243-SYNCPodcast_DrJess

[00:00:00] Jenny Swisher: Welcome friends to this episode of the Sync Your Life podcast. Today, I’m being joined by one of my very own doctors, Dr. Jessica Lofgren. She is a functional neurology practitioner and functional health and wellness, practitioner as well. She owns Brain and Body Co. She’s here in Indiana with me. I recently was connected to her last fall, actually, when I started experiencing The vertigo issues that I’ve shared here on the podcast and the exacerbated migraines.

[00:01:22] Jenny Swisher: She was a referral that just kept popping up. Like people kept saying, have you met Dr. Jess? Have you met Dr. Jess? So finally scheduled with her, went in for, um, some assessments and whatnot, and have really valued learning from her and I really feel like I’ve made giant stride in the right direction as far as.

[00:01:39] Jenny Swisher: What I’m pursuing in my health when it comes to these migraines. So we’re going to talk about that today. I’ll share a little bit of my story as we go. But first I want Dr. Jess to just share more about her, how she got to doing functional neurology. And so I’ll hand it over to you and you can share it with my audience.

[00:01:53] Dr. Jess: Great. Well, thank you, Jenny, so much for having me on here. I’m really excited to be able to come and share what I do with the functional neurology with all of your listeners. Um, so yeah, a little bit about how I got to where I am. I’ve always been interested in health and wellness since, you know, I played sports growing up.

[00:02:09] Dr. Jess: I was involved with athletic training at my school. So I always wanted to look at how the body function and how we can optimize how our body functions. Um, I also grew up in a family filled with chronic disease. So I mean, Every member of my family had diabetes, high blood pressure, some sort of cancer, and they were all struggling to find answers.

[00:02:32] Dr. Jess: So that was always something in the back of my mind that, you know, I wanted to find answers, not only for myself, but for my family. Um, and so when I was in college, I went to college for nutrition, foods and exercise. And that’s when I stumbled upon chiropractic for the first time. So went through school.

[00:02:48] Dr. Jess: I was I was a chiropractic assistant through undergrad, and then after that I went to chiropractic school naturally. So I started learning more about alternative health because in my mind, finding other ways to treat underlying causes of disease, that felt the right direction. And while I was in chiropractic school, I actually was introduced to a functional neurology practitioner.

[00:03:11] Dr. Jess: And he came in to do a guest lecture in one of my neurology courses. And he started talking about the sympathetic nervous system, the parasympathetic nervous system, and was talking from more of a chiropractic standpoint of how Chiropractic affects the nervous system, and other ways we can have our results amplified by using functional neurology techniques.

[00:03:33] Dr. Jess: So from that point, I mean, I was pretty much hooked on functional neurology. I started, I, I sort of make jokes that I, I more so went to school for functional neurology, but in the background was doing chiropractic because I was so, I was, I was obsessed with functional neurology from the start. , so did that throughout my entire chiropractic career.

[00:03:51] Dr. Jess: School, um, after I graduated, went right and sat for my board exam, sat for my fellowship exam, um, started teaching functional neurology to actually other clinicians because I had been so involved in the school there. And it just led me down this path and, you know, I was going through it. I was also dealing with my own chronic issues that I’ve been facing with migraines and hormonal issues as well.

[00:04:16] Dr. Jess: I then sustained. concussion, which then made me turn to functional neurology as a patient, which gave me a completely different perspective and then took me down to functional health as well. Um, so that’s how everything sort of got combined because I saw functional neurology had its strength, but then when combined with functional health practices, it just became.

[00:04:38] Dr. Jess: It just works so beautifully together. So that’s where I’m at now. I have the combination, you know, depending on what the patient needs, we do functional neurology, or we do more of the functional health side, or we combine them, um, really independent on that particular case.

[00:04:54] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, I know when I first started seeing you, I thought it was going to be a lot of just almost like vestibular balance therapy, which we definitely do, but it’s, it’s been more integrative of metabolic health too.

[00:05:04] Jenny Swisher: Like looking at lab work, looking at different, you know, root causes there too. So, so if my listener is listening here and they’re, they’re like, what is functional neurology? How would you define it?

[00:05:15] Dr. Jess: Yeah. So what functional neurology is, is we use the concept of neuroplasticity. So you can sort of use the words not like.

[00:05:23] Dr. Jess: together. Functional neurology, neuroplasticity. Um, what we do is we assess for the brain’s ability to adapt, heal and change based off environmental stimulants that we give. So in our practice, what we’re doing is we’re assessing different areas of the brain. We’re testing different regions that we know Are responsible for different functions, and we’re looking for areas of the brain and nervous system that are functioning so optimally or not to their best level from there.

[00:05:51] Dr. Jess: We use sensory inputs from the environment, whether that be like physical, like actual exercises or sensory stimulation or metabolic intervention in order to change the way that area of the nervous system is functioning. So, um, It’s all based on using the environment to change the way the brain is perceiving the environment.

[00:06:12] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. Yeah. So for me personally, just to share my story with this, I didn’t come into her office with some sort of like brain injury necessarily for me. It was just, why is this, why are these migraines manifesting differently? Why are they turning into more, um, vertigo type migraines? I guess they call them vestibular migraines.

[00:06:30] Jenny Swisher: And, um, I know that that first assessment we did together was like, I was like, what is this? What’s going on here? It was like a two hour assessment where Dr. Jess had me go through a lot of different, like different things like eye gazes. Um, you know, I I’ll let you kind of describe what that assessment can look like, but it was interesting because I was like, when we left that day, my husband was with me and he said, what’d you think?

[00:06:52] Jenny Swisher: And I said, what’d you think? And he’s like, I don’t know. And I said, well, I’ll tell you this, that the fact that it triggers so much in me tells me that I’m in the right place. So I had been to like balance clinics. I had done the whole, like, you know, the different tests that you can do on your inner ear.

[00:07:07] Jenny Swisher: And I had seen all the ENTs and all the things. And of course, everybody was like, you’re normal. You’re normal. But stepping into Dr. Jessa’s office and doing the assessment very clearly showed me that I was not optimal. As you said, there were definitely some suboptimal aspects to how my brain was working and adapting.

[00:07:23] Jenny Swisher: I think you said adapting to stimuli. So talk to us about what an assessment like might look like in sort of the functional neurology world. Because one thing that I tell women who suffer from migraines, a lot of us are sent to traditional neurologists, right? These sort of, I call them modern medicine neurologists.

[00:07:39] Jenny Swisher: Goodness, I could write a whole book on that. My experience in that environment has been a lot of, You’ve had brain scans and everything’s normal. There’s nothing wrong with your head, right? But stepping into dr. Jess’s office or these different doctors that I’m seeing now is a different experience because they’re basing more off of actual, actually assessing what your, what your head is doing.

[00:07:59] Jenny Swisher: So tell us more about, about that piece of it. Like the assessment part of functional neurology.

[00:08:05] Dr. Jess: Yeah. So the assessment is very different than what you would get from a traditional neurology office. Because with those tests that you would see in. A traditional neurology clinic, not to say they aren’t beneficial because they do give us great insights, but they, they are looking for you to hit a specific number or a specific thing to say that something is wrong or not wrong.

[00:08:25] Dr. Jess: It’s not looking at the entire nervous system together, right? So if you’re looking at a test for your inner ear is just looking at your inner ear, right? It’s not looking at how it’s connected to the proprioception of your neck or your eyes. Or so on and so forth. And so what we do here is we’re looking at everything.

[00:08:42] Dr. Jess: So from the beginning, I mean, you probably remember the intake form. We, we fill out this nice, you know, 19 page intake form where we get a general idea of what your lifestyle looks like. So then when we come into the office, Based on what we see on the intake, we can decide, okay, this area of the brain based on these symptoms is probably not functioning as optimally as these areas.

[00:09:03] Dr. Jess: So this might be it, but let’s go in and test and see if the findings match up. And so when we start diving into our exam, I like to say it’s like working with a black box. And so the brain and the nervous system is our black box. And it’s job is to take a sensory input. The black box does its magic and then outcomes the response.

[00:09:22] Dr. Jess: We should expect to see if one comes in, the other one should come out, right? Now, if something is going wrong in that area, we’ll put the input in and we won’t get the response that we expect, the Y output. So if I shine a light in your eye, I expect to see it constrict, I expect to see your pupils constrict and then come back out.

[00:09:41] Dr. Jess: If I don’t see that something’s wrong in the black box. And so then we start tallying, okay, this area of the brain is responsible for this, put a tally here, put a tally here, put a tally until we find where the tallies all meet together. Take Yeah, um, so we’ll be looking at, you know, we look at your, like you said, the gaze stability, looking at your eyes, how are your eyes working in conjunction with your inner ear in conjunction with your neck.

[00:10:07] Dr. Jess: We’re seeing if you know where your body is in space. So we might do some like Touch stimulus where I touch a point on your body. You have to touch where I’m touching, which sounds simple, but not so simple work. Well, we do look at balance, but we look at balance. When we also challenge that balance. So, you know, standing on a foam pad, turning your head in different directions, making you do cognitive tasks, like counting backwards by sevens while you’re doing it.

[00:10:34] Dr. Jess: Um, cause we’re really trying to see. all the layers come together, what happens? Because nothing’s ever working in isolation. So we’re just adding in layers and layers to see, can your brain handle everything that we’re giving? Um, and so once we start going in that direction, we can then start isolating our test down and really narrowing it down to what we need.

[00:10:55] Jenny Swisher: Well, I remember when I was there, you said, you know, the purpose of these tests is to help you figure out what areas of the brain need the most focus, right? Like how can we really optimize those areas? And so ever since then, I’ve been going in to see Dr. Jess and we do a variety of different things.

[00:11:09] Jenny Swisher: We might, you know, we might do, well, I want you to, at some point, we’re going to talk about like the tongue stimulation and all that kind of stuff, which I think is fascinating.

[00:11:16] Dr. Jess: Yeah.

[00:11:16] Jenny Swisher: Um, but there’s also been some, you know, I, I would say, are you Mary Poppins ing me today? Because she’ll, she might spin an umbrella, right?

[00:11:23] Jenny Swisher: And have me look at the umbrella in a certain way or a certain direction. We’ve done chair spins. We’ve done all kinds of things to really help my body and my, my brain function better. And so I want to make the connection for everybody. Because and I will start with this really basic, maybe like 30 second overview because I know that my listeners have heard me talk before about sympathetic versus parasympathetic nervous system.

[00:11:46] Jenny Swisher: But I want people to understand the nervous system the way you view it. So tell us, you know, tell us what you’re looking for because I know even just talking before we started recording. You said this to me, you said, we know that you are living in sort of this like heightened stress state, right? And so of course, of course I am.

[00:12:01] Jenny Swisher: I’m living in chronic migraine and vertigo. So what, what, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Um, but there is a stress response that my body is going through, which is therefore affecting the way my brain functions. So if you could tell us, you know, talk about the sort of sympathetic versus parasympathetic system where we should be.

[00:12:19] Jenny Swisher: And then we can go from there and kind of connect it to hormones. Okay.

[00:12:22] Dr. Jess: Definitely. Yeah. So what we’re looking at when we’re looking at that, so while we’re doing our exam, essentially what we’re looking for is if there’s a sensory mismatch is what I like to call it. So is your brain seeing the environment as the environment is, or is the brain seeing something different and then causing your body to go into panic mode?

[00:12:40] Dr. Jess: Right? Because if I’m not properly seeing, like if my neck, what my information coming into my neck is not the same information coming in from my vestibular system or not the same information coming in from my eyes. Your body is going to go into a state of threat because there’s a mismatch there. It’s like what’s real, what’s not real?

[00:12:58] Dr. Jess: And that will put you sitting in that sympathetic state more, most likely is where you’ll go. And so with the sympathetic parasympathetic, you know, we could talk about like dorsal vagal and everything, but we’re gonna keep it nice and simple with sympathetic parasympathetic. And so when we’re looking at that, our sympathetic is like our fight or flight.

[00:13:15] Dr. Jess: It’s what helps us to. If there’s a threat, if a bear came in the door, it gets us on guard to either fight the bear or run away from the bear. It protects us and keeps us in that survival mode. Our parasympathetic is more of our rest and digest. It allows us to do those functions that don’t necessarily are necessary to keep us alive from the bear in that moment, but are vital functions for our body to actually be functioning optimally.

[00:13:40] Dr. Jess: Now, this should be a nice wave of going back and forth between sympathetic, parasympathetic, right? We should be able to have that high sympathetic when we need it, but then easily get back to that parasympathetic when we’re done with the threat. When your body is in sensory mismatch or. Or if you’re not processing your environment correctly, your body can start to tend to favor feeling like it’s in a threat more than it is in that parasympathetic state.

[00:14:05] Dr. Jess: Being in that state for a long time is what a lot of people look at with like high cortisol levels or, you know, being fight or flight that like high sympathetic state over time just becomes more plastic. It becomes more accustomed to being the norm for that person. And it can put the other things on the back burner that are more of those parasympathetic things.

[00:14:27] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. So I think in layman’s terms for a lot of my women listening, for those of you who struggle with like anxiety attacks, right? Like, um, different things that can Settle in for you sometimes to the extreme, but then other times might not be so extreme, you know, I mean, I’ve talked before about, I can tell for myself when I’m in sympathetic versus parasympathetic state, because I can actually resist sitting down.

[00:14:48] Jenny Swisher: Like I will actually, like, I should sit down to eat a meal, but for some reason I physically feel like it’s impossible to sit down. That is because my brain is in overdrive and I’ve got to feel it back down. Right. So. Um, sensory mismatch is a great way to put it, but I also think for women listening who are like, Oh, I don’t, I don’t have migraine or vertigo or these types of issues.

[00:15:07] Jenny Swisher: My question for you would be, are you living in sort of a high stress state, right? And it doesn’t have to be that you’re in a work environment that’s stressful or a relationship that’s stressful. It could just be how you’re responding to your day to day interactions. The notifications on your phone could bring you into that state, right?

[00:15:22] Jenny Swisher: Like, Getting a call from your kid’s school to bring you into that, whatever it is, you know, um, we have, we recently have construction going on across the street from our house and I’ve just noticed my shoulders go up, right? Like, it’s just like, why is there always noise? Why is there always dirt? Like what’s, what’s going on?

[00:15:36] Jenny Swisher: So there’s so many things that. You know, our senses and our body is wired for survival. So regardless of whether you’re conscious of it or not, that cortisol is, is spiking and lowering and whatever throughout the day as responses to your environment, right? So, um, I say this because I think this, this plays a role for so many women.

[00:15:55] Jenny Swisher: Now I want to connect this because Most of my women listening are listening because they’re interested in hormone health. And it’s, you know, I have one podcast in particular that I’ll link up in the show notes because I think it’s so relevant, but it’s called calm the F down. And I think this is at the end of the day, you know, I can tell you, I can give, I can look at your lab work.

[00:16:14] Jenny Swisher: I can give you suggestions. I can point you in the direction of the right doctors who can get you on the right supplementation who can, you know, you can do all the exercising and the syncing. You can do all the things. But yet, I see this happen often where women are doing all the things. They are cycle syncing their workouts, they are paying attention to their energy, they are eating healthy and eating enough, and they are doing all these things.

[00:16:35] Jenny Swisher: And they’re like, but why am I still stuck? Why is my body holding on to the belly fat? Or why do I feel like I can’t sleep at night? This is the answer. The answer is your stress response. The answer is your cortisol, right? And we know that as women, especially I know most of my listeners, are entering perimenopause, so 35 to 50.

[00:16:53] Jenny Swisher: for joining me. When we’re entering perimenopause, our body starts to do this really interesting tango between blood sugar and cortisol regulation, right? And so we start to see this become more of an issue. We’ve seen more insulin resistance popping up during perimenopause. We start to see different things go a little crazy as progesterone starts to decline as well.

[00:17:11] Jenny Swisher: So when this happens is when women will start to say like, for some reason, I’m dealing with anxiety, you know, like I’m getting older, I’m in perimenopause, and now all of a sudden I’m dealing with anxiety or I’m having trouble sleeping. This all comes back to this idea of stress regulation. So, um, I wanted to kind of make that connection.

[00:17:28] Jenny Swisher: So what I want, what, what I want you to help women understand too, and maybe you want to go into the vagal nerve stuff. Maybe you don’t, that’s up to you, but you know, I had Kaylee Calabrese here on the podcast who talked a lot about just, Eye gaze stretches. She, she did, you know, we, we, we talked about like breath work and meditation and those kinds of things.

[00:17:45] Jenny Swisher: What would be your, like, knowing that my audience is dominantly females in this age category who are maybe wondering, like, how do I do this? Like, how do I get my body into that, you know, state of rest and digest? What would your top tips be?

[00:17:59] Dr. Jess: Oh, yeah. Okay. Um, so before I do that, I do want to bring up the sensory mismatch real quick.

[00:18:06] Dr. Jess: So when I say sensory mismatch, it’s not something that you would consciously be aware of. That’s something that we bring out on exam. So I do want to make sure like, you’re like, Oh, I have sensory mismatch, because you won’t really be able to see it. Um, you won’t be able to feel it until we bring it out on exam.

[00:18:20] Dr. Jess: But you’ll feel those signs that you talked about, Jenny, like the, the racing heart, the can’t sleep at night, the holding fat in the belly, um, the high anxiety for no reason. That’s the kind of stuff you’ll feel. You won’t feel that sensory mismatch until we see it on exam. But different tips that I would do, a lot of it is cortisol regulation stuff.

[00:18:37] Dr. Jess: So a lot of it goes to, What you’re doing on a day to day basis to help support your nervous system. And the biggest thing is circadian rhythm stuff. So that would be like my number one thing is to work on your sleep schedule. Sleep is not just for like re energizing you, it’s for healing. And so getting a good routine going to sleep where you, maybe you put your phone down and turn off electronics for the last 30 minutes to an hour before bed, trying to get to bed at a reasonable time.

[00:19:07] Dr. Jess: Because the best time for us to have that healing is between the hours of 8 p. m. and 12 and midnight. So if you’re going to sleep past midnight, you’re, you’re missing out on those nice key hours of healing. And so we want to try to push our bedtime a little bit in that window and turn the electronics off so our brain can start to process that it’s, it’s time for sleep.

[00:19:30] Dr. Jess: So that’s going to bed and then waking up what we want to do when we wake up. If you are the type of person, I’m guilty of this a lot. Sometimes that you wake up and the first thing you do is make a cup of coffee, but you are also dealing with high sympathetic, high cortisol states. We want to try to negate that a little bit.

[00:19:48] Dr. Jess: Cause you’re already, when you wake up in the morning, the cortisol is the highest. And so if we add in caffeine, we’re just pushing you a little bit more over the edge. So what we want to do. So it’s one, wait at least an hour before your first cup of coffee. If you can’t do that, if you are a caffeine addict like I am, you can then pair it with a meal that’s high in protein while you’re drinking your coffee or before you have your coffee.

[00:20:14] Dr. Jess: That’s going to help to get that cortisol levels down because the cortisol is what tells us that it’s time to eat. It’s what wakes us up in the morning. So when we eat that insulin is going to do its job, that cortisol is going to go down and then you can enjoy your cup of coffee. So that would be my very first step, doing some sleep changes there.

[00:20:31] Dr. Jess: After that, we would do, I would say that there’s different techniques that you can do throughout the day to help promote good, healthy cortisol stress response. I personally like EFT, some tapping techniques can help a lot. So, um, different points that you can, you know, look up a, on YouTube, a general EFT tapping routine.

[00:20:53] Dr. Jess: And to do that throughout the day, it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to sit and meditate, which is. Which is great, but some people don’t like that, right? So tapping is a great way to do that. Doing different somatic exercises. My favorite is brushing down the arms and doing that for about five minutes of starting at your shoulders, arms crossed, like you’re giving yourself a hug, and then swiping down your arms and then doing stuff like hip release.

[00:21:14] Dr. Jess: Saying exercises like yoga and stuff that releases the hips because the hips store a lot of trauma, store a lot of stress. And so when we can physically release it, we can also help with that stress response as well.

[00:21:27] Dr. Jess: I would say the last thing would be to support detox pathways would be a huge thing. Um, you want, you want to make sure like detox, I think of it as like a kitchen sink. So the faucet is the environmental triggers that the sink pouring out, right? And then the drain is what’s coming out the detox pathway.

[00:21:43] Dr. Jess: So you want to eliminate the stressors. Like if there’s mold in your household, that would be your big example. You want to take away the sink. But then the drain is still full because it’s not the detox pathways aren’t optimized. So then we optimize the detox pathways and we can remove it. So those would be like my, if we were going base level, that would be where we would start with it.

[00:22:01] Jenny Swisher: Yeah, it’s interesting because I always say we’re part of nature, but we’ve come so far from nature, you know, like when we have our phones and screens and we don’t get outside to walk and we don’t look up at the sun, you know, we recently had a total eclipse here in Indiana, just a couple of days ago, which was way cooler.

[00:22:16] Jenny Swisher: I’ll give my husband credit. He’s a former science teacher and he bought the glasses like eight months ago. He was so worried they were going to sell out. Um, and I was like, what’s happening? Like, I have to come out of my house for what?

[00:22:27] Dr. Jess: Way cooler than I thought it would be,

[00:22:31] Jenny Swisher: but it’s just another reminder to, that we, that women, especially our lunar beings, I have to share this quick story here in a second, but being outside that day, it was a gorgeous day in Indiana.

[00:22:39] Jenny Swisher: So we were outside all day. I slept so well that night and I know it’s because I literally was outside in the sun looking, literally looking up toward the sun. And there’s something to that. There’s something so powerful about that. But yet I feel like our modern society and the brick buildings and the things that we’re in is really blocking us from that natural light and the natural stuff.

[00:22:59] Jenny Swisher: So

[00:23:00] Dr. Jess: I

[00:23:00] Jenny Swisher: want to share this though, cause it’s really funny. Um, so I’m of course, part of these different groups on social media for like hormonal migraines and You know, women in perimenopause and all these different things. And I, my, my phone was blowing up the day of the eclipse from women who were saying things like, does anybody else feel off?

[00:23:18] Jenny Swisher: Like, or did anybody else start their period today? Like, so it’s just, it’s further proof that women, especially right. We’re lunar beings. And when we had that total eclipse happen, like you could. Absolutely. See shifts happening, like in these groups of women who were all saying like, Oh my gosh, this, this, and this is popping up for me.

[00:23:34] Jenny Swisher: So yeah, getting back into nature, resetting that sleep routine, I think is always, is always powerful. And, and also I think it’s important to know that each person is so unique in how they process stress. One thing that you had said to me that I wanted to call attention to, um, I think it was our last appointment.

[00:23:52] Jenny Swisher: You know, I just got my genetic test back. So, um, Dr. Jess had looked at that too. And I said, you know, what does this mean about me? We were talking about my gene mutations and stuff. And one of the things that keeps popping up from the different doctors that I’m seeing is Jenny, you have this sort of inability to process adrenaline, which makes so much sense.

[00:24:11] Jenny Swisher: based on what I’ve experienced in my own, like, I hate roller coasters, right? Why do I hate them? I think I now know I don’t like to be put in adrenaline situations, but I also feel myself having adrenaline surges throughout the day. I know that I tend to wake up with an adrenaline surge. Um, and I’ve always been just so jealous of my husband who just like rolls out of bed, like totally even keel, but that’s, that’s my norm.

[00:24:33] Jenny Swisher: Right. And so I’d love to just talk about that. Cause one thing you said to me recently was you were like, you know, the way that you’re wired is you may have to just go for a walk to burn off that adrenaline when you feel that way. So, whereas someone else might, like, if, if someone would have given me the suggestion to like go lay down, that would have been like the world’s worst suggestion for me, because it’s not going to help me burn through that.

[00:24:54] Jenny Swisher: So I’d love for you to kind of talk about, um, obviously every health is individual, so everybody is unique, but I’d love for you to kind of talk about that too.

[00:25:02] Dr. Jess: Yeah. So that’s, yeah, that’s what you said. Like everyone’s unique. And that’s why when somebody, one person is high cortisol and you say, Hey, go, you know, do some breath work and meditate.

[00:25:11] Dr. Jess: That might feel like torture to that person versus someone who’s like, Hey, go get a workout in and burn that off. Or like do yoga sequence. That’s a different thing. So that’s where things become very unique and what that person is going to fit into their lifestyle and make them actually feel good when they’re doing it.

[00:25:27] Dr. Jess: But yeah, what we were talking about with your, with the genetic stuff is that, you know, there’s this gene called comp T and so, uh, genetic just becoming very popular now, especially, but remember genetics is just the, uh, whether it’s expressed or not, just because you have the gene doesn’t mean that you’re expressing that gene, right?

[00:25:44] Dr. Jess: Different environment. Mental and lifestyle factors are going to cause the expression or not the expression. So you can turn on and off your jeans But the gene that we were talking about with, with you, Jenny was, uh, for the comp T gene. And so that gene helps you process, you know, adrenaline, norepinephrine, epinephrine, um, so that you can eliminate it from your body efficiently.

[00:26:06] Dr. Jess: And so when you have a snip in that gene, it can make it harder for you to get that out of your system, get that, that adrenaline, norepinephrine out of your system. And so these are the people which my, I am also have the comp T gene and. These are the people, you know, my entire life, I thought that people worked out to like, blow off the anxiety and like, get that release from the adrenaline or like, in my brain, everyone felt that way, until I learned that not everyone feels that way about exercise and, you know, working out and in getting movement in to feel normal to not feel so on edge.

[00:26:43] Dr. Jess: Yeah. And so that’s where genetics plays such a role, because You know, for someone who has an expressed constant teaching, we’re going to tell him like, Hey, you might like just need to move your body. In order to get some of this excess off and make you feel good. But then another person would be like, Hey, you just need to move your body, you know, nice and gently like yoga kind of movement so that we can stimulate the cerebellum or stimulate this part of the brain and still be feeding the brain, but in a different way.

[00:27:15] Jenny Swisher: It’s interesting to me, isn’t it? That like the brain is our control center. Of our body. And yet up until I feel like this, this maybe I’m just new to it, but this world of functional neurology just feels so unavailable or like, not like people don’t aren’t talking about this enough. Of course, like I said earlier, there’s modern medicine neurology, which I feel like is, as we’ve talked about more of a reactive approach to Oh my gosh, you have a brain tumor or brain cancer.

[00:27:41] Jenny Swisher: So now let’s. Let’s have a doctor for that. But I feel like what you do is more in the world of like looking for these mismatches, like, where are there mismatches? Where can we more optimize? You know, optimize the brain in different ways. So I think it’s, it’s fascinating. It’s something that I recommend everybody do at some point is, is to have this sort of functional neurology assessment and to also find what works for you as far as how you can support your nervous system, because it is what you’re hearing from me could be completely different for you based on, based on your genetics and everything else.

[00:28:11] Jenny Swisher: Um, one thing that I want to, and I know I almost asked you to do, to do this topic and we might have to just have you back in a few months or something for, for a different episode topic. But. One thing that we’re working through right now, just in my personal health journey, is We don’t know what. We don’t know if it’s, maybe it’s mold, maybe it’s parasite, maybe not.

[00:28:28] Jenny Swisher: But we’re going to do a little bit of a cleanse. We’re going to do a little bit of, if you’ve heard of cell core, that’s, that’s the route we’re going. Do you call it a cleanse? Is that what you call it? Like parasite cleanse? Is that the phrase? Yeah, you can call it a cleanse. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So we’re following a protocol.

[00:28:42] Jenny Swisher: Right. Uh, protocol that will, um, eliminate hopefully, um, anything that I have might have going on beneath the surface. I heard a doctor one time say that most everything comes back to lime mold or parasites. Um, and of course here in the U S you know, we don’t, we don’t read parasites ever as other countries might do more frequently.

[00:29:03] Jenny Swisher: Uh, so this is something that I’m taking on to see what it might unfold for me. Things just keep popping up. You know, it’s like my lab work. Really? I mean, I’ve had so many doctors be like, this is just the picture of health. Like, wow, you’re so healthy. This is so different than what we’re used to seeing.

[00:29:17] Jenny Swisher: But at the same time, my red flags have gone up. Like, well, why is my ferritin consistently low? Why is my, you know, why is my progesterone consistently low? Why is my cortisol? Like, there are certain things that keep popping up that don’t make sense to me. But when you step into this functional world and you start looking at things through a different lens, you’re like, well, actually this does make sense.

[00:29:37] Jenny Swisher: Maybe I have something like a parasite or mold exposure or something that is. causing those things to be reflected in my labs. So, um, just in case I haven’t told you guys enough, my listeners, you know, that, that it’s not all about just taking normal as optimal for you. It’s really about advocating for yourself and finding someone who will look at your health through a different lens and who will say, actually, you know, we can, we can make this better.

[00:30:03] Jenny Swisher: And there is something here. So cool. So let’s talk briefly about, um, just for a couple minutes about what that, you know, cause like you said at the beginning, you help with not, not only the neurology side, but also the sort of metabolic health side. Tell us more about this avenue of like helping support, um, endocrine function and, and helping to run, you know, get rid of any root cause issues that might be at play.

[00:30:26] Dr. Jess: Yeah. So, um, there are different ways that, that can influence the nervous system, right? The nervous system is, it’s not like you just, have a concussion or a brain injury and now you have nervous system deficits or symptoms that show up. It can happen from a numerous amount of factors and one of those factors is going to be environmental toxins.

[00:30:48] Dr. Jess: Um, and environmental toxins that can be, you know, the stuff that’s in your environment, but also it can be a pathogen or a parasite or a bacterial overgrowth. These are all things that are not only going to affect your entire body, but it’s also going to affect your brain. And so that’s why we want to look at everything because everything that’s happening in the environment is not only going to affect you, your body, but it is going to affect your brain and the way your brain processes.

[00:31:13] Dr. Jess: And then it becomes the game of what came first, the chicken or the egg, like we talked about Jenny, right? Like, was it a parasite that caused the neurological symptoms? And now because you’re sitting in high sympathetic, you can’t heal from the parasite, you know, so we, we play this game of trying to get to, okay.

[00:31:30] Dr. Jess: How deep into the root cause can we go? Because just saying you have a hormonal imbalance doesn’t tell us anything. You know, it just, it says, okay, you have a hormonal imbalance, but why do you have a hormonal imbalance? Like, why did your body decide the body is constantly trying to keep you healthy and keep you in homeostasis?

[00:31:49] Dr. Jess: Why did the body adapt in this way to where now we’re not making the hormone? Right. And so that’s when we get deep into looking at, okay. Is it something that’s going on in your gut? Is it something or do you have a parasite infection? Which is very very overlooked over here because people don’t think you can get a parasite infection unless you travel abroad Which is completely false

[00:32:11] Dr. Jess: is it you know mold? Is it lyme like you talked about? Is it epstein barr virus? Is there something deeper going on that we’re, we’re seeing that the top of the, the layer, we’re seeing the top being the hormone imbalance, but is it something that’s deeper down at the foundational level that’s causing this hormone imbalance to express itself?

[00:32:32] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. I think my good friend, Dr. Page, who I, I do consults with, um, she always says hormones are the, are not the front bowling pin. So she’s like, you know, we’ve got to really, we’ve got to make sure we get everything Absolutely. Else figured out there. So I you know, i’ve said this before but i’ll say it again that parasites my friends We all have them.

[00:32:51] Jenny Swisher: So I know it might gross you out, but we it’s it’s the truth of life I heard something recently that was like, if you have a pet, you have them. Even if you haven’t traveled abroad, you have them. Like you have them basically, no matter what. I was, I was telling my mom about it. I was like, I’m starting a parasite cleanse.

[00:33:08] Jenny Swisher: And she was like, what, why? And I’m like, we all have them. We should all be doing this every so often. So, um, but again, I mean, even outside of parasite, like my mold markers came back a little elevated too. So we’ve had our house tested our houses in the clear, but that doesn’t mean that I haven’t had prior exposure.

[00:33:26] Jenny Swisher: That’s, that’s causing an issue there too. So for me, it’s just a matter of like, how can I get my body working optimally? Now that I know these things about my genetics, I now know things like I don’t process adrenaline well, or I know things like I don’t methylate well, my liver needs extra support.

[00:33:42] Jenny Swisher: That’s when everything can kind of be customized and tailored to me. Right. So not only am I working with Jess in the sense of like. You know, this neurology side of things and this vestibular therapy, but also I’m now using different supplements that I was using before. And I’m really trying to support my digestive system.

[00:33:57] Jenny Swisher: I’m using castor oil packs, which is going to have to be a podcast episode in itself. Um, but these are all things that I wasn’t doing before, but perhaps that’s what it takes. Right. And so I always get frustrated when women say to me, how can I correct my hormone imbalance or what do I need to do? Or do I need progesterone?

[00:34:12] Jenny Swisher: Like they think that that’s like the answer. And I think you’re exactly right. Like it’s not the front bowling pin. It is literally like, there is a bigger picture going on here. And when we can dig into your bio individuality and figure out the nuances to you, and perhaps look deeper at those root causes, we can start to make progress.

[00:34:29] Jenny Swisher: Cause I mean, look at me. I mean, of course, I’m a perfect example of I’ve used progesterone cream for 13 years that have the headaches ever gone away. No. So maybe we need to go a little bit deeper, uh, which is exactly what we’re doing. So perfect. Okay. Is there anything that you can think of as it pertains to helping these women make the connections between, you know, nervous system regulation, hormone imbalance, especially as they’re entering, entering perimenopause, any other final thoughts there?

[00:34:56] Dr. Jess: Yeah, I would say, final thought on that would be. The nervous system, like when, why we’re so stressing about the nervous system and why we create a whole podcast episode for this today is because it really is the foundational level. And if you’re, if your nervous system is not optimally doing its job, it’s not controlling the body the way it should.

[00:35:14] Dr. Jess: We’re never going to get to the top of the pyramid, which is sex hormone regulation, um, doing those more higher order things. So, starting at the base, starting with the root, starting with the nervous system, dysregulation or function or however you want to call it for yourself, it’s going to help get your body out of a fight or flight threat state into more of a healing state.

[00:35:36] Dr. Jess: So then we can Then come in and do those higher order things like hormone regulation.

[00:35:41] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. It was funny because before we started recording, I’m like, okay, trying to nail it down. Are we talking about nervous system? Are we talking about, there’s so many things that we could talk about, but the one thing that I think is so fascinating that I also want to point out before we wrap up.

[00:35:55] Jenny Swisher: this topic keeps coming up to me from different clients and women that are in my groups. About the role of like emotional traumas and how it factors into our store. hormone health. And just recently I was I was told by somebody who’s a fitness influencer online that Um, we shouldn’t be paying attention, like hormone health is really irrelevant.

[00:36:20] Jenny Swisher: We should be paying attention more to mental health and that women should just journal or go to therapy was, was the, the phrase that I heard. And I said, well, I have, I agree with therapy. I agree with journaling. Um, but I also believe that there’s a hormonal tie in to trauma and vice versa. And I also believe that telling a woman that it’s, that she just needs to journal is another form of gaslighting.

[00:36:42] Jenny Swisher: Like, this is just another way of saying. No, it’s just you. You’re crazy. You know, move on. Yeah. Um, so the one thing that I wanted to point out is, you know, we don’t have time to go into it today, but I want to make that connection is, uh, there’s a new book out by Dr. Sarah Gottfried called the autoimmune cure.

[00:36:59] Jenny Swisher: I started listening to it recently on audible and I’m blown away by the fact that she’s finally taking science, like scientific data. And making the connections between childhood traumas and emotional traumas and how that impacts our stress response as humans and how that, of course, then impacts our hormones.

[00:37:17] Jenny Swisher: So a lot of times, you know, I said this at the beginning, and I think it’s perfect to bring it full circle here. We come back to that idea of calming the F down, right? Like, there’s, there are so many things that you can, you can take the bioidentical creams, you can do the exercise, right? You can even go to therapy.

[00:37:32] Jenny Swisher: Yeah. But at the end of the day, like coming into, coming to terms with your unique individuality as, as a person and finding a way to really say, okay, this is what works for me. To keep myself calm. Most of the time. This is what works for me to to be in that state is going to be what helps you, you know, reach that maximum energy.

[00:37:51] Jenny Swisher: So perfect. I just want to say thank you for hopping on here with us today. I probably will invite you back on. So you’re probably not. And I know where you are, so I can find you.

[00:38:00] Dr. Jess: You can come find me. But

[00:38:02] Jenny Swisher: I would love for you to tell everybody, you know, where can they find you? I know that you’re offering like virtual assessments and things like that.

[00:38:10] Jenny Swisher: So Tell us where they can find you, maybe on social media or website or whatever you want to give.

[00:38:15] Dr. Jess: Yeah. So, my Instagram would probably be the first place to look to get some more of an idea of what I do and what I focus on. Um, and so that Instagram handle is the brain and body doc. And then if you want to visit my website, it’s hello, brain and body co.

[00:38:31] Dr. Jess: com, or you can do dr. Jessica law, friend. com. It’ll take you to the same place. Um, but that can give you more information on how you could work with me if you decided The path that fits for you. Um, and yes, I do offer virtual consults as well in virtual sessions. So we can do in person or virtual depending on where you are.

[00:38:54] Jenny Swisher: I highly recommend this, my friends. I think it’s an, it’s an, I don’t know if the word is overlooked. It’s an underlooked, is that a phrase? It’s an underlooked area. And I think, you know, everybody’s wanting. Doctors to look at their hormone labs and everything else. But at the end of the day, I putting some attention and investment toward your nervous system is going to get you so much further.

[00:39:13] Jenny Swisher: I really, I really believe it. So I will link everything up for you guys in the show notes, including her Instagram and website and all the things, feel free to reach out to her with questions. She’s amazing. So thank you again, Dr. Jess, for being here, my friends, and we’ll talk again soon. Bye bye.

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