Kelly Episode 1.mp4.1

[00:00:00] Welcome to Chinese Medicine in the modern world, a space where ancient wisdom meets today's most complex health challenges. I am Dr. Kelly Smick. Join us as we explore holistic dermatology, chronic inflammation, and root cause healing through the lens of traditional Chinese medicine.

In this episode we talked about. Why IBD is on the rise, the difference between IBS and IBD, how Chinese medicine views these conditions differently than we do in the west. Why testing can be useful, but not the whole enchilada, common mistakes people make and how you can help yourself.

I'm of the opinion that IBS is sort of this blanket diagnosis for anyone who's got. Discomfort and there's different diagnostic criteria for it and [00:01:00] different subtypes.

If you've got something that's leaning more in the direction of diarrhea or constipation, and primarily you've got some pain or cramping associated with the bowel movement, but you just get this, oh, you've got some IBS try and eat good food and kind of get sent out the door with it. So. I think it's a common sort of what I call a, a garbage bin diagnosis and for lack of better answers, especially in the West, um, it's just something people get labeled with and it doesn't often lead to good treatment outcomes or a change for the better for people.

So that's one aspect. There's IBS and then there's IBD when you're talking about an inflammatory bowel disease. Crohn's and ulcerative colitis are certainly on the rise statistically and in industrialized nations specifically, and with more serious cases happening in younger and younger [00:02:00] people. And I think that's multifactorial and there seems to be some interplay between genetics and environment and toxins and diet and pathogens.

And there was kind of a race to the bottom. In the sixties or seventies trying to find the exact microbe that did this. And we haven't found it. And that's because in my estimate and why Chinese medicine can really shine here is because there's this reductionist obsession that we have in the West trying to find this one root cause.

And you know, there's new kids on the block. Even in sort of the naturopathic and functional medicine community looking at sibo, everybody's got sibo. It's a very common diagnosis. Oh, small intestine bacterial overgrowth. We have an opportunistic pathogen that's taken up residents and is proliferating in the gut and is [00:03:00] the root of all of your problems.

And. A lot of the treatment protocols are still heavily reliant on antibiotics to combat these pathogens, and I see time and time again people that have gone that route and still have digestive issues coming at the other side. So it's a complex interplay of a number of different factors, and in Chinese medicine there seems to be room to hold more than an individual causal factor.

We're talking about causal web. And the interplay of all these different factors as opposed to one myopic root thing. And we know now that antibiotics can exacerbate these problems long term because they're essentially carpet bombing our microbiome and allowing certain opportunistic pathogens to proliferate and dampening down immune response and other, you know, gut commensals that are [00:04:00] helpful for digestion.

So. That's where I and why I, I am wanting to talk about Chinese medicine and its capacity for these conditions because there's really room here. And my professor is a brilliant man, and he has said time and time again, if he had to choose one condition to focus on with Chinese medicine, it would be ulcerative colitis because it responds so incredibly well to treatment with Chinese medicine and we can essentially help.

People prevent their intestines from getting cut out and that's significant. So I'm hopeful we can change the tide. I've built a program around this stuff. It's an umbrella program, gut health, I-B-S-I-B-D program. That includes IBS and its different manifestations. IBD. Crohn's and colitis. And of course there's certain cases that are gonna be too far gone that I won't be able to be particularly impactful with.

But I am, [00:05:00] I am ever hopeful that we can move the needle and hopefully at some point change some public opinion and maybe make a dent in, uh, what's possible with medicine. I am not. Of the opinion that everybody who comes in that has a skin issue automatically has a, a gut health issue.

Um, that being said, there are lots of different patterns that are directly connected to the gut, and I see a lot of psoriasis. I see a lot of eczema. I see a lot of acne and certainly certain patterns in Chinese medicine have a direct link with gut health.

So an example of inverse psoriasis, which can be quite stubborn and tricky to treat from an allopathic standpoint. When I see that people have psoriatic lesions under their arms in their [00:06:00] groin in what we call the intertriginous region in the folds, basically places on our body that are prone to being a little more damp and hot.

There's a pattern in Chinese medicine called damp heat, and it makes perfect sense. We shake it all out and the the herbs that address that address damp heat and usually in the gut and. It's foreign language to us, but I think looking at the body in terms of all these little sublimates and recognizing this is how the skin is showing up on the surface, and it's a reflection of what's happening internally, and that helps guide me to build the formula, come up with a different differential diagnosis, and then prescribe something accordingly, and then have the evidence.

Part of the reason I love treating skin is that you can see the difference. It's not just somebody reporting that they. Feel better. It's obvious. So we treat damp heat in the gut and conditions like [00:07:00] inverse psoriasis or certain forms of eczema, very damp heat, eczema, nummular, eczema, things that are very well circumscribed, damp, oozy, weepy, respond very well to these conditions and the gut health tends to improve at the same time.

And there's often concomitant symptoms, things that are overlapping. With gut health that we can see at the outset that helps to guide our diagnosis. And similarly with acne, there's a form of acne that is consistent with what we call Y Ming damp heat. And Yung Ming means bright young in Mandarin, and it's pointing at the physical stomach and the large intestine, and that's where this type of damp heat tends to proliferate.

And then. On the skin, you'll see pustular lesions. You'll see a lot happening on the cheeks. You'll see really greasy skin, lots of inflammation, lots of heat. People feel dehydrated. They often [00:08:00] have a disturbance in the digestive system that is obvious in terms of either constipation or diarrhea, loose stool, and we can make modifications to the herbal formulas to address those things individually.

Whereas things get really specific and nuanced and interesting from. My lens, but you treat that and the skin starts to clear up and that's very cool to watch. In Chinese medicine, there's a famous saying, and I would butcher it in Chinese, so I won't attempt, but the basic translation in English is same disease, different treatment.

Different disease, same treatment. And while it is infinitely more complicated than that, this is the idea that two people get a diagnosis of ulcerative colitis. And in the allopathic model, that's what it is. Here are your available treatments. We will offer, you know, steroids, something to either suppress the immune system, shut the immune system [00:09:00] down, or modulate it to get the inflammation under control.

Inflammation's the immune response Beyond that. In the west, we say very unironically. Well, we can just cut out the colon because the inflammation's in the colon colitis. Whereas ulcerative colitis, or the Crohn's disease, the lesions are through the entire elementary canal. You can have skip lesions going from nose to tail, mouth to tail, and with colitis, it's confined to the colon and.

They'll say, yeah, we can get rid of it. We'll just cut out your colon, which is, and it works, but has obviously pretty serious implications for people's quality of life and self-esteem and mental health. And I think hopefully we can start to change this. So when we're looking at it from a Chinese medicine standpoint, we are going beyond that.

It's helpful to have. Uh, a Western label on [00:10:00] it. So we know what we're dealing with, but we are looking at pattern differentiation and are we looking at clearing out damp heat with toxin? Are we looking? And usually people go through a round of clearing first anyways, but there's subtleties here and there's a way of looking at.

The person is an individual and treating what is happening in an acute phase, and then moderating and modulating treatment over time, clear out the acute things, do some rebalancing, and then go in and strengthen the digestion to the extent that we're able and people that have been besotted with these things for a long time.

It can have such a, a weakness in their digestion that allows for the proliferation of these things in their system. And sometimes that's a, what we call a more deficient picture show up with more fatigue and diarrhea and bloating and gas and indigestion intolerance to different foods. And that's where we go in and [00:11:00] strengthen, we call it spleen sheet deficiency.

We can go in and support the root and. It's fascinating medicine. It's a fascinating approach to these types of conditions. So we'll take an overarching pattern, we'll build a formula around that, and then we will modify it and put in certain things. Are you having more. Blood in your stool? Are you having, you know, more mucus in your stool?

Are you having a lot of pain and cramping? Are you really uncomfortable? Is the inflammation outta control? Is your CRP, your C-reactive protein? You know, through the ceiling indicating a high level of inflammation. There are herbs that can help bring the situation under control fairly quickly, and then we can also administer herbal enes.

That people can retain for as long as they can, so we can get the medicine directly applied in through the colon and the rectum. Um, ulcerative colitis always affects the rectum and then it will affect [00:12:00] the remainder of the colon approximately to one extent or another. So, IBS we are looking at interestingly.

Quite different than IBD. We're looking at IBS. We're looking at spasmodic pain and cramping with bowel movements. We're looking at a liver pathology from a Chinese medicine standpoint, and we break it down in degree of severity. You know, are you just having a little cramping and discomfort before you have a bowel movement?

We'll give you a formula to. Smooth the liver basically to deal with what we call liver chi stagnation and any pain and cramping and use se antispasmodics and help clean out and dredge the liver. And then we take it a step further if the symptoms are more severe, where we call it calm the liver and restrain urgency.

If there is, you know, emergency [00:13:00] situations when you have to go to the bathroom, you've gotta go right now. And that is. Often the picture that is compromising people's quality of life the most, and it's a more aggressive formula. It's stronger, and we recognize the degree of severity for all the different symptoms and treat accordingly.

So I've mentioned the liver here, and you know, it's an accessory organ of digestion, but it is of prime importance in Chinese medicine for all manner of conditions and very intimately connected to especially IBS.

And. I mean, my goodness. For whatever reason, we just don't pay a lot of attention to this large organ in our abdomen until you've got a really serious problem with it. Until your liver enzymes are elevated until you're developing cirrhosis or fatty liver, [00:14:00] which rates of fatty liver, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease are exploding right now.

It's one third of the population. Which is unbelievable to me in a lot of ways. And I see people all the time that have gone to their GP and say, oh yeah, they told me I've got fatty liver. And I said, well, what did they tell you to do about it? And not much. But the end stage of treating non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is immunosuppressants.

'cause the inflammation gets outta control. It starts impacting people's quality of life, and then they want to go in and shut down the inflammation. The inflammation is always coming from somewhere. We need inflammation. Inflammation saves our life. It's a, it's central part of an immune reaction, but when it's switched on all the time and it's high, this is what's driving, you know, autoimmunity, all kinds of chronic inflammatory degenerative processes in the body and.

The liver is often the root of a lot of it, and the liver's on [00:15:00] our side, it's trying to help us. It's trying to filter our blood and metabolize our hormones and do you know, thousands of other functions and it's also a repository for latent viruses and bacteria and it'll tick along for a very long time.

Symptomless like, what are the symptoms of fatty liver disease? There are none. It's a silent issue, but we can tell in Chinese medicine based on other symptom patterning if you might have a pathology that's happening in the liver. So with IBS, and I think this is why possibly for a long time people have said, oh, there's mental emotional connection.

It might be in your head, or it's just stress, is that there's actually congestion in the liver that's considerable enough that is impacting your digestion. And your mood and we see more severe forms of IBS. There is often a [00:16:00] correlation with a disrupted menstrual cycle, PMS, breast distension, irritability in young women, issues of fertility, um, all manner of things that are playing into it.

But then again, that's the beauty of the pattern differentiation. We can kind of tell and we ask, how is your mood? How is your menstruation? Are you having pain and clotting with your cycle? And there's a correlate there, so it's the liver's important as not to be overlooked. So again, iBS and IBD are distinctly different, you know, disease categories, so we're talking about IBS. It's a more mild form. It's usually just kind of, you know, uncomfortable and cramping, maybe some diarrhea, loose stool, constipation, what have you. But the two main patterns have to do with liver congestion and.

There are levels to pathology with liver and it will [00:17:00] start as you know, what we call in Chinese medicine, liver qi stagnation. It just means the liver has been a little bit jammed up and it's having trouble getting the wheels moving, and when you actually break it down what's happening physiologically, it makes good sense. And this is just another language in a way of describing a natural phenomenon. It's a departure from how we've been trained to think, but it's perfectly logical when you really think about what's happening.

The liver has become congested through all kinds of things, and our environment, our diet, stress, et cetera, it becomes a little bit congested. And they call that liver cheese stagnation. And there are very specific symptoms that come with it. And then. It progresses the level and they say it's liver chi stagnation, and then it's generating heat.

And you think about it like an engine that doesn't have enough oil and the things start smoking. You know, this is liver cheese stagnation generating heat. [00:18:00] Take it a step further. We call it liver fire. And you can see the progression of the symptomology and you can see when somebody comes into the clinic and they have liver fire, this can get so extreme that people are having significant issues with rage.

Anger is connected here, frustration is connected here, and it's a, a real cause and effect as well in terms of mind body connection. So rather than just sort of. Medicating somebody down because they're having, you know, inappropriate feelings. We're looking at, where's this coming from? You can get epistaxis, nosebleeds, red eyes.

The eyes are connected. Certain forms of eczema are connected with this, and then we've got damp heat in the liver and gallbladder. So there's a, there's a progression there. And then when it comes to IBD, we are primarily looking at damp heat in the yanging. With fire toxin and what does fire toxin mean?

And that's more [00:19:00] often than not pointing at some sort of pathogenic load, but we're not overly concerned with finding the one thing. There's generally an understanding dampness being an umbrella term. Heat being kind of an umbrella term. It's often opportunities of bacteria that are pushing heat and it's often one or a mix of some.

Yeast and fungus and mold that is the damp piece, and they kind of come together and there's a, an interplay happening in the intestine and a lot of the, like antibiotics, antifungals aren't often quite catching it. And I, for the longest time I really couldn't understand it. And I, the best I can do is to think like it's just too myopic.

And the herbs, there's some sort of organizing intelligence. Within them themselves. And then the way they interact with human physiology and the way the formulas are constructed, that allows for a kind [00:20:00] of a clean out and a system rebalancing is as elegantly as I can put it. That's major. And then we get this condition called spleen sheet deficiency, where the system's been overloaded for too long, and we can see where there's a, a deficit has become important in this.

Picture and there's herbs to support that as well.

Food stagnation. It's an interesting concept in Chinese medicine and there can be different factors that play into it, but often it looks like, you know, overeating, eating inappropriate food and kind of feeling bel, we call that stomach chi rebelling. The stomach energy is supposed to, you know, take things in, digest it and things keep going through the elementary canal out the other way.

And if your stomach cheat is rebelling and you get. Indigestion and gas and bloating and burping and belching, things are coming back up. That is often indicative that the, there's food stagnation [00:21:00] and there are herbal formulas to address this that are quite famous. There's one called Ba Hoan, and I carry it everywhere with me in little packets just in case anybody gets indigestion around me and I can't pour it in their drink.

And it tastes good and it works. But that's normally, a dietary issue. And it can be exacerbated by underlying digestive dysfunction and what we would probably call in the west, something like, you know, stomach acid insufficiency, hydrochloric acid insufficiency, low motility, those types of things where things kinda get a little bit backlogged and then we help to address that and keep it moving.

Blood stasis is a very interesting piece of, pathology in Chinese medicine and. Blood stasis can happen for a number of reasons as well.

So the conversation just keeps mushrooming onto itself almost like a fractal. When you start looking at what's actually cause and effect and you start to [00:22:00] get into kind of non-linear thinking, whether it's gonna be this and this and this, but blood stasis basically.

Indicates that the blood in the system is not moving properly for one reason or another, and this can be because the liver is too jammed up to properly filter the blood. It can be that we have blood deficiency or there's an anemic picture. There's not enough blood in the system to get the blood moving properly, and so blood stasis, and there can be signs and symptoms of this.

And we'll often see more severe cramping and bleeding and pain and digestive issues. And it will transform into blood stagnation, will transform into blood stasis where the blood's not moving and all, and it can congeal and coagulate and cause pain. And to get that moving is important and also [00:23:00] to try and get our handle on.

Why that's happening in the first place is important. And there's books written on blood stasis. It's a very big topic and its role as a driver of disease in all kinds of chronic degenerative processes, and it's very common in aging. So I will usually, unless it's very obvious out of the gates, that blood stasis is at play.

I won't normally start there. When we're dealing with these types of conditions, we try to clear up the system, clean things up as much as we can. Then if we need to, we might go in and use herbs that we call nourish and move the blood, but it's typically think of something becoming stagnant and swampy and there's no movement in it.

Like in. Immobile, small body of water that becomes sort of brackish. That's how it starts. And, but why is it like [00:24:00] that? Where else in the system is jammed up in the first place? We aim to clean all that stuff up and then afterwards we can go in and, and nourish and move things along. And typically people, experience less pain and more energy and even more glowing skin.

Uh, in women because we can see it with disrupted menstrual flow. I see it particularly with a type of acne that is along the jawline that gets more stubborn and stuck and purpley and modeled and has trouble moving out. But as we're treating this, we are also treating the liver, and that is what is filtering our blood and metabolizing hormone.

So as we work on that level, and we'll add some things in to move the blood, the skin tends to clear up as well, which is. Very interesting. But we would see it in a case with IBD where we've got lots of pain, dark blood in the stool, that there's been an issue at the level of the blood. And this can also, be the end [00:25:00] stage of where there's some, what we call blood heat in the system where the inflammation's at the level of the blood, where you've got something like streptococcus hemolytic.

Which means there's a bacteria that has an action of breaking blood basically, and heat at the level of the blood for a long time. Eventually, the blood vessels get taxed and it turns into more of a blood stasis picture, and there are all kinds of corroborating signs and symptoms that let us know that that's at play.

But how to address it is a different story. So part of the reason I love Chinese medicine so much, I mean the fact that it works is helps me sleep at night and it's got its own unique system of diagnostics that took me a very long time to wrap my head around.

So I deal with a lot of skin conditions. I deal with a lot of digestive issues, and by the time somebody breaks down what's going on with them, I already have a sense of at least. [00:26:00] A couple of patterns of imbalance and sometimes it's like peeling an onion. We start by peeling off top layer. We kind of see what's under it and we keep going until we get things sorted out.

It's not suppressive therapy. We are peeling back the layers and that's interesting. Like we said, IBS, it's usually some sort of liver pathology. IBD, it's more specific to the stomach and the intestines and. There's nuance there and there's ways of describing these things and the formulas work and do their thing.

And over the years, as brilliant as the herbs are, I have worked with some very smart people and I've learned a lot from them, and I have incorporated some other pieces that I found very helpful. The gut reset that I work with, being one of them. , I love homo toxicology. I used to think it was totally insane.

Now it helps peel off a layer. Now I'm a little more focused on diet and for the longest time I didn't think much [00:27:00] of any of these fancy gut tests because I personally knew some of the people that were headhunted for these bigger companies that were running tests on the microbiome. Long involved conversations over dinner with them and basically like, we don't really know what we're doing yet in terms of making recommendations for diet based on, whatever's happening in the gut.

And we're, it's a bit of an experiment and at best we are doing a large scale data collection, which is eventually gonna give us some really good intel. And I was like, okay, great. But is it informing your treatment protocols? Are you helping people have better health outcomes as a result of this testing?

As a clinician, I wasn't all that interested in it because I didn't see the end game. As I've gone along in my clinical journey and I've seen more and more of this stuff and there's been advancements with the testing, I found it interesting.

At the very least, it can be very motivating and. Give us good information. It still doesn't necessarily impact the way that I'm going to treat that condition, [00:28:00] to be honest. 'cause I don't see, oh, you have streptococcus, hemolytic and this and that and the third in in your system. But it might give me information to say, oh, you have higher levels of mold than I was aware of.

So maybe we're gonna focus on that a little more aggressively. So it does inform me. A little bit, but the Chinese system of diagnostics is still pretty bang on because they nailed it. They got it right the first time. There is no need to adapt a lot of this stuff because it works. It's effective, it's efficient, it is logical, and it informs, treatment that produces.

Pretty outstanding outcomes on, a lot of times if people apply it properly, they know what they're doing, they know the conditions, it's good at treating and they're, well versed in it, then it's really helpful. But I have brought some of this stuff on board. I just put myself through a round of testing myself than I was like, oh, a little more going on there than I thought.

[00:29:00] I otherwise have clear skin, feel good, pretty healthy, good energy, sleep like a baby, and I could. Clean up my act a little bit and make sure that I am doing everything I can to give myself good quality of life moving down the road. , I, I'm impressed with what Vibrance put together to be honest. I've seen lots of other companies, I've been pretty dismissive of a lot of them, most of my career. And I think even some of my colleagues that know me really well are surprised that I've brought Vibrant on.

But that's how impressed I am with them. . You know, the level of specificity, the accuracy, the methods of testing, what they're actually looking for and at, that's of interest to me because I'm pretty clear that there's a latent pathogenic load that's been, you know, a. Chinese medicine 1 0 1, where's the pathogen?

What level of the system is it impacting and how do we guide it out efficiently and effectively? I'm aware that there are pathogens pushing a lot of these chronic diseases that I'm treating, so they [00:30:00] have awesome tests to look at, different viral load, bacterial load. Their gut zoomer is very comprehensive and can give you a lot of information, and at the very least can be very motivating.

Clean up your act. Um. I'm, I'm just happy with what they've done and there's a link in my bio if you wanna get that done. If you want me to go over them with you, I have to see you in person. You have to go through a bit of a process with me. I will link it for you guys. You can check it out. And I had somebody commenting the other day, oh, it's expensive. It's like, yeah, it's expensive. All the stuff that's covered and paid for isn't gonna tell you much. As far as you know, my standard blood tests are concerned.

I am healthy, I'm the picture of health. I'm healthy as a horse. And then you start looking deeper. I wanna know about pathogens, viruses, bacteria, heavy metals, and then. My logical scientific mind wants to see [00:31:00] exactly what's going on and then watch it come down as we treat, and that's all fun and good testing isn't mandatory, in my opinion.

I might start moving that way just to have a more standardized process that we can look at, because I am looking to make a bit of a splash here with this, but IBD is well worth treating with Chinese medicine and. I've got lots of tricks up my sleeves. Chinese herbal medicine, the raw boiled herbal medicine is the strongest tool in my toolbox.

The medicine is brilliant. I think we can help change some lives here considerably. And I want this information out there and you know, I can't bring people back from the dead. I can't help if you've already had. Your colon removed. There's no colon to work on, depending if you have your bowel resectioned and how much of it's gone.

And there are situations that I can't really work with, and at this point [00:32:00] it's difficult for me to work with people that are on too many medications that are already suppressing everything that's going on. I kind of need to see what's happening. I recommend if possible. Get in as soon as you're able to, while the disease is as fresh as possible, you have the best chance at getting things sorted out and putting yourself on a better trajectory.

I think the biggest mistake people make are, you know, listening to influencers on the ground.

To be honest, I, I try not to give too much blanket advice that isn't gonna be useful 'cause it's difficult because everybody's so individualized. But, you know, something occasionally will take hold in our psyches in the west and be touted as this. Panacea this thing that's good for everything and people say, oh, I got some gut stuff and I'm just gonna go load up on probiotics.

Well, just taking probiotics all the time, if you are relying on them consistently, even if you find it helpful in the short term, isn't [00:33:00] solving a big problem. So yeah, just this kind of piecemeal, I'm gonna go into the health food store and, oh, I heard this was good for your gut, or, I'm gonna take a bunch of this, or like, it's not.

Useful. You need somebody that's got a lens on what's happening that can identify your patterns. And you told me to be quick and that's all. I'm sorry. No, just like I want you to like call out these specific things because I'm like, oh, I've done that, I've done that, I've done that. Or like heard about it.

There's so many things people will grab onto.. If you've got a serious case of IBD, it's the last thing you want. You actually wanna be on a low fiber diet for a minute and do things like. Like a congee because there's so much inflammation in your gut and you've got blood and puss coming out in your stool.

You can't have a bunch of, Metamucil in there that's gonna act like a aggressive sweep through. It's just gonna cause yourself so much pain. And I think that's part of why something like the carnivore diet has been allowed to. Become so popular because [00:34:00] people that have a lot of inflammation in your gut, when you're eating a lot of fruits and vegetables and these fruits and vegetables have compounds in them that are antimicrobial, that are causing a little bit of a, maybe a little bit of a fallout in your gut from even , a antimicrobial level, let alone their high fiber content that's pulling through and you super inflamed, that's gonna cause you some discomfort.

People say, oh, I can't have too many fruits and vegetables. It wrecks my gut. And it's like, well. Once we get that sorted out, it's not the fruits and vegetables that are causal and there's actually evidence to suggest that people that are not eating much in the way of fruits and vegetables actually have higher rates of things like IBD.

We need to get sorted out and then hopefully have you back to , a more whole foods plant-based diet. But in the short term, depending on the degree of inflammation, sometimes you have to be very careful. And because there's no fiber in things like the keto carnivore. Diet people feel more comfortable in the short term and go, oh, that's the only thing that helped me.

It's the only thing that fix me. And the long term outcomes [00:35:00] I think we're gonna see down the road are gonna be disastrous. There's no long term evidence for any of them.

I care deeply about people. I care about this medicine. I want people to be well, and I would never seek to push my own personal agenda on somebody if it was gonna give them a negative outcome. And over the years, the more evidence that comes across my desk, over and over and over and over again, a plant-based diet is the best across the board for.

Overall health longevity for, treatment-based plans for autoimmunity, chronic inflammatory conditions, which is all I'm treating all the time. The old school Chinese medicine therapeutic diets. The heat clearing diet is plant-based. The number one food to do that is celery. Over and over and over again.

I see more and more evidence and, you know, there's a doctor in our community that is doing a very good job of citing all of the literature. Very matter of fact, Lee, his name is Dr. [00:36:00] Matthew Negra. I'm a very big fan of his. He has a lot more patience and time to go through this and, you know, debate people and I think he's wonderful and I'm a big fan of his work.

Thank you Matthew Negra, for what you do. I appreciate you, you know, at the end of the day. It's not good use of me and not what I wanna do with my career to sit around and have those conversations all the time. I'm a clinician. I am results driven. I can help you apply these things. I don't always wanna sit around and talk about the why can you?

The gut reset that I offer is one of the few things that I think is pretty universally applicable as long as people don't have, you know, clotting problems. I love it. It's gentle, it's effective. I think everybody should do it for a variety of reasons. It's brilliant. But if you've got a situation like IBDI, I want to treat more ulcerative colitis, I wanna see more people with.

Ulcerative colitis, IBD and IBS in my clinic. 'cause I'm known [00:37:00] as the skin person. The skin and the intestines are very intimately connected. And I am launching my digestive health program and I want you to see what this medicine can do. And I cannot tell you I'm not gatekeeping what to take. 'cause I don't know, I don't know what your pattern is.

I dunno what the problem is and without a lens on it. It difficult to make universal recommendations. Gut resets pretty easy to do, can usually get away with that. Outside of that, you need customized treatment.

I'm so grateful you guys are here and listening.

This, I think, has the capacity to really change the game. Here and have people living healthier, happier lives, and I'm very passionate about it and I'm happy to share what I know.