Episode 336: The Lymphatic System: A Whole Body Approach to Healing with Dr. Perry Nickelston
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Overcoming chronic pain requires an understanding of how different parts of the body (and the mind) influence each other in the healing process. Today’s podcast guest, Dr. Perry Nickelston, focuses on healing chronic pain and inflammation via the lymphatic and vascular systems. What this conversation emphasizes, however, is the fact that nothing heals in isolation.
Erin and Dr. Perry delve into why blood flow and lymphatic health are essential for the health of the rest of the brain/body (and visa versa), the importance of the vagus nerve, diaphragmatic breathing and how it keeps the lymphatic system pumping efficiently, the lymph and brain health, and more.
Perry Nickelston, DC aka ‘The Lymph Doc’ is a Chiropractic Physician with primary focus on treating chronic pain and inflammation via the lymphatic and vascular systems. Owner of Stop Chasing Pain, LLC. International speaker and educator of the self care MOJO series. Lymphatic Mojo, Blood Flow Mojo, Tongue Mojo, Glymphatic Mojo, Visceral Mojo, Vagus Nerve Mojo, Primal Movement Mojo.
Author of the upcoming book Stop Chasing Pain: A vital guide to healing your body, moving well, and gaining control of your life.
He is a 1997 graduate from Palmer Chiropractic University and a master fitness trainer with over 25 years experience in the health industry.
In this episode:
The lymphatic system and its relation to chronic pain [10:58]
Why our body parts cannot heal in isolation [19:06]
How concentrating on pain can keep you unwell [33:24]
Interplay between brain health and lymph health [42:58]
The diaphragm: the unsung hero of functional medicine [50:08]
The importance of the vagus nerve [1:00:47]
Resources mentioned:
Discover Dr. Perry’s work and educational programs
Qualia Senolytic (Get up to 50% off and an extra 15% off your first purchase with link + code FUNKS)
Organifi supplement powder (save 20% on your order with code FUNK)
LMNT Electrolyte Replenishing powder (Use code FUNK get a free sample pack with any purchase!)
Learn more about Self Healing and Manifest Your Health
Related episodes:
221: Lymph Love with Leah Levitan
317: Chronic Inflammation, Neuroplasticity & Your Healing Potential | Manifest Your Health Series
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Erin Holt [00:00:02]:
I'm Erin Holt and this is the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast where we lean into intuitive functional medicine. We look at how diet, our environment, our emotions and our beliefs all affect our physical health. This podcast is your full bodied, well rounded resource. I've got over a decade of clinical experience and because of that I've got a major bone to pick with diet culture and the conventional healthcare model. They're both failing so many of us, but functional medicine isn't the panacea that it's made out to be either. We've got some work to do and that's why creating a new model is my life's work. I believe in the ripple effect, so I founded the Funk'tional Nutrition Academy, a school and mentorship for practitioners who want to do the same. This show is for you if you're looking for new ways of thinking about your health and you're ready to be an active participant in your own healing.
Erin Holt [00:00:52]:
Please keep in mind this podcast is created for educational purposes only and should never be used as a replacement for medical diagnosis or treatment. I would love for you to follow the show, rate, review and share because you never know whose life you might change and of course, keep coming back for more. Hello my friends. We had some audio issues with the show we plan to release today, so what we're doing instead is pulling one out of the vault. This is one of our top, most downloaded episodes of all time and it's one of my top favorite interviews I've ever done in seven years of podcasting. I'm talking to Dr. Perry Nickelston from Stop Chasing Pain and we're talking all about lymph. Lymph flow is so crucial to the overall health of our bodies.
Erin Holt [00:01:41]:
Today you're going to learn exactly why that is, and we're also going to talk about ways to support your own lymph, one of which being the Big Six. If you don't know about the Big Six, you're in for a treat. It's something you can do in a couple of minutes a day and it makes a huge difference. You know, I'm a fan of supporting lymph flow in my face. It's something that I do instead of Botox in fillers, but I always start with the Big Six. On the heels of last week when we were talking about staying healthy through the holidays, lymph support is a big part of that too, so I'm personally doing the Big Six every day. There are certain yoga movements that I do and that is really to help limp support. Otherwise I start to get stiff and puffy and that's not really fun for anybody.
Erin Holt [00:02:23]:
So if that's you definitely listen to today's show and if you have follow up questions for us, definitely write in and we can do a follow up lymph specific show in the new year. I would love to do that. All right, let me tell you a little bit about our guest because you will love him. Dr. Perry is the lymph doc. He's a chiropractic physician with a primary focus on treating chronic pain and inflammation via the lymphatic and vascular systems. It's kind of the name of the game of today's show.
Erin Holt [00:02:52]:
He's the owner of Stop Chasing Pain. He's an international speaker educator of self care Mojo series. I've done one of his series, Lymphatic Mojo. Could not recommend it enough. He's also got the upcoming Blood Flow Mojo. He's got Tongue Mojo, Glymphatic Mojo, Visceral Mojo, Vagus Nerve Mojo, Primal Primal Movement Mojo. He's got a lot of workshops. Strong recommend from this gal.
Erin Holt [00:03:20]:
He's the author of the upcoming book Stop Chasing pain, A vital guide to healing your body, moving well and gaining control of your life. Cannot wait for that release. He is a 1997 graduate from Palmer Chiropractic University and a master fitness trainer with over 25 years experience in the health industry. And just as an aside, he is extremely kind and just an all around good human and it's always nice to be in conversation with good humans. So I really hope you enjoy today's show. Okay. So Dr. Perry, thank you so much for being here.
Erin Holt [00:03:57]:
I am so excited and I know that so many of the listeners are. I just posted on Instagram and people are losing their minds about the fact that you're coming on the show.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:04:06]:
Well, that's so nice.
Erin Holt [00:04:09]:
Welcome, welcome. So for those of you who are may not be familiar with your work yet, I would love to just kind of high level, take it from the top. How did you even get into the field of lymph? Like why is this your jump off? Why is this your jam?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:04:26]:
That's a great question. And thank you again so much for having me on this show. I'm really excited to be here. I'll preface to say that I love lymphatics like a super duper uber lot. So I may get really excited and go a little crazy and you might have to say, oh, hey Perry, you can stop talking now. Next question. But honestly, the reason that I got into lymphatics is a very personal one, it saved my life and I had to find it on my own through a lot of pain and suffering about, I don't know, eight years ago, maybe, going on it.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:05:03]:
When I really hit a form of what I call the abyss, or the quicksand or rock, rock bottom. The short and sweet of it is I had like an autoimmune type disease. I never really got a name for it, honestly, like a lot of people listening, they may be suffering from something, but they can't get a definitive answer or diagnosis. It felt like I had every one of them, to be honest with you. And here's the thing, I couldn't get myself well based on the things that I had already studied and known up to that point or the thought processes that I was using to get myself well. And then the people that I was seeing weren't able to do it either. So the traditional Western medical approach definitely didn't work. That, you know, that made me way worse.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:05:51]:
They didn't do it on purpose, but it's just, you know, they're on this pathway and then that's all they see. But I was kind of guilty of it too, because I was in my small little lane of stuff that I've studied up to that point. But it wasn't the thought process that I needed to heal. That's why I like to research and study and look at everything you could possibly imagine outside of what I currently know, because there's so much I don't know. And I found the lymphatics through a friend and colleague of mine who reached out to me and said, you know, I know that you're suffering. I'm going to be going to a workshop in London on energetic medicine. And I said, that's kind of cool. I might as well try that, because
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:06:36]:
What I'm doing right now is not working. And then during that workshop, the person who was teaching the class said, I think I know what your issue is. I think you have a lymphatic system issue. And I went, lymph what? Like, I didn't even think about that at all, right? And then through the course of being there and then getting some work done, I felt honestly 30 to 40% better within one week. And I'm like, all right, this is it. And then from that point on, I was an absolute monster at trying to look at and learn everything I could about lymphatics. And that's why I'm so passionate about it today, because it's the only thing that pulled me out. But it tied in together so many missing pieces that I've been searching for over my 30 year career.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:07:28]:
But I saw how many other people in the world were suffering like I did and had no idea either. That's why I do what I do right now for everyone else, because I know that they don't know what I didn't know. You follow?
Erin Holt [00:07:47]:
Absolutely. I mean, it can take 10, 15 years to even get an autoimmune diagnosis. And what I try to explain to people because it can feel like such vindication, such validation when we finally do get the diagnosis. But that's often just the tip of the iceberg. That's just the starting point, especially if you're operating within the conventional medicine model, because there's not a whole lot of solutions, there's not a whole lot of answers. It's kind of like a we don't really know why your body's attacking itself. Curious. You know, there's not a whole lot of solutions.
Erin Holt [00:08:15]:
And I find that this, whether you're dealing with a diagnosis or just kind of a chronic mystery health syndrome, what you said is I found it on my own. I feel like that's where so many of us land is like I'm not receiving the answers anywhere else I go. So I guess that's kind of up to me. That can feel exciting for some people. It could also feel like really quite burdensome and exhausting for people, especially if they're already not feeling so hot. I'm curious to hear why you think you said pretty quickly you started to feel 30 to 40% better, I think is what you said. Why do you think addressing the lymphatics made such a significant and fast impact on you?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:09:00]:
Great question and I agree with everything that you previously said a thousand percent. Right. But at some point you're going to have to rescue yourself because nobody else is gonna. And you got a choice, like I did. I'm going to give up, lay there and die or I'm going to pull myself out of it. That's it. There are only two choices. And when you hit your own form of rock bottom, you'll make it. Right?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:09:21]:
But you never make changes in your life when you're comfortable because you're comfortable. Why would you do that? Right. So my definition of pain is pain is a request for change. Well, hitting rock bottom is a nice form of requesting a change. Right? So let me get back to your question. It's very simple, now that I look back at it, is one I just had the awareness of the Lymphatic system as a system that I should be looking at, because you can't control something until you become aware of it. Right? So you're always doing something in your life to influence every system in your body with everything that you do. Right.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:10:02]:
But there's no specific intention and attention behind a lot of the things that we do. And the reason that I felt so much better is that I was sick because I was full of so much toxic metabolic waste from the outside world that got inside me and then couldn't get out. And my own metabolic cellular waste of my cells dying every day just as a natural circumstance of being alive on the earth because cells die all the time. So you can make new ones and hopefully make stronger, more resilient ones based on your ability to adapt and recover. Right? So it was. It hit me like, can it really be that simple? And I'm like, yes, it absolutely can. This is a fundamental principle of my work. And here it is.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:10:56]:
We put stuff into our bodies all the time on purpose. You know, that's like the food that you eat, the supplements that you take and, you know, and then the air that you breathe. But that comes in, even not on purpose, otherwise you'd be dead. And there's a lot of stuff coming in now that you've got no control over. That's just your environment that you're living on in from what was done to your food before the food got to you, where you live in the world. But your fertilizers and your toxins and your dyes and your foods and your candles, I mean. I mean, we're living in a toxic world. And don't even get me started on the toxic thoughts that get into your head.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:11:32]:
Yeah. So you've got stuff coming into your body from the outside world all the time. That's just the price you pay for living on this earth, right? So stuff is going in all the time, which means that stuff also has to get out. It's basically like a supply chain, if you will. You know, you deliver things to the cells of your body that come on in mostly through, like we said before, what you eat, right? That's the nut, what I call the nutrient side, right? And then so whatever you put in your body, the body has to metabolize and digest and figure out, oh, I don't like this stuff. I got to get rid of it. Or I've used it already, now I got to get rid of it.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:12:15]:
But here's the problem. What happens if you can't get rid of it. Well, what happens if your, what I call your waste management system or your toilet system of your body doesn't work as well as it could? If it stopped working altogether, you'd be dead. All right, so. But what if it doesn't work? Maybe only at 20% capacity, right? Stuff still gets out, but over time it starts to back up. And what happens is you actually begin to live in your own liquid pool of what I call muck. Muck is everything that you don't want, like bacteria, viruses, toxins, cancer cells, parasites, all this sort of stuff, because they're always inside of you, right? But you're going to hit a point where your body can't deal with that anymore, it can't tolerate it anymore. And then that's when it tells you, okay, we got a little bit of a problem here.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:13:17]:
And you start to get symptoms. And all those symptoms that most people get are because your body's trying to kill something that's trying to kill you, that's stuck inside of you. That's called inflammation, right? So if you can't get your toilets to flush, think about it this way. Whatever you keep putting in on the other side of it, it's going to make you worse. No matter what it is, right? Good stuff or bad stuff. So what I mean by that is that I could eat the best nutritious food in the world, or I could eat a Snickers bar and a Yoohoo and a Ding Dong. You got it. I'd rather you eat the good stuff than the bad stuff. But here's what you have to remember.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:14:02]:
Both of them are going to become waste no matter what. So you're back to the same thing of I got a waste problem. And then I started to look at. I'm like, you know what? That makes complete sense. I never thought about it that way because I was too busy trying to put stuff into my body to change it, not understanding what kind of environment that it was already living in. And most of the organs that you have are there for a reason, to get stuff out. That's. That's why you have them, right? They're not there by oopsie Daisy accident.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:14:33]:
And they all have to work together. And when you realize that all of them want to work together and when you have a problem with one, the other ones try to help out. But eventually they become overloaded because they're trying to do another organ's job plus their job, and they just get worn out. And eventually you wake up one day where yesterday you were okay and today, all of a sudden, you're not.
Erin Holt [00:14:58]:
And whoops, there goes a gallbladder. Rip it out.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:15:02]:
Yeah, exactly. And then you have to ask yourself, well, why in the world do I have to rip that guy out in the first place? What about all the years, Weeks. Decades. Right, That's. And that's what was important about what you said about. I just want to know, like, what my diagnosis is.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:15:19]:
Well, that can be a blessing, but it can also be a curse because from that point on, you become that diagnosis and label, and sometimes you get pulled into the quicksand and you can't get out based on how everybody else is interpreting your label.
Erin Holt [00:15:34]:
Yeah, it's like the thing that validates us, has the potential to keep us from moving forward, to actually impede our ability to heal when we attach ourselves to that diagnosis as an identity. And I really resonate with this idea of this philosophy is like medical diagnosis as a hexing, because we believe what we're told, especially if we're told by somebody that's in a position of authority. And so we take this on and if we, if we've been searching for answers and we finally get the answer, and then we can hold it up as like a banner to our family, to our friends who maybe didn't really understand and really didn't believe our struggles. If we've been told that we're a hypochondriac, we're like, no, look, I have this thing. It's real. There's something really, really wrong with me. I was telling you guys, and here it is. And so we can kind of anchor into that.
Erin Holt [00:16:23]:
But in there, I kind of. I think that we sometimes need to allow ourselves like a little bit of a grace period with that of being like, okay, I trust. I knew something was off here. I'm going to trust myself. I knew something was off with my body, and this is proof positive. But then we have to find the ability for true healing to happen, in my opinion. We have to find the ability to move on from that diagnosis, from attaching to it as though it's our identity, our be all, end all.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:16:52]:
I agree a thousand percent. You know, there's a term in healthcare called psychoneuroimmunology, PNI, basically, that means that how you think influences your nervous system and your immune system. So you can think yourself. Well, you can think yourself sick, you can get your diagnosis, and then all of a sudden you have every symptom of the diagnosis, because you're supposed to. Right. So you can come to grips with that. But you know you can get pulled into the quicksand quick, fast and a hurry. And that one in relationship to your your mental state because your body will always react to how you're thinking.
Erin Holt [00:19:06]:
You know, you say that there's no such thing as isolated healing and so when you bring up the PNI like the super system. This makes me think of that.
Erin Holt [00:19:50]:
In my world, the functional medicine space, many practitioners utilize functional lab testing, which can be a wonderful tool. I mean I leverage them myself in our own practice. My concern and something that I've been sounding the alarm off about for the past couple of years is that running these labs or putting too much attention on these labs on this, like on these external data points may like pitch us into hyper focusing on those individual lab markers and sort of spot treating. Like, well, if this is low, then I give this, that brings it back up and it fixes the whole system, bippity boppity boom. When it's really not that straightforward. And I feel like when I'm working with practitioners and clinicians, I feel like I'm constantly trying to get them to zoom out to see the full body, to see the full human being, to see the full picture. And I think it's really hard to help people heal without that full picture. So I'm curious what that, what that means.
Erin Holt [00:20:54]:
No such thing as isolated healing, what that means in your world. What's the problem with breaking the body down into parts?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:21:03]:
That's a great question. Isn't that an interesting view, right. That see, functional medicine practitioners are actually ahead of the game in relationship to most practitioners because they do look at the big picture, but sometimes they lose picture of the big picture when they're in the big picture, you know, and then they go. It's, it's because we're kind of taught that way with a way that we learn, especially in western medicine. It creeps its way into things that we like to isolate things down to one single cause I'm like, that's called fantasy land because there's no such thing, right? And if you chase the one thing you miss, all the other things that are around you, it's basically you get what you are looking for, right? And that can happen with the labs and the testing, which I like too. But I also, that can be a slippery slope because I think one of the lost arts in medicine is actual human touch and a manual examination. Like I'm going to do that first and foremost before I run anything on a lab.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:22:05]:
Because there's things I'm going to be able to pick up with my hands and your reaction to my hands that I'm not going to see on any kind of test that you do. So the perfect world, you do both, right? But I have this saying that I do all the time and it's this. No system in the body ever works alone, never gets injured alone, never heals alone. There's no such thing as an isolated injury in the body. There's no such thing as isolated healing. The body is one piece. It's all or nothing. Like people say, oh, if I sprained my ankle, that's isolated to my ankle. No, it's not.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:22:38]:
Because the rest of your body has to deal with the swelling and inflammation in the ankle and how you have to move around your injured ankle, right? And even remembering a prior injury of your ankle before in your life, that kick starts the stress response in your body. So you can start where it hurts because one, that's the logical thing to do. And plus, your client expects you to start where it hurts because they don't know any different yet. So it shows that I understand them. I'm showing empathy, that I'm gonna go where it hurts. But I know that I have to look everywhere else at the same time, right? So all the systems of the body, first of all, they get broken down into specialties in medicine today, where you have like a cardiovascular specialist, I have an ear, nose, and throat specialist, and I have a gut specialist or an endocrinologist. Well, your body's like, well, that's great, but guess what? I don't even know what those things mean. I'm just me.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:23:37]:
I'm working together. And you can isolate that stuff, but that's not how I work. And, you know, they don't talk to each other in the real world with medicine, but your body does all the time, right? Honestly, your gut doesn't even know it's a gut. I mean, we called it a gut, but you could, you could have called that thing a kitchen sink. It doesn't matter. I want you to understand what the hell the kitchen sink does with everything else in the kitchen. You understand? So it's a full house that we need to look at. And that's a big, big thing that I teach.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:24:10]:
And that's why it's called Stop Chasing Pain. We treat pain, but we don't chase it. Because pain only tells you that you have something going on. It doesn't tell you what it is. X very rarely, if ever, marks the spot. It's not that easy. And you have to start where the pain is. Because, listen, nothing is more terrifying than the idea of unlimited possibilities.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:24:32]:
But when it comes to the human body, guess what? That's what it is. But that's why you have to deal with the human being standing in front of you, because the possibilities change based on the human Being that's carrying the body part around that you're trying to help them with or a diagnosis that you're trying to help them with, Right? Because somebody can have the same diagnosis, but they got there from a completely different pathway than somebody else. So you can't treat them the same way. I can't take the same supplements, I can't take the same doses. I can't take the same movements. So I can't pull out my cookie cutter sheet of what I do with rheumatoid arthritis because it's probably not going to work. But the isolated healing one sometimes people have commented on my post is that doesn't make any sense. I don't get it.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:25:11]:
Well, think about it this way. Let's go back to the ankle. If you twist your ankle, right? Well, that's isolated pain in that region. But we all know from neuroscience, or most of us do, that pain is actually in the brain. It's not in your ankle, it's in your brain. So your brain is already telling a story of the ankle. So if you hurt your ankle in the past, it's going to hurt more because you hurt it in the past. So the brain is already kicking started off, and then I'm going to contend that you probably have inflammation in your brain that you didn't know about.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:25:41]:
This is causing your pain to be worse in your ankle. But if that ankle needs to heal, it needs blood flow. And then I ask people, where does the blood flow to your ankle come from? Well, you should be pointing to your heart because that's it. Right? And it's got to get down to your ankle by going through all these big pipes in your abdomen and down your leg. Right. But if you have an issue with one of those pipes in your leg or your abdomen, it's going to be difficult to get the blood flow to your ankle. Right. Now, let's say you did injure your ankle and you need to get the injured cells out, the waste out and the inflammation out.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:26:23]:
How does that get out? Well, through veins and through lymph. And then I'm going to ask where does that go? You got to be pointing to the same place as you pointed for the blood. It's got to go. It's got to go out pipes the same direction. So the ankle is actually beholden to everything else above it. Right. And so that's why in my work, I'll examine the ankle, but I'll never ever treat the ankle first. Never.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:26:58]:
I'll assess it and I'll move it And I'll touch it and I'll ask you about it. But I'm not going to treat it first because I know that ankle is beholden to everything else above it and how it functions. Does that make sense?
Erin Holt [00:27:12]:
That makes a lot of sense and is the answer to why you say there's no such thing as isolated healing or an isolated injury. You said a lot of things. I have a lot of follow up questions, but one thing I don't want to bypass is you were talking about hands on bodies. And so I run a virtual practice. I, my work doesn't allow for hands on bodies, but I did. I was first introduced to your work through Lymphatic Mojo a few years back. I took the workshop. I took the course because I wanted to, I wanted the information, but I kind of wanted it for me because I can put my hands on my body.
Erin Holt [00:27:52]:
And I think that that's something maybe we overlook. Not you, because that's what your whole, you know, work is. But I think we, we forget to realize, like, we don't need a degree or a certification to put our hands on our own bodies. Right. Like we can do that. Your courses, and I'll make sure I link them to them all in the show notes, give us the knowledge in the skillset and the tools and the technique to actually do that as it relates to the lymphatic system. So I super, super appreciate your work, but I want to make sure, because if somebody's sitting here listening and be like, I don't have a practitioner that can hands on my body right now. Like, you can still do that.
Erin Holt [00:28:31]:
You can still access some of this medicine. Like you can be your own medicine with the methodologies that Dr. Perry teaches. So I want to highlight that. You were talking about the brain.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:28:44]:
Yeah, I want to stay on that for a second if you don't mind, because you are absolutely correct. Everybody has innate right to be able to sense the body, feel the body, care for your own body. But people have become so disconnected from feeling their body. The only time they really pay attention to their body is when something hurts. Right. And also they begin to even doubt themselves on feeling their body because they may have somebody in medicine that told them to doubt what they're feeling. But it, it's, it's also important that a lot of times we just don't know what we don't know is that everybody can check these tight tension points on your body.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:29:29]:
It's just knowing that you should be checking them. Right. Like I teach people how to work on their abdomen all the time. It's one of the most important areas of the human body, and it's one of the most neglected areas of the human body because people don't experience physical pain there very often, so they just ignore it. But it's just knowing that you can massage your abdomen and press on your abdomen and see how it feels. That's it, right? It's just knowing that it's there. And then this is when people ask me, well, how.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:30:04]:
How can I massage it? How can I rub it? And my answer is always the same, yes, any way you want. I don't care. Fast, slow, deep. You can do circles, you can do hieroglyphics. I don't care what you do, just do what you feel comfortable doing. One of my biggest mentors was Jean-Pierre Barral, who's the osteopathic physician, and he's considered the founder of visceral manipulation. Basically moving the organs around by hand. And one of the things that he said that stood out for me, and I use it all the time, and I kind of changed it up a little bit, was feel first, think afterwards.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:30:50]:
So I just say feel first, think second, which means get out of your head. Don't think so much. Just feel things first. And don't try to put a label on what you're feeling. Just experience it, then go back later and think. But don't overthink, because that's one of the biggest problems that people do. They can't get out of their own way because they overthink everything. And people say, doc, me, well, all of my work.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:31:15]:
They so, doc, it can't be that simple. And my next statement is, well, who the hell ever told you that? Why not? Why can't it be that simple? Doesn't have to be complicated. The human body is complex, but it's not complicated. It's really simple. I break it down. Nutrients in, waste out. If you don't get that down, you're not getting better, period. Like, that's it.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:31:36]:
Like, blood flow is a big thing. If you don't have it, you're not healing. That's it, right? And then you start from there.
Erin Holt [00:33:24]:
I think, I think that many of us have perhaps some adversarial relationships with our bodies depending on how we learned about our bodies, you know, what has been done to them by other people, by ourselves. And so bringing back the line of communication with oneself and bringing back trust in oneself is huge. And this can be an entry point, like hands on bodies can actually be an entry point to reestablishing a healthy relationship with our own bodies. It's funny what you said. We tend to not really pay attention to. We've really collectively divorced ourselves from our physical bodies, I think.
Erin Holt [00:34:22]:
And it's funny that you said we don't pay attention to our bodies until we experience pain. My daughter, who's 9 years old, super into like, I don't know, like round off back handsprings, all the things in the backyard. She was practicing, practicing, practicing. And the next day she woke up and she called me from her bed and she's like, I can't move my neck. And she kind of threw her neck out, little nine year old kid. And she said to me, she's like, gosh, you know mom, I never really appreciated how much my neck does for me until I couldn't move it one day. And I'm like, right, you know, it's like we never walking around being like, hey, guess what? My mouth doesn't hurt. What a great day.
Erin Holt [00:34:56]:
Until we have a tooth pain. And we're like, oh, my God. And I think that if we, you know, we all know that we have this negativity bias in our brain. Our brain is, like, actively searching for the wrong thing, the wrong thing. And one of the ways to overcome that, first of all, it requires conscious effort. But if we can just. I try to have people do this with their bodies is like, for every one negative thing you come up with in your body, can you come up with three things? They don't have to be like, razzmatazzy and Jazzy.
Erin Holt [00:35:23]:
It can just be like, wow, my lungs are breathing today. My feet are walking today. Like, really basic stuff that we just take for granted until something goes wrong.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:35:35]:
Yeah. Gratitude goes a long way in the healing. Resentment is never going to work out well for you. But it's. It's easy to get there because I was there. You know, you resent your body because it's always in pain and you're sick. So that's that thought process that pulls you in, but that keeps you in the sinkhole. And y'all, you get to a point eventually where you realize that pain is always about protection.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:36:00]:
It's not about punishment. It's just trying to prevent you from doing something that could make yourself worse or. Yes, like what you just said. Everything can be worse for you because your body doesn't want you to be dead and in pain any more than you do. That's my joke, right? Because that's you. And I have the saying that I do all the time. The body always does the best it can with what it's got in the moment it's in to heal and protect you.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:36:25]:
Right. So it's whatever decision it's making right now, it's doing it because it thinks it's the best option in that moment. Right. And one of the things it does is, unfortunately, it gets caught up in these loops of things that it did in the past to protect itself. And it just keeps repeating old patterns for one reason, because they worked. Which means how do you know they work? Well, because you're not dead. That's how I know they worked.
Erin Holt [00:36:53]:
Right.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:36:54]:
So to your brain, happiness is not the main goal. You not being dead is the main goal. They'll deal with the happiness part later. So all of these strategies get ingrained in your system. So your nervous system and your immune system are quite unique because they work very closely together with all the other ones, of course, but they're called neuroimmune responses. And the nervous system and the immune system never forget anything, even though you do. And let me break that down for a minute because that's one of the most powerful things I'm ever going to talk about in this show. The nervous system and the immune system never forget anything, even though you do.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:37:33]:
That's the difference between conscious thought and unconscious subconscious thought. You have 90% of your behavior in your life, of what's happening for you is subconscious, non conscious. Like you don't feel your heart beating, you don't feel your lungs doing all. There's so much stuff coming in from your outside world that if you paid attention to every single thing that was happening, your head would explode in half a second because it just can't deal with it. So it's on autopilot, which is part of what's your autonomic nervous system. Right. So 90% of everything coming into your brain, you're not, you're not even noticing. Only 10% you're aware of.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:38:17]:
That's the conscious one. So if I want you to think about those numbers, 90% is driving your life that you don't know about, and 10% is driving it. Everybody focuses on the 10%. Why would you do that? You need to focus on the 90%. Right? But you can't become aware of the 90% until you use your 10%. So what I mean by that is that there's areas on your body where you actually have pain and discomfort that you're not feeling right now, but they are there. And the only way you're going to know it is when I stick my finger there and I press on it. Then it becomes the 10% that you could control.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:39:01]:
And I really need for people to understand that what I just said. So many people, let's say, come on in and they point to their right shoulder that's been hurting them forever. So all they focus on is the right shoulder. And that's okay. But everything else just you forget about. One like you said before, think about the rest of your body that doesn't hurt like your shoulder. But then I go, how do you know I don't hurt? Then I'm going to lay down on my table and I'm going to stick my fingers in your abdomen and on your sternum and see if it's painful. And you want to punch me in the face because it hurts.
Erin Holt [00:39:35]:
Yeah.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:39:35]:
And here's my point. It's not supposed to hurt when I do that. But if it does, what does that tell you? That it's been painful there all the time, but subconsciously for you, under the radar. So your brain is having to deal with that input all the time. That's a constant stressor and threat to your nervous system and your immune system all day long that you had no awareness of. But those are the ones that can keep you sick because you're concentrating on the 10%. So what I do is that I have people focus on the areas that they discovered that they didn't know about and then work on those. Then what you find is the area that you were having your big pain with the shoulder all of a sudden starts to feel better because you're lowering the systemic system.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:40:23]:
Whole full body threat load, stress mode, inflammation mode. Right. And most people are loaded with them all over the place. And then here comes the rub. There's people that you touch every single part of their body and they have pain on it. Well if that's the case, I already know one thing. Your lymph system and your blood flow system is a hot mess. And that's where I start.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:40:52]:
I start there first. Because they control the health of the environment that every single body part is living in. That makes sense. Including your brain. Your brain doesn't work without blood flow and waste out. It doesn't.
Erin Holt [00:41:08]:
So that's, that's kind of a layup for my next question. And everything you're saying, I mean it's like what Candice Pert said, the body is the subconscious mind, right?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:41:16]:
Yes it is.
Erin Holt [00:41:18]:
It holds on to it is a receptacle for all of the experiences that we have, even the ones that we're not holding onto in like conscious or implicit memory. Like it's, it's still there. It's still there.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:41:31]:
Well that's the emotional part too. So that's why people stay sick. Because these subconscious non conscious emotions that are still there that are what I call feeding your dragon of pain and illness. So that's why there's always an emotional component to every pain and sickness. That's what makes us human.
Erin Holt [00:41:51]:
Full agree. You know, I'm co signing on all of this fully because I see it every single day in my work. I do want to shift into. You've been talking about subconscious, you've been talking about the brain, you mentioned neuroplasticity. And I love the intersection of all of the non physical bodies with the physical body. But one thing that I've been thinking a lot about is brain health. I don't know if it's because I'm getting older or if it's because my brain is my moneymaker. I don't really know what it is, but I've been paying extra attention to that.
Erin Holt [00:42:22]:
A lot of the work that I do is with subconscious neural rewiring. I just am fascinated by it. It's really impactful. But what's interesting is that neuroinflammation and neuroplasticity can be antagonistic. So it's really hard for the brain. It's really hard to leverage the power of our brains, the ability of the brain to change and adapt the way that we want it to go if the brain is riddled with inflammation. And so can we talk about that just a little bit? I feel like it's a little bit under discussed, at least in the circles that I run in.
Erin Holt [00:42:58]:
What, what's the interplay between brain health and lymph and. Yeah, what can you say about this?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:43:06]:
Oh, that's a big one. That's a really big one. Right. That. That's kind of huge. And I think it's important to reiterate what you said before is that you can't separate the brain and the body or the mind and the body, whatever you want to call them, from each other. Right. So a lot of people who, who do stuff with the brain and do brain health and neuro health, that's.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:43:30]:
And things like that, that's great. But it's also attached to everything below, to the feet. Right. And then people who do body work sometimes forget about the brain part. But from, from my approach, when I think about fluid flow, they all share the same fluid, which is the blood flow, the arteries and the veins, and the lymphatic system, the waste management system. So inflammation in the brain is like inflammation anywhere else. You know, it's. It needs to be there.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:44:02]:
And why do you get inflammation in the first place? Because it's trying to kill something. Right. So you need inflammation. It's not bad. Just like stress. Stress isn't bad. You need stress. But hopefully you can adapt to the stress and become stronger and more resilient and go hashtag beast mode monster.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:44:20]:
It's the same thing of why you train and break things down and you rest and recover, but the brain is the same way. Now think about this. The brain has a lot of these wiring and firing neurons in there. And most of the neurons in your body are in your cerebellum, which is back in here. And that controls movement. So that's why movement can be one of the best things to actually heal your body. But every time you wire and fire a brain cell, you make waste, right? So everything that you do during the day, you make waste. And then that waste also has to get out.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:44:57]:
And then my next question is, how do you think it gets out? Same way, it's got to go through veins, big time, through from your head, down your neck and to where the collarbone before they enter back into your heart. And then they go out to all the other systems and then they can escape the body like all the other toxins. Pee it out, you poop it out, you sweat it out, you breathe it out, that sort of thing, right? And then you actually have what's called cerebrospinal fluid, which is the fluid that coats around your brain and coats around your spinal cord and your nerves and that flushes waste products out of your brain every day as well, or put it to this way it's supposed to, particularly when you sleep. So sleep is when your brain clears itself. Now what happens if you can't sleep? Well, then you have a hard time clearing the waste. And then your brain is living in waste, and then it's hard for it to wire and fire because you have waste in there. And then your body gives you more inflammation because it got waste in there, right? And this was came first the chicken or the egg. Maybe you're not sleeping because you got so much brain waste.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:46:04]:
It backed up over the years you didn't even know about, and then all of a sudden you can't sleep. And stress is one of the biggest reasons that people can't sleep. Because the stress hormones are through the roof, right? Breaking the body down. And stress hormones break the body down. Well, what? If you break the body down, you're making more what? Waste. They can't get out. And then it used to be a time when they didn't believe that the brain had a dedicated lymphatic system to it. But they're discovering more information every year because technology is expanding so we can see into places we were never able to see before. And they actually found a brand new unseen layer of the brain, what's called a dural layer of the brain.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:46:49]:
So there's. There used to be three forever, and then now guess what, there's a fourth one. And it's a lymphoid-like, lymph-like layer. And this job is to drain muck from your head, right? So it's really critical that people need to understand this fact. The lymphatic system in your head and brain are beholden to the function of the lymphatic system below your head and brain. They all have to work together. And what's quite fascinating is this. You have a lot of lymph nodes in your body.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:47:31]:
Most people have heard of lymph nodes, but basically they're little mini toilets that flush out waste and kill things. And they're actually scanned barcode scanners. The lymph nodes scan invaders to let your immune system know what it is that's trying to take you out. And one third of the 700 lymph nodes are from the neck up. One third of 700 from the neck. So let's just think from a design perspective here as an engineer. What does that tell you about the importance of the head and the neck and the lymphatic system? That it's pretty important. It's super duper, uber important to keep clean. And the body put the lymph system there for a reason.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:48:21]:
Right. And then you learn that the largest location of lymphatics in the body is the gut, your abdomen. And that's where. And think about that one. Why in the world would your body put the lymphatic system in the gut? Primarily because that's where your immune system lives. Why would your immune system live there? Because that's where you stick stuff in your mouth that you swallowed into your body from the outside world that you can get sick and die from quick. So your immune system is there to take anything out that gets into it or breaks through it, because the gut has issues like leaky gut syndrome and malabsorption syndrome and all those things, you know, and this is an easy one. How do you know you have a gut problem? Yes, is the answer.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:49:14]:
You're alive on this earth. I know you got one. It just depends on how bad it is and how the other systems are relating to that one. Right. So gut problems are brain problems, brain problems are gut problems. And there are always lymph problems because they communicate with each other. Does that make sense? So in my world, many people struggle with brain issues because they have gut issues. Many people struggle with gut issues because they have brain issues.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:49:44]:
And very often people are only going after one of the two, and you need to go after all of them.
Erin Holt [00:49:54]:
Yeah, let's drill into the gut a little bit more, because I know that folks listening to the show.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:50:02]:
That's a good word. Drill.
Erin Holt [00:50:08]:
You know what I feel like is like a little bit of an unsung hero. Again, I'm talking about in my world, in my circles, the diaphragm. The diaphragm is not something that I've really paid much attention to in my own body until I had hands, somebody else's hands on my body, saying, your diaphragm is stuck or you're stuck in your diaphragm. And they did a little maneuver and then I walked out of the office being like, oh, I can breathe. Amazing. You talk a lot about the diaphragm. You talk about being stuck in the diaphragm. Can you say more on this? I think everyone, my people, they're always looking for the next best lab test, the next best supplement, the pill, the potion, the powder, the thing to fix their gut.
Erin Holt [00:50:52]:
And I would say 9 out of 10 aren't out actually like appropriately breathing. So what can we talk about, the diaphragm? Can we talk about breath and what happens when we're actually breathing, like the movement and the pumping that happens and why that's so important?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:51:07]:
I would love to. That's a fantastic question. And you're so right. You know, very few people actually know what the diaphragm is who have heard of it. And even if they do, they're not quite sure what to do with it. Right. One of the things that I learned over the years of teaching is that when you're in this little bubble of people who know all the things that you know because you're in the circle, you just assume that every other human on the earth knows about the diaphragm and knows about breathing. And when I went out in the real world, you realize that nobody knows about it.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:51:39]:
And those are fundamental basics that everybody should at least hear and learn and know. So let's go over what the diaphragm muscle is first. Actually put together a brand new breathing course coming out soon called Breathing Mojo, because I wanted people to see our way of doing it. Just exposing him to the role of breathing and the diaphragm. Because like anything else, when you start to get into it, it can be very overwhelming. There's about 5 billion sources on it, and everyone's going to tell you something different, but I'm going to tell you, make it easy for you. Every breathing technique works for someone. They all work.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:52:17]:
It just depends on what you're trying to accomplish. The very first step to changing your breathing is awareness of your breathing. Because as soon as you become aware of it, that means you're paying attention to it. And when you pay attention to your breathing. It's the number one way to impact your autonomic nervous system, to take you out of a fight or flight, hypervigilant stress response. It's just to control your breathing.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:52:39]:
Just there, right? It's the number one way to calm the body. And you can't heal until you calm the body. Hard stop. Period. Zero discussion. I'll die on the stake telling you that. Because in order to calm the body, that's when you can rest, relax, tension eases up, and then you can heal. So the diaphragm is a muscle that sits above your organs, but below some other ones.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:53:04]:
It's below the lungs and it's above the abdominal organs. So it's at the lower part of your rib cage. And whenever you take a breath in the diaphragm muscle, this looks like an umbrella. There's an open umbrella that opens and closes. It actually contracts and it pushes your organs down because it contracts and it increases pressure in your abdomen. So it moves. I'm using that word on purpose. It moves your organs down towards the floor.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:53:38]:
And so they don't end up on the floor. You have a basket or a hammock. They're called your pelvic diaphragm or your pelvic floor. That's the ones that help you hold back peeing and pooping in your pants. So you don't do that, Right? So that catches at the bottom of the hammock. Then when you exhale, the diaphragm relaxes. And then now the organs say, yippee, I can go back up. So then the organs pump back up.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:54:07]:
And then you repeat that over 20,000 times a day. Up, down, up, down, up, down, up, down, up. What does that sound like? A pump. Like a piston pump, right? Because you need to move your organs around, because if things don't move, they die. That's called stagnation. Right? And let's go back to the lymphatics in your abdomen. Well, they live mostly in your abdomen. And two things move your lymph primarily. Movement.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:54:42]:
Like you moving moves fluids, right? But breathing also moves lymph, because breathing is a form of movement. Right? But what are you moving primarily? The organs. So the organs are just like jammed, like sardines in a can. They're really tight together. And then this viscous fluid, this gel like that goes like this that they live around. And so you're able to get the blood flow to move, too. You have a significant amount of blood flow in your gut, and you have a significant amount of vein flow in your abdomen as well. So to me, breathing is great because it keeps you alive.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:55:27]:
But the primary reason that you breathe through the diaphragm is to change pressure in the body. And pressure moves one thing, fluid. So I'm back to the same thing I've been telling you since we started. It's all in relationship to how it impacts the rest of the system. So if you don't breathe through the diaphragm. Right. Everybody always breathes through the diaphragm. It just depends on how much.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:55:51]:
Most people are usually breathing through their upper chest, their neck, and their lungs primarily. So they have a lot of movement in the rib cage and a lot of movement in the neck and the shoulders, and they breathe very quickly. They called hyperventilate. Like, they kind of go like. Like a stress breathing. It's very shallow breathing. They breathe more from the nose instead of the mouth. Your mouth is for eating, your nose is for breathing, period.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:56:17]:
Okay? So shut your mouth and breathe in and out through your nose. If you could just do that, you'll change inflammation and you'll automatically move your diaphragm more just from breathing through your nose. But sometimes the diaphragm gets stuck. It doesn't move as much as it can because. And people say, well, what makes it get stuck? That's easy. Life, poor posture, stress, not even noticing about your breathing, inflammation in your abdomen, you name it. And the connective tissue gets stuck. And people know that as fascia because it's like a spider web that connects everything.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:56:57]:
And just the posture of that we live in, where we sit in chairs and we slump, and then the pelvis tucks, the abdomen contracts. Everything in there gets tense and tight, and tight tissue doesn't accept blood flow well, so we curl into a fetal position. Right. But that fetal position is also the withdrawal position. So when people are in a lot of pain or they have emotional trauma and shock, they curl forward in a protection response. So very often you're feeding what we call flexion forward all day long because of your lifestyles and your habits, and then you're just choking.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:57:42]:
It's the easiest example to give you. It's like taking a hose and I'm putting a kink in it. Stuff just can't flow. So that's why if you can get into the abdomen and somebody probably did the reset for you, which is what we teach people, it's just rub and massage a little bit underneath your left rib cage and your right rib cage and show a little bit of love to the abdomen and absolutely around your navel. And then all of a sudden you go, this is crazy, man. But I actually feel like a little bit better. And then I say where they go everywhere because that's the center mass. And then your four corners, which are your shoulders and your hips and your hands and your feet are going to be beholden to the center mass.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:58:33]:
Right. So if you can just open that area up, it can be absolutely transformational. And that's also called your emotional gut-brain. So you know, like people say you got kicked in the guts or you feel that deep ache of life and sorrow. And in my work, when I work with people emotionally, the abdomen is where they hold trauma and shock in the system. And it's called a trauma lock right there. And you can actually think about it sometimes of like this very quick trauma gasp like, like this. That's got a lock right in that standpoint and then it needs to be released out.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [00:59:19]:
And that's why going in there, lying on your back, bending your knees, put your feet flat, getting in a safe, protect, comfortable position for you and just putting your hands there and slowly exploring and pressing in can be quite healing and also quite emotional.
Erin Holt [00:59:38]:
Yeah. And you know, you had mentioned energy medicine, energy anatomy earlier and this is like right at the diaphragm too. It's kind of where our solar plexus is. And that's really so much of how we like individuate out. We expand out into the world like our authenticity, our self trust, our self confidence comes in. And it's really hard to do that if we are pitched into that closed off trauma response. So it's kind of interesting. Again, bridging the energy body with the actual physical body.
Erin Holt [01:00:10]:
This might be a little bit of an off-piste question, but you, I have heard you talk about this before and
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:00:17]:
I like those. Go ahead.
Erin Holt [01:00:17]:
Okay. I'm curious if you could say, do you have. Actually I just looked at the time. Do you have a couple extra minutes or.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:00:23]:
Yeah, I'm good.
Erin Holt [01:00:24]:
Okay. You said, when you were specifically talking about the abdomen, you said there's kind of a point where stuff is innervated by your brain and then it's innervated by your tailbone. And you are also talking about motility issues, constipation, peristalsis. Can you say a little bit more on that or is this not really a relevant question?
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:00:47]:
No, that's a great question too because you know, all these different systems work together. So the, the major. They Call it your gut brain axis, which is kind of the lingo that's out there. But you just need to know that. Well, of course it is, because everything talks to each other, right? Some people have heard of this nerve, especially when you've been sick for a long time, called the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve, to me is the most single most important nerve in the body because it controls your ability to get yourself into a relaxed state out of fight or flight, and into what they call parasympathetic. Wne, dine, feed, breed, rest and recovery. So you're either in fight mode or healing mode. You can't be in both at the same time.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:01:36]:
Right. So that's why you need to work with the vagus nerve. And the vagus nerve is a nerve that you have one on the left and you have one on the right, and it comes off the brain stem. It's called cranial nerve number 10, the vagus nerve. And it also controls the inflammation reflex in the body, how well you deal with inflammation. And if you've got any kind of chronic pain or autoimmune disease, you have chronic inflammation. So everybody's got a vagus nerve problem. They just don't know it yet.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:02:06]:
Well, now you do, because I told you. And the vagus nerve goes to a lot of the organs in the abdomen, but particularly your gut. And in my world, it's more important because the vagus nerve controls blood flow to your gut. So that's why we have to work with clearing the brain too. You can't just work on the gut itself. So because the blood flow signal comes from the brain, right? And then things can travel up the, you know this better than anybody stuff can travel up to the vagus nerve and make their way into the brain, I. E. Like viruses or toxins or bacteria, things like that.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:02:45]:
And then so you can get brain sick from gut sick, like that way. And then the parasympathetic system is also part of the sacrum, the sacrum system at the bottom of the spine. I think you heard, I heard you say sacrum, s. 2, 3 and 4. Sacrum, 2, 3 and 4. Right. And that's a big part of it that we deal with for people to be able to go to the bathroom. Right.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:03:09]:
So parasympathetic state. So you can, you can relax. Because constipation is a big problem that people have when they're in stress for a long period of time. And when you can't get rid of poop, then you keep all that poop inside of you, and that becomes really toxic. Right. And so that's going to make a difference also in relationship to the vagus nerve, and you should be able to eliminate things. And another reason why massaging your abdomen can work so well, because you can stimulate yourself to have a bowel movement when you stimulate your abdomen. Right.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:03:43]:
So, yeah, that's a huge connect. I see a lot of people who've had head and neck trauma, concussions, or whiplash injuries end up developing gut issues.
Erin Holt [01:03:55]:
Absolutely. Yeah.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:03:57]:
And so I always ask about a prior injury to the brain when people have digestive issues, and you're always going to find one because everybody's had a hit to the head whether they remember it or not. And now I'm Back to the 9010 discussion. Right. But then it also goes the other way, where you have a lot of these neuroimmune disease, such as Parkinson's, that starts in the gut first and then the brain goes second. And. But still, you're going to be working with both all the time. And in my world, the main conduit that I have to work with is still the lymphatic system, because, you know, people talk about the nervous system, which is great.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:04:39]:
So, yeah, the nervous system is a driver, but it's not the only driver. All right. And it also has to work in relationship to blood flow and the immune system. So people say, well, which came first? Yes, is the answer. I mean, both probably did. It just depends on the situation. I'm going to work all of them regardless. Right.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:05:00]:
So. But I find, honestly in my work, the three things, the top three things that I do for people is that I have to calm the body down first. Help calm the body in whatever way works for them in their life. Doing things that makes them feel calm or sometimes just removing themselves from situations that they didn't know were setting them off, which can very often be a toxic relationship with someone in your life or how you talk to yourself, because sometimes you may be the most toxic person in the room and you're with yourself all the time. So you calm the body. And then next is where I begin to move the fluids of the body, all of them. And you can do that quite nicely through breathing.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:05:47]:
It does both, which is awesome. And then teaching people the places that they stimulate in my courses, with one, massaging your abdomen. But two, doing the single most powerful reset to the body that I teach everybody that can absolutely change your life, called the Big Six method. And you can just go on YouTube and type in big B I G the number six, and then Perry my name. And it'll show up and it'll show you me being on another podcast, what they are and why you do them and how to do them, and it'll make a big difference for you. And then I can get those down. Then healing can happen, in my viewpoint, much more effectively. Right.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:06:37]:
It's still going to be a process to get where you need to go. But those are two big check marks that you have to get done first. Otherwise, I'll contend that the healing can't happen. It's just like I tell people, it's like trying to take off in an airplane. You got to make sure you got a plane and you got to make sure you got a pilot.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:06:58]:
It. If you don't have those two things, you're not going anywhere.
Erin Holt [01:07:02]:
Good luck to you.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:07:03]:
That's. Yeah, that's good luck. You could have all the other fancy stuff you want, but if you miss the first two, you're not going. And that's really what I try to do, is basics and fundamentals first. And nothing is more fundamental than being able to relax so you can heal and then get blood flow in, blood flow out, nutrients in, waste out. Those are the two most important things, and that's what I teach every single human being on this earth to do.
Erin Holt [01:07:31]:
Awesome. I think that that's a great way to end this. I think it's funny. I invited you on the show to talk about the vagus nerve, and it took us an hour to get there, but there were so many other good things to talk about. So, in summary, calm the body, get the body into parasympathetic. That's going to look different for everybody. There's different ways to skin that cat. Gross analogy.
Erin Holt [01:07:51]:
I wish I had said something else. Movement that calms you.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:07:56]:
If that calms you, go ahead.
Erin Holt [01:07:57]:
You know, we can move our bodies. We can breathe. Dr. Perry explained in detail why breathing helps to send fluids to the organs, blood and lymph. And the Big Six. I can swear by that. You taught me the big six. I do it all the time.
Erin Holt [01:08:13]:
It's huge. It takes, like, very little time. Anybody can do it. And then for more details and more tools, go to Dr. Perry's Instagram. Stopchasingpain. I will link to that. And also look into.
Erin Holt [01:08:28]:
He teaches tremendous workshops in live courses. There is one on the vagus nerve. I don't know when that's going to be next. I know that your blood flow is coming up next, so we'll link to all of the resources, but don't miss an opportunity to learn with Dr. Perry live because it's. It's a real. It's a real. It's a real thing.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:08:49]:
Oh, thank you so very much. I am very, very grateful for the kind words.
Erin Holt [01:08:54]:
Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. This was a tremendous conversation, one of my favorites, and I appreciate your time.
Dr. Perry Nickelston [01:09:03]:
I had a wonderful time as well. Thank you.
Erin Holt [01:09:11]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Funk'tional Nutrition Podcast. If you got something from today's show, don't forget to subscribe, leave a review, share with a friend, and keep coming back for more. Take care of you.