Dr Jessie Keener is a naturopathic doctor with 36 years of experience in private practice. That is a lot of bodies and a lot of wisdom. In this episode we cover topics such as: What is a naturopathic doctor, The roots of AMA medicine, Jessie's personal healing journey and what led her down this path, The epidemic of fear and the immune system, Loving the body vs. trusting the body, Chronic PTSD. I have worked with countless doctors on my path of healing and Dr Jessie is truly special. I am so thankful to have her on the podcast!
Follow and contact Dr Jessie Keener on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/DrJessieKeener
Connect with Dr Jessie on Telegram at "Jessie Keener"
Connect with me on facebook: https://www.facebook.com/codyjs/
and on instagram: https://www.instagram.com/codymaher18/
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome friends to agency wellness the podcast. My name is Cody Mar after decades living with the diagnosis of chronic illness. I began to ask myself if this diagnosis, this label was really helpful. I started to challenge my own learned concepts, as well as cultural concepts of what it means to be well. I spent years studying all sorts of techniques and experimenting with different modalities. I took course after course and certification after certification. All of this amazing knowledge has enriched my life and informed how I care for myself and who I am as a practitioner. However, my greatest teacher and my most credible source has been and continues to be my own amazing body agency. Wellness was born out of the feeling that just like actors need agents to support and guide their careers. Sometimes in the wild, wild world of wellness, you need a health agent, someone you can trust to help you navigate the various twists and forks and bumps.
Speaker 1 (01:10):
You inevitably encounter as a human living in today's world who wants to feel well be well. Who wants to be, let's just say it happy and healthy. This podcast will help you expand your knowledge, vision, and practice of wellness. I'll be bringing you heartfelt conversations with a variety of experts in fields, such as naturopathic medicine, fung Shui, life coaching, womb healing, psychic guidance, creativity, Pilates, and so much more. It's my hope and intention that from these conversations, you can begin to tap into your own unique and ever evolving wellness recipe. I'll be right here with you the whole way. So let's dive in
Speaker 2 (01:57):
One. Here you
Speaker 1 (01:58):
Go. On this debut episode of agency wellness, the podcast I'm excited and honored to welcome Dr. Jesse keener. Dr. Jesse is a semi-retired naturopathic doctor with 36 years of private practice experience. She has so much wisdom. She generously shares. In this episode, we dive into topics such as what is naturopathic medicine, the epidemic of fear and the immune system loving the body versus trusting the body Jesse's own journey of healing, chronic PTSD. And that is just the tip of the iceberg. So join me, friends in welcoming Dr. Jesse keener to the podcast. Welcome Jesse. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 3 (02:41):
Oh, thank you so much, Cody. It's it's a pleasure to be here. I, this is my passion and, um, I know, I know you well enough after our work together for a little while here to know that you're also extremely passionate about wellness, so I'm just excited. I think we're gonna have a, a lively conversation with lots of juiciness and we'll see what happens next. Absolutely. Yes. We'll see what twists and turns we go on, cuz we could go in many directions. So let's start just introducing people to a little bit about who you are, you know, um, what brought you to naturopathic doctor path, the naturopathic doctor path, and just a little bit about your history with that. Sure. Yeah. Cause it is kind of an interesting story and it does, it explains a lot of my passion for this field. So a naturopathic physician is not a real common thing.
Speaker 3 (03:30):
In fact, there's only about three to four colleges right now in this country turning out that particular degree. Uh, but interestingly at the turn of the 18 hundreds and the 19 hundreds in this country, there were hundreds of naturopathic medical colleges, but what happened, and this is part of our shady government history is that when standard oil started to become extremely popular, the scientists working for Mr. Rockefeller who owns standard oil, came to him at one point and said, we have all these really cool chemicals we're making from the ground from the oil. And we wanna figure out ways of using them. And he said, absolutely, here's some money do some research. And they came back and said, we believe we can make these patentable. And we can get people to consume them as things for their health. And you know, Mr. Standard oil, Mr.
Speaker 3 (04:20):
Rockefeller said, let's go, let's go that. And then he gave a big amount of money as a grant to start. What's now known as the American medical association. That all sounds fine and good until you realize what I just said. They're looking at oil byproducts and figuring out in the early 19 hundreds, how to turn these into consumable items that will satisfy something to do with health. And then we started an institution to start promoting this called the American medical association. And the thing we never read about in the history books, Cody, about what happened next was how a lot of that money was spent stamping out naturopathic medicine in this country because the things the naturopaths were recommending such as Camil tea for an upset stomach or crushing pineapple and putting it on an injury to bring down inflammation from the Broma lane in the juice, these were things they couldn't patent, right?
Speaker 3 (05:17):
And patents were already important at this point. So we have the beginning of the 19 hundreds, a giant Exodus of naturopathic physicians. Some of you that are chiropractic enthusiasts out there will also know the same thing happened to chiropractic at darn near did get stamped out, but they persevered. So right now we have about 17 states in the nation. I believe that are, are legislating naturopathic medicine, but what happened to me? You know, my story is very basic, but it's also sort of outrageous. What happened to me is I was raised in a new England family. I was a super athlete. I loved being in my body. I was a competitive swimmer, first, a downhill skier, then a track star cheerleader. And then I actually went to college on a full ride as an equestrian on the equestrian team. So I was fit as a fiddle or so I thought, and everything was great.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Meanwhile, my parents were divorcing and in my second year of college, my health just really hit the wall. I started having massive insomnia, horrible depression, which, you know, seemed circumstantial except I was not sleeping. So that was a nasty, sticky little widget right there. I was having anxiety couldn't focus. The only thing that seemed to work was long rides on my horse, in the countryside. That was it. So, so I could see that my body was melting down and I intuitively knew it was from stress. And I even went to the college counselor and started to look for ways. Now I have to date myself here. This was in the mid seventies, there weren't books out about how to manage your stress, right? There was no internet, right? There was really nothing. I do believe laughter is the best medicine came out, but I had no idea how to get from negative 500 on laughter to actually laughing.
Speaker 3 (06:59):
I, I didn't have that operational. I just didn't work me so long story short things got worse and worse and worse. And by the time I was out of college, my menstrual cycle had stopped and had been gone for four years. I had pain in my entire neck and spine. I had a lot of difficulties. Like I, I looked good on the outside and that's what my doctors kept saying. Cuz I kept going back to doctors saying I took out a book from the library. I looked up thyroid. That could be part of why I'm in this premature menopause. They also diagnosed arthritis in my spine. They also diagnosed, uh, osteoarthritis. They also said, we have no idea. You know what to really do with you. We can put you on hormones for the rest of your life. The other thing that was really weird Cody is I was having random fainting attacks.
Speaker 3 (07:46):
And after all this time and all these years of working me up, they said, we still don't know why you faint. Imagine all the blood tests and all the time up in the store, the whole thing. Right? So, so finally they said, here is a script for your hormones for life. They call it Premarin. Here's a referral to see a psychiatrist. So you can learn to live with your disorders here because you're never gonna have children. You're gonna have to learn to live with that. Here's your pain killers and here's your muscle reluctance, go get these filled. We'll we'll talk about all this soon. And then the next thing happened. I had a pre-cancerous pap smear popup. Then I learned this very interesting term that is used a lot in modern AMA medicine. And the phrase is watchful waiting, Jesse, it's not cancer yet. And again, being a superstar athlete, I'm like, okay, what's the training?
Speaker 3 (08:36):
What's the development. What do we do? What's the, what's the protocol? What do we do? And they said, oh no, we do watchful waiting. I said, say what? And they said, watchful waiting. We watch. And when the cancer comes because we waited and then the cancer will come, Jesse, then we have a plan for you, but we don't have a plan for that. And I said, are you joking? You don't have a way to back this out. I said, what about vitamin C therapy? I've been taking books outta the library. They go, no, no nothing's proven no study da. So something inside of me kind of snapped at that point because I'd already been given these four pieces of paper and a death sentence essentially in my mind because I knew I was gonna have a kid. I knew since I was six years old and watched my mom with her terrible parent parenting styles and said to myself, Hey, when I'm a mom, I'm never gonna do that stuff ever.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So, um, I went and got a job for a chiropractor. I had relocated from Massachusetts to Austin, Texas. I'd seen a couple of Austin city limits and thought, you know, free beer, free mu free music. Hey, I'm straight outta college. What do I know? Right. So I go there and I get a job working for a chiropractor and he starts adjusting me. And a lot of my pain starts to get better. And I'm like, wow. Chiropractic, who knew? I didn't know anything growing up. I was in a very conservative academic family. My dad was an English professor. Okay. So what did we know about health? Nothing. We just, you know, drank our OJ every morning in the usual, right? So this guy tells me after a year of working for him, he says, I think you can get a lot more well, but you're gonna need to find a clinical nutritionist.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
I said, I don't even know what that is. He goes, well, they work with extensive supplementation and amino acids, all kinds of things. And their, their testing is different than the regular AMA testing. But Austin's a very small town. Jesse. I don't think there is one here. Little, did he know that I was dying to find a new job because this guy was a wham bam, thank you. Ma'am chiropractor. And I, I saw through that very quickly. And so that very weekend I was looking at the one ads in the Austin American statesman newspaper. And I saw clinical nutritionist seeks, office manager must have clinical experience. I'd been working for this chiropractor for a year. Wasn't sure he'd give me any kind of review. Cuz I knew I was gonna go get this job and, and, and run away from him. I knew it and sure enough, I got the job.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
I was able to give him two weeks notice. That was great. And this woman, Teresa Dale is really a who's who of clinical nutrition. She now runs the col the California college of natural medicine. She is a wizard in vibrational medicine, homeopathic medicine, herbal medicine, clinical nutrition, which doesn't include homeopathy or herbal medicine, which is interesting. So, um, she was my mentor and she said, when she hired me, I'm gonna take her case. And I had not said a word about my wellness, but I was about 25 pounds overweight. I'd gotten really pudgy. And when she did my case, it, it was just a mind blowing experience. Cody. She said things I'd never even heard before. And one of the most important things she told me was that my thyroid flunked her tests. And I said, but that can't be, I've had a test every three months for the last four years and it's always come out in the normal range.
Speaker 3 (11:43):
And she said, ah, yes, let me explain to you the fallacy of clinical normal ranges. And I said, due tell. And she said, well, if you were queen of the universe and you were setting up clinical abnormals, how would you do it? Right? And I said, well, being a little smart, I would look at the best healthiest members of our population. And I would do some statistics based on their stuff. And she said, exactly correct. She said, sadly, that's not, what's done. And I said, well, how was it done? Then? She said, well, they run all the tests. And then they knock off the top 10 numbers and they knock off the bottom 10 numbers and they started averaging and right in there that's normal. And she said, but here's the problem. So I was already thinking like, that can't sound, that's not, it didn't ring.
Speaker 3 (12:28):
And she said, who gets the most laboratory tests? Incredibly well people or sick and dying people. And I said, sick and dying people. And she said, Touche, hence the problem you're being compared to mostly not well folks. And you're coming out in the middle of that. And I was like, oh my God. She goes, like, in other words, if you're in an academic system, you might still get an F, but it looks like you pass. And I'm like, that's crazy. And she said, that's why I have a great business. But she talked about how my pituitary had been turned off by a birth control pill. I had taken at the age of 16 that my doctor had put me on for a system, my ovary. And she said that pill was so strong. That ortho Novum was so strong. It just knocked your pituitary, right?
Speaker 3 (13:15):
Offline. It's asleep. It is no longer commanding ovulation looks to me like all your anatomy otherwise is fine, but there's just no signaling from your pituitary. And your thyroid is also asleep and you have no adrenal glands left. None of which, I didn't even know what those things did at that point in my life. I had no idea
Speaker 3 (14:01):
And I said, okay, because as an athlete, I knew what being coachable meant. It meant a hundred percent. I'm gonna be the yes, but I believed her. There was something about how she was being her level of conviction and who she was in that moment when she said, we're just gonna reverse all of it. I knew she was right. I, I knew, I I'm sure there were moments of time when all my friends were out at happy hour, having margaritas and chips and hot sauce. And I could not. I'm sure there were times where I doubted what I was doing, but the more I read and the more I researched and she had amazing file cabinets full of articles from newspaper journals magazines. The more I realized, wow, this whole AMA thing is mostly a racket. And the stuff that really works is the underground, natural medical community of what works.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
And, you know, we were just starting to have books come out like vibrational medicine by Richard Gerber, which I immediately bought and, and read from cover to cover. We were just starting to have people develop things like cold lasers, all of which I'm fully trained in. Now, I, I got to read all her stuff on homeopathy and I was stunned to find out that this inexpensive, completely valid form of medicine had been the rage in Europe for hundreds of years until the AMA moved over there too. So it, it just stunned me to no end. But the bottom line is I had a baby at home underwater three years after I met Theresa Dale. She knew. So, um, so that was my passionate turnaround. And I told her, I wanna do what you do. And she said, okay, but don't go get your clinical nutrition degree.
Speaker 3 (15:38):
And I said, well, why? It seems like that's an awesome degree. She goes, no, I don't think it's gonna be legislated ahead of the naturopathic physician degree. She, I think that one's gonna go first because there's already active colleges in the already universities. And there's just gonna be a huge swell in that direction. Not for nothing. Whole foods had opened its doors for business right before I went to work for Theresa Dale and one of her clients while I was working for her was John Mackey CEO of whole foods. I think if I were, you I'd go get the naturopathic physician degree. That way it may become, there may be a point in time where even insurance pays for you. And I was like, oh, that'd be great. Thinking that now all these years later, we would've arrived there. I see what we've headed head long into sort of crashed into like bumper cars.
Speaker 3 (16:26):
And there's now real debates from our own CDC about whether immunity is real and whether a person can have natural immunity. Well, I just happen to be an expert on the immune system. And yeah, I have a natural immunity to almost everything. And how do I know? Because I had active patients after I got my degree and opened up my practice that would, and I can't relate, but this actually happened to me once I was, she was on the table. I was doing my applied kinesiology muscle testing with her. And I said, Sarah, every single gland is testing weak. What? There's something different. This is not, you you've never had pinene gland in pitu. All these things are out. She goes, huh, let me see. Oh, I was diagnosed three days ago with mono. And I said, mono, she goes, yeah, mononucleosis. And I'm like, okay.
Speaker 3 (17:15):
And I just, I just let go over. I didn't panic. But I ran over to my little sink and washed my hands again, which I always wash in between patients. Right. And then just simply grabbed my homeopathic liquid antiviral, shook it up, put several drops under my tongue, took a nice deep breath and said, okay, Sarah, that would be the information you need to give me on the first moment of visit. You need to say, oh, I was, I need you in your body more than this, Sarah. This is you not being in your body. You not even thinking there's a connection between that visit and this visit. I need you to kind of take a deep breath, put your, put your headlights on for me now. And let's real because you have active mono. Let's get to work
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Um, and that, that makes me a little bit of a strange character because I don't buy into the germ theory the way everyone does. I, I think there's a combination of things happening in bodies and that when bodies get sick, the germ part of it is the last thing that happens. If that makes sense. So many other things that happen first and so many other glands and organs that are completely overwhelmed and way laid. And then the body produces these particular symptoms. One thing Theresa Dale taught me is the symptoms are always the body doing the best it can to save your life. The body wasn't doing that symptom something worse would absolutely be happening. So there's something called the terrain theory. And that says that it's the environment of the body that creates the sickness. And then we have Louie pastor over there with his germ theory.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
No, no, the body is the body and the germs create the sickness. And so I constantly get asked this in interview. Well, what do you believe Dr. Jesse? And I say, yes, I believe both. If you're toxic enough, you're gonna get sick. And that was the environment creating a sickness. But I also believe that your terrain will lead you into a devastated environment, right? So you have to work on the terrain, which is the inside of the body. That's the gut system. That's looking at the gut brain connection. That's looking at the endocrine glands and how are they functioning? Because our endocrine glands are actually the hands and feet to our immune system. And I would say the gut is probably the torso to the immune system. And the brain is kind of just like, I don't know, it's just a little ball on the top of the head thing.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
It's the brain doesn't have to do much for immune function. Believe it or not, cuz the system's so tight. But I wanna talk about something that's happened in our recent history that has devastated brain function and devastated immune function. And that is all the fear that's been going on in the last two and a half years with this pandemic we're may of 2022 right now. Right. And um, what I, what I know about chronic fear is chronic fear creates something called chronic post traumatic stress disorder. And I had the unusual and exciting experience years before this pandemic of working with a laboratory out of Atlanta, Georgia called Metametrics. And we were testing adrenal function, doing a simple in-home test kit. And we were looking at, uh, adrenal cortisol and DHA and looking at their ratios and evaluating people's adrenal health. And right as we launched the test, we, we launched the test in August and then September nine 11 happened.
Speaker 3 (20:35):
So all the tests that came back to us came back after nine 11 Cody, we didn't have one normal test ever, not one pass we always had, okay, it's this, or it's even worse than this. Nobody cleared it. They were just like, okay, you're bad or no, you're really bad. So I knew already after nine 11 as a physician practitioner, healer conscious person, we're gonna have a huge uptick in PTSD, which of course these tests confirmed for us for several years until that company went bankrupt. But where we are now is this is 10 times worse than that because we've put masks on children. We've seen people's storefronts be closed. Their businesses have to shut down. We've seen huge upticks and alcoholism and all the side effects. So I'm not gonna discuss the actual content of our pandemic real quick. I just want to sort of allow people a moment to sit with something.
Speaker 3 (21:36):
I think that's really important. That'll frame the conversation going forward, which is when you talk about sneakers, for example, there's not one sneaker that everybody wears to run in. There's multiple sneakers and you can try one sneaker and you might run in that sneaker and it doesn't feel so comfortable. So you go try a different sneaker. When it comes to medicine, we grow up thinking there's only the AMA medicine. There's only what we also refer to as Western medicine. And that's the only route for people. And the thing that I see over and over again with people like you and I is people need to be pushed oftentimes to a point of crisis before being exposed to all these other medicines. So just in terms of framing the conversation, just if you're listening, think of it that way, think of it. If, if, if this is not a subject you're familiar with or something that you think about often, it's not that there's an alternative medicine or has its kind of framed.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
It's just that there's many different lenses to look at health. There's many different ways. It's not just one way. And so the perspective that we're talking about today, is't alternative or you know, there all these words that come around now, but it's just a different framing and it goes back thousands of years as well. I'm sorry. Please continue with the nervous system. And yeah. So I'm gonna say something in relationship to that old friend of mine, once he's a MD psychiatrist, uh, Harrison, he said to me once, cuz we were discussing, you know, how to help people's perception with mm-hmm
Speaker 3 (23:27):
That's a great way to look at it. Listen, if I'm in a car accident and there's blood spurting outta my broken arm, that the bone has stressed through the skin. I want AMA medicine. I want some drugs. I want some, I want the best, you know, staples and stitches. And I want lots of follow up on that.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
So alopathic clearly came much later because there was this first thing and they had to distinguish themselves no, no, we're the other one. We look at this carefully and without emotion, three to 5% of what walks in really needs that or is gonna respond beautifully to that. And then there's the whole placebo thing. But pushing all of that aside for now, let's talk about fear. So when the cortisol goes up higher than the body wants that, that signals the body to go into a fight or flight response. And of course this is built in as a safety, but when our enemy is something in the future, like a dreaded disease or uh, I'm worried that I'll be persecuted, I'm worried that I can't go to work. I'm worried that they won't let my salon be open. I'm worried, you know, whatever. So the more fear that keeps happening and I believe it's all by design, there's a very profound change that takes place in the brain.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
Normally an adult human being has all of their processing up here in the Corpus cosum or the frontal lobe of the brain that is the adult and the mammal part of the brain when fear gets too high. And that might look like chronic anxiety, just a chronic sense in the background. And, and I know right now, right now in may, they're pushing the fall. COVID getting really bad again. Mm-hmm
Speaker 3 (26:06):
Now in the reptilian brain center, there's only a certain amount of limited thinking that can take place. And it's survival thinking this, not this good, bad, right? Wrong, very short term, radical kill, or be killed. Kind of thinking now in that place, we are truly dumbed down. We are less rational, moral logical, and we're gonna be prone to a lot more looping around with fear and worry, fear and worry. Now we're getting some insomnia going. We're not sleeping as well. Now we're taking UNSOM. Now we're doing things to help us sleep. And in the background, maybe people are reaching for more alcohol, more weed, whatever it is. But the reality is there's about five really bad things that happen when the cortisol takes the brain until the reptilian center. Number one, besides the style of thinking, which could lead to marital disruptions, being fired from jobs, having your kids hate you, cuz you've lost your temper too many times.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Aside from all that, the, the social aspect. Now your immune system is disengaging, right? Your, your thyroid gland is down regulating your blood. Sugar is down regulating. Now you're prone to low blood sugar attacks. Anyone worried about short term memory loss in their thirties, forties. Yeah, because that's what's happening. Your cortisol's high, your blood sugar's going down. You're getting that. Oh, I just blanked out. I don't remember what I did. What did I say? All of that is because the cortisol's gone high. All of the reproductive hormones start going sideways, which is why I laughingly say, but it's not really funny. That high cortisol is the antichrist to all our reproductive hormones. And we know somewhere in the back of our mind that hormones are important.
Speaker 3 (27:56):
You take anything alive, you chronically stress. It, it dies. So here we are chronically stressed. We went from a nine 11 to some weird wars in Afghan. And then we came over here. Now we got a pandemic and we're just chronically stressed. So when all the hormones start going sideways, AMA says, Hey, I've got a cash register cow right here. It's called artificial hormones. It's called testosterone gels. It's called estrogen pill it's and all these fake hormones. Now these are really dangerous, extremely, uh, we don't have truth of reporting with all the side effects and adverse effects of any of our medicine or our vaccinations. So if we just kinda loosely say for the topic of the conversation, this is not the way to go. These have dangerous side effects, some of which can include cancer. Here's what the natural medical model knows. Oh, number one, there are ingredients that are known to regulate cortisol.
Speaker 3 (28:54):
Number two, interestingly, when we start to get that cortisol down to a more moderate level, the other glands that we're suppressing themselves, for reasons they don't wanna get hurt by all that cortisol thyroids starts to come back out and play the pancreas tail. The pancreas starts to modulate insulin things start to improve. Dr. Dale taught me, never replace a hormone in a human body. If you can get the gland to do it itself. So we've got all these new waves of functional doctors coming in and saying, oh, we can put pellets in your behind. It's all bio identical. Just like what your own body makes. Not the point, not even close to the point. Now listen, if someone is just dying from hot flashes and night sweats, they're just all a wreck. Am I against a term biodentical hormone just to get them outta crisis while we work on the glands, I've done that in my past and it's worked out just great, but never replace a hormone that you can get the body to manufacture itself.
Speaker 3 (29:52):
Because as soon as you start replacing hormones, the gland that's supposed to do the job just keeps getting quieter and more shut down and lazier. So it's a, it's a big deal. And again, in naturopathic medicine and clinical nutrition, uh, we know how to rebuild organs and glands. In fact, rebuilding glands is one of the big things I do with bodies kind of all the time. So we we've kind of allowed AMA medicine to make hormones this deep mystery. Like it's just so mysterious, but lemme say something really frankly, shocking for most people, 50% of what hormones are manufactured from is human cholesterol. Yes. So we do get cholesterol from our diet, but that doesn't really influence cholesterol, uh, stores in our liver. So cholesterol stores that the liver uses to help manufacture ingredients for hormones that comes from healthy liver. But I just want us to do a two plus two equals what notice since the seventies, all this terrible hammering on our population about cholesterol, right?
Speaker 3 (30:59):
No, no, no. You can't have that. You can't have that. You can't have that. Meanwhile, an uptick in diabetes and heart attacks and everything else. And then meanwhile, the new kid on the block is biodentical hormones. We'll just keep making stuff, go into your body. So your body doesn't make it well, if you're not using your cholesterol to make hormones, what do you think your liver's gonna start to do? It's gonna say, I, I, you don't need me. I can be lazy here. I, I don't have to do my job. Okay. Gonna drink a my tie. See you later. I'm gonna, yeah. It's time for margarita, hot sauce and chips. And oh, by the way, I only have about a hundred thousand functions. I wondering if you need any of those either. So we have this sort of strange disassociation, like wait a second. My liver is part of the thing that makes the hormones.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
Most people don't even know where their hormones are manufactured, which is okay. Right. But if you just think, oh, okay. So I need a certain level of cholesterol or I can't make my hormones. That's how we wanna have you think I need a gland to be healthy or it can't secrete its juices. So why are glands called glands? Because they excrete. They have, they make stuff inside and they spit that out. And the things they excrete are called hormones, insulin is excreted by the pancreas. That's a hormone. So on and so forth. So we've kind of gotten this huge ball of wax going on, where people are removed from knowing anything about their bodies and how it works. Yes, yes. And remove from understanding that the culture in our society and our media and even our government is pushing such intense fear, scarcity that we're all reduced to this shock chronic.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
I, I gotta have a lot of, you know, detours around my life. I need a lot of Netflix. I need a lot of this. I need a lot of that because we're not made for this and the narrative I'm and you're, you're, you're hinting at this, or you're, you're saying this, and I know this is something you believe. And it's something that we're really getting closer to in this conversation, which I think is so exciting is, you know, as anyone that has had a cancer diagnosis or any kind of diagnosis knows, it's always about fighting that war on cancer fight the body SEP. So it's about separate divide and conquer. Yes. Fix this problem and you know, conquer it. And if it crops up another problem, don't worry. We have something else to fix that. Whereas yeah, we gotta plan for that.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
So from what you, you know, I know you from my, our work together, what you have always imbued into me is working with the body, getting to know the body, the body's intelligence awakening, the body's intelligence. So if we awaken the intelligence of a gland and support it, it's gonna do what we need. So it's just a, another way that it's a different perspective. It's really coming home to the body and loving the body and learning about the body and supporting the body to do the miraculous things that the body knows how to do. Yeah. One of the best things I've heard about the body, I, I actually heard it from my brain training teacher, core love. He said, think of the body as the avatar, just like the guy in the movie slips into that really cool thing. And he is got this tricked out body with super skills and super senses.
Speaker 3 (34:12):
He said, that's our body. We actually have that body. Right. But we're our brains aren't functioning properly. And I've explained one reason why high cortisol, duh right. Fight or flight all the time. Then that's when people can develop super senses. That might mean things like E or psychic abilities are really able to follow intuitive nudges or get a certain feeling when we're in that reptilian brain center that fight or flight, those gifts of the body are greatly reduced. Yes. And, um, there's a lot of research that I've done that says, Hey, you know what, the powers that be want those gifts reviews, they don't want those gifts turned on. They don't want people able, able to levitate or walk through a wall or do anything else. You know, we want them dumb down sub subservient and you know, good little worker bees. So, um, it, it is, it's fascinating.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
It's really, really fascinating to think about the journey. So one reason I think I'm fairly unique as a naturopath. Cody is because of my personal journey with my body and what happened to me, there was a vivid moment, like a waking dream moment. I was driving in my car and I had just finished going through a year long series of chelation therapies. And for people that don't know, that's where you go to a specific doctor, they hook you up to an IV bag full of things that pull the mercury and the other heavy metals outta your blood. It takes about two hours. You just sit there and it drips in slowly, but it's a way of quickly. And without a lot of harm, removing some of the toxins. And I had 12 fillings, all of which were old, all of which were leaking. Here's what happened.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
I was driving home from that session. I, that was my last session I was done. And I, as I'm driving, I start giggling and I start laughing and I'm like, wait, what's happening? Like, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
I had to change my brain and that took me another 36 years. And I'm still working on it.
Speaker 3 (37:26):
You're still progressing and it's can become joyful once you reach a certain point. So, I mean, I just love that perspective too. I had to really go through some, some major changes. Cody, uh, yeah. I, I had a belief system that my body had betrayed me, that my body had done these things to me. My body was hurting me. The good thing is when I was pregnant with my daughter, Karina, um, I had literally, I was, this is how I knew I was pregnant. I was in the bathroom. I was holding the E P T stick. And it said, you you're pregnant. I went, holy what? And actually this was an unplanned pregnancy, but I was still like super excited. And I was already engaged and was like, I don't care.
Speaker 3 (38:14):
It was a deep, booming, masculine voice. I'm in the bathroom. And the voice said, yes, my child. And you will have your baby born underwater. And I'm just kind of wait, what, what
Speaker 3 (38:54):
I think it was God. He goes, oh, okay, hold on. I said, what? He goes, hold on, I'll be right back. And he comes back, goes, I had to get my little black book. And I'm like, you have a black book for God. And he goes, no, I have a black book for the national underwater birth educator. And I'm like, okay, this is like, so sync. I, I had goosebumps on my goosebumps Cody. So he gives me this woman's name. I go to meet with her and she says, in order to do your water birth, you have to do rebirthing with me every week, the whole nine months. And she wanted to address all of this BS I had going on all of these patterns and beliefs. She said, you will imprint your baby with all those same patterns that your body isn't safe, that your body betrayed you.
Speaker 3 (39:32):
Yeah. You did all this work to get well, but you don't even trust your body yet. I'm like, Ooh, crap. She's right. I don't trust it. I love it. But I don't trust it. So it was really difficult work, but the breathing made it easy. It made it a lot easier, I should say. And I did exactly what she said every week for nine months. And it really shifted me a lot. It was, it was my first foray into breathwork. And I thought after the baby came, I would just kinda leave all that behind me. And I realized in the first six weeks that Karina was with me, that I needed to keep doing breathwork that I couldn't let that go. That this was gonna be an ongoing way for me. And so I started training people on how to let go of these old patterns and how to drop out of those old beliefs and create new beliefs about themselves and their body.
Speaker 3 (40:15):
Because I think the most profound thing I learned so far about being well in a body is the whole thing is a giant game of self love. Yeah. We ha our culture does not teach self love. And yet it's the most important thing. So when there, Dale said to me, Jessie, I want you to think about the fat on your body differently. Cause I was going maybe the fat, she goes, if you didn't have the 25 pounds of fat on you, you might be dead. She says, you're so toxic and mercury, your, your fat cells are filled up with the things that could kill your liver, literally kill your liver. And I said, oh my gosh, I had no idea. She goes, I want you to start thanking your body for saving your life. That is your assignment right now. I want you to really dig into that and really see the purity of that belief that your body is busy, saving you from your own self destruction.
Speaker 3 (41:03):
I'm like, oh my God. She's right. Like, it was way intense in my face at first, like how my mind was destructive underneath at all. Yeah. But it was, I grew up with low self-esteem. I had a, really, my, my mom was a self-esteem brutalized. Like her game was to erase all your self-esteem while in public looked like she was building you up. I love her. She's gone rest in peace, but she really brutalized her four children's self-esteem. So by the time I got to Theresa Dale, I had no self-esteem laugh. And she was from New York and kind of in your face and slap you around with the truth a little bit, so that wasn't gonna help my self-esteem. But I kept going with the breathwork and I started doing some counseling and I got some perspective on my family of origin and realized, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
I am a survivor. I do have PTSD. And between the, the nutrition, the supplements, the right exercise, learning how to slow down. I took myself from a 40 hour work week to a 25 hour work week, uh, because I learned that adrenal glands evolved with about a 24 hour work week in the human body. That as a CA a cave woman, I worked 24 hours a week. My man, if I was lucky enough to be mated, my man worked 23 hours a week. And all the scientists, cultural anthropologists, paleo anthropologists, all agree. Those adrenal glands are still the same size about the size of the final joint of my thumb, one on each kidney. And that's in charge of all of our fight or flight hormone, and many other hormonal excretions. So I realized a long time ago, I can't be in the rat race and expect to stay well.
Speaker 3 (42:43):
Now that I've gotten well, I've gotta figure out how to leverage, how to do this in a way where I'm not killing myself. Wasn't easy. Cuz for a while I, after I divorced my daughter's dad, I was a single working doctor mom. So there were times where I know my cortisol was too high, but the blessing is I've now learned about that. I've learned how to manage that. I've got mine pretty well managed even under high stress. So that's really cool. That's amazing. And the couple things I know we're getting close to the hour and I promise not to hold you over too much because there's so many things I could ask you. So maybe we'll have to do a part two. I would love that. Okay, great. So, um, but a couple things that I just wanna get into real quick is someone might be listening to this and be think like, oh, this doesn't apply to me.
Speaker 3 (43:28):
I'm not stressed. Now. I think we always typically think of stress as a, a specific type of presentation. And I feel like I'd love for you to talk about the little other, the little friend, the little lonely friend of fight or flight, our friend freeze and how our friend freeze plays into all this. Because I think there are some people out there that might be experiencing things with their health and resonate with this conversation, but say like, oh, but then missing piece for me is I don't feel stressed in that classic way. Yeah. So, uh, this is juicy. I love this part. So the freeze response, uh, we learn very young. Uh, most of us develop PTSD in childhood. Some of us did develop it later and that's that's on. But most of us, literally by the time we graduated from high school, that's what was run in the show.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
The freeze one is inherent in life preservation, but it also teaches us a skill. It teaches us a poker face skill where we can feel something on the inside and act completely different on the outside. And that's our initial training in profound disassociation. Mm-hmm
Speaker 3 (45:12):
What's really bad about that is we don't feel the stress and the most difficult thing I have with my clientele that I still work with. I I'm partially retired, but I still have some VIPs like Cody here.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
Yes. Not being one with ourselves. So, so that freeze response is perhaps more dangerous than the fight or the flight in my mind. And in my experience because that's where we truly get disassociated. And that's where we stay disassociated. So I, I show people when I had a hard, you know, brick and mortar clinical practice, I would get people up on a, on a testing table and I would show them with applied kinesiology testing that they were not the three on a scale of, of one to 10 that they thought that they were an eight and they'd be like, oh my gosh, I'm so outta touch. I'm like, yes, that's part of the process. And it's not your fault. The culture trained, this don't cry. No, you're not sad. How many times have you watched in a public place, a child start to cry? And the parent picked the baby child toddler, whatever up and say, you're okay.
Speaker 3 (47:00):
No, that child is not okay. Hence the tears and the noises I learned a long time ago in the conscious birthing community that you never ever tell a child. They're okay. You train them to think that they're safe. You say you're safe in and out the mouth you're safe. You're safe because they're not okay. That that training goes on throughout our life. You know how many times I don't know about you, but I I've had staff meetings where I had to act. Okay. Wasn't okay. I just had to hospitalize a patient an hour before the, the staff meeting or I just know somebody just passed away, but I gotta go in with my big girl suit on and talk to the board and blah, blah, blah. So learning how to be in the body. It's, it's a lot about the initial stage. And we can talk about this.
Speaker 3 (47:45):
Maybe on the next, uh, podcast is you have to claim yourself. You have to decide, no, no, no, I'm gonna claim me. I'm gonna claim my feelings. I'm gonna claim my body. I'm gonna occupy my body and I'm gonna occupy myself. And that is not what people are trained and developed in. So it's a process. Yeah. And it may sound a little strange to people that are first bumping into the notion that maybe they have chronic PTSD and that's keeping them from being well. And it's creating memory law. So it's creating anxiety or it's creating food addiction or alcohol addiction or shopping addictions or all these addictions. I believe the gateway drug is the trauma. I really believe that all my heart, and as we start to own the trauma and start to look safe ways like breath, work as an example, to move through the trauma and see how I can do it differently.
Speaker 3 (48:37):
And it's taken me a long time. It's really taken me 36 years to be able to stand in the face of, of real traumatic step and go, yeah, I'm just actually integrating this as it's happening and doing some breathing into my belly while this person is screaming over there about this or whatever it is. So my goal when I was 19, bef long before I got into the whole wellness thing was I wanted to learn how to stop the mind, the monkey mind. We didn't have phraseology for it. Nobody knew what it was. And I just would tell people that I knew, well, my goal in life is to learn, to stop my mind, learn to silence my mind. I would say, and I have that. Now, if I ask it to, to go, it goes, I said, we're getting on a podcast with Cody.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
So go turn, go on all, turn up the rest of the time. It's very still, it's very quiet. It's like, Eckard totally talks about that. Stillness speaks. I love the stillness. I've learned that that's actually where I get to be the most authentic, the most vulnerable and the most powerful it's worth it's worth working off. It's not a fight. It's, it's a walk. It's a gentle walk, learning more about the self and owning that everything we've ever done good, bad, right or wrong was us doing the best. We knew how with the limited resources we had and that, that our source wants us fully engaged and fully alive a hundred percent. That's so beautiful. Jesse, thank you so much. I do have one other question for you, but I just wanna comment on that quickly. Yeah. You know, one thing that changed my life with Jesse was the simple and profound knowledge that until I, and, you know, healed PTSD, another way that I look at it is healed my nervous system.
Speaker 3 (50:17):
Um, until I healed my nervous system, I had no chance at the health goals that I wanted really. I mean, I could, I could, you know, put a lid on it, so to speak and, and make certain progress. But, you know, I started sleeping through the night now for the first time in 12 years as a result of our work together. And that's because of the nervous system work because of working with cortisol and, and all of those things that we've been speaking of. So it's just, you know, everybody that's listening, it's not easy, but it is simple to start with really whatever health challenge you might be facing or face in the future to always go back to finding safety in the body. My final question to you, and anything else you wanna share, please? The space is yours, but what does wellness mean to you?
Speaker 3 (51:02):
Uh, to me, wellness means freedom. Um, I, I am very eccentric in my beliefs and I believe that the body is made for a lot more amazing stuff than we're currently operating at. Uh, I believe bodies can live for many, many years longer than our us lifespan and do it well. So I, I, I just look at wellness as that's, that's the activation of the freedom in the body. It's, it's the engagement of the freedom it's, it's operating from that level of freedom. So wellness means longevity. Wellness means potentially imortality wellness means in the face of disease. I have immunity like that. Amazing. Thank you so much, Jesse. Is there anything, any you wanna share with anybody before we wrap up? Yeah, I think for some people it might even be a little more of a elephant in the room to take on being safe in the body.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
I know when I looked at that, I had all the evidence in the world, Cody, that I was not safe in my body. And I had hardcore exactly like this effing neck pain and the sciatica doing my thigh and I can't poop to save my life. And I'm bloated like I'm six months pregnant. So I, I do think thanking the body is a great place to start. I had someone recently I was working with and they just couldn't get into that safety. They were like, yeah. I said, well, what about thanking it? You've got 35 extra pounds. You'd be dead. Let's just start there. She went, oh, I like that. I can do that one. I can thank my body. Mm-hmm
Speaker 3 (52:36):
And let's just start there with simple gratitude, cuz that's the cornerstone for everything anyway. Yes. Thank you body. Yes. Thank you to your body.
Speaker 1 (53:24):
You again to Dr. Jesse keener and a big thank you to you. My friends for embarking on this path with me of exploring what it means to be well in this wacky world of ours. I'm excited to be with you again next week. Same time, same place, otherwise known as every Wednesday for one on one guidance. Or if you just wanna say, Hey, shoot me a DM on Facebook or Instagram. See you next time. Bye.