Welcome to the Adult Share Podcast with Michelle Chalfant,
A place to delve into who we are,
How we got that way,
And explore what it takes to be a healthy grownup.
With an extensive toolbox and guests with varied expertise,
Michelle will lead us on a journey to learn what it's like to live authentically and to love ourselves just the way we are.
And now,
Here's Michelle.
Well,
Hello everybody and welcome to the Adult Share Podcast.
I am Michelle Chalfant and I am so happy to be with you today.
We have on the show a phenomenal guest.
Her name is Dr.
Keisha Ewers and we talked about all things physical,
Physical ailments like autoimmune diseases,
Cancers,
Lyme disease,
Crohn's disease,
Thyroid issues,
You name it,
Leaky gut,
We talked about it.
And I was so excited to have her on because she offers us ways to reverse these diseases and illnesses.
It's phenomenal.
And as you know,
On this show,
On the Adult Share Podcast,
I talk so much about the Adult Share model,
Of course,
Which helps you to live your healthiest life.
And I'm very heavy in the emotional side of things like codependency and relationship issues,
Anxiety,
Depression,
All things like this.
And there's a piece that has to be addressed,
Which is the physical aspect of health.
When we are suffering from an illness such as an autoimmune disease or Crohn's disease or something like that,
Oftentimes it can be very difficult to stay in our emotional balanced place.
And Dr.
Keisha offers us some phenomenal advice that absolutely everybody can apply to help to reverse these illnesses.
And it's a very natural approach.
I'm telling you,
Wait till you hear her story.
It's mind blowing.
She reversed her own rheumatoid arthritis in a matter of months without medications.
That's what I love.
Oh my gosh,
You're going to love this show.
Let me tell you just a little bit about Dr.
Keisha Ewers.
She is an integrative medicine expert.
And when you hear what she has to say,
You will agree she's a medicine expert.
She's a doctor of sexology,
Family practice,
ARNP,
A psychotherapist,
Herbalist.
She is board certified in functional medicine and Ayurvedic medicine and is the founder and the medical director of the Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program.
Dr.
Keisha has been in the medical field for over 30 years.
After conducting the HURT study in 2013,
Which is H-U-R-T and it stands for Healing Unresolved Trauma,
She developed the HURT model for understanding how past childhood trauma impacts adult health.
You know that I am right in line with this model.
She led to the creation of the You Unbroken online program for patients to heal their own trauma and the Mystic Medicine Deep Immersion Healing Retreats that she leads in her home in San Juan Island,
Washington.
Dr.
Keisha is a popular speaker,
Including at Harvard and from the TEDx stage and is the bestselling author of Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle,
The Woman's Guide to Reclaiming Emotional Freedom and Vibrant Health,
The Quick and Easy Autoimmune Paleo Cookbook,
The Anti-Inflammatory Recipes with Seven Ingredients or Less for Busy People,
And Your Libido Story,
A workbook for women who want to find,
Fix,
And free their sexual desire.
You can listen to her at Mystic Medicine Radio Show and of course,
Find more for programs at DrKeisha.
Com.
She is a phenomenal guest.
I am thrilled to have her on today.
Well,
I can only imagine the conversations and comments that are going to come in after this show.
Let me just tell you,
There's a lot of amazing information in this show and it's going to spark some conversations,
No doubt.
So make sure you jump on Instagram and come find me at michelle.
Chalfant,
Michelle.
Chalfant,
And let me know what you think of the show.
And of course,
Tag DrKeisha,
D-R-K-E-E-S-H-A,
And let us know what you think about this episode.
It's going to be episode number 143 at the Adult Chair Podcast.
And don't forget to join my favorite group on Facebook.
It is the Adult Chair Closed Group.
Life can be so hard and that's why I created this group.
It's really a group of just beautiful people that are wanting to get vulnerable and share what's going on with their lives and get that support and that love.
And this group is all about that.
It is the most beautiful group of people I have seen come together under one account or one little roof on Facebook.
So come join us at the Adult Chair Closed Group.
And if you just want some more information about the show or about the Facebook group or anything,
Check out theadultchair.
Com.
We'd love to have you join us.
All right,
We are going to jump right in now to a big conversation with Dr.
Keisha all about autoimmune disease and so much more and how you will learn how to reverse and heal them and also understand what happens to us in the body and how we even develop all of these types of diseases.
So I cannot wait for you to hear the show.
Here we go with Dr.
Keisha.
Hello Dr.
Keisha and welcome to the Adult Chair podcast.
I'm so glad to be here.
Thanks for having me on,
Michelle.
Oh my gosh.
I am thrilled to have you on and I want to share with our listeners how I found you like I was saying to you prior to this.
So my brother-in-law is a doctor in Charlotte and he always sends me great people to listen to and we're all a very integrative family.
And he sent me your talk,
But the beginning was cut off so I didn't have your name.
So I listened to everything that you had said and I said,
Oh my God,
This woman,
I am so in line with her.
I don't know who she is.
So I had to hunt you down and I'm thrilled because when I finally found you,
I realized you speak my language and I love everything that you're about.
And I listened to a talk of yours on autoimmune disease and how to heal it.
And it's amazing to me how many people these days tell me or I just hear in the news or wherever,
You know,
It seems like it's on the rise and you have a framework for healing these things and other dis-eases.
So oh my gosh,
I can't wait to get started with this,
But I thought we would start with your story because that is what I heard on the talk and my jaw was on the floor.
So would you mind sharing like a little bit about your history and then all of your illnesses that you had and how you changed your life?
Absolutely.
So,
You know,
I always say that anybody that's integrative in nature has gotten there because they've had to.
What is it?
Necessity is the mother of invention.
So when I was 19 years old,
I graduated from my RN nursing program.
So I started out as a nurse really young and went straight into the Western model of medicine and stayed there.
All through my 20s,
I rose to the ranks of getting into a more intense adrenaline junkie the older I got.
So intensive care unit,
Really,
Really doing a lot of life like kinds of things and loved my work.
I just loved it.
But then one day,
I always say and this is what my patients will say to me too,
All of a sudden and I'm putting that in air quotes,
I got really sick and I woke up one morning going from this marathon running,
Raising four children,
Overachieving super mom kind of a personality.
My friends all called me an energizer bunny.
Just really drove myself to flattened.
I woke up one morning and I had 10 pounds of just puffiness all over my body.
My joints were red and inflamed and I had zero energy.
The batteries had been removed from the energizer bunny for sure.
My husband got me in to see a doctor and this doctor diagnosed me with rheumatoid arthritis.
When we got into a discussion about it,
This is an autoimmune disease that has no cure.
No autoimmune disease in the Western model can be cured is what they say.
Right.
Wait,
Wait,
Wait.
And you were how old?
This is key to the story.
I was 30.
That's so young.
So young.
Yeah.
Yes.
Okay.
Go on.
This shows you how badly I drove myself actually.
Exactly.
I didn't listen to any of the feedback my body had been giving me all along because when I was 18,
I was on Accutane for acne,
Which was the worst drug ever.
I used to take ibuprofen like it was candy when I ran.
I was so proud of myself because when I would get done with a marathon,
I would be fine,
Like not in any pain because I had this great formula where I would take 800 milligrams of ibuprofen at the start of the race.
And then I would take 100 milligrams at mile 13.
And then I would take 800 milligrams when I completed it.
And I was always pain free and would say,
Gosh,
I've got the.
.
.
Why is everybody hurting so badly?
So I was just wrecking my gut.
And all the pain my joints were in,
I didn't listen to it.
Instead,
I just dumped ibuprofen down there and shot them right up.
So it was a disaster waiting to happen.
Yeah.
I get the diagnosis of RA and in the conversation with my doctor who gave me two prescriptions,
One was for a really strong non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug.
Another one was for a cancer fighting drug called methotrexate.
And she ripped those prescriptions off of her pad,
Handed them to me and said,
When you get worse,
Come back.
Not if you get worse.
When you get worse,
Come back and we will up your medication.
And I said,
Really,
Is that all there is?
Is that all there is?
Because I said,
I am a really disciplined person.
I will change the diet.
What is it that I need to do here?
And she said,
Well,
I'm afraid you drew the short end of the genetic lotto.
And I thought,
Oh,
Yeah,
Because I had told her that my grandfather had had RA.
So that was it.
Like,
Close the book,
Put it on the shelf.
That's the end of the story.
So on my way home,
I was thinking,
There has to be something different because I knew the side effect profile for methotrexate.
And I didn't want my four children who are used to a very,
Very active mother in their lives to go to,
You know,
The third person that was in the car,
Right?
And so my why was my kids.
And everyone has to find a why if they're going to really transform their lives.
So for me,
It was my children.
So I went home and this shows my age.
I'm 54 next month.
So I went on my internet with my dial-up modem and asked Jeeves,
Asked Jeeves was the search engine of the time.
And I asked Jeeves if there was something other than methotrexate that I could do for my RA.
And I went into PubMed where we keep our scientific literature and research.
And what I found was an article on yoga and autoimmune disease and having it be an effective modality.
So I thought,
Okay,
I'll go to my first yoga class.
So the next morning,
I was in my first yoga class.
The yoga teacher said something enough during that class about this word Ayurveda,
Which is the sister science of yoga.
It's the medical arm of yoga basically.
So I went home and asked Jeeves about Ayurvedic medicine.
And what I read was kind of like what you were saying about like your jaw on the floor.
You know,
I thought,
Oh my gosh,
This is amazing.
All of these patients I've had in my past that have had what we label idiopathic problems.
So you can have idiopathic heart disease and that means we're actually idiots and we don't know why it's there.
So we call it idiopathic.
Oh my gosh.
There's no solution to the puzzle.
We can't figure it out.
So we just call it idiopathic.
And there are a lot of those.
And so we try and match drugs to the symptom.
And all of these people from my past came flooding forward.
And I thought,
Ayurveda explained why they were there,
Why this person had this heart attack at the age of 35 and was a marathon runner and didn't smoke and didn't have any of the JAMA criteria for having heart disease at such an early age,
Things like that.
It's like all these very mystery cases just came popping into my head like popcorn.
And I was like,
Oh my gosh,
What I found out and that was so revolutionary to me was that we are not all the same.
Right.
That was just this revolutionary idea.
We are not all the same.
And that's where it started was,
Oh,
I have my own unique constitution that I should be feeding and watering and taking care of in a very unique way.
And I never knew that.
Right.
We're not taught that in our medical model and in our society.
No.
We have standardized medicine and standardized care is what we actually call it.
And standardized care means that we have a standard of treatment that is supposed to behave in the same way for every single person.
And we know it doesn't work because diseases on the rise is one obvious thing,
But also because of the number of lawsuits we have in our country.
People have this expectation because we propagate it that we're standardized people.
So you can have ketogenesis for everybody or paleo diet for everybody or the Mediterranean diet for everybody or being vegan for everybody or eating raw food.
Actually,
That is true.
I agree.
We each are unique.
You know,
We have our own fingerprint,
Not like anyone else's.
And so I started there really thinking deeply about that.
And the other thing Ayurveda medicine said was that autoimmune disease is undigested anger.
And I just remember my response was,
I'm not an angry person.
I was super angry about being told I was an angry person because I was a consummate people pleaser.
And you know,
That's what I found in the years since then.
It's been 24 years since I reversed my RA.
I've never seen it since and I'll tell you how I did it.
But I've been taking care of people since then with autoimmune disease.
And one of the things when I tell them this,
Because I see the same pattern.
And Ayurveda says that the people that get autoimmune disease are perfectionists and nobody that is a perfectionist will cop to being a perfectionist usually because we have our bar set so high.
And we say,
I'm not a perfectionist.
Are you kidding me?
I think I'm just saying how far from perfect I am and it's only a perfectionist that would ever say that.
So funny because we'll have this thing that we do.
You know,
Like I'm not a perfectionist and I'm not a people pleaser.
The thing that I see in my patient population is it's oftentimes women,
80% of autoimmune disease is diagnosed in women who are taking care of everyone else and not putting themselves on their task list.
And they're trying to bring home the bacon,
Fry it up in a pan and look hot at the same time.
Women.
We are not designed to be able to sustain that.
Perfectionism is a losing battle.
The interesting thing around all that then for me was to say,
Okay,
So if I have undigested anger,
Where did that come from?
During the process of taking up yoga and learning Ayurveda,
I also became a yoga teacher and got a master's degree in Ayurvedic medicine because of course I'm a perfectionist,
Right?
So I'm going to do it.
Of course,
Right?
So I also learned how to meditate.
And one day in meditation,
This word autoimmune started floating in front of my third eye and sort of dancing there trying to get my attention.
And I looked at it and I thought,
Oh,
Autoimmune means I'm attacking me.
I'm actually committing suicide in a societally acceptable manner.
And I thought,
When was the first time I wanted to die?
And that was kind of a life changing question because I think that the dirty little secret about humans is that all of us want to die at some point.
It does get hard to be a human.
And there are times when we may not have what we call in the business suicidal ideation where we have a plan that we want to carry out.
But I think everybody has times in their life where they wake up and think,
It would be really nice not to have to wake up.
Oh,
Really?
Or I want to deal with this gigantic life challenge that I've just been presented with that I have no skills to navigate.
I was thinking about that and thinking,
Okay,
So I'm going to go back and see when the first time that came up for me was.
And as I followed my little golden breadcrumb trail backwards,
I found this 10-year-old little girl version of myself who was being sexually abused by the vice principal of my elementary school.
And I thought,
Oh my gosh,
Of course,
I did want to die then.
I didn't think this world was safe.
And I was pretty right on.
It wasn't for me in that moment.
Right?
Right.
And I didn't think adults could really be trusted.
And sure enough,
The ones in my life really couldn't.
Right.
One of the things that in my research,
I conducted a study called the Healing Unresolved Trauma Study and it created the Hurt Model.
And the Hurt Model shows that you have this emotional wound that happens when you're a child.
And with the undeveloped brain of a child,
You do not have your full adult prefrontal cortex in place until you're 26 years old.
So in your child's state,
When you have experiences,
You create a meaning to match what it is you're going through.
So little humans trying to figure out how to become human on planet Earth will have all kinds of experiences they don't understand.
And if you don't have a fully attuned wise caregiver by your side 24-7 to help you understand those things,
You're going to make stuff up with an undeveloped mind.
And nobody has a fully attuned wise caretaker at their side 24-7.
It's part of the beauty of life on planet Earth as a human is that in childhood,
We go through these experiences so that we can gain wisdom in adulthood by learning how to unpack them and navigate them with a fully developed brain.
It's the whole plan.
Yep.
That's actually part of it.
So when I was 10 and I was having this experience,
I didn't have words to describe what was happening for me because it never happened.
And I was raised with no television.
You have to remember this was a long time ago.
It was in the 70s.
I was a Navy brat.
My dad was out to sea.
And I had been this bookworm my whole life,
Loved school,
Loved to learn,
Really a geek.
I started crying and saying I didn't want to go to school.
I had a headache.
I had a stomach ache.
I didn't want to go to school.
I didn't have words to tell my mom about sexual molestation or sexual abuse or even the word sex.
And so I didn't know those words.
And also,
I faintly had an idea that it was my fault because the vice principal was saying it was happening because I was a bad kid.
So the meaning that I made up to match my experience was that people weren't safe,
Adults couldn't be trusted,
And I wasn't safe.
And so then a belief will come out of that meaning.
And the belief I had was that I needed to be perfect to even survive.
Because when you're told that this kind of stuff's going on because you're bad,
Then you're going to try and be as good as possible,
Right?
Of course.
So I would go into the sympathetic system overload with my nervous system on high alert just walking into school,
But then it would get worse when the intercom in the corner of the classroom would crackle to life.
And we had it crackle to life every morning to stand up and say the Pledge of Allegiance.
So every morning I start my day like Pavlov's dog with my heart racing,
Getting clammy,
And in a fight or flight,
Freeze or faint kind of space.
Every time it would go off during the day,
I would do the same thing because every once in a while,
It was the secretary calling me into the vice principal's office.
That's where the nervous system stuff started for me.
And we all have an experience like this.
And I'm going to talk about this,
Because there's no child left behind on this.
When you have a belief then,
Like the one I had,
I'm not safe in this place,
Then you're going to have an adoptive behavior.
You'll adopt a behavior that you will feel is adaptive to that meaning and that belief.
And my adaptive behavior for the child mind was to be a perfectionist and to also try and blend into the background.
Don't show up.
Try and be invisible.
That was what I carried into adulthood then.
And that's what all of us do.
Whatever our meanings and beliefs and behaviors are that we create with an undeveloped mind,
We bring into adulthood.
And then they run us in the background until we become aware enough of them to be able to go back with our fully developed brain and reframe them and reclaim our power.
Yes.
At the end of the day,
When I had that moment in meditation and I said,
Oh my gosh,
This is probably connected.
I've got to go get some therapy and figure this out.
And so I did some trauma release therapy.
And of course,
When I did trauma release therapy,
I had to go back and become a psychotherapist and I had to go get trained in all these trauma release techniques.
Because I understood fully that this had something to do with everything.
However we show up,
My running turned into marathoning,
Which turned into being very competitive with myself and having my watch on and looking at my personal record and constantly making myself one better version of myself than I was before.
That drive you have to see is fueled by this perfectionism.
And it's not sustainable.
So when I got sick,
I got an opportunity to look at that whole pattern of behavior and say,
Oh,
This isn't coming from a place of self love.
This is coming from an inherent lack of self worth.
And I'm trying to constantly fill this ever emptying hole in my soul the way that I think about it now.
And I look back,
That's what my whole state of being was about.
Instead of realizing that I'm whole and complete,
No matter what I achieve or how fast it takes,
How long it takes me to run a certain number of miles or whether my kids turn out happy and well adjusted.
I'll put it all on my shoulders.
And of course,
That crushed me.
Right?
So I really started working on that.
And one of the things I talk about now is that this is your way of going through adult development.
So we have these adult developmental states that we progress through.
And the only way we go from one that's not as adaptive and open,
It's the only way we go from being black and white and very judgmental and concrete thinking into a more adaptive,
Resilient state of development is by having a great big challenge that we don't know how to navigate the hero's journey.
So you have this call to action,
You have to go find a mentor to give you new information so that you can have new skills to navigate this challenge that you don't know how to navigate.
And then you have to go master those skills.
You can't just hear them once and say,
Okay,
I've got this,
You have to go practice.
You know,
Life gives you all these wonderful gifts called challenges that you get to practice your new skills and master them.
And then you come back and you're in this resurrected state of being a new you in a new developmental level.
And now you have some wisdom.
And you can share that with your community.
What really makes people super angry that I see in my patient population is that they think that once they get to that place,
And they've really reversed their disease,
And they're in this new developmental stage,
And they've got new skills that they've mastered,
That now life should kind of leave them alone.
Right?
The way life works.
We have four seasons,
We go spring,
Summer,
Fall,
Winter,
And then we have spring again.
And if you're doing it right,
And if God loves you,
Then it will be easy and you will have joy.
So not true.
No,
It's not being human.
You'll have your next call to action.
Next big challenge.
I agree.
100%.
So how long did it take you and I know you're going to get to the how you actually healed yourself,
But how long did it take you from the time that you were diagnosed with RA to actually recovering from it and healing?
So it's interesting because I make a distinction between curing autoimmune disease and reversing it.
And the reason I make that distinction is because I have the genetics for RA.
You know,
I carry the gene for that,
You could say several genes that actually put me at risk for breast cancer,
Autoimmune disease,
All kinds of wonderful things,
Just like we all have our own genetic makeup.
But I was able to flip those genes off by making a series of lifestyle choices and changes,
Including the way that I perceive life and engage with life.
Now,
I reversed my RA within six months of diagnosis with no medications by really going after it in this way,
This very holistic,
Okay,
I can see this is connected,
I'm going to dive in and I'm going to take care of this.
Now I can have RA back within six months,
I truly believe.
If I were to go back to the way that I used to function,
Which on the outside looked like I was very high functioning,
You know,
But I was literally killing myself.
And so if I were to go back to that way of being,
I would get sick again.
You just made a great point.
I want you to comment on this.
You said the genes turned off,
I really believe we can turn them on and off.
Can you just comment on that for a minute?
Yeah.
Because I think people think that once you have it,
You're stuck with it,
They're turned on forever.
It's like,
No,
We can turn those genes off.
Right.
Well,
That's the myth that we used to believe.
So it's actually sort of simplistic.
And frankly,
It's not correct language to say you can turn a gene off.
It's really changing how it expresses itself.
I have changed the way my genetics express themselves by listening to my body.
And I did a series of functional medicine tests.
I did trauma release therapy.
I used this framework that I use with my patients today.
And I was able to change the way my genes express themselves.
And that's what I mean by if I were to go back and start living the way I did back then,
I could get them to express themselves in a fully different way once again.
So I often have my patients say I want to go back to who I was before I was so tired or so fat or so frazzled or so frumpy or whatever it is they're having trouble with.
And I always say,
No,
You don't want to go backwards.
This is life asking you to go forward to have a new version of yourself 2.
0.
We always want to go back to the energy level that we had before we got sick.
And I can tell you,
Oh my gosh,
I'm so much happier.
I'm so much healthier.
I even look younger at the age of 54 than I did at 30.
Wow.
I mean,
It's crazy.
Yes.
Because I'm listening to my body now.
I had heard you say one time in a talk,
You said that we need to collaborate with our bodies,
You know,
And it's about collaborating,
Not fighting.
You know,
I know that when people let's say get sick,
Or even hurt their knee or hurt their lower back or something,
You know,
We get angry at our bodies like how did you let me down?
But we really need to listen because it's all they're always giving us a message.
The bodies are messaging us and we don't pay attention very well is what I feel.
People will feel and I see this in women a lot that if their bodies don't behave the way that they used to or what they expect from it,
They get angry and they feel betrayed by their body.
Autoimmune disease is by definition being in a combative relationship with yourself.
And when you're at war with yourself,
There can be no winner.
And if you think about it in that way,
You have to say,
Okay,
So what part of me doesn't like the other part?
And how do we get these parts together and can create a collaborative relationship between all systems.
And you can see this outside of yourself,
You can look at it on a macrocosmic level on the whole globe and see us not in a collaborative relationship with the environment or countries not in a collaborative relationship together or the government here in the United States not being collaborative.
And you can see the outcome.
There's a lot of suffering and a lot of outcome that people don't really enjoy living under.
Well,
That's the same things going on inside of you.
If you're not being collaborative with your own self.
Ayurvedic medicine says we're a microcosm of the macrocosm of the universe.
So everything that's happening outside of you can happen inside too,
All the way down to the cellular level.
That's what cancer is.
Cancer is just going rogue,
Not listening to the rest of the body and reproducing rapidly under their own direction without being in a collaborative relationship with the rest of the cellular population.
And that creates cancer and it kills us.
You can't live under that kind of right.
So this idea of becoming collaborative,
The way I talk about it is I help women make friends with the woman they see in the mirror.
And I don't necessarily mean that you make friends with looking at yourself and seeing yourself as beautiful,
Although that's what I want you to do.
But also making friends on a level that maybe you can't even see the microbiome,
The little cells,
The microbes that live inside of your intestinal wall.
They have to get along if your immune system is going to work.
And if your neurotransmitters are going to synapse properly.
So if you want good memory,
You know,
Lack of brain fog,
If you want to have an immune system that works,
If you want to feel happy,
If you want your weight to be where you want it to be,
The little microbes in your intestinal tract have to be getting along.
When I say help you make friends with the woman that you see in the mirror,
It's friendship on every level of your being.
That's really important.
So true.
Every level.
I agree with you.
So would you say that your model like these the four corners that you talk about,
It really works for because of our working with a microbiome,
You're talking anxiety,
Depression,
Autoimmune cancers,
It's everything,
Correct?
It is everything.
So what will happen in the functional medicine world is they'll just focus on that.
And in fact,
There's an amazing,
Amazing researcher who's won awards for his work with understanding the role of the gut,
Alesso Fasano.
And,
You know,
What he says are the three root causes of autoimmune disease are toxins,
And your genetics and the health of your gut.
But he left out one giant one.
And so when I wrote solving the autoimmune puzzle,
It was to rectify that.
It was to say,
Look,
You can't just focus on detoxing and working on your microbiome and your digestive health.
Because if you leave out past trauma,
And how you manage your stress today,
You're leaving out such a big part of your puzzle,
That what I'm finding is people coming in to see me that have spent literally thousands of dollars in the functional medicine world on supplements and protocols and lab data chasing down those three supposed root causes.
And they're angry because they've been doing everything right,
Right?
And air quotes,
They've been eating really rigidly.
And in fact,
Their food choices have gone,
Like I always call it the shrinking iceberg have gone down,
Down,
Down,
Down to what their bodies can tolerate.
And they come to me and they're so mad because they don't want to hear another word about the microbiome.
And they don't want to hear about digestive health.
And they don't want to be tested anymore.
They've already been there,
Done that and got the t shirt and it didn't work.
And so what I have to say is,
But you left out this big portion,
Which is what's in your mind gets crystallizes in your body.
You can't leave that out.
And in fact,
It has to become not the only thing you do,
But it has to have equal time.
And you have to address all four of those corner pieces of your puzzle at the same time.
You can't take them one at a time.
There's no way you can just work on your genetics because the toxins you're exposed to in the world and your digestive health and your past trauma all affect how you express your genetics.
You can't just work on your emotional stuff because if you only work there and you're eating Snickers bars,
That's also not going to do the trick,
Right?
You can't just deep talk because your body might not be able to get rid of heavy metals because your gut is such a mess and your adrenals and your hormones are imbalanced and it will make you sicker.
So you really do have to take yourself and look at yourself as your own unique puzzle.
And we have to address all of it at the same time.
And that really does reverse it pretty rapidly.
Wow.
I'm surprised you said six months for your RA.
Six months,
But I did not have it for very long.
And I never went on the medications.
Wow.
In my book,
Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle,
I tell people,
Please,
There is not one size fits all.
And so what I did for myself,
The exact thing that I did may not work for you.
I have to actually do the testing for you.
I have to talk to you.
I have to find out what's going on.
And then we develop a solution to your puzzle that's uniquely yours.
And if you've had your autoimmune disease for years with organ damage,
It may be that we can just halt progression if you've already had a lot of organ damage.
If you've been on medications for years and years,
I get people off their medications all the time.
But it may very well be that it takes a year or two to really get recovered.
In the natural health world,
There's kind of a rule of thumb that for however long it took you to get sick,
Please expect that much time to get better.
I find that that's not really accurate,
But it's a nice expectation to set for people.
That way,
When it goes earlier,
It's actually a nice surprise.
Yes.
Instead of expecting that you're going to feel good after being off of gluten for three months,
You know,
That you're going to all of a sudden miraculously better.
Yeah,
So true.
So true.
I stopped eating gluten for two weeks and I didn't notice a change.
So I hear that.
I hear that all the time.
I'm like,
What?
You got to.
.
.
No,
No,
No,
No,
No.
I know.
Can you just expand a little bit more?
I think it would be important to talk about the four corners of the puzzle.
I know you just went through the four of them,
But just a tiny bit more about what each one is because I know leaky gut.
A lot of people go,
What's leaky gut?
I don't have that.
And they might have that.
Right.
So first of all,
I'd like to back up and say,
How do you know if you have autoimmune disease?
Yes.
Great question.
That's one of the most undiagnosed and underdiagnosed issues that I find in my practice.
I'm always diagnosing autoimmune disease.
But here's the thing.
People sometimes will cry when I give them a diagnosis.
Oh,
At last I have an answer.
I've gone from doctor to doctor to doctor who does blood work and says,
I'm fine,
But I feel so pretty.
I'm so glad you found this.
But in my book,
I say,
Please don't attach this diagnosis because yes,
It gives you a kind of concrete thing that you can rest in and say,
Oh,
Here's why I feel so pretty.
But what I always say is you can take every diagnosis that has inflammation attached to it,
Throw it in the same bucket,
Label it inflammation,
And we're going to go after it in the same exact way,
No matter what the diagnosis is.
We're busy reclassifying diseases right now.
That's why autoimmunity seems like it's on the rise.
It's because we've gone from thinking that we had 12 autoimmune diseases out there,
Lupus and MS and autoimmune and RA and type 1 diabetes and chogrens,
Just a handful of them.
Now really knowing that we have over 150 of them,
But they're diseases that have been reclassified as autoimmune disease.
So for example,
Type 2 diabetes,
It used to be thought of as autoimmune.
Now we think of it as autoimmune.
Alzheimer's now called diabetes type 3 has an autoimmune factor to it.
We have osteoporosis is now thought of as autoimmune.
Heart disease is thought of as autoimmune.
Wow,
I had no idea.
Yeah.
Huh.
Yeah.
So anything that has this inflammatory root cause,
When I go through the framework I use for reversing autoimmune disease,
I want you to understand that.
And then it takes anywhere from 10 to 30 years to develop a full blown autoimmune disease.
So you can have all kinds of ways that your body's trying to quietly tell you something is wrong.
Like I said in the beginning of my story,
I had plenty of them and all I did was just shut them up.
And that's what is Americans a lot of times what we do is we say,
How do I get out of my suffering instead of why is the suffering here and what is it it's here to tell me?
Right.
We have to find the root cause.
Right.
Change the question to the why,
Then you start looking for root cause instead of a pill for an ill to get rid of your symptom.
Right?
Right.
So the framework that I use then for any chronic illness,
I don't care if it's it can be obesity,
It can be depression,
It can be anxiety or insomnia,
It can be low libido,
Or it can be an autoimmune disease or cancer.
I think about you as a puzzle.
So we're going to want to solve your puzzles.
So the way I think about puzzles,
You look at the box,
You like the picture,
You take the lid of the box off,
And then you dump all the pieces out on a table and then you turn them all over,
You can look at them.
And what we go for first are the four corner pieces to anchor the puzzle frame.
So the freedom framework has these four corners,
And they are your genetics,
Those for sure matter.
The second anchor piece or corner piece is going to be toxins that you're exposed to and how well your body is able to get rid of them toxins.
Now toxins will come in the form of the things you think about like all of the chemicals being dumped into our environment today that are estrogen mimicking and have all kinds of issues with our food supplies.
So we were familiar with those chemical toxins,
But there are also viral toxins.
Some people that are quite famous talk about Epstein-Barr virus as the root cause for everything now and everyone's watching on to that.
I have Epstein-Barr virus,
Therefore it is the problem.
And I'm like,
No,
It's not.
It's just one piece.
And I have Epstein-Barr virus.
And guess what?
95% of Americans have Epstein-Barr virus.
That's what the Centers for Disease Control tell us.
So does that mean 95% of Americans are just sunk now because they have EBV?
No.
You have to make your body an inhospitable environment so that the EBV doesn't want to take hold.
So then we also have like Lyme disease.
I'm also Lyme positive and neither one of these viruses actually bother me at all.
They're all in remission.
A lot of us have these.
Yeah,
We do.
Wow.
So that's a kind of toxin.
Another kind of toxin outside of bacterial and viral is also going to be the toxin in your mind of parasitic thoughts,
I call them.
So those are the non-life supporting thought processes that you have where you're canting or wanting and just not showing up to your potential.
Fear,
Anxiety,
Depression,
All of these things are toxicity.
Okay?
I want you to think about toxins in the physical sense,
But also on emotional,
Spiritual and mental levels too.
So that's that second anchor piece.
The third corner piece is digestive health.
And there's this term intestinal permeability syndrome or what we call leaky gut.
And what that is,
Is when you have a healthy intestinal wall and every framework of medicine from Chinese to Indian to Native American to our current Western model of medicine,
All of them have said in some way,
Shape or form at some point that the root of all wellness and illness begins in the gut.
And so,
It's a really important place to pay attention to.
In your intestinal wall,
If you were to take all your intestines out and spread them out and open them up,
They would actually fill a double tennis court.
Crazy amount of space in there.
Oh my gosh.
And we cram it all in to this little pure anal cavity.
Wow.
So this abdominal cavity holds all of it.
And in that tube,
The intestine,
It's lined with a protective layer of cells.
It's only one layer thick.
The same layer of cells that lines your bronchial tree and your lungs and your sinus cavity and your eustachian tubes,
Anything hollow in your body is protected by a cellular barrier.
Those cells are supposed to be tight,
We call them tight junctions,
Kind of like your teeth.
There's enough room there to put some floss in,
But you don't want to have great big gaps that things can get caught in.
And unlike your teeth,
In your intestinal wall,
You can't floss those cells to get things that get caught in between them out.
So what'll happen is different things that we do in our lives will pull those cells apart.
Now the biggest one is stress.
When we release cortisol from our adrenal glands,
When we're in fight,
Flight,
Freeze,
Or faint mode,
We release cortisol into the system that alerts the body that you've got a lion on your tail and you're a zebra and you're about to get eaten.
And so all of the hormones responsible for you having sexual desire,
Being able to reproduce,
That zebra knows that right now it's not safe to stop and have sex when the lion's on its tail.
And it's also not safe to go to the bathroom.
So everything that has to do with getting rid of your waste shuts down.
And everything that has to do with your hormonal balance shuts down and your mind shuts down.
It goes into this very narrow focus of survival only.
It's hard to remember other details when you're in that place.
So that cortisol that's trying to get you to safety,
If it's chronically being released,
It will start to break down the cells in your gut wall and create spaces between them.
This is what we call leaky gut.
Antibiotics do this too.
So do non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs like ibuprofen.
Yeah.
Take it like candy.
It will do that.
And so many people do take it like candy.
Exactly.
Exactly.
Monthly cramps.
As well as antibiotics.
People take those like candy too.
I mean,
Forget it.
Chemicals will break it down.
Alcohol breaks it down.
Caffeine breaks it down.
It's very acidic.
So foods that you're sensitive to that you should not be eating because your body says,
I don't want this,
Will break it down.
So if you're sensitive to gluten and you decide you're going to eat gluten anyway,
It will break down your gut wall.
If you're sensitive to dairy and you eat dairy anyway,
Because you just can't seem to give up your cheese,
Then it will break down your gut wall.
So now you have these spaces that undigested food particles will move through and get out into your system.
Now your body is wired quite wisely to attack anything that it sees that's not you.
If it sees a molecule of broccoli out there because you're eating a lot of broccoli because you're super healthy,
You'll start to develop a sensitivity to broccoli.
You can develop a sensitivity to blueberries and coconut oil and salmon and all the healthy foods that you eat.
All the good stuff.
Oh my gosh.
That's right.
Because your gut wall is not working properly.
That's leaky gut.
So that's really important to understand that anyone with autoimmune disease,
Anyone with cancer,
Anyone with inflammation has leaky gut.
You just have to know like,
Okay,
I have that.
And in fact,
It's very rare that anyone that I see doesn't have it.
Wow.
After all of the years of antibiotic use that we've done and taking and.
.
.
Who does not have leaky gut?
Some people don't.
And it's always very rare.
I always say,
Wow,
Congratulations.
It's a shock.
Oh my God.
You're a unicorn.
So that's the third piece of the puzzle,
That corner piece.
And then the fourth one is past trauma.
Now people will hear my story and they'll say,
Well,
I wasn't sexually abused and my parents didn't beat me.
And so,
I don't have anything like that.
But the thing of it is,
Is this is the beauty of the human experience,
Is any experience that you had in childhood of rejection was experienced as a traumatic event for you.
And if you think about this,
We are wired to be in the village,
Canning the hides and grinding the corn and exchanging stories,
Keeping the toddlers out of the fire pit,
In community,
Right?
We keep each other safe.
We know that if we are on the outside of the village without fire and without others around us,
The saber-toothed tiger could eat us.
So when we feel rejected by our community,
It is trauma.
That's a form of trauma.
And every child has this experience and they all have experiences of rejection or betrayal of trust or confusion about why people are behaving why they are,
Some kind of hurt,
Because that's just how it is on life on planet Earth.
We have these.
And if you don't have,
Like I said,
A stable,
Well-attuned caregiver by your side to help you navigate that moment,
Then you're going to make up a meaning,
Create a belief,
And adopt a behavior to match it that you then carry into adulthood.
So the Adverse Childhood Experiences study was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Kaiser Permanente.
And the reason this big study even came to be was because Kaiser Permanente was running a weight loss clinic.
And it was really working,
Had a really good program.
And when the clinic administrators started looking at data,
They started seeing that a lot of people were dropping out before they reached goal in spite of the fact that they had been consistently losing the weight they wanted to lose.
So wisely,
They got curious and asked that wonderful question,
Why?
Instead of how do we retain them?
Why is this happening?
And so they brought them back in and started interviewing them.
And they found that a bunch of them,
Most of them,
Had some kind of abuse in their background,
Sexual abuse,
Especially.
And so they started saying,
Well,
This is something.
And so they worked with the Centers for Disease Control and did this two-year big study called the Adverse Childhood Experiences study and came up with this score called the ACEs score.
And I write about this in Solving that Omnipugil 2.
And you can take the quiz there if you want to.
And it's a kind of limited study because there are only 10 different adverse childhood experiences they were asking about.
And they're the,
What I call capital T trauma.
So they're big experiences of neglect or abandonment where you had a parent addicted to a substance or you had a parent with a mental illness or you had a parent that was incarcerated or died,
Divorced,
Or you had sexual abuse or emotional,
Psychological or physical abuse,
Or you watched your mom get beaten in domestic violence.
These were the things they were asking about.
You give yourself one point for each one of those experiences.
So I had a dad that was out to sea all the time.
So that was in that verbiage would have been abandonment,
Even though that was his job and he couldn't help it.
But as a kid,
It felt very traumatic every time he left for six months.
It's very dramatic.
And then sexual abuse,
Right?
So I had an ACE score of two.
If you have an ACE score of one or more,
And they found that of the over 17,
000 participants in the study,
Over two thirds had an ACE score of one or more and 85% of those had two or more.
So they were so shocked by how many people reported these big events.
What they discovered is that the higher your ACE score,
The higher your risk for the chronic illnesses we experience in adulthood today,
Heart disease,
Cancer,
Autoimmune disease,
As well as being sedentary,
Having dysfunctional relationships,
Being addicted to drugs,
Dropping out of school early,
Having more suicidal attempts,
All of these things,
Promiscuous sexual behavior,
More STDs.
They also discovered that there was a real big barrier,
The higher your ACE score to self care,
That self neglect was a big piece of the puzzle for them.
And the way that looked was the unwillingness to eat healthy,
Even though you know you need to,
But unwillingness to stick with an exercise program,
Unwillingness to follow through on whatever program you set up yourself.
And I have women all the time coming in and calling themselves good or bad,
Depending on if they're on program or not.
So I'm really good for a while and then I self sabotage and I'm bad.
So I always take people out of that good and bad language and say,
No,
No,
No,
No,
No,
No,
You know,
You're either working towards life promoting events or you're not and we'll work on what happens right there.
But it's not a matter of willpower.
It's a matter of how your brain is wired based on these early events and meanings you made up.
You can't just power through this.
That's one of the biggest messages I'm always trying to convey is we actually have to rewire and reframe your story so you can reclaim your power.
You're not bad when you fall off the wagon,
So to speak.
You know,
There's just a natural consequence to an action.
So if you've been trying to shed some weight and then you stop following your program,
Then you find that weight back again and maybe even some friends that went with it.
That's not bad.
It's just feedback from your body.
It doesn't like this particular pattern of life.
Getting out of that judgment,
You know,
Your scale never sort of goes at you when you get on it.
Right.
And that's based on these early events in childhood.
That's a really important piece for us to add into this puzzle and it's completely been missing.
So then you've got your four corners.
Then when you're solving your puzzle,
You always look for the edge pieces so that you can put the whole frame together.
So I call those the four Cs.
They're the pillars,
The side of the freedom framework.
And so the first side section is going to be uncover root causes and you'll find your root causes for anything you're struggling with in your body,
Your mind,
Your heart,
Your spirit,
And in your story.
And then you go up to that top edge and the pieces there are going to be confronting your laboratory data.
And it's not just the blood draw of the TSH or the cholesterol that you get in your yearly physical.
Those don't really tell you anything.
It's really looking for root cause.
Yeah,
I do some pretty important testing in my office that has nothing to do with your cholesterol,
But actually tells you what's really going on with your heart.
And so it's kind of creepy how we have this.
Your data is going to also be your libido level,
Your sleep quality.
How do you wake up in the morning?
Are you energized and ready to go?
Are you exhausted still?
I've been after eight,
10 hours of sleep.
Your relationship quality.
Are you happy when you're driving home?
Are you happy when you're driving to work because of the people you get to share that space with?
If not,
Then that's one of your things we need to look at.
So it's all of that.
And then the third side piece,
Those edges are going to be puzzle pieces that have to do with connecting the dots between the data you just kind of gathered and the lifestyle choices that you're making that created that data.
So now you really do have to take responsibility for what's on the end of your fork,
What's in your cup,
What your thoughts are that go through your mind automatically,
All those automatic thoughts.
You have to take responsibility for the state of your relationship.
It's never the other person's fault.
It's always everybody involved,
Right?
Right.
So all of those things have to get connected to the data,
Like what's happening that I'm doing that's creating this data.
And then at the very bottom edges,
It's the create the life you want with intention,
Instead of what I call from factory default settings.
The factory default settings would be when you pull your phone out of the box when you first buy it,
You don't ever just leave it on the time zone of the manufacturer.
And you don't just leave it the screensaver they put there.
You're always trying to upgrade it to personalize it to what you want.
Your ringtones and your alarms and your pictures.
Well,
Actually,
You can do that with your life too.
And that's when you go back and you have to do trauma release and you have to do some what I call mirror work and forgiveness work and that then creates a life that you actually really want to lead.
And everything is not in the subconscious anymore.
It's out in front of you.
So you can take a look at it and do something with it.
And then in the middle of the puzzle are what we call the five Rs of healing and that's removing what doesn't work replacing it with what does it just goes through the fine tuning component.
So that's the puzzle.
I was gonna say and this is all in your book,
Correct?
It is.
Okay,
Fabulous.
You can see it's more than getting rid of gluten.
I was gonna say it's a lot more than wheat and dairy intolerance or allergies for sure.
I think that you're it's so key though,
Like the emotional component is huge and so many doctors they have not caught on to this yet.
I even went into my doctor and I never go into this doctor,
This internist and I said a few years ago I said I need to get tested for allergies,
Gluten,
All of it.
And she says,
Well,
We don't really do that.
I was like,
What?
So then I found of course a functional medicine doc and everything changed,
You know,
But the typical doctor does not even they don't have that framework that you have that they're thinking is not where your thinking is and they need to have that framework.
We need to have this other blood work done,
But that's only in functional medicine land,
Isn't it?
I mean,
It doesn't happen.
It is.
Yeah.
It's true.
And like I said,
And then functional medicine docs are not doing the emotional part of it.
So they're leaving it to those other three places and not taking on the rest of it.
So people are getting very frustrated because they think they found the answers with their functional medicine doc and then that person's not falling through on fourth of the solution.
So can we clone you?
You would put you all over the world because I know everyone that's listening,
This is going to be like,
Well,
Wait a minute.
How do I get into?
I'm actually already doing that,
Michelle.
I have the Academy for Integrative Medicine Health Coach Certification Program and I'm busy cloning myself.
So anyone that hears me that's excited and passionate about this and wants to do this for a living,
I actually train lay people who are passionate about it because sometimes I know Suzuki,
You know,
The violin and piano method.
I remember hearing when my son was doing the Suzuki method and the violin,
But they actually liked taking children that had never learned an instrument before and teaching them this method because otherwise they had to unlearn everything they've learned before.
So I love training people that are already health coaches or just lay people that are passionate about this kind of way of living in the world,
Who everyone's already coming to them for advice because they do research on the internet all the time and they read all these books by all the people like me.
And I say,
You're the perfect person for actually being able to make a living at this.
So I have an online six months training program.
I'm busy trying to clone myself.
I've been doing it for the last four years.
So I've got some pretty amazing coaches out there that do what I do.
Are the coaches on your website?
Yes.
Okay,
Cool.
So why don't you tell us where we can find you?
What is your website?
Give us the name of your book again.
And do you have any offerings coming up?
Sure.
So my website is drdoctorkeshk.
Com.
My doctorate is in sexology.
So best doctorate ever.
So I work a lot because on that level,
Because women were coming into me and saying,
I need to be on bioidentical hormones.
And I would start asking them questions like,
Well,
Do you like your partner?
And they would start crying and saying,
No,
You had no fair five years ago.
And I really,
You know,
I really don't want to have sex with them anymore.
You know,
And I would say,
Well,
Hormones aren't going to make that.
No.
So that's my website,
Drkesha.
Com.
And the book is Solving the Autoimmune Puzzle.
And I would love.
.
.
One of the things I told you is about the ACEs study and the HIRT model that I created.
But people will get discouraged.
They'll have an ACE score of 8.
And they'll read in my book that if you have an ACE score of 6 or more,
It actually reduces your lifespan by 20 years.
And so what I want to make sure I add into this conversation is all of it is reversible.
And just because you have a high ACE score does not mean that that outcome needs to be yours any more than I have genetics for RA and breast cancer,
But I've reversed both of them naturally in my life because I went after the root causes.
So you can actually reverse all of this.
I'd like to offer your listeners a gift.
I call it the 21 Day Quick Start Program.
And what it is are 21 emails that you get scattered,
Not all in one day.
There are tiny little easy things to implement that will help you start reversing the effects of an ACE score,
But also learning how to take care of yourself in a way that puts you at the top of your task list for the day.
To let you know that you are just that important and to start recovering that subconscious belief that you're not.
And so it's ways of balancing your hormones and they go from physical to energetic to emotional to mental to spiritual little tiny things that you can do each day to create a habit.
21 days make the habit.
So that's why I did 21 of them.
So it kind of gets you started in a way to get you out of any form of self neglect you might find yourself in.
So for people that let's say can't afford to go to the functional medicine doctor,
Get all the blood work done.
And I mean,
When I had my data,
It was like $600 to get all the blood work done and the same.
It was crazy.
But for someone that just wants to start,
Is this the best way?
Would you say like,
Get your book,
Of course,
And then also do this 21 day?
Like what else can people do to really start if they have any sort of autoimmune or anxiety or anything like that?
What can they do?
Is there anything else that you can offer?
Is that the best place to start?
That's a really great place to start.
But I want to acknowledge what you just said,
Because we tell people to plan on about $1,
000,
You know,
To get started.
And there's a lot.
And so I need people to think about,
I always say,
If you're buying Starbucks,
Or if you're buying some of the things that are not life supportive,
Replace that with budgeting in.
We're in this idea that insurance should pay for everything.
And that is an outmoded idea.
It will not.
And so as soon as you can get yourself wrapped around the idea that that's not reality,
And that you do need to budget monthly for your own self care,
That will be helpful.
I tell them it's out of pocket and you can submit to your insurance,
But don't expect them to pay.
Sometimes they will and sometimes they won't.
So what we did is created some online programs,
Like I have a full individualized life detox program that is detoxing on all levels in the way that works for your body type.
I help you figure everything out in this online program where you're not even working with me,
I'm just giving you the information.
And so that program is on my website,
You can just,
So I call them do it yourself program.
Because I had someone ask me years ago,
So what can someone that's not rich do?
And I thought,
I don't want to just treat people that are rich.
That's why I got into medicine.
And so I created that one,
I created a trauma healing program,
I created a libido cure program.
All of those are on my website in the programs area.
So there are ways that you can do this in a more economical manner and it's do it yourself stuff.
You have the information and I teach you how to personalize it to you.
Another way is we have a free book study group from solving autoimmune puzzle,
Where I just spent an hour to an hour and a half to two hours once every other week donating my time to take people deeper into the construct and the concept of this book and help them work it through.
Because I'm really passionate about people having this information.
And so we have that program too that was just free when you buy the book.
So if you're willing to start what I call self confronting and taking responsibility,
There are ways that you can do this and we offer them and then we have for people that need handholding and have been sick for a lot of years,
We have a deep immersion retreat that includes a genetic consultation,
All your functional medicine laboratory work,
Some of your supplements,
We teach you how to cook,
You come and do trauma relief here in my home with me with eight other people and it's powerful.
And those retreats are $6,
000 and you can do our VIP program and do all four of them plus see me every month virtually in our VIP program.
So it goes for as much handholding as you need to do it yourself to free.
So you just have to kind of find where your needs are and then match it.
So do you work with people long distance?
I know I'm going to get that question.
You do.
Okay.
So you work with people all around the world.
Okay.
Perfect.
All around the world.
Awesome.
Oh my gosh.
This was so informative.
Thank you so much for sharing all of your wonderful information.
You have done such great research and oh my gosh,
Thank you.
Thank you,
Dr.
Keisha.
This is amazing.
Really.
Well,
Thanks for providing a platform where people can change their lives.
Michelle,
Thank you so much for the,
You know,
The adult chair model that you do and really helping people understand that this is all reversible.
They can take control over this themselves.
I really believe everything is reversible.
So thank you.
All right.
Well,
Thank you again.
And everybody,
I will see you seated right here next week in the adult chair.
Have a great week.
