Share Power Health Talk with Dr. Martin Rutherford
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
By Dr. Martin Rutherford, DC : Functional Medicine Practitioner
5
4242 ratings
The podcast currently has 231 episodes available.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
Hey Dr. Rutherford here today and I’m going to be a little jacked up because this is going to be a little bit of a venting for me so the title today is stop chasing symptoms now a lot of you have probably figured that out at least you think um a while ago i mean that’s that’s that’s been the whole medical world for as long as i could remember and and and frankly i’ve been thinking about this a lot in the medical world was correct for a long period of time when i look at things now and i look i i sat there last night and i was looking through google i was looking through functional medicine i was looking through thyroid i was looking through leaky gut and i’m looking at stuff and i’m going this is not for today’s present population of chronic condition patients what do you mean dr rutherford i mean i mean you know i mean you know you’ve been talking about leaky gut since the day you were functional medicine practitioner i mean what do you mean about that what do you mean sibo you’ve talked about sibo i do but i talk about it in a certain context of an entire frame of reference that’s called functional medicine and functional medicine is no longer about chasing symptoms and that’s what the medical profession has been about and then you know to their defense they were about fixing broken legs and then having heroic surgeries and heart transplants and then making drugs that got rid of symptoms because nobody knew any different but when you really look at it the healthcare system the alternative healthcare system has as a lot of it has followed that model when i look online and i look at certain well-known websites which i was looking at last night it’s like magnesium here’s the 12 things you can do for me that magnesium does and the next thing you do is you can take that magnesium it’s going to work and it does for most people for just a short period of time and when i say most people i’m talking about the patients who walk in here and i’m talking about the patients who are looking online today because those patients are like they’re they’re the chronic mystery patients there i i looked at three histories this morning i uh something happened and i put on i put on what was 80 pounds in three months how do you put on 80 pounds in three months i know okay and it ain’t gonna and and just like and the doctors told me it’s my thyroid not to worry about it they told me not to worry about it because it’s easy to take care of so they’re taking the medication it’s not working they’re taking the pills it’s not working it’s not gonna work so a new model was made it’s called functional medicine which is another whole thing because not everybody out there is pregnant a classic functional medicine model everybody’s got their own take on it because it’s not a regulated discipline and so you know you can go down the street somebody can rub your knees somebody can rub your back and give you a couple of pills and go i’m a functional medicine practitioner literally you can do that in in like most of the states so this is what i have to deal with so people coming in and they have like fibromyalgia peripherally chronic fatigue they got a bad gut they they can’t they either can’t get away from the bathroom you know for more than an hour or they can’t go for a week and and all this type of stuff and and they come in with bags of supplements okay and and and they push those bags at me and i look at them and i go don’t you shop to me don’t even come to me because that’s not the model the model that was uh produced was based on the fact that we have a new patient population i go back that you’re looking at google you’re look to me 80 of stuff i looked at last night online is not relevant to the present patient population and why is that because auto immunity has changed the rules of the game big time the the the doctors don’t know what to do with it yet the medical doctors don’t know what to do with that because their model which was appropriate at a time before autoimmunity when the person would come in with a flu or a cold or a stomachache or or an earache or you know they were chickenpox or something like that that was their world that’s how it developed but that world’s past them now this is now i’m not saying i’m not saying medicine’s not relevant i’m just saying for the chronic condition patient that is not that is not the the the best model and substituting a supplement for a pill for a symptom okay is not the right model it can give you temporary lease yes am i okay with that of course who doesn’t want temporary relief but when you come to me i’m into more than temporary relief look it’s genetics it’s it’s it’s the person living an unhealthy lifestyle whether they knew it or not do i drink coffee do i not drink coffee do i take salt away not take salt sugar batter sugar not that and i i is is out oh i drink one alcohol a day it’s good too alcohol bad no three alcohol i mean like it’s confusing so you could be uh following an unhealthy lifestyle not even knowing it and and either way it’s an unhealthy lifestyle the next thing you know your systems start breaking down and now the way it’s happening is once that gut breaks down the next thing you know you start getting you can start getting chemical sensitivities the next thing you know you are now open to getting autoimmunity the next thing you know you have a stress has anybody here been stressed in the last year i get a little stress you get a little like maybe get an argument and your stress is already up because your presidential guy lost their one or whatever or you’re or we got coveted you’ve been sitting in your house for six months which is not natural for us as human beings to have to do that type of stuff i don’t think that’s like like a controversial thing and so the next thing you know you have a trigger um you have an overwhelming infection you get copied i think a lot of these coveted people are getting it and they have these mystery symptoms later i think you’re going to find out those mystery symptoms are they had a genetic propensity develop autoimmunity and now here it is this is a new development in our society and frankly i treat people from all over the country and all over the world it’s everywhere it’s not just here okay so now this person comes to us and we have spent years years and years just trying to figure out how do we get that under control and i think we’ve got a pretty good model going and the model is not based on on symptoms the understanding of the case is based on symptoms i give out a close to 300 question questionnaire to my patients to fill out by the time that question is filled out a pretty good idea what’s going wrong with them and it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s and it’s all symptoms however those symptoms lead us to understand what systems have collapsed because these systems these these autoimmune problems they are not going away they’re getting more i’m seeing them in three and four and five-year-olds now you can’t cure at least not right now nobody’s come up with a cure now and um and and so basically you have to dampen it you have to get you have to do your best to get that person out of a uh out of a flare um some people have been on a flare for like 10 years okay and you have to get them out of that you have to get them in you have to try to get them in remission and show them how to stay that way we have we have done that we do that pretty well not everybody’s a candidate i’d say 80 people who call here are candidates and i’d say 20 for a variety of about 20 reasons just are not going to respond to this model of care now i said all that to say this so we get into the model we start treating people and and the person starts getting better and then maybe we switch into so basically the way it works is you’ve heard me say this if you watch this for a long time there’s a hierarchy to treatment we figure out what systems there are how do we get the immune system under control dampen the most it’s going to be lifestyle changes it’s going to be nutraceuticals it’s going to be it’s going to be a chemical toxicities it’s going to be triggers that we have to get rid of dietary changes with the uh that are going to help to get rid of strains and we have a very organized way of going about it and we do it in stages and you maybe maybe you know maybe you could do first stage one and also versus doing a lot better and then and then maybe in stage two i’m talking about not standard stages i’m talking about in that person’s particular case and now maybe you find that there’s a liver that’s not you know playing ball with us so maybe we have to go in there a little harder next thing you know you give a person an extra set of vitamins i’m not going to talk to them again for two or three weeks the next thing you know they’re not feeling good for three or four or five or six or seven days so what do they do they go back to dr google they go back to the model that’s failed they go back to the model of i’m going to go home and i’m going to go and i’m going to take this because this has helped me in the past in the context of what i do that’s not a good thing because what we’re doing is is changing physiology and physiology is very very uh communicative to the person who is doing classic functional medicine and if that’s and and it might be that that physiology is good because finally that organ is starting to like be demanded upon to get better and and and and so in the end that that person just kind of has to let me know send me an email do something say you know what i’ve had i’ve had some discomfort for the last three days and um i think i’m gonna take you know these five pills because they’ve helped me in the past and uh what do you think about that and then i would look at the five pills and go probably not a good idea you know or i might say you know one of those might be a good idea that might be the next thing but why don’t we wait a week why don’t we let because the whole idea is to get your physiology working as much as possible online now i have adopted an approach of more supplements in the beginning and tapering them down and tapering them down tapering down as the body heals but see people come in here you got they got like problems for 10 or 20 years you think it and and and we’re trained i take the drug and it either makes me feel better or makes me feel yucky and i tell the doctor he’s an idiot okay so but so so we have that model so so it’s we’re so like about the symptom and and and we’re so like to put band-aids on thing but in the framework of unraveling your physiology of getting these these multiple vicious cycles under control to start synchronizing tierra i mean you know i might have a patient who has doesn’t have constipation develop constipation that tells me something i might have a patient who has alternating constipation diarrhea go away like in a day it might take three weeks it depends on that case as to what’s normal for that and and so i i just there’s there’s a couple of things that really really make it difficult when you’re dealing with a functional medicine practitioner so i’m so i’m kind of like this is like my my my anthem for you for all of the functional medicine practitioners who are actually practicing functional medicine you give them if give them uh you know give them all the data that you can but don’t switch from one model to the next model in the middle don’t go from fixing systems getting your whole body to start working in sync again getting your gut under control and all of a sudden the endotoxins go away and next thing you know your joint pain goes away but now you’re going to the next step and the next step starts getting toxins out of your fat cells and now your joint pain comes back so now you go back to taking your your your magic you know whatever urban botanical gets rid of the joint thing which is fine but it takes away the markers that the functional medicine person needs to know what is the next something what is the next what is the next step so i mean in the end it’s it’s it’s you have to i mean like you have to when you go into functional medicine if you go to a practitioner that you feel confident in that has a plan that is an organization that talks the way we talk that then then you have to work with their model you can’t and again the people who have a lot of knowledge of um of what’s on the internet and and and and people who maybe don’t know how to read maybe maybe think they know how to read blood panels but they don’t i’m thinking largely of like one particular patient who has massive blood sugar problems but her blood tests are normal and then and i’m hearing like no i don’t have a blood sugar problem well we can’t go forward with this you can have you can have pre-diabetes for 10 years before it shows up on the blood pound you have to trust your doctor on that that’s what functional medicine is about it’s about catching all of these cycles and all of these systems that aren’t functioning properly before they get to the point where they show up on the blood test to where your f where your doctor when you read your blood test and he goes like that he goes oh yeah your a1c is up so we need to give you metformin we need to fix that long before that happens and your symptoms are telling us about that we understand that so when we say look i know your glucose is normal and i know your hba1c is normal for those of you are not aware those are two common but not always comprehensive blood markers um if they can be totally normal on your test and you can have you can have high or low blood sugar okay and and and you’re gonna allow your doctor to go with that so i mean this is a new world and it’s and and the thing is that you can’t you can’t chase you cannot chase symptoms and you cannot strictly chase blood markers and you have to and and and if my when my patients are you know what drives me crazy is is is i’ll be treating and and the person will be getting better then all sudden i’ll get an assessment form and it’s totally off the off the charts um then you know i’ll be waiting for the next time that i talk to them and then i understand and then they start telling me about about well you know i had this so i went back and i took this this uh this particular product because that made me move my boss three years ago but it’s not making me move my bowels now and or or i took i took a product and i felt good for like three days i started sleep again everything was wonderful now i’m doing it and and and now i’m back to where i was and and and i’ve stopped that product but it hasn’t changed anything that’s what functional medicine spent years years and some some of those brilliant people on this planet who had the courage to go ahead years and light years ahead of time getting their teeth kicked in getting getting criticized getting uh getting getting told that they were doctor wannabes and believe me being on this side at that point in time is not fun but they need to get that patient and what do they do they they call you and they say like it’s not working no no it it is working you’re not working your your decision to go back to another model is not working and so you have so either like decide to do your functional medicine practitioner do what they tell you to do or don’t do it is like is like my it’s like my advice i definitely am on a rant right now and so uh but but i’m i’m you know what i want my patients to get better oh and the other thing is they’ll go like i’m not i’m not i’m not uh i’m not getting better i have to go through their whole file make sure i’m not missing anything make sure i’m not losing my mind and then i’ll schedule an appointment to uh to to discuss the whole thing with them and say look here you know like what i’m telling you right now so maybe i’ll be able to use this and just tell them look on youtube for my rant and uh and and then have that conversation then they’re upset because i charge you for a console you know it’s like well i wouldn’t have to charge for the console if you just did what i tell you to do what i asked you to do because i’m going to ask you to do something it’s going to go better or it’s going to go worse if it goes worse that tells us something that is diagnostic that is functional medicine if you and it’s either a supplement or you got off of your diet or you were stressed that day which one was it oh it could be all of those things yes it could be all of those things a lot of times when people call me after they’ve been out of here for just that one last night and the young man was just phenomenal when he left and all of a sudden he’s starting to have symptoms again we talked for like 15 minutes he was stressed he was stressed at work that was it stress through off his blood sugar blood sugar thrown off his sleep what is he doing he’s taking supplements for each one of those things okay this is what i’m talking about all right and he’s delightful just in case you’re watching you know who you are he’s absolutely delightful and and and truly it was it was it was a cool thing because he he did call and he grasped it right away okay and he kind of felt sheepish because i had already given him what to do if something like that happened he goes oh i should have done this i go it’s okay next time do that you won’t have to call me and pay me for a consul and then yell at me because you’re paying me for a console so that’s my rant for today i don’t even remember what the name of the topic was it was but that’s my rant for today look this is a new world if you have these chronic conditions you’ve been to the doctor they don’t know what’s going on with you you’re taking the medications it’s not working you’re coming in here to me with three bags of supplements that’s not working you don’t want to go back to those two models when we’re in the middle of doing what we’re doing when any functional medicine practitioner you know oh the functional medicine practitioner well you know there’s good and bad functional medicine practitioners like everything else on planet earth okay it still gives them the best shot of helping you if you don’t if you resist the temptation to go back to that model and honestly if if if it’s going to be we have signs around this office it says we didn’t say it was going to be easy we said it was going to be worth it i mean because we know there’s going to be tough days when people are getting through that we tell them that in the beginning but that seems to like be forgotten sometimes you know so i’m not talking the vast majority of my patients but i’m talking to a percentage and i don’t like when my patients don’t get better because they’re shooting themselves in the foot and then they shoot themselves on the foot and maybe they even blame me but either way i don’t like that i don’t like that they’re not getting better because they could be getting better if they weren’t continuing going back to that model so so it’s not about it’s not about symptoms it’s about correcting the system it’s about correcting the vicious cycles it’s about correcting the inner twining as my mentor would say intertwining webs of of of conditions that that all come together to create these these chronic symptoms and and it’s it’s a whole different animal and it’s and it’s a whole different model so that’s my rant i’ll be interested to hear what anybody thinks about this one and i’ll be okay with whatever you throw at me and uh and so i’ll be with you again next time with uh uh hopefully is equally illuminating but maybe less controversial subject you – Hey, Dr.
Rutherford here today. And I’m gonna be a little jacked up, because this is gonna be a little bit of a venting (laughs) for me. So, the title today is “Stop Chasing Symptoms.” Now, a lot of you have probably figured that out, at least you think (laughs) a while ago.
I mean, that’s been the whole medical world for as long as I can remember. And frankly, I’ve been thinking about this a lot, the medical world was correct, for a long period of time. But when I look at things now, and I look at.
.. I sat there last night, and I was looking through Google, I was looking through functional medicine, I was looking through thyroid, I was looking through leaky gut, and I’m looking at stuff and I’m going, “This is not for today’s present population of chronic condition patients.
” Well, what do you mean Dr. Rutherford? I mean, you know…. I mean, you know, you’ve been talking about leaky gut since the day you were functional medicine practitioner. I mean, what do you mean about that? What do you mean CBO? You’ve talked about CBO.
I do, but I talk about it in a certain context of an entire frame of reference that’s called functional medicine. And functional medicine is no longer about chasing symptoms, and that’s what the medical profession has been about.
And then, you know, to their defense, they were about fixing broken legs, and then having heroic surgeries, and heart transplants, and then making drugs that got rid of symptoms, just because nobody knew any different.
But when you really look at it, the healthcare system, the alternative healthcare system, a lot of it has followed that model. When I look online and I look at certain well-known websites, which I was looking at last night, it’s like magnesium.
“Here’s the 12 things you can do for that… Magnesium does.” And then next thing you knew, is you can take that magnesium, it’s gonna work. And it does, for most people, for just a short period of time.
And when I say most people, I’m talking about the patients who walk in here, and I’m talking about the patients who are looking online today, because those patients are like, they’re the chronic mystery patients.
I looked at three histories this morning. Something happened and I put on, I put on, what was it? 80 pounds in three months. How do you put on 80 pounds at three months? I know. Okay. And it ain’t gonna.
.. And she’s like, “And the doctors told me is my thyroid not to worry about it. They told me not to worry about it because it’s easy to take care of.” So, they’re taking a medication, it’s not working, they’re taking the pills, it’s not working, it’s not gonna work.
So, a new model was made, it’s called functional medicine, which is another whole thing, because not everybody out there is a practitioner, and got a classic functional medicine model. Everybody’s got their own take on it because it’s not a regulated discipline.
And so, now you can go down the street, somebody can rub your knees, somebody can rub your back and give you a couple of pills and go, “I’m a functional medicine practitioner.” Literally, you can do that in like most of the States.
So, this is what I have to deal with. (laughs) So, people are coming in, and they have like fibromyalgia, peripheral neuropathy, chronic fatigue, they got a bad gut. They either can’t get away from the bathroom, you know, for more than an hour, or they can’t go for a week, and all this type of stuff.
And they come in with bags of supplements. Okay? And they push those bags at me, and I look at ’em and I go, “Don’t you show ’em to me. Don’t you show ’em to me because that’s not the model.
” The model that was produced, was based on the fact that we have a new patient population. I go back to you’re looking at Google, you’re looking… To me, 80% of stuff I looked at last night, online, is not relevant to present patient population.
And why is that? Because auto immunity has changed the rules of the game, big time. The doctors don’t know what to do with it yet, the medical doctors don’t know what to do with it, ’cause their model, which was appropriate at a time before auto-immunity, when the person would come in with a flu, or a cold, or a stomach ache, or an earache, or, you know, we got the chickenpox or something like that, that was their world, that’s how it developed, but that world’s past them now.
This is now, I’m not saying medicine’s not relevant, I’m just saying for the chronic condition patient, that is not the best model. And substituting a supplement for a pill for a symptom, okay, is not the right model.
That, it kinda gives you a temporary relief. Yes. Am I okay with that? Of course, who doesn’t want it temporarily relief. But when you come to me, (laughs) I’m into more than temporary relief.
Look, it’s genetics, it’s the person living an unhealthy lifestyle, whether they knew it or not. Do I drink coffee? Do we not drink coffee? Do I take salt, do I not take salt? Is sugar bad, is sugar not bad? Is alcohol.
I drink one alcohol a day, it’s good, two alcohol bad, or three alcohol? I mean, like it’s confusing. So, you could be falling in an unhealthy lifestyle not even knowing it. And either way, it’s an unhealthy lifestyle.
And next thing you know, your system started breaking down, and now the way it’s happening, is once I got breaks down, the next thing you know, You can start getting chemical sensitivities, the next thing you know, you are now open to getting auto-immunity, the next thing you know, you have a stress.
Has anybody here had been stressed in the last year or so? A little stress, a little… Maybe you get in an argument and your stress is already up because you’re presidential guy lost or won, or whatever, or we got COVID, and you’ve been sitting in your house for six months, which is not natural for us as human beings, to have to do that type of stuff.
I don’t think that’s like a controversial thing. And so, the next thing you know, you have a trigger, you have an overwhelming infection, you get COVID, I think a lot of these COVID people are getting it, and they have these mystery symptoms later.
I think they’re gonna find out those mystery symptoms are, they had a genetic propensity develop auto-immunity, and now it is. This is a new development in our society. And frankly, I treat people from all over the country and all over the world, it’s everywhere, it’s not just here, okay? So, now this person comes to us and we have spent years, years, and years, just trying to figure out how do we get that under control? And I think we’ve got a pretty good model going.
And the model is not based on symptoms. (chuckles) The understanding of the case is based on symptoms. I give out at close to 300 question, questionnaire to my patients to fill out. And by the time that question is filled out, I’ve pretty good idea what’s going wrong with them, and it’s all symptoms.
However, those symptoms lead us to understand what systems have collapsed, because these systems, these auto-immune problems, they’re not going away, they’re getting more, I’m seeing them in three, and four, and five-year-olds now.
You can’t cure, at least not right now, nobody’s come up with a cure now. And so, basically, you have to dampen it, you have to get… You have to do your best to get that person out of a flare.
Some people have been on a flare for like 10 years. Okay. And you have to get them out of that, you have to get them… You have to try to get them into remission, and show ’em how they can stay that way.
We have done that, we do that pretty well. Not everybody’s a candidate, I’d say 80% of people who call here are candidates. And I’d say 20% for a variety of about 20 reasons, just are not gonna respond to this model of cure.
Now, I said all that to say this. (laughs) So, we get into the model, we start treating people, and the person starts getting better, and then, maybe we switch ’em to… So, basically, the way it works, is you’ve heard me say this, if you watch this for a long time, there’s a hierarchy to treatment, we figure out what systems they are.
How do we get the immune system under control, dampen the most, it’s gonna be lifestyle changes, it’s gonna be nutraceuticals, it’s gonna be a chemical toxicities, it’s gonna be triggers that we have to get rid of, dietary changes that are gonna help to get rid of, treat.
And we have a very organized way of going about it, and we do it in stages. Maybe you could do first stage one, and all of a sudden the person’s doing a lot better. And then maybe you get to stage two.
I’m talking about not standard stages, I’m talking about in that person’s particular case. And now, maybe you find that there’s a liver that’s not, you know, playing ball with this.
So, maybe we have to go in there a little harder, the next thing you know, you give a person the XR starter vitamins. I’m not gonna talk to them again for two or three weeks, the next thing you know, they’re not feeling good for three or four, or five, or six, or seven days.
So, what do they do? They go back to Dr. Google, they go back to the model that’s failed, they go back to the model of I’m gonna go home and I’m gonna go, and I’m gonna take this, because this has helped me in the past.
In the context of what I do, that’s not a good thing, because what we’re doing is changing physiology. And physiology is very, very communicative to the person who is doing classic functional medicine.
And it might be that, that physiology is good, because finally, that organ is starting to like be demanded upon to get better, and so, in the end, that person just kinda has to let me know. (laughs) Send me an email, do something, say, “You know what? I’ve had some discomfort for the last three days, And I think I’m gonna take, you know, these five pills because they’ve helped me in the past.
And what do you think about that?” And then, I would look at the five pills and go, “Probably, not a good idea.” You know? Or I might say, “You know, one of those might be a good idea.
That might be the next thing, but why don’t we wait a week?” Why don’t we let? ‘Cause the whole idea is to get your physiology working as much as possible online. Now, I have adopted an approach of more supplements in the beginning, and tapering them down, and tapering them down, and tapering down as the body heals.
But see people come in here, they got the problems for 10 or 20 years, and we’re trained. I take the drug and it either makes me feel better, or it makes me feel yucky, and I tell the doctor he’s an idiot.
Okay? So we have that model. So, we’re so like about the symptom, and we’re so like put the band-aids on things, but in the framework of unraveling your physiology of getting these multiple vicious cycles under control to start synchronizing to you.
I mean, you know, I might have a patient who doesn’t have constipation, develop constipation, that tells me something. I might have a patient who has alternating constipation, diarrhea go away (snaps) like in a day, it might take three weeks.
It depends on that case as to what’s normal for that. And so, there’s a couple of things that really, really make it difficult when you’re dealing with a functional medicine practitioner. So, I’m kinda like, this like my anthem for you, for all of the functional medicine practitioners, who are actually practicing functional medicine.
You know give them all the data that you can, but don’t switch from one model to the next model in the middle. Don’t go from fixing systems, getting your whole body to start working in-sync again, getting your gut under control, and all of a sudden, the endotoxins go away, and the next thing you know, your joint pain goes away.
But now, you go onto the next step, and the next step starts getting toxins out of your fat cells, and now, your joint pain comes back, so now, you go back to taking your magic, you know, whatever urban botanical gets rid of the joint thing.
Which is fine, but it takes away the markers that the functional medicine person needs to know, what is the next step? So, I mean, in the end, it’s, you have to… I mean, like you have the… When you go in the functional medicine, if you go to a practitioner that you feel confident in, that has a plan, that as an organization, that talks the way we talk, then you have to work with their model.
You can’t… And again, the people who have a lot of knowledge of what’s on the internet, and people who maybe don’t know how to read, maybe think they know how to read blood panels but they don’t.
I’m thinking largely of like one particular patient who has massive blood sugar problems but their blood tests are normal. And I’m hearing like, “No, I don’t have a blood sugar problem.
” We can’t go forward with this. You can have pre-diabetes for 10 years before it shows up on the blood panel, you have to trust your doctor on that, that’s what functional medicine is about.
It’s about catching all of these cycles and all of these systems that aren’t functioning properly, before they get to the point where they show up on the blood test, to where your doctor, when he reads your blood test, and he goes like that, and goes, “Yeah, your A1C is up, so we need to give you Metformin.
” We need to fix that long before that happens. And your symptoms are telling us about that, we understand that. So, when we say, “Look, I know your glucose is normal, and I know your HbA1C is normal.
” For those of you aren’t aware, those are two common, but not always comprehensive blood markers. They can be totally normal on your test and you’re gonna have high or low blood sugar. Okay? And you’re gonna allow your doctor to go with that.
So, I mean, this is a new world and it’s, and the thing is that you can’t chase, you cannot chase symptoms, and you cannot strictly chase blood markers, and you have to… When my patients are, you know, what drives me crazy, is I’ll be treating, and the person will be getting better.
And then all of a sudden, I’ll get an assessment for ’em, and it’s totally off the charts. Then, you know, I’ll be waiting for the next time that I talked to them, and then I understand, and then they start telling me about, “Well, you know, I had this, so I went back and I took this particular product because that made me move my bowels three years ago but it’s not making me move my bowels now.
” Or, “I took a product and I felt good for like three days. I started sleeping again, everything was wonderful, but now I’m doing it, and now I’m back to where I was. and I stopped that product but it hasn’t changed anything.
” That’s what functional medicine spent years, years. And some of those brilliant people on this planet who had the courage to go ahead years, and light years ahead of time, getting their teeth kicked in, getting criticized, getting told that they were Dr.
Wannabes. And believe me, being on this side, at that point in time, is not fun. But they gonna get that patient, and what do they do? They call you and they say like, it’s not working. (laughs) No, no, it is working, (chuckles) you’re not working.
Your decision to go back to another model is not working. And so, you ha… So, either like decide that your functional medicine practitioner do what they tell you to do, or don’t do it. Is like my (laughs) advice.
I definitely, am on a ramp right now. And so… You know what? I want my patients to get better. And the other thing is they’ll go like, “I’m not getting better.” I have to go through their whole file, make sure I’m not missing anything, make sure I’m not losing my mind.
And then I’ll schedule an appointment to discuss the whole thing with them and say, “Look, here, you know, like what I’m telling you right now.” So, maybe I’ll be able to use this and just tell them, look on YouTube for my rant.
And then have that conversation, and then they’re upset because I charged them for a consult. You know, it’s like, why wouldn’t I have to charge you for the consult? If you just did what I tell you to do, what I asked you to do, because I’m gonna ask you to do something, it’s gonna go better, or it’s gonna go worse.
If it goes worse that tells us something, that is diagnostic, that is functional medicine. And it’s either a supplement, or you got off of your diet, or you were stressed that day, which one was it? It could be all of those things.
Yes, it could be all of those things. A lot of times when people call me after they’ve been out of here for… I just had one last night. And the young man who was just phenomenal when he left, and all of a sudden, he’s starting to have symptoms again, we talked for like 15 minutes.
He was stressed, he was stressed at work. That was it, stress threw off his blood sugar, blood, sugar throwing off his sleep. What is he doing? He’s taking supplements for each one of those things.
Okay. This is what I’m talking about. All right. And he’s delightful, just in case you’re watching, you know who you are. (laughs) He’s absolutely delightful. And truly, it was a cool thing, because he did call, and he grasped it right away.
Okay. And he kinda felt sheepish, because I had already given him what to do. If something like that happened, he goes, “I should’ve done this.” I go, “It’s okay, next time do that.
You’ll have to call me and pay me for a consult, and then yell at me because you pay me for or consult.” So, that’s my rant for today. I don’t even remember what the name of the topic was, it was.
(laughs) But that’s my rant for today. Look, this is a new world. If you have these chronic conditions, you’ve been to the doctor, they don’t know what’s going on with you. You’re taking the medications, it’s not working.
You’re coming in here to me with three bags of supplements, that’s not working, you don’t wanna go back to those two models, when we’re in the middle of doing what we’re doing. When any functional medicine practice.
.. (mumbles) “You know, it was a functional medicine practitioner,” they went, “Well, you know, there’s good and bad functional medicine practitioners like everything else on planet earth, okay?” It still gives them the best shot of helping you, if you don’t, if you resist the temptation to go back to that model.
And honestly, if it’s gonna be, we have signs around this office, it says, “We didn’t say it was gonna be easy, we said it was gonna be worth it.” I mean, ’cause we know there’s gonna be tough days when people are getting through that.
And we tell ’em that in the beginning, but that seems to like be forgotten sometimes. You know? So, I’m not talking to the vast majority my patients, but I’m talking to a percentage, and I don’t like when my patients don’t get better, because they’re shooting themselves in the foot.
And then they shoot themselves in the foot, and maybe they even blame me. But either way, I don’t like that. I don’t like that they’re not getting better, because they could be getting better if they weren’t continuing going back to that model.
So, it’s not about symptoms, it’s about correcting the system. It’s about correcting the vicious cycles, it’s about correcting the inner twining. As my mentor would say, “Intertwining webs of conditions that all come together to create these chronic symptoms.
” And it’s a whole different animal, and it’s a whole different model. So, that’s my rant. I’ll be interested to hear what anybody thinks about this one, and I’ll be okay with whatever you throw at me.
And so, I’ll be with you again next time with… hopefully, as equally illuminating, (laughs) but maybe less controversial subject.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
So today, we’re gonna talk about something that isn’t gonna sound very sexy but you need to manage your blood sugar, period. I’m morphing more into doing a little bit more education on blood sugar because over this past year so many of the cases that came in here were their success just hung on the ability of us to get their blood sugar correct.
And people would commonly say, “Well, I don’t have a blood sugar problem” (laughs) I’ll say, Well you filled out my assessment form and there’s 16 symptoms on there that would indicate that you have a blood sugar problem if you mark them down and you have all of them.
So then the next retort from the patient is usually, but my blood tests are normal kinda like the Hashimoto’s thing. And I’m telling you that is so common. I found that when I get patients from other practitioners, alternative practitioners and functional medicine practitioners, the first thing I look at now is the blood sugar because it’s just not really emphasized the way that it should be.
Why is it important? First of all, blood sugar is used by every single every single cell in your body. We did a back to basics of functional medicine I did do a segment on blood sugar. I think this one’s gonna sound a little different than that one, but in the end in that segment we talked about how blood sugar is foundational to everything.
Every cell in your body needs proper balance of blood sugar every single cell in your body has insulin receptors so that sugar can get in there. And sugar works with your, the mitochondria these little energy mechanisms in your cells to create energy.
Okay, too much blood sugar is not good too little blood sugar is not good. Hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia. Well I don’t have hypoglycemia. The vast majority of patients who come in here have hypoglycemia.
But their numbers are normal. If you look at that… And so this goes back to the functional medicine model has different ranges but even within the functional medicine ranges A lot of times the lab tests are normal while this person is sitting there if I don’t eat, I get irritable, shaky, I wanna choke my wife or my husband, I get agitated, I get anxiety, I crave sweets, and you cannot even begin to go into all of the things that physiologically are affected by that.
For example, your thyroid hormones can’t convert properly into active thyroid hormones in other words you’ve got a perfectly normal thyroid and yet if your blood sugar’s off, your thyroid hormones may not be converting into the proper form to actually activate your energy in your cells.
If your blood sugar’s fluctuating all over the place, you may not be able to make the proper neurons in your brain to be happy, to be motivated. If you don’t have them, you may be you may have anxiety, you may have a.
.. even as much as panic attacks So the blood sugar is incredibly important. I think the thing that I’m wanting to say today is most of you have normal blood sugar tests. People come in here I mean like 70% of people come in here that blood sugar abnormality is a big part of their symptom picture that they’re coming in here for.
Whether it’s Hashimoto’s or another autoimmune disease or gut problem and no one’s even talked to them about it. Because the blood tests were normal. And so the thing is there’s like seven different levels of blood sugar abnormalities, for a medical doctor to tell you that you have hypoglycemia, low blood sugar I mean you have you be practically dead.
I mean, you’re supposed to be like it’s supposed to be the numbers less than 60 or 50 depending on who you’re looking at. By that time, your blood sugars are so low. Your brain is not getting any oxygen from your blood sugar.
I’m sorry, your brain’s not getting your blood sugar your muscles aren’t getting any blood sugar and your cells aren’t getting any blood sugar and you’re passing out and you’re getting lightheaded and you don’t feel good and all that Kind of like a diabetic, who hasn’t taken her insulin.
And so that’s hypoglycemia They’ll diagnose you with low blood sugar if you come in like that. But the vast majority of you, it’s not like that. The vast majority of you it’s again, if I eat, I feel better.
Cause my lecturer comes out. If I don’t eat for long periods of time, I get irritable I get shaky, I get nasty, I get tremors Maybe I get blurred vision (laughs) There’s a number of things that happen when you’ve got low blood sugar that you’d never connect to your blood sugar.
And so and the doctors, maybe they run a blood sugar Maybe they don’t. If they run a blood sugar, they go it’s normal. Well, here’s the problem. You may not have as much damage to the receptor sites in your cells to be able to register as low blood sugar on your test.
And that’s not a theory. I mean, that’s a fact. Some of the things that I’ve read have said that it may take as much as seven years for you to show up for low blood sugar and or the next sugar problem up the line which is insulin resistance.
And here, just to drive you crazy If you have insulin resistance, which you might call pre-diabetes, insulin resistance If you have some other things you might call it metabolic syndrome. It’ll take even longer for the damage to be done for that to show up.
So now you have metabolic syndrome You’re overweight your blood pressure’s high, you eat and you fall asleep afterwards. You just crave sugar all the time. You can’t lose weight. You’re urinating all the time and when they do your blood sugar, you’re fine.
Or even better they might say, well your diabetes you’re not diabetic type 2 yet. So we’ll just wait until you get to be diabetic. And then we’ll take care of it. In the meantime, you’re having all this damage from being either pre-diabetic or low blood sugar which we call functional hypoglycemia.
You’re not dying because you’re below 60 but you have low blood sugar. And every time you don’t eat for hours or you don’t feel like eating first thing in the morning ’cause your blood sugar is in the toilet and it’s setting off as stress response and it makes you nauseous This is damaging tissues.
For those of you who watch my Hashimoto’s stuff this is creating inflammatory responses against your thyroid. So the blood sugar is huge. And to make it even better (laughs) if you have low blood sugar and if you have high blood sugar not metabolic syndrome, not diabetes type 2, pre-diabetes, low blood sugar, pre-diabetes they bang back and forth.
So then you get symptoms of both. You get symptoms of, I eat, I don’t eat and I get irritable and shaky I eat and then I fall asleep right afterwards. You get a lot of symptoms of… That are very confusing.
And so you can have all of those blood sugar symptoms take the test and not have it show up. Now, there is a test that you can run. It’s a three hour test and you take a person’s blood sugar levels and insulin levels over a period of three hours.
And usually at the end of two or three hours that person whose lab tests were normal but has all the symptoms will show up. Whether it’s higher or it’s low is that helpful? Yeah, It’s very helpful to me because it helps me to lean my supplementation or my recommendations or my dietary lifestyle recommendations to one or the other.
And so, but I cannot emphasize blood sugar enough like you have to follow the fuel. If the person doesn’t have oxygen getting to their cells if a person doesn’t have blood sugar getting in their cells, getting to their cells, you’re gonna have a hard time for that person to get well of anything because they’re not getting enough energy in their cells to really create enough of a response to a healing response so that they can respond to whatever dietary changes or supplementation or lifestyle changes or any of those types of things.
So I could go on for blood sugar for a long time. It is so huge. And yet most people have no idea that some of these profound symptoms that they’re experiencing, inability to lose weight. Yeah, it could be thyroid but let me tell you a lot of times it’s that pre-diabetic who’s been told you’re okay.
Or you don’t have pre-diabetes or you got pre-diabetes let’s wait until you’re diabetic. We’ll wait for that. That will stop you. That will stop you from losing weight. And there’s so many of those instances so managing your blood sugar is huge.
There’s a lot of good stuff online as far as general general things to do for it. But really at some point you need to figure out either symptom-wise or by testing Do I have low blood sugar? Do I have functional hypoglycemia? Do I have insulin resistance? Pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, diabetes type 2 or diabetes type 1.
That’s blood sugar. It’s a blood sugar. It’s not just like, no I don’t have diabetes. My blood sugar is okay (laughs) It’s way more than that. And believe me in dealing with autoimmunity Hashimoto’s, all the things weight loss all these types of things You better know your blood sugar and you better be addressing if it’s not right.
Or a lot of things you’re trying are going to fail.
In the final segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses the female hormones.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
I really really makes me get up in the morning and do this so female hormones yo-yo. Why? I am. Why is this the last in this series? This is the last in the series because, as my mentors would say, everything flows downstream to the female hormones if female hormones are affected by everything, particularly if you’re, still, menstruating and and to a degree, even if you’re in Menopause and I’m gonna talk about both of those.
So let’s. First talk about let’s, just first talk about and female hormones and and like the natural cycle of what a female hormone should look like. So the natural cycle of a female hormone is, I’m gonna start with the brain and, and there’s a there is a structure in your brain called the hypothalamus.
What you need to know about the hypothalamus is it &? # 39 s, this, it’s, this little organ in the brain. It’s, not an organ, but it’s. This little this little yeah it’s, an organ in the brain that senses all of the balances of chemicals, particularly hormones in in your system, in your in your bloodstream, and so it senses how much estrogen that a woman has okay and then, if It’s.
If, if there’s, not enough estrogen, there then being produced by the ovaries, then your hypothalamus talks to another organ, that’s called your pituitary gland. Many of you may be familiar with it, and that is called the master gland, because it sends signals to all it pretty much controls all the hormones it sends signals to the thyroid.
It sends signals out for you to make growth hormone. It sense they goes out for you to make estrogen testosterone. It’s, the master gland. So when it is told that you do not have enough estrogen, it then tells your ovaries to make estrogen okay, but that’s, not the end of it.
The over the estrogen then has to be made, and it has to go out to the cells that needed and and and in women, that’s, certainly that it goes. It goes into your brain. It gives you it gives you better mood.
Estrogen certainly controls how your ovaries work and, and so because there’s, a lot of feedback in there relative to medical periods and and having them and along with progesterone having proper cycles and and so and then estrogen in women.
Well, the next step would be once it hits all of the cells, the frontal lobe cells, and it gives you good mood and and and and and it just ultimately has to be cleared after it goes to all the cells. So it goes through these cells and then it – and so the estrogen goes to the cell.
This is a cell, it hits the cell, the cell opens it goes in there. The cell uses it when it when it uses it. It has mechanisms to detox itself to send the the and the unused estrogen and they use it and and the they kind of used estrogen now has to be cleared from your body.
This is a very, very, very important, salient point, so it gets so when it gets when it gets cleared. It gets cleared like anything else that gets there’s, a certain pathway in your liver that clears your estrogen.
Then it has to be cleared through your gall bladder, because gall bladder takes all of the toxins there’s, bio form, the gall bladder spits it out into your intestines. It has to be cleared through your intestines.
There is a there is a enzyme in your intestines called beta glucuronidase that actually further clears your estrogens. If that enzyme is too high, it’ll, actually reconstitute estrogens and make inactive estrogen into active estrogen that was supposed to go into the toilet.
The enact that was supposed to go into the toilet or talk about that in a few minutes, so you and then it can go in and then it also can be. Estrogen can also be stored in your fat cells, so women are estrogenic and and and it’s natural for women to have estrogen in their fat cells.
There was this kind of cool little mechanism there that if a woman starts getting too much testosterone first before they develop polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is caused, which is it has too much testosterone as a feature it’ll, get stored in your fat.
In your fat cells in your adipose tissue, and so this is the cycle of estrogen, and you have to kind of remember that, as as I’m walking through this, so so things that affect any of those. Any of those processes are going to alter your estrogen function, so I think today I guess the next, because the next step to go to is today most people come in here with female hormonal problems.
Aren’t coming in here, expecting that I’m, going to talk to them about their liver or talking to them about their their intestinal dysfunction. We’re talking to them about blood, sugar or essential fatty acids or all of the things or their stress, or all of the things that ultimately go into making your hormones.
They’re, not usually expecting me to talk to them about their cholesterol, and this is a point that I don’t see made enough today we are, we are subject to a whoever makes these decisions that are making this decision, that Our cholesterol should be down below 150 or 100, and that’s.
Incorrect based on the understanding of physiology, because when your cholesterol starts getting down that low – and this happens in a lot of thin patients when it gets down that low and your doctors telling you how great it is, it’s, pretty well understood that That bulow, 150 and cholesterol – it’s, difficult to make hormones.
Almost all of our hormones are made out of cholesterol. They’re. Almost all of our hormones made out of something called cholesterol. I’m pregnant alone, and, and so so these are all things that in the functional world we look at if a person is coming in here with scanty blood flow, excessive blood flow they’re coming in here with periods that are All over the place they’re coming in here with facial, hair and and acne, and we might be looking at and we’re gonna talk about polycystic ovarian syndrome in a separate in a separate video.
So it’s, not technically going to be part of this series, but we’re going to talk about that, and actually we have videos online already on polycystic ovarian syndrome. If you want to look those up, but you so we could be talking about polycystic ovarian syndrome there, which also has a lot to do with all of these imbalances and all these organs that I talked about.
But we’re, going to be looking. First, at all of those things, because, because all of them have our play a role in particularly in the menstruating female, all of those play a role in making your in making your estrogen balanced.
So if you are, if let’s, so let’s. Say you’re, not any! Let’s say you’re, not eating of cholesterol. Maybe you went on one of these, like low-fat diets. Low flat diets and and and maybe you’re, really got a lot of low fat and all sudden you start getting all these symptoms like what is going on here and you go and they take your estrogen and your estrogen is low.
They give you Harmon replacement therapy, let ‘ S say that your intestines has too much of this enzyme that I briefly mentioned called called beta glucuronidase beta glucuronidase will cause the estrogen that is supposed to have been detoxified and then going into the toilet.
Because remember your brain knows how much estrogen you need, but this if this beta glucuronidase is too high because of a number of things that could be going wrong with your intestines, irritable, bowel syndrome, SIBO any of the autoimmune diseases like celiac or cross, or anything like That you’re, going to reconstitute your estrogen before it goes into the toilet, and it’s, going to be reabsorbed, and you’re, going to be estrogenic.
You’re gonna have too much estrogen too much estrogen by the way, creates the same symptoms, frequently as too little estrogen, and the reason is because if you take a Carmo replacement therapy and and and you have again in the cycle of what The hormones supposed to do is supposed to be made and that’s supposed to be used by being used, and the hormone actually gets on this little protein.
It gets over here to the cell and then there’s, an enzyme that cleaves that off and then the cell goes opens up and it goes in. But if you, if you give yourself too much estrogen like from creams and stuff, then that estrogen will cause this to become resistant, this receptor site, you know, like I got enough – I’ve got enough, and eventually this receptor site just won’t open if it doesn ‘
T open and estrogen is not getting in. You’re going from you and and they take and they take it and they take a lab of your estrogen or going like. Well, you’re, a she’s like 900. You have like too much of it.
You’re and and and you’re, getting like low estrogen symptoms. This is why, and it’s and it’s fairly common. If somebody comes in – and I’ll put this in line with what we’re talking about. If we’re looking at their intestines for the beta glucuronidase, if someone comes in here on what we call you know, post birth control syndrome, someone comes in here.
They want to have a baby there. They’ve, been taking birth control pills for ten years. We have to like take like three months to clear all of the estrogen out of their system, so that so that we can get a proper feedback loop going between their brain and their ovaries.
So that we can now give them the proper supplements, in fact, when we do that and we do and we and we work with their intestines, we work with their liver. We work with their gallbladder a lot of times they just, I would say, seventy percent of the time they just the person, the person’s, hormonal balances start to level out.
We do we just we just ran kind of a little beta test on a program that we’re thinking of putting out here here in the next few weeks, and it’s really for lack of a better term. It’s, a detoxification program.
It’s, a strip all the inflammation program out it’s fairly. It’s, it’s, a it’s, a it’s fairly. Genetic, but we kind of tailor it. We have ways of tailoring its that individual person and we have one of the gals here and she said it’s.
Okay. For me to say this, although I’m, not gonna, say her name or anything, we put her on this protocol. She hadn’t had a period in in two and a half years and like within a couple of weeks. She started having her periods again just by clearing out the estrogen just by getting your liver and working and so on and so forth.
So let’s go back to so so let’s. Go back to that. I hope I’m. I hope I’m making sense here. So let’s. Go back to estrogen is at the bottom of like the stream, and everything else affects your estrogen.
So so, if your livers, not clearing and your gallbladder is not clearing, then you’re, not clearing the estrogen. Now you get to high estrogen right in your system because it’s because it’s not getting cleared out.
Now that too high estrogen maybe starts giving you symptoms, or maybe that too high estrogen starts shutting down your receptor, slides and the next thing you know you’ve got signs of too low estrogen, but you got too high estrogen, but they go in There and there you go here – take hormone replacement therapy, but my estrogens high, this is the tool in the medical community is, is to take the hormone replacement therapy period first last and always, and when you, when you take that hormone replacement therapy, it tells your brain.
You have enough estrogen that brain then tells your your ovaries, that they can kick back, that they don’t need to make estrogen and then the ovaries start to atrophy next thing you knew you lose that feedback loop between your brain and your ovaries.
If you’re younger, if you’re, if you’re, if you’re, a menstruating female that could that’s enough, that that could make you not be able to have children? But the point is is: is that there is that feedback loop? So your ovaries could start to atrophy your your your pituitary gland could start to be not start to not make luteinizing hormone or follicle stimulating hormone, particularly luteinizing hormone and a female.
Your your hypothalamus is fine because it’s. Just saying we got a lot of estrogen in here, pituitary gland, take a breath, take a break, take a rest. Go to the each have a few martinis you don’t ever have to work again, because somebody else is doing your job for you.
Somebody’s, telling the ovaries to put estrogen, but it’s, not telling the ovaries. The ovaries are doing the same thing: they’re gonna like wow. You know nobody’s talking to me, so the ovaries start to atrophy.
They go on vacation too. This is this is the the downside of hormone replacement therapy. I’m, not a hundred percent against it, but I’m only for hormone replacement there being certain in certain in certain occasions.
So so I don’t really even run most of the time I don’t really run. I don’t really run female labs when somebody comes in here and they have all these female and they have all the symptoms. The scanty blood flow, the heavy blood flow, abnormal periods, just all of the pre mention’el syndrome.
Most the time I don’t even run female labs when they first come in, because I’m gonna be looking at their liver. If their livers gunking up, they’re gonna have too much they’re gonna have too much estrogen your system.
I’m gonna look at their gallbladder. If their gallbladder is not working, they’re gonna have too much estrogen resisting. If I’m gonna be looking at their at their intestines, I’m gonna be looking at blood sugar blood sugar has an awful lot to do with the manufacture of of estrogen down the road.
I’m gonna be looking at adrenals stress hormones. I just your your secondary sex glands are your adrenals and your adrenals and your blood sugar work together. You can look at that segment and when, when adrenals go up, then blood sugar goes up.
When adrenal goes down, blood sugar goes down when your blood sugar is high and low. It affects these things called sex hormone, binding globulin. These are the things that carry or your your estrogen all over the place, and so when you’re stressed and your adrenals are firing off and it’s, causing your blood sugar to be high.
It screws with these little taxicabs these sex sex hormone, binding collapses. Now, all the sudden, you’re, not getting estrogen to where you’re supposed to be, and it shows up as low estrogen and it’s.
Actually that you’re stressed that’s affecting your adrenals, that’s affecting your blood sugar, and all of that is affecting our female hormone cycles. So again, this is the functional approach and essential fatty acids are important.
I will usually in the beginning to a a lab on someone who has these problems to determine if they have enough essential fatty acids in their body, because essential fatty acids, under normal circumstances, sensitize these receptor sites to make them work better so that they don’t get stuck, and so that the and so that the so that the hormone can get in there.
So so I don’t really do testing in the beginning, because I’m gonna treat all of the other aspects of what that person presents with and their labs are gonna look much different later on than they would look In the beginning, well, I don ‘
T really need to know what they look like in the beginning, because now, if we do all of that and the person still having imbalances in their female hormone health, okay, then, then you run the labs, because at that point you run the whole lab from the Brain you run the follicle-stimulating hormone.
You run that all of the estrogens I run DHEA and I run DHA sulfate. I know you’re at your. Your endocrinologist would say that that’s like stupid. It’s not in and because it tells us what your adrenals are doing and your adrenals are a part of your female stuff.
I run a thyroid lab because thyroid helps your again. It helps desensitize your real receptor sites so that your estrogen works properly. So I run a thyroid lab and – and I’m in – and I Brenda obviously testosterone and progesterone.
So I run the whole lap to cover that whole feedback loop to see if it’s even working and if it and if this parts not working well, the the then the the elta luteinizing hormone, follicle-stimulating hormone, coming out of your pituitary.
There’s, herbs and botanicals for that. If the arbors aren’t, working and and and and and they have an atrophied yet – which you can pretty much tell from from the from the labs there’s power for herbs to balance that out there’s herbs.
That actually will balance that out. If you have high testosterone, I’ll, bring it down. If you have low Tesla sorry estrogen high test, high estrogen will bring it down, low estrogen will bring it up, and even and even progesterone.
If, if a person’s thought persons losing their Ag if they’re, not if their we got pregnant and can’t carry that’s her there are there’s, herbs and botanicals. For that, so the next step would be to use those herbs and mechanicals based on the labs and then, if all fails, then I think hormone replacement therapy probably is something that needs to be done.
I’m, going to tell you follow that whole thing it it rarely fails. I mean it’s, your physiology, it has to work. You just have to figure out what it is. They have to do. Perimenopausal women. Well, so a few few things I want to mention: oh let’s, go to menopausal women.
Then I’ll. Go back to that so menopause. When you go into menopause, okay, whether it’s, because you are you’ve turned 50 and you’re going into menopause or whether it’s, because you’ve had a hysterectomy and they’ve, taken everything out.
If you know what’s going on, you, rarely rarely rarely ever need to harmone replacement therapy, and I know that for those of you had your ovaries out and your and your uterus out, you probably think I just lost my mind but hear me On this okay, you basically have been put in the menopause.
If you’re younger and you’ve had that taken out you’re, not gonna have babies. You’re, not gon. Na cycle anymore. You don’t need a lot of estrogen now what happens when that happens, and what happens when you are when you’ve crossed the bridge into menopause? Is your adrenals take over responsibilities? The baton is handed through.
The adrenals takes over your responsibility for managing your sex hormones. Your RINO’s, make estrogen testosterone and progesterone, and, and so so when so so you don’t. They don’t, make anywhere near as much, but you don’t need as much because again you’re, not cycling.
You’re, not going through that whole stress on your system. You’re, not gonna have a baby. You don’t need as much estrogen you-you-you need estrogen and you need enough estrogen, but nowhere near as much, and so so.
If it’s, the adrenals, then you’re looking to if the baton has been passed, the adrenals in those cases you’re. Looking at the adrenals. Frankly, you’re, looking the adrenals and the blood sugar, because again adrenals and blood sugar kind of track together.
So you’re. Looking at you’re looking at and and adrenals are affected by everything. If you have an infection in your body, it affects your adrenals. If you’re stressed, it affects your adrenals. If you have, if you have small intestinal bacteria, we’re gonna affects your adrenals.
Everything affects your adrenals. So again, you go back to same thing. You’re still gonna go back to liver, gallbladder, essential fatty acids, blood sugar adrenals. So except this time the adrenals are more prominent.
Do I start going in there and throwing adrenal supplements people right away? No, I would see if they ‘ Re stressed. If they ‘ Re really really stressed. I might use some. I do functional neurology too, so I might use some brain rehabilitative neuroplasticity exercises, but there’s, a lot of herbs and botanicals that that can be used for stress and if they’re, not strong enough, then maybe a person needs to Take a medication for that, but but but because the stress hormones are now much more prominent and even in menopause, because the adrenals are the guys and the adrenals are the are the glance and put out all the stress hormones.
So stress adrenals, all those other things and the vast majority of time. If the. If the person has not been on hormone therapy for a long time and the audrina and that aspect of their adrenals stops making even the little an estrogen that it makes that the person needs, then they’ll need hormone replacement therapy.
One point I want to make on this is I get a lot of women to come in here and they’re like late 30s early 40s, and they’re having a lot of they’re having the the hot Flashes and and and the dogs like you &, # 39 re in early menopause yeah.
I I’ve, studied with some pretty profoundly brilliant people. These are people who are in practice. These are people who do research. These are P, some of them specialize in female issues and if they will stay will tell you – and I’m, and I think they are correct is that these women are not in early menopause.
They’re, having more significant problems with all of the aspects of the things that I just got them talking about the liver, the gallbladder that most most of the time the intestines are involved Navy.
They’re, going through an incredibly stressful period, maybe maybe they’re. They’re, trying to do too many things, and and and and and and and maybe trying to be a mom and and working and taking care of a husband and taking care of kids and and all that type of stuff.
And it’s, just hammering their adrenal glands, which in turn is hammering their blood sugar, which in turn is hammering their intestines in earlier. So the vast majority of time that’s, what it is and – and you can and and you can run a panel on a postmenopausal on a menopausal, female and and see what that is now in and the last bit of pieces here is – is In the adrenal glands there’s.
This unique setup where your drill glands, are your fight/flight glance. So if your brain goes into fear and and fight/flight, your brain tells your adrenals to start putting out stress hormones to put you in shape to to fight our Flake here’s.
The problem, the adrenal glands, are your secondary sex sex glands right. They make your test, they actually even in a female. They make testosterone first and then, and then that and then, without getting through the whole chemical thing.
The testosterone eventually is involved with making estrogen and then that’s eventually involved with making progesterone like that. Almost like almost like you pour the cup in you get enough testosterone next thing you know it starts making estrogen next thing.
You know it starts making now well here and here’s problem in the adrenal glands alone. If specially, if you’re a menopause, and it is your source for taking care of you as far as getting you enough estrogen you when you’re, when you get stressed and you’re, making cortisol, you can’t make this stuff called DHA.
Dha is what makes the testosterone that makes the estrogen that makes the other stuff and DHEA is is is come is a hormone that’s, made from cholesterol and pregnant alone, so there’s. This thing in your adrenals called a pregnenolone steel, and what that means is you’re either making sex hormones or you’re, making stress hormones? You’re, stealing the pregnant alone to make stress hormones, because pregnant alone also goes to make your stress hormone.
Cortisol. So stress is a huge, huge part of so many of these female issues that it’s; crazy, that even you, even in the menstruating female, where the test where the adrenals are not the main guys they’re that, like the secondary Size class’stress is a big player.
Stress is a big player in this, so I think, yeah and and and one other so so so so you look at all those things and yeah the other thing. We went that you would look at the other thing that we would look at relative to particularly the menstruating female is well.
I apprec –, probably save this for the PCOS, but over overtraining overtraining creates a lot. I’m, seeing more and more and more women who are doing crossfit and they’re competing and they’re doing.
Of course, this has been for a while, now and and are doing, triathlons and and marathons, and and just all that type of stuff and and and there’s, a balance to training and when women’s start training like that.
That will start creating hot flashes, because their estrogen will go love. Yeah, I mean yeah. They they have a hard time having babies if they’re. If they ‘ Re are a female age, because their testosterone goes up the russian-georgian go.
So I said that because I hesitated on that because it’s also kind of part of the polycystic ovarian syndrome, I can’t have a baby syndrome, but relative to menstrual issues. It’s, pretty well understood that if a person is going through that it’s, not uncommon to have normal periods or like not have a period.
So that was kind of like one other clinical pearl that I just wanted to throw. In there, so that’s, that’s kind of the lay of the land of female hormones. I think what I wanted to do was more make you understand kind of the options that you would have when you start having these issues or if you’re, taking the hormone replacement therapy and and and and and and you’re, Not getting better or you’re concerned about the possibilities of too much or making cancer.
Remember if you take too many hormones, it’s, just like not taking enough, you cause those receptor sites to become resistant. The hormone doesn’t get in, and now you’re taking hormones, and you have all these symptoms of low hormone function and you’re, going like what the heck is going on and your doctor is going well.
We’ll, just you know, give you a little bit more estrogen, because they haven’t run all of the panel’s. This is what you’re facing. So I think that’s. It. I think I want to wrap it up with that. I think that’s, a good again.
I’m. Speaking from the clinical perspective here of my thought process. When a patient comes into me with these symptoms, and and so it was, it was my I thought to get into like all the different aspects and all the different herbs and botanicals, and all that, but more to point out that the the physiology of it and And as I’m saying that I think of one more thing, if you, if you have hot flashes, ask yourself, are you, are you sweating or are you just sweating or are you hot? Are you having a hot flash, because that’s? Another thing I run into and if it’s just sweating, it’s, your adrenal glands it’s, not a hot flash, and so what is the you know? What’s? The target the targets, the adrenal glands and anything that would be fixed in the adrenal – that’s almost forgot that so I I feel like this is a good summation.
I feel like this gives you a good framework, a lot of people today. Of course are looking online that’s. Why? I’m doing this, so a lot of people buy time they’ve gotten here. They’ve looked online, they’ve tried to figure this out.
They couldn’t if they couldn’t figure it out a lot of times. They just show up here are its some functional medical doctors offices, so so that’s yeah, so that’s. Female hormone imbalances and I think that should think alights a lot of people up.
I think a lot of people kind of go like ooh holy cow. I never realized all that. If you did that good, that’s, why we’re? Doing these vid he’s; these online YouTube videos, so, okay, so that’s, the that’s the end.
I think that’s, that’s. The end of this, that’s. The end of this presentation, for those of you who don’t know what I’m. Talking about that’s, the end of our entire series, and I will be looking forward to hearing feedback from you on this particular subject, because it’s a subject.
I’m great interesting and I’d like to know where your thoughts were on this, so I’m doctor mark Rathbun. That is the end of the functional medicine back to basics series. I hope you enjoyed that if you, if you managed to get through all of those and thank you for watching, take care, you
In this segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses the male hormones.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
So so for the again for those of you have been watching, I’m there’s. An order to this. There’s, a hierarchy, a pretty general hierarchy as to how you attack things and we’ve. Already gone over a lot of stuff, we’ve, gone over basics of care relative to blood sugar and essential fatty acids and oxygen.
We’ve gone over everything from the exam to the history, to the large intestines intestinal permeability, chemical sensitivities and in a relative order. I’m making that point that, again to those who may just be bringing this up.
For the first time, because we’re close to the end of this series – and we’re now, just getting to the male hormone imbalances and a subsequent presentation will be on female hormone imbalances. We’re.
Doing we’re doing the else first, not because we’re sexist, but because, frankly, it’s. A lot easier to me, health males, don’t have as much going on, thank God as the females have. I say that as a male and I’m, treating females and and and and the women having to deal with a lot more complexity.
So so we’re going to be talking about mainly we’re gonna be talking about loti. We’re gonna be talking about low tea, low testosterone. I mean I listen to a radio program every morning to get the news and the weather and the traffic and all that type of stuff, and there’s, no shortage of ways to get up your testosterone to raise that old testosterone.
There’s medications there’s. There’s herbs there’s. Botanicals. I’m, going to present you with a little different look on that there’s, a reason that that your testosterone is low. We’re, going to talk about those things there’s, a reason that it’s being presented last and and actually the way we look at problems is not that their testosterone is low, but the vast majority of time We’re, looking at it that their estrogens are high, that the male estrogens are high.
This is usually the problem, basically male problems, with the exception of prostate problems, which is too much testosterone because it’s, not getting cleared out of your system. Our are low, testosterone problems secondary to estrogen being high, and that’s.
Has a term it’s called andropause, and when I mentioned that to my male patients, they kind of look at me like, like they’ve, never heard the term before so it’s, the equivalent of menopause when women Go into menopause and they lose their.
They lose their ability to make estrogen from their ovaries. It’s different with men. It’s, not that men are losing their ability to make testosterone it’s that they’re, creating too much estrogen. So here’s this so here’s.
The picture of somebody who is creating too much estrogen increased body fat. You’re, you’re, you’re, getting you’re. Getting the increased body fat around your waist and, and you can’t, lose the weight you you know it could be.
It could be from fluid retention, but increased body fat can be manopause if men start getting. What is euphemistically caused his man boobs, so you’re. Looking at somebody’s got like a gut who & # 39? S probably got you know who’s, probably got a gut.
You’re. Looking at somebody who’s getting breasts as a man, they’re, actually starting to get the man boobs. You’re. Looking at somebody who’s, starting to get more emotional, you’ll notice. I’m starting to get into breasts more emotional.
I’m. Assuming there’s, not a lot of women tuning. You know this thing, but just in case there are, women do tend to be a little bit more emotional than men. It’s because of their hormones. Okay, it’s, not because they’re weaker.
It’s because of their hormones, and so so in andropause, the guys kind of turning into a little bit of turning into a female, because these are symptoms of more estrogen fat around here that won’t, go away.
Man boobs starting to maybe cry at those movies on on television, on the on the Women’s Channel when you’re sitting there with your wife watching them low libido. Obviously, now, if you have high estrogen, you’re.
Normally going to have low testosterone or it’s, a very least you’re gonna have a balance where your estrogen is equal to or higher than your testosterone. That’s. That’s, not a good thing. The balance has to be for men, testosterone, more for women testosterone more towards mood depression.
If you have depression, one of the many things that can cause that is low testosterone. Your frontal lobe has receptor sites for testosterone. Testosterone massively helps a male to have good frontal lobe and a good for a little function.
Good frontal, lobe function is that’s. Your executive function that your motivational function. Testosterone, testosterone, you’re, not very motivated. Testosterone is kind of a gas pedal, so that’s. That’s motivation, but it’s mood and then, if men have low testosterone, they’re.
Going to not be very, they’re, not gonna be very happy. They’re gonna be more or less depressed and had Daniel. It’s, a fancy name that says you know I’m, just not having fun in life anymore. It’s. That’s, so those are types of things you’ll, see you’ll, see low energy levels.
You know testosterone, I just got done saying is the is the is the is the gas pedal if your brain is not getting stimulated enough by testosterone, that will that will cause you to have low energy? We’re gonna talk about how some of the most common causes, one of the most common causes of low testosterone, is diet.
Okay, so and the same diet that will cause you to have low testosterone will also cause you to have usually blood sugar problems, usually pre-diabetes or insulin resistance or diabetes type 2. We’ll talk about how this creates the high estrogen and the low testosterone, and that causes fatigue.
Those types that those types of dietary regimens cause fatigue insomnia, because I’m. What kind of I’m kind of crossing over now into the high estrogen in some in high estrogen, as we’re going to talk about again? It is a lot of times heavily caused by pre-diabetes in your fats and causing your fat cells to turn estrogen into testosterone.
I gave you a little little, you know foreshadowing there and and that pre-diabetes can make you get up in the middle of the night and tap to pee. So it ‘ Ll interrupt your sleep quite a bit. It can cause prostate problems because high estrogen levels will lead to enlarged prostate, which will which will cause urinary issues, and so that’s.
Maybe a first for some of you to hear that that it may be more about your high estrogen levels. Then then, then, the testosterone that is accumulating in there because you’re, making too much. What’s called dihydrotestosterone, or you’re, not clearing it out, and you’re, not clearing it out a lot of times relative to this estrogen problem and then and then cardiovascular disease is kind of extreme.
But by that time you usually figure out your your testosterone imbalances or their, but but but these can also stroke it stroke there’s. A I’m. Sorry, I let me let me go back on that. The the low testosterone and high estrogen is highly inflammatory, and that tends to create inflammation that makes you susceptible to stroke and susceptible to cardiac problems, but the inflammatory response that causes the cardiac problems in turn causes something called high cortisol.
So we ‘ Ve talked about cortisol a great length, I think, two times ago, when we talked about adrenal glands, we’re gonna mention those a little bit here before we’re done, and adrenal glands. When you get inflammation, the adrenal glands are like they control your blood sugar.
They control your blood pressure, they control your energy, they control a lot of things when they put out too much cortisol. What cortisols main job is, after it creates information, is to move blood.
Sugar out of your liver, to try to control your blood sugar, you get too much blood sugar and the next thing you know, and next thing you know. If you’re, an older man, you’re, not getting a lot of exercise.
Things like that, you start developing blood sugar problems that starts to that starts to cause you to put on the weight at the man. Boobs get the press start crying it at female-oriented movies, the emotional tug at your art type movies, so that that’s kind of like the that’s kind of like what you.
If you’re feeling those things. If you’re having those problems, if you’re, if the normal thing is, is to be taking a medication for all of those right, so it’s like okay, yeah, low libido, they test you.
They look at your testosterone slow, so they give you a a low libido shot of testosterone and that’s, not the functional medicine world. Obviously, well, you might say well the functional medicine world’s.
To go. Take one of the many products that are online now that will bring your testosterone up and it will okay, but here’s, a problem. It’s, something called a Roma Thais ation there’s, a couple of problems with that and I’m gonna go over them all.
It’s, something called a Roma today. Ssin. Remember that word, because if you’re feeling all the things that I’m talking about right now and you’re aging and you’re, let’s. I’ll, be generous and say 55, although I’ve.
Seen this and I’ve seen this in 35 year olds, I’m, seeing it much much sooner. I think it’s because of the stress we’ll talk about it used to be you didn’t, see it until people were 55 60 65, but now we’re, seeing it a lot sooner.
So if you’re having these symptoms, remember the word andropause, because it’s, the equivalent of menopause in women. They lose estrogen in men. We lose testosterone, but we lose testosterone mostly because we are building too much estrogen.
How do we do that, so there is so fat cells, okay, store estrogen in both men and women in women. It’s, a good thing: okay in women, it’s, its life, the estrogens and balances in women. It’s, largely a good thing and then not so much okay in men.
We know we need estrogen, we need testosterone, we all need pregnenolone, we all progesterone, we all need all of the hormones and then we need more testosterone in the when we have pre-diabetes there’s, two things that will cause this.
Okay, when we have pre-diabetes when we have what’s called insulin resistance, which your means that your your blood sugar starts, getting high insulin resistance. You’re still banging between high and low.
You’ll, get symptoms of high blood sugar where you’ll eat. You know, and you’ll kind of nod off after dinner, but you also get it. You’ll also get symptoms of low blood sugar. Where you, if you don &, # 39 t eat and then you feel better or if you don’t eat, get herbal and shaky, and you want to choke your wife and stuff like that.
That’s, insulin resistance. Then you go through pre-diabetes, the the the low blood sugar stuff about getting irritable and shaky. That kind of goes away, and now you just start getting the. I’m urinating frequently and I’m, putting on weight and I can’t, lose it and and and I crave sugars and and so you start getting more diabetic type symptoms.
Although you may not be the diabetes and then you morph in the diabetes, the reason I go through all those is because you started a Roma tizen in which is turning aromatized means. You are in your fat cells.
You are turning your testosterone into estrogen like like a like a woman, thus okay, and so so so this is so. This is the key to andropause and, and so whether you’re in pre-diabetes, whether an insulin resistance or whether you’re in type 2 diabetes, this mechanism starts it might start over here a little bit at a time.
All sudden I’m, just having trouble, losing weight and then and then and then one of the things is, you start having a low libido. If you’re 35, you know you’re gonna go to the doctor. They’re gonna tell you they’re gonna.
Take your testosterone, you’re gonna look at it and go it’s low! Let’s. Give you a shot. They’re, not going to look at you’re. They’re, not going to look at you’re. They’re, not gonna. Look at your estrogens.
They’re, mostly not gon. Na look at your luteinizing hormone are in a man’s particular case follicle. Stimulating hormone follicle-stimulating hormone. Is that in your brain that tells your testicles to make testosterone they’re, not gon.
Na look at that whole feedback loop and we’re gonna talk about that in a second, why that is important. They’re, just gonna look at the testosterone. They’re. Looking they’re, not gonna look at why the testosterone is the way it is.
They’re, not gonna look at it that it’s, probably your pre-diabetes, or that it’s. Insulin resistance right! Thank that there’s going to give you an injection, though, are they’re gonna give you a pill, or they’re gonna give me a cream here’s, a problem with that, okay, and And the same thing with herbs and botanicals that are just kind of like just there to raise your testosterone there’s a time for that.
We’ll talk about it in a minute! So so, when you get so there’s this, how does a hormone work? Okay, your there’s, part of your brain, and that says it’s called the hypothalamus for those of you who are a little bit more clinical about these things.
The hypothalamus says there’s, not enough on there’s, not enough testosterone in my in my bloodstream. So then what happens? Is that alerts the pituitary gland, which is the master gland it it’s, the brain part that tells all of your all of your hormonal glands.
What to do it’s, a growth hormone and and and and a female estrogen, and it talks to your thyroid. It talks to to your adrenals talks to all these guys, the, but in this particular case we’re talking about male hormones.
So then that pituitary gland is supposed to tell your testicles to make testosterone and then your testicles make testosterone. The hypothalamus says: oh, we got enough and – and you have this balance mechanism when you do hormone replacement therapy – and you see this most in the powerlift there’s – the heavy weight lifters that that that take it to you know to boost their muscle.
I mean these are steroids, your testosterone, estrogen progesterone. These are steroids. They’re there in the body, one of the other things that they are supposed to do other than give and more muscular fullness.
Is they dampen inflammation, so steroids, so their actual steroids? So you have the weightlifters to take them and make the muscles bigger a bad thing to do, because what it does is when you’re, taking an exogenous form and a form outs from outside of your body.
Okay, it’s, telling your brain that hypothalamus it’s, saying man. We have like a time the testosterone flying around here and we don’t really don’t need to talk to the truth, very glad. Why would you at least that part of it that does the testosterone and that talks to the testicle? So we’ll just tell that to teri grant take a vacation and when that pituitary gland takes a vacation, your testicles start to atrophy.
So it’s, been it’s been said that heavy weight, lifters uh many developed a little testicle because they start at your f — -ing from not making tests out now I haven’t checked that out personally. Just for the record, but but but this is but this is a this is a fact.
Okay, this is taught in in in in diagnostics in school, and so this feedback loop gets interfered with and if it gets interfere with the point where you’re, not making enough tests us where your testicles aren’t getting testosterone except For me, an exogenous force, they’re gonna they’re gonna atrophy because they’re not needing to make any so they just started not making it.
So it’s. Not so I’m, not a big hormone replacement therapy family’s, not in the beginning. When somebody comes in to me with something like this and and so that’s, because so what happens? You take this testosterone? You take the stuff online and it damages that feedback loop.
Also, the pituitary gland might Pat Rafi in that particular area that, before the follicle, stimulating hormone is made to tell your testicles yeah, so you may break down that whole area. I just said that the doctors just look at your testosterone.
They don’t, look at your follicle, stimulating hormone. They don’t, look at your estrogen. They don’t, look at the FSH. They don ‘ T. Look at all that stuff, so in functional medicine, the ideas first is to test for all that to see if the feedback loop is even intact.
If it’s intact, then then you go to strictly a a functional medicine approach. Now, what’s, a functional medicine approach, functional medicine approach is, I mean, is – is to look at all of the aspects of physiology that can go wrong that ultimately results in you becoming that type.
1 type. 2. Diabetic all right, I’m, sorry type 2 pre-diabetic in some resistant person and and so in in a classical functional medicine. In the chronology class, you’re first gonna look at the person’s gut there’s, two reasons you’re gonna look at their intestines one.
Is there’s? Something in your test is called beta, glucuronidase and if they have beta glucuronidase is not. If it’s high, you’re, not clearing your estrogen. So let me step back one more step here here’s, how it here’s! What’s supposed to happen to a hormone you’re supposed to make it it’s supposed to get used by your testicles.
You’re, telling your it to make in, and you may get testicles you make sperm and then and then it gives you strength and it helps your frontal lobe, but it does all that stuff. It goes all those receptor sites and, and it dampens inflammation, and when it’s done being used, then it needs to be cleared through the liver through the gallbladder into, but through the intestines and then out into the urine and or out into the Feces, that’s, the normal life of of testosterone and if any of those things are blocked up, particularly the liver gallbladder and the intestines.
You’re, going to have a you’re gonna have a problem because you’re, not clearing, and if you have constipation your your and you’re, not detoxing, that that hormone is not getting into The toilet, where it belongs, it can be reabsorbed in your intestine okay, but there’s back to the beta glucuronidase in a female.
The estrogens are supposed to be cleared that way. Well, we have estrogen as males and they’re supposed to be cleared by this beta glucuronidase enzyme in your intestines. If that’s high, then you’re, not going to clear it.
Your estrogen is going to go up. Your testosterone in testosterone, balance is gonna is gonna go off and you’re gonna have a problem. You’re gonna you’re gonna have a you’re gonna get all these symptoms.
You’re. You’re gonna think that your testosterone is low and you’re gonna get and you’re gonna take you’re gonna take testosterone, and if you keep taking testosterone over a period Of time it’s actually going to increase this problem, because what happens when you get the testosterone right when you win, when you’re, taking the testosterone, the normal flow of testosterone, is you make it? Then it has to go to the cells and be used before it gets cleared.
Well, it has to hit the cell the testosterone the cell has to open it has to go in if you keep taking hormone replacement therapy. Normally you’re, not going to be able to gauge it exactly correctly for what your body needs.
The way your brain can by assessing the balances in there so bait. So when you take hormone replacement therapy – and this goes for women too – with their estrogen – if you – if, if you keep doing the testosterone and the testosterone, keeps hitting this receptor site eventually, this receptor site becomes resistant to opening and letting the testosterone in so then it Stays out here when the testosterone stays in your bloodstream and it’s, not getting in the cell.
You get the same symptoms as though you are not taking any test tossed around. Does that make sense you get low so whether you have low testosterone or high testosterone, you get these these same symptoms.
You get symptoms of not having enough testosterone. I hope that’s, not confusing. I hope that was pretty clear, so you I so and then it’s about testosterone, estrogen balance. If you have a bad got the other, then you’re, not clearing your estrogens.
If you have the too much beta glucuronidase, so that needs to be checked, yeah yeah, you know I do a gut panel on people that have that test, whether they have high- Cooper on today’s. If you have, if you have another aspect of the guy, is, if you have these Tai endotoxins, they’re called they’re called lipo polysaccharides, so these are bad little buggers in your intestines.
They’re bacteria that are in your intestines and they literally are now being labeled in the literature as being obesogenic. In other words, if you got them, if you got these lipopolysaccharides and you have a leaky gut and they get out of your leaky gut, they cause you to be fat because they alter the ability of your body to produce to process insulin properly.
The insulin doesn’t allow the sugar into the cell this now you start off in the insulin resistance, pre-diabetes, diabetes, diabetes, even if you’re exercising eating right, even if you’re. If, if you’re, even if you’re wit, not overweight, even if you don’t fit the exact model of the manboobs in a lot of type of stuff.
This will eventually cause you to have diabetes. It’s, a very interesting thing so and then, and then, and then that and now what happens with the blood sugar. Okay, what happens with the diabetes? What happens with the pre-diabetes? What happens with the lipopolysaccharides the in some resistant? Is they cause your fat cells to create this aromatization process? Okay, and so the aromatization process? Is it turns your testosterone into estrogen in the fat cells? Women? Have this happen? It’s; okay, for them they’re supposed to territory testosterone into estrogen, because women should be more estrogenic within within reason and and and that’s.
What they’re made for that’s. Why women have wide hips that’s? Why women have the the fat where they have it? Okay, it’s, not where we’re supposed to have it. The men are supposed to have it so so this creates high testosterone low estrogen.
Again I go back to say you go in. You have low tea, oh man, I took the low tea. I’ve lost 60 pounds. I feel wonderful. Everything’s; great, that’s; great, that’s; fine, but you’re. You’re. You’re, actually creating a problem.
You’re, creating a situation where you’re, going to break that feedback loop. Your testicles are gonna atrophy. Your your follow your your your pituitary glands canary and you’re gonna have to take something like that.
For the rest of your life or suffer the or suffer the from the symptoms that you’re gonna have so, and that’s. Not just for the record when you draw that out over a period of time. That’s, not a good thing for your physiology.
If you look at, if you look at weight, lifters who’ve been taking steroids for a long time or you talk to something they ‘ Ll tell you, you know, you’ll, see their face, getting craggy and you’ll, see that and it can, it can cause like heart problems and it can cause strokes and it can cause those types of things.
So what do you do? So? What do you do so so what you do in classic, classic classic functional medicine is, you know I kind of got diverted from that a little bit and you’ll, see why here? The second is you look at that you look at the intestines.
Okay, you’re gonna check the intestines first there they have lipopolysaccharides. Do they have this beta glucuronidase? You’re gonna look at the liver. Why? Because everything because testosterone are supposed to be getting cleared through the liver, if it’s, not getting cleared through the liver or the or the or the or the gallbladder, then then you’re going to not then, and then it’s, gonna get stuck in your liver and and and you’re, not going to be clear, and then that’s, going to go into your and then that’s.
Gon na go into your fat cells, and if you already have this process a pre-diabetes going on are on your way to it that’s, going to turn more testosterone into more estrogen. You’re gonna look at blood sugar for obvious reasons.
Okay, so you’re gonna look at blood sugar. You’re gonna look at gut. You’re gonna look at liver, gallbladder and and your and you’re gonna look at central fatty acids. Why essential fatty acids, essential fatty acids have a lot to do with? They have a lot to do with sensitizing.
The receptor sites so that this so that the testosterone you have does get in to the cell, and so if it’s in the cell, it’s, not going to be out here. If it’s out here, you’re, not gonna be getting too much of any of your fat cells.
It’s, not gonna it’s, not going to interfere with that delicate balance between your brain and your testicles. That’s going. This is exactly how much testosterone I need. So basically, the things you look at are pretty interesting.
The things you look at or in addition to that are pretty interesting, obviously beyond the so just to say just say so. Will, if you, if you look at all of those processes, if you look at all those organ systems and and and you find that they’re, not right and you correct them a lot of times.
Prisons, testosterone goes normal, like most of the time their testosterone goes. When does it not go normal? It doesn’t, go normal when that feedback loop is broken. Sometimes, if you catch it soon enough, you can use herbs and botanicals to get the follicle stimulating hormone.
Just start, you know making itself again in the pituitary gland to get the testicles start start working better, and so so so one of the things as you look at all those, so you want to reduce body fat.
You want to start exercising. You want to do like the old 10,000 steps a day thing or something like yeah, whatever works for you, if you have the lipopolysaccharides, you’re, not gonna lose weight until you get those under control.
That’s. Another whole presentation, so you’re. Looking at the gut, we do a gut. We do a gut panel that tells us whether that’s there. You have to decrease stress. You have to decrease stress stress, as I stated before, and I said I would get back to when your adrenal glands are under strain, that’s where, when you’re stressed, your brain is telling your adrenal glands to make a lot Of hormones to put you in fight flight, so you can handle the stress when you’re in fight fighting for a long time.
You’re stressed a lot. One of the things that happens is it puts out a lot of something called cortisol when you’re under stress your body’s, trying to put more trying to take sugar out of your liver there’s.
A lot of fun there’s, a lot of sugar stored in your liver for the purpose of fight flight, and it takes the sugar out of your liver. And it puts it into your muscles and it puts it in your bloodstream and it gives you more energy and gives you more strength.
But if you’re stressed over long period of time and that cortisol stays high, your blood sugar is gonna keep staying high. That’s, going to cause the insulin resistance. That’s, going to cause the the aromatization testosterone down estrogen in the aromatization.
Their stress is a big one. You know it was one that interested me, because I’m thinking back to a seminar that I went through. Was these EMFs? These these frequencies, that people talk about that, we think, is a joke, but they’re.
Now not thinking that having your cell phone in your front pocket is a joke anymore. Then I had a picture that I was showing somebody the other day on what a cell phone does to your brain. When you stick it up here and – and it showed that you know in a in a in a child – I mean an adult – this entire part of the brain is affected by those radio frequencies that are coming out of cell phone.
There was another video that showed in a or another MRI cat scan. It was neither one of those. It was an electrical magnetic scan and and showed that if you put that, if you put this cell phone here, this amount of the brain is affected.
When you’re, putting the cell phone there, but cell phone in your pocket, there is strong evidence that it can can decrease testosterone. So you might want to look at that if you particularly if you have your cell phone, even in your back pocket, but particularly if you have your cell phone in the front pocket it’s, something to look at so these are.
These are kind of the main things. If, if, if you do the main things you fix the guy, you fix the gallbladder. If it needs to be fixing, you fix the sugar, you fix the intestines, you fix the essential fatty acids and there’s.
Still a problem, then there are numerous good products that will that will take down the high testosterone. I mean I’m. Sorry, the high estrogen – and I would wait until as a practitioner, and so we did all the other things because I would say easily seventy percent of time.
If we do that. First, the person’s. Testosterone, estrogen levels are gonna be restored if they’re, not it’s because there’s, some atrophy taking place, but maybe not enough to where you can’t recover the property, the testicles and that Feedback loop, so then you could actually take some supplements that will decrease your estrogen.
I would decrease the estrogen not give you something to boost your testosterone. Decreasing the estrogen in a male is normal, increasing their testosterone. Artificially is not it messes with that feedback loop.
If, in the end, that’s, what needs to happen, and you can pull it off with that increasing your testosterone is what needs to happen. You can pull it off with herbs and botanicals once everything else is taken, it is, is handled you.
Can you can use you use herbs and botanicals and then and then, if all, if none of that works, then you probably need to have like some sort of hormone replacement therapy, which is not a great thing in the long term.
But but if you understand this process, then you will understand that that’s, something that you don’t need to do that’s. It. I think that’s, it. I think that’s, pretty much testosterone and male menopause andropause.
All of the difference, all the different aspects of what is creating that that lethargy, that overweight mistake and yeah first thing I hear on the testosterone commercials, I lost 60 pounds and my wife and my libido is back, and my wife tells me I have to take This for the rest of my life, she’s, not gonna, be telling you that a few years I can tell you that she’s gonna be going what happened because that’s, that’s! Pretty much how it goes so so andropause there you go male hormone imbalances that’s, that’s, pretty much it in a nutshell.
So I don’t know that I need to announce to the audience that’s, problem, probably being attracted to this. Maybe maybe some physicians are being attracted to this, that our next presentation will be on female hormones and there’s.
Gon na be a lot of similarity and then, but there’s. Gon na be a lot more complexity on that one. So so I hope this helps. I hope this gives you a different perspective on on maybe the long-term solution for your male hormone imbalances, and and if it does then on that now it pleased me very much so until next time is doctor Rutherford and send me all your questions.
So many suggestions – and I really appreciate that so you take care, see you next time you
In this segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses the thyroid and its roll in chronic conditions.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
Ve talked about the basics we’ve talked about blood sugar, oxygen godwe, you can go back and you can look at all of those things just to let you know, because some I’m, going to refer back to some of that, Especially today and and we’re, going to continue on now with thyroid okay, I guess the point I’ll.
Make here to those of you who have not been watching – or those of you have been watching – is that we’re finally getting the thyroid, and I think, one of the most common conditions that walks into our office is thyroid and my mentor dr.
Crossan was the doctor who dust it off mr. Hashimoto findings from 1902 and said: Hashimoto’s is causing the vast majority of thyroid problems, and indeed he was correct, and that was years ago when nobody thought he was correct and those of us who Knew him had a strong suspicion, he was correct and we were using his his knowledge in his findings and the challenge back then was people would come in.
I was probably 15 years ago or something like that and people would come in and say. Well, I got tired problem. I went to the doctor, it’s, not working. All my numbers are normal and I got all the symptoms and what do I do and and and I would start to walk them through what it meant to have a thyroid problem in today, Society, which is enormous, ly more elaborate than what’s.
The newest supplement before that, because I don’t want to take the medication, and the answer was was there is no supplement for that, particularly you have to go through all the steps that we’ve gone through in the back-to-basics emotional Messaging protocol see which one the patient’s, have relative to different gut functions and bacterial infections and blood sugar or fluctuations, and these things and and all of those great inflammatory responses, and you have to go through all those first that didn’t go over very well by the way.
Look those patients they’re, like I just came in here for my thyroid, and I was like this is rough now. The Mayo Clinic says that 85 to 95 percent of all thyroid problems or Hashimoto’s, which is the reason that we have done everything else first and it’s.
The reason that a functional medicine practitioner should attack a thyroid problem in a certain fashion, so I’m. Not going to go through this is thyroid is what it does thyroid thyroid controls your metabolism, and it helps with calcium metabolism through through calcitonin through through working with the parathyroids, that’s, what it does if your thyroids working you have energy.
If your attire is not working, everything slows down everything you put on weight. Maybe your hair starts falling out and you maybe get constipation. Maybe your gallbladder stops functioning as well, because because, when the thyroid goes down, all the receptor sites from thyroid hormone and all of those areas go down that’s.
What thyroid does that’s, that’s? The extent that I’m going to get into the physiology of thyroid what I’m going to talk about, I was thought I was thinking about this earlier. I’m gonna talk about how I process a thyroid.
In my mind, again, when you look at a book about thyroid – or maybe even some stuff, you see on ly about functional nonsense here’s, the thyroid here’s. How you do this, you give them that supplement, and it is it’s not like that for the patients who come in here anyway, because the vast majority of people come in here have already been everywhere and they’ve been their Doctor or they’ve, driven them crazy.
There’s already. Symptoms are are normal or okay, but their numbers are off. So the doctor gives the medication to screw them up or vice versa. The numbers are okay, but they have 25 out of 25 symptoms of Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and the doctor, doesn’t know what to do for him and because and then gives them a medication, and that’s, gruesome or It doesn’t, do anything to them or any variety of things.
So this is. We’re going to talk about thyroid. I’m gonna. Maybe do a separate one on autoimmunity because to me thyroid and autoimmunity or wan na in in the in the in the practical clinical world it’s almost always about automating.
So let’s. Talk about that! Let’s! Talk about thyroid by the way when we first started doing videos on thyroid it had to be. I don’t, know seven eight nine years ago, and so we have a lot of videos on all the other things.
I just told you, I’m, not going to talk about, and you can look at them up on power. He’ll talk calm in the early ones, you’ll notice. You’ll, actually have to look up hypothyroidism. The reason that they’re under that under the heading is because nobody was looking for Hashimoto’s back then, because nobody knew they had it.
So we would talk about hypothyroidism and then people would check out our hypothyroid tape, arte for presentation or whatever, and and they’d, go like you’re talking, you’re. Talking about Hashimoto’s, it’s.
Like I looked at, I have hypothyroid it’s like no. You’re like washing my toes so and then the later ones are about Hashimoto sweet. I I don’t, think I’m, exaggerating if I say we probably 20 hours or more on on on thyroid online.
So you can look those up for more details, but here’s, kind of how it goes with me. Okay person comes in and it’s classic they’re. They’re, holding their thyroid. They’re, holding their thyroid labs for me to show me what they are and they’re, obviously not very happy where they are most of them have classic symptoms, and the vast majority of people who come in here have Hashimoto’s, it is a rare rare day when I see an actual hypothyroid case and and and and and those are the the first challenge is to figure out that right there, okay, but really now again, I’m, just giving you clinical experience Here, because you can look at all the other stuff elsewhere, okay, but really when a person comes in here and they have hypothyroid that’s, usually going to be, they have hypothyroid.
They’re, taking the medication it’s, not working that & # 39; s, usually be going to be there’s there, several pathways there’s like 21 different pathways between your thyroid making thyroid hormone, and I’ll, go into a little of the science when your thyroid makes thyroid hormone.
It is makes mostly like 93 to 97 percent of what it makes is in active hormone. Doesn’t. Do anything it’s. It’s inactive, so it can be flying around your system attached these little proteins and fly around your system all day long and it never attaches to anything to create a physiological response, meaning it’s, not gonna make you it’s, not gonna give you any energy until it becomes an active form of thyroid so and that active form is called t3, so the inactive form is t4, the active form is t3, and most of your thyroid medications by the way are t4.
We’ll talk about that, so so you’re. So how does that happen? Okay, there’s. There’s 21 different things that can screw. That I mean I’m, not exaggerating. I’m, saying specifically 21 different pathways that we know of that can screw that up half of the drugs that people are taking that come in here people come in here.
Half of the drugs are taking for these six other things that they have, that they’re. Taking drugs for can be screwing up that conversion factor that’s called conversion; okay, the big things that screw it up are.
However, most of the conversion takes place in the liver, and so so, if you have a fatty liver, if you’re, not clearing your liver, if you have a golf lap and bad gallbladder that’s, backing up into your liver, you’ve have cirrhosis you drink too much.
All of those things are gonna cause you to not convert your thyroid hormones, so you! So, even if you take the thyroid hormone, which is t4, it still has to be converted. Okay, so so in my world I’m. Looking at those things right off the bat I’m.
Looking first of all, do I have I try to not just say everybody’s got Hashimoto’s. I try to make sure okay is this person actually have a hypothyroid? They wouldn’t like the five to ten to fifteen percent of people who does not have Hashimoto’s, who has a thyroid problem, and, and so, if that’s the case, I’m.
Looking for these pathways, second pathway is the intestines if the person that has bad intestines, if they have poor hydrochloric acid in your stomach, if their gallbladders are decreased, if their pancreas is off, if their digestive enzymes are off, if they got information on the inside of Their intestines, all of that is going to contribute to an environment where the t3 cannot be converted.
You cannot get the t4 to t3, so those are Biggie’s, so person comes in. They’re here. They’re interested. They’re hypothyroid. They’re, taking their their their medication. It’s, not working. They’re.
Looking for supplements and a lot of you’re gonna say there are supplements for that now and there are, but we’re gonna talk about that, because that’s, not the classic way to start falling in Love with giving people supplements right away.
Okay, for those two people, the issues fix the gut fix the gallbladder fix the fixed, fixed intestines and all the sudden they’ll, start converting properly other the other most common things that convert that caused you to not going to work properly.
Are stress. Stress hormones, great inflammation, that alters cortisol, cortisol screws up your blood sugar, and that brings you to the next thing that screws up your conversion of t4 to t3, which is your blood sugar.
So you can either have blood sugars just totally screwed up, because you’re eating like crap and and because or you’re trying. You know whatever you know you’re, all the things, your blood sugar drinking eating, eating too much sugar eating too many processed foods and all that type of stuff.
So so the so the blood sugar is a big deal that will cause you to not be able to convert when that’s fluctuating the stress is a big deal. Stress, inflammation from stress will cause you to not be able to convert right.
For many reasons. I won’t get into the whole physiology of that. The stress affects your pituitary gland. It stops talking to your thyroid, your thyroid yeah. Then. Maybe he can, or maybe can’t even make the thyroid hormone.
It’s supposed to be, and then, when it gets to the receptor sites in your body, where it’s supposed to get in it can’t get in because of stress inflammation is screwing that up on top of Screwing up your blood, sugar or stress is a big reason that you can’t convert your thyroid hormones another than the other.
Two big reasons that I see they come in here are hormone replacement therapy and I’m, not talking thyroid hormone replacement therapy. I’m talking in men who take testosterone and women who take estrogen.
These hormones interfere with you with what’s called your sex hormone, binding globulin, and they also a fear, interfere with whether with the earlier thyroid, binding globulin and you can’t, and these are.
These are proteins that actually carry this stuff around, carry the they carry the thyroid hormone from your thyroid to the liver into this and to the intestines and to the cell sites, and and and and without getting again.
You know it into the extensive chemistry of that. Indeed, the conversion just doesn’t happen. So those are the main things that we see come in here and drugs like I said, the drugs right it’s. Not you look.
I have literally I don’t have right here. I should have had it that would have been fun. I literally have three pages. This is enough. This is not it, but I have. I have three pages like like full of all the medications, because I can’t.
Remember them all all the medications that screw up somebody’s thyroid. So first thing I do is this: I look in look at those medications to see if they’re on those, because I know that that’s going to be an issue.
So this is usually what’s walking into the office, so it’s, not a matter of. Do I take google for my hypothyroid GU GU L. Do I take Google? It’s? No, it’s. It’s, it’s. It’s because it’s, not gonna work anymore.
Then then, the medication is going to work, so this this is. This is even that’s even height. That’s hypothyroid! Okay, now you throw Hashimoto’s. On top of there and Hashimoto ‘ S is very, very complex.
My mentor does a three-day twenty five hour seminar on the thyroid, okay and I go to it every year and I’m, always amazed that I always think I’m. Just gonna go get some CEUs and, and I get there and the next thing I know three hours later.
I got 41 pages of notes that I’ve, just written out from what our understanding has advanced relative to autoimmunity and particularly Hashimoto’s just from the last year or two. So it’s. It’s. An evolving understanding of what’s, going on with your thyroid, and so so the thyroid is, is autoimmune.
Thyroid is in arc in our practice, my god, it’s. It’s, 90 % to 95 % of what walks in the door. Mayo Clinic says it’s 85 to 95 percent of all hypothyroid diagnosis, whether you’ve been diagnosed correctly with it or not.
So it’s very common. It’s, extremely common. The the thing about the hypothyroid. Is it’s, not functioning right and most of the time it’s, going to be those conversion factors that I just got done talking about? But when you have Hashimoto’s, that’s, an autoimmune attack on your thyroid.
So this is your thyroid. This is the immune system. Your thought, your your immune system is, is hitting your thyroid, okay and, and – and so this really is the problem at least initially. Okay, there are things that you first need to determine.
Does that person that Hashimoto said that’s? Not always that easy, because here’s, the nuances of it? Okay, the nuances are this here’s, a problem? Okay, it’s. The immune system, somewhere along the line.
Something has happened there’s, been a stress there’s been a trauma there’s been an accident, so somebody had their third child and their whole life fell apart. They got an overwhelming infection, they got mono and and all their physiology fell apart.
Usually what has happened is under those circumstances. The immune system is flared up and it’s N and for some reason you have a genetic propensity in your DNA to allow your thyroid to get attacked and it attacks, but some people it just attacks a little bit some people.
It attacks a lot some people, even though they get a viral infection or taking really really good care of themselves and or eat and writing or exercise. And then they get a positive mental attitude and and and this attack is very mild and it doesn’t even cause any symptoms.
You don’t even know you have it that’s called silent, Hashimoto, silent autoimmune attack. Then, as this attack keeps going, maybe the person goes through life, maybe their stresses. Maybe there’s ups and maybe there’s financial stresses.
Maybe there was relationship stresses maybe you know. Maybe there’s. Maybe there’s, national political stresses, like all the things that people are going through, right and and and and those stresses will cause that immune system it’ll cause inflammation to keep attacking attack more and now what happens is that person Starts getting symptoms and the symptoms by the way are classic symptoms are hypothyroid.
Are I’m tired? I’m tired all-time. I’m sluggish. I can sleep all I want I’m. Never I never feel like. I have energy. My hair is falling out. I’m, putting on weight for no reason at all, and I’m still exercising and I’m still eating right constipation.
We could have hair thinning and that outer third of the eyebrows hair scalp and face genitals. You know having your hair, get thin or fall out dryness of the shins, particularly but dryness of skin dryness, of shins mental sluggishness, mental sluggishness edema around the ankles.
I think those are pretty much the main ones for like hypothyroid and – and I mentioned hypothyroid, because, as you’re, getting beat up your thyroids getting beat up, you initially go into hypothyroid.
I mean it’s, beating up tissue. That’s, making thyroid hormone, and you’re as kind of a like. You know like a boxer getting like beat up and and it starts losing its ability to make thyroid hormone, and you get all the hypo symptoms.
But this guy is the guy that’s, doing it, and so eventually you start getting hypo symptoms and eventually you start getting hyper symptoms and the number one hyper symptom to me. That alerts me to the probability of the person sitting in front of me is Hashimoto’s.
I get heart palpitations for no reason at all. Now, heart palpitations, the person usually has been to the cardiologist cardiologists check them out, told them everything’s. Okay, life is good. You’re, just stressed, and indeed they may be stressed, but heart palpitations is different from the type of feeling that you get when you’re stressed, and these heart palpitations come and go for no reason at all, and and they can Actually flare up and cause anxiety and they can cause heart palpitations and we’re trembling, increased pulse at rest, nervous and emotional night.
Sweats insomnia people get night sweats, they think they got a hormonal problem dip and, in rare cases, difficulty gaining weight and and and and and now that’s. When you’ll have to look up, we have a.
We have a presentation on the thin Hashimoto’s, patient most Hashimoto’s. Patients are heavy, so it’s, so some people call it autoimmune Ottoman hypothyroid. Some people call it Hashimoto’s hypothyroid because you get the hypothyroid stuff first, so we went from silent autoimmunity.
I haven’t forgotten over to here to where we now have what’s called reactive autoimmunity. You’re, getting it. You’re, getting more damage to the tissue. All the sudden, you’re starting to get all of these symptoms right.
You go to the doctor and everything’s, normal everything’s normal it’s. Wonderful but doctor. I have all of the symptoms. The doctor Rutherford chest cut and talking about every one of them and, and he says I have Hashimoto’s and and the doctors are well, he’s like a jerk.
He doesn’t know what he’s. Talking about you know and and and what we found over the years was. It was legitimate to go by the symptoms, because the symptoms will come first before you start getting enough tissue damage for it to show up on the on the testing and then eventually, so so that’s, where a lot of my patients are when They come in here it’s.
Like I got all these symptoms. I went to the doctor. He told me I’m normal. I go. I’ll, see in six months. I’m, like my hair’s falling out one bite, you know like that, so this is this is this is my job.
This is what I do every day. This is. This is what I see and then the next thing is full-blown active autoimmunity and that’s, where you’re, getting all the symptoms, but now you go to the doctor and they go.
Oh, your thyroid hormones are all over the place and maybe they check your prostate medicine. Maybe they don’t. Maybe they just give you something for your hypothyroid symptoms and they think that your heart palpitations anxiety and we’re trembling.
Are that you’re just stressed, and and and and it’s more and more doctors are starting to look for Hashimoto’s, but here’s, the thing most people don’t. Well, let’s. I’ll, get to that in few minutes. So so more and more doctors are starting to look for Hashimoto’s and more and more doctors are starting to find it, and so the challenge there is sometimes doctors will say we don’t know whether you got it or not, Because there are varying ranges still on what’s, hashing motifs, and what’s not? And so when we started out the range you check these certain antibodies, they’re, called thyroid, peroxidase antibodies and anti-thyroid gamma globulin antibodies.
And so basically, you check these things, and maybe they come up normal now in our world, since we were have been doing this since so long before anybody even thought she was real. The symptoms, weren’t enough for us to say we got to treat you for autumn unity and dampen the immune response and see what happens with your thyroid and and that’s.
The ultimate takeaway from this today by the way. But what happens is you know? Usually there’s, an endocrinologist involved, and, and so there can be a little bit of a tug-of-war there, because the endocrinology so go well.
Your your your, your thyroid, gobby and antibodies came up normal. So you don’t, have it or even better, they’ll, come up positive and they’ll go, oh, maybe you have it and then the next time your your test says normal and they ‘
Ll say you don’t, have it so I’m, not quite sure why this is a huge confusion today, but it’s, but but the reality is is is if you’ve gone to get test Board once you test positive one time, you’ve got it because what happens is the antibodies that tag anybody’s.
The way it works is there’s, these antibodies in your immune system, and they actually tag what they think are bad guys. They tag bacteria to get killed by your immune system. They tag the viruses to alert your immune system to kill the virus.
Unfortunately, four people have autoimmune disease, they’ve, tagged, an organ and in this particular case it’s thyroid, so they’ve tagged the thyroid Oregon and and when they tagged it when they’re up.
When the antibodies are up, because you’re stressed because you’re eating like crap, because you got a cold or something like that, this really starts happening when they go down there’s less of an attack, but when They go down, you can test them and they can look normal on the test and and then the doctors go well.
I I don’t know it’s. One day it’s positive in one days negative. So we don’t know where you got it. If you ask an immunologist, they’ll, say you have it you have it once you get the positive test, you have it again.
I started going there in two ranges when we first got into this. The range for Hashimoto’s and to be positive, was zero to 100. This is the next confusion. Okay, then it came down to 64. Now our group and and my mentor after experimenting with a lot of Hashimoto’s.
Patients, among maybe 35 to 50 of us, like practitioner, said it’s somewhere between zero to eight and zero to ten so pH. So it came down to third 64. Then the range came down at 32. I’ve, seen some ranges in the 20s and the 16s Mayo Clinic today says the range is zero tonight and in having treated people from around the world there.
I think Belgium zero to five and there are some other European countries where it’s. It’s, zero to seven nine ten, so everybody’s got their little thing relative to – I guess their patient population here, but the reality is is so I just go to.
Let me oh clinic because everybody goes Mayo Clinic okay, so so Mayo Clinic says zero tonight, and that was no small thing for them to come down and say that, but still in my town here in Reno Sparks area and Northern Nevada, I mean you can go To you can go to all the different labs and one of the one of the hospitals here has two laps one lab it’s, zero to nine and the other one is zero to thirty.
Two, so point is everybody from nine to 64? Is being told that they don’t have Hashimoto’s, even though they have all the symptoms. So I said all that to say this so high, so that’s. Hashimoto’s, so first you got to figure out this person.
Actually I’ve hypothyroid. They have silent autoimmunity, they have reactive autumn unity, they have just full-blown autumn unity, it kind of it kind of dictates your prognosis, okay, and from this perspective, a lot of people come in don’t want to take thyroid medication and they’re like alright, I don’t, take any medication.
I’m like okay, I’m. With that I mean I’m, like like less medication. Better thyroid medication is kind of unique in this sense. If you can, if you have a thyroid problem and you can get the right dosage of medication, the side effect is your body works really well, okay, if you have too much, are you too little that’s, not good, because you’Re gonna either have hyper thyroid or you’re gonna have hypothyroid symptoms and for the Hashimoto’s patient, it is impossible almost impossible to dose that properly.
Until you’ve done all of the other things we’ve talked about in all of the other videos, those of the of those conditions that are unique to that particular person. So if the person got sasebo or if the person’s got a bacterial infection or if they got h, pylori or if they got chronic stress or if they got gallbladder problems or like hydrochloric acid.
Some all of those things create inflammation all those things raise cortisol more inflammation and then the next thing you know that causes a poor conversion factor and in the Hashimoto’s, patient it also flares up their thyroid.
Are the attack against the thyroid? So you have to go about it that way. So in the beginning, you can imagine that people coming in here looking for like some herb or botanical now we have Peters whole screening and this therapy will get them walk out.
Look what are you talking about? It’s, my thyroid it’s. Like I know my gut, my bad gut is like has nothing to do with this. I mean you know that I don’t get that anymore. Today there’s enough online, where a lot of you’re, probably saying why he’s even talking about this.
I already know this stuff, but I mean, but I get a lot of people in here. They’re way, more educated about this stuff than used to me, so so that’s been nice, so so, okay, so so we figure out that you have Hashimoto’s or you have or you have hypothyroid.
Okay, I put the IRA, it’s, easy frankly, one of the main reasons I don’t get hypothyroid. That often is because they’re. The people who take the medication and they’re Lou life – is good. Everything is wonderful.
My weight is going away. My hair is growing back Mary. Why don’t you take this medication. Look at how wonderful it was for me and Mary takes the head of medication and just about blows her head off because she’s got a hyper hyper.
She mutters hyperthyroid. So these are the things that that that you have to to understand about your Hashimoto’s. It’s, it’s, it’s. It’s. I’m, doing the thyroid very late in this back to basics protocol, because this is the way it goes.
So when somebody comes in your Hashimoto’s like oh another thing, do you want to know? So if a person comes in here with Hashimoto’s and they have not taken any thyroid medication, so thyroid medication is, is the substitute it’s artificial.
It’s, hormone replacement therapy, you put it in okay, you put it in and it and and now you have enough t4 flowing through your system. It may not be getting converted, but you have enough getting going through your system.
That tells you a part of your brain that assesses these things called the hypothalamus. It says Doc & # 39; s, got enough thyroid hormone in them, and you and and that tells the pituitary gland at the master gland, to tell your thyroid to kick back and take a vacation and it doesn’t have to do anything.
It doesn’t have to produce, because I don’t know where it’s coming from, but there’s plenty of t4 running around in here. So so kick back until we need you well, if you keep taking it, you’re, never gonna need your thyroid and then it atrophies and then it and then it can’t make tea for my guideline when people ask me, Am I gonna have to take thyroid.
Medication is if they’ve been taking 50 milligrams, maybe 50 milligrams like the borderline, but but at the bottom of ends of the range, fifty milligrams or more for two years or more. It’s. My observation, that’s, a lot of there’s, not in any books or anything it’s.
My observation that that person is probably gonna need hormone replacement therapy for us. They’re like okay, if they are not taking any thyroid when they get in here, and they’ve just been a trooper and suffering because they don’t want to take medication when they didn ‘
T. Think their doctor knew what they were talking about or they are or they’ve been taking it for like less than two years and it’s been fifty milligrams or less. I’d, say seventy percent of those people their thyroid ends up working again.
It hasn’t yet atrophied. The point we can’t work and and and most of those don’t have to take a medication. But to me honestly, it’s, not about taking a medication or not with a thyroid, because most of ours are Hashimoto’s and it’s about.
Do we get the let’s? Let’s, get the inflammation down. Let’s, get the food sensitivity, figured out, let’s, get the toxins figured out. If you have them, you know it. Let’s, get figured out what’s, causing the inflammatory responses in you and let’s, see what happens now at that point.
At that point now, before you go to medication, you can use herbs and botanicals, okay and and and and there’s and there’s, different herbs and botanicals for it there’s herbs and botanicals. That’ll, just get your thyroid to start making tea for there’s other herbs and botanicals.
That will help your conversion factor. They all have nutrients in there that will sensitize receptor sites so that they take your thyroid hormone in on the cells they have herbs, but they have herbs and botanicals in there.
That’ll, get your your liver working better or your pancreas working better and and I’m. Sorry, you’re in your. Your gut function, working better receptor sites working better, so so, but it’s. The same thing until you get on the other hierarchy better, then you shouldn’t start you shouldn’t start using herbs or botanicals.
Yet, okay, because you, if you get the other things under control, your thyroid might just start working. You might not even eat herbs and botanicals for your thyroid, then the next step is use the herbs and botanicals, and if the thyroid is gone, then then thyroid medication, full disclosure.
I take levothyroxine okay. My story is, I probably got Hashimoto’s when I was 20 21. I had a severe bout of mononucleosis, I mean like. I was sick for months like three months. I was in bed – oh, my god.
It was like sweats and and chills, and I was losing weight and and the whole thing and then even after I got out of it, I was I was a guy that played sports back then I had to miss a whole soccer season and and and my Baseball season that year, wasn’t all that one to put in the record books, to say the least, because I was fatigued for like 14 months.
Well, we know now is, is that if you got Epstein, if you get mono it’s caused by epstein-barr virus and it lasts for more than 4-6 weeks. You would probably developed Hashimoto’s back then, so nobody figured out and then I started having a little trouble with my weight and my fatigue, and nobody figured out that I had Hashimoto’s until I was almost in my Earl late Forties and so my thyroid wasn’t coming back, so I take actually take 50 micrograms of levothyroxine and I even take a smidge of something called t3.
I’m, not telling you to take these. I’m just telling what I do to give you some reality on like what I think is the reality of Hashimoto’s, especially for the people coming here. Oh no, no, never! Never! Medication! It’s like if I wasn’t taking medication.
I wouldn’t, be sitting here doing this. I can tell you that, and why do I take that t3 because I have celiac? I have celiac and – and I have Ottoman gastritis, so I don’t break down the t3 properly. So I take a combination of both of those – and Here I am, my numbers are perfect.
Your numbers can be valuable after you ‘ Ve done all that after you’ve fixed your stress after you’ve fixed your intestines after you’ve fixed your your gut after you’ve fixed all that stuff, then your your thyroid numbers actually become Useful, but, prior to all that that TSH, the t3, the T for that the doctors are are using.
If you have Hashimoto’s, it’s strong probability. Those numbers are not representative of what your actual thyroid function is. So I think that’s, it I thought any other clinical pearls relative. The thyroid.
Again, I mean, like I said, my mentor teaches a 24 hour 24 hour course, over a period of three days on this, and and I’m there, he ‘ S got another one coming up in June and I’m. Either gonna be there or watching it online or one or the other, because it’s.
It’s, just it’s, a really it’s, autoimmunity okay, for the vast majority of you, it’s. Automated okay, here’s, another clinical problem, Hashimoto ‘ S is usually connected to a lot of other things.
It’s. You it’s connected to autoimmune gastritis, it’s connected to celiac. It’s; connection connected to antibodies against your cerebellum. So those of you who, at the same time you started getting putting on weight, you started getting dizziness and balance problems and and stuff like that.
It’s connected to that. It’s connected to autoimmune hepatitis. It’s connected to polycystic ovarian syndrome, all in different in different ratios, but like like them like. More often it’s connected to it’s, a celiac and the cerebellum that’s, a polycystic ovarian syndrome, but the bottom line is: is it’s connected to a lot of things? So if those things come in to me, guess what we have to go through the whole hierarchy right and then there’s.
Those areas where you’re having to treat the the the gut and the thyroid at the same time, because the thyroid screw it up to gut against screwing up the thyroid. So you have to attack those both at the same time.
So so so so for those of you who are like you know always looking online and you’re doing things. I encourage that because it’s, making my job a little easier with people coming in and having tried things and they haven’t worked or they understand what I’m talking about.
When I talk about SIBO. Are it just helps? It helps a lot, but, but you need to understand there is. There is an organization to our system and this this autoimmunity. This has been there’s, a screw things up, majorly and it’s.
It’s only it’s, the only last 30 or 40 50 years. I mean I’m, not treating the same patients. Now I was treating when I went to the practice 40 years ago. Yeah people don’t respond as well now as they used to and a lot of it’s.
Because of these, these autoimmune problems that people a lot of people coming here, don’t even know they have them. They just know they’re, not feeling well, they’ve tried everything it didn’t work, so so I’m expanding a little bit into autumn unity there, because that’s.
What most thyroids are all about, if you go and you I and you go, and you come in here and tell me: well, I got a doctor and he understands Hashimoto’s and and he’s, a wonderful person and she’s, wonderful person and they’re, doing a wonderful job and her sitting here, and they got 20 out of 20 symptoms of Hashimoto’s.
I’m asked to plate. Lee tell them that we may not be able to do this if you think that what they’re doing is right, because I’m gonna change, what they’re doing, because you still have all these symptoms, so It’s kind of a unique area, but this is why it’s at the end.
So for those of you who have may be frustrated with your thyroid approach from your doctors, I one last bit one last bit. I should tell you this, so if you there are doctors now that are getting more conversing with the fact that person’s got Hashimoto’s, however, they just keep treating at you as hypothyroid.
There’s. The next level of doctor who finally goes you know this is an autoimmune problem, and, and there are those doctors who are actually using a little bit of hydrocortisone, which is which is a steroid that you use in autoimmune problems to bring down the information, and it Helps and it helps it because why? Because it’s addressing the problem, it’s.
Addressing this, but people will say I don’t, take hydrocortisone rest of my life because it ‘ S got like a lot of bad side effects, which is true. Okay, then, the next thing that they’re doing is they’re, going like okay? I just know what to do with this.
So here’s. What we’re gonna, do we’re, either gonna, take it out or radiate it from you. Take it out, radiate it, but this is still there. The immune system is still there and nobody has addressed dampening the immune system.
Oh, but there’s, not tissue left. I’m, not so sure about that. Okay, I’m, pretty sure that when people take these thyroids out, I’m willing to be corrected. But I’ve. Seen hundreds of these and I’m, not exaggerating when I say hundred people had their thyroids out that come in, they stopped all the hype.
Oh, they sell all the Hashimoto stuff. We put him through the automated protocol and in their symptoms, resolved, okay or improve substantially or whatever, and and and and the same thing with people who get radiated.
So I’m, not sure. If the whole thing just doesn’t get radiated, I think they don’t, I just understanding from anatomy courses and doing anatomy and teaching in anatomy labs. In my younger days. I it would be hard for me to imagine that they can get the whole thyroid out without, like damaging other things, so there’s, either still tissue in there or just you got to get it’s just that they have not Addressed it the amine with component of it, so whatever it is, that’s.
What I’m saying today, so they’re, more doctors who are recognizing it, but the the ultimate solution for a lot of doctors. They just take it out, just full disclosure. My thyroid is never coming out and unless it’s got cancer.
That’s. It it’s not coming out for nodules. It’s, not coming out for undifferentiated cells that they’d, say: oh, we looked in there and did a biopsy and there’s, undifferentiated cells and we don’t know what they are.
They’re, not cancer, but we’re gonna take it out. No, I mean I’m, just saying me: okay, so and and and by you know, inference. Maybe I’m telling you. You know what I think, and I tell you what I’m telling my patients, so so that’s, that’s more or less fibroid from a clinical experience perspective, it’s, it’s.
It’s, really it comes in the door, it’s there. It’s, an autoimmune case first in a thyroid case. Second and it may get rid of the immune, you may dampen the immune response and the thyroid may just start working again and and – and I gave you the parameters for who that may work for and who ain’t know.
But if you, if you do all of that, and you’re still having thyroid symptoms now the herbs, if you do the immune response approach, that would be the back-to-basics of the functional medicine things that we’ve talked to from the Ends of that, and you still have symptoms now, the herbs and botanicals may work, and if they don’t work.
Now your doctor probably will be able to dial in your medication to where it works. It’s, complex thyroids, complex and that’s, really what you need to understand so that’s, thyroid it’s, one of my it’s.
You know long with the with the adrenals, the blood sugar I mean these are, these are the key players and – and I haven’t – talked about male or female hormone problems, yet we’re going to because they are also, at the Behest of all the other things not because they’re autumn youn for different, but for different reasons.
But if you are in menopause perimenopause, you’re having a lot of problems. If you’re 41 and you’ve been told that you’re in that a pause which is not likely the case. Okay, it’s. All this stuff. We’re talking about it’s, always things double you’ll notice.
That comes after all, the things we talked about that just affects the thyroid and the thyroid. So, for those of you on hormone replacement therapy that’s, screwing up your thyroid. Okay, you can see there’s, a lot of vicious cycles there.
We’ll, be talking about that next time, so, okay, so next time we’ll be talking about hormones. I kind of like that too. I kind of like that, because they kind of complete the cycle when you’re. Doing a full-blown autoimmune case full-blown got case a full-blown.
I’m Aang’s, IAT case these types of things and we’ll talk about that so until next time. I hope you enjoyed this. Please give me any feedback. I love, I love the feedback. I’m amazed at how much feedback we get.
I we do. I do have someone here who actually looks through all that and tries to sift through them and gives me the questions of like you know what seems to be the most likely things that are popular, and so please, please feel free to.
Let us know whether you like this or you know that type of stuff, but but if you get any questions, let us know makes it easier for me to think of topics. So alright, so I ‘ Ll. See you next time.
Bye, you
In this segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses the adrenals and their roll in chronic conditions.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
I several points that I really want to hit, because when I first got into this, I got into it in a different way than a lot of people get into alternative medicine. And I wasn’t brought up on the. If you can’t fix the adrenals, you can’t fix anything much from, and in fact I had a I had a doctor one day.
I was sitting here in my doctors quarters and he he was just going into functional medicine and he he was coming over here to see. If we had some extra equipment, we could help him with and, and he looked in the door, it said doc I’m.
Going into functional metastasis can’t fix anything. If you don’t fix the adrenals, and I went like oh yeah that’s. True, it’s kind of not true. We already have a presentation online from several years ago on, I think it’s called the adrenals or the wrong target.
I mean if I would, if I would edit that I would probably say they aren’t, always the initial target and meaning that my experience with the adrenal glands prior to the then, where have been any functional medicine doctor that you went to well, There was no functional medicine, then any alternative doctor or alternative medical doctor that you went into two things they always did.
They always gave you something for your thyroid and they always gave you something for your adrenals. Either they gave you a cortisol boost for your adrenals. They give you a shot for your adrenals. They gave you a supplement support.
They gave you something for your adrenals because duh everybody ‘ S stressed out right. So it’s. The adrenals you can’t fix anything because the adrenals do a lot of things. The adrenals are the they really are given their dubai, being called stress, glands, because then it makes everybody think that it’s, all about emotional stress, and certainly it’s about emotional stress that can be about.
Eventually, it can be about mental stress, it can be about unhealthy relationships. All of those things can create stress hormones that will or situations where your pituitary glands time your adrenal to put out stress hormones, but it’s, but there’s.
So many things that affect the adrenals and so, for example, you you can have food sensitivities. If you have food sensitivities, let me let me step back on this. So what happens when they? How do how the adrenals get activated? Basically, something happens where you either hit the fear center of your brain.
We’ll, go with the mental stress first, that hits the fear center of your brain, so that is called the amygdala. So your frontal lobe here goes there’s. Danger I don’t like this. I don’t like that person.
I’m, not happy with this situation, and and – and it tells this part of your brain called the amygdala to that and that’s. The fear center, your brain, that we need energy. We need energy because I’m, going into kind of a little fight flight response here or a big fight flight response, and then that amygdala tells the party a part of your midbrain.
Your brain stem. Where your fight/flight response neurons are, your sympathetic nervous system is what it’s called to tell your adrenals be to start putting out stress hormones, and then they puts out the stress hormones of it puts out aldosterone, which raises your blood pressure, puts out Glucocorticoids cortisol cortisol has a tremendous effect on your blood sugar.
When you’re, a fight flight, you want blood sugar going to your certain parts of your brain, your big muscles in your legs. You want you want going to the big muscles in your and your butt and your thighs and your hand strings everywhere, that you need to fight or flee.
Okay, yeah it puts out it puts out up a nephron. It puts out hormones that will that will cause your lungs to cause you to start breathing dilate. Your bronchioles so puts out a number of things. It’s at that point.
It literally shuts down your sex hormones and a lot of people. Aren’t aware that their adrenal glands during their productive years or their secondary second sex glands, and for those of you who are female once you have stopped your your productive years and you’ve morphed over into menopause.
The baton has now been handed over to the adrenal glands as your primary sex glands, and you cannot make stress, hormones and sex hormones at the same time, and you can maybe see where that’s going okay, so the adrenal glands are highly underappreciated.
Okay, if you get stressed and and and and then – and they put out all these all these hormones and and and and so one of the hormones being cortisol when that goes up, that stress hormone will also mobilize sugar from your liver.
Okay, you have your store sugar and your liver, mainly for when you’re asleep, so that you can drip it out and keep your brain functioning, because your brain needs blood sugar and when that cortisol spikes up your blood sugar spikes up and eventually It’ll sensitize, your your your receptor sites, to where you end up developing high blood sugar from stress okay.
Now most people know that most people know that the adrenal glands or stress glands, and they wear you out, but almost almost everything forget the other hormones for now. Almost everything in your in your physiology, almost anything that happens to your system that creates an inflammatory response.
Is going to stress your adrenal glands, so stressing just stresses and just emotional stress it’s like if you’re. If you’re talking in the science world, you know, if you’re talking in the world of engineering there’s.
You know they talk about the world of stresses on on beams as they’re building. Buildings here think of stress as like, like that it’s like if you have a bad intestinal problem. If you have leaky gut our air and and and and you start to develop inflammation in your intestines, that’s, going to raise cortisol that is going to and that’s, going to raise your blood, sugar and and that’s going to put a lot of stress on your system.
If you have a viral or a bacterial infection, and your immune system excuse me, and your immune system is trying desperately to get that. Maybe so we’re working. Usually there’s, a little inflammatory response with it.
First gonna have stress on your dream: glands, because that’s. Gon na raise cortisol inflammation raises cortisol. Cortisol then does its thing: okay, which in which which creates more inflammation and it and and it messes up your blood sugar.
If you have food sensitivities and – and we already talked about blood sugar, bio – you’re gonna hear me mention blood sugar – a number of times here, because blood sugar tracks with your adrenal glands.
So if your adrenal glands are initially activated and and you’re excited and your stress – you’re, putting out blood sugar. If you do that for long enough, we’re going to talk about that, then what happens? Is your adrenal glands are going to go to in what people like to call adrenal fatigue.
Adrenal exhaustion I’ve, heard all kinds of names for it, but that takes a while to happen. It could take 20 years for that to happen, and when that happens, then your blood sugar drops, because you can’t put out cortisol and it’s.
Gon na be hard for you to get your blood sugar up. If you have low blood sugar and low blood sugar is a big big problem, you can look at ours. You can look at our presentation on low blood sugar so back to the things that can cause that everything you can.
You can have food. You can have food since activities, you’re gonna have food sensitivities, and these food sensitives will create an inflammatory response, and next thing you know your blood. Sugar is all over the place, because your adrenal glands have been stressed.
They’re, putting out cortisol, your cortisol is flying up and down and and and I could go on – you cut your left – toe cut your left toe it’s. Stress on your adrenal. Glands pain is stress on your adrenal glands.
Those of you are in chronic pain. Those are your fibromyalgia patients, peripheral neuropathy patients, people who are worried because they have a problem. This is now back to the mental stress, so so the adrenal glands they take a lot of hits.
Is why the reason your blood pressure goes up is because the adrenal glands put out aldosterone that works with with with some chemicals, in your kidneys and, and that throws your blood pressure off. They should call the adrenal gland glands the homeostasis glands, and they and and and sometimes they should be, the first target and many times they shouldn’t be the first target, depending on how you’re.
Going about this. I have a lot of people that come in here and they’ve, been to alternative government medical doctors. I have nothing against alternative medical doctors just for they’re just so you know.
So you know I refer to alternative medical doctors for things that are not within my parameter. Okay, we have several of them here in Reno Nevada, where I live, and but I I’m gonna say one of the first things they do is.
Is they they give people these adrenal shots? If they’re, you know, drean all fatigue, okay and we’ll talk about adrenal fatigue in a second here’s, a problem with that. I just have one of these. Like last week, so here’s, the problem with that, what they’re saying, is your adrenal gland.
What the doctor is saying to you is your adrenal. Glands have been under strained for a long time. From all of these things, I mean our – I mean, like our whole society. Right now is attacking our adrenals, so you know like so from all of these things, so the first thing they want to do is they want to make you feel better because, like a lot of a lot of practitioners or in a medical field, they’re used to like acute care, so it’s like get the person feeling good today.
Okay, that’s; fine, but if, if you give a person an adrenal shot and they have adrenal fatigue that adrenal shot isn’t going to bring him out adrenal fatigue because it takes. You could be in an cute adrenal response, which is like the initial response.
Where you’re, all shaky and jittery, I can’t fall asleep perspires easily under high amounts of stress weight gain under stress because it’s. Spiking up your blood sugar wakes up tired, even after six or more hours of sleep, excessive perspiration or perspiration, with little or no activity.
These are acute symptoms. These are like when you’re like in fight flight, and you can make a fight fly for twenty years before you move into adrenal, exhaustion or adrenal fatigue. I like to call it adrenal Malaga maladaptation, okay, and basically, at that point, if somebody gives you a somebody’s, not somebody’s.
Not gonna want to give you adrenal shots. They’re gonna want to give you they’re gonna want to calm you down, but once you have started to move morph into now, your adrenals, your dreams just like. If they’re like a hormone factory, they make hormones.
Okay. All of these are hormones that I’m. Talking about and your brain says, make those hormones they make them, and then they empty out, okay and over a long period of time. These these hormones basically empty out and eventually they can’t produce.
The factory can’t produce the product anymore. So what happens as you go into adrenal maladaptation. The adrenal has lost its ability to adapt to all the things that are hitting it, and now you start going into that.
I’m. Exhausted. Can’t stay asleep, I wake up in the middle of night. I wake up and I can’t and I can’t stay asleep. Why can you not stay asleep in the middle of night because you need blood sugar in the middle of the night to stay up so that you have? Because you’re fasting right? You’re, not eating.
In the middle of the night, you’re supposed to eat like every couple of hours, unless you’re, doing the keto giant, ketogenic diet in a minute fasting. For those of you who aren’t, which is most of you, you should be eating every couple of hours.
You know like grazing snacking because you’re on about a two and a half hour cycle with your blood sugar, and so your blood sugar stays out for about two and a half hours, so you eat. When the middle of night, you don’t, do that, so there’s, a mechanism in your adrenal glands, the stress, glands, okay and your adrenal glands that you’re.
Also, the blood sugar glands because they work with your pancreas and your liver to control your blood sugar. So now you get this, you get this dump in your blood sugar because you’re, not eating, and usually you make it through the first phase, which is about two and a half hours, and you and and your brain says we don’t know Fletcher, and it puts out this thing called cortisol.
What does cortisol do? It raises your blood sugar because it moves blood sure how to liver. This is the main reason it does that to keep you sleeping okay, but usually by the time. If people were compromised and their and their adrenals not and not adapting there’s.
What I like the term mal adaptation, then what happens is the second phase they drain the blood sugar starts to drop because we’re, not eating, and what happens is the the the adrenal can’t? Do it they’re too weak? They don’t have enough, they don’t have enough to do it, but they have a backup and the backup hormone is adrenaline, and so you wake up and you go and you can’t get back to sleep.
Most of the time, waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to go back to sleep is, is low blood, sugar and or low adrenal function. Low adrenal function may not be able to move the blood sugar, the blood sugar may be low and that’s, causing this whole cycle.
Other things crave. Salt, if you crave salt, that’s because you’re, maybe because your adrenals aren’t working, because you need salt for that mechanism between the adrenals and the kidneys to work, to keep your blood pressure up.
If you’re craving salt – and you might be one of those folks who has low blood pressure, I should probably do a talk on low blood pressure, because low blood pressure is not good. Okay, high blood pressure, bad low blood pressure, bad normal blood pressure are good.
If you have low blood pressure, you’re, not getting enough. You’re, not getting enough oxygen to your extremities, particular brain, and then you can get dizzy when standing up quickly. If you have that, and you’ve been checked to see, if you have a trans ischemic attack and and and you don’t, it’s, going to be that your adrenals or mal adapting okay and so your adrenals.
So when you’re stand up quickly. Your Bloods not going through your head because the adrenals don’t have the pump in there because you’re because you have a low function and your aldosterone, which is the blood sugar.
What I’m, sorry, the blood pressure or hormone isn’t connecting properly with your adrenals and the blood stays here. You go up. The blood doesn’t, go up there, everybody’s. Checking your blood pressure.
Should be checking it laying down sitting and standing and seeing if it’s relatively the same if it’s low, if you’re laying down and it’s good and by the time you get up, You’re standing. It’s like it’s like 20 points.
Less, do you have an adrenal problem if it’s like 40 or 50 points less, that’s, a whole different story. That’s like pots disease, but but and that’s it, and that is adrenal, and that’s adrenal. So other things for fatigue, slow starter in the morning.
Those of you who can’t get out of bed first thing in the morning. We do adrenal index adrenal stress index on that person and and if their cortisol it’s, all about cortisol, isn’t it mostly their cortisol, is low in the morning.
This is your adrenal glands. If your adrenal and those these things are hard to fix that people get they get up, and you’re like hopping around and you have to have coffee first thing in the morning and all that type of stuff yeah.
We actually have a. We actually give people like like licorice it’s like first thing in the morning. Get up take this licorice because it ‘ Ll raise your blood pressure and I want you to get up and I want you to vigorous activity for anywhere from two to seven minutes and and then take a cold shower.
I mean literally, that’s like what these folks have to do. It’s that’s. Normally, that’s, going to be your adrenal glands, okay, other things that are your adrenal glands slow starter morning afternoon, fatigue afternoon fatigue again, I look at it more as a blood sugar thing, but again we did blood sugar already and I’ve talked about some of this because we’re, going through functional medicine, as it classically is practice and in functional medicine.
There are foundational things and one of the foundational things that a person should do before they do. Anything else is check. The person’s. Fuels make sure that data on low blood pressure because they’re, not getting oxygen.
It’s, it’s, oxygen and sugar, oxygen and sugar, oxygen and sugar are the fuels to every cell in your body. If you don’t, do those first, you’re gonna have a hard time getting a lot of other things better, so so so blood sugar, though, and adrenals again they track together.
I’ve. Had a lot of people coming here with low in high blood sugar and they’ve taken medication. They’ve taken herbs, they’ve taken botanicals, and it was that they had Noor degeneration in their brain.
They were kind of like they were kind of getting brain fog and they were maybe some of them were like going in the early Alzheimer’s. Maybe they just had neuro degeneration from years of not taking good care of themselves and and and and once we were able to get that under control their blood sugar corrected, because that got their adrenals.
They get to do better and then that got their blood sugar. To correct so this is pretty cool stuff that I don’t see a lot out there, so I thought I would share this with you afternoon. Fatigue is usually, I usually think of it as blood sugar, but it could be.
It could be that you have a blood sugar problem and and your blood Sugar’s dropping in the afternoon, or it could be that you have this. I’ll use the term adrenal fatigue because that’s. What most of you are familiar with this adrenal malla that patient your adrenals aren’t working, so your adrenals can’t, get up to bring your blood sugar up in the afternoon and by that time, those cycles of, even though you’re eating if you have the adrenal fatigue, even though you’re eating those cycles of eating every couple of hours.
By the time you’re in mid-afternoon, it’s hard for your adrenals to keep up with that. For those of you have adrenal fatigue and don’t. You get that afternoon. Dump afternoon headaches afternoon, headaches it’s kind of, like all goes along with the afternoon fatigue, because, basically afternoon headaches, the adrenals are down the blood sugars down.
You’re, not getting enough oxygen to your brain. If your adrenals are low, your blood pressure is going to usually be low yeah and your blood pressure is low. Your blood Sugar’s low. You don’t. Have you don’t have enough of either one of those foundational things get into your brain.
There’s, a good chance that you’re, going to have afternoon headaches, headaches, which stress that’s. That’s. I think that pretty much would be understood from that. Most people get, this stress, stresses the adrenals and then the adrenals won’t allow if the if the adrenal been stress for a year or five 10, 15 20 years.
However long it takes to get into the adrenal fatigue, then you’re, going to have a problem when you get stressed, because your adrenals can’t produce properly again your adrenals, they they work. They work to keep your blood sugar normal.
They work to keep oxygen in you. The last one is weak nails. If you’re, not getting. If you’re, not getting. If your adrenals are low, you might not be able to. You might have weak nails because you’re, not getting oxygen.
Your adrenals work with your blood pressure to get the the physiology to get all the chemicals that you need once your food is broken down and it gets into your system. It has to get to your extremities and your extremities are hard to get to, because your feet are a long way away from your heart, and your in your arms are a long way from your heart and your brain.
The heart has to pump up like this. So if you have low blood pressure, your load renals you don’t have to have low blood pressure, but most patients would come in here by the time they get here. They usually have low blood pressure too.
You’re, not getting enough pressure to get it out to your hands, your feet and your head, so it could be causing your headaches. It could be causing the fungus on your toes. If you have fungus on your toes, I’m test me.
It’s because you’re, not getting enough oxygen to your feet, and this could be the reason why, if you’re, not and if you have weak nails, it could be because of this. Now I go all the way back to now, where I say you know you go into the doctor and it’s kind of an acute situation and and then they give you a shot of cortisol once you’ve gone into adrenal Exhaustion – and that usually makes the person feel better and and then they usually have to do it every week.
Okay! Now, because that adrenal, those are those that person’s, adrenals are in exhaustion, fatigue maladaptation, whatever term you want to use it. Doesn’t mean they can’t come back okay, it just means they’re in exhaustion, and here’s, a problem there’s, a feedback between your brain and the adrenals through from your Pituitary gland it’s called a HP, a axis the hypothalamus pituitary adrenal gland for those of you who are who are like computer nerds and look at all this stuff and and that’s.
That’s. The HP axis is is, is, is another name that a lot of people like to use for a stress response, okay, so the so the pituitary gland has to detect that you, don’t have enough of some of these hormones, whether it’s, cortisol or dosterone, or whatever it, and it has to tell the pituitary gland hypothalamus to text that it’s.
That’s, a part of your brain that detects that and then it tells your particular hey. We don’t have enough cortisol going around and then that tells your adrenal glands to to make cortisol okay, even at that, so and and so basically that is a really like inviolate able loop in my mind.
In other words, if you give a person cortisol, if you start giving cortisol shots or you give them certain supplements that just jack up their cortisol, the person’s. Gon na feel better, but here’s. The problems like any other.
It’s like taking thyroid hormone or any other hormone. Okay, once you start taking that hormone from an external force, okay, then, then it’s, going to tell that part of your brain that hypothalamus, that you have enough of that hormone.
In there that is then going to tell your pituitary gland to take a vacation and then go to a Perry. Gland is going to stop talking to your adrenals. Now they’re, going to atrophy that part of the adrenals is going to atrophy, and now you will not be able to fix your adrenals and you’ll, be to having to take those shots once a week for the rest of Your life so the point, the big, the big takeaway from this is when people come in here, I certainly adrenals or one of the top things I look at, but you’ll notice.
I’m pretty far down the line here in in in in the back-to-basics, and for those of you who’ve been watching this series I’ve, been emphasizing. That is a hierarchy of care. Okay, there is a relative hierarchy of care as to how you attack these chronic cases, and so so I’ve already talked about.
I’m talking about small intestines. I’ve talked about intestinal permeability too much ass in your stomach too little acid. In your stomach, multiple chemical sensitivities, I’ve talked about pancreas, SIBO, gall bladder liver and I ‘
Ve talked about sugar before all of those, and now we’re to the adrenals that’s. Going back to the, if you can’t fix the adrenal, as you can’t fix anything all of those things if they’re out of kilter out of whack, if they’re, if they’re dysfunctional biochemically are stressing your adrenal glands out, so when a person comes in, I try to assess this.
What we call the brain, adrenal axis, that HPA axis and and I try to assess that person now, if that person comes in here’s, where I think the practical things that I’d like to share with you, come in.
If that person comes in and they are in a bad relationship, whether it’s with their with their significant other or their child or their boss, or they hate their job, like one of those types of things are going through a divorce and it’s, just they’re.
They’re battling it out in court. They’re, going through a bankruptcy. Something like these. These are massive things. These are massive stresses or if the person has like you know, maybe panic attacks, something that’s, really significant.
That is directly just hammering that adrenal gland, then I and – and I also practice functional neurology too. So I think those have you been watching forever, probably know that that’s kind of where the functional neurology comes in in a sense of you know what maybe we need to hit that brain? First, maybe we need to the diet.
You know we have diets, we use like 12 different diets we might use. You know we might look at a. We might look at a keto diet for that particular person, but what we’re gonna do. Is we’re? Probably going to help that person’s brain we’re gonna get into the herbs and the botanicals that will dampen those the ash.
When God does the adaptive grins, the the phosphatidyl calling all the types of things you’re, probably familiar with I don’t get it. I’m, not getting into specific prescriptions. Here. I’m, just giving you a general idea, but I would probably go and if you look at all the adrenal stuff, that’s out there on the market, all these products are in it III that’s.
When I would probably go for the adrenals first, okay, because if you don’t calm down that fight/flight response, that is, that is being caused by your brain, telling your adrenals to vomit out all of those hormones, the aldosterone, the epinephrine and norepinephrine.
All of those things that are causing you to be heart, palpitation or your and your journey, all those types of things, though those those chemical processes are affecting all the other things I just got done talking about small intestines, large intestines, the stomach, the pancreas gallbladder.
All that so it’s kind of hard to take care of those when the adrenals are the case and that’s, where, like you can’t fix the adrenals you can’t fix anything, however. However, if that, if that level of stress – and I forget to mention one other stress – overtraining overtraining – I’ve – had I’ve had two trainers come in here now and I know I have a patient coming in next week who or Who I can’t get one of them.
I’ve. Gotten understand that overtraining was was was what was what was really getting their or their adrenals under control um? How distinct and they were lucky that they took a two and a half week. Vacation couldn’t train and they came back feeling so much better that they altered their their physiology, but overtraining actually goes in there with all those other things.
Okay, so we’re training will bring. You ultimately damage your for all. You 80 year-old marathoners out there. So so, basically, though, if the? If so, if the stress it doesn’t raise to the point where I feel like it’s going to interfere with the other things I’m.
Doing I’m going to do all those other things. First, because they’re each and every one of those that that gets better is going to decrease inflammation and it’s all about inflation right. It’s, going to decrease information.
It’s, going to it’s, going to decrease cortisol it’s, going to take pressure off of the of the adrenal glands and the vast majority of the time those adrenals are gonna start working again. I prefer that okay, but people come to me and – and we set out kind of initial programs for several weeks or sometimes several months, and then we reevaluate.
If, if I were to be along the way, go boy, those adrenals are not kicking in, then I would do a the adrenals and I do an adrenal stress index test and there’s, several of them out there that measure the core.
You probably familiar with them a lot of you who are in and who are who are conversant in this world or where you take the cortisol. You take the saliva or the blood first thing in the morning and then at noon and edit for that night and and those can be helpful to kind of let you know where you are on that scale and maybe when you should intervene, it is my preference, Not to intervene unless, unless it’s, going to alter that case, where I can’t get where we can’t get there, leaky gut better, because when you’re in fight flight, when you’re in fight flight – you don’t need to be you don’t need to be peeing or pooping right.
So when you’re in fight flight, you’re. Your stress response shuts down the acid. In your stomach, it shuts down the valve between your large and small intestines so that you can’t poop. It’s. It shuts down your bladder so that you can pee.
This is the fight flight syndrome, but if you’re in chronic fight flight, it’s still trying to do that to a certain degree, and then that will stop you from fixing. Somebody’s intestines, because if the brain is continually putting out stress hormones that it’s telling the intestines not to move it’s, usually like the number one cause of constipation and so and then that causes back to Home balances and off to the races you’re, trying to fix somebody’s, leaky gut.
That came from all of that. Good luck and you go online and you do all the you know. You do all the leaky gut stuff in the diet and you’re better for a week and then it comes back because the the fight/flight responses is his his is engaged, and so so there’s that balance there.
Okay, so that’s, why I take a little bit of issue of if you can’t fix the adrenal. Just can’t fix anything, I would say if you can, if, if you’re, not in like if your stress level it’s not like at a level of seven, eight or nine or ten, maybe even eight nine Or ten, if you’re stressed a little not up there, you fix everything else.
First and then the adrenals have come back and that’s better because you’re, not going to mess with that feedback loop and you’re gonna be able to have your adrenals for the rest of your life. But if you’re, taking exogenous hormones for your adrenals, eventually, your adrenals are not going to be good and and and then you have to depend on that person, giving your adrenal supplements forever giving you adrenal shots forever.
Then you have to depend on them, giving you the right amount of adrenal shots and, and and that’s and that’s. A tough one. Remember, ladies, it’s, the adrenals that are causing you all of your female hormone problems when you are when you’re in menopause.
So if you’re a menopause and you’re going like or if you’re having a bad perimenopause, it’s, it’s, it’s, adrenals and blood, sugar and and And and so, and because because your brain has cut out of talking to your ovaries, okay, because you don’t need to maybe make babies anymore and has now said.
Okay, we’re just going to go with the adrenals. You either make stress hormones or you make male and female hormones and the adrenals and it’s just and and it’s, one or the other. So so, and stress hormones put a pressure on the adrenals screws up the blood sugar that’s, usually what is in menopause, and so so you’re, usually in our world we usually handle the stress in the adrenals and the blood Sugar before we start even throwing herbs and botanicals at you for estrogen or any of that type of stuff, so the adrenal glands are are a big factor, so you want them.
You don’t want the early on. You know, you know having them. You know given medications for them and then having them not work, and now you’re, getting some menopause now you’re gonna have to take all of these herbs and botanicals and/or drugs.
For for to help, you feel better when you’re when you’re in menopause, so the adrenals are like and they are, they are like our homeostasis glands, I mean like they keep us balanced everything that happens, screws them up everything.
It happens, causes them to go up eventually, if too many things happen that cause them to go up and being excited and all that eventually the factory like the machinery starts to break down, and then you go into mental and mental.
You’ll, go into mental exhaustion too, because you’re, not getting blood, sugar and and you’re, not getting oxygen to your head. But then you go into adrenal exhaustion and then there you are and then there you are so your dreams are important.
They’re, hugely important, but again to recap: if you’re not like, if your stress levels, aren’t like a like, I’ll, go eight nine ten. Most people can gauge your own stress levels and go yeah that’s me seven.
It’s kind of borderline. Okay, then it’s, everything else. It’s. Everything else you need to you need to it. You need to take care of the other things and the adrenals will come back and and that’s. What you want! You want to do that if, at all, if it’s all possible that you can’t and and then there’s, there certain cases, your balance and then there ‘
S are cases where you just got. Ta hit those adrenals first, so I just want to kind of clear that whole thing out, like you man, you could talk about the adrenals for hours and hours and hours, but I think this kind of this kind of I think it.
This encapsulate all the basic principles that that I would like you to understand about the adrenals. I think I’ve, hit most of the major symptoms and and and issues with the adrenals, and eventually they got to be better.
Eventually, they have to be better for you to be a normal, functioning, human being and and and from that perspective they are important. So, okay, so adrenals. So let’s, see so the next time we come back and yeah.
Next time we come back. We’re gonna talk about thyroid. Okay, we’re going to do it. We’re gonna do kind of I we have. I have so many presentations online on thyroid. I mean hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and a lot of them are under the under the titling of hypothyroidism, because that’s.
What people used to be looking for all the time. Many of them are now under the under the title of Hashimoto’s because we’re finding, yet that that’s, mostly what it is. So we’ll, be talking about thyroid next time.
It’s, gonna be kind of an encapsulated thyroid that one. But if you’ll notice, I ‘ Ve talked about everything else. Before I’ve talked about thyroid. We’re gonna talk about why that is the next time that I talk to you so until then thank you for watching.
I’m Dr. Rutherford, see you next time. You
In this segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses the liver and its roll in chronic conditions.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
As far as functional medicine back to basics and back the basics means this is kind of a classic functional medicine overall protocols that that I think one should expect to experience if they go into a functional medicine practitioners office.
Unless the practitioner lets. You know that you know I’m, not doing that type of functional medicine, so to speak and and so so back to basics, liver and for those of you again who are just tuning in, I walked through this it from the eyes of a Daily practitioner and what they actually see in practice so, for example, on liver, I’m, not going to be going through cirrhosis and all the herpes viruses and all that we might touch on the virus a little bit because that’s.
Not what we see we don ‘ T generally see people coming in here. You know a ten phase, you know liver cirrhosis in an alcoholic, you know cirrhosis or hepatitis or I just I rarely see those things that person is already gone and to the medical field and and and gotten all the tests and and and then they come here Or they or they get fixed that way, so so the livers kind of interesting in our world, the liver, does well, okay, just a little brief.
We had livers pretty wild the liver. When I was in school, they said it did 250 things ten years ago. They said 350 things and now it’s delivered us 500 things. It truly is an amazing organ. It is massively regenerative.
So for all of you, we ‘ Ll talk a little bit about fatty, liver for all those of you out there. They have fatty liver, which I see a lot. If you, if you do the right things, you have to worry about it, I mean it’s got to be really really gone for you to not get rid of that fatty liver.
So the liver is, is just it’s, four different lobes. They all do different things. It’s, a detoxification center. Everything that you dump into your body that doesn’t belong there, that liver tries to neutralize or get rid of there’s.
Several there there’s like seven different pathways in the liver that detoxify there sulfone ization glue. Colorization big one to me is the glutathione pathway, because I see a lot of autoimmune patients kind of hard to get autoimmunity.
If you have enough glutathione, which is probably a separate topic for another day, it stores a lot of our nutrients particularly, is important in blood sugar management. It and, and so it makes vitamin K, it stores a lot of other fat soluble vitamins and has a has a it, has a process as fat, its cholesterol triglycerides.
It has to do with making proteins. Oh, my god, it’s, just like that’s 500 things, so you could go on up for a long time. Processing the vitamins and but the big thing by the time person gets here, is usually it’s, not working right because of the lifestyle that the patient has had before they’ve gotten here, or maybe the patient’s.
Been working around toxins, or maybe we’ll talk about some of the some viruses. What a herpes virus might mean to somebody who has a chronic condition, but mostly for us and another big thing that the liver does is it clears out all your hormones, and I mentioned that one because that another big thing it does and one that we see Mostly here is the liver, not clearing out people’s hormones correctly, particularly estrogen for the female.
So the types of things we see is that we see females. They come in relative to liver that maybe have polycystic ovarian syndrome. Maybe there maybe they’re in menopause and they’re having hot flashes.
Maybe they’re, not maybe there are not happening. Maybe women aren’t having their periods and and a lot of more surprised, and I said well, the first thing we’re gonna do is we’re gonna go and we’re gonna Clear out your liver, we’re gonna clean out your your gallbladder and your intestines, because you’re, probably not clearing, rest regions right when you’re, not clearing your estrogens right, it sticks in the liver.
It sticks in the gall bladder and, and then you have, and then you have a deficiency of estrogen it’s. Not it’s not getting cleared and, and it’s interesting and deficiency of estrogen, as well as a as well as too much estrogen expresses itself the same way, because if you don’t have enough estrogen you out Here you have all the symptoms of not having enough estrogen and you got depression and you’re fatigued.
Then you’re, putting on weight and all those wonderful things. But if you have too much estrogen in your system, because you’re, not clearing it out and it’s. Staying in your system in your liver in your gallbladder in your fat cells, okay, how to post tissue cells! Then then it shuts down what’s called the receptor sites for your for your estrogen molecules and then the estrogen can’t get in so it’s.
Just like you, don’t, have enough estrogen kind of an interesting thing for a lot of you. So so the liver is kind of unique and and and that’s. One of the things that we in the functional medicine world see in the as far as liver, goes coming in a lot of female problems that are poor clearance.
We have a staff member here who hadn’t had a ventral cycle and I think was two or two-and-a-half years and are we. There was put her on a six weeks class and two weeks into the cleanse she had her menstrual cycle back.
So so that’s, how that works? It is about clearing in that particular case. It’s, not clearing out your estrogen okay. Maybe it’s and and and a detoxification is something gets ingested that shouldn’t, be there.
It goes to your liver in your liver. There are the multiple pathways for clearing out toxins. We might just mentioned two of them: cellphone ization, glucose asian. There’s, methyl ization there’s, there’s, the glutathione pathways or seven pathways, and they all do different things and they all do different things, and so they take these substances and there’s.
Two major major major pathways and one pathway, breaks everything down and makes it water soluble so that it can run through your system and then the second time the second pass through. What will happen is.
Is there’s, a molecule attached to the broken-down protein, the broken-down substance, and that molecule attaches to that substance and allows it to go through the second part of detoxification and being attached to that molecule actually allows it to go through the proper detoxification Process and end up in the toilet, either through urine or feces, or maybe through and clear out through sweat, if that pathway, doesn’t, if that, if that second pathway is broken down – and you just have that first pathway working and the second pathway Isn’t able to attach that molecule to it.
You become very sick. You are the person who cannot who cannot take medications. You’re. The person who cannot eat supplements, so you, because these, when these toxins only go through the first phase, you want to become water-soluble until something’s attached to it.
They are toxic and if you’re, and so if certain aspects of your liver, aren’t working properly, then then that is the person who comes in here. It says I’m, not gonna be able to take. You to your supplements, okay, like why are you here? I’m, not gonna, because I can’t, take any medications, and so but but I I say why are you here, because we know what to do with that? So so that’s kind of like a general basics of the liver, I must say we had a conversation right before he came in here about the liver, backing up and gunking up in and and all the problems that can cause.
But again I don’t, yet, basically the cirrhosis patient. In general occasion I’ll, get somebody who’s had cirrhosis for a long time. I don’t, get to hepatitis patient who’s in you, know acute hepatitis or anything like that, but so so so the liver does back up, but the most for the people coming here, but most of the time, the people – I Am seeing will go back to the to the back-to-basics gallbladder sections that I did last week? The vast majority of time here it’ll, be their gallbladder.
That is not that is heavily connected to your liver or to me they’re. One in the same, although or at least close brothers, sisters or twins because they heavily work together, the gallbladder dumps out all of the bile and all the toxins from the liver into the into the intestines.
To me what I’m, seeing a lot is it’s that it’s more the gallbladder, that is the problem, backing up the liver in my practice in the tighten the people who show up here into a functional Medicine practice and then that you start to get the symptoms of the poor clearance.
So what are the symptoms, acne, acne and healthy and unhealthy skin? Well, that’s kind of a given when people come in here and they have and they have skin problems they’ve been to the doctor or they’ve, had the appointments and and they’ve.
They’ve done shots and they think it’s an allergy, and they rub all this type of stuff. On most, the skin is an extension of the inside of your intestines, and so you might first look through your intestines for that.
But they with, but when they win the gallbladder and the liver, and you’re gonna hear me kind of talk about both of them together are not clearing. Then those toxins are going to be not getting into the intestines and into the toilet.
The way that they should they have to go somewhere and one of the one of the most common places that they go is the is the skin. Now you can have acne. For other reasons, okay, but not many other reasons you could have acne, because you have polycystic ovarian syndrome.
Okay, you could act, you could have acne because you just eat like crap all the time, but that’s, not the patient, who usually shows up in here and so so when people come in here and they start like. I had one yesterday or two days ago and I’m – absolutely certain.
It’s for liver clearance and she eats this stuff and she gets up. She gets a rash over her over her the bottom part of her legs. You’re gonna hear me, say: liver clearance, a lot because those two liver pathways that I talked about the phase, one that breaks it into water-soluble materials in the face too.
That attaches the molecule and does the rest of the work. Those are that that is called hepato biliary bio transformation. That’s. A fancy word of saying, if bio transforms, that toxin into water-soluble attaches it and transforms it into something that can go into the toilet so that you don’t get sick, and so that’s.
Largely what’s happening with with so many of the skin conditions, excessive hair loss? Why would you get excessive hair loss for liver, okay, the liver has a lot to do with clearing all of your hormones.
If – and it has a lot to do with what we talked about in the first place, we talked about estrogen, okay, so you have to clear out estrogen if you don’t, if you’re, not clearing it out, you get symptoms Of not enough estrogen, even though you have too much estrogen yeah, you have symptoms of not having enough estrogen and that’ll.
Make your hair fall out. The liver can ‘ T is also heavily influenced by the thyroid. If the thyroid hypothyroidism Oto’s, the liver might slow down because because the thyroid slows everything down when it’s, not working right now it’s, not detoxing.
It could be a direct of fact that that’s, causing you to have not enough thyroid hormones cleared out of there. That can cause your hair to be falling out the if the liver is slowing down again it’s, not clearing the estrogen that can be making your hair falling out the vast, then that’s, a different mechanism than the liver.
So there’s, a couple things that can cause your hair to fall out. I thought I write directly can cause your hair to fall out. I read indirectly can cause your hair to fall out relative to getting stressed, but the liver, the liver is usually a good bellwether if your hair is sort of pulling up that that you need to look at that liver overall sense of bloating.
An overall sense of bloating, mainly the liver, if it’s, if it’s being overworked, and you’re tired. So what makes the liver, toxic? Okay, what makes it most of us know? Alcohol makes the liver toxic, but you know just toxins in general if you’re, if you’re inhaling toxins like molds, if you, if you have had some viruses and they’re low level and they haven’t reached the point of like hepatitis or something that can alter function, but it’s.
Basically, you know you’re eating junk. You’re eating a lot of foods. You’re. Putting a tremendous you’re, creating inflammation in your intestines, you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. The bad bacteria have to be cleared somewhere.
If you have an inflammation in your test, it has to be cleared somewhere. If you have food sensitivities, they create inflammation. The inflammation has to be cleared somewhere, so I mean the liver has a lot of things that that cause it the gunk up other than the obvious junk food fatty food fry foods which which Gunks it up by gunking up the gallbladder as well.
So I mean it’s, just everything just thing anything: it doesn’t belong here by it has to go through that liver of you. If you walk into a if you walk into a perfume like buy through it like we have a Macy’s here, and you can’t, you have to walk in the front door, you have to walk by their cologne section and If you walk by that Cologne section and you’re like oh, my god, I can’t.
Do this part of that, your liver for sure part of that is your liver. Those those molecules are coming in to your system. They’re, going. They’re, ultimately going through that phase 1 and phase 2, and those people have a glutathione deficit.
A big glutathione deficit, because glutathione is a pathway and the liver is supposed to grab that molecule and supposed to kill it. If you don’t enough glutathione, that’s, part of the reason that you have that type of a sensitivity.
So those are the things that caused the liver and go going back to an overall sense of bloating. Bloating usually is going to come from. It can come from small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, separate from that it’s, going to come from poor gallbladder function.
Poor stomach function or poor pancreas function, if you have and and all of that is wrapped in with the liver, because it goes back to me saying a lot of times. The liver gets backed up because of the gallbladder.
So if you, if you have poor stomach digestion, you don’t digest the hydrochloric acid isn’t you don’t, have enough hydrochloric acid in your stomach, which is there to to digest your proteins, then that’s going to cause you gas and bloating immediately after a meal, but that’s, also going to tell your gallbladder to work not to work and then that chain is going to tell your pancreas not to work either.
One of those two in and of themselves can also cause gas and bloating, but the gallbladder will also back up the liver okay. So if we have a nut myth, but so by that time now you have a backup of a system that does 500 different things.
So an overall sense of bloating will cause can be liver, fat and, and one of the more pathological things which I do see for some reason is people coming in here with like swollen ankles are swelling or edema in their in their feet or their or their Lower legs there, sometimes even there are higher legs that can be a more serious liver problem.
For some reason I do see that occasionally, for some reason that gets passed, thought may because there’s, so many things that can cause swelling in the ankles. But but that can be a liver issue, because when things back up in the liver they back up the whole system backs up, and so it backs up into your bloodstream.
It backs up yeah into into your kidneys, it backs up and then and then it’s not going anywhere. The fluids aren’t going anywhere, and the next thing you know gravity brings those fluids down to your legs bodily swelling for no reason at all.
That’s. Basically, the same thing that I just got done talking about with the backup hormonal imbalances. I think we ‘ Ve already talked about that a little bit it’s, it’s. It’s, really more female hormone imbalances and again the liver is the main organ that detox is your hormones and a little review hormones are supposed to be made.
They’re supposed to go to your cells and get used. They’re supposed to get go through the liver, the intestine or the gallbladder and the intestines, and then they’re supposed to find their way into the toilet.
The unused estrogen progesterone test it’s supposed to find its way into a toilet. It’s, not supposed to be sitting around in your fat cells or getting backed up into other or just staying in the liver.
So if that happens, then you’re, going to get symptoms of menopause or you’re, going to get symptoms of not having a period like our staff member. There is so so when we see hormonal imbalances, is it the liver or is it the female organs or is it or is it yeah detoxification or a female organs? So usually, we will go after the liver first for all of those of you who are sitting out there and hot flashes and and are having abnormal periods and heavy bleeding and not have been and and light bleeding, and just all of those things can be other Things that are causing that that are in that are causing your ovaries to not work well, one of those other things is the liver.
So for for cases like that, if somebody comes in here polycystic ovarian syndrome or somebody comes in here with any of those types of female issues, we don’t even begin to directly address the female issue.
Until we’ve handled their liver till we’ve handled their intestines, so we’ve handled the blood sugar and essential fatty acids, which doesn ‘ T have anything particularly to do with this particular presentation.
But those do have to do with hormonal imbalances, so so so liver is a big part of that and detoxifying the liver to get all that excess estrogen out of there. If you’re taking, oh my god, if you’re taking like estrogen therapy and you’re, whether I don’t care, whether it’s oral or whether it’s, creams And creams are like the worst, they cannot be dosed exactly correctly for your system.
As you might imagine, your system is a very delicate system and usually it creates usually there’s too much. Usually the the creams are absorbed into your fat cells and, and they stay there, the the capsules are over over dose.
Then it’s, so so the body uses what it can and then a Gunks up that liver, the gallbladder and a part of your intestines. And then you get all of these hormonal imbalance symptoms. You go through your female doctor and drive her or him nuts, because they can’t.
They can’t, get you properly dosed, and that’s. The reason for that weight gain weight gain is when people come in here. Weight gain is, is a sign that maybe your liver is gunked-up, you know, weight gain can be thyroid, it can be blood sugar, it can be adrenals, it can be gut problems, it can be viral infections.
There’s. A number of things that cause awake in you’ll notice. I’ve, already, basically probably talked about all of them in some way, shape or form when liver detoxification has been popular for as long as they’ve.
Been writing books about it. I read a book called the the Dao Dao of health, sex and and and physiology and and and it’s, the it’s. The American interpretation of the Chinese emperors internal medicine guide, which was written thirty five hundred years ago, and so they talked a lot about detoxification in their the way they talk about.
It sounds like it had already been being done for maybe another thousand or two years. So so it has not been lost upon the human race that detoxifying your liver is is a good thing to do, and so because everything seems to pass through the liver, the liver can touch everything weight gain.
We talked about thyroid if you have a perfectly normal thyroid, I mean, if you have a if you have a hypothyroid that slows everything down. It slows those detoxification pathways down. You’re, not converting, thyroid hormones properly there into active hormones which would allow you to keep the normal metabolism.
Now you’re. Now your body metabolism slows down you’re. Putting on weight you can’t get rid of it. You don ‘ T know why blood sugar, the liver, has a lot to do with blood sugar swings. So you could argue that you could argue that your blood sugar swings.
If I get low I get here to Bowl, I get shaky if I don’t eat or if I eat too much and I fall asleep afterwards. That could actually be connected to your liver. Those are blood, high and low. Those are low and high blood sugar symptoms, but your liver breaks down most of your other nutrients, particularly your your carbohydrates.
It breaks it down into triglycerides and and and it met it’s stored into the liver. It breaks it down into primary glucose molecules, those are stored in liver and then and then, when you need that blood sugar, when your blood sugar goes low, your pancreas and your adrenal glands work with your brain to tell your liver to give up a little bit Of that stored sugar, so that you can so that you can have sugar getting back into your body and it’s, your brain, the main time I see this happening is in the middle of the night.
Those of you go to sleep. Wake up. Can’t, go back to sleep that waking up and can’t. Go back to sleep is because your blood Sugar’s dropped in the middle of the night. Your brain, your body knows your brain needs blood sugar.
So it tells your your adrenal glands to tell your pancreas and your liver to go get working, but specifically it tells your liver to put a lot of blood sugar out so that you have enough blood sugar for your brain.
And if you have enough blood sure you don’t wake up. If you wake up it’s, because that mechanism is, is waking you up to give you more blood share. Sometimes we’ll, just same thing as the lady we talked about doing the cleanse and then having her period come back a lot of times.
People can’t sleep like that. We just detox their liver and all sudden they start sleeping. They don’t know why it’s, because that liver was being sluggish in that mechanism of delivering that blood sugar to them in the middle of the night.
So that could be a liver symptom weight gain could be a liver symptom in so many ways and and all of them run through the liver. If you have bad, gallbladder and and and skunking up the liver and and and your hormones are off, that could be waking, so so weight gain on a weight gain out of nowhere is usually thyroid, but if you have weight gain it’s, always Wise to go thyroid and liver blood, sugar and liver, gut and liver, and then, whatever you know, and and virus and liver, so poor bowel function.
I think poor bowel function. First, when we happen, this is another liver symptom. I think when we have poor valve function. I don’t think livers. The first thing we think of, I think we think of stress – is the number one cause of constipation hypothyroid, probably the number two cause of constipation and then, when you get down into the actual gastrointestinal tract lack on where we ‘
Ve talked about all this on the other on the on the previous segments, lack of hydrochloric acid, in your stomach. If that’s, not breaking down your your your proteins, that’s, going to that’s, going to cause poor, bowel function and poor valve unction can be transmission or diarrhea.
Okay, so you can have bacteria causing poor valve function. You can have gall bladder in not making not putting its enzymes out causing poor valve function. You’re, going to us pancreatic enzymes, that’s.
One of the first go twos that people seem to go to when they come in here. They’re already taking pancreatic enzymes, but remember if that whole chain of physiology breaks down the hydrochloric acid in the stomach that that that doesn’t break down your protein and then that sends a hormone to your gall bladder and says.
Okay, you need to stop working because I’m, going to send this food down there, that’s, not digested, and that’s actually going to possibly cause you to have inflammation. So the gall bladder stops working both of those things tell the pancreas to stop working.
Then you’re gonna. Have you’re? Definitely going to that’s, a potential to have poor bowel function, and all of that will do what all that will back up your liver. So, basically, when you do a liver cleanse, you you clear all of that out you you clear the sludge out of the gall bladder you clear, the liver.
You get all those pathways working now, the one and the one thing that the one thing that really lights me up, that the liver is a significant factor in what’s going on with that person is if the person has excessively foul-smelling, sweat.
Okay, so you I mean, maybe maybe it’s, people who are just like they got this bad body, odor and-and-and and you get around that person and you’re, like ooh man. What is that, or, and in person maybe has had to alter or lifestyle frak? I’m telling you that is, that is a liver that has not yet reached either.
That has not yet reached the stage of pathology, in other words, liver cirrhosis or things of that nature that liver can be helped in, and but it takes a lot more than just a basic, liver detox. At that point, you really got ta get in there and hit each one of the pathways with with different.
We herbs, botanicals supplements whatever that person particularly uses homeopathic remedies, you got you have to get in there and and and that live at that point. Most of the time, the liver here is part of the problem.
Okay, as you, it is kind of part of what I’m trying to say here. You can see it’s connected to all of these different things, as so many tentacles as to as that as to how it can affect everything, which is why the liver cleanses have been popular justifiably so for thousands of years.
But when it gets to this point, when it gets to this point, the liver is really really the key, and so you you, you have to go after it aggressively and now the liver, instead of being part of the whole protocol.
The liver becomes the issue, and at that point but but but to fix, deliver you got a you got to be pristinely clean. You have to make sure that the person is eating properly. They have no food sensitivities.
This is where it really gets into like. This is a liver problem, but all this other stuffs got to go. They have to be digesting well so that it doesn’t back up the bile duct, because if you just do the liver cleanse and if you just do the liver, bile gallbladder cleanse it’s.
Gon na work for about a week or it’s, gonna work for maybe maybe two or three weeks. Maybe the person’s. Foul-Smelling sweat is gonna go from severe to moderate, but it’s, not going away its way. So you have a serious clearance problem when you had that fel smell as well, but to step back.
If you have really foul smelling sweat, that’s, where it’s at and that’s, my gauge in a case like that five somebody who’s in here and everything’s, doing better. But they still have that fell, smelling sweat.
I know that everything that I did is gonna be for naught within a couple of weeks or a month or two that it’s all going to be coming back because that liver and that gallbladder are not clearing and, as you can see It’s connected to everything I mean I could go on for hours with all the things that’s connected to.
If I, in a in the in the I went to one course that was called mastering blood chemistry and they had sections on, you know the gallbladder sections on the stomach and section on the sections on all these things.
Were. You know like this, like this, the section on the liver. It was like this, you know so, fortunately, the liver is pretty as far as as as functional medicine goes by the time people get here, pretty much.
What I just got done telling you is like the scope and breadth of the liver and and how do you know you have it a lot of times you’ll, go to the doctor and they’ll run ice and then they’ll run enzymes.
I almost forgot this: they’ll run. Enzymes are not enzymes, they’ll rot and they’ll run yeah. They’ll, run enzymes on you and and and those enzymes are in most metabolic panels and and and they’ll say: oh, you’re, you’re, SGO t is fine and it’s.
It’s, so you don’t have any liver piles. Meanwhile, you have every single one of these symptoms. Okay, so understand. First of all, it takes a long time for those symptoms to create enough damage for it to show up on the test, and for those of you have watched all of these videos.
You ‘ Ll, see a pattern here. What we’re trying to do in functional medicine is get function normal again before it becomes pathology before it becomes cirrhosis of the liver. So so so, and what usually happens first is usually get a fatty liver.
So most people know that fatty liver comes from alcohol abuse most of the patients. Here it comes from blood sugar problems and it doesn’t have to be diabetes. It can be that you have what’s called insulin resistance.
You’re just on the first steps towards towards diabetes, it can be pre-diabetes and, and it’s in and of course, that comes from. Maybe it comes from alcohol, but it usually comes from eating a lot of junk, a lot of sugars, a lot of processed foods and processed carbs and all that type of stuff.
The standard American diet, and eventually, what happens is that all that’s? Being turned into fat and you get what’s called a fatty liver if that fatty liver is is, is if the it is not too bad in the in the eyes of the doctor, because those transaminases, those enzymes that I talked about are not Over 200, then, the the range for transaminases should be like 10 to 25.
If they’re and the doctors don’t usually get too lit up on you until it’s over 200. If it’s 35, you have you’re, you’re, developing a fatty, liver and, and that needs to go again. That also takes a little bit more effort to get that fatty, liver under control, because you actually have to fix the problem that is causing the fatty liver in addition to the fabula.
So you’re gonna have to change your diet. If you’re drinking too much, you’re, going to stop drinking too much. If you’re, if there’s a there’s, a kind of a flow of understanding of in our intake forms as to what the types of things might be that are causing that thing, calm well, fatty liver is Not a death sentence it.
It will frequently, if you find, if you understand what’s, going on it’ll, frequently go away. The doctors, usually they won -‘t handle it until your transaminases are over 200. Once they’re over 200.
You, you now do kind of have a problem. I don’t see a lot of those here. I’ll, see I’ve, seen a handful and even they have done. Okay; okay, but at that point, that’s where you start getting into serious liver problems and maybe it starts getting tender and maybe it’s swollen because it’s, backing up in those types of things.
So from a perspective yeah, so so having said all of that in the functional medicine world, it is largely about what’s called hepato biliary bio transformation. It’s, which is a fancy way of saying it’s about detoxing that liver.
It’s about clearing that liver out. Unless you get into the high fatty acids or I’m. Sorry, the high fatty liver numbers, or unless you have that foul foul, smelling sweat most of the time. You know a good two.
Three four five six week detox is kind of a good layer. What’s up? What am I saying, entry kind of a good entry protocol for almost everybody out there, who is suffering from almost anything and and and and hasn &, # 39 t had any success that liver detox there’s, general liver detoxes.
There’s, aggressive liver, detoxes, the sicker, you are the gentle or you should go. I know it may seem counterintuitive, but usually going to do a liver, detox, the liver cleanse everybody’s got their products.
We have our line of products that we prefer and – and I usually want people when you do liver cleanse – you’re, probably not going to feel too good. If you do it fast, you’re, not gonna feel too good, because you’re.
You’re. You’re, just going to overload that liver with all kinds of toxins, because now your body is allowing that to happen. But even if you do a liver cleanse, you could feel not good for the first most people three to five days.
I’ve, had people who haven’t felt good for the first ten days to two weeks. If you’re, doing a liver cleanse and you’re, not feeling good for more than ten days, then it might be that there’s, something else going on so that’s a nice.
So that’s, the general again, I’m not into them that here to like go into like the whole, the whole issue of the liver. I’m here to kind of kind of focus you in on the types of things that that you would encounter yourself and that the functional medicine practitioner should encounter and how it should fit into that functional medicine model.
So for me we did a big talk last week on gallbladder and to me it’s interesting, but here it’s, almost more gallbladder backing up the liver than it is liver, being a bad from. But frankly, if we treat one, we treat the other one because they’re together, so so that’s, liver and liver, gallbladder again, and so next week next week we’re, going to be talking about the adrenals and That’ll, be kind of fun because everybody back comes in here knows about the adrenals.
For ever it’s been about the adrenals there’s, a stress hormones, the adrenals are pretty cool, but they’re. Actually, more, your home homeostatic, glands and, and we’re, going to talk a lot about that and how sometimes you there used to be at army? If you can’t fix the adrenals, you can’t fix person to a degree that’s true, but we’re gonna talk about why? If you don’t fix the person you can’t fix the adrenals next week as well, so I would or my next segment as well, so I would so for the for the adrenal fans.
I would tune into that. You might hear some different stuff going on there that I think you’ll find very beneficial. So until then, doctor Rutherford with another exciting episode of functional medicine back to base is signing off until next time.
Bye. You
In this segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford discusses the gallbladder and its roll in chronic conditions.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
This is like there’s like the continuation of the functional medicine back to basics. Again, for those of you who may just have seen gallbladder and I don’t know. Yet what we’re titling this or for those of the you who are just looking at gallbladder? Maybe this is the first time this is one in a series of presentations on what classic functional medicine should look like and and and and the emphasis on the is on the fact that there’s, a hierarchy to functional medicine and the way it Should be approached, and we’ve, been through that hierarchy from the very beginning of how to even evaluate a patient as to whether they should be a patient to what the basics are to to.
We’re, called the the priorities of blood sugar and oxygen, and those have you been watching know what I’m talking about. So we’ve gone through the we’ve gone through the intestines. We’ve gone through leaky gut.
We’ve gone through chemical sensitivities, pancreas stomach. We’ve gone through ulcers. We’ve gone through all that in an organized fashion. There is a hierarchy as to the way you should address a person’s overall case, and there’s and there’s, a specific hierarchy within the framework of that as to how you should address a gut function.
There’s like 35 different things that can cause gut issues and a lot of people today know Co, functional medicine, as I do the former program or the flybar program for the gut, and I got on the autoimmune, Paleo diet and I took a Bunch of supplements that I got on dr.
so-and-so this thing for leaky gut or SIBO or whatever it is, and didn’t work. So what’s? Going on what’s, going on as a person, didn’t, follow the hierarchy and in hierarchy of trying to get an intestines under control.
Any other things I just got mentioning there’s, a couple of major major players that if you miss them, you could do all the all the intestinal permeability you want. You can do all the liver flushes you want.
You can do all of the all of the SIBO diets and supplements and all the time and you’re, not getting better ever and one of the two biggest things and those have you been watching know what the other one is.
Hydrochloric acid. In the stomach, I wanted two biggest things: if you don’t fix, if you have it, you don’t fix it, you don’t know you have it to fix it. You it’s missing and you don’t fix that.
How can you fix that? We’ll talk about it? Okay, then you’re. Not getting better is the gallbladder. The gallbladder is like ginormously important to us. You wouldn’t think so with a gajillion gallbladder is coming out.
I think it’s. I think it’s, God. How much is it seventy five thousand? I forget. I actually have notes in front of me today. I don’t, usually use notes, okay, but the gallbladder to me is so huge. It’s, so important that I really want to.
I’m, not good at statistics and stuff, like that. I’m, not great at numbers so, but I really wanted you to get the whole idea of what’s going on now. Most of you know, and so I’m gonna – be looking down and reading off my notes.
So if that looks unprofessional, then too bad that’s, where we’re gonna, do it so so is it gallbladder? Do okay, what most of you know that gall bladders break down fats? Most of you know, people have had their gallbladders out and it’s like oh.
You know that pain. It took the gallbladder out, the pain went away, and then it came back or sometimes the pain went away and stayed away. But you know I don’t see those patients. I see the pain where they took it out.
It came back, they took my gallbladder out. The pain never went away and and and and goblet or shouldn’t come out anywhere near as frequently as they’re coming out, like like 90 % less frequently than they’re coming out, and I’M not exaggerating when I say that they do a lot more than fat digestion.
It does change your cholesterol, so cholesterol is kind of kind of accumulates in your in your liver has to be it has to be, it has to be broken down so that it can get into your system and then and it, and that’s.
Done by bile salts and that’s done in your gallbladder, those of you who can’t eat fish oils, okay, those of you who can’t it. It helps to break down and it helps with the absorption of fatty acids. So it helps with the absorption of your fat soluble vitamins, not just the fish oils, not just a but it but also vitamin A vitamin D.
Vitamin E vitamin K. So if you’re, taking all those things and are they’re coming out the other end or if you’re, taking these these things and you still have flaky skin and then you’re either. Not taking enough or you’re, not breaking it down and absorbing it.
The gallbladder is one of the biggest reasons that you may not be able to take that the symptoms of gallbladder are symptoms of gallbladder or your patients will come in here and and and i’ll. You know i have a assessment format.
People put out there’s old section on gallbladder. First question is, like you know: how did it what happens when you eat fried foods, fatty foods and a lot of people just leave it blank or they go nothing, and I have to ask them and say, because it’s, a zero to four Scale, zero, meaning nothing ever happens, so they mark zero.
I’ll, always ask that person. Is that because you don’t eat fried foods and fatty foods, and things like that and the most the time they’ll, say yes? Why? Because it makes them not feel good. It makes it not feel good because their gallbladder is not working.
Okay, some of the bigger ones for gallbladder are some of the bigger ones or I can’t. Do fish oils can’t eat fatty foods, gas and bloating a distension? A couple of hours after or after I eat fatty foods, but then a lot of times they don’t realize it’s.
The fatty food, a big one, is, can’t. Take supplements, can’t. Take the fish oil supplements a burp up fish oil. I perp up fish oil. I burp up a fatty fish oil after I do it. I kind of woke up. One is really interesting.
Two that are really interesting. Are it genus and the palms of your hands and just general itchiness it’s all over? I don’t know why? Because your gallbladder, or when it’s, not clearing things, those bile salts and the toxins from from not getting cleared and getting into the intestines, they got to go somewhere some of them and make it because because not having a gallbladder, also cause constipation.
One of the things that can cause constipation, so if it’s not getting in if you’re, not clearing those those toxins, if you’re, not clearing those bile salts into the into the toilet, and you can only Clear so much through your kidney, it’s going to the skin.
It’s going to each that’s like that’s like to me like one of the biggest things, and I see like get unis all over and it’s kind of generally, the the other one Is like dry flaky skin which can be thyroid? It can be, it can be.
You know, a lack of essential fatty acids. I don’t need enough. Nuts. I don’t need enough fish. I don’t need enough. Olive oil – I don’t need yes, though, but then if the person is going well, I eat all that.
Then it’s, not getting broken down it’s, not getting through the intestines. It’s, not getting even years into your into your system. You have dry flaky, skin, and so all of these are potential signs of gallbladder.
The gallbladder helps with the secretion and detoxification of a lot of different things. One of the biggest things it helps detoxify is in women. Is your estrogen a lot of people, a lot of women who are who are like estrogen dominant? They may just have bad liver and bad gallbladder Ida.
I have a actually an employee here and we were doing kind of a little bit of a beta trial here on the program. I, those of you who saw my my new year’s high. My new year’s, talk or my new year’s presentation my new year’s.
My years cards to you, I’m verbal cartoon. We talked about how we’re. We’re working on different level programs that maybe we can offer that are more meaningful to people who can’t get here. You know people who you know are wondering whether this actually works or not, and so on and so forth.
So anyway, we we tried it on all of our staff members here, not one staff member here who got our period within like two weeks, just detoxing, just in the initial detox face of one of the programs were considering because it detox their liver.
It detox her gut and a detox, their gallbladder and all the sudden. She started clearing excess estrogen from her system because it was stuck in her gallbladder and was stuck in her liver and she got a period back after two and a half years.
I’m, not having a period, and she was kind of happy about that, but but but so so the gallbladder is a big part of detoxing. Your estrogens now is that a big deal yeah a lot of you like a lot of your women, know too much.
Estrogen is not a good thing. It gets in your cells, ultimately, can lead the cancers, but long before that it can lead to you getting it. Can it can imbalance you and you can get you into depression and you can get all kinds of things from the gallbladder from the gallbladder, not working and and if the gallbladder doesn’t work, the gallbladder and we ‘
Ve talked about this, the gaaah bladder has to work to actually activate the pancreas and to and then to activate the now expanding understanding of the microbiome. It actually helps to to to to cause the immune aspect of the microbiome to work better and that’s, because the gallbladder actually puts out enzymes that help your immune system so called Liars.
A big deal, the mall, the gallbladder works with the pancreas. The decrease in or prevent and decrease inflammation in the intestines, so you can kind of see why this is one of my favorite subjects in a sense so – and I just have one the other day again.
I say that, but this is what I do and the other day. So they are they. I have someone come in and they went through our program and then this is about three years ago and they were doing great and then apparently that stresses in her life went off the diet.
I mean she was came in and just follow my lead all this out. I would hope the diet – and you know – and I I just got back on it ten days ago, I’m feeling much better. The final diet that we had come up with rehearses I I’ve, been kind of on and off with the supplements, and you know so I kind of – and we have a you know when we’re done.
We tell people what supplements you should take. We try to tell it. We try to get him down as few as possible, but the ones we tend and take they better take and, and one of them was gall bladder and one of us gall bladder the other ones hijack lurk acid.
The two things that I just got done saying it: your your your problems will come back or they’ll, never go away. If your, if either one of those aren’t working right and sure enough, you know she.
She had the assessment form was all marked up. She had she had stomach Cynthia pancreas symptom Chicago. I was sent them. She, gas, bloating, blood, sugar symptoms. She had thyroid symptoms, just something called Hashimoto’s and we went when we finally came down to it.
It was her gallbladder and it was her hydrochloric and it was her stomach. So we we started to start the hydrochloric acid again and then we’ll talk about you know what we do for gall bladders what you can do for gall bladders and she’s.
She’s gonna. Do that. I’m gonna see what’s in two or three more weeks. I almost guarantee and she’s. Gon na go back on her diet. I almost guarantee she’s. Gon na be fine, even though the whole thing blew up okay, so it’s.
A big deal temp, like the estimates, are like 10 to 15 to 20 percent of people in America, have gallbladder problems and, and that’s. That’s kind of it’s interesting there’s, different cultures, those of you who might be Indian Americans or Mexican Indians or Canadian Indians.
I don’t, get into the whole reasons. Why, on that? And the politics of it, and all that, like seventy percent of female Canadian women in the end of Indian descent, American Indian descent makes an Indian cent get gallbladder problems and it’s, a lot more than what they eat all right.
But but it’s kind of interesting and her other countries. You go to Africa, it’s like nobody gets it and there’s reasons for that. So it’s. It’s, so this country it’s, about 20 %, about 20 % of people get gallbladder.
You know, and it’s, a lot to do, which dress and there’s, a lot to do with our diet and – and then this allowed to do it probably like seven tons of food by the time we’re, Like 55 years old, so, but whatever it is, you want it working.
Okay, it’s, the most common cause of electric elective surgery in the country, approximately 750,000 surgeries per year. That’s, almost a million okay. I’m. Just gonna use that as round figures, 320 million people, given it’s like one out of 300 people, something like that gets their gallbladder taken out, not just gets a gall bladder problem: okay, 20 % of that 325 million.
Getting gall bladder problems. Eventually but 130 gets it taken out approximately okay, that’s, a lot okay, that’s, not like you know that’s like enough one in 10,000, or even one, a thousand that’s a lot in And and, and it really really shouldn’t be taken out, what happens is is gall bladders how they break down they break down because of stress stress, causes.
Every stress just causes your intestines to slow down when you’re in fight flight. You know your your nature has provided us. This thing this this mechanism that says don’t poop don’t eat don’t pee, because you’re in fight flight.
You’re supposed to be fighting or fleeing, not pooping or peeing, or eating so kind of shuts down your throat. Those of you who have those of you who have trouble swallowing pills, look at your stress response.
It shuts down your stomach. It shuts down the ability to make hydrochloric acid it slows down. Your gall bladder stress is the number one cause of constipation. Constipation could be a lot of things not like a hydrochloric acid.
Pour gall bladder function are among those things. Okay, stress shuts down your your. Your your urinary tract so stress is a big common cause of it. Obviously, eating like a lot of junk is a big cause of it.
Illness is a big cause of illness. Kinsel can its log off your your liver and then that can kind of gunk up. Your up, your gall bladder of fact you long before you get a gall bladder problem. You get sludge in your gallbladder, it’s, been it’s interesting.
I have another case right now and we’ve been working. That case down for for several months and we the case is like probably 90 % better, even better than I thought it was going to be and then – and it was funny we were down to almost our last visits and I was like I keep looking at Looking at this, this, this this assessment form and and everything’s, clearing out except the itchiness, I’m going.
You have a goal of everybody know they checked it out. I’d, have a gallbladder problem, my gallbladder spine. It’s, a jack thing. I said I’m telling you. You have a gallbladder problem, because that’s.
What’s, causing your whole body itchiness? Now I’ve. Had it my whole life and it comes and goes I’m, like we’re gonna we’re gonna we’re gonna work with your gallbladder so and at that point, because we had Already figured out so many other things about chemical sensitivities and pathogens and fixing your gut and everything, Minh and, and that’s.
The other thing that’s, the other thing, the gut problem that was gone, was starting to come back and – and I just got done telling you, you know, fix the gallbladder, it’s. Coming back you know, and, and so we so all we did at this point – was we gave this person a couple of supplements literally within four days, the itching went away that got problems the intestinal problems I tend to use the term gut and that’s very broad, the intestinal problems that were starting to come back, the gas, the bloody gone.
I suspect that was the last piece to our puzzle. We’re, not always fortunate enough to get the whole persons whole system to get functioning again, but in this for the air case that gall bladder was the last thing now.
My point of that was going to be. This tests were normal. I did lab tests on them. Her gallbladder stuff, like the called the GGT, was normal. Her liver enzymes were normal. They had checked her for gallbladder.
Her ejection fraction was proper. What does a gallbladder do it? Just basically is a holding tank for this bile and and and for toxins out of the liver, and it just went when it gets the signal from the stomach to that that it needs to do something.
It goes and it just squishes out bile, okay into the intestines, and then that does all the things we talked about before so long before you get a stone. We’ll talk about that a little bit long before you get a stone.
Okay, you get sludge there’s, no test for sludge. I shouldn’t say that you can do an ultrasound and, depending on how much sludge you AB in there, you might see it and you might not. So you can go in, there, have an ultrasound done and, and they go it’s perfectly normal.
They do your ejection fraction. It’s perfectly normal lab tests perfectly normal. That’s. Why we use assessment forms? The assessment form says that the person was having a little trouble still with the lot of job with the agent is a little bit of trouble, still with a little gas four hours after heating and and and and one or two other things I can’t remember, but the assessment form said there was a gallbladder problem.
Symptoms come can come on five to ten years before you see anything in testing, so this is a problem, so this problem. This is why those of you who have your gallbladder is out. We’ll, be talking to you a little bit about that or going like.
You know what do they think my gallbladder, or why didn’t that you know why didn’t? They know it’s, because we don’t take enough time to do what we’re talking about in this functional medicine, back to basics, which is, if you walk back, we talked about how you have to do a History, an exam first and again, we’re, trying to put together protocols and figure out how I can be comfortable that that person’s, going to give me enough data to be able to tell them which program would be best for Them, in other words, if you’re, going to do a lesser program and I’m, not gonna be involved.
I’m, not gonna be involved very much. I’m gonna have one of my colleagues here at the office be involved. I want to know that if you’re going to be doing this program that there’s a and you’re gonna you know there’s, a cost involved.
If you’re gonna be spending your time, your effort, you’re gonna trust this and you’re gonna pay. Us I want to make sure there’s, an awfully good chance that you’re, going to get improvement from that particular program, and so so so trying to figure that out and and and that assessment form is, I think it’s going to end up being a part of this, but because long before that you’re gonna get bloating.
You’re gonna get distension. You’re gonna get burping after meals. You might get the gallbladder pain up here. You might get an upper back pain, you might just get chronic digestive issues, you might be getting an inability to now you’re, avoiding fats, you’re, avoiding like eating fit.
You know fatty fishes your going to sushi – oh my god like. Why did I eat that hamachi and it’s like you know the overall itchiness, the bitterness, the bitter metallic taste in the mouth, that’s, a big one that your gallbladder bile coming back up into your throat? I get that down.
Then, if I eat too much not that I ever eat too much and so so yeah, so this these things will happen. Sometimes, ten years before anything shows up on an ultrasound all right so bottom line, you will never be able to restore a healthy gut and microbiome function.
If you don’t resolve a gallbladder issue that’s there. So let’s, see what else don’t want to tell you about gallbladder. I think I think that’s kind of like the basics of the background. They were gonna bladder.
Okay. So what do you do about? It so you got a bad call bladder, so the medical profession. What do you do with the with the medical profession that medical profession has some drugs that that will that will break up like so that so the medical profession, usually doesn’t, get involved until they see something on the ultrasound? Okay, the the position there is the position there is.
Is we’re gonna look and see? If there’s floods, we’re, going to look and see if there stones, we’re gonna look and see if the gallbladder is not pumping right. We’re gonna look and see if the gallbladder is is becoming gangrenous and obviously well, not obviously, but if it’s becoming gangrenous that predisposes you the potential of cancer, that’s, what they’re.
Looking for okay, that’s called pathology. If you go in there with a bitter metallic test in the mouth and I can’t, he you know, eat, I can’t eat this. They’re, not gon. Na do anything I can’t eat. I can’t eat fatty.
It’s in something they’re, not going to do anything because that’s, not the basic standard protocol locally or nationally. In the healthcare field it’s like they want to see something they want to see.
They want to see. They want to see liver enzymes up on the test. Okay, they want to see they want to see. They want to see gall stones yeah. You got gall stones and not have any of these symptoms, and that can happen and they’ll.
Take your gall bladder. Okay, you’re gonna, have every symptom in a gall bladder function and not have gall stones and they’ll. Go it’s, not your gall bladder. So I’m, not being a jerk. By the way, those of you watch me, you know I’m, not against the medical profession, but you know I’ve made the point many times that that the medical profession as it’s developed, is more of an Acute pain, acute condition, situation, a pathology situation, let me kill it.
Let me take it out. Let me do something like that, that’s, what they do, okay and and – and so if you got that stuff, that’s where you want to be, you got this stuff. That may not be where you want to be, so there are things that they do is they have biles.
They have kind of bile sequestering drugs that help you to bind your your, your your fats, because you’re, not absorbing them, and any other thing they do. Is they take it out? They do have a medication that they can use.
They do have medication that they can use. Excuse me to kind of unlock it long before you get stones, you get, sludge sludge is manageable, even stones are manageable. Okay, we’re gonna get into that too.
It’s a little bit so so that’s, kind of where the medical profession is on it. Probably before that, I should have done, showed you this. I I thought this was. I thought this would be fun to show you and, of course, I pulled out the wrong thing, not Carrodus, so though this would be fun to show you, so this is uh back in the 50s and back in the 60s and back in the 70s.
This was how you and whether a person probably had gallbladder problems. Okay – and I’m gonna show you what the modified one looks like, but I thought it would be fun to show you that it was. It was female as me.
They said it was, it was being female fat 40, they used the term fat and and – and that was pretty much like okay, that person and and has a gallbladder problem, and then and and today it’s. Today it they’ve expanded it.
They’ve, expanded it quite a bit. Okay, they’ve expanded it once and they have expanded it twice. Why am i showing you this to show you that there’s? A lot of interest in the gallbladder now because people are starting to get how significant it is so risk factors for gall stones there’s, just a ton of them here.
So I’m, going to read them mostly female. More being female, being 40 being overweight, they’ve, changed it to having a high BMI versus calling you fat being a Native American. We talked about that Mexican, American, Canadian, American, being overweight or obese losing weight very quickly because your because you’re, just not absorbing anything, because you’re, not breaking down a lot, because when your gallbladder is not working, it’s not only not breaking down the fats when it’s, not breaking down a fats.
You’re, not absorbing them, but the gallbladder also has to. It also has to alert the pancreas to start working. So it’s, a chain stomach gall bladder pancreas. You pull the plug on the stomach. The gallbladder and the pancreas doesn’t work.
You pull the plug on the gallbladder. The pancreas doesn’t work, pancreas doesn’t work. You don’t break down other other nutrients. They don’t, get absorbed, you start getting like malabsorption, and then you start losing weight quickly being sedentary got to get up move around.
One of the things that you can do to like get your gallbladder like working good is exercise being sedentary. Is bad being it’s, bad, nothing! It’s, not bad, but being pregnant. During a period of time that you already are compromised, you have all the symptoms.
Nobody knows you got to go all that our problem being pregnant, because it puts a lot of stress on the system that can bring it out eating a high-fat diet, eating a high cholesterol diet, obvious reasons: okay, eating a low, fiber diet.
Fiber moves the moves of fat through. So if you don’t have any fiber, it’s, it’s there, and then it overwhelms your gall bladder having a family history of gall stones having diabetes, taking medications that can contain estrogen.
We briefly talked about that. Such as oral contraceptives or hormone therapy drugs, so so that’s, big the drugs that can cause gall bladder problems. We talked a little bit already about estrogen if you’re taking, especially if you’re taking estrogen creams, because you put them on and it’s hard to dose those, and so they get absorbed into your.
They get absorbed into your fat, they go into your system. Usually you’re, going to be taking too much of those okay, a lot of problems with estrogen creams, as they put you into estrogen dominance. There’s, not a good way to measure it.
So what happens there & # 39? S? Is estrogen is supposed to be used all hormones, all hormones you make them. They’re supposed to go where they’re supposed to go, do what they’re supposed to do. Then they’re supposed to go through the liver and the gallbladder and the intestines, and they’re supposed to be detoxified through those three things, and then they’re supposed to end up in the toilet.
Okay, that’s, the that’s, the hormone cycle, if you have constipation, they’re, not ending up in the toilet. If you had a bad liver, they’re, not ending up in the toilet. If you have a bad call bladder, they’re, not anything up in the toilet and if they’re, not hanging up in the toilet, they’re.
Anything up in your liver. They’re going there or they’re gonna end up not being digested properly through your your stomach or they’re gonna get into your fat cells, fat cells or estrogenic, men and women.
They absorb that and so, but it so it puts a tremendous. It puts a tremendous demand on the liver and again, as I discussed when that one came out one case that’s, what happened case with the staff member here we just cleaned her out.
We just cleaned her out and cleaned out her liver. We cleaned out her gallbladder, we clean our stomach all sudden, her estrogen balance came back into into normal and and she had her period with like she came in and she was like.
I just had a period I’m like well that’s, good! You’re, like you know, you’re, like 40 years old, that’s; okay, no! You don’t, get it haven’t had a period in two and a half years, and so and they’ve been normal.
Since I mean I was like six or seven right, I don’t know. I forget six or seven eight months ago that to happen so, okay, so so estrogen drugs will caught statin drugs. You got ta look in the statin drugs.
I will admit. I’m kind of like not a statin drug man. There’s, so many other different ways. You can get your cholesterol down: Minh statin drugs – I had gentlemen in here the other day and he was taking statin drugs.
This doctor hadn’t, given him coq10 as muscles or cramping up. You know the statin drugs do so many things, one of the biggest things it does is it decreases your cholesterol and then, and – and it alters your abilities, cholesterol to synthesize into bile.
That puts a strain on your on your on your gallbladder next thing. You know you get sludge next thing, you know that goes into into stones and so on and so forth. Diuretics diuretics will also increase the the biliary cholesterol saturation rate.
So so you’ll, get too much being being absorbed and then that Gunks up the liver and the gallbladder antibiotics just increase sludge. I talked about sludge. Sludge is sludge, it’s. All these toxins, and all this other bile in the liver that just gets thick and it just won’t, go through the bile duct and won’t.
Go in antibiotics, alter gut function significantly, if you haven’t liked. Taking a probiotic or something like that to get your gut function back, if you’re, even able to do that because you you, if you know good hydrochloric acid, you don’t, have a gall bladder, good, gall, bladder and stuff, and Sometimes that might be hard that, but if you, if you can’t get it back, then the antibiotics themselves will actually increase demand on your gallbladder.
You get the sludge, you get all the symptoms, they take an ultrasound. Maybe they can see the sludge. Maybe they can’t. If you can’t see it, then you’re screwed and then – and we talked about statins already and that decreases gallbladder motility.
Those are the big drugs. Those are the big drugs that you have to look at. Everybody comes in here. I have a list of drugs and I can’t. Remember them all so I have I have so. I have a couple of sheets that I’ve.
Had put in plastic, so I can look at them. I one I have two and a half sheets of drugs that screw up your thyroid. I have you know I’ve sheets of drugs that screw up your your gallbladder, because if you don’t look at those before you start a case.
Now, if we go back to basics and we go into priorities, if you don’t look at those before you start a case, and you got a gall bladder problem and are taking three of these drugs and you’re. Trying to give them some bile salts or something like that to get rid of it, so another clinical pearl there.
So you need to like you need to understand that. So let’s, see let’s. See I see let’s, see they use medicines, okay, so okay, so we already went over. So you get a gallbladder. Basically you get the gallbladder from one of these many mechanisms we talk about.
The gallbladder starts to slow down the gallbladder doesn’t, and then you start to get sludge and then ultimately, you start to get small stones and then later gets larger stones. If you get a stone stuck in in in the duct, this is the duct.
This is called the cystic duct. If you get a that, then they have now. They have lasers that can blow those stones up, and you know if they have your gallbladder taken out. They use medications for the most part.
If you have stones, they’re, taking it out; okay, so so it’s, medications taking it out so and so forth. It’s. It’s, sludge, it’s, it’s, it’s, stones, its blockages and it’s and and somewhere along the line.
Somebody does an ejection fraction on you showing that your gall bladder is slowing down and then it’s and then it’s. Gangrenous larger than the large stones and ganger says kind of like the flow of. Unless you get the gangrenous.
All those are things can be handled. Let’s, see what other things cause gall bladders problems. Brain injury can cause gall bladder problems. So this, why is like one of my favorite subjects? I mean look how long I’ve, been talking about this and look at look at how many things are going on here.
Okay, so like brain to brain injury, a concussion can actually cause your gall bladder to slow down because your brain controls, your vagus nerve, your vagus nerve controls, your the the movement of your gall bladder and if your vagus nerve gets inflamed called hour, starts not working.
So now you’re trying to fix the gall bladder, but you have like this post concussion syndrome and it’s not going away. There are the generative disease like Alzheimer’s, Alzheimer’s. Parkinson’s. These things, notably cause constipation.
They notably slow down the whole bowels. When that happens, gall bladder chronic intestinal inflammation will will will cause the gall bladder not to work, because the gall bladder has sensitivity to information.
We talked about oral contraceptives, Oh ovarian cysts, those of you have polycystic ovarian syndrome, it alters the amount and it can increase your testosterone or can increase your estrogen. Those things will screw up your gall bladder.
Let’s see. I think that’s, it. I think that’s, all of the things that cause gall bladder problems and – and so the outlier is like an interesting thing and it’s. It’s because forever and ever and ever it’s, just been like the gall bladder is like just pumping.
We don’t really need it. Just take it out and we’ll. Give you a medication and we’ll. Give me a call, a saira mean, and you’re good man. No, no! No! No! No! No! It’s. Okay, so I have a call that a problem – or I have my gallbladder out so so let’s, go without my gallbladder out.
Okay got my gallbladder out. What can I do so here’s, the thing hierarchy? If you have your gallbladder out, you know and you got and you got and you have any of these things I talked about. You have nor degeneration from Parkinson’s or you have it from maybe early dementia or Alzheimer’s.
Brain trauma or you have it, because your whole guts in flames or something yeah well, unfortunately, what you got to do is get rid of that, even if you have a gallbladder out, okay. Well, I’m going all our out.
What does that have to do anything? When you get your gallbladder out, you still have a duct that’s called your cystic, duct, okay. This is a little duct, so the gallbladder pumps into this cystic duct and then that this duct dumps into where the it ‘
S called your duodenum, where it’s like the right to the top right outside of your stomach. The top part of your intestines and that and the pancreas dump in and then they they help to digest that that cystic duct becomes your new gallbladder okay and it tries to do the Wobble hours job it should try.
It ends up expanding it’s, a duct, so it’s round it’s round it’s long, but then it ends up becoming like a pouch so that it can so that – and you can imagine So that I can transfer the bio well, you can imagine when you got a gallbladder, and this is this old duck just trying to do what the gall bladders doing.
Maybe it’s. Gon na have a hard time doing a job, and so a lot of times what we’ve seen here is the patient comes in, have every single call letter symptom marked up and I go? Oh, you ‘ Ve got to go all black, probably go.
I don’t, have a gallbladder and I’m like right. I see that on your on your chart, but you have this cystic duct. Well, you don’t, get. Usually you don’t, usually get stones at that point. Usually you have sludge in there, okay and and so it’s pretty standard for me when people come in to and they don’t have a gallbladder because it’s so important.
They’re, going on some sort of a support for a gallbladder, oh yeah, you there or no, I’m, not treating them if they have a gut problem. I’m, not treating them if they have. If there are problems that I have to get to through the guy, I’m, not treating them, because what did I say it’s not easier or not gonna work or it’s.
Gon na go away and come back, and so there are number of supplements there’s. Ginger there’s. Caps of can there’s curcumin there’s. Fenugreek onion enhances the secretion of bile acids and bile sauce there’s, the deliver stuff, the dandelion, the milk thistles.
All of these things can can help that to work. We use a couple of supplements I used to come. I use it number of different companies, but I use this one product from apex. Energetics is the company. I think you can only get those through doctors, though, and it’s called bio men, and it has several of these things in it.
I usually will use bio men and then something another product called lipo men that lipo lipo is like fat, okay, so those two things usually break it down. I usually have them take that for a month, and then I will have them take one of these herbs or botanicals forever, because you don’t have a gallbladder okay, and this is this – is probably one of them there’s.
Probably one of them at people calling go. What can you tell me to do you know it’s like one of the things, I can actually tell you to do. Okay, that’s, going to be good for you that doesn’t really depend on anything else.
You just need to to take this stuff. If you, if you want to, if you don’t have a gallbladder, the chances are you’ve, already decreased your fats and fried foods and carbs, and if you haven’t you should.
You should decrease sugar, like the diet, you know whether you have gallbladder problems or whether you have a gallbladder al. It’s like decrease your fats and oils. After what we talked about for the last 30 minutes or whatever it is or more it’sit’s.
That should be a no-brainer fried foods. Most of you are already not eating it. You know, decrease your carbs, you know not having a gallbladder is not the best thing for people on the ketogenic diet.
Okay, so if you’re on the ketogenic diet, you definitely need to supplement for your gallbladder, even if you have it frankly. Okay, even if you have your gallbladder, you should supplement for that because it puts a demand, high fat diet right.
It puts a demand on gallbladders. Twenty percent of the people have gobblers that’s. All they know forget, remember about the 10 %. That probably have gallbladder problems that they haven’t even figured out housing, yet okay, which is probably more than that 20 %.
So you should be taking that sugar screw it up. You should increase your fiber. You can drink coffee for those of you who can drink, coffee or aren’t stressed out of your mind or you don’t drink coffee, and it makes you better.
Coffee cannot be good for your stomach and your intestines see if you kind of have to gauge that if you have an inflammatory bowel disease, don’t drink coffee. You know I’ve, been planning about disease.
You can drink coffee, coffee, enemas! I’m, not gonna go into coffee, enemas yeah! You know they’re good. Alright, there’s. There’s. The no coffee enemas are bad. Coffee. Enemas are good. They’re good for this.
They’re good for this. I’m, not, and I’m, not everyday coffee and I’m a guy. Okay, but if you have a gall bladder problem, it’ll, get your gall bladder or sludge moving it ‘ Ll get your gall bladder.
If you got small stones, it ‘ Ll get those out there’s. Tons of studies that’ll say that that that will work, and I’m talking still to those of you. Don’t have a gall bladder. I’m kind of talking to both of you right now.
Get into people have a gall bladder a second so anyway, so all of that decreases increases your your irritability. For those of you, don’t have gall bladders. You have a cystic duct that’s. Trying to be the gall bladder, you need the support and bile salts, and I and I’m, a full disclosure.
I just learned this like six months ago. I go to seminars all the time and – and I and I I know who’s, the who’s who and who to go to. I know who’s, a commercial guy. I know he’s good at selling it. I know who’s good at, but but that’s, not where I go.
I go to the people who have been in this since the beginning. The people are doing the research. These people are money, everything they’ve ever told me over the last twenty years has come to fruition and they said don’t.
Take bile salts, I’ve, been taking, tell people to take bile salts forever and and they work, but the position of my mentors who you can trust with your life. I let me tell you, is the bile salts are too harsh over a long period of time.
They’re to us to ours, so you want to go more to these supplements. Okay, so for those of you who have the gallbladder, let’s, go back so don’t, be gallbladder. You have a gallbladder, it’s called it.
It’s called the cystic duct. You just got to keep it moving. Okay, you got to keep the sludge out of there that’s. The way you know you can do it by exercise. Exercise is also really good because you’re.
Moving around it increases vagal activity exercise is good for people who do and do not have a common factor. Size is good for everybody. You can do it if you find the right if you find the right, the right intensity level for you, you have a gallbladder here’s, the thing! Okay, you go to a doctor, you know how you, if you have the symptoms, you have the symptoms.
If you have the symptoms, you’re, one of those people who’s like you’re on your way to stones. Okay, you can get small stones, you can get large stones as the stones are. Not impact is not about what you eat for the most part.
It’s, not about it’s, not about your imbalance in calcium and all that type of stuff. Okay, it’s about it.’s about these things that we ‘ Ve talked about. Excuse me, and, and so well it’s about what you eat it relative to that you got to decrease your your fry, your fats and your oils, and your fried foods and and your carbs and your sugars.
So I’ll. Take that back, so it is about those things, so you have to decrease those things and and – and you can use these herbs and botanicals and these stones will disappear now there are, I you know used to like I used to like, attach all the pure future Episodes but frankly I just don’t have time to do that anymore.
So, but you can look these studies up. You can look on pop PubMed. You can look on the dissolution dissolution of stones by natural means, and there are tons of studies out there that will show before and afters of ultrasounds, where the stones are are have disintegrate, even large stones, even large stones with spikes on them or that, oh, you Got to get it out because it’s, gonna go in your duct and then well.
You know I’ll, wait until it goes in my duct. Let me try this first, the it won’t work, and so so you can do that. You can do that. You do the exercise, you can change the diet, you can do herbs and botanicals and and and and and and those things largely are going to to take care of the problem you can do you can do the olive oil and lemon juice deal.
It works. Okay. There there there’s, a lot of controversy on it, but at that seminar they presented a number of papers and they prevented they showed a lot of studies and they actually show pictures of where the stones would come out, and it would show you That you know what the stones look like and so on and so forth, and then there’s.
The old coffee, enemas, okay, I’m, not gonna get into the details of coffee on us, but I have sheets here for people. I use it for people who have severe gall bladder issues that are not resolving and the other way, and I use it for people who have severe constipation.
I don’t, use it that often most of the stuff that we we do. Everything gets going but but but but there’s there’s. There studies I’ll. Tell you the coffee and episodes don’t work. There are studies that will tell you they do work.
So my experience, my colleagues experiences and my mentors experiences: are they work for these types of things? I would do all of that. The only thing they’re. My reason anybody’s ever taken.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
The the concept that I keep hoping to get to you is that there are a lot of moving pieces to this there’s, an organization to it. You really need to in the beginning, when you attack a case kind of get a feel for what all the moving parts are for.
That particular patient is what we’ve been talking. We’ve talked about that there’s. What we’ve, been talking about up until now, and and now we are at the pancreas and pancreas is kind of interesting.
Most people know pancreas relative to somebody who drinks too much acute pancreatitis. Most people know that that’s, not a good thing, and that if you hear that you start making plans and not always, but it’s, you know when their pancreas gets that bad.
It’s. It’s. You, it couldn’t, frequently be a life in death situation. Most people know pancreas with diabetes, particularly diabetes type 1. People are getting real familiar with their pancreas, but it’s.
Interesting. We don’t normally see the pancreas being a huge huge player in our world as far as the necessity to start throwing pancreatic enzymes on it are our bovine pancreatic tissue at it or anything like that, because of the way that we dressed cases, The way that classic functional medicine should address cases symptoms of the pancreas.
I have a cheat sheet here. Okay, so difficulty digesting roughage our fiber okay and it’s, not so not after protein. It’s, a lot of it’s very similar symptoms to lack of hydrochloric acid, which we talked about last week, and you get these symptoms after you.
But you get these symptoms after you digest a starch, not after its starch fibers. Not after you digest protein, okay, so difficulty digesting roughage and fiber indigestion and fullness lasting two to four hours after eating, because you’re, not digesting those the roughage or the fiber pain, tenderness, soreness on the left side of the rib cage.
Okay, so pancreas actually goes from about here over. Can you see the kidneys I’m, not sure. If you can see this, it actually goes from here over all the way to here kind of behind the stomach, and so you can get it.
Excessive passage of gas can be a number of things, and but certainly if your pancreatic enzymes aren’t doing their job, then you can get excessive passage of gas, nausea vomiting you get nausea and vomiting from the stomach.
You can get it from the liver. You can get it from anything that stimulates your vagus nerve, but you can get nausea vomiting from the pancreas, so it’s, not like. Oh. I got nausea vomiting it’s, the pancreas okay.
It’s like you got to start looking around, go okay, it’s. Can I do. I have no stomach problems. Pancreas problems, stool, undigested, foul-smelling mucous like and greasy and poorly formed, and and I’ll, maybe kind of a little bit like the gallbladder.
Okay, it could kind of float. You’re gonna find out why, in a second, because the gallbladder and the pancreas kind of work together and when one stops working the other one kind of stops working a frequent loss of appetite.
These are the most common symptoms of gallbladder function. A lot of them are similar to symptoms of not having enough hydrochloric acid, and I tell you that not to confuse you, not enough. Hydrochloric acid talked about in the last segment is usually usually due to stomach, not having enough hydrochloric acid in your stomach, not breaking down your protein and in the last segment we talked about how, when you don’t break down your proteins, because you Don’t have enough of hydrochloric acid.
It sends a signal to the pancreas and it tells the pancreas to it says I’m, going to send you a bolus of food that’s, not well digested. Thus it’s too acidic, and there’s, a duct now that these that thing that the gallbladder dumps into and that the pancreas dumps into there and and and so this common duct okay, if you it also is dumps into where The food comes right out of the stomach, so if you have an acidic bolus coming out of there, Nature has already kind of figured out.
You could screw up your gallbladder and your pancreas. This is mostly what we see I don’t normally see the person who is drinking themselves to death. They’re, not usually somebody who is like attracted to alternative functional medicine.
Just at least I’ve only seen a few and and we don’t, usually see people who have severe acute pancreatitis. Usually the pain is so much that they’re in the hospital. So we see the chronic pancreas issue, but nobody ever comes in here for that it and – and we don’t, have people come in here with.
Oh, I’ve got all these problems and then we find out that they have diabetes type 1. Usually they have found that out long before they get to my office and and if you’re, a physician watching this usually to your office.
If you’re doing functional medicine, so we get the person whose pancreas isn ‘ T functioning properly why isn’t it functionally? Probably the number one cause is usually a lack of hydrochloric acid in the stomach, and then a signal is sent to that pancreas and the pancreas just stops putting out pancreatic enzymes.
Part of the reason that you get undigested foul-smelling mucous, like greasy stools, is because the pancreas has a lot of different enzymes. So most people who come in here and have some a clue of what the pancreas does usually connected the blood sugar, and indeed you can get blood sugar symptoms.
Also that will alert you to a pancreas problem. You could feel like you have insulin resistance. You can be, you can be fatigued after meals and you can crave sweets and you can urinate a lot and things of that nature.
You can have that that can alert you to a pancreatic problem, but that, but the key Technic pancreas is is: is this the key to the pancreas? Is that the hydrochloric acid, in the stomach in the functional world? Usually it’s? The hydrochloric acid? In the stomach that’s, causing the bolus not to not be digested properly, the bolus is not has an abnormal chemistry by the time it hits that duodenum, where the, where the food dumps out of your stomach into this part of your upper intestine, Is called the duodenum that’s where all of these things dump and it’s healthy and it kind of tells the pancreas to not work.
And then the pancreas puts out enzymes to digest your starches. Okay, not particularly fibers, but it can it can. It can do a little bit of that, but pancreas also puts out enzymes that has to do with immune responses, but but the big thing is it puts out enzymes that dampens inflammation there.
It puts out anti-inflammatory enzymes that dampen inflammation in the intestines. So if so, if you put, if you put a lack of hydrochloric acid together and you put a decreased gallbladder function, the other which we will talk about here in the next segment actually and you put pancreatic dysfunction together, you’re gonna get A leaky gut, if you put that together, you’re gonna have you could have irritable bowel syndrome? Yeah you could have.
You could develop irritable, bowel disease. If you have that trio, I put these together kind of as a trio. Frankly, I look at them when I look at a person’s case. I look at a hydrochloric acid in the stomach pancreatic symptoms.
Are they there? Okay and gallbladder symptoms and the two things that I find to be more important and that was verified to me by some some of my seminars. I kind of went to about a month ago on autoimmunity by my mentor dr.
cross and that I, it always seemed to me like it was the it was the decrease hydrochloric acid in the gallbladder, and indeed it turns out that hydrochloric acid in the gall bladder Are two links in the chain that if either one of them go there about it’s important to address as pretty much anything else? You’re going to do to your to your gut, so the pancreas is usually secondary to that.
I don’t use a lot of pancreatic enzymes simply because if you followed this series and and and you’ve heard the mantra move there’s, a hierarchy there’s, an order to treat this. If I see a acid indigestion in the stomach, if I see person burping right after a meal full, they have all these low, hydrochloric acid symptoms, which we talked about in the last segment.
I’m, treating that and and in treating that, and if they have a lot of gall bladder symptoms. I might be treating that at the same time or I might be waiting because it’s, a tad bit down a little chain to chain of command.
I might wait on that, or am i doing both the same time and the vast majority of time in my practice, those symptoms go away now. This is separate from the approach of okay. You have all these digestive problems.
Let me give you digestive enzymes and hydrochloric acid, and the person is going to feel better okay, if you do that, maybe if they get their diet properly under control but-but-but-but. This is more of what functional medicine was meant to be, which was to be getting your system to start functioning.
Normally, the vast majority died in my practice. We get the hydrochloric acid, we get the stomach under control if they don’t have an autoimmune problem in their stomach. As we talked about in the last segment, you get that under control and the and the function of the pancreas is going to usually follow.
If you get that and the gallbladder under control, then the pancreas is going to is going to follow. If I get those two under control and I stop pancreatic symptoms, then I’m going to be looking say. Okay, do we have some rare case rare in my office? Okay, do we have some rare issue where, where the person has panco diabetes, type, one and doesn’t know it or do? Are they getting in an early phase of some sort of a liver issue? And then I’ll run the the labs that would be appropriate to to find out if the pancreas cells are producing properly and and doing their job.
So pancreas is pretty clean. It’s kind of like a if it’s, not a severe acute problem in functional in the functional world and with the type of people that are drawn to most functional offices. It’s, kind of like it’s kind of like a step along the way that’s, that’s, not the biggest step in most cases that come into the office, and so that’S kind of how we see it, that’s, how I, that’s, how I’ve experienced it, and so this is a fairly efficient presentation this week, because in my mind I’m, not treating acute Pancreas as most of you or not or probably shouldn’t be, and so so there’s, not a whole lot, get to go more to go over a relative to pancreatic function and how to get it going properly.
Mostly its treat. The gut treat the stomach and and possibly and possibly treat the gallbladder, so so that’s it for today. So I’ll for you for all you, pancreatic fans. I hope that that fed your appetite for pancreatic function, data and next time we will be going over the gallbladder and the gallbladder is quite a bit more involved than I think most people understand, and I and I say that, having spoken to literally hundreds and hundreds Of people who’ve had their gallbladders out, and so it’s kind of fascinating.
The gallbladder is far more than just breaking down your fats and the ways to manage it are are a little bit more than the pancreas and possibly even the stomach. So I’ll, be looking forward to that. Talking to you on that subjects.
One of my favorite subjects, and so any questions that you have on this, please send them to me, and I will be looking forward to talking to you next time about the gall bladder you
In this segment of Functional Medicine Back to Basics Dr. Rutherford will discuss the stomach and its roll in chronic conditions.
Note: The following is the output of a transcription from the video above. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.
If you are interested in scheduling a consultation with Dr. Rutherford please visit http://PowerHealthConsult.com
They can be at that spot right after the gut right after small and large intestines, they can be, they couldn’t, be later it’s, something that it depends on the person’s history, but right now. This is a good relative order.
In the way you would attack a chronic condition case, which is mostly why we see chronic conditions. Neuro inflammation, we see autoimmunity a lot, but but even just a strict gut case. This is why you would you would attack so this week’s on stomach stomach is, I think it’s highly underestimated, as as a part of chronic conditions.
Most people are really aware of the intestines. Now it’s on the four-hour program, the heal, your gut, all these different programs. For that, do it do that audio, mute, alio, diet and and and take some supplements – and you know, kind of keep your fingers crossed and sometimes it’s going to help.
But the stomach is frequently missed and if you’ve done it automating, paleo diet or if you’ve, been diagnosed with small intestine bacterial growth and you’ve done that or you’ve done any number Of things for your diarrhea or constipation, and they work for a short period of time and and then they stopped working, you’re gonna find out.
Why? Right now, because the stomach has a huge player in not only helping to get those under control, but they are a huge player in keeping them under control. Once you’ve done one of those programs, so there’s, so the stomach it digest your food and – and one of the main things it does is one of main features of it is hydrochloric acid hydrochloric acid is, is designed to Primarily digest your protein, it’s.
Your stomach’s, a very acidic area for those of you who are alkaline people, you tend to dampen this response, which is not a good thing. The and, and so it is the beginning of the chain, it’s, it’s. Actually not the beginning of the chain of digestion.
The beginning of the chain of digestion is actually smelling your food, seeing your food that actually creates a beginning of the digestive process in your stomach in your pancreas and your gallbladder and, of course, chewing your food.
But then, after that, the next thing is hydrochloric acid. So cyntha so first there’s low there’s, low hydrochloric acid symptoms and their high hydrochloric acid symptoms. If people think about their stomach and they think about symptoms, what I my experience is mostly they say.
Well, I don’t have an ulcer or they say I’m, taking yeah I have or or they say I do have my do taking in acids, because I have acid indigestion and, and one of those is one of those – is Too much acid one of those is too little acid.
The problem with the stomach environment is usually too little acid and I think it’s, important to walk through that. Let’s. First, walk through other symptoms that our stomach symptoms that you may not connect with the stomach one is excessive, excessive belching, burping or bloating, and I think that’s.
What seem like it could be number of things, but that would be excessive, belching, burping and bloating after you’ve eaten the protein. I just had a lady yesterday patient and we’re close to the end and she started the range to do some food.
Oh she that’s, one of what she switched over to keto diet. Typically, she’s, starting to eat more meat than she probably should, and she’s having a hard time and she’s having a hard time digesting and she’s getting gas play.
Well, it’s because she she doesn’t have enough hydrochloric acid in her stomach and she’s now, trying to digest more pro team. So so, usually the guests and the bloating from the stomach versus a pancreas or gallbladder or SIBO would be.
If you are not able to digest protein, I eat a protein meal again gas and bloating that’s, usually lack of hydrochloric acid. In your stomach way, more about hydrochloric acid in a minute, so guess immediately following a meal same thing offensive breath.
So so many of the people come in here our health minded. They are brushing their teeth. They are flossing their teeth. They have going to the dentist. They’re, doing the right things, and yet someone come in here and they and their breath is really horrible and they’re embarrassed by it.
Of course, we smell their breath to see what it smells like, because breath coming from a lack of hydrochloric acid in the stomach has a very distinct smell, and it can alert us to the fact that that person, doesn’t have on the hydrochloric Acid understand difficult bowel movements, one of the number one causes of constipation, possibly the number one cause of constipation is stress and stress – creates a situation where it puts you into something called fight flight and when you’re in fight flight, your nature kind Of knows that you don’t need to be eating peeing pooping, so it shuts all of that down.
So if you’re in chronic stress, it shuts down your stomach, your intestines, your your goblet, your not your gallbladder, your urinary, bladder and so stomach. If it shuts that down what happens, is you stop making hydrochloric acid for that period of time? But if you’re chronically stressed, and you shut down that hydrochloric acid there’s, a chain reaction from hydrogen from not having enough hydrochloric acid, and that chain reaction is.
Is you’re, not making enough hydrochloric acid? That sends a signal to your gall bladder not to work, because doesn’t want you, you’re here. You’re in fight flight. We don’t want your gall bladder to work either you don’t need your gall bladder doing anything while you’re, trying to run from the barre right and then that will help to shut down your pancreas.
For all you, pancreatic enzyme fans, and so and and and that is a stressors and then those if you’re in stress long enough, can create inflammation in the intestines and for their. I’m just trying to point out at this point in time how important not having an of hydrochloric acid in your stomach is and where it comes from.
So we’re, so so difficult bowel movements will happen when you have all that happening. You’re not to just in your protein. You’re, not digesting your fats, you’re, not digesting your and your your your starches, because all those organs – aren’t working, that’s number one cause of constipation sense of fullness during the other thing.
By the way, second, most common cause of hypochloride Rhea low hydrochloric acid is thyroid. Hypothyroid Hashimoto’s thyroid slows down the ability to make hydrochloric acid sense of fullness during and after meals.
Of course, you’re, not digesting your meal, because you have enough hydrochloric acid difficulty, digesting proteins with meals, undigested food found in the stools. These are symptoms of low hydrochloric, acid they can and and and that can be caused by that can be caused by stress that can be caused by high power.
Just said late, just a few minutes ago, it can be caused by low thyroid. Those are the two most common causes that come into this office that can be caused by h, pylori, h, pylori is a bacteria that you get in your stomach.
That will actually cover the inside of your stomach and cause you to not make well. You’ll still make hydrochloric acid, but the hydrochloric acid can’t be expressed because the parietal cells that are making it are being covered by a bacterial infection.
So not having in my world not having enough hydrochloric acid is probably more important to look for immediately than whether the person has too much hydrochloric acid, because, as I’m, going to tell you here second to little.
Hydrochloric acid leads to you having symptoms up too much hydrochloric acid, just they are with me on this okay. So so what are the symptoms of too much hydrochloric acid, more people know these then know the symptoms of not enough.
Chloric acid stomach pain, burning aching when just right after eating use of antacids. This is like the number-one thing feeling hungry an hour to after eating heartburn when lying down or bending forward.
I’m gonna stop on that one heartburn when bending down or lying for it can also be a hiatal hernia, and I don’t have any to my knowledge. We should do something on high auto hernia, because I don’t think I have any presentations online on hiatal hernia, but hiatal hernia is when your stomach pushes up through your esophagus.
It can because you were vomiting it because it could be because you’re bent over too much. It could be because we sit too much and because you can live to much and it pushes up your stomach into your esophagus.
And then your acids become available to your esophagus and then it starts burning your esophagus long-term hypochloride, Riya, low low acid, long-term hyper chlorhydris too much acid or long-term hiatal hernia all can caught lead to something called Barrett’s, esophagus esophageal esophagitis.
Some of the things that some of you watching this may have it’s, something I see semi commonly heartburn. When you’re laying down or bending forward, then can be too little. Hydrochloric acid. It’s, usually too much hydrochloric acid and it can be a hiatal hernia.
Temporary relief by using hand acids that’s too much acid in your stomach digests. Their problems subside with rest and relaxation that’s too much acid heartburn due to spicy foods, chocolates citrus peppers, alcohol and caffeine.
By that time, the inside lining of your stomach is starting to disappear. Okay, so we have a low hydrochloric acid in stomach problems. We have high hydrochloric acid and stomach problems. Now we briefly have talked about the importance of low hydrochloric acid, because if you have low hydrochloric acid to go over it again and take it one step further, you eat food.
The proteins don’t, get digested. The the the food then sits there. The proteins actually sit there. This is this. This is a step by skipped. Previously, the protein sits there. It is what becomes acidic in a case of low hydrochloric acid.
This is by far the more common reason for you having acid indigestion, because it takes a long time to get where we’re going to get to in a minute with the high hydrochloric acid. So the protein starts getting acidic and then what happens is is, is it gets putrid and you know it starts to.
It starts to burn, and then your your, your, your digestive system, has a lot of checks and balances. A lot of failsafe mechanisms. A lot of Governors, if you will okay, and so this is the biggest one.
If you Dom enough hydrochloric acid, the food gets putrid. The food gets acidic and now sends out a hormone to your gall bladder called cholecystokinin, and it kinda tells your gall bladder to not pump for all you.
People have had your gall bladders out. Why did they take it out because it started pumping slower? What did they tell you? Your ejection fraction is slower and when that happens over a long period of time, guess what else happens? You start to get sludge and then guess what else happens that ends up turning into two to two small stones and then large, donuts and so on and so forth.
If you’ve had low hydrochloric acid over a long period of time, from usually chronic stress or hypo and or ultimately, maybe h, pylori. These are the things that caused it. Okay, now that gallbladder and that stomach also now alert your pancreas hey.
I’m about to send a bolus of food down in there that is not digested properly and is acidic stop working pancreas, because if you keep pumping out enzymes through your little duct inflammation from that as city acidity of that food is gonna Get in there and you’re gonna get sick, okay, and this is how some people get pancreatitis without drinking alcohol, okay, so so, but the bottom line is low.
Hydrochloric acid shuts sound gallbladder, both of those shut down your pancreas. Now you’re, not putting out pancreatic enzymes. Now you’re, not digesting your proteins, you’re, not digesting your your fats and most people.
Don’t realize that these organs do more than that. Your gallbladder. Actually helps with immunity. It helps with inflammation. Your pancreas puts out enzymes that are anti-inflammatory. If you want to know how to get an inflamed intestine, then don’t have enough hydrochloric acid, in your stomach.
How did that happen, usually by stress usually by low thyroid, usually by h, pylori? Those are the biggest ones. There are other things, but that’s, probably 98 % of the reason two people have low hydrochloric acid and the next thing you know you start getting bad bacteria in your stomach.
Why do you get bad back to your in your stomach? And then you get bad back to your in your intestines. Why do you get bad bacteria intestines? Because the hydrochloric acid is not just there to dance to to to digest your protein? It’s there to kill bad guys.
It’s. There to kill bacteria, in fact, even though it’s kind of a reciprocal thing, even though h pylori infections can cause out like a hydrochloric acid, you almost can’t, get a hydrochloric h, pylori infection in your stomach.
If you have enough hydrochloric acid, because it’s going to – and i’ll tell you in a minute why the other thing would be, but because it’s, usually going to kill that it’s. Usually going to kill that bacteria, it’s, going to kill Candida it’s.
Gon na kill viral infections that come in, even if you’re like if you like, out there and and and you’re drinking bad water. You have enough hydrochloric acid. That may even kill that, although the water goes through a lot quicker, it may even kill that okay, so the hydrochloric acid also is like the guard at the door to try to make sure you don’t get bad viruses.
You don’t, get bad yeast. You don’t, get all that stuff in there. Now you don’t have enough hydrochloric acid. All that stuff starts starts happening. If you don’t have enough hydrochloric acid.
For a long enough period of time, then you start to get damage to the inside of your intestines, because you have because you have infections in there, because you have food, that’s, not digesting properly and most people say and then and then what Happens is you start getting very acidic now? Let me stop at this point at this point.
Many of you are taking antacids, but antacids are gonna, do what they’re, going to kill what little acid you have left. This is so common. It’s like mind-boggling. How common this is? Okay, so you’re now perpetuating the problem.
So now we know what a little bit of acid being left causes. Now you have no acid left because you’re killing. Everything now you’re, perpetuating everything we just got done talking about, and now you’re, taking them over a long period of time.
The inside lining of your intestine starts getting bad because there’s, inflammatory responses because you don’t have the enzymes and those types of things to kill it, and the next thing you know you stop absorbing things now you can get Malabsorption now you can get osteoporosis and you get all the other things that you can get in your intestines.
You can get all kinds of intestinal problems so, like you know, omeprazole, and that’s. What is it pants? Oprah’s own. Those types of things you, if you, if you, if you, if you are taking those and you have been confirmed as not having an ulcer, find another way, there are lots of other ways, herbs, botanicals or a lot of other ways to get over that acid indigestion.
Until you take care of whatever is causing it, I mean bad diet could cause it to, but the number one and two causes are usually stress and thyroid, and so now so we move from hypo chloride, Riya to hyper acidity okay, but you get the hyper acidity Because now after you’ve had low hydrochloric acid for a long period of time.
And if it’s. Because of stress for sure you’re now going to have a so long that it’s. Going to start to damage the inside of your intestines now at this point, when you have the day when you have damage the inside of your intestines, you’re, definitely going to check that person to see if they have h, pylori, okay, because they’re because they’re, not going to be killing their bacteria because first they had low hydrochloric acid.
Now they have high hydrogen. I dab high acidity because the inside lining of their stomach is being affected. They have, they can’t eat any of these things. They’re, taking antacids and and and so the damage is happening to something called the parietal cells in in there.
The parietal cells are what make hydrochloric acid. So when you start getting damage to that stomach now from from from having it from having the the hypo acidity for so long that’s now causing the damage.
Now you start getting an inability of the cells in the lining to make hydrochloric acid because they’re being damaged, so that could be because you had hypo acidity for so long. You could get that hyper, acidity separately other than the low hydrochloric acid.
If you have an automated problem, so if you have let’s say you have Asha Moto’s, let’s say you have rheumatoid arthritis. Let me sit and lupus whatever you have. You can get other antibodies. That will attack the inside of your stomach separate from everything I just got done saying, and so, if you come into a person and and if you come into a doctor and you have that type of an issue, they should be checking you for a hypo chloride.
Riya they should be checking you for autoimmune antibodies, in other words, antibodies to the inside the parietal cells. On the inside of your stomach that are being destroyed by the acidity that you’re.
Having at that point in time, they should be checking you for h, pylori B, if you have nothing torque, hydrochloric acid or if you’ve advanced the point where you’re, having stomach symptoms or actually ulcers.
You’re, not making enough acid to kill the bacteria h. Pylori is almost a standard. If you do the test, it’s, almost always going to be there, and – and so this is stomach. Okay, and and and and the big thing about this is – is as you’re following me: you’re, probably thinking wow, it’s, pretty important to have like enough hydrochloric acid in my stomach, because it screws everything else Up and the answer is that’s right, but the hydrochloric acid comes first, so you have to figure out.
Where are you? Are you just at the point? We don’t have enough hydrochloric acid or you point. Are you at the point where you’ve crossed over to the dark side, and you now have actual damage to the inside of your intestines and or do I have h, pylori and do I have or do I have in parietal cell antibodies that Are attacking the inside of my stomach? This is stomach.
Okay. This is something there’s, a lot of weird things that can happen through the stomach other than that, but these are pathologies that rarely happen, and there’s, something that people would see if they do an endoscopy or something like that.
This is ninety nine and nine-tenths percent of the people who come in to this office. This is the flow and again we’re talking about flow. We’re talking about there being a we’re talking about there being a an organization to this and a hierarchy so and and and many of you, if you go back, you’ll understand we’ve.
Already looked at stress responses: we’ve, already looked at those types of things and we’ve, looked at your intestines, your intestines being violated can in turn like if you’ve developed celiac or if you’Ve developed Crohn’s, disease or ulcerative colitis.
First, the inflammation from there can certainly feed back and can certainly cause an abnormality in stomach function, and so that’s. Another thing that you kind of need to be aware of. As far as that goes, but again, those are not a huge part of the population.
I don’t know what the percentage is. Maybe six percent people who have got problems have those autoimmune issues the this is what you’re. Looking at so so so the big takeaway from this to me is I go back to those of you today.
Everything’s on the internet, everything everything people come in to me today. It’s. It’s way different when I started when people had no clue as to anything about anything relative to why they had autoimmunity or why the what was going on through thy right or what’s, going on with their gut now.
The for our program, the 5-hour program, the SIBO program, the automated Paleo diet. All these programs are all over the place, and people who are looking at this, like yourself, probably have already looked at all those things.
Many of you have probably tried all of those things. Many of you have gotten no help from them, or many of you have – or many of you have gotten help from them for a short period of time and then two weeks later, four weeks later, six weeks later, eight weeks later, boom everything came back.
You got discouraged, you said, oh, my god, I thought I had SIBO. I was right out of textbook. I did everything was better now it’s. All back. I’m, so bummed out. Oh my god, like it’s like and it’s, not that, but it could have been that.
But if you have small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, okay and you do that whole thing that whole that whole dietary regime and and you used to and you use the proper herbs and botanicals and stuff – and it comes back it’s because most likely you Didn’t have enough hydrochloric acid in your stomach, to kill it and keep it away and by the way for those of you who are the alkaline people, you need at least a little bit of acidity in your intestines, and you need a lot Of acidity in your stomach so that you can kill things and so that you make the environment in your intestines just a little hostile, so that these viruses, these bacterias and stuff don’t, come back once you’ve killed him so That’s kind of, I think the extent of really what you need to know about stomach.
I I think that’s, really the critical core of it for those of you who have gone through again. This whole series is relative to back the basics of what functional medicine is supposed to look like and and and and the breadth of functional medicine.
The organization of functional medicine, the hierarchy of how you attack things to the degree that you can do that, and so that is really this is. This is a huge, huge, huge, huge key to the entire hierarchy of attacking almost any problem that walks in this door.
Relative to gut problems got problems having immune responses that are attacking other things. If you do all the right things and you don’t get the I and you don’t, get the acidity in your stomach under control.
You don’t, get the stomach under control. You’re, not gonna get a long term response. So this is one of my favorite subjects. I could go on for hours and hours and hours and hours on this, but I, but but there’s.
Lots of data online relative to this particular type of a condition. And if you want to, like you know, look those things up and verify it, but this is the core of stomach. This is the testing that you would do, and this is the testing that you would do when you would do it and I and it’s.
It’s such an important part that if you’re having any these problems, I would like rewind this thing. Rewind this thing I would replay this thing. You tell where I’m at right. Where I come from, you can replay this thing a couple of times and then kind of compare it to your symptoms and I think you will find and and that and and and a success.
The solutions are dietary. The solutions are supplements, sometimes the solutions are are just you know getting hydrochloric acid in there. Sometimes you take hydrochloric acid and you burned you, so you have to actually you know.
Maybe you got autoimmune gastritis because you have positive antibodies against your bridal bed cells and then you’re, not making enough hydrochloric acid. So you may have to get the immune response. That’s, a whole nother animal! That’s, a whole nother presentation, but it is extremely doable the vast majority of the time, so so so that’s, an important presentation back to basics, and I’m, a big back to basic guy.
I’m, a big fundamental guy there’s, a reason for that, and – and this again I can’t reiterate this enough. This is one of the most important aspects of what we’re doing so next time we’ll, be going onto pancreas, which will be frankly a pretty short presentation.
So I’ll, see you, then, with pancreas, you
The podcast currently has 231 episodes available.
663 Listeners
12 Listeners
1,014 Listeners
13,188 Listeners