Deconstructing Conventional
Welcome to Deconstructing Conventional, a show fascinated by one simple question: How did we get here? How did what we call “conventional” come to earn that title? Is there a better way, and if so, what would it look like? This show is about deconstructing two things: Our individual biases, and the systems that run (or attempt to run) our everyday lives.
We do this deconstruction with an eye for where we can reconstruct something better that leads to flourishing societies, and robust physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. In short, this show is about questioning our assumptions and practicing systems-level thinking.
I’m your host, Christian Elliot, I’ll do my best to stay curious and humble. You do the same and we’re both bound to learn something. Welcome to the show. Prepare to have your thinking stretched.
Deconstructing Conventional
Mike Merrill – The Gut Health Revolution: Healing Crohn's, Embracing German New Medicine, and the Power of Mind-Body Harmony
When Mike Merrill, affectionately known as the "heal your gut guy," and I first crossed paths, I knew immediately that his story needed to be heard. Struggling with Crohn's disease and its many challenges, Mike's transformation from patient to gut health coach speaks volumes about the potential of the human body to recover and thrive. Our conversation peels back the layers of conventional health wisdom, questioning everything from the role of environmental toxins to the power behind our emotional states and their profound impact on our physical well-being.
This episode is undeniably a treasure trove of revelations for anyone who's ever felt at war with their own body. We navigate through the murky waters of medical paradigms and come up for air with fresh insights from German New Medicine, shedding light on the role of our mindsets in healing. Not only do Mike and I share anecdotes from our health journeys, but we also discuss how to approach gut health from an angle that respects the intricate dance between our physicality and our emotions. It's about time we consider the possibility that our health is as much about resolving internal conflicts as it is about the foods we eat.
Wrapping up, we delve into the inner workings of the mind-body connection and how our past traumas and emotional triggers can manifest in genuine, physical symptoms. This dialogue is an open invitation to break free from the fear surrounding our diets and to explore the critical elements of healing and adaptation. Join us for this thought-provoking exploration into the human condition, and you might just come away with a new outlook on the powerful connection between our emotions, beliefs, and gut health. Mike's expertise and surprising personal discoveries offer a unique perspective that could very well be the missing piece in your own health puzzle.
RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
- Mike's website
- Mike's YouTube channel
- Mike on Instagram
- Mike on TikTok
- Learn more about German New Medicine
ABOUT MIKE MERRILL
Mike healed himself of Crohn's & Colitis. He used to have diarrhea +10 times a day, crippling gut pain, con
Have you been struggling with brain fog, chronic pain, insomnia, GI issues, auto-immunity, infertility, or inability to lose weight? Check out our 8-Week Accelerated Detox Program
LET'S KEEP THE CONVERSATION GOING
As always, your (kind) feedback and criticisms are welcome.
- Find the Healing United PMA app in the App Store and chime in on our themed Community Forums.
- Click the link above ("Send Us a Text Message") to send us some fan mail. Note: We can't reply to your text message.
WANT SOME HELP?
- 8-Week Detox Accelerator Program
- 16-Week Mind & Body Cleanse
- Get to know our coaching businesses at
- Odysee channel.
- Need a personal coach? Apply here.
Hello everyone, welcome to episode 27. I've got another fun interview today and my efforts to continue to deliver on my promise to stretch your thinking. My guest is a man named Mike Merrill. He is better known on the internet as the heal your gut guy. He's a fellow coach and, like me, he's got a backstory of needing to heal his own body, and what he had to recover from was Crohn's disease, and I told Mike he gets the award for probably the worst case of gut problems I've ever heard about, and I'll let him tell you about that.
Speaker 1:But fast forward to today. He now has a really robust social presence teaching people how to heal their gut. He gives away a lot of information for free. He also has a 13-day course that you can take and anyway, like me, he got into health coaching as a result of his quest to heal his body, and he too has spent a lot of money on trial and error. But he's also been at it long enough to realize that it's really hard to help someone heal if you don't get to the roots of what's causing their problem, and to do that, we actually have to think much more holistically about the person in front of us, and so, while we stayed on the topic of gut health, we also got into various theories about what causes disease and different approaches people and professions take to helping others heal, and I've been following Mike for many years. He actually taught me a lot about gut health, and this is actually my first conversation with him, though. So in this episode you get to hear me learning and asking questions in real time and trying to integrate or test out new information, and one of those topics was the subject of German New Medicine, which Mike has become a student and proponent of, and while I have some unanswered questions about that way of thinking, hopefully you can tell from the introduction to this show that I like entertaining new paradigms. I like the challenge of trying to hold competing ideas in my head and test them out against each other, and so hopefully that can be a fun experience for you as well in this episode, and I just find life is so much kinder when I'm curious and I try to take on a posture of attempting to understand.
Speaker 1:So one final logistical note on the show is that I'm moving this weekend, so I may or may not get a show out next week. We'll just see how it unfolds. So if you're looking for an episode next week and it's not there. The sky is not falling. I'm just trying to figure out who moved my water dish, which actually, ironically, there's a funny and unexpected window into my perspective on dogs in this show. So I'll just, I'll leave it there. I'll just say don't hate me, okay.
Speaker 1:All right, without further ado, here is my interview with the heal your gut guy, mike Merrill. All right, hello everyone, welcome back to today's episode. My guest is Mike Merrill. He is perhaps better known as the heal your gut guy and I first came across Mike many years ago and I've probably read more than the average coach when it comes to gut health and in my estimation, mike probably knows more about the gut than most doctors do, especially most gastroenterologists, and he does. He knows so because he's had to live out, he had to find his own path to healing because the medical profession let him down and really, like so many of us, he got into coaching, kind of just as his own quest to get well.
Speaker 1:And this may not be the title you want, but you've probably won the prize for the worst case of gut health that I've ever heard of before. And now you're on the other end of that and you're teaching people. You've got a very successful business teaching countless people how to heal their gut, and so I'm thrilled to talk to you today because I've been following your work for years. I took one of your courses several years ago and just you dialed me into a lot of what I didn't know about health, and I compared that to other books I was reading by well-credential doctors and your information stands out. You've done a great job of studying the gut and walking out a healing journey and then turning that into your own message ministry slash business, and it's been fun to watch you over the years. So, mike, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me on. I'm excited to chat with you and show people what I did to get better, because I just want to save you guys. All the time pain, you listen to the wrong person, you're wasting a lot of money and being in a lot of pain. The way I help people, you could literally have all your food and tolerance has gone in a day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, there's something different about your parents.
Speaker 2:It sounds ridiculous, but you're one thought away from at least not being completely healed, but at least stopping the injury so your gut can actually complete the healing process, the inflammation process.
Speaker 1:Cool, all right. So before we get too much into the weeds of just helping people, think more strategically about their health, tell us the story of Mike Merrill, because your story is so fascinating to me. So when did your symptoms start? What were you diagnosed with? What kind of process did you guys tell us about that?
Speaker 2:So I was diagnosed in 2010. It was kind of like right when I was finishing up college, but growing up I always had diarrhea like just all the time, always farting, always super underweight. So I'm about a little under six foot tall and I weighed about 150 pounds, so it's pretty skinny. I look at my old pictures and I don't know how anybody took me seriously when I was 150 pounds, talking about gut health. So I had a fistula pop up. I started having some.
Speaker 1:So tell people two things, what were you diagnosed with and what is a fistula? So I was diagnosed with Crohn's, which is kind of like the Rolls Royce If you're going to go big on gut health problems, go Crohn's, because that's about as bad as a kid.
Speaker 2:I had inflammation in my small and large intestine so I should have been diagnosed with Crohn's. This is where you get into the buffoonery of modern medicine. They don't even use their terms correctly. So I had Crohn's and Colitis. Technically, they had inflammation both in the small and large intestine and I had a perianal fistula and fistulas in my small intestine and fistulas is just like these channels start to form. It's just so beat up down there.
Speaker 1:So describe it a little bit more so the listener they don't know what a fistula is. They can. I had almost a second butthole so near my butt. See, there's no limits with me. Brace yourself, people, because it's going to be an honest conversation here.
Speaker 2:So I was in college and stuff, so I had this pimple start showing up by my butt, my butthole, and I'm like what is this? You pop it and you're like, oh okay, it's like I don't know. I'm like I don't think it's an STD or Like what is this? And then it just Sometimes it would just start just gushing pus and blood and sometimes it would close up and then it would fill up with pus and just It'd be an abscess and it's a wound that cannot heal and it can create all sorts of problems because it gets trapped behind flesh. So yeah, not fun.
Speaker 1:No at all. So Crohn's ankylitis and fistulas and constant diarrhea and the symptoms and the ache that goes with. It is kind of a short version. Did I miss anything important in?
Speaker 2:there and I was super underweight. I'm surprised more people didn't call me out on it. But I look at my old pictures and I just shudder yeah, kind of like a skeletal or without muscle. Yeah, and I would just shovel. I would try to eat a lot and knee clean and I still wouldn't put on weight.
Speaker 1:Okay, so tell us anything you want to about what you perceived led you there, but then I really want people to hear the journey you went through, from starting to go to the doctors, and what they did or didn't do to help you.
Speaker 2:The fistula definitely motivated me to be like, oh, I got to go to the doctor and figure out what's wrong with me and I remember getting diagnosed. I remember I went into the doctors with my dad and they had the drug stamped on the room and the hospital wing and on their pen and on their clipboard and the brochure that they handed me and I was just like this is like super fishy. And they sat me down and they're like hey, you have Crohn's disease. It's incurable. Yada, yada, yada, yada. Hey, go on this drug that's stamped on my chest and on my underwear. And I was just like, okay, let me stop you right there. I'm like this skinny 20 year old at the time and I'm talking to this grown man. I'm like, hey, stop, Okay, enough with the BS, what's the root cause? And they're like, well, we don't know. I'm like, well, do your job. Then, Dude, figure it out. I'm going to get a second opinion, Thanks Bye. My dad's like that's rude. I'm like, well, they need to do their job.
Speaker 1:Okay, Tell me about. I remember I heard you on the Y-Stradition podcast many years ago and you talked about how, the one of the times you came back to the doctor, the doctor had some gut issues and put himself on some sort of diet and wasn't even sharing that information with you. Tell me about that story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I blocked that out of my memory. So oh so, like I think two years later, after getting diagnosed like I was like all right, all right, I'm going to try the drugs, I'm going to try, you know, the biologics for a year and I did that and didn't see any improvement whatsoever. And then I went to go talk to the doctor, like one last time. He's like okay, we're going to try something. And you know, on the side I was experimenting with the specific carbohydrate diet. I felt a little bit better.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I felt a lot better at the time, but in reality it was only a little bit. And you know, I told him about this diet and he goes look, look, I understand, I understand why you're excited about this. You know I'm on the diet myself and I've been seeing this guy for like a year and I just, I just remember screaming into the phone and he, he was I'll see you in a year when I got a cut out your colon and yeah, well, for those who don't know that the last time I went to a GI doctor, yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 1:And for those who don't know the end state of where Crohn's goes if you don't, if you go the medical route, as they cut out part of your colon and you end up pooping in a bag the rest of your life that you get to carry around, which is all sorts of not fun. So so you diverted from that path of medicating your symptoms into oblivion and trying to heal differently. So what did you start changing and what did you do differently? Tell us about the healing journey.
Speaker 2:Well, well, first I went the diet route and you know I did specific carbohydrate diet for a while and then somebody told me about the gaps diet. And you know, usually when you hear about the gaps diet, somebody said, hey, you got to read this book. It's by this guy named, you know, weston A Price. He was a dentist in the 1930s and he went and he investigated what healthy primitive populations were eating and they were so healthy that a 0% cavity rate.
Speaker 2:I had the book in my hands like the next day and like I just devoured that book and I was like, all right, well, I guess I'm going to eat like the Swiss population, I'm just going to eat like sourdough, rye bread and raw milk and you know everything's going to be okay. But so so I, you know I went that Weston a Weston a price route for a long time and you know I felt a lot better. I was still pretty skinny and still kind of walking this holistic tightrope, you know. But I started heal your gut guy. And I just noticed like some people just never got better, like no matter how well they followed the diet or you know what supplements they took. And you know that's what eventually eventually led me to. What I do now is where I help people. You know, from a German new medicine perspective and the work of Dr Hammer.
Speaker 2:He could look at someone's brain seats, he's going to know exactly what diseases they had. And when somebody told me that I was like, I was like what and you know dove, right in.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, okay, well, let me. Before we get to German new medicine, let me. Let me zoom out and see if I'm tracking here. So one of the things I've appreciated about you is similar to me, your coach, and so you see things often through our holistic or simpler lens. I'd say, and I think we would both say, that you know, being sick or having some sort of health challenge is really the result of one of three things, or some combination of these three, and it's malnutrition, it's being poisoned or it's toxic thinking. So one does that make sense? You agree with that?
Speaker 2:I agree with that, but it's. It's very rare in today's society that malnutrition is causing the majority of somebody's problems. Okay, that's so. Here's an example. So if somebody has scurvy, you know they don't have enough vitamin C, you know they're bleeding or whatever you give them vitamin C, they're better in a week. That that that's it. Like that scenario I just described right there is, is I find it at least people who I help is very rare.
Speaker 1:Okay, so most of your customer client base is North American and probably overfed rather than underfed or lacking enough breadth of nutrition.
Speaker 2:Most of them have nutritional deficiencies because it goes straight into the toilet. Yeah, for other reasons.
Speaker 1:So yeah, okay, okay, well. So I guess with those let's, we kind of talked a little bit about the nutritional end of it with Weston A Price and more or less so. If it's malnutrition or if a nutrition poison and toxic thinking are the big three, then anything else you want to say about your nutritional philosophy or Weston Price in particular, that would kind of close the loop on that aspect.
Speaker 2:You know, learning, learning what Weston A Price saw is like I don't know. I don't know how. I don't understand how diet is as crazy as it is today. It's such an easy topic Get the most nutrients into you as possible and as easy to digest as possible. But like you know, like if you were to, you would have like somebody like chew and vomit something up to you if you really optimized it that well, you know, like Kind of a gross thought.
Speaker 1:How do I make this easy to digest?
Speaker 2:Somebody. Okay, he's going to eat it for me and then regurgitate it for me, but he just saw the primitives were just trying to eat the most nutrient dense foods in their environment.
Speaker 1:Well, a lot of it was void of the tools of industry to do the preserving and the denaturing it in so many different ways, or removing it from natural environments where food would normally be cultivated. Is that a fair summary?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, you know. I definitely think farming practices today, you know, affect the quality of the food. But you know, when someone thinks kale has more nutrients than liver, it's just like yeah, that is a head scratcher. It's just like there's so many people who think butter is bad for you. Like it doesn't make any sense. It's like that's how they discovered the first vitamin. Like what are you talking about?
Speaker 1:All right, so let's talk poison then. So tell us, from your perspective, what are some things that will maybe keep it focused to the gut, but you can broaden it if you want what are some of the things that poison the body, or the gut in particular, if we're looking for egregious things we can do to unburden the body.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think some of like the easiest wins as far as like taking like easy stressors off the body.
Speaker 1:I would say getting what did I do? Yeah, anything about that as well.
Speaker 2:You know I really don't harp too much on like diet because you know the big problem that I run in. People are like almost, you know, orthoresic. They're literally afraid of the very thing that keeps them alive. Like they don't know if they can have, like they don't know if they can have baby food, like they don't know if they can tolerate dairy. And if you like, sit down and you have a conversation about it, like literally, like what food is easier to digest than like milk? Or even raw milk, milk what's easier to digest than milk? Raw milk, okay, what's easier to digest than that? Like okay, maybe yogurt. Like, maybe yogurt. And I was like, okay, like what foods have been broken down more than that? And you're really at a loss. And it's like okay. So you just said you can't digest the easiest to digest food on the planet. Like what makes you? Yet you can digest, you know, meat, which is also a great food, but it technically much harder to digest. It requires much more work from your digestive system.
Speaker 1:Like you're already like yeah, okay, well, blowing people's mind with like, how does the gut function or how does it work to essentially disassemble our food and turn it into something useful is a fascinating thing. Yeah, but I think where you're. So I guess in my mind, to close the loop on the things that are disruptive to the gut, you'd probably say things like preservatives and industrial chemicals and glyphosate.
Speaker 2:Tab water.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:It's great to avoid those things, but you'll, it's like it's I don't know what. Where do you live?
Speaker 1:I live in a panhandle of Florida.
Speaker 2:You're in the pan. Okay, depending on where you live in America, like good luck, good luck finding organic food. And even that organic food is going to have stuff in it. So you know it's those. Things aren't great, those like I wish we could live in a world where glyphosate, like literally wasn't on every piece of bread you're going to eat. Even if it was organic, right, you probably have to grow it in your own backyard to have it, not have glyphosate or something in it.
Speaker 1:And then it's probably in the rain Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, and then so. But the but the panic and fear. Okay, let's say that does we're going to use video game terminology. Let's say that does one HP of damage that glyphosate?
Speaker 1:One hit point for those non-video gamers.
Speaker 2:What it does. One hit point it does. One hell. All right, freaking out about that food and having a little mini, mini, a panic attack that puts your gut into overdrive is going to do way worse, way worse.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's going to do 10 just in that one instance, but you're going to eat bread every single day for the rest of your life and it's going to be thousands of hit points over the course of your life. But I wish there wasn't glyphosate in it. I really do Right.
Speaker 1:Well, it's not that they're irrelevant. So the quality of the food and the things done to food, that ways that industry tinkers with it or modifies it or preserves it, or that puts poisonous things like food color and chemicals or whatever into the food, is still there in your mind. Part of and where I'm going it's just your paradigm or the way that you have, over the years, matured into your perspective now of how you help people. What you're driving at is there's something very emotional and mental about how the gut functions that is often overlooked in the paradigms we have about how to heal it, and often we're stuck in reasoning from one sliver of what's influential and we're missing the 800-pound gorilla that's actually driving some of the symptoms people are having. Is that kind of a good assessment of how you've grown your business over the years?
Speaker 2:And here's a different way to put it I don't know how to help somebody get better if you're going to be afraid to gloot in the whole time. I don't know how to help you. Yeah, I can't Because you have awesome willpower but you're going to run in. I don't know what you're going to if you're afraid to gloot and you're going to be afraid of something else. When I had people doing a perfect West NA price diet if they didn't have their conflict, that's putting their gut in an Edo overdrive, that their life was super stressful and stuff like I can't help them get better. But I can get somebody eating McDonald's get better. That can get their conflict under control. I can help them get better and put on 20, 20, 30 pounds or whatever health goals they're trying to reach.
Speaker 1:If you could resolve the mental or emotional or life conflict, not necessarily optimizing what you'd call. One hit point of energy Is that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, okay yeah. And again, mcdonald's in Europe is healthier than McDonald's. Just to be healthy at one point.
Speaker 1:If you can believe that right, what they have morphed into is a different animal. So, okay, well then tell us. So the one of the things that has become important in your coaching business is the concept and you mentioned it earlier of German New Medicine. So tell us a little bit about that theory, because there's, essentially we've got the germ theory, the terrain theory, and then there's German New Medicine as a third or another theory. So you want to maybe define each of those and then kind of tell us your perspective on where German New Medicine has an ability to help where other things haven't.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so germ theory. So first you kind of think it's just like a nutritional deficiency or I'm eating too many bad foods and my gut's overworked. And then you got to think to yourself, why do none of the professional eaters have gut issues? And then I was like, oh, it's an infection, it's got to be an infection. And this theory has been disproved.
Speaker 2:If you just go read Dr Crohn's book. He disproved it 100 years ago. He thought it was tuberculosis of the gut, which is actually a tuberculosis infection which is actually very interesting when you learn German New Medicine. So he thought it was an infection. So he would take bad gut culture and he would put it into rats and dogs and cats and stuff his test lab animals and they would never come down with gut issues, they're always fine. And then he would. So he's like, okay, well, all right, well, let me test this again. And so he would take good bacteria from a healthy person and put it into sick people and they very rarely ever get better. If you Google that right now, there's I don't know, there's studies that say like, oh, we have like 100% cure rate. I've never seen anybody get better. What's the book?
Speaker 1:Okay, so you're talking there's a book about that from 100 years ago, and then you're speaking specifically of the current idea of fecal transplants as a way to shift infections or reset the ecology of someone's gut.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So yeah, the book I'm referencing is by Dr Borrell Crone. He coined the term. Well, he actually didn't coin the term Crohn's disease. He never wanted to call it that. He wanted to call it regional ilitis, because it's just inflammation in the ilium, the last part of the small intestine. But yeah, he thought it was an infection and he tested it and turns out it wasn't. And I don't think terrain theory might have been a thing, but he didn't really talk about that much. But what he did mention he says usually when someone shows up in the ER it's usually after something pretty stressful. And in one of his books, like literally the first sentence in his book is like let me tell you the personality of somebody with Crohn's incolitis. They're angry, they're difficult to work with, they're mad all the time. They won't admit it most of the time.
Speaker 1:All right, which are things you can be filing or listening and thinking of yourself? Do I have any of those, especially if you have gut issues? But okay, so we've got germ theory, which is kind of the idea that there's a boogeyman virus from somewhere on the planet or outer space or wherever that's coming, it's trying to take over our body and kill us. And then there's the terrain theory, which says really what matters more is the overall constitution, the susceptibility, the diversity of that person, and it's more important the overall health of someone and the breadth of what they do than whether or not this bug can actually come and do anything. Did I summarize that well in your perspective?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I'll touch on germ theory one more time because that was something I obsessed about. So you can buy Candida and E coli from a lab for like 20 bucks and you can test it. And that's what I did. I grew it on bread and then I would test different essential oils and stuff on it. And so you know, oregano essential oil literally one drop and nothing's going to grow, like it won't spread when if you use like peppermint oil, like you got to use like six drops to get to kill Candida. And so I created this protocol where you're taking that oregano oil and then like smashing down probiotics and you know it still, you know, wasn't as effective as you think it would be. It's like like literally I just watched it multiple times, I like it, I just it does not grow if I use one drop and I still have a screwed up, messed up mic, cut microbiome, like what's going on.
Speaker 1:Okay, so maybe some lift your overall constitution, but it didn't necessarily finish the job, is what you're saying, okay?
Speaker 2:I would probably still use that if parasites were involved.
Speaker 1:Okay, cool, I'll ask you about that in a little bit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, I went down the germ, the terrain theory rabbit hole. What did I? I got down to there's something called like the somatid cycle, where they there's one terrain theory scientist he would watch the cells create like bacteria and then like he would watch the bacteria come out of your own cells the bad guys and then he would watch fungus and Candida come out of your own cells and he would watch your own cells make tumor cells and he's like, wow, this is. And he saw kind of like the cycle to it. He's like it's very interesting that these things come out of your own cells, because right now we have this idea that they just like, they just appear out of nowhere and it's like science or they're flying around. They come out of our own cells.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it's very different to the pleomorphism and such that there's theories around it. What I guess for the listener, what we're digging into is some of the theories or concepts behind where disease come from. And, as you guys know from the intro to this show, I like to stretch our thinking, I like to help us entertain. Maybe there's something else to a different paradigm and it can be helpful to entertain other theories that might explain where things are coming from. And that's a lot of what you've done over the years and your work to heal yourself and then test out what you found worked for you and find, oh shoot, there's areas where this isn't as helpful for other people, and so that led you into studying German new medicine. So tell us, I guess, when you first came across that and what was it about that perspective that added more of a holistic picture or helped you fill out the other theories that you were working with?
Speaker 2:So I had one student tell me about it and at first I was like I don't know if they didn't get all the important details across to me at first, but I was like that doesn't make any sense, like what are you talking about? But then he came back like I saw him like a month later and he gained like 30 pounds. What?
Speaker 2:And this is after this person, I think they fasted for like they like fasted for like a couple of weeks while they had all their nutrients I've eaten into them and it like literally did nothing for them. He didn't do anything, he wasn't eating anything, yet he was still having diarrhea. I was like crazy and yeah, and then he started doing GMM and he gained like 20 pounds, and so that's when I started to take it seriously. But when I started to see that I don't know where I heard it, but I heard that Dr Homer could look at your brain CT scan and know exactly what was wrong with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah there was something about it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like if there's a ring in your brainstem, you know, at six o'clock. Well, let me get this right. So if there's a ring in your brainstem at nine o'clock, I know you have colitis. If it's at 12 o'clock, I know you have Crohn's or region earlyitis. So, and then I got my brain scan done and it looked just like it should know, like oh my God, oh. A few other brain scans and always where it was, always where it should have been, and it has this very like when you see all the relays on the brain, they're all like lined up right next to each other, like, like it makes sense. It looks like we were intelligently designed.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, well, so if you, if I understand you got more depth of understanding of German new medicine than I do, but if you somebody's interested in this. The basic idea, as far as I understand it, is that there's a correlation between stressful events in your life, or what they'd call conflicts or conflict shock something unexpected that happens to you, and the symptoms that we then develop physically in life. And as a coach doing the work I've done, I can't tell you how many times I've been able to correlate somebody's health issues to oh, this is more. It's got its roots in something mental and emotional or some trauma big T or little T trauma that you've lived through. And so talk to us about the idea of conflict shocks, or what you call indigestible morsels that really manifest as problems, or specifically as gut problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so so you know the way I like to explain German. New medicine, like one sentence, is every, every organ has a survival function. So when we experience a conflict, shock, a stressful event that catches us off guard, that we can't like, the body's like oh my God, we're going to die. All right, put a survival tool into overdrive and when that conflict is is alive. For you know, depends on what organ and it depends on how stressful the conflict is. You know, when that organs and overdrive for too long, you know it starts to get all get beat up and we get symptoms, right, and again, this can change the symptoms. You know that it can change depending on what organ we're talking about, because each organ does something and functions differently. So right.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the things I appreciate about you, or what you when I watched some of your videos on this, and the way that you and I could correlate this to other clients as well where they the words that we speak give windows into what might be going on, or where some of this type of whether it manifests or what might be the source of it, and you hear phrases like I just can't all right, I can't process this or that, this makes me sick to my stomach, or I need to get something off my chest, or such and such makes my skin crawl, or I've got the weight of the world on my shoulders, and those can be linguistic clues to some of the biological things or the historical events in your life that led to some of that. So, in your experience one, does that make sense? Are there some words or emotions or phrases people might get into that help them identify some of this? I guess these indigestible emotional morsels that leave them emotionally constipated, so to speak.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's so in German New Medicine. You know we're dealing with a subconscious mind, so it's pretty tricky. You know I personally I use a lot of crap and shit language. I thought that's a bunch of dumb shit, dumb crap. I don't want to get the shit out of here.
Speaker 2:And maybe that's why my brain put my colon into overdrive, because its job is to hold and get rid of poop. But we don't know. We don't know unless we can get a transcript of what my subconscious is thinking. We don't know. But the way that we do this in German New Medicine is we start with this. We use the symptoms to help us, like what our brain is or what our psyche is picking up as a threat. It's like ah, toothpicks, toothpicks and diarrhea. Okay, my brain thinks toothpicks. Somehow toothpicks are a reminder of the conflict of crap I want to get rid of. I was like, oh yeah, the guy tried to stab me with toothpicks and you might not be consciously aware of that, you might not be like, oh, I remember toothpicks, I got, almost got stabbed. But until you make that conscious connection, then your subconscious might be oh okay, we can have diarrhea every time we see a toothpick.
Speaker 1:now, yeah, okay, I can turn that process off.
Speaker 2:We can turn it off now, all right.
Speaker 1:The strong emotions often are. They're biological in anyways, like anger or fear or loneliness. So they talk to us about how they can trigger gut episodes and the connection between emotional health and gut health.
Speaker 2:Well, sometimes, sometimes there's not like. Sometimes you won't get emotional about it, sometimes you will, Sometimes it makes sense. Oh yeah, every time I fight with my friend I get diarrhea. That kind of makes sense. But every time I pick up a toothpick I get diarrhea. There was times I would go into Sprouts, which is like an organic grocery store here. I would get diarrhea and I was like I want to be here. I have a smile on my face.
Speaker 1:I'm like, well, what's going on?
Speaker 2:And I just realized, oh, I think they didn't have raw milk once and I threw a hissy fit five years ago. And then I go the next day I went to Sprouts and everything was fine.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But you, so you recognize there was an anger trigger for you. Is that fair? The hissy fit over not having the milk you wanted was yeah, that was five years ago. Right.
Speaker 2:Now I was going in with a smile on my face and it wasn't like oh yeah, I remember that one time. And even like going in there like yeah, those idiots, they didn't have raw milk. Like I was like all right, I'm going to go to Sprouts and see what cool stuff they have.
Speaker 1:Uh-huh, oh, where's the bathroom? Yeah, interesting, okay, well, so what was it that helped you get over the anger of that? Once you realize it, talk people through, because I imagine there's probably a handful of listeners who are going to have maybe anger issues or loneliness. Your emotion tends to eat at them. That keeps them from having the in this case, the gut health or the overall health they're looking for. What are some of the ways that you historically have helped yourself process anger or other strong emotions that may have something to do with the symptoms you manifested?
Speaker 2:So, um, I'm trying to figure out where to start. So I like understanding things and emotions is a it's a very tricky word, like when I was trying to help people, when I was trying to, like, educate myself and try to help people better with you know, coming to, you know, not feel anger and fear all the time and resolve their conflicts. I was like, well, what's an emotion? And I would go into the psychology books and I was like this is a horrible definition, like I don't know how this passes. So I got to the etymology of the word, like where it stemmed from, and I guess it's like it's like a French and like a Latin word and it means to move up, to stir and to move, and so I kind of came up with this definition of an emotion.
Speaker 2:An emotion is a feeling inside of us that brings us closer to things that, oh, this makes me happy, I need water, I'm in a desert, I'm happy. And then negative emotions, such as anger. What is? It's something, it's a response to something that's threatening, threatening my survival, and I feel like I can fight it. And then, if fear kicks in, that's something threatening my survival and I can't fight it.
Speaker 1:And powerless on. That threatening thing is the fear element.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that can change on a dime. So and that's one of the kind of the qualms I have with G&M, like some of their conflict definitions are like indigestible anger and I'm like it's not always anger, it can swap back and forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, anger to me is secondary.
Speaker 1:It's a symptom that I'm afraid of something else happening, and that could be abandonment, that could be being disconnected from some important work or any number of things. But frustration or anger can be one of the ways people manifest the fear, or it can be detachment. It's been a. It's a hairy, interesting mix to really get to the root of someone's whether it's an anger issue or to find the primary emotional drivers. But I love how you framed what is the word actually mean. You're stirring up something and it's the stirring that, to use my in the moment metaphor kind of clouds up the water of whatever you're dealing with and it's harder to see it, or it makes you feel things strongly because you don't have clarity. Is that reasonable?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because like I had a comment on one of my TikTok videos today and it's I'm always curious, like I'm really curious, like how psychology deals with this stuff. But like you know, if you're afraid of this is one analogy I use all the time so like like, let's say you're afraid of dogs Like why are you afraid of dogs? Are you afraid? Do you like dogs? Are you afraid of dogs?
Speaker 1:I am one of the people who is I guess you could say not a fan of dogs. And often if people find that out about you. They're like what are you dead inside, Like what's wrong with you? You're allergic to love? No, apparently. Yes, I'm allergic to slumber and employees who don't pull their own weight, but that's my so you know you have.
Speaker 2:I have more positive memories of dogs than you do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've got scars on my hands from being bit by dogs, which may have something to do with there you go To back myself up, though I didn't like the dog before that happened. But anyway, and maybe the dog, yeah, who is?
Speaker 2:So like let's say, let's take a kid for example, and you know, a dog comes in like, licks his face, but like the whole before that, his mom was always like dogs are dangerous, dogs are dangerous. So this dog perfectly nice dog comes up and starts licking him in the face and he freaks out because I think the dog's going to eat him, like we're in reality. You know, the dog was just being playful. So it's like everything is based off of our past memories and that's very hard to keep track of, because you know what teachers, parents, tv shows, books, you know, tell us. But if you are get super angry about something, then you have subconscious memories there telling you like, hey, this is dangerous and you can fight it. Okay, so get angry.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or you can run from it.
Speaker 2:Or you can run, yeah, or it's fear and you just like play dead.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:Or run, or you know.
Speaker 1:So Well, it's like the whole. The idea of like is that as you're walking down a sidewalk and you see a stick, you don't know if it's a stick or a snake and you can panic if you think it's a snake or you can just assume it's a stick and you're. You don't trigger that fear, that visceral response to what it is you're looking at. And so much of our life comes back to those stories we're telling ourselves about what's real and what's not, and to realize they have real biological implications is it's a freeing thought on some of it, because it gives you another set of variables to explore and really disarm a lot of the things that end up causing you poor health and on various levels, and I think that is it safe to say that's a lot of what you've ended up helping people see over the years as you've worked as the heal your gut guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like it's. You know, at first, like I didn't know how to help people, like not get angry about this or that, I was like just stuff it down, right, and I was like I'm going to suppress which is, which is really just like being like okay, you can't consciously deal with this, put the gut and overdrive even more.
Speaker 1:Right. Hold that beach ball underwater for as long as you can, and then, when you fall asleep, it's coming out like it has to yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a really good analogy.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So, like you have, like, like you have to have memories that override those old ones, like we have to have new beliefs, like how, like, what needs to change, like, in order for you not to be like, not view this as a threat anymore.
Speaker 1:Right. Well, it comes back to food phobias too, right? If you're afraid of everything you eat or you're constantly anxious about what this might do to me, that sure enough, that can, that can be the source of the gut problem, more so than the actual food. Is that something you've found in your work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, like when someone gets over their food phobias and you know it's easier said than done, depending on the person you know that it literally can cut their symptoms in half, usually like in a day, while eating, going to McDonald's the next day.
Speaker 1:Yeah, You've stopped telling yourself one story this is actually a stick, not a snake, and it's not going to harm me. And that unto itself it's not that what's in the food is necessarily irrelevant if it's loaded with mercury because it's potato grown and it's an in and out fry that is causing all sorts of other problems.
Speaker 2:But I guess Like when people call gluten, when they treat it like it's mercury. It's like no, it's a fricking protein. It's like one of the most important nutrients.
Speaker 1:And doesn't have to be your death sentence or your gut bomb when you eat it. And sometimes recognizing those mental cues that you give your body can be at least part of and I would totally agree, because that's something I deal with a lot as a coach as well is I have to figure out why this person's afraid of this, that or the other before we can calm them down enough to physically feel the relief in their body. That then reason gets to spend more time in the room and the emotions and the dialogue between that and logic can happen. And so there's one. There's a fascinating story I've heard you tell before about two Russian twins joined at the hip and they-.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's super interesting, but it's well. It's fascinating because what it? It's an interesting window into the idea that there's something I put in me and it's causing an infection or it's causing my symptoms. And so there's there's two twins joined at the hip and they have different. They have the same, they're sharing the same circulatory system, the same blood, and yet their symptoms are different. So tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2:They also share a colon and one oh wow Rectum, and that's like normal, and sometimes I have to do surgery to like connect things. But like, yeah, it's very, very interesting. But yeah, that's like, yeah, they have two separate brains, so and they're deciding which organ to put into overdrive, Like these, like these two Masha and Dasha, I think, were their names, you know they, they, they did everything together. Yet they had two very different personalities.
Speaker 2:One was kind of a bully and one was kind of like, I guess more sweet, I guess you could say in kind and yeah, it's kind of a sad, tragic story, but they would, you know, one would drink and get, would drink but didn't like it, like to, and they would both get drunk together. Wow, but one would get sick, you know, get a cold, and the other one would Weird, Especially when it was like mono and you know it's supposed to be super contagious.
Speaker 1:Right, fascinating. And then you've you've told how your, your story and your upbringing contrasted from your brother and how that was he, the way he ate, the way you ate. You were breastfed, he wasn't, and and tell the listener a little bit about the differences between the two of you.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So you know, if you compare, like me and my youngest brother, because I think he went on a formula pretty quick compared to the rest to me, you know it. You know we both had a very similar diet growing up, but you know he doesn't have any digestive issues and I do, and it's just, if you look at our personalities you can really see it Like I was quick to get angry and quick to get frustrated and he he's just, you know, pretty, pretty cool and calm and reserved.
Speaker 1:Okay, Well, I guess what we're laying out for you, the listener, is just that there are. There really is something. If you have always been in the, what am I supposed to swallow? What foods are bad for me? And that's all I need to focus on to get my gut well or to improve my health on some level. Well, hopefully we're broadening your perspective that there's more going on in here, and so another thing I'd love for you to speak to you, mike, is just the helping somebody have a realistic expectation when it comes to healing. So talk to us about what's a from healing, from a significant gut issue, because that's really your lane, where what is a is. Is there a typical path or what? What does it help to? What does it take to help someone get on the road to recovery, and how long does that process usually take?
Speaker 2:I mean, it really depends, and like where they are with their conflict. So you know, let's take somebody who has only had colitis for like a year. Okay, Well, I can actually give you a better example. One guy came to me once. He was a friend and he's like, oh my God, my gut is, it hurts so bad. Like, should I go on the carnivore diet? I've been watching a lot of carnivore videos. I said, no, don't do anything. Like what? What was something stressful? That really just happened. He was like oh, oh my God, I just broke up with my girlfriend. I couldn't get her out of my house. I finally got her out of my house yesterday he was in a week. He was fine. Fine, he was developing extra gut cells to help digest her, to get her out of the house. And then, when he got her out of the house, oh, I don't need these extra gut cells anymore, gets rid of them and you know, guess what that hurts. And he wasn't traumatized by the experience.
Speaker 1:Most importantly, if he was going to cry.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm never going to meet another girl again. All this stuff. Then I could see it being off and on off and on off and on until he comes to peace with it. So for him five days.
Speaker 1:Wow, but if who's having constant flare ups, what's the?
Speaker 2:yeah, but so so it's like. So if somebody you know has been diagnosed for a year, you know, not a lot, you know it depends, but usually not a lot of damage has been done. You know. You know I've seen lots of people gain in like a month or two like 30 pounds. It's not uncommon. The healthy weight gain you mean, yeah, like, yeah, like there were skeletons, like they were, like it's, it's like uncomfortable to look at some of their old pictures and they'll put on. When they can put on 30 pounds in like a month or two, probably two months, that's a lot of weight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting. I remember reading about what was it Unbroken, the Louis Ampirini story and they showed pictures of these guys in these Japanese POW camps. And you're right, you look at them like gaunt skeletons. And as soon as the airplanes flew over with the wars over and the airplanes are dropping all these food and supplies those guys poked right back up before they left Japan. It was like it just looks dramatically different.
Speaker 1:That conflict was over and it's like their body could finally go back into a healing health phase.
Speaker 1:But yeah, some of them had these and there's the PTSD to deal with of what they went through. But I think that, if I'm hearing you correctly, that's kind of what you're describing. There's a trauma that happens and then the body rebuilds the health and as it's doing that, there can be a what you might think of as a relapse phase or a there's a healing thing that it goes through to kind of purge some of the buildup of what it had to process, and for some people that can be a discouraging element. And then, so if I'm understanding you correctly, there's a phase where the body is in a conflict and it's dealing with, it's got a process going on that's uncomfortable and producing symptoms. When that conflict passes, the body can start healing, but often there's a what, objectively, from the outside or even within that person, feels like a setback or a flare up. That can be part of a cleansing response. Is that? Did I capture that well, or how would you nuance my thinking on that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know flare up is it's not a precise enough term. Okay, you know that's just the vocabulary everyone uses. So in German, new medicine, you know we have a few terms to kind of, so we like better under so we can have like a better conversation about things, because a flare up can mean different things to different people. So let's say you know your girlfriend breaks up with you or whatever, and I can't digest her, whatever the gut will start developing extra gut cells to help you digest women or digest her or digest money or whatever.
Speaker 2:Whatever it is, it's the thing you can't digest. And Dr Hammer tested these extra cells and they produced extra digestive juice and they digested food 10 times faster than normal gut cells, than normal digestive juice. And so when that conflict gets resolved, you know you get a new girlfriend or she comes back or whatever. I don't. These cells are high maintenance. My brain is going into, you know, like processing more information. It gets rid of them. And that's when. That's when you go to the hospital and you're like, oh my God, there's blood flying out of my butt. But someone who knows German medicine, they would, you know. They look down and they see blood in the toilet and they go oh yeah, I've been through some stress lately. Okay, the blood started, you know, right when she brought her soup case back in the door.
Speaker 1:You know, maybe they go to the hospital.
Speaker 2:They're like oh, my God, I'm losing so much blood. She'll probably get a blood transfusion. But we're not freaking out like, oh my God, I have, oh I don't know, like they don't like if someone who knows German medicine will be like oh okay, this could be part of a healing response.
Speaker 1:is what you're saying?
Speaker 2:This is like my body's not broken, Like I might need help, but like okay, this is like I know what's going on here.
Speaker 1:Well, it's almost like is it tell me if I'm making a decent approximation? It's like catching a cold or coming down with a I call it cold now an unscheduled detox. It's a. Your body goes through a set of things to purge or rid your body of things that have built up and need to be eliminated, and so that can be mucus or skin rashes, or it can be you poop or pee more, you vomit. There's things the body does in order to open the exits and get things out, and that's actually healing your body, even though it's highly unpleasant at times.
Speaker 2:And the same thing applies to a cold, which again, is a broad term. It could be the larynx, the bronchials, it could be the lungs, and they all. It's again, it depends on what tissue we're referring to, but they all have this process of creating extra cells to help you deal with the conflict, or eroding.
Speaker 2:Hey you need more air to come in. Okay, let's erode the bronchials so that there's more, so that the passage is wider. And then when you resolve the conflict, it was like, okay, well, now we need to heal this, and then that's when you would get the majority of the symptoms.
Speaker 1:So there's a very similar process in every tissue our body has Interesting so it sounds like in the exercise world we talk about hypertrophy and atrophy, we talk about the muscles increasing their size or working capacity or shrinking it, and they do that in response to stimulus, and the soreness you get after a workout is not often pleasant, but it's actually a sign the body's healing and adapting, and sometimes the gut or other parts of the body can be that way, is that?
Speaker 2:This is an emergency adaptation that we preferably don't want to do, but as far as the mind sees it, we need to do this or we're going to die, which is usually not the case, but that's how our brain sees it Okay.
Speaker 1:Well, talk to us about whether it's in the conflict active or the conflict resolution, if I have those clear enough in my head there. Talk to us about how we might help or aid the body and empower it to function a little better and we can maybe suck specifically for gut health or probiotics and digestivates or binders or things like that. Helpful or waste of money, or what are things that people can do to kind of symptomatically give their body a few more tools to work with?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so sorry, that was an open-ended question, well you can take it wherever you want. So what is my approach? Yeah, that'll be fine. I feel like my job nowadays is to just modify beliefs in people's heads, because that literally is important.
Speaker 2:Even if a diet is going to fix somebody which it isn't. But even if it did, I would still have to change a thought in your memory, in your head or create a belief in you to eat that diet if that were the case, if diet got you better. So I'm dealing with a lot of people who think diet's going to get them better. I have to kill that belief and then teach them German, New Medicine, because I don't know any other way to help somebody be calm and keep their wits about them with blood flying out of there. But if they don't understand what's going on and that's what Dr Hamer would tell you too the first part of therapy is teaching them what they need to know about German.
Speaker 1:They got to get the intellectual buy-in on the process and the symptoms and that goes a long way to it becomes the getting at the nub of it more than trying to manage symptoms Is that.
Speaker 2:So all these diseases are a response to stress or unexpected stress, and if you don't have German New Medicine to protect you, when you go onto the doctor's office and they tell you you're screwed, we're going to have to cut this and that out and then tell you to do something. That's just going to make everything's worse. That's why the knowledge he wanted to call it the new medicine, because it's how our body actually functions, but it's also German New Medicine is a very confusing term. Some people call it Germanic healing knowledge and I think we can all argue if that's a better term or not, but I think it better explains like it's not a pill, it's a way of looking at how the body works, because right now in modern medicine it's literal shit show.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's genetic Right, which is such an easy way to not describe anything and just blame something.
Speaker 2:It's an infection, but the data doesn't say that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay. So if you've got somebody, they're dialed in or they're at least starting to investigate more holistically and think of the symptoms from that perspective. Is there a place for other things that like? What other things might you add or accompany that perspective, once it's in place, to help somebody heal or speed up the healing process, if possible?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so some of the things we do to support healing is getting nutrients into them like good, and the one thing like we kind of stress from a German New Medicine perspective is your body's just pounding through protein and calories and so and we also work with a lot of people who were in the carnivore keto community and I'm like your body is starving for sugar. So I'm working on trying to get sugar into them, because there are certain foods that just get fully absorbed in the stomach, like coconut water and orange juice, and for somebody who they just can't keep anything down until we get things figured out from the conflict side of things, it's like, dude, you need calories into you. How you? You don't have enough calories in you for you to think properly. So like I know they say sugar is bad, but like start drinking orange juice.
Speaker 1:Or it's like, yeah, maybe don't down the whole thing at once.
Speaker 2:But yeah, yeah, you don't, don't, don't, give yourself like a sugar crash.
Speaker 1:But like, yeah, no, I've had, I've observed similar things that people the people get on the carnivore diet and it can do amazing things to help healing. But there comes a plateau, or there comes a point where the hunger or the craving for carbs gets so, so heavy and I don't think the body's screaming at us for those things for no reason. It has. It's looking for more balance and breadth and you know, modest amounts of them or using them well can be so much more healing. And, to your point, do something to get at the food phobias and okay, so anything else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, protein and getting protein and sugar into somebody, and what would you say, the good fat fits in there, the good fat well, the best fat would be to do the cod liver oil with high mineral butter and butter. Butter is the best, but it's like besides, you know, putting cod liver oil on your. I guess some people do it, but I'm not putting it on my bread. That sounds pretty gross.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've never had it that way and I have no plans to go that way either.
Speaker 2:But butter is your. Butter is your most nutritious fat. It has a D, e and a little K, two in it, like that's sour cream cream. That's going to be your most nutritious fat.
Speaker 1:Okay, got it. So no particular cod liver oil but no supplements. That people really, if you want to heal your gut, these are because there's so much interest in digestive aids or binders or probiotics these days. That are people are just really I can't heal without it and that's there's such a big market for that, in your perspective, is what Um, you know which ones do?
Speaker 2:I recommend the cod liver oil with high mineral butter. I think that's everyone's. Everyone on planet earth will benefit from that, especially some of the gut issues. Okay, your body's in desperate need of those. Um, I like using a whole vitamin C. Okay, um, not, not, I don't. I don't consider a scorpic acid to be vitamin C. It's a very like like I like to get all of my um, you know, like nutrients from like the whole plant source. So, and there's, there's a lot of good products out there for like a whole made from a whole, a whole vitamin C. Way pro, these like really aren't supplements, they're like almost food.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. I have a short list of things. I consider more food than the supplement realm, just to maybe fill in some holes. But, um, okay, nothing else to add there Way protein powder um colostrum.
Speaker 2:colostrum powder is like the best vitamin pill you can take. Okay, I don't really recommend it, but do you do?
Speaker 1:anything different? Or six, uh significant for somebody who's maybe had their gallbladder or appendix taken out Anything different they should think about?
Speaker 2:The appendix? No, because that's really not too much involved with digestion and if it would be involved with anything, it would be with absorption. Okay. But yeah, if you're missing a goldbladder and I actually do recommend people to take enzymes and something to help you digest and deal with that Okay, even taking ox bile with your, because you Right, okay, what about fasting?
Speaker 1:and it's rolling the gut health and there's different versions of what fasting is, but does that something that you work with people through or recommend in any way?
Speaker 2:I normally don't recommend fasting, you know, because usually I work with people who are super underweight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that would make some sense.
Speaker 2:So if I do recommend fasting, it's, you know, intermittent fasting, okay, yeah, it's, yeah, they're you know. The thing that's going to make them get better is them having it's unraveling the trauma in their mind which we could have in this conversation about yeah. Fasting unless they have some spiritual awakening while fasting, it's not going to it's. And to think requires calories and you don't have it is. Most people don't have much fat to burn, when you know, when they come to me.
Speaker 1:Right, I can imagine. Okay, Well, last one on specifics like that. So tell us about your perspective on parasites or how to deal with them, or you know what sign somebody might look to to realize okay, maybe this is parasitic and that is there some particular tests to take or ways that you help people in that realm?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so parasites is something German medicine really. You know, dr Hammer didn't get much time to investigate it, okay, but but the way that we see, you know, bad bacteria and fungi, is that they, they, they come out of our own cells and they aid with the cell removal or the cell restoration when we resolve the conflict. So we kind of like to think that they aid with that. Parasites aid with that.
Speaker 1:But some like a tapeworm or something like. There's probably some we don't want Like is there any anything?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the way I go about it is like yeah, do what you got to do to get rid of them and detox and get them out, but the majority of the symptoms that I see that people complain about you know they'll swear up and down that it's parasites. Where it's, it's really the conflict.
Speaker 1:Hmm, okay, so, okay. So your default is to go after the conflict and if you know you still can't get healing, maybe you look a little deeper and consider that as part of it. But, okay, cool, yeah, well, then I start bringing us home here and wrapping us up. So what would? Can I give us a summary of maybe your top three or five things tips for people dealing with gut issues or if they're just looking for a place to start? Now, what kind of advice do you have to people when they're just like the stuff you imagine on your YouTube channel, or helping people think about this process of healing the gut?
Speaker 2:Yes, so when I have people go through like my 13 day protocol, I kind of have like four like core pillars. Okay, one is becoming educated on you know German medicine, and you know first German medicine and then how the brain responds to trauma and basic knowledge on how our emotions work and stuff like that, and you can go down so many rabbit holes with that. Sure, so that is just not blaming food. And then, if you know, if you do want to optimize your diet a lot of people I work with they don't really care all that much, but if you do want to get all the nutrients that you can into you, start educating yourself. You know the Westinay price way, okay. And then three is start looking for your conflict. Like, just get out a piece of paper and make a timeline.
Speaker 2:In the winter of 2020, in the winter of 2000, is when I first went to the emergency room. What was going on? Yeah, oh, nothing. Hey, the brain is trying to conserve energy. It doesn't want to dig up these old past traumatic experiences Like right, what was going on back?
Speaker 2:then Right, like just be aware that your brain is and if you're somebody like me, where it started in childhood, then you really got to get kind of creative, because I don't remember, like there's still things I'm trying to like figure out. You know it's like, was it when my dad cut my Nintendo chords? Oh painful, I don't want that report card. Oh, that hurts. So, like, how is that trauma? You're just so ungrateful. Yeah, I know, but like that was my trauma, you know, yeah.
Speaker 1:Right. But it's funny the things. I've got six kids and so I look at their responses and I'm like I'm not a perfect parent so I know inevitably I'm going to do something I didn't mean to do. That is a memory they have. That led them a different way and so the awareness to try to not let that happen in their world and cut their Nintendo chord and have them be like scarred for life and angry and mad at the world or whatever, that's significant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like you know, think about, like you know, I was a 90s kid so we had like those brainwashing commercials. Like if I don't have a suker soaker, my life is going to be absolute trash. None of the kids are going to like me because I got some Any words I don't like. I got like the dollar store knockoff version. I want no, I want a super soaker. I don't want this dollar store thing. Like I think all the kids are going to laugh at me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, funny how that works Like.
Speaker 2:That was my amortal. I wanted to have that, I wanted to have this, but I can't.
Speaker 1:I don't have a job?
Speaker 2:Yeah, wow, and depending on your personality and just like you're up like, or you know. However, for me it was that it was like my parents not letting me have the things that I hey. Can I have ice cream? No, hey. Can I have a happy meal? No, I'm sure in my you know I'm not blaming my parents I'm sure they would have gone broke if they would have gave me everything that I demanded. Exactly. But like I've had to dig back into those memories to as a 30 year old, which takes time?
Speaker 1:Sure, okay. So we've got learn German new medicine, we've got study West Sene Price and we've got look through your history to find some of these triggers. So what's the fourth one?
Speaker 2:And then for the foods. It's very important not to be afraid of food. Yeah, like, don't go eating like a ghost pepper, Like that's like literally the only food I'm like, hey, don't go be, don't go be eating ghost peppers. But three is try to figure out what your conflict is, and that might take some time. Write down what you're doing when you get symptoms.
Speaker 2:Mm, hmm, yeah, and the fourth is start coming to peace, start trying to come up, whether you want to use your religion or or whatever, or just I'm way to make sense of this world. Yeah, there's a lot of ways to resolve trauma. Some are better than others, um, but a lot of the time is just consciously being aware of the thing that's putting your gut in overdrive. I could have never guessed it with toothpicks.
Speaker 1:Right. So if you're sure enough, that did it.
Speaker 2:Just becoming consciously aware. Well, 50% of the time, stop symptoms.
Speaker 1:Right on, okay. Well, mike, I think you've given the listener plenty of interesting things to think about and hopefully we have succeeded in stretching their thinking and asking them to explore new ideas. So, um, tell people where they can find you and anything that you might have coming up that you want them to know about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you want to learn more about you know I focus primarily on, you know, intestinal issues and heartburn and stuff like that. But, um, and just, you know I try to focus on that. But yeah, I have a YouTube channel, a Tik Tok and Instagram. That's where I post most of my most active on Tik Tok and YouTube. So, um, I also have a newsletter where I pretty much email every day with lots of stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, go check in there. Yeah, I'm on your list and you're constantly sending out things that stretch people's thinking and um and give them little nuggets of like ooh, other breadcrumbs too. Maybe this is the path to help yourself heal. So they are helpful, thanks.
Speaker 2:Eric, I bet you like it.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, and thank you for taking the time today. I know you've got other things going on, so I appreciate you carving out some time to talk with me today. You're welcome. Thanks for having me on. All right, we'll talk to you guys later, bye-bye, bye.