Episode 122

[Music] hey everybody and welcome to another amazing and exciting episode of Finding Peaks your host Chris Burns president founder and CEO here in Colorado Springs so grateful to be joined by Dr Michael Pierce Kyo practor also a neurologist joining us from Dubai today virtually thank you for coming on Dr Pierce really appreciate it thank you you got it you got it Dr Michael Pierce has really championed um something that’s very near and dear to my heart and that’s walking with humans um in a very intentional way in and out of suffering and into healing in a lot of different ways and so he was introduced to me by a colleague of mine and just couldn’t wait to get him on the show and talk a little bit about the biomedical model some of the stuff that he’s doing with clients and groups to uh inform healing um before we get into that I just wanted to allow you you to chat with the viewers a little bit um give some insight into your background and why you started the journey to help people heal sure well you know when I was a when I was a little kid I had a a number of health problems and my family went to the standard doctors you know in the in the 70s and they sought out all these different methods and tried a bunch of drugs and nothing worked and then my grandfather stepped in and my mother stepped in and said hey let’s let’s try some natural stuff let’s try an Elimination Diet so I did an Elimination Diet I got better and I I didn’t need medicine I didn’t need drugs and then as my family Grew From kind of a standard American diet a sad diet uh we evolved into you know my my parents became interested in um you know breastfeeding and natural natural health natural labor and delivery my mom became a l League leader and a natural birth coach and I grew up in that environment of lay people women helping women solve problems you know they were solving problems about milk and let down and nurs Ing and and inability to nurse and and and at that time and even today um the the hospitals would say to people on the surface oh yes we think breastfeeding is the greatest thing to do however if you got a little problem we’re just nudge you over here toward a bottle and they would always do that they would always find a reason and and L league and other types of groups were able to get women to understand that there’s very little reason for you to need a bottle most of the time you can you can take care of it yourself and and if you can’t a wet nurse is the best choice way better than formula way better than a bottle and I don’t have to tell you about Nestle I don’t have to tell you about the boycotts I don’t have to tell you about the hundreds of thousands of people killed in in in in Africa and Asia by that company so um that’s how I got into it and I I thought I wanted to be an astronaut or a firefighter a cop or or you know an athlete and then I ended up in Chiropractic and I ended up in natural medicine um because of an injury in college so that’s that’s really my story pretty pretty much in a nutshell yeah no I I really love that and it it blew my mind that I was talking to you about a book that I was reading uh the biology of belief by Bruce Lipton PhD and you were like oh it’s my professor at Stanford at Palmer Palmer Palmer he was at Palmer in Iowa the the the Chiropractic the leading chiropractic school at the time yes he’s an amazing amazing Professor uh returning professor and um his books are amazing his concepts are amazing quite a guy yeah absolutely and with respect to what we do here at PE obviously treating you we treat all types of suffering but most certainly uh mental health issues and uh disconnectedness and Trauma one of the one of the biggest things that comes up for us in our milu with the clients that we serve especially on the substance use side is kind of this fight or flight response and um you have a brilliant podcast called The Human Condition um that I’ve just loved and we talked a little bit before the show it’s just anything and everything that ails the average American is on this podcast with a seemingly simple way through and so I wanted to talk a little bit about I was drawn to that podcast in particular and I think the viewers with respect to peak’s recovery would like to hear a little bit about that how does that work well there’s a couple of approaches um there there’s these PODS of people that have been doing things since you know time and Memorial and they haven’t talked to each other and there’s kind of probably three groups the first one was led by Jay gunman around 1972 he was a guy that was doing Nur feedback and he said you know you know what let’s just figure out people’s EEG and let’s do neuro feedback to help with addiction and let’s let’s see what happens with addiction and so he did some neuro feedback and you found that there were two general types um the groups divided into about twoth thirds and onethird of of either problems with Alpha problems uh Alpha problems or or problems with the with the anterior singulate in in the frontal part of the brain and he did neuro feedback and largely fixed them and then sought Federal funding almost got it and then it was denied and so that was the beginning of of really highly successful neur feedback treatment in in that little insular Silo for addiction the other the next one that comes along was a biochemistry one and that was related to a guy named William Walsh William Walsh is in Chicago to this day he’s a biochemistry professor and he doesn’t do mental health he just does biochemistry and lab testing and diets and supplements and he’s been treating addiction and other types of mental illness for 50 years using lab tests and so it’s not to say that everyone who has an addiction is only a biochemistry patient but it’s to say that if you treat addiction with the 12 steps for example in counseling and you ignore their biochemistry you’re probably going to have recidivism rates that are you know the natural average and you’re not going to get as well as you might and then the third group would be a functional Neurology Group and and diet group that looks at ketogenic diets and carnivore diets and and neuro rehab and that’s the American Chiropractic neurology board um which I serve on and that’s a group that takes care of um you know natural neurology approaches basically gosh that’s that’s that’s really really cool to even even conceptualize in opportunity since 1974 we we we’ve been doing this thing I just heard or for the first time in my recovery about nearly 16 years I just got hooked up to bio and neuro feedback you know eight weeks ago and I had people had touched on it but not with respect to hey there’s this thing that could potentially introduce into your nervous system for the first time you know for a guy like me I’ve been all gas no break my whole life you know and sure so I always tell you know and Dr Jen and some of these folks that are doing this biuro and HRV feedback it’s like we’re just going to introduce a breaking system and so now and I said so what is the RX Dr Jen what do I do you know is it a pill is there something crazy that I need to inform myself with she’s like no low and slow diaphragmatic breathing just 10 minutes in the morning and 10 minutes in night I’ll do I’ve been doing that for six weeks and I have noticed diabolical changes with a with in with respect to my ability to
calm the nervous system that is a beautiful thing yeah because with the fight ORF flight response that’s what we’re what what we’re noticing a lot with the folks that struggle with substances and high degrees of trauma is this cortisol habituation and so being able to really introduce something like that is is phenomenal why do you think we don’t hear more about this in the addiction or more I should say more connectedly the mental health space why why aren’t people seeing this from the rooftops Dr Pierce well I mean I I admire you guys as counselors you are the Frontline people and you should be the Frontline people to deal with this issue you should be the ones that do the intake you should be the ones that hold the people’s hands and and wipe the tears and and dry the eyes and and do that work and and you are and and we stand kind of behind the scenes we Chiropractic neurologists and and people that do EEG and neuro feedback kind of stand in the sidelines to help you with the the the you know the the biochemical part the lab testing the physical examination the digestive stuff all that you know skin disorders how does skin have to do with it you know those are things that are out of your scope of practice but I think that the real reason is is because we were not allowed to integrate originally your profession and my profession was allowed to integrate and we were able to do that stuff but around 1911 there was a a real push that was done um that was called the flexner report and the flexner report was a report that looked at medical schools and it showed by an educator named Abraham flexner where he looked at the medical schools and said basically the medical schools in the United States are fraudulent and many of them were many of them were diploma Mills but unfortunately they used the fact that there was some diploma Mills that were legitimately needing to be shut down in in a in a massive coup to take over all these medical schools in the medical industrial complex and it happened in 1911 1912 1913 and that was the that was the really the big move that really restricted what psychologists and counselors could do in their scope of practice what dentists could do what nature paths could do and everybody except chiropractors was taken down by that and the reason chiropractors work was because the founders of Chiropractic the Palmer were uh Rich because they had radio stations they they were responsible for radio stations in that time of of of the of the world and so they were able to fund and pay for the expansion of Chiropractic and keep it a separate and distinct profession so because Chiropractic stayed a separate and distinct profession it remained immune although we gave up the right to go to go to medical school and get hospital privileges and prescribe and do surgery however we still got full physician rights the ability to diagnose and treat any disease but we were tied and we could not our hands were tied and we could not do prescriptions drugs and surgery and that I think is the foundation of what happened to both you and me yeah wow that’s an incredible amount of information that going back to 1911 and and it makes a lot of sense they’re like yeah we’ll allow the Chiropractics to do their thing but they can’t inform any of this prescribing or any of this stuff we’re doing the dayto day and to your point point I remember when I was growing up as a kid and my parents would lead me to believe that you know there’s these chiropractors and they this kind of woo woo stuff over here um you know we used to have a Dr Jarrett in Prescot Arizona when I first started in the field sometimes we would refer individuals over to him and they were like you know oh it’s just Dr Jared I would imagine now I think I’ve mentioned this before as well I would imagine that his books are full and he is in alignment with where we’re at today and where I think a lot of this energy is coming is people are tired of being stuck people are tired of being sick and they want to find Solutions and you know it’s it goes back to when I sat down with my primary care doc 15 years ago when I got into recovery and he said oh you have hypertension and I said yeah I do and he said I know why your dad had hypertension and I said yeah my dad did have hypertension but since he didn’t ask a good follow-up question I didn’t give him a good follow-up answer and I went on the losartan train only to learn that there was ways to mitigate stress introduce produce good nutrition and alleviate that hypertension just amazing yeah there was no heart disease and there was no profession of Cardiology before President Eisenhower it was caused by diet in the United States I mean Parkinson’s disease toxic chemical exposure there’s so many things small poox uh polio these things were caused by DDT these things were caused by chemicals in the environment I’m not to not to say that there isn’t other typ of problems out there but this was a large coverup by a lot of toxins in the environment and it was controlled by a media that was just as controlled then as it is today yeah yeah yeah I mean it’s music to my ears I really appreciate that insight and I think the viewers will really you know when you get to zoom out and see the timeline very clearly you’re like whoa it makes a lot of sense where we sit today in 2024 and why it really feels like this uphill battle that we need a mountaineering team to get up you know but that’s what absolutely that’s what we’re doing today is we’re introducing and bringing to the table you know Dr Michael Pierce and some of these really extraordinary professionals that have been moving in the direction of healing for the multitude of their career um I noticed on your uh website or on the podcast um that the majority of your resources for health and wellness exclude you said it earlier you don’t prescribed medication exclude any sort of pharmacological approach why well um the root cause of most things are uh usually some mechanism that does not require drugs if a person needs drugs urgently upfront I’m okay with that but my goal would be as every pharmaceutical textbook in the world says to get them off of them within three months if you read every pharmaceutical textbook ever written it says that most medications are not designed to be used for longer than three months wow um even insulin insulin type two diabetes is completely reversible um so the concept that that that most people don’t need medication is really a foreign one medicine is a genie that’s been let out of a bottle and we need to stuff it back in because the scope of of modern medicine is really small it should be absolute horrible surgeries for terrible catastrophic car events and disfiguring uh disfiguring industrial events where you cut off an arm or you slash something through somewhere and you needs surgery you need heroic interventions but we’ve we’ve allowed the heroic interventions of medicine to invade EV into chronic life conditions that they have no business being in they should stay in their Lane and they should stay in that era of of of very very serious illness in fact I want to Elbow my way into mental illness and say that most mental health crises really do not require a a medical intervention the the history shows that there’s a lot of ways that we can mitigate crises mental health crises with natural methods and not necessarily have to beat them over the head with some kind of of psychotropic drug and I I can cite all kinds of doctors that are psychiatrists more qualified than me to talk about that and we’ll do that another time but there are sources that are really powerful psychiatrists that are that are saying the same message that I got it from yeah no no that’s that’s brilliant I I actually want to even reference uh the biology of belief and when they when they talk about introducing these medications and how powerful the placebos were and the only reason that they even got um any sort of data on the side of the people that were actually taking the real medicine was because of the side effects that came before any sort of benefit and so oh yeah those numbers are so skewed and frankly the biology of belief really speaks to the people that believed that they were taking the drug had this change this this this uh this healing if you will and so um I’m I’m really really in alignment with that and it turns out you know when I when I got into recovery 16 years ago it was medication after medication it was stratera it was lartin for my blood pressure it was cakil for this and um today I find myself laying in the grass before I go to work with sunshine in my face good nutrition in my belly and I could not feel better from a quality of life perspective good well you know the the clear viw sanitarium in California and Iowa did those things in the 1930s and 40s and 50s the um the spears the spears Hospital in Colorado did it before it was closed in the 50s so um these these these me methods existed and they were part of an actual ecosystem of care that was expunged wow by the industry so they existed they were part of our of our heritage in the United States wow that that’s absolutely incredible and then you get to see you know families on my side of things Dr Pierce where I’m just thinking of a case that we have right um a couple months ago and there’s this individual who came in um from the East Coast she came in from some depression treated her she went into the community got swallowed up by the biomed model she comes back a year two years later on 16 medications you know 100 pounds overweight and the family looks at me and just says you know what happened here and and I see it over and over I’m thinking of a young man who was in our program six months ago I’m thinking of a mature adult last year who was a physician who came into our program who quite literally just got swamped by this biomedical model and it really chews people up and spits them out the other side in a casket I mean yeah and they’re not measuring it no they’re not measuring it no not at all and then you have these this pharmacological approach again that really now we’re taking medication to treat symptoms of other medications and it’s just really really bad and your point about all the phac pharmacological textbooks um speaking to clearly 3 months of medication as a stepping stone potentially and then getting off that was I got chills when you said that because I had never most of the mental health medications that you deal with had eight weeks of study that’s it wow most of the medications were studied for eight weeks no longer wow that’s incredible yeah so excited to be moving into these opportunities but again you know when you are a provider and you’re trying to do something like access to care and quality of care it’s this real difficult thing to do because the access side says do the thing that doesn’t work and you have to do it or we’re not going to pay you and that’s the vast majority of Americans are trying to pay for their healing for their mental health through a benefit that really is more despondent to shareholders than it is individuals and members you’re right you’re so right yeah it’s it’s a sad thing how do you see longterm Dr Pierce is it is it through having meaningful conversations that matter with the people that matter the most and really getting people at the table to inform healing and um change one day at a time um how do we do this how do we make continue to penetrate this model in our very holistic and mindful way well I’m a I’m a root cause guy I’m I’m a kind of an engineer at heart and um my training and My Philosophy is to go for the root cause and the root caus is really at its core is inflation if we if we haven’t addressed inflation what happens with inflation is that people get squeezed by every side they get squeezed by the cost of of Education the cost of housing the cost of food all these things are avoidable and preventable and they’re usually caused the root cause of it is inflation and that is a money printing process so what we have to do is we have to give people hope and help them understand how they can take care of themselves and how they can do it as cheaply as possible but most importantly we have to make sure that they’re not so squeezed that they’re absolutely dependent on some benefit as you so rightly said they’re stuck that that they can’t pay for it because they’re squashed and if that benefit doesn’t pay for it if that insurance doesn’t give them a return on on their payment they’re screwed because they don’t have 400 bucks to rub together if an emergency happens so if we can provide cheaper care and if we can provide care that involves a little more involvement of the family and and and switches from technology and medicine to to home labor then we can figure out ways that you can do this stuff at home if we can convert the the price of healthare of Mental Health Care from very expensive and very technical to very cheap and very labor-based which is what’s what you do it’s how you eat it’s your discipline it’s your habits if we can convert that over then it won’t matter what happens with inflation it won’t matter what happens with the economy it won’t H people will be able to take care of themselves regardless of the of the economic environment and political environment that they live in yeah that that actually hits really close to home I was sitting with my business partner the other day and he said yeah I said you got to go see uh so and so you know over here it was a cash pay situation and he’s like I found someone with my insurance over here and I said I’ve done the research for you buddy it’s over here you know but to your point introducing the viewers to this really cost effective potential opportunity much different than what they’re walking through on the biomedical side Bruce lipton’s book often speaks to in a very broad way the most important thing for individuals is environment right yeah and and and so how do we speak to that environment you know and being connected within that environment and I want to say there was studies showing that isolation and disconnectedness was one of the worst things for humans Point Blank end of story and so if we can begin to reinform that environment good quality relationship sunlight good healthy ecosystem helps humans heal in a way doesn’t it yeah oh yeah well if you think about the licensing regulations once again you’ve got a you’ve got a restrictive system coming in and saying you can’t help others unless you have a license well wait a minute we’re not talking about practicing medicine we’re talking about just people helping each other so there’s got to be as you said a community way of people helping each other and I’ve seen seen patients even before they’re fully better they get inspired enough that they want to go out and help somebody else and they’re not even better yet and so if if they could be empowered to go out and and and give the good message the good word to other people about what they can do without having to have a license and of course without practicing diagnosis and treatment but just just in a coaching model just helping people understand mechanisms and steps that they can do that would change that would change a lot of what’s going on in in Denver and Colorado Springs for sure yeah definitely it almost feels like to your point the biomedical model has created this need for instant gratification um and when when you tell me something you know if I zoom out 16 years ago and I’m sitting in front of Dr Michael Pearce he’s like all right Chris we’re just going to get you a good Community around you and some sunlight on your face I’m like Dr Pierce I’m dying this isn’t going to work but I think there’s been too much emphasis on do this one thing and get this experience or this solution and it’s just not the way that he works it’s a multifaceted approach that speaks to physical mental emotional you know all of the things and so um I the viewers have to be ecstatic to hear especially for their loved ones who potentially are struggling that we get can change from the outside in and the inside out and really provide a quality of life not just for us our family systems but our loved ones that are that are struggling this is just amazing amazing information yeah it’s the patients often ask um well even if they don’t ask I try to help them understand how did how did you get into this bloody big mess and and that that understanding of the ideology the formation of their condition is is how they’ll get out of it and until they understand how they got here they won’t understand how they’re going to get out of it yeah and really really speaking life into that timeline and um what I love about your approach and we’ll kind of um wrap a bow around it here what I love about your approach is it it says to humans that you have the key to your healing right it’s not some wild thing off in the closet we got to go search for you have the light inside and somebody has told you or wrapped around it a blanket so that you can’t see it we want to expose that and allow you to be empowered in your healing Journey which is so much more refreshing than when I got into recovery 15 16 years ago and they were like you have this disease it’s called addiction you’ll have it the rest of your life it’s an allergy let’s speak to the book that was written in 1935 by the doctor’s opinion that actually isn’t even valid anymore may you find this one day at a time and I’m like oh my gosh I’m 22 years old this is I can’t do this right so I I love the light that you shine and that the life that you breathe in to the clients that you serve in the community that says that not only can we do this we can do it better and you have greatness living inside you I just think that’s extraordinary thanks Chris you got it Dr Pierce um we’ll leave the viewers with this I know we talked about on the front end kind of disrupting the industry through quality of care I think your your podcast Again The Human Condition really speaks to that in a very authentic meaningful and educational way is there anything you want the viewers to know maybe people that are out there struggling with their mental health that have been stuck in the biomedical model maybe families that have spent you know 500,000 a million dollars on treatment are coming in and saying we give up yeah when when when they come in they’re tapped out and so we’ve got two free ebooks on my my website that people can get for just giving their email and and signing up there there’s no no obligation at all no no cost at all ever um you can get an ebook on on elimination diets which is the way to start in mental health and another ebook on how to talk to your doctor about new diagnoses and questions that you’ve got and you can get both of those instantly just by going on Human Condition lab.com human condition.com I love that Dr Michael Pierce is bringing up cost-effective strategies to find healing and then he’s got two books on his website that are absolutely free for the viewers and that’s how you get started thank you so much Dr Pierce for coming on today joining us from Dubai late evening it’s been phenomenal I know the viewers are going to really connect with this information and uh you’ve created a lot of hope for us today so thank you so much sir well thank you for all your work and all you’ve built Chris thank you I appreciate it until next time folks peace [Music] my