How Your Nervous System Affects Long Covid, POTS, CFS, Lyme, Mold

[00:00:00] Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Heal with Grace podcast. Today, we are going to talk about
[00:00:06] something that I get asked all the time is this nervous system response, is that nervous system
[00:00:11] response is actually sometimes I don't really get asked about long COVID or CFS or POTS,
[00:00:18] but it is often something that I come across. So we're going to demystify these conditions
[00:00:23] that really have left many of you pretty hopeless things like chronic fatigue, long COVID,
[00:00:28] mold illness, Lyme disease, POTS by looking at what the science shows that the root of these
[00:00:34] conditions is not a virus. It's not a toxin or a pathogen alone, but a nervous system stuck in
[00:00:41] survival. So what you'll recognize is that yes, there are actual physical manifestations
[00:00:47] happening in the body. There might be a virus, a toxin, a pathogen that continues to stay
[00:00:52] within the body, but it doesn't mean we need to have a reaction towards those. Our bodies are not
[00:00:58] perfect and always going to have something wrong with it, if you will. I don't even really want
[00:01:02] to use that term to be honest. We're just always we're abnormal human beings, like we're
[00:01:06] not perfect. So this is going to be a really important one. I'm going to try to blend in
[00:01:10] some of the research and science behind this and some recovery stories as well. But
[00:01:15] also stay tuned because I'm going to have some people on the podcast that can share
[00:01:19] their story around healing these types of conditions through nervous system and mind body
[00:01:24] work. So let's get into it. Hey there and welcome to heal with Grace. I'm your host,
[00:01:30] Grace Secker, and I'm a holistic licensed therapist and nervous system coach who believes
[00:01:35] that the chronic and often unseen symptoms you're living with are a sign of something
[00:01:39] deeper going on. A sign that your nervous system needs attention. In each episode,
[00:01:44] I'll share the science behind the most common chronic health disorders plus holistic health tips
[00:01:49] using mental, physical, and spiritual practices. You'll hear what I've learned in my journey
[00:01:54] and the true stories from our trusted guests so you can feel less alone in your experience
[00:01:59] and give yourself grace no matter what you're going through. So without further ado,
[00:02:04] settle in and get cozy. It's time to heal with Grace. Okay, let's start with one of the
[00:02:11] most very most misunderstood. It seems to weave its way into literally everything which is chronic
[00:02:17] fatigue, CFS or ME, which there's a very wide spectrum of this. So I myself have dealt with CFS
[00:02:26] on and off for a long time. I mean, I could really track it back to probably teenage years,
[00:02:32] but at the same time, well not at the same time, but I did not deal with it in terms of being
[00:02:37] bedridden and stuck and not being able to get out of bed and work. I was almost there at one point.
[00:02:41] I was, I was about to quit and just say like, I can't work anymore. That was like the tipping
[00:02:46] point for me. But I just want to honor that everyone's experience is a little bit different.
[00:02:51] And what I mean by this weaves itself into so many different ways in people's lives is that
[00:02:57] sometimes it's an additional diagnosis. Like you also have CFS along with listing out all
[00:03:03] different things, whether that's pain, whether that's long COVID, whatever it is, gut issues,
[00:03:09] mold histamine, usually CFS kind of goes along with this. And then also for many people,
[00:03:17] this is their primary concern where they maybe it hit them right off the bat or maybe
[00:03:23] it kind of slowly started to come into their life and eventually they had to stop life and
[00:03:28] could barely function. So I just want to recognize all the different types of people and how this shows
[00:03:34] up in everyone's life. So there's been so many people that have been very dismissed with chronic
[00:03:40] fatigue. I'm more told that it's just psychosomatic. There's not really much you can do. You can just,
[00:03:45] you just have to manage it or maybe that's purely biological. And that's all completely
[00:03:49] wrong. CFS or ME is not just in your head, but it is in your brain and body threat system.
[00:03:56] So fatigue is not evidence of broken cells. It's a protective warning signal created by
[00:04:03] a hypervigilant brain that believes you're unsafe or depleted. In neuroscience terms,
[00:04:08] the brain is constantly predicting danger and adjusting your physiology accordingly. Sorry,
[00:04:15] that was a mouthful. So basically this is, I mean, what I talk a lot about on here is exactly
[00:04:20] what I'm going to say now that really when it perceives chronic threat, when your nervous
[00:04:25] system in your brain perceives a chronic threat, physical, emotional, psychological,
[00:04:29] environmental, it may predict that resting and shutting down is the safest thing to do, right?
[00:04:35] If your body or nervous system is like overextended, it doesn't know what to do and there's constant
[00:04:40] threat over and over. Even if that threat doesn't seem very logical, it can completely
[00:04:45] shut you down. And what we've noticed, many, many different types of recovery stories of people who
[00:04:50] are in their, in their life, they've been people who are high achievers or athletes or not just any
[00:04:59] kind of athlete, but Olympians or professional athletes or I heard a story about a Navy SEAL
[00:05:04] the other day, like all these people that are doing incredible things in the world
[00:05:08] and chronic fatigue completely shuts them down. And it is not about like you just need
[00:05:14] more sleep or no, you're not doing enough or you're kind of this lazy person. No, it is not
[00:05:21] that absolutely at all. It can feel like that to the person. They can be like, oh my gosh, what?
[00:05:27] Am I just not able to handle life like everyone? And some people in their life might think of
[00:05:32] them as just kind of like lazy, but it's not like that at all. So you can also see this
[00:05:37] described as an injured mammal response where your system goes into freeze or shut down the
[00:05:42] same instinct an animal has when it retreats to a cave to recover. So we've seen this, you can
[00:05:48] actually Google this on or you can look this up on YouTube. What's the title called? I'll link it
[00:05:52] in the show notes of a mammal going through the stress response. Like they are in danger,
[00:05:57] I think it's a deer or something like that where they are in the wild and a tiger is about to
[00:06:02] come and will has pretty much caught the mammal, the deer and about to eat them about
[00:06:07] to kill it. And so they plays dead, just goes into a freeze shutdown response until something
[00:06:14] scares off the lion or the tiger. They end up going away. I don't remember exactly what
[00:06:19] doesn't matter, but they go away and the deer still stays there, shut down, frozen, protect
[00:06:24] itself. And then you start to see it shake, like vibrating, shaking as it's literally
[00:06:30] shaking off that threat response, shaking off the terror that it was just in the
[00:06:36] near death experience. And so as it shakes it through its body, that's how the nervous
[00:06:40] system starts to shake off or move through that threat response. But if we don't have that type
[00:06:45] of recovery or repair from things in life, this could be anything from over time, your
[00:06:52] nervous system deemed a certain person as a threat response or a certain experience or work
[00:06:57] or emotions as a threat. And if we don't know how to process the threat and repair it,
[00:07:02] then our nervous systems go into freeze or shutdown, which is what happens in chronic fatigue.
[00:07:06] In this state in CFS, the brain never gets the update that you're safe now. That freeze becomes
[00:07:12] learned, repeated and reinforced, which is a neuroplastic loop. So you can do all the things,
[00:07:18] rest, supplement, eat clean, get IV treatments, go through detox protocols, but until the brain's
[00:07:26] prediction of danger changes, fatigue will keep showing up. And to be honest, this is one that
[00:07:31] I myself, and I notice a lot of people that I work with have a hard, hard, but this sometimes
[00:07:37] is the thing that kind of lingers and lasts a while. It doesn't have to, there's plenty of people who
[00:07:41] don't have to, but it's hard to be in a freeze and shutdown response. That fatigue response
[00:07:47] where literally your, your body is aching on such a level. It's this deep, deep fatigue.
[00:07:55] Like if you haven't been through it, you just can't understand it. It's not just like,
[00:08:00] oh, I'm tired. I'm overtired and I need to sleep more. No, you can sleep all you want,
[00:08:04] and then you literally could barely get out of bed or maybe not get out of bed because your body
[00:08:08] is just done. It feels like it just cannot move. So it's just a deep response. It's a deep
[00:08:15] response, right? So healing really comes from rewiring the nervous system to feel safe again,
[00:08:20] being alive again. And it might sound kind of silly, like, I thought I was safe. Like,
[00:08:25] again, these people living these amazing lives, but we have to dig a little bit deeper to understand,
[00:08:30] okay, they're obviously was threat building up underneath the surface of in that nervous system
[00:08:35] or else they wouldn't be in this place. So it's not that you're just weak or sick or whatever or
[00:08:40] just, you know, your body can't handle life. No, we can teach it basically to handle life. We
[00:08:45] can teach it to feel safe and be in your life and experience things and get back into the
[00:08:50] lives that you love. So it's really through emotional honesty, curiosity, and really learning
[00:08:55] to respond to sensations without fear that the brain learns, well, it's okay to move. It's okay to have
[00:09:00] energy again. This is also pretty similar to long COVID, but I want to really address that when
[00:09:08] the threat response never turns off after an infection like COVID, this can lead into what
[00:09:13] we know now as long COVID. So many people, if you've experienced this or you know people
[00:09:18] that have experienced this, many people are told that they still have viral fragments,
[00:09:21] microclots or spike proteins causing inflammation, which is why they're experiencing all these
[00:09:27] different symptoms associated with long COVID. But here's what's fascinating is that research
[00:09:31] shows that the viral load in a person's body doesn't always explain chronic symptoms. So
[00:09:37] for example, before we had COVID and before we had something called long COVID,
[00:09:41] we've had something called EBV, Epstein-Barr virus. A 2017 journal of virology study
[00:09:47] found that people with asymptomatic Epstein-Barr virus infections had the same viral load
[00:09:53] as those who got sick with Epstein-Barr virus. 95% of adults carry EBV and are totally fine.
[00:10:01] This is a part of my story too. I had a crash of, I don't remember when this was, but it was
[00:10:07] after traveling essentially, and I was just sick and could not get over it. I swore, I was
[00:10:13] like, oh my God, it's COVID, it's long COVID. And I got tested a million times and it wasn't COVID.
[00:10:17] And then finally I got tested for EBV and they're like, oh yeah, yeah, you've got, you have EBV,
[00:10:23] it's probably just a flare in this. And nothing, I did work, nothing. I did all the things,
[00:10:28] but it didn't work. So I guess what I'm saying here, it's really not the virus itself. It's
[00:10:33] the exactly what I just explained with CFS, it's that same response. You do not have to have
[00:10:41] symptoms if you have a underlying viral load in your body. Again, our bodies are so wise and
[00:10:48] wonderful and self-healing and they're always fighting off something. We can't be perfect.
[00:10:53] There's toxins everywhere. That's just normal and our bodies are supposed to, literally meant to,
[00:10:59] move through that and fight them off. But over time when threats come in time and time again,
[00:11:04] there's usually something that breaks the camel's back and for some people it's COVID.
[00:11:09] That's just the thing that kind of like their bodies go, okay, no more. I'm done. I gotta,
[00:11:14] your nervous system's like, uh-uh, no more. We're shutting down. Everything's way too dangerous
[00:11:18] out there. So if the nervous system keeps sending danger signals through fear or stress or unresolved
[00:11:24] trauma, those same cellular defense programs stay switched on. It's like your brain goes,
[00:11:29] we have this virus in us. Yeah, okay, that's the reason we're going to keep reacting because
[00:11:33] we have this in us. So your cells are literally just trying to protect you,
[00:11:37] but they can't repair and grow at the same time. So there's something called the cell
[00:11:41] danger response that comes into play here that some people talk about in the recovery world,
[00:11:46] where Dr. Robert Navajo, and I apologize for saying that, if I did not say that last name
[00:11:53] correctly, he discovered that after an infection cells shift into a defense mode, which then
[00:11:59] they shut down normal metabolism to protect the body from harm. It's actually brilliant
[00:12:03] biology until it doesn't turn off. So some people say that this is the reason why they're in the
[00:12:07] stuck response, and they need to get their bodies out of that cell danger response, which is
[00:12:13] true. It's true. It doesn't mean though that you only need to go through some physical protocol
[00:12:18] in order to get to that. We really need to work with the nervous system and the stress
[00:12:22] response. When I was at the AT&S, the Association for the Treatment of Neuroplastic
[00:12:27] Symptoms Conference a couple of weeks ago, I went to a talk on CFS and a talk on POTS.
[00:12:33] And I'm going to talk about POTS in a minute. But Dr. Thomas Klaminsky, who is a fascinating
[00:12:39] doctor who literally works with POTS, and this is almost pretty much his career now.
[00:12:43] There's a lot of research around POTS. He was speaking and showed that after infections
[00:12:49] like COVID trauma or even bullying, the body often fails to restore vagal dominance,
[00:12:55] meaning the parasympathetic safety branch of your nervous system doesn't come back online
[00:13:01] after a threat, after a trauma. So the constant sympathetic activation drives everything from
[00:13:07] fatigue and pain to brain fog and heart palpitations. So long COVID is not a virus that
[00:13:14] won't go away. It's a nervous system that hasn't yet felt safe enough to stand down.
[00:13:19] And it's grabbing on to something to explain why it needs to shut down. That's
[00:13:23] essentially what's happening. Hey friend, it's Grace. I know you're tired of feeling like managing
[00:13:28] your physical and mental health is just one big moving target. I also know that you've spent
[00:13:32] years of your life and hundreds of dollars on doctor's visits, juice cleanses,
[00:13:36] fad diets, and fancy supplements, only to feel like nothing about your chronic symptoms has
[00:13:41] changed. If this sounds like you, consider this your invitation to find a holistic health
[00:13:45] protocol that works for you and your body, even if you have chronic symptoms,
[00:13:49] unhealed trauma, or a dysregulated nervous system. That's exactly what's waiting for you inside the
[00:13:55] mind body healing method. My 12 week group program that's designed to help you say body
[00:14:00] or chronic symptoms through learning how to regulate your nervous system, retrain your brain,
[00:14:04] and heal unresolved trauma. Our clients have found relief from even the most chronic of
[00:14:09] symptoms, including fibromyalgia, sciatica, migraines, gut issues, and other uncomfortable
[00:14:14] symptoms without pills or a long list of rituals and regimens. If you'd like to
[00:14:19] learn more about our program, head over to the show notes and learn more. Because the truth is that
[00:14:23] there is a protocol that works for you, you just might not have found the right balance for your
[00:14:29] body yet. Now let's get back to the episode. Okay, let's talk mold. Still, I first want to
[00:14:37] come at this one from a place of so much compassion. It has been a very large part of my story and
[00:14:44] my symptoms up until, well, I mean like throughout, but even last year, 24, I still got caught in the
[00:14:52] loop of mold. Yeah, it's been a crazy one. And I also want to say like, mold is a hard one because,
[00:15:00] I mean, I guess you could kind of say this about the other ones too. But one of my friends,
[00:15:04] Sean, who will be on this podcast that you're gonna listen to, I was on his,
[00:15:08] the mind body medicine for chronic pain podcast. And I was telling my mold story and
[00:15:14] he was like, Oh my gosh, it sounds like the best lie is one that has an ounce of truth to it. And
[00:15:21] that resonated so much because that's kind of what mold is like black mold. No black mold,
[00:15:27] you can see that is tearing up your home is 100% dangerous in high concentrations. That is the
[00:15:35] ounce of truth that is very true. And I don't ever want to dismiss that. I don't ever want
[00:15:39] to say, Oh, you don't have to ever react towards mold, you just think, you know, your way and retrain
[00:15:44] your brain, you're fine. So I just have to say that that's true. That's real. And that's why I
[00:15:48] think it gets so many of us myself included. So tripped up about it. But let's talk about it in
[00:15:54] terms of a nervous system response, because this topic has gained so much traction in the
[00:15:58] functional wellness space, that people are literally afraid of their homes or food, even
[00:16:04] their own bodies. And here's really the lie is that mold is always dangerous. The lie is that
[00:16:10] mold is everywhere in your air, food inside your gut my go briome, and you have to get rid of it
[00:16:16] to not experience symptoms. So what happens is the problem over time, especially if it's not
[00:16:22] directly black mold, and there's mold again, there's mold everywhere, I guarantee you if we
[00:16:26] all tested our bodies for mold, which I've done many times, I always show lots of not
[00:16:32] lots. But well, sometimes there are lots of mold in my body. The thing is that I probably have had
[00:16:37] that since I was a kid. I mean, I remember my mom saying like, yeah, we had that house that
[00:16:43] was actually pretty moldy. So it's probably, you know, part of where that came from. But also,
[00:16:48] y'all, it's in our food, it's in the air, it's in the dust, like I don't want to scare you,
[00:16:53] but it's everywhere. But our bodies don't need to react, our bodies filter through that and
[00:16:57] fights against it, not in a harmful way, but in a way that our bodies are supposed to. But
[00:17:03] when our nervous system becomes stressed out, the nervous system interprets mold as danger,
[00:17:09] danger everywhere. Also, you might start to learn more about mold, read all the things,
[00:17:15] watch the videos, listen to your doctor, and then you start to get really fearful about it.
[00:17:20] Oh my gosh, I did this like, when I moved out of my apartment, because I found mold in it,
[00:17:25] it was at first like, oh my gosh, I found the answer. This is why I'm crashing all the time and
[00:17:30] everything I'm doing, all my body work isn't working. That was me. I thought I was doing
[00:17:34] everything I could do. So I was like, well, it has to be physical, it has to be something going
[00:17:38] on. And so I tested my apartment and first did not find anything actually, the first tested
[00:17:44] it. And that could be a whole other episode where certain tests find some mold, some tests
[00:17:49] are a lot of false negatives, like, oh my gosh, it's a whole world. But I tested again,
[00:17:53] and they found certain traces of mold, which, again, are probably in many places. But I grabbed
[00:17:59] onto that and was like, yeah, that's what I'm experiencing. I'm moving out right away. And
[00:18:03] then I became afraid of literally everywhere I went. I was afraid of every Airbnb I went into.
[00:18:11] I wasn't sleeping. I was crashing all the time. Like, I felt like absolute shit. And I
[00:18:16] really thought it was mold only. Come to find out later. It was not. I still treated myself.
[00:18:21] I do think I had an overload of toxins in my body. But again, that wasn't the only reason.
[00:18:26] Back up years prior, the first round of functional testing and everything that I went through found
[00:18:31] mold in my body, high levels of mold. So I start going through detoxing and doing all the things.
[00:18:36] I tested again, and the mold had gone down in my body, but I still had zero
[00:18:40] improvement in symptoms. Then I found my body work and started treating my nervous system in
[00:18:45] my brain. And I started to feel so much better. I tested mold again. Same amount of mold was in
[00:18:51] my body, but I wasn't reacting. Same with EBV. Same with long COVID spike proteins. You can have
[00:18:56] these in your body, but not react. It's just that once you've had this scary experience with mold
[00:19:02] or illness, the brain links any sign of mold, even the smell or the idea that it's there,
[00:19:07] with danger. And then it sends danger to your brain. Your brain goes, oh no, I'm going to send
[00:19:12] you all these signals, these symptoms. And so that association gets reinforced every time
[00:19:16] you react with fear, vigilance, or avoidance. So your limbic system fires up, your immune system
[00:19:22] follows suit, and you start reacting not just to the environment, but to your own fear. The truth
[00:19:28] is most types of mold that show up in everyday environments or food are not inherently dangerous.
[00:19:34] But when the brain deems them a threat, when you learn about it, the body responds as if they
[00:19:39] are releasing stress hormones, histamines, and inflammation. So again, your body is going
[00:19:43] through a real response. It's just that the fix is not going to be detoxing the mold. And this is
[00:19:49] how fear itself becomes the toxin. Fear is a incredible toxin in our bodies. It wreaks havoc
[00:19:57] all over our mind, body, emotions everywhere. Now, I don't want you to become afraid of the fear
[00:20:03] either. So I want to say that with some compassion, but healing from mold sensitivity
[00:20:07] often involves retraining the brain, teaching it to separate real danger from conditioned danger,
[00:20:13] because if your body's alarm system is blaring at every dust particle, you'll stay trapped
[00:20:19] in a cycle of stress chemistry. No detox can fix. I really want you to hear that. If you are
[00:20:25] high alert in fear, and your body's alarm system is going off all the time, you can do
[00:20:30] all the protocols, everything that you can put your hands on, but it will not work if your
[00:20:36] nervous system is in the danger response. So again, I value all types of health and wellness.
[00:20:43] So first, that's why I think it's really important to start and work with nervous system response and
[00:20:48] then go and do something you need to do from a functional level. I professionally have worked
[00:20:53] with multiple functional practitioners where we share clients where they've been really stuck
[00:20:57] with them and nothing's working and they can't make any progress. And then they send them to
[00:21:02] me and we work on nervous system and brain retraining. And their threat response goes down,
[00:21:07] their danger response goes down, they have more confidence and they have more safety in their
[00:21:11] body so that then if they do need some kind of physical intervention, they go do that. And
[00:21:16] it actually works and helps them. And we can heal on so many different levels of the body.
[00:21:21] So I think it's a beautiful combination. It's just that the physical is not the answer.
[00:21:26] Yeah. All right. If you have any questions about mold, come and ask me. I have a wealth
[00:21:30] of information for that. Yeah. But basically, just remember that your body does not need
[00:21:35] to be responding to low levels of mold. All right. Let's talk about Lyme disease. So
[00:21:42] if you have noticed, if you've been in the chronic illness world, if you're in the functional medicine
[00:21:46] world, if you are in any kind of medical world, you might notice trends. So for a long time,
[00:21:52] Lyme disease was the thing that people are getting diagnosed with and still are.
[00:21:56] CFS is always kind of mixed in there. Now it's more along COVID but still Lyme too.
[00:22:02] It's a big one where people might be sick for years and years and years and then finally test
[00:22:06] for Lyme and they might be positive for Lyme and they're like, oh my gosh, this is the answer.
[00:22:11] Okay, cool. I'm going to do all the things because the traditional narrative is that the
[00:22:16] bacteria of Lyme hides deep in your tissues and causes chronic infection. That's the answer
[00:22:23] that you might receive. But most research now shows that after appropriate antibiotic treatment,
[00:22:29] lingering symptoms aren't caused by active infection. They're caused by nervous system
[00:22:34] hypersensitivity and immune dysregulation. So basically your body keeps fighting something
[00:22:39] that's no longer there. Are you seeing a theme here? There might be an initial infection. There
[00:22:43] might be something that an initial bacteria that gets into your body or initial mold exposure.
[00:22:49] But your body goes through a treatment response, whether it's on its own or you might treat
[00:22:56] it with something, treat the infection, treat the disease, treat the bacteria and that should be it.
[00:23:01] But if your body doesn't allow for that threat response to decrease, it's still going to respond
[00:23:08] as if there's something to fight. So this is that same chronic fight-or-flight loop,
[00:23:13] again that we're seeing in CFS, fibromyalgia, post-viral fatigue, that your immune system
[00:23:18] gets stuck on attack mode while your vagus nerve, the part that signals rest and repair,
[00:23:22] goes offline. So healing Lyme isn't about killing what's left. It's about changing
[00:23:28] your inner chemistry, moving from cortisol and adrenaline to IGA and oxytocin from fear to safety.
[00:23:36] If you're listening to this or you know someone who has successfully treated Lyme from a purely
[00:23:41] physical standpoint, I'm actually curious to know. Haven't heard many of those stories,
[00:23:45] so let me know. But basically no matter what protocols you follow, your immune system can't
[00:23:50] regulate if your brain is still convinced you're in danger. Yeah? All right, now let's talk about
[00:23:56] POTS, the body's alarm system on overdrive. This is a really interesting one. Again, I've had some
[00:24:04] experience with this myself, but then lots of other clients that I've seen experience this.
[00:24:08] When I say on a spectrum, like probably a lot more than I ever did as well. I also heard,
[00:24:13] I talked about this at the AT&S conference, like I mentioned by Dr. Thomas Klaminsky.
[00:24:17] He researches and reframes POTS as a functional disorder of the brain's survival
[00:24:22] circuits, not a structural issue of the heart. So Dr. Klaminsky talks about how he found that
[00:24:30] the periqueductal gray, the PAG area, the midbrain region responsible for orchestrating
[00:24:36] fight, flight, freeze or even bladder and pain modulation becomes overactive after trauma,
[00:24:42] infection or psychological stress. So POTS, by the way, if you have not heard of this,
[00:24:47] it's postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. And it's honestly exploded in awareness,
[00:24:53] especially after COVID. Most people are told it's purely cardiovascular, drink more salt water,
[00:24:58] wear compression socks, do more cardio. And while those might help to symptoms,
[00:25:01] they don't actually treat the root cause. So instead of regulating normally, your
[00:25:06] survival brain is constantly pressing the gas pedal, increasing heart rate,
[00:25:10] tension, alertness, even when you're safe, you might experience dizziness.
[00:25:14] This is where you might stand up and pass out. Your body can't regulate your blood pressure very
[00:25:19] well. This also explains why POTS often overlaps with conditions like chronic pain, IBS, grains,
[00:25:25] all rooted in the same threat circuitry. Dr. Klaminsky's new approach, POTS reprocessing
[00:25:31] therapy actually focuses on retraining the brain body connection through safety, reassurance and
[00:25:37] exposure and seeing a lot of progress with it. Essentially, they're turning off the alarm
[00:25:42] system and not just making the noise. POTS is not actually the root cause is not that
[00:25:47] your heart is malfunctioning. It's your body protecting you too well for too long. Again,
[00:25:51] there's a threat response and your body goes, Oh, no more. We are literally going to shut you
[00:25:56] down. We're going to make you pass out. We're going to make you not be in reality. So this
[00:26:02] does take a little bit of a different approach and really recognizing how dysregulating this is
[00:26:09] for someone really struggling with POTS, because it's hard to literally ground yourself,
[00:26:14] ground into reality. You might not feel like you can grasp onto reality and just doing a simple
[00:26:21] somatic tracking like track the pain or symptom in your body may not fully be able to work
[00:26:27] because it's everywhere. Dr. Yonita Arthur, the study coach talks about this as well.
[00:26:34] And I heard her speak about this where we do have to take a little bit of a different
[00:26:37] approach and truly meet that person where they are and recognize that they're sometimes are truly
[00:26:43] not in the reality because they are hyper like super dizzy. They can't even feel maybe their
[00:26:48] feet on the ground. They're literally afraid to stand up because they don't want to pass out.
[00:26:52] And so what I'm saying here in the research that supports this is that this is a true
[00:26:58] neuroplastic response. I really want you to hear me on that. If you have experienced POTS,
[00:27:02] you do have POTS. It is your brain response. It is your nervous system response. This is
[00:27:07] not something you just have to live with forever. Really, really don't have to. You can truly
[00:27:11] rewire this. And there's plenty and plenty of people that have out there just find the POTS stories.
[00:27:17] Yeah. Okay. So overall, if you can tell your brain sets the tone for your physiology, your
[00:27:23] emotions set the tone for your chemistry and your nervous system determines whether your
[00:27:29] body is in protection or repair. I want to share a little bit about Dr. Dupenza's research,
[00:27:34] Dr. Joda Spenza. He showed that emotional coherence, states like gratitude and love,
[00:27:41] can increase IGA, which is Immunoglobulin A, which is your body's first line of defense,
[00:27:48] coding mucosal surfaces and strengthening immunity. Basically, if you can increase
[00:27:54] IGA, you can increase defense and immune responses. And we do that, he does that in
[00:27:59] his research through having people be in their heart centered space of love and safety and
[00:28:06] gratitude. And this is the emotional work that I talk about a lot on here, but I really want
[00:28:10] you to grasp how our state of being changes our physical response. So if you're sitting here
[00:28:18] in threat response thinking everything is bad, everything is horrible, why am I sick,
[00:28:21] why am I feeling this way, criticizing yourself, judging yourself, thinking negatively all the
[00:28:26] time, your body's literally going to go into a physical threat response. Unresolved emotional
[00:28:30] issues like shame, grief and fear keep that brain predicting danger. And that's what creates
[00:28:36] chronic activation in the amygdala, the PAG we talked about, the autonomic nervous system,
[00:28:42] your IGA levels, it's all what keeps the cell danger response alive, the danger in your body.
[00:28:48] So no matter how many physical interventions you try, if the brain and the body don't
[00:28:52] believe you're safe, healing can't happen. Safety is not just an idea, it's a physiological
[00:28:59] experience. Safety is a felt sense in a knowing in your brain and in your body and in your nervous
[00:29:06] system. And it completely can be learned and practiced. I still practice it all the time,
[00:29:12] all the time, because I'll never be perfect at it. I'm not walking around here being like,
[00:29:16] I'm safe all the time, I'm great, I can handle anything. I have grown in that so much,
[00:29:20] so much, but it's still a work in progress. And with our emotions, when you start meeting your
[00:29:26] emotions with compassion, releasing control, allowing joy again, your biology follows,
[00:29:33] your physical body follows. And don't just take it from me, listen to the stories on this podcast,
[00:29:39] listen to the stories on other people's podcasts, curable like MindBody, Raelyn Eggles
[00:29:44] podcast and YouTube channel. I mean, there's a lot out there now, which is wonderful. So we
[00:29:48] have so much evidence that this is possible, because your body is so resilient. And it's not
[00:29:55] just broken, it's truly brilliant. I see it time and time again with everyone that I work with. It's
[00:30:00] really cool. Like it's really cool to see people coming in. Well, it's not cool to see them coming
[00:30:06] in desperate and hopeless. That's not cool. It's cool to see that when they come in in
[00:30:10] that state, but then they start to do this work, things start to shift. And it's like,
[00:30:15] I mean, I was about to say, it's like magic. It's not it's science. It's real work. Like they're
[00:30:19] doing it. Yeah, it's just really cool to see how we can change our body's physical response by
[00:30:25] working with the brain, the nervous system and our emotions. So this is the work obviously that
[00:30:29] I love to do. And if you experience anything that we've talked about today, or other types
[00:30:34] of pain and symptoms and you want support, I would love to support you. I have one to
[00:30:39] two spots left for my individual clients. And then I would love to come see you and the
[00:30:45] mind body healing method, which is my group program that helps you understand how to rewire the brain,
[00:30:50] how to regulate the nervous system, and really how to come back home to yourself,
[00:30:55] feel safety in your body. So you can just live your life and you don't have to think about
[00:31:01] this all the time. You don't have to think about your body and your symptoms. That's
[00:31:04] the goal. I want you to put this behind you and not have to work so hard towards healing
[00:31:10] that you can literally just live your life. You don't have to be so in control all the time and be
[00:31:15] so fearful about what's going to affect you. And we do that through coming home to your body,
[00:31:19] understanding your brain and nervous system and really working with your emotional health.
[00:31:23] So if you would like to join, find the link below. We are accepting new members into the
[00:31:29] mind body healing method, which is just a wonderful, wonderful group community where
[00:31:33] we all lift each other up and do this work. So remember healing begins when you stop fighting
[00:31:37] your body and start listening to it when you teach your nervous system that it's safe to rest,
[00:31:43] safe to move, safe to feel again. And once your body feels safe, your brain stops predicting
[00:31:48] danger. And that's when real healing begins. If this resonates with you or you are thinking
[00:31:53] of someone when you're listening to this, please send it to them. My mission is to help
[00:31:56] everyone or help people that want to be helped. So please send this. And I would love to have
[00:32:02] you review the podcast and that's how we continue to get this work out there. All right,
[00:32:06] I will talk to you next week. Keep healing with grace.
[00:32:11] If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to me if you could do these
[00:32:15] couple things. One, go to the heal with grace show page wherever you listen and tap the plus
[00:32:20] sign or click on the follow button so you don't miss an episode. It helps both of us out.
[00:32:25] While you're there, if you could give a five star review so that this podcast can reach
[00:32:30] more people, it would mean so much to me. So I can continue sharing episodes that help you
[00:32:35] as well as others. Thanks for listening and I hope this brings you hope on your journey.