Episode 307: Detoxing From Addiction and Trauma
Addiction takes on many forms. And even if we are we not addicted to the obvious things, most of us are addicted to something. Many addictions can be rooted in stored trauma in our bodies, and they can present themselves physically, emotionally, and even chemically.
I'm proud to say today's guest is part of my own HCF family of Platinum Doctors. But more than that, he's an expert in the field of applying our unique multi-therapeutic approach and cellular detox to patients who are struggling with addiction. From breathing, yoga, and IV therapy, to simply getting away from the grind and retreating; this is practical advice that I am sure everyone can benefit from.
More about Dr. Nick Jensen:
Dr Nick has been practicing in Vancouver BC, Canada for over 10 years with his wife and business partner Dr Sonya Jensen.
As a result of both Dr Nick and Sonya wanting to be on the leading edge of this health movement, they’ve always known to seek out the best mentors they can find, like Dr Dan Pompa! With this search they’ve received advanced training in detoxification, Addictions/Recovery, Hormone replacement therapy, IV therapy, Brain Neurofeedback and more. They are Parents, Kundalini Yoga Teachers, Podcasters (The Doctor Dads, Women N Wellness), Speakers and run yearly retreats (Naturally Brave Retreats) to take people on a Wellness Holiday and immersion experience.
Dr Nick is also Medical Director of the Agora Regeneration Clinic helping individuals through their brain health and addictions recovery journey using the best protocols available.
They recently opened a Dr Pompa inspired “Longevity Lab” in their clinic allowing patients to access some of the top tools in the world of Biohacking and Longevity.
Show Notes:
Attend this winter's retreat! Feb 25-March 1, 2020 Code “CELLTV” for $50 off
Divine Elements Naturopathic Family Wellness
Order Dr. Pompa's new release, Beyond Fasting!
CytoDetox: Total detoxification support where it matters most – at the cellular level.
Transcript:
Dr. Pompa:
Addiction, you realize that most of us are addicted to something that actually comes from traumas earlier in life. However, the solution is not just trauma. It can be chemical. It could be emotional. It can be physical. I interview a doctor who is an expert in this area who brings the multi-therapeutic approach in cellular detox that I’ve been teaching for years. He puts it all together in this show and talks about some unique answers, even gives you how to breathe and a really amazing strategy that you should apply and need to apply every day. I’m telling you, this is a great show with just some real practical advice about some things that will change your world. If you don’t think you’re addicted, you just might be, but there’s an answer. Stay tuned.
Ashley:
Welcome to Cellular Healing TV. I’m Ashley Smith, and today we welcome Dr. Nick Jensen who is a naturopathic physician, yogi, husband, father, biohacker, speaker, and podcaster on his own show called The Doctor Dads. He is here to discuss implementing a multi-therapeutic approach to addictions and recovery with a focus on IV therapy, yoga, and emersion, and you’ll hear about how you can work with Dr. Nick in person at a very special retreat that he hosts. Let’s get started and welcome Dr. Nick and, of course, Dr. Pompa. Welcome, both of you.
Dr. Jensen:
Hello, thank you for having me.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, Dr. Nick, well, let’s start here. You’re more than special than all that. You’re one of ours. You’re one of the platinum doctors of cellular detox. You’ve trained through this multi-therapeutic approach. Today’s topic is how you use this with one of your expertise areas, and that’s addiction.
Yeah, let’s open it up here. Addiction is something that could be a lot of things. I mean, we think of it as drugs, but obviously, it could be food. It could be addicted—many types of addiction. You obviously apply this cellular detox that we all love and share, but you also do some other things like mindset. Gosh, you call yourself a yogi. What does that mean? Yeah, we’ll get into that. Anyways, tell your story first of all. How did you end up getting in this area of recovery from addiction?
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, well, I mean, it’s funny how different things in life draw us into our niche. It’s not the only thing that we focus on, but when Sonya and I got our first job, we actually were…
Dr. Pompa:
Sonya and I, that means your wife.
Dr. Jensen:
That’s my wife. That’s my amazing wife.
Dr. Pompa:
I know that.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, you know that.
Dr. Pompa:
They don’t that.
Dr. Jensen:
Dr. Sonya Jensen, who’s my wife and also an elite doctor with me, and nothing would get approved if it didn’t run by her first, as you know with Merilee as well. Our first job position was actually to work at a multidisciplinary retreat center in Costa Rica, and Sonya and I, after we finished naturopathic school, we traveled the world and taught English in Taiwan. We had a big love and passion for seeing different aspects of the world, and it didn’t work out. We didn’t get a chance to fulfill that dream, but here we are ten—I guess it was ten years later so that we got back into this world of recovery through the lens of yoga, through the lens of IV therapy, and nutrition, of course, and all those tools. I was experimenting with my own biohacking. I experienced with fasting, whatnot.
We stumbled across you, and I saw you on a post on Facebook at some point. I said, Sonya, we’ve got two options. We go see Tony Robbins, or we go see Dan Pompa, and Dan Pompa seems right up our alley. Let’s go check him out.
When we went to go see you, I mean, the amount of heart that you bring, Dan, is what drew us to you. You’ve got so much passion for what you do, and it really hooked us in. It made us realize that you can bring so much heart and science and research into what we do. It was a perfect missing piece in our protocols for helping people through this world of recoveries as you were speaking to it.
Yeah, there’s different types of recovery. There’s different types of addictions. I really like what one of my dear friends—or how he speaks about addiction recovery. This makes it a little less triggering for people and that is any substance, any environment, any scenario that’s repeated over and over that leads to a negative outcome is technically an addiction. We can draw conclusions to food, to relationships and, obviously, prescription medications and other nonprescription medications, alcohol, technology. I mean, we’re surrounded by triggers that put us into a world of a downward spiral where we feel so dependent on these things, and we lose ourselves in it. It’s a universal problem, I think.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it really is. I don’t know. They say anywhere between three and five percent actually break the addictions permanently in their life. I mean, I believe cellular detox becomes a big part of that, especially when you’re dealing with certain addictions. I think what you bring, that full scope of it—because it’s not just a chemical aspect of things. There is a mindset part of this, right?
Dr. Jensen:
Oh, absolutely.
Dr. Pompa:
The patterns still exist, and you have to change those patterns of thinking. Again, those patterns of thinking get hard to change when the chemical parts of things are still there. Again, it really becomes a multi-therapeutic approach to this answer. Let’s start there; unfold that. If you don’t deal with all of those areas, then you’re going to fall victim again to the addiction, so peel that apart where you start with somebody.
Dr. Jensen:
I mean, obviously, we always want to—not obviously. It’s not obvious to the person that’s going through it, but where we always want to start is to work on some aspect of mindset. The way that you bring it too is that you remove the obstacle and let the body heal itself. If we can apply that model to recovery, part of removing the first obstacle is what can we do to change our attachment to the addiction, to the substance and whatnot? If we don’t address it through the multi-therapeutic approach that you teach us from a biochemical point of view as well as a mindset point of view, we’re missing the piece. As you know, it’s like, when our hormone of insulin is on overdrive, that’s the hormone of addiction right there. It’s like, if we don’t calm that insulin overload and do something to fix the metabolic processing within the body, we’re fighting this mindset against a biochemical onslaught that’s so hard to engage.
I think, from a mindset point of view, what’s that—as you taught us, what’s that person’s reason for wanting to get better? If they have a good enough reason that’s bigger than the thing that’s keeping them attached to their addictive substance, then great. There’s an opportunity for progress. At the same time, can we unhinge some of that hormone overwhelm with this craving cycle of over addiction to even just sugar so sometimes just calming down the sugar and getting people open to the mindset that there are absolutely tools that can get you back into a space for healing should you get rid of those obstacles? Those are the two starting points, I think, for…
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, let’s unfold that a little bit more. When you’re dealing with the mindset, if you don’t get upstream to the causative factors, then everything else downstream is not going to work, anything lasting anyway. As far as addiction goes, Dr. Nick, what do you find are some of the big upstream issues? For example, when I talked about chemical stuff, the three hidden ones that I call the three evils, mold, people miss it. Metals, people miss it, hidden infections. Those three are the ones that are missed. Is there something similar you’d say to mindset? Meaning we go back into someone’s childhood, it’s this, this, or this are typically where we find those clues.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest thing it comes down to is to attachment and connection. When we lose that connection to our tribe, our community and that’s early childhood when we don’t feel that love and tenderness from maybe a parent, or maybe there’s abuse or violence, or we see these patterns that are passed down through the lineage of our DNA and our environment, I think the first reach for everybody is how do I feel connected to something? Sometimes that’s connected to community, but it’s also maybe connected to something greater than themselves. I think a lot of young people in this day and age too are looking to different party drugs and things like that to just help them feel a little more connected to something bigger than themselves, and so I think that lack or loss of connection or the perceived or the illusion of disconnection is part of where that starts. I’d say that’s definitely one.
Dr. Pompa:
Let’s stop right there. Then what do you do about that, meaning that we can’t go back to someone’s childhood and create love necessarily? What do you do about that? How do you deal with a patient that’s sitting in front of you, and you identify that as one of the root problems?
Dr. Jensen:
I mean, first of all, for most people is that they’re not really paying attention to how they got to where they got to. They may have an awareness that maybe growing up was a little bit rough, but I don’t think most people really understand the depth of how this trauma, this emotional trauma sinks into our being. I mean, if you looked at the work of say Bruce Lipton in The Biology of Belief and understanding that the neurochemical processing that’s happening from our perceived threats and our environment are such a strong problem for us getting out of this fight or flight response. Just bringing awareness is obviously the first step. Listen, I’m sorry you grew up in such a challenging environment. That must have been extremely traumatic, and no doubt, it’s a big part for why you looked for a tribe outside or your family net or your family circle. You’re wanting to belong and feel connected to something. Is there another way to reframe this so that you can see that there’s other ways to connect with yourself? There’s other ways to connect with community that maybe doesn’t involve substances. First step is just bringing that attention in, bringing in the awareness. There’s something more here that you can tap into.
Then, basically, the next step is what are some of those traumas? We understand that, working with our emotional system, there is no such thing as time. When we perceive a memory, we’re getting on the physiology of it, and so sometimes it’s reframing. You came into this experience. You had that experience. The first way to look at it was that was bad, and that molded and shaped you. We label it as a trauma, and we label it as something really hard to overcome that we subdue that feeling with a substance, or a drug, or anxiety medication, whatever the thing may be.
Until we allow ourselves to get into that feeling again, it’s—I like Dr. David Hawkins process of letting go, so it’s all about feeling what we’re feeling, allowing ourselves to feel that instead of push it away. I encourage all our patients to go through this program. Find a way to invite these feelings back in so you can reframe your connection to them and see that it’s a part of your unfolding. It’s a part of your journey. You talk about this all the time. From paint to purpose to promise, it’s like your pain becomes a catalyst for your growth instead of your pain is a statement of who you are for the rest of your life, and so that’s awareness and then reframe and surrendering to.
Dr. Pompa:
Is the addiction often times us not wanting to experience those feelings again?
Dr. Jensen:
Oh, man.
Dr. Pompa:
In other words, why does the addiction—why is that our brain’s answer to the problem? It’s not a good answer, but why is that? What is it that we end up going to addiction because of a trauma, or this lack of identity, or this lack of connection?
Dr. Jensen:
I mean, the root thing is that we’re programmed for fight or flight. It’s like the limbic part of our brain that is telling us there’s danger here. How do we get away from it? Either flee and run away, and we can do that with our emotions. That’s just escaping our emotions or trying to escape our emotions, or we suppress our emotions. We can suppress them with drugs, alcohol, or some other form, or we try to distract ourselves. Maybe we create a different attachment, or addiction to TV, or become a recluse, and we just totally distract.
Those are three different ways I think that we deal with it. Try to escape and run away, flee. Try to suppress, whether it be another type of drug or addiction, prescription or otherwise. Then the next one would be to just try to—what do I say? Basically, well, suppress, escape, or distract and so we’re all stuck in some form of that, and that’s why we reached for things to try to calm that pain own in our system instead of allowing ourselves to feel that emotional…
Dr. Pompa:
Right, so I mean, subconsciously, I’d be saying—or consciously I’d be saying, oh, I don’t fear that emotion. Yet, subconsciously you do, so you avoid it at all cost. How do you help the person get there? You said Step 1 was going it’s okay to feel that, and I’m going I don’t have a need to feel it. I don’t care. It doesn’t bother me, but yet, it does. How do you deal with that, man?
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, I mean, this is why Dr. Sonya and I realized that sometimes the easiest way to do this is to bring people into an immersive setting. When we’re constantly surrounded by our triggers or fight or flight response, our phone, our social media, the distractions, or we’re in the environment of suppression or whatever that may be, sometimes we need to be plucked out of our environment and put into—this is why we run a program that’s basically 15, 20 to 8 days long where they’re with us constantly. They’re totally removed from their environment, or we take them on to a retreat where they’re surrounded by a loving community where they’re learning tools to reframe, to release. We teach this through breath work and yoga and mindset conditioning and all sorts of other things. Sometimes we have to be pulled out of the environment in order to allow for these processes and these healings to happen.
I don’t know about you, but when you’re a dad, or a mom, or whatever your job is, you’re busy doing your work. You’re trying to make sense of the world and get moved through your reality. You don’t make time to look at those underlying traumas. You don’t make time to eat the right food sometimes or do what you need to do, so sometimes we need to be removed from our environment, put into an immersive setting. That’s why there are some real benefits to people going into recovery at some of these different facilities, right? It’s sometimes the only way to get out of that space.
Dr. Pompa:
Again, I will have—when’s your next retreat? I agree with you. I think that’s really important. I mean, if you don’t take people out of the environment, they’re just not going to get there. However, the other fails will come. They’ll go to one of these things, but then they’re not dealing with the toxic issues at the cellular level. Obviously, that’s part of what we do. It’s a multi-therapeutic approach. Let’s keep forwarding it back here.
If we don’t change their mindset—you made the argument pulling people out of their environment is critical. Getting them to experience what they’re really afraid of. Experience is the first part of healing. Maybe we should go to the second part. I don’t know, or we can move on to some of these other places where, if you don’t hit these areas, you’re not going to get through this.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, I think one last thing on mindset I would say is that we’re creatures of doing, and we’re constantly I got do this, or I got to do that. I got to that. One of my mentors in the world of yoga says it’s effort to give, but it’s relax to receive. When we’re constantly in a space of doing, doing, doing, giving, giving, giving, we forget about that space of receiving. The way I relate to that in our world of naturopathic medicine, alternative health, or whatnot is to create space for contemplation, meditation, prayer. Get in touch with something greater than yourself that can feed that part of you.
When we’re constantly in a space of doing, we’re so linear in our thinking. We don’t realize that the creation and opportunity and the manifestation and all the more intuitive aspects of who we are as spiritual beings having a physical body is that we can tap into these other resources when we’re not constantly in a space of doing. This is why I love—I don’t care what it is for you, prayer, reading the Bible, deep in meditation, contemplation, reflection, but you got to create space for that so that you can be in a place of be instead of a do. That’s like, I guess, the cap on the mindset.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah and another argument for a retreat or something to force you out of your day-to-day. In the day-to-day, yeah, it’s very difficult. I mean, unless you already have that habit, it’s very difficult to get there.
Dr. Jensen:
For most, it’s not the case, and we’ve all been there. I mean, I’m not talking from a pedestal. I had to learn a lot too. We all have our childhood traumas that we’ve had to move through and challenges that we perceive to be the biggest deal in the world at the time that we’re going through it.
Dr. Pompa:
Mine was dyslexia, and again, I always looked at mine as going, yeah, that’s not even a trauma. Look at these poor people who’ve been raped, etc., etc. Yet, what I didn’t understand is that, my subconscious, it was—again, you can never make comparisons, but to my subconscious, it was like this is horrible. It was like you were afraid of this. You were afraid of being made fun of. You were made fun of, da-da-da-da. It was like of course you set up the same compensations around your life to protect you, and again, I had to break those down.
You brought up Bruce Lipton. There’s these neurological patterns that are set up to protect us is we’re talking about. What people have to understand is that, those patterns, that sends wavelengths to your cell, and Lipton has shown that it drive cellular inflammation. If we could change those patterns, change our thoughts, the thoughts send a different wavelength. This is science. This isn’t woo-woo. Those wavelengths change our cells differently. It either becomes toxic, toxic thoughts, or healing thoughts. I hope our viewers and listeners understand what I just said. Again, we talked a little bit about how we change that, but give our viewers and listeners some other tips on how we change our thoughts that change our cells and, ultimately, our lives.
Dr. Jensen:
After getting into thoughts and mindset, which is maybe a little bit more ethereal or outside of our control or it’s a mindset thing, then I think the next level of information that we can discuss which you brought up is the nervous system tone. HeartMath, I love that company. It’s amazing to see how they’ve brought all the research into understanding the coherence field of the heart. When you dial into a breath rhythm where you’re actually coordinating a heart-brain connection, you create this phenomenon called heartrate variability, which the greater the heartrate variability the better the parasympathetic tone or the vagal tone in the brain. That is the communication space that we need to be in in my mind for a place of being and for a place of moving through our trauma. In getting in touch with these emotional pains, we’ve got this—we’ve got these big feelings, and now we have to surrender to the feeling and create a healing mechanism within the body through this heart coherence breath, which is one of many different ways that people can get into a relaxed nervous system tone, but it’s one that’s measurable. It’s one that we use in our clinic.
Dr. Pompa:
Describe it. Give us more description.
Dr. Jensen:
Basically, it’s a biofeedback tool. You’ve got a little sensor ear clip you put onto your earlobe, and basically, there’s just two aspects. One, there’s a reading. There’s a diagnostic look to see how your heart rhythms are changing over time, and then the other piece is the teaching tool. It’s teaching you how to breathe in order to create a better coherence rhythm. I’ve hooked people up with serious cardiovascular dysfunction, valvular—I want to say valvular atrophy and really serious heart conditions. These people have such little variability in their heart rhythms. It’s crazy. It’s almost like a flat line.
Basically, a healthy system, you might go from 90 beats per minute in 1 second down to 70, and that’s a nice deep range. Where the people with more complicated issues or constantly in that fight or flight state, it’s almost like a flat line. They may be moving between 81, 82, 79 up to 82. It’s very, very linear. We tested our boys, our two young boys. They’ve got a massive rhythm change, and they can quickly get into that state. It’s a really great subjective, inexpensive—or sorry, objective, inexpensive tool that tells you about your nervous system tone and tells you how to get into a space of relaxation. I think it’s [00:22:44].
Dr. Pompa:
I noticed you have an Oura Ring on, which…
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, thanks to you.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and it measures a heartrate variability. It is one of the things if you’re recovering or not. I mean, you can look—you get to know your variability, when it’s good, when it’s bad, what makes it worse. I mean, again, something that’s objective. You can track and look at. You start to then get a feel for, wow, when I get stressed out, I start flat-lining.
Dr. Jensen:
Oh, totally. You see that in yours too, right?
Dr. Pompa:
Absolutely.
Dr. Jensen:
If you go to bed late, or eat a late meal, or just jetlag, I mean, that’s a perfect one. It’s a real struggle to get that deep sleep and then the nice big change in that heartrate variability, yeah.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, when you can measure something and then you can start doing things to actually fix it.
Dr. Jensen:
Oh, totally.
Dr. Pompa:
I travel too much. I’ve got it down. Anyways, an Oura Ring, yeah, we should put the link up for people. That is a way of knowing what your variability is, and the heartrate variability is, again, an indicator of being locked in this sympathetic dominant state which so many people are. Then it affects your digestion. Then that affects your immune system. That affects your all-around health. It affects your detox. I mean, it goes on and on.
Dr. Jensen:
This is one of the things I love about you, Dan, is that you gave me a green light in our practice to look at these tools for biohacking and measurement and whatnot. It’s allowed me to convince Sonya to bring some of them into our practice. There’s so much value in being able to have these objective measurements and especially if you can look on yourself on a daily basis. I mean, it’s just—it’s simple information. Actually, David and I talked about this on our podcast the other day. It’s around 350 some odd dollars for a ring. That’s a dollar a day for the year, and you’ve got it paid off.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly.
Dr. Jensen:
We’re not plugging Oura Ring here. It’s just something that we—I learned from you, and I love it.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, it’s just a measure—something to measure some of these things that are so important. We’re talking about heartrate variability as a measure of your mindset, if you will, to some degree and how important that is to change. Okay, I mean, we get the fact that our thoughts affect our cells, and obviously, there’s ways to change that. Before we leave that topic and move on, what else do we need to know?
Dr. Jensen:
I think, in connection to that nervous system tone, I would look at the next level down. I’d look at the exercise or matrix and the connective tissue and the fascia and all these networks that we don’t really usually refer to as the nervous system, but it’s intimately connected to our nervous system, whether that’s someone who’s suffered an injury, or a trauma, or again, a drug overdose, or accumulation of biotoxins, and the cells have basically just spit out inflammatory markers into the surrounding spaces. That’s getting into that connective tissue, affecting the nervous system tone. This is what I love about what you’ve been doing and teaching us is that, if we’re not going to look at this from a multi-therapeutic approach, we have to also change the environment around these cells, which is connected to that nervous system. It just helps to deepen the layers to show just how connected everything is.
As we’re working on our mindset and the breath work or whatever your practice is to get into a deeper parasympathetic state, now we can start talking about how do we start to get movement happening through our body, moving your physical body? Not that we had to really look all that hard, but movement is one of the most powerful tools to get the BDNF and rise in brain function and just feeling good about ourselves again. That comes through movement, and if we’re not moving, we’re not vacillating and pumping all that stuff through our exercise or matrix that’s moving between our cells.
Dr. Pompa:
Movement brings deeper breaths.
Dr. Jensen:
Oh, yeah, totally.
Dr. Pompa:
It ties in what you’ve just mentioned. Breathing and focusing, there’s nothing magical about it in a good way. I mean, there’s something magical about it and what it does. We talked about that sympathetic-parasympathetic balance. That’s huge for our health, but breathing is—it works. It brings us more of that balance of sympathetic-parasympathetic, and the more you do it, the easier it becomes. Exercise is a very similar—it puts you into a different state, deep breath, and it sets you up for that parasympathetic. You just gave us—that’s why you love yoga, right? It forces you into that breathing, basically, focused state that we don’t do enough of and exercise. Really, you’re taking about two solutions here.
Dr. Jensen:
With that, I mean, we don’t give the diaphragm enough credit. I mean, with the contraction and relaxation of the diaphragm, we’re really—we’re charging every organ below on our deep breath in or deep inhale. Our deep exhale, we’re charging the heart and everything else on the way out. Exercise does this, yoga, intentional breathing, anything that’s engaging a full capacity breath. If we’re sitting on the coach or we’re stuck on our medication in our homes or alcohol, we’re not really moving around a lot. Guaranteed you’re an upper chest breather. You’re not maximizing that full proprioceptive effect of getting full breaths into your body which, again, influences the lymphatics, the exercise, the other matrix, everything that we were just talking about.
It’s a huge part of the recovery piece. I mean, actually, if we dive in a little bit deeper into some of the early plant medicine people that were experimenting with LSD and mushrooms and different things to get people in an altered state of consciousness to get off their medications, these things were happening in Europe decades ago. When they brought them to the US eventually or North America, they eventually shut that down for many different reasons. What some of these early researchers did was they started to bring in holotropic breathing, which is a very specific breath pattern, and it creates different gas exchange within the brain that puts you into altered states of consciousness, much like you would say meditation, or yoga, or contemplation, or prayer, or being in whatever your version of divine connection may be. When you start to tap into these altered states of consciousness through breath and whatnot, you start to see things a little differently.
In yoga, we talk about changing perspectives by changing our angles. When we’re in a very linear body type movement and we don’t bring your head below our heart and bow to something bigger than us or maybe do some inverted positions, we change blood flow in our body. We change our perspectives by changing our angles, and it allows us to see things more clearly. I can’t say there hasn’t been a single time where I haven’t finished a yoga class, a spin class, a good set at the gym, or whatever it is and you start just feeling better.
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, always. I mean, take a 20 minute walk in your day and watch what happens. It forces you to breathe differently.
Dr. Jensen:
There you go.
Dr. Pompa:
Yes, but hey, if you’re out of shape, you’ll breathe even deeper. With that said, that’s what you’re talking about here. Give us an example of how to breathe. I challenge people. If you have the ring—you know what I’m saying? You have an objective way of measuring this that we’re talking about here, heartrate variability, and there’s a lot more there. If you do this for 21 days, you will come out a different person. You get the ring just to prove it, number one. You’ll see the improvement so exercise, but talk about the breathing that they could just add in.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, well, I think just because there’s so much research backing the heart breath coherence technique, I mean, I think that’s the simplest place to start. Just by virtue of how many people we’ve tested over the years, it doesn’t take long to get there. The tool is helpful because you’re getting that feedback, of course. Basically, it’s a deep inhale to capacity, deep exhale to fully release. That’s Step 1, just breathing fully. Ideally, we get people that place their hand on their belly, so they’re actually not in this place of what’s called paradoxical breath where when you’re breathing in your tummy is actually moving back towards your spine. This happens for so many people in that fight or flight state. This is actually Step 1.
Step 1, make sure when you’re taking a deep inhale your belly is actually expanding outwards. Yeah, I would tie that with the heartrate—or sorry, the heart coherence breath work. It’s deep inhale, deep exhale, deep inhale to full maximal in breath, exhale to full maximal out breath. Make sure that the belly is expanding on the inhale. That’s Step 1.
Dr. Pompa:
How long do you do that for?
Dr. Jensen:
You could literally do that for three minutes or less depending on age, toxicity burden, the mindset, or whatever it is, but for most people, just switching out of that paradoxical breathing is enough to stimulate that vagus nerve, which is phenomenal. Breath work takes minutes.
Dr. Pompa:
Your vagus nerve runs your organ system. That’s what runs that parasympathetic that so many people lack when we’re looking at that heartrate variability.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, that rest, digest, and healing state, it’s so important. That’s Step 1, just full breaths in, full breaths out. Much like you would get if you were doing a class, or exercise, or what have you. Step 2 according to the heart coherent breath work is, I mean, you can bring your eyes to a close, and you’re imagining that breath moving through your heart. There’s something about our physical bodies that when you bring attention to a certain area of the body it stimulates the electrical system. It’s like you could be sitting on a chair, and you’re not paying attention to your feet. All of a sudden, you’re like, oh, I’m wearing socks. I got shoes on, and I can feel the floor beneath me. Now I’m paying attention to that area. It’s just you’re bringing information, nervous system information, whatever to the area, same thing with the heart, so Step 2 is imagining all the breath as you’re expanding your belly is coming in and out of your heart. That’s Step 2.
Step 3 is find an emotion, a feeling, a memory, someone special in your life that makes you feel an elevated sense of emotion, a sense of love, and getting us out that cortisol dominant state, that stress dominant state by releasing oxytocin and all these neuropeptides like serotonin and dopamine that are allowing us to feel a state of love. That’s essentially part three, and that gets us into that space. Steven Kotler in his book, Stealing Fire—and he wrote one other one I can’t remember right now, but he talks about the state of flow. The state of flow is this space that we get into where we have the perfect secretion of all the neurochemicals: anandamide, serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, and there might be one more, oxytocin. It’s like these five or six chemicals all get released at the right proportions all at the right time, and that’s when you hit the next level of what this breath is doing in our body.
That’s that altered state that we get into where we start seeing the world a little bit differently. It’s like the state you get into when you’re—that runners high, or like you, I know you love biking in the mountain. You get into this space where you’re just so zoned in. It’s all these neurochemicals that are getting released, and it’s through that connection in the heart. You can do that with this type of breath.
Dr. Pompa:
What do you recommend someone starts? People watching this are like, okay, I need this. I mean, how much do they have to do to benefit? Is there a better time than others?
Dr. Jensen:
The best time is probably when you were in the middle of that—or maybe at the tail end of that stress response. We don’t know what to do with ourselves. We’re going to go to our substance of choice. Maybe it’s food. It’s our phone. It’s something that we know is leading to a negative outcome.
Dr. Pompa:
You know what you did? My next thing is pulling us back to the addiction.
Dr. Jensen:
There you go. Yeah, that’s the time to do it. You got to re-pattern your brain for how do I move through this recovery process, or this addiction, or this negative outcome that I found myself in neurochemically, emotionally, everything, physically? That’s the time to reprogram. Then we’re desensitizing ourself to this chronic result of that trauma, that exposure, that whatever. I mean, that’s the perfect time. Are you going to get that right off the bat (probably not)? If you can remember that at those points in time, it’s fantastic.
Otherwise, it’s all about—I mean, you talked about this too. It’s all about linking behaviors. You can’t just bring a new habit in. I’m going to wake up at 4 o’clock every morning or 5 o’clock every morning, do my breath work, and magically get on with my day. It doesn’t work like that. Maybe every time you brush your teeth, right at the end you take a minute and do it or right before you get out of bed. Right before you get out of bed you just, okay, I’m going to take a minute or two. I’ll set my timer. Maybe that snooze button you press is the time where you get into that heart coherent breath, and then eventually it becomes part of your life.
It doesn’t take long, I’ll tell you. We say 40 days to change a habit. If you can lock yourself even for those first five, you start to feel a different set point. Your resiliency, your adaptability to your environment, your reaction that you may be in in a typical scenario, you might just see that it’s a little bit lessoned.
Dr. Pompa:
I heard you say two things. Link it to something you do every day anyway, brushing your teeth was an example, right?
Dr. Jensen:
Mm-hmm.
Dr. Pompa:
Also, the second thing is link it to when you feel like you’re trying to break that addiction. You feel that craving or whatever it is. Link it into that. Just doing those two things—if you say, oh, yeah, I’m going to do a half hour of breathing every day, you’ll probably end up as a fail.
Dr. Jensen:
That’s never going to work.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s not going to work.
Dr. Jensen:
I’ve tried that.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, exactly, we all have. If you link it to either one of those two things, your chance of success go up dramatically.
Dr. Jensen:
Oh, considerably, yeah. This is the magic that you bring, Dan, with looking upstream for root cause issues, root cause obstacles. I think the next level of this journey after understanding just some of the basic mechanisms to get into that vagal tone and deep relaxation have tools to get out of a state of crisis and trauma is like, well, what about the cellular environment? What about the cell membranes, the cell health, the cell energy, all the stuff that you teach? This is why we’re so grateful for what you brought. Being able to insert TCD and the principles of the elite coaching that you deliver for us, we’re able to take people, bring in all of our own uniqueness and blessings that we give to people, but then we’re also able to teach them how to detox properly. When you get in that space, I mean, a lot of this other stuff becomes a whole lot easier because you’ve got more faculty at your feet.
Dr. Pompa:
I think, doing one without the other, it’s a setup for failure there. Again, I’ve been on the other side where I was really sick, and I can tell you that breathing and those things that help the other people didn’t help me. My cells were that dysfunctional because of neurotoxicity. However, as my cells got better, these things become easier. However, once even I got my cells healthy, I still had neurological patterns in sympathetic. There were certain things—even the smell of a chemical would still put me in this sympathetic state. I had to change that pattern.
My point is this is that you have to—again, it’s a multi-therapeutic approach. You can’t do this without this or this without this. Many people are teaching breathing, teaching this, but they’re not teaching the cellular detox of why someone doesn’t feel well in the beginning. Putting it all together, right, Nick?
Dr. Jensen:
Oh, totally.
Dr. Pompa:
I mean, this is the balance that we have found.
Dr. Jensen:
We love the yoga community and a lot of the movement towards more spirituality and thinking bigger and whatnot, but this is a piece that’s so missing. People get so fanatical about what it is that they’re doing for their emotional system. They get locked in there. I mean, one of the communities that I’ve got the blessing to be a part of is my dear friend, Tommy Rosen. He’s got a massive online community called Recovery 2.0, and it’s a yoga community; learning yoga to overcome addiction and move through this recovery process. The challenge for these people and part of what I’ve been bringing to teach them is this. It’s like, if you’re not changing that cellular environment, if you’re not getting rid of those drug residues, those neuropathways, and all those things that got them there in the first place—we’re putting all our eggs in the basket of breath work and yoga and stretching, which is extremely powerful, of course, but we got to change everything else too. It’s not just one thing.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I think it’s so worth saying. It’s so important that I’m going to say the same thing again differently. I said it. You said it. Now I’m going to say it again. That’s how dang important this is, and I will use my own story as the example. I was neurotoxic, and my life as I knew it ended. I couldn’t sleep. I was anxious. I was sympathetic. My digestion went, I mean, all of these things gonzo, life different.
I tried so many of the mindset things. Because I was so anxious, I couldn’t get it, and it was a fail. I start focusing. I realize, oh, I have this neurotoxin. Okay, I start doing the right things, those things that we do in our practices to get the neurotoxins out of my cells, out of my brain. Then I go, okay, I have energy again. I can actually sleep through nights. However, I still have some anxiety. I still sniff a chemical and have these reactions, so there was this neurological component.
Then I started changing the way I thought. These things we were talking about, right? Then, all of a sudden, I had to go through this process of reprogramming my nervous system. Now it started working. The point is is that, if you can lower the toxic load, you can change your nervous system. Doing it together is the magic, and so few people are putting it both together. You need to put it all together. Your body doesn’t know the difference of physical, chemical, or emotional stress, so yeah, empty the bucket of stress, man.
Dr. Jensen:
No one teaches that better than you. It’s because you’ve gone through the experience yourself. Every patient that comes into our clinic, we know what they need to do. They don’t yet what we know, which is the conundrum, of course. We know that it’s going to be a journey for them too. One of the things that we’re grateful too that Dr. Sonya and I learned from you is that we got to make this into a journey for people. It’s not going to happen after one session of breath work, after one detox program, especially not after a juice cleanse or whatnot. This is a journey, and people have to move into this energy of this culture of understanding this multi-therapeutic process. I always get excited when I see someone coming. I’m like you don’t even know what’s coming.
Dr. Pompa:
It’s true.
Dr. Jensen:
Not everyone’s ready for it.
Dr. Pompa:
I mean, the old days—we have so many stressors today from childhood traumas to existing traumas and stress to chemical traumas or chemical traumas from childhood, existing chemical traumas. It’s in the EMF components to things. The old days of just change your diet and you feel better, those are gone. It’s like this multi-therapeutic approach is now, really, the answer, so what I want to say is this—you know it. You hear me say this all the time. We can’t just treat people anymore. We have to teach people the process, so they can do it long enough to actually make a lasting difference.
To go into a clinic and just get treated and leave, that is so done and old that it’s—you’re wasting people’s time and money and your own. If we take the time, to your point, and teach the person everything that we know through this process, man, their lives will change, and they’ll change forever as opposed to, hey, I feel better for a month, a week, a couple months, whatever it is. Yet, two months later, they’re going I’m back where I was. Darn it. Then they keep losing hope. That worked, and then it didn’t. It worked and it didn’t. The process is we have to teach people what we’re talking about here.
Dr. Jensen:
Essentially, this is the movement of recovery. There’s a need for it. I mean, there’s a lot of people on prescription medications. I think I just looked at the Canadian statistics. There’s 435 million prescriptions. That’s 14 prescriptions per Canadian. We’ve got a lot less people up here, of course. I mean, it was well over that for the US, of course, with more people.
Just looking at prescription medications alone, I mean, these people are on so much stuff. The recovery journey of just drug residue, nutrient depletion, all those things that have been going on for decades, people need to know that there’s a lot of work to do. Like you said, it’s not just the days where you could change a diet and magically everything goes away. I’ve tried that on myself. It doesn’t work.
Dr. Pompa:
The sad part is is people are still just searching, watch a YouTube video. They’re still looking for the darn single nutrient, that one exercise, the one breathing thing. Again, if it were only so darn simple, if it were only so simple, and it’s not. I mean, if you want a different life, you’re going to have to learn a different way. You don’t have to learn it all at once, but connect into clinics like Dr. Nick’s and his retreat. Learn this. I mean, putting it all together is in fact the magic.
You look at this, Nick. It’s like, kids today, they’re on Adderall, creating already an addiction. The reason they’re on Adderall is because they literally don’t have the focus to study. They quickly learn that they can take Adderall, and they can study and learn. Man, that made their life better. What did they just learn there? They learned in their biochemistry, hey, this affects this. They’ve learned an emotional lesson of, hey, I can win with this. Then that doesn’t work, and then they end up on another drug and another drug. Oh, and then because they’re doing all these stimulants, now they can’t sleep, so then they end up on another drug to sleep and then another drug.
This is the generation Nick. I mean, when we talk about addiction, they’re being trained on Adderall addiction, THC addiction, and you can keep going down the list. Where are we going to be 20 years from now? Where?
Dr. Jensen:
You know what’s interesting is that—I mean, yeah, the top—so the top three most abused medications are the opiates, the CNS depressants like the benzodiazepines, and then the stimulants. Like you just said, I mean, you use a stimulant to wind yourself up and then a depressant to take yourself down. It’s not looking good. Then as kids get older, as socially—I mean, let’s look at alcohol for a second. Alcohol is one of the most socially accepted addictions around. There was actually a recent trend for 2020; something called sober curiosity. That’s this movement to see people in social circumstances, finding things to do that don’t involve alcohol.
I think that there’s—I mean, amazing, absolutely amazing. I can think of myself growing up, going through college, or going to the hockey game. Alcohol is constantly involved. There’s some things, just like prescription medications, they are so acceptable, like 14 prescriptions on average for every Canadian. Some of these things are so socially acceptable including alcohol, that we have not found our way out of this trauma and this crisis, but there is a movement. There’s people realizing that, hey, we can actually do some things with other people like maybe activities or going to sports, doing a healthy vacation, like a retreat or whatever it is, that doesn’t involve having to check out of life.
I think that, as more time goes on, as more people understand more of this multi-therapeutic approach, there will be a movement towards understanding that you know what? Biohacking has gotten really cool. Not drinking is going to get real cool. Getting off prescription medications, looking for alternative therapies, some of these things are becoming more on trend as are tech gadgets and everything else.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, no, I think we’re way ahead on this. I mean, when you look at light therapy, photomodulation has become this big thing. Why? We’re being exposed to lights that are negatively affecting us. All of this stuff that we’re discussing, breathing, pulse electromagnetic fields, PMF, I mean, all of it is in our world, but it’s becoming more and more mainstream and will become more and more mainstream. Why? 5G is coming. All the EMF, the bad light, the bad—I mean, the more toxins we are—I mean, gosh, hopefully, there’s a time where everybody—cellular detox is more of the norm.
I mean, it’s like—but the point is is that people are going to be forced to reach out to these different biohacks. They’re being biohacked, and they don’t realize it. To take control of your life, we better look at some of these things. How do we change our mindset? How do we get rid of the stored traumas and toxins that we’ve been exposed to? We need to empty our stress buckets, man. The stress around us is too much, and the lower you get it, the better, more you can endure.
Nick, I love the example. You have one glass that’s very full, right near the edge. A little bit of stress, it spills over, symptoms, all that stuff that we don’t like, headaches, lack of energy, brain fog, can’t sleep. That’s the water spilling over. Then if empty one down halfway, we can stress it a lot more without symptoms, without spilling.
Dr. Jensen:
I love that. That’s a great analogy.
Dr. Pompa:
Here’s the thing, that glass is filled with physical, chemical, and emotional stressors. How do we empty it? We have to empty all of those stressors out. That’s what you’re talking about, changing our mindset, the breathing, obviously getting rid of the chemicals at the cellular level. Everything you preach and teach, man.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, thank you. You’ve shown us the way, and it’s amazing what—I think it was not too long ago that a patient reached out and just gave me, so much thanks for taking her through this journey. I went, well, you know what? It’s because we got a chance to learn from the best and learn from Dan, and so it’s like all those people that you—or all the doctors that you train, we’re training our patients. In comes back out. The fact that you’re helping us pave the way forward, it’s a real testament to the legacy that you’re leaving, Dan. We’re so grateful.
Dr. Pompa:
I can only reach a few, right? If we train more of us, we can reach thousands and millions that are doing the work. Hopefully, there’s practitioners watching. We need more. We need more of you. Dr. Nick, I want to thank you and your wife Sonya. Man, you guys are doing amazing work. One of the things too I think I want to point out about your practice—you can tell the where you are, when your next retreat is, but you also do a lot of the IV therapies, right?
Dr. Jensen:
Right.
Dr. Pompa:
We get these people who their digestion is so wrecked that IV therapies can be such an amazing biohack. Talk a little bit about that and also, like you said, where your clinic is.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, thank you. I mean, yeah, IV therapy we’ve been doing since we’ve opened our clinic just because—I mean, I had suffered from what seemed like Crohn’s illness, Crohn’s colitis. My mom had it when I was growing up. Digestive dysfunction was a big part of my health history, and so we saw the need because I saw the need for myself. When you’re bypassing that digestive system, I mean, you’re getting 100% absorption into your circulatory system through the IV, but it’s allowed us to explore. I mean, we’re doing some really fun IVs that—like NAD and phosphatidylcholine and glutathione. I mean, you’ve had an NAD IV now, haven’t you?
Dr. Pompa:
Oh, yeah.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, I mean, it’s a whirlwind, and it’s amazing to see the kind of effect that people have, even just after a few. I mean, speaking of…
Dr. Pompa:
By the way, NAD and their new research on addiction, to bring it full circle, it’s huge.
Dr. Jensen:
That’s in our protocol, actually. I mean, our 15, 20 day protocol for getting—I mean, we get people off benzodiazepines, not everybody, but sometimes within two to three days of just getting that NAD in there. We know that it’s binding to those opioid receptors in the brain, and when you unhinge that chemical trauma in the brain, you can start to see the cravings come down massively. It’s been used for decades for addiction. That’s a big one in the recovery world that we use in our facility. That’s a daily IV. Sometimes people are hooked up for five, six hours because we have to put really big doses of NAD into the system. We found it to be such a powerful tool. The whole biochemical restoration that happens with amino acids and the other things to replete those neurotransmitter deficits as a result of the medications, the drugs, alcohol, whatever it is, I mean, it’s just—it’s such a powerful tool.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, and you’re doing a lot of other amazing biohacks in your clinic. Yeah, it’s a great place to be. Tell them where you’re at and when they can find you.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, so we’re in Vancouver, British Columbia, and we’re in a little area of Vancouver called Kitsilano, which is the health hub of Vancouver. Our clinic’s called Divine Elements Naturopathic. Because of your inspiration, we’re just about to launch our longevity lab, which has the hyperbaric chamber, the red light, the iron cleanse footbath. I mean, this is what I was saying before. If it wasn’t for you, I don’t think I would’ve got my dream of having a biohacking lab.
Dr. Pompa:
Hey, listen, that’s a health center of the future, man.
Dr. Jensen:
Yeah, that’s right.
Dr. Pompa:
All those things you just mentioned, this is what I do, right? This is what I do. This is what you’re bringing in your clinic. That’s a health center of the future, so thanks for bringing it.
Dr. Jensen:
I mean, these are things that are in your home, and so we got to try them out.
Dr. Pompa:
I do them every day, man, although every day I can. I’m traveling a lot.
Dr. Jensen:
It’s funny. Just in our setup, we’ve got all the stuff at our home right now. It’s like we move from the red light to the hyperbaric to the BEMER to whatever. I mean, it’s just—it’s a lot of fun.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, I do every one of those, man. Thank God they can go to your clinic and not my house. Anyways, well, listen, hey thanks for being on CellTV and bringing your wealth of knowledge in this area of addiction. This is a big problem. Share this episode folks because people need to hear this information, and Dr. Nick, thank you.
Dr. Jensen:
Thank you so much and if I could plug our retreat one last time.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah.
Dr. Jensen:
If you don’t mind, that’s the other way to reach us, naturallybraveretreats.com. We’re leaving for Baja February 25 to March 1, so join us. There’s a discount code for CellTV listeners too.
Dr. Pompa:
That’s it. Hey, man, I’m a big believer in the retreat. We started with that point, right? You have to get out of your environment, and it’s powerful. I’m looking to do one myself. I love it, Nick. I so appreciate you doing it. Thank you.
Dr. Jensen:
It’s the model that you’re teaching us too in our group dynamic with—the only way that we learn as doctors is by being in an immersive environment with you and everything you brought.
Dr. Pompa:
Yeah, it’s beautiful, yeah, all right, Nick.
Dr. Jensen:
Thank you.
Dr. Pompa:
Thank you, man, appreciate it.
Ashley:
That’s it for this week. We hope you enjoy today’s episode. This episode was brought to you by CytoDetox. Please check it out at buycytonow.com. We’ll be back next week and every Friday at 10 a.m. Eastern. We truly appreciate your support. You can always find us at cellularhealing.tv, and please remember to spread the love by liking, subscribing, giving an iTunes review and sharing the show with anyone you think may benefit from the information heard here. As always, thanks for listening.
