Business Innovators Radio - The Perinatal Care Paradigm

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

A health pregnancy doesn’t start at conception. Like so many things in life, preparation is the key to the best experience – not just throughout the pregnancy journey but for postpartum healing long after the birth of your baby.In this episode, Dr. Dan Turo welcomes Dr. Melissa Matthews, a chiropractor from Guntersville, Alabama to discuss the perinatal care paradigm – care before, during, and after pregnancy. The conversation revolves around Dr. Melissa’s personal experience with postpartum depletion after her first pregnancy, which led her to discover the Shafer Protocol, a comprehensive approach to preconception care and overall health. Dr. Melissa emphasizes the importance of preparing the body for conception, both for the mother and father, to ensure optimal health for the child and prevent issues like infertility, postpartum depression, and generational health problems. If pregnancy is in your future or you’re working through the perinatal care paradigm, take the time to take this episode in.If you are struggling with pregnancy or postpartum care, reach out to your trusted health care provider for support. And if you don’t have one, reach out to our office so that we can help you find the care you need. You are not alone.To learn more about this and other hot health topics, follow us on social media and subscribe to our WTH podcast. If you have a specific health question or would like to find out if we can help you with a personal health challenge, check out our office page or contact us at 412-369-0400/ [e-mail] always, our mission is to help you Get Healthy and Stay Healthy for a Lifetime!What the Health?!https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/what-the-health/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/the-perinatal-care-paradigm

Welcome to What the Health, where anything health is fair game as we tackle the trends and bust the myths about health and wellness. Here are your hosts, Dr. Dan and Angela Toro. And welcome to another episode of What the Health. I am your host, Dr. Dan Toro. I don't have my co-host, Angela, with me today because we have another special guest that we're going to get to in just one second. But before we do that, as with everything our day,

disclaimer. This information is for your information. Only never treat. We don't treat, diagnose, do anything with any sort of diseases. Please talk to your trusted healthcare professional before making any health care changes in your life. And if you are looking for a good health care professional in your area, never hesitate to reach out. So with that being said, this is a wonderful friend, probably one of my wife's best friends. Since chiropractic school, we go way back, Dr. Melissa Matthews out of Guntersville, Alabama, and she is going to be sharing her experience through the birth process, a little bit of her own story, and talking about helping patients through the perinatal care paradigm, meaning what you do before,

during and after the birth process and how that really sets you up for success or possibly failure, depending on what you're implementing. So we are going to jump right into it. Dr. Melissa, thanks so much for joining me today. Oh, I'm so excited to be here. I love talking about this stuff and just kind of dive right in. Like this, the stuff that we talked about or will talk about literally saved my life. So if I can help someone else not go down the road that I went, I'm all for it.

That's what I'm here to share. So let's go. So let's talk a little bit about that. You know, so obviously your background is a chiropractor. You also see a lot of horses. We were talking about that a little bit right before we got on here. And I just love, you know, there's a lot of videos that go around the Internet now, right? You know, different chiropractors adjusting different animals.

I just got, and I don't. I'm sure you as an animal chiropractor, patients send you all sorts of videos like, oh, we saw this online. I got the giraffe one that was going around recently and sent to me like three times. So, but talk to me about what sparked your passion to get into chiropractic care? Wow. That, I, I think I'm a rarity now that I've been in this little bit, literally since. I was two weeks old is I'm one of those like rare people. My parents were not chiropractors.

Actually, my mom is a nurse, but she's, I call her a hippie nurse. Nice. She kind of saw the medical side of things and she swore she would never actually end up a patient. Yeah. And so she did all things kind of hippie and natural. Like I remember that my views have now changed, but I thought this was like not how, you should raise children was was giving them good quality vitamins and filtered water, not allowing Kool-Aid at an early age.

I was like, this is not a normal childhood in the 80s and 90s. Now, I'm grateful for that. So, so I was just raised in that paradigm was I knew early on, again, I rode horses since I knew what a horse was and I knew early on, you went to the chiropractor if you fell off your horse or if you're sick. That was just the education. And then through life, I realized, oh, I'm kind of a weird person because I remember being at a job and it was a very busy, very stressful job.

We're on the road, six and a half days pretty much worked. And I was, I was sick and I couldn't get over this. And my boss was like, well, have you taken anything for this? And I was like, I knew I just needed rest at an adjustment. but we were out of town. I was like, well, I've taken my vitamins and I've drank extra water. What am I supposed to take? Like, it just didn't even cross my mind of all the over-counter things you can take.

So that's when I was like, oh, I might be a little different. It might be a little weird. Then, moving forward, I ultimately, chiropractor care has just always been in my life. And then the chiropractor I went to when I was in high school was literally across the high school from me. So I would see him get dropped off in the morning, go get adjusted and then go to school. And then eventually I worked as a CA in that office. And when I graduated high school, I knew I was going to be a chiropractor. But then life kind of happened.

And then university was weird. And all the sciences, I was like, let's not do this. But then working in that office, I remember this is like what changed my life, literally poop. I was at a screening event and a young mom came up to me and she was like, hey, can chiropractic help with constipation? I was like, young, I'm like, of course, chiropractor can help like everything. So she came into the office. Her five-year-old, every morning needed metamusal to have a bowel movement. was her life. This is what they were dealing with. Sorry getting adjusted. Poop happened normally.

So literally, again, I'm chiropractic with a poop. Yep. Healthy normal response. Yes. She, and then the mom also had a one and a half year old son and he was about to start his third asthma medication at a year and a half. Wow. So you know where this story is going. got the child under care, that child no longer needed medications for asthma. Yeah. Total life changed in that family. I lost count of how many people, how many kids, that mom referred into that office. And I was just like, I have got to go do this.

So I'm from Canada. So going to Atlanta is a long way and kind of an expensive way to go to school. but I packed up my two suitcases in a backpack and hopped on a plane to 11 shortly after that. And the rest is history. Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic. So you were ingrained in this from a very young age. So that was your norm.

So it was almost like an awakening experience when someone was, you know, coming at it from a medical perspective. And, you know, because that was completely against what you knew. And so it's like, well, I've, you know, I've never taken a medication for anything. I've, you know, yeah, kids should poop regularly. They shouldn't need asthma medication, you know, from a very young age. Again, as we always say, medicine has a time and a place, but not when you're trying to promote health and well-being. So, so then that got you, let's fast forward a little bit. Well, and again, let me back up because, you know, in looking over the notes that you sent me, you're talking, you mentioned,

how one thing that blew my mind is that our kids generation is the first generation over the past several that they're actually going to see a decreased life expectancy compared to us, right? That's how it was portrayed. So our kids, you know, on average, are going to actually have a lower life expectancy than our generation, which means that we're seeing a massive decline, you know, in our health and well-being. So talk, can you talk a little bit about like what you're seeing going on and and why that statistic, you know, might be, might be out there? Yes. Wow. You just opened a whole can have worms. Ten of worms and it can go so many, down so many different rabbit holes. So I'll

keep it focused to what I do and the work that I do. So the work that I do. So the work that I do is preconception is basically I want these parents that are preparing to bring a child into the world to be as healthy as possible so that when that child is brought into the world, that they're passing on the best qualities, the healthy qualities, the healthiest versions of themselves into this child, and therefore hopefully helping to change that statistic. as well as if you have been a parent for any length of time, you know how just if you haven't really prepared and done the work to step into that role, it can really mentally, physically, emotionally damage you.

And you don't intend for that to happen. But that's just, that's kind of where we're going to go with this talk a little bit about why that is. So I love this idea of preparation, right? this being proactive to, you know, stepping into a role as a parent because we, we study so many other things in our life, right? You know, we study, you know, our degrees, you know, we study math, science, reading. We, you know, we study, you know, how do we do different things. And again, you know, today's day and age, it's amazing that you've got YouTube at your fingertips and,

you know, you can pretty much become a DIYer of just about anything within reason. But, you know, a lot of us just like, oh, you know, we either it was a surprise or we were planning on becoming parents, but just had no idea what we were getting into. So talk about, you know, some of the qualities, because you mentioned, you know, you mentioned, you know, why, why is it important to be healthy before even conceiving a child? Like what, what is it that's getting passed on? And I have a reason that I'm asking that because I, I just read a statistic recently about adrenal glands. and what moms do when their adrenals are sucked out with the baby. But why is it important preparation, both mom and dad, preconception, to be as healthy as possible?

Yes. And again, the preparation, one of the analogies I love to use is how when you and, you know, for example, when you and Aaron got married, how long did you plan for that wedding and prepare for that wedding. And then how much money also did you spend to, as you prepare to spend the rest of your lives together, usually on average, you're planning for about 10 months or a year or longer. Yeah. But then like you said, like kept becoming parents.

Sometimes it's just a, hey, and then that's exactly what happened with the first. Surprise or, yeah, you were planning and then, okay, now we're going to do it. Yeah. That was, second one was kind of a happy surprise and first surprise. And the first one was like, well, have a child. And that's what brought me to this work. So the importance of, so thankfully, it's coming out a lot more of the male's responsibility and the genetic expression that he brings to the child.

He's actually 60% responsible for the genetic expression of the child. So it's just like one of the reasons of kind of hey dad like you have such an investment in this child's health and from the start. So bring your A game, dude, as well as it's the sperm that builds the placenta. Because here is a woman, you know, I kind of can't just be like, all right, body, let's create a placenta. let's create another organ, a new organ. No, not going to happen, no matter how I try. So, and that placenta, the health of that determines how the pregnancy is going to go for the woman, whether they're going to be symptom-free and joy, or if they're going to experience all the morning sickness,

all of the just ickness factor. And again, my two kids are a tale of with my firstborn. I was like, well, let's just get pregnant. Okay, that happened. Yes, I experienced the morning sickness and whatever, not so great. Second child, my husband did some preconception work, and I did not experience any of those negative symptoms. It was an awesome rock in pregnancy, and he came out over 10 pounds.

so it's fun. And then, yeah, there's so many, so much more that goes into that. But that's just some of the fun, fun facts right off the top of my head. Well, that's it. That's really, that's really neat because I don't know if I've ever heard it expressed that way in terms of like the sperm being responsible for the health, you know, in creation and building of the placenta. So, and again, that's so important for those of us who aren't in the health care.

world, you know, the placenta is really what feeds, right? The, you know, has that blood barrier between mom and baby and really feeds and houses a lot of nutrients to be able to grow that baby. So, you know, that, that's, that's so interesting. So, so talk about like this genetic expression, right? We all have a certain number of genes, but the old theory was, you know, you have a gene and, you know, and that gene is, is expressed and either it's, it's on or it's off. But, like, now with this genetic expression, this idea of epigenetics, you know, our environment has the ability to turn on and off genes. So when you're talking about, you know, the men and women getting prepped for birth, you know, we're looking at how are certain genes turn on, you know, healthy

expressive genes turned on versus, you know, how are maybe not so healthy, you know, adaptive, mutated genes turned off when we practice, you know, healthy, healthy lifestyle habits. So can you talk, you mentioned what your husband Jubal went through in terms of some of the pre-birth work that he did. So what would that look like for, you know, for men and then, and then we can talk about the women afterwards. Yeah, you totally hit it on the nail on the head. You know, it is about the environment. and environment drives what the genetic expression is going to be. So we're going to rock and roll into the protocol, and it's pretty similar for both male and female,

again, some tweaking of various things. But really the basis even of this preconception work is at the core of what builds a healthy human. and what we need. So there's eight essentials. First one, being chiropractic, having that brain, body, the nervous system communication. Excellent.

Yes. And then the second one, and this is a whole other science, is proper glycosylation. So that is, how to explain that is how chiropractic is the brain talking to body, body talking to the brain.

Glycocellation is the cell talking to cell, so cellular communication at that level, and we want healthy cell talking and communicating with other healthy cell. So that comes in the form of taking glycans, and that's one of my favorite supplements. And again, there's a whole science on that. Without getting too much into it, okay? What would, you know, specific vitamin glycans? What, you know, does it come from a certain food source?

when you say glycans, help our audience understand what you mean by that. Yes. So it does come in food sources. You're kind of catching me off guard and have to look it up again. I think like broccoli is one of them. Again, coming from mostly vegetables, probably crucerous. Presiferous, yeah. Yeah, vegetables.

But, of course, the easiest way is to take a supplement. And that was something that really changed for me. change in my mind was, again, I've grown up in this chiropractic paradigm. I was always healthy. I didn't have any symptoms. So I didn't necessarily think to take supplements. Because in my mind, how it always sort of been was, well, if you have X symptom, then take Y supplement. And I was like, but again, we're just chasing symptoms and just like kind of putting the same. a band-aid of, oh, well, you have this, so take this. Yeah, you're going from taking medication for a symptom and just substituting it for

supplementation, right? It's like, I have X-symum, I'm going to take X supplement. And I never really had symptoms. I was like, well, I guess I just don't have to take anything. Then, then I learned. Basically, it comes down to you like how crappy our food supply is that even if you eat the best, cleanest diet, you still need to supplement it with essential nutrients. And that's one of the key things. That's again, one of the other eight essentials of this protocol.

That's what I'm able to sit down with and be like, okay, yes, you need to take, you know, omegas and iodine and selenium and multivitamin, even a multivitamin. I'm like, okay, at bare minimum, I'm like, everyone should at least be on a quality multivitamin because, again, our food supply. And again, that's a whole other rabbit hole and a whole other conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's such a good point because we always talk about that.

You know, and my, you know, my sister who works as part of our team, you know, as a, you know, salutogenic specialist. So, you know, lifestyle specialist. You know, we always talk about, yeah, we want to get our nutrients as much as we can through our healthy food supply. But as you just mentioned, it is so difficult to actually get, you know, the good healthy sources, you know, our food is not what it was, you know, 100 years ago. And, you know, again, so much of it is chemically processed. A lot of that is to, you know, help extend shelf life. And we always talk about if you extend the shelf life of a product on the shelf, it's going to be extended in your body, right? Like, those chemicals end up in your system and they end up in your, you know,

your endocrine organs, you know, so you have hormonal imbalances. They can be stored in your fat cells. You know, we've all heard of it, you know, situations of someone, you know, starting to diet and starting to lose weight, and then that person ends up having like a massive heart attack or a stroke, right? And, you know, I think so much of that can be related to, you know, toxins that are stored in liver and fat cells that then get released out into the system. And we have this detrimental effect. So again, going back to such a good point of, you know, doing a lot of this work long before you ever are thinking about, you know, about having children. But part of that challenge, though, is, right? I mean, we're really capable of having children as early as, you know, 16 years old.

But, you know, what average 16 year old is thinking about, you know, about taking care of themselves? You know, it's hard enough to tell a 16 year old, hey, don't drink that soda and drink some water, right? But to then relate it to, you know, hey, you know, this has an impact not just on you now, but, you know, your future family, if that's what you're. you choose to do. So sorry, I'm going off on a tangent. So let's bring it. Even coming to the 16 year old, this is for the work that I do and for what I've learned, like, that's, I love talking to the teens or the early 20s, especially if they've never had a regular cycle or a continuous bleed or their hormones are just like out of whack, literally had friends send in one of their friends.

friends, they're like, I don't know what's going on with her, but please fix her because she's not the same loving friend that we know. She's like just, I mean, got her own protocol. Hormones regulated. She did great. Friends are like, oh, my gosh, thank you. She's back. Yeah, she's back to the way. Yeah.

Yeah. And educating that on an early, early so that, I mean, really, if you have hormonal issues, at, well, from really any age, but especially young, like kind of the only band-aid they have for you is, well, here, take the pill, which has other detrimental effects. Yeah. So you might be on a pill for 10, 15 years, and then the negative depletion that happens with that. And then it's like, oh, well, I'm married, I want to start a family, but your body has never had a regular normal cycle. It doesn't know what the normal hormonal flow is and no wonder more and more families are having issues with fertility.

Yeah, so we're seeing significant increase in infertility rates, right? So it's getting harder and harder for, you know, moms and dads who want to have children to actually get pregnant. And I'm sure that's one of a massive number of factors that you talk about, right? but, you know, this idea that, hey, you know, you're having an abnormal cycle or, you know, you're cramping really bad. Here, just go on this, you know, this hormone, this birth control pill. And, and wow, so your body never learns to have a normal, you know, menstrual cycle. And how important that is in the female anatomy to be able to, you know, go through that normal

healthy cycle. Just like, you know, just like we mentioned, you know, my wife always gets a little, not miffed, but like, you know, I talk about birth being as natural as pooping, right? Doesn't happen as often, but, you know, and there's a lot more factors that go into it, but if we think about it, it's a very, it shouldn't be in any normal healthy state, birthing is as normal as going to the bathroom, right? It's a, your body was designed to do it. And so, you know, we are artificially societally blocking that from an extremely young age.

And so what you, you know, so you get the operative. opportunity to talk to patients, you know, men, but, you know, a lot of women, too, of, you know, hey, this is what normal should look like. You know, and there's not, there's unfortunately, not a lot of normal and healthy scenarios out there. So, fantastic information, Dr. Melissa. So let's talk, let's go back and review real quick. So you talk about, you know, obviously chiropractic from, you know, healthy spine and nervous system function, you know, nervous system controls and coordinates absolutely everything. So making sure that your spine is aligned and moving, that's, you know, point number one. And then you talk about the glitcans, which a lot of that comes from, you know,

normal, healthy diet, but, you know, because of our poor diet quality, we need to add, you know, certain supplementation. So, so what's the next step? And first, I don't even think we mentioned what this protocol is that you use. So you use something called the Schaefer Protocol, right? Yeah. And so you got into the Schaefer Protocol because of your different. You know, you had a, did you have a difficult first or second, but fill me in on that. How did you come to, you know, through your personal story, how did you come to the Schaefer protocol and start studying and implementing that in your practice? Yeah.

So conceiving both boys. So I have two boys, a five-year-old and a two-year-old. I was my five-year-old that brought me to this work. Conception, no problem. He's a Disney World souvenir of fun times. So, and, you know, experience some warming sickness, like pregnancy was, was okay. It was more of like the typical, you know, anyways, but moving forward, I'm sitting in continuing Ed. He's about a year old.

and postpartum journey was rough for me. But again, when you're kind of idiot, you just kind of go through it and you think it's normal. And there I am sitting class going a year through this of now I know, looking back, postpartum depression. But this professor, this doctor, Dr. Schaefer, brought up a word. that I'd never heard before was postpartum depletion. And what she explained suddenly made sense for all of my symptoms. And again, I'm not a symptom chasing person, but I was just, I was miserable. Like, there was a moment.

Um, trigger warning. My husband was leaving for work and I'm holding our baby. And I'm just like, honey, I know where the gun is. I'm just letting you know. Like, things are bad. So. this is why I take this work so serious. I had those intrusive thoughts.

Like, I did not want to be a mother to my son. And that just, the joy was robbed. Robbed. So, so I learned about postpartum depletion, where it comes down to, if you've already entered a pregnancy in a depleted state, nutritionally, of course, also emotionally, spiritually, physically, how much harder a time that makes for pregnancy and postpartum, but then rolling into postpartum, how depleting that is,

if you've spent nine months growing this baby, the baby's taking all the good things from you, and now if you're having a nursing relationship with that child, they're further depleting you. And yes, I did exclusively breastfeed, so he was also taking everything from you. there. Again, being someone that, yeah, I took my prenatal. Now I know differently. So I thought it was quality at the time, but now I know. And then I just was like, this is it. This answers everything. And I, that was my moment. I'm like, I started and started on the protocol, started to get myself healthier, build up my nutritional supplies and total life change. Like I've not had those intrusive thoughts.

I have a family history of depression. I have overcome that. I have beat that depression in my family line stops with me. My children will not go down that path because of the work my husband and I have done. that too is one of the powers of this protocol is breaking those family curses. Wow, that's, thank you for sharing because you're absolutely right. People need to know about that. And it makes perfect sense, right?

Because you're, you know, all of ourselves, you know, we learn about, you know, in chiropractic school and we learn as health professionals that, you know, our bodies, you know, restore themselves, right? We're self-healing, self-regulating. And that means, you know, our, our, our, you know, our, cells go through a natural normal process of apoptosis, meaning the old damaged ones start to die off, and then new ones need to be replaced. But if you don't have a good, healthy building block, right? If all you have is like sand bricks to build your foundation of your house, well, you know,

the first rain that comes along, it's going to wash your house away, right? So, you know, but if you've got good, you know, strong, you know, strongest concrete and you can lay that foundation right with rebar and all that. Well, now you're going to have a good foundation to be. build upon. And, you know, I'm getting chills just, you know, thinking about this, but it's like how many, you know, women and men have no idea the importance of what they put into their body, not just physically and how they feel, right, but again, the mental emotional aspect that you just hit on. You know, it does. It's just kind of mind-blowing, you know, how much that mental emotional state is grounded in the physicalness of what we put into our system.

system, right? So, I mean, thank you for sharing that. So, I mean, so you, so you made that change and noticed a pretty, how long did you, did it take from the time you started the protocol until you noticed some pretty significant changes in your mental emotional health? It didn't take long. And, and you know this and can appreciate it, like, there is no end to health. And so you just continue to head in that direction. And I look back, so I've been, I guess, doing this about four years now. And like every year, I'm just leveling up in health and going to that next level mental clarity, whatever of whatever life brings to me of going through it changed and for the better.

Sorry, that's rambling, but I know you can sum that up and explain that better of that help Yeah, and that's what I like, you know, because I've got a, you know, we have a small book that I wrote for the office a few years ago. But, you know, it's really just an educational piece of, you know, just helping people understand the basics of what it is we do. And I started, you know, signing it, you know, I'm so happy to be a part of your health journey, right? Because so much of, so many times we think of help as a destination. And it's like, oh, I'm going to get there. And then what? You're just going to stop doing what you're doing?

Like, no, it's like, you know, everyone, we're taught from a. young age, as soon as your teeth come in, let's brush those teeth because it's a healthy practice. That's what this whole concept of like, oh, you know, I'm going to get fixed by my chiropractor and I'm going to start going. Well, it's like, well, how long do you want, you know, good, healthy nervous system communications? Like, do you want that for the rest of your life?

Well, then you're going to come in and get checked, you know? Doesn't mean we're going to adjust you the same way every time or even adjust you every time, but you're going to get checked. You know, how often are you going to eat your healthy fruits and vegetables or, you know, take your supplements, right? As long as you want to continue on that health journey. Because either you're growing, you're getting stronger, you're adapting, or you're slowly withering and, you know, depleting.

I love that word. You know, you're slowly depleting, you know, your system. And again, our body has an amazing ability to adapt and be healthy. But, you know, eventually we reach a point where, you know, that adaptation is going to be greatly interfered with, you know, based on. the level of, you know, of the foundation that we have. So what else? So what are some of the other, you know, steps?

You mentioned eight, you know, first one being the chiropractic care, second one being the glycans. So what else? What are some of the other steps in this Schaefer protocol that you use? Love it because you really can start anywhere because we've talked about so many of them our lifestyle habits. So hydration, proper hydration. And my one tip with that is.

I love gel water. Are you familiar with that term? I'm sure. Fill me in on it. I might have heard it a couple different ways, but no, please. Fill me in. Well, it's best how to describe it is thinking like how a cactus in the desert is able to survive on so little water. It's able to take whatever water it can get and turn it into essentially gel water, so you can hold onto it.

So, I am. whole side thing to that. But the simplest thing is you take your water, take your water bottle, throw in a little pinch of Himalayan salt, and I like frozen fruits or vegetables because they're in my freezer. They're picked it.

Right peakness, they're great. Can also throw in fresh, but I like frozen. Throw it in your water. There you go. Congrats you made gel water. Nice. What that's going to do,

it's going to properly hydrate yourselves, as well as like if you've ever had someone, be like, increase your water intake and all you're doing is peeing every five minutes, this will help that. It'll actually keep the water in the cells where it needs to be. Yeah, the salt concentration, right? It helps drive the water into the cell rather than just going through your, you know, stay in your bloodstream and then filter it out by the kidneys and then it's out the bladder before you even have a chance to hang on to it. No, great point.

So I don't think I've ever heard it termed gel water, but yeah, we talk all the time about the importance of, you know, salts and this time of year, too, as we get a little hotter. You guys have probably been a little hotter than we have a month or two ahead, right, down in Alabama. But yeah, this time of year, you know, throwing the cucumbers, the watermelon, you know, the blueberries, all those, you know, good, healthy fruits into the water. You know, it makes it flavorful. And again, great point of just being able to drive that hydration into the cell, not in the bloodstream. Because if it's in the blood, it doesn't help you. It needs to be in the cell.

And it's also fun, again, kids teach you so much, right? So when we're down the frozen fruit aisle, I love my kids to go pick out some weird, wild fruits that I might not even heard of. Or, you know, they pick out some great ones. We've had fun with that. Like dragon fruit. Love me some dragon fruit. But that's because my kids picked it out of the frozen fruit section. So how about this?

Kids are great teachers. So, so that's three. Movement. Again, and the basis of this protocol is all driving A1C and vitamin D levels. And that's what this is. So movement, something as simple as just playing with your kids, 10 minutes a day, getting, keeping it fun, doing something enjoyable. And a great thing to also, again, help with.

insulin is after a meal going for a 10 minute walk. Yeah. Helps you kind of avoid that. Oh, gosh, I need a nab after having my lunch. Yeah. Yeah. That's an amazing point if I can jump in there because I, and I'm seeing the future of this, again, kind of seeing the blend of the biotechnology route.

I've seen a lot of patients now. They've got those blood glucose monitors, right? Yes. Love those. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's like they're watching that.

And then after a meal, if that blood sugar starts to creep up too high towards going over a threshold level, it actually starts buzzing you and saying, hey, it's time to, you know, do something. So, you know, stop and do some air squats, stop and do some jumping jacks, go take a walk. Like, do something because what happens is rather than having that blood sugar continue to spite, you're able to curb that, get your insulin up and curb that blood sugar spike to drive it back below the threshold. And so now, you know, because again, if you get those spikes every day and multiple times a day, that's what drives insulin resistance, which is eventually going to drive diabetes. So if you're able to, you know, start to recognize that, and again, patients are visual, right? So that if they see that spike and they're like, okay, what can I do to curb that spike and bring it back below the threshold, you know, we can curb that A1C level. So great, great point. So movement.

So what else do we got? Essential nutrients, and that's again coming back to proper supplementation, realizing food supplies. So that typically involves omegas, vitamin D, selenium, iodine, coline, I love coline to help clean out the liver, again, good quality multivitamin. and there might be some other ones. And black seed oil is awesome for fertility, especially for the male part.

There might be some other ones, but those are just kind of like the basics of if you're a human, you probably need these in your system because you're not getting enough from food supply. Do you ever do any blood testing to determine how much someone should be taking or do you just have like a here's the, you know, here's the threshold. Here's like, you know, the recommendation, you know, get it in your system.

I love that question. So most of the dosing is based on body weight. And again, it's kind of a let's establish a baseline first because let's face it. Someone's in front of you. They're probably depleted. So let's get that baseline. If things are still wonky and one thing about this protocol is we work in 120-day cycles because that's the cycle of the egg. So at least can be 120 days.

Let's see where we're at. Yes, if we need to do a blood test, we can do that. It's not the driving force of the work that I do. But again, the more information you have, the better it is. But of course, with blood tests and you can end up chasing symptoms based on where someone is in their cycle of taking the blood work at certain times. And it's really just a picture of that moment, not the whole overall thing. which again, that's where I love where you mentioned the glucose monitor or even the heart rate variability, like the aura rings, things like that.

Anything that gives you moment by moment by moment by moment feedback. Feedback, yeah. So I want to go back to something you just said there really quick, but because again, anytime I talk to, you know, patients about nutrition, right, you know, going back to something we said earlier about the medication and symptoms, you know, so many people, you know, they want to. start that nutrition supplement and they want to see, you know, immediate results, right? We're all about instant gratification. But when we're talking about building and growing and developing health, it takes time. And you just mentioned something that, again, I'm sure I learned in school and it plugged it away, but the cycle of the egg is 120 days. So talk about that. Because when a woman is born, she has all the eggs that, you know, in her ovaries that she could ever,

that she could ever produce, but then those eggs are chosen to go through a cycle. So when you talk about the cycle of the egg in 120 days, can you clarify that a little bit more for people who are listening? Right. So when we start on our cycle, we're developing, maturing that egg, and it's going to go through a 120-day journey before it is released. And that's the one that if you're trying to get pregnant, is going to get ovulated. So, and there's maybe new information or different thoughts on women being born with all their eggs.

That's, there's different theories, different science now that says, oh, you actually can continuously make eggs throughout the rest of your life. But again, we're talking about quality. And yes, this comes down to the preconception and why, if I'm sitting with a couple that wants to create a baby, get pregnant, I say we're not making one that first 120 days because we need to, we want quality and we're building that egg. We're giving that egg all the good stuff it needs. And yeah, it's going to take 120 days to come to fruition. And that's, you know, I think my point being for you describing that is helping people

understand that like if you're, if you're changing something nutritionally, at an absolute minimum, you're talking three to four months, you know, four, you know, four to six. six months before you, you know, recognize and notice and change. So if someone's starting to work with you, it's not like, oh, yeah, I'm going to start, you know, chiropractic care and I'm going to start the Schaefer Protocol. And I've had infertility challenges for two or three years and I'm going to get pregnant next month. No, it's, you know, if you're truly wanting to get down and you're having fertility challenges, you know, you've got to look at this as a minimum, probably six month process or beyond, right? Right. And it's really even the first couple months, maybe,

the first three, four months is really like getting the habits down of, oh, at this time I take my eye on. Oh, I go for my walk at this time. I mean, that's happened in those four years and I'm still like, oh, hey, I'm slacking on that essential. I better get to it. You know, but again, it's a journey. It's a journey. Progress, not perfection. And yeah, I'll have those people that they're maybe a little type A and they just see it as like a checklist. They're like, okay, I did this, I did this, I did this. It's like there's lessons to learn in the process as we gain those good habits and to keep those good habits. That's fantastic. So we got movement.

We got the 120 day cycle. What are the last couple points to the Schaefer Protocol? I'm going to put you on the spot. Right. I'm kind of like, where are you an army? So a big piece, and this is where things are a little different, where it's not just a supplementary. protocol is the empowerment piece of it, the up here component. And this is where journaling is what I recommend.

And some people are looking at me like, mm, not doing that. No, no, no, no. So easy way to start. I say easy. You know, it takes you 60 seconds, if that, to write down these answers. But again, it's doing it and being intentional about it and taking a time to do it is where the power is. It is in the morning, starting with your question, what are you excited about? And at the end of the day, what are you proud of?

Nice. That's really where we start. That's it. And if someone isn't kinesthetic and wants to write it down, could they use like a voice recorder on their phone and just, you know, talk into it? Yeah. The exercise of... It's the exercise of doing it. right?

What are you excited about? What are you proud of? I love that. I love that. I think this stat is for every positive thought we have in our head. We've had 76 negative thoughts. So to counteract that, like the stories we tell ourselves, right?

I know. I know. Right? And it's, and typically it's, right, you just like we feel like we're in control rather than like surrendering it. And like,

you know, hey, let's, you know, what, you know we we talk about giving it up to a higher power right it's like you know you're you're you're not as bad as you think you are up here and but but no i mean that that's so that's so important i love those two questions what are you excited about what are you proud of um so dr melissa let let's talk about if someone is there a so you met this dr schaefer um you know

through your you know through your own personal experience and then you know started you know training and learning it as a healthcare professional so that you could help others. If there are people listening to this and they're having their own fertility challenges or maybe mental, emotional stress or, you know, or any, you know, any case, could they find a practitioner, you know, in their area? Is there a, is there a directory? Can you speak to that at all? Yes, there is a directory of certified doctors.

I'll send that to you. Okay, yeah, yeah, we can put it as a link. Yeah, we can put it as a link, no problem. So how do people get a hold of you if they have more questions, you know, specifically about this? And again, you know, our audience might be a little bit, you know, small right now. But it's always crazy to hear, you know, who's listening. But if someone wants to get a hold of you, how would they do that? The one of the best ways.

I won't say that I answer it frequently, but I will check it. I'm trying to get more on Instagram. So it's Dr. Melissa Matthews, D.C. is my handle. That one is more related to the Schaefer Protocol work that I do. Again, I'm a busy mom. I can't promise to you that, like, it's there. But I care. It might take me a week to actually see the message, but I will respond.

Or you can get in contact through the office, phone, email, whatever, Jubilee Family Chiropractic that's in Gunnersville, Alabama. Yeah, those are probably the. the best ways. Awesome. Yeah, we'll make sure those are included in the links down below. Any final words before we jump off? I mean, just a review. I mean, I love this concept of, you know, we're going to have in a good, strong, you know, chiropractic foundation with healthy spine and nervous system. You know, we're moving our bodies better. We're getting essential nutrients. You know, we're working that mental emotional side through journaling, you know,

good healthy hydration through gel water. I mean, any final thoughts for those? And again, Again, thank you for sharing your personal experience, Dr. Melissa, because I think people need to know that, you know, as health professionals, we're human too. And we work just as hard, probably sometimes harder, you know, to make sure that we do our best and we're on this journey. And I know I have had some of my own health challenges over the last, you know, year, close to year now, you know, since I was diagnosed with Lyme and, you know, it had some issues with shingles after that. So it's like we're health professionals, we're humans too. So, you know, someone listening, you know, I would tell them, you know, don't, don't give up. There's hope to get healthy, right? Right. You know, but they have to, they have to be willing to keep looking and keep working. It comes down to establishing those simple daily habits and setting simple achievable goals of like this month I'm going to focus on getting my gel water in, you know, even. know, even two glasses of gel water a day. Let's get that in. Okay, easy. Check. You're going to feel

more energized. You're going to feel the results, the success, kind of like right away as you get that into your body and you're like, cheers, got that. All right, what's my next step? Okay, I'm going to invest in this supplement. All right. Awesome. Check. And not trying to do it all at once because you might mean well, but you're kind of setting yourself up for failure, unless if you're like Superman. But so again, just those setting, those simple lifestyle daily habits. Small steps over time equal big results, right? Yeah, because it's so easy to go into overwhelm if you try and dive in and do, you know, change everything immediately. And I think having the support, too, I love that, you know, you talked a little bit about your,

your husband, Dr. Jubal, but like, you know, having that support, you know, as a health professional, but more importantly, as a parent, you know, in your partner makes such a difference, right? I mean, that's, you know, if you don't have that support at home, you know, trying to do everything on your own, you know, nearly impossible. So even do it as a family. Set those schools, do it together. And if you have kids, they're watching and they're little sponges, ooh, it's a little humbling if you see some of your like bad habits trickling in.

But when you see the good habits and the impact it has rocket and rolling, there's no better feeling than that. Yeah. Yeah. And there's no worse feeling when you're a little one. calls you out on something that you're trying to tell them not to do. So, uh, preach.

Yes. Yes. Yeah, I, I heard it said at one point. There was a colleague of ours. It was like, you know, we have our children, uh, you know, to really, you know, humble us or, you know, teach us, you know, where we're, where we're weak in certain areas of our life. And, uh, man, is that the truth?

Yes. Yeah. Well, Dr. Melissa, thank you so much for joining us today. Um, I am. Dr. Dan with What the Health Podcast. And if any of this information resonated with you, you can reach out to us directly, ToroFamily Chiropractic.com.

We'll have the links to Dr. Melissa's website and information down below. But as always, you know, we're here to help people get healthy and stay healthy for a lifetime. Dr. Melissa, thank you for joining us today. Thank you. This is fun. Absolutely. We'll do it again soon. You've been listening to What the Health with Dr. Dan and Angela Tori.

Brought to you by Toro Family Chiropractic. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.com.