Episode 23: From Symptoms to Root Causes with Holistic Medicine and Dr. Shawn Persaud

Awesome. So Sean, if listeners were to get one thing out of this episode, what would you want them to know?

3:56 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Well, first of all, I would definitely want them to know that there's hope. I'd And there too, suffering from chronic illness, I've suffered from debilitating anxiety disorders and also all sort of colitis and Crohn's, which is a very serious autoimmune condition. So I can relate a lot to those who would be listening to a podcast like this. I want them to know that there's hope and hopefully we're going to have a chance to kind of get into maybe a bit of a different philosophy from what they're used to, you know, in terms of approaching chronic illness and things like that, you know, diving into more of that holistic approach and how we view things and, you know, and maybe that'll give to a little bit more of a logical reason as to why there's hope and, you know, in understanding some of the basic principles behind, you know, the type of work we do and why that can be so powerful and also empowering, you know, for those going through these types of illnesses.

4:49 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

So could you share a little bit with us about you, your background, and also, yeah, how you came to heal those autoimmune conditions yourself?

4:59 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, for sure. So. Well, first of all, I'm the director of the Center for holistic health care and education, which is in Pickering, Ontario. I'm a doctor of natural medicine. Like I mentioned, I also have my own healing journey, which is a big reason as to why I got into this field. Like so many others, I had a really hard time, you know, with the conventional medical system. Medications weren't working. You know, they didn't know what was causing the problem, which is so often the case. A lot of my symptoms went unchecked for a very long time because nothing showed up in blood work and know all that type of thing. I know so many people are very familiar with that very scenario. So I've been there too. And what really helped me was holistic medicine. When I got introduced to that, it changed everything for me. Like things started to turn around really quickly, including the anxiety disorder. That was the first thing I was faced with. You know, from the age of three, that was something I struggled with for a very long time, a good 10 years, I met the holistic practitioner in Toronto here when I was about 14. So I spent a good 10, 11 years exploring all the different avenues to try and get better with the anxiety. My mom was was taking me all over the place, doctors, appointments, sometimes weekly, I weekly, like all the time was missing. Sometimes a third of the school year because of this, like it was, it was very bad. was very debilitating. And, you know, the response we always got was, well, you're just going to to live with this. There are no cures for anxiety. It's just something that, you know, happens. And, you know, when you're bit older, we'll try all sorts of stronger medication and things like that. But, you know, it is what it is, right, which was very full of this kind of prognosis. You know, eventually a family kind of suggested we try, you know, this, this type of holistic practice called applied kinesiology. And, which is something that today I practice, it's a blend of many different healthcare systems, know, it's a blend of osteopathy, chiropractic, nutrition, acupuncture, know, there is, it's a beautiful blend of many different healing modalities. And, and one of the things that's characteristic about it is how it kind of goes about, you know, finding problems, which is through a process known as muscle testing, know, which is known as neuromuscular biofeedback to be a bit more technical. But, you know, for short, we call it muscle testing. We're basically using the human muscle response as a feedback tool to see what's going on on the inside, right? And, this protocol, you know, the practitioner was able to quickly find what was triggering this anxiety and what was behind it. And it had a lot to do with some food sensitivities, which was very easy to correct. I corrected that immediately. I also had some underlying parasitic infection. protection, which is not something that's ever spoken about in the in conventional medicine, I'm going to be consider for these types of cases, they assume anxiety is just in the head or an issue of the brain or nervous system. So they don't look at, you know, the possibility of an infection like that as being part of it. But within the week, I was not having anxiety attacks or panic attacks anymore, like it wasn't, you know, to that point. And very quickly after everything was settled, you know, everything was settled. I never experienced anxiety after that, you know, it was it was, and for me, I was 14 at the time but having spent 10 years going to all types of doctors, trying all sorts of things, this was very impressive to me. You know, at 14, like I was I was old enough mature enough to know that there was something very special about that way of practicing medicine. And it really inspired me from the air to, you know, jump into this field. I remember at 14 years old, I started picking up books. started attending workshops. They started, you know, through webinars, starting to learn about this type of holistic medicine. I started practicing on family and friends. I had a lot of guinea pigs that were willing to let me try some stuff out and things like that. But, you know, that's how I got into it. That's how I got into it. And it just kind of progressed from there, right? And I started to, you know, went to university eventually and just kind of added all types of, you know, different modalities to my tool belt kind of thing.

9:32 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

But that's how it all started for them. There's so much to get into there. So I'm going to go back a little bit and we can take this a bit high level for people and get down into specifics because you mentioned holistic medicine, which again, that term, a holistic thrown around quite a lot. But when you pair it with medicine, I don't think people are aware of what that is.

9:54 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

So could you share about that? Yeah, for sure, for sure. And I'm glad you're asking the question because this is something that gets confuse so much with people, you know, holistic is sometimes viewed as just being, you know, something natural, right? So sometimes a lot of people today are using the term holistic when, you know, really they're using a natural form of medicine, whether it's massage or maybe it's herbs or maybe it's nutrition or chiropractic, etc, which is great, you know, these are all great tools, great pedalities and stuff like that, but fundamentally, like from a philosophical perspective, it's not technically holistic medicine. Ballistic medicine really means that we're approaching healthcare by looking at the whole body, okay? So what does that mean? A lot of times people's concept of what constitutes the body is the physical stuff that are seen, right? The muscles, the bones, the organ systems, know, that's typically where, you know, people will kind of, you know, start and finish when they think about the body, right? But the human body is a little bit more complex than that, right? We have emotions, right? We have a mind, you know, we have thoughts, we have memories. We also have an energetic body, right? have an acupuncture system. This was something that was developed over 10,000 years ago, you know, traditional Chinese medicine, you know, we have an acupuncture system. We have a chakra system, right? We have an energetic anatomy, right? physics has taken this to a whole new level, you know, in a very scientific kind of way, in a very compelling scientific kind of way, you know. So from a quantum physics perspective, every part of our body, every body part, whether we're talking about muscles, whether we're talking about organs, whether we're talking about bones, we're actually made up of energy, right? So when you zoom in, for example, let's say on a, whether it's your arm, let's say, or like a bone or whatever, right? You know, that part of the body is made up of tissues, right? That's something we're going to all agree. And those tissues are made up of cells, right? Also something we can all agree until there. You know, all that's made up of molecules, right, which we're still familiar with. Those molecules are made up of atoms, right? All the stuff that we see on the periodic table, right, from chemistry class. So, you know, it's made of carbon, made of hydrogen, made of oxygen, you know, all these types of things. When you zoom in on an atom, let's say it's a hydrogen atom or a carbon atom or whatever, you know, have a nucleus, you know, that's made up of protons and neutrons. then you have those, you know, little rings around them with these electrons flying around, right? Now, you know, scientists and physicists, you know, tell us that if you were to kind of try and get an intuitive sense of what that looks like, you can imagine a soccer field, right? And you can imagine putting a little P in the center of a soccer field, and that's like the nucleus of an atom. And then you can put other little keys. swirling around that across the soccer field. So in the case of something like hydrogen, there'd be like one little peat just flying around that soccer field, around a little nucleus. So what's going on with all that other space there, right? It's not empty, it's full of energy. And what's been discovered even further than that is those actual electrons and protons and those subatomic particles, when you zoom in on them even further, they're not solid matter at all. They're actually vibrational fields of energy, right? And so something that started off as very solid, whether it was a muscle, bone, an organ, when you zoom in, you find the cell, you zoom in, you see the molecule, you zoom in, you see the atom, you zoom in, you see these little flickers of light and electrons, and then you realize those are just vibrational patterns of energy. So from a quantum perspective, everything is energy. not just the acupuncture that's energy, but every cell in your body is fundamentally made of this energetic stuff. So this is also a very important concern. iteration in holistic medicine. If we really want to be able to get to the root of the root of the root of the problem, know, we have to also be understanding what's going on at a quantum level in the body, you know, as well as going on in the mind and what's going on in the physical body and the organs and the chemistry and all of it. All right, so, you know, that's really, you know, in a nutshell, what encapsulates holistic medicine?

14:23 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

And this idea of holistic medicine, isn't anything new. medicine has caught onto this long, long before we're having this discussion. this isn't like a new field or a new area that's just come about. But I like how you really brought that scientific explanation to energy and the energetic bodies, because I think there's this great confliction that happens with people with the scientific, rational, analytic side, and then the woo, woo energy healers. So when you work with clients, how do you kind of marry those two and explain it to them because it's both?

15:09 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Oh yeah, no, absolutely, absolutely. that's what's key when you're approaching any case. Okay, and that's also another important point, know, like I know a lot of listeners for this podcast or press field dealing with endometriosis more specifically or, you know, people who are who know someone with endometriosis and all that kind of thing. But the thing in holistic medicine is, you know, we're not specialists in any specific diseases. Okay, that's how conventional medicine is built their specialist for every possible part of the body and every disease has its own specialist and that has its advantages. But it also has its disadvantages because sometimes they don't understand the connection between that part of the body and the rest of the body. Okay, and, and, and obviously, you know, not just the. impressive body, but the more nuanced parts like we were talking about like the energy aspects and then the mental aspects and so on, all the other dimensions, right? So in holistic medicine, we don't really consider ourselves specialized in any specific disease because we're working with the whole body. We don't treat a diagnosis. We don't treat a specific disease. That's not so much part of our philosophy. treating people. We're treating the whole person. And when we approach any case, whether it's endometriosis or whether it's just someone coming in with back pain or someone who's just dealing with a headache or a migraine issue or something like that, the overall approach is actually very similar, okay? We're getting a good feel of, you know, all the possible weaknesses that we can find in the body's regulatory systems, you know, is there a toxicity issue? Is there a problem with the immune system? Are there blockages in the flow of energy in the body? Is there mental stress, you know, or trauma? Is there, you know, what's going on with the diet? Is there a deficiency, right? So We're looking at all the different aspects of the person, and we're looking to see if we can measure imbalances at any of those levels. And then the treatment approach in very simple terms is we're trying to correct as many of those weaknesses or imbalances as possible, right? And as we do so, we're really strengthening the bodies in a healing capacity to start to regulate itself and to start to heal in a very, very powerful way. So again, in a very basic sense, whether it's something that's seemingly simple, like a chronic back pain kind of thing or something very complex, like an autoimmune disease, your overall approach is relatively similar.

17:42 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

Yeah, I'm really glad you brought that up because you mentioned that holistic medicine and the practices encapsulate like acupuncture or nutrition and psychology and all these sorts of things, which again, as you so eloquently said, that there's specialists for all these specific things. So how do you, I guess, Patients who seek out your support are probably a little bit more comfortable with a holistic model, but is that a piece of your work is explaining kind of like you did what holistic medicine is and how you don't necessarily need a specialist for all these different things?

18:19 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, well, absolutely. know, like you said, like a lot of people who come to see us, it's, you know, they're already familiar, you know, like they're already into this, like they really believe in holistic medicine, they want a natural approach, you know, like that's just, you know, what really aligns with them. There's also lot of people that get dragged into the clinic by, you know, loved ones, and they don't necessarily know much about what to expect. And this happens quite often. And, and so, yeah, of course, we always, in the beginning, you know, take the, take the time to make sure we're all on the same page and they understand the differences, right? And one of the important things to that I always explained to people is not like, it's an either or situation. It's not like either you're doing conventional medicine or you're doing holistic medicine. the ideal situation, especially with chronic illness, is we're blending the two together. We're getting the best out of both worlds. Like I said, there's a lot of advantages to having a specialist in that said condition or that part of the body because they're going to be able to really go down at a very molecular level and really pick up on all the little nuances and stuff like that, that someone like me won't be able to do. On the flip side, I'm going to be able to look at a lot of the nuances that they won't be able to look at. Like I said, in my case, for example, something that psychologist, neurologist, and doctors around the board would assume that anxiety is just sort of like a brain and nervous system thing. They would never think that there was like an immunological component to it. know, where there are would be like an underlying parasitic infection that was driving the hormones crazy or something of that nature or even a food sensitivity. Like those are things that they connect together at all. So that's a bit of a limitation because like I said, spent over 10 years going to the best of the best and zero progress, but I wanted to see a holistic practitioner within the week. had more progress than the last 10 years of dealing with the best medical doctors, right? So having that wider scope has massive advantages because you're going to be able to sometimes to pick up on things that the specialist, you know, won't be able to see. But at the same time, if I did have a problem in the brainer nervous system, you bet that they would have been the best ones to find it, right? So I always explain to people, you know, it's not an either force situation. They have their role, which is very important. we have ours and our role is really centered on, like I said, looking at the whole person. at all of those different levels, the physical, the biochemical, the energetic, the mental, looking to see if we can pinpoint any weaknesses there that have been unchecked or not looked at at all. And then focus on therapies that are going to help strengthen all of those weaknesses. as we do so, we get a body that becomes way more regulated. And when the body is nice and regulated and free of deficiencies and free of all those, you know, limitations that all the other levels, it starts to respond in a super powerful way. And the innate capacity of the body. I've seen just about every disease or condition known out there to respond, you know, in some people. So it is very powerful.

21:48 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

I want to go back and talk about muscle testing before we kind of move on because that's really fascinating. I'm not even familiar with that. it's really interesting to hear about anxiety, because it's such a, it's such a common thing. I too have dealt with really crippling anxiety in the past and it always felt like it was a symptom of something. So I was like, I'm controlling this, this is under control, but it's still happening, which can be really devastating to the person dealing with that. But I guess my question about anxiety is since there's so many people who are struggling with that and we live in a culture that I feel isn't set up for our body to access its innate healing capacities with the environmental toxins, social media, those sorts of things. So what are your tips or advice to those people who are struggling with anxiety and can't really get it under control in their circumstances?

22:54 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, so the first thing is to recommend that is, and this is true for any conditioner disease that anxiety isn't just something that's like a mental old factor, okay? Sometimes it is, right? Sometimes there is very specific things too that you're even going to be aware of because it could be like traumas that you've gone through or lived experiences that were very difficult, or very stressful current situations or living conditions that are bringing out that kind of anxiety response. And those are cases that are usually pretty obvious that that's where it's coming from. people are generally aware of that when that's the case. But there's also a lot of situations where, and mine was one of them where there's like this very severe anxiety response happening, panic attacks happening and stuff like that, but nothing seemingly actually triggering it, right? Like I was waking up in the morning having breakfast and then panic attacks on the way to school and it could have just been a nice normal day. It didn't really make a difference if it was a stressful morning or not. It was just happening. a lot of people doing chronic illness, you know, as a kind of like another symptom, you know, they a lot of people have anxiety as another symptom. And it's just not even linked together with their condition, right? It's just thought that, oh, that's a whole separate thing, you know, that's a whole separate thing. There couldn't possibly be connection to the endometriosis, you know, or anything else. But what's really important to understand is that when we're talking about anxiety from a holistic perspective, again, we have to look at every level of what is up the person, okay? So at a physical level, there can be, you know, very, you know, real things that could be affecting how the nervous system is working. And I'm talking here, looking at it from like even a chiropractic and osteopathic perspective, misalignments in the spine, in the sacrum, in the bones of the cranium. Remember, your brain is inside the cranium and your nervous system is running through your spinal cord and sacrum. If there's tension, if there's, you know, what they call subluxation, These are afraid that are out of alignment that are putting pressure on the nerves or blocking circulation in the nervous system. These are very real things that can affect the regulation of the nervous system and affect the communication pathways in the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. So this is like, even from like a really true physical biomechanic perspective, there's a lot of, you know, things there that can trigger this type of anxiety response. Looking at it from a chemistry perspective, food sensitivities can trigger anxiety big time. know, it's very, very common. is extremely common. Very common in children as well. I see this a lot in children and soon as we sort out their food sensitivities, it can be gone within the week. Wow. So that's a very big one in balances and the microbiome, you know, huge links between that and anything that's, you know, thought as like mental health related. You know, there's something called the gut brain connection, a lot. of brain related stuff or cognitive related stuff or neurological related stuff is linked back to imbalances with the gut whether it's gut inflammation whether it's imbalances in those gut bacteria. This is one of the reasons to a lot of people's chronic illness. Eventually sometimes develop anxieties because they get hit with antibiotics so much. know this is a big part of a lot of chronic illnesses is you know you get all types of infections from a weakened immune system. You're on many different rounds of antibiotics. This is totally disrupting the gut bacteria, the microbiome, those probiotics. We now know 90% plus of the serotonin produced in the body is coming from those gut bacteria right serotonin being the neurotransmitter that's often associated with anxiety depression and things like that. That's what the medications tend to is that serotonin but 90% plus of it is actually made in the gut right so when you're going through so many rounds of these antibiotics. you know, throughout the course of your, you know, you know, your, your illness, and then you start to suddenly be developing these anxiety issues. There's no accident there. That's a very real thing. I saw a case like that not so long ago following the course of antibiotics, she started to have a very severe panic attacks, very, very severe and you know, the doctors kind of gaslighted her and just kind of dismissed her all with nothing to do with us to go get a psychologist and you know, and, and they kind of just left her hanging and it got really bad in her case. It got very, very bad and, and luckily, you know, we were able to sort out very quickly and you know, she's much better now, but it all had to do with restoring her gut microbiome, right? So that's a huge thing. That's a huge thing in itself. So it's just to kind of give people, you know, a sense that, you know, there is more going on. There is more going on and it doesn't matter if you're not in the middle of a crisis, know, there could be a lot happening with your body chemistry or your physical body. That's pushing these types of symptoms.

28:00 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

Okay, so I think the antibiotics is a great example because the patients know what the antibiotics do, right? go in and they sweep out all the bad bacteria that's causing infection and causing the symptoms of whatever, right? So from that logical perspective, what we've been taught about antibiotic use, it makes sense. And that's what our doctors are prescribing us and we trust in our doctors to not lead us astray. So if somebody has this information about, well, antibiotics aren't targeted, they aren't targeting just that specific bad bacteria but wiping out all of them and their doctors say they have an infection and their doctors prescribing this antibiotic to them, what are their other options? Because obviously they don't want to continue having this infection but what do you do in that situation?

28:52 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, so obviously there are situations where the antibiotic is warranted and these are situations where there's a very acute infection. And it's gotten very serious. And anyway, there's a lot of nuance in the situation here. say it's a situation where you really have to take the antibiotic. Normally, I tell people take the antibiotic, but let's start doing some work together to make sure this doesn't happen again. Every time you take a round of antibiotics, the likelihood is you just weaken the immune system, and more likely that you're going to have to take another round of antibiotics. And this happens way too often where you start getting stuck on this cycle, where it just seems like every few months, you're back on an antibiotic because of another infection and some other problem pops up. So in cases where things have gotten quite serious and they need the antibiotic, and I'll tell them, go ahead, take it, let's start doing some work together. Let's start doing some damage control from the antibiotic. And then let's start working at this together to rebuild your immune system, OK, so that your immune system does what it's supposed to do. OK, now in cases where we have the time, And in a situation where we have the luxury of time of dealing with this, there's a lot that we can do naturally to target infections and to deal with them with natural medicines, right? there are a whole range of natural medicines that work really well as kind of like natural antimicrobials, natural antibiotics and stuff like that, that have no side effects that don't disrupt the good bacteria, they're really targeted. And the other approach sometimes we take is just strengthening the immune system. So the immune system can actually just do what it was designed to do and take care of the infection. And sometimes we do a combination of them both. we focus on strengthening the immune system, which is more of a systemic approach. And at the same time, sometimes we give something a bit more targeted to deal with the right now infection. So those are just a couple of the ways that from a natural perspective, we can start to deal with these things and then cut that vicious cycle off with the whole antibiotic use.

31:00 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

Yeah, I think this leads us nicely into the next topic because as you mentioned, you can get stuck on that cyclical medication use. I think with women with endometriosis, it's a never ending cycle of trying different birth controls, which have damaging effects to the gut microbiome as well as a myriad of other effects and then pain medication, which, you know, I think women with endometriosis know the effects of it. But when it's like something you mean to get through your day, it can be tough knowing the effects of it, but still needing to take it. So I know you support women with endometriosis. So if you could share with the listeners, maybe what endometriosis is in your words and how you approach that condition.

31:48 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm sure most people watching this probably know the definition of endometriosis and stuff like that, what it's all about.

31:57 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

But you know, it's obviously, you'd be surprised, Sean, you know. I think there's a lot of people out there who have heard of it, but they're like, I don't really understand what it is.

32:05 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Okay, sure. Well, get into it a little bit and stuff, then I'll spend more time discussing our approach with it and stuff, because I think that's going to be something that a lot of people are here for in the first place. you know, so Enemetrios is an inflammatory condition. Basically, the endometrium, that tissue can start to overgrow. It can start to thicken. It can start to overgrow, and it can start to grow in places where it shouldn't be. Okay, this can then create a whole range of problems. Okay, this can start to create pain that can create inflammation. Like I said, that tissue sometimes grows in areas where it shouldn't be. So, it can grow outside of the uterus. It can grow in the bowels. It can grow, you know, in other organs, and this can start to cause other problems. So, it can be a very serious condition. It can cause a whole host of other kind of effects that are, you know, related to the pelvic region at all. And so it could be a little bit complex to manage from just a strict conventional point of view. So a lot of times when women just go the conventional route, whether that's a personal choice or they're just not aware that there are other options too that they can explore, basically they're limited to medications, drugs, I said, painkillers, hormones, things like that. And then when if that's not doing the trick to get things that are controlled, now surgery becomes sort of like the next of option in line. So now the holistic side of things is like I said, our approach is very similar to dealing with health history. Okay, we want to know all the details as much as that they can provide. Um, and we go very deep together at looking at the physical body. Okay. Because again, like we said, we want to make sure that from a nervous but system perspective, there's nothing disrupting its regulation. So we look at the cranial bones, we look at the spine, we look at the sacrum, we look at also other joints. And a lot of times this is an approach that, you know, and I get the question a lot like, why are you looking at all these body parts and stuff? I don't care about that. I want you to deal where I have pain, know, we're having to be an issue. And that's something that's to be expected when you're working with the holistic practitioners. going to be looking in all sorts of places that you wouldn't expect, right? Often, and that's one of the things, right? We often get this illusion and focusing on where the pain is. And then we forget that, um, you know, all the effects, you know, that could be coming from other places, right? And so we want to make sure that the nervous system is well-regulated, because the well-regulated nervous system means you have a well-regulated immune system. and a well-regulated hormonal system, a well-regulated digestive system, it's the main communication system of the body, right? So we're looking at the physical side, we're looking at the body chemistry, we're looking for deficiencies, we're looking for issues of toxicity problems, we're looking at the microbiome, we're looking at the hormones, we're looking at all those different elements on the body chemistry side of things, and we're looking for any weakness, looking for any type of deficiency, anything that we can find as a clue as to what's causing so much imbalance and disruption in the body, we're looking for and we're looking at correcting that. And then beyond that, we're looking at the energy body, we're looking at the acupuncture system, weight, the chakras, we're looking to see if there's any blockages there. This is very important, a lot of times people don't really know the connection between those energetic systems and how that instances, the physical body, but the way you can look at it is like the acupuncture system. important information, right? So that's a very important part two. I've seen many conditions respond extremely fast just to, you know, correcting imbalance in the acupuncture system, right? In the same way, using the same analogy, if you had a light bulb that wasn't working, and, you know, you select the switch back in your breaker box, all of a sudden, everything's working again, you didn't have to change it, right? And this goes, this extends pretty far in the, you know, looking at human health. Sometimes people will be pushed to surgery, and you can correct the poem just with acupuncture, or just by correcting the acupuncture system, just by turning the lights back on so it's getting the electricity flowing. Things come back alive, right? And so it's a very important consideration too. Beyond that, we also look at the mind. Okay, this is huge. This is huge, okay? Holistic medicine is also a mind-body medicine. We're looking at how the mind is manifesting disease in the body, okay? this can be because because of ongoing stress, severe stress that's kind of current ongoing, this can also be because of trauma and past trauma. It could be things that were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, know, for the mind, it doesn't keep track of time when it comes to trauma. know, these things can, you know, have a real significant effect no matter how long ago it was. So these are things too that we discussed with endometriosis patients along with anybody to see if that may be an issue that's behind some of the immune dysfunction and again, the nervous system dysfunctions impacting their overall, you know, ability to heal.

38:40 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

Yeah, so I think it's so interesting because I'm seeing more and more research come out that is linking trauma to some of these physical body conditions as you had mentioned. And I think it's kind of an interesting path to walk because you would never want to make it seem like it's the patient's fault that they are then sick because of this thing that happened to them. So that's that's an interesting one but people I think need to be educated on like how this works. So I guess could you share with us how the effects of trauma can then have those physical manifestations in the body?

39:18 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah absolutely absolutely and you know like you know like a kind of an anecdote comes to mind. I had a professor that was a medical doctor worked at one of the bigger hospitals in New York City and he told us a story about you know working with a cancer patient and it was it was a very severe aggressive form of cancer it was like stage four type cancer sorry and he didn't have much time to live and so they had offered him an experimental kind of treatment and the medical doctor like my professor they were they were excited about that a new drug. It seemed to make a lot of sense, seemed to be something very innovative, and you know, they had kind of high hopes for it. And he had sat down with the patient, explained the whole thing, and the patient got really, really excited about it. And, you know, he was yet a lot of faith that this thing was going to work. And so they gave him the, you know, the medication ensured that cancer went away like extremely fast. You know, almost overnight it disappeared, and there was no trace of it left in his body, you know, within a couple of days. And they sent him home, there was nothing left to do, they sent him home. you know, month, two, three, four months went by and, you know, he was cancer free. All of a sudden, there was a news report that came on, you know, the news about that drug, you know, basically, and this man was watching the news that evening, unfortunately. Basically, the news report was that the drug had failed in its trial, experimental trial, it was found not to do anything, no effect on the cancer in question. Um, it basically they say, you know, it didn't work where we're scrapping the whole thing and the drug won't be available anymore. He saw that and immediately he became very depressed about it because he thought that the results or the test that they had done that confirmed the cancer was gone must have been like fake or just like it was wrong or there must have, you know, they must have missed something. Right. And he became very depressed very quickly. And sure enough within a very short period of time, the cancer exploded again. And this time he didn't survive. So, you know, this is an anecdote, but it's just to kind of display here the effect of the mind body connection a little bit. Okay. How powerful the mind can be. And whether that medication actually had a real effect on his cancer or it was his strong belief in faith that it was going to work and the conviction of the doctor who gave it to him and everything involved, know, no, we don't know 100%. But we know. went away very fast. And then when he got the news that, you know, the drug isn't effective, etc., he got back down in a very bad mental state and the thing, you know, came right back, right? And there's also, you know, beyond that, just a phenomenon known as spontaneous healing, right? These are cases where, you know, not just cancer cases, I'm more familiar with some of cancer cases in this research, but there's just about any chronic condition, you know, has been observed, you know, with this spontaneous healing phenomena, where, you know, the person might have, again, like a stage four cancer, they're terminally ill with something, they have 24 hours to live, and then just out of nowhere, you know, within 24 hours, it's almost like they're cured. There's not a single trace of cancer left in the body. There's, you know, no sign of disease whatsoever, and there's left to go home. And there's a lot of research that's been done on this, because it was very difficult for anyone to. understand, you know, how this could be possible in some of these cases. It was quite drastic in some of these cases. And basically what the researchers found is that in most of these cases, there was always some kind of drastic shift at a kind of emotional or mental level, you know, that preceded that spontaneous healing event. Very often, right when they knew that they were, they had 24 hours left to live or whatever it was, they may have let go of some type of grievance. You know, in many cases that were documented, you know, they would tell stories of how they picked up the phone. They called, you know, their mother that they hadn't spoken to in 30 years and said, sorry, or there was some kind of major emotional release of some sort that preceded the spontaneous healing. And this makes a lot of sense from, you know, mind-body perspective and holistic perspective. effective and what we know of how the immune system works. The immune system is very sensitive to stress. It's very sensitive to trauma. It's very, and like I said, doesn't even have to be active stress. Okay, this could be from trauma that happened 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago. Maybe you don't even think about it anymore. But if it's still in the body that's still stuck in the body at a physical level at a chemistry level, right, it's impairing in blocking the body's energy systems. And this includes, again, like the acupuncture system and so on. This can create very serious blockages there. can be blowing up circuits, so to speak, in your body that are very important to make sure everything is working at a physiological level. And it can really shut down the immune system. Okay, and when the immune system is shut down and the nervous system is dysregulated, you know, this creates conditions where disease can happen. This creates conditions where pathogens can run freely and not be detected by immune system. And you don't need a full-blown fever to have a pathogen. Sometimes people associate infections with kind of like the typical flu type kind of symptoms. But you don't need a full-blown fever to have an infection. Parasite infections, for example, don't often cause full-blown fevers, but they can make you very, very ill. They can cause lots of chronic inflammation in the body and not even just the gut. It can be the joints. It can cause chronic headaches. It can cause that there's one of the things we found in our research working with endometriosis patients is a huge number that had parasite infections. So just as a kind of a fun fact, now this doesn't mean I want everyone listening to go to a parasite cleanse because that's something that should be done with the items. But it was just it was just an observation we made that many, many, many, probably the majority had it in parasite infections. So these are the kinds of things that, you know, some Sometimes trauma can have an effect on the body, OK? And of course, it's not your fault, right? You know, these are these are horrible things that have happened in life. But it's important to understand, too, the connection. And again, knowledge in this case is power, OK? When you have that self-awareness, now you can do something about it, right? If you don't know that that's even a thing, or it's even, you know, there's a possible link there, you're not going to be paying attention to that when it comes to treatment approach. You're just going to think your options are drugs and surgery. But if someone tells you, hey, know, like trauma, you know, even just a very difficult childhood, you know, could be something that's still affecting your nervous system today and how your immune system is working. Well, now that's something that you can use to your advantage because there's a lot of therapies out there that can really help reset the nervous system. or that can really help reset the immune system, right? There's a lot of techniques that you can learn to do that will help regulate your nervous system and negate the effects of that, right? So for me, it's very empowering to know that, you know, it's not so much, you know, like a, your fault thing. It's, you know, happened happened, you know, we're human and this world is difficult. It's complicated. There's a lot that goes on. There's a lot of suffering that goes on. But understanding how that suffering impacts the mind, how it impacts the body, a lot of power back into your hands. Because now you can, like I said, you can do something about it. You can, you can explore therapies that help to negate the effects of that so that you can have a fresh start with your body, your body can start to heal itself, right? So that's a huge thing.

47:53 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

That's a huge thing. I think one of the most empowering pieces of information I learned was just the fact that the brain doesn't know the difference between something that has happened and then what is currently happening. So the same traumas that happen can still be playing when you're having an emotional flashback or you're thinking of something your brain is perceiving that to be happening now. It's the same way that memories happen. It's not separate. Also, while you were talking, I was just thinking of one of the most impactful books I've read on trauma and physical symptoms is the body keeps the score by Dr. Bessel van der Kolk. So I'll link that one in the show notes for everybody to access because that blew the lid off of a lot of things that I thought I knew.

48:40 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, absolutely. It's a great book.

48:42 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

It's a great book. And it's digestible, I think, for people. Be prepared going in to read it. It's not something you just like sit down and read at the beach. mean, you could also, but it's not a novel. it's a tool to help you become the driver in your health, which I think is really important. And I want to go back to something, parasites, because I think when people think of parasitic infections, it's like, oh, well, you were just traveling in Asia drinking the water, weren't you? That's what we think of these parasitic infections come from. So how in the heck are we getting parasite infections in North America?

49:22 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, so that's an amazing question, because, like I said, this is not something that conventional doctors even look at over here, among this is true both in the US, Canada, and so on, because there's an assumption that as a first world country, we don't get parasite infections. Okay, this can be further from the truth. Something that I discovered is that vets know very well, you know, about parasite infections, because pets get them all the time. And they're constantly dealing with that in their clinics and in their practices. they're constantly, you know, teaching people to deworm their pets at home and stuff like that. it's just a very normal, casual thing. And they're actually very good at testing for parasites too, compared to for human labs, which are very not educated on how to do these tests in a manner that will help them find the actual parasites. We've had many cases where we've told clients or patients that we think they have parasites, etc., or maybe a bit skeptical. They went to the doctor, they asked for a stool sample and stuff like that. And because that's a typical way that a doctor will test for parasites out here is a stool sample. Stool samples were clear. They give us a call all upset and stuff like that. doctors, there's no parasites and we don't get that stuff over here, blah, blah, blah. Anyways, long story short, they decided to take the anti-parasitic kind of herbs or whatever we kind of prescribe to help kind of clear that stuff out. then they would see things that's big in the toilet. so, you know, the evidence is really in the... and the results kind of thing, and it does show, you know, people do get this stuff and big time. Okay, this is just part of nature. Okay, they're all over the place. People who guard it, okay, people walk barefoot in the sand or in the dirt and stuff like that. If you have pets, like we just said, like pets get parasites and they give it to their owners all the time. And young kids, you know, they're crawling and putting everything in their mouth and touching everything. you know, then you're, they're putting their fingers in your mouth and up your nose and all kinds of stuff. You know, they're giving it to you too. We get this stuff to you from things like raw fish, you know, lot of sushi lovers out there and stuff and we don't always have the freshest, you know, stuff up there and parasite eggs, you know, like to hide in raw fish. So that's a big source too. Public restrooms, you know, you know, transmission from person to person. I'm going to a public restroom and not closing the lid some places. Don't even have a lid to close, you know, on the toilet. But when you flush a toilet, whether this is at home or a public restroom, there's a tornado of particles that fly up in the air. A lot of people don't know this, so a quick piece of advice, always make sure that lid is shut before flushing because that actually I'm so glad you mentioned that.

52:14 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

so glad.

52:14 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

A lot of people don't think about it, and it's something that actually can inspire a lot of infections because it transmits very easily that way. And then we bring produce from around the world, you know, so not to mention just the stuff we have here baseline, but we're also bringing in stuff from around the world all the time that also have little- and it's the parasite eggs in specific that we catch, not usually the big worms and stuff is the eggs which are microscopic usually. So we don't even see them, and if they're not the produce and the food isn't well handled or washed properly, you're not going to know, you're not going to see it, you're not going to know, right? But these are some of the ways that we get it, and then if you have a weakened immune system in particular, those are the types of people that parasites take advantage of. Okay, that's where they decide.

53:02 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

I have done almost all of those things in the last week. I had one here, but in sand, I have played with nasty little kids who definitely were into some stuff.

53:14 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

I've eaten sushi and I've had fresh produce. I'm a little scared now, but this isn't the intention. This isn't fear mongering. it's educational because if you don't know, there's nothing you can do about it, right?

53:27 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

So do you think that everybody should be going on a parasite cleanse though, because these are like very common things that people are doing all the time?

53:37 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, so it's something that in many countries, by the way, around the world, there are health agencies, like the government health agencies, advises the population to do parasite cleanse is like they advise routinely to do so. there's also many countries that you can get pharmaceutical anti-parasidics off the shelf just the same way we could get a towel and all off the shelf kind of thing. It's well known. It's just a part of life and they know it. They educate the people and it's very helpful. Over here, like I said, a bit trickier when you're going to do this. They don't really have over-the-counter antiparasitic. There's one or two in particular, but aside from that, there's not lot of options. And to do an antiparasitic cleanse on your own, like using like herbs and, you know, spices and those types of things, I would always do this with guidance, okay? A big principle in our work at our clinic, and it's part of our research, is learning how to prioritize and sequence treatment modalities, okay? So this is basically, you know, taking a case, you know, we know that there's a whole pack of problems, there's a lot of symptoms, but choosing in a very methodological kind of way where to start and how to proceed in a logical order, okay? This is very important because if you start a parasite cleanse, but your body isn't ready for it. Okay, so for example, when you're doing a parasite cleanse, there's a lot of extra toxins that get released into the system. Okay, because parasites hold on to a lot of toxins. And so when you start killing them, there's going to be a lot of extra toxins kind of flooding the system. If you have a very beat up liver, okay, because you've been on lots of medications, you've been dealing with chronic illness for a long time, or whatever near liver is under a lot of stress already. And then you start a parasite cleanse. You can one do more harm than good, okay, and that parasite cleanse could be very dreadful for you. You might get a lot of horrible, horrible symptoms, massive headaches, debilitating pain, chronic fatigue, might be bedbound, you might get flare-ups with your other symptoms, right? And so sometimes what we do is even if we know there's parasites, we don't treat them until we do some gentle toxic for us and we strengthen the immune system and we get the inflammation down, we get the bowels moving, sometimes if people are constipated or something like that, we don't want to be, you know, killing off these types of bugs if they're not able to flush them out. Right, so there's a lot of, again, details, you know, all of this that we want to make sure we're doing it right so that you're not causing war harm and good and, you know, you're doing this the right way. So I always tell you, like, don't do this on your own, get some help so you can get some guidance so that, you know, this is done properly. The only piece of advice I can give on that front would be on the nutritional side of things. Parasites love dairy, they love, you know, the milk proteins and the milk sugars. So if you suspect that you might have parasites, I would avoid dairy products, you know, and sugar, the bad types of sugars, sweets and treats and things like that. Often when you have parasites will create these things, know, like a, very badly. These will be very, very strong cravings for you. You like the kind of cravings like you can't live without, you know, your dairy or your, your sweets or your sugars kind of thing. And that's often because parasites want it. And they're actually influencing you for your hormonal system to go get the foods that will feed that.

57:19 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

So moral of the story, get support with your parasite cleanse. I'm really glad you brought all that up because a few, I guess this was only maybe a year and a half ago. I was actually considering doing a parasite cleanse from this kit online. It's called Mrs.

57:35 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Hood.

57:37 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

So it's antimicrobials.

57:39 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

have you, I decided to see a naturopath.

57:42 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

I had SIBO. So I think that would have probably been a pretty negative thing for me to start undertaking when there was this other issue going on and a weakened immune system. So, yeah, that's great, great advice. And I'm wondering if you could, I'm putting you on the spot here. but maybe name like the five best holistic medicine tips you have for lifestyle for lifestyle.

58:08 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

Yeah, that's got the dairy one.

58:10 - Lexi Burt (lexirburt@gmail.com)

I guess that's if you suspect you have parasites.

58:12 - Shawn Persaud (The Center for Holistic Healthcare & Education Inc. | Pickering ON)

my general. Yeah, if you suspect you have like, well, let's say on the nutrition side in general avoid processed foods. Okay. All right, basically, if you want to like a quick trick, you know, to like a little mental reminder for yourself, if it didn't grow on a tree, if it didn't grow from the ground, if it didn't run around your yard or like, you know, swim in the sea or something, like if it wasn't a living, you know, thing plant-based or animal, don't touch it. Okay, that's like a rule of thumb, just don't touch it. Okay, because your processed foods are, especially if you're dealing with chronic illness, it's probably going to be inflammatory. There's probably going to be a lot of food, sensitivity type stuff, know, triggers in there, etc. Okay, so that's a very basic way of kind of approaching your nutrition. in thinking about you want whole foods, you know, real food, avoid the fake stuff, okay. The next big thing that I would say is do not drink tap water, okay, or use it for anything, okay. This is something I'm always shocked at how many people drink tap water, and I'll just give you like one reason not to, there's a lot of reasons not to, it's highly contained, even in the best of cities, but one of the reasons going back to the microbiome and protecting our microbiomes, which, you know, if you're not aware with the kind of research around this microbiome and like the probiotic bacteria and how important they are and stuff like that, when it comes to the immune system, they make up 80 to 90 percent of your immune system, okay. So when we're talking about auto immune conditions and things like that, having a healthy microbiome is absolutely key, it's critical. We know that those with autoimmune disease have huge imbalances with their microbiome. 100% of the time. It's they go hand in hand. And so you want to protect it at all costs. Now tap water, which is high in chlorine and other disinfectants to keep the clean and from bacteria and other types of pathogens. You know, when you're drinking that, you're also going to be killing off your good probiotics. Okay, so you're, it's there to kill bacteria, but if you drink it, it's also going to be killing bacteria. It's going to be killing off your probiotics. So it's like taking low doses antibiotics on a daily basis. You're drinking water all the time, right? And so you don't want to do that. You want to protect that microbiome at all costs, right? Like I said, there's a lot of contaminants in tap water, which, you know, if you don't filter it, you become the filter, right? Now the burden goes on to your kidneys, your livers, and things like that to start filtering out all those toxins. So making sure you're drinking purified water super important, making sure eating real food super important. Optimizing your sleep. Okay, I can't, I can't drive this home enough. A lot of with an omitiosis are dealing with hormonal issues, right? One of the most important ways you can regulate your hormones is through your sleep, okay? Because melatonin production, melatonin itself is a hormone regulator, okay? it regulates hundreds of different hormones in the system. And if you're not producing enough melatonin through deep sleep, you're gonna have issues with your hormones, right? And so it's not always matter trying to correct this with drugs and synthetic hormones and stuff like that, we have to look again, what's driving the hormone imbalances in the first place? So those who have broken sleep cycles, those who circadian rhythms are completely out of balance because whether they used to do shift work or whatever, or whatever life circumstances, maybe they're not sleeping early enough, or they're using a lot of screens and like the blue light from their devices and things like that. These are all things that suppress melatonin until we break the circadian rhythm. of the most important things in making sure hormones are balanced. So, there's no use in using all the expensive supplements or drugs or whatever, if you're not correcting those two things. So, that's very, very important. And a very important thing just in general for healing, making sure getting good quality sleep. So, that's definitely another one. Getting sun, don't underestimate the value of sunlight. It's not just for your vitamin D, but there's a whole host of things that sun does for you. That's very important for a well-function immune system, a healthy detoxification, and a whole hormone balance and lots of other things. So, that's also a very, very important one. One with just outdoor time in general, going out in nature and all that kind of stuff. All super important. And then, I'm not sure where I'm at now, but I would definitely say the next one would be paying attention to the mind. and your nervous system and your stress levels and all that, your emotional world. From a mind body approach, 90 to 95, close to 100% of all these, especially chronic disease, there's a mind body component to it, at least in some capacity. So this is probably one of the most important of any of them is paying attention to your mental world and your emotional world. Learn some nervous system regulation techniques. Learn how to meditate. Make sure you're prioritizing yourself. Okay? If I had to give one piece of advice from all of this, if you're suffering from chronic disease, if you're suffering from an autoimmune condition, if you're suffering endometriosis. And this applies maybe to women even more in some ways than men. But because women tend to have a lot more care-taking duties, on their hands sometimes. A lot of men do. too. right now, I'm just, you know, just we're talking about in the matriosis, so we're talking to a lot of women today. Get a little bit more selfish. Start prioritizing yourself, and know it's very sometimes natural and instinctual to put everybody else first. And when it comes to chronic illness, and especially autoimmune disease, there's often a pattern of chronically neglecting yourself, you know, for a very, very long time, many, many years. So it's very important that you learn how to set boundaries, healthy boundaries. It's very important that you learn how to say no to people. So get used to disappointing some people. Hey, this is very important.

:: 04:48

Yeah, that is really good advice. And just to recap for the listeners, those five tips were don't eat processed food. try to avoid it. Don't drink tap water. Optimize your sleep, get sunlight and the mind focus on calming your nervous system and being selfish. And on that note, if you want to learn more about setting healthy boundaries, especially if you're a parent and you have people depending on you, check out my episode with the counselor Nelson. I think it's episode 17 where we talk all about this. And then also I have a whole episode on acupuncture. I think this is one is 18 with Stacy Smolensky of AcuGo. And Sean, thank you so much for coming on today.

:: 05:34

I think the listeners are going to get a lot from this and I'm so grateful for your time. Beautiful. Thank you so much for having me and I hope I hope people get something out of it.