Ep. 505 We’ve Been Treating Pain All Wrong – The Shocking Truth About Healing Chronic Pain Naturally with Dr. Stephen Hussey

I am delighted to reconnect with Dr. Stephen Hussey today. He is a Chiropractor and Functional Medicine practitioner who guides his clients back to health using the latest research and health-attaining strategies. 

In our conversation, we explore the challenge of chronic pain, discussing how it is assessed, experienced, and managed. We unpack the concepts of coherence and heart rate variability, highlighting the value of optimizing circadian rhythm for managing hormonal changes and pain in perimenopause. Dr. Hussey also shares his perspective on chiropractic care, the nervous system, fascia, and the role of trauma, metabolic health, and environmental factors in healing.

Join us as we explore how to navigate chronic pain, support natural healing, and restore balance from the inside out.

IN THIS EPISODE, YOU WILL LEARN:

• Why is pain so difficult to treat?

• How the Flexner Report influenced medical education and contributed to pharmaceutical-based care

• The breadth and scope of the opioid crisis, and why people become addicted

• How our bodies perceive pain 

• Why the fascia is so important, and its role in our physiological processes

• What is structured water?

• The link between cellular hydration, metabolic health, and the pain response

• How obesity and diabetes are directly associated with artificial light exposure

• How trauma rewires the brain and contributes to chronic pain

• Dr. Hussey explains the concept of coherence and its importance

• How pain changes during perimenopause and menopause 

Bio: Stephen Hussey

Dr. Stephen Hussey, MS, DC, is a Chiropractor and Functional Medicine practitioner. His story of personally healing heart disease using light and environmental health strategies has become an inspiration to many and a calling for change in healthcare. In addition to Chiropractic clinical practice, Dr. Hussey is a health consultant, speaker, and the author of three books on health: The Health Evolution, Understanding the Heart, and Pain Sense. Dr. Hussey guides clients from around the world back to health by using the latest research and health-attaining strategies.

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“It's not about controlling the substances. It's about making your life better than the substances.”

– Dr. Stephen Hussey

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Connect with Cynthia Thurlow  

• Follow on⁠ X⁠,⁠ Instagram⁠ &⁠ LinkedIn⁠

• Check out Cynthia’s⁠ website⁠

• Submit your questions to ⁠support@cynthiathurlow.com⁠

Connect with Dr. Stephen Hussey

• On his website

• On social media:@drstephenhussey

Transcript:

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:02] Welcome to Everyday Wellness Podcast. I'm your host, Nurse Practitioner Cynthia Thurlow. This podcast is designed to educate, empower and inspire you to achieve your health and wellness goals. My goal and intent is to provide you with the best content and conversations from leaders in the health and wellness industry each week and impact over a million lives. 

[00:00:29] Dr. Hussey, great to have you here. Thanks for your patience. I know the evolution of the in-home podcast studio took a lot longer than we'd anticipated. So, thanks for your patience. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:00:38] Yeah, of course. Happy to be here. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:00:40] Yeah. And before we really started recording, we were touching on some of the tenets of your newest book, which is really focused in on pain. And I think pain is as I was taught as a nurse and a nurse practitioner, pain is whatever the patient states it is and yet it's hard to assess, it's very subjective. I can't tell you how many patients I took care of that looked completely comfortable and would tell me their pain was 10/10 and of course, you believe them or people that obviously looked incredibly uncomfortable and then they would rate their pain at, like, one over-- You think to yourself, it's such a subjective experience that oftentimes it can be hard to assess as a clinician, it can be hard to assess as a patient. What is it that's problematic about our current medical model as it pertains to pain assessment and management? 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:01:31] Well, I mean, that's one of them, it is very hard to assess. It's very subjective. So, like you're saying, I mean, I've had people look at me straight in the face, calm, as I'm sitting here now, and say, “Yeah, I'm a 10/10 right now.” And technically, that could be the worst pain they've ever felt. They could have had nothing more than that.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:01:49] Stubbed toe. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:01:50] If you say, like, if 10/10 is the worst pain you ever felt, then this could be the worst pain they've ever felt. That's also objective based on their life experiences. So, it's very hard for a clinician to get an understanding of where they're at. How much is this really hurting them right now? Because it's such an objective thing. 

[00:02:08] And so, then I guess you have to go into, like, how is this affecting your life? Is it preventing you from doing things you want to be able to do or need to be able to do? Is it preventing you from working or whatever it is you need to do? Because the answer they give you is more reliable than their number. Because the number we can't really tell much from. So, yeah, that's difficult to assess, first of all. Second of all, well, it's difficult to treat, when you think about it of an aspect of dull the pain or kill the pain, because there's so many different pathways of pain mechanisms in the brain that if you try and kill the pain by killing one of those pathways, you may not get the right pathway. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:02:51] Yeah. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:02:51] And so, that becomes difficult for drug makers to make a drug that will actually knock out pain because there's so many different pathways. And then unfortunately, what ends up happening is that you have to make the drug stronger and stronger. And so instead of inhibiting one specific pathway of a pain signal, you're basically inebriating the person so that they don't feel anything. And when you get to those levels of “pain relief” there's an addictive nature to it, not because of the drug itself, but because of the effect the drug has. And so that's a very slippery slope and that's one of the issues with trying to correct pain in that way. The other issue is that it's not really fixing why the pain is there in the first place.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:03:36] Right. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:03:35] Just to dull it, just to knock it out, so you don't feel anything. It's not fixing why the pain signal is being sent or helping you rewire the brain, if it's a cognitive aspect of pain, to help that pain signal not be sent anymore. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:03:49] Yeah. And I think I definitely want to talk about the physiology and the anatomical structures that are impacted by pain impulses. But I think about as a clinician, I trained in inner city Baltimore, as many of my listeners know, and I got to see the extremes and this was at the height of the opioid crisis back in the 1990s, which was not about oxy, it was about heroin. And how many of my patients either were subjectively involved with someone that had an opioid addiction, or they themselves were suffering from it. And I can remember my first job before I was a nurse was that I worked on Osler 8, which for anyone that's familiar with Hopkins, that's the HIV and AIDS floor. It's probably something else now. 

[00:04:33] And how many of my patients, like just the stories that they would choose to share and how some patients-- they would sneak out of the hospital and they would have central lines, so they had direct access into their bloodstream, not just a peripheral IV. They had a central line, which is far more significant. And you would wonder why sometimes your patient that hadn't received any narcotics, you'd walk into their room and they were just completely fairly inebriated and there's telltale signs when someone has been exposed to opioids. And so, it was interesting to have it from that perspective then you flash forward and when I became a nurse practitioner, one of the first jobs I was offered was on a pain management service, which wasn't really my interest, but I think pain in general is incredibly challenging to address as a clinician is incredibly challenging, as you astutely stated, to assess. 

[00:05:29] And then the other piece of it is you and I have both been patients on the other end of the spectrum. We both have had circumstances where we've been hospitalized, and we ourselves have experienced what significant pain feels like. And I would actually state that the worst pain I've ever had was my ruptured appendix. A close second to that was when my water broke and I was in active labor with my first. But I think about the way that pain is addressed and treated, and you're absolutely correct. 

[00:05:55] In many instances, what I remember about those experiences was that I was given so much narcotics where I was given so much pain medication that I don't remember anything else beyond that. It was like I would have fleeting episodes where I was actually aware of being in the hospital in between sleeping or vomiting. Because as a side effect for a lot of individuals, that's what they get. Like, I think codeine was always one of those drugs when we prescribed, patients would say, “Yeah, I didn't have any more pain, but I vomited and then fell asleep.” And so, I think in many ways there's this desire to assess our patients, be able to treat them properly.

[00:06:30] But the challenge is always, are we actually treating the pain or are we covering things up? And that's a lot of the tenet of your new book is really helping people understand the pain response. So, it was interesting in the book, you talk about the scope of the issue with modern management of pain. 20.9% of adults or 51.6 million in the US deal with chronic pain. That is quite significant. And it was far larger group of individuals than I realized. And the cost of chronic pain, wait for this $560 to $635 billion a year that's just for chronic pain. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:07:08] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:07:09] When you were writing the book, were you surprised to learn that it's that large of a scope of problem? 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:07:15] Yeah, I knew about chronic disease in general, but when you isolate it to specific aspects of chronic disease, like chronic pain or heart disease or whatever, it's always interesting to see like, how much is going toward this one specific thing because then it really makes you realize that if we just address that one specific thing, how much money would be saved for people, how much they're spending on their healthcare because they can't fix this chronic disease that they have or this chronic symptom that they have. So, yeah, pretty shocking. And for me, I deal with pain every day as a chiropractor.

[00:07:46] I'm still currently practicing as a chiropractor. And so, people come to me for pain. That's the main thing that. Chiropractic has many other benefits, but people usually come in the door because they've got some pain issues. So, I'm seeing it every day. And it's a surprise to me to see those numbers and how big it is. And then it's also surprising to see like, how lots of chiropractors struggle to stay in business. It's like, “Man, there's this thing here that could help, but people aren't utilizing it and they potentially need it.” And that’s the big—that was the realization I had. Just like, man, how much money could be saved if they were using these lower-cost, more effective, more long-term solutions rather than going to the doctor, what their insurance pays for, and getting the drugs, everything. That's the only option they have. So, you see how the problem starts to get created too, from that perspective. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:08:35] Yeah. And it's interesting because you go in and you talk about the Flexner Report and this will be the second time on the podcast that we've actually examined this. And you're right, there are a lot of individuals that they have to go with whatever their insurance will pay for. And what is it that changed in the United States in the early 1920s that impacted the ability for most people to have familiarity or exposure to complimentary medical options? And that includes chiropractic care, which absolutely for many, many people has been life-saving in many instances for alleviation of pain, discomfort, etc. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:09:14] Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's this whole story that's very well documented that in the early 1900s, I think it was 1911 or 1912 or something like that. Flexner Report. Anyways, John Rockefeller was this big oil tycoon, and he found a way to use oil to extract ingredients out of different things and concentrate them into pharmaceuticals. And so, he being the businessman that he was, he used that information to make pharmaceuticals. And then he went to the medical schools and he funded them as long as they taught a curriculum that was centered around pharmaceuticals so that they would use his products and he would make money. You could say he's a big businessman or just a good businessman. You could say that it was conspiratorial. I don't know, but it happened. 

[00:09:54] And so then there was this very big push. They started the American Medical Association and all these different associations. And the Flexner Report came out, which basically shunned any alternative care and said that we have to have this standardization and these things and the associations were started. And that's when this whole big pharmaceutical basis of medicine started. And it's really interesting. Chiropractors are well aware of this. We learn about our history as chiropractors in school and then from others. Actually, here in Virginia, there's somewhat of a chiropractic story, and I've learned a lot from him. His name is John Foley. But chiropractors were accused of practicing medicine without a license when they were just practicing chiropractic because certain people in the associations were encouraged to go and file complaints against them. 

[00:10:40] Chiropractors were jailed for that kind of thing, and all they were doing was just practicing chiropractic. And so, there was this stronghold created over medicine, and anybody else that was trying to do anything therapeutic was arrested and prosecuted. And there was a tough life for some people back then, but it's a testament to therapy itself, because we're still here, so obviously people still valued it. And there were stories of people who was like, chiropractors were in jail, and people were showing up to jail to get treated by their chiropractor because they valued it that much, or the chiropractor's livelihood was taken away for whatever reason, they couldn't practice, and people were bringing food to their house and everything so it was like more of a barter system, could still get treated, and they were supporting them.

[00:11:23] So, obviously, people very really valued it. But that's where we got, that's how we got to where we are today. As far as like when you go to the doctor that your insurance company is going to pay for a medication and for that doctor that's going to prescribe a medication and any other option that you want, you have to pay out of pocket for if you look. And even then, they call it, back in the like 70s and 80s, chiropractic had much better insurance coverage than other alternative therapies did. And now they just keep taking away the coverage and people come in, they say, I'm giving a you treatment plan what I think would get them the best result and they're like, well my insurance only pays for part of that, so I'm only going to do part of that.

[00:12:01] So, it's just this really hard thing. And I'm not like complaining as a chiropractor. It's just that when you understand how that system's set up, it's geared pushing people toward the things that are going to make a profit for the system, which is prescribing the medications, going to the big hospital systems and that kind of stuff. And then people are left to their own devices to seek anything else that may be more effective and work longer term. But as I talk about in the book, there's very complex mechanisms of pain that lots of times just chiropractic's not going to help with, people who have to do other things too. So that's an uphill battle as well. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:12:36] Yeah, and thank you for sharing that because I think that for the same reason nurse practitioners have only been around for about 50 years and if you look at the research, we provide excellent care and I would say 98% of the individuals I interact with are thrilled with nurse practitioners. But we will oftentimes get kickback and it's generally from people who feel very threatened that there are other options to seek care with. Our conversation, is not designed to point fingers or in any way be hostile towards any other licensed medical provider. I just simply think the Flexner Report is really interesting because it sets the stage for our modern-day healthcare system and there are pros and cons. I always say if you've got an urgency or an emergency, we do it better than anyone else. 

[00:13:26] But we do a terrible job with prevention and chronic disease management. And I can clearly see that. I'm trained technically as a primary care NP, although I have never practiced primary care. I always did Acute Care Medicine until nine years ago when I diverted paths. For anyone that's not familiarized with the basic tenets of chiropractic care, I would love touch on that before we start to expand because to me, I think about, dear friends of mine, like Dr. Stephanie Estima as an example. I learned so much from her about body mechanics and muscle and things that my particular training did not provide a great deal of information on. But I think there are so many benefits to chiropractic care. 

[00:14:09] But let's touch on that for those that are unfamiliar with the basic tenets so they have some perspective about how you have this overall differing opinion and approach to healthcare. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:14:21] Sure, yeah. And I think one of the issues-- you could think of it as an issue as far as people understanding chiropractic is there's so many different philosophies of chiropractic, which is good I think, in that there's this variety in everything. Whereas in medicine you're going to get pretty much the same philosophy because if they don't practice that, they're going to get in trouble. But with chiropractic, you can go to a chiropractor and they could treat you 15 different ways depending on the chiropractor. And I didn't know this going to school, I just picked a school and applied based on location. But there's chiropractors that are definitely more, you could say philosophical based. And then there's chiropractors that are more tending toward the medical side of things. 

[00:15:00] And then there's chiropractors that focus a lot on biomechanics and are sometimes leaning more toward things like people would think of physical therapy. And then there's chiropractors that do a lot of functional medicine. And then there's chiropractors that are very philosophical adjustment based, treating the spine. So, it's across the board. But when you think about like, I guess, a basic philosophy of chiropractic, we're talking about the nervous system. And I think of chiropractic much differently. And I've given lectures to chiropractors about how I think it differently. And I talk about it in the book how I view it differently. I don't think we're affecting just the nervous system, but the traditional way of thinking about chiropractic.

[00:15:38] What was originally thought to be how it was working was that we were adjusting the spine that was affecting the nervous system. And when you affect the nervous system, you literally can affect everything in the body because the nervous system goes to every organ, gland tissue in the body. So, when you do that and you create a more regulated nervous system, you're regulating hormones, you're regulating the autonomic nervous system response, everything. So that's where we could have an effect on everything. And I was will say that in practice, I've had some interesting experiences where I adjust somebody and their behavior changes, they're becoming more pleasant person to be around [Cynthia laughs] or I have adjusted some-- four different women now have come to me unable to conceive and I start adjusting them. 

[00:16:19] I don't treat their infertility. I'm just adjusting their spine, correcting the structure and function of their spine. And they get pregnant and they go to full term. So, I don't know, I can't explain that kind of stuff. But when you affect the nervous system, you affect everything. So that's a basic understanding of chiropractic. And like I said, I think there's a lot more that we're affecting. We're affecting fascia. And there's a more biophysics approach, I think, than just dysfunction of a nervous system based on a spinal segment that's not moving properly. And I think a lot of the early pioneers in chiropractic, like The Palmer’s are some of them. They didn't invent chiropractic, though. They just gave it a name and gave it a profession, which is great. 

[00:16:58] But manipulation has been around for years and years, all through the ancient societies and everything, people have been doing that kind of thing. But when you think about what they were saying, what they were describing back in the late 1800s and the first chiropractic adjustments were being done formally as a profession. What they were describing makes a lot of sense when you think about it from a biophysics perspective and affecting the fascia and electromagnetic fields and more like quantum is a word that people talk about these days. It makes more sense to me than just signals from a nervous system. But that's just my particular opinion. What you learned in school is very philosophical, based on nervous system and spine and that kind of function. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:17:38] Well, because it's interesting. I certainly have had a lot of chiropractors on the podcast, and there's deferring this differing kind of philosophies in terms of practice. And so, I appreciate that you gave us a broad-based perspective because, one of the things that I find curious and interesting, I'm traditional allopathic trained, I'm also functional integrative trained. And there's so much practice variation, just even within nursing and advanced practice nurses. And so much to your point about chiropractors that, depending on where you went to school, what your training's like, what are your interests, what is your area of focus. And I don't know if you focus broadly or if you are very focused on particular populations of patients. 

But for me I find that the more niche down that we get, sometimes we can exclude the possibility of considering alternative perspectives. One thing that I think is interesting and touch on this in the book as well, is how the impact of pain has impacted people financially, physically, philosophically. And there's a Harvard study that says 62% of those that file for bankruptcy do so because they cannot afford the cost of medical treatment. That is unbelievable. 78% of whom had health insurance. So, people even with health insurance being unable to afford to pay their bills. And there's a book that I read or listened to on Audible because I love to learn in the car. It's by Patrick Radden Keefe. And so, he's this incredible investigative journalist. It's called Empire of Pain. And this is all about the Sackler Brothers. 

[00:19:14] And you talk about Dopesick in the book, which is another excellent resource and you start to understand as this Flexner Report was brought up and it directly impacted the way that medical training is focused in on treating symptoms with medication. And then the evolution of the trajectory of the pharmaceutical industry, you superimpose, people are always looking for pain management appropriately. So, acutely is different than chronic management. But what I found interesting was you start to look at the impact of OxyContin. And I trained in the 1990s and when I finished my nurse practitioner training it was 2000 and I recall this was the hotbed timeframe for drug reps. In fact, I had many nurse practitioner colleagues who could not find jobs and they became drug reps. And it was very, very profitable. 

[00:20:09] And it seems like a lot of the drug companies would choose very attractive young men and women to be able to share information about new drug and new drug technology. And so, from that in particular there are drugs that emerged that seemed to be at that time on the tertiary for me, because I was never managing pain chronically. Acutely, yes. Chronically, no. Many, many patients that were prescribed OxyContin. And how the Sackler brothers, who should be in jail but are not, how the Sackler brothers and the rise of Purdue Pharma, how that impacted the way that physicians and other licensed healthcare providers were prescribing drugs and also impacted the patients that were prescribed these drugs who unknowingly became addicted. 

[00:21:01] And now, really looking broadly, not just here in the United States, but internationally, the impact of this opioid crisis. And certainly, I know that living in the State of Virginia, we are both not too far from Appalachia and parts of the country that have really been decimated by the opioid crisis. So, let's talk about this, because I feel like from a social perspective, we have an enormous responsibility to our patients. And yet the practice of first, do no harm, in many instances, these pharmaceutical reps were encouraged to flat out lie to clinicians and to provide really biased research that in many instances drove profits up and addiction up as well.

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:21:54] Yeah. And wine and dine them, so to speak. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:21:56] Oh. That was the time I could tell you stories about the things that our drug reps did for us.

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:22:01] Yeah, definitely. Yeah and it was interesting. Like reading Dopesick specifically because that's so local to where I am and pretty close to Southwest Virginia. But that was the first part, it was just like-- it was strategic. They targeted that area for reasons because they thought it would be the most profitable way to start. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:22:17] Let's say it out loud. Why did they target that area? 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:22:20] Because it was poor. Yeah. And which suggests to me, I don't know, but it suggests to me that they understand addiction. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:22:27] Yes. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:22:29] Because generally when people are poor and have a harder life, that's what makes them addicted. Because you experience the euphoria from something that we call addictive, whether it's alcohol or pain medication or heroin or whatever it may be, you experience that euphoria, and then you wake up from that euphoria and you hate your life again. How do you get back to not hating your life? You use again, use again, right. So that's what addiction is. It's not that necessarily there's this chemical process happening in your brain that makes you want it again and changes that. Eventually it will change the wiring of your brain, but it's because you can't experience anything like you just experienced of not caring about anything anymore until you use again. And so, you just keep doing that. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:23:12] Chasing the dragon. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:23:14] Yeah. And then you want it so bad that people are literally stealing from other people or ruining their life even more to get more of the drug or the substance. And you wake up and your life's even worse because you've screwed everybody out of your life and you want to use again. Like, that's the cycle of addiction. And people who break the cycle of addiction, it's always they replace something. They rewire their brain. They make their life better. That's always the case, I've heard people who just basically throw themselves into working out or something, some other way of doing something that they become addicted to that. And that's a much better way to deal with any sort of-- if they had ever had a problem, they would go run or they ever had a problem, they felt bad, they would go work out or something. So, they all improve their life that way. So, yeah, that was concerning that they targeted that area. 

[00:24:01] It was premeditative. And then it was so close to home for me. Like, as I was reading the book, I was like, there's experiences that I've had personally being close to that area that I was just like, I didn't even realize that that was the case, but that's probably why that is. I had some patients at one point, I was working in pretty close to Downtown Roanoke, and I had some patients and I just was asking the guy what he does for a living, and he was like, I drive things for people. And I was like, “Well, that's kind of weird.” But basically, he told me that he goes to New York and he picks up people and things, and he drives them down Interstate 81. And then I read Dopesick, and I read that 81 became this highway for drugs. And I was like, “Oh, that's what he was doing. That was his job.” So, things like that.

[00:24:48] And then I've had patients who've basically straight up told me that they were addicted to opioids and then harder drugs once the opioid prescription stopped, and that their whole family is addicted to opioids or harder drugs. And this one guy was just like, I stopped and I did something different. And now I'm trying to help other people get off it. And I applauded him, but he was like, “They don't work. They just mess you up enough that you can't feel anything.” And I was like, “You're exactly right.” He told me that while I was researching this book. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:25:15] Yeah. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:25:16] And he said, “Yeah, everybody in this area, like, lots of my extended family have had this issue.” And then most surprising to me was, in my experience, you talked about us having similar experience as appendicitis. After the surgery, I didn't really have any pain, but nobody asked me that. I was just given this prescription, two weeks’ worth of oxycodone, I think, and I never took any of it. I got rid of it because I didn't need it, but it was just given to me. In Dopesick, she talks a lot about that's how people become addicted. Because it's not that this is very important. It's not that the oxycodone itself was such an addicting thing. If you just take two weeks of it, that you're going to become addicted. 

[00:25:59] I happen to enjoy my life, so if I had done that, it's very unlikely that I would become addicted because I would like to go back to the things that I like to do. But in a very poor area of the country where people are struggling and maybe not in the best situation, if they take that two weeks’ worth and they realize that it makes them forget about those things they are struggling, they want more of it. They go back to the doctor, “Hey, can I have some more?” They may fill it. They may do that for a while, but then they stop. And then the person says, “Okay, well, now I need something else. Now they look at harder drugs and different things or alcohol or whatever,” and that's how it starts. So, that's a very important component as far as addiction goes. And addiction and chronic pain are very hand in hand. So, yeah.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:26:36] It's interesting because as I was reading your book, I was thinking about people that I'd known throughout my lifetime that had addiction to opiates. And one thing that was really telling back a thousand years ago, when I was an ER nurse in Baltimore, there was a nurse who worked shifts with me, multiple shifts. This won't tell anyone who she is. She was a PICU nurse who floated down to the ER and was very nice. And I always noticed, I was like, “Dang, her pupils are pretty.” I was like, “No.” In the back of my mind, I was like, “Noted.” But then, you're in the ER, it's busy, and this is back in a time in the 90s where, yes, you had a Pyxis machine, and that's how you got drugs out. But the whole thing would open. And so people could conceivably, if they were addicted or dishonest, they could pull other things out.

[00:27:26] And she and I had worked a lot of shifts together, and at one point, they count the narcotics at the end of the shift, and consistently every time this person worked, the narcotics were off. And it turned out she had this terrible addiction and ended up losing her license. But because we had worked so many shifts together, like, everyone that worked shifts with this person got pulled into this investigation. And they can talk screen everybody. They can do all these things. And I remember thinking, oh, my gosh, this is someone who is such a good nurse, and how easily this can happen. Whether it was-- you had a motor vehicle accident, you had a traumatic surgery or any kind of surgery. Like you pointed out, narcotics are prescribed so often that you could unknowingly get addicted, and it could allow you to numb down feelings you don't want to experience or process in addition to numbing out the pain.

[00:28:20] And so, I always think about that nurse that I worked with years and years ago, because she ultimately ended up not being able to continue practicing and was really good at what she did. And then I think about, over the years, the constellation of stories that I've heard from patients, family members, about individuals that do get addicted, and I wonder if there are things that make us more susceptible. You mentioned the socioeconomic piece. More susceptible to addiction. And I start to think about underlying trauma or just life episodes that happen. People that tend to more likely to push the envelope, they're chasing that dopamine hit. They're the ones, the thrill seekers and people like that might just be even more susceptible to these kinds of things. And it's a huge problem. It's not necessarily getting better. And I think from the perspective as a parent, the things that I get concerned about. 

[00:29:13] And I sent our oldest to College of Narcan, not because I was concerned that he was going to experiment with an opioid. You're on a college campus, and at some point, someone is going to do something that they could unknowingly be exposed. And so, I remember having a conversation with several of my ER physician friends and they were like, “Oh, yeah, we did the same thing with our kids. That's completely normal now.” But it's not just oxycodone now it's fentanyl, these synthetic narcotics that are even more powerful and frankly scarier. Like back in the day when I would administer fentanyl in the ER, it was like, “Fentanyl, this is serious stuff.” And it's synthetic, so much stronger. And you have to be careful, conscientious with the utilization of it.

[00:29:57] But now you're finding fentanyl in just about anything, whether it's a pill, whether it's a joint. The things, the stories that I hear from law enforcement friends, from medical provider friends, it is a huge problem that is just not going away. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:30:15] I think the big underlying thing with that this becoming such a big problem and the use of these things becoming such a big problem, it just basically highlights for me that the modern way of life people are unhappy with, and they're looking for something that they don't have to worry about these things which means that the things that we're filling our lives with are unsatisfying to us, and we need to change that. We want to change this problem. It's not about controlling the substances. It's about making it so that your life is better than the substances. And that's the most important lesson for my book. There you go. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:30:46] Yeah. No, no. It's such an important thing to talk about, to me and we could spend hours just talking about Purdue Pharma and oxycodone. But let's shift and speak a little bit about how do our bodies perceive pain, what is the physiology of the pain response? Because I think this helps explain why a lot of these drugs are not per se, addressing the root cause of the problem. It's making us less aware of the pain, not per se addressing the pain at a cellular level. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:31:23] Yeah. So, I like talking about it in reference to the components of pain. So, there's a sensory component, there's an emotional component, and there's a cognitive component to pain. And there's also what we call neuropathic pain, but that's more like a nerve has become damaged and you're getting pain from that nerve damage. But these three components are the more common ones. So, when you just cut your hand or something like that, and it's painful. The pain is not happening at your hand. Some chemical change is happening in the tissue and that could be from physical damage, be it from a burn, it could be from any sort of thing. There's lots of different things that can cause this chemical change to happen. 

[00:32:02] I would say it's a drop in body charge in that area, which we can talk about what that is. But anyways, the body senses that change in the tissue and well, I mean we're all just big sensory things. We have all these senses, way more than five senses. And that information is taken to the brain and the brain says, “Oh, something's wrong here.” And it sends a sensory pain signal back to that spot. So that's why they say pain is in the brain. And that's just one way that pain is in the brain. That's the sensory pain. And that is a most species of animal life have that, that mechanism of sensory pain, but some very lower evolved animals just have that, so if they feel pain, they get away from it and that's about it. 

[00:32:42] And then there's also an emotional component to pain, the sensory cortex areas of the brain communicate to the emotional centers of the brain. And so, this is very well evolved in most mammals and higher evolved animals, I should say, because this allows us to attach a negative feeling to pain so that we learn to avoid it in the future, which is very important. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:06] Don't burn your finger. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:33:07] Right.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:07] You make that-- [crosstalk] 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:33:08] You do that one time and you're like, “Oh, I know that's hot. I'm going to try and avoid that in the future.” And there are people who are unfortunately born without an ability to feel pain. And I say unfortunately because that sounds like a great thing. But unfortunately, because these people don't live very long because they never learn how to avoid pain because they never have A, the pain signal that's never tied to the emotional aspect of it, that never gives them a negative response to avoid it in the future. These people obviously, they tend to die of complications from injuries or just like built up scar tissues and things like this. And people say, “Well, can't you just tell them what's bad for them, what's not?”

[00:33:42] And it's just like, “Well, how many times have you told someone that something's bad for them and they're still going to do it until they learn for themselves.”

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:33:50] Right.

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:33:50] Right. And that's just how humans are. So, you have to learn it yourself, has to be wired into your brain. And so, without this ability to feel painful, that never engages the sensory centers and then the emotional centers and never learn to avoid it in the future. So that's a very well-preserved mechanism. There's lots of different emotional areas of the brain. There's the insular cortex. There is five or six different ones. There is so many different pathways. So, it's very very important. Evolutionarily, it was determined it was very, very important to learn to avoid pain and have this negative emotion with it. Then there's the cognitive aspect of pain.

[00:34:24] So, now we have the emotional centers of the brain communicating to the prefrontal cortex, where we have this executive function and cognition. And this is mostly only seen in humans, probably in some aspect in primates too, but not near as much as in humans. Because we have this very big, highly evolved prefrontal cortex which just allows us to wonder and worry about things. And so that's the aspect of cognitive pain, is that we're wondering about the pain and worrying about it.

[00:34:53] And so, if we wonder and worry about the pain too much, like if we get an injury or something, there's studies that show that the amount of time someone spends or how worried they are about the injury and how it's going to affect their life and if the pain is ever going to go away or anything like that, dictates if that pain will become chronic pain. Because what they're doing is that they're wiring the cognitive centers and the emotional centers of the brain together. And that's an issue because now when the physical injury heals and it's no longer there, now the cognitive centers have learned to activate the emotional centers that activate the sensory pain signals that are sending out a pain signal down to your body with no physical damage whatsoever. 

[00:35:33] So, the brain is wired to create pain, and that's what happens. There is many aspects, I think, of our modern way of life that can do that. And it can happen not just with physical pain or injury, it can happen with emotional pain too. If we worry about things too much, we can literally think our way into a pain response, which is why it's no coincidence that it's estimated anywhere from 50% to 75% of people with chronic pain also have a mental health condition, whether they're anxious or they have depression or whatever. And so, it's very interesting.

[00:36:02] And so, I tell the story of Henry Beecher in the book, and he was a just to kind of illustrated these aspects of pain. He was an anesthesiologist during World War II, and I think he was at Harvard in Massachusetts. But anyways, during the war, soldiers were coming off the line with horrible injuries, right? These uncontrolled injuries or whatever. And he started asking them, collecting data. He had asked them how much pain they're in, how much pain medication they wanted, and how they were just generally feeling at the time. He just started recording that data. And then after the war, he was back at the hospital, and he was doing the same thing with people coming out of surgery, just asking them how much pain they're in, how much pain medication they felt like they needed and how they were feeling about things. And what he found was that people coming off the front line with much less controlled injuries and that could eventually kill them were reporting less pain, requesting less pain medication, and seemed to have this calmness about them. And it was the exact opposite, people coming out of surgery.

[00:36:59] And what he found or what he concluded was that, the people coming off the front line saw this pain as a good thing because they were leaving war and they were alive, and they might never, ever have to go back depending on the extent of their injury. They were never having to go back into that stressful environment. Whereas the people coming out of surgery, this was something they saw as a negative thing, that they had to have this surgery. And they were worried about how the surgery went and if it was going to affect their life going forward. And so, they were more worried about it. And so, they were having more pain. Their cognition was causing more pain. 

[00:37:28] And there's studies too, that talk about that, like after surgeries and stuff and rehab, like, the more you worry about it, the more likely you're going to have chronic pain from that surgery, which is an injury. So, it's very interesting to understand that kind of thing. And then it can be empowering because it shows you that we have more control over this pain signal. But that just illustrates these components of chronic pain or pain in general. I should say not just chronic pain, but it also helps us figure out, like, it's really important to figure out which aspect of pain you have before we can effectively treat it. Is it a more cognitive component or is it a more just chronic sensory pain signal which one's happening? Because that dictates how we have to approach this to get an effective response. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:38:09] Well, and that saying, “What wires together, fires together.” And so really speaking to the fact that mindset and our thought process about our injury or surgery or recovery is so critically important for the trajectory of our healing journey, or lack thereof. Now, when you're working with patients, let's say you've got-- most of my community are people north of 35 that are women. What are some of the common pain-related issues that you see in this group of women that are north of 35, navigating perimenopause and menopause? Are you seeing common themes in terms of how they are navigating pain and chronic pain management? 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:38:53] Neck pain, back pain, headaches, those are very, very common. And again, it can be across the board as far as like, what could be the cause of those things, especially women coming up to hormonal changes that could be an explanation of a headache. So, you have to rule that out versus these sensory pain signals that could being sent or just the muscle spasm or things like that. But those are the most common things that I see. Neck pain, back pain and headaches that's what people generally think chiropractic is for. So that's what I'm being attracted to. But I do have people that come for complex chronic pain-type things, or I hear probably at least three or four times a week, like, “Oh, I have fibromyalgia” just like, “Oh, I have this.”

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:39:32] Which is the catch-all, like, 25 years ago, we used that term to explain things that wouldn't fit in neatly into another bucket. And now I look very differently at fibromyalgia because I think it really speaks to our lack of understanding of some of the things that are going on, whether it's tick-borne illnesses, MCAS, all these differentiators that can impact how someone experiences pain. Not to mention the fact, post Women's Health Initiative, how many women were taken off their hormones and that just worsened a lot of their pain experiences. Why is fascia so important? I mean, I think the more I learn about it, the more I have great reverence and respect for it. And I learned little to nothing during my training about it. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:40:15] Yeah, same for me we were dissecting cadavers and we're just like throwing the fascia with, “Oh, we got to get this out to here. It's interfering with our ability to learn the anatomy,” but it was everywhere where you're just having to go through these layers of fascia, which should suggest that it's important. And it's not just this thing that holds us together. But I think that one thing that illustrates why it's so important is that it is everywhere. We now have evidence that we know that it penetrates the cell wall and goes all the way to the level of the DNA. And it's not like this layer of tissue laid on top or in between organs and bones and things like that holding things together. It's interwoven between all of it.

[00:40:53] So, it's like this spider web 3D thing going through everything, which means that it's connecting everything, which means that to me, it suggests that it very likely plays a role in communication. And that's exactly what we found. It's a highway for communication. Not just like communication, we would think of a nervous system communicating a signal like that, more like communication, energetic communication, energy transfer. And they've actually shown that fascia is the wire in your wall. It can communicate electricity, protons and electrons. So, it can communicate through fascia or be transported through fascia. And so, this we're talking about eggs going through the mitochondria. It's literally interwoven everywhere. 

[00:41:33] So, whatever's going on in this section of the body over here, your body can communicate what's going on over here through fascia over here. And then the other aspect of why it's so important we understand that is that if fascia gets damaged, now it can't do that job. And we call the scar tissue, where this tightly packed fascia that is not laid down like a normal spacing of a normal fascia, that interferes with it’s ability to do that job of communication or of hydration. So, it's not just this thing that holds us together and creates restricted range of motion when we get scar tissue, it's actually interfering with communication. And your body's ability to communicate within itself, which is probably the most important aspect, I think, of health, is your body's ability to communicate what's wrong and when it's wrong. 

[00:42:17] So, we're learning about this intelligence of fascia and the role that it plays. It's also a huge storage form of water in the body. So, we're talking about hydration and particularly structured water, because that's what forms on it. But, yeah, it's incredibly fascinating. And it was really fascinating to dig into it a little bit and understand it. And it's what led me to my different perspective of chiropractic. And when we're affecting fascia, not just the nervous system. What are we affecting there and it let me down a whole different pathway. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:42:43] Yeah, it's so interesting because I feel like once I better understood fascia, it explained why when my muscles felt tight, it was less about the muscles and more about this. Whether it was hydration, whether it was just stress, but understanding how it's just used the term or that terminology of a spiderweb. But it starts to make you realize that everything is connected within the body. Western medicine would like us to believe everything is siloed neatly. Like, this is your cardiovascular system, this is your renal system, this is your pulmonary system, and everything's siloed. And they don't really communicate. And we of course have learned that's obviously not the case. You brought up structured water. What is structured water? This is a new term for my community and certainly I learned a lot reading the book. Why is structured water-- also why is it so important? 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:43:34] Yeah, it's, I don't know from big picture to start with. We're on the water planet and there's so much water, whether it's steam or liquid water or ice on this planet. And we are up to 99.9% water molecules by molecular volume. And so, it's not just this inert solute that things are happening in. It's very active in our physiology and we're learning more and more about it. And I think that one of the biggest mistakes of many of medicine is just seeing it as that inner thing that just biochemistry happens in. But water also has some unique properties. We all know, we all learn in school that it can be ice, it can be liquid water or it can be steam, but there's actually a fourth state that it can exist in.

[00:44:18] And this has been discovered, I guess is the word that would use by many different scientists over the last probably 100, 150 years. And they all called it something different. But Dr. Gerald Pollack has made it the most popular, I guess because of his book The Fourth Phase of Water. But there's many scientists that have come across it. So, what it is just this fourth state, that's more like a gel state of water. Under the right conditions, water can exist in this gel like state. And those conditions are that we need the water, we need toxin free, mineral rich water, we need that water to hold energy and we need a hydrophilic surface or water loving surface which all biological surfaces on humans or any life are water loving. 

[00:44:55] And so when those conditions happen, water will become this structured form of water on that biological surface. So, it'll become this gel like state of water. So, you can think of it like the consistency of raw egg white is what it feels like. And it's why I feel like a gel. Like, if I poke myself and I bounce right back, I feel like Jell-O because most of the water in the body is in this gel like state. And, and so the water in the cells is in this. They call it bound water or structured water or exclusion zone water or fourth phase water. Lots of different names for it. But the water in the cells is in this state, which is why I feel like a gel, the water in, around the fascia. So, fascia is very hydrated, but it's hydrated with structured water. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:45:34] Should be hydrated. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:45:34] Yeah, should be hydrated. Ideally hydrated. And so that's why the scar tissue is laid down too tightly that structured water can't form on it. There's not space for it. So, it becomes this dehydrated dysfunctional tissue. And without that hydration, it loses its strength. So, with the hydration, there's one study, they said that it could withstand up to 300 times what a muscle contraction could create. That's the strength of this fascia when it's hydrated. When it's dehydrated, not so much. But there's also liquid water in the body, like in the blood and the lymphatic system and cerebrospinal fluid, and it's all liquid. 

[00:46:08] But the edges of that, like on the lining of the artery or the lining of the lymphatic fluid or the spinal cord and the linings where the cerebrospinal fluid is like all that stuff has structured water lining it. That also plays important roles in physiology. But when it comes to fascia, because that's what we're talking about, you can think of this structured water forming this gel-like form of water around it like the myelin sheath on the nervous system. In school, we're taught about the myelin is what allows for quicker signaling of the nervous system. It can travel much faster when it's insulated by this myelin.

[00:46:43] And so, this is what one thing that structured water does for fascia is it allows for this conduction of this energy, electrons, protons, and I would say other quantum forms of energetics to be communicated much faster through them where you can-- now we're getting to like, where if you have the dehydrated scar tissue, that's not going to happen or may not happen at all. It may hit that scar tissue and just die right there. So, it's like having faulty wiring system in your body. If you've got this scar tissue and that could be physical or emotional trauma that could cause those things. So, yeah, that's water.

[00:47:17] And I could talk about water all day long, but water has some very, very interesting roles in our physiology that I think have been ignored or not known and then now that we're starting to know it, ignored. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:47:29] And how does dehydration play a role in the pain response? 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:47:33] You mean like general body dehydration? Well, so I think that when it comes to hydration, like drinking water, that's mainly hydrating, those liquid water aspects of our body, the blood and the lymphatic system and those types of things. When it comes to cellular hydration, I think that's down to metabolic health because we're all taught that-- if you ever take any physiology, you're taught that the mitochondria makes water as a byproduct of. And we're like, “Oh, it's a byproduct.” It's like, no. It's probably actually the most important thing that I, I think it does is making this perfect metabolic deuterium-depleted water coming from the mitochondria. So cellular hydration comes from that. 

[00:48:09] But that's critically important, that cellular hydration is critically important, because when you talk about a sensory pain signal, again, it's a chemical change happening in a tissue. And that chemical change, when it happens, sends the signal to the brain. The brain says something's wrong and sends a pain signal back down. And one thing or that chemical change, you could see it as voltage, like this voltage change in a tissue, it drops below a certain voltage. And what maintains the voltage of a cell is structured water. We've been taught in cellular physiology that it's big negatively charged proteins in there or chloride ions or things like that, when in reality it's structured water. Because structured water is very electronegatively charged. You put an electrode in structured water, it's giving you a negative charge. 

[00:48:54] And so, this negative cell voltage that our cells hold, that all-- people who study physiology know there's this negative cell voltage that's coming from structured water. But if you have poor metabolic health and you're not optimized-- your mitochondria are not optimized at creating this metabolic water, you're not creating a hydrated cell full of structured water. It can be hard for your cell to maintain the voltage. And now that may not cause a pain signal in itself, but you're much more likely to get the pain signal because you're more likely to get to that point where the voltage has dropped enough that there's a chemical change that happens. And your body says, “Oh, something's wrong here.” And what's wrong is that you have poor mitochondrial function, you have poor metabolic health potentially. 

[00:49:34] And there are many different things that can contribute to that. You can have physical damage, like degeneration in your knee or your spine, but those things in themselves aren't going to create a pain response all the time. There are studies I talk about in the book where they just did MRIs on people with no back pain. They had no back pain whatsoever. They had MRIs of the lumbar spine and half of them had severe, not just some degeneration, but severe degeneration in the low back. So, having degeneration is not indicated that you're absolutely going to have pain, but it does make it more likely that you reach this threshold of where the voltage drops. And that has to do with maintaining adequate structured water.

[00:50:13] And that comes down to a lot of different things. Toxin exposure, metabolic health, doing the right things in your environment to get structured water, to get it, to create to form infrared light, grounding those types of things. So, that could go on and on about that stuff too. But that's how it plays a role in a sensory pain response. And then if you start to get a sensory pain response and you can't fix it, and the sensory pain is chronically being stimulated. Now the nervous system can’t wire itself to more readily create that pain signal. And it gets lazy, right? So, instead of having to always do that, send that signal, it creates a new pathway that's easier and then we call that sensitization. There you go, where your body is more easily activated because it's always having to it. 

[00:50:54] So it's like, well, I might as well just do it more easily. And that can be hard to overcome. But then we get the sensory pain signal communicating to the emotional signal, then it goes to the cognitive. And if that happens long enough, because we haven't fixed that chemical change, then now we can get it coming the other way. And if we do fix that change, you could still give us a pain response because we're wired the brain to react that way. So, I hope that puts it together for people a little bit from like the very basic chemical change in a cell and how that can go full blown if it's not treated for long enough. How I can full blown go into chronic pain that's cognitively activated where there's no physical damage whatsoever. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:51:32] Yeah, I'm glad that you touched on metabolic health and mitochondrial health because we know by the age of 40, most if not all of us will have some degree of mitochondrial dysfunction. And I think this is improving, it is evolving, it is greater awareness. Ten years ago, everyone thought I was crazy talking about metabolic health and doing it in a way where I was trying to make the information more accessible. When you're talking to your patients about the things that are going to put them at greater risk for poor metabolic health, I know nutrition and lifestyle play a huge role. Are you sometimes surprised that with greater awareness around these topics and becoming more popular, it seems to me there's a trickle-down effect. Sometimes it takes a while before the general lay public will have greater familiarity with it.

[00:52:24] What are some of the stumbling blocks that you feel like your patients are dealing with with regard to mitochondrial dysfunction or poor metabolic health?

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:52:31] Yeah, I think again, one of the biggest ones we keep going back to this is there's just many aspects of the modern way of life that are seen as normal. Or seen as things that everyone should be able to do and not have an effect on their health. And then someone tells them that no, actually these things aren't normal, they're contributing to your problems. And they're like, “No, that doesn't make sense. My doctors never told me that, that doesn't make sense.” So, at first, they're just like, “I'm not going to do that.” That doesn't make sense in their head. But then the more and more they hear it, hopefully, I think the average is like seven times someone has to hear something before they start to even think about changing something or they've tried so many of the things that it's not working and they finally get to the point where they're willing to do anything. But I think that it's just been so normalized.

[00:53:22] All these things that I feel are contributing to all chronic disease, but specifically in the context of this conversation. Like that chemical change in the tissue that can create a chronic pain signal or a sensory pain signal turning into a chronic one. They're so normalized, all these things and you can just list them off. You get toxin exposures are huge and they're hidden everywhere. And you start to think about that, you start to lose your mind trying to avoid toxins, which is then not helpful. 

[00:53:51] The processed food diets, we talk about, high-carbohydrate foods that are straight carbohydrate sugar-type things that are also loaded with toxins. And I think that those are a problem, obviously a big problem, but I don't think that food is the biggest player in poor metabolic health. I think light is-- our light environments and how they have changed. If you look at this epidemic of obesity and diabetes, it correlates directly with artificial light exposure, specifically after sunset, disruption of circadian rhythm and how light plays a role in signaling for every single one of your hormones. So, I always say that I think that has really set the stage in the process through that is just adding a ton of fuel to the flames. 

[00:54:33] And you can completely go like low carb and everything and eliminate all those flames, but there's still these embers burning if the circadian rhythm isn't set. So, there's that stuff, there's trauma, physical or emotional, past trauma can contribute to all these things, whether that's poor mitochondrial health or even just higher cortisol, that state being higher cortisol disrupting your hormones like leptin and things like that. So yeah, you could go on and on inactivity, being sedentary. And these, they're all things that again are normalized. Like, this is the way that it should be. You should be able to do this. And oh, my best friend's this way and he's fine and I'm not, but we're living the same type of lifestyle. Like, why is that? And that's where genetics plays a role. 

[00:55:14] But that doesn't mean that he's fine, just means that it's going to take him longer to get the issues. And he may get it when he's 70 and you may get it when you're 30. Because we all have different experiences and slightly different genetics and things. So yeah, it's about learning about all those things. And that's a huge ask for a lot of people. That's the other big thing in the way is that in our society today, we've been trained to be good at one thing and that's our job. The way that we make money and we're an expert at that. We do that every day. And then we outsource everything else. We outsource health, we outsource whatever, everything.

[00:55:52] But we have to be an expert in those things too if we want to optimize those things. Otherwise, we're just taking someone's word for it, like the doctor's word for it, which in some cases it's appropriate. Lots of cases it's not appropriate what they're giving you. So that's another battle is that to find the time to learn these things and then make the changes. It's an uphill battle, which is why you keep sharing the information. So, many different things that contribute to the body getting more to a state where it's going to express that chronic pain signal or any disease really. It could start with just insulin resistance or whatever else, but yeah.

Cynthia Thurlow: [00:56:26] I feel like it's a slippery slope. I did a webinar last night and one of the things that really stood out, not only in the conversations that I was having was the perspective even from traditional allopathic medicine that you're going to gain weight as you get older, you're going to slow down, you're going to have pain. I was listening to on social media-- sometimes when you're just killing time in between a busy day and looking at what people's perspective is on the aging process and some people just like they normalize the fact that they can't get out of bed and not be in pain. And it's like, “Oh, the aches and pains of getting out of bed.” And I'm like, “Well, maybe you slept funny, maybe you need to replace your mattress.” 

[00:57:11] Like, what could be the things that are like, we don't ever want to normalize having pain or discomfort and that being your new normal. And so, I'm always encouraging/challenging people to not necessarily buy into this philosophy of, oh, “You're X age, so you're going to gain weight, you're going to get flabby, you're going to be tired all the time, you're going to have brain fog.” It's normal to eat all of your diet comprised of ultra-processed foods, it's normal to drink soda all day long, it's normal to want to eat Krispy Kreme donuts. And I don't know why Krispy Kreme donuts were like a thing in Baltimore. And then most of the east coast likes Dunkin Donuts. But the point of what I'm making is that we've normalized not taking care of ourselves and accepting the consequences. 

[00:58:02] And I encourage people to think about-- Peter Attia always says it best, there's this marginal decade, there's this time where people are living, but they're not really living anymore. It's just that they're acquiescing. Their quality life is greatly diminished. And I want everyone to feel good throughout their lifetime or be able to course correct. And that's why I think these conversations are so important, especially as it pertains to lifestyle, because some of these things we have control over. We may not per se have control over who our parents are or the way that we grew up, but a lot of these other choices we do and that's why I think this is so important. 

[00:58:38] You touched on trauma. Trauma is something that we explore on the podcast with greater frequency as we start to realize that the impact of things we go through as children or young adults can have a long-standing impact on our health and the trajectory of our health. And you talk about in the book that you get changes to the thinking part of our brain, the prefrontal cortex, in response to traumatic experiences or trauma and how that can then play into the pain response. And so, I think making these connections is so helpful because sometimes when someone's experiencing pain, it's really about some deep-seated traumatic experiences that they had earlier in their lives that they haven't been able-- The body keeps the score. 

[00:59:23] Bessel van der Kolk’s talk-- his work about how trauma can be trapped in the body and can manifest as pain or a myriad of other things. What are your thoughts around this? Do you have opportunities to talk to your patients about this, especially the men or women that are experiencing chronic pain issues? 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [00:59:41] It's definitely a question I ask, especially if it's something that I can't seem to get them over the hump. It's like, “Okay, we have to investigate this.” Is there something blocking this or keeping your brain wired in a way that it's sending that pain signal. But yes, we're talking about experiences pretty much whether they're big T trauma like you know when this happened and it was very clear that this thing was traumatic or when it's more complex trauma that you may not know why it's there, but you keep doing a certain behavior that you can't explain and it's keeping you from being what you want to be. Those types of things so and yes, these types of things will wire your brain in a certain way, especially if they happen when we're younger, when our brain is still developing.

[01:00:23] And when I've explained pain in the way I have, where we talk about how the cognitive centers of the brain can activate all the way through the emotional and the sensory and cause a pain signal, people who've been through trauma that have wired their brain in a certain negative way are much more likely to get to that point. And in writing the book and researching it, I found that chronic pain is like, let's say sensory pain signal could be like a micro trauma that can turn into a macro trauma if it happens long enough. And that macro trauma rewires the brain and that these trauma situations where it's big T trauma or complex trauma, like they can rewire the brain too. 

[01:01:02] So, it's all about rewiring the brain to treat these things. Whether it's cognitive issues or mental health issues or whether it's chronic pain. To me I see them as one and the same and people always like well how do you do that? How do you rewire the brain? And there's many different ways. Like one reason that good therapy works is because you're creating an empathic relationship with another person. And that is one way to rewire the brain. Re-engaging right and left brain, but there are many different ways you can do that. 

[01:01:32] And in the book I came to the conclusion that nature basically rewires the brain. There is many aspects of nature and there's many things that many modern-day technologies or therapies that have been discovered or invented that are basically trying to mimic nature, that have been shown to rewire the brain. One of them is exercise. You could exercise and that rewires the brain or you could set your circadian rhythm or even chiropractic's been shown to rewire the brain or grounding has been shown to do that. Basically, you're creating a safe signal, you're getting your body the right information from externally and then also if there's things that have been stored internally, like this trauma. Masaru Emoto’s work showed us that water holds memory. And we are 99.9% water molecules. And the fascia is hydrated by water. So, water can imprint these traumas too. 

[01:02:23] And so if there's poor coherence of the body inside because they can't communicate, because we have these stored traumas, we have to release those as well. But then also looking at the external signals that we're getting, are they sending us a coherent or incoherent signal? Because if you're constantly in this environment that's sending you these incoherent signals, it's going to be very hard to rewire your brain from a trauma. And so, “Yes, that session with therapist was useful, but if you go back into this environment that undoes all that.” Just like, this chiropractic adjustment was useful, but if you go back into an environment that's just undoes all that, it's not going to work. So, trauma is just one aspect of those things that rewires the brain and how we get past the trauma is the environment of nature.

[01:03:05] That's what I came across, is that when we talk about light, electromagnetic fields, which are also a form of light, talk about diet, we talk about toxins, we talk about relationships, all these different things are keeping your brain wired the way that it is, depending on if they're having a negative or positive impact. So, you have to learn how to change those things. Take those toxic relationships and get rid of them and surround yourself with positive people, positive loving relationships. Look at your light environment and set it to the day, night, cycle of the sun. Very, very important. Look at your life and eliminate all those toxins and just go through the list one by one. And if you're facing this trauma that you can't get past, see that therapist and do these things too. 

It's the path to healing. Like, we have this incredible ability to heal as humans. It's just that we have all these things in the way that are preventing that. And some people would say it's nefarious that all those things are there, but all we can do is be educated about them, figure out which ones are most pertinent to us, and then make the changes to allow your body to heal, because it'll do amazing things. And I'm a testament to that in my story with heart disease and everything. And so, yeah, I hope that's a positive message for people. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:04:20] Yeah, no, I think it's so important that we do have control over our circumstances. And I think that as someone who has a high ACE score, grew up with quite a bit of childhood trauma, which I talk now very openly about on the podcast. And podcast listeners have had a lot of very similar experiences. I think the more that we work through these things, the better off we are. Ultimately you touched on a word that maybe listeners may not be familiar with, the word coherence. Help us understand what coherence is and why it's so important.

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [01:04:54] Yeah, coherence, like basically it's just when two things are interacting with each other and based on each other. So, if it does something that's going to do something else. So, you can have coherence of two things or you could have coherence of like a whole system. And so that's what we're talking about as far as like, if you think about your body as a system, we want coherence of that system. We want it to be synced up and intercommunicating with itself and with its external environment in a way that everybody's on the same page and doing what's best for the system as a whole rather than acting individually like a cell. 

[01:05:27] Acting individually would be just doing what's best for it rather than what's best for all of its neighbors in the tissue, which you could argue is what a cancer cell is doing, is acting for itself. So, when we talk about coherence, we need to think about restoring the body's internal ability to communicate which one of those is the nervous system. We've also talked about fascia. We also know that the body communicates electromagnetically like the heart is giving off a giant electromagnetic field. All the organs are, but the heart's the biggest for various reasons. And so, it's measuring that coherence and that communication mitochondria are sending out electromagnetic fields, communicating to each other electromagnetically. So, we want to make sure all these things are intercommunicating well so that the body is on the same page. 

[01:06:09] And then externally we also want to be making sure that the signals we're getting external are creating a more coherent signal, more like safe signal. So, again, this goes back to like the relationships in your life or the electromagnetic field environments of your life, which there's lots of nonnative electromagnetic fields which people argue about don't do anything, but it's nonnative, which we can talk about that too. Or artificial light is it's not native to us. It's nothing like the sun. It's very processed, so all these different signals are like these stress signals that are sending incoherence. We're in a stress state and so depending on what signals we're getting, our body is sensing this information in many different ways. We know we have the five senses, but there's many different ways. 

[01:06:52] Like the electromagnetic field of the heart is a sensory organ. It's sensing, reaching out into our environment and sensing the environment and so based on that, the heart is perceiving the state of our coherence or the signals of coherence. And it's relaying that information to the brain. It's relaying it neurologically, but also electromagnetically. And then the brain it's not really in control in my opinion. People think it's in control, but it's not. To me, it's like the postal service. [Cynthia laughs] It receives the messages. It reads the messages and sends them where they need to go. It doesn't change the message, doesn't open the box. It just sends it where it needs to go. 

[01:07:25] So, if we want to change what our brain is signaling to our body to do, we need to change the signals that it's getting, which is the external environment and the internal communication environment. So, those are things we have to work on. So, anyways, that's like the nervous system is telling your body what to do and how to react to this environment. And what it's telling it to do is based on how coherent of a signal that we're getting, whether it's external or internal. So, and again, creating more coherence is all the things I just talked about, looking into your life and changing all those things. But the best measure, I say, of coherence is heart rate variability. People talk about that. People think-- a lot of people say that it's measuring autonomic balance. And I don't think it is. 

[01:08:02] I think it's measuring coherence. And if we have coherence, that will reflect in better autonomic balance, like sympathetic parasympathetic signaling. But really what it's measuring is coherence, which makes sense. That heart rate variability we're measuring because the heart is what's measuring coherence. It's the only organ big enough to be able to sense that coherence or reach out far enough into our environment to get that sense of things. So that's why we feel things with our heart. That's why we attach such emotions to that organ, because it's what we're feeling with. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:08:31] Well, it's interesting, with all my background in cardiology, about six years ago, I met Dr. Elisa Song and she was asking me if I did heart math. And I was like, “What is that?” And so, she explained to me, showed me the app, got me doing it, and it was talking about heart coherence. And that was really my first exposure to the concept. And I do think that heart rate variability with the coherence piece is so important for getting an objective assessment of how balanced your autonomic nervous system is. I think so many people, and I really speak mostly to women, but just are so sympathetic dominant. They're heading into perimenopause. 

[01:09:15] They are coming in hot because everything is not working as it once was, whether they're dealing with brain fog, whether they're dealing with sleep issues, whether they're dealing with weight loss resistance, a whole multiplicity of concerns and symptoms. And this is one of the ways that I can objectively, give me a screenshot of your Oura Ring or your WHOOP band, like, let me get a sense of what's going on. And I think for a lot of individuals-- there was a woman I was talking about the other day, and she said, “Oh, my HRV is always low.” I was like, “Okay, like how low?” She runs in the 10s and 20s, like all the time. And she's telling me she's meditating and she's sleeping and she's managing her stress. 

[01:09:54] And she was asking what my numbers are. And I said, “Well, the context is what's normal for you and how can we improve your metrics?” And so, this is always my tell. I know what happens when I travel, especially time zone shifts, my HRV tends to plummet. Although, interestingly enough, on vacation, it was the highest that I've seen it in probably a year was while on vacation where I was sleeping, getting a lot of sun exposure, a lot less stress. It's amazing how that works. I want to make sure that we touch on because this brings it back, conversation around pain. I was looking at the research on how pain changes in that perimenopause to menopause transition for women. We know that estrogen modulates pain sensitivity.

[01:10:40] So, as you can imagine, as women are navigating this transitional time in their lives, they may have-- it says estrogen has complex and bidirectional effects on pain and fluctuating estrogen can increase pain sensitivity. So, you can have more pain sensitivity as you're in perimenopause. And lower stable estrogen is often associated with reduced pain threshold and greater central sensitization. There's also an increased prevalence of chronic pain conditions in menopause. I'm sure you see this chronic low back pain, headaches, migraines, TMJ and how HRT can improve sensitivity to pain, which I thought was really interesting. And obviously, stress and inflammation and lack of coherence can all magnify it as well. And I'm sure you probably see this in clinical practice, just based on our conversations today. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [01:11:33] Yeah, I'd say a lot of women around that age are presenting with pain. Yeah, and I think, well, just so people know, we talk about sensitization of a pain signal. There is things that can modulate that. Like you're talking about estrogen modulating that. So, we get this shift in hormones and the body's like, “I don't know how to do this anymore. I can't stop the pain signal from happening.” So, it decreases the threshold at which you're going to feel a pain response or get a pain signal to your brain. And so, yeah, one way you could do replace estrogen. 

[01:12:05] One of the most critical things I think during this time, from my perspective, is circadian rhythm and setting your circadian rhythm, because the light is what signals for every single one of your hormones to do, for when to be made, how to be used, how much to be made. So that's signal through the eye, that hits the back of the eye and that information signals to the suprachiasmatic nucleus and that goes to all of the centers in the brain that regulate our hormones. Those things are measuring the amount of hormones and then signaling to the body, “Hey, we need more of this, less of this, that kind of stuff.” 

[01:12:37] So, during that time, it's incredibly important to set your body to the day, night cycle of the sun, because that is the light stimulus that we had forever until we invented fluorescent bulbs in the 1950s, because incandescent bulbs weren't really enough to disrupt that day/night signal. There's a very small amount of blue light. And blue light is the signal that tells your body night versus day. So yeah, this means like being very conscious of artificial light exposure before sunrise. So that screens, LED bulbs, phones, all that stuff, computers. And then being especially very conscious of it after sunset. Like, nature has told us that there should be no more blue light, no more real bright light in general. And we surround ourselves with that. And your hormones get a completely different signal than they should. 

[01:13:24] So that would be the first step for me. But also, through alpha-MSH, which is something that's optimized whenever your circadian rhythm is set, that's going to also decrease the threshold at which you're going to receive a pain signal as well. So that's, to me, anything hormonal we have to set that first. And then if there's still issues, yes, we can use other things or do different strategies. But yeah, and it's associational. But you just look at in like mid-1950s, we have fluorescent light, LEDs came along in the 70s. And what has happened, just skyrocketing disease. And there's many other things that changed too, many toxin exposures, seed oils, all the different stuff that we've changed about our environment. 

[01:14:02] But that was a big one because you add all these things and you disrupt hormones in the context of the processed food and the toxins and everything, your body doesn't know what to do, when to do it, how to do it. And then also I think as far as like, cleanup of hormones and a whole new way of processing hormones, which is something that menopause will bring about too. I've heard some interesting arguments that the liver stress is one of the biggest issues in menopause because the liver can't deal with the change in hormones because it's been so much toxic buildup in it for so long. And then the shift happens. It doesn't know what to do. 

[01:14:37] But optimizing circadian rhythm will optimize your sleep, which is when you optimize detoxification, cleaning house, autophagy and mitophagy and all these things is when it's supposed to happen and artificial light is just completely destroying that for us. So, if you don't sleep, you can't process all those-- the differences in hormones. You can't detoxify, you can't do anything, or you're not doing it optimally, I should say. So that's, to me, the biggest thing to going forward is optimizing circadian rhythm. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:15:04] Well, this has truly been an invaluable conversation. Please let listeners know how to connect with you outside of the podcast, how to get access to your books or learn more about your work. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [01:15:12] Yeah, everything is on my website, which is resourceyourhealth.com, books and how to work with me, anything I'm currently doing and then social media as well Dr. Stephen Hussey, @drstephenhussey, people can find me on there. Reach out there. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:15:24] Thanks again. 

Dr. Stephen Hussey: [01:15:25] Yeah. 

Cynthia Thurlow: [01:15:28] If you love this podcast episode, please leave a rating and review. Subscribe and tell a friend.

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