Your Mental Health and Your Diagnosis Don’t Define Who You Are with Dr Debbie Smrz, ND on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

get to do it all.

 

Manon Bolliger 02:35

True. So, but what was there some, you know, something in your life that got you interested in the field of, of healing in the first place.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  02:51

So, I didn’t have anything happen to me, particularly. And I’ve always been quite intuitive. And I’ve always been able to see what people need and to support them in certain ways. And but I am not one of the naturopaths that always had digestive issues, and that’s what brought them to see a naturopath. I actually discovered natural apathy a little bit later in life. I initially actually wanted to be a motivational speaker. And I heard these motivational speaking and I’m like, this is amazing, but what platform am I going to use? What am I going to speak on. And then I started learning more and more about natural healing and herbs, and just the benefits that we can do for people without drugs. And I thought, you know, this is the platform that I want to go on to?

 

Manon Bolliger 03:38

Well, I think I mean, the timing is, is amazing. Because with I mean, first of all, I’m sure that you’ve noticed changes in your practice, which we can talk about in the last two years, during this whole episode of the pandemic. But many people are getting discouraged now, with so called modern or conventional medicine, you know, where some of the solutions that they’re bringing to the table like, you know, Rosefemodere, and all that are as are more deadly than as it turns out, you know, the actual thing, I’m not using certain words so that we don’t get banned, but you know, are quite deadly, right. And then, you know, other drugs that are not nearly as bad and have been time tested are banned. You know, we’re in a very strange time period. And I think people are going what’s going on, like I’ve seen an increase though I’m not practicing anymore, a great demand for naturopathic medicine. At least, you know, I’ve been referring left, right and center in BC. So.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  04:53

Yeah, and I think there’s a couple of different reasons for this. One is the medical system has changed in itself. And the allopathic medical system. People can’t get in patients into see their doctors, because everything was shut down for so long everything is so backlogged, people are feeling discouraged. And I think that’s the first issue that’s going on. And then again, they spent so much time triaging. And then…and we don’t understand it, I think as patients for medical doctors, we don’t understand why we can’t get in to see them. Why is my medical doctor not seeing me now? Why is everything online? I understand the change, why hasn’t it changed back? And then people are very feeling…feeling isolated? Because to see them, they’re not getting to see other people? Yeah.

 

Manon Bolliger 05:42

Yeah, no, I think there is a change within the system, at least I know, also, with nurses and I’ve talked to a lot, they feel like they’re just, you know, administrators at this point. And there isn’t the sort of quality of time, you know, with the patients, even in the hospitals, you know. So, there’s a real…and then, of course, when they made, you know, decisions, like, despite that, you know, nurses and doctors were there. When in 2020, we, you know, while we were having this, at this time, kind of unknown, you know, virus, they were there working, and they were risking their lives, because we didn’t know any better if it’s, how dangerous, you know, the stats weren’t out as they came out later.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  06:33

It was definitely a lot of fear around at that time.

 

Manon Bolliger 06:35

Yeah, and, you know, they were all there. And then what happens is, when it’s under so called control, and, you know, then they cut all the stuff off that, you know, either have had it or, you know, are immune to it. And then they’re not working. So now the, the hospitals and everything is so…there’s they’re lacking staff, they’re lacking, you know, help. I mean, I know, from many people who have rather stay at home, than go into those types of establishments, because they’re afraid they’re not going to get the care that they should.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  07:15

Yeah, and the wait lines are so long right now as well.

 

Manon Bolliger 07:18

Exactly,

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  07:19

It’s definitely…you know, again, my focus is, is actually brain health not so much just mental health, but the whole idea that, you know, the brain is a structure, an orient organ that we need to understand more, it’s the only organ that we really don’t do any testing on, except for questionnaires that can be so subjective. And we’re definitely seeing an increase in in mental health issues, as well as information issues. More so I think than before, when it comes to the brain, you know, since 2020, people are just feeling discouraged. People are feeling overwhelmed. And people don’t know what’s going to happen next. You know what I feel like everyone’s walking around with a when’s the next shoe going to drop sort of feeling?

 

Manon Bolliger 08:01

Right

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  08:02

Like people will joke Oh, well, the kids are back in school now. But who knows how long that will last? And so, there’s this, this fear of the unknown, right? What troubles society is the unknown. When people have anxiety, what they want is control. That’s the number one thing you need. If you’re anxious, you need control, and talk about taking control away. And so, I think anxiety has really gone through the roof, and it’s one of the biggest reasons.

 

Manon Bolliger 08:25

Yeah. So, you’re seeing that amongst your own patients?

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  08:32

Amongst my own patients, you know, on the playground when I dropped my kids off at school, talk to other parents that absolutely among patients, absolutely. And then so many people are working from home, and just when they got used to that, and now they’re being told to go back into work, but then they might not stay that way for long either. So again, it’s just this…so many changes, and we’re being told to just change on a dime so quickly.

 

Manon Bolliger 08:56

So, what is the this…what can you tell us that most of us might not know about the brain? And also, ways of testing it?

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  09:07

Yeah, so, one of the reasons though, I’ve been focusing on the brain now for my practice, 15 years, almost 10. And I started with saying mental health. So, anxiety, depression, even Alzheimer’s memory, and then an infection…streptococcal infection caused my daughter to have massive neurological symptoms. Anxiety, depression, regression and math, but we didn’t know what it was. And so, people were just telling me that my daughter was in the 95th percentile of anxiety, the 95th percentile of emotion dysregulation, so all of these things and you know, here I am thinking like, Wow, here I am, I focus on mental health, and I didn’t even notice? And it took us months to realize that it was pandas a streptococcal infection that was causing inflammation in the body, and therefore affecting the brain and people don’t realize. People don’t know that sure an infection can cause you to have brain changes. And I think this is something that when we think about any kind of infection, right now, they’re calling it PANDAS pediatric autoimmune neuropsychiatric disorder associated with streptococcal infection. But when I started doing the research, I was finding books that had been written in the 60s, the 50s, talking about how inflammation affects the brain, talking about how infection can affect the brain. So, it makes absolute sense that anything we do, what you were alluding to earlier, that affects the immune system can cause neurological changes. Getting a virus, getting something against a virus, all of these things can cause changes to the brain. And we’re seeing that more and more in this sort of inflammatory state. And so, I think that that’s a big one that people don’t realize, and just how much even your diet can make a difference when it comes to brain health, because you’re causing some inflammation going on in the brain. One thing that I just bought was, it’s called a Wahby, brain scan device. There’s not very many in Canada, and it does a neurological assessment of your brain. So, a functional assessment. So, it’s like you’re wearing this cap with different electrodes that are connected to your head. And it gives you a full-on scan, and it’s just been FDA, or I don’t know, just it is FDA approved to, to assess ADD in a couple of other things. And we’re just gonna get more and more research on that down the road as we get more people running through these different kinds of programs.

 

Manon Bolliger 11:30

Mm hmm. I was thinking there’s a brain health doctor in California, he’s quite well known. And his name, of course, there’s just escaped me.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  11:41

Are you thinking of Dr. Ayman?

 

Manon Bolliger 11:43

Yes, that’s it.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  11:43

It’s because of him that I decided to get one, I was calling the Ayman Clinic to say, you know, I want this patient to get a scan, I don’t believe that just they’ve got anxiety. I think that they’ve had a concussion, I think that there’s some minds as well, that there’s more to it. But it’s expensive, because not only is the scan expensive, but you have to fly there and then stay in a hotel, And so I mean, I don’t have a PET scan like he has by any means. But this is definitely a step in the right direction to be able to assess what’s going on and then use that methodology. Just the way Dr. Ayman would give us an understanding of what to do as far as diet, supplements, working on certain parts of the brain that might be reacting differently based on what the scan is going to show us. So really excited to start using it I haven’t still in the process of getting trained on this one, I’ve been trained on a different device. But I’m, I’m really looking forward to launching that in the next couple of months.

 

Manon Bolliger 12:46

Well, I’ve followed his work quite a bit myself, because I’ve always found the brain intriguing. And, you know, like he says, what live is very different than when it’s just a, you know, an image that doesn’t show functionality, right? So, and it’s so funny, we have it for the heart, we have it for everything else, we should have it for the brain, right?

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  13:10

All the time I had patients say, you know, like, I think I should go get a CAT scan from my head brain. And I’m like, What are you looking for? If you’re looking for a tumor? Absolutely, you’ll get a CAT scan for the brain. But otherwise, there’s not much that a CAT scan is going to show you. It’s going to show you just functionally is everything in place. Oh yeah, when you’re trying to do this memory work, this part of the brain is not firing. I know I had a Neurofeedback scan done once on me. And it told me that I’m most likely to not have good facial identification, facial recognition, and it made me feel so much better because I’m the kind of person who will watch a movie and the main character will change, put on a wig and change their outfit. And I’ll think, who’s this new character they just introduced. So, it was really validating to suddenly say, Okay, this is part of the brain, my brain just works in a different way than others. And so, I know now that I have to work a little bit harder or use other identification markers then just hair color to really be able to identify.

 

Manon Bolliger 14:13

Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. Because I mean, I you know, I have a love hate relationship with a diagnosis, right? Because sometimes a diagnosis leads you to a sort of a limiting belief about your capacity to actually heal and because so much is based on you know, management through chemical agents, you know, they don’t really see what how wonderful the body is and how it can heal. Right.

 

Commercial Break 14:46

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Manon Bolliger 15:28

Right? So, I’ve often been told her, Well, this is an incurable situation. And it’s like, okay, whatever. Let’s see, let’s see if we can make you feel better. And let’s get to the root of it. And then you know, people get better, right? We’re not allowed to say heal.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  15:46

So, I hear what you’re saying. I actually studied German biological medicine in Germany. And the whole idea there is if the train of your body is healthy, you’re not gonna get sick. And so, I started doing chronic degenerative kind of diseases early on, because it doesn’t matter what your…how you’re presenting, or what the name of it is. It’s, you know, is there inflammation? How is your PH balancing? Is there dysbiosis going on in the guts? Are you eliminating properly, is your detoxification pathways are they open? Are they working properly? Is your methylation pathways working? And so then, we don’t need a diagnosis? I agree with you about diagnosis’s, and if we want to sort of take a tangent on that? Do you find are you finding the kids today? Like, seems like people want to label more than they used to.

 

Manon Bolliger 16:34

Absolutely. I know, which is really, you know, and I’m wondering if that has to do with this syndrome, that we have this free-floating anxiety that feels better if it’s got some label or some sort of thing? You know, like a little bit what happened during that, again, the last two years where we’ve seen, I don’t know, what’s his name, Desmond, the psychologist who tried to explain how propaganda works, and how, you know, we end up putting peace to free floating anxiety once you know something. Right? Even if it’s kind of not necessarily true, or it’s a dead end or whatever, you know, and of course, it has to be temporary. But I’ve had this interesting thing with diagnosis. It’s like, people search for it.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  17:29

It’s really interesting. And I agree with you completely. And that’s you’re looking to get a drug for it. Why do you need the diagnosis? Why can’t you just say, Yeah, you know, what, sometimes I have trouble focusing, and I’m kind of all over the place. That’s just who I am. And isn’t that great? Because I can get a lot of things done. Do you need the ADHD diagnosis? Only really, if you’re getting at medication, and then we have to look at the whole reason around that because I agree. I actually…I had another clinic, neuro health and fitness. And it was focusing on kids with neurological issues. And the owner of the company, the…maybe not owner but anyway, he had even sponsored a commercial, and it was all, and it showed all these kids, and you know, what it would say, degenerate, or all these bad things, right, that you could think of. And then in the end, the kid would pull off the label they were wearing, and it would just be like, adventure seeker. And then the last one for the kid that was like, hyperactive and hard to focus, he pulled it off, and it just that kid, right? And it was so moving. I actually have it on my Instagram or my Facebook somewhere. And but the thing is, I feel like today when I that was maybe eight years ago, nine years ago, I feel like now people like no, no, I want the anxiety label. I want the ADHD label. Yeah, it’s sad that we have to, like label ourselves like, and my daughter is in grade 11 now, but you know, when she was in grade nine, and right in grade nine, you have to identify your, your gender that you identify with. And it’s like, well, what if you don’t know yet, then you don’t want right? Like, it’s just why do we have to label everything so quickly?

 

Manon Bolliger 19:16

Right? Yeah, I mean, the gender thing that gets me going on a whole other thing. It’s like, I don’t know. I don’t know. I just find that the whole thing is a bit…we’re causing problems where we don’t need to, on both sides.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  19:32

We would all be very confused if we’d had that right because we just didn’t haven’t thought about it. Like why do I have to think about it in grade seven.

 

Manon Bolliger 19:41

Exactly. Well, exactly. And why can’t we just be who we are and everything we think about that we are and then you know eventually if it really is a problem who we are, we can deal with it as an adult but not you know, when you ask a four or seven year old you know, do you identify as a, as a girl or a boy, it’s like, they don’t know what the hell you’re talking about. It’s so crazy. But there is this labeling thing. And part of it, I think I’m gonna, I’m just gonna throw this out there, but it’s that, then you increase your dependence on either the medical industrial system or the government, because you either get special needs funding, or you get into a bunch of drugs that, you know, you’re now…it’s almost like, if you can identify like this, now you’re in the system.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  20:41

It is true, and especially I don’t know, in all countries, but as social country that we are in, you definitely get more. So, I’m an immigrant to Canada. I was born in South Africa, my husband was a refugee, he came from Czechoslovakia. And I was filling in a form the other day, and it said, you know, are you an immigrant? And I was going to check off. Yes. And I was like, they don’t, that’s not what they mean by their questions. So even though I am an immigrant, and I have a citizenship card, and I had to do the whole immigration, everything, they’re not really asking about me, and I’m like, okay, that’s fine. I don’t, it doesn’t matter. But it does give you some benefits. I do…so going back to mental health, for kids that need to get because a lot of parents are like when they find that their child has ADHD, it’s very traumatic for some parents, even though it means your child has the gift part of the brain is working better. But and we’ll talk about that, is it worth getting an IEP, because a lot of the time is what they want to have my child’s being identified and I don’t want the other children to think anything. But so many kids have IEPs now, and I will often say it’s usually a benefit, because then they can get special attention, they can get special health, they can possibly get their own computer. And so, because our system is built to give extra money to somebody who has been labeled in these ways, it can be more, it can be beneficial in a lot of ways.

 

Manon Bolliger 22:08

But it’s beneficial, and it’s sort of a trap.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  22:13

And then it can kind of be a trap as well, because now you have it, that you have whatever this is, and I always especially if you’ve got to be talking about anxiety, I’ll always say to people, no, you don’t have anxiety. Anxiety comes to visit you sometimes. But let’s take away this idea that this is who you are.

 

Manon Bolliger 22:28

Exactly.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  22:29

You can make yourself become that. And now all of a sudden, well, you know, I will sort of joke that, you know, I’ll have patients and the mother will come in with her daughter, and she’s there because the daughter has anxiety and she’ll say Oh, but she comes across it honestly, I had anxiety, her grandmother had anxiety. And I’m thinking in my head, and you told her all her life, she has anxiety. So now she does. Whereas if so, I always say to people, you know, take it out of the out of you put it beside you. And I get it, it comes to visit sometimes, but it’s not who you are.

 

Manon Bolliger 22:59

Yeah, I totally agree with that. Actually, I have an example of this. Because I was just telling you, my mom just passed away. But one of the things I will never forget that what she did, how she stood up to the doctor at the time, you know, that my sister and this is public because my sister wrote a book about this. So, I’m not giving any confidential information, just in case anyone’s listening on that level. But she was told that because of her condition, which was Ven Reckling house, a disease it’s a neurofibromatosis, that it affects mental capacity. And she was told that she could put her child into, you know, sort of a special boarding school type thing that she would never get past grade one or two, but she would never be able to function. And my mom just threw that diagnosis out and just say, just watch me, you know, thanks for your opinion. And it’s quite…it’s quite moving. But you know, my sister went through grade…up to grade and 13 finished it. She’s running a business with her husband. None of what they said was true. And she just and she refused to label her in any which way. She got a little extra help and things at school, but the thing is, she did not buy that this meant that, you know

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  24:35

I love it. I love it.

 

Manon Bolliger 24:36

It’s such a strong example.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  24:39

One of my favorite books about autism is…it’s been a while since I’ve read it now, but I think it was called The Spark. And again, it was the same thing a mother who eventually just said no, I don’t believe that my you’re not helping my son. I’m taking him to a million things, everything that that system says to do, and it’s not helping. So, I’m doing this myself. And she just said, I’m just going to keep working with him on myself and get through to him. And she was able to devote the time and attention, and then I think last thing, and so you know he was nonverbal when she wrote the book. And this wasn’t like, I don’t know, but grade three four something higher than that, and able to communicate. And then suddenly somebody woke up in him. And I think now he’s a math teacher.

 

Manon Bolliger 25:22

Wow. There you go. Yeah.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  25:25

Yeah, so there’s absolutely something to be said for that as well. Right. Like, there’s so many ways. And don’t just believe. So, for me if I had just believed when they told me that my daughter had anxiety. She, I mean, we were almost at the point where we couldn’t leave the house as a family because she couldn’t leave the house. It was…it was beyond the anxiety was beyond anything about pandas, it’s beyond. And so, you know, she dropped out of school and grade six, they were sending us a homeschool teacher. And I would have at that point, I don’t know what I would have done, I would have had gone into the system, she would be on every sort of medical mental health med there is. And she probably would never left my basement again. But I just said, You know what? No, no, this is not what she has. She doesn’t have anxiety, anxiety. Sure. She has some anxiety. This isn’t anxiety based. And I just kept pushing and pushing. And I remember when I eventually figured out it was pandas. And we were given a special doctor who had worked at a six kids tickets. I said to her, I don’t care if you don’t think it’s pandas, because I know what it is now. And I’m just going to keep working on the neurological system and treat this as a bug. And she was…and that was that was it. And she was fine with it. And we got her better. We got her better with antimicrobials.

 

Manon Bolliger 26:46

Yeah. And cool. But it takes such perseverance, right to want to get to the root of things. One not to give up and not to sell short, you know, it’s like, we really have to question everything, you know, and also trust our intuition. Right? Well, they, you know, especially I think mothers they know. They know, okay, there’s something doesn’t feel right, and just, you know, trust that, don’t be stupid about keep looking.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  27:20

But I think what we are taught to not trust our intuition so much. I did some research on as an actually, it was in the 1950s, when parenting magazines first started coming out. And that’s when, you know, instead of thinking, learning, listening to our intuition and doing what we wanted, we were suddenly told not by our moms or our family members, but by this authority somebody has written in black and white of what to do.

 

Manon Bolliger 27:46

Yeah.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  27:46

And then we started second guessing ourselves, like our grandparents didn’t second guess themselves. And yet, now we come from a society where we’re so self-conscious about what to do, and you know What to Expect When You’re Expecting. I will tell people you know, don’t even read that, like know a little bit, but just use your intuition. Use your intuition for what feels right.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:11

Exactly. Really connect. You know?

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  28:14

Yes, yeah

 

Manon Bolliger 28:15

Yeah, yeah. Anyway, or our time is like up. So, do you have any, any last statement for everyone?

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  28:24

At? Yeah, absolutely. I would love it if they if your followers would follow me. I have an Instagram account. My handle is @DrDebbieSmrz. So, @drdebbiesmrz. Sorry about that. I also yeah, check out my website, notliving.ca. And I would love to hear from anybody got any questions.

 

Manon Bolliger 28:48

Okay, well, thank you so much for sharing your knowledge and, yeah, and the possibilities, I just find that we need to know that there are options and that we can, you know, trust ourselves and, and keep open. So, thank you for the positive message.

 

Dr. Debbie Smrz, ND  29:07

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me.

 

ENDING: 41:33

Thank you for joining us at the Healers Café with Manon Bolliger. Continue your healing journey by visiting TheHealersCafe.com and her website and discover how to listen to your body and reboot optimal health or DrManonBolliger.com/tips.