On today’s podcast, we’re talking about “invisible illness.” This is a term you may not have heard, but if any of this sounds like you, you’ll want to hear this interview. Have you been told your lab tests are “normal” and you are “fine” but you know you are NOT fine? Are you bone-tired? Do you have odd rashes? Do you hurt in ways that don’t have names? Are you losing or gaining weight in a way that makes no sense when you consider your diet and exercise? These are some of the signs of what my guest today calls “invisible illness.”
My guest today is Dr. Carrie Louise Daenell. She received her naturopathic medicine degree from Bastyr University and is licensed as a primary care physician in the state of WA. She is also an author, speaker, frequent guest on PBS health programming and volunteers service to the state, national and educational institutions of Naturopathic Medicine. In today’s interview, Dr. Carrie Louise Daenell shares all about what she calls “invisible illness” – how to know if you have one, what to do about it and who to see.
Please enjoy…
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TRANSCRIPTION
| Trevor: | Hi there. I’m Dr. Trevor Cates. Welcome to The Spa Doctor Podcast. On today’s podcast we are talking about invisible illness. This is a term you may not have heard of, but if any of this sounds like you, you want to hear this interview. Have you ever been told your lab tests are normal and you are fine, but you know you are not fine? Maybe you are bone tired or have odd rashes or hurt in ways that don’t have names. Maybe you are losing or gaining weight in a way that makes no sense, when you consider your exercise and diet. These are signs of what my guest today calls invisible illness. |
| My guest is Dr. Carrie Louise Daenell. She received her naturopathic medicine degree from Bastyr University and is licensed as a primary care physician in the State of Washington. She is an author, speaker, frequent guest on PBS Health Programming and volunteer service to the state national and educational institutions of naturopathic medicine. | |
| In today’s interview, we talk about invisible illnesses, how to know if you have one, what to do about it and who to see. I really think you are going to enjoy this interview. If you know anyone who you think would benefit from hearing this information, please share with them because I think this is important information to get out there. Please enjoy this interview with Dr. Daenell. Today, we are talking about invisible illness. This is a term that you have created and and I think it’s a really interesting way to talk about this. What is invisible illness? Tell us about that. | |
| Carrie: | That’s the term I use for patients like me. Now thankfully I’m not like that anymore. For ten years, and I’ve been well for twenty, I was that invisible patient. They are near and dear to my heart Dr. Cates because when they come to me I think, “They are my people, I know I can help them.” The challenge for being invisible isn’t that you have a diagnosis that your friends and family can’t see. The challenge for being invisible is that even though you are suffering and your life has basically been taken down by your illness. When you go to the person that should be able to help you and they run all the tests. All the tests come back fine and they look at you and they say you are fine but you are not fine. That’s where you start to feel invisible to the very people who are supposed to be trying to help you. |
| Trevor: | Let’s talk about your story. Tell everyone about what’s been your journey and how you came to this awareness. |
| Carrie: | It can start out with something that is so intangible and yet so life wrecking as chronic fatigue, which then goes to fibromyalgia. Those terms are thrown around a lot but they are very hard to measure and so people don’t always get believed by the people they are reaching out to. It’s insult to injury to be so bone tired as I call it, and in so much pain all over, and yet have nothing that can say definitively that you actually have a problem that deserves to be helped or that somebody even knows how to help. |
| Unfortunately it doesn’t end there. As if that’s not enough. What happens a lot of times for these patients is that they end up being, one of those multiple food or chemical sensitivity patients where they start being sensitive to everything and then ultimately I see those patients ending up with a real diagnosis later on down the road. It’s not fun because it typically ends up being something autoimmune. | |
| Trevor: | What you are talking about is that if people can be aware of theirs symptoms and not wait until it becomes something that is diagnosable or visible, to actually pay attention to these clues, these messages your body is giving you. I realize that these messages can come in a lot of different ways, and I focus a lot on skin issues, I see them show up, eczema rashes that maybe the person hasn’t gotten a full diagnosis for and they just have this kind of weird itchy rash and they can’t figure it out or maybe it’s like fatigue you are talking about, but their labs look normal, and this is what kind of what you are talking about that there is no necessary term for it, but you don’t want to wait until you have a diagnosis and a lab show this crazy, these crazy off numbers. You want to be proactive, right? |
| Carrie: | Indeed, Dr. Cates. One of the things that I felt like took me down to a serious degree before I was diagnosed with my autoimmune disease is fatigue. I was dealing with fibromyalgia, but I also had eczema. I call it intractable eczema because it was all over my face and it was all over my arms. It was ugly. It was difficult to be around people when they would look at you and you could hear them wondering, are you contagious? Sometimes it would just come right out of their mouth. It wasn’t pretty and you couldn’t cover it up because the skin was so damaged, it wouldn’t hold any kind of cover up, except for on your arms. You could certainly wear sleeves but on your face what are you going to do? There is not enough make up in the world to to cover that up. |
| On top of all that, it was extremely painful. Your eyes and your mouth are highly innervated and I would try to explain it to people by saying, “What if you just took a needle and you just started poking yourself all around your eyes and all around your mouth?” That’s what it feels like all day long, every day mouth to have that intractable eczema. It was just one more thing that looked like nothing in particular along the way, that had I known what I know now I would have paid attention to and taken it much more seriously and done the work I eventually was able to do that not only resolved the chronic fatigue, the innervated and the eczema, all considered to be incurable, but also my two autoimmune diseases which ended up being crippling rheumatoid arthritis and Graves’ disease, also considered incurable. | |
| That’s the wonderful thing about working through naturopathic medicine, because at the end of the day we are going to go to identifying and treating the cause whenever possible. When you do that you can resolve diseases instead of just simply finding ways to manage them. | |
| Trevor: | When we pay attention to divert our bodies giving us these clues and messages, we want to pay attention to that rather than just suppress them. We want to try and figure out, what is that underlying cause, what is the root cause of that? Before it gets worse. It sounds like things got pretty bad for you. What did you, what ultimately happened with you, how did things turn around for you? |
| Carrie: | Fortunately or unfortunately, however you might look at it, because naturopathic medical school is no small ride. I arrived sick, Dr. Cates and I got sicker along the way. It was very difficult but at the same time I was surrounded by the science of natural medicine. It gave me an opportunity to be exposed to the treat the cause strategies that I was eventually able to put together that rewrote my health story. While people are thinking pain and fatigue and skin, which of course I was, and eventually joints and thyroid, what it ended up being was my digestive system which wasn’t really on my radar to begin with. I didn’t have any of the symptoms that might lead you to think you had a terrible digestive disorder. |
| The interesting thing is that in naturopathic medicine we say that the digestive system opens to the skin, and that of course the immune system, which is responsible for autoimmune and inflammatory skin changes and reactivity to foods, and chemicals, [inaudible 00:08:05], lives in the gut. There is just no other way to say it, it’s that simple. What I did was I spent about a year with a treat the cause protocol, made up of nutritional supplements targeted to completely restore health to my digestive system. Then all of a sudden the several other problems I had resolved themselves. It is very powerful to treat at the causal level, and it was powerful to me to be lucky enough to be surrounded by the science of natural medicine when I was that sick so that I could figure it out. | |
| Trevor: | That’s such a great story, and it really does show that when you treat the cause, it helps a number of different issues. It helps with skin issues, that’s why I call our skin our magic mirror because it gives us great clues about our overall health. When we really focus on treating the cause then like you said, the autoimmune disease, all these other issues that you have get results. They are just, instead of like a side effect that we consider with conventional medications just causing all these other problems, when you use naturopathic medicine to treat the real cause, the side effects are actually that you get rid of all the other issues that you have, and you actually have more energy, and you are sleeping better and you have more, you have a better mood, and your skin is glowing and all these great things are the actual side effects, rather than what you typically think of as a side effect. |
| Carrie: | Absolutely. You just listed a few more of the things. I try not to wear people out with my laundry list of problems but when you are that sick, you end up with so many different challenges that don’t end up with a name. Yes, i had brain fog and my mood was depressed even though I’m not that girl. You know me Dr. Cates. I’m like a bucket of positivity. It’s too much for some people on most days but not in those days. Unfortunately that would distract some of my conventional providers and say, “Maybe you are like this because you are depressed.” I would say, “No, what if I’m depressed because I’m like this?” It gets really frustrating to be the patient. |
| One of the most exciting things about being me at work is that I get to look them in the eye and believe them and know that we can work together to resolve it. These patients are savvy, educated and experienced. Sadly some of them were at it just as long as I was or longer. For me it was a ten year tract trying everything, significant elimination diets, every kind of natural bandit treatment that I could come up with because I didn’t know any better. Certainly every attempt at conventional diagnosis and help and then finally just being able to get down to that causal level. It allows me to really meet people where they are, believe them and get them back on track. | |
| Trevor: | That’s so great to be able to help other people in a way that like you’ve been helped. You can fully appreciate where they are. Tell us what it’s like for a patient to come and to see you, what is a typical visit like? What kind of workup are you doing, what is it like seeing a naturopathic physician such as yourself? |
| Carrie: | The fun thing about us is we practice in all kinds of different ways at various different levels because the different states we work in regulate us in different ways. In my world, I work as a wellness consultant, even though, in Washington state I’m licensed as a primary care physician, with prescriptive authority. In Colorado, the regulation we have allows me to do much less at the convention. I focus primarily on the natural. I require that all of my patients have a conventional primary care provider at the very least, specialist, if they need them. I work very well with them because you know as well as I do that in our training, we are trained in conventional as well as natural in how the two worlds work together. |
| If someone is willing to work with me, I work very well with them. After eighteen years practicing in Denver, I can say that I’ve made a lot of conventional friends to to speak. It helps us serve our patients better because we can work together. They come into my office and they fill out extensive medical and symptom history forms and then, I say, and I say it jokingly but I mean it very seriously, “I just need to hear your whole life story,” because in our world, as naturopathic doctors, it is amazing what might figure in and what might matter that patients themselves don’t even know matters. | |
| We take our sweet time and I hear their life story, and then I begin the process of building them a protocol that is designed to treat the causal level for their individual case, considering things they can’t do, things they should do and not only teach them how to follow that protocol but treat the cause is one sacred principal of naturopathic medicine for me but doctor as teacher is the other one. The teaching begins. I empower my patients with what I believe is going on and how the things we are going to do are going to help so that they go out of my office changed forever with an ability to make informed decisions about what is going on with their bodies, so that they are always in the driver seat to drive themselves back to health. | |
| Trevor: | That’s great. Let’s back up for a moment, because I’ve had people ask me questions about naturopathic physicians an what their training is. I’ve covered this, but you and I are both are naturopathic doctors. We are talking about, yes of course we are portraying in this way. Let’s back up a little bit and can you explain to everyone what our training is like, how we are trained? Because I think there might be some people going, “How can they possibly be trained in both natural and conventional medicine?” Will you talk a little bit about that? |
| Carrie: | As treat the cause doctors. There is no way around understanding, and not just getting through the class and moving on and then memorizing treatments later on. There is really no way around understanding biochemistry and having a working daily knowledge of it, so that you can apply what’s wrong with the biochemistry underneath the diagnosis to how you know that the various different active constituents for example, that might be involved in an herb or a vitamin or a mineral, might work to correct those underlying mishaps in the biochemistry, to really drive, treat the cause healing. |
| There is no way to become a naturopathic doctor if you don’t have all the basic medical sciences. There is no sort of natural anatomy or natural physiology or natural biochemistry et cetera and so on. When we go to school we have to learn all the basic medical sciences. They are what they are, that’s what the body is and we need to know how that works. From there, because we are trained to be family doctor, primary physicians with an expert in the use of natural medicine and the ability to use them together safely and effectively. We have to learn pharmacology. | |
| We’ll have to learn how to prescribe drugs if necessary. We also need to know a very deep understanding of how the vitamins and the minerals and the herbs and homeopathy et cetera and so on, work with the body to treat at the causal level, and also when necessary, because none of my patients like to do one or the other, they want the best of both worlds. How to put those together in the smartest way to deliver the best result for the patient. | |
| Trevor: | Another one of the questions that I’ve gotten is, how do I know how to find a naturopathic physician, which naturopathic physician? Because there are differences in naturopathic physicians. How do you find one, how do you find the right one? Let’s talk about that too. |
| Carrie: | Let’s start with, you want to go to somebody who went to school and who passed the exams set forth by the Department Of Health, of one of the states in the United States, so that you know they have a basic level of competency. You can find those doctors on the naturopathic.org website under find a doctor. If you find a naturopathic doctor there, you know absolutely for certain, that they went to an accredited naturopathic medical school and they were licensed by a state that gives those exams. For example in Washington State Dr. Cates, I sat for five, eight hour days of exams from the State Department Of Health of Washington in order to get my license. You at the very least want that. |
| I think from there you are looking for people who are really focused on the things you care about. Obviously I’m not going to go to a gentleman who focuses on male urology if I have bioidentical hormone needs. Then I think finally you have to do your homework and find someone who you connect with on a personality level. In my practice I give lectures, every single month. For one, it helps my patients learn more about what’s going on with them and why we are doing what we are doing. Some of them come to those lectures four or five times because they say, “I always learn something new and I always forgot something that mattered.” The other thing is that, they can bring their friends or their family. They can check me out so to speak and I say, “You know what? Everyone is not for you. You need to find someone who you connect with and feel good about.” | |
| When they have the opportunity to see how I teach and the things I care about, and how I work, they can decide for themselves. “I really resonate with that girl. Maybe there is someone else for me.” I think most of us, I know I’m like this. If someone is looking for a naturopathic doctor and they are not where I am and they want to go locally, I help them, and help them find somebody that might be a good fit for them. Or if they are looking at me right in my office and saying, “I’m looking for this or that.” Pretty much I know everyone in town and I can say, “This doctor might be a better fit for you.” | |
| Trevor: | That’s great, and so well said. Just to reiterate I think it can be confusing when looking for a naturopathic doctor because there are people that call themselves naturopaths or even naturopathic doctors who have not gone to one of the accredited schools, especially if people are in a state where naturopathic physicians are not licensed. It’s such a confusing thing. I look forward to the day when there is regulation on every state, so it’s not so confusing when we … It doesn’t matter state by state where you are. There are now, I believe it’s fifteen states that license naturopathic physicians? I think that’s … |
| Carrie: | I think we are up into the eighteen, nineteen range with a couple of territories and Washington DC which isn’t a state, but not enough for sure. That is very difficult because you’ve got some really well meaning people out there who know something about something, and I’m not even saying they are not helping people. When you say you are a doctor, that really speaks to people. We all understand doctor to mean a certain level of credentialing, a certain level of training. It’s a little misleading to the public when you go into the office and you think you are seeing a doctor and you are really seeing someone who has a lot of wonderful information that they came across just like you might have maybe reading some books, maybe taking some classes in herbs or natural supplements or lifestyle or diet. They don’t have that training. That extensive training. |
| I just reviewed again, as I have so many times, that list that compares the various different medical schools. They have some of the naturopathic schools, they’ve got Stanford on there. They’ve got various different of conventional schools. When you go to school to be a doctor, whether it’s an MD or an ND, you are looking at anywhere from thirty five hundred to forty five hundred hours of training in basic medical sciences and clinical sciences. Interestingly enough, it is not across the board naturopathic has less or more or medical doctor schools have less or more. They are all different but they are all within that range. | |
| There is just no way to compare that to a self designated, self educated practitioner of something natural, regardless of how wonderful kind or helpful they may be. It’s just tough for the patient to know what they are choosing when the state doesn’t say this is what that means, so to speak. I agree, I look forward to the day that all fifty states say, “This is what naturopathic means. At the very least it means they went to an accredited school and they passed the exams and they are basically competent.” | |
| Trevor: | Until that time it’s, unfortunately it’s just up to people to do a little homework themselves, because you, we don’t want people to have to go through what you went through. Of course you went through with the journey that was right for you. Having to go, you don’t have to go through naturopathic medical school to cure yourself. You don’t have to go to through all of those years because there are already people who have done all that work, like you Dr. Daenell. Finding that right person, the right fit, the right naturopathic physician, and like you said some of these people that are calling themselves naturopaths, they are well meaning, they are helping people and that’s, it’s not the issue. |
| The issue is when someone is calling themselves a doctor or if you want to get to see actually a licensed naturopathic physician because doing an online course is so different. Like some of the certified naturopaths. It’s do different than seeing something like you that have been through and done clinical hours in school, seeing patients, actually physically being there, going through four years of rigorous education is different. It provides a different layer because I really feel like we are such an important part of people’s health team. | |
| When you are trying to figure out, what are the all the different options out there. Having a naturopathic physician as part of your team or maybe is the only person that you see or depending upon the person’s situation. A lot of people with complicated health issues, they need a team of people. Naturopathic physicians can be a really good co-person to help regulate and point directions and help manage that situation, can you agree? | |
| Carrie: | I do. So many times, especially as healthcare changes, because we could be on it for two hours at least. As the healthcare system changes, more and more, I’m serving as the patient’s medical conscience. I’m overseeing their entire case, and we are talking through every strategy, every diagnosis, every proposed treatment and really thinking it through so that we know for sure that things are happening the way they are supposed to for that patient so that nothing slips through the cracks. |
| If they are seeing me anyway, what they want to do is use the very best of conventional medicine when absolutely necessary but also first take responsibility themselves, their lifestyle, their diet, nutritional supplements that are targeted to treat the causal level, to make sure that they don’t need those medications or surgeries if they can simply restore their health. Then if they do, I work with them to identify the very best of the best in the fields of surgeons of prescribers, and people that are willing to work with my patients while they are working with me, so that they have a sane playing field so to speak. They really do get the very best of what they need because I believe right now it’s getting more and more challenging, even for the most savvy. Even for the most well resourced patients. Kind of not to slip through the cracks right now. | |
| Trevor: | It’s so true and especially with all the information that people can find online, it can be so overwhelming. I get so many patients coming in and saying, “I read this and I saw this, and this person told me this. It’s so,” they get so much conflicting information and they feel like, a lot of times they feel like they are betraying their primary care doctor, their MD that they’ve been seeing for years if they go and start doing, changing with their diet and lifestyle and start looking at naturopathic medicines. |
| Some of these are options when in actuality it’s just about finding the focus, the right approach for that patient, because there are a lot of solutions out there, a lot of possibilities. They’ve helped many different people, they’ve had different people too but finding the right path for that person, because everybody is unique and everybody has their story and their underlying causes that need to be addressed. I think that this is great that we are having this conversation because it can be so overwhelming for people and having some guidance is what a lot of people need. | |
| Carrie: | This is the way I explain it. If you find me at the scene of a car accident and I’m not all together the way I should be, the last thing I want is a natural remedy. I want to be escorted to an ER and I want the very best of care to stitch me back up and get me on the mend. At the same time, it has never ever been a bad idea in the face of any diagnosis to try to restore health in that area to the best of your ability while you are looking to treat, manage or cure that disease process. I just can’t imagine if you have someone that is skilled and working alongside with conventional medicine, how it could ever be a bad idea to be as healthy as you can be while you are dealing with any diagnosis. |
| Trevor: | I agree. I love what you are talking about too, about the fact that you speak a lot, and how it’s good to, for people when they are looking for a naturopathic doctor to go and listen to them speak or like you’ve had some people come back and hear you speak. To find that person that you connect with, when looking for a naturopathic physician or really any doctor, any practitioner. |
| Carrie: | Any doctor. |
| Trevor: | You want to find someone you resonate with. I think that a lot of naturopathic physicians are good. It’s really part of what we do is getting out and teaching and speaking whether it’s, I do podcasts or you do more public speaking. People want to find someone that, and listen, and say, “Is this someone that I can resonate with? This is someone that is speaking in a way that I can understand, in a way that I can appreciate, that’s going to help me with my health journey. |
| Carrie: | Or even something as simple as what are your values around health, healthy lifestyle and living? Sometimes I’ll get deep into discussion of food elimination and my path to restore my digestive health, because I have this long history of being very sensitive to almost every single thing I ate. I will say I was down to white rice, pears, and salmon at one point and still reacting. I got really frustrated with the whole food elimination thing and I said, “Instead of finding foods that bother me and eliminating them, why don’t I just eliminate the fact that I’m bothered, because it’s not natural to be that reactive to a full variety of health whole foods?” |
| I developed a bit of an attitude that spurred me on to restore health in the digestive tract in a way that would resolve those food reactivities. I am not talking about anaphylaxis Dr. Cates, I’m talking about those delayed sensitivity reactions that lead to aggravation of chronic fatigue and fibromyalgia and autoimmune diseases and eczema and brain fog and so on and so forth. Then I’ll stop and I’ll look at the people that are listening to me so intently and I’ll say, “I’m not living to be healthy. I’m healthy so that I can live.” That’s a really important distinction. I don’t get up everyday and figure out ways that people can be perfect and live in a bubble. I figure out ways to restore health to such a degree that they can make a lot of really healthy decisions and then sometimes have that beer and have that Mexican food that is probably not organic and still live to tell about it. | |
| You just want to live life while you are here and live it to the fullest. Sometimes it means not having a perfect diet or a perfect lifestyle. You want to be so robustly healthy that you can afford to make those choices, when it makes you happy and allows you to join in with your family and friends. Sometimes that’s the kind of value system that someone will resonate and they’ll say, “You know what? I’ve been with those other people that really value being perfect all the time, because they think that’s the greatest way to be and they just don’t feel like they can connect.” The people that really do want to live like that, and do value that sort of thing are going to listen to me and say, “She is not for me,” and that’s okay, | |
| Trevor: | I completely agree with you on that and I think it’s great to talk about the fact that you don’t have to be living on such a restricted lifestyle. It’s so great to hear you say that you had that, you experienced that, you knew that, you went through that but now that you’ve healed your gut, that you’ve been through the treatment that you’ve been through, that you are able to actually have some of these other foods, you are not limited to three different foods. |
| I think that for my patients, sometimes they do need that in the beginning. They have to be on this restricted diet until we can restore their gut health but ultimately you don’t want to have to be living like that. Nobody should have to live like that. Nobody should have these chemicals sensitivities that keep them home that they can’t travel, they can go walk into a store, they can’t go to a friend’s house to have dinner. Nobody should have to live like that. There is hope for people because I’m sure there are people who are listening or watching that are already, they are in that point right now, they feel like they can’t live a normal life. What is your life like now, what is it? | |
| Carrie: | Dr. Cates, my life is completely different now. I was sick for ten years and literally trying to live in a bubble. Even my shower curtain was made out of organic cotton. I couldn’t wear synthetic fabrics, make up was an absolute no for me. Like I said, I was very limited on the foods I could eat. It wasn’t something that I wondered. I could literally have an organic gluten free corn quinoa pasta and within ten or fifteen minutes the wicked eczema all over my face would just bright red and start burning. It wasn’t a subtle thing. It was very real. It’s just that my body was so broken that everything hurt and everything hurt me. |
| After battling that for ten years, and losing foods. First it was getting rid of wheat, then it was gluten, then it was dairy and so on and so forth. I’d get a little better for a little while but until I really addressed my gut, I just kept reacting to whatever foods I replaced those things with. Now I’m allergic to things I didn’t even know were foods before. Millet and quinoa and spelt. Back in the early days, before I was a naturopathic doctor, I didn’t even know what those foods were until I needed to replace dairy and wheat and gluten products. Ultimately, I went from being just pathetic and sad and hard to look at quite frankly, to being a bouncing off the walls, I just want to save the world before I die person. I’ve been well for twenty years now Dr. Cates, and I mean really well. | |
| I can eat whatever I want. I can walk into a room that has both a glade plugin and six cats living in the house and not die. Not that I want to live in a sea of glade plugins but I can stand up to it. My body is strong enough to say, “I see you, I can manage you. We are going to live robustly anyway.” That’s what I want for my patients. Health is freedom Dr. Cates, if we have our health, then we can make the contributions that we came here to make. If we don’t have our health, we spend all of our time just trying to white-knuckle through the day. I want that freedom for all of my patients. | |
| Trevor: | So beautifully put, so true. I know that you can’t tell us everything that you did to help turn your health around, when you talk about addressing the gut, can you highlight some of the main things that you did that were super important, just so people have some ideas on what it means to heal the gut? |
| Carrie: | In my world, I start with designing for a condition. What I consider to be a protocol that addresses the various pieces of the underlying cause. For the digestive system there are some, I would say at least five very significant pieces. You don’t get to choose your I found, you don’t get to choose your very favorite piece and do the heck out of it and expect the rest of them to be ignored and yet heal. I say, you do these things all day every day at the at the same time over time. Usually within a year, two years, some patients six months. For me it was a year, some of my sickest patients six months. Some of the in the middle of sickness one and a half to two years, everyone is different. Severity of illness doesn’t determine it. |
| Those pieces are, you have to digest your food, which means you have to take the big pieces and turn them into the little pieces that are nutrients instead of rotting them into toxins. Then you have to make sure the bugs are right. Everyone’s had a probiotics that are listening to your show I’m sure. You have to have good bugs and you can’t have a lot of bugs that aren’t good for you, that’s called dysbiosis and so you have to correct dysbiosis. Then if you are not digesting your food and you are rotting it, and you have too many bad bugs and not too many good bugs, the next thing you are going to get is free radical activity, inflammation and irritation. | |
| Then, once that ball starts rolling, no matter what you do to stop what brought it, it will keep itself rolling. Inflammation creates free radicals, free radicals create inflammation. You’ve got to address that self feeding cycle or you’ll never get out of the winds. Then when you have that whole scenario working in the digestive system, what you have is a sea of toxicity. Locally you have to relieve the body a little bit of the toxicity but at the same time you cannot be tempted like so many people are to launch them on into a big detox because they cannot handle it. It will set them back and experienced patients will walk right into my office and say, “You know what? Whatever you do, don’t detox me.” | |
| I say, “I know, we can’t can’t detox you because detox is a form of drainage and you are already drained and beaten down. We have to build you up to make you strong enough to take anything away from you including systemic toxicity.” In the gut it’s different locally. There are ways you can very gently and locally relieve that system of toxicities so that it will heal more readily. Then finally and most importantly where the rubber meets the road is at the point where the gut lining itself is broken down and allowing things to go into the blood stream, triggering the systemic immune system, aggravating the neurological system. You’ve got to shore up that broken down tissue so that that inappropriate relationship between what’s going through the gut and what’s eating your bloodstream doesn’t happen anymore. | |
| That is affectionately known in the world as leaky gut, and so you have to restore that lining. If you look through those five priorities you can find very targeted nutritional supplements. I have my favorite starting set but the truth is that there are many ways to pull that off. Sometimes you have to tailor it to the individual because maybe I’ll say, “I want to use L-glutamine,” and somebody will say, “I have a long history of reacting to L-glutamine.” You have to find other ways. Things like L-glutamine and N-Acetylglucosamine to heal that lining. Things like a gentle demulcent fiber, like slippery elm to relieve that toxicity. Something as simple as quercetin for the inflammation and free radical activity, a good probiotic for the dysbiosis and then of course a digestive enzyme to make sure you are digesting your food into nutrients instead of rotting it into toxins. | |
| Trevor: | Thank you so much for giving that example. I think that some people listening, watching might be thinking, “Six months, a year, two years, how can I possibly wait that long?” What I would just add to that and I’m sure you would agree that I think that with people it depends on their level of severity. You are obviously seeing some very complicated cases of people that have been sick for, and very sick for many years. When you are talking about a year or two years or they’ve probably been sick for ten years or longer. A year or two to them is not in the grand scheme of things that big a deal. |
| It really depends upon the severity of your illness. If you are being proactive, and you are catching this early on, then it’s probably a shorter process. I find that within two weeks of making these changes that you are talking about, these kinds of addressing that that in two weeks people start to notice a difference. That gives you hope to keep going forward. Once you see two weeks a month, I see some improvement. I’m going to keep going and then in six months you look back and you go, “Look how far we’ve come.” | |
| Carrie: | Absolutely, and I love the way you’ve described that. I follow up with my patients at the one month mark on purpose because I say, take the month, do what I ask you to do, record what happened when. If things get a little funky in the first week or two, I don’t even want to hear about it, so I’m not going to have you schedule an appointment, unless it’s this or this, you just keep going. At the one month mark it is amazing what I’m able to hear from a patient and although they are not done in a way that they can set the protocol down and walk away and except to keep those results, they are well on their enough to know they are doing the right thing for the first time, like you said sometimes in a decade. |
| They are more than happy to continue, they blink their eyes, years goes by, it’s nothing compared to the time that they’ve suffered. Then there is a way to measure that sort of done point, and I know that I can withdraw the protocol with confidence and kiss them goodbye at the door so to speak and wish them well in their way and say, “If anything else comes up for you, you know I’m here, I’ll do my best for you. Go live your life now because you’ve arrived. It’s a start and finish project, you’ve done it, enjoy.” | |
| Trevor: | Absolutely, I was just talking to a patient this morning who after a month, they had a month follow up where I just do the same thing as you, I had a month follow up. She said she was 50% better, and which is amazing to get 50% better, especially for something like depression which can be debilitating and keep you from being able to do so much. Because of that 50% improvement within one month, I explained to her that that next 50% is going to actually be easier than that first 50%, especially with something like depression where you’ve got this kind of fog that keeps you from being able to do so many things and makes you feel tired and makes you feel crazy and not motivated. |
| When she’d feel, in some patients they get 75% better. Everybody is a little bit different but getting that significant improvement in a month gives you hope to keep going. I hope that gives people some hope and not feeling like they have to wait two years to get better. Thank you so much Dr. Carrie Louise Daenell for your information today. I really appreciate you sharing your personal journey and how you are able to help other patients. I think it’s beautiful the way that you’ve made this your life mission to be able to serve in this way. | |
| Carrie: | Thank you so much for having me. It is my pleasure and mission to be here talking about natural medicine whenever I can. |
| Trevor: | I hope you enjoyed this interview today with Dr. Carrie Louise Daenell. To learn more about Dr. Carrie Louise Daenell you can visit my website thespadoctor.com. Go to the podcast page with the interview and you’ll find all the information and links there. While you are there, I invite you to join The Spa Doctor community on my website or just subscribe to The Spa Doctor Podcast on iTunes, so you don’t miss any of our upcoming shows. |
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