In this episode Dr. Troy Spurrill, owner of Synapse Center for Health and Healing, Dr. Joshua Wallert, Lead Practitioner, and Marque Gant, Clinic Director have a conversation about how to rebound after the holidays.
In this episode Dr. Troy Spurrill, owner of Synapse Center for Health and Healing, Dr. Joshua Wallert, Lead Practitioner, and Marque Gant, Clinic Director have a conversation about how to rebound after the holidays.
Speaker 0: Welcome to the Synapse SNPs Podcast, where we explore the power of health and healing. On this podcast, we will be talking with health experts, professionals and leaders about hot topics in the world of health, whether it's tools to help you flourish. Successful stories to inspire or tips to optimize your health. Snaps is here to help you take the first steps towards living your best life.
Speaker 1: Welcome to snap snips on Dr. Troy. Joined here with Doctor Josh and Marquis, and we are coming to you today to discuss. Rebounding from the holidays here. So it's very important for this time of year, January after Christmas and the New Year and Thanksgiving just to check in and talk a little bit about how to rebound number one, but also some of the things that can slip in there and cause some dysfunction and and just little changes that you can make to start getting back on track.
So Sorry, you Doctor. Josh. What are some of the things that that we need to rebound from?
Speaker 2: Exactly. That's it's tough because holiday season, I tell my patients too. It's it's a special time. I understand if people, you know, have special meals or meet with family and do special things. The problem becomes a multi fold.
And this the food is a big thing. A lot of people go too far. Right? They'll yeah. Instead of saying, hey, I'm gonna have a meal or two that are good.
Paid from from Halloween until New Year's Eve, I'm gonna eat junk. Isn't it? I don't remember the exact stat, but the majority of weight that people gain throughout the year is in that window.
Speaker 1: Yes.
Speaker 2: Basically in November and December window just because it's... Now candy and treats and good food. And again, I I I don't wanna be a, you know, a sc and say never to do stuff. But in moderation. Right?
Because that sets us up for a whole bunch of other issues, whether it's and stress pork got health poor immune function, died as a big is a big player there.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. And the weight gain is one thing. And and just weight gain in general equals inflammation. So So fat equals inflammation.
Sometimes you don't gain weight, but you still feel lousy. And so that's inflammation. We're just joking around about family earlier too, but some people when they come together with family. That's more of a stress. It's it's not actually something that helps you with your health.
So there are so many variables. One of the other things we're talking about before we went live here is just the pure volume of people that are just challenged by the seasonal we're in right now being January twenty twenty three, We have a lot of patients that are stressed out because at work, they're doing more than just their one job. They're doing two jobs or two and a half jobs. And there's some issues with labor. There's some issues with just systems breaking down in other companies.
So supply chain stuff. We've run into that ourselves here as well. And so there's a lot of increased stress or demands being put on people, and there's a trickle down effect. So the first thing I want to encourage, just look at how your life is going. If you are starting to lose some capacity, meaning you can't do what you used to do, that's one thing.
But if all of sudden your responsibilities have increased as well, whether it be with your family or with work. That is something else. So it's important to first have awareness and then start to put some boundaries upper parameters So... Because you've gotta protect yourself as far as your capacity. If anything is starting to interfere with your sleep, then we've gotta make sure that it gets addressed.
And it doesn't have to be changed overnight. You don't wanna let get to that point. Kinda like the titanic. We've talked about that ourselves here. Just make some subtle changes plan ahead.
My my conversation yesterday with one of my patients. It's because he feels like he's doing two and a half, three three jobs was to schedule extra time off in the summer starting now. It was to actually get his weeks off for the future planned out right now. And although that was kind of a novel idea, Tammy, it was important. Even if it was a non paid time off, we need breaks from certain things or we need ideas of how to restructure our current lives.
And this is very very important. So when times are tough, that's when we really need to to to focus in on our core. Foundational principles are being healthy.
Speaker 2: Yep. We get the double w this time of year of the cold and the lack of of sunlight too. For those of you that don't live in Minnesota right now in January. I think the low tonight is what negative seventeen, the negative thirty five chill, I think is what we get tonight.
Speaker 1: It's just negative.
Speaker 3: Yeah. That's very negative.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Exactly. But that plays a big role because even... I was reading something recently. Cold...
Exposure in the nose as decreases the immune function of that area by fifty percent even within a few minutes. Yeah. And walking outside and breathing in in that cold air. This is one reason why this part of the world, we get a lot of colds and sickness is that the immune system is naturally damaged a bit when we go outside. Coupling that with the lack of sunlight, which is also a downer the for the immune system, then we have a, you know, triple w perhaps.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And that's a that's actually a really good thing to do is just when the sun is shining, take advantage.
Speaker 2: Go outside.
Speaker 1: Go outside, sit in the window, just get get that sunlight. And we... We know that there may people around the world there listening to the podcast. And so Marquis, what was some of the... You remember the stats on the different countries and stuff, you remember know how many approximately?
Gonna put him on the spot though.
Speaker 2: Lot in Germany. Live German,
Speaker 4: some other... Eight in Australia.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I'm I just thinking about Australia. Do you think and maybe Australian listener can answer this for us. The holiday season in Australia is their summer. Mh. Right.
So I wonder if they have less negative impact because their cold and flu season is our summer not as much of a holiday time. I wonder if we get that worse because we're layering those stress on top of each other and they're not.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting. Yeah, yeah. If you're from Australia or from the the... South of the equator, just let us know help be good.
Speaker 2: Or minus the come. We'll show up. Yeah. We'll do that talk for
Speaker 1: some Australia. In January.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we've seen, another variable is the post Covid I'm gonna say, post Covid era. Even though we're kind of in that that season. We've seen that through the last couple years, there are some changes with our immune. Ability to fight off infection. A lot of that can happen with stress.
We see a down regulation of our of our immune system that is helping to fight off infection. So there's here locally, we saw a rise with things like Rs v and other infections. We're seeing basically our immune system not be as adapted at fighting off other infections. And many of them are opportunistic infections the medical literature, talk about tuberculosis and into and can lead is one of the other ones, but we actually see in things like parasitic infections and even things like lyme we're seeing a ton of lime post Covid or post vaccination with mrna vaccines. We're seeing that these opportunistic infections also on the rise, whether they were there before or end dormant or they're new and exposure has been new.
It's very, very intriguing to see that the start to to increase. So what that means essentially though, is the internal environment of our bodies is such that it's not the defense mechanisms aren't quite what they used to be. Mh. And we know that for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Everything from the covid and vaccines and other infections, but all the stuff we talked about with winter stress and holiday stress dampen up that part of the immune system. You've got that T one system that's meant to go and, you know, kill off those infections and that keep them under control, but that... With all of the things we mentioned, that part of the immune system is down regulated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And again, what's helpful for t h one t two regulation, the top. Three things in the body that help our glut, which is our major antioxidant and helps us detox omega three oils, fish oils, and Vitamin d, which is the most important. And again, in the summer summertime, there's more Vitamin d just from the sun, but Vitamin d is very, very crucial for that. So one of the things that absolutely helps to improve immune function and to fight infection, other than deep sleep.
And this is something we can encourage everyone to do is simply experiencing joy. So what brings joy to your life that's a good question to answer. If you can answer that for yourself and start to actually put that into either a daily weekly or monthly routine, that actually is gonna help your immune system.
Speaker 2: Mh.
Speaker 1: And a lot of times that can be free. Or if Joy is like, I like to go to Hawaii hate. Like be expensive. But it's important to at least take a look at what brings joy into your life. Now it could be as simple as just watching a smile on your kids face or grandchild face.
That... That's it. It could be as simple as looking at pictures of family and and speaking with certain people within your family. Whatever it is, make sure you start to put that into your daily routine, especially if you're working two and a half three jobs, you've got to balance that out with some good deep sleep and some joy. So that's that's something that's very important just just as something to lift you upper right away, but it actually does boost your immune system quite a bit.
Speaker 2: I think that can be amplified them. This is something that I'm trying to work on with a a better daily routine. You know, it's easy, especially with me having young kids to you know, come home and do dinner and deal with bedtime and and then not wanna go to bed right away and stay up too late and then have be able to get up early enough and Ideally, I would be going to bed early. Which again, that usually means around my kid's bedtime, which I don't early wanna do. And then getting up early.
Because ideally getting up early getting Sunshine if it's there, doing a workout having some time where you're actually relaxed in the morning in particular. I think it'd be really good. That would be the optimal.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And for me, because that my young kids, You stage are long gone. But getting that routine is still very, very important. And when I go through a busy season like this, one of things that I implement for myself and man my patients is just doing a very simple physical routine. That doesn't take a lot time.
So I literally have a five minute routine in the morning where I do push ups and other physical activity to engage my muscles right away, and it helps a lot. It's only five minutes. And it it it's remarkable after thirty days of doing it, the changes that occur just from doing that five minutes. So I encourage people all the time Sometimes mentally, we think because we're overloaded overwhelmed, we just don't start anything.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But you can... Really just take five minutes and it helps. And I'm gonna say this, we have a within our courses here programs here, we have a class that call the mindset class where I kinda walk people through how your mindset can either fear with your health and healing or it can help with your health and healing. And there's one way for us to identify if there's an actual fear problem and interfering with your health, and that's excuses. When you can identify an excuse that you are throwing out there That means there's there's something going on.
So let me just walk you through that real real quick. Our definition of an excuse basically is an excuse is nothing more than a reason wrapped in a skin of a eye. Which means if there's a lie that you're believing, you have to identify that lie. And if you can change that, meaning like just reverse at a rna degrees and reverse that, that is a game changer for your overall health. And when we say stuff, like, I don't have time for that that's an excuse.
There's a lie that you're believing somewhere. Identify what that lie is and then make that change, and you will completely see a difference in outcomes, even how you feel. We have a testimony on our website of a patient where we walk through that and her and she shares how that changed her entire condition. She had bleeding ulcerative of colitis and this was one of the things among many other things we had a lot of lab work a lot of treatments, but this was one thing once she identified, it ended up helping her get to the point of of healing her ulcerative colitis. So a It's very, very important our mindset when it comes to the healing process and to to be thriving in life.
And so that's one of them. If you if you can identify an excuse and change it or change the lie or the blue system around the lie That's a game changer for your health. One of my favorite books written by Jack Can, he... Interviewed successful people from all walks of life, and it's called the success principles, great name if you're actually interviewing successful people. Yeah.
And he interviewed professional athletes, high level executives, stay at home parents, people were considered elite in their field. And he wanted to look at what are the traits of successful people? And the first one that came across the board, didn't matter who he was interviewing. He said they all just had this attribute. They all took one hundred percent responsibility for their life, for all the results in their life.
Now when you take one hundred percent Responsibility, what are you not doing? Giving excuses. Yep. So there's no lies that you're believing. And lies don't come from God.
Lies lies basically are there to disrupt us and get us off course. So if you hear an excuse come out of your mouth, which by the way, when you're feeling down when you're being defeated when you're feeling overwhelmed, what do we tend to throw out? Reasons for why we feel defeated overwhelmed. And what are those excuses? So this season as you work on your sleep as you work on bringing joy back in, help yourself and help other people around you to identify excuses, and then see if you can figure out what lie you're believing.
And in our coursework and stuff with our our mindset class, we actually dive into a little bit more as far as to how to work through that and work on that. But it's crucial. To be able to identify that. If you feel like you're kind of at the end of your role for struggling and you hear yourself throughout out an excuse, that's an opportunity. That's an opportunity to now start to improve the healing process and you will be shocked how the body starts to turn around.
When you've identified what that excuse is. Yeah. There's that. Mic drop. Mic drop.
Speaker 3: I think we should work out right now.
Speaker 2: Once you do video podcast will make everybody do the
Speaker 3: accuracy exercise. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Podcast yeah. So right now, we're doing Burp. Right? No. Good
Speaker 3: job. Yes.
Speaker 2: Was quick. What? Yes.
Speaker 1: So what else as far as anything you're seeing that people are struggling with that might be impacting their immune system or their ability to fight infections. Just coming through the season and then starting in the New Year. What what else do you see?
Speaker 2: Another thing that I'm working on personally that I see this very commonly is hydration. Yes. Very overlooked. Another study that I just read recently was looking at the sodium levels in the blood and how even slightly elevated sodium which is a mark. Marker of dehydration plays a big role in longevity, something that...
Because we think about water is important, but it just is one of those things that we don't take very seriously. Mh. Yeah. And I'm guilty of that. I can go an entire morning, you know, breakfast through lunch and not drink anything when I'm busy.
Which is a bad habit to be in. But hydration, if you don't have hydration, you're... We've talked about this before. Right? The immune system doesn't work, your gut doesn't work.
Your brain doesn't work. Pretty much everything needs a bunch of fluid in order to be able to function. And I see that because we run that our up. Our Bi test, right, our body composition tests. That's the one of the main findings people are dehydrated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah. And that's that's significant because your immune system dumps everything into the lymph system and the lymph nodes basically lymph is greek for fast flowing river or water system. And so we have to have water flowing in our body to detox number one and to fight infection. That's why they say when you're sick, what you supposed to do?
Drink fluid. Drink fluids, water, not not pop. Not soda. Yeah. Water.
And that's a big part of it. So the other thing is what happens when we have stress? What do we crave? Salt and sugar. So when you're under stress, we tend to eat more salt because the adrenal glands actually need that salt, but when you have stress, your body retains salt.
And so it needs more water to actually help flush it out. So when you have stress, the demand for water increases. And so that's why when we do our lab testing too, we'll look for at sodium and When sodium is functionally elevated, we meet which means it's, you know, in the one forty four range, and if it's above one forty two one forty three, we look at that and say that's functionally high. It's not it's not necessarily lab height, but it might be functionally high. That's a sign of stress.
That's one of our markers for stress. So a chronically activated stressed adrenal gland, can actually cause you to disrupt how you're actually balancing your your water levels. And anti diarrhea hormone will actually be involved with that, but you can actually just in a simple sodium blood test see if you've got some level of adrenal stress and dysfunction there. But please note that when you have stress, and what do we crave? Salt and sugar.
So just wash those two things and coming through the season, of Christmas into the new year, just look at some of those habits that you have that might be interfering with that because that that those chips at the end of the night or the ice cream at the in of the night. Whatever it is, whatever your go to is, just know by tweaking that one havoc can actually be a game changer for how you feel in the upcoming weeks and months afterwards.
Speaker 2: Let me give you a question that I get frequently when going over Bi. Yes. Can I'll say like you need three liters of fluid inside cells and the person says, I drink so much water. Yes. What's your typical answer for that?
Speaker 1: So this is very common. So someone may drink a lot of water. It's not how much you drink. It's how much you retain and where you retain it. So there was research years ago done by dr.
Bruce Lip, where he under a Microscope could see people who were under stress. Their cells would lilly fold over kinda like a frightened child, think of a frightened child that's curling up in a ball, hold on to their knees. Our cells do the same thing. On the outside of all of our cells, we have these receptors, and those receptors are where our minerals go into the cell. So things like sodium, sodium potassium, pumps, chloride, things like that don't actually get into the cells efficiently because literally, the surface area of the cell for those receptors gets covered up.
So you don't have as many receptors. So what we see is the sodium stays outside the cell because of stress and it doesn't go inside the cell. If the sodium goes inside the cell, the water falls, it's called the law of osmosis. So when we find someone's dehydrated by three liters, and their blood sodium is high, that's a stress response. You have to get them out of fight flight.
When someone's in fight flight, their cells will fall over on each other. What doctor Lip also found was when someone was in state of love, their cells were wide open. And so the hormone oxytocin has an on that, and we see that when people have joy and love and there's a spectrum there. But when people are happy, joyful, full of love, once their cells are wide open, and it's really hard for these people to get sick. And so this is why it's important to step into that space.
To open up your cells. So for me when I see that, I say, we've got to get this person out of fight flight and into what we call rest and digest. That's what we focus on sleep primarily and stress management, and you will see the cells open wide, the sodium will go from the bloodstream into the actual cell, the water will follow and go in there if they're using those cells. So that's some people need to use their cells build muscles. But if you're drinking a hundred ounces of water and your a hundred ounces of water and your Bi doesn't change.
It... That's not the problem. The prop you're you're drinking actually too much water because now you have to decrease the amount of water you're drinking making and work on the fight flight stuff. I've had people literally drink so much water, they're up two or three times a night disrupting their sleep, hiking and they can't get the the water into their cells. So I say, let's cut that in half.
I want you to drink twenty six ounces of water a night a day. That's it. And we're gonna work on your stress response. We're gonna get you sleeping deeply and what's going on. Sometimes the stress response is emotional, and sometimes it's a relationship stuff.
Sometimes it's inflammation in the gut from a food sensitivity. Sometimes it's an infection that's not being dealt with. There's so many variables when it comes to that, but that is one of the most common things we see on the Bi.
Speaker 2: Very common. Lack of exercises is another big... Trigger for that. You said sell cellular use. Yes.
That's one of the big... We... It's it's interesting. We... Our population tends to come in not feeling very well.
And so they don't have the capacity to to exercise. Yeah. Getting someone to exercise even just a little bit, like, the morning routine thing you mentioned has really an outs sized benefit on general cellular health. Yep. You don't have to do very much.
That's where there studies on those short duration, high intense, seven minute exercises. And even studies on longer like a aerobic robot exercise. You don't need very much to get a huge benefit to it.
Speaker 1: Mh. All you have to do is improve tomorrow where you were today. And so you're... We're just talking about increasing capacity a little bit. So just taking these baby steps is very much needed.
These these small everyday things are what help us actually get a little bit better, a little bit better. And you can you can improve like with the Bi, you can improve your phase angles, what we use, but many of our patients will know it as the age of your cells quite a bit. And and you'll be surprised because even in... Like in my fifties, I still have sales opera operating like that of a twenty eight year old twenty nine year old. And that's possible.
And it takes a discipline and good routine and don't field twenty nine time. But cells still have that potential. Still, which is great. And we have we have many people who have cells that are much much younger than what their actual physiological ages. And then we have people who come in here and they might be thirty and if cells of a sixty five year old, That's actually more common.
Speaker 2: It is. Yeah. But it can change.
Speaker 1: It can change.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 1: Yep. And a lot of our disciplines and a lot of what we do in... Life that helps quite a bit. And I will say I'll say this. The mindset for me is one of the most common causes of a very, very poor phase angle because it's it's that chronic stress thing.
And Tony Robbins years ago had a quote. He said the most successful people in life become comfortable with the uncomfortable of life. And that's very, very true. You learned to improve your capacity to handle the stresses that are coming at you, to keep you as much as possible in that space of joy, love, whatever it is. And you've got to protect against throwing out excuses and going down that negative path.
And no one is perfect. But I would say, we hear that with this group, we've got a good leadership team here at synapse apps, but one of our core values is having fun laughter. And it's important for us to actually laugh in our stressful work environment if you will. And when I say stress a work environment. I mean, like just managing a healthcare facility of any type can come with a lot of stress.
But Mer testified this two I actually use Well Josh. But we've... It's taken years to generate the culture that we have here. To actually be able to operate and laugh and enjoy each other other's company, as we're solving very challenging problems. Yeah.
So that's true for all of you. You all can do that within your within your world has start to create that that environment if you will. But it takes time.
Speaker 2: When I when I met Marquis, he never left at all.
Speaker 3: No. Now. Just look at Josh face. It's all too god it's hilarious.
Speaker 1: Can't that's
Speaker 2: fucking tell everything I hired.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So that that's that's a big part of it as far as it's just just these simple little things and people we don't have to make it more complicated than that just but brings some some key qualities, discipline, joy. And and working on restoring sleep and detox from our own toxic thoughts. It's just so so crucial to a lot of this.
Speaker 2: Mh.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Anything else that you guys have seen that seems to be impacting people's. Health. Oh awesome. Moving into the new year.
Speaker 2: And we talk about exercise, hydration, sleep, diets, love. I talked about a lot.
Speaker 1: Yes. And make
Speaker 2: if there's anything else, basically that we didn't didn't cover.
Speaker 1: Well, the number one thing we're gonna leave you with this. The number one thing that increases oxytocin, hugs. So just know that, and I know I've got some people in my family if my sister's listening I hear you. I know you're not a hug. Many people that just aren't hug.
And funny enough this came up at our staff meeting today do One of the doctors who was not a hug has a friend who does this professionally and hugs people. And she doesn't quite understand it, but Yeah. But it's friend It's take pretty ox oxytocin. So there is a lot of value there. So if you're a hug, go ahead and hug away.
I don't if I should say this on air, but But we have one patient who comes in, gets treated and everything and then goes to Marquee office looking for a hug because his... Is capacity to give good hugs. So I don't don't don't ask mark keeper for Hugs, You'll never get any of his work done, but but you can you can tell there's value there. So go ahead. And if you're gonna hug, someone make sure they know you're coming in and Things like that and that they are a hug, but that is the number one way to increase oxytocin that everyone can do.
So mh. With that, we will leave you to it, go go hug the world and and improve your oxytocin and start to improve your immune system. Take care everyone, and we'll see you next time.
Speaker 3: Actually, real quick. We wanna thank everybody. We actually have people from forty three countries Listening. Okay. That number a del.
It is twenty two
Speaker 4: was really successful for us, just doing this podcast. So again, thank you, everybody for listening that.
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