Latest / Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill Carnahan, MD / 264: Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill: Key Updates in Integrative Mental Health and Wellness with Kirkland Newman

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264: Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill: Key Updates in Integrative Mental Health and Wellness with Kirkland Newman · Resiliency Radio with Dr. Jill Carnahan, MD

• 0:01
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Hey everybody.
• 0:01
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Welcome to Resiliency Radio, your go to podcast for the most cutting edge insights integrative and functional medicine.
• 0:09
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I'm your host Dr.
• 0:10
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Jill and with each episode we dive into the heart of healing and personal transformation.
• 0:15
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Join me as I interview renowned experts, medical thought leaders and everyone in between to bring you insightful and fun and very hopefully practical advice to optimize your health and well being and even performance.
• 0:30
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I always just like you, learn right alongside you.
• 0:33
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I love interviewing these guests and look forward to sharing each week new information with you.
• 0:38
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: This week you're going to love new insights on Integrative Mental Health with Kirkland Newman, my guest.
• 0:44
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I will introduce her in just a moment, but before I do, I want to remind you that you can find all products that have been curated for your health needs@drjillhealth.com we have only the very best and if you're looking at a condition like Mast cell activ, chronic Lyme disease, Epstein Barr reactivation or just fatigue, you can find bundles there as well.
• 1:08
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I've put together some bundles to make it easy.
• 1:10
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• 1:14
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• 1:25
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• 1:40
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• 1:42
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• 1:46
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• 1:50
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• 1:57
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• 2:02
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• 2:04
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I used bed and it is literally my don't go without Biopeptide beauty cream which you can find@drjillhealth.com okay, onto our show.
• 2:12
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Let me introduce our guest.
• 2:14
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Kirkland Newman is anglo American journalist and philanthropist.
• 2:17
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: She is the founder and editor of Mind Health360, a free global research for integrative mental health and functional Medicine Psychiatry and the host of Mind Health360 show.
• 2:27
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I've been a guest on that and it's so fun.
• 2:29
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: She's an amazing interviewer.
• 2:30
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: She created Mind Health360 after her own postpartum depression to address the epidemic of mental health issues in lack of sustainable root cause based solutions for mental health and the mainstream medicine.
• 2:42
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: She launched this Mind Health 360 show in 2020, giving voice to the leading practitioners integrative and mental health.
• 2:48
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: She had some amazing guests as you can hear from our interview today.
• 2:53
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: She is co founder and trustee of the Horizon foundation providing support for young refugees from the Middle East.
• 3:00
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: She's first class BA MA Founder from Oxford University in Modern Languages and Literatures and I could go on and on but she's just an incredible bring being who is now putting on the IMH conference.
• 3:12
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: We'll talk a little bit about that today.
• 3:14
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: If you're a practitioner, you can join in San Diego September, either live or virtual.
• 3:19
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But let me go ahead and first welcome Kirkland Newman to the show.
• 3:23
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Kiki, it is so exciting to be here with you and as we're recording this shortly, I'm going to be visiting you in London.
• 3:29
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I can't wait to actually see you in person.
• 3:31
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: We're talking today about updates integrative medicine and mental health and you and I, right before we got on are just talking about we both love functional integrative medicine.
• 3:40
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: We all, we both know tons of practitioners and we have a lot of practitioners who listen to the show.
• 3:45
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But today I want to dive deep into all the realms and some of the new and upcoming things, especially somatic therapy, trauma therapies.
• 3:52
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Before I do, tell us a little about how did you get interested in this field?
• 3:57
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: What was your journey into being the, you know, collaborator and kind of founder now taking over the IMMH conference.
• 4:05
  Kirkland Newman: Thank you so much Jill for having me.
• 4:07
  Kirkland Newman: And you've always been a hero of mine.
• 4:08
  Kirkland Newman: And you and I first met at the IMMH conference several years ago.
• 4:13
  Kirkland Newman: I think it was in Orange county or in some place in California.
• 4:18
  Kirkland Newman: You have always been such an inspiration because of your journey, which has been very personal and then very professional and also what you do and how you treat clinically and the research that you use and also your presentations are really second to none.
• 4:34
  Kirkland Newman: So first of all, hats off for that and you really are a leader and a pioneer in this field.
• 4:39
  Kirkland Newman: And second of all in terms of my story, so I had no intention of getting into the health space.
• 4:44
  Kirkland Newman: I did a master's in French and Spanish literature.
• 4:47
  Kirkland Newman: Then I Did a Master's in European Studies.
• 4:50
  Kirkland Newman: The first one was at Oxford.
• 4:51
  Kirkland Newman: The second one was at lse.
• 4:53
  Kirkland Newman: And then I did a Master's in Middle Eastern Studies at soas, the University of London.
• 4:57
  Kirkland Newman: And I had a very checkered career.
• 4:59
  Kirkland Newman: I worked for Rockefeller Brothers Fund, I worked for Ogilvy and Mather.
• 5:02
  Kirkland Newman: I worked for the Prince's Trust.
• 5:04
  Kirkland Newman: I did Europe's largest hip hop festival with Jay Z and Beyonce and Alicia.
• 5:08
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Wow.
• 5:08
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I had no idea.
• 5:09
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: All this.
• 5:10
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: It's amazing.
• 5:12
  Kirkland Newman: Yeah.
• 5:12
  Kirkland Newman: And so I was a fundraiser.
• 5:14
  Kirkland Newman: I started a.
• 5:15
  Kirkland Newman: You know, I started an Internet startup in the early 2000s as well.
• 5:21
  Kirkland Newman: So I've had a very varied career.
• 5:23
  Kirkland Newman: And then I was set to do a PhD on the middle Eastern conflict.
• 5:29
  Kirkland Newman: That was really my passion.
• 5:30
  Kirkland Newman: And I got postpartum depression after the birth of my first child, which I was offered drugs.
• 5:36
  Kirkland Newman: I was offered SSRIs, I was offered tranquilizers, I refused them all.
• 5:40
  Kirkland Newman: And then I fixed it with nutrition and meditation, and that was fine.
• 5:45
  Kirkland Newman: It took about a year and a half, and it really affected my immune system.
• 5:49
  Kirkland Newman: And I was sick all the time as well.
• 5:51
  Kirkland Newman: On top of having panic and anxiety attacks, I was sick a lot.
• 5:56
  Kirkland Newman: I would have every stomach bug, every flu, etc.
• 6:00
  Kirkland Newman: But I didn't really have depression.
• 6:02
  Kirkland Newman: I had more anxiety, panic, and then weak immune system.
• 6:05
  Kirkland Newman: And then after the birth of my second child, I had a much worse postpartum depression.
• 6:10
  Kirkland Newman: And I was completing my master's in Middle Eastern studies, and I was writing my dissertation, in fact, on the battle for victimhood between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
• 6:20
  Kirkland Newman: And about nine months after that, I developed this terrible postpartum depression where I couldn't get out of bed.
• 6:27
  Kirkland Newman: I was crying all the time, I couldn't sleep.
• 6:30
  Kirkland Newman: And so it took me about three years to be able to sleep properly.
• 6:33
  Kirkland Newman: I was sleeping maybe three, four or five hours a night.
• 6:37
  Kirkland Newman: And as you know, if you don't sleep for that period of time, you.
• 6:40
  Kirkland Newman: I mean, I just had a complete breakdown.
• 6:43
  Kirkland Newman: And there I did accept the drugs.
• 6:44
  Kirkland Newman: I was put on Mirtazapine, I was put on Zoplicone, you know, which is a sleeping pill, one of the zed drugs.
• 6:51
  Kirkland Newman: And I was told by my psychiatrist I would be on these indefinitely.
• 6:56
  Kirkland Newman: And after a few months of being on them, they provided immediate relief.
• 7:00
  Kirkland Newman: So I stopped having panic attacks.
• 7:02
  Kirkland Newman: I was able to sleep.
• 7:04
  Kirkland Newman: And so that was a huge relief.
• 7:05
  Kirkland Newman: And my first reaction was, wow, why has no one told me about this sooner?
• 7:09
  Kirkland Newman: Like, these are great, these drugs.
• 7:11
  Kirkland Newman: Like, why is everyone so afraid of antidepressants?
• 7:14
  Kirkland Newman: But gradually, in fact, strangely, my mood got worse and worse.
• 7:19
  Kirkland Newman: My energy levels got worse and worse to the point where I couldn't get out of bed.
• 7:24
  Kirkland Newman: I was constantly crying.
• 7:26
  Kirkland Newman: I was constantly.
• 7:27
  Kirkland Newman: You know, and then I started noticing that my nails were super brittle, my hair was falling out.
• 7:31
  Kirkland Newman: I had all these weird symptoms, and I was feeling much worse even than I had when I had the sort of panic, anxiety, and insomnia.
• 7:40
  Kirkland Newman: And so I said to my psychiatrist, look, you know, these aren't working for me.
• 7:43
  Kirkland Newman: I think I.
• 7:44
  Kirkland Newman: And she kept upping the dose till I was on, really, a mega dose.
• 7:47
  Kirkland Newman: I was on 40 milligrams of mirtazapine or Zispin or Remron, whatever you want to call it.
• 7:53
  Kirkland Newman: And it.
• 7:55
  Kirkland Newman: And I said, look, I don't want to be on these.
• 7:56
  Kirkland Newman: And she said, well, you'll be on these indefinitely.
• 7:58
  Kirkland Newman: And I said, I've never been on a psych med before.
• 8:01
  Kirkland Newman: I don't understand why I need these.
• 8:04
  Kirkland Newman: And she said, well, you know, it's just you're depressed, and that's that.
• 8:09
  Kirkland Newman: Anyway, I started doing my own research, and not one of my five or six doctors.
• 8:14
  Kirkland Newman: I saw an endocrinologist, I saw two OBGYNs, I saw several psychiatrists, psychologists.
• 8:19
  Kirkland Newman: I was doing some cbt.
• 8:21
  Kirkland Newman: No one ever said, let's look at your nutrition status, let's look at your hormones.
• 8:25
  Kirkland Newman: Let's look at all the biochemical stuff that's going on.
• 8:28
  Kirkland Newman: Not one of them through my own research.
• 8:30
  Kirkland Newman: And I have to say, the first book I read, somebody gave me, it was Susan Summers Breakthroughs.
• 8:35
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Oh, yeah.
• 8:36
  Kirkland Newman: And, you know, and she.
• 8:38
  Kirkland Newman: For whatever.
• 8:39
  Kirkland Newman: So I started reading her book, and I thought, this makes a lot of sense.
• 8:42
  Kirkland Newman: And I started this odyssey.
• 8:44
  Kirkland Newman: I went to Belgium.
• 8:44
  Kirkland Newman: I saw Thierry Ertog, who's a hormone doctor who's quite controversial, and he gave me a list of hormones as long as my arm.
• 8:52
  Kirkland Newman: I came back to London.
• 8:54
  Kirkland Newman: I saw Marion Gluck at the Marion Gluck Clinic.
• 8:57
  Kirkland Newman: I saw an endocrinologist there, and all of a sudden my eyes were open to this whole alternative approach which no one had told me about.
• 9:05
  Kirkland Newman: I started seeing a nutritionist who tested my heavy metals, my food intolerances, my gut, et cetera.
• 9:12
  Kirkland Newman: And it turned out I had, you know, all these imbalances in my HPA access.
• 9:16
  Kirkland Newman: I had very low dhea, very abnormal cortisol rhythms.
• 9:20
  Kirkland Newman: I had very low progesterone, very low estrogen, very high copper, low zinc, low B12, very low Omegas, very low vitamin D.
• 9:30
  Kirkland Newman: And so all These things, everything.
• 9:31
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Your brain needed, right?
• 9:32
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Like, name the list of, like the top five to ten nutrients.
• 9:37
  Kirkland Newman: Well, exactly.
• 9:38
  Kirkland Newman: And.
• 9:38
  Kirkland Newman: And no one had tested this.
• 9:40
  Kirkland Newman: And as I started to figure this out, you know, it became very obvious why I was depressed, why I was having insomnia, why I was so panicky.
• 9:48
  Kirkland Newman: I had a very high mercury load, I had a very high lead load, I had gut dysbiosis, I had leaky gut and I a very serious gluten intolerance.
• 9:59
  Kirkland Newman: None of this, you know, I had any idea about until I started doing all these tests.
• 10:04
  Kirkland Newman: I then started working with doctors.
• 10:06
  Kirkland Newman: Sarah Gottfried, this was back in 2011, and she was doing all these webinars on adrenals and, you know, women's health.
• 10:16
  Kirkland Newman: And my whole world was blown up because I discovered functional medicine.
• 10:22
  Kirkland Newman: And I thought, wow, why is no one talking about this in the uk, which is where I was based?
• 10:27
  Kirkland Newman: But also she was saying that only 1% of practitioners in the US practice functional medicine.
• 10:34
  Kirkland Newman: And I thought, why is this not more well known?
• 10:37
  Kirkland Newman: So then I made it my mission.
• 10:38
  Kirkland Newman: I went away from the sort of Israel Palestine conflict and I said, this is going to be.
• 10:45
  Kirkland Newman: My mission is to raise awareness and provide resources around integrative mental health and functional medicine, psychiatry.
• 10:52
  Kirkland Newman: So I started a website called Mind Health 360.
• 10:55
  Kirkland Newman: I then started a podcast called the Mind Health 360 Show.
• 10:58
  Kirkland Newman: This was in 2020.
• 11:00
  Kirkland Newman: And then I took over from Dr.
• 11:02
  Kirkland Newman: Shaw of Great Plains Labs, IMH, which is integrative medicine for mental health, which had been going since about 2009 and had started very small.
• 11:11
  Kirkland Newman: It was founded by Dr.
• 11:13
  Kirkland Newman: James Greenblatt and Dr.
• 11:14
  Kirkland Newman: Shaw, with 50 people in a room, grew to about 500.
• 11:18
  Kirkland Newman: And last year we did it in person.
• 11:19
  Kirkland Newman: We had 700 people.
• 11:21
  Kirkland Newman: And this year we're doing it again in San Diego.
• 11:24
  Kirkland Newman: Diego from the 11th to the 14th of September.
• 11:27
  Kirkland Newman: And, you know, there's a real need for this type of medicine, both for, you know, practitioner training, which is what IMMH is, and also for patients and their families, because there's such a need for this type of approach.
• 11:43
  Kirkland Newman: And the way I look at it is if you want to sustainably heal mental health, you really need to look at three areas.
• 11:51
  Kirkland Newman: The first is the biochemical, which is your gut, your hormones, your nutrition, your toxins, your infections, your inflammation, your.
• 11:59
  Kirkland Newman: Your genes.
• 12:00
  Kirkland Newman: The second is psycho spiritual, which is your trauma, your adverse life experiences, your chronic stress, your lack of purpose and meaning, difficult life circumstances.
• 12:09
  Kirkland Newman: And the third is your lifestyle, behavioral, so sleep, sunlight, exercise, essentially, and only by Looking at these three baskets, can you really sustainably heal mental health?
• 12:21
  Kirkland Newman: So that's a long winded version of why I started what I started and why I'm so passionate.
• 12:27
  Kirkland Newman: Because I really believe that we need a revolution in the way mental health is diagnosed and treated.
• 12:33
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, I, I ended up weaning myself and it took me six months to wean myself off my drugs without my psychiatrist's approval.
• 12:42
  Kirkland Newman: I'm not recommending that, but that's what I had to do.
• 12:45
  Kirkland Newman: I had huge rebound insomnia.
• 12:47
  Kirkland Newman: I had, you know, it took me three years to regulate my biochemistry and my stress response so that I could handle it.
• 12:54
  Kirkland Newman: I nearly checked myself into a psychiatric institute.
• 12:57
  Kirkland Newman: I was desperate.
• 12:59
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, in the end of the day, what stopped my panic attacks in their tracks were a simple breathing exercise that was, you know, taught to me by a psychologist, which was just four in, hold four, eight out.
• 13:12
  Kirkland Newman: He recorded it on my phone.
• 13:14
  Kirkland Newman: Every time I started feeling a panic attacks beginning, I would do this exercise.
• 13:20
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, through my own journey, I realized that there are so many tools that we have in our arsenal to treat mental health and that are not in the mainstream.
• 13:31
  Kirkland Newman: There are so many root causes to mental health, be they hormone dysregulation, nutritional imbalances, Lyme disease, toxins, et cetera.
• 13:40
  Kirkland Newman: And through, you know, my work, I've learned so much about all these different factors that can be contributing to mental health and also ways that we can address it that are not in the mainstream.
• 13:53
  Kirkland Newman: So I'm passionate about revolutionizing mental health by bringing this awareness and education both to lay people, patients, their friends, families and health practitioners.
• 14:04
  Kirkland Newman: So I will now shut up.
• 14:05
  Kirkland Newman: But that's my story.
• 14:08
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So good, Kiki, and thank you for sharing your personal experience.
• 14:11
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I don't think I knew the depth of what you had personally gone through.
• 14:14
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I just want to highlight real quickly because like I said, you literally named all off the top 10, at least, things that are contributing.
• 14:21
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So people may not know.
• 14:22
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Celiac disease, non celiac gluten sensitivity.
• 14:24
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: They think of it as a gut issue, gas or bloating or malabsorption.
• 14:28
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: The truth is about 50% present with mental health issues.
• 14:33
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Depression, anxiety, insomnia, daytime fatigue.
• 14:35
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I see it all the time.
• 14:37
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: In fact, it was always a joke back in the day when I first started functional medicine.
• 14:41
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You know, I help a mother with her hormones and she'd send her college kid.
• 14:43
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So it used to be a young man, you know, 19 years old, and we talking through it and Like I'm having depression, anxiety, I can't get through my studies, I'm having trouble with college and like, okay, da, da.
• 14:53
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And we need to do a stool test.
• 14:54
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And it was so funny to see a look on their face.
• 14:56
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: They're like, you know, this young man and me giving them like, here's the poop test.
• 15:00
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But back to the pul celiac, the zonulin issue.
• 15:03
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And then also what you mentioned, dysbiosis.
• 15:06
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: A lot of people have lps, endotoxemia, which is this bacterial leakage into the gut, from the gut into the bloodstream, which is a really potent inflammatory thing that can contribute to depression, anxiety, insomnia.
• 15:18
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So this gut connection you mentioned zinc and copper, we test this for not only mental health but cognitive function.
• 15:24
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Super common to have those imbalance.
• 15:26
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You mentioned heavy metals.
• 15:28
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And these are all things that the conventional doc you go to is probably not going to look at or test or even know.
• 15:33
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And God bless them, they just don't know any better.
• 15:35
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: It's not that they're not trained to help you, but they've been taught, like I was in medical school, that you have depression, you give an ssri.
• 15:41
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You don't look at hormones, you don't look at.
• 15:43
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You mentioned cortisol curve, you mentioned female hormones like progesterone, which can be calming and gabaergic, and on and on.
• 15:49
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But I love that I just wanted to highlight it because as people are listening, they might be suffering like you were.
• 15:54
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I don't know what the stats are.
• 15:55
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Kiki, do you know, I think I heard over Covid that prescriptions for antidepressants went up by about 400%.
• 16:02
  Kirkland Newman: Yeah, I'm not surprised.
• 16:03
  Kirkland Newman: I know that anxiety went up BY I think 40% and it was already very high before.
• 16:10
  Kirkland Newman: And I know depression has gone up.
• 16:12
  Kirkland Newman: Covid has been hugely detrimental.
• 16:14
  Kirkland Newman: Everyone's mental health, the isolation and you know, there's the epidemic that was already before COVID has now just gathered steam essentially and then the inflammation.
• 16:25
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Because you also mentioned there are hidden infections like Lyme or Epstein Barr.
• 16:29
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And we see, I'm seeing a lot of long Covid post Covid where people have semi permanent or at least 6 to 12 to 18 months of inflammatory cytokines from the infection that maintain for months afterwards and absolutely affect brain affect blood FL to the brain effect because the T cells are diminished.
• 16:49
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Other infections that were just hanging around, not minding their own business, not bothering the patient like CMV or Epstein Barr or any Herpetic virus or any Borrelia or Lyme infections, all of a sudden pop their head up because their immune system isn't functional.
• 17:03
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So this, if you're listening, this may sound very complex, but I think the core message is what you said.
• 17:08
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Kiki, I am so passionate like you about getting the word out to other practitioners because we need critical thinkers and problem solvers in the realm of medicine that are looking outside the box, which is comes back to your conference.
• 17:23
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Tell us just briefly now about.
• 17:24
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: We'll talk about this at the end too, and it'll be in the show notes.
• 17:27
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: What's the dates again?
• 17:29
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Who is it for and what are you covering this year?
• 17:33
  Kirkland Newman: Thank you so much.
• 17:33
  Kirkland Newman: No, it's fantastic because the other thing is just before I talk about the conference, there's a disconnect between the amount of research and evidence that is out there.
• 17:42
  Kirkland Newman: We know that, for instance, you know, there are hundreds of thousands of papers on the gut brain connection, most on animal models.
• 17:49
  Kirkland Newman: That's the only thing.
• 17:50
  Kirkland Newman: But there's a lot of research that's out there that's not getting into mainstream clinical practice.
• 17:55
  Kirkland Newman: And so one of the things we're trying to do with the conference, which is Image Integrative Medicine for mental health, the 11th to the 14th of September in San Diego, is to really bring that research to the fore, essentially and bring the clinical practice to the fore as well.
• 18:11
  Kirkland Newman: And it's for health practitioners, whether they're MDs, DOs, and there's a large proportion of them nurse practitioners, physician associates, psychologists, psychotherapists, nutritionists, naturopaths, chiropractors, social workers and even passionate lay people.
• 18:27
  Kirkland Newman: And so it's to really showcase the latest research, you know, on these biochemical imbalances mainly, but also on the psycho spiritual side and the lifestyle behavioral side and also the best clinical practice so that they can go away after four days of.
• 18:43
  Kirkland Newman: It's quite intense.
• 18:44
  Kirkland Newman: And we're covering a whole number of topics.
• 18:47
  Kirkland Newman: So we've got Dr.
• 18:48
  Kirkland Newman: Gabor Mate who will be talking about the sort of the biology and the brain, the body and brain connection and the effects of sort of chronic stress on our physiology.
• 18:59
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 18:59
  Kirkland Newman: Emren Meyer will be talking about the gut brain immune connection.
• 19:03
  Kirkland Newman: He's a gastroenterologist at UCL.
• 19:05
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 19:06
  Kirkland Newman: Robert Lustig and Dr.
• 19:07
  Kirkland Newman: Matt Bernstein will be talking about metabolic psychiatry.
• 19:11
  Kirkland Newman: We have Dr.
• 19:12
  Kirkland Newman: Dale Bredesen who will be talking about Alzheimer's.
• 19:15
  Kirkland Newman: And him and Cat Toops.
• 19:16
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 19:17
  Kirkland Newman: Cat Toops and also Heather Sanderson will be doing a whole afternoon on Alzheimer's and on their latest research on preventing and even reversing Alzheimer's.
• 19:29
  Kirkland Newman: We have.
• 19:29
  Kirkland Newman: Who else do we have?
• 19:31
  Kirkland Newman: We have quite a few wonderful speakers.
• 19:32
  Kirkland Newman: We have a lovely postdoc from Princeton called Dr.
• 19:35
  Kirkland Newman: Alexis Cohen, who will be speaking about circadian rhythm, sleep and blue light and the effects of those on mental health and especially on your mitochondria.
• 19:45
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 19:45
  Kirkland Newman: Bob Rountree will be speaking about mitochondria and mental health.
• 19:50
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 19:50
  Kirkland Newman: Naysha Winters will be speaking about cancer and mental health.
• 19:54
  Kirkland Newman: I always try and add one person who's a bit left field, and last year we had Dr.
• 19:58
  Kirkland Newman: Aseem Malhotra, who's a cardiologist, talk about the heart brain connection.
• 20:03
  Kirkland Newman: She will be talking about sort of metabolism, mitochondria, but also the cancer mental health connection.
• 20:12
  Kirkland Newman: We have Patrick McEwen, who is a wonderful breathwork practitioner, whose latest work is about training mental health practitioners to work with the breath, because that's such an important part.
• 20:27
  Kirkland Newman: We have JJ Virgin, who will be talking about exercise and muscle and the importance of muscle actually as a neuroendocrine organ and as a source of sort of biochemical chemical neurochemistry.
• 20:38
  Kirkland Newman: So apparently your muscle acts as an endocrine and a neurohormone, which I had no idea about.
• 20:46
  Kirkland Newman: It's so fascinating.
• 20:49
  Kirkland Newman: We have Dr.
• 20:49
  Kirkland Newman: Joe Pizzorno, who will be talking about toxins and mental health.
• 20:53
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 20:54
  Kirkland Newman: Neil Nathan will be talking about mold and Lyme and mental health.
• 20:58
  Kirkland Newman: So we really, you know, there are so many more, but we really.
• 21:02
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 21:02
  Kirkland Newman: Arwen Podesta on addiction and mental health.
• 21:06
  Kirkland Newman: So we're trying to cover a whole number of bases.
• 21:09
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 21:09
  Kirkland Newman: James Greenblatt, of course, will be talking about ADHD and mental health.
• 21:14
  Kirkland Newman: And so we really are trying to cover sort of nutritional psychiatry, metabolic psychiatry.
• 21:20
  Kirkland Newman: We have two sessions on genomics with Dr.
• 21:23
  Kirkland Newman: Sharon Houseman Cohen and another one whose name I'm forgetting.
• 21:30
  Kirkland Newman: Lisa Gray.
• 21:32
  Kirkland Newman: No, Erica Gray.
• 21:33
  Kirkland Newman: And.
• 21:34
  Kirkland Newman: And so essentially, and that looks at the sort of new science of genomics and how certain snips really impact our mental health and epigenetics and what we can do about them.
• 21:47
  Kirkland Newman: We're really trying to cover really, the full gamut of depression, anxiety, addiction, and looking at genomics and metabolic psychiatry, nutritional psychiatry, the gut brain connection, toxicity, and really cover as much as we can in those four days with people who are real experts in the field, who can then showcase both to people, practitioners who are new to this area and are new to functional medicine completely, to people who are much more experienced.
• 22:22
  Kirkland Newman: And really, it's across the board and anybody who's interested or invested or working with people with mental health, which is most practitioners.
• 22:31
  Kirkland Newman: Yeah, there'll be something in it for them because it's, you know, and it's really trying to say, look, mental health is so much more than treating the symptoms with SSRIs.
• 22:41
  Kirkland Newman: There are so many root causes.
• 22:43
  Kirkland Newman: So we're looking really at a root cause, personalized, precision approach to mental health treatment.
• 22:49
  Kirkland Newman: And as far as I know, there is no other conference or platform out there that combines integrative approaches, functional medicine, specifically in the realm of mental health.
• 23:00
  Kirkland Newman: So I'm really grateful and excited about being able to be part of this movement and this community, because that really is what it is.
• 23:09
  Kirkland Newman: It's a community and a movement of practitioners coming together to say we need better ways to deal with this.
• 23:18
  Kirkland Newman: And just one final thing.
• 23:20
  Kirkland Newman: The theme of this year's conference is the Anthropogenic Drivers of Mental Health.
• 23:25
  Kirkland Newman: Healing the individual, the community, and the planet.
• 23:27
  Kirkland Newman: And it's looking really at what we're doing as a society, whether it's our phones.
• 23:32
  Kirkland Newman: We have Dr.
• 23:33
  Kirkland Newman: Don Grant, who will be talking about devices and attachment or whether it's toxins or whether it's processed foods and what can we do about this?
• 23:41
  Kirkland Newman: And we also have Dr.
• 23:43
  Kirkland Newman: William Walsh from the Walsh Protocol, who is one of the original biochemists, who's worked with Abraham Hofer and Carl Pfeiffer, who will be speaking at the age of 89.
• 23:54
  Kirkland Newman: So it's very exciting.
• 23:57
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Kiki, I'm blown away.
• 23:58
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I did not know the list of speakers, and you just named the who's who of our world.
• 24:02
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Like, I'm blown away by the caliber, the quality that you put into this.
• 24:07
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I've been to hundreds and hundreds of conferences over 20 years, spoke at many of them, and I'm like, holy cow, I don't want to miss this conference.
• 24:15
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So, I mean, so impressive, because you really.
• 24:17
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I love the quality and caliber of the kinds of research you're bringing, because that's what's going to take us to the next level.
• 24:24
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And you're doing it.
• 24:26
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You're.
• 24:26
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And obviously with the numbers that you've just explained, it's.
• 24:29
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I get so excited about that, about changing the landscape.
• 24:32
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So I'm going to be there.
• 24:34
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Hey, everybody.
• 24:34
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Just a quick break.
• 24:35
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: To remind you, if you haven't yet subscribed, click the subscribe button below.
• 24:38
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: If you're listening on Spotify, itunes, or wherever you listen to podcasts, would you please leave us a review?
• 24:44
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Thank you so Much.
• 24:45
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Let's get back to the show.
• 24:46
  Kirkland Newman: Well, you and also Jill, don't forget.
• 24:49
  Kirkland Newman: So the first year I took it over, it was online and you did a brilliant talk on the Gut Brain connection.
• 24:55
  Kirkland Newman: Brilliant.
• 24:56
  Kirkland Newman: And you're also speaking in 2026.
• 24:59
  Kirkland Newman: Yes, making sure of that.
• 25:02
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, yourself are absolutely brilliant and I can't wait for you to be part of it because I think, you know, it is a smallish community of change agents and I'm really a stickler for making sure that we have credibility, we have evidence based research and we have fantastic leaders in the field because, you know, last year we had a large number of psychiatrists, MDs who had never heard of integrative medicine.
• 25:31
  Kirkland Newman: They'd never heard of.
• 25:32
  Kirkland Newman: Well, they'd heard of it, but they were really due to it.
• 25:34
  Kirkland Newman: So conventional psychiatrists who had seen a Facebook ad, I met three or four of them and who are like we like those speakers.
• 25:42
  Kirkland Newman: So we came and they were blown away.
• 25:44
  Kirkland Newman: And that's what I want, and I know that's what you want, is to bring conventional medicine and on this journey, which sometimes is more challenging because it maybe takes more time or it takes more research or it takes more effort on behalf of the patient or the practitioner and the practitioner.
• 26:01
  Kirkland Newman: But essentially I think for practitioners and patients who really care and really want sustainable results, to me it's the only way.
• 26:11
  Kirkland Newman: So, you know, I'm so excited to be able to bring this to the world and you know, and have access to all these amazing pioneers.
• 26:21
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I love it.
• 26:22
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And it's so interesting as I heard your history, sometimes I feel like the divine kind of leads all these things, all these experiences up until what we're really meant to do, right?
• 26:32
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And we think it's something else.
• 26:34
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Like you thought it was your dissertation or whatever else.
• 26:36
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And now I'm like, you are so where you're supposed to be making such an impact.
• 26:41
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I, this is going to continue to grow.
• 26:43
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I have no question.
• 26:44
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: In my 20 plus years of practice of practicing functional medicine, what I've seen is way back in the day I was with a hospital system in Illinois and no one knew integrated function medicine.
• 26:54
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I was off in a clinic, I helped the hospital build and creative medical center and all the gastroenterologists, rheumatologist, like I don't know what that weird Dr.
• 27:00
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Jill is doing over there, but she's a quack.
• 27:02
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I mean, whatever, right?
• 27:03
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But I knew number one, just like you from the day I stepped out of medical school, As a graduate, my job is to bridge great science and push the edge.
• 27:12
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Because what you mentioned is so true.
• 27:14
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: The studies coming out now are actually, there's a lot of proof for nutritional interventions, gut interventions.
• 27:19
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: The microbiome is exponentially increasing.
• 27:21
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And every topic that you mentioned has a lot of great research and it is continuing to grow.
• 27:27
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But back in the day, what I knew to be true is I would just forge ahead and one one, make a difference in that patient's life.
• 27:33
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And what happened, Kiki, is over my three years there, patients would start to heal from their RA and they'd go off the meds and they'd go back to the rheumatologist be like, what are you doing?
• 27:42
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Well, this Dr.
• 27:43
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Jill did this and that.
• 27:44
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And so what happened was the testimony of those patients healing started to go around the community.
• 27:48
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And all of a sudden it wasn't me shouting from the rooftop, it wasn't me trying to prove anything.
• 27:52
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: It was just me putting my head down and making a difference one on one in the patient's lives and then their stories coming back.
• 27:59
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And all of a sudden there was a shift and these doctors who had no interest in what I was doing were like, what are you doing over there?
• 28:05
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And we started a community, a group of integrative practition, that area that every, you know, once a month we get together.
• 28:11
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: It became hundreds in that community.
• 28:13
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And so like you, I've always had this deep passion of how do we bring docs together?
• 28:17
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And they don't have to necessarily even change the way they practice.
• 28:19
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But even if they think outside the box to ask about diet, to ask about sleep, to ask about blue light, to ask about breath work, and maybe, just maybe, if they even know someone that can help, they don't have to even do it themselves.
• 28:31
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: They can refer.
• 28:32
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So speaking of sleep deep and blue light, in this I want to talk a little bit about, you said one of the most profound things in your journey was just learning basic breath work.
• 28:41
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: What would you say are some of the low hanging fruits that maybe someone doesn't need to see a practitioner and they could start if they're suffering from anxiety and depression.
• 28:48
  Kirkland Newman: And look at right now, it's such a good question.
• 28:51
  Kirkland Newman: It's one of the things I really want to write about, in fact, is that low hanging fruit.
• 28:56
  Kirkland Newman: Because one of the criticisms of functional medicine is it can be expensive, it can involve a little lot of testing, it can be very onerous and resource draining in terms of finances and Time.
• 29:07
  Kirkland Newman: There are so many low hanging fruits.
• 29:09
  Kirkland Newman: I think the first one is really circadian rhythms.
• 29:12
  Kirkland Newman: So a lot of people with depression and anxiety have trouble with sleep or they have trouble with their circadian rhythms.
• 29:18
  Kirkland Newman: And one of the key things is we know more and more now that getting exposed to light in the morning is so important for your mitochondria.
• 29:26
  Kirkland Newman: And getting exercise when you're getting that light in the morning really improves your ATP production in your mitochondria.
• 29:35
  Kirkland Newman: It makes your mitochondria so much more efficient.
• 29:37
  Kirkland Newman: And it's that combination of light exposure and exercise.
• 29:40
  Kirkland Newman: So even if it's just getting out for a brisk walk in the morning and getting that light in your eyes, on your skin and getting your blood flowing, I think that's super important.
• 29:51
  Kirkland Newman: Same at nighttime.
• 29:52
  Kirkland Newman: It's like reducing the, that exposure to blue light because as Dr.
• 29:56
  Kirkland Newman: Alexis Cohen and a lot of her cohorts have proven, is that blue light is incredibly detrimental to your mitochondria.
• 30:05
  Kirkland Newman: And so it really drains your ATP and your energy.
• 30:09
  Kirkland Newman: And it's so important not to be exposed to that blue light from your screens.
• 30:14
  Kirkland Newman: And we're exposed all day long to that blue light, but because we have the full spectrum, it's less of a problem.
• 30:20
  Kirkland Newman: But at night we're not supposed to have that level of blue light.
• 30:24
  Kirkland Newman: And getting the infrared light is very important.
• 30:26
  Kirkland Newman: We used to sit around campfires at night and now we don't.
• 30:30
  Kirkland Newman: And so we don't have access to that infrared, which is also so important to our neurochemicals and to our mitochondria.
• 30:38
  Kirkland Newman: So I would say getting sunlight in the morning with some exercise, and then at night having fewer screens, having a bedtime routine.
• 30:47
  Kirkland Newman: And if sleep is an issue, I mean, there's so many wonderful sleep hacks like Epsom, salt, bahads, you know, having a sort of wind down routine, not having any light or any noise in the bedroom.
• 30:59
  Kirkland Newman: I personally have always struggled with insomnia well since my postpartum depression.
• 31:03
  Kirkland Newman: And one of the things that really works for me is meditation.
• 31:06
  Kirkland Newman: And so if I can't sleep, you know, I could lie there literally all night and not fall asleep.
• 31:11
  Kirkland Newman: But if I sit up in my bed and I just meditate and I do breath work and meditation, I change the wave.
• 31:19
  Kirkland Newman: So, you know, I, we usually probably when I have insomnia, I probably have better waves which are very stimulating.
• 31:27
  Kirkland Newman: And it's when I meditate, I bring them down to alpha or to theta or delta.
• 31:33
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, those that change in brave brainwaves through meditation is incredibly soporific.
• 31:39
  Kirkland Newman: And it really does work for me.
• 31:41
  Kirkland Newman: It least another trick is, you know, light legs up against the wall, so you lie against the floor, put your legs up, which is an old yoga trick.
• 31:49
  Kirkland Newman: But that seems to work as well.
• 31:51
  Kirkland Newman: And I think so those.
• 31:53
  Kirkland Newman: None of that calls in a thing.
• 31:56
  Kirkland Newman: Meditation for me has been absolutely crucial.
• 31:59
  Kirkland Newman: And I try and do it 30 minutes a day.
• 32:01
  Kirkland Newman: And I try to incorporate humming because that tones the vagus nerve.
• 32:05
  Kirkland Newman: And so I sort of do so deep breathing, which tones the vagus nerve and also sort of hum when I breathe out, which also contributes toning the vagus nerve.
• 32:14
  Kirkland Newman: And the vagus nerve is so important for your gut health and for your nervous system regulation.
• 32:21
  Kirkland Newman: You know, none of those things cost in a thing, but they're so important.
• 32:24
  Kirkland Newman: Community, going out and being able to connect with people is so important.
• 32:29
  Kirkland Newman: And we're so disconnected in our world of, you know, phones and.
• 32:33
  Kirkland Newman: And just, you know, in our worlds of essentially loneliness.
• 32:37
  Kirkland Newman: I mean, there's a lot of loneliness.
• 32:38
  Kirkland Newman: There's a lot of disconnection and being able to join a community, whether it's a book club or a dance class or something that gives you joy, you know, or.
• 32:48
  Kirkland Newman: And I mean, you know, Trudy Scott, for instance, would say, well, you should check yourself for cryptopylorea and see if maybe you have social anxiety because you have a lack of.
• 33:00
  Kirkland Newman: Lack of zinc, Right?
• 33:01
  Kirkland Newman: Yeah.
• 33:02
  Kirkland Newman: So there is also that whole biochemical piece in terms of the food.
• 33:05
  Kirkland Newman: You know, try to eat a diet of whole foods, no processed foods, cut out sugar.
• 33:10
  Kirkland Newman: I mean, Robert Lustig is the sugar expert.
• 33:12
  Kirkland Newman: It's a mitochondrial poison, sugar.
• 33:14
  Kirkland Newman: And so really take cutting out sugar, eating whole foods, trying to eat.
• 33:20
  Kirkland Newman: Obviously, as you know, there's a huge movement towards ketogenic diet, so high fat, low carb, because they found that the brain works well on ketones and that it's very good for cognition.
• 33:32
  Kirkland Newman: And, you know, doctors.
• 33:33
  Kirkland Newman: Chris Palmer, who was at IMH last year, talked about.
• 33:36
  Kirkland Newman: He's written a wonderful book called Brain Energy, which is all about how, you know, the brain really needs its energy and its mitochondrial energy not to have depression or cognitive decline or anxiety.
• 33:49
  Kirkland Newman: You know, all these things.
• 33:50
  Kirkland Newman: And whole foods can cost less than processed foods.
• 33:54
  Kirkland Newman: And, you know, you can have sort of simple.
• 33:57
  Kirkland Newman: I mean, I eat cabbage or which.
• 34:00
  Kirkland Newman: Which can be really good, and lean meats, et cetera.
• 34:05
  Kirkland Newman: What else?
• 34:05
  Kirkland Newman: I mean, things like yoga, meditation, anything that calms the nervous system.
• 34:11
  Kirkland Newman: Because one of the things that I'm finding more and more is that it's all very well to look at the biochemistry and to look at the mold and the lime, et cetera.
• 34:20
  Kirkland Newman: But a lot of this has to do with nervous system regulation.
• 34:24
  Kirkland Newman: A lot of our mental health really boils down to how resilient are we from a nervous system perspective.
• 34:31
  Kirkland Newman: And if we suffered from childhood trauma or chronic stress, we'll be less resilient.
• 34:36
  Kirkland Newman: We're primed.
• 34:37
  Kirkland Newman: Our systems are primed to be overreactive.
• 34:40
  Kirkland Newman: And they talk about a Lyme personality or a mold personality.
• 34:43
  Kirkland Newman: So people who are more prone to getting Lyme disease or mold toxicity and there's a very high correlation with people who've had childhood trauma.
• 34:52
  Kirkland Newman: And so, you know, being able to regulate your nervous system and keep it regulated is so important.
• 34:58
  Kirkland Newman: And that doesn't mean that you have to be calm all the time, but it means that it's just, it means that you have very good vagal efficiency.
• 35:05
  Kirkland Newman: So your vagal tone works well.
• 35:09
  Kirkland Newman: It is very adaptive to your circumstances and that's a form of resilience.
• 35:13
  Kirkland Newman: And your nervous system can adapt to whatever circumstances so that you're reacting appropriately.
• 35:20
  Kirkland Newman: I'm jumping around a bit, but I just wanted to say there are so many ways of essentially low hanging fruit, whether it's from sleep regulation, circadian rhythms, a diet of whole foods connection and trying to do things that really regulate your nervous system and your vagal tone.
• 35:38
  Kirkland Newman: Those are all really important and they don't cost anything.
• 35:41
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I love that you gave us a wonderful overview of lots of things that people could grab onto and a couple thoughts.
• 35:47
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I love the nighttime routine.
• 35:48
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I am a stickler for my nighttime routine which involves Epsom salt baths, often a little bit of reading, sometimes a candle, definitely prayer, meditation, your gratitude, practice.
• 35:57
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But for if you're listening out there, you can find what works for you.
• 36:00
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You can also find devices where you know, put red bulbs in the lamp by your bed so there's no blue light coming out.
• 36:06
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You can change.
• 36:07
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: There's so many apps now with your phone and your laptop that automatically change at like 6pm so you don't get the blue light.
• 36:13
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You can buy glasses that are blockers, of course.
• 36:15
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So there's many ways.
• 36:16
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And even some people who are EMF sensitive can turn on a master switch to their bedroom so that when they go to bed, their EMFs in their bedroom are shut off or their wi fi during the night is shut off.
• 36:25
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Those are little things that can make a difference.
• 36:28
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I also love that you talked about easy ways where you don't have to Spend a lot of money.
• 36:32
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Just this morning I had put out a mass cell post about a guide that I have for free on Instagram and a lot of people super excited and you know, it's free information about how to support the mast cell.
• 36:43
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But one patient on there had wrote in like, I hate the functionist and so expensive.
• 36:47
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: What about my family isn't supporting me?
• 36:49
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Like she was really dad and if I'm honest, kind of victim mentality.
• 36:52
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I just said, oh, sweetheart, I'm sorry you're suffering.
• 36:55
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Because first of all she's suffering and that's a reason.
• 36:57
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But the second thing was all about how do you just create safety for yourself?
• 37:01
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Because when we think about we can't rely on someone else to do that for us, right?
• 37:04
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And that's been one of my biggest life lessons is somehow we relegate that to oh, we need to have these people support us or we need to have this.
• 37:12
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And what I've learned, it's an inside job.
• 37:13
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And all of this ends up, yes, you can have community.
• 37:17
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And one thing you mentioned is important.
• 37:18
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: There's studies showing three to five really close friends make a massive difference in mental health.
• 37:23
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You don't have to have 12, you don't have to have communities of a hundred, you have to have three to five and start with three.
• 37:30
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But you also in this patient's again her query and I was just trying to be kind with the response, but also say, let's think about this differently because if you're wanting, you know, everything to be cheap and you don't have to do any work or you're wanting all the people, your husband, your children to support you're going to be disappointed every time because we have no control over those variables.
• 37:50
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Right?
• 37:51
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So I just tried to gently shift and say, sweetheart, there's things you can do and here's what I would suggest and try to practice that myself too.
• 37:59
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Trauma.
• 37:59
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You started to talk about that.
• 38:01
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I want to kind of go there in the end of our conversation here, this is probably the biggest thing.
• 38:06
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: You and I both agree that many functional medicine, sorry, functional medicine minded practitioners and integrative health practitioners are starting to be open to into.
• 38:14
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But I think it is the next frontier, hands down, the most important thing.
• 38:18
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And interestingly, last fall I was speaking at a Jeff Bland conference and I was going to talk about mast cell activation and mold and all these things that I always talk about.
• 38:27
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: The night before I had a deep conversation with Dr.
• 38:29
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: David Perlmutter and we started talking about love and the heart of Medicine and trauma.
• 38:33
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And went really deep, really quick.
• 38:35
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: It was a beautiful conversation that night, like 10pm I'm like, I gotta change my presentation to make tomorrow.
• 38:40
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I went up on that stage and had, I mean it was.
• 38:43
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: The basics were there, but I totally.
• 38:45
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: The frame was different.
• 38:46
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And what I did is I talked about how trauma as a child and I shared some of my own past had affected my mast cells because those are our primordial responses to aggressive environmental insults, which means they're fear based.
• 38:59
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Right.
• 39:00
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So there's a connection to mold, Lyme disease, mast cell activation, as you mentioned, and the trauma in our system that's unhealed, healed.
• 39:07
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I shared very deeply, very personal about my own experience and how maybe my cancer, my Crohn's, all of my experience actually went back not only to the mast cells but to unhealed trauma.
• 39:18
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I ended the presentation by saying, if you're out there and you're not asking your patients about trauma and you don't know the resources in your community to help you deal with this, you don't have to be the expert, but you have to ask.
• 39:29
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And you have to start by creating a safe space for your patient.
• 39:33
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: That safety is the foundation of healing.
• 39:36
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And you know, Kiki, what happened, I had a standing ovation and the whole conference I was only.
• 39:42
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And it wasn't about me, but it was about me listening to that heart place of like, this is so important and even for you, bringing this to the world.
• 39:49
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So let's just.
• 39:50
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Do you want to talk a little bit about why this is so critical for us to heal our past traumas?
• 39:55
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Because all the rest is important.
• 39:57
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But if you feel unsafe in your body, there's no amount of B12 that's going to help that.
• 40:01
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Right?
• 40:02
  Kirkland Newman: That's 100% right.
• 40:04
  Kirkland Newman: And it's interesting because when I started on this journey, it was all about the biochemistry, it was about the nutrient imbalances and the, you know, the heavy metals and all that.
• 40:13
  Kirkland Newman: And then gradually as I progressed, I realized that so much for me was in that triggering event of giving birth and then getting into motherhood.
• 40:23
  Kirkland Newman: Because my, you know, my mother had been a very depressed, very anxious person.
• 40:29
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, her mother had killed herself when she was 15 years old.
• 40:34
  Kirkland Newman: And she, you know, that was a huge trauma.
• 40:36
  Kirkland Newman: And she'd been an alcoholic up to that point.
• 40:39
  Kirkland Newman: And so there was this family legacy in the maternal line of trauma that really got triggered when I gave birth twice.
• 40:46
  Kirkland Newman: And that was the piece that was really missing.
• 40:49
  Kirkland Newman: And equally, you Know, in so many practitioners that I've spoken to, and were just talking about this before, they all say, look, you can do all the work that you want from a biochemical perspective.
• 41:00
  Kirkland Newman: You can heal the gut, you can balance the hormones, you can balance the nutrition.
• 41:05
  Kirkland Newman: But until you go to that trauma piece and you heal that, or at least you start to really make progress on it, the biochemical and the physiological piece aren't really going to shift sustainably.
• 41:19
  Kirkland Newman: That really is an insight that I think more and more practitioners starting to take on board.
• 41:23
  Kirkland Newman: And one of the things I'm really aiming to do is with this conference is to, because it's a mental health conference, to bring the trauma world and the functional medicine world together.
• 41:33
  Kirkland Newman: Because, you know, I go to all these conferences at, you know, trauma conferences.
• 41:38
  Kirkland Newman: I go to Bessel van der Kolk's conference in Boston.
• 41:41
  Kirkland Newman: You know, I know I've worked with Dick Schwartz and Bessel van der Kolk and Stephen Porges and all these Amazing Deb, Dana, Dr.
• 41:49
  Kirkland Newman: Janina Fisher, all these incredible practitioners in the trauma field, but they're very disconnected from the functional medicine field and vice versa.
• 41:59
  Kirkland Newman: And so one of my goals is really to bring these two worlds together.
• 42:03
  Kirkland Newman: And I think that's why I'm so excited about having Gabor mate this year, because he really is, you know, he's a doctor who really buys into the fact that trauma and difficult life circumstances and chronic stress really undermine the physiology and make you prone to so many different chronic illnesses.
• 42:22
  Kirkland Newman: And so really it's about looking at that piece.
• 42:25
  Kirkland Newman: And the other interesting piece is that, you know, there's a lot of research around cbt, so cognitive behavioral therapy, that's very evidence based, but what's less evidence based, but what we now know is so much more impactful are somatic therapies.
• 42:40
  Kirkland Newman: And somatic therapies, whether it's somatic experiencing, which is Peter Levine's work, or, you know, emdr, or whether it's breath work or whether it's trauma release exercises, there are all these different types of therapies.
• 42:55
  Kirkland Newman: Ifs even Dick Schwartz's internal family systems, which are much more neurobiological and which work with the body, with the breath, with the nervous system.
• 43:05
  Kirkland Newman: And we have a huge debt of gratitude towards Stephen Porges, who developed the polyvagal theory, who said it's not just sympathetic, which is fight, flight and parasympathetic, which is rest, digest.
• 43:18
  Kirkland Newman: The parasympathetic also has a freeze component.
• 43:21
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, so he Talks about sort of the ventral vagal, which is the social engagement system, the dorsal vagal, which is the freeze and then the fight flight.
• 43:30
  Kirkland Newman: And he's saying, you know, the only way that we can truly heal is by really balancing that nervous system so that we are more in ventral vagal and social engagement than we are in freeze or in fight or flight.
• 43:43
  Kirkland Newman: And there's a huge body of work that really has been done in this whole trauma piece and looking at the cellular biology and just to talk also to bring it back to our world.
• 43:54
  Kirkland Newman: Dr.
• 43:54
  Kirkland Newman: Robert Navio, who has worked on the cell danger response, shows that, as you know, that cells, basically, they're primed once they're attacked by pathogens or toxins and they mount a response, sometimes the external trigger can disappear, but they're still primed for the cell danger.
• 44:14
  Kirkland Newman: It's by calming the system down, making it feel safe.
• 44:16
  Kirkland Newman: You mentioned safety.
• 44:18
  Kirkland Newman: That is so important.
• 44:19
  Kirkland Newman: And you know, Stephen Porges talk so eloquently about the need for safety, the need to feel safe.
• 44:26
  Kirkland Newman: And it's not just cognitive, because a lot of our trauma is preverbal, not only in the sense that a lot of it happened before we could talk, but also it's in a preverbal part of our brain.
• 44:35
  Kirkland Newman: It's in the limbic system.
• 44:36
  Kirkland Newman: It's not stored in the prefrontal cortex.
• 44:39
  Kirkland Newman: And so we have to be able to work with the vagus system, with the cranial system, nervous nerves, with the body in order to heal it, because that's where it's stored.
• 44:46
  Kirkland Newman: We can talk about our trauma until the cows come home, but until we're actually dealing with it on a somatic level, it's going to be very hard to heal.
• 44:55
  Kirkland Newman: And the other thing I will say is that a lot of the practitioners that I know who are working in the trauma field, you know, I'm also saying, look, you have to pay attention to functional medicine because you can do all this therapy for, you know, months and months.
• 45:10
  Kirkland Newman: But if somebody really has a zinc copper imbalance, or if somebody really has Lyme disease or they really have mold toxicity, there's only so much even that somatic therapy and nervous system balancing can do.
• 45:22
  Kirkland Newman: And so that's why I'm so passionate about bringing these two worlds together and saying, look, to heal mental health sustainably, you have to look at both these areas.
• 45:32
  Kirkland Newman: But, you know, as were saying before, childhood trauma can prime you for biochemical insults, and same biochemical insults can also prime utero for trauma.
• 45:44
  Kirkland Newman: So this is the other fascinating thing and then I'll be quiet.
• 45:48
  Kirkland Newman: But if your mother smoked when you were in utero, that's a stressor to the fetus.
• 45:56
  Kirkland Newman: And they've shown that mothers who smoke when you're in utero, the babies are more primed for stress responses afterwards.
• 46:06
  Kirkland Newman: And so you know, events that or traumatic quote unquote.
• 46:09
  Kirkland Newman: Because you know, trauma is not in what happens, it's how our body reacts to what happens.
• 46:16
  Kirkland Newman: And so our body is more likely to react in a stress response way if we've been primed biochemically to be less stress resilient.
• 46:26
  Kirkland Newman: So the body doesn't know the difference between physiological and psychological stressors.
• 46:31
  Kirkland Newman: And so, you know, it's very important to look at both and say, okay, these biochemical stressors are priming us to be more susceptible to psychological ones and vice versa.
• 46:42
  Kirkland Newman: Which is why we need to look at both.
• 46:44
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Oh, love that so much.
• 46:46
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And I couldn't agree more as the importance of bringing these all together, which you're doing with imh, if you're listening, you're driving, whatever, don't worry, this will be in the show notes.
• 46:55
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: But do you want to just repeat dates, times and where they can find the website?
• 46:59
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And then I also want to highlight your podcast because you have an amazing a lot of these people you know and have talked to on your podcast.
• 47:06
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: So if people want to know more, they can also listen to the podcast.
• 47:09
  Kirkland Newman: So IMH is www.imh.org.
• 47:13
  Kirkland Newman: it's a not for profit as is Mind Health.
• 47:15
  Kirkland Newman: So we're very mission driven, we're non commercial and we really just want to advance this information and education in the world.
• 47:24
  Kirkland Newman: The dates are the 11th to the 14th of September in San Diego and but also online.
• 47:30
  Kirkland Newman: So if you can't attend in person, there'll also be a virtual option.
• 47:34
  Kirkland Newman: And then my podcast is the Mind Health 360 show.
• 47:37
  Kirkland Newman: And that's I can never remember the URL, but the website is mindheld360.com and there I interview some fantastic people, including you Jill, on different aspects of mental health and there we really have the full gambit.
• 47:53
  Kirkland Newman: I'm really building a library across the board of different factors and different approaches, you know, that dysregulate our mental health and also ways of healing.
• 48:03
  Kirkland Newman: So, so yeah, I mean it's all.
• 48:07
  Kirkland Newman: The podcast is completely free, the website is completely free.
• 48:11
  Kirkland Newman: Obviously the conference is not free, but we're not making a profit.
• 48:15
  Kirkland Newman: We're just doing it to essentially educate and train.
• 48:20
  Kirkland Newman: So we're doing it as accessible as we can, given the expenses of running a conference.
• 48:28
  Kirkland Newman: So it's out there.
• 48:29
  Kirkland Newman: And it's just we're really excited about being able to offer this.
• 48:33
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I am, too.
• 48:34
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And not only is your background perfect for this, but you've done an incredible job at bringing together some of the best minds in this.
• 48:41
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Yeah, truly.
• 48:43
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And thank you for today.
• 48:44
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Thank you for coming on.
• 48:45
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I look forward to seeing you.
• 48:47
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Well, I'll see you in London and then, of course, San Diego.
• 48:51
  Kirkland Newman: I'm so excited.
• 48:52
  Kirkland Newman: Thank you so much, Dr.
• 48:53
  Kirkland Newman: Jill.
• 48:54
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Thank you, everyone, for joining me for another episode of Resiliency Radio.
• 48:58
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I just love Kirkland Newman and all of her passion for mental health.
• 49:02
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I hope you enjoyed that episode.
• 49:04
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: If you're a practitioner, be sure and check out the IMH conference.
• 49:08
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: It's really one of the best out there.
• 49:10
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: I go to so many conferences every year, and it's really one of my favorite venues.
• 49:14
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And as you can see, Kiki has really put together a stellar list of speakers.
• 49:19
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: If you can't go, you can always join online.
• 49:22
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: And either way, if you are there, I hope to see you there in September.
• 49:26
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: As you know, guys, we have over 570,000 subscribers on YouTube.
• 49:32
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: If you haven't yet subscribed, please click and subscribe.
• 49:35
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Hit the bell to be notified of future episodes and you can join us next week for another episode.
• 49:40
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: We have new episodes coming out every Wednesday, and I look forward to seeing you then.
• 49:44
  Dr. Jill Carnahan: Take care of.