UNspecial LLC: We should be treating sunlight deficiency before we're giving our kids 30 random supplements made in a lab. is the opposite of trauma. You see your kids starting to play, their brain is not in trauma mode in that moment. Take a minute and celebrate. Like what you're doing is maybe they're not speaking yet, but their brain chemistry is changing and that's brilliant. And I think whether or not you believe in prayer or healing, gratitude and the expression of gratitude changes how our cells behave in a nanosecond. Trust your gut. It's right every single time. If you're not walking in fear, your gut is right. It's your God-given roadmap to help your children heal. Your intuition is there. to create a safe environment. That's its entire purpose. Intuition exists to create safety. Hello and welcome to the Unspecial Podcast. I'm here with Kelsey Spanbauer, also known as the.family.undoctor on Instagram. And Kelsey is the clinic director of Engeti. Engeti. and Getty Wellness, Advanced Mitochondria Medicine for Autism Pans and Vaccine Injuries. And I love this slogan, parents getting their kids back, no BS. No BS allowed. No BS allowed. ⁓ So what if your child's symptoms aren't a defect, but a defense? What if the meltdowns, the inflammation, the shutdowns aren't random, but the body's saying, don't feel safe? Today we're talking about cell danger response, a mom's journey with her kids, a past in midwifery, and just really combining all the good stuff and the science behind why kids get stuck in survival mode and why so many parents are waking up to the idea that healing doesn't start with control, it starts with safety. And here's the part that makes people uncomfortable. When parents understand what's actually happening inside their child's body, they stop outsourcing their authority. So this episode is about biology and tuition and the quiet revolution of families choosing informed intentional medical decisions for their kids. Kelsey, thanks for being on. I love it. And so you're coming to us live in Bend, Oregon. I'm in Tijuana, Mexico. My wife is- Wanna swap? Yeah. It's funny. I own a construction business in North Idaho and ⁓ we just hired a guy and my main guy, Drew, I was like, hey, just tell the new guy that I live on a beach in Mexico. What he asked where I am. So, you know, it's mind games. It's how you perceive things, right? Totally. Changes everything for sure. All I'm gonna rapid fire through some questions. like 30 second response. Okay. Off the cuff. What is one common trigger that keeps kids in stress? Screens, EMF, blue light, our biology gets its organizational signals from light. If we're living indoors under LED lights, constantly being inundated with EMF, energy drops in the cells, one the most harmful things for cellular energy production. Low energy is the number one trigger for our cell danger response, which is that biological, mitochondrial state of stress. Ooh, and that is the world we live in. That is our world. Man, wouldn't it be nice to just go back to horse and buggy days? Yeah. I mean, it feels, think, again, back to mindset, it feels so much more overwhelming than it is. When I decided to tackle lighting in my clinic and at my house, I thought it was going to be so much harder than it was. I spent like 50 bucks and we eat dinner by candlelight. We don't watch TV after sunset and we have incandescent bulbs I ordered from Canada. And done, you know? So I think part of it too is just being like, okay, one step at a time. it's more like living to the circadian rhythm. Yes. All of the circadian biology rhythm is what organizes our mitochondria. It's not just about hormones and weight loss and sleep. It's how our cells get their marching orders for the day. It's really profoundly impactful for cell danger response. Probably one of the most significant impact you can make is changing lighting, changing your light exposure. Wow. And it's 50 bucks. It's cheap. It's really not that hard once you do it. You just change out some light bulbs and... It just feels overwhelming because it's not how we live. It's a paradigm shift. Right, We need sunlight. We're sunlight deficient. We should be treating sunlight deficiency before we're giving our kids 30 random supplements made in a lab. Most of the stuff that's out there is poison anyway. And they really need light. If they don't have light, it doesn't matter if you give them the best supplement in the world, their body won't have the instructions for how to use it anyway. It's so important to bring that stress response into a healing response. What about like in the winter time in like North Idaho or in those darker areas where it's dark at four and some days and weeks the sun doesn't even come out. Like red light? Yeah, red light can be really helpful for especially in the morning more towards sunrise or if there's a lower light day for treating that deficiency, a quality red light. A lot of what they sell online still has that high flicker, which stresses the cells. So getting a quality one, that can be really helpful. But also remembering that our biology is designed to sync to where we live. So if you live in a colder climate with lower light, you're more adapted to that, and that's okay. If you have a kid in a critical state, go to the beach, take a trip, do as much as you can, take three months. if you're able to, to go somewhere warmer, especially during that initial healing stage. But long-term, your biology is really wise. It's not gonna just start sucking because you live in a northern latitude. It's gonna adapt to that. Wow, wild, wild. The body, the human body is a crazy thing. What's one sign a child's body might be asking for safety, not suppression? They're not sleeping. They're anxious. Oh, you said one sign. Those are those are two things. I think especially if you're starting any sort of medical protocol and you see you went out there for a second. If you see poor sleep, less restorative sleep, more anxiety, that's a sign or any symptom with a new protocol that they really need safety. Like in their environment before they can Yeah, yeah, Sleep. Seven to nine hours a day? It depends on their age. Some kids need more than that. Some kids might do okay with less than that. It's more of the quality of the sleep. If they're tossing and turning all night, if they're not waking up rested, if they're mouth breathing, then they're still getting that danger signal from their nervous system through the night. And whatever it is, that's going on either in their environment or in how what you're doing to treat them. You know, if you're treating underlying medical conditions, then that's a sign they're really just not tolerating that or there's still something in their environment, which could be a million things, right? That could be light, that could be mold, that could be bedding, that could be emotional stress, that could be inherited trauma, that could be heavy metals, that could be a lot of things in their day to day that's disturbing their sleep. So that's where parents are really the best investigators with their kids. And I think if we can become more curious and start watching our kids from what does this mean? We have this innate intuitive response where we just typically know, ⁓ I think it was this. And if we can observe their behavior from that place instead of fear of, my gosh, does this mean this isn't working? Does this mean we to something different? Does this mean the mold is back? But really just sit and listen. Why is my child tossing and turning all night long? We might notice, ⁓ my gosh, it cycles with the moon or, ⁓ it was after we started going to this new school. And then we really can start to understand which of the, can be 10 million things, right? Right. It's our parental intuition that's going to get us to the target the fastest in my opinion. Yeah. And that's one thing a doctor can't tell a Because a parent knows most. So what's one empowering phrase parents can say in a medical appointment? My favorite is I am willing to and I am not willing to. And so I think if we're talking specifically about autoimmunity, pansor, or autism, and we're looking at that sort of situation, I am willing to walk my kid through this medical condition or this one to their tolerance. I am not willing to push them into a herx that disrupts their life or that they can't tolerate. I'm not willing to violate my intuition. I think those statements are really powerful because they're boundaries that don't require the other person to do anything. They can't do anything to infringe on I am willing and I am not willing to. That's good. That's good. Okay. Okay. So there was one daily habit that supports nervous system regulation. Sunshine, getting outside, getting barefoot. It's like the thing sounds so simple and silly, yeah. Throw your kids naked outside. Well, that's funny. In the COVID days, we were in North Idaho and I got COVID, I got sick. And ⁓ I was like, I just need vitamin D. So I literally, just sat outside naked. I mean, we lived on four acres, like no one could see anything. And, ⁓ you know, in a couple of days, I slept for like two days and then I was good to go. Yeah. I mean, use, discernment, but for children, they need to be outside. They need to be, have unscheduled time. Our kids are over-scheduled. They're rushed. They're indoors. They're not getting sunshine. They're not getting fresh air. And while those sounds like simple things, when it comes to cell danger response, they have the biggest impact on how our mitochondria behave, which is really profound. I mean, we can talk about all these fancy biohacks and functional medicine things that are available to families these days, but out of everything on the planet, what impacts how our mitochondria behave the most is sunlight, electrons, and water. Water. ⁓ yeah. So there's a lot of rabbit holes there. I know there's so many, so many different ways that we could go. ⁓ okay. Okay. So there was one belief about kids health you've completely rethought. We don't have to do it all. You know, I think when I first started working in this space, specifically with autism, and pans panas and my own children and their health struggles, felt like, okay, we can identify all the major problems and then we want to fix all the major problems. But I think the error in that is there's an order and a way that our biology repairs our own tissue, our gut tissue, our neural tissue. And if our biology doesn't do it all at once, We shouldn't be doing all at once like detoxing and infections and cellular repair and diet and you know, lot of parents are also doing ABA and all these other therapies and we don't have to do it all at once. You can understand that your child has a severe yeast overgrowth problem. Like that's pretty much clinically true for all kids. It doesn't mean that you have to treat it right away and it doesn't mean you have to treat it the same time. that you address parasites and the same time that you address everything else. There's definitely things that need to be prioritized, which would be metacondrial function, cell danger response, terrain. If you don't have a biological terrain, right, like the environment of the body, of the cell, to treat yeast, doing that along with 10 million other things is just gonna burn up all the energy that's left in the body and you're not gonna be anywhere better than you were before, so. I think having the, it takes a little bit of trust in our biology and in ourselves as parents and in our kids to say, we can trust that the body has wisdom in why it does things in a certain order and work with that and trust that some of these things that feel really overwhelming might actually resolve themselves. And then if they don't, we get symptoms that remind us, okay, we got to deal with this one now. Now it's time. ⁓ Where has all this been lost in time, like in society? Is it just the way the world is going and all the different things and... I mean, I guess I can't speak to that factually, but I can give you my opinion, is, I think it's in a way, it's our own fault where we have abdicated our own authority and allowed other people to make decisions for us and given our responsibility away. And so now we're in this position where we're realizing we want our power back, but also now the weight of the responsibility of what it means to take it back feels overwhelming because we haven't exercised those muscles. so we have this, you know, my background is in midwifery. I've been delivering babies and practicing out of the hospital space for my entire adult life. started, I opened my first private practice before I was 21. I started very, very young in this space. What I can tell you is parents are being gaslit, they're being misled, they're being coerced. Frankly, they're being abused from preconception care through fertility care, if you have it, all the way through prenatal care, through labor, through birth, through postpartum. We're being conditioned to believe we need someone else's permission. We need someone to tell us when to feed our baby or when to push when we're delivering our baby. It's ridiculous. That is innately in us. And the moment we gave that away, We started down this cascade of being susceptible to being manipulated and not knowing what to do. And I that goes back historically just with the institution of medicine, frankly, and obstetrics and whatever. And we could be the devil's advocate and say, they don't all have intention to harm. And I think that's true. It's also true that there are forces with intention to harm and that starts with taking your power away. And when we shift out of making decisions out of love into making decisions out of fear, now we're in a really tough place because before we can even help our kids, we have to completely realign ourself and reconnect with our own intuition. Or else how in the heck do we navigate the world that we live in today? Yeah. Well, in that fear piece, you know, you can manipulate a population to set a fear, which is crazy because my fourth kid, he had an adventurous life. My wife was pregnant, 25 weeks in diagnosis of cancer. He stayed in that womb for four more weeks. And even when he came out, the second, third day, they come in and they want to give him a pet peeve. Wow. At 29 weeks? Yeah, yeah, yeah, he was three pounds. And he's in the NICU and they come in and then they drop the fear on it hard. And I'm versed in this stuff and I know, I know. But even in that moment of like, okay, like just complete ⁓ trauma and fear of like, what's gonna happen to this guy? It was even them explaining all of the, you know, the yes of that B. I listened to it, but I was in such a state of you know, of an organization and I could feel that fear. And then like, I don't know, a couple months later, they're trying to push the RSV. Yeah. And even then I'm like, man, what if he got, what if he got it because I didn't get him the shot and blah, blah, blah. But thankfully, you know, I stepped back and I like. came back to base and I'm like, this is what I know. I'm not going to let them and their whatever they're saying affect what I know. so thankfully we didn't have to do it. I mean, I also was talking to my wife and then a couple of friends and they're like, what are you thinking? You're like, you're like the guy who would never even close to any of this. was like, I know, but we just, we're in like the trenches of cancer and all that stuff. Yeah, that fear is real. they As soon as you step into that, you're a mess. It's really hard to operate from a place of fear. It's really, really hard. you know, I have extensive experience working with kind of the holistic, natural, right, more aligned with like personal medical autonomy, your rogue doctors, and then also mainstream. And what I can tell you is I've literally seen them tell parents, pregnant parents, If you don't test for diabetes, both you and your baby are gonna die. It's like, I'm sorry, doing this test is gonna save both of our life for something that we probably, wait, what? Like it doesn't make any sense and I think we need to be aware that whatever your spiritual belief, like orientation is, there's an assignment of authority that exists in the universe and. In the medical system, they are trained in and operate in this fear in such a profound way. They're pressuring you to give your baby happy because they're scared to death, right? Scared to death of litigation, scared to death of losing their license, scared to death of looking to death, to death of looking bad for a colleague, scared of, okay, well, what if everything I learned actually is true and this baby is going to die? Whatever. And if you abdicate your authority and then give that responsibility to them, now you're stuck under this same operating system of fear. Like you're putting yourself under whatever they're under. That's a really big deal. Who you come into agreement and into alignment with when you're in such a vulnerable place is a really critical decision. People don't think about that very often. Yeah, I was having this conversation with our chiropractor, neuro-focused chiropractor. And we were talking about how the system is legally obligated to rob you of hope, know, the antidote to fear. And they cannot legally give you hope. Like they have to give fear because of lawsuits. It's wild. But then when you, like you said, when you get back to how the body was intricately formed and how the body is designed to heal itself and you can start to regain some of that authority and then you start to operate out of that, then real hope is born. ⁓ So how did you get to where you are? What's your journey with your kids and- ⁓ gosh. I'm trying to catch up with you, you rattle enough stuff like- Alright, you know your stuff. How did you get I've lived a few lifetimes in my short little time on earth, think. ⁓ Suffering has a way of empowering us. ⁓ But I, started in midwifery, which again, chose me. I didn't wake up one day and say, I want to deliver babies. It kind of happened through a cascade of events and I had this understanding through the process, this is what I'm meant to do. And so moving into that space, really growing in this, what we're talking about, Medical autonomy is so important and understanding this fear versus love and how that impacts parenting and how parents are being treated and how parents should be empowered and how that impacts not just the birth, but parenting was a really big part of my early practice. so being in that position of, you know, I really value medical freedom and autonomy in the birth space started attracting more higher risk clients, maybe those who couldn't find providers or who would be ruled out for home birth or natural birth. And so then I found this need to kind of beef up my clinical skills. And so I started studying more functional med, integrative medicine. I became a master clinical herbalist, which was a huge undertaking, believe it or not. I mean, I think there's lots of ways you can be an herbalist and all are amazing, but this was a pretty profound amount of work compared to other things that I've done. And so I started formulating herbs and writing formulas. I've written some formulas for companies and I write custom formulas for my own patients. And then again, it kind of picked me. had my own children. And I was doing really basic pediatric work. So parents would bring their kids to me instead of the hospital if they had whooping cough or suture, needed sutures or were sick or constipated. I wasn't doing auto-immunity and autism right out the gate. And then when I had my kids, ⁓ my own journey started. with some pretty profound difficulty, I think. And I haven't talked about it a lot on the internet, so I feel a little nervous. But ⁓ I was in a really abusive relationship. And for me, I believe that was one of the primary triggers for my kids' health issues, was that environment wasn't safe. And ⁓ my oldest ended up developing Lyme's, Babesia, and Bartonella after a tick bite. who he's now in remission. He kind of teetered on the pans pandas line. ⁓ I remember watching him jump on my youngest and try and strangle him. And just would his pupils would dilate. It was like he wasn't there. He had these horrible night terrors was hallucinating. Couldn't, couldn't see the sun. Like the sun caused him so much pain. He'd have these migraines. He was like this. I mean, we live outdoors, you know, we're campers and anyway. And then my youngest had some sort of undiagnosable epilepsy as a baby and ⁓ was nonverbal, had some very profound development delays and like one side of his body was all tight and kind of twisted. He didn't walk or crawl normally. And none of it was diagnosable with him. It was all pretty mysterious. think, you know, for me personally, I believe a lot of it traces back to that trauma and his nervous system and how that impacted his development. and I remember with both my children were the moment came that I was like, okay, we're going to solve this. There was no support in the mainstream medical system, which I didn't believe enough in to seek it. But because of my the legal situation, I had to have some of those appointments. And I remember going to the best neurologists in the state and they all just look at me and say, it's normal. ⁓ I'm like, he's having seizures every 20 minutes all night long. not normal. He can't move normally. He's not, he stopped speaking. He was saying words and now he doesn't speak. Like it's not normal. They're like, well his his EEG was fine. I'm like, what, so one five minutes you were like, like, like not only am I this kid's mother holding him while he sees us all night, I'm also a seasoned clinician. Like I, I see more newborns than you. Like, come on. What, what does that like when, cause I hear it over and over again. That's like, ⁓ it's normal. It's normal. It's normal. What is it like for a parent when you get that from doctors, just piss you off. Yeah, I mean, I kind of expected it. I think I'd had enough experience that I expected they wouldn't be very helpful. I was kind of just scratching off the list, you know, covering my bases, so to speak. But it feels violating. I mean, if I were to pick a word, would say it feels violating because they're gaslighting you. They're telling you it's probably not really seizures or and it's different. It's different if you're a nervous Nellie new mom. who your kid sneezes and they kind of shake and you think it's a seizure. That's totally different to be reassured than to be told, you know, you're just overreacting like he's not having seizures all night long. I'm like, it's like they're trying to get into your mind and make you change your reality. it literally is guess-wise. It's awful. It's disgusting. Gosh. So what happened? heartbreaking because that's That's what parents are experiencing every day, especially with, you know, there's a lot more resources for autism now, but for Pan's Pandas, it's just... By the time parents figure out what's actually going on, they've been slapped sideways so many times that it's just trauma after trauma after trauma. hard. Will you and that's why these conversations are so important. Will you go into Pan's Pandas? Like break it down and how did you treat your kid to get through it? So it started with Before my kid had that experience, had actually treated some, I had already started treating pins in clinic. I say treated, but I work more like client to client than doctor to patient. I don't like that power over dynamic. ⁓ I like to teach parents how to do it instead of send them with a protocol because the science can feel overwhelming and complicated. But it's not too hard. Like there's no parent I've ever met that can't figure out how to do this when they're given the tools. And when you understand the reason why and flip your mindset into curiosity, it's totally, you can do it. ⁓ So I had some neurologists and other doctors in the community sending me patients. That's how I started doing this work is they were watching my kids heal and change and They were watching some of the, I would say, way less complex than what I do now ⁓ cases that I'd taken in our family clinic just totally transformed easily with very simple cellular medicine. And so they just started sending me people that they couldn't help. like, I don't know, see. And so we formed these really beautiful relationships in our community. to work with other providers who believe in the cellular medicine and the mitochondrial medicine, or at least they believe in the evidence of it, but it's not their modality. And so that's kind how I got to where I am now. And then I just was starving, like so hungry for learning to understand biology. And I still do. Like I was up at 5 a.m. this morning training with another practitioner looking more into cancer. So there's... There's always so much more we can learn and grow. I think looking for a practitioner, if I was going to, that's the one thing I would look for is are they curious? Are they learning? Can they teach me to harness my curiosity and turn that into wisdom? That's what we really need. ⁓ So PANS, PANS PANAS. The first case I had of PANS PANAS was an atypical presentation. So we learned kind of through the gauntlet that way. how to make sure I didn't ever miss it again. It took me a couple of months longer to catch it than I wish I would have, but it was my first time. And it was absolutely incredible to watch this child get their life back, to have gone from being in the hospital every weekend with mystery, pain, and nightmares, and hallucinations, and night frights, to loving their life. You know, they had ⁓ ticks that resolved, they were able to go back to sleep, OCD and anxiety. ⁓ And so when I experienced what I did with my oldest son with his Lyme's disease, I did something that I probably wouldn't have done that I'd love to share because it was a really healing experience for me. I found a naturopath. Normally I can be very type A. So my way of treating him would have been, I'm doing it my way and no one will touch him, look at his labs or talk to him. I'm very, very protective after experiencing the system we were just speaking of. But it's hard. to treat your own kid as a clinician and I wanted that support. And so I kind of wrote up, this is how I'd like to treat him. Like I want to use the cellular medicine. I want to focus on the mitochondria. I want to restore the structures. And then I kind of explained like, this is how I want to address it through cell danger response. And there's an naturopath I'd worked with. And so I kind of pitched it to her and I was like, I want to treat the limes with an advanced cellular detox, I want to do it this way, but I don't want to do it alone. would you consider working like I was like, would you consider working with me? I'll pay you, but we'll do it my way basically. And she was like, I love it. I love it. She's like, we'll learn from each other. We'll work together. And so we cozied up for a year, maybe a year and a half. And I learned so much and it was so healing to I didn't need her to validate me, but to have someone that wasn't the mom, right? To have someone that wasn't me say, yeah, you're right. He is healing. Like I can, my nervous system can remember the moment where I said, I think he's in remission, but I, but just the way I said it, there was evidence I wasn't a hundred percent sure. I needed someone else and she's like, yeah, you're right. He's in remission. And I just remember that. So that collaborative effort was so healing, I think for me emotionally. And it was so nice not to be alone and to have someone to kind of bounce things back and forth. But yeah, for him, we worked on mitochondrial structure. We did lipid therapy. I did a little bit of amino acid therapy and then worked up through other cellular healing, did a lot of herbs. And then I treated the limes and babesia and Bartonella one at a time with herbs. So I would target one, target the other. And we did it mostly by symptoms. instead of running labs all the time, I could, and this is where curiosity is boss with, with clinical decisions and, making them shared with parents, using the parents intuition instead of a piece of paper that is this tiny little blip in time. I could tell which bacteria was driving the car by his behavior. And so we would switch the herbs and we would switch the treatment based on that. And we would, this is what I think is really, really important and why I teach parents tools. It takes, for most kids with PANS, PANDAS, it takes a while before you can even treat the limes. They don't tolerate it. We have to repair those structures and... put that fire out and calm down that system, get the immune system on board a little more organized, and then they'll start to tolerate the treatments better. But then if you understand why you're doing what you're doing and how it works, you tweak each treatment cycle. Each one is different. There isn't one protocol that works for every kid. There isn't one protocol that works for every bacteria or one protocol that works for every cycle. We're constantly adjusting it. based on symptoms. And this is where if we can let go of this rigidity and trust the biology and start looking at symptoms like they're signals, they're telling us, you know, like for example, just really specific example, if you're starting a treatment and stimming goes up, that can mean a few different things. But the top two things to investigate first are where is the nervous system dysregulation coming from? Like they are trying so hard to regulate is what you're doing too much for them. Is there something else in their environment that needs to shift and to be able to have the ability to tolerate this? Is it just too soon? Are we doing the wrong thing? Like that's where parents really can partner with their provider to figure out why that's happening because it's not just, yeah, they're stimming more and then. That's a signal that we need to listen to. The other thing is, are we releasing toxins? If stimming all of a sudden goes up during a treatment, you might be stirring around toxins that their body isn't equipped to eliminate safely or quickly and it's driving more inflammation and nervous system dysregulation. that either needs to be addressed or that treatment needs to stop because it's not just, well, can we make the stimming stop? It's why is it happening that right? And I think that's where pans and pandas can be so overwhelming. Is there so many symptoms that don't seem to make sense? But it's like when you have a newborn, you learn their language, right? You learn what this cry means and that cry means and this straight leg, stanky leg, like you learn what they all mean. Our kids with the neurodevelopmental, you know, things, it's the same. Learn what their symptoms mean and be curious. And then you'll, you can learn to tweak and shift their, their treatment or what you're doing to support them based on what do they actually need? When do they actually need it? And when can they actually tolerate it? Because treating infections, dealing with toxins at the wrong time is usually worse than just leaving it and supporting them. Timing is really important. Cause what? you overwhelm the system. Yeah, and if there's not enough gas in the tank, they just can't do it. If their cells don't have the energy, they can't do it. They can't tolerate it. you know, I think that's where really restoring the mitochondrial structures. if we can, every parent can do that. Every parent can reduce the harmful signals. causing chaos in the cells. Maybe not every parent can treat Babesia, right? That can be really intense to do by yourself. Yeah, some people might tolerate that, some people won't. But every parent can deal with the cellular signal clutter and create a safer environment so there's less confusion between the gut and the brain and there's more organized signaling between the cells and the immune system. And then everything you do is going to work better. So the root cause and the treatment of it all is repairing those cells. And this is where my belief is pretty deep and profound, but I believe our body is designed to self-repair. It's only designed to self-repair. It isn't designed to attack itself or tear down. Those are all mis- communications signals from toxicity from stressors and you're flipping the whole system on its head right now. I know. But if we look at like let's look at cell danger response specifically and as we move through the cycle. Yeah. Yeah. Can you break that down? then. So the first thing that happens and I love this, we think about mitochondria as like our energy making machines and they are. But they also survey for danger, right? They're also like always checking things out, looking around, seeing is there anything that could be harmful to me? It's one of our primary survival mechanisms in our biology. It's incredible. And so they receive all these signals. Like I said, the ones that impact their behavior the most are light electrons, is energy magnetism from the earth and water. And so, but there's a million other things, right? Stress, inherited trauma, beliefs, gratitude, toxins, mold, EMF, all these things also, limes, they all impact our membranes and our mitochondria behavior as well. So they sense these threats or really in our world, whatever hodgepodge, like they get the kitchen sink of threats, right? And they start what's been called the cell danger response. which has three different elements, three different parts of the cycle. And what's really important to understand, and this is where I'm careful not to misconstrue this, is it's not a harmful cycle. When the cycle completes, we get adaptability, increased resiliency, our biology upgrades. It's only harmful if we get stuck in... the first or second or even third part of the cycle. We really want it to be initiated, completed. So I think I love to explain it this way because parents can see it in their children. The first step is I call it animal in a cage, CDR1. This is when the cell isolates itself from the rest of the body. It breaks off communication. Normally our cells are organized. They work together. the gut and the brain and the immune system and all the cells between, they're constantly communicating. First thing it does is it isolates, it signals inflammation that is designed to prevent further damage. Okay, so it's saying I'm gonna isolate myself, I'm gonna cause a little inflammation, we're doing damage control. These are your hypersensitive kids, any sort of chemical, any sort of sound. ⁓ They just are so overstimulated, overwhelmed, everything sets them off. They don't sleep. There's severe anxiety, severe OCD. This is acute. This is autism onset. is pans pan is onset. This is where a lot of autoimmunity sets in. And it really the best way to describe it is that they're like an animal in a cage. And you can see that in their behavior too. Yeah, okay. Okay. So maybe the response is one. Yeah. then it's... Threats, Yep. Okay. Tracking. I'm tracking. It's... you can go so deep into the science, but this is what is so beautiful is nerds like me can nerd on that for hours, but it doesn't have to be that complicated. You don't have to understand any of that to use the basics to completely transform the way you think about medicine. Okay. If there's enough safety input, safety signals, and structural repair of the mitochondria. So when they move into cell danger response, they actually mutate. gosh. Okay, okay. It can be described as a regression. They actually change their development phase, the mitochondria do. It's remarkable how what what we see mirroring in ourselves and their membranes become really rigid and stiff. So cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes are usually fluid. They move, they let things come in, they let things leave. They become stiff and rigid, just like our kids do. And if there's enough repair that the mitochondria can kind of move through their next development phase, there's a little bit of membrane repair, then we kind of shift into CDR2, which is where we see a little more flexibility, less gut symptoms. Maybe less constipation doesn't mean there's never any, but there's some improvement. They're a little more connected, like maybe better eye contact. Maybe this is the moment where you're like, ⁓ I feel like they were in the room today versus totally checked out. ⁓ More curious, maybe more willingness to connect with others, right? The animal's still in the cage, but they're kind of like sticking their nose out. They're looking around. They're like, what's going on? It's a very cautious healing state where the body begins to cautiously repair tissue. And the first tissue after membranes, the body starts to repair is the gut. And so I think this is such a perfect example of how our body heals. When it has what it needs, the body can repair the entire epithelial lining of the gut in three days, three to seven days. its own with no herbs, no supplements, three days. Wow. And so we have parents that are spending years giving 30 supplements a day to clear leaky gut and all these infections that are driving LPS up in the brain and leaky gut in the brain. And those are real problems. But we need to understand how closely that's linked to cell danger response. Because if we follow that same cycle the body does and we remove enough interference and get biology on board. The body can completely repair it. The problem is we live in an environment that makes it really challenging, right? There's glyphosate and everything and these kids have lead in their gut and aluminum and all these infections that keep driving holes. So there's a bit of a dance to say, when do we pause and repair and then when do we intervene and say, okay, now it's time to add these things. So we can be really smart and say, Let's change everything in the environment that we can so that we're not just like patching holes, you know, with all these supplements and things and understand that each kid is really different. And people get mad on me on Instagram. They're like, why don't you just tell us how to do it? I'm like, well. Why don't you bring your kid over for the weekend and I will? Yeah, why don't you tell me how to do it because you know your kid you know their environment, you know their triggers and it's just the bio our biology is so Profoundly capable to heal itself to detox itself to repair itself, but it won't do it if it feels threatened and so this is where it's It's very challenging but also very simple at the same time. Is our environment is a bigger part of the problem than just the biochemistry is. The infections and the toxins suck and they're a big problem and they can be a mouthful, a handful to deal with. But if we aren't changing our environment, that stuff isn't gonna, it might help a little, but it's not gonna bring your kid into full remission because just like my son, It wouldn't have mattered how many supplements or adjustments he had if I had stayed in that abusive environment that changed his brain chemistry, he wouldn't have healed. If my son didn't have the right light exposure, all the treatment we did for Lyme wouldn't have mattered because the autoimmunity would have just gotten worse and worse and worse and worse. So we understand, what is the body asking for? What does it need? What are its foundational needs? And we build those. so that it can complete cell danger response. And I think this is a really overwhelming idea. And this is where I love to say this is there's 500 trillion mitochondria in the body. 500 trillion? 500 trillion. A lot of them are in the brain. We can see how that significantly impacts autism. Yeah. Because so many of them are in the brain. And here's just like a freebie I'll interrupt my brain of thought with, but like Mitochondria can alter the way the brain interprets information. So sensory sensitivities and all of that, the mitochondria can shift the way the brain interprets the same information one day to the next. The profound impact of how mitochondria behave on the gut and on the brain is it blows my mind how overlooked it is in autism because it's sitting right there. the elephant in the room, nobody's talking about because the addressing it feels overwhelming and it's not popular to talk about. But there's 500 trillion by the time you have a diagnosis, 70 to 80 % of them are not functioning normally. They're mutated. ⁓ my gosh. That feels pretty overwhelming. But if you flip the script on that and then you can tell yourself this, this is what I tell parents. It sucks to find that out, that that percentage of your kids' mitochondria are mutating and not behaving in a way that's beneficial to them. But that means if we can get them to 60, 70 % functioning more optimally, structurally sound mitochondria, that is the place where we see reversal of irreversible disease. We don't need We don't need to get to zero. 100%. We need, we need like for most kids, we need a 10 to 20 % shift. Wow. And there's so much you can do to help that. And if you take responsibility back as a parent and really sit without fear and without the overwhelm and look at their environment and start making the shifts, it's not going to happen overnight. It takes time, right? Development is like It's unpredictable and it takes time. A baby doesn't develop overnight. Your kid isn't going to just all of a sudden develop overnight. But you can change the way the most impactful organelles and their cells behave overnight. Which can start that healing process, which is very remarkable. And the biggest evidence that you'll see is that increased resiliency, increased flexibility, decreased sensitivity, curiosity, play. If your kid isn't playing, like when we look at chemistry, I'm just, I'm going off on a nerd tangent now on you, but play is the opposite of trauma. You see your kids starting to play, their brain is not in trauma mode in that moment. Take a minute and celebrate. Like what you're doing is maybe they're not speaking yet, but their brain chemistry is changing and that's brilliant. That's so fascinating. Because, yeah, I'm thinking of my youngest Jack. ⁓ He had all the adventurous life and the NICU and all that. And for like eight months, he perceived like he was developing, typically. But my special ed background, could see he wasn't. And I would watch him and he wasn't playing. He was just kind of existing and stoic. And it didn't flip the script until we started getting him into a neuro chiropractor. And once he started getting adjustments and all the, you know, the subluxations and the nerves were able to fire and find the pathway to where to the brain. ⁓ Within like days, that was the first thing I noticed. I was watching it. I'm like, ⁓ my gosh, he's playing by himself right now. That's crazy you said that. So then what's the biggest thing to get those cells into repair mode? Other than, you know, sleep and sleeping is when the repair takes place? Yeah, sleep is really important for healing and for repair. So that's where light, I think for a lot of people comes to the top of the list, you know, and. things you can do at home without any sort clinical support is flip the breaker at night. Get all the electricity off in your house that you can. If that's not possible, like if you work at night in a home office or something, hardwire the internet. People think I'm crazy when I say that. My clinic is Wi-Fi free. You'd be best friends with my wife. Yeah. I mean, my... ⁓ My staff, if they ever watch this, they're going to be mad. They were upset when I was like, we're hardwiring the office because they don't want to be tied to like a little cord to their face. But within two weeks of hardwiring the office, they stopped getting headaches and stopped having anxiety attacks at their desk. it's so the the EMF disrupts the electron transport chain, which is how our cells make energy. The number one signal that triggers cell danger response is not enough energy in the cell. So if you want your kid to come out of cell danger response to complete the cycle and have increased resiliency, you have to defend their energy. Autism is a low oxygen, low energy state. They need all the oxygen and all the energy that they can get. So repairing the mitochondrial structures is one of the first clinical things you can do. It's so easy. And than reducing anything that's going to steal their energy. So breaker off at night. You can even just flip the breaker to their room if life goes on after kids go to bed. ⁓ No Wi-Fi, at least unplug the Wi-Fi at night, bare minimum. It costs like, I have these EMF shielded cables. I just plugged them into my router, plug them into your laptop or your phone, put everything in airplane mode, Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off. All the things have to be turned off or they still emit EMF. And then you have to log into your router and turn off the 5G and the 2G at the same time. It's one little button. You click disable, disable, save. You're done. No more Wi-Fi. It takes 20 minutes to completely eliminate Wi-Fi and still have fantastic internet. ⁓ If you have Roku or Apple, just buy the one that has the HDMI port. It feels so much more... It's like taxes. always feels like it's gonna be so much harder than it actually is. But doing that and then no screens after sunset. This is a huge, this is really hard. A lot of parents, especially with picky eating kids, they're putting their kids in a high chair, giving them a screen and feeding them food. This is gonna perpetuate picky eating and sell danger response. We really need to limit blue light because if you think about it, Our biology organizes itself through sunlight. Yeah. Blue light is disorganizing to our body. So if they're not getting enough sunlight, and then we're sending all this chaotic blue light input, and it doesn't mean no blue light ever, but they certainly shouldn't be sitting in front of a Wi-Fi enabled device for hours or while they're eating if you're working on picky eating. And it just tells their nervous system there's danger. there's danger, there's danger. So we can get them as much sunlight as we can. If you're absolutely going to do screen time for school or whatever, download it on the device, turn the Wi-Fi Bluetooth off, put it in airplane mode, give them blue light blocking glasses or make sure it happens during the middle of the day when the sun's the brightest, blue light's going to be less harmful to them. If it's during the day instead of early morning or late at night. And then eat dinner by candlelight. Honestly, that's one stupid trick that can change picky eating and meal times. It doesn't happen the first day, but eating dinner by candlelight or if you have very adventurous, expressive children, use battery powered. you know, like you just bring it down or salt lance or candles, a pie on attached to the wall where they can't reach them. ⁓ Because that Firelight says safety to their cells and to their nervous system. And it can help change that routine in the evening to be a routine that feels safe instead of overwhelming. Yeah, and there's so many things I need to change. There's so many things we can, but light should be at the top of the list for everybody because we're exposed to it all day long. especially with autism and autoimmunity, it's disorganized signaling and light organizes it. So why is it not at the top of our list? Right, right. And these are such easy like little fixes. Yeah, they may be a little inconvenient, but over some time you're going to get used to it and it'll be easier. And even like even Wi-Fi. I we have the little plug and it turns off automatically. ⁓ Yeah. 8 p.m. Or whatever it is and then it turns back on at 8 a.m. There's that option as well man This is a very quick hour Yeah, it doesn't change symptoms overnight, but it changes the way your mitochondria behave. So then everything else that you're doing Yeah has biology more likely to be on board helping versus resisting you because there's too many signals like they're They're sensitive little suckers. Yeah. So then what once you do all those things, you start to repair the mitochondria, your cells start to find safety. Is that when you start to incorporate herbs? Yeah. Herbs are one of my favorite tools because not only do they address some biochemical issues. like yeast overgrowth, SIBO, toxicity, I don't detox with herbs. ⁓ But they can support biology's natural detox process and they also send safety signals to the cells. They interact with our biology like food. So the way that we use herbs can be a danger signal or a safety signal. ⁓ But those can be really calming and soothing to the nervous system, to the gut, to the brain, ⁓ and to the cells as well. So if you think back to animal in a cage, we are never detoxing or treating infections in that stage. we are in, if your child fits into that CDR1, that is not where you're adding any harsh protocols. is everything you're doing is reassuring that animal that it's okay. You're removing as many danger signals as you can and flooding them with safe light, with quality water, with. grounding and all of those beautiful things with gratitude. Yeah, this is You know this this story. I had this kid with pretty significant pans ⁓ Who's made it really remarkable most people would say miraculous turn around and I remember When he first came into my office He was so aggressive with his siblings parents were worried about them not surviving. Like it was intense. And he got better and better and better, like slowly, slowly incrementally, like is pretty typical. And then he came into my office one day, walked up to me, looks me in the eyes, pulls me down close to him and says, my body is healing. ⁓ And He describes these adults coming around him and praying for him and expressing healing over him. And it completely changed his mindset, his belief, and the way his biology was responding to everything we were doing and everything in his environment. And his sensitivities came down. And I think whether or not you believe in prayer or healing, gratitude and the expression of gratitude changes how our cells behave in a nanosecond. Yeah. And those are all things every family can do if you can't access high level, you know, clinical care. Like we're putting all this information out for free for anyone that can't afford. mean, our course is so inexpensive anyway. much parents can do like there is no reason why any child should not be able to move through some of these things. And herbs are so affordable as well. The one thing you have to be careful with with herbs, will say is source. They can be really contaminated with mold and heavy metals. You shouldn't be buying them off Amazon. Buy them from a trusted source and make sure they're organic. ⁓ There's a million herbs you can choose from, so a little bit of guidance can be helpful, but it's not rocket science. Man. What would it look like to work with you? We're to land on plane somewhere, but this is a good closure. What would it look like to work with you? You have a course? You have your own practice? Two main ways families can work with us. One is clinical practice. Like we have our one-on-one coaching programs, which is more of a concierge medicine type format where we're spending a lot of one-on-one time with families, coaching them, teaching them, going through labs, ⁓ talking through every steps, walking them through the whole process. And then we have our un-doctor school. Which is what's in there right now is the advanced cell danger response course. And then we're going through together every month, the steps in order to heal, to move through cell danger response and the practical thing. So it's full of resources, like how do we change light? How do we change water? And then the clinical stuff too, like how do you use supplements, where to get them? We prescribe them. they're, if you have to have a license to order them, we make sure that they're available. and then what's also in there is a basic for, for detox for using zeolite. And I say that cautiously because most kids are not in a place that they should be doing that. But when the information came out from the health department about vaccines, everyone started doing these detoxes and kids started getting really sick. Like it's causing bad reactions. So we put that in there for parents to have a basic cellular. perspective, understanding if they're going to do detox, this is how to do it in a structured way that's actually safe, that works with their biology. But my hope is that people join the community. There's parent support groups every week. We love on our families, we give them tons and tons and tons of information and resources. We do live mentoring. And then we're walking through this year, like I said, all of the practical steps through cell danger response and a more advanced level understanding. I'm a nerd. I think it's awesome. Our parents think it's awesome. So that's what we have to give for now. But our intention is to give as much to the home as we can. This belongs in the home. It's going to take me a while to get it there. But before I die, every parent should have access to all of this information. Well, this is massive and I'll have all these in the show notes and I'll be spreading this far and wide for sure. Cause this is hands down something that's so overlooked and so simple. I mean, I've been in this space for a while and I've learned so much in this last hour that I didn't even know. And now in my mind now thinking like there's how many cells in the body? Well, there's 500 trillion mitochondria. 500 trillion. I'm just going to act like they're my little buddies and I'm going to take care of them. They're here to save your life. Right. And really and really take care of them. That's the easiest way I can think of it in my head is they're my buddies and they need help and they need to be safe and not in fear. What's something? We'll close out with this. What's something you wish? every overwhelmed parent could hear when they feel like they're failing their child's health. I mean, I guess I think there's two things. One thing that I would like to say in whatever place with whatever authority I can is just an apology from the medical system. they, you know, and I've never really been a part of it, but in whatever, you know, as someone with a license, like I'm so sorry that you were lied to and stripped of your authority. Yeah. And if parents could just receive that and move on to, you can do it. It's not going to be easy. Most of our kids need a lot of different things, but you can do one thing at a time. And walking your child through complex medical conditions leading to pans, pandas or autism is not impossible. Any parent can do it. And you don't have to understand the nuances of the science. You just have to understand the input that their body needs and the timing and reconnect to your intuition and you'll get there. Even if you don't speak great English, like honestly, you could understand a third of what I'm saying or less and still get there. You can do it. Trust your gut. Trust your gut. It's right every single time. If you're not walking in fear, your gut is right. It's your God given roadmap to help your children heal. Your intuition is there to create a safe environment. That's its entire purpose. Intuition exists to create safety. Reconnect with it and trust it. It will get you there. Yeah, wow. That was so fun. I really appreciate you coming on, Kelsey. Thanks for being on the Unspecial podcast. And make sure to go follow the .family.undoctor. And you also have a webpage in Getty Wellness. dot com and find and get in touch