Gut Health, Inflammation & Naturopathy | TKOE Ep #6 with Louise Cork

(upbeat music) Welcome to the Knock-On-Effect Podcast, where concussion meets conversation with Adam Wood and Cliff Butler. Brought to you by Safeguarding You in the Melbourne Headache and Concussion booth. Let's get into this. - Hey everyone, and welcome back to the Knock-On-Effect Podcast. We have the amazing Louise Corp. Naturopath joining us today. She's traveled all the way from Ballarat to join us today. And we really appreciate you coming down to have a chat with us in studio. It's always, I think, much more fun and interactive when you've got the person sitting in front of you. And we've got the lovely guys from Proactive here. We need to give them a shout out. They've let us share their space at the last couple of times. So we love it here. So welcome Louise. - Thanks for having me. - Thanks. - It's really great to be here and talk all things concussion. I'll talk for hours. - Well, we've got an hour, we'll be right. You've got to pick some bikes up and hop as crossing so there's two birds with one stone. So it's going to be an eventful day for all of us. But can you give us a little bit of a background about who you are, what you do. Obviously, I've met you through Instagram. I seem to be stalking everyone, Al, you. And you're the concussion naturopath is your handle. Inspired me to become the concussion osteopath on Instagram. So, yeah, tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be working in this space. - Yeah, so, well, I'm a clinical naturopath. So I hold a bachelor degree in health science, also studying a graduate certificate in neuroscience. It might be as long, you know, just for fun. And so as a naturopath, we treat the whole person, the whole body, nothing's random, everything's connected. It's going to be in a nutshell. And how I came to fall into concussion is, well, I mean, a couple of reasons, really. Like, I've always had brothers who played football. My brother's still, one of my brother's still coaches football. My husband played football, had several concussions. It's been something we've spoken about. Now, my kids are into football. But I think more importantly, and I'll hone this message in, people are dying. People are dying, and we're calling it mental health, and we're calling it other things, but actually, it all starts back with these head traumas. And the cascade that happens after that. And that's really serious. And I, quite frankly, when there's something that I have in my power to do about that, I'm going to do something about it. Yeah, person by person. I love that. And so that then kind of leads us to leading us into our next question really perfectly. So how do you see naturopathy helping these people? Like, what is it, because I mean, to be honest, you get a head impact, you have a concussion. And the first thing you do is usually go to a GP or you go to see your physio, and you're doing all the exercise as an all of a stibular and kind of visual rehab. But no one would really think about a naturopath straight off the bat. So, yeah, what is it from a naturopathic perspective? What is the bat concussion that makes it such a unique and challenging thing to work on? Well, I think if you look at the way that people who have concussion and multiple head traumas the way they track, eventually they go downhill. And nobody's addressing that. There's nothing that anyone is doing in any other modality. They don't have the tools. And we have the tools. And because we see the whole person, their whole health picture and all the moving parts that make up them as a unique individual, then we can support the body to do what it needs to do, to come back into balance, and improve outcomes, really. Like, you know, no one's saying we can cure all. But there is a huge gap in the way that we deal with concussion and post concussion at the moment, which nobody is doing anything about. So, here we are, I'm doing something about it. Yeah, that's amazing. And so, like we said, you know, we're aware of the vestibular challenges that people have. They're often dizzy or off-balance after a concussion. We're aware of maybe some of the visual changes. Maybe some double visions, some kind of light sensitivity, headaches, et cetera. There's this kind of cascade of symptoms that occur that we're aware of, and usually kind of working in that acute kind of phase. But what are the things that you're looking for as a naturopath specifically and working with people? And I guess I'll touch on the word, and as an osteopath, I'll work on someone's neck. And so, we're kind of working through that kind of scale of all of the kind of areas that get affected with concussion. But I think no one really probably thinks about inflammation in concussion, and then how that kind of contributes to the array of symptoms. So, is there something that you can speak to? So, I guess there's a couple of things. So, we know, posthumously, in CTE, that there is evidence of chronic low grade neuro-information that we cannot see on scans. We know it's there. So, why aren't we doing something about it? Point one. And naturopaths can do something about that. And secondly, is that a head trauma, or a concussion, multiple head traumas, is far more than an injury to the head. It is a full systemic injury. So, on impact, yes, we have all the inflammatory processes happening in the brain to kind of, oh, there's something's happened, we need to repair that. But we also have increased permeability of the blood brain barrier, which is usually very selective. So, that means things can travel through that blood brain barrier that would normally, not necessarily a good thing. And we also have increased intestinal permeability. Now, this is the thing that nobody is thinking about. And with increased intestinal permeability comes a whole change to the ecology of the gut. And we know you might have heard gut brain axes that what our gut is doing directly impacts what our brain is doing. And it does that via a number of mechanisms, but right down to the very bacterial species that are living in your gut. And that's why, one reason why, if you have a head trauma, it might be very different, if I have a head trauma, because your bacterial species' makeup is different to mine. And each bacteria living in our gut, they produce and/or consume different substances. So, it becomes really kind of like microscopic chemical reactions. And so, there is a lot to it. And then the other thing that no one's thinking about is how the immune system interacts with all that, because the glial cells are part of your immune system, the gut is a huge part of your immune system. So, the puzzle gets more complicated than just looking at the head. And I think in terms of inflammation, because no one's addressing the inflammation systemically or in the brain, that those inflammatory loops go from acute to chronic, because those loops aren't closed. The body struggles to resolve the inflammation. So, we can give non-steroidal anti-inflammatories or whatever. And that'll just like squash the symptoms for now, but it kind of leaves the mess behind. The problem still exists, and we know that, because we see it at the end of life. But we shouldn't be waiting until someone dies to do something about it. And when you work with someone in this way, and you address inflammatory drivers and resolve the processes, and you see how their symptoms change, it's like it's magic. When you see someone go from not being able to work, to say, "I'm going to go on a five-month trek," that's pretty amazing. And you've obviously got some experience with patients that are going through these right now, that are having some really cool outcomes. So, are we talking about inflammation being one of those precursors? In terms of going from acute to chronic, is that kind of. Yeah, so, like, one thing I often talk about is specialised pre-resolving mediators. And this is something that is derived from omega-3s. And in an injury like a concussion, your body's ability to make a new specialised pre-resolving mediators diminishes really quickly, among other things. But specialised pre-resolving mediators, as the name suggests, they resolve those inflammatory loops. And that's something that we can supplement. It's a specialised supplement. So, you know, there's like different types of fish oil. Those are your basic, you know, you can get the pharmacy or whatever. And then there's, you know, maybe a clinical, cleaner version or whatever. And then we have specialised pre-resolving mediators and plasma logons and they do different things. So, there's lots of tools like that that we can employ to close those inflammatory loops. And that's obviously why it's important, like, for someone to come and see a specialist or someone that specialises in this like yourself, to read something on chat GPT or Google and go, "Oh, I hear that I should take fish oil or maybe I should take, you know, some other supplement like creatine, NAD, magnesium, all the things that you do." Obviously, as an osteopath, I can kind of tap into some, you know, decent, kind of supplementation as well. But you're obviously going next level on that. Like, and so I really want to kind of, like, dive into like, what is it exactly? Like, are we, how are you finding these things out? What exactly are you doing as a naturopath? Like, yeah, like, you know, are we. Oh, I ask a lot of questions. Like, you know, you ask a lot of questions. Are we, what kind of tests, are you. Have you got specialised tests that you're doing? Because this gut brain access thing really sounds super, super interesting. And I know that, you know, part of the question that I have in my head is, yeah, cool, I can get people to take supplements. And like I said, someone can look it up on the internet. Are they actually going to be beneficial to that person? And you touched on it with the specificity of what you're actually prescribing. But if your gut isn't functioning right, are those supplements going to be kind of useful? Like, a little bit. Yeah, maybe not. Like, yeah. Yeah, you do, when we prescribe from a naturopathic perspective, we are really prescribing for the person in front of us, for their own unique picture. Because you're like the way you were born, the way you were raised, what illnesses you had in childhood, how many times you've had antibiotics, you know, there's a gazillion things that make up you, and why your outcomes would be different. So we have to prescribe for you. And that's highly nuanced. And yes, so clinical questioning is the absolute first point of call, so we ask lots of questions. So we don't just ask about the concussion injury. We go right back in your health history, been into your family history, and we go through what I do, sort of every body system, asking lots and lots of questions, looking for clues. And then if you could see in my brain, it's like this giant mind map of all the things connecting together, because nothing is random and everything's connected. You had a concussion and 10 years later, all of a sudden you're depressed, not random. You had a concussion and then all of a sudden, you're getting five colds and flu's a year, not random. So then we take that information and go, okay, if we do some functional testing, what test is going to give us the most information right now? Is it pathology or I find really valuable to actually test the microbiome with metagenomic sequencing? So find out exactly who's living in that gut. Do we want them there or not? And what is the terrain like? What's the state of the terrain? So we're looking at the Mucosa layer, intestinal permeability. You see lots of zonulin floating around. So you hear about leaky gut and things like that. So you've got all these junctions in you gut like this, right? Zonulin is the protein that sits in those junctions to keep it tight and selective. And when that breaks away and you find that in the stool, that means, yeah, these junctions are open and that means things can travel through the intestinal lumen that wouldn't normally go that way. Well, they wouldn't normally be allowed. So if you've got bacteria that are producing unfavorable substances, like lipopolysaccharides, for example. That's a big word. That is a big word. This goes through the intestinal lumen and your body's like toxin, toxin. And then, hello, information. Yes. And then inflammatory response. Is that then lodging your brain? Because you're talking about the tight junctions. And obviously, when you said the same tight junctions exist in the brain, that exist in the gut. Yeah, you have a brain barrier selective as well. So are these things now then starting to kind of come out of the gut and then go into the end of the brain? Yeah, so your microbiome is always talking to your brain and, you know, information travels via the vagus nerve, the 10th cranial nerve. So there's lots of little receptors on there, to trickling up. And this can be beneficial or can be un-beneficial. For example, I mentioned lipopolysaccharides or LPS. They are un-beneficial substances produced by gram-negative bacteria. But then, you could or should, hopefully, be producing IPA. And this is a beneficial, not the beer sauce. But yeah, you think about it, right? I'm not sure how beneficial that is. But anyway, IPA is a beneficial substance. And this can cross the blood-brain barrier and it's anti-inflammatory. So that's, like, in the most simple terms of the biochemistry, but IPA producing microbes, we love them. And butyrate and things like that, beneficial substances. So that, you know, kind of goes, "Oh, what am I eating? What am I feeding my microbiome?" But on injury, with all the things that happen, it gives different bacteria the opportunity to proliferate. And maybe that's not a good thing, depending on who's living in your gut. So I often think, "Wouldn't it be amazing if, say, like sporting clubs and things where people, we know they're continuously exposed to continuous head trauma. It's going to happen. It's part of their job." Imagine if we optimize their microbiome. Pre-injury. I feel like that's a huge opportunity. To mitigate the negative outcomes. Yes, we still have to do lots of work in the instance of an injury. But imagine if you didn't have those gram-negative bacteria, or they were, you know, all the good ones were so happy and thriving that it mitigated the risks of those substances crossing the microbiome. Adam and I always talk about we're not here to stop sport. We're really pro sport. We love sport. I mean, I've just spent the weekend with my son, trying to trial for a, you know, a cross team. And it's just a beautiful thing. The community come together and everyone, you know, staying fit and healthy and off their phones. So we don't feel like concussions are going to happen, right? They're going to happen and we don't, you know, yes, maybe we might want to alter training patterns, etc. We can, that's a discussion for another day. And it's something we touched on with our and one of our podcasts. But what we are about is getting the message out there so that we can actually look after people after they are concussed at the best of their ability. And why it's something that I'm so amazing to be talking to you today and it's something I'm loving is going, well, is this whole picture that we're not thinking about? And part of it would be, yeah, what about if we just went around and to the clubs, we've got a baseline screen, you play it. So if they do get concussed, we can actually objectively rule them in, rule them out, you know, and manage them through return to play. Yes. But yeah, what about if we strengthen their microbiome? That's amazing. Yeah. Yeah, just went around and how would you do that? What would what would be involved with that? So we'll first do tests because tests don't guess. And that's probably like, you know, with the supplement thing as well. You, you can throw everything at the wall and hope something sticks. But if you are clinically precise, then you're going to have better outcomes as well. So tests don't guess what is going on in that microbiome. And then you work to fix that. So there's, it really depends on what you know, it shows. If you need to repair the mucosal layer, you might look at using serenbovine immunoglobulins or something like that. So there's lots of specialised things that you can do. But establishing that baseline, that's like number one dream. Come on, guys, you're going to be exposed to this. Let's get the gut right first so that your risks are lowered. And what risks are we talking about there? We're not we're saying, obviously, we said, concussions happen. Are we talking about reducing the risk of. We're not saying we're going to get you back to play quicker, right? But are we saying we're trying to reduce the risk of that young man or girl or boy or girl being depressed at 25? Is that what we're talking about? Well, there's that. Yeah, we're talking about longevity as well. Because there's a lot of evidence that suggests that symptoms worsen decades later. And I see that clinically, you know, like I see someone, you know, I might see someone who had a car accident 25 years ago. And then when you timeline everything out, you go, oh, yeah, okay. I can see how this decline is happening. And, you know, they came to see me for maybe a skin issue. Right. Yeah, but what's happening in your gut determines what's happening in your skin as well. But I think back to your question, what are we trying to do? Have a think about someone who's had a concussion, let's use football as a relatable example. They've had a serious concussion and then they come back to play. What happens when they come back to play? There's a couple of things that happen really commonly. They have lower limb injuries. They might do a groin, hamstring, things like that. And also, they might get hit. I mean, it could be any part of their body, really. But they might have another head trauma and they fare much worse than they did in the first instance. And then the other thing that happens is the difference between someone who's knocked out cold and the person who's like, oh, yeah, I can pass my concussion test and goes out and keeps playing and then they decline after. And this is all the inflammatory processes that are happening in the background. And maybe that leads us to glial priming. Yeah, yeah, that's where it was one of our first questions that we had there about. That was our system and how it works. And we're all now talking about it now. People are starting to talk about this little system that drains your brain. And then it's injured during a head knock. And I obviously heard you have a chat with another podcast about that. I'd love to hear your kind of take on that and how it works, what it does, and how you can influence it. Yeah, so I guess there's probably two parts that say there's the glinfatic system. That's waste removal kind of like your lymphatic system for your brain. I love that it was only discovered in 2012. Like how neat is science. We're always discovering new things. So glial cells are like the immune cells in the brain. And they're always on the lookout. So their job is surveillance, looking the danger. Oh, something's happened. I'm going to go and I'm going to go fix that. But they kind of get hyperfixated when we don't give them the support they need to resolve and they just keep going, going, going. And then we end up with what's called glial priming. So essentially, what those glial cells are primed, they're ready to go. They're ready to like spring back into action. So like, I could even punch you in the arm really hard and reactivate those. So they never really switch off. They never really do. Unless you actively work to switch them off. And then they're probably still there, which is why, you know, head trauma after head trauma after head trauma after head trauma becomes worse and worse and worse. Yeah, yeah. It's like that's a simplistic way for you, but yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. So we're talking about, I mean, your job sounds like my, your job sounds, my job sounds remarkably easy compared to your job. Like I, you know, we, I just, we, you know, I do the, the stimulus stuff, the balance stuff, the, the eye stuff, a bit of next stuff. We obviously like to try to influence, you know, drainage and venous return and that kind of glimphatic system through treating the neck, thorax and all the diaphragms. Obviously, yeah, no, no. Right. So you see like how all the parts have to come together. Yeah. So there's that really great synergy between practitioners that are all looking at this. But you are looking at like glimphatic system. You're looking at, there's some words you've used in here that I kind of know. But I mean, you're obviously looking at, you know, the junctions in the brain. Like, you know, the, the, the kind of broad blood brain barrier. We're talking about microbiome. We're talking about specific cells that are coming out. You spoke about kind of depression and kind of anxiety and, and concussion before. Obviously, that's through the kind of that interleukin pathway. I think is it or what with there's a pathway there as well. Yeah, there's, there's lots of things. So there's, I don't know, you may or may not have heard of something called the ping axes. So ping axes is like the psyche, immune, nervous system gut. Yep. You've got axes for everything. Yeah, yeah, love it. HPA axes. Anyway, um, we'll be here all day. So there, there are so many moving parts. And, and I guess from why I love what I do is that, you know, I love to find out all the bits of pieces and put them together and then help the person unravel it. You have to be curious. And you have to see the person for the whole person that they are. Not just their injury, but everything that led up to that and everything that's happened after that. So I think there was something, um, something in the media, uh, was maybe last week, um, that worrying is, um, what causes CTA not be actual injury. Oh, did you see that? No, I missed that one. Yeah. I'm like, yeah, mate. Like if I hit, if I had a concussion, I'd be pretty worried about what was going in my brain. Because literally these people, there are millions of people who've had head trauma, right? Not just in sport, um, domestic violence survivors, um, in the defense force emergency services, car accidents, so there's so many ways you could have a head trauma. Um, all these people are just like, oh, okay, yep, you're good. You can go back to work or you can go do whatever you want to do. But they're just left marinating in your own information and systemic information. And nobody's doing anything about that. Yeah. Except for me. Contrary to now, that's why he ends with here. He ends up here and why it is so interesting. And I think, you know, it's important to break it down for people today. Because it, I didn't understand, you know, how complicated your job is. Like, like, as I say, the systems that we've mentioned, um, today, like even just in the last, you know, I don't know how I've been going. Like 30 minutes or so is, it's, it's not just one thing. It's like so many moving parts. So many things, um, yeah, it really is. But the other thing is that, you know, sometimes when I'm having a conversation with you like this, that could sound a bit intimidating to someone who's like, oh my god, what does that mean? But when I'm working with a client, I will always break things down into language that they can understand. And we always say focus on the step in front of you, not the whole staircase. Right? Because otherwise it becomes overwhelming. So clinically, um, you have to meet the person where they're at as well. And people have had multiple headdramas, concussions, that kind of stuff. Attention span can be limited, um, and also taking in information can be limited. So, you know, like write everything down and make sure you just, you just have to focus on these doing these things, taking these things, um, and make it simple and accessible. Yeah, and I know the way that you tend to work is, again, you're meeting the person where they are. A lot of those people are on work cover or kind of some maybe third-party scheme. They're not working. Yeah, they're a victim of, of some kind of, maybe some, maybe a crime or maybe a car accident or whatever. And I know that you were, um, you know, that you're, again, you meet them where they are and, and like, that's the thing that I liked about. Talking to you was, was kind of like, yeah, you're not going to tackle everything at once. You've got to go through and work bit by bit. Um, back to that, that thing you just said about CTEs from worrying. I feel like it leads us into a good segue because often these people are worried. Marinating is a great word. I think they are often sitting in that kind of, the neuroinflammation, the worry. And it's a chicken and egg scenario for me around. And I'm, I turn to you for, for kind of your expertise on this around neuroinflammation and creating anxiety and depression. And like, they're kind of, they're one of the, like, they work together. We go back to the gut. Yeah. So, um, when we think about anxiety, depression, all these kind of things, we're thinking about neurotransmitters, right? And altered neurotransmitter function and most of our neurotransmitters start their life are in the small and large intestine. So, this is where the microbiome becomes really, really important. And the bacterial species that are living in there, because they produce, you know, they contribute to the production of neurotransmitters. So, some, some microbes produce GABA, for example. So, I always say to people, and it doesn't matter if you're seeing me for concussion or something else. But if you say, yeah, I've experienced low mood or I'm constantly anxious, yeah, we're going to look at all the obvious factors. How much coffee are you drinking? Are you drinking on an empty stomach? All those kind of things. But it becomes a thing where you can't think your way out of it, right? Because it is your biochemistry. So, we have to biochemistry your way out of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And the rest isn't going to cut them off. Rest ain't going to cut it. That's just going to keep you reminating. So, you can't think your way out of it. And your psychology and your physiology are not separate, in my opinion. They are intrinsically linked. So, you know, if you have a big weekend and you're, you know, drinking all weekend, you're probably going to feel really anxious and bit-yuck disconnected for the week after. That's the Westgate Wednesday isn't it? Yeah, it's been a long time, it's been a long time, it's been a long time, 45. Can't do Westgate Wednesdays anymore. Yeah, no, I don't drink alcohol at all anymore. Can't do it. Well, lucky I didn't get you in present, which was a bottle of champagne. I'm glad I skipped that one. Yeah, yeah. So, really, we come back to the gut again. What's happening in your gut is so important for how you feel in your psychology. And I mentioned the ping axes before the psyche, the immune system, you know, 80% of your immune systems in your gut, nervous system, you know, highly governed by the 10th cranial nerve. So, all these, you know, nothing's random. No, it's not. So, you know, you might go and see a cardiac specialist for all things heart or a, you know, lung specialist for your lungs. But when you see a naturopath, we're looking at all the bits and pieces. And so, yeah, don't see me for surgery. Don't see me for a manual adjustment. But when you need the whole picture and you need to understand the moving parts, then yeah, that's what we can do something about. Yeah. And so, the vagus nerve. I mean, we've got, we're going on 35 minutes here or I think you could probably talk 35 minutes on the vagus nerve, right? I think, let's tell everyone what the vagus nerve is because I think that's one of the biggest things for me as an osteopath working in concussion is trying to get that balance between the two nervous systems. And I think a lot of people don't even know what they are. And people are familiar with flight and flight. Yeah. But maybe not so familiar with the parasympathetic system with the vagal nerve. Yeah. And that, I mean, that plays a massive role. And I feel like it's a nice segue from the thinking causes CTA. I think that's a completely wrong statement. But I can kind of, if we kind of step back through it, you can kind of go, I will hang on. And maybe the information is super high. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the way I describe the vagus nerve to people who aren't familiar with it. So we've got 12 cranial nerves in the brain, big nerves. And the 10th cranial nerve is different to all of the others. So all of the others are single direction. And the vagus nerve is bidirectional. So it's receiving information? It's giving and receiving. Yeah. It's providing kind of, like, what would you say or what? Information to move or do or whatever, yeah. Correct. And we won't get into polyvagal theory, because then we really will be here all day. But in simple terms, you have fight, flight, freeze, fawn, and rest, digest, safety. And we should come in and out of those relatively easily. They both serve a function. Certainly, fight, flight, freeze, fawn gets a bit of a bad rap. But it's evolutionary. It's survival, right? You're not playing football unless you've got a bit of that going on. Correct. But what happens is you kind of come out into a flight, flight, freeze, fawn, and you just don't come all the way back down. And then you come out again, you come down anything. You kind of zigzag all the way up here. And you're just stuck in a holding pattern, yeah? Your nervous system becomes like the smoke alarm that doesn't know if you burnt the toast or if the house is on fire, yeah? And we just, you know, it needs to come back out into rest, digest, safety. When you're stuck in this holding pattern, your body is not prioritizing anything other than survival, blood pressure pumping blood around that kind of thing. Yeah, so you'll find that your digestion is off. And that could come in many different forms from many different people. It might be bloating. It might be fluctuating bows. It might be nausea. Any number of things. Sleep disrupted. So I'm going to sleep, but I'm making up feeling tired. So not rested or I can't get to sleep. There could be any number of sleep issues presenting. And, you know, this feeling like I'm being driven by a motor and I can't stop. But also I can't do anything. I need to do everything and I can't do anything. People will describe this when they're really stuck in that holding pattern. And then they become kind of adrenalin fatigue. And they're like zoned out unable to focus concentrate all kinds of things. Rest I just safety is where we should come. When we're sleeping, our digestion happens. We should be making refreshed. That glimphatic clearance is happening in the brain. While we're sleeping, all those good things. And at some point in that point as well, is it the glimphatic clearance is happening when you're sleeping? Yeah, so that system is pretty much only active when you're asleep as we understand it today. And it is clearing debris from the brain. So when you've had head trauma, there is debris that needs to be cleared. You know, all those, all that inflammatory waste, basically. You know, so sleep's important to all the things. Otherwise, you end up with what you've just basically described. There is the wide bit tired. Yeah, wide bit tired. Yeah, that's the word. Yeah, that's the other thing. That's just wrecking my brain there. Didn't get enough sleep last night. And then obviously, the vagus has massive implications for gut too. Yeah, like in terms of sensing, sensing gut and working with gut. That's going to be about the interic part of the nervous system. Yes. And pain perception as well. So all of those things become really important. So I think the word, again, we're using to put this into, we love blankets or like little, you know, capsules is, is autonomic dysfunction or autonomic dysnobia that people kind of say. So that that autonomic nervous system is on fire and flight or flight. Yeah. And I guess what we're kind of coming to here just to summarize because for people is that the inflammatory process that's occurring within your body post-head impact driven by the gut and the vagus nerve really is what kind of sets you up for those kind of persistent ongoing symptoms that a lot of people are overlooking. So we're talking about A&S dysregulation. You know, hang on a second, I thought it was going to be 21 days and I meant to feel better. Yeah, why am I now four weeks into this or five weeks into this? And I'm still not feeling right. And the, you know, the main thing is my balance is good. I'm cognitive, I'm, I'm cognitive, I can speak to you, but I go to school and I can't get through half a day or I go to work and I can't get, I can't look at busy, I can't look at the screens. Irritable, I can't sleep. So we're talking about this umbrella as the word I'm looking for on autonomic dysnobia basically. Yeah, and the other thing people describe has been really overstimulated. You know, like so irritated by things like the exhaust fan on the stove. Stuff like that can really set them off. Yeah, all of those things are signs that there is something deeper going on. And I think the main message is that you don't have to just sit in that. There are things that you can do about it. I think that's the key message. You know, and if there are possibilities to improve outcomes, then we should do that. Yeah, and I love the idea of getting in front of it. Yeah, like, like, you know, and we're not, we're not saying this to be, you know, factual, but, you know, if you look at it, look at anatomy, look at the physiology, and look at what happens after an impact. Well, what about, yeah, what about if we prime to the gut before I've probably got a good example. Someone that I've seen who's a professional athlete who competes internationally. And they were at the point. And you know, sometimes you ask these people about, oh, how many concussions have you had? And they're like, I have had eight, but only three of them were bad. And you're like, yeah, okay, they're all pretty bad. And then once you unravel things. And then so I tested this person's gut and their intestinal permeability was like through the roof. But they had really good bacteria in their gut. So they had some really good things going for them. So that process was, you know, within six weeks, they were back in the gym. They were back training. And now next year, they're going to compete again, which they didn't think that they could do before. They couldn't even put their gear on to participate in their sport. So, you know, you can turn things around quickly if you've got the right information. And that's not for everyone. You know, everyone's health story is different. So sometimes it might take months or years. But that's better than the steep decline of cognitive dysfunction. And other things that pop up that maybe you don't think about hormonal dysregulation. And that can look different for males and females. And yeah, it can be irritability and anger and dysregulated testosterone, that kind of stuff. Or I always think about AFLW players. And, you know, endometriosis is a condition that a lot of women suffer from. And it is, in my opinion, a gut problem first. And, you know, those LPS producers, LAPA polysaccharide producers, in the gut are highly implicated in that. What happens when they have a concussion? When we already, like, imagine if we could get their microbiome right before they were injured. I don't know, it's just like, if we can, we should. What you're talking about is that you're talking about a quicker turnaround in symptoms or a quicker improvement in symptoms. Yeah. Like I said, we're not saying we're going to get them back earlier or sooner, but we just, people want to feel better because there is life outside of sport. You know, we're going to school, we're going to work, we're doing these things. So we need to, if we can have our symptoms resolving in a shorter time span, and that's a win for us, so that's massive. But I also feel like the thing is, those accumulative hits, like you were saying, that basically, yeah, you're not, we kind of haven't maybe physiologically recovered from the first despite the fact that your symptoms have gone, and we've given you that buffer of 14 days of symptom free and now, you know, whatever. Yeah, but we're still not really getting that, that kind of, we're not getting back to where we need to get to. So, you know, we've got CTE at the end of the line there, which is, you know, a horrible, you know, outcome for people. But that's all right. Yeah, good. That's a way. So I feel like what we're talking about here is, I'll start again, hang on, where I was like going with this, here we go. So I feel like what we're talking about here is, how do we progress people through to the best version of themselves after a head knock? Because it's like, or a head, or once a head knock, they'll kill me, a head impact. So, you know, how are we, how are we reducing symptoms quickly? How are we then setting them up for success moving forward? How are we reducing end-game risks? I feel like that's, that's kind of where, what we're talking about with, with what your work is. You know, there's, it sounds like we're missing a massive portion of concussion care for everyone. Yeah, yeah, there is. And I think that's probably the main reason why I do what I do, because there is a big gaping hole in what we do at the moment. And people are left just to decline. And like you said, the end of the road, CTA, that's not very nice. MND, Parkinson's, dementia, or significant mental health challenges that all of those things lead to, to death. I don't think anyone wants that. So if we can, we should do something about it. And probably we didn't even talk about my favorite thing, which is herbal medicine. Yeah, well, this is one of the most for our next question on here. We just say, we've talked about all these amazing things. What is it that you actually do as an atropath? Yeah. Yeah, how do you, how do you go about your. Which trough, the sorcery? I was going to say witchcraft, I was going to just say craft. How do you go about it? What is it that you do? Yeah, so I mean, herbal medicine is so cool. It's, it's highly bioavailable and, you know, each herb does more than one thing. So when every, every person I see, you like, I don't think I would ever have made two herbal formulas the same, because it's for the person in front of you. So you can tick a lot of boxes in one bottle just by piecing together that person's puzzle. So yeah, they've got some brain stuff going on. So you're going to use some herbs that are great for that, but those herbs also do other things systemically, and then maybe they need some liver support, or maybe they need some hormone support, and you know, you can put package all that up in one bottle. Taste disgusting, taste better than how you feel, it's how what I always say. And it's over in a second, but it is amazing when you see the right formula for the right person. Do its work. It's incredible, really, really incredible medicine, and very unique. Obviously, like, you know, we live in an age of pharmaceuticals, and you know, we want the quick fix, or you know, stop the symptoms, stop this, herbal medicine really works to resolve. So, and to support the body to come back to do what it is designed to do, when we've taken the conditions away, and when you have a head trauma, we take away the conditions that the body needs to thrive, basically. So yeah, it's just one piece of the puzzle, but it is a really cool piece of the puzzle that does some amazing work. How long am I expecting to take this lovely stuff for, in terms of recovery, and obviously everyone's different in terms of where they want to get to as well, but usually you're looking at a time frame of months, years, weeks. If you're looking at an acute phase, maybe it's weeks, but if you're looking at someone who's had multiple head traumas, or we're dealing with the head trauma, you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years down the track, it's going to be longer, yeah, because those symptoms have been going longer. And it's, if we want to be a better term, it's slow medicine, yeah, because we're not suppressing, we're not pacifying, we're not doing anything like that, we are restoring. So that takes time. And if you come to me 20 years after a head trauma, the symptoms that you're experiencing, that didn't happen overnight, they happened over 20 years. So that takes time to unravel. And yeah, that, you know, we're impatient and then we want to feel better now, but what's the cost of doing nothing? Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So you can take my delicious herbs and go forward, or you can not take them and keep declining. You spoke earlier about some patients that you have and you gave a few kind of timelines there. You see, you see change within the first 46 weeks, though, don't you? Yeah, there's usually like, yeah, for some people, it's a big shift. And others, it's, you know, shift the needle a little bit. So, you know, for someone who has had multiple head traumas, it might be a matter of increasing their energy span from an hour and a half every morning to two to four hours. That's something that I've seen. Or someone, you know, who hasn't been able to work, concentrate, do all the things that they love doing. And now they're going to do a five month trek. It's pretty profound. Or the other person I mentioned, unable to compete in their field, now they're going back to compete, which is pretty magical. So yeah, and they're just like the athletic ones. There's all the everyday, you know, people who are now thriving in their family life or their job, they're finding parenting easier, they're sleeping better. All those things are really meaningful to someone's everyday life and their quality of life. And so, yeah, why are we leaving people to just go down the slippery slope? As I said, as a parent and someone who works with this, I just am really excited. And I think I've repeated myself that three or four times, but just that that there is something we can do in the acute phase in the subacute phase to actually just actually know that we're improving that physiological element to concussion because that's the unseen. We can't see that. We see the symptoms and we see people struggling. But yeah, to know that, yeah, maybe it is, all right, cool, because my biggest thing is the accumulation of knocks and like you mentioned before, each one seems to be less and less and less force needed to think. So, if there's some way through cleaning up your inflammation or bodily inflammation that we can help maybe we'll maybe just thinking outside the boxy that we can help to restore that kind of pattern that happens. That's really exciting. Give people back the life they deserve. I'm not saying we're going to do all this work and you can just go and get more head trauma. Please don't do that. Definitely, please don't do that. But it is about improving outcomes. And, you know, like I said, if you can, you should and we absolutely should. And I'm really glad that we're having this conversation because it starts now because this, like we said, this is a huge gaping hole in the way that concussion is spoken about and treated in the, you know, in the mainstream or the standard of care, whatever you want to call it. But I think I said to you before, you know, before we start recording, like, what is the cost of this standard of care if it's your loved one or if it's you? Like, you want, you want to live your life to its fullest. Not look at the road ahead and go, oh, that's, that's a big downhill. Nobody wants that. I don't think. No, like you said, I think you mentioned before about the kind of, I don't know how to say this is the, you know, you said the mental and the physical working together. And I think it's really about acknowledging that as well that you know, why do I have these symptoms? What's going on in my life? I'm angry all the time. Geez, I really like beer. That's amazing because it solances the voices in my head or it makes me kind of escape myself for a little while. All these different bits and pieces, my relationships breaking down. But to know that it, it's actually probably got physiological roots within your body is, I think, groundbreaking in this space to actually be able to link those two things together. It's, they're going crazy. Yeah. I can't experience all this stuff. And they're constantly being told, no, nothing wrong with you. No, you're just, you know, oh, you're worrying or, you know, whatever. If you're worrying, you're activating your, your flight of fright, you're not allowing your vagus there to do its thing. It's stuck in the holding pattern. You feel crazy. A lot of people when they come and see you, I'm certain would feel a great sense of relief that they're not going crazy. And there is actually a reason the process that's happening in their body that's making this kind of, you know, mental scenario for them or this, this kind of where they're occupying. When you listen to someone's story, and then you can say, okay, so you're experiencing this. And this is how I see all this connected together. And you see their face go, their face softens. And I feel like that's really their first step in feeling better. Ah, okay, there's something we can do about it. B, I'm not going crazy. And C, I don't have to continue on this path. So, you know, just telling their story in the first instance is the first part of healing, I think. And no one's listening to the whole story. They're not. What maybe we think we are, but I think we need to open up to these, these elements here. And I know I had an experience with a patient where I was working with them. And their main thing was they couldn't sit at a TV or a computer screen. They worked in tech, so that kind of like wasn't a good thing for them. And, you know, we were working on them and they were getting good responses from manual therapy. But it was, I was like, what are you going to try and see an atropath? And they went to, apparently there's, they had a relation. There was an atropath. And I never saw them again. And so then I started to go, oh, what have I done there? And got in contact three months later. And this person said, oh, I changed my life. I went to see the atropath and those symptoms that were kind of sticking around vanished. And so hence the reason why we're here that more people need to have those experiences, I think, and understand that there's more they can do than just go and see the physio or sit in the dark room or just try to sit it out because they can make a difference in their life. So I hope that we have an absolutely bamboozled everybody and that we're trying to keep it kind of that just highlight how important your role is in the concussion journey. And that basically where you're trying to influence the so many systems, but generally speaking, the autonomic nervous system, the inflammatory pathways within the body that are derived in the gut. That's making it really simplistic. And I'm sorry, because it's been so amazing. It's a good way to put it. And like I said, people understanding that everything's connected and nothing is random is probably the key message. Yeah, all the complicated sciencey stuff behind it. Yeah, that's there. The person who's experiencing the symptoms, they don't have to know the details of that. They just have to know that if they do X, Y, Z as prescribed, then we should see some shifts in their condition. So my advice, and I'm going to probably answer my question here because I was going to ask you this question, but I feel like my advice to anybody that comes into CME or has a head impact or is to go and see your naturopath alongside. You should have a team care arrangement going on around this with multiple people working with you, you probably should be seeing, you know, a neuropsych and you're seeing your osteopath or your physio for support. But you have to see your naturopath. I just think it's so important. And where I really love that is that, yeah, you can change so much about what you're feeling and suffering. And even if you aren't really suffering at the high end, just go and see your naturopath and see if you can optimize your system. Because I think that's just amazing. But what would be the one piece of advice that you'd give a parent or a player or an athlete trying to optimize their brain or their situation after taking cushion? Yeah, I mean, definitely come and see that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You're right. You didn't see your own question. I think it's pretty stressful when you're in the moment of an acute injury. But I think the most important message is that you know that there is help available and you know that the gap is being filled. So, and you know, we can support you. There's a whole, there's cosillions of naturopaths. And yeah, you know, maybe there's an opportunity that we need to train them more specifically in concussion, but you know, there's another problem for another day. For now, you know, optimizing that gap is just one key thing that you can do. So the rest will follow. I'm very envious of you because I can't work online a hell of a lot. I do do some virtual management of concussion for people, but it's it's usually in the acute early stages and then the return to play stages. We can do that. But my best work is done with with these here. You obviously work online and people don't need to go to Ballarat to see unless they want to come up there for. I mean, like I always welcome anyone to come in person if they want. It's beautiful to you know, that's why you do your podcast in person. It's so much better. But I really don't want a location to be a limitation to this work. And that's why I work online for concussion. So I can see anyone. I can pretty much see anyone in the world really. And you know, I choose not to see USA and Canada because it's, you know, it's an insurance nightmare. Yeah. And the timeline, you'll be at the end of that. I'll be working at 2 am. But yeah, pretty much anywhere in the world, we can support people. So, but you know, there's enough people in Australia that need our support right now. So you're sending herbs through, you're sending your herbal medicines through the mail. You're seeing people online. And the great news is that you're trying to know, well, you're moving into predominantly managing concussion with a lot of people. So you're going to niche yourself into that and have lots of availability for people. Your online herbs come in the mail. Yeah. Shipped medical express. I even work Saturdays, Sundays, Sundays. Yeah. I'm always surprised to hear how much testing material we'll call it. It's traveling in Australia post as well. You told me about that last time. And you know, if you're going to do what? Yeah. Yeah. You're going to put what in the fridge? And send it in the post. So you do all your testing, everything's remote. Where can people find you Louise? Because I think it's just yeah. So yeah, my Instagram is concussion naturopath and my website, which my new refreshed website is about to be launched. But that's the concussion naturopath.com. So, but yeah, my inbox is always open. If people have questions, they want to know anything. Yeah. Please always feel free to reach out because the more we can share this message, the more we can share that this big gaping hole in treatment can be filled. That's only a good thing for everyone. And so I think it's just so exciting. And I've learned so much that my head is complete. I thought I knew a bit about naturopath and concussion, but my head's completely swimming. And as I said, I think the key take home message is don't marinate. Yeah. Get ahead of it. Be proactive. Go and get your microbiome sorted out before you go and get a head impact. But if you do get a head impact, know that a naturopath can make a huge difference to your how you feel, how quick you recover. And it's just another person that should be involved in your team of concussion specialists. Absolutely. Yeah. It needs to be naturopaths need to be on the table. And in the conversation. Yeah. Awesome. Hey, well, I've learned so much. I hope everyone else has learned so much. There's some massive words in there that I'm sure everyone's chat GP team right now. Is there me a demon? I'll tell you where they are. Yeah. Jump on. Have a bit of a look at Tom Louise's Instagram handle. She's just such a fantastic person to have here today. Thank you for driving down all this way and having this conversation with us because I think it really is important and just paramount. So yeah, lots of love. Thank you. And everyone, if jump on and check out Louise's Instagram and he'll be Brian. Thanks.