#47 – Dr. Katherine Zagone: Healing Means Considering the Whole Body

You are at the intersection of wealth, health, and happiness. Welcome to the Wealthy Wellthy Life.

Hello, and welcome to the Wealthy Wellthy Life, the show about becoming wealthy without sacrificing your healthy. Each week, I interview a counter-cultural thought leader to bring you a unique millionaire mindset. I’m Krisstina Wise, bestselling author, millionaire coach, and your personal guide to money, health, and happiness.

Doctor Zagone, it is so much fun to have you on my podcast, so thank you for being here.

My pleasure, Krisstina. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here.

We’ve met twice now, and both times were at the Bulletproof Conference in Pasadena two years in a row, and you had your IV booth, basically. So, I came in, and I love to get IV infusions, some IV nutrient infusions. That’s what you did at the conferences is put needles in a lot of people that wanted to get a little injection, a little booster, if you will.

Anyway, we started conversation and I just fell in love with you, your work, your mission, your contribution, so I’m really thrilled that you’re taking your time to be with us here today.

Thank you. How funny that two years in a row and probably the exact same chairs that you sat in the year prior?

Right, probably. I think we even have similar pictures year to year. Well, you’re amazing, so I can’t wait to introduce to everyone listening. While we get started, you have a very unique background, just the way you were raised, you were sort of introduced to the world into more of this naturopathic side. A lot of the doctors that I interview, they actually started more in the allopathic sort of Western medicine side. But, you’re just this very unique person that was raised to more of this naturopathic philosophy and upbringing, so it’s just so fundamental, I think, to who you are. So, do you mind sharing some of the story? Because, I think it’s every unique and special.

I would love to. My mom is very proud of these facts, by the way. So, I was born at home and breastfed until I was 4. My mom says that’s why I’m so smart and I’m a doctor. It’s a typical mom thing to say. But, we were also raised very naturally as well. We did go to the doctor. But, as we were growing up, it was like very minimally invasive anything. Everything was like, if you get sick, take probiotics and Vitamin C.

When I got to high school, my mom was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, and went the conventional route because we didn’t really know there was like a natural doctor, per se. We just kind of lived our lives the way my mom thought that we should live them, and my dad was kind of on board. He’s always been a very nature guy, fisherman, and he’s like, “Whatever your mom says. She knows what she’s doing.”

But, when I got to high school, she was diagnosed and went to the conventional medical doctor, and spent about a year, two years trying to figure out what was going on. So, they put her on methotrexate, which is an immunosuppressant. That means she had autoimmune something. She’s also having steroid injections into her eyeballs because she was having iritis flares, which is one of the manifestations of rheumatoid arthritis, which was excruciating, as I’m sure you can imagine.

After, she just was getting sicker and sicker and was practically bedridden to the — I mean, she would stay in bed all day so that she could be up and make dinner for us when we got home from school and work, and I still have guilt about the way I treated her in high school, because I was a high school girl and she was my mom, and I didn’t know how sick she was.

At one point, it finally was like, she was like, “I can’t do this anymore. This is not working,” and stops taking all of her medication and found a chiropractor in the city of Chicago who did nutritional supplements, muscle testing. Very basic compared to like the breadth of knowledge that naturopathic doctors have now and all the different modalities that are out there in the healing world. But, this is the guy that she found, and literally, in like six months, she was 80% better. My dad, who was an engineer, was like, “I don’t care if it’s voodoo. I don’t care what it is. It worked for you.”

Seeing my mom come back and heal was the impetus for me to be like, “Maybe I should do this in the world.” So, I started looking at different schools. I thought I was going to be an M.D. and do an integrative residency, I thought about chiropractic, I thought about osteopathic. When I found naturopathic medicine, I just knew that that was the thing. I mean, I got all the training that I wanted: the primary care training, the botanical medicine, the nutrition, the psychology, the whole physical medicine, the whole breadth. So, I just knew, and that’s what really started my career path.

That’s incredible, and you really knew this, even, at a relatively young age, called to do it versus just something you think maybe you should do or whatever. Because, I think all of us, at a young age, doctor, lawyer, or whatever. So, maybe, many people move that direction, but you were very inspired and called, I think, to do this type of work. I find it fascinating, really, and even that you naturally moved into the naturopathic.

Now, a lot of people, there’s a lot of confusion out there and I really want to help people be less confused on some of the different distinctions. So, many times, like if people found your name, next to your name would be N.D – N as in Nancy, N.D. – versus M.D., and I know people would be confused, like, “Should I go to an N.D.? What is an N.D.? Is it the same thing as an M.D.? Is it not? Is it better or worse? Is it less training, more training?”

So, there’s that confusion out there, I think, that gets in the way of people making, maybe, some really smart decisions as far as whom they choose as their, maybe, primary care physician and otherwise. So, will you help people differentiate the difference between M.D., N.D.?

Absolutely. So, N.D. stands for naturopathic doctor, and we also a pre-med background. So, I have a Bachelor’s of Science from Benedictine University in Illinois. It’s a four-year, full-time medical program where we’re trained in the same “ologies”. So, physiology, pathophysiology, medical biochemistry, and then the cardiology, gynecology, all the fun “ologies”, and we learn both the medical standard of care, and then how do you find and treat the cause of that person’s condition or disease.

So, we also get botanical medicine, intensive nutritional therapies both in food and supplementation, physical medicine, psychology therapies, mind-body therapies, and then homeopathy. And you can also go on and study more modalities in more areas, whether you want to do more hands-on work.

But, basically, we have the foundation of being trained as primary care doctors, and then specializing in natural medicines. We have all the natural modalities on top to really use the philosophy of finding the root cause, treating the root cause, and removing that obstacle to cure so that the body can truly heal itself.

So, someone goes through pre-med and does basically all this fundamental, foundational — get this foundational, fundamental education, and then you go the N.D. route and someone else goes the M.D. route. Where does it change? So, you’re being taught that, as a primary care physician, as an N.D. you’re going, then being taught, obviously, these natural medicines in different natural modalities. Where is the N.D. going, the primary care N.D.? What are they learning instead?

So, in medical school, for M.D.s, they’re doing a number of different rotations and they’re focusing mostly on pharmacology. So, we get pharmacology as well. We have to know how to take people off of medications and sometimes put them on them if it’s appropriate. Our scope of practice does vary state-to-state. So, N.D.s in certain states cannot prescribe or can’t practice as a primary care doctor, but their training is still as a primary care natural physician.

An interesting thing to note though, we take board exams just like an M.D. would do and have to get licensed in our state. But, because of the variation in licensing from state to state, in the unlicensed states, there are, let’s call them, distance learning programs that will give you a certificate saying that you can call yourself a naturopathic doctor.

So, in these unlicensed states, there are people practicing calling themselves doctors, naturopathic doctors that don’t have the four-year, full-time, in-person training where you’re actually seeing patients and where you have the actual training. So, that’s something to be aware of when you’re looking for a doctor. You want to make sure that they are licensed. Well, if they’re in an unlicensed state, which they may be licensed in one of the states that they do license.

So, for example, the school that I went to is in Arizona, the Southwest College of Naturopathic medicine. So, a lot of people who go to unlicensed states will hold their license in Arizona so they can keep up on their continuing education credits and still be part of the physician community. But, if you’re out there looking for a naturopathic doctor, you really want to make sure they went to an accredited school, they have a license in a state, that it wasn’t just like a certification program, because that causes a lot of confusion and that can be dangerous to the public.

Yeah, that’s good to know, absolutely. So, how would one know? Would it be on their website? Do you need to call and ask specifically?

Most licensed N.D.s will have it in their bio, which naturopathic medical school they went to. There’s a handful of them across the country, so it’s pretty easy to do a little bit of research. You can literally like Google the school and it will be very clear whether it’s one of the accredited naturopathic medical schools or not.

There’s another category that go through a very similar beginning and board, and that’s a D.O., so what’s the difference between an N.D. and a D.O.?

D.O.s, currently, are very similar to M.D.s. They do get a little bit more training in some physical medicine and possibly nutrition, it depends on the school, and tend to be more holistic-minded, but have more — they’re closer to an M.D. than an N.D., so they don’t necessarily get the botanical medicine, intensive nutrition, psychology, all of that. Very similar to an M.D. with a slightly more holistic lean but, again, it depends on the doctor.

Okay, awesome. Thank you. I think that helps tremendously, and on the N.D., the naturopathic, I think the way I listen to that, it’s important, I think, to me and where I want my listeners to really understand is the M.D., it really does go into the pharmacology, which is really the philosophical backbone of the conventional medical system, the allopathic medicine, is you don’t look for the cause, you treat the symptoms, usually, with pills, medications, some sort of pharmaceutical, and/or surgery, versus the, maybe, N.D. and some D.O.s that are more the naturopathic side. You may or may not need to treat using medication, but you’re not looking at, “Okay, let’s treat the symptoms.” You’re really looking at, “Why do we have the symptom in the first place? What is the cause? Let’s peel back the layers of the onion and try to figure it out, because there’s a reason why the body is reacting this way, so we need to find the source of that.”

I’m guessing that’s what happened to your mother when she was going the conventional route, and it was like, “Hey, let’s put you on this medication,” and she continued to get sicker and sicker to the place where she couldn’t get out of bed. Then, she just like, “Done with the medication. I’m not going to live my life this way,” she goes the more naturopathic way, and what is she probably getting down to working with that chiropractor and that doctor to say, “What’s causing this?” and then she went to what was it? Nutrition? Did they really discover what was the root cause of her RA?

There were a few pieces that they had worked on over the six — well, I mean, she still sees him for regular check-ups and his predecessor. But, there were a few different pieces: liver detoxification, thyroid, certain mineral deficiencies, specifically calcium. So, there were a few different pieces that showed up for her, and once they figured out all the pieces and she was on everything for enough time for a few months, that’s when everything really shifted for her.

So, looking at the cause, I have a really good analogy I want to share, and it’s like the smoke detector analogy, and this is kind of what I think happened with my mom when she was on meds is if you have a little fire in the kitchen, the smoke is going to make its way up and over to the smoke alarm, and you’re going to hear the beeping, and that beeping is a symptom. You have a choice.

So, the easiest way to get the beeping to stop is to hit the button and just turn it off, or take the batteries out, but the fire is still burning, and if you don’t go back and put the fire out, then that smoke is going to travel to the next room and the fire’s going to get bigger, and then the next smoke alarm, so that’s another symptom to show up.

Again, you have a choice. You can hit the button, you can take the batteries out, or you can put the fire out. But, if you don’t actually address the fire, which is the reason that you’re having symptoms and the beeping, the whole house is going to burn down. So, the question I like to ask my patients is, “Do you want to take the batteries out of the smoke detector or do you want to put the fire out?”

I love, love, love that metaphor. That is really helpful, and boy, wouldn’t it be easier just to push the button and turn the darn thing off versus having to try to figure out how to address the fire. But, you said another thing that I think is really important there that I want to help people understand that by the time we’re having these symptoms, usually, it’s a domino effect. There’s many things that are going wrong that, like you said, the metaphor, is the smoke started in one room, and that’s fine. We could put out the fire in one room, but if we wait, then it’s traveled to the next, to the next.

So, it’s not just trying to put out the fire or smoke in one room. We have to go back and find out all the places it’s been affected and address all those issues and those places, which means it’s going to take more than a 10-minute visit with the doctor. It might take six months, it might take a year to really keep peeling back the onion, the metaphorical onion of, “Okay, now we found something here. Let’s fix this with changing diet with maybe supplements or whatever.” But, wow, there’s something else going on over here. So, it takes a while to discover depending on how sick we are, correct?

Definitely, definitely, and when you ask — I don’t want to get too far ahead, but when you ask me for my myth, I’ll share a little bit about timelines, and healing, and what’s actually possible.

Oh, that’s great, awesome. Alright, well thank you. I love that metaphor. If you don’t mind, I’m going to start using that myself.

Please do.

Well, something that I really love about your philosophy, as a doctor, again, that I find really unique regardless of what sort of label you have, acronym you have behind your name, is that you really look at mental, emotional, and physical health. So, you’re not just looking at the physical health part and looking at, “Okay, what are the root causes? Is it diet, is it toxins, is it X, Y, Z that tend to be more on the physical side?” Your work really encompasses this emotional, how are you emotionally, how are you mentally, and you emphasize, really, the mental and emotional components of overall health, their importance in overall optimal health. So, how does emotional health really impact one’s physical body?

Oh, my dear, this is like my favorite question in the whole wide world. So, the emotional piece affects you in two ways: One, it affects the stress hormones that your body produces and causes physiologic changes. So, if you are reacting emotionally to a situation, it can increase cortisol, epinephrine, and over a long term, elevated cortisol can throw off thyroid and sex hormones. So, our emotional reactions to life affect our physiology.

The second piece is that, I believe and I see in my patients, that our emotional health is a reflection of the patterns we’re running in our subconscious, which are really running our entire lives. So, sometimes, that patient who needs to really clean up their diet, needs to go gluten-free because they have Hashimoto’s or whatever the situation is, there’s something in their subconscious or in their emotional piece where they’re not following through, they’re not actually doing it, so there’s a lot of coaching that happens.

With the emotions, what I like to do is, one, honor that that emotion is real for you and let it flow through the body, because the more we resist it, the more it affects our physiology, and the more it affects our life. So, let it move through. The word emotion: e is good, motion is movement, obviously. So, emotions is just movement through the body, movement of energy. Once we realize that, we don’t get so attached to what it means, and sometimes there is significant meaning, and sometimes it just really needs to move through the body.

But, looking at the subconscious beliefs with those emotions, sometimes it’s holding us back in every area of our life, our financial piece. So, if I have a patient who won’t stop eating gluten and is self-sabotaging, her deepest healing is going to happen on that emotional sphere for her. Like, why, either, does she not feel worthy or why — everybody has a slightly different flavor to what their belief is, or why they’re not achieving or putting into action something that they know that would be really awesome for them.

I’m sure you see this on the financial side as well, someone who’s not willing to — or maybe not willing, but is struggling to actually make the health changes is also probably also struggling on the financial side, yes?

That’s very much the case, and even I have a saying that’s a little bit similar on the money side is self-worth really does have a lot of impact on net worth. How we feel about ourselves and the stories we tell ourselves does — do we self-sabotage on the financial side because of some of these emotional issues or self-worth issues, or the opposite of that? So, very much so.

Yeah, awesome. I love when things go together.

I know, I know. That’s why I love the money and health together, because they very much can serve as metaphors to one another, and many of the same principles apply on both sides, so absolutely. It even makes me think is that I think of my own health journey, and when I was really sick, I had a lot of fear. So, fear tends to — probably, it’s more of a negative emotion when it’s deep-seated fear that sort of gets you stuck in fight or flight and the stress that comes with that. So, I don’t think that really helped towards my health recovery.

But also, at first, I really had this feeling of, “This isn’t fair. Why me? I’ve done all these things to be a good person.” So, that negative story probably kept me stuck for a period of time in the place of being sick, and I finally did reach a place where I really did change that narrative and worked to get over the fear. I mean, there’s still a little fear under there, but it’s like I can do this. My body can heal. Now, I understand that I can heal my body and my body has the capacity to heal itself, which I didn’t know that before, because Western medicine doesn’t tell you that. The doctors heal you. You don’t heal yourself.

But, once I had that belief change, that changed almost everything, and then I got over the story of, “It’s not fair,” to like, “Wow, how can I turn this into a positive and what can I do to work with my body and learn these things?” Of course, miraculously, I started to heal, and probably the only thing — I mean, obviously, there was a lot of physical things going on too, but I think a huge part of shifting from getting sicker to sicker over to the other side where I actually saw the light at the end of the tunnel and thought I might live after all was just the change and the emotional story.

Absolutely, and our cells respond to what we tell them, what we feel in them, and creating a healthier happier life by starting with that emotional piece first, it trickles out into every other area. I like to say healing is such a spiritual journey. You have to let go of any ego stories, any victim stories to really step into the highest expression of your health and of yourself.

Kind of like your story, once you shifted your mindset, everything started working for you, I see this a lot with my fertility couples because they’re on the struggle bus for months or years, and you hear the stories – I just did a webinar where I talked about this actually – where people, all of a sudden, stop trying, or they go and adopt, or they’d schedule the appointment with the IVF doc, and then all of a sudden, they get pregnant.

I’ve had patients where this has happened. Like, I’ve had a patient be pregnant walking into their first IVF appointment, and it’s the dropping the attachment, and the, “My body doesn’t work,” and trusting in themselves and in something higher that is so vital for letting the body relax and receive all of the amazingness that life is, and through that, healing happens. Or, pregnancy happens, depending on what you’re going for.

So true. There’s all those oops babies too that they went through IVF and maybe had their first child, sometimes twins, and then that third one comes along that they weren’t planning on because they didn’t think they could pregnant, but once they weren’t trying, there comes the oops baby, and I’ve had that happen to countless numbers of friends.

So, I’m with you, and I think, again, that this isn’t talked about when it comes to healing, and I love what you just said, “Healing is a spiritual journey.” It changed everything for me. I mean, getting sick, and being broken, and way I saw the world before being sick and after, all of it was a spiritual journey. Going through that healing spiritual journey, it changed me of who I am and how I see the world once I got past that. Now, getting over sickness and moving to health to, hopefully, optimally healthy at this point.

But, yeah, it changed me spiritually, and I got connected back to nature, and I got connected back to my body and how I feel, and how that my body does know how to heal myself. I learned how to love myself, because I think so much of healing comes to self-love. If we can’t love ourselves, it’s hard for our body to heal itself, because healing happens naturally, but there’s also that love aspect too versus, like you said, sort of the opposite of that: the loathing, or the unworthiness, and I think that can get in the way – so much in the way – of successful healing.

I totally agree. I think love is our natural state. So, when we’re loving ourselves, when it’s flowing through us, that’s how we naturally heal, is through love. I would love to say love is enough, and as a doctor, I’m still watching for that. Sometimes it definitely is, and sometimes there’s physical pieces that have to be put in place as well. But, I definitely think that love has to be the foundation.

I do too. At least, through my own personal journey and my own personal story that I didn’t have love of self before. Who I was, my value, really, my self-esteem, my self-worth was all attached to my achievement, was all attached to my success, what other people thought of me, and I didn’t know how to love myself. It was all based on what other people thought, and if I didn’t hit a certain achievement level, or get a certain award, then I’d beat myself up, and that’d make me just work harder and try harder.

I didn’t have any concept of what self-love was, and in fact, the opposite, as I’d beat the hell out of my body trying to achieve all those things and keep up constantly, and the next thing, and the next thing, and the next thing, and push harder, and push harder, and go more, and do more, and be more. I mean, it was just this constant pressure and stress and never being good enough.

The shift really did happen when I went through my own journey of learning to love myself like I’m good enough just the way I am, and it took a long time to get there. It didn’t just happen overnight. That was part of my own work. But, I really do fundamentally believe that I started moving from the sick side to getting healthy once I learned to love myself. I think that’s the first step, and I love that you’re a doctor and you believe that and talk about it. I mean, that’s just so unusual because it is a little voodoo, right?

Amen, sister, and I totally resonate with you on like the perfection junkie — not perfection junkie, the achievement junkie side. I don’t know if you’re a perfectionist too.

I am the ultimate perfectionist.

My journey didn’t manifest in physical illness, but I ended up in an abusive relationship, and it was finally choosing to love myself that got me out of it, and that really saved my life. It wasn’t physically abusive, but saved my soul. I felt like my spirit was dying, and I couldn’t understand why I was depressed and anxious, and why I was so miserable. When I finally admitted what was going on and realized, I was so embarrassed. It took me forever to even acknowledge the word “abuse” was even possible, but I had to choose myself, and I had to choose self-love, and I left, and that’s actually when I started — so, I needed therapy, and this might transition into our next topic, but I found a Groupon for belly dance, and that was my first step into self-love, and that was the medicine I needed at that time.

Yeah, we’ll talk about that in a second because that’s such a great story. But, yeah, it is the self-love piece, and I was in an abusive relationship early on too, and I’m embarrassed to say that publicly because, again, I’m thinking, “How was I in an abusive relationship?” but I think so much of it as that that I didn’t know how to love myself.

Totally, and if we can’t love ourselves, nobody else can love us. We have to show them how to treat us.

So true. Well, let’s reverse that. So, you believe and I believe, and I think, hopefully, many believe now that emotional health absolutely impacts one’s physical health. But, what about vice-versa? What about does physical health affect one’s emotional health?

I’m going to say yes with some caveats. So, I think it can make it harder to be in the mental emotional state that would make us thrive, and there are physical things that can affect like our neural transmitters, which can affect how we see the world, and in that case, it’s important to make sure we’re addressing physiological causes of things like depression or anxiety. One of my favorite things to look at as an MTHFR mutation, which is how your body can use or not use the full-laden folic acid that you’re taking in, which if you have this gene mutation, can cause anxiety, depression, inflammation, all sorts of things.

But, I see a lot of patients with anxiety and depression that it’s either this genetic piece, or it’s gut-related. There are very physical things that can contribute to a less-than-optimal emotional state. So, that’s why we do have to look at everything. I wish we could just play in the emotional piece all day.

Yeah, and the healthier we feel, I think the more positive we can feel too. So, I do really see this yin-yang affect that even when I don’t get enough sleep, or more the physical side, it really does affect my emotional state. So, I think they’re working both ways, and that’s why we want to take care of both, and they’re not isolated. I think more conventional Western medicine really puts all these things into these silos and is afraid to cross over from one to the other versus more Eastern medicine: emotional, and energy, and chi, and flow, and some more of these, let’s say, woo-woo topics are all part of the health protocol, the health philosophy.

Totally, and it’s so funny. I remember growing up — actually, even somewhat recently, like anytime I’m feeling very emotional and I need to let it out, I’ll call my mom and I’ll just cry to her on the phone for a few minutes, and the first thing she’ll ask me is, “Have you gotten enough sleep?” the second thing, “Have you been eating well enough?” Just like you said, it’s a very real phenomenon that we have to take care of our physical bodies to facilitate a good emotional state.

Yeah, and they’re not disconnected. Our bodies are these magical, magical things that we get to be part of, or live inside of, or something. But, everything’s connected. They’re not isolated. Like, you just don’t take care of your psychology without taking care of your physiology and vice-versa.

Totally. You are one being, all connected.

Exactly, and I think, again, that’s the big difference between, let’s say, an N.D. and M.D. It’s just philosophically, it’s a different belief system. So, why do you think, as a society, we’ve really moved away from sort of this naturopathic being connected with nature, being able to heal ourselves, and throwing some of these things into the woo-woo? Why have we moved so far away from that belief system?

It’s really been the last 100 years that that’s happened, and it’s been a combination of industry, pharmacology, money. Some of the first pharmaceutical companies kind of took control of the education systems of doctors. There’s like a couple of books that are volumes long written on the history of medicine and where that happens.

So, in, I want to say, it was the ’20s, there was a report that was funded by – it now has trickled down into a pharmaceutical company – but it went to all the different medical schools and used their own — they said they were checking on quality and standards, but they kind of created their own standards. So, it was whatever they thought was appropriate was how the school was deemed accredited or not, essentially. So, they ended up closing a lot of the, I would call them, eclectic schools where they were doing botanical medicine, homeopathy, different things because it didn’t meet the standards of this organization that decided to write a report that they basically created their own organization to do this.

So, there were some political things that happened, and it’s very tempting to think, “Oh, I can just take a drug and get better.” So, it’s easily spread when there is this miracle cure that’s reported to have arrived. And some drugs are miracles. I mean, I’m grateful that we do have the Western medicine that we do have for certain situations. But over time, there’s been some vilifying of natural medicine, AKA snake oil salesman. Now, I have to also say that, sometimes, the natural community, whether a naturopathic doctor, not as much N.D.s, but some practitioners also vilify medical doctors or allopathic medicine, and they think there’s a place for both.

But, we’re definitely more towards the “let the body heal itself” support from the naturopathic perspective and really heal the whole being on all levels, because I think people are craving that in their souls, and because it works. So, they’re finding that the more drugs they take, the more times they take the batteries out of the smoke detector, the sicker they’re actually getting.

Exactly. I think even my story and so many others that I talk to today, that where they wind up on this other more naturopathic side is they go down this conventional route and they don’t get better, and they get sicker, and sicker until they get to a place of being so desperate that they look over elsewhere. The great thing about the internet now is you can start doing some of your own research and more easily find different, more natural ways to heal online, and be connected to different doctors.

But now, you even can notice with all the number of functional medicine doctors, naturopathic doctors, there’s a lot more that are going that route. So, that’s a lot out of demand, I think, that we are going back to this route of like, “No, I want more of a functional, naturopathic, homeopathic doctor, because I’m seeing that this other system is not working for me, or for loved ones.”

Absolutely, yeah. I mean, the things that I see patients heal from that their medical doctors told them they would have for their entire lives, it’s crazy. And things that medical doctors don’t even recognize that people are having issues with is also crazy. So, I’m super honored to be able to do the work that I do and be part of the community that I’m in.

Yeah, and you do. You’re a healer. You have this love of healing. So, talking about that, you’re one of the leading experts on fertility, and that’s one of your loves and passions. I run into more people than ever that have fertility issues. I mean, it almost seems more common than not these days, which seems somewhat of a tragedy. Then, the next thing I hear is, “Oh, we’re going through IVF.” That’s the sequence of events.

So, what do you have to say about that? You’ve created your own healing method called “Holistic Fertility Formula”. But, back us up. What is the root cause of, let’s say, just this epidemic of fertility issues? I mean, that’s probably not an easy question to answer. Then, why is IVF the first step to take to try to get pregnant?

So, cause is multifactorial, as with most things, but I see a lot of environmental factors. So, the toxins that we are constantly exposed to which can mess with our estrogen, which can affect the quality of our eggs, which can affect blood sugar, and if and how we’re ovulating. So, environmental is huge. I mean, the number of chemicals being dumped onto our planet every day is increasing, and it’s super sad, and we have to deal with the aftermath. So, I think that’s a huge one.

Other causes are the lifestyle that we lead, like the push, push, push is not conducive for bringing children into the world. So, if our bodies don’t feel safe and relaxed, biologically, we don’t want to create another human life, because it’s one more thing we have to take care of, and the planet isn’t safe, and we don’t want to use reproductive energy to procreate if it’s not safe out there. We want the species to survive. That sounds very basic, but I use that because I think it’s true. Our lifestyle and our environment, I think, are the biggest pieces.

So then, your IVF question, I think a lot of reproductive endocrinologists, or infertility specialists are jumping to IVF too quickly. I had a couple I worked with up in Seattle, she just wrote me a beautiful testimonial about how when she went to her first doctor, they ran all these tests and they said, “Oh, everything’s normal, so we should just get you set up for IVF because it still hasn’t happened yet.” They had tried for about a year, which is the medical definition of infertility. She’s like, “If nothing’s wrong, what’s going on?” She was so confused.

They ended up not doing IVF. They came and worked with me for four months, and she was very impatient, I would say, at first, and she’s like, “If this doesn’t happen by this date, we’re going to go do the IVF. They wanted it.” Again, it’s like a quick fix, but the success rates aren’t quite as high for the time, and the energy, and the money that go into it, and sometimes it’s what people need, and I think a lot of times, it’s thrown out there way too early in the treatment plan. There are so many more tests that we can run to see what’s actually going on with your body, there are some psychological assessments I like to do to see where some subconscious flocks could be happening that’s either affecting the physiology or just affecting your body’s ability to conceive on a more energetic level.

With this couple up in Seattle, four months and they got pregnant, and that’s about as long as I said it would take, because we want to use the healthiest eggs and the healthiest sperm, and it takes about 120 days from the time that we start developing that egg and sperm until when it comes out of the body. I’m not always that on with time, but for them, I was, and I’m glad I was so they didn’t have to even try IVF.

It’s interesting and every doctor is different. But, like I said, it’s thrown out there too early and I think there’s so — the female body is so powerful and just the right tweaks can create amazing results. That’s why I love what I do is because I help these women regain their bodies and be empowered in their bodies and know that they can do this.

Yeah, that’s so important, especially I think I know a lot of friends that I’ve gone through the experience with them. The women start beating themselves up like, “I’m responsible for this, I can’t even get pregnant,” and they take on most of the responsibility for the infertility.

Yeah, and medically, it could be her, it could be him, it could be both, but what I see is a lot of unexplained infertility, like nobody knows. So, that’s why I work with both partners, because you’re creating a baby together, so both partners get to be as healthy as possible. And it’s not a blame thing. I have had couples who didn’t want to do testing because they were afraid it was going to be their “fault”.

But, it’s a matter of if you want the body, if you’re committed to having your dream baby, your miracle baby, your superhero baby, whatever kind of baby you want, then you can detach from the blame and just let yourself go through the process and trust that you’re taking the steps that you need to take to get there without beating yourself up.

I’ve had a lot of women who have had abortions earlier in their life, and now that they’re struggling, there’s all of this shame, and guilt, and blame on themselves, like, “I f’ed up. I shouldn’t have done that.” Whether there was shame and guilt at the time, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but it’s like now that they’re now struggling, so that’s a huge piece that I help them heal through is forgiving themselves for whatever decision they did or didn’t make and honoring that they can have a different story this time in that they didn’t do anything wrong, per se, that this is part of their healing journey and part of what gets to happen so that they can have the baby and let go of the blame and, again, come back to that self-love and love themselves enough to love their partner and love a baby into the womb.

Yeah, and probably our bodies know. If we’re full of love, that’s the reproductive environment that the body will want to produce, as opposed to the opposite. But, yeah, you’re right. It goes back to that self-love piece, and it does take both. It takes both male and female, and we’re both in this together. I know some of the infertility doctors I’ve talked to on the more naturopathic side is that it is both partners and the healing journey, even if it’s changed with diet and lifestyle, it affects the sperm also.

So, it’s not just the woman that may need to change things, but it’s, “How do we go through this together as a healing journey, as a spiritual journey together, let both of our bodies heal, go through the process, no blame or shame, let it take the time that it takes, and not putting any additional pressure on it, and just produce love in our environment, and let’s see what happens,” is a big part of that.

Absolutely. You’ve got the fertility mindset down.

And you say some other important things too that are really important is that our toxic environments play a big role in this, so it’s a place to start. Like, where are we adding chemicals to our bodies, to our environments, from cleaning products, to detergents, to shampoos, to toothpaste. I mean, looking at all these places where we may be putting toxins in our body or in our environments.

And the lifestyle piece, you’re right, that we’re not thinking about this, but when we’re so stressed out in our lives, in our jobs, and running around constantly in the state of fight or flight, now there’s more pressure to get pregnant, and then that whole thing, and then going through IVF and not getting pregnant and feeling bad. I mean, that can be a very unhealthy cycle that the body’s saying, “No way do I want to get pregnant. This is not where I want to bring in a new species into the planet.”

Absolutely, absolutely.

How important is food and diet in fertility?

Incredibly important. We want to make sure that we’re getting all of the right nutrients in that our body needs to have healthy hormones and the building blocks to make a baby, and then we also want to be avoiding anything that could be harming the process, so obviously, packaged foods, trans fats, those are the big ones. It’s the foundation of our health and the foundation of our baby’s health, and it also affects how we pass our genes down. So, what we’re learning now is we can turn genes up and down like a volume nub, and a diet has a lot to do with how we do that, and then we can pass those changes onto our children to really set them up for the healthiest life possible.

Yeah, another thing is to make sure we’re giving the body the nutrients it needs to reproduce later one.

Absolutely.

But, if we’re living on fast food, running around, airport food, packaged food, eating out all the time, that’s one more thing that may get in the way, correct?

Absolutely, absolutely.

Alright, let’s shift the conversation a little bit. This is what I loved part of your story that you shared with me when we were in Pasadena. You talked about your belly dancing and to bring this feminine sexuality back to the equation and how it really impacted your healing journey. So, tell more of that story. Talk about sexuality, women’s sexuality, how you include that into your overall business, and practice, and philosophy, and the belly dancing piece, how that’s facilitated all this.

So, my story, like I said, I got out of an abusive relationship and literally needed therapy and found a Groupon for belly dance. I did like two classes three nights a week for the first six months and I was hooked, and it’s really how I got all my confidence back. Like, I was convinced nobody would love me, I was ugly, I was stupid, like all of those terrible things, and it was how I rebuilt myself, and how I felt sexy again, and how I was able to express myself again.

So, I didn’t realize that that would come into the work that I do until it did. What happened is I got out to California after graduating medical school, had a really rough first year of business and life, and was pretty depressed, and found another sexual healing modality and was deeper into expression and my personal sexuality. It really pulled me out of my downward spiral and made me realize how powerful I am as a woman and how powerful I am as a human, and the importance of the feminine and honoring the feminine, and that being I don’t have to like push, push, push, push, push, push all the time and that I can relax, and receive, and manifest, and trust that I am taken care of, and be in the self-love and whatnot.

So, after I had that experience, I was seeing more patients, more women who I’d kind of started asking about more of the sexuality not necessarily symptoms, but, “Are you satisfied, or how do you feel about your body?” which I had done a little bit before, but hadn’t really had a solid tool to give them to do. So, what I find is that reclaiming our sexuality, reclaiming out femininity is a big part of the healing journey for a lot of women, and a big part of the fertility journey for a lot of women.

And it’s more about sex in the bedroom. It’s about how we express ourselves in the bedroom is how we express ourselves in life. How we honor our bodies is similar to how we honor the rest of ourselves. With my fertility couples, I see that a lot of the women are in this push, struggle, go, and once they can relax and release attachment, and get into their bodies, and I have a fertility dance video that I give them, and we do some exercises in office sometimes.

I had one patient where she had never had an orgasm – they were a fertility couple – and we only did three sessions and ended up having this huge energetic release, and they’re now five weeks pregnant. It’s just something that I feel like we don’t address in medicine, especially, but even in life like, what does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean, to you, to be a woman? How do you feel in your body? How do you move in your body? And I feel like it’s one more way we get to feel the juiciness of life, and one more way that we can move energy and allow ourselves to be our fullest expression and heal by using that energy. It’s the most powerful energy on the planet, sexual energy. I mean, it can make a baby. So, we can use it in ourselves to heal, or even manifestation to bring in money.

How do you describe sexual energy? Like, how do you describe it, explain it, what is it?

Everybody experiences it a little bit differently, but it can be anything from a physical sensation of pulsation, tingling, and you might feel it in the pelvis, or you might just feel — like, have you ever walked into a room, and you just feel like you are commanding that room? Like, you just feel like you feel sexy, you feel powerful, you feel amazing? The sexual energy, the creative energy doesn’t always feel sexy. It can, and I like to play in that space, but it’s creative power.

So, it might be you’re just in flow and you’re just allowing yourself to be guided through — you know, art is obviously the easiest way to explain it. So, doing art projects, whether it’s the Mandala Coloring Book, or taking a class is a very easy way to get into that feminine and that sensuality, because the sensuality is really what precedes the sexuality, and the sensuality is really the heightening of the senses, so taste, touch, smell, everything. When we tap into that greater, it’s a greater experience of life, and it can ignite that sexual creative power within us, and inspire us.

How much of this is attached to body image? I mean, it’s really hard to be a woman these days when we’re constantly comparing ourselves to how people look in a magazine, or those that have the perfect figure and the bikini when we go to the beach with our husbands on our vacation.

This is definitely a way to heal body image issues, just like being able to honor your body exactly where it’s at, and trusting your body, and seeing your body, and knowing that it’s perfect as it is, whether you’re working on losing weight or not. I had a friend, actually, who took one of my belly dance workshops – it was a two or three-hour workshop – and she had been working out consistently for 45 days, had some serious body image issues, did a whole Facebook Live series called “The Worthy Journey” on loving her body.

But, 45 days of working out, no weight loss, she did one belly dance workshop with me, got into that sexual energy, that sensuality, and in the next two weeks, she lost over 10 pounds. She’s like, “It’s because I finally love my body. It’s like I finally let myself just enjoy what I have and who I am.” So, I think that’s super powerful. I’m so glad she shared that.

Yeah, I know. That’s awesome. Then, how does sexual energy differ from men and women?

Typically, women tend to be more in the feminine pole. So, there’s polarity. There’s the masculine and feminine, and men tend to be more in the masculine. Same-sex partners, one will tend to be more feminine, one will tend to be more masculine. So, for women, that feminine looks like savoring, so the sensuality, a little more relaxation, a lot of receiving. So, whether that’s receiving from your partner, whether that’s receiving money from wherever. Kind of like the queen energy, just like holding your space, and you’re not rushing. You’re really just enjoying the juiciness of life.

Whereas it’s very different for the masculine. For men, that sexual energy is more directed, more pointed. In life, that masculine sexual energy can be directed towards something like a life purpose, or career, a partner. But, it tends to come off more powerful, more focused. In an unhealthy manifestation, it could be a little aggressive.

There’s definitely like the healthy and unhealthy aspects of the masculine and the feminine. So, just asking yourself, “Where am I now, and what would be healthy for me to move into right now?” So, if you’re a man, “Do I need more drive and purpose?” If you’re a woman, “Do I need less drive and purpose?” Maybe not. I mean, if you’re on a building phase with your business, maybe that’s where you are right now, or maybe you don’t need to push so hard, and Krisstina, you can help them to create the business of their dreams without ruining their health, because that’s so important for women, especially.

So, the feminine, it’s all about balance, in a way, and allowing yourself to drop into your respective pole for better sex and a little bit more juiciness in life when you want it.

What I listen there, which is so good, is women, we can tend to be, maybe, just so driven. We’re those types of women that it’s just go, go, go, drive, drive, drive, and is more of that pointed, direct, and maybe masculine energy that is great on one level for succeeding in business whatever, but may need to be balanced out in other parts of life.

But, there’s also the give, give, give, give, and the word you used there was “receiving”. I mean, I think that’s such a big word that regardless if, as a woman, you’re driving or giving, we might get stuck in either one of these patterns ultimately can become unhealthy one way or another. But, they might both be okay as long as balanced out with receiving, and receiving can be sexually – that’s kind of what happens in the bedroom for women – but also massages, or what are we doing through the self-love and self-care that is about receiving.

A story that comes to mind is where this really jumped out at me is, recently, this summer, I went to Sedona and did this four-day all-inclusive spa vacation, and what it was everything was taken care of, and you go through several spa treatments every day and you can lay out by the pool, and take walks. But, it’s all about receiving and I’ve realized what it felt like because I’m such a giver and doer in life that I’m like, “Oh, wow, I’m receiving this love from these healers and these therapists, and they’re vested in me and taking care of me for a change.”

It was so healing, this four-day vacation, really, which was just a spa vacation. That’s why I was going there. I was like, “Oh, a spa sounds nice, but I learned this sort of the spirituality and how important the art of receiving is, and I just came back so rejuvenated from learning how to receive and being in an environment that it’s all about giving for the people that go there to receive, and it’s mostly women.

That’s such a beautiful example. Absolutely, yes. The spa vacation, we think of it as, like you said, you thought you were going to a spa vacation and got this beautiful, receiving, healing experience. That is the divine feminine right there.

Yeah, I think so, and it just reminded me, “Oh, I need to be a good receiver and do things where I can receive versus just giving and doing, basically,” and it did very feminine, by the way. It’s like, “Oh man, I feel so beautiful.”

“Man, I feel like a woman.”

That’s right, that’s right. Alright, we’re bumping up against the hour here during our time together, and I know you’re on a tight time frame. So, I have a couple more questions for you. I’m a millionaire coach. I teach the money side, and obviously, I teach your body is your number one asset, and I interview people like you, like doctors, especially, and healers, and health practitioners to really help my audience that tends to be more, maybe, achievement mindset, the importance of why we want to take care of our body and how to take care of our body. So, thank you for sharing all of your wisdom and philosophy and practices with us today.

With that said, money is an important part of overall freedom, the financial freedom piece. You’re a doctor, you’re a healer, you’re a giver. What is your money philosophy? What is that, wrapped up in all of this?

I’m going to share my quick story that I didn’t go into depth in earlier. My money philosophy – that’s such a good question – I would say, my base philosophy is that I’m here to serve the world and I charge for my services, and I think that’s part of the agreement that we have as humans on this planet right now, and I believe we can all live abundantly, and it starts with that inner self-worth.

It might sound like I’m skirting the question, but right now, I’ve been playing with using the inner game for manifestation, to manifesting the clients that I want to work with, because I don’t work with everybody. We see you for a good fit first. So, when I was telling you about the deeper sexual healing that I did after my rough year, what that looked like was basically reprogramming my subconscious and setting some clear beliefs about how much money I was bringing in, and using a heightened state, like orgasm, with that intention in mind, to manifest that.

So, I had like six three-hour sessions that I had done, and set the intention for $40,000 to come in for a business loan so I could start my practice, and before my last session, I got a $40,000 business loan with 0% interest and no repayments starting for a year and a half. So, something that I didn’t even think was like possible out in the world, and it was like handed to my lap better than I ever expected it.

My money philosophy is that everything is possible, and what I’m currently working on right now is creating more consistency and stability and using some actual strategy instead of just orgasming my way into a bunch of money.

Well, and I think you hit on something earlier, and I do believe that to be true, and I think men really have this nail down, even subconsciously, but sexual energy has a lot to do with money on the female side too, being more connected to the sexual energy and some of the confidence, and just that energy completely turns into money versus when we don’t have the energy or are self-sabotaging, or we don’t feel our worth, or we question our value. It really is hard to get into the money game.

Absolutely. If you’re familiar with chakras, the second chakra is that creative power, that sexual energy, and how we receive pleasure, and how we receive money. As women, we get to really receive the pleasure and the money.

Oh, that’s awesome. Yay, that’s great! You’re quite an entrepreneur, so you’re healing the world and building a business, and business practice, and those are two huge concerns that you’re working to take care of at the same time. So, it’s how do we blend these together and use the business as sort of the infrastructure and the tool for you to be able to do your best work and help as many people as possible. So, the business becomes the leverage, and the money becomes the leverage in what you get in return. Many times, the money shows us how successful we are at achieving our overall ambition, because when we give out there, that’s what we get to receive. Money is what we receive. Again, it’s feeling good about receiving, especially as women, and I do a lot with women and money, a lot of coaching, and a lot of teaching with women and money.

But, receiving money, it’s feeling good about that, like, “I’m putting this contribution in the world, I’m changing lives, I’m making impact, I’m giving, I’m helping, I’m nurturing,” these things that are very natural to women. So, everything has this yin-yang. It’s being a good receive what comes back to us, and that’s just in the form of money when it’s in the business space. There’s different types of receive in different spaces, but money is the receiving part. So, we have to get good at that receiving and feel good about it.

Absolutely, absolutely. A cute little note to go along with that. I recently started dating someone new and he told me the other day that I have a PhD in receiving, and I was very thrilled to hear that. I took that as a huge compliment.

I love that. I’m going to write that down. That’s really good. Awesome. Alright, so one final question that I ask all of my guests, and I always work to do myth busting here at the Wealthy Wellthy Life Podcast. So, what myth do you bump up against all the time that you want to bust?

That natural healing is really hard and takes a long time. Sometimes it takes work, especially if you’ve been taking the batteries out of the smoke detectors for years. But, I have also seen, what I would call, miraculous healings of patients in hours to days to weeks. So, just know that everything is possible and your journey is unique, but it doesn’t have to be a struggle.

I love that. I love that, like it doesn’t have to be a struggle, and if it is a struggle, maybe that’s sort of the siren going off, the smoke detector saying, “Hey, something’s out of balance here.”

Definitely, and even in the struggle, can you choose ease? Can you choose to embrace the journey? Because, the struggle is really our reaction to the outside circumstances.

You’re so right. Alright, well Dr. Z, you are remarkable, you’re beautiful, you are sexy, you are a healer, and you’re magical. Your energy is magical, and just being next to you, I feel better just standing next to you. So, thank you for what you do, thank you for your time here today, and I look forward to getting to know you better as time goes on.

Absolutely, Krisstina. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been such a blast, and I can’t wait to see what else we’ll create in the world.

And so ends another episode of the Wealthy Wellthy Life. This was one more millionaire strategy that will make you wealthy while keeping you healthy. Before you leave, remember that if you want to get it all together, then make sure to sign up for a free online training session at howto.money. You will learn my signature formula for transforming your life from debt to multi-millionaire. It’s already helped thousands of others, and it can help you too, and it’s the only moneymaking system that makes your health your number one asset. So, if you’re curious how it all works, visit howto.money and sign up today. Remember, it’s free, so why not invest some time in learning “how to money”? Again, that’s howto.money. H-O-W-T-O dot M-O-N-E-Y. As always, be sure to subscribe to this podcast to make sure that you catch next week’s millionaire strategy. Signing off, this is Krisstina Wise, your personal guide to having it all. Here’s to living a Wealthy Wellthy Life. I’ll see you next time.