Podcast #11
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[00:00:00] Today I wanna talk about chronic illness or chronic health conditions in our children. The current statistics show that between 40 to 50% of children in the United States have a chronic illness, and between 12 to 15% of children in Norway where I live and practice, have a chronic illness. 60% of adults worldwide suffer with chronic illness.
So what is chronic illness? Chronic illness, if we're gonna put it at its most simple definition, is a failure for the body to heal. It's an actively maintained reaction to an illness or an injury. I talk a lot in my practice about stress and having a retained stress response. Just about every [00:01:00] single one of my patients has heard my speech.
When it comes to what typically lands us in the health, the situation we are currently in having to do with. The difference between living in the old days in quotations, which you know, my kids would say was back when I was a kid, but I'm thinking actually a little further back than that. Back when we lived in caves and life was much different than it is today.
Back then, you had a stress response when you saw the tiger, but the episode was over fairly quickly. Either you got eaten or you got away, but it didn't go on for very long. These days, life works differently. The tiger sits behind a curtain in the room. We can hear it breathing, we can see its paws sticking out from underneath the curtain, and it's always there.[00:02:00]
And we know that it can jump out and eat us at any time. And we live our lives like this all the time. And all my patients nod and maybe some roll their eyes because I forgot that I already told them the Tiger story at least four times. But everybody kind of gets the idea. We weren't born with the uh.
You know what? We need to handle the level of stress that we go through on a daily basis, and a lot of that stress leads to long-term or chronic health conditions even for our children. But I thought that it would be helpful for parents if I went. A little more into depth on what this actually means, what is actually happening in the body.
When we talk about a prolonged stress response and its effects [00:03:00] on our health and on our children's health, I think that the more we know and the more tools we have as parents in our toolbox, the better equipped we are to be the leaders for creating health for our families. So if we're gonna talk about chronic health conditions, what kinds of things do, I mean, I'm thinking about anything that persists over time more than, you know, three to six months, which is the typical window for something termed more of an acute illness into, , three, three to six months.
Beyond that, uh, is what we start looking at when we're thinking of chronic or prolonged illness. And it affects the body's ability to express full health or homeostasis, which is balance in the system. This could be allergies, it could be asthma, it could be recurrent respiratory infections that take forever to [00:04:00] heal and come back all the time.
It could be digestive issues, chronic ear infections, eczema. The list is long, so let's go back for a second to the old days. Maybe not as far back as when we lived in caves, but still the old days. Allopathic medicine was emerging as an organized profession in the 18 hundreds, and they were making breakthroughs in their paradigm and their way of thinking about health.
Louis Posterior was coining the term of the germ theory of disease. Robert Koch identified specific pathogens. There was a lot of progress being made in that field, but here's my point. Allopathic medicine has spent a huge amount of time and energy identifying what makes us sick, what kinds of things create a loss of health for the human body, and developing ways to attack these pathogens and stop them from continuing [00:05:00] harm or damage to human bodies.
But there's a piece missing to that story, so. To continue the story, I have to first say this, when there is an insult or an injury to the body, like an acute infection or an acute injury, two things need to happen. You need to remove whatever's causing harm. But that's only half the story. From there, you need to restore health and vitality to the body.
And the allopathic model doesn't focus on restoration of health. It focuses on attacking and eradicating pathogens. What are examples of this? Um, antihistamines are used to treat allergies, but they don't make you allergy free. Insulin treats diabetes, but it doesn't cure your diabetes. And that's the case in all of allopathic medicine.
None of the drugs they use to treat symptoms have ever made the [00:06:00] claim that they cure you from the disease. But people were still being restored to full health after acute illness. So what was happening besides removing the pathogens? What's step number two in that process? This secret kind of magical.
Process that none of us think about and each of us is born with. That is the body's ability to heal and repair itself. Um, we're gonna get more into how that works with talking about the body's mitochondria and something called the cell danger response, which is the actual mechanism behind. Why the tiger sitting behind the curtain breathing and scratching its paws on the floor is something that over time leads us into an area of chronic illness.
So what are these magical, healing [00:07:00] inborn qualities we all have and each of our children also have to get there? Let's talk about mitochondria. Mitochondria have become quite the buzzword these days, but most of the time when people talk about mitochondria, they're talking primarily about them being the part of the cell that produces energy or a TP, and that is right.
They do that. But they also have another very important function, that is cellular defense. When they register danger to the body, they activate something called the cell danger response. When the cell danger response is activated, it turns off. Energy production. So the mitochondria can do one or the other, but they can't do both at the same time.
And this is important. The cell danger response has three parts. The first thing that happens [00:08:00] when the cell senses danger is that it activates an acute inflammatory response. This is an important immediate or acute response that's protective for the body. The next thing that happens is that the mitochondria work to replace the cells that were lost to the acute damage and the recruiting stem cells to rebuild healthy new cells to replace the ones that were damaged.
And the final stage, step three in the cell danger response is all about cells reestablishing communication between the tissues. Normalizing metabolism, reestablishing normal function, which brings the body back to a state of homeostasis or balance. So this is the magical inborn ability of the body to bring us from an area where there was an [00:09:00] acute injury or an acute infection back to a state of full restored health.
The overall function of the cell danger response is healthy and restorative for the body. But the problem comes in when the cells get stuck in part one, which was the inflammatory process or in part two when it comes to building new cells and repairing damage and. They aren't able to move into and complete part three, which is the reestablishment of full function and homeostasis.
Let me add one more piece to this. A stressed mitochondria that is signaling danger in the environment. Leaks. A TP. It leaks energy. Remember we said that? [00:10:00] We can't make a TP or energy at the same time. The mitochondria are signaling danger
When this happens, it triggers the nervous system into a fight or flight or sympathetic dominant state. It tells the nervous system to be on high alert for good reason. This is what I mean about the body being in a state where the tiger is behind the curtain. It's breathing loudly, it's scratching its claws on the floor, but it's not jumping out to eat you yet.
The body gets stuck in this response cycle and it's not able to , complete the cycle and get back to a state of homeostasis or repair or full health. And the result of this is chronic symptoms or chronic illness without the body being able to fix it. When it comes to our kids, the cell danger response takes [00:11:00] energy and resources away from normal childhood development.
And it puts those resources into defense of the cell. You can't grow and develop and be in a stressed state at the same time. So now the really important piece of all of this is what triggers the cell danger response in our children's mitochondria. Chronic illness is something that has exploded in modern times.
And it wasn't the main beast they were fighting back in the development of allopathic medicine in the 18 hundreds, like we talked about earlier, why wasn't it as prevalent back then? Because we lived in a world that wasn't constantly triggering. Our bodies need to defend itself and be in survival mode.
The cell danger response could complete the cycle. And come back to full function [00:12:00] and homeostasis because it wasn't being constantly bombarded. We could take that magical self-healing part. Completely for granted once we had removed the pathogens or removed what was causing the acute injury or infection, and not even give the second part of the process a name until very recently, because it just always worked.
But today our world looks really different than it did back in the old days where we primarily just had to survive acute illnesses or injury. And if we could do that, we would eventually be fine. Now our world has changed drastically and not in a way that more promotes human health, quite the opposite.
So. What promotes human health, sunlight, healthy [00:13:00] vitamin and mineral rich foods that promote cellular function and production of everything important in our bodies. Good relationships, being part of a community where we feel like we're necessary or we're important to the community. Good sleep that happens when it gets dark and waking up when the sun comes up.
Physical strenuous activity for the majority of the day. Spending our days outside in nature, being with our families and our loved ones during the day, not separate from them, except for an hour in the morning and two hours in the evenings. How much does any of this sound like anybody's day right now?
Pretty much everything in our days is set up in a way that our bodies need to protect themselves from it. You know, indoor lighting being separated all day from the people that we care about. Waking up to alarm clocks, not our [00:14:00] body being ready, spending all day indoors, which throws our circadian rhythm off completely by having too much, you know, fake light exposure and screen exposure in the evenings.
Not eating an anti-inflammatory diet that's rich in vitamins and minerals and enzymes and phytonutrients that our bodies need. Our foods are full of chemicals and made in a laboratory instead of grown in the ground, losing more and more human connection that's being replaced by screens, especially for our kids.
You know, hardly being in nature or being in nature, being something we do on a Sunday as an exception to the rule of always being indoors. And all of these things register a stress response in the cell. It activates needing to survive, which is not the same thing as growing, developing, and thriving. So if my goal in life is to help women have the [00:15:00] tools and the information to create thriving health for their families, and it definitely is, then I think knowing as much as we can about how to create health in the human body is so incredibly important.
And we can make the process really complicated and fancy, and we can talk about it in ways that are hard for everybody to understand, or we can make it really simple and say, when you're in doubt about the right thing to do for your child's health, the choice that is the most, like whatever they would've done in the old days is often a good place to start.
Think of the mitochondria as batteries that need to be charged to thrive and not need to protect themselves. They need sunlight in the eyes and on the skin. That's not constantly covered in sunscreen. I don't mean let your kids go out and get a sunburn, but I do mean let [00:16:00] them get sunlight on their skin daily.
Think of this as a way that you're, the same way you think of, you know, charging the solar panels that run a generator in your home. The sun charges ourselves and sends information to our mitochondria. So does being in nature. Walking barefoot in the grass, drinking enough water, eating foods that were grown in the ground or that had a mother as much as possible, limiting how much food we let our kids eat that was made in a factory and sprayed with toxic chemicals before we are supposed to eat it.
Help our kids develop good social skills and have good friendships. Tell them how important they are to you just for being themselves and how much better your life is because they're a part of it. Make kids do hard things that you know that they can accomplish to grow their sense of , self-worth, and make [00:17:00] them understand and know inside of themselves that they're able to handle hard situations.
They can trust themselves. Guard their sleep like it's a full-time job. Restrict screens from the beginning as much as you can so you don't have to detox them when they're older and struggling with their mental health or their relationships. Let them be outside moving their bodies as much as they possibly can.
Tell them how much you love them every day of their lives. Show them how you regulate your own nervous system when you are upset or scared. Show them how you say you're sorry when you hurt somebody's feelings. Be an example of how to live a good life where you prioritize your own health and wellbeing, because our kids are listening to what we say, but they're mostly watching what we do and none of any of these things cost money.
And it was pretty much how all of us grew up as kids. So we know how [00:18:00] it's done. The low tech part, at least some of the food all of us ate, was probably really questionable. But start with the basics so that if your child does get hit with a big infection or a big injury or a stressful situation happens in your family.
They haven't been surviving in a fight or flight state for years before this happened already. They will be better equipped to handle those stressors and find their way back to homeostasis, back to balance, back to thriving health. It's so much easier to patch one leak in the boat than to be trying to bail water while the whole thing is sinking.
The basics that create human health are not to be underestimated. And if you can build your life on a foundation of that being your everyday normal routine, it will take you farther than you think. [00:19:00] It will make it so that our kids' bodies are equipped to be resilient with what happens in their day and what happens in their lives because they're not constantly on the back foot.
Stuck in one of these processes of acute inflammation or working, you know, stuck in a cycle where they're not able to repair and, and heal from, from everyday routines that are signaling a need to defend itself to the body. I hope that this has been helpful. I hope it gives you something to think about when it comes to.
Things that we maybe don't think of as stressful for our kids or for ourselves, but it's not necessarily about how your brain thinks about a situation being stressful or not, it's more about what is in accordance with normal, natural. Human cellular health [00:20:00] and trying to live our lives more in accordance with what the cell actually needs to promote or to express health.
Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening, and I will see you next time.
