Episode 33: How to Be Your Own Health Advocate

Transcript…

In this episode, you will learn:

  • What kinds of tests are the most beneficial for you
  • While at the Dr’s Office, ask questions. Ask why you are having certain symptoms. 
  • If you are prescribed antibiotics, ask the following:
    • Why will I feel better?
    • Why do I need to take this?
    • What are the side effects?
    • What can I expect? I don’t want to be chasing symptoms.
    • What happens if I don’t take this?
  • The medical field definitely serves a great purpose and is truly so helpful but may not always be your end all, be all solution to healing your pain.

Episode 33: How to Be Your Own Health Advocate

Katie Wrigley  0:06  

Welcome back to the Pain Changer Podcast. This is episode 33. Do you feel like your doctors ignore you? Or worse, they gaslight you? Do you often feel frustrated and depressed when you leave a medical appointment, unsure how you could make things better for yourself or if you can improve them at all? If you said yes to any of that, this episode is for you. Today I brought back a guest who’s joined my show before and we’re going to discuss how to become your own health advocate to get the care your body is asking you for. Stay tuned. That’s coming right up. 

Joining me again today is Magic Barclay. Magic Barclay is a lead practitioner at Holistic Natural Health Australia and host of the podcast, A Magical life: health, wealth, and weight loss. And by the way, my listener, highly recommend that podcast too. Magic’s life changed when she faced multiple life threatening conditions. She then decided to find the root cause of her health issues and that set her on a path of life changing learning. Magic helps mainly women aged 45 to 65 who feel unheard or misled by mainstream medicine or anyone who wants to bring their health back to basics. By treating root cause and the systems of the body not chasing symptoms, reconnecting to the environment and overcoming their past trauma and that of previous generations through healing the PNEI, psycho neuro endo immune pathways of the body. She is also a Master Practitioner in mold toxicity recovery. Personally, she is a mom of two amazing humans and two gorgeous fur babies,  grower of organic food for her family and a passionate native gardener. And if you have been listening to this podcast at all, you know, I have also started to work with Magic behind the scenes as well. And welcome back to the Pain Changer Podcast, Magic . I’m so happy to have you come back here today.

Magic Barclay  2:10  

Thanks for having me back. I’m so excited about this.

Katie Wrigley  2:15  

I have wanted to do something around health advocacy since before I was even a full time entrepreneur. This is something I feel so strongly is missing. There’s so little guidance. So before we dive into that, the last time you joined us, you told us about how you’ve been diagnosed with thyroid cancer. And you had also presented at the hospital with a heart attack and you have basically been dismissed. I was wondering if you’d be more comfortable to dive deeper into some of the depth that you had to go to to get that cancer diagnosis and what happened in between the first attempt when you tried to get someone to hear you by the time you finally got the diagnosis.

Magic Barclay  2:56  

Sure, well, the first attempt was, I want to say about 10 years before the diagnosis. And I was super morbidly obese. So I did all the wrong things during my pregnancies. And the weight just wouldn’t go, no matter what I tried, the weight wouldn’t go. And I started developing like numbness in my hands. You know, you’d go to open a jar and the jar would just completely fall out of my hands. And all this kind of weird stuff was going on. And I was going to the doctor because I believed in them. And they were just going “Well, you need to strengthen your hands, you know, get one of those Squeezy things and you’ll be okay.” All right, tried that didn’t work. Then I would start getting all these moments where I either couldn’t swallow, or everything felt awful. Like my whole whole body was just responding badly to everything. And I was getting massive mood swings. And so went back to the doctor’s. Now I can’t swallow properly, I feel like there’s you know, like a tire around my neck. And we’re getting all these mood swings… “Ahh no it’s just because you’re stressed. You’re a mom of two little ones, and you have a lot going on. Just chill out, like you’ll be fine.” And so this was going on for about 10 years. And so I started diving into Dr. Google, which had just become a thing at that point. And I was seeing… thyroid kept coming up. So I would go to the doctor and say “I think something’s wrong with my thyroid. Can you do the tests?” “No, we don’t need to do any tests. There’s nothing wrong. You’re just attention seeking. You’re doing this, you’re doing that.” And I found a great doctor back then. And I said “Listen, I’m not happy with my weight.” And he said “Well, honestly if your weight keeps going up, you might as well order yourself a funeral because you know, you’re simply morbidly obese, you’re short person, and I can’t help you unless you’re going to help yourself.” So again, he was a great doctor, and he snapped me into it, like I need to drop some weight. But the blame was on me. “You’re doing all the wrong things.” And I’d started doing some right things by then. So this was not sitting well with me. And I said, “Well, you know, I’m going to the gym”, and I was going to the gym, like, four days a week, but nothing’s happening. So then I went back again for another visit to the doctor, and I said, I think something’s wrong with my thyroid. He goes, “No, no, no, you’ve got Munchausen’s”. And then I saw him write it down on my file. And I’m like, “I don’t, I’m just saying, Something’s wrong. Can someone please listen to me.” So here, I am being blamed. I’m being told, I’m attention seeking, I’m being told, I’m doing all the wrong things. Like it’s all you. So they put me on some medications. They put me on an antidepressant, well, that just blew my body systems up. I started shaking, getting sweats, like, all sorts of things were happening to my body. And I was starting to think about things like suicide on these antidepressants. And I’m like, well, that’s not happening again, stop, taking those. So I’m glad to say I was only on antidepressants for three months of my life, because it made it worse, like, this is obviously not a solution, right? Meanwhile, all these weird things kept happening in my body. And it wasn’t until I moved away from that town, when I left my marriage and my kids and I moved town, that we found another doctor who actually said, “Do you know what, I think you have a thing called Cushing’s disease. And I think there’s a tumor there somewhere. I think we need to explore this. You’re presenting a whole barrage of symptoms, that are raising red flags.” And he said, “but I’m a new doctor, I have not long come out of uni. So I think we need to do some exploration here.” And me saying “I think something’s wrong with my thyroid and he goes, “Yeah, I think you might be right.” So this is kind of what led up to it. It was about 10 years of me being told, “You’re making it up, you’re attention seeking, it’s a mental health disorder. There’s nothing wrong with your thyroid. No, we don’t need to do any tests.” And unfortunately, I still hear that from clients who start working with me. “I asked for a full thyroid panel, and I just got TSH.” Like, well, that’s not a full thyroid panel, and you asked for it, you have a right to do it like, you know, so nothing’s kind of changed there. Unfortunately. And you know, that’s a bit of a blanket generalization. I’m not saying all doctors don’t listen to their patients. But certainly, in my experience, that was the case till I found this GP, who, you know, we did the ultrasounds, and we did the blood tests. And he asked me all my history, like what happened, and then what happened. And then what happened. And that was the first time I had that. Of course, it turned out that yes, we found the thyroid cancer. And even then, they said, “It’s just a nodule on the right side of your thyroid” The endocrinologist that I started seeing said, “Of all the cancers you can get, this one’s going to take the longest to kill you. You’ve got decades, people can live with this, but we need to manage it.” And then with further exploration, and then going into surgery, or fast forward, I was forced to go to surgery because I was going through a divorce. And when I woke up after the surgery, the surgeon came up and said, “It wasn’t just a nodule on the right hand side, there was a cancer right across the whole back of the thyroid, we had to take the whole thing out. We couldn’t exactly stop halfway wake you up and ask you.” So, you know, unfortunately, it was a lot worse than anyone thought it was. Well, that’s what they’ve reported to me. And how long has that been going on? Because for 10 years, I’d been saying I’m losing feeling in my hands. You know, I’m getting all these problems swallowing and all this, and blah, blah, blah, and blah, blah, blah. No one listened. So, you know what came first, the chicken or the egg? Really? Were the symptoms I was feeling because this cancer was there growing, or were they whispers that something was wrong and someone needed to listen. We’ll never know and we can’t turn back time. It is what it is. But, you know, I see a lot of patients that go “Well, yeah, I asked my doctor for this or I asked about that. And they told me, you know, I’m making it up or it’s nothing or it’s something I’m doing”. So unfortunately, that hasn’t changed. Again, bit of a generalization. And I’m not putting all doctors in the one bucket. But from my experience, and from what I’m seeing with clients, unfortunately, it’s happening way too often.

Katie Wrigley  10:21  

I agree. And thank you for sharing so much of that story. So what stage was the cancer by the time they took out your thyroid?

Magic Barclay  10:31  

It was stage four. So it had spread to my lymph nodes. And once there’s lymph node involvement, of course, then it can travel anywhere in the body. So I am at this point, clear of cancer, but I don’t stick my head in the sand. I constantly check all my markers. And every year I order blood tests for myself, and I go, “Okay, well, where are things at now?” And I listen to the symptoms, I don’t chase the symptoms. I don’t treat the symptoms, but I listen to what they’re trying to tell me. And I go, Okay, I’m having trouble swallowing. A bit of, you know, maybe have a look at what’s going on in my hormonal system, my endocrine system.

Katie Wrigley  11:15  

Yeah, that makes sense. And I want to have a brief note, you mentioned Munchausen’s. And I know what it is. But I don’t know if I’m going to explain it. Right. So what is Munchausen syndrome?

Magic Barclay  11:29  

Well, in layman’s terms, it’s a mental health issue. That basically, it’s an attention seeking thing. It’s, it’s like, you make yourself sick, to get the attention. And that’s very simplified. There’s a lot more to it. But just people will know it as that. And then there’s Munchausen by proxy where you make someone else sick to get the attention. So, you know, I was basically being told you’re making yourself sick so that we talk to you. And that wasn’t exactly the case, you know,

Katie Wrigley  12:05  

Right. And that’s a conscious level. So you know. As you were saying that I’m like, I actually found in my own story that I was subconsciously going to health problems because of trauma, which is different than Munchausen‘s. I mean I may have been in other ways, but I didn’t have Munchhausens. But I just wanted to take a moment for anyone that hadn’t heard that before. So please continue.

Magic Barclay  12:29  

Yeah. So when we have trauma, that is a completely different ballgame. So that is our body screaming out for “I need help”. And so throws up all these roadblocks in the form of illness, resulting from trauma. So this is the PNEI system in play. And so it’s completely different. It is not a conscious thing. You don’t go, “oh, well, if I get sick, someone’s going to listen to me or talk to me or spend time with me.” It’s not that at all, it’s your body going “Do you know what this toxic thought has been here from a trauma or from a self trauma or whatever kind of trauma it is. You’re not dealing with that. So now I need to do other things.” So it’s completely different.

Katie Wrigley  13:16  

Yes. And I want to make sure we made that distinction there. If someone is hearing that you don’t have Munchausens unless you are consciously and then stuff like you know drinking gasoline and going to the hospital say whatever. Like it’s physical harm to yourself you are consciously doing when you have Munchausen’s which is not what we’re talking about here. I love what you said about you know, could that have been your body whispering? There was another guest that gave a great quote like “If you don’t listen, when your body whispers you’re gonna have to listen when your body screams” and after 10 years of doctors refusing, you’re trying to listen to your body but doctors aren’t listening to you till you find this great practitioner fresh out of the universal womb, so to speak and ready to practice medicine with all his excitement and passion. And he’s the one that found that thank goodness. So how many years now have you been cancer free, Magic?

Magic Barclay  14:12  

Yeah, so I’m coming up to my anniversary. And my brain is just really quickly doing the math. I think it’s year seven coming up pretty soon. So, you know, we in the cancer world, we look at year five, as if you make it to that and it doesn’t come back. You’re doing really really well. There’s been, you know, a couple of times in my life where my hair started falling out again and you know, something’s happened. I’ve gone “Ah, crap. Is that it back?” So I’ve checked my blood. No, it’s not something else, you know? So yeah, coming up to year seven and seven years of life changing learning basically. And you know, people go, “Oh, but you had cancer. Oh, that’s terrible!” “No, that was fantastic. Because it made me really take life head on. And it made me really go. ‘Alright, I’ve just wasted 14 years being completely miserable and unhappy, pretty much nearly every day. Life’s too short for that’”. So, you know, for me, yeah, it was a horrible experience to go through. But what it’s given me, what it’s taught me about myself and about what is important to me. That’s irreplaceable.

Katie Wrigley  15:35  

Your mindset is exactly why you’re cancer free now. I mean, obviously, you do a lot more. It’s not just, I’m going to be cancer free, you do nothing and your kids are free. There’s a little bit more to that. But the mindset, you being determined that you’re going to get past it. Did any doctors at the time when you were diagnosed with stage four, did any of them give you hope, that you are going to be able to survive this and that seven years down the road, you’d be talking about your survival on a podcast?

Magic Barclay  16:02  

I’d really love to say yes, apart from my GP who found it not really, no. My GP was, he and I were great together for a few years, you know, and he said, “You’ve got this, you can do this, you know, you can drop the weight, you can do this. Yeah, I believe in you” But the specialists, were really not in my ball camp there. They were like, “Your high blood pressure is going to kill you if the cancer doesn’t. Your high blood sugar is going to kill you if the cancer doesn’t”, it’s like, you know, don’t tell me how to fix it. Just keep telling me, this might kill me, or that might kill me. So for me, mentally, it really wasn’t a good place to be. And there’s something wrong when you’re going to see a specialist that you are depending on for help. And every cell in your body feels the dread as you’re driving there. Like, that’s not good. That’s not a healthy place to be. So you know, it was really only my GP at the time that I would go, “Okay, even if nothing else happens, I’m gonna walk out of here feeling better than I walked in”. Because he’s gonna say “You’ve got this.”

Katie Wrigley  17:19  

Yeah. And doctors like that are there, they’re priceless in my book, you know, and you see a lot of that, that encouragement, that personal time, with naturopaths, with functional medicine doctors, and they’re starting to have that I’m forgetting what they call, but they’re actually going back to the way they used to do health care in the US pre HMO, where the doctor, the regular allopathic doctor is spending an hour or so with you. But allopathic medicine, as it is, is not going to be the most bang for your buck for chronic conditions at all. It’s going to leave so much on the table. If you want to stay stuck, keep going to your allopathic doctor, but if you want to get unstuck, continuing this episode, and we’re going to help you figure out how you can make yourself feel better, because I know you can even if I don’t know who you are directly, I know you can make changes, because I’ve seen it too many times to believe that you’re going to be the exception to that rule. So is your cancer journey what turned your interest into becoming this amazing, holistic practitioner that you are today?

Magic Barclay  18:26  

First of all, thank you. Second of all, yes because seeing my kids’ faces and being told, I had a year to go and having to tell them mummy might not be here. That was a game changer for me. You know, and my kids are the most important thing in the world to me. I don’t care where I’m living, how much money I have, what’s going on, as long as I have them with me. That’s all that matters. So yes, that was the turning point for me. And do you know what? They’re in their early 20s now, and I try and treat them the way I treat my clients. But do you know what? They still think I’m a bit of an idiot and what would I know? Because I’m just a mum. You know, that’s okay. They’ll get to it. But they’ve also seen me still alive after we had that conversation of mommy might not be here. So you know, that was the turning point for me was seeing their faces and every day that I’m alive is another day on with them. And sometimes I’ll just go up to them and I have to reach out because they’re both taller than me because I am a very short person. And I’ll just give him a hug and I’ll go “Hey, baby, I love you. I’m gonna go oh man, get off me. Get off the chair, stop cabling me.” And that’s okay, because I’m here today to annoy the heck out of them. And that is the best thing.

Katie Wrigley  19:57  

I love that and I bet they love it too, and the very, very, very distant day in the future, when you’re not here anymore, they’re gonna miss that. You know, we all miss the things that annoy us the most about people when they’re no longer in our life like, “Why did that even annoy me that was kind of cool”. But that’s just exactly.

Magic Barclay  20:21  

I actually asked my younger one the other day, I said, “So when I’m gone, and you’re saying a few words, as you bury me”, you know, in the seed of a tree, so I can respread a tree or something. “What are you gonna say?” And he said, “I’m gonna say she was annoying, but it was worth it.”

Katie Wrigley  20:44  

*Laughing hysterically* That’s an honest answer. 

Magic Barclay  20:46  

You know, what can you say to that? Like…

Katie Wrigley  20:51  

I would take it if I had kids, and that was the feedback. Absolutely. I would take that, thank them and be quite content. That’s hilarious, though.

Magic Barclay  21:03  

Then you go to find, never give a kid a gravestone, which I probably won’t. She’s annoying, but it was worth it. I think that’s cool.

Katie Wrigley  21:10  

Yeah, that’s actually hilarious. But I may actually want that on my I don’t even think about my death yet. All right, but we are still alive. Let’s go back to the conversation. So what happened after the cancer diagnosis? What kind of training did you start to get? And my understanding is you also focus on immunity. So you can tell us a little bit about your training background as well, because I really want people to understand not just from her own health, how she learned how to be a health advocate, but she has a lot of training that really positions her to give solid advice. And if you don’t yet, have a notebook to take notes, go grab one now, pause this real quick, because after she gives her credential, she’s going to be giving us really solid information to help us stay healthy. Or if you aren’t healthy yet, get healthy again, help your body start to feel better. If you’re struggling with any kind of pain or stress, anxiety, anything like that. Please stay tuned, grab your notebook. And Magic. Yes, please continue. And let us know this path of learning that you started on embarked on after your diagnosis and surgery.

Magic Barclay  22:19  

Sure, well pre diagnosis and surgery. I already had my Advanced Diploma in fitness and my Advanced Diploma in clinical nutrition. I actually owned a gym. And so this is part of what triggered something’s wrong because I was working out and something was wrong, like going out and saying I was working out five days a week, three hours a day. I’m working out and I’m stacking weight on and can’t swallow. So yeah, I already had those qualifications. Then I started looking into nutrition, like more advanced nutrition, so nutrition for health conditions. Once I got the diagnosis, I took myself on a fasting retreat. So I raised some money and went over to Bali and learned a lot about I guess, the diet and autophagy and you know, fasting and all that kind of thing. And that got me into studying things like the Medical Medium, and studying with Don Tolman. And I thought, well, this is great, but it kind of sounds a bit to me, airy fairy. It’s not ticking all the boxes for me. I’m gonna keep looking for something. And I realized post surgery that I developed Lymphedema. So I found a chap called Dr. Perry Nicholson, who is the lymphatic Mojo master. And so anyone that wants to look him up, he’s on Instagram, stop chasing pain. And he’s brilliant. And so I started doing his courses. And I did a course here in Melbourne. And then I went to Malaysia, and I did his advanced course there and kept studying with him. And I’m like, “Yep, this is great. But something else… There’s something I’m missing, like this is training one system. And Perry talks about how no system works alone. So what are the other systems that I need to look at? So then I met, through Perry, I met Dr. Stuart Gillespie, from innate immunity and functional health solutions. And I started studying with him, so did his basic courses. And I went, Wow, he’s talking about all the body systems and he’s talking about the immune system. And, huh, this is good stuff. I’m gonna look into this. So did his advanced mentor ship. And that’s where the immune system stuff came in. And he’s like, there’s five immune types. And there’s this and I’m like, wow, this is so cool. And so that was a year’s worth of study. Pretty much, you know, every single week there was a module that had to be done. And we’re covering all the body systems, but really looking at the immune system. So I’ve done that mentorship three times, wow. And I have to say, every time I do it with him, he goes over something, I go, I’ve never heard this before. And then I look at my notes, and I’ve got it three times I’ve written it down. So there’s so much that you’re learning that it’s hard to take it in all at once. So with him, I’ve also done other courses. So I’ve done, you know, advanced immune, optimizing immune. We’ve done a science-based approach to essential oils. We’ve done some transformational modules and things like that. And what I love about working with Dr. Stewart is that as practitioners, there’s so much to learn, but he’s giving us the studies. And he is that super nerd guy that gives you the study number and says, “Here it is. And you know, I’m backing this up.” So I love that because I can then read the studies without spinning forever looking for them. They’re right there. And, you know, the information is very clear. And it’s through a lot of research. And so it’s not the airy fairy stuff that I’d started with. It’s the science, it’s the data. It’s the numbers. And, you know, I love all that stuff. So it’s been probably a journey now for four years with Dr. Stewart, and learning a lot every single day. And now there’s a group of us practitioners that we actually band together. And so when we have a new client file that kind of stumps us, and we’re at our desk, scratching our head, we can jump on and the other practitioners will go, “oh, no, it’s this you missing that bit, you know, and you’re almost there. But it’s this”. And so we’ve all got our own things that we have rabbit hole that we’ve done the deep dive in. So, you know, we’ve all got each other’s backs. And we’ve got Dr. Stewart and Dr. Perry behind us as well. So, yes, that’s a lot functional health solutions, and innate immunity has been brilliant. And all I can say is, you know, the amount of information that comes at us as practitioners is brilliant, like, just the word of the day, isn’t it? Brilliant, but it is. Because, yeah, this is stuff that isn’t readily spoken about. But the information’s all out there. And we were just having conversation off air you and I about, you know, someone questioning what I was talking about with the immune system types. Well, the information’s out there, or how many studies do want to tell you that this is there, you know?

Katie Wrigley  28:03  

Yes. And these are the studies that they’re talking about, these are like the legitimate deep dive, double blind, all of the scientific method type studies on here, these aren’t like, “Oh, hey, look, we just cured cancer in that mouse. Let’s go”, like you’re talking about legit medical stuff.

Magic Barclay  28:23  

These are the top tier medical studies, they are, you know, double blind, and they’ve run the same kind of experiment, you know, 50 times and, for example, and so this is information that the medical community knows. Why aren’t we using it? So as innate immunity practitioners, we are using it. And, you know, we can say, okay, the five main types, they all have different behaviors and different characteristics. So everything pretty much comes back to, I’m gonna use Dr. Perry’s wording here, the big dog on the block, he says, you know, that the immune system, yeah, and the lymphatic system, because that’s your waste removal system. So, you know, if you don’t do something, you’re going to have an immune reaction. And if you have an immune reaction that’s going to cause waste, your lymphatic system is going to be involved. And so these are two systems that we either completely ignore, or we shy away from.Any immune system is one that, you know, in the past few years, it’s become a bit of a dirty word. But it doesn’t need to be because it’s something that we actually have to face head on. And we have to go okay, our bodies all behave differently. So one supplement is great for someone but it’s not great for someone else. One food is great for someone but it’s not great for someone else. Why is that? Why is her body behaving that way? And how can we turn that around so that we can feel the best that we can.

Katie Wrigley  30:07  

And that’s where that root cause analysis comes in is digging deep into that why. And before we start to shift into health advocacy, you actually helped me when I got stuck with COVID. I had it for three weeks, a combination of hemochromatosis and I had so much iron, but the bigger culprit is because my immune system is stuck. Am I remembering that correctly?

Magic Barclay  30:30  

Yes, totally. So for you, Katie, and you’ve given me permission to say this, I want to let your listeners know that I’m not breaking confidentiality. Katie actually said, can you talk about this. So for you, in your childhood, you were stuck in a TH2 system with some allergies on board. And so your immune system was anabolic, it was never letting you break down pathogens. It was building you, nurturing you. So that’s what we’re seeing with allergies, and acid reflux and asthma, that’s a really TH2 presentation. Okay. And then you took a whole lot of supplements, and you kind of threw the whole washing basket in there. And you drove TH1, which is the opposite of TH2. Now normally, they would balance each other out, but your immune system was going, Whoa, this is a seesaw, I’m going from one side and instead of balancing, I’m just gonna flip straight to the other one. So you went full TH1, which is, you know, a whole lot of joint soreness and a whole lot of arthritic inflammation pain and things like that. So there’s a balance there. And we need both of these systems but we need to jump in and out of them. Rather than, you know, five kids jump on one end of the seesaw, and the poor kid on the other side goes flying through the air, right, you know, cartoon style, like, we’ve got to try and see this balance. And so that’s what I love about these immune type presentations is, we can see from what’s going on, what it’s telling us. And you said about, you know, doctors are now going back to the “sit down with you for an hour”. They need to do that. Yeah. Because if they don’t have the conversation with you, that we, that I had with you of why is this happening and when you’re taking, you know, “this that gets better”, you’re not gonna see what those whispers are and why the immune type is heading where it’s heading.

Katie Wrigley  32:37  

That makes sense, and you want to get it when it’s a whisper so you avoid the scream because the scream is a hell of a lot less pleasant. I ignored the whispering rave and ignored the normal room voice that I waited until my body was almost hoarse from screaming before I’m like “I should do something about this.” But it makes so much sense what you talk about from an immunity because I can validate this on this side like the collagen supplement I take was amazing for the last lingering joint pain I had. And I have considered myself pain free for a while. But that knee of mine was still a little pesky. And then enter this collagen supplement and it’s not pesky. It’s happy. So this is a good segue into health advocacy. So what should people be asking their doctors for? As an annual, quarterly, semi annual. What is the baseline to begin on this or where should people go? What should they start to keep in mind?

Magic Barclay  34:37  

Okay, well, I am not a great believer in blood tests. So I’m just going to tell you any time that you put a needle into your body, you are causing the innate immune system to have a bit of a freakout because you’re breaking one of the barriers which is the skin, okay? So we know, what we need to look at with blood tests is they’re a snapshot in time. So, yes, they can be very useful. And I do use some blood tests for people. But they’re telling us what is going past the site of the needle in the bloodstream at that second that you are drawing the blood. It’s not particularly the best indicator of what’s happening in your whole body, but it’s useful. Okay, it is useful. So if you’re going to do blood tests, and you have some issues around thyroid concerns, you want a full thyroid panel. So you want the antibodies, you want TSH, you want free T4 Free  T3, reverse T3, you want the whole picture. Okay, because if you just get TSH, which is the thyroid stimulating hormone, then you might as well be trying to play pin the tail on the donkey without the tail. Like you just you’re not gonna see the whole thing. Okay, if you’re looking at things like iron, well, iron storage isn’t usually an iron problem. It’s usually a liver problem. So you know, people rush out and they get liver tests done. Again, that’s a snapshot in time. It’s not telling us the whole thing. So what you really want to be doing with testing, there’s two tests that I do love and one is the Dutch test, which we spoken about, a dried urine analysis test, and certainly for people going into Adrenopause, Andropause for men and Menopause for women. That’s kind of what you need to do, you need to see exactly where those hormone metabolites are, what’s happening, which direction that’s going. You can see the whole picture. And that helps with adrenal health and immune health. And like, it tells us a lot. Now, the other thing is the organic acids test. So this tells us what are we being exposed to. So it helps us look at toxicity. It helps us look at minerals. There’s a whole lot that it tells us. But what you need to do with your doctor, is you need to sit down for an hour with them. And you need to go, Hey, this happened. And then this happened. And then this happened. And so what we do at Wholistic Natural Health is we build a timeline with our clients. And so, you know, I actually have yours here in front of me. And I’ll just go up to that. Yep. So what we’re doing is we’re going “okay, so what happened first, so from the moment that you were born, then what happened? And then what happened? And then what happened?” And so we can see that, you know, there’s some childhood illness around the age of seven. And we can see that, you know, then there was a candida overgrowth, and so we can see it all in a timeline. And that’s how we treat root chords. Now, obviously, not all doctors have time to do that. But they need to ask you more than “Where does it hurt cough, let me feel the glands under your neck.” Because that’s just not going to tell them enough. So you know, by all means, just say to your doctor, “hey, this happened. And then this happened. And this happened. And I’m kind of a little bit concerned about the trajectory of what’s going on here.” And that’s basically where you need to start as your own health advocate, as you need to say, “Okay, so I’m coming in today, because I have a sore throat. But why is that happening? Why do I have this sore throat? Why is it an over flourish of viral cells?” or, you know, if they say, “Here, take these antibiotics, and you’ll feel better next week”, but why? What is this gonna do? What side effects is that going to have? And you know, antibiotics is a great one. People get prescribed antibiotics. They don’t know what’s actually going to happen. And then next week, they’ve got thrush. Yeah. So you know, we’re taking out the bacteria or allowing the fungal cells to over flourish, and then we’ve got thrush. So now we’ve got a Candida problem. So you know, you need to say if I take this, what’s going to happen? What can I expect? And you need to say as your own health advocate, “I don’t want to be chasing symptoms. If I take this antibiotic today, I don’t want to have to come back for UTI next week”.

Katie Wrigley  39:39  

Yes. I love that. No chasing symptoms. And does it also make sense to say “Okay, what happens if I don’t take this? Like, is it just as important to ask what happens if I do, what happens if I don’t? Or is it just more important what happens if I do?

Magic Barclay  39:58  

You want the whole information okay, but you want to be able to get all of your questions answered. So this is where this five to 15 minute doctor’s appointment isn’t good enough in this day and age. You know, when it was an old doc, whatever his name was, or has shingle out, and it’s a small town, and he’s delivered every baby in the town. He didn’t just give you five to 15 minutes now. And he was like, “and how are you feeling? And what happened? And is everyone else in the family okay?”. He was getting all of those answers. And so now you need to make sure that you get those answers. So you need to say, “Okay, if I don’t take this, what’s going to happen? And if I do take it, what’s going to happen? And what can I expect? And you know, why do you say I need to take this?” Yeah. So you have the right to all of those. And something quite alarming that we’re seeing here in Australia, and I hope it’s not the same everywhere else in the world, is I’ve had clients ask for their blood tests from their doctor surgeries, and they’re told, “No, we can’t print those out for you.” Why not? That’s your information. That’s about something that’s going on in your body. So why can’t you have a printout?

Katie Wrigley  41:22  

Yeah, there are some strange laws. I haven’t heard about that happening yet, thank goodness. But I did just hear the strangest thing the other day. I very, very rarely listened to mainstream news but apparently, in the state of California, they’re allowing people to have their remains turned into compost for gardens now, which I think is actually a lovely idea. But yet, and you may chuckle at this, but so my mom, who was a laboratory technologist before, she was a physician’s assistant, and she was a laboratory technologist before the age of AIDS. So when the blood was too old to be used for donation to someone, she was actually allowed to take it home. And she used it as fertilizer in her yard because it had all this iron and stuff. And so when I had hemochromatosis and you just clicked another piece, with the immunity, I have been stuck so many times, I have scar tissue from all the phlebotomy they’ve given me. So I’m sure that has not helped my immune system along at all. Now you say that I’m like, Ah, son of a bitch. That did not help me. It really does motivate me to stay on the zeolite and get my metals down. But I said, I asked him one day, I’m like, “Can I take my blood?” They’re like, “No”, I’m like, “But I’m walking around with it in my body all the time anyway, why can’t I take the bag?” “No.” Like, what am I gonna do with it? Like, you’re gonna put it in the trash can because our government can’t run my blood through an extra filtration system, which is all they have to do. No one can get this condition from me. It’s genetic. I’m not having kids. I don’t even have the parts to have kids anymore. So it’s really not happening. This ends with me. I’m like, You won’t let me have my blood. But we can now compost ourselves. Okay, I don’t get it. But far be it for me to judge. I’m just kind of scratching my head at that one. But yeah, that’s uh, there are some interesting things there and a lot of times, you have to ask a lot and be really assertive. And my mom taught me to do that because she was a PA and she was pre HMO, when they spend time with us. And that model actually is called the direct care model. There are some states and some insurance companies starting to do that. It’s going back to pre HMO, where your allopathic doctor is going to sit with you for 45 minutes to an hour, covered by insurance, all the good things. So that is that other model of care in addition to functional medicine, or naturopath or holistic medicine, as well, any of those are going to be great, viable, they’re going to dig deeper into the weeds. They’re going to take into account your mind, your spirit, not just your body, and there is a direct correlation between mental and physical health. So in the event that someone is saying to their doctor, this is happening, this is happening and they’re getting dismissed. What do you recommend they do as their next step, Magic.

Magic Barclay  44:27  

Okay, well, I recommend that you get in touch with us. I mean, just kind of put it out there. So we are at wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au. And it’s holistic with a W because we treat with wholism. Get in touch with us, book your root cause analysis and we may work with you, we may not. We may refer you to someone closer to you. So we actually spoke to a lady yesterday. And you know what, she’s really close to a lady in Arizona. And so I’m gonna refer her to another practitioner. It’s not something that I specialize in, it’s a hormone issue. And I know this other practitioner in Arizona does that kind of stuff every day. So I’m going to send her off there. And so we’re going to be honest with you, we’re going to do your root cause analysis, and your call, and we’ll get, you know, your 33 page intake form done. Katie, you’ve done it, you know, it takes quite a while to get done. And so, yeah, we’re either going to, well, no matter what, we’re going to give you some answers, but we’re either going to offer to work with you, or we’ll send you to a practitioner that has the same skill set as we do, but they focus on something a little bit more niched. And I think that’s important to have that transparency, to have that honesty of “Do you know what, I specialize in immune, and PNEI, and mold. And you want something that’s not solely an endocrine thing, but it’s mainly an endocrine thing. I know someone that does that better. So I think that’s really important is to know that you’re in a worldwide team of practitioners. And that, you know, if it’s not my bag, it’s someone else’s, I’m gonna send you that.

Katie Wrigley  46:26  

And that’s one of the reasons that made me trust you so quickly other than you clearly are an expert in your space. But with my own case, I already started to work with a naturopath and I’m feeling pretty healthy. I got some adrenal fatigue and menopause perimenopause going on. So my hormones are doing whatever they’re doing. But that was the first thing you said to me, is “Oh, well, we’ll have you work with your naturopath”. But then things came back that are pointing to PNEI, to mold, to immunity. That’s your wheelhouse, but you are collaborating with her. And it was full transparency to her. It’s like, I’m still working with you, you’re local to me, I have a lot of respect for you, you’re doing a great job with me too. Magic does root cause analysis, and now she’s fascinated and “Ohh!” And you know, I did the Dutch tests that you recommended, I did that last week I sent it in, I’ll let you know, when I get the results, it is not a big deal at all, you’re a little bit dehydrated, the day that you test. And if you have to give up your coffee and your DHEA drops like I did, you’re gonna be a little tired. Not a big deal. Just do it on a day, you don’t have to do too much. It’s really not agonizing. It’s a heck of a lot less painful than going into the doctor’s office and having a blood test. And it’s gonna give you a much deeper look. Like I’m not excited to see it come back, because now I know things are off. Whereas like when I filled out the root cause analysis, like I was expecting you to be like, “Wow, you’re so healthy.” And that wasn’t what happened. But I thought I was healthy in my mindset. So I was living a healthy life. And I still am. And now I know why I can’t fall asleep at night, my cortisol goes up. But you know, all of these things were happening. And you gave me you basically gave me the key to the puzzle. It’s like I had all these puzzle pieces, but I couldn’t figure out how they fit together or which ones were supposed to go there because I didn’t have a picture to look at. Your root cause analysis is basically like a puzzle box be like, Oh, that’s where they go. Okay, cool. Now I can do something with this. And that is exciting, because I’m gonna feel even better than I already feel. Because I’m doing these deep “Why”. And I’ve done a hypnosis session already to help clear out my birth trauma. So that was where this all began. I was almost a stillborn, I don’t know if I’ve said this on the show yet, I was born with a pulse of 10, which Magic knows from my form. And that caused some issues. You know, it affected my subconscious mind. And then the trauma that I am aware of, that happened from age three to seven. And then during that time, I’m getting sick a lot, a lot a lot. That was also the first time I had iron overload. There was a lot happening in my little body from age three to seven, and it continued happening into adulthood with random hive episodes, and you’re giving me the keys there and so much of it is linked back to trauma. So I want to actually take a moment as well, because you had mentioned the PNEI neural pathways before. So how does that play into a lot of this and if I’m not even sure how to word that correctly for PNEI, but how does that tie into this, Magic?

Magic Barclay  49:45  

Okay, so for the listeners, PNEI is the psycho neuro endo immunology and in this case of trauma. So, what we’re looking at is Katie from your childhood, that thought and the feelings that you were developing from the trauma that was happening, then sent nervous system messages through your body. So you were starting to get sick and you were starting to, you know, have these episodes of, you know, pain and things like that start popping up. And so that’s then sending system messages through to your endocrine system. And so as you’re getting older, you’re starting to have these endocrine issues. And then what that’s looking like for you is, then it ends up with an immune reaction. And so that’s when you flipped from your TH2 to TH1. And so now you’ve become catabolic, and everything’s breaking everything down, because there’s this stuff from your childhood that your body is seeing as a pathogen. It’s affected all these other big systems. And now it’s gone, “Well must be an immune problem. It’s a pathogen, it’s got to be”, but it’s actually what’s happened when you were, you know, three to seven, or even from your birth. So this is what PNEIi is. And it’s the way your body links up these really four big systems. Now there’s 13 systems for the body, but these four, link up to that trauma, they link up to that psycho inflammation, right? So it’s a form of inflammation, but it’s from your thoughts, from your feelings, it’s from your experience. That never leaves us unless we address it, and we send it off and we go, do you know what? Thanks, that happened. That’s good. So that’s when you did the hypnosis around, nearly being the stillborn that you’ve gone. “And now I release that that’s okay, that can’t hurt me anymore”. And now this, this sounds maybe to the listeners a bit, kooky, a bit out there. But it’s a thing. And, you know, just because you experience something and that was in, doesn’t mean your body and your mind have forgotten it. Right? And how many times do we think that we’re okay, we walk through a department store and we smell a perfume, and all of a sudden, you’ve got this feeling of dread or fear or something because someone that wore that perfume, when you were a child did whatever and all of a sudden that’s flooded back to you. So, you know, these things don’t go away unless we say “You happened. That’s okay. I can’t turn back time. But now I release you, you’re gone”. And unfortunately, when we don’t do that, it ends up as an immune problem. So, you know, we see a lot of people out there in the world that are going great guns until they’re, you know, maybe 40 to 50. They start getting into that adrenopause cycle, and it’s like, bam, now you’re really sick. Why? What happened? Why is the endocrine system now triggering the immune system? Let’s work backwards. So you know, that’s what the PNEI system is that we look at? What was the root cause? What was the catalyst? Why is that now happening?

Katie Wrigley  53:18  

And that makes a lot of sense. And I’m going to ask this next question and preface it by saying, I literally have no fear this is actually going to happen to me. If the answer is yes. And I don’t know what you’re gonna say, if I hadn’t already been doing the work to clear out so much of this trauma, because I have peeled back layers already. I mean, the fact that I never had to have neurosurgery or any of the other surgeries I’ve been told I was gonna have to have I don’t get sick. Well, that’s actually more of a product of immune system doing what it wants to but didn’t get sick, very much, very healthy, and I’m visibly healthier than I used to be. If I didn’t have this awareness, I wasn’t already doing this work. What are the chances that all of this would wind up in some sort of autoimmune condition?

Magic Barclay  54:01  

Huge chances. And I’ll take my own world to share with the listeners. I still have poly autoimmunity. So multiple autoimmune conditions, I have one that’s affecting my brain at the moment. My hair is still thin, you know, there’s a few things still going on for me. I’m still quite a chubby person because my body doesn’t feel safe. And so you know, people come to me and they go “All of a sudden I’ve got this autoimmune or whatever”. I get it. But the reason is, because so much has been happening for so long. That your immune system, the big dog on the block, is going “Do you know what, I just need to try and calm things down”. And it’s almost like a fire blanket. I really love visualization. Okay, but imagine you’re cooking in the kitchen and you have the tiniest saucepan and it catches fire. Like it’s one of those little, you know, sauce ones. I don’t even know the word for it. But it’s really, really tiny. But you’ve got this big ass fire blanket and you put that across. Did you need the big ass fire blanket? Probably not. That’s your auto immune. Could you have done with the corner of the fire blanket to put out this little pot? Yea you sure could have. But instead, you’ve got this big fire blanket and now you’re going to spend the next 15 minutes trying to fold it back up to put it back in the bag. That’s your autoimmune going on. That’s your poly autoimmunity. So the body needs to react to what’s going on to keep you safe. That’s all it needs to do. And it will do that no matter what is required. It will keep you safe. Do we need the whole fire blanket? Probably not? So in my condition, at the moment, I’m a million times better than I was. Have I got all my ducks in a row? No, my fire blanket’s still spilling over the bags that didn’t put it back in properly. So you know. It is what it is. But if we don’t address it, yes, you will end up with autoimmune. And so, you know, mainstream medicine says autoimmune is your body attacking itself. Not really. Like, that’s what it looks like from the outside but autoimmune is your body trying to keep you safe. What have you missed? So I know what I missed. And now I’m addressing all of that. But, you know, what have you missed? Is there just some little nuance? Is it one of the immune types that you’ve swung too wildly? Or, you know, for me? Why was my thyroid unwell? What was the root cause of that? You know, and for me, a lot of it was trauma. So okay, I’m dealing with my trauma, and I teach other practitioners how to deal with trauma. So I’m slowly folding back my fire blanket. It’s not something we need to go on a running scale. A label is a label. Yep. You know, it’s just a name that we give to a collection of symptoms. But we need to look at what started that.

Katie Wrigley  57:19  

Absolutely. I love that. That’s very solid advice there. Thank you for that, Magic . And I also want to point out even as you’re peeling back the layers, your quality of life has been improving this whole time, even if you don’t have the fire blankets shoved neatly back in its container, correct?

Magic Barclay  57:37  

Totally. So for me, my fire blanket is folded. It’s not folded particularly neatly, and it’s not fitting back in the bag 100%. But it’s folded. It’s not spilling out all over the floor. You know what that’s better than where it was. And so, you know, to the listeners, you need to be patient with yourself, you are not going to get 100% better today. It’s not going to happen. That’s an unrealistic expectation. Okay. But if you can walk without pain, or if you can go out with your friends and not be so tired that you’re most full, you know, face first into the soup plate. That’s better than it was yesterday. So, you celebrate the wins and celebrate the steps you’re going through. Because it’s not as you know, black and white. If I can say that, as “Today I’m well, tomorrow. I’m not.” You know, it doesn’t work that way. It’s “Am I better today than I was yesterday. Great. Am I better today than I was last year? Great. Am I exactly where I need to be or want to be right now? Maybe not. But I’m headed there”. So you know, we always talk about, look for the silver lining. Well, I’m alive. And seven years ago, I was told I wasn’t going to be. So do you know what that works for me.

Katie Wrigley  59:02  

Yes, absolutely. That’s such a great sentiment. Feels like a good sentiment to wrap the show. So the call to action for this episode, I will make sure the link is in the show notes. And it is also in the other episode that we did before. Wholisticnaturalhealth.com.au. Book your root cause analysis with Magic. Yes, it will take you some time to do it. And you will feel very heard, very seen, and it will give you the cover of the puzzle box to be able to put the pieces together that haven’t made sense to you yet. Thank you so much for joining me again today, Magic. It’s always such a pleasure to get to talk to you and work with you.

Magic Barclay  59:46  

Thank you so much, Katie and thank you to your listeners because, you know we couldn’t do these things called podcasts without these fantastic people listening.

Katie Wrigley  59:55  

Yes, I agree. And that’s always how I sign off it is with a thank you. And thank you again, Magic. And to you, My cherished listener, thank you again for listening, and I really hope this episode has left you feeling empowered. We’re going to continue the theme of empowerment with next week’s guest. Join me again next week to learn how you can take your power back. If you combine what you learned today with what’s coming next week, you will feel so much better prepared for your next medical appointment. Until then, never forget that chronic doesn’t have to mean permanent. 

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