146 - Dr Becca Kennedy - Chronic Pain & Fatigue Doctor

In episode 146 I speak to the fabulous Dr. Becca Kennedy, a family medicine physician, who discusses her approach to treating chronic pain and fatigue using evidence-based neuroscience.

She emphasizes the mind-body connection, explaining that many medically unexplained symptoms are due to brain signaling rather than structural damage. Kennedy highlights that 30-50% of primary care visits involve medically unexplained symptoms, including chronic pain, migraines, and irritable bowel syndrome.

She stresses the importance of understanding the nervous system's role in these conditions and provides tools like breathing exercises, meditation, and expressive writing to help patients manage and recover from chronic symptoms.

Deborah Neal Youtube video

Becca's website: https://resilience-healthcare.com/

For more information about Long Covid Breathing courses & workshops, please check out LongCovidBreathing.com

(music credit - Brock Hewitt, Rule of Life)

Transcript

Jackie Baxter  
Hello, and welcome to this episode of the long COVID Podcast. I am super excited to be joined today by Dr. Becca Kennedy, who is from resilience healthcare. And we're going to talk about what that means and what Becca does and why she's here today. So a very warm welcome to the podcast today.

Becca Kennedy  
Thanks so much. It's nice to be here.

Jackie Baxter  
So I'm really excited to dive into this whole topic. But before we get started, would you just say a little bit about yourself and what it is that you do, and maybe what brought you to here? 

Becca Kennedy  
Yeah, I'm a family medicine physician. And I empower people with chronic pain and fatigue and other symptoms, to restore their lives through evidence based neuroscience at this point in my career, and what brought me to it as I've been a family medicine physician for over 20 years, and seeing so many people with debilitating chronic symptoms that our medical model just couldn't help and didn't understand. So it gave me this intense curiosity to figure out what pieces science was missing. And I went pretty much on a years long search to find out what other information was out there. And I found out lots of different information, but wasn't quite there didn't really restore people's health completely. And then I was fortunate enough to find the current model, that I use this evidence based neuroscience model through Howard Shu Brunner several years ago, and I've been studying it and learning about it and using it with patients over the last few years.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I mean, this is really interesting, isn't it, because, you know, modern medicine is very good at some things. But there are these little pockets, and maybe there are more pockets than I'm aware of. But certainly the pocket that I am very aware of recently is this kind of long, COVID MECFS, kind of, you know, chronic fatigue, but not just fatigue kind of area. And there does seem to be a huge kind of gap, you know, where we just don't know what to do, or certainly the majority, I think of kind of standard medicine doesn't know what to do. And the people that do seem to be recovering from things like this, tend to be the people that have looked a little bit outside of the box, maybe been a bit open to things. I mean, certainly I would have poo pooed a lot of the things that helped me, you know, beforehand. And it's it's really, really interesting, but it's, it's also that there doesn't seem to be one method, it's not you do this one thing and you recover. Or certainly I've not seen anyone who's covered up with the magic things. So I'd love to talk through your approach and around about this. But should we maybe talk about the like, I'm gonna say the elephant in the room, the word mind body. Now, you didn't actually say that earlier, but it's certainly one that I think gets tossed around a load. And I think possibly people don't really understand what it means. But certainly, it can be very controversial. So I'd love to kind of get your thoughts on. Firstly, what does it mean? Is this part of what you do? And kind of what are your thoughts around that?

Becca Kennedy  
Yeah, there's lots of different names sort of are the model that I use Mind Body is one of them. And it is accurate. I mean, it's really connecting our mind and our body. And another way to say it is that it's connecting our brain and our body. And that's just the reality of what happens is, the brain is what actually tells the body what to do. So it's understanding the connection between our physiology, which means the functioning of our body, and the brain, which is where those signals come from through our nervous system. And kind of speaking to the point that you were making about sort of the pockets that modern medicine is missing, is that I would argue, actually, that it's a huge amount of what goes on medically, and not actually just small pockets, is there's been study after study after study for years for decades, even looking into what is termed medically unexplained symptoms, or patients that come into the primary care office for some sort of medical problem that we don't understand or it's quote unquote, a medically unexplained symptom. And many, many, many studies show that 30 To even 50% of the medical visits in a primary care office, fall under this sort of umbrella of medically unexplained symptoms and really the As new science, the neuro plastics symptoms or mind body or kind of whatever way that you choose to refer to it covers, I would say the majority of those medically unexplained symptoms. So it's a lot of chronic pain conditions, migraines, tension, headaches, neck, back pain, pelvic pain that's not otherwise explained by structural disease. It's also irritable bowel syndrome and functional disorders. And Dizziness. Ringing in the ears meant a whole host of symptoms throughout the body that are not explained by structural damage in the body. And when that's the case, it's really this mind body condition is that it's the signaling from the brain, rather than damage in the body.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, so it's not so much pockets, it's more gaping holes. It

Becca Kennedy  
is. And it's really about the it's the human condition. I mean, sometimes I say, your diagnosis is being a human. And it's really that every human on the planet has had some sort of Mind Body symptom at some point. I mean, it's just what we do. Even if you get embarrassed and you blush, that is a physiologic change in the body, that there's redness in the cheeks, the capillaries are opening up. And that's happening because of actually an emotion and a thought. And again, it's just really the normal functioning of the connection between our brain and our body.

Jackie Baxter  
I mean, you know, blushing can be embarrassing to use your example. But it's not debilitating. Exactly. It's not debilitating for the majority of people. Right. Right. Right. So that's a normal reaction.

Becca Kennedy  
Yeah. And I think that's part of it. And even things like CFS or lung COVID. It's mean it gets, it's how you would term it. That is also a normal reaction. So all of this are normal reactions. And but really understanding that it is happening because of our primitive survival brain. And this is how our brain evolved, evolved to have a bias toward danger, and learn and store and remember, away from our conscious awareness, what means danger, and then automatically reflexively respond to that. And that gets stuck in place through a neural pathway. And then our brain becomes better and better and better at making that neural pathway, which is the symptoms and the functioning in the body through our nervous system. Even though it's not helpful for us. It's how our brain evolved. And so those symptoms can get stuck in place permanently. So blushing is something that comes it's temporary, generally speaking, and then goes away. But this is that same sort of thing. But you know, times 1000, throughout our whole body, and it's stuck in this loop, this chronic loop, if we don't understand, you know, what the source of it is, and don't understand how you break that cycle.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I think the one of the things that really helped me when I was starting to understand my nervous system, and how that sort of worked or didn't, was actually that it was my body trying to protect me, it was massively overreacting. And it had gone a bit screwy. But it was kind of trying to help. And that sort of helped me to feel a little bit less frustrated, a little bit less helpless, a little bit less angry, or these things that maybe aren't very helpful, and a bit more like, Okay, now, I slightly understand a bit of what's happening here. Maybe I kind of have a few ideas about what to do about it now. So I think, you know, that kind of understanding, even on a very sort of minor basic level, I think can be really helpful as well, because otherwise you just feel so helpless, don't you?

Becca Kennedy  
Oh, my gosh, so much of what you said, I think is key is that it's number one, understanding that the body and the nervous system are not damaged, which is such a difficult concept. Absolutely. But it's actually that our nervous system is functioning the way that it was designed. It just has had this huge amount of danger and stress, stressors and inflammation that it's responding to as if it's as dangerous. And so it is our nervous systems, normal response to that, and so it's functioning correctly. It's just hyper vigilant, and it's not actually helpful for the reality that our life is in now. And then understanding that you actually have influence over that. So to really empower you to understand that you have the ability to get yourself better, instead of feeling that it's just overwhelming, and there's nothing that you can do about it, which is a terrible, terrible place to be and way to feel.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's, I think, you know, probably most people go through this experience where, you know, they get sick, and they expect to get better, but they don't, you know, that's, I think, how the majority of people with MECFS, long COVID, while obviously, you know, and ended up, you know, with the chronic symptoms, and you have this kind of like, period of, I'll be okay. I'll be okay. Okay, this is taking a bit longer. Okay, what's going on here? And then, you know, certainly for me, I had a whole big phase of denial. But, you know, eventually, in whatever route we take, we end up in this really helpless, terrifying place where the body isn't working, you know, everything has gone wrong, or it feels like everything has gone wrong. And it's an absolutely horrifying place to be in, you know, font, anyone who's been there will totally relate, I think, you know, and that looks different for everybody. But you know, I think that word empowering that you just said, you know, I think finding that first thing that helps, you know, for me, it was breathing. But you know, for lots of other people, it may be a whole host of other things, whether it's a physical intervention, or I don't know anything. But, you know, finding that first thing that makes you go, Okay, well, there's still 1,000,001 things going on here. But I have some semblance of control, because when I do this thing, when I do that breathing exercise, for example, it makes me feel a little bit better. And having some sort of control, I think, is huge. Because we feel like everything else is out of our control, don't we? Yeah,

Becca Kennedy  
and I think that it's, you know, it's really about understanding that your body and nervous system are not broken. They're absolutely hyper vigilant, and as you said, just can cause overwhelming debilitating symptoms. But making that shift in that understanding is key. And then I think just like you said, then it's lots and lots of different ways that people can get better, it's essentially, at the root of it, showing safety to your unconscious brain is the root and dialing down the fear. And that response from the unconscious brain is ultimately that's what gets people better. And there's lots of lots of different ways to get there. And there's, you know, lots of different ways that any individual person is going to find, to dial down the fear in the unconscious brain and show it that it's over protecting us in a way that's not helpful. Now, you

Jackie Baxter  
mentioned a moment ago, the thing where, you know, people will go to their doctor, and they will get test after test after test, and their doctor will say, oh, there's nothing wrong with you. And you'll say, Well, clearly there is you haven't tested for the right thing. But there's nothing showing up on the tests. But then, you know, kind of coupling that with some of the research that's starting to come kind of out of other areas of lung COVID. You know, we've got the one that's been kicking around for a while things like micro clots, immune dysfunction, you know, evidence of viral persistence. And those are things that aren't, you know, measured by most doctors in most surgeries, because they don't have the ability to do that. But they are now starting to show up in some of the tests that other people are running. So how does that fit in with your kind of model? Because they might still be medically unexplained in some ways, but there is no something showing up on scans. Yeah.

Becca Kennedy  
And this is a key part of all of this. Actually, sort of going back to the idea of mind body. I think that when when we say mind body, part of why it's controversial is because it gives this idea that maybe we're making it up or it's in our head, but that is absolutely not the case. This is about physiologic changes in the body. So the again, the signals from the brain how the brain had the primitive, unconscious brain, the part that controls the body, how that is responding to the stimuli that come in, deciding and interpreting if that means danger or safety. And then when it decides that it's danger, then In the signals it sends to the body, those signals are physiologic changes. Those are chemical signals, as are changes in the cells. Again, just like if we blush, that is a real physiologic change in the body. And that is happening all the time through chemical signals, when we're stuck in fight, flight, or freeze and the nervous system. And so chronically, those danger signals are being sent to the body, day after day, week, month, year after year, then it creates the outcome and the output of cells not functioning correctly. So we've known through science for quite a long time, that cytokines do not function correctly, when we're chronically in the fight flight and freeze. Mitochondria don't function correctly, ATP is not functioning correctly, our cortisol levels, our serotonin levels, all of these chemical levels are specifically changed because of the nervous system functioning. Also, inflammatory cells are created when we're stuck in that sympathetic nervous system or fight flight or freeze. And so inflammatory cells are made and coursing through the whole body increased inflammation, you can see swelling, you can see redness, there's muscle spasms, there's all these different structural changes in the body. But the root of it is because the nervous system is stuck in that hyper vigilant state.

Jackie Baxter  
So it's the mind body is just that it's all connected. The nervous system is the mind, but it's also the body. It's absolutely everything isn't it is the nervous system that I suppose connects the mind to the body, and it underlies absolutely every process in the body, I think, doesn't it?

Becca Kennedy  
Yeah, right. Every single thing, I mean, our weather our hair grows, I mean, our hair falling out, actually happens when we're stuck in fight flight or freeze, there's a article about the year that America's hair fell out, or the world's hair fell out with the pandemic, because when the body thinks we need to protect ourselves from the saber toothed Tiger, it mobilizes every single part it can from our body. And so sometimes it's actually not sending energy to our hair follicles. So I mean, every single part of our body is dictated by the signals from our brain. And that is dictated by our brains perception of whether we're in danger, or whether we're safe. And this is not about our conscious awareness. It's not about feeling stressed, or feeling anxious, or our conscious thoughts. This is about how our primitive survival brain is interpreting information coming in at it, as well as what our brain has been through throughout our entire life. So the more danger that our brain has been in throughout our whole entire life, starting at a young child, even Prime's our brain for interpreting the world as danger. Even if we had been doing just fine. feeling healthy, living our life fine, not having problems, it's accumulation over our lifetime that affects it. Yeah.

Jackie Baxter  
And this, this sort of like trauma element, you know, over a long period of time, maybe going back to childhood, or maybe more sort of bigger, more kind of boom, trauma moments, maybe more recently, or maybe a bit of both. You know, I think this is hugely interesting, because, you know, you get many people who did have quite a traumatic sort of initial illness, you know, maybe they weren't quite unwell, maybe they were unwell near the beginning of the pandemic, where everything was terrifying. Or, you know, maybe their initial illness was like, barely noticeable, because there are plenty of people who were in that situation as well, where they, you know, weren't really sick, but then it just didn't go away, or it got worse and, you know, persisted for maybe years. And, like, you know, a lot of people will say, Well, I didn't have any childhood trauma. I didn't have any this I didn't have any of that. So why did this happen? And in some ways, the Why isn't that relevant, but all that helpful, but in some ways, you know, certainly for me, I like to understand things. Like, is there a genetic component to this? Are there other factors that can kind of feed into it, you know, the kind of the pot of stuff that fills up that you know, something will then send you over the edge? Is it possible that there's participating up, and we're not aware of it.

Becca Kennedy  
It's understanding that the perception of the primitive survival brain, and its perception of danger can be radically different from what our rational conscious brain would perceive. And getting to the root of understanding that can be key. And kind of starting with the current time is that the pandemic was a massively huge trauma for everyone. And even if your particular life like my particular life was actually just fine, my husband and I both could work we had, you know, jobs, our kids were at an age and it was just fine, they were doing fine. I mean, there wasn't actually anything in our own particular lives that was quite bad with the pandemic. But it's really the worldwide trauma that we went through. And it was as dangerous for our primitive brain as almost we possibly could have gotten is that there is a virus that you, you can't see, it could have been one little particle on your grocery that you touched, once one little particle that you breathed in once you don't know where it's coming from, you could die if you're young and healthy, you can't access the medical system. And you can't be around what brings human beings more safety than anything, evolutionarily, which is other human beings. And it's around the world, there's no end in sight. There's political turmoil, financial turmoil, economic turmoil, I mean, every piece of our life was so traumatic. And then the idea also, then, if you get the acute infection, if you don't die from the acute infection, then you could get long COVID. And then they don't know what that is. And that could go on for the rest of your life, as you know, the information out there. So every piece of it is so traumatic. So if we even just look at right here, right now, like what has happened in the last four years, to explain how our nervous system is really responding to this. But then if you look at sort of the question about, well, then who is more likely to have a nervous system that responds to this, as we're talking about is someone who has been through more trauma and dangerous through their life, and sometimes it's like you said capital T trauma, it's really quite obvious to me know that, you know, it's really difficult. But sometimes it's little T trauma, and it's not so obvious. And I would say that, that was more of my life is that there was nothing that was particularly, you know, neglectful or abusive, but my parents had their own generational trauma, and weren't able to connect up with an emotional attachment and, you know, kind of create the situation that I needed as a, you know, as a child and, and then more kind of, I guess, normal kind of stressors that someone wouldn't necessarily think of as traumatic. But, you know, parents getting divorced, or, you know, different things. But going through that often creates personality traits that are protective mechanisms, that are things like being a perfectionist, having high expectations of oneself being hard on oneself, being in control, being a people pleaser, and all of those personality traits are often actually part of what is connected with the danger part of our brain, and the unconscious brain interpreting that we're in danger. Because those personality traits are things that protected us as a child's, and kept us safe, didn't make waves with others, and thought about others instead of ourselves are emotional states, you know, all of these different things. But again, if we think about our primitive survival brain, it stores and remembers and carries those things with us. And it's not that every part of those personality traits is bad, lots of them are good, but our unconscious brain takes them to the extreme, which puts a lot of pressure on us and dials up the danger part of our brain. So it's, it's actually really understanding that that can be a part of what adds to the danger interpretation from our brain and then puts our nervous system into this hyper vigilant mode. Another big piece of it also that can be a part of it is also strangely enough. I mean, this part didn't really make sense to me, but this is a lot of what I do with people is also how our repressed emotions turn the danger part of our brain up as well. And when we've gone through capital T or little T traumas And we weren't taught to really process and express our emotions, as a child, especially the emotion of anger, is it gets pushed down underneath the surface, where our brain with keeping us safe. Again, it's all about keeping us safe. But our brain carries that with us. So if something happens, again, that sort of triggers that emotional response, which is automatic, and then the unconscious brain, the brain stuffs it down, instead of bringing it to our conscious awareness and expressing it. And when it stuffs it down, that's part of what turns the danger part of our brain up, which then, again, puts us in this whole cycle of that hyper vigilant nervous system. Does that make sense at all? Yeah,

Jackie Baxter  
I've been, I feel like you've kind of just described me, I don't think you meant to. But, you know, all of those personality traits that you mentioned, the, you know, wanting to be in control people, pleasing, perfectionism, you know, repressed emotions, desire to succeed all of these things, and, you know, unprocessed trauma that I didn't realize was trauma at the time, but looking back on it, you know, it'll, as you say, builds up and up and up. So someone like me, who would have described myself as a completely healthy, super active, very fit, I was 30, you know, on the surface of it, I was grand, you know, so why did I get hit so hard with COVID? And, you know, took me however many years to come out the other end, but Len, looking back on it, and thinking, gosh, okay, you know, actually, life wasn't as perfect as I thought it was, you know, in some ways, my nervous system was kind of primed. You know, it was it was just waiting for the next big head. And I suppose in some ways, this brings us on to another point that is a total tangent, but probably relevant, is this idea of blame. Because, you know, I think a lot of us, maybe feel like, we want to blame someone or something, and, you know, you will sort of lash out at anyone and anything, because, you know, I suppose that's probably quite a natural reaction. But I think for me, it was kind of realizing that cause and effect, it wasn't about blame, it was kind of realizing that, you know, the these things, combination of all of these things lead to this, which led to COVID happening. Well, it didn't bring on the virus, but you know, led led to my nervous system, not reacting very well to that virus. And, you know, actually kind of working through all of that, and kind of understanding what led to it has kind of helped me to come out the other side better than I went in. But I don't know, I think it took me quite a lot of time to kind of process my way through that. Because certainly, when someone said to me initially, oh, well, the life you were living before wasn't so great. I was like, you know, absolutely, like super defensive about that. Yes. Like, no, I was fine. I was great. I was completely healthy. What are you saying? You're blaming me for my illness? Yeah, gosh,

Becca Kennedy  
I mean, again, such a good point. And you're really stepping back is that, you know, even the idea of blame, I think is is huge. And if we think about really, if you're not well, what should be happening is you go to your doctor, and your doctor is the expert understand science and medicine and the body, and then can give you the answers of how to get you well. And like you were saying, at the beginning, our medical model does that great when there is structural damage in the body, if you have strep throat, or a thyroid condition, or a tumor, frankly, or broken bone, we are great at helping you with that. And that is our job, it is not your job as the patient to figure out how to get yourself better. That's our job as the doctor. And so in this realm with medically unexplained symptoms, because it is a paradigm shift in thinking. And most doctors do not understand the extent to the amount that brain signaling can cause real physiologic changes in symptoms in the body. Then often the doctors end up gaslighting patients, and don't believe them because it doesn't make sense in what they know, which is the framework of damage in the body. So then it does sort of turn into this, even sort of blaming doctors which in some ways, the kind of deserve frankly, because it's our job. It is our job to figure out I mean, it's one thing to say I'm sorry, I wish I could help you I just don't know. And there are a lot of doctors that say that but unfortunately there's also doctors that that Don't say that, and, and, you know, sort of more don't believe, people unfortunately. So it does kind of turn into this. And then people's only option is then to just try and fix themselves and look at, you know, try and research on their own. But again, it's really the doctors responsibility to figure this out. But then if we sort of switch it around, it is not blaming the patient, just because then switching it around to empowerment, and that people have within them the ability to get themselves better. That is not blaming the patient, although I can definitely see how sometimes at first people can sort of feel like that a little bit. But again, it's still our responsibility to teach people what the tools are to use. And there is no reason that anyone would intuitively know what to do. Because this model, this paradigm shift in thinking is not intuitive. And I even developed my own chronic pain and fatigue quite severe after I learned about this model, and I was doing this work with people. So this is not about the conscious brain. This is about how the unconscious brain perceives things. And I have all of those personality traits that that I just listed. So again, it's really I think, you know, about really understanding that this is about being a human, this is about how our nervous system evolved, we just didn't have the proper understanding of the power of what the nervous system could do on a chronic basis. And now that we do, and really understanding the normal human psychology of what's at the root of it, of our primitive survival brain, so that we can actually get to the root of why our brain is misinterpreting danger, so that we can turn those danger signals off. And I would not expect anyone to know what these things are just intuitively, and really be able to, on their own figured out. I mean, some people can, which is awesome. And I love that but but it's not easy. I don't think

Jackie Baxter  
we talked about a minute ago about you know, everyone's sort of part of trauma or pot of unprocessed emotions or plot of you know, what, whatever it is that people have kind of amounted over their lifetime to this moment, you know, everyone's journey to this point is different. So it's not surprising that everyone's journey from this moment is also going to be different. And it's going to take some people longer, because reasons. Some people may respond very quickly, some people may have a lot more to work through, you know, and I think that's going to be very personal for different people. Certainly, I went through some of the, why did that person recover in nine months? And it's been three years for me, and I'm still not better? What's wrong with me? Why am I more broken than she was, for example? And I think, you know, in some ways, understanding that, yeah, everyone's kind of on their own road, aren't they, and comparing yourself to other people, is a very natural and normal thing to do. But it is also not particularly helpful. So, I'd love to talk a little bit around what your sort of approaches are. And, you know, I guess, with the caveat that this isn't medical advice, you know, any anything sort of, like generally, well,

Becca Kennedy  
you know, sort of speaking of medically, I mean, it is important to get a thorough evaluation, and get the blood tests and the radiology tests, you know, whatever it is that your doctor deems is important. I mean, that part is, is really key, and very rarely, but sometimes, there are things that are identified that you didn't necessarily know a thyroid problem, or diabetes or an occult infection or, you know, something like that. And I was the lead of the lung COVID clinic at our big health system, Kaiser Permanente. So I assessed hundreds of people with lung COVID. And we would, you know, recommend sort of a series of tests, and every now and then there was something that was missed. And that was actually the reason for the symptoms, not actually long COVID, which, by definition, is a diagnosis of exclusion, so means that there isn't something else going on. So it is important to get that evaluation. But that evaluation is not that difficult. So really, any physician with a normal blood test and radiology tests can do a thorough evaluation to really rule out that that's going on. And there's a lot of tests out there that are not mainstream. And one point I would say about those tests is that there's a lot of tests that are done not accurate tests. So it's very possible to get tests done that show that it's, you know, abnormal or positive, but it's not an actually scientifically validated accurate test, which then means that the results don't necessarily mean what you might think, you know, the the test results mean. So, at any rate, getting an evaluation by your regular doctors is pretty straightforward. But then once you have that, again, that's really the key is to understand that this is a nervous system, brain signaling problem, hypervigilant, nervous system, rather than structural damage in the body. Again, it's not that there's not structural changes from our physiology, but the generator of it, the root of it, is not because of some sort of damage in the body. And so that understanding that the brain is sending these warning signals down trying to protect us, but it's just this evolutionary vestige, it's not, we don't actually need protecting and so calming the nervous system, sending the brain safe signals is key, in order to dial this down so that it can restore people to their good health. And in terms of how I approach it with patients, is that there's definitely a stress management tools that people know like meditation, breathing exercise, you know, sort of things like that, which I think can be really helpful. But often, they're not enough just by themselves, although sometimes can be, I think, if you know, people that really truly understand that this is about dialing down the danger in the brain, and that the body's not broken. Sometimes that can be enough. But for a lot of people, especially with a big history of capital T, or a little T trauma and the personality traits, sometimes it requires more. And the other things are tools that are not intuitive. And it's showing our body that we're safe. And so using our body in ways that again, does not feel intuitive, but sort of leaning into the discomfort using it a little bit to show the brain that we're not damaged, and rewire those neural pathways, as well as releasing, expressing those stored repressed emotions. So that can be a big part of it. There's doing expressive writing is one of the ways it's which is different than journaling. But it's one of the ways that can be helpful for that. Or there's emotional awareness and expression therapy that Dr. Shubin or mark Lemley came up with, which is something that I do with patients, to really teach them on how to get those emotions up and out and express them. As well as also really connecting what our brains have been through throughout our whole life, to really understand from our own particular survival, primitive brain, why it's interpreting danger, when a rational conscious brain would not interpret danger, if we can get to the root of that understanding, then we can make changes to respond in different ways, again, to then rewire the nervous system and turn off those neural signals that were created that are protective warning signals that are the symptoms and the dysfunction in our physiology in our body.

Jackie Baxter  
I loved what you said about the difference between damage and changes. Because I think, you know, it's probably quite a normal reaction to feel broken, because your body isn't working, or you feel like it isn't working, you know, it's not doing the things that I expect it to do. So, you know, I'm broken, but think that the difference between sort of damage which, you know, implies sort of things that aren't repairable, I would say, with changes, you know, I don't think anyone would deny that there are changes whether they are, I guess neurological, physiological, and the other illogical things like micro clots and extra viruses and all of that sort of stuff, you know, that's absolutely changes in the body. But that's not to say that it's not repairable, you know, if it changes in one way then surely it can also change back and you know, again, thinking about what I'm doing with breathing, you know, it's amazing when you look into it, you know, breathing isn't just a hippie dippie woowoo kind of thing it actually in and there is no evidence to support this where you know, you are literally Changing the biochemistry and the biomechanics, and also your nervous system by changing the way you breathe. And, you know, that's obviously my wheelhouse. So that's, you know what I understand. But it's like, if you can understand that, then it's not so much of a step to understand that there are lots of other ways of doing the same thing. And this, I suppose, comes back to different people having different routes. And actually, that a lot of the thing is actually that understanding is kind of underlying in its importance, I suppose, understand the nervous system?

Becca Kennedy  
Yeah, absolutely. And it's really about getting into the unconscious brain and teaching the unconscious brain to turn down the nervous system and calm the nervous system. And we just don't have a direct conscious connection to do that. We can't It's like saying, Stop your fingernails from growing? Well, conscious part of our brain is not what controls that. And I'm curious what your thoughts are about this. So how I talked to people about breathing is that it's the one conscious, active thing that we can do that directly affects our nervous system. Because the breath in turns our nervous system into the fight, flight or freeze and the breath out, is the calm, parasympathetic, rest and digest part. So just by breathing out is Am I on the right track? Yeah, so just breathing out consciously, actively, we can directly affect our nervous system, and otherwise, the rest of the control of our nervous system is purely happening because of our unconscious brain.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, I mean, it's the only thing that we can directly influence, isn't it, you know, you can't say slow your heart rate down, you know, actually, if you try to slow your heart rate down, you're probably going to speed it up. You know, you can't speed your digestion up, you can have to use your example, make your fingernails grow at a different rate, you know, these these things you can influence but the breath, you can, you know, and it may not feel that easy all the time. But she you know, the the reality of it is that you do or certainly, the more you learn, you can have control over it. And I suppose that's, that's why it's so important. And it's such a good starting point for so many people. Maybe it would be really nice to have it have a bit of hope, to maybe share some success stories or something along those lines. Yeah.

Becca Kennedy  
You know, I think about how, you know, the idea that part of the reason that physicians, gaslight people is because the symptoms do not seem believable, and in some ways, you know, from their medical training, and so people's real lived experience doesn't get validated, which is such a hard place to be, because that is the real lived experience is having these overwhelming debilitating symptoms. But again, from the scientific physician community, it's just new science, they don't understand why it's happening. So what I like to do is talk about even the real lived experience of people who had the debilitating chronic symptoms that are now better, they are fully restored to health. And that is their real lived experience. And that can seem unbelievable. How can that happen? And so but we have to believe them, right? We have to believe that, you know, 1000s and 1000s of people have gotten their health completely and fully restored. So now if we start there, and start with that believing have the real lived experience, and then work back to then figure out, alright, well, this must be real. So then what happened? And so again, it's really thinking about such a different way to think about what is going on that it's not intuitive, and it doesn't follow the pattern of what we know in terms of damage in the body like a sprained ankle or an infection that follows a predictable pattern path from what we know about how the body functions in that way. But the path of chronic symptoms like this follows a completely different path. It comes and goes it sometimes it's better. Sometimes it's worse in ways that it's hard to figure out why. So you know, really getting to thinking about it in that way. But with that, and in terms of the success stories of looking at that I have just patient after patient after patient that I've seen get better, I have gotten better from my own symptoms. And just like you're saying, it's a very different path for everybody. Some people get better, quicker. Some people, it takes a long, long time, it actually took me a long, long time. And that's okay. It's just really knowing that you're on the right path. A patient of mine per story is actually on on YouTube, she is very, you know, enthusiastic about trying to get the information out there but is 75 year old woman I believe, and she had long COVID for three and a half years before she met me and I mean, really debilitated could not live her life talks about in our video, it was it was difficult to even lift the coffee cup. And once she understood the shift in the nervous system, you know, the nervous system approach, kind of started implementing some of these things, and putting in tools like expressive writing, I think, probably did some breathing exercises and meditation, and really started thinking about her body differently. And getting to the root that the fear of the symptoms, which is completely understandable, can propagate the cycle. But started, you know, again, sort of little by little doing these things until she was going for walks. And now she's remodeling her house and playing with her grandkids, and really back to living her life that wants to live. But I have lots of other patients that have, you know, kind of similar success stories, a patient of mine, that when I first saw her was, and she was fit and active and young, relatively young, and came to me with a wheeled walker, and can barely walk down the hall and had to use a wheel Walker and can barely get in and out of the chair, and, you know, still on the road to healing but is back riding her horse?

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah. And I think, you know, the hope, that belief, you know, that's why these hearing these success stories hearing these recovery stories are so important. I suppose it's going back to what you said a moment ago that, you know, the belief in the symptoms that we're asking other people to have, you know, whether it's doctors, family members, employers, you know, believe me when I tell you that I have these symptoms, don't gaslight me, you know, actually then, you know, turning that around and saying well, actually, I believe that these people have recovered, because they have, you know, I have you have and you know, lots of others have, it's just, there's still a lot of people that haven't, which is sad. Yeah,

Becca Kennedy  
it is. It keeps me up at night, actually, to know that there is a way and again that you know, the different path for everyone, but kind of really starting with the hope that you can get better. And the message is that you're never going to get better. We don't have any answers, you're going to have to learn to manage this and live with this for the rest of your life. Those messages, while understandable, because most people in the scientific world don't understand the new science. Those messages actually reinforce that fear cycle and actually reinforced the symptoms. So it's important to understand that there is a pathway out and have that hope.

Jackie Baxter  
Yeah, absolutely. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. It's been so interesting diving into all of this. So I will make sure that I put a link to your website and also to that video that you mentioned of the lady had recovered. So if anyone's interested in checking that out, they can do so yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah,

Becca Kennedy  
thank you, Jackie for what you do.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai