What causes cancer?
Stress + inflammation!
What’s the number one and two result of my quiz “what’s accelerating your aging?”
Stress + inflammation and that’s 3500+ people that have filled the quiz out to date!
Systemic chronic inflammation leads to disability and death.
That’s a scary statement and I don’t want it to be anyone’s reality.
Elevated cortisol lowers the ability of your Natural Killer (NK) cell function.
This means when you’re stressed you can’t go on attack when invaders get into your system.
Or regulate the inflammatory response.
How do you know if you’re stressed?
Psst, everyone is to some extent!
Do you have any of these?
Symptoms of high cortisol:
- elevated blood sugar
- elevated blood pressure
- insomnia
- hypothyroidism
- poor digestion
- decreased immune function
- constipation
A lot of these symptoms are what is seen with aging.
Put inflammation in check and you can control how fast you age.
Many anti-aging gurus have clients taking herbs and medications to counter all the high cortisol symptoms…
- elevated blood sugar – Metformin is prescribed (even if you’re not diabetic)
- elevated blood pressure – Indian snakeroot (Rauwolfia) + Hawthorne Berry + Nitric Oxide
- insomnia – Magnesium, melatonin, herbal formulas
- hypothyroidism – Armor or NP thyroid meds are often given or iodine
- poor digestion + constipation – digestive enzymes, probiotics + collagen or the peptide BPC 157
- decreased immune function – Echinacea, Astragalus, Artemisinin, zinc, glutathione, Vitamin D (the list goes on and on)
- inflammation in joints – Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) or Bromelain, quercetin and other systemic enzyme formulas (I use Inflammatone by Designs for Health)
If you add up all of those things you’ll be taking 7 things on the low end.
Yikes!
It’s easier to take a pill than to work on your thought process and spend more time in parasympathetic mode to reduce stress.
Does your body even know what to do with all of those?
This is a question I ask myself often.
I’ve put people on protocols like this, more in the past than present.
What’s the difference between this type of protocol and all of them being 7 pharmaceutical medications?
It’s a valid question and something that I can’t help but think about.
If the common denominator is stress…
…why not go after one thing to not have bandaids for the rest of them?
Back to root cause medicine here.
This is where docs like I have to think about what aspect of one’s symptoms are also causing them stress.
For most, inflammation presents in the form of pain or some type of discomfort.
To de-inflame quickly in conventional medicine – prednisone is used.
It’s effective but is hard on the body.
What’s the natural alternative?
Systemic enzymes.
They work as digestive enzymes when you take them with food.
When you take them away from food by 2 hours, you get an anti-inflammatory effect.
Holozymes by Healthy Gut or Masszymes by BiOptimizers are my two go to’s here. (enter “thehealthfix” for $ off if you’d like).
You start with 2 capsules twice a day between meals and you can ramp up to 10 between meals.
Sounds like a ton right?
This isn’t meant to be done for more than 2 weeks.
Putting inflammation in check naturally requires a bit more effort.
But it can be done.
In my podcast with Wade Lightfoot, one of the owners of BiOptimizers, he mentions using 50 capsules twice a day to eliminate inflammation.
While that’s quite extreme, there’s a time and place.
If you’re dealing with inflammation, I’d start with my 2 week protocol and then work on restoring balance in the body.
Stay tuned, Monday where I go through the steps I use in my programs to restore balance in the body!
Here’s to your health,
Dr. J
