Brehan (0s):
When you take something and you culture it, and you say, here's the profile of your gut flora. It's completely inaccurate. They're gonna miss a lot of things that would normally be there. And they're gonna tell you that there's an overgrowth of stuff that there isn't really, just because of the way that the test is done. So people come back having done that, they often will get it run by a chiropractor, a naturopath, like somebody who like intends well, but then they'll tell them an inaccurate result and then they'll, they'll prescribe them, you know, a bunch of probiotics and gut health supplements that don't really do that much. And because what? It's not really assessing the whole picture. And so you can't treat the whole person that way. Hmm.
Brian (35s):
How do you go about navigating someone? Maybe they're coming in and they, they're having digestive issues, bloating, gas, you know, things like that. The first
Brehan (43s):
Step is to take a history, like any good clinician should be doing that. Right? When did this start? What was going on at the time? What were the events that proceeded the onset of your illness? That history then gets correlated with objective signs and symptoms. And so the way that Chinese medicine, which is my paradigm, the way that we assess gut health specifically, is that we're looking really at three things, which are temperature, pressure, and moisture. And because those are the three main components that go into cultivating a healthy garden of intestinal flora and a healthy intestinal environment. So we look at the gut a lot, like a garden bed. Like
Brian (1m 17s):
This week I interviewed Breen Crawford. Breen is internationally renowned for evidence based treatment using Traditional Chinese Medicine for modern chronic illness. We discussed how to assess gut health with Chinese medicine, along with Breen's thoughts on most supplements, the Importance of Breathwork, Overcoming Allergies with at home therapies, ways to treat Ed and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was. Really enjoyed my interview with Breen. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right. Welcome to the Get Lean, Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn and I've Breen Crawford on Welcome to the show.
Brehan (1m 54s):
Hi, Brian. Thanks for having me.
Brian (1m 56s):
Thanks for coming on. All the way from, is it just outside Portland? Is that right? Just outside,
Brehan (2m 1s):
Yeah. Yeah. We're southwest of Portland a little bit, kind of halfway to the coast.
Brian (2m 4s):
Pretty area, I'm sure.
Brehan (2m 6s):
Most of the time. Yeah, today
Brian (2m 8s):
It's not raining, right?
Brehan (2m 9s):
You guys are watching. Yeah, you can see it's very, very gray and wet out there, and in about two months things will get really bright and green and it'll be lovely for most of the rest of the year.
Brian (2m 19s):
Very nice. And you have a, like a Chinese medicine clinic that way? That's right. How long have you had that for? Let's see,
Brehan (2m 26s):
This will be 16 years I think that I've been in private practice. I finished school in 2009, so yeah. Yeah, this is 16 years and started off being a very kind of general practice, a lot of acupuncture, people coming in for musculoskeletal injuries, migraine headaches, things that acupuncture treats really well. And, but my real interest and, and most of my training actually is in management of chronic illnesses. So we've shifted over the years, and especially since the pandemic, when we were kind of forced to go virtual for the most part, to focus on Chinese herbal medicine and medical Qigong therapies. And we're mostly treating chronic illnesses now.
Brehan (3m 7s):
So a lot of diagnoses of exclusion, things that western medicine just doesn't really have an answer for. Like IBS, fibromyalgia, long COD, chronic infections and post infectious
Brian (3m 17s):
Syndromes. And so when you first started out, I mean, obviously starting outta practice, not, not the easiest thing probably, was it, was it, did it take a while to sort of build it up and, and and to where you are today and, and Yeah,
Brehan (3m 30s):
It's, it's been a process of evolution actually. The, the initial start of the practice went pretty fast because I'm, I'm in the town where I grew up. Okay. So I moved away to go to college and then graduate school. And then when I moved back here, my family's been in this community for a long time. I'm, you know, we just, word of mouth. We grew pretty fast to capacity. And then the practice, you know, has been evolving a lot since then. But since, you know, I'm currently, my, my clinical practice is actually a, a small amount of my weekly time. I, I still take patients. I still see people one-on-one, but a, a great majority of what I'm doing online is actually trying to grow awareness about Chinese herbal medicine for gut health and endocrine health And, you know, the, the things that, that it can do really, really well that we don't have answers for in the biomedical world yet.
Brian (4m 22s):
Yeah, gut health is definitely a hot topic. I feel like, you know, having a podcast, a lot of people bring it up and Yeah. But there's a lot of gut health tests out there as well. Yes. GI maps and things like that. And what are, what are your thoughts around that? And do you do any testing and, and how do you navigate that?
Brehan (4m 39s):
So I don't do much testing. I do occasionally refer people out back to their primary or to a GI specialist. If I see something that's a red flag to me in terms of like, oh, this person needs a colonoscopy, or, you know, yesterday I told a patient, like she was passing obvious gallstones and stuff, and I said, you need to hide a scan. And I don't do those in my office, of course. So, you know, we refer out for that. For the most part though, I see a lot of people who've failed with what is currently trending in the, i I guess we could call it like the DIY gut health world, what they see on social media or, or often what's, what's being promoted by a lot of people in, in what's called functional medicine.
Brehan (5m 21s):
And it's not that the whole idea is wrong, the paradigm is correct. Like they're really trying to address health from the ground up by looking at functions of the body And what can they do to influence those, unfortunately, the, the diagnostic paradigms that they use. And then as a result of that, the treatments that they utilize are, they're very young, they're very juvenile, and so they're not really grounded in any kind of firm tradition. And the science that they're based on is kind of half baked. So for the GI map, for example, that test is a combination of several different things. There's a PCR component to it, which is fine. That PCR is very accurate. It's, that's what's run. If your doctor suspects that you have a very specific strain of a bacteria that's overgrowing, like clostridium difficile, they can run a PCR in a hospital for that.
Brehan (6m 10s):
And if you have it, they will find it. And that's good. So it can identify some pathogens that way. Unfortunately, that's, that's, that efficacy is limited to the, if you have this, we must kill it mindset, which is not always the best way to bring digestive health back into harmony. The other part of the test is what's called a stool culture. And so that's where they'll take a sample of your fecal matter. You know, you collect that in the toilet and put it in a little box and mail it off to the lab. And the, the stool culture takes a, it takes your flora and it, they put it in an agar plate. And you know, like we all did in high school biology, learning how to, to culture cells. And you let it grow for a certain period of time.
Brehan (6m 50s):
And then you look at, you know, you count the cells that are in there and you look at what's, what's active. Well, that's fine for the bacteria that are aerobic for the bacteria that thrive in an oxygen-rich environment. Unfortunately, that's really only about 3% of our flora and the rest of our microbiome is anaerobic. A great deal of it is anaerobic. And so, and those bacteria die immediately when they're exposed to oxygen. So when you take something and you culture it, and you say, here's the profile of your, of your gut flora, it's completely inaccurate. They're gonna miss a lot of things that would normally be there. And they're gonna tell you that there's an overgrowth of stuff that there isn't really just because of the way that the test is done.
Brehan (7m 31s):
So I I, people come back having done that, you know, they often will get it run by a chiropractor, a naturopath, like somebody who like intends well, but then they'll tell them an inaccurate result, and then they'll, they'll prescribe them, you know, a bunch of probiotics and gut health supplements that don't really do that much. And because what, it's not really assessing the whole picture. And so you can't, you can't treat the whole person that way.
Brian (7m 56s):
So how do you go about navigating someone, maybe they're coming in and they, they're having digestive issues, bloating, gas, you know, things like that. Yeah.
Brehan (8m 5s):
So what's
Brian (8m 6s):
The first step? Yeah, the
Brehan (8m 8s):
First step is to take a history. Like any good clinician should be doing that. Right? When did this start? What was going on at the time? What were the events that preceded the onset of your illness? That's a, a privilege that I have being, you know, a small, small office provider. I get to take as much time as I need with a patient. And oftentimes in primary care, you know, you're limited by the insurance system. You have seven minutes with a patient, you don't have time to do that, right?
Brian (8m 32s):
The,
Brehan (8m 33s):
That history then gets correlated with objective signs and symptoms. And so the way that Chinese medicine, which is my paradigm, the way that we assess gut health specifically, is that we're looking really at three things, which are temperature, pressure, and moisture. And because those are the three main components that go into cultivating a healthy garden of intestinal flora and a healthy intestinal environment. So we look at the gut a lot, like a garden bed, like, you know, just a vegetable garden bed that you would keep in your backyard is the temperature correct to grow the things that you want to be growing and to keep the things that you don't want from overgrowing. You know, you don't want weeds in there all the time. You don't want too much fungus in the soil when you, is it aerated properly?
Brehan (9m 18s):
You know, what's the pressure is the, so is it just lumpy clay, hard clay, nothing can move through there. It's holding water and it can't be properly hydrated when it rains or from your irrigation system or whatever. And, or, or is the soil too loose And you know, it's too much sand and things just fall right through. And then a temperature, or sorry, we, we covered temperature and then moisture. Right? And so those three things play a role together. You know, if you have too wet soil, you know the plants will, will suffocate. And if you have too dry, they, they, they wither and die. It's the, it's very much the same in our intestinal environment. And so what we do is we ask questions and we look for signs and symptoms that, that relate to that. And a couple quick examples are for pressure.
Brehan (9m 59s):
You know, people will often feel bloated or they'll have abdominal pain, cramping, something like that. Well, if that's better after passing gas or having a bowel movement, then we understand that the pressure, the ambient pressure in the intestines is too high. So relieving pressure through evacuating makes you feel better. Okay, that's excess. You have too much pressure if, if you feel worse afterwards or if somebody puts pressure on your abdomen, like really heavy deep pressure on the abdomen and it feels better, it feels soothing, it doesn't make it worse. That's, that's a deficiency, that's low pressure environment. You want a happy midi, happy medium, you know, goldilock zone, same thing goes for moisture.
Brehan (10m 41s):
Is your, are you very swollen? Are you carrying a lot of extra water weights, swollen feet and ankles? Do you find that you, you know, have extra water in your stool or that your stools are super, super, super sticky? Like just takes, you can't clean yourself very easily. You wish you had a bidet, that kind of situation, that's too much moisture. And so we're trying to, and then thermal nature is exactly what it sounds like. Are you warm or cold? And people in the west often, we eat a lot of cold food. We eat a lot of frozen foods. People in the gut health world mistakenly get conned on drinking ice cold matcha smoothies all the time. That's not necessarily the best thing for you. A warmer diet often helps a lot.
Brian (11m 20s):
Okay. And are there certain, I mean, obviously supplements huge market and probably a lot of times it's like the wild west a little bit with what you can buy. Yes. Yeah,
Brehan (11m 30s):
Very much so.
Brian (11m 31s):
Yeah. How do you navigate, you know, supplementation and I mean, now there's so many different ways to get it and sources.
Brehan (11m 37s):
I mean, it's, it's not controversial to say that most supplements do nothing. There's, you know, if you have a, a diagnosed deficiency of a certain vitamin or mineral, you should supplement that. Most people are lacking fiber in their diet, and I'm, I'm certainly not against gently introducing, you know, some cilium, seed husk or something like that. The one that I see to use the most that I think is outright harmful is actually what are called binders. So activated charcoal is a big one. There are, there are pharmaceutical options for that as well. This gets, this takes a rather twisted approach towards overall health based on a, a misunderstanding of the way that mold and fungus affects the human body.
Brehan (12m 19s):
And so to talk more about moisture, mold, yeast, fungus, these things are a natural part of our environment, right? They grow everywhere in the world. They grow. It's a part of our microbiome. In fact, microbiologists often will refer to it as the microbiome myco meaning, you know, fungal like mycelium. And we are supposed to have a certain amount of it. So people will think like, oh, I have a, I have candida. Like, yes you do, we all have it. You're supposed to have a certain amount, you shouldn't have too much. They oftentimes will think, oh, I need to take binders to absorb, you know, the, the mycotoxins that molds are being, are producing all the time so that I eliminate them. You, you don't.
Brehan (12m 59s):
And it very rarely are those things actually helpful, because the best way to regulate fungal growth or fungal overgrowth, or to eliminate mycotoxins is to just promote the natural ways that our body already detoxifies itself. We've all evolved in a environment in which mold is growing. And so mature medical systems have also evolved in environments in which mold is growing and mold is affecting our health. China, especially southwest China or Sichuan province, which is where most of Chinese herbal medicine comes from, is one of the most damp places on earth. The molds there are intense, like it's common knowledge. You don't go in the shower without slippers on you, you know, you're wearing flip flops all the time to protect your feet.
Brehan (13m 42s):
You don't want to get toenail fungus there. And the plants that grow in that area that are used medicinally are often incredibly rich in volatile oils that have a warming and drying effect so that it's, you know, it's constantly fumigating your body. And those are included in everyday cuisine. So you're eating stuff all the time that has an anti mold effect on your body. When you take something like a binder that is meant to soak up mycotoxins, unfortunately it's doing two other things that aren't ideal. One is that it's also soaking up healthy nutrients. It's like chelation therapy for heavy metals. Like you're taking your, you're getting the bad out, you're also getting a lot of the good out too. And so you start, you stop absorbing some of the necessary nutrients you need to promote a healthy intestinal flora environment and to keep your body by properly.
Brehan (14m 28s):
And then two is that those things slow intestinal motility a lot. So activated charcoal is famously useful. And I, and I think it should be used for this for acute food poisoning, right? It's sort of like Imodium, like you can, you know, you've, you're running to the toilet 15 times a day with urgent watery stools and you're traveling or something. Like by all means, take what you need to slow that down so you don't have accidents everywhere. But, but it's meant for a short-term acute therapy approach because it dramatically slows your motility. It will constipate you well if you're trying to get something out of your body. If you're trying to promote a healthy flora environment, you don't want to be constipated at all. And when you slow that motility, when you're causing, you know, more of a dry, of a soaking up clay-like environment, you're actually retaining a lot of that moisture in your intestines.
Brehan (15m 15s):
And that promotes an a place in which unhealthy flora continue to grow like molds and yeast stimulant, laxatives are another great example of this. Senna is very popular, and I cannot tell you how many people have come to my practice after being told to take a combination of activated charcoal. And then, what is it called? It's that famous terrible supplement company. I probably shouldn't even name them. It, it's called Bowel Mover. And it's a, it's a combination of a bunch of stimulant laxatives like Sena cascara, citta rhubarb, I think allo leaf concentrate. Those things all have extremely potent bitter alkaloids that promote intestinal spasming. It's not just gentle motility.
Brehan (15m 56s):
It's like it causes a, you know, like a, it's, it's like a, almost like a Parkinsonian kind of tremor in your colon. And as a result of that, you do evacuate your bowels one time, but those things are incredibly cold. So they create a floral and thermal environment in which mold will overgrow very rapidly. As soon as, you know, you purge, that's what's gonna come back, not your lactobacillus and akkermansia and bifidobacter, which are, you know, kind of the three healthy bugs you want to have in, in abundance. And then you also become dependent on those things. You get rebound constipation. So you're worse after than you were before.
Brian (16m 31s):
And I noticed, do you use a lot of herbs with your clients? Is that something Oh
Brehan (16m 35s):
Yeah, yeah. It's mostly nutrition, like dietary therapy. Yeah, herbal medicine and breathing exercises
Brian (16m 41s):
In the breathing exercise. Is that just sort of like, maybe touch on that a little bit as far as breath work and how that can sort of help, you know, with overall, obviously we know like for like meditative purposes and things like that, and like Yeah, sure. Yeah.
Brehan (16m 56s):
Do you mean breath work and gut health? Yeah. Yeah. So, so the simplest way to describe it is that the guts are extremely sensitive to activity of gases in our body. Like, and these are things like nitric oxide, hydrogen sulfide, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and methane. And these are all what science is starting to call gazo transmitters. So they're signaling gases that again, need to be in a Goldilocks environment in order for proper physiological function to occur. So when you have to speak just to gut health, sibo, small intestine bacterial overgrowth is a very common condition. It's, it's often what's underlying IBS for people.
Brehan (17m 38s):
And you know, there are three main types of sibo. There's hydrogen sulfide, sibo, hydrogen sibo, and methane sibo. Those are all overgrowth of normal organisms, normal flora in the wrong place in the body. And as a result of that, you get an, you get an overproduction of what otherwise would be healthy gases in the wrong area. So by using your body's own ability to regulate gas production and gas circulation, which is breath, you can influence the distribution of those gases. And we know from, you know, tons and tons of research that merely the act of breathing mechanically massages the intestines just by your diaphragm rising and descending.
Brehan (18m 21s):
So just by breathing more, you're going to be helping yourself if you're find yourself holding your breath a lot, being very tight, not good for your guts and
Brian (18m 30s):
Like nasal breathing, is that something you promote or is that not
Brehan (18m 34s):
Yeah, I do. That's, that's a little bit different than, than how we would directly address the guts, But it is important if you find yourself breathing through your mouth all the time, that's not good for anything nasal breathing. So a lot of nitric oxide is produced in the nasal cavity, the, the nasal sinuses. And you know, if you've read, I think I keep it on my bookshelf all the time, it's back, that yellow book is called Breath by James Nestor, famous book. Sure. Extremely popular, wonderful text. I really love how he brings all the, the awareness and science and tradition of, of breath work together and, and conveys it in a way that's very effective. And there's a whole section in there on nasal breathing and why it's important. You get more chi from nasal breathing, that's nitric oxide.
Brehan (19m 16s):
You, you just make more, you also tend to distribute it very well. And one of the things that nitric oxide in the nasal cavity does specifically is it has a, it has a, in in, when it's replete, it actually has an antimicrobial effect. So it's sort of harmonizing your flora that are in here, but it's also fighting bad ones all the time. And this is an area that you want this to be warm, you don't want it to be cold old saying in many different traditions is that, you know, if you go outside in cold weather, you're gonna catch a cold. Like you need to bundle up if you go outside and forever western medicine has si has said, oh, that's a whole lot of superstitious hocus pocus. There's no science to that. It's just about viral exposure. Well, that's not true because we're constantly being exposed to things, viruses, molds, bacteria all the time, all the time.
Brehan (20m 4s):
Even if you live in a bubble, you, you, you have your own and they can overgrow. And one of the ways that you harmonize that flora is by keeping this a healthy environment. This is just like the inside of our guts. In fact, you know, it's the nasogastric area. So this is one extension of our digestive system, and one of the ways you keep this healthy is by keeping it warm, by keeping it with enough pressure, and by keeping it moist. Like if it dries out too much or if it's too cold because you're outside in the cold, you're gonna get different things growing in here. So nitric oxide is a warming substance. It is an inflammatory gas. And people often think, well, any kind of inflammation is bad. That's not necessarily true.
Brehan (20m 43s):
Uncontrolled inflammation is unhealthy, but proper inflammation, the proper inflammatory process works in a loop in a cycle. And that's how our body heals from injury and infection. So if you're constantly fighting stuff that's coming into your body from the outside here, you want a lot of nitric oxide in this area. Nasal humming promotes it a lot. So if just, and that's by physically vibrating your nasal cavity. So just, you know, making a humming, humming noise, this has even been clinically studied for very severe medication resistant fungal sinus infections, like the worst kind of sinus infection you can get. You can cure it by nasal humming. It takes a lot, it's really annoying.
Brehan (21m 25s):
It's very boring. It will make your dog freak out and think that something is wrong with you. But if you do it for like 15 minutes, four times a day, that can cure fungal sinus infections.
Brian (21m 37s):
Interesting. Yeah. What about like allergies? We're getting to the time where, especially in the Midwest, we change seasons into this thing and seasonal allergy. Yeah, seasonal allergies is a big thing. And obviously there's a lot of over the counter things that people can take. But, you know, as from Chinese medicine perspective, what, what are your thoughts around that?
Brehan (21m 57s):
Nasal hummings a great practice for that too. I, I will say this is not specifically Chinese medicine, although it is used in Chinese medicine, it's also used in India. A lot is nasal rinses are fantastic for people with allergies. Like just taking warm water with a little bit of salt And you know, hydrating your sinuses, whether it's a neti pot or I, I actually really like the, what is it called? That's a, it's a little soft plastic squeeze bottle. You can get it any, any RiteAid or any walgreen, you know, any drugstore is gonna have this. You just put a saline packet in it. It's like salt and baking soda and, and you put distilled, it needs to be distilled or boiled water. You don't want it to be anything that you just get out of the tap or there's a, it is a very small but very dangerous chance of a, of, of an amoebic infection in here, which can be life threatening.
Brehan (22m 44s):
So do boil your water or use distilled water.
Brian (22m 47s):
So distilled water and baking soda,
Brehan (22m 49s):
Distilled water salt and baking soda, salt
Brian (22m 51s):
And baking
Brehan (22m 52s):
Soda. And yeah, they sell like little pre-made packets of it or you can just make it yourself at home and you just, you just flush your sinuses out each side twice a day, like once in the morning, once at night. And you'll find a dramatic reduction in seasonal allergies if it's affecting your sinus cavities. It's just from, it's like washing your hands, you know, it's, but in the inside. So you
Brian (23m 11s):
Just spray in there. Yeah,
Brehan (23m 13s):
Yeah. You just squirt it up there and let it drain out the other side, you know, you tilt your head to one side. There's videos online that do a better job of explaining this than I will, but you tilt your head to one side, you take the squeeze bottle, you stick it in one nostril and squeeze, and you let it like, you know, go up in here and then it drains down this side into the sink and then you, you know, blow your nose and then you do the other side and then, and then you're good. Oh,
Brian (23m 38s):
Love to tell my wife.
Brehan (23m 39s):
Yeah. Wonderful. Easy, inexpensive at-home therapy takes three minutes a day and it can really reduce people's need for antihistamine medication And you know, the stuff that you like, it work kind of works, But it also doesn't work for very long. And it also has long-term side effects that you don't really wanna mess with. Like possibilities of dementia. Oh,
Brian (24m 1s):
With all, with some of the other things that are out there. Yeah.
Brehan (24m 3s):
Some of the, especially the older antihistamines, you know, Benadryl, diphenhydramine, that kind of stuff.
Brian (24m 9s):
And then neti pot, same type of thing.
Brehan (24m 11s):
Same type of idea. Yep. Neti pot, warm water with a little pinch of salt added to it. That's how they've done it in India for thousands of years.
Brian (24m 18s):
If you don't want do the rinsing, that would be,
Brehan (24m 21s):
Yeah. Yeah, there's, And you know, you can use herbs for this too. We oftentimes will recommend people take home an herbal formula. It's just a sinus steam, so it's a bunch of plants with high volatile content and you, you know, you put 'em in a pot of simmering water and then take the pot off the stove, cover your head and the pot with a towel And you know, breathe all that stuff in. Really fumigate your sinuses really well. That's wonderful for high pressure sinuses with a lot of allergy or infection. Yeah, I do that when I have a head cold or, you know, if patient has a sinus infection, will have 'em do that and then hum a lot of nasal humming. Mm. You can use internal herbs. And so people who have severe seasonal allergies or, or other kinds of reactive allergic phenomenon like cat dander, allergies, mold allergies, that kind of stuff, we oftentimes will, in addition to sinus humming, we'll recommend using herbal medicine that changes their allergic response through moderating the intestinal flora.
Brehan (25m 20s):
So, so your production of histamine, which is the compound that makes people itchy and red And, you know, inflamed is mostly coming from your microbiome. And so you have a balance between biofilm production, which is mucus intestinal bile, which is sort of like the master garden or master gardener of your, of your microbiome and, and then histamine producing flora. And over time, I mean, I can't tell you the number of people that we, we fixed their IBS and they, they didn't, they weren't even coming here for allergies, but they'll say like, Hey, my allergies are not as bad this year. Does that have anything to do with what we've been working on?
Brehan (26m 1s):
Oh yeah. Like that's very common situation.
Brian (26m 4s):
Right. Definitely a link between allergies and gut health.
Brehan (26m 8s):
Huge. Huge.
Brian (26m 10s):
Yeah. And when you talk mentioned the breathing in the herbs, you know, with a, you know, I don't know, a towel over you, are there certain herbs that you recommend or
Brehan (26m 21s):
Anything that, that has a lot of volatiles to it can be helpful in that situation? So like we have formulas we really like for that, that we find to be very effective. But if people wanna just try stuff at home, this is not necessarily Chinese medicine, but you know, even anything that's very fragrant, anything that's super aromatic, rosemary is a great one to try. You know, thyme, oregano, like these are kitchen spices. You want 'em to be fresh so that they have a lot of volatile oils. So like if you have a rosemary plant growing in your garden on a dry day, not on a wet day like this, the plant won't be producing a lot of oil. But on a dry day, you, you go out and you pick a sprig of that And you know, shave off all of the, the needles into a pot of hot water, smells, amazing, smells like, you know, somebody's roasting a chicken and you sniff that in, do a lot of sinus humming.
Brehan (27m 13s):
It's, it's fantastic. Got
Brian (27m 14s):
It. Okay. So we've hit allergies, gut health, anything else top of mind that you see, you know, a lot of people come in for, I know you mentioned, you know, fibromyalgia as well.
Brehan (27m 25s):
Yeah, yeah. I mean there's a huge overlap between all of these things. The microbiome and pain, nociception, chronic pain. Yeah, so fibromyalgia just means that you have chronic pain and your doctor doesn't really know why that, like, it's a diagnosis of exclusion. It means that they've hopefully done some kind of diagnostic work to rule out injury, chronic infection, you know, many other causes of pain. They usually don't. And they oftentimes, this is just for, you know, this gets applied to women more often than men, unfortunately. It's, you know, it's the, they took away the diagnosis of hysteria and just kind of replaced it with fibromyalgia. And so a lot of women are sent home with a prescription for psychiatric medication And you know, told you just have anxiety go away.
Brehan (28m 11s):
That's not really not the case at all. And yeah, we, we do a lot of that too, just because by being one of the original forms of medicine that looks at functions of the body and that addresses those effectively, Chinese medicine has a great deal of a great deal of effective therapies available for chronic pain of many causes.
Brian (28m 31s):
I like to ask this question to my guess is like, what's one thing you've changed your mind on over the last, let's say 10 years?
Brehan (28m 37s):
That's a, that's a great question. What's something I've changed my mind? You know, the first one that comes to mind is actually blood pressure. So I've always dealt with kind of an older population of patients and blood pressure is something that many of them are concerned about, whether they hear about it in the media or from their doctor. And I used to be of the mindset that absolutely anything in the world could be treated naturally and effectively. And that's not necessarily untrue, but I want my patients to get better as fast as possible for the least amount of money as possible in the most effective way possible. And I have found that for the, the vast majority of my elderly patients, you know, people 65 or older, when they're dealing with elevated blood pressure, one, it is really important to bring that down.
Brehan (29m 23s):
It's what's called a silent killer because it's often asymptomatic, people don't experience gross symptoms of having high blood pressure. But when it's higher than one 20 over 80 for a prolonged period of time, it is always doing a little bit of microvascular damage. So it is causing small ischemic damages. These are clo micro, you know, nano clots. You could even call them in the extremities of your, of your body. And that's hands, feet and brain and, and genitals too. But you know, a lot of times, you know, men will just get a Cialis prescription And you know, women are just told, oh, that's normal for your age. But you know what's called idiopathic neuropathy, which is like, you know, loss of feeling in your hands and feet or pain in the nerves of your hands and feet if you're not diabetic, is very, very common in an aging population that's often due to high blood pressure, cardiovascular risk, and increasing risk of stroke is directly related to elevated blood pressure over time.
Brehan (30m 27s):
And there's a lot that you can do kind of naturally holistically to address this. And it's the basic stuff. It's like getting good quality sleep, mild to moderate cardiovascular exercise, not being sedentary, you know, looking at your diet, you know, are you eating too much fat, too much salt, things like that. And then there are some herbs you can use at home that are really, really safe to try, like strong hibiscus tea, three cups of hibiscus tea is really effective for reducing systolic blood pressure. But I think it's like 10 to 15 points. Breath work breathing exercises can do really well with that. There's a very simple one that, like I have a video that teaches people how to do it on my YouTube. If they wanna do it, it very reliably will drop your blood pressure 10 to 15 points.
Brehan (31m 7s):
But sometimes that's not enough. You know, sometimes people have, you know, their ambient blood pressure is just like 1 65, 180 systolic that's dangerous. Like you can't stay, keep that elevated for a long time and have a great outcome. There's a time and a place for medication with that. And western medicine, I have to say, has got that dialed in pretty well for that aged population. Younger people, it's a different story. But for, for an aging population, I think they really should consult their primary or a cardiologist about medication if they're doing everything naturally already before they see an herbalist, because we have strong herbs that can work for that, but they take longer, they're very expensive and you have to stay on 'em forever. You know, it's not something where it just fixes you and you're better.
Brehan (31m 48s):
This is a, this is a, a declining function as we age of regulating that blood pressure.
Brian (31m 55s):
And you mentioned Cialis, so maybe we'll touch on erectile dysfunction. Is that something you see in your practice?
Brehan (32m 2s):
Yeah, yeah.
Brian (32m 3s):
And and do you take 'em down the herbal route or like we can, you see there's lifestyle things, you know, probably they have a lot of visceral fat or, you know, sedentary And, you know, things like that. Not eating correctly, but yeah, I'm curious.
Brehan (32m 18s):
Yeah, the first thing I talk with most men about who are experiencing ED in my practice is, is their stress level. And because there's a, when I was in school, we, you know, we are, you're learning, you're doing Chinese medicine pathology class, you're learning about the different causes of the symptoms that patients will, will come into your practice for. And when we're talking about Ed, the teacher was an older guy and he said, it's hard to do this test anymore. But when I was in training, we would take, we would have guys take a roll of stamps and wrap it around their penis when they were sleeping. Like, you know, the stamps used to come in a roll and they were sticky on the, you know, and he said you would, he would have 'em put it on when they went to bed at night, put a roll of stamps around their penis.
Brehan (32m 60s):
And if they, if the roll of stamps was broken in the morning, they would not use the things that we think of for ed. They would not use testosterone therapy, they would not use herbs that, that have androgenic or androgenic promoting effects, which we have herbs that are basically TRT, they would not use, you know, Cialis or Viagra, something like that. They would do stress treatment. They would address that because if oftentimes men, even older men will have ED during the day or ED when they want to, to engage in sexual activity, but they're still getting nocturnal erections. And when that's the case, it's, it's not usually an endocrine issue, it's usually a stress issue.
Brehan (33m 42s):
Like stress is endocrine, but it's not, it's not a testosterone deficiency, it's not a nitric oxide deficiency. It's a, it's a stress excess. And so when you, when you take that away, they oftentimes find that, oh wow, function's there. And that can be herbal medicine, it could be breath work, it can be physical exercise, it could be community building, like just having enough male friends. There is really a, you know, it's called the male loneliness epidemic in the west. Men don't talk to other men, don't hang out with other men enough and have that peer support where they feel like they can actually be vulnerable and talk about the problems that affect everybody and or they go to therapy, you know, see a psychotherapist and, and learn to get in touch with their feelings and identify their own causes of stress and address them through lifestyle changes.
Brehan (34m 24s):
That's very important. But if they need, you know, if there is also deficiency, like that is real too. And if, you know, men are dealing with that, we, we have treatments for that available as well.
Brian (34m 34s):
But there is there certain herbs that you point to, like, I know I'll probably pronounce it wrong, but you know, within your shop that you like to promote or that want people to, when
Brehan (34m 44s):
I was getting to, I laughed because when I was getting into herbal medicine, you know, one of my teachers was saying, you know, you have all these, you've learned all these skills, you know how to manage chronic illnesses. I'll tell you, you know, like, and he, he'd done this for decades and he, and he was like, if I had it to do over again, I'd kind of have to compromise my integrity, but I'd just be selling weight loss and dick pills. Like, it's just, It's like that's what people want, right? I don't promote that stuff. I don't do it. I be, and actually it's not because it doesn't work or because there's anything wrong with it. It's because a lot of guys will go immediately to what we call the tonics. They're, they're the herbal equivalent of TRT, the herbal equivalent of Cialis and Viagra.
Brehan (35m 25s):
And we have those, I don't sell them on my website. Like I just, because if you use them incorrectly, just like tr just like hormone replacement therapy, just like Viagra and Cialis, if you use them improperly, they're toxic, they're dangerous for you. And so like rine Alis work, work on nitric oxide, they're cheap boosters, like they're just, it's a massive flush of nitric oxide. And if you do that, if you're deficient in it, yep, you're going to, you're gonna get a great healthy erection and, and be fine if you are not deficient. If you're not, if you're already in the excess category from stress and you take those things, it'll work, it'll work for a while. But it will also nitric, like I was saying, nitric oxide is an inflammatory molecule.
Brehan (36m 7s):
If you take that too much, it's going to burn out the nerve receptors in your extremities. And then you have ed that's worse than before. And the same thing that you used the first time won't work anymore to fix it. And we see, I'm seeing, I see now in my practice, like this has changed in the last five years. I see young men, like men in their thirties who've been taking Viagra or Cialis candies, like, you can buy these online without a prescription.
Brian (36m 31s):
Yeah.
Brehan (36m 32s):
Like it's,
Brian (36m 32s):
It's like go himms. I think one of the Yeah. Or
Brehan (36m 35s):
Blue Chew, like that company even found my social media and was like, Hey, will you promote our chewing gum? You know, dick pills? I'm like, no, this is like one, it's outside of my scope of practice. I don't do pharmaceuticals. And two, if like, I I, I completely disagree with the marketing strategy of promoting these things to young men. There there is testosterone deficiency in young men at increasing increasing rates and there is nitric oxide deficiency in young men at decreasing rates. But it's not because it's, it, you know, like that that treatment I don't think is the right solution. And so I, you know, it it's, it's more about, you know, looking at
Brian (37m 11s):
Like, I'm sorry to interrupt you, but there's some, the, the, the ca na names came to me of like the ginkgo, ginkgo baloba and tribulus tourist.
Brehan (37m 20s):
Yeah, ous Terrestrial. Yeah. Ginkgo, ginkgo. We use, we actually don't use ginkgo that much in Chinese medicine. It is, it is an, it is an herb that we use, we use it mostly for memory, for brain health. And, and the thing is, there's a lot of data on ginkgo and how ineffective for memory loss it is. It's because the, the studies that look at it are not looking at it in the context of its traditional use where it's combined with other plants. They look at it as a single herb. It is a powerful substance for that. We don't really use it for sexual health tribulus. We can, we do use it that way. Sometimes we actually use tribulus more for gut health than we do for, for sexual health. So tribulus is actually an important ingredient in the, the formula I recommend to like 80, 90% of my patients for when they're dealing with gut issues.
Brehan (38m 2s):
There are other ones that people will know of, like horny goat weed, we call it yang hall. There's
Brian (38m 7s):
Casandra,
Brehan (38m 8s):
Casandra, Casandra Berry. Yeah. Well Waits, we
Brian (38m 11s):
Have panic ginseng. Is that
Brehan (38m 13s):
Another ginseng? We have donga, we have foi root, we have, you know, those are both for men and women. We have, oh God, there's,
Brian (38m 21s):
There's all kinds of, there's a lots of stuff,
Brehan (38m 22s):
You know, pine pollen and every, like, there's certain kinds of mushrooms, cordyceps mushrooms for example. Like this stuff all works. It all has a time and a place. It's mostly for old guys. It's not so much for the young dudes. And if, you know, if your, if your audience is over the age of 65, I would absolutely consider those things for them in a, in a, in a context for, for younger men especially. They, they really don't need it. And oftentimes it's harmful if overused.
Brian (38m 53s):
What's another question I like to ask and we'll, we'll wrap it up soon, but what's one tip you'd give someone? You know, maybe they, they're they've, they're overweight, their health has gotten a little bit outta hand. I know you spend time with every client and to figure out or patient, but like, what's one tip you'd give them if they're looking to get their body back to like what it once was 10, 15 years ago?
Brehan (39m 12s):
Oh man. Start with walking.
Brian (39m 14s):
Yeah.
Brehan (39m 15s):
Like
Brian (39m 15s):
That's, I talk about that all the time. Yeah, yeah.
Brehan (39m 18s):
Like a lot of people go like, okay, I gotta get, I gotta get in shape, I gotta lose weight. I'm gonna go to CrossFit. Right? I'm like, you've been sedentary for a long time. That's a great way to injure yourself. Like I know from experience, here's a scar I got from, you know, overdoing CrossFit gym broke my wrist. Oh wow. Doing
Brian (39m 33s):
Box
Brehan (39m 33s):
Jumps. Yeah. There's
Brian (39m 35s):
Walking is like the most underrated health hack out there, right? It's,
Brehan (39m 39s):
It's, I mean you look at what, what humans have been doing for millions of years. We used to walk a lot. We used to walk a lot and we don't really do that as a, in the west. We don't need to. We have cars and chairs and we don't walk, we don't squat. And I mean, my own personal stories, like I was morbidly obese in, in college I was 365 pounds. I knew I needed to make a change. I didn't know how to exercise. Every time I'd tried playing sports, I got injured, I started walking And, you know, over the course of six months, lost 40 pounds. And then was able like, was then fit enough to go like, learn how to lift weights, learn how to do martial arts, learn, you know, do other
Brian (40m 18s):
Stuff. Wow. So 365 pounds And now you, what do you weigh Now?
Brehan (40m 24s):
I'm about two 20 right now. I'm six two And you know, I, I got a dad bod, but I'm also 45 years
Brian (40m 30s):
Old. Well, hey, that's a, that's a lot to, you know, I don't care how long it took, but you know, walking is, is like, like I agree. It's, that's the advantage of having a dog or two dogs. Oh,
Brehan (40m 42s):
They, they'll take you on a walk. Yeah, yeah,
Brian (40m 43s):
Exactly. Well this was great Brian. When's, where's the best place for people to learn about, you know, your practice and do you do like telehealth and things like that?
Brehan (40m 52s):
Yep, I do. They can schedule virtual one-on-ones with me. They can come visit me in Oregon if they want to. Most of my effort, effort and energy these days is actually going into a free online group that I have on the platform called school. So if they go to school.com, S-K-O-O-L slash chorus dash circle chorus, like the, the church choir, they'll find that it's a, it's a free group to join. They can post their photos of their tongue, which we'll teach 'em how to take and they can post those up in the group, ask questions, give us their symptoms and health history. And we will, you know, we can't give direct medical advice in there, but we can kind of point 'em in certain directions and or refer 'em to a provider that can, that can help 'em out.
Brian (41m 29s):
Yeah, I noticed. Yeah, I, I have your, i'll, I'll put a link in the show notes so people can check out the core circle. Is that what you're talking about? Yep. Yeah. And that digestive botanical, is that like something that Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brehan (41m 42s):
So that's the formula I was talking about. Like it has a little tribulous in it and, but it's like, it's a gut health formula. And the way people know that if it's right for them, they can post their tongue photos in the group and we will tell 'em. But if, if it's not, it's not right for everybody. You know, it's right for about 80, 90% of the population and that's people who have a, it's a lot
Brian (41m 57s):
Thick,
Brehan (41m 58s):
Thick biofilm. It is a lot. It's, it's people who have a thick biofilm coating on the tongue that covers, you know, two thirds of the tongue and if they feel better. Yeah, you got a little bit, you you got that, you got quite a bit of a coating, actually quite a thick white coat on your tongue there. And you can try it. I'll send you some and the, if you feel better after a bowel movement. So that's the what we were calling the excess dampness category. And if people are in that camp, they're on that side of the spectrum course is very likely to help 'em. And if it doesn't within 30 days they get their money back.
Brian (42m 31s):
What's, what's the main, I'm trying to find the ingredients in it. It's,
Brehan (42m 35s):
It's 16 plants.
Brian (42m 37s):
Okay.
Brehan (42m 38s):
So there's, there's a lot of things in there that are really great. The website does break it down and tell people what each one does, but they work in synergy. So Chinese herbal medicine, oftentimes people will think like, oh, gimme the one herb that's gonna fix my everything. We're like, yeah, we stopped doing that 5,000 years ago. 'cause they figured out that just like in western medicine, medicines have side effects, plants do too. And by using the correct plants in combination, you get less side effects or hopefully none at all. And you get all the beneficial effects of the entire formula.
Brian (43m 8s):
And did you, is this something that you came, like you came to yourself or did you find find
Brehan (43m 13s):
The formula is based on one from the Yuan dynasty. So during, this is when the Mongols were in charge in China and the, the diet of China, of China's middle class and wealthier class at that time, which was very large, it was a very, very affluent era in China's history, was very similar to the American diet now it was a lot of meat, especially a lot of fatty meats and fried bread. It was a lot of alcohol. And they even had ice cream, which people are like, they didn't have a freezer. How did they have ice cream? Well, they had, they have glaciers and they have icebergs and they would do the thing where they would cut off giant chunks of ice and bring it down on a cart into the city and shave the ice.
Brehan (43m 57s):
And they would mix it with cream and honey and people would eat that as a dessert. They had carts serving it all over the city. It was incredibly popular. Lo and behold, they, the medical texts of that time historically in China, they keep excellent medical records. And this is part of why Chinese medicine is so mature now, is that they, all the records from that time talk about all the gut symptoms people were having at that time from eating a lot of deep fried food, a lot of meat, drinking alcohol and eating ice cream and not enough vegetables. And it's like, oh, you have what we would now call IBS. You have fatty liver disease, you have gall stuff. Like, oh, okay. So the number one formula that they found during that time that was effective for people is what we based chorus on.
Brehan (44m 39s):
We have modified it slightly for the modern American diet with some of the nuances that people have. Some of the medications that people tend to take and the medical history they have in a lot of brain fog is very common these days. They may have had it then they didn't. It's a newer herb. It's, it's been in Chinese medicine for hundreds of years, but not 2000. And So we, we have slightly modified the formula for that, but for the most part it's, it's based on that architecture and it works very well.
Brian (45m 6s):
Might have to try that. I got, so I have a coding. Yeah,
Brehan (45m 10s):
Take a photo. I'll send you some chorus. Take a follow up photo in a month, see how it looks.
Brian (45m 14s):
Okay. Okay. Well this was great, Brianne, I'll, I'll definitely put Links in the show notes for chorus and, and ways to reach out to you 'cause you can reach people all over the country. So thank
Brehan (45m 25s):
You. Yeah. Yeah.
Brian (45m 26s):
Thanks for sharing. Yeah, thanks for sharing all this information and yeah, best of luck and thanks so much for coming on. Thank
Brehan (45m 33s):
You Brian. Thanks for having me on the show. Thanks
Brian (45m 35s):
For listening to the Get Lean Eat Clean Podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes at Brian Gryn dot com for everything that was mentioned in this episode. Feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member that's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
