OMD & BEH Podcast

8 Things Your Mind Can Help Your Body Heal

BEH PODCAST EPISODE 56 - 8 Things Your Mind Can Help Your Body HealThis is the eighth of eight podcasts, where we have been talking about the different pieces of our Better Eye Health program, more specifically, on what your doctor does not tell you. Your doctor does not tell you these diseases can be improved, that there are things you can do to reverse vision loss, and there are things under your control that make a huge difference in not only your health, but the health of your eyes. 8 Things Your Mind Can Help Your Body Heal. Part 8 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve.056 OMDPodcast 8Things MindBody-8of8CarlyleWelcome to the Organic MD podcast with Dr. Damon Miller. This is Carlyle Coash. How are you doing today, Dr. Miller?Dr. MillerI am happy to tell you that I am doing well today, and I am grateful for that and for today. How about yourself, how are you doing?CarlyleI am still in one piece. I am walking and breathing, mostly. The air quality has been better since all of the fires, but I am still here breathing. Dr. MillerIt is almost like the like icing on the cake, you cannot go out to mingle because of the pandemic. Now, you are not able to even go outside for a walk because the air is so toxic, but what are we going to do? CarlyleSmall victories. Dr. MillerYes, it is.Today is the eighth of eight podcasts, where we have been talking about the different pieces of our Better Eye Health program, more specifically, on what your doctor does not tell you. Your doctor does not tell you these diseases can be improved, that there are things you can do to reverse vision loss, and there are things under your control that make a huge difference in not only your health, but the health of your eyes. We have talked previously about the different pieces to our Better Eye Health Program, like microcurrent stimulation, color therapy, and supplements. We also recommend the elements of Oriental Medicine, like needleless acupuncture and exercises, which are important if you have already developed an eye disease, or if you have a predisposition to it. The piece we have not spent much time talking about is the fact that if you want to make your eyes healthy, you need to take care of your health.This sounds too easy and too good to be true, but the things you do to take care of your health have a huge impact on it. That is a dirty little secret about modern medicine, most of what you can do to be healthy, and even to reverse significant disease, is under your control and based on choices you make every day. We are here to help you make good choices and give you some good information about what you can do to take care of yourself. With western and allopathic medicine, they talk about the body and mind connection, but they do not really know what to do about it. This leaves us with just body, so we are going to be talking not just about your mind, but of your spirit and body. We will go over all the things you can do to take care of these three important pieces. I am going to start by discussing the body because I am an MD, and that is what I was trained in. Then Carlyle will go over the mind and spirit because this is his expertise. He has been working for decades with people on their mind and spirits. The basic thing about our body is pretty simple stuff, eat a decent diet. We should not be eating too many processed foods or sugar. If you drink alcohol, it is toxic to the brain and eyes, so you should stop drinking. The same goes for smoking cigarettes, they impair the circulation to your brain and eyes, so you should stop smoking. This is especially true if you area already impaired by a disease; these can all make it worse. You can find out more about what eating a decent diet is, by doing our Healthy Eating Workshop. We should do whatever it takes, even if it means giving up alcohol and smoking. We can talk about alcohol in moderation because everyone has a different idea of what moderation is. It is usually more than what I recommend. We also need to get some exercise, even if it is only taking a stroll around the block. Exercise is important and it does not have to be in training type atmosphere, like an Iron Man, but you want to move your body parts around, keep your joints supple, and keep your muscles strong. You need to do what it takes, and it will help serve you. Even more important is I want you to avoid the idea that there is a quick fix for your health. We need to step back from the global and integrated view of dealing with your health because it does take time. This includes your mind and spirit. If you have challenges with your health, you want to avoid the quick fixes because most of them are going to deal with symptoms, not cause. Chinese medicine has a great way of talking about it, using a tree as a metaphor. They talk about dealing with the root of the problem, not the branch. This means you want to work on the source of the problem, not only with the symptoms of it. This is a topic with a big discussion, so I am only going to introduce it here. You also want to avoid taking too many of the prescriptions that are handed out for the diseases. This is especially true with eye diseases because they can compromise your eyes for things like allergies and immune function. You can even get heart disease, high blood pressure, and have urinary problems. These drugs really have a negative impact on your eyes, so you want to find a way to deal with these problems without taking the drugs. There has been a lot of work done looking at how the health of your digestive system, heart, and cardiovascular system affects your brain and eyes. You cannot isolate to only taking care of your eyes, you need to take care of your whole body, it is one big package. This brings us to taking care of your mind and spirit. One of the differences I was taught with how oriental medicine looks at the notion of spirit is that 95% of all the people who come to you are dispirited, and this is at the root of the physical problems one is having. If you do not care for your spirit, you are not going to make it better. Fortunately, oriental medicine is full of ideas, tools, and techniques for touching someone's spirit by lifting, helping, and supporting it. This notion can be found in some early textbooks of western medicine. I am not sure if it still true today, but when I was going through my schooling, if you wanted to become board certified in internal medicine, you had to read Harrison's Textbook of Internal Medicine. I believe I had the 27th edition, and you had to basically memorize his textbook, which was very thorough. You can then go on to take the boards and become board certified in internal medicine. In the introduction to a few of the original additions, when he was alive, Harrison says, “Doctors, I need to let you know that 80% of the people who come to you are dispirited.” He says 80% and oriental medicine says 95%, but the point is that a big majority of people we see has an issue with their spirit that needs to be dealt with. This was understood with doctors in the past and passed on to me by one of my mentors, who was a country doctor. He would divide his day up, in the morning he would see people who needed quick fixes, like adjusting their medications or removing stitches. He could see five or six of them in an hour. The afternoon was saved for longer, almost hour-long sessions. He would see ladies who needed to come in to talk about their health problems, but had also recently lost their husbands; he knew it was their grief. They needed someone who cared and would listen them, so he scheduled longer appointments for people who would be working on their spirit. It worked very effectively. It may not be easy dealing with it, but you can do it and will thank yourself in the long run. CarlyleYou certainly will, and I have seen so many people get better. I was thinking back when I took a session at Stanford, based around spiritual, existential, and cultural perspectives around illness. I ended up teaching the course for a number of years, after I was two or three years into it. It was only a small module set in a larger set of modules that the medical students would take during their many days and hours of lectures. They would go through all different medical topics, then throw this class is, almost as an afterthought. I initially started with an hour and a half session, but as the years progressed, it went down to an hour, then 45 minutes. At one point, I asked a group of doctors and nurse practitioners in the session, how many other sessions they had that were like mine. They had different sessions on all sorts of topics and I was curious to know if they had any other sessions focusing on the body, mind, and sprit. After being stared at silently for a moment, I am told this is pretty much it. They do not have anyone coming in talking about social work stuff, it is all the logistics about discharging. I found it really interesting that they were spending hours upon hours learning all they can in the medical field, but the mind and spirit, which are very important pieces, are thrown in as an afterthought. I believe this led us to have the mindset of having a quick fix for everything, including our mind and spirit. We want to be handed a pill that will make us “better”, but this is not the best approach. We need to look at the long-term goal when working on these things. Every day we are deepening the understanding we have of our emotions and how they play out in our lives. One of the things I teach comes from a Buddhist tradition. Buddhism is an incredible heritage that is almost 3000 years old. In Buddhism, we are looking at our minds, emotional state, and how our emotions play a role in our actions. Take struggling with anger for example. When the anger arises in you, chances are it arises in a similar pattern. Your body may also feel a certain way, or even have a certain color, texture, or quality when it arises.

Here are Some Powerful Tools to Regenerate Your Vision

BEH Podcast 54 - 8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 6 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve. In this podcast, we are going to jump in with both feet and talk about a subject that is at the core of our work in the Better Eye Health program. There are powerful tools that support regeneration, and it is important to understand the notion of how you can help your eyes if you do have a serious retinal challenge, like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt’s disease, etc.I am not some magic sorcerer that has a way to take cells that are damaged and replace or repair them. I do know the body knows how to do this; your body can help you heal your eyes. I cannot heal your eyes, but I can help your body have the tools and resources it needs. We make sure everything that needs to be working is working, so your body can heal your eyes. 8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 6 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve. 009_OMDPodcast_8Things_RegenerationCarlyleWelcome to the Organic MD podcast with Dr. Damon Miller, and myself, Carlyle Coash. Welcome back Dr. Miller, how are you doing?Dr. MillerI am good, it is good to hear your voice Carlyle. CarlyleIt is good to hear yours.Dr. MillerI really enjoy doing this, it is a good day for a podcast. Today we are going to jump in with both feet and talk about a subject that is at the core of our work in the Better Eye Health program. There are powerful tools that support regeneration and it is important to understand the notion of how you can help your eyes if you do have a serious retinal challenge, like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, Stargardt’s disease, etc.I am not some magic sorcerer that has a way to take cells that are damaged and replace or repair them. I do know the body knows how to do this; your body can help you heal your eyes. I cannot heal your eyes, but I can help your body have the tools and resources it needs. We make sure everything that needs to be working is working, so your body can heal your eyes. Through research, we now know when something gets regenerated in your body, it involves our adult stem cell system. We are born with this elegant system, full of stem cells that are able to go where damage has occurred and help is needed. Your adult stem cells completely restore and regenerate, leaving the cells that were damaged, like new. You have the best stem cell system in the body and we are here to help you support your own stem cell system. We have seen it work and now we understand why it works. The results are far better than anything recorded, like injecting stem cells. CarlyleStem cells work from birth until death. There may be times when they slow down, and not work as well or be as effective, but they are always doing something. Take cutting your finger, for example. After it is cut, your finger heals and this is your stem cell system working. Dr. MillerExactly, breaking a bone is a great example too. CarlyleBasically, all of the tissues in our body regenerate numerous times throughout our lives because your system is constantly working. It can be hard to realize, but our body has so much going on and is always doing so much for us. Dr. MillerOur body is constantly regenerating and repairing the parts of us that need fixing, but we only found out recently this is true for every tissue in our body. It was not that long ago that I was in medical school where we were taught the brain and the central nervous system tissues, like the eyes and spinal cord, do not regenerate. It was taught that you are born with a certain number of cells and that is it. Through Nobel Prize awarded research, it is now understood all of these cells and tissues regenerate. The cells in your brain and eyes are turning over at least every ten years, possibly more often. These are the most complex tissues in the body and they do not repair or regenerate quickly, but are capable of it. Our program will help you with this, but you must do the work and stay with it. If you do everything we show you to do, it will work. You are going to improve the vision and health in your eye, but you may work on it for year before you see any benefit. It takes a certain mindset because you are in this for the long term. One of the tools we use in the program is something called micro-current stimulation. Our motivation to use this micro-stim unit, came from early work from an orthopedic doctor that was looking at why certain animals, like frogs and salamanders, can regenerate limbs. Is this possible to do in people? The doctor showed we the ability to some extent, but we are not able to go full force. When you amputate an arm off a mammal, the body can heal the wound, but it does not go as far as to regrow the arm. Through some very elegant research, he found he could use these externally applied electrical fields and actually regrow a limb on a mammal that had been amputated. With this finding, Grace Halloran, PHD., a woman I worked with until the end of her life and did much of the pioneering work with degenerative eye diseases. We thought, if you can grow an amputated limb on a mammal, maybe we can use this technology to help regrow cells in the eye. Among other things, she found with this micro-stim technology, you actually can. We have seen people regenerate their retinas and regain vision, in a long-lasting way. It does takes times and patience though. There is no single, “magic bullet”, where you can throw some electrodes on your eye, treat for a while, then all of a sudden everything is better. Some of the tools we are use are important too, like the oriental medicine of acupuncture. Instead of needles though, we use acupressure, which stimulates the acupuncture points by using pressure. This has turned out to be extremely effective. Our program offers things you can do to improve circulation in your head and eyes because you need to be bringing in nutrients and oxygen to them. We have learned some simple exercises from physical therapists and chiropractors to improve circulation in the brain and eye. We offer color therapy, which we consider more of a special treatment. Certain colors stimulate circulation in the retina, so we have these lamps that expose the eye to those colors. Then of course, the micro-current stimulation. Whether you are using it in the eye or on a broken bone that is not healing, it will improve circulation, remove toxins, and stimulate the health of the cells. The micro-current stimulation does is draw circulating stems cells to the area being treated. We go into more details of the mechanisms, science, and research that discovered and proves this in the book Stem Cells Heal Your Eyes. You can get that book on Amazon as a large print book, audio book, and Kindle. The final thing I want to touch on is about the physical aspect of degenerative eye disease. Let’s use the most common form of eye diseases, macular degeneration, as an example. The most common form of this is age-related macular degeneration, ARMD. It of does not show up until a person is in their 60s, 70s, or 80s. People go their entire life with great eye sight and being very healthy, then suddenly their vision starts to deteriorate. They go see their ophthalmologist and are told they have a degenerative disease. One thing we have learned is that just about everyone who has this problem, has an abnormal gene that predisposed them to it. There are a lot of people who have the abnormal gene who never experience any problems at all. I am telling you now, if you a diagnosis of macular degeneration, you have a gene that predisposed you to it. The question you want to ask yourself is how did you get to 60, 70, 80 years into your life with no problems in your eye. The reason you have been able to do this is because your body was taking care of you and your eyes. Your body was fixing things faster than they could break and was keeping that gene suppressed. If all we do is address and support those systems responsible for regeneration, and give it the resources it needs, your body will continue to fix your eyes, like it did for the first part of your life. I cannot fix your eyes, your body can. What I do know is how to support your body so it does the work. The theory behind this is stems cells heal your eyes. It is a complex, but know that it works. You do not need to understand why, you just need to do it and it will work. It is more a question of will you do it, not does it work? Some of this has a relationship to how the mind and body work. How do you commit to something to salvage something really important to you? Why do some people do it and other do not? When you have trauma in your life, or face any issues like it, the scars you are left with are both physical and emotional. This is what we mean by mind and body medicine. If you get whacked by something in your life, it will whack you emotionally and physically. Very often, we have seen people with an abnormal gene for macular degeneration and go their whole life without a problem. This may have to do with some emotional things, like things in your life that were hard to see or look at. I know you, Carlyle, have seen the poetic ways of how the mind and body works when you have worked with people with very dire health situations. Our mind and body are effected by the things that happen in our life.CarlyleIt can be very power. If we are willing to acknowledge it is possible, then something can happen. We often see with these eye diseases, activities a person has done their whole life, like playing golf, bridge, and doing outdoor activities often disappear. It is going to be harder to do these things that you have normally done. I believe this is because the message many receive is nothing can be done. I have known people who had macular degeneration and their eyes are seriously deteriorating. I suggest to check out our program and Dr.

Your Genes Are Not Your Destiny

BEH PODCAST EPISODE 55 - 8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 7 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve. This is the seventh of eight talks that we are putting together about the eye work we do to help people who have chronic degenerative eye conditions, like macular and retinal dystrophies. Some of the specific names include macular degeneration, Stargardt’s disease, retinitis pigmentosa, and cone rod dystrophy. We also help people who have severe glaucoma and separated retinas. Our eyes need a lot of support to be able to heal itself because it can. Today, we will be talking about the genetics behind these diseases. Especially, the idea that your genes are not your destiny. Let me say it again, your genes are not your destiny.  8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 7 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve. 055_OMDPodcast_8Things_Genes-Not-Your-Destiny-7of8CarlyleWelcome to the Organic MD podcast with Dr. Damon Miller. This is Carlyle Coash. How are you doing today, Dr. Miller?Dr. MillerI am doing pretty well during these tough times, by the grace of whatever. History will look back on this time, shake its head and wonder how we all got through it. I am grateful to be here because we are going to be talking about some important things. It is good to hear your voice, are you doing well?CarlyleI am holding up, as you said, by whoever is handing out grace. It seems to be helping to, at least, get through the day.Dr. MillerThis is the seventh of eight talks that we are putting together about the eye work we do to help people who have chronic degenerative eye conditions, like macular and retinal dystrophies. Some of the specific names include macular degeneration, Stargardt’s disease, retinitis pigmentosa, and cone rod dystrophy. We also help people who have severe glaucoma and separated retinas. Our eyes need a lot of support to be able to heal itself because it can. Today, we will be talking about the genetics behind these diseases. Especially, the idea that your genes are not your destiny. Let me say it again, your genes are not your destiny. Carlyle and I have been working with people for a couple decades now, and we see people in all different types of domains of their life. What we find of most people is they assume if it runs in their family; they will have and do the same thing their parents did. Your genes are not your destiny.CarlyleInstead of medical hexing, like we have talked about, we can say it is like a family or gene hexing. As opposed to seeing the pattern and looking to change it. Dr. MillerI see people respond to it if we can put it in some familiar ways. Without getting into a significant talk about genetics and epigenetics, consider the most common of these eye problems. Take the most common form of macular degeneration, called age related macular degeneration or ARMD. As it says in the name, the degeneration shows up in people when they are in their 60s, 70s, or 80s. From the time they are kids to the time they retire, there are no problems with their eyes. All of a sudden, their eyes start to fall apart. You need to be asking yourself if these diseases have a strong underpinning of some genetic predisposition, meaning you have a gene that predisposes you to the disease. We know that almost everybody who gets macular degeneration has some sort of abnormal gene. How is it that you can live to be 60, 70, or 80 years old, and have no idea that you have any kind of a genetic problem? You have had the gene from birth and your body has kept it suppressed. If it starts to rear its head, your body is able to fix things faster than they could break. This is true of many other diseases. Another bit of data that is interesting are the genetic testing kits, which look for genetic abnormalities. It is so common now, for only $90 you can get an at-home test kit that shows you any tendencies you may have for all these different dispositions. I do not recommend these tests, for most people, because they will get scared to death of the results. It may show you have a gene for diabetes, breast cancer, colon cancer, etc., but a lot of people have these genes. It shows us people with macular degeneration, have some of the genes that predispose you to it. There are tens of millions of people who have done this genetic testing and the gene is pretty common, yet the gene is much more common than the disease. Most people with the gene never get the disease. The same goes for people who have the gene for diabetes or breast cancer, most people will still not get them. Yes, there is a gene there, but the disease does not necessarily come with the gene. Well, what would make your gene get expressed then? We are going to shift gears a little so we can understand the basics of genetics, specifically about your DNA. This is the six-foot long piece of double helix; the base pairs that defines how you put together, like what eye color you will have. This is your genetics, and is what the genetic tests look at. Sitting on top of your genetics are epigenetics, which are the things sitting on top of the genome of your genetic sequence. They are incredibly tiny, barely the width of a wavelength of light, and involve things like proteins and histones. Every cell in your body has a six-foot strand of DNA, along with the epigenetics, and are not thrown together, like a bowl of spaghetti. They are carefully packaged, wrapped, and folded together. It is what is going into the folding up of the DNA that also controls the DNA. The reason you do not randomly start making tissue in your body is because the expression of the genes in your body are very tightly controlled. This is especially true when you are first forming as a fetus. Everything is very carefully controlled and orchestrated as you grow in the womb. Your neural tubes, ears, and everything else, can form at the right time. We do hear people saying there will be a drug or technology someday that will affect this. We just saw this week, the announcement of the Nobel Prize winner in biology. It was shared by two women for their development of CRISPR, which is the ability to modify your DNA sequence. This is one way to affect your genetics, by modifying the gene itself, but nobody has found a way yet to sell you a kit to modify your epigenetics. There is no drug, surgery, or technology for it.Epigenetics raises some interesting questions, like how does our body decide when a gene should get expressed and not? There are things that can change if you modify your stress level, diet, and lifestyle. These have a profound effect on whether or not an abnormal gene gets expressed. I know you have seen this in all the work you have done with people. CarlyleI certainly have. It also struck me when you mentioned how so many people are testing their genetics for all sorts of things. I hear more and more people doing preventative surgery, only because there is a chance the abnormal gene will turn into a disease. This is an odd term to use, but it is very “hot” right now to do these preventative surgeries to remove the issue before it starts. Yes, you can do this, but it is a very extreme measure of prevention. The focus goes to getting rid of the thing that might be a problem. If you know you have a propensity for macular degeneration, are not going to remove your eyes ahead of time? With this notion of epigenetics and its ability to affect an aspect by managing your stress, diet, all of the things we have talked about in the last few podcasts. There is a way we are committing to our resilience by building our resilience. As we have talked before, when it is flu season we find ourselves taking more vitamin C, D, and A, we make sure to eat healthy foods, and we are managing our stress. The core of your immunity is stronger, helping you to get through any flu or COVID season, whatever may be happening at the time. The same is true here because you have this gene, but it does not mean it will ever manifest ever. There are things you can do to improve your situation, so why not try them first, as opposed to a dramatic surgery that may not be needed. Surgery puts a lot of trauma and stress on your body, but it is a crazy choice people are making. We are living in a very interesting time right now, but we need to build our resilience. We must look not only at our physical health and the things we do to support our immune systems, but also how we manage our stress. We have all fallen into the assumption that nothing ever changes, that we will go on in life because everyone is going to live forever, and no loss will be experienced. Sometimes people think they will never have any stress, will have any job that makes endless amounts of money, and nothing is ever going to happen to the economy. If this is true for you, great, but if you have been on the earth for any length of time, you know that is not true. Things will always happen, there will always be change, and these things are unpredictable. We can have things in place for ourselves that will manage our stress on a daily level. You will be able to stay pretty full of physical, emotional, and spiritual nourishment, using the tools we have when outside circumstances shift and change. Let’s take for example losing your job, or there is an illness or death in the family, or you have relationship stress. Whatever it may be, you will have the tools because you have worked on your own self. In terms of stress, being able to relieve and nourish those moments can help you manage it long-term. You will have the work you have done and use it as an ally, where we can rely and draw from it. The road in front of us can be bumpy with uphill climbs and steep downhill falls or can be smooth sailing; sometimes it is all of the above. I think many of us assume that by continuing to make the choices we do in everyday life, will somehow work out. I really hope it does,

Toxicity is an Obstacle to Healing Your Eyes

BEH PODCAST EPISODE 53 - 8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 5 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve. In this episode, we are covering toxicity, which is part five of the eight part series about things your doctor does not tell you when you are diagnosed a retinal disease, like macular degeneration, Stargardt’s, or retinitis pigmentosa. Toxicity is something I wrestle with while talking with people in my office all the time. It is not the cause of a disease, it is an obstacle to getting better, no matter what kind of health problem. No matter what you are doing, toxicity gets in the way and it can stoep any progress from happening. It has to be addressed. People wonder all the time if they are toxic, but how do you find out? 8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 5 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve. 053_OMDPodcast_8Things_Toxicity-5 of 8Carlyle Welcome to the organic MD podcast with Dr. Damon Miller, and me, Carlyle Coash. Welcome back to our interesting, ongoing conversation about bettering your health. How are you doing today, Dr. Miller?Dr. Miller I am doing well today. We are recording this while the great fires in Northern California are happening. It is bad enough that we are stuck here because of social distancing due to the pandemic, but it is almost dangerous to walk outside. It is getting better, and it is a good day to record a podcast. Today, we are covering toxicity, which is part five of the eight part series about things your doctor does not tell you when you are diagnosed a retinal disease, like macular degeneration, Stargardt’s, or retinitis pigmentosa. Toxicity is something I wrestle with while talking with people in my office all the time. It is not the cause of a disease, it is an obstacle to getting better, no matter what kind of health problem. No matter what you are doing, toxicity gets in the way and it can stoep any progress from happening. It has to be addressed. People wonder all the time if they are toxic, but how do you find out? There was a large study done to help find the toxins we have in our bodies. The study group consisted of hundreds of people, who were all seemingly healthy. They chose a healthy group of people to study toxins in, so they would have a control group to compare with those who have a disease or illness. Samples of everything were taken, stool, urine, spit, hair, and even skin biopsies. They tried to get as much information they could possibly obtain and came up with a list of about 150 toxins. The results were astonishing. Everyone had every toxin on the list, and in dangerously large amounts. This sparked a lot of interest in toxicity when the results were published in 2000 and doctors wanted to know if their clients were full of toxins. It was a mini industry for a number of years and some of the centers where the study was taken, put an elaborate test kit together. Doctors would get these kits with different tubes, vials, and envelopes to gather all the information from their clients; everything would then get sent back to the centers. This kit cost about $4,000 and you would get a 13-page printout back showing the results. This did not last for long because every test came back completely positive for toxins, everyone is full of toxins.This is a long conversation and we have a course on Do It Yourself, Detox. This first piece of work helps you mobilize the toxins in your body because they need to be shaken loose from where they have been stuck. This will help you from being sick while the toxins are floating around until your body can figure out a way to excrete them out. The toxins that are stuck are for a good reason and if it cannot deal with something it buries it in your solid organs, bones, tissues, brain, spinal cord, and in your eyes. This is so the toxins are not freely floating around your body, poisoning you; it is poisoning wherever it is stationed though. There is not much done for toxic testing anymore, but there are still some doctors who do. When we look at toxins, like heavy metals, through a hair or urine analysis, the results only show what is being excreted by the body, giving inconclusive results. The issue we run into when trying to address the toxins, is not that they have been exposed to the toxins, but their body is, in a sense, crippled, and cannot get rid of them. Out body is able to excrete heavy metals through urine or hair, but only if the toxins are not sedimentary. You may be full of lead or mercury and not even know it. A workaround to this is to give an agent that will mobilize the lead or mercury; when the test is repeated, there is usually a huge spike in the new results. This tells us that yes, you do have toxins, but taking an agent to mobilize them may be useful. Usually, the people doing this testing have the intention to do intravenous chelation. Chelation is the process of getting metals out of your anything, including your body and farmland. It has leading agents that bind up the metals so they can be either sequestered or removed. This is very profitable for doctors, but they need proof that that risky technique is justified. You have to go out of your way to get some data on paper that showing you really have these metals. They explain why they did this and apologize for causing any damage, but it was worth it because it was needed. It is completely the opposite. There have been people excreting metals out of their body for many more years by using oral medication, not intravenous chelation.This leads us to another part of our discussion on toxicity, which we will deal with for the rest of our lives. We live in a very toxic world, and will always be taking toxins into our bodies, no matter how hard you try. Some of these may already be acquired, and they can take many years to finally clear. It will take good habits of detoxification and getting rid of the bad habits, which you know a lot about, Carlyle. Your dad had habits he needed to change, and it is a very motivating story. Carlyle He had a clear understanding of his issue with his gallbladder because he ate very heavy and rich foods. He had the option to change his diet or remove his gallbladder, but he hates surgery and did not see it as an option for himself. He opted to make a change in his diet, started taking lecithin, along with some other supplements, and he lost a lot of weight. He knew he had to keep a healthy diet for the rest of his life, and he did. I was about eight years old when he started making these changes and had many more life experiences with him because of it. Along with changing his diet, he set a routine for himself. By setting a routine, he would be able to stick to the changes for rest of his life and knew if he goes back to eating like he used to, the issues with his gallbladder would arise again. If he stopped doing the things that helped him get to this place of feeling great, he would be right back in the same place. Usually, you are not just cleared and recovered for the rest of your life. It is different with a broken arm, once it has healed, it will not necessarily continue to break in the exact same location. We are talking about toxins and other health issues, which require changes you make for the rest of your life. Change is always hard at first, but once you are comfortably in your routine, it will be like second nature to you. In today’s time, we want a quick solution and never have to think about it again. The world is toxic and it does not seem to be getting better anytime soon, so we need to balance it out. The same can be said with COVID or the flue, we all need to do things on an ongoing basis to keep your resilience high. You are likely always going to get exposed to something like the flu bug or COVID, even if you take precautionary measure. We need to keep our immunity boosted by taking vitamin C and D3, so when you are exposed to something, it will not have the same effect. Dr. Miller I heard someone refer to this as fragility, when you are trying to avoid a state where you are vulnerable to whatever comes in from you. This says it perfectly and will bring our discussion into the habits we have. I have some inspiring papers on habits, that are written by someone I have known for years, and we will have a segment on our habits in the future. Carlyle I experience this in my own life when I am not feeling well or under the weather. If I reflect on myself and think about the last couple of weeks. I realize I have not been taking my vitamin C, D3, or my diet has not been that great. I need to make sure I am, at least, drinking some juices or smoothies so I can get the healthy greens and nutrients in my systems again. When I do not do this, my body has much more work to do to maintain, regulate, and give my body the resources it needs. We need to ask ourselves if we want to have a cold now or feel rundown in a week. None of us do, but we can lose track of it. I used to think I do not get sick in summer, but the worst colds I have had have been in the summer months. Having the cold or flu is more prevalent in the winter months, but it is still around. It is not like these bugs take a vacation from getting people sick, it will accompany you on your trip to Hawaii. We need to continually help our body, so it can fend off different illnesses. Dr. Miller We need to do these things that will keep us healthy, and continually do them. More and more, we are seeing people who are willing to engage and do the program we are talking about. They let us know years down the road that they are still feeling so much better. By taking care of their health, they can now sleep better, have more energy, and have not had a cold in years. We receive feedback from a broad range of people, and I have been seeing this since I left the hospital-based practice and stepped into integrative medicine, two decades ago.

Heal Your Diet and You Can Heal Your Eyes

BEH PODCAST EPISODE 52 - 8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 4 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve.Today, this is the fourth of eight podcasts on Organic MD. We will discuss our Better Eye Health program that helps people with serious eye diseases, like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and Stargardt’s disease. We have a very effective program for stopping and reversing the progression of these diseases. To some extent, allowing people to get vision back that has been lost. I want mention how important your diet is – what you choose to eat and how you eat it, not just taking supplements. Our title of this podcast, the benefits that come from improving your diet can go beyond your wildest dreams, says it all.8 Things Your Doctor is Not Telling You About Your Eye Disease, Part 4 of 8. Hint: Your Vision Can Improve.007_OMDPodcast_8Things_DietCarlyleWelcome to the Organic MD podcast with Dr. Damon Miller. I am Carlyle Coash. How are you doing today Dr. Miller? Dr. MillerI am doing well today. I am very grateful. We are in a time where we get to spend more time listening to podcasts. Grateful for that and making our offering here. Today, this is the fourth of eight podcasts on Organic MD. We will discuss our Better Eye Health program that helps people with serious eye diseases, like macular degeneration, retinitis pigmentosa, and Stargardt’s disease. We have a very effective program for stopping and reversing the progression of these diseases. To some extent, allowing people to get vision back that has been lost. I want mention how important your diet is – what you choose to eat and how you eat it, not just taking supplements. Our title of this podcast, the benefits that come from improving your diet can go beyond your wildest dreams, says it all.CarlyleI would agree. We talked a last time about my dad making his diet choice. Among other thing he did, the main shift was what he ate and how he ate it. From the time he made the change to the next 30 plus years, he kept to it. There were times he may stray and have a meal that was a little more heavy or cheesy. He would suffer a little, but would say it was worth it because he did not get to eat it that often. He was suffering at the other side of it though. You have talked about this many times over the years, your health can start reflecting the types of food we are eating and putting into our system. Our body works with what we give it, to some extent. If you are giving your body not-so-great-things, it will do the best it can to process them, but your body may take a hit for it. Dr. MillerYour dad was motivated. The doctor said he could lose some weight, but they would end up doing surgery anyway to take out his gallbladder. Your dad wanted to try losing the weight first. This is the basic philosophy here at Organic MD – when you have multiple things to try, go with the safe ones that easy, simple, and cheap. It may take some work, motivation, and effort on your part, but if there are options to surgery, we want to exhaust them. I cannot tell you how many people I have seen go into a fairly simple surgery and come out very scarred or dead. This is also true with a degenerative eye disease, like a retinal disease, or macular degeneration, etc. Will changing your diet reverse these diseases? It is not clear. There are many things you can do to take care of your health that are worth mentioning, in terms of the science behind it. When we talk about macular degeneration, Stargardt’s disease, retinitis pigmentosa, we are talking about problems that almost always have an underlying abnormal gene that predisposes you to it. I choose these words very carefully – predisposes you. Having an abnormal gene does not mean that gene is your destiny. We have another topic we will be talking about in a later podcast called epigenetics. This is the information that sits on top of a gene. The gene is simply the strand of DNA holding the information. It is wrapped around all of these complexes of proteins, histones, etc., that are bundled up and control which parts of the gene gets expressed. Whether or not a gene gets expressed is as important, if not more important, than whether you have the gene. Macular degeneration is a perfect example of this because it is the most common form of the age-related macular degeneration, ARMD. Often, age related macular degeneration, does not show up until the sixth, seventh, or eighth decade of life. Everyone with this has had the gene since birth, yet somehow their body has been keeping this gene suppressed. If there was any damage being done by the abnormal gene, the body was healing the damage faster than it could show up. In terms of the science of it, everyone now understands there is such a thing as epigenetics and how important it is, but seem to be looking for a drug that can be given to suppress a gene. How are we going to develop that? There has been a lot of work on epigenetics and with this work, there have been no drug…nada, nothing, zip, zero. This research has shown is that changes in diet and lifestyle will change the epigenetics. In other words, do things we know how to do to make you healthier. In our program, we are usually working with people at the later stages of the disease and they have already have quite a bit of damage done. You need to be doing a lot to regenerate and rebuild these cells in the eye. After all, they are the most complex tissues in the whole human body. When we are talking with the family members who have parents with this disease, the assume they have this gene too. We have also spoken with people who did a test found they have the gene. They are all asking what they are going to do so they do not have the same problems later on in life. If you eat well, take care of yourself, change lifestyles, do no drink too much alcohol, and do not smoke. We need to get a good sleep and destress. Basic, basic, basic things. We consider working with your diet is so important that I am going to talk about our Better Eye Health program. We do many things in the program, one of them being a module we added almost 18 years ago, our Healthy Eating Workshop. We work with you to find what is the best diet for you. What is the diet that is going to energize you, keep you healthy, and keep your cholesterol down? When you start working with a good diet, it solves all kinds of problems. People find that their blood pressure and sugars normalizes, their glaucoma goes away, their skin clears, and their joints feel better. The list really goes on and on. You need to be eating well. You would not believe what a difference it makes when you start eating a healthier diet. Keep in mind that a healthy diet for one person, may not be a healthy diet for another. It goes back to the old notion that you are what you eat. How often have you heard that? I have heard that my entire life, is it ever true.CarlyleI think you have said that your grandmother would say the fastest way to get in a box is to eat out of a box, or something like that.Dr. MillerThat was Adelle Davis, she was considered a the diet guru back in the 50s and 60s. She would always say, “The fastest way to end up at an early age in a box, is to eat out of a box.” There is a lot more wisdom where that comes from, not necessarily from Adelle Davis. Let me get philosophical for a moment, the reason that we are all here today is because we had grandmothers and ancestors who had figured out how to keep the family and the community healthy. It is not because of modern medicine. The wisdom we have been losing sight of is what does it mean to be healthy and what do you do? What is the healthiest lifestyle for you? There is a lot of valuable information and just another thing we do here at Organic MD. We are also trying to include more “ancient wisdom” in the podcasts and on our webpage. The most basic of it is you are what you eat. CarlyleBe curious of the things you are eating and what is in this product. Next time you eat something that is a processed, ask yourself what ingredients are in it and where did it come from? Especially when you are dealing with an illness, just asking those basic questions and thinking about it the next time you order something. This is also true when you are going to make something yourself. The next time you are at a supermarket and pull an item off the shelf, ask yourself if it will help you with the illness or issue you are relating to. You might have to put the box back…I go to Trader Joe’s and there are plenty of things that speak to me when I am in the aisle. The dark chocolate peanut butter cups literally talk when you walk by saying, “Wait, come back and get some! You need me, I am really good!” They are so good that you want to eat the entire container. I know I have to be very sparing or I will eat them all the time. In chocolatier terms, there is an aspect of chocolate that is good for you. The sweets and other processed foods contain so much fat, salt, and sugar. This mirrors back to what we have been talking about, which is for these things to change. You need to be more engaging, question things, and be mindful. Maybe pass on having three sugars in your coffee. Start with little things that you can shift in order to maintain that wellness. There are of course the rare examples, like George Burns. He smoked cigars his entire life, and probably ate pretty rich food, and drank too. He was fine, but that is not the case for the majority of people. We have to find our own path. Dr. MillerGeorge Burns was a pretty functional guy up until the end, but we are here to talk about the value of a good diet in the context of trying to stop and reverse a serious disease and keeping people on a good diet. One final thing about what happens when you eat well and make good choices about your food. It is not necessarily about peanut butter and chocolate and other sweets,