recovering somebody with any chronic illness. And so the lymphatic system is just this body-wide network. So it's a network of what we call lymphatic capillaries, we have lymphatic vessels, we have nodes, we have organs. And the lymphatic system is really highly interconnected to our circulatory system. So we have our heart that pumps blood through our arteries. So the blood flows into the arteries and into our tissue spaces and what we call capillaries. So the capillaries are these like micro, that's where the micro-circulation is happening. If you all have heard like my micro-circulation is not working, it's like in the capillaries we've done. And so what happens in that capillary system is that that oxygen-rich blood is kind of basically part of the fluid in that space is leaving the capillaries and bringing nutrition and all this good stuff to the tissues. And some of it returns and goes through the venules to the veins back to the heart. But a lot of that fluid stays and a lot of that fluid stays in that tissue and it starts to bathe what we call the extracellular matrix and bring oxygen nutrition in. And then it also helps to shuttle waste out of that system. And then in the extracellular matrix are these lymphatic capillaries. So that start to drain that fluid so that interstitial fluid becomes a lymph. And then that lymph basically carries its way back through vessels and countering nodes and making its way back to the thoracic duct and the right lymphatic duct. And going back to that extracellular matrix like that is where all the action is, I believe in our patients story. So when you think about what's going on there so there's the cells, the cell membranes and encapsulating the cells there's all of these structural proteins like collagen and elastin and the fiberglass the mast cells that are hanging out there. Lime, love, Borrelia loves to hang out there. It loves to be in the grade college and viruses hang out in there, heavy metals that we get exposed to because of their charge on lock on to like the proteoglycans. Mycotoxins can get hang out there, viruses, parasites. So this space is not draining regularly. It can be highly congested and can be full of contaminants and that can affect basically cellular communication and the ability for the cells to get the trash out, right? And so why we do our lymphatic therapies is really on the microscopic level to drain that space and keep that space moving so that we can have really, really wonderful cell communication, keep those pathogens and toxicants out of there. And that's also where trauma hangs out. So there's the structured water around the collagen that through this wonderful biophysicist her name is May 1 home, she's past but she studied structured water around the collagen and the acupuncture meridian system. And that's where when we do neural therapy or craniosec roll or somatic work that's why you have a memory or something when you're working on that tissue. But yeah, so it's all in there. So that's a really important space to keep moving and keep draining and a big part of where we work. And Dr. Rob Cass who he's the creator of Physica and he's a great book. And he says, I had always six in my brain by draining the lymphatics were essentially we have the opportunity to change the train of in the cell and our epigenetic expression, right? So by doing these therapies we have a profound effect on our health. Yeah. Oh gosh, I love that. And I love that you kind of gave us an outline. I see so many patients and specifically like you said with Lyme and mold which you see a lot of them who have congestive lymphatics. How would you know? I mean, clearly everybody could use lymphatic work but what would be signs and symptoms of congestive lymphatics? Like how would you know from a clinical perspective? Yeah, it's kind of like just, again, nothing's 100% but it's pretty much 95% for a lot of our patients. But it's a lot of symptoms, right? So from headaches to migraines to nasal congestion, allergies, a lot of gut dysbiosis, bloating, pain, edema, cellulite, acne, all of these things. And then there are key areas in the body to their kind of lymphatic areas. There's a lot of the cervical lymph nodes that can get congested, especially in your patients. Underneath the clavicle, there's the on the left side, there's the thoracic duct and then the right lymphatic duct. These areas can get tender. Women breast health is lymphatic health, right? So if you're breast, if you have vibratinomas or fibrocystic breasts or even cancer, there can be lymphatic congestion, the armpits or the axilla, that can be a huge area. Any pelvic issue, any reproductive issue, ovarian cysts, fibroids, probably even endometriosis, prostate health, a lot of lymphatic congestion can happen in the pelvic floor. Gut dysbiosis, of course, can lead to lymphatic congestion. And then a lot of our patients, especially with Bartonella and other infections, their lower extremities can be full of symptoms from neuropathy to poor blood flow, to DMA, to being very cold. So a lot of these symptoms are the, let me say this, a lot of these underlying causes, the outcome is lymphatic congestion. That makes so much sense. And I love the image of Bartonella. There's many, many causes, but in my clinical experience, I'll say that, the most difficult lymphatic cases are usually related to Bartonella. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree, yeah. Yeah, so what would, tell us about your, what would you do to treat lymphatics and any, I wanna hear about your products too, for sure, but is there anything people can do at home or do you have a dramatic drainage kind of stuff that we can do? There's so much you can do, right? And it's just awareness is the first step. If you're struggling with a chronic illness, that whole idea about scars that I talked about, scars can create blockages in the lymphatic system. So if you can see somebody for neuro therapy or you can do different topicals that can talk about or even photobiomodulation to help ease some of that stagnation in the scars. So scars are really important with the people who are struggling with chronic illnesses, especially also the tonsils, as I mentioned. So making sure that lymphatic tissue is being treated. I use a lot of different topical sprays from like, I love the beekeepers, propolis and I like the megasidin and different gargles with ozonate of water. So those are kind of, you know, those hidden areas that could keep your lymphatic system, you know, congested if you're not addressing scars and the tonsils, in my opinion. Also the sinuses and again, if you have any dental infections, that's gonna just be that chronic, you know, assault to the lymphatics. However, there's lots you can do. Some movement is really important. So even if you're really sick and you can't obviously go walk miles, just get up and move and move your body. And my good friend, Jean and Bria has also talked about how, you know, not only that are we moving the lymph, but the fascia, which is the connective tissue, what we call the saran wrap around muscles. It's way more than that. It's actually this fiber optic communication system in the body that delivers exclusions on water in our tissues. So basically you're moving water and hydrating yourself by moving. So that's really important for lymphatics and movement. And then there's different ways to kind of do self-lymphatic drainage massages. One, you know, again, you can use your hands and you can really, you know, the lymphatic system is all interconnected. So if there's a block in one area, it's gonna affect distant areas. So you wanna think about these key points, especially, you know, the thoracic duct and the right lymphatic duct opening those areas up. There's some lymph nodes again along the neck that a lot of our patients, you know, are congested with. So, you know, opening the self and then draining. Also the breasts, you know, and so I'm using along the breasts or the armpits. And there's a lot of tools. So I love the wash-offs, the facial wash-offs. I think those are really fun to use at home. Dry skin brushing can be really great. You always wanna go in the direction of your heart and then open up upstream before going downstream. So if you wanna drain this arm, you basically wanna open up here, then here and then go here so that the lymph has somewhere to go. So those are some, you know, home tools. There's also the vibration plates. There's the rebounders. There's home little vibration things. And then there's lots of topicals. So I've created two products that I really enjoyed. They work well. One is from a product line called Loom V. It's lymphogen and it's an oil infusion and it has different, some of my favorite herbs plus essential oils. So like red root and cleavers and nettles and red clover and then it has Heliocrisum draining and frankincense. So I have people put that on like their body at night, especially because our lymph is draining a lot of it. And then I just other product that I collaborated with Dr. Ruggiero, it's called lymph flow and it's just a little bit more, it's stronger. So it's really good for those who really congested areas and it helps a lot of our patients to have brain fog and all sorts of things going on the brain. So we want the lymphatic system in the brain to drain really well. So we open this up at night and then there is biopur has their detox deodorant. So you can actually also use that at night around the like axilla and the delinoponodes in the groin area, like in the pelvic floor, bikini area, also the bottoms of the feet. It can be very helpful for... Biopur also has a breast health tissue, what do they call it? Femtox maybe, I forget what they call it but for people who have a lot of breast congestion and recovering from explant surgery, that can be very helpful. And then castor and packs can be very helpful. There's so many tools and then we use internal herbs as well. There are a lot of drain and tremities and then different herbal combinations that we use. So there's a lot, a lot of things to do. Also patients who are chronically ill often you've had your lymph system congested for a while. So if you're in an area and if you can connect with a clinic, getting like a wonderfully skilled practitioner who does lymphatic drainage massage that can really help things to get things going. And then my good friend, Kelly Kennedy, introduced me to an equipment called the Flowpresso and it's this like compression suit. So it's in infrared and they call it nano vibrational technology. Wow, yeah, that's cool. Yeah, and it's so, it's so relaxing. And you know, you go into the portal before you go in. Yes, yeah, it's really nice. And so that's a really wonderful piece of equipment to use as well. So, so yeah, there's so many things to do Jill. One thing too, I guess to note for our patients, some people when their lymphatic system is really congested and when we get it moving, they can feel flu like for a little bit. And that's not a sign that it's bad for you. It's actually a sign we really need it. So what I do is I often treat people with binders before and after lymphatic therapies and also immune support. So whatever it, whatever you're taking just take more of like your anti-viral or, you know, Lyme support. And then you can navigate that ozone can be really nice before and after as well. But don't, you know, just moving too much. Don't like be afraid of it or, you know, be deterred from it. Just go back more gently with more support. And that does get easier. It doesn't happen for long. Yes. Oh gosh, that was just a wealth of now. Oh my gosh, so many things people asking for now. So we'll do, if you're listening, wherever you're listening, we're gonna include links to Dr. Christine's products and anything else that she mentioned, we'll make sure and get from you everything that you mentioned so that we can share that with everybody who's listening. I see some hearts going out. People are glad to hear that. I was like, wow, that was awesome. Truly that was great, great overview. And so many things like you said, there are so many things that you can start with at home and then some of these other remedies. And all, like you said, all that junk just coagulates and that's a terrible word because that's blood, but you know, issues and really this is part of the healing. Gosh, it is so fun to talk to you, Dr. Christine. And time goes so fast. Oh, I know, I can't believe it, yeah. I know, right? So it's Dr.ChristineShaffner.com is your website? Yes. And are your products actually on the website? Yeah, we have that website we'll kind of direct you to everybody. Perfect. My clinic is called Eminence and then we have our stores called iPothecary and so that we have a lot of things there as well. Awesome, I'll make sure people have the links. Thank you so much for sharing your heart and soul and spirit and all the wonderful things you do. It is just a treat to talk to you. Oh, thank you so much for having me on your podcast. It's always lovely to connect. It is.