A Look at Systemic Inflammation and Joint Tightness with Peter Swanz, ND, FHANP
Show Notes:
Link to Peter Swanz Website:
- www.drswanz.com – Dr. Swanz practice website
- RITM SCENAR USA – This is the company that I recommend for those interested in purchasing a SCENAR device in the US
- SCENAR Therapy with Dr. Swanz 2011 – my very first SCENAR video
- SCENAR Home Tutorial with Dr. Swanz– recorded this one in 2014 when I was practicing in NC
- SCENAR Recommendations for home use – 2019 recording that talks about what I suggest for people to use at home
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
If you’ve found this article interesting please schedule an appointment by clicking the button below:
Full Transcript
Hello its bill the knee pain guru and welcome to the pain education podcast, brought to you by The Comella Foundation. We have a special guest today. His name is Dr. Peter Swanz, and he’s a good friend of mine. We go back quite a ways back to love Kentucky days reached out to him recently just to reconnect and ask them be on the show and… Well, here we are. So welcome.
Peter, the bill. Thanks, man, it’s good to see. And thanks for having me. Thanks for the invitation. Awesome.
Will you introduce yourself in terms of your experience, your background, what brought you to this point?
Sure, sure. So I am a naturopathic physician, I attended a the more year naturopathic medical school in Arizona. Naturopath, it’s not a male of the order School, it was actual in person, we’ve take clinical words, the basic sciences, I worked with other physicians saw hundreds, if not thousands of patients while I was in school, and the training of a naturopath is as a primary care physician now, unfortunately, not all 50 states yet. Licensed naturopath. I’m still in Kentucky, Kentucky, does it license nature path yet. So I work more in the realm of health coach support, the patients that I work with, I do want them to maintain relationships with primary care doctors, but most of them don’t want to just go the pill and procedure route, they’re looking for more comprehensive and holistic supports to transform their health. That’s what I’m passionate about. And so that’s what I’m doing here, and I’ve been out of school since 2005, it’s over 15 years now, I’ve been doing this and I feel really fortunate to support people this way.
No, it’s always interesting to me in conversations I get in with the guest is what brought you to become a natural path… There’s always a Nexus like this place, it’s like, Well, it turned the corner, it’s like, Okay, I gotta do that. So tell us a little bit, or share a little bit of what life was like and what got you to go into the direction of being a naturopath?
I joke, because my parents weren’t hippies and I wasn’t exposed to alternative types of medicine and supports as a child, I’m fortunate, I’m intelligent, and I went to a great liberal art school in Lexington, Kentucky, called Transylvania University, and I was a pre-med student there and there were aspects of that that were discouraging to me at the time, and I enjoyed a lot of my fellow classmates, but I thought many of them seemed better suited to be scientists as opposed to healers, and at the same time, we were having the transition in the insurance industry to hmos and PPO-type programs. And there were conversations that doctors are only gonna get 10 minutes with their patients and patients may not get to pick the doctors they’re working with, and so even before I had started into the medical route, I was feeling a little disenchanted with the direction medicine was going so I was wondering if there was a different path, and I did America or after I graduated before I discovered osteopathic medicine, we talked maybe that was gonna be a more holistic… Like a better fit for me. And I did AmeriCorps after I graduated, and I was working with young homeless women, helping them get situated, and they had food stamps that I would drive them to their doctor’s employments, and they would have children that were getting prescription after prescription for antibiotics for ear infections and sinus infections, and during this time, I took a part-time job in a health food store, and so I was readout nutrition and food sensitivities and how these impact children, and I just…
I had this internal question like, Who do we… Who do I have to be to stop this pattern? Because I’m helping these young women, but where kids are getting helped by the doctors, I’m taking them to… They’re just prescribing more and more pills, and they don’t take in these young moms to the grocery store to spend their food stamps, and they’re buying Doritos and Kool-Aid and hot dogs, and I started putting it together, and it was weird to me because the organization… I was working for… We had a nutritionist on staff, and the nutritionist wasn’t telling me that I should be helping these people figure out what they need to eat and what’s gonna help their kids, so I just kind of had this internal question like, Who do I need to be to stop these patterns to break these patterns of disease and dysfunction and truly help people transform their health, and with the terrier, it was a serendipitous moment, a magazine, a new issue came into the health food store that compared… At the time, the three naturopathic med schools in the US, and I read this two-page article and was like, That’s it, that’s the kind of doctor I’m supposed to be on.
Okay, so give me an idea. Transpiring University. You’re pre-med. Did you complete that program?
Yeah, I graduated with a degree in Biology and then a minor in philosophy, and in some ways, I think the philosophy degree is more important for me because it’s the why that I think matters in as a naturopathic physician, you know, there is no work fully licensed primary care physicians, we can do acupuncture, we can do it, they’re so naturopath that do just Botox and esthetic type stuff because it’s a money maker, we can do all kinds of IVs, we can do prescription medications, and I’m not opposed to prescription medications, I’m not opposed to pharmaceutical drugs, I’m not anti-vax, it’s not what we use, but why we use it that I think matters. There’s a time in place for the panels, and there’s a time in place for the procedures, but the problem is things don’t make people healthier, and when you look at the data, the more prescriptions you give to an individual, their health is declining, it’s core, more pills were given to people, does it make people healthier? And the problem is today, you know it’s one thing if you’re in your 60s or savages and you’re taking six to 10 prescription pills a day, but we have people now in their 30s, some in their 20s that are requiring those kind of pharmaceutical supports, and they’re not addressing the underlying issues, and I just think we need to be able to offer something better to people…
Agree, agree. I know in my own personal experience, my big thing was my new injury, that’s how I got into all of this, and they gave me Percocet to numb it so I could deal with post-surgery pain, and I’m taking perches making me vomit. I’m like, Okay. So I tell the doctor about that and they’re like, Well, they give me another prescription with the nausea, I was already feeling horrible from the pain and words from the Percocet, and now they’re gonna have a third one or a third dynamic in there that I was just like it’s much easier for me personally just to deal with the pain than to go down the layers of figuring out what was going on.
Right, and neither of those pills actually help you get stronger or recovered, not the beads.
And that sent me down a path where I was looking at homeopathic and herbs and starting to tweak my diet in different ways that I was able to reduce the inflammation faster in my knee rather than just being medicated.
Right, and that’s what he has connect and be like, Oh wow, he’s a couple of guys that kind of think like… Yeah, yeah.
Yeah. So the whole angle for today, we’re gonna chat about systemic inflammation, and I believe it’s tremendously overlooked in the understanding of physical pain in the body, a pick your joint, pick your body part, and how systemic inflammation is gonna play a role in that. Could you begin speaking to that…
Yeah, I think inflammation is really underline just in general, the state of disease or disease that most of us are in today, it’s a chronic… It’s an unlined factor for all of chronic diseases information and oxidative damage, and many of the habits and behaviors that people follow day in and day out are just feeding that we’re thrown well onto this fire in our body, and I tell patients every patient like a goal for me, is to help you get your inflammation in check to lower oxidative damage in the body, to help the body recover, it’s not often, right, causing account issues, but it’s that chronic accumulation over time that’s sending us down the road, whatever our genetic predisposition, maybe for some people, it’s heart disease, other people with cancers, other people, it’s autoimmune conditions, but inflammation is an underlying factor across the board, and absolutely. When they’re more inflamed, we’re gonna have more pain, we’re gonna be more likely to have worse seasonal allergies, and then more predisposed towards those chronic diseases, so it’s something that we have to talk about, but I also think, you know… It’s not bad in and of itself. If we have an injury, we need some inflammation to help the body recover if we get exposed to a virus or a bacteria, part of the immune response is creating inflammation, so there’s a balance there, and I try really hard to not cast things in the good or bad categories.
There’s a balance we’re looking for in our bodies, in our life…
Here’s an interesting piece, ’cause I have my own experience with systemic inflammation, my own dance with it on a daily basis, to watch it, it’s like, Oh, oh, I gotta back off a little bit, so I’m tweaking my diet, I’ve become aware of when I need to start incorporating some herbs or change my diet a little bit, or drink more tea or things like that, but… Would you talk about how it shows up? Because for me, until I began to feel it in my own body that it’s like, Oh, that’s what inflammation feels like, Well, that’s what happens when I cut out grains and dairy from my diet, that my body felt completely different, like flipping a switch on a light on a light switch, could you speak to what it feels like or what may show up in their body that they would not equate as systemic inflammation.
As… Absolutely, I’ll talk… The first one, I just hit on what I think is often an overlooked factor contributing to it, and it’s just like you talked about, it’s dietary-related, and there’s two things that I think tend to happen on is people really high glycemic stuff that causes a high blood sugar spike, the result is the body has to pump out a lot of insulin in serum tells the body to store what was eating as fat and it creates more inflammation it…
Let’s give examples, ’cause this is, I think there’s a disconnect. Guys like you and I, a doctors, they can talk to medical terms, but the average person is listening to it or haggling need that… The thing says glycemic in my package.
You took the glycemic came Dax is how fast, how quickly something in the body is converted to sugar, and the higher the glycemic came, the faster and the higher it’s gonna push up or blood sugar values, which then the body responds by putting out more insulin, and insulin is effectively telling the body we have an abundance of potential energy in the form of blood sugar now, we don’t need it all now, so we’ll store it in another energy form, fat. So we can use it later. The problem is none of us go into really starvation time, so we’re not using these fat stores and we continue to eat these higher glycemic foods and really grains, I think are the big corporate that get over, we know sweets and sugars and deserves, and even sometimes from can cause blood sugar to spike, but then you look at a pack a pasta or something, it’s not sweet, it’s just got naturally occurring sugars in there, high carbohydrate content, and so like a breakfast of cereal and skim milk… Right, you’re getting green, you’re getting the sugar from the lack to… You’ve taken the protein and the fat out of the dairy, the fact We have buffered some of that blood sugar response, so now the blood sugar goes higher, and that’s why people start to often feel crashes when blood sugar goes down, and then the result of this excess inflammation, the insulin is more systemic inflammation, the other way that I think we’re often doing this unknown is with tibesti ties, right? So you talk about, Oh, maybe I’m gonna cut out gluten or cut out dairy, and the reason is if we have a sensitivity to food, what it means is it’s triggering an immune response in the body, our body is effectively treating the proteins, it’s the proteins in the food that trigger immune response is, It’s the proteins that I’m bacteria, viruses that trigger immune responses, so if we have a sensitivity to gluten, a protein and what our body will effectively trade it like a foreign invader and that’s gonna push inflammation up, so these…
And that often might fly under the radar because it’s not like you eat the piece of bread now, and five minutes later, you have all these outward sides of inflammation, often this kind of inflammation is going to present either tonic, people are just always dealing with pain always fighting high blood pressure, high cholesterol levers, all these other markers that are indicating their land as flaring up, their allergies. They see it within 12 to 36 hours. It doesn’t have to be instantaneous. A lot of patients that I work with that have autoimmune diseases, right, like lupus or R or something like that, if they eat food that we’ve discovered that are triggers for them that they have a sensitivity to, it might cause a flare in their pain. So now, 12 hours later, my neck ache more, I feel really stiff, my back hurts or brain fog, so there’s a whole… These things that we wouldn’t necessarily tie directly to the food and the way the food can raise inflammation, but then what’s gonna become a rare of it through their experimentation, through competent approaches by cutting these foods out and then re-introducing them to see how they impact us now we have some knowledge, and once you make choices about this, and I tell my patients, I’m like, Look, if you give up gluten, it doesn’t mean you never…
Ever eat it again. Right. Well, if you understand how it impacts you, now you get to make a more informed decision going forward, in the tricky part for a lot of people is if they want to know if gluten an issue for them, you can’t mostly give up gluten. You’ve really gotta try it all in 100% for a month or two, you just have to give your body a fair shot of functioning without it and then see how it does, so that’s a big part of what I do just with the approbation in my practice, I tell them, I’m not gonna try to get you to eat exactly how I eat, because I don’t believe that we necessarily work for you. We need to figure out what’s gonna work for you in this way. And when we do that, now we’re loving your inflammation.
My own experience was… Well, the first experience of tweaking my diet was Paleo ritmo, the greens in the dairy, and I was absolutely shocked by how different I felt, and then it was… For me, it was like an elimination piece, and okay, I’d had this little bit of cheese here and I did a little bit of this here and try this out, and I remember the thing that was so significant was the gluten piece… Sure, I did. I’ve never gone to a doctor and never got anything officially diagnosed or any blood tests around it, but I would have even the littlest bit of gluten and I would feel like there was an alien in my belly. I was like, Oh, that’s awful, I feel horrible. And there would always be this feeling like after the eating pasta that I felt like the snake, I just swallowed the big animal and has to lay for three days while it digests, and I felt no energy, and I felt lethargic and just really tired, and my belly hurt and the seat. And it got to a point where there was no payoff in the Iditarod, there was absolutely none, it was…
I started going in the direction of non-gluten options or gluten-free options, but there was just no option for me anymore for eating anything that had it in it. And this was something that you could share it with somebody, you could talk about it, but until they feel the difference by giving that space and time in their diet where they turn off that white noise, what you’re speaking to is so significant. So significant.
Yeah, I was resistant for a long time, and I get it up as I was finishing med school because I felt tired in the afternoons when I would eat, say, which is that I was like, I gotta pass my boards, I can’t take a nap every afternoon, I’m gonna try give it up, gluten finally, and I felt so much better. In six weeks, I lost 10 pounds. My knee stopped, heard I had three new surgeries in high school, playing soccer, and I was all of a sudden at 28, 29 like, Oh, maybe I can start to run again, because I felt that much beer that I didn’t eat gluten for a year. That’s how much better I felt. Getting it out of my system.
Yeah, yeah, it’s been well over a decade. So I Benguet the beginning, it wasn’t like I flipped the switch and all of a sudden I didn’t want anything with gluten, it was like, there’s this interesting thing that your psychology plays, it’s like, Oh, I wonder if I could get away with that. Muting doesn’t hurt. And I try it ’cause a previous life traveling in Europe and they have these amazing bigger places and it’s like, Yeah, I think I can get away with it. I could do it, I think I can do it this time. And after a period of time, it just got less and less further between trying those things and eventually it’s like, No, I’m good, I don’t even get tempted anymore.
Even now there’s so many options, alternative things that are as tasty and we don’t stop for the same way.
Okay, let’s tie systemic inflammation in with the localized inflammation, knee pain, hip pain, back pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, tennis ball, name your diagnosis, and now we have a specific issue in conjunction with systemic inflammation. Yes, let’s make that connection and how the reduction of systemic inflammation can support the localized issue that we’re dealing with.
Yeah, yeah, no, it absolutely does. It’s a huge factor and a lot of joint issues in my experience there either because if some kind of injury, there were some kind of initial trauma and it’s in whatever the initial healing cascade that started after the trauma, the swelling, the redness, that will happen and try to help the joint recovery, but our jeans aren’t really high priority in our body, so after the initial kind of approach there to try to fix things as much as they can, often the body goes back to digesting and eating and thinking and sleeping and growing and repairing in our organs and vessels, these places that are more innovated and what we’re left with are Dunster misaligned, there still trauma to these tendons and ligaments, they’re not innervated with blood, so they’re not really healing well, and it’s causing that local pain, but that’s not the pain of healing, it’s just this discomfort and that often met, pressure tight creates tightness in the muscles around the joint, and then we start to favor them and we limit what we do with, and then that adds to the tightness. And so it’s just this kind of vicious cycle.
And I tell patients, I’m like We… As I’m getting older, the way I exercise and workout is so different, and I just do a lot of stretching, a lot of mobility stuff, because that’s what makes my joints feel better, and when I work with patients, I tell them, You know, I, it… You have a lot of chronic pain. We’re gonna try to start hitting it from the lifestyle piece first, so that we can lower your total inflammatory burden so that things aren’t quite hurting as much as they are, then we can start focusing on the more exercise practices, recovery type things, stretching around the Jeane strengthening the ligaments, getting things realigned, but for so many of these patients, it’s been chronic, they’ve been hurt in all the time, you kind of have to start just learning the overall burden so that they can even then start to do the other therapies that they need, ’cause otherwise it’s just painful, and you can do something temporarily, Oh, we’re gonna put some ultrasound on it, or I… Like this device called the Santo rush into it, it works great for pain and inflammation, but if you’re not also addressing it systemically, it’s very likely you’re gonna find yourself right back in the same situation, just down the road scenario…
No scenario, C-E-M-A-R. It’s like a TENS unit, it stands for self-controlling energy, neuro-adaptive regulator, and so it effectively to send in a like an impulse, like a tenured in the body, like impedance and signal, and then it self-adjust, so it’s at…
I’ve been on one of those before I got in Ashville, I met somebody that had one, and I didn’t write down the name or get the person’s business card, and that’s exactly… It’s like a bio-feedback, so it changes as your body responds to… Oh, that’s fantastic. I’m really good. To know.
Your action, it’s a great tool, and the difference is when we use like a TENS unit or an ultra sound, you’re just repeating the same kind of signal, a parameter that you say, and over time the body gets acclimated and so… That’s what’s nice with this kind of tool is it’s constantly self-adjusting and it’s changing, and it can make a difference through that pain in the acute moment, and it can help chronically, but for me, it’s a disservice. If we’re only doing that, we’ve gotta look at the lifestyle pieces, we got the over-affirmation because yeah, you may help you no pain, but realities that do if you have a heart attack in a… Utah’s true.
So I’m really glad you shared the name of that machine, so that’s something you do at your office.
If it’s not a huge part of what I do because I tend to work with people more holistically in the device, it’s kind of not cost-efficient for me to be applying that therapy if I had somebody else working for me that I kinda trained in it and had been doing it, would… What I actually do with patients who I think it’ll be valuable is I let him take it home, or we go to you… And I do kind of an in-office training for them on how to use it, and then they can use it for a week or two. And then to buy a home unit is like 700 bucks, 800 bucks, they’re not prohibitively expensive, and they’re incredibly effective, so a lot of patients or families will buy one, especially if they’ve got kids playing sports and it’s a great kind of tool…
I don’t wanna get too off-topic base, this is kind of what happens when I talk to cool people who know cool stuff on a second here. Okay, we had the camel foundation non-profit, got A-P-E-MF donated to us earlier this year, which we had one of the people who has been dealing with and working with the PM machine for extended period of time, I’m learning about the machine. I’m curious as to how… If you know anything about the PMs and how we can kinda compare apples to apples with it.
What the P… I’m not sure about whether Arbitron.
Pulse electromagnetic field. And it’s based on Tesla technology, which is an evolution of the rife machine, so it’s more of a dynamic thing that raises the frequency of the mitochondria on the settler level that helps the body detox and tops off the battery, so to speak. That’s how I understand it to be. I’m speaking out of turn on that I couldn’t explain much more than I know, I feel super relaxed when I go on it, I feel more energized. Feel different things at different points in time. But I’m curious as to how the Senate scene what you may…
I’m not sure. I feel like I’ve talked about that with someone, I’ve made a few skanda YouTube videos, and so every couple of months I get contacted from somebody somewhere in the world who wants to talk about it or ask some questions, I feel like I was talking to a chiropractor in Florida, who was sharing something about this technology, what I know what the scan device is, it’s like a ten impulse and how they described it in the training that I did with it, is that it’s creating a communication from the area you’re training back to the brain and it’s gonna try to bring more attention to that area to facilitate healing, so for me, when I think about it, like for a joint, I think about what are some of the other things we try to do to bring attention to the joy for her promo therapy or PRP or stem cell injections. My understanding, gait those is they’re bringing healing, creating more inflammation in the joint, so I’ve kind of figured that that’s a big part of what the scan are doing, but they did say that it does also help to directly kind of buffer the more fiber A…
So you can get that immediate relief in the moment when you’re dealing with that acute pain, but as far as like… I don’t think of it as like an energetic vibratory energy, which is kind of what you described, sounds a… Which I would compile think, Oh, that may be impacting people in a way that’s similar to like acupuncture, that’s working on these and these channels, and I think of that as a vibrational energy or classical Homeopathy is a big part of what I do. That’s a vibratory energetic type medicine, the synergy in all of these approaches and bringing them together to help people…
Sure, and this is the way my brain works. I wanna see where one ends, where the strength is of that modality or that machine, or that practitioner or that doctor, and then where is another one pick up because we are complex, the human body is a very, very complex machine. Right, and it’s so interesting to see what would resonate with one person and work with one person doesn’t necessarily work with another, so that gives me an idea for future guests on that I’d like to figure out more information. What I’d like to do is add those YouTube videos that you did on it in the description below, as well as if there is a national international body that the trainings and things…
There’s one company, I think they’re based out of Florida now, that is the the company that I send patients too who wanna order and purchase a device from, and they’re who I purchase my device from, it’s not the same company that was in the US the first time I discovered to scan our tool, you know, one of the things I’ve been told about it is because this is a Russian technology, it wasn’t developed here, there isn’t a lot of money to be made in the US using this… It’s not utilized a lot, there’s so much more money from US companies marketing their TENS machine, their ultrasound, whatever their fancy lasers are, and that might be unfortunate, especially with the scan or as or even more effective than a lot of these other more expensive tools. So that’s a different kind of issue.
Yeah, one of the things having… One of big component that I studied in pulling my program together was systema, Arimathea art, and what I found is the Russians being that they were in an environment where they didn’t have a lot of resources, and they’re very difficult situations that they were in, they may do with what they had it, so there wasn’t a huge marketing component or a cost component in terms of getting it out to people, so I think when they get those types of technologies in the west, it’s like, How do we make money with it? Right, right. So anyhow…
And the legend has it that it was developed by their space program because they wanted a tool that was small, compact, it was versatile, because in space, you have to recycle a way to material in water, so you don’t wanna be taking tons of pills, if you’re doing with pain or inflammation or a sore throat or whatever else, and so that this was a tool they developed to send in a space with the cosmonauts so that they could keep chemicals out of the water supply.
Yeah, there’s a perfect example, a story about how NASA spent a million dollars to create a pen to write upside down and… And the Russians use a pencil. So its like, it was like that just the difference in mentality from a Western perspective from what they were offering, and I guess Russia would be considered the East… Sayan, okay, systemic inflammation. This is great, the snare. You mentioned Prather, AP-PRP stem cells or classical Homeopathy, working with the localized inflammation in the joint, and when we got the systemic inflammation in the body, it’s going from head to toe, it robs the resources from what the joint needs to heal, what’s going on there? Just isn’t enough, it’s like trying to bail out your bath to while the flood is happening at the same time. What has been some of your experiences working with clients? What would different joints… Different situations or scenarios that come to mind that you’d like to talk about…
Well, yeah, it’s the holistic health improvement approach. Patients start to lose some weight. I led two other things that I think about a lot when I think about inflammation, essential fatty acids, like we have to have a good balance and ratio of omega-3 and omega-6, both of those essential fatty acids feed inflammatory pathways, that sixth pathway is more inflammatory, than the three pathway, and if we’re disproportionately high and six is in lower and tries, that in and of itself is gonna just have us in a more inflamed state, so fish oil supplementation is a pretty much unanimous across the board, and then his patients start eating better and don’t have those blood sugar spikes, don’t have those insulin spikes, information lowers and they stop storing things is eight, and that’s taking pressure off the joints, and I’ve got a group of sisters that are working with right now, they are all there of them and motivated and wanting to get… ’cause they’ve been No yo dieter and they’ve done it together, there are whole lives, and they just were like, We’re ready to learn how to eat correctly, but they also were all limited in their physical capacities because of the excess weight and the chronic inflammation, and so…
Right now was just beautiful, firm to come in and be like, Oh, Dr. Swan, when I get up out of the chair, I don’t have to sit there for 30 seconds to let my knees kind of rebalance underneath me, or if I start walking in, I’m a get this sharp pain or it’s gonna hurt and they’re being able to push the distance that they’re walking outside a little further, they’re starting to incorporate some exercises, you know one of them… I just told her, I was like, You know, I think you should start dancing a little bit at home in the house, if you feel a little more invigorated and tap into your feminine energy and your sense of joy with the life… And she’s able to do that because she’s feeling so much better overall… And that’s the goal, right? I’m not a competitive athlete of any kind anymore, but I wanna feel good day in and day out, and be able to do the things that are important to me in my life, and so that’s what I try to help patients figure out. Say, What are your goals down the road, and what sort of physicality do you need to have in your body to be able to do those things? And most people, it’s not run a marathon, or again, play competitive sports, is they wanna be able to play with the grandkids and go a lot of vacation and hike around and look at the sites and not be limited or hold the other people they’re with back and I think that’s possible for most of us, regardless of where we’re starting from…
I agree. And what would you say is one of the biggest mistakes people make… Your patients make in terms of that sabotage, that process, they’re starting to get improvement that I’m doing what you’re saying, Dr. Dr. Swans and I’m starting to feel better, and all of a sudden it’s like the next time you talk to them and it’s like they’re in the weeds, I’ve fallen and I can’t get up like, what do they do? What do you see… Well.
You know, I’d say, I took over all of my patients do really well with the process, I think, you know, nutrition and diet temptations is where people often kind of a wet, my cousins were… Or my nephews, what in it? I hate all this cake, and then I brought the left overs home and it’s like a weekend and they’re just completely falling off their nutrition plan wagon. So for me, a really important piece is emphasizing to patients that this is a journey, and perseverance is more important and perfection, I don’t eat the way I wanna eat day in and day out, but I try to be mindful about when I’m making those decisions and how is it gonna impact me tomorrow, and what’s the thing that I have going on that I maybe don’t wanna eat that gluten today because I want my knees to feel good tomorrow… What I would say in general, what I see more like broadly, and the people who don’t work with me is there’s a lot of people who go around just kind of taste-testing different approaches, and they’re gathering in some information and then they’re trying to do…
All of the work and support the transformation themselves, and I just don’t think that’s as effective as it is actually working with some outside resources, been a health team that’s supporting you. Having people holding you accountable. You can try some acupuncture here, try and injection therapy there, work with a trainer or a PT, but it’s really when you put everything together in a more comprehensive program and mindset and you have the support, that’s where people get the most lasting success. And I think through that experience of transforming their health in that holistic way, they’re empowered in the future for whom things start to feel like there may be sliding off a little bit. Oh, I kind of know what I need to do to get back on track. And that’s my goal. I want people to feel empowered in that way, that none of us are gonna do it perfect, but we can get where we wanna be if we keep that we keep that in our sites and… Just one step at a time, one day at a time.
Yeah, I agree with you, it’s like my ability to… Any time in my life that I’ve really been able to make significant change has come as a result of working with someone else who’s kinda coaching me through the process, from your perspective, what would… How would build out that team, how would you begin… Who is the head coach? Who are the people that you’re pulling into that team to be able to guide and direct you, if you were to pull together a dream team, maybe one, two, three, four or five people? Yeah. What would he look like?
Based on individual, but ultimately, I want the individual to feel like though the coach or they’re the quarterback, that they’re at the center of that team and that everybody else is there supporting them. For me, I see myself as an integral player on a team for the patients that I work with, but I tell them, No, I’m not gonna dictate to you what you have to do, I’m gonna tell what I believe is gonna help you, I’m gonna support you in these naturopathic and homeopathic in the medical ways, and I support the patients with the coaching and the mentorship, but they also need to have a primary care physician, even though that’s my training, I’m not gonna fill that role for them here, and we want to be able to have conversations with the doctor that’s prescribing them, their blood pressure medication, or their cholesterol medication or their diabetes medication, because as they improve their health holistically, their need for those pills is gonna change, so I think everybody needs a primary care that they’re comfortable working with, and they need a primary care that’s comfortable with them, working with other people, I think you personal trainers, physical therapists can be really important, I’m not doing tons and times of hand on stuff in that sort of physical way, so the people that have aches and pains…
You do need to do that. I think a lot… I’ll tell you why I… That’s an interest… You want a dermatologist testing stuff, a lot of people neglect it, and we just worry about roles and basal cell and stuff like that, not being observed. I’m also a huge fan of the farmer’s markets, and I want people to think of their local farmers that are doing grass-fed beef and free-range Poultry and eggs, and locally grown organic, minimally pesticide fruits and vegetables, support those local resources and let those be friends with them, so it… When you come in to and they’re like, Hey, I set this aside for you, these are relationships we get to cultivate, and it feels good when we’re doing that and when we’re feeling the progress and the improvements from that, and I think in a lot of ways, built health is more contagious than disease, so these people in who are transforming their health, they inspire their children, and this is a big thing that I do, and I work with a lot of moms wives, and for so long, they’re sacrificing their needs to take care of the children and their husbands, and then they get this place where they can’t continue this way, and I just tell them, I’m like, This isn’t selfish, this is a gift you’re doing for yourself and for those people you love and have been taken care of because you don’t want your children to find themselves in the same situation.
Sure, yeah. They say Put your actions, your mask on first before you help someone else, and it just makes sense in life, and I believe people don’t realize how much more they’re going to have to give when they do take care of themselves first… Right, when they do take themselves into consideration first, then they’re gonna have way more to be able to share with their children, their partner, or whoever it is their family, their community. I think.
In the cost of not taking care of ourself, it impacts us directly and how we feel and lack of ability to enjoy life, and if you like it, but it also impacts the community, it also impacts the immediate family, the community, the insurance system, the hospitals the urgent cares, we can do better, and we need to be responsible for ourselves in that way.
Yeah, but Peter, this has been… This has been fantastic, I enjoyed talking with you. It’s been fun. I would… You work with clients both in person, but do you also work with them remotely? Absolutely.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I work with patients. Yeah, I do do same appointments, phone check-ins, I have a few patients that over the past year, we’ve never met in person, and that’s not a big deal, people around… You know the Lublin of Midwest area, I have patients that travel a few hours to come see me in person, and it’s great, but it’s not necessary, we can still get moving in the direction we need without having to see each other directly, and I do a lot of education stuff, I do stuff talks in my office, but I also do normally like two, sometimes three webinars a month that are free and just kind of talk about the process and what I’m trying to do to help people transform their health.
Nice. Well, how do we have it set up here with the Kamala Foundation, if it works, ’cause some of the people that… Some of the guests that we have don’t actually work with people remotely, it’s all in person, but if it is set up and you’re capable of doing it, what we’ll do is we’ll put a button below where they can click a link and send you information or directly from us that they could schedule a time to work with you and would have that connection through the Kamala Foundation. That’d be great. Great. Before we wrap it up, is there anything else you would like to share? Anything that’s coming to mind a little loosen that we didn’t quite… Tie up nicely.
Nomi, think this has really been great. It’s so good to see you, bill, and to get to chat with you, and I think people are thinking more and more about their own health and their wellness and about the holistic stuff, and now is the perfect time to start and committing stuff. This is the youngest we’re gonna be right now is… I don’t know why people put stuff off with this one than as a species, we just tend to be comfort comfortable in the status quo, were just… People are resistant to change. But you gotta be able to look and say, Hey, when are Matt’s not working for me? Let’s start doing something different.
Yeah, great. Well, Peter, I wanna thank you so much for being on the show, sharing your knowledge and wisdom with our listeners will have the replay up for you to share with your friends, family, loved ones, your list you people you work with. Awesome.
And Dr. Dr. S W A N Z dot com.
Thank you, I will have all of that in the description box with the link and all that to get in touch with you, I zoned out on that one. Perfect. Okay, this is Bill Parravano, the knee pain guru. Thank you so much for being here and listening on the pain education podcast, brought to you by the Comella Foundation. Thank you so much and we’ll see you on the next one.