 We are live and hello everybody who's joining us on Facebook. As always, this will be recorded. You can watch it if you missed the first part and we'll be sure and share the final video. Just a little housekeeping. I hope that you will check out the other videos we have on the YouTube channel, which is just under my name, Jill Carnahan, lots of great interviews and stay tuned because we've got the whole ICI board members. This is the first of those that we're gonna talk about mold toxicity, environmental toxicity, and hear from all the experts. So I'm super excited about that. And I will just go ahead and introduce Dr. Kelly McCann and then we'll jump right in. So Dr. McCann's passion for understanding why certain people develop specific conditions drove her beyond conventional medicine to study first complementary and alternative. I remember when that was the term, right? And then back in the day. Many years ago. Yeah, yeah. And then integrated functional medicine and environmental medicine, which led to an exploration of chronic infections and illness due to mold exposure. And today we're gonna really dive into how does the mind-body connect to these illnesses? And I know we both agree. It's almost like you can't really overcome and get well until you deal with all the pieces, including the limbic system and the mind-body. So I'm super excited to pick your brain on that today. She is a practicing internal medicine doctor and pediatrician and utilizes her extensive knowledge of root cause, various modalities and treatment options to guide patients to help in her thriving practice, the spring center located in Costa Mesa, California, where she's also on staff at Hogue Met Memorial Hospital. She lectures all over nationally and internationally. That's how we've kind of got to know each other. I always love your lectures because you bring together again the mind and body and yet all these different modalities. And we really, in order to help people get well, and if you're listening, you know this. If you suffered from mold-related illness or Lyme disease or some of these chronic complex things. And now we're going to see even more, I think, with COVID because some of the same inflammatory cytokine pathways are activated. And so I think functional medicine doctors are going to be very busy in the coming year. There is so much more I could say. You are on boards and so many different credentials. I won't read that all, but if people want to visit you, where's your website, Dr. McKinney? It's thespringsenter.com. Okay, so people can find you there. And I'll be sure and add those links on our Facebook Live here. The way I love to start is the story of kind of how you got interested in medicine and especially it sounds like you were conventionally trained like I was and then we both shifted or maybe you went in ahead of time kind of knowing where you wanted to be. But I'd love to hear your story about how you got into medicine and then how you got to where you're at now. Sure. So I was actually a music major in college and I had no idea I was interested in medicine whatsoever. But when it came time to figuring out what I was going to do with my life, I thought I really don't want to sing opera. I just don't think that that will be what I want to do for my life. So I had to figure out what the next steps were. I went to library school because my mom's a librarian and at the time, the only things that I was really interested in was like how we organize information. So I thought, okay, I'll go to medical school. And I contemplated going to acupuncture school. My parents persuaded me to go to medical school and I made a deal with myself that if I got in, I would go and if I didn't get in, I'd go to acupuncture school and I'd be very happy. I got into like four medical schools. So darn it, I had to go. Darn again. So I went to medical school and was always very interested in complementary and alternative medicine, which was the term of the day. I studied with an acupuncturist. I did healing touch workshops and massage. And that was really my goal from very early on to learn about how we lead to help in a holistic way. And so I did my residency training and even during residency training, I spent time with an acupuncturist. One of my continuity clinics was with some naturopaths. This was always a burning passion of mine. And then after I got out of residency and I moved to Oregon and started in practice in private practice, I got really sick. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, terrible depression. I had no idea what had happened to me. And after that, I really tried to dive in and figure that out. Turns out the office that I was in was a flat roofed building in Oregon. Wow. So I suppose if you're listening could probably figure out I got mold exposed and I didn't realize it. And it turned out- And that was like what year was that? This was like 2004, 2005. The way before it's been really escalated but that was really in the beginning. Wow. Yes. There wasn't as much resource out there, was there? No, there was nothing. In fact, I don't even know if I put it together. I just left, I had to leave Oregon and went to Arizona, recovered without really understanding why did the University of Arizona's fellowship in integrative medicine in Arizona. And started training, did functional medicine, studied environmental medicine with Walter Crinian when he was still with us. And one of the docs in his training program with me said, hey Kelly, you should really check out this shoemaker guy and learn about mold. And so I did check that out, started treating people for mold exposure, treating myself for mold exposure. And then that led me to learn about Lyme disease. And yeah, here I am today, taking care of very complex patients. Obviously now we've learned about mass electivation. And somewhere along the way, I actually got a master's in spiritual psychology from a school called the University of Santa Monica. And that was really a personal game changer for me because it helped me work through a lot of these misbeliefs that I had about myself, about the world that I think have really helped me help patients understand themselves a little bit more so that they could really get to some of these root cause beliefs that are interfering with their healing. So that's my story. First of all, I love it, it's so funny. I think we should have this like secret librarian society. I just talked to Danette Hope not too long ago and I found out she, and same with me, I always joke I was gonna be a librarian. And then it just, and the same, there's such a similar path with so many of us. I applied to acupuncture school, chiropractic school, osteopathic school, and allopathic school. And I knew my heart wasn't really into the allopathic medicine as much as the rest of them, same like you. And then I got accepted. And I was like, oh gosh, I gotta go because if I wanna make change, our system still is so predominantly allopathic that I thought if I ever wanna go overseas and do mission work or something, like you really, it's a lot harder, sadly, even though I learned so much from my naturopathic and chiropractic colleagues and all these other people. And then during residency, I did a rotation with a brilliant Chinese acupuncture. So I love, and I've looked at Dr. Weil's program, but with kids in marriage and timing didn't work out. Such a parallel journey. I love that, I really do. And I remember it's funny, because the alternative now I like, I don't like that term, because I don't feel like, I'm sure you too, but at the time, I was in school the same time as you, I'm sure, and it was very much, that was, in fact, I was at Loyola University in Chicago. And I was the medical student that started the very first integrative complementary kind of interest group. So we'd bring in massage therapists and chiropractors and kind of get the medical students acclimated to these other therapies. So it seems like decades and decades ago that this all happened, but I love that. And then to have that experience, and it was so early on, no one was really talking about it. And so you actually got well and happened to get out. But I bet it's there's a lot more clarity in hindsight looking back now that you know what it was, huh? Oh, absolutely. And so many things I've learned to help myself heal yet even more, and then obviously help patients too. I love that too, because really truly, I think are like when you sit in front of a patient and you hear these little details that there's no textbook, there's no online site, nothing that really puts that together, but your personal experience, I often hear things and I remember and I've experienced them. And so I recognize the patterns and that experience actually adds this depth that there's no kind of training except for like the experience adds a depth of knowledge and understanding that is impossible to replicate with any education, right? Absolutely, yes. Yes, so healers, we have to heal ourselves first. We have to go through the journey. And I think that that, especially when we're talking about that mind body piece, we have to do our own internal work. We have to understand our intuition, our motivations, our belief structures so that we can actually help patients identify their triggers, their intuition, their belief structures. I think it's a big piece of getting well. So I would love to talk more about that because I couldn't agree more. And same thing as what you're saying, I went through mold illness and then a divorce and then I had to, my work world kind of fell apart because of my identity for 20 years was as a wife of one person and then I had to really do, I always call it the awakening. And it's because my ex-husband and I are in good terms and we both are like, that's the best thing that ever happened to us because we were in this like illusion of sameness and it broke it apart and then it forced us both to look at ourselves at a very deep level. And what happens is we think we've kind of overcome and learned and grown and there's more. So I continue on this process. I am on the process with you listening and with you Kelly but it's interesting because what I realized is how many false perceptions and beliefs and how it affected my health probably more than anything else. So let's talk about this. You've got a psychology degree, spiritual psychology degree. Take us down the path, like if we were, patients are listening or people struggling, what are some of the things you explore with your patients and how would we make changes around those belief systems that are keeping us from healing? Yeah, it's definitely a tricky situation because especially as an allopathic medical doctor even a functional medicine doctor people are coming and they're like, okay, fix me. We have to change that mentality right from the get go because I can't fix somebody, you can't fix them. They actually have to do the work. We can be the cheerleaders. We can go give the supplements but ultimately it is their process and their journey. So some of what I do is help teach them how to access their own intuition. But perhaps we can talk about like how to start to get at what the root beliefs are or the root causes are. So for example, one of the key points that we learned at the University of Santa Monica is this idea of victim mentality and to identify the issue when you hear yourself say, I'm upset because I'm upset because that guy over there is smoking and smoking is bad and it gives me a headache and it's bad for the world and how rude are they and how thoughtless are they to actually smoke, right? And the idea that's really hard to kind of wrap your head around is that I'm actually not upset about the smoking or the person. I have some internal issue that is being triggered by the presence of that guy smoking. Like I can be rude and I'm probably not, I'm not a smoker, right? So it's not that I'm doing that but there's ways in the world that I might be rude or I might be thoughtless and that's the opportunity to look outside of myself. So why is that making me angry? And can I look inside of myself and see what's actually there, what's being triggered by that external, seemingly external event? I love this because you're talking about these like exiled pieces of ourselves, right? Because we're always like, and you're also, I'm hearing this like it's a judgment which I'm learning. It's so easy for us to have judgments and probably first of all to ourselves, I'm bad or I shouldn't have done that. The shoulds and the must, right? I always think of those trigger words that if I should be doing this, sorry, must be doing this, that's probably a judgment and not from a really intuitive place if I want to show up in the world this way. And the other thing I heard is again, and I've been working through some of these myself as these exiled parts, like I think of myself, I wanna be a kind and loving person. I wanna be generous, I wanna be, as I want to be because I know the truth is I am both unkind and kind. I'm generous and stingy and I hopefully am more of the good side than not but if I exile that part of myself and I see that quality in someone else, it's really easily to become self-righteous and judge that. But the truth is we all have those parts, right? And usually we're triggered by the parts that we most exile of our nature. And so if we can start to embrace, I just recently I'll tell you a personal journey thing with a not healthy relationship. And what I learned was he was always triggering me by accusing me of things that I thought were not my nature. So I would start to defend myself. And this is classic manipulative behavior. So I get in the cycle of trying to defend myself because I'm like, no, I've really meant to be good or to do this. And when I started to understand I can be imperfect and still whole and lovable and I don't have to defend myself. When I started to embrace this like, oh wait, I don't have to defend myself. It gave me so much freedom and I really, that's how I got out of that manipulation. I'd love to comment on some of those things especially the exile because it sounds like with a smoker, you're talking about these pieces of ourselves that we kind of like push away and then we're triggered by them, right? Exactly, exactly. So it's the thing that causes an emotional charge because I think for a lot of people it's how do I identify this? You're talking about these things. How do I identify it? It's the emotional charge that is the gateway in. So what is it that you get upset about or I get upset about for our listeners? What is it that really, really makes us upset? That's where we can get an avenue in to start to look at that. And I love what you're talking about is it's not pointing fingers at my mom did this or my sister did this or my husband did this. It's saying, because the only thing we have to change is ourselves, right? And that gives us more power because it's very easy to point fingers. So how would this look if a patient's come into you and they might be stuck in? So what I see a lot, I'll give you a scenario and then I'd love to hear what your thoughts are is chronic Lyme, chronic mold. Some of these illnesses, chronic fatigue and they're chronic and they're suffering and they've been through a lot. They've been to many doctors but somehow they start to maybe identify with that illness and how do you start to coach them just how to get out of that cycle of feeling like they're always gonna be sick or that they don't have any control over their environment or their situation? What would be some of the ways that you'd start to navigate that with your patients? Good questions, they're tricky. These are really tricky things. I think some of it has to do with trying to get them to come to an understanding about what are the core beliefs that they hold? For example, do they feel that it's unsafe for them to heal for whatever reason? Are they unwilling to heal? Really at the core, is there something that is unwilling about them to do the work, whatever that is, because they're tired or what have you? Or perhaps they might have an idea that they don't really deserve to heal, that they're not enough, they're not good enough, they're not worthy of their own time and attention to get better. And other possibilities, maybe they don't believe that they have the ability to heal or that it's actually possible to heal. Many patients feel, oh, it's just impossible, I am never gonna get there. And until we identify that that is a core belief that they're holding on to, we're really not gonna be able to shift it. So a lot of this does require some intention to uncover what are the beliefs that they might have. Those are so powerful, because I think a lot of them, and even the safety, there's always like, you know, the actions that we do, they give us some outcome and so we keep doing them, even if they're not good for us, right? So we uncover what's the thing that we're getting out of that action? And I can, as I hear you, you know, I can think back to myself when I felt like I wasn't able to express needs easily, like I had to be compliant. And so it was hard to say, I need this. And I think that there was times when illness was an excuse to like rest or to say no. And so I could see that being a cycle for some people where, again, not that they maybe are even conscious of it, but that that illness had become a pattern that gave them relief from having to express, I need to rest or I need to go away or I need to have time alone. And so if they were just not feeling well or had a headache, it would give them that. And that's just one small example. But how would you, is there any way, first of all, do you actually counsel patients in practice or do you send them to professionals? And would there be like an exercise or something that you would recommend for patients to look through? Yeah, good questions. Given the complexity of all the other things that are best functional medicine practitioners and the time constraints, if somebody is really interested in doing this sort of personal work, I do recommend that they have a therapist or a counselor or if they decide to do limbic system retraining to at least have a coach who can help them work through some of these issues. And again, because of the nature of the practice it's not always something that I'm bringing up or bringing to light. Of course, I think this conversation will spur me to want to try doing it more because I think it can be very, obviously it's very valuable. Me too, but it's so the time and the clinic is really like in Pandora's box, right? So if you start to open this, you can really go down there. But there are some exercises that people can do. One of my favorites is called is an exercise that we did at the University of Santa Monica called Gestalt, where you would have a conversation with the part of yourself that wasn't upset or the part of yourself that's hurt. So you could have a conversation with your headache if you have headaches or you could have a conversation with your upset about whatever. And that can manifest in a variety of different ways how we did it at the University of Santa Monica is we would set up three chairs. One chair was the counselor, one chair was the client and then the third chair was a neutral observer who was holding space. You don't have a neutral observer if you wanna do this in the privacy of your own home set up two chairs and then designate one chair as like you and then the other chair as your other aspect and get up, sit in the other chair and literally have a conversation going back and forth with the intention of really understanding that aspect of yourself, understanding what its motivations are, what it's trying to tell you. So for example, Louise Hay has been writing for... I've been thinking about her in this trailer. Yeah. Louise Hay has been writing for decades and she's got these little snippets of information. So for example, a headache could mean a metaphor of invalidating yourself or self-criticism. And so if that person has a headache and they gestalt with their headache and they find out, yes, actually I am very critical or I'm very angry and they're not allowing themselves to express that anger in a healthy way and it's being bottled up in their head, figuring out what that anger is all about, giving voice to it, going to therapy about it, might really clear the energy so that that headache doesn't have to be there anymore. I love this and Gabor Mate, Peter Levine, some of the trauma work they talk a lot about. I love Louise Hay actually, like she has a little like cheat sheet which is really fun to look up when I have a symptom and like is there something deeper here, emotional, like back pain might be feeling like the weight of the shoulders, it can be weight. Oh yeah, right here. Like there's a lot of stress or pressure. So all of you dealing with COVID and homeschooling and if you're having neck pain or shoulder pain, it might be just because you're feeling the weight of the world. And I love that we're talking about this because this doesn't minimize the real chemical exposures and toxicity that people are dealing with or the real physiological manifestations. So we're both definitely not saying this is all in your head, but I love that we're going bigger because again, sometimes you get stuck in the healing just a pill or a supplement isn't gonna really go to that place. And so if you're open to healing and you really want to heal, you can look a little bit deeper and start to ask these questions. And I found like the same thing you mentioned with kind of talking whether you're actually sitting in chairs journaling, you can actually journal to a symptom or you could journal to your younger self or you could kind of have these conversations in a journal form and sometimes the writing you can get out stuff that you wouldn't necessarily be thinking of consciously. This reminds me of you started out by saying this intuitive sense of ourselves. Let's talk a little bit about that because I think that's important. If I have to talk about my journey, what's funny is I went to allopathic medical school. I was born in this very, very intuitive creative child and I was in a very fundamental black and white engineering family, amazing brothers and sisters, but very, very black and white kind of judgmental. There's a lot of this, you know. And so I've realized that that creative kind of wild child was not really acceptable in that situation. And so I pushed it aside, kind of suppressed that part of myself and became very analytical. I went to engineering and before medical school and that actually helped with medicine. I mean, I look at problem solving as kind of an engineering analytical proposition. All I have to say in the last decade, what I found is I've rediscovered this intuitive side of myself and it is thousands of times more powerful than the scientific rational mind, right? So when we take the scientific mind and it like, I always think of it as like hundreds of pieces of variables we can put together on paper and analyze, but now that I'm living in the intuitive side and bringing that together, I can take millions of pieces of data in an instant second and the subconscious can actually analyze these and give me answers that are really spot on. And then I prove it with science, but I loved it to hear your perspective on how do you use that in practice and then how do we talk to our patients about engaging in that creative intuitive side for answers? Okay, so my woo-woo hat on. I love it, I know, we're going there. I know a lot of our colleagues use muscle testing and muscle testing definitely gets poo-pooed by conventional medicine. I don't tend to use muscle testing for diagnoses, but I teach my patients muscle testing, mostly to like assess, you know, when you've got six supplements that are good for inflammation, how do you pick, right? Well, do you pick the pretty label? Do you pick it because it's cheap? Like what's the intuition or what's the reasoning? For me, it's helpful to have that intuitive sense. And I think I tap into that on a regular basis. Some people might experience their intuition as they're hearing it or they're feeling it in their bodies. They get a sense like in their gut that this is something that they're drawn to. But I literally teach the sway test with supplements and teach them how to do that. And if they're open to it, I think it can be really powerful. I remember one time I was playing around with it very early on, trying to see about different foods. And so the idea, if those of you who don't know this, this way test is when you're standing and you might hold a supplement. Let's see, I'm a very old model of body bio PC, my favorite. I might hold the bottle at my solar plexus, put my hand in my heart, I'm sitting down, but I would ask, body, is this good for me? And then if I swayed forward, I'm attracted to it. It's something that's gonna be good for me because I'm attracted to it. If I move backwards, then my body is being repulsed by that and trying to get away from it and it won't necessarily be good for me. And then if I sway side to side, it might be helpful, it's not gonna hurt, it's probably not the best choice. Of course, I also realized that I have to verify that forward is yes and backward is no before we go ahead and do the muscle testing. So, you know, just simply, I tend to put my hand in my heart and my solar plexus, maybe the other way around, I don't remember. And then ask, what is yes for me today? And if yes is forward, I'm good to go. If yes is backwards, then I probably have to do some, like walking in place or tapping or something like that that's gonna help reset me and then I'll do the muscle testing again. And we can, what I was gonna tell you was, I kept muscle testing potato chips and I kept falling to the side. They're not really good for me, but not terrible for me. It's getting good, right? Like, I love that you say that, Kelly, because I'm the same way in my project. I mean, I don't, I'm so careful because we have this conventional system we're trained in and you and I, we still use great science. I feel like we bring the best of both worlds. And sadly, you know, years and years ago with your term alternative, at least for me, there was a lot of judgment against what I did. And I remember the very beginning, I was in a medical center, I started the integrative program there and all these like rheumatologists, GI, they were like, who is this person who's doing this? They are totally quack. And what would happen is the patient would get better then they'd go back to their specialist and they're like, what did you do? You're off all your meds. And they're like, well, I saw the Dr. Jill and they're like, what is she doing over there, right? So then you start to get credibility and now we both have in our fields or respected credibility. And there's still people who think, we don't know what we're doing, but in general, we, you know, but all that to say for my whole life of career of medicine, I've tried to walk this line so carefully of really using great science because I want to bring the best science to our field and further it. And again, ICI, we're both involved and I love that about our organization and that we can really bring great science. But the truth is in order to really help to heal, we have to deal with the mind body. We have to deal with the woo-woo, which is a funny term for it, but it's this considered non-scientific. If you look at it, some of the best sciences in these fields. So this is not without its science, but I actually am so grateful that you brought that up because I'm just like you and when it's my health, I'm testing my supplements. So I might not do it in the clinic with the patients, but I'm doing it for myself. And I find it's being incredibly helpful when you have this large array and it might be like on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, your body kind of desires this. And I've gotten so that when I'm just putting my supplements together out of the cabinet, I just know what to put. It's like a recipe, like I'm cooking and I just like know this week I need this, the next week I don't need so much of this. And I just intuitively now I'm really good at that. But if we can give that, that empowers our patients because then they don't have to call us with every question. Exactly. Yeah, so actually I really appreciate you bringing that up because I'm 110% in your court and same thing. So now let's see, we talked about intuition with patients. So that's one way to kind of teach them to tap in. One thing else that you mentioned was like talking to the headache and kind of trying to see is there something else deeper here? I just want to mention in my research I had breast cancer 25 and then Crohn's a 26. And as I read some of Gabor Mathe's and Levine's work on trauma, there's a lot of data that connects breast cancer in women with this kind of over nurturing and conscientious personality that puts aside their own needs. And I alluded to that earlier that I always had a hard time kind of expressing needs but I would much rather take care of someone else than to ask for something for myself. But part of the breast cancer profile can be along the lines of this nurturing because it's breast and it's a nurturing organ for women especially of course, to be over nurturing and to actually deny their own needs. So I'd love to ask if you've seen that and then I want to mention auto immunity on the long list lines because that's super common now. Autoimmune is basically your body's attacking self. And often there's a hidden self loathing or self anger or something directed towards yourself that needs to heal. I just would love to know if you've seen some of those patterns with illness especially with breast cancer and auto immunity. Absolutely, I see all of that. And there are a couple of, in addition to Louise Hay, there are a couple of, I don't know what to call them, formats of thinking about this. So for example, acupuncture and the traditional Chinese medicine meridians and the organs in acupuncture have specific meanings. And depending upon what the person has or what the patient is presenting with, you may be able to clue into these systems to give more information. So let's say the patient is kind of an irritable, angry person and they have insomnia and they wake at two in the morning every night. Well, we know from traditional Chinese medicine, the clock of the organs two in the morning is a right smack dab in the middle of the liver time. And liver is often represented as anger in that realm of that momentality. The liver meridian is the chief planner and it provides us with purpose and direction. And when we are physically imbalanced in our liver, we get headaches, we have a red face. I'm actually really warm right now, so my face is really red. Red eyes, painful joints. And if someone was able to identify, okay, yeah, I'm really angry and then trace that energy of anger back to the first instance in their life that they felt that, then they might be able to really start to clear those patterns. Why are they so angry about headaches are actually in my mind a really good metaphor for anger that's trapped in the body. Some other, as I was preparing for this, some other ones that I was thinking about was the chakra system. So we've got the acupuncture system and then there's the chakra system. And the thyroid is the fifth chakra. And when we don't express ourselves, when we don't speak our truth, we can have a block in the fifth chakra which can manifest in thyroid issues. So I think that these are metaphors that are rampant if we look for them and give us a clue to where we can start to intervene. I remember I was in residency and I was at the VA at the time in Phoenix. And one of my patients was a very sweet, like 65 year old man who had just had a heart attack. And as I was taking his history and talking to him about his family history, there was so much emotional stagnation in his relationship with his mother that he never married, he never really expressed himself. And in that moment, I just saw the emotional clogging of his coronary arteries that was manifesting now in his cardiac issues. So profound. So profound. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I love that. And again, as you well know, lungs are a grief a lot of times. I remember right after the divorce and I wasn't conscious of my grief, I was like, oh, I'm fine, I was very repressed. And I remember I got pneumonia, I had lung issues, I had all these lung issues and I'm like, oh, duh, that's like my body's trying to express this thing that needs to come out. And it's so interesting that and my lungs are good now. So it's that the transition, you kind of get those emotions out. Yeah, repressed emotion is a huge, huge piece of the puzzle with illness as well. So I love that we're talking about this. So let's maybe shift in the last few minutes. A lot of, so we both deal a lot with environmental toxicity, mold-related illness. And I just see this epidemic, I think partially because of the toxic load in our environment is making it harder in general for our immune system to cope. Buildings are getting tighter. There's more cardboard and porous materials than the new builds, they're built quickly. There's just so many reasons for this. But sadly, cause a lot of people are like, well, my grandma used to have mildew in her shower and never got sick. Why is it such a big deal now? And I think all of these things plus EMFs make the mold a little bit more aggressive. So we're seeing like, cause even for me, I'm like, why, and even the last five years there's so much more mold. And it's so much more aggressive. We're seeing neurological illnesses, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's. Just, it's amazing to me how toxic it is and how prevalent it is. And I remember even when I first realized mold was at the root of a lot of illnesses, I kept seeing patients and my heart was like, I think mold might be involved. But I'm like, not everything could be mold and yet it kept coming up, right? Like it kept proving itself in the labs. So back to the question, what I wanted to talk about, we talk in ICI about limbic retraining and these ideas of that. Let's talk a little bit about that. I actually put together a whole like limbic suggestions and I'd love to pick your brain and I'll share some of mine about how do we actually, so let's define that first, what does that mean? And then how do we help the patients kind of get out of that limbic loop? Sure. So the limbic system is the ancient, I describe it as the ancient part of the brain, the part of the brain that is the emotional center and it, I'm sure you come up with better ways to describe it, but when patients are stuck in fight or flight when they start to perceive that the world, everything around them is dangerous. They get stuck in limbic system activation and they have difficulty existing in the world because their limbic system is literally getting hypertrophied. We also often see this in combination with mast cell activation where their mast cells are degrading and they've got lots of inflammation. And my understanding is that if we calm down the limbic activation, if we help get them out of fight or flight and into parasympathetic, which is the relaxed state, they will be better able to exist in the world, better able to detoxify, better able to digest their food, to breathe deeply, do all of those things. You can probably miss something in there, but. Let's see. So there are two different limbic system retraining programs that I'm aware of right now. Annie Hopper's DNRS and then Annie Hopper spoke to us at ICI in our inaugural conference and then Gupta, the Gupta program, he spoke to the ICI participants in our most recent conference. And both of those programs require an incredible amount of discipline on the part of the patient who is participating and really trying to rewire their brain so that they see the world as a safe place. So thank you for saying that, because what we've both seen is either one of those programs, it can do profound shifts when we get stuck. And I'm almost now, it's not that I'm requiring them, but I highly, highly recommend that any patient with mold or Lyme or chronic illness, because it really is what happens, we've all seen this and now we're starting to really put it all together as a group and organization and teach our doctors that this is part of the healing. But what happens is, it's this physiological stressor mold is and for some reason it happens to be particularly a threat to the system, like the system knows it's very, very dangerous. And then we get, even if consciously we're like, oh, I'm gonna be okay, I'm gonna get out of the moldy house, I'm gonna heal, even if we consciously are aware of that, if we get re-exposed, the same trigger happens in our limbic system, even if we are consciously aware and awake. So we actually have to go to that subconscious level and start to create a safe space for healing and that's part of these. Some of the things I put, like I said, I put together this random list as I pulled from different sources because for me, like as a type A, another program, another book to read was like in the midst of the illness was a lot to add and I could do it, but I found some patients are just so overwhelmed that they maybe would start. And so what I try to do is like passive and active, like the active things are the books to read, the programs to do and they're amazing. And some of the other books that I've heard recommended are Accessing the Power of the Vegas Nerve by Stanley Rosenberg. I know Neil Nathan loves that book and he was the one who first turned me on to that. And then I read The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Dodge. And then Stephen Porges, who's been a big trauma psychologist, has done tons of work in this area. He has a protocol just called the safe and sound protocol. And I can include some of these links in our notes. I'm not associated with any of them, I've just found they help patients. But then the passive stuff, like heart math or any sort of issues with the heart rate variability, which is our beat to beat variability, can be really profound. And you can get those on apps on your phone or on computer. And heart math is the best known, but there's a lot of other ones out there. And then I found even like a cranial sacral therapy, I'm a huge fan of that for this activation because you passively get a treatment. It's very subtle, it's very gentle and it can kind of help to shift that. And then biornal beats, if you've never heard of these, these are music that all different types of music. It's usually classical or there might be some drone types of gamma or alpha-perts. But what they are is they're slightly different frequencies in the ears. And again, I don't know all the science, but I know enough to know that it tends to calm the nervous system down just by listening. So if someone's really up-regulated and they can't read a book and they can't, you can go do the biornal beats and that's B-I-N-A-U-R-A-L beats. And you can find them on Spotify or Pandora. You just search and listen for free. And then I know some of the other like neurofeedback, frequency-specific microcurrent and just breathwork, which you started by saying the breath is such a powerful way. So learning butecho breathing, which is B-U-T-E-Y-K-O, but there's many others. You can do a box breath where you're breathing in for five, hold for five, out for five, and just do that box work. Anything else that you can think of or anything with breathing, you're probably an expert in this. And I certainly am not. Any breathwork that you would teach your patients on that level? Dr. Andrew Weil always taught the 478 breath, which is a little bit different than the box breath. So you inhale to the count of four, exhale to the count of four, inhale to the count of seven, exhale to the count of seven, inhale to the count of eight, exhale to the count of eight, and then you do that like 10 times. And it really definitely quiets the... You're kind of slowing down the systems, right? Okay, that makes sense. You have to slow down the breath so you can get over it. Another passive device that I learned about through a patient of mine is actually the Rezimax. For E-Z-Z-I-M-A-X, the Rezimax Tuner Pro, it has a couple of different settings, but it's considered a vagus nerve stimulation device, though it calms down the nervous system. My husband uses it periodically. He'll put it on his back and he's out for a half hour. Wow. Obviously. So that's a lovely thing too. Oh gosh, I had another one and I lost it. Oh well. All these devices, and besides me, everybody's heard me talk lately, everybody's heard me talk about my PMF mat, the POST electromagnetic frequency. Now these have been around for years, there's tons of data. It's just that I got a new one and I have been real excited because it's changed my life. It's really been, I love just like you, in fact, at the conference, there's a little pause and you and I are pulling out our biohacking devices and showing them like that. It's because I know we both like to find things at work, but that POST electromagnetic frequency can be really powerful. There's different hurts there too, you lay on a mat and so some are for more for, like it would be like earthen or grounding, like walking on the earth's surface, so more relaxing. Some are more for healing modalities, for the brain and nervous system and for bones or for muscle injuries. It can be really amazing. I don't have the data all read yet, but I just keep being amazed at all these different things that we can do for our systems. So, well gosh, this time it has just flown, Kelly. I have so enjoyed this interview. I love going to that metaphorical esoteric woo-woo thought because honestly, it's some of the best profound healing for our patients and even myself. So I love that we're talking about it and bringing it credence. We're in the midst of a pandemic at the moment we're recording this and people are anxious. And I think one of the things we're seeing is the things that we're safe and secure, finances, health, relationships, intimacy, connection, a lot of the things that we relied upon for security are in flux. What would be, do you have any, I mean of course you're seeing patients and feeling this energy too because you're intuitive like I am, what would be any kind of parting advice for people just trying to learn through this or stay afloat or deal with isolation? Any tips or things that you wanna leave us with regarding what we're all dealing with right now? Well, actually I think in many ways we can look at this time as challenging as it is to that it's an opportunity. I think it's a missed opportunity for the powers that be to not say, hey, let's help people get well, let's help people get healthy, let's help people lose weight. So since nobody else in the government is going to tell us to do that, we can take it upon ourselves to really use this time to dive in, to explore our thoughts, our feelings, our health and figure out ways that we can use this time to greater purpose. I know a lot of people are anxious and yet anxiety is technically not a feeling. It's really a suppression of emotion that causes those feelings that we call anxiety to show up. And so if we look at just like we're using that upset, we're using that trigger, we're using that charge as an opportunity to self-investigate, to look inside of ourselves and figure out what is it that I'm really upset about? What is it that I'm really suppressing? Maybe we can use this time to truly heal, to begin to heal. And hopefully those of you out there can find functional medicine practitioners to work with so that you can have greater empowerment and take charge of your own health. Oh, love, love, love that. And just again, personally for me, it's been a time of, I've been in some ways busier than ever, but in other ways, there's been some quiet and lots of introspection. And so if you're out there and having this time or whatever, I just encourage you, get a journal. I've got coloring books that kind of help me tap into the right side of my brain and whatever it is for you, maybe it's walking with your dogs or your child or being outside in nature, getting on a PMF mat or one of these devices. But I just encourage you if you're listening, there is a purpose in all the suffering and the difficulties. And a lot of this is slowing us down so that we can actually access these things. Again, for me, I was going at high speed, traveling all the time. And this was an opportunity for me to step back and actually reevaluate where am I going? Where do I wanna go? What do I want my relationships to be like? How do I want my office and clinic to be like? And so it's been a great opportunity for the introspection. So I love that, Kelly. And from two librarians who now became physicians to all of you, I just thank you for your time. This has been such a great discussion. Yes, thank you so much for the invitation, Jill, and for the opportunity to spend time with you. This has been wonderful. You are welcome. We'll have to do it again. Sounds good. Love to.