And welcome back to Family Health Matters.

I’m Shelley Irwin, with me today, Dr.

Anna Flores, co founder of Authenticity Recovery.

Dr.

Nicole Cain, a naturopathic physician, and Carolina Gil-Ortegon, owner of BodyMind Pilates.

#ionlygetthebest Ladies, a power panel talk about a very important topic of this motivation and brain.

How do you spend your day in this field, Carolina Well, I have specialized in neurology of movement, so I spent many, many years of my career initially focing on postural alignment as the best way to create sound patterns of movement, to only then discover that I was wrong and correcting course and started to enjoy seeing life, the results on clients ever since I’ve been focusing on really how movement is produced, meaning in the brain.

So I’ve been using the sensory information of my my clients through their visual system, their vestivular systems, and their proposive systems as the means to inform movement, and it’s been life changing.

Yes, we’ll get into the details.

Dr.

Cain, your expertise, please?

My favorite thing to study and to teach and write about is psychobiobeuro immunology from a trauma informed perspective.

And what that means, in essence, is we look at how adversive, stressful unplanned events can affect the nervous system, the immune system, the brain, our mood, and our hormones.

And so I teach, I do talks, I love to write, and I come on and do panels like this.

What’s the name of your book?

Panic Proof.

Here we are.

Dr.

Flores, your talent, please?

I am a doctor of clinical nutrition, specializing in behavioral health, including mental health substance use, eating disorders and also integrative and functionally informed practitioners.

So looking for and addressing root causes of dysfunction within the body, looking at biological drivers and then also mental emotional, spiritual, drivers as well.

Good, we’ll get into that.

Let me turn to you, Dr.

Cain on some anatomy 101.

Would you remind us of, well, we’re going to zone in on the frontal cortex, but this brain of ours, take it apart.

So we have a few parts of the brain, I think that are really poignant for this conversation.

We have the prefrontal cortex, which is the part of the brain that lives behind the forehead.. And think about that as your analytical brain, your problem solving brain, your executive team.

And then we have the limbic system and the em amygdala, that’s more in the center part of the brain These are evolutionarily older parts of the brain, and this is where we have emotional processing and memory processing occur.

And then we have the lower parts of the brain, like the brain stem, we call this the reptilian brain, which can drive largely unconscious processes, like heart rate and brain breathing, and even a panic responds where that there’s tigers in the woods and we’re running away before our logical prefrontal cortex has even had something to say about it.

Wow.

Add to that.

I appreciate so much you breaking that down better than I could, so thank you.

I like to also think about the interplay between these systems and how how our behaviors and our lifestyles impact their functioning.

I’ve noticed, and chime in for sure, that when people are experiencing maladaptive behavior so things that are not helping them in their life necessarily, are health supportive.

So in eating disorders, right, not nourishing their bodies regularly or adequately, or in substance use disorders, utilizing substances.

Those systems tend to shut down front to back.

So you describe really beautifully, you know, logic exists here, executive functioning in the the prefontal cortex exists there, and that’s where logic thinking, personality, all that stuff is, and then behind it is emotion, and then behind that, a life support systems.

And so when the body and the brain are not nourished appropriately and or we’re engaging in behaviors that harm those systems or force them to function in a way that’s harmful or maladaptive, they will actually shut down from front to back.

So we’ll notice when people are struggling, they start to maybe not have the same personality they used to, right?

They start to be making choices that aren’t making sense logically to us And their responses become more emotionally reactive as opposed to a beautiful interplay between all of those systems.

Or sometimes they’re not even having emotion play in it at all, right?

You describe panic, and that being fully reflexive without any type of emotional reasoning or cognitive thinking in there at all.

Add to that, Carolina.

Well, I think I got the perspective from.

movement, right?

The reason why my studio is called Body Mind is because I’ve always I’ve always had that clarity that we can’t separate one from the other, and that when you’re influencing your psychological part, that’s going to have a repercussion or repercussions in the body as well.

So any interventions that we do to our bodies are going to have repercussions in in the mind.

Then when I study neurology of movement and you start thinking, okay, are the visual systems of this person with her vesivular systems in his proposeceptive systems real?

really communicating, because what I find is when people have had these maladactive behaviors, these systems are like fighting each other many times, or two systems are working by the third one is like lagging and they come to me, oh, I have vertigo, I can’t stop spinning.

And then you start noticing, can you even feel your feet?

And the answer is like, uh, no.

And so we start reconnecting through the body right?

The sensations through the body, focusing on movement patterns based on the ability to feel or not feel.

So when somebody can’t feel something, then I go like, okay, can you perceive this distance between your body and this food bar, for example?

And then take it from there and I’m using now their visual system to repair their vestibular and their function, to try then to put the pieces together And that’s what forms sound patterns of movement, not the assumption that the client, because he’s coming in through the door is going going to be able to perfectly align her head over her shoulders, over her hips, and et cetera.

I’m not assuming anymore.

Yeah, right.

Exactly.

But I mean for the longestest time, was assuming that the client coming in through the door was going to be able to do that.

Now I depart from where the client is.

If the client’s brain perceives that carrying the head in front is the way why do I go from day one trying to bring a bank?

That was producing a lot of tension, threat perception.

And now we start talking about the brain.

One of my first things that I start making sure that I’m providing to my clients is reductions of threat perception How can I make this person’s body and brain and visual system and vestular systems, not feel threatened, but to feel safe?

So here goes, when I’m giving a positive movement experience, the client’s brain is releasing dopamine.. And I’m not going into huge spikes or anything.

It’s like, oh, my God, my neck is not hurting anymore anymore.

Oh, my goodness.

I never thought I would be able to do this.

So that gives gentle sensations of pleasure, I appreciate of eating so much what you’re describing.

I think it’s, we often forget that there isn’t this like wall from the neck down.

Our brain and our body are connected in a very intimate way.

And actually, the brain receives more information from the body through the nervous system than it sends out to the rest of the body.

So we like to think of it as this control system, which it can be and is, but it’s not the main control system that’s sending inputs to the whole body and controlling the whole show.

The body is giving feedback consistently back to the brain.

And the brain’s receiving way more information from your whole body system than it’s putting out.

And your example of someone comes in with vertigo and they feel like they’re spinning, they can’t get balanced and you ask them if they can feel their feet and they say no.

Well, makes sense you don’t feel grounded, right?

If you cannot connect into your body and into your physical experience.

Dr.

Cain, bring in the topic of immunology.

You know, there’s a really interesting concept of how our immune system can affect our brains.

So many of us right now are dealing with stuffy nose, itchy watery eyes.

Maybe we get skin rashes or kids get eczema.

Those same neurochemicals, like histamine, can be as stimulating to the nervous system as the brain.

But what’s interesting to me is why is histamine doing that?

What is that an adaptation to?

I kind of think about it, like, if you’re sitting in a boat and the boat is sinking and you’re bailing it out with a spoon, offtentimes we want to address the problem.

Oh, you’re bailing it out with a spoon, why don’t you use a bucket?

This is more efficient.

But what’s more interesting to me is, why is the boat sinking?

What is that behavior of bailing it out with a spoon or a bucket and adaptation, too?

And I think we often find people that are in these feedback loops where they’re not getting that connection to their feet.

They’re doing all of the skills, they feel like they’re doing everything right, and yet their boat is still sinking and they’re having to bail.

So what I like to do is to look at the whole person, like you said, we’re not just from here up emotionally, we’re not just here down bodily but look at the whole person and figure out what did or do did not happen that they now have inherited or are in a boat that is sinking.

And once we can stop that boat from sinking, the behavior of bailing it out with a spoon or a bucket is no longer there because we’ve actually identified and addressed that root caused adaptation so that they can actually ride that boat throughout life.

How would that play into, say, eating disorders is one of your specialties?

I appreciate that.

And I just want to say, you do such a beautiful job of bringing people together.

I’m so happy to be talking with all of hands.. Better stay in touch.

Yes.

Thank you for bringing up addressing root causes and also dopamine, when we think about the brain and motivation and our behaviors and how all these things are connected, we were having a conversation earlier today about dopamine and dysfunction.

Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that helps with motivation We need it to initiate any task that we do.

And there are a lot of disorders that involve dopamine deficiencies, so somebody not having enough dopamine, thinking about executive dysfunctioning disorders like ADHD, autism spectrum resorders, and other type of neurodivergence these people struggle to initiate tasks, to remain focused.

To get motivated?

Yes, because they don’t have enough do.

dopamine.

And so to tell somebody, just be different, just do it, just push through is very similar to the analogy that you gave, right?

You’re asking somebody to do something who doesn’t have the tools suit do it and saying, just make it happen.

If I don’t have enough of a thing that helps me initiate tasks, it makes perfect sense that I will struggle with task in initiation And in my work, again, again, looking at those upstream causes and addressing what’s going on here, maybe they get a medication that helps with that.

But let’s think about how does the body make dopamine?

How does it respond in the body right now?

Your brain has to make its own dopamine.

It can’t cross the blood brain barrier.

So I know I said, I don’t like to think neck down, neck up but actually, there is a barrier around your brain to keep it separate a little bit from the rest of your body or to control what can interact with it and what can’t.

And dopamine cannot cross it, which is why we can’t just give people more.

We can’t just supplement it.

But we can give people the building blocks to create it Tyaccene is an amino acid found in different types of meats and also some vegetarian protein sources like soy and beans that can cross the blood brain barrier and interact with different enzymes, as well as iron and some B vitamins to make dopamine.

So this person could get on their medication and say, "Hey, I’m not still not feeling good, right?

We’re bailing out my boat with a spoon.

It feels like it’s a spoon.

I’m not getting enough.

Maybe you’re iron deficient right?

We have to look at all of these systems.

Maybe you’re not getting enough B vitamins.

Or maybe your cardiovascular system is not functioning well, and the blood is not crossing the blood brain barrier very well.

Maybe it’s leaky or it’s hard and rigid.

So there are all these different processes that I think people can feel very defeated in their neurology, their behavior, and their motivation.

And it’s not always like just figure it out and just push through.

Sometimes we talk about do it anyway, do it scared, do it even though it’s hard.

I said that to myself, in the car, out in the parking lot this morning.

I took a breath and said, do it scared, Anna.

You’re allowed to be nervous But other times, that’s actually a very defeating and harmful way to talk about these things, or maybe a better way of saying it’s discompassionate.

So balancing that is really important too.

Carolina, I’ let you respond to that, and then bring in the piece of our brain equipment, the cerebellum to discuss in your niche.

Okay, so if I can go back just a little bit, loving this panel.

take it away.

What Anna was describing of ways on how we can create a baseline.

That’s what is really, really important, is not to get the immediate high peak rewards, like when we get from chocolate, from sexual intercourse, or just from seeking sex, from many other activities, right?

Those gives us like a really high spike of dopamine.

What we really want to focus on and what I help my clients with is to focus on what are those daily life activities that are going to help us rebuild your baseline of dopamine, because that’s what we’re seeing.

This will be the long term plan, right, on a more balanced and joyful life.

So what are those things?

Exercise is one of those.

But if I haven’t, I was talking about this with Anna one of those people who are really, really that love and are passionate for, like high effort exercises, like, I have a very dear client he knows who totally knows that I’m talking about Bob.

We call him Bob, exactly.

He knows he’s laughing already.

He loves all of the really, like, high risk sports.

So mountain bike, full speed.

Well, he’s crashed one and too many times against trees, you know, as he puts it, trees get on his way.

Move those trees.

It got to the point where he needed several repairs for his body, and the hardest part for him was not to expect from his body, always 100% or more, understanding that sometimes our bodies break, and how do I respond to the changing needs of our bodies?

I feel like that’s especially the case perhaps, with men, as women, were exposed to the opportunity to adapt to those physical challenges on a mentally basis.

So we have a little bit more of practice of adapting, the same as pregnancy, how the body transform and the feeling and sensations within our bodies and minds transform.

And then here comes experimentopause into menopause And all of our lives is the process of adapting, changing, adapting, changing.

So we have a little bit more of practice.

So working with a male that has been a custom to having high athleticism and those abilities is the hardest challenge for me.

I’m not saying for every partitioner for me because I see how they struggle at listening to the the needs and the sensations of their bodies, because what they’ve practiced is suppress and give me everything.

Supress, pain, plus high dopamine.

Yes.

They’re like really going for, you know, the size similar a little bit to what we see in eating disorder patients as well, really suppressing and disconnecting from their experience in their body to, as a way to continue to ask it to perform at 100% all the time.

And bodies have needs and they can’t do that, especially if you’re not meeting your needs nutritionally, right, in all these other ways in a lifestyle that makes sense And that disconnection piece, and I’d be so curious to hear your thoughts on this too.

That disconnection piece sometimes can allow us to push through in spite of having needs.

But yeah, they seem to present really, really similarly, I’m learning across disciplines and across I guess you could say, diagnoses for lack of a better term.

But yeah, eating sover client is the same thing.

They’re suppressing, they’re disconnecting, and they’re just asking their body and pushing their body and expecting their body to do more in the face of not having enough.

And eventually your body will say no, your mind will say no.

Your circumstances will say no.

And then it leaves people in places where they don’t know what to do.

Because it’s almost like sometimes it can feel like an overnight thing.

And that’s a really scary and hard place to be.

And that’s a big part of the work that I’m doing in my practices supporting individuals before they get there, right?

When when they maybe, maybe, are starting to notice things, or when they are there and they’re saying, what the heck can I do?

And I say, take a breath.

Yes, we can keep bailing out the boat with the spoon or the bucket or whatever we have, and we’re going to look and see why why did the boat sink?

And we’re going to do the hard work of repairing it, right?

Repairing a boat is really intense manual labor.

I love this analogy and use of all the time.

It’s really intense labor to repair that boat, and it’s not fun and we don’t want to do it in the rain or right when conditions aren’t good, and saying, how do we find a way to be gentle with ourselves and try anyway?

Nice.

I want to get back to Bob, but let’s see if you add to this.

I want to think about how a couple things.

One, is that as a society, we are really quite intolerant of not having high dopamine.

We have adapted to this world of constant input and constant stimulation, and the body wants to be in homeostasis.

And so especially with this young generation that’s coming in and they’re always on the phones, they’re always on the devices, they’re always getting this dopamine stimulation and so then your body is going to adjust around that.

And so when we were younger, before the internet, I makes me feel a little bit old, but I celebrate that, is that we got to experience boredom.

And I think it’s really something that we’re losing out in this generation is how do I get more and more and more dopamine?

So that’s the first thing is how can we work on allowing ourselves to tolerate boredom, allowing ourselves to tolerate a dopamine trough And the second thing is, well, let’s say somebody does have imbalances of dopamine.

Truly, it’s a dopamine issue.

The question is why?

So an example to bring psychoneuro immunology back into it is we inherit our microbiome from our biological mother And her microbiome will inhabit our mouth, it will inhabit our gut, and we’ve actually found that the brain isn’t steri.

We used to think it was comp completely sterile, and it turns out it’s not.

It gets seated from our biological mother and from our gotten from our mouth.

So we inherit this microbiome that’s as unique to us as our fingerprint.

And those microbiome bugs, viruses, protozoans, all of those little critters, they have a lot to say.

Like earlier, you were talking about how really the body is doing most of the conversation.

So the gut is telling the immune system, this is what you’re going to do immune system.

It’s going to tell your hormones.

This is what you do, hormones, and it’s going to tell your brain how to think, how to process, what to crave We think that, yeah, later today, I want to have a celebration cup of coffee.

No, it’s my gut.

My microbiome is wanting that celebration cup of coffee.

So when we’re thinking about this juxtaposition between our thoughts or feelings or sensations, we want to look at it from a multimodal perspective.

We want to look at it from our behaviors, our body, our movements, our interception, like you were talking about.

We want to look at it from our actual nutrition.

We want to look at it from what we’re inheriting and what kind of programming has been going on, so that we can essentially start to repattern and reprogram that so that our gut microbiome, our immune system, our brain chemistry, that it’s all in attoneement with that fluid in the v variability of highs and dopamines and lows and dopamines and all the other hormones.

Yes.

Tell us more about Bob and how we fixed him or worked with him.

Well, I always tell them, how badly do you want to change.

People tend to think that, oh, I go one hour of class a week with Carolina and and she needs to fix me.

So first I changed the story of whose bodies is it And then I joke, I say, you know, treat it like you own it.

I have lots of say.

Good.

But it’s like transferring that ownership.

Like, you do have the power over your body.

You get to go outside of this studio with your body.

So are you going to repeat the movement drills is what we call them during the day so that we have the frequency of exposure to this new element that we’re really reintroducing or in instances, learning for the first time, really relearning.

But for a very long, long time that they haven’t practiced and it’s like, wait a minute, so it’s on me.

And no, it’s not a magic pill, it’s going to take work.

So the basis of all of these work that I do, it’s based on research, is what we’ve heard from these two beautiful and smart women here, that it is through the process and the loving and appreciating the process, appreciating the effort, it is taking that is where your happiness, your developing stability, your baseline is thickening within you, so that you can tolerate the caffeine high, the chocolate high, right?.

The amazing sport I’m going to throw myself from a flying machine in Colombia when I go into weeks high.

Okay.

So I’m prepared.

is what you preach.

And there’s that intentionality that comes with that too, I try to be mindful with my clients who are so used to pushing, pushing, pushing, right, and saying, and we can ask you to just push, push, push, in healing, which if pushing, pushing, pushing, will cause a lot of the hurting, we want to think about it differently in the healing.

And I like what you’re bringing up.

And to me, it sounds like intentionality.

If we’re intentional about our choices and give ourselves some grace up there are not always choices or things in our body that we can control, you mentioned the microbiome, right?

We have bacteria in our microbiome that actually produce compounds that look just like our hunger and fullness hormones that they release.

So let’s say I eat a meal and I have certain bacteria in my body that need carbohydrates.

My whole body system needs carbohydrates, too.

Let’s say I didn’t get very many of them at that meal.

It wasn’t very balanced.

Those bacteria will release those compounds.

Let’s say, you’re hungry, and they will act on my brain.

And say, I want brain.

Yeah.

And now there’s this conflict between feeling full in my stomach and getting that sensation from my physical body of fullness.

That’s true.

But then still having this, you’re hunger, you’re hungry, your hungry thing happening.

And that’s where that you know, how in control are we and how do we balance that with grace around how we perform in our lives?

And that’s where I bring in intentionality and thoughtfulness and that balance between the cognitive and the emotional and giving space for both.

I want to add to that really quickly because I know we’re almost at time.

Is that brings us full circle to the beginning of the conversation, about prefrontal cortex So our brains, in short, we have our executive team, which is a group of parts of the brain that help us feel in control and that can help us be intentional.

And then we have the default mode network, and this is autopilot.

We live largely in autopilot as human beings 8 to 90% of the time And so you’re talking about intentionally working with neuroscience informed tools and techniques to take us out of autopilot into this executive activation so we can be intentional.

And so how having tools that are trauma informed, that are neuroscience informed, can help us do just that.

Yeah, absolutely.

So on just that, Dr.

Nicolaine, give us a parting comment, and obviously a resource from you.

I think the most important thing is that your symptoms are here to tell you what needs healing and how.

And instead of looking at your symptoms as I’m broken, they need to go away, make them stop, is practice curiosity and compassion for your parts is simply notice them and allow them to inform you you about what healing needs to take place.

And I’m Dr.

Nicole Cain, and I’m a founder of Health for Life Counseling in Grand Rapids.

I’m also the founder of the holistic Health Collective, and so you can find all of that online.. What do you leave us with Dr.

Anna Flores?

I guess similarly, gosh, this has been such a lovely morning.

Similarly in grace and gentleness in our own experience as well as curiosity in our own experience, it seems to be what guides us.

There’s always a part of someone that knows whether we are ready to listen or not to that part of ourselves, that kind of has this idea of what needs to happen to drive change and create change, whether or not we’re afraid that we can do it or know how is kind of a different piece and that’s where my work comes in.

And the work of the co-founder of Autticity Recovery, who’s a licensed professional counselor.

We’re actually launching an eating disorder, intensive outpatient treatment program this month.

So working, thank you.

So working with individuals, a little bit more intensely than outpatient, right?

More frequently than once a week to support their healing in their recovery.

And knowing that recovery is possible and that everyone deserves it, whether or not they believe it doesn’t change the fact that it’s true And the stereotype men and women, to see you.

Absolutely, absolutely All gender identity expressions are welcome and they’re all impacted.

Great.

How do we find it more information?

My authentic recovery.com.

Authentic’s the key word.

Yeah, it really is.

You get the final word, Carolina I want to finish with encouraging everybody not to only look for Pilates as a form of movement.

It is very important that whatever physical activity you enjoy doing, that’s what you’re pursuing.

It can be gentle or it can be intense.

It’s whatever you like, that’s what it is going to be producing those endorphins, not to forget that exercise is not the only way to to form that baseline I keep talking about.

Doing any activity that gives you pleasure, for some people, it’s cooking, some people enjoy painting, but try to remove having a perfect pursuit for a reward, focusocus on the process of the thing, rather than on the end result.

It’s being present and enjoying what you enjoy doing, right?

And then regarding to what I do, I am launching a new program too, for women from paramontopause to menopause, because when our estrogen levels and our hormonal levels change so that’s our ability to feel our body.

So I’m inviting groups of four at a time for eight classes.

So it’s a cycle of eight classes in which I create a system as an education on how to reincorporate movement within their lives in a way where they can get back that sensation, that feeling using their visual system, festivular and propceptic system.

Great.

How do I find out more information?

Bodymind Pilates GR.

concrete.

We need to take this panel on the road.

Lies thank you for your spirits, and certainly your pieces of advice on this topic of, getting motivated, make that brain work for us.

So thanks.

Appreciate you all.

Thank you for watching Enjoy your day.