I Disagree

by Patrick Flynn

  Why do you need a professional to oversee your detox? While it is good to minimize your exposure to toxins by upgrading your diet to organic, whole foods and using cleaner personal care products, you can’t just dive into a detox. You have a lifetime of filling and probably overflowing that bucket; there may be some damage that needs to be addressed before you go pushing toxins around.

  A proficient doctor will assess and test your body to find out if it is ready for a detox. You need to know if your body is functioning well enough to handle the detox and has the nutrients to properly do so. We check for food allergies that lead to inflammation and leaky gut. The most common area we have to improve is the GI. If you are like most people, you may have gut issues. Many people have bloating, gas, diarrhea, constipation and other signs of gut issues. What’s an easy way to know if you have gut issues? Take a look at your poop. Are you pooping at least two or three times a day? Does it look like chocolate soft serve ice cream? If it doesn’t, you are not ready for a detox.

  Doing that detox before your gut is ready is a very bad idea. During those first days you’re drawing toxins that may be stuck in the fat tissues or other organs when you force a detox. If you try to pull those out too soon, without your GI being properly healed, all that stuff can actually leak back in the system and make you really sick.

  CHRISTY’S THOUGHTS

  Not so funny story about a friend who insisted that she wanted to do a detox, but to save money, she decided to go to a local health food store and buy a cheap one instead of doing the one through our office where she would be monitored by one of our doctors. She ended up in the emergency room in intense pain and became very sick as a result. The cheap ’detox’ wiped out all her beneficial bacteria and caused infections that didn’t exist prior to the unsupervised ’detox’. She may have saved some cash up front, but was it worth it?

  I also know someone who constantly does cleanses. At one point her health had deteriorated so bad that she also ended up in the emergency room. She continued to insist that the cleanses were helping…I disagree. Moral of the stories? Your body is an intricate ecosystem of bacteria, organs and systems that work together to create homeostasis. If something messes with the complex ecosystem, the body will try to bring itself back to homeostasis. If you are feeling ’off’, don’t try to guess at what will fix what’s going on in your body…you need to be properly tested so you don’t inadvertently make it worse.

  It’s not just as simple as drinking some juice and flushing the toxins out. There’s important work happening there.

  The gut is a very important part of your body’s detox assembly line. Yes! Think of it like an assembly line. It’s not just as simple as drinking some juice and flushing the toxins out. There’s important work happening there. It’s a multi-system job with three phases. A detox covers the whole body. All your organs, your blood circulation and your lymphatic system takes the detox to every corner of your body. There are some key players to support.

  Key Detox Players:

  • Liver– the main filter or cleaner

  • Lungs – processing O2 and H2O

  • Gallbladder – creates bile

  • Kidneys – needed for blood filtration

  • Intestines – microbiome has to be functioning to push the toxins out

  • Blood vessels and lymphatic tissue

  All of these have to be functioning for a detox to be effective. What happens during a detox? Here are the basics:

  Phase one is what we call the biotransformation phase. It’s the phase where the body breaks things down from fat-soluble toxins. Here’s another analogy for you. You just made some really tasty bacon for breakfast. Sizzled to perfection. Instead of cleaning the pan right away, you sat down and ate that bacon. I mean if you don’t eat it right away, someone else will. When you go back to clean the pan, it’s crusty grease. You can’t just spray water on it. You need dish soap to break it down. That’s what your body does in this phase. It breaks down those fat-soluble toxins. That’s why phase two is important.

  Phase two is what we call the conjugation phase. This is the building things up phase. After phase one, your body is left with a bunch of broken-down metabolites that can be more toxic than the original fat-soluble toxins you started with. There are a bunch of metabolic pathways that make sure those broken-down toxins bind to natural enzymes or substances created by your liver. Some bodies are better at that than others. If your liver has been stressed for years it can take a toll on this process. Your liver and body need support during this process to make sure those metabolites from phase one are bound so they make it to the exit. If they aren’t, then they are recirculated into the body. That will make you feel very crappy.

  When you put the hard work into making sure your body is functioning, you think more about what you are exposing it to.

  Getting shown the door, or the excretion process, is the last important step in this process. You see this step happen every day in the way of stool, urine and sweat. Smaller toxins that travel in the blood go to the kidneys to be filtered. Larger molecules are excreted through bile that comes from the gall bladder into the small intestine. If we are pushing toxins into intestines, we need something to push them through the back door. Vegetables, beans and lots of other fibrous foods are really important during the detox. We don’t tell you to eat veggies because we want you to be miserable. I don’t get excited about veggies, but our body needs them. I can’t say this enough, if you don’t get the toxins out, they can make you sick.

  Can you see how critical each part of the detox process is and why it is important to support the body through each step? I bet you also see why minimizing your exposure to toxins is so important. When you put the hard work into making sure your body is functioning, you think more about what you are exposing it to. The body should be functioning at 100% and it can’t do that if it’s not effectively detoxing.

  CHAPTER 16

  Say It… I Disagree

  What do you think this plant needs? Water. Why didn’t you say drugs or surgery? Why didn’t you say horse hormones? Most people understand more about how to take care of a plant than their own body. That’s frustrating for me. Traditional doctors do their best to manage symptoms and minimize pain. It’s honestly amazing what they can do, but what they’re never taught to do is support the body to bring it back to normal. It’s not how they are trained to look at or approach a health condition. They are trained to go in with their ax and hose to do what they were taught to do, to save your life. That’s ok! When your body is on fire, you’ll be grateful for that axe and hose—I know I was grateful they could help my wife with her pain, until we could get her back to normal. Both sides of this conversation are important—stopping the fire, and rebuilding the house. I disagree with simply putting out the fire.

  Every day, couples are told they will not be able to have a baby. Then there are the patients who hear they need to be on a drug for their high cholesterol. Girls are told birth control is the answer to their period problems. People are told they are fat because of genetics. Divorce rates are going higher because society tells us men and women are the same. Menopause is a change that is feared. Men are told testosterone goes down as they age. Women are told there is nothing wrong with them even though they have a laundry list of symptoms. I disagree with all of this and so much more. Don’t you?

  You deserve individual care that treats you, not just the average person.

  Don’t you agree that there needs to be another approach? One that builds the body? I want this approach to be known all over. Everyone deserves it! You deserve individual care that treats you, not just the average person. Your body is a Swiss watch with different gears and a unique makeup; that means an individual set of hormones. It means individual triggers and individual circumstances. Now that you know of a different way to look at the body you have powerful information that can change the future of your health.

  Patty’s Story

  After 11 year
s of infertility, exploratory surgeries and rounds of IVF, I was feeling done. It was hard wanting to be pregnant, seeing pregnant strangers or being with a friend who was expecting a baby. I had been told by the IVF doctors I’d never be able to carry a baby in my womb. They told me I would have to look into a surrogate or adopt. I wanted to have a hysterectomy. If I couldn’t use my female organs, I didn’t want them.

  When we had found The Wellness Way and Dr. Patrick, a cancelation enabled us to get in right away. I knew it was meant to be!

  We learned a whole new lifestyle at The Wellness Way. The approach was completely different. From all that we learned, I have referred my sister, a neighbor, people with cancer and those with other health challenges. While some people are opposed to trying anything different, others have great results with The Wellness Way.

  We had several people who were skeptical and told us it wouldn’t work. I faced my own challenge. I worked in the dairy industry. Due to my allergies, I had to eliminate dairy from my diet. I often heard “don’t bite the hand that feeds you;” but I had to do what was right for my body.

  We are now expecting our second baby and weren’t even trying – it just happened. We weren’t trying but we also weren’t not trying. We figured since it took 11 years to have our son, he would be our only child. Then I started waking up with nausea and wasn’t feeling well. I was 8 weeks along before I realized I was pregnant.

  When I share my Wellness Way story, a lot of people are concerned about insurance coverage. I tell them all it’s worth it. If this is what you want, and this is your dream in life, then there really is no dollar amount. When we went through IVF, we spent tens of thousands of dollars. All the medications were out of pocket as well. When I talked to my insurance company about the IVF, I was told having a child isn’t a necessity of life and they wouldn’t cover it. Now, I tell people to put that money toward fixing your body the right way. Let it work the way it should and treat it right. You only have one body.

  *At time of publishing, Patty was pregnant with baby number three!

  Hope Restored

  I want to share more of Patty’s story with you. As she and her husband Josh tried to start their family, they faced some heartache. Eleven years ago, Patty and her husband Josh tried to get pregnant. After trying for eleven years, guess what happened, nothing. She went to the medical doctors. They only have two tools. They gave her medications, did she get pregnant? No. She didn’t. So, they only had one tool left, they decided to do IVF therapy. They extracted three eggs from her ovaries and fertilized them, then they implanted one. Any guess how much that cost? $20,000. Insurance covers nothing.

  Patty paid the $20,000 and it did not work. They implanted the second egg for $20,000 and that didn’t work. The doctors told Patty and her husband that they had one more egg left, and they felt bad for her since she had already spent $40,000, so they’d do the last one for $5,000. But before they did this, the doctors said they’d heard about this guy in Green Bay, Wisconsin. They were talking about me! They didn’t really know what I do, but they told her, “He gets crazy results.”

  Patty and her husband came into The Wellness Way. As we were going through her medical records, I asked her some very basic questions. “Did they test your hormones?”

  “No.”

  Well, they actually had tested one of them, but it was incomplete testing. We tested all her hormones and found the imbalance. I started the process of finding the triggers and what she needed to do to balance her hormones. It took time to rebuild her body. After nine months we retested her. She was regaining healthy levels of hormones; I sent her back to her doctor. They did the last in-vitro and she got pregnant. I was so happy for her and Josh!

  Here’s what followed. Medicine has standards they do with everyone. One of the standards they do with IVF is to give the woman hormone shots to keep her pregnant. Why? They have to force the body to keep the pregnancy. This is a standard because, unless the mother is working with a doctor like those in our Wellness Way network, the body hasn’t been brought to a place of healthy function. Standard medicine is trying to help, and make sure they manipulate those hormone levels to maintain the pregnancy. Josh, Patty’s husband, called me and was concerned they wanted to do these hormone shots. “Doc, is this okay?” I told him, “Her labs are normal; the shots now will make her abnormal again, and she’ll get sick. “

  She went back to the doctor, shared her concerns, and the doctor told her “Dr. Patrick is hurting you, don’t go back to him. You have to do this. If you do not, we won’t take care of you.” You know what? He was trying to make sure she did what he knew, based on his experience.

  A doctor who doesn’t allow you to question his approach is wrong.

  See guys they don’t see the body like we do, so they don’t understand this approach. They haven’t been trained to and some might even stop you from asking questions. A doctor who doesn’t allow you to question his approach is wrong. What have those other doctors done? They’ve tried, but their thinking is focused on the fire. We rebuild the body and support the body’s natural ability to heal. This leads to places traditional medicine is unfamiliar with.

  So, what happened with Patty? She was scared so she listened to them and got the shots. Six weeks later, in October, that baby died. My heart broke for her. The doctor conclusively told her, “You can’t have children,” and left. He had nothing left to offer her. Imagine how she felt in that moment. She had trusted this doctor, and he had no answers for her.

  She went into a deep depression after she lost the baby. Josh texted me and called me often saying, “I can’t get Patty out of bed she’s so depressed.” I told him to leave her be, she had to get her stress down. It was a normal reaction both physically and mentally to what she had just been through. She lost a baby and the idea of a family—she was going through tremendous physical stress. A month later I hadn’t heard from them. Then Josh reached out to me again. “Doc, Patty’s finally getting up and around. You made the most sense to us even when the other doctors didn’t understand your thinking. My wife was the happiest and healthiest when she was with you. I understand we can’t have a baby, but I’d rather have my wife happy and healthy than sick with no child.”

  I told him, “I know what the doctors said, but I disagree. Don’t tell your wife that though. She doesn’t need to hear that right now. We need to remove the stressors and get her body functioning.” Her body was struggling with the synthetic hormones she had been injected with. We had to detox her and build her hormones back properly. That detox was painful for her; there was a lot that needed to be pulled out. She felt like she was going to die. A detox can be very hard when you are properly pulling all of the toxins. February 8th, I called Patty so we could redo her labs. She said that she and Josh were going to go on vacation to Mexico for three weeks. I told her to call me when she got back.

  March came around and all of a sudden, I got a text message from Patty. She said, “Dr. Patrick, I was at work today and my boobs were sore, I was tired, and I got nauseous, so I went to Walgreens and I bought seven pregnancy tests and they are all positive. How did that happen?!” I told her she was a little old for the talk about the birds and the bees and she should know how it happened! I laugh every time I tell that part of the story!

  Recently she sent me a picture of her son, “Joshua wanted to say hi to his favorite doctor!”

  Why am I his favorite doctor? Because their story had a happy ending for them, but their story was far from easy. The other doctors had given up hope and offered his parents no hope of having children. Their thinking and philosophy were different than the one Patty and her husband needed. They are very good at their jobs, but does their thinking get you where you truly want to be? Back you normal function and health?

  There is no

  other approach?

  I disagree!

  There is no other approach? I disagree! I’m so saddened by people being sick, infertile, unhappy, and divorced. I want to liv
e in a world where rates of cancer, heart disease and all common, chronic diseases are actually decreasing. We have to change the direction that we are going in and it has to start somewhere. Even if that just means saying, I disagree.

  Take Comfort

  People are uncomfortable with the concept of disagreement. It has negative connotations, and even just the thought can bring on feelings of anxiety, anger, stress, and tension. However, disagreement does not have to be a bad thing – in fact, when done respectfully, it’s actually a very good thing! Why do I say that? Because the ability to disagree and walk through constructive conflict is a gift – it means you have a choice. It means we have the opportunity to learn and grow, and pursue new things. Things that may be different than the norm, but hold promise. Imagine, knowing what you know now after going through this book, and not having the option to disagree. Imagine being told nothing can be done, and the door is shut forever. Imagine a doctor looking at you and your very real symptoms, telling you it’s all in your head, and it’s the end. Imagine being handed a laundry list of prescriptions with side-effects worse than the actual illness, and being told it doesn’t matter, you’ll be fine, and there’s simply no other options. Maybe that hopeless scene has already been a part of your story – it surely has been for tens of thousands of other people, and is one of the reasons I am so passionate about this topic. This, right here, right now. This is the part of the story where we get to make a change.

  People can become extremely defensive about health decisions, and rely heavily on emotions.