One Doctor’s Quest to Eliminate Stress-Related Illnesses with Dr Elizabeth Hughes on The Healers Café with Dr. Manon Bolliger, ND

Dr Hughes :                        02:59                    So that, so that was the focus of the article I was reading. But his first patient a woman named Minnie had obesity. She was hypertensive. She didn’t have her period so she couldn’t have children. She had acne, she had excess hair growth, she had muscle wasting and stretch marks. And I was reading this article over lunch one day in my office and I said, that’s everybody I saw this morning. Like what struck me was something that went from being a rare, unusual condition became 100% normal a hundred years later, really early or slightly less than a hundred years later. And that struck me and somewhere in that same medical journal or in the same pile of journals, I was catching up on I was trying to eat lunch and there was another article about how we’re not going to have enough doctors and I’m in the United States, so we’re not going to have enough doctors in the United States with the aging population.

Dr Hughes :                        04:08                    And medical schools really haven’t kept pace. And I thought to myself,but maybe all of this illness that we’re seeing is not necessary. Maybe there’s too much illness and we have of plenty of doctors. So those ideas kind of rattled around in my head for a few years and I didn’t make anything of it. And I actually now, well, and the funny thing was at the time that I had this discovery, I myself was constantly anxious. I was, I had an incredible anxiety disorder and which I thought was normal. I, you know, how else do you get through medical school? You need an anxiety disorder. Right? But I also wanted adrenaline. Exactly. Exactly. I ran on it all the time, but I had, you know, I was constantly anxious. I was exhausted and yet I couldn’t sleep well. I was weak. I had a brain fog and I had all of those symptoms, many of the symptoms as well.

Dr Hughes :                        05:18                    I wasn’t wrestling with let’s say high blood pressure, but many of those same, those same adrenal excess problems or adrenal over exhaustion problems. I was having this. Well and I was like, wait, something’s not right here. And so I soldiered on for a few years. And then saw a woman who who got a complete resolution of a chronic skin condition or an incurable skin condition. She was, she was getting ready for surgery to hopefully correct a large non-healing ulcer on her leg where she healed that leg in three weeks with just a change in belief. She had been told by every doctor she’d seen that she was too old and it would never heal. And I spontaneously said, well, that’s ridiculous. You’re going to be able to heal it. And sure enough it did. And all of these things sort of all together made me say, there’s something I need to do here. There’s something I need to look at. And at that point it was a kind of like just, I was walking into this new candy shop of ideas and I didn’t know what to try for a stylist studying everything and looking at everything, reading everything I could. It was, it was confusing and overwhelming and exciting. All at the same.

Dr Manon :                         06:50                    Yeah. I I can relate to that. Like many of the patients that have come to see me are so confused, right. Because once you lose that, that connection with the, your medical doctor who can’t do anything except more drugs and more disease management and, and you know, there’s more, it’s like, where do you start?

Dr Hughes :                        07:16                    Right. And there was very little way to guide people towards what they need. And that’s something I experienced for myself because I had to get myself well first. And it’s something I know that all of my clients have experienced ..

Dr Manon :                         07:36                    Yeah. so, okay, so then that was your beginning of of like knowing there’s more. And then so what, how did you, how did you start knowing the thing that was right for you? What was that process like?

Dr Hughes :                        07:56                    You mean right? For me personally or right me professionally?

Dr Manon :                         08:02                    Well, both actually personal first, because I think to me that’s one of the things in the, in the book that my upcoming book, it’s really about aligning what is that thing that, you know, that makes sense, that this is the door you should open first. You know? So, so how was it for you?

Dr Hughes :                        08:30                    So, well that, that was probably the scariest thing for me because I started to have basically being woken up in the middle of a night with almost feeling as if someone had, was shaking me. I live in, I live in Seattle, I live in earthquake country, we get earthquakes here and now and again, and I’ve kind of felt like the, you know, we was shaking and I, with this sort of voice that was me, but wasn’t me in my head saying, you’re doing it wrong now. That was, that was frightening because as a doctor, I’m not allowed to do anything wrong, you know, I’m just not allowed to, like perfection is expected. But but it was also very sort of imprecise because what was it, you know, what, what was it? And so in some ways, then I said, I need to figure out what the messages my body might be sending is. And I don’t know why that was the first place, but all I knew was I could only sort of listen to myself and find out what that was that I might be doing wrong. So I, I started not only to look at what I thought was true about and what I assumed from medical school about how health and illness works. There’s a bias towards detecting illness in the medical world and not celebrating and amplifying health. So that was a first place to go. And, and then I became very interested in the beliefs around that that we’re all, we’re all sick, we’re all dying, all falling apart, which isn’t true. So that’s, so that wake up basically the little tremor, right, was saying more or less, you know, that was your hint that there’s a messaging in, in the subconscious that is informing you of something and then it’s time to figure it out. Where’s this coming from then?

Dr Hughes :                        11:02                    Yeah, so I had joined a health coaching program and became a certified health coach. One of the guest lecturers was a man named Bruce Lipton, Dr. Bruce whom you may know or have heard of, but he works, he’s works on epigenetics. You know, he gave a lecture on epigenetics and gave us reading material. And mentioned this technique called psych K, which I had never heard of before, but it said, this is, you know, sort of how to change your subconscious beliefs that then change your, genetic makeup. And I was like, all right, here’s another medical person talking about something that I want to understand. And I actually did the site unseen didn’t know what I was getting into. I’m going to go and get trained, at least do the basic training in this, this modality of psych K, which is a subconscious belief change process.

Dr Hughes :                        12:10                    In the first hour of my training, the the facilitator of the workshop cured my lifelong cat allergy. And, and I knew that it had been cured because she had actually was running the workshop in her home where she had two cats. And I, you know, I’m, she asked is anybody allergic to cats? And I said, well, me. And she said, okay, we’ll change that for you. And I spent the whole week, the whole four days in her home with the two cats without sneezing or having any itchy eyes, no runny nose or anything like that. And that sensation of rightness, that sensation of this really is a change that what really made me feel like I was on the right path.

Dr Manon :                         13:00                    Mm. Yeah, it makes sense. It’s amazing how at least I’ve noticed you have to experience to believe and especially, if you have if you’re science-based, if you’re medically trained, if you have, built in bias assumptions of how things work, even if it’s towards disease management as you say, like there’s not much emphasis towards healing. In fact, there’s not even a philosophy of healing cause that’s not really, it doesn’t appear to be one of the options. Exactly. All the Incurables out there, it’s like the untouchables is like really it’s not true. But yeah, so, but it’s like when you experience it, it’s really hard to turn that off. You can’t deny your own experience.

Dr Hughes :                        13:55                    Exactly. Exactly. And that is one of the things that I realized for myself and one of the things that I realized then in starting to work with clients was that they need to have that experience of what it feels like to feel healthy or stress free. And once you get that, it’s it’s undeniable and it’s also your guide. You can start to use that. I’m, going off course because I’ve lost that feeling or it’s harder for me to get back on that.

Dr Manon :                         14:33                    Oh yeah, I’ve got chills. We are exactly on the same path.

Dr Hughes :                        14:40                    Yeah. And so for, I tried, when I had anxiety, I tried all the stress management things. I tried multiple different forms of meditation. I was practicing yoga actively and i was totally stressed out. And and I realized that none of these standard techniques for dealing with stress actually gave you that experience of what I called like embodied rightness. That like if he gave that to you right up front and said, this is where you’re heading, this is what you want you’re aiming for this, that would have helped a lot. because the idea was just, okay, sit and breathe and you know, eventually you’ll feel better. It didn’t feel right.

Dr Manon :                         15:30                    That sounds actually, yeah, that, that really that’s well, well put and it is my experience. But you’ve really summed it up in a way that, yeah, I’m just, I’m like looking at what my …for me this whole field obviously is fascinating, you know, how do you, how do you empower people to really take charge of, of themselves when there are no other apparent solutions. Right. And, and I think that it’s the, it’s the embodied experience it really comes to, they have some measure to be able to come back to, to notice that, ah, that’s, that’s what it feels like and now, Oh, I’m deviating from it. Or, Hmm, I wonder if it’s this and that, that caused me to come, go off track of that inner Oh, definitely. No. really isn’t is no, I mean there’s diagnostics, but it doesn’t tell you, you know, how you feel. Right.

Dr Hughes :                        16:36                    The problem with so many folks is that they don’t feel well when medical the medical world will say we are perfectly healthy. There’s nothing wrong with you. And that’s disempowering. , it’s, I call it victim blaming. You know, that’s just, you’re really blaming the victim for feeling badly. You shouldn’t feel badly, your numbers are normal.

Dr Manon :                         17:00                    Exactly. Yeah, yeah. Numbers are normal. Therefore you’re, you’re, you’re abnormal for not feeling as the labs represent you. Right. Exactly. Yeah. That’s why like you ended up, I ended up feeling like I’m treating a whole bunch of healthy people who can barely walk straight. Yeah. That’s scary. Right? So tell me, what is it that, yeah, so what’s the focus of, let me make sure I’ve got the name of what it, what it is that you created. The stress…antidote.. system. Like what is it, what is it? What is it? Well, so

Dr Hughes :                        17:41                    I started to really, because this played into how my life went, was the, the role of stress playing with illness and started to too. And in medicine, in medical school, you don’t talk about stress, you don’t talk about it at all. And yet it underlies probably 75 plus percent of medical visits have some component of stress related illness. So the way I started to look at this is that your body has sort of two modes. It operates when the stress, neurotransmitters and hormones, I call them the stress molecules are running through your body. They, the whole body behaves in one way and when they’re not there and when you have your rest and restore and repair hormones and information, you know, molecules running through your body, your body behaves in a totally different way. It’s,dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde or Bruce banner and the Hulk or something like that.

Dr Hughes :                        18:43                    It’s like we’ve got two of us in ourselves. And so learning how to notice that those stress molecules are being released. And then how really to very simply turn that off is, is the focus of what I do. That is the stress antidote program that I use for people. And it is, as we’ve been talking about this embodied feeling and then there’s there’s processing so you can make sure that it gets embedded into your life really easily because health is not supposed to be difficult. We’re not supposed to struggle. We’re not supposed to strive. We’re not supposed to deny ourselves. We’re just not. It’s not supposed to be our work. And believe it or not, by letting your body lead and doing the fun things it wants to do, it takes care of you. It takes care of itself. It’s amazing.

Dr Manon :                         19:49                    Hmm. So, okay, I’m going to get more nosey. Please. So how do you, what’s the method in which you get people to have that initial embodied feeling?

Dr Hughes :                        20:04                    So I actually have people envision situations where they have felt that they trusted someone. Because when you come down to it, stress is a feeling of I’m in danger. I can’t handle this. And the opposite feeling of that is I trust I’m cared for. And, so I approach illness on this. Like what is your body saying? And what is the opposite feeling, not the opposite molecule or something like that. And so when you take a person through an exercise of feeling and remembering a period of time when they felt that deep trust, they suddenly like, Oh, this is what it’s supposed to feel like. This is your body turning on. This is what it’s supposed to do. And that’s, that’s the start of what I do. And then we do exercises to I mean it, we do exercises to help you feel that momentum going towards that again, an embodied practice so that, that feels natural. And then of course there’s, you know, on the longer term there are all sorts of things come up because you know, your neighbor, mother, sister, doctor, everybody who’s going to tell you you’re crazy. And so we still, we talk about all of those stumbling blocks and all of those resistance,s that’s going to come up. And even memories from the past that would throw you off the course. We work on all of that. But that initial experience of trust is where it all starts.

Dr Manon :                         21:56                    So, so how do you explain or work with, or understand how trust has a, you know, has a feeling and if you can embody that feeling, but is that, what’s your understanding of the subconscious and the awareness consciousness piece? because I think both are at play. And I’m just wondering sort of what are your understandings or theories between bringing up the, potentially the sabotaging unconscious and the well-intended awareness of let’s say trust, if we just use trust as an example. So, your, your patient now knows and remembers trust and has embodied that. How do you deal with the internal unknown subconscious that might be knocking that down?

Dr Hughes :                        23:02                    well that’s part of the, the energy medicine technique, the psyche K that I use. So we, we go in and we say things like, well, everybody in my family has had cancer so I’m, I’m bound to have cancer or something like that. So those individual beliefs that you may have about genetic patterns or family or anything else , we address those. But once you’ve once you’ve had that feeling of trust, you can suddenly say, wait. So when I feel that I go off I’m gonna talk, I’m gonna veer off course a little bit and, and change the, conversation about the word subconscious. Subconscious makes it sound like it’s lesser or unimportant or buried. And I don’t use the term, but I really would prefer to use sort of your body wisdom and your head wisdom, you know, rather than conscious and subconscious.

Dr Hughes :                        24:06                    It’s there. We have access it to it all the time. It’s not dark, it’s not deep. It is the thing that keeps our heart ticking and our selves breathing. So this subconscious is not something that’s so incredibly inaccessible. It’s right there. You can find what you need from it and talk to it. And most of ours, you know, quote unquote subconscious things that are knocking us off course really aren’t that subconscious. We know what they are. We just don’t. We. just, we just dont pay attention to that belief over there in the corner.

Dr Manon :                         24:45                    Right. So, so do you like are you familiar with the work of Byron Katie or so like where she goes, is it true, is it true? And she takes the thought and then allows you to, to flip it and see whether the opposite is maybe even more true and then reapply it in your, in your life. Because in everything we say or do, there are things that we take so-called for granted. Right? Right. So is your feeling slash understanding I’m going to go both ways. Is it that we actually have all the information and that we just don’t pay enough attention because we don’t know how to read our body.

Dr Hughes :                        25:37                    Absolutely. I could not agree More and I do teach my clients different ways to read or communicate with your subconscious. So they’re kind of like, they’re not bridges but they, until you really have that feeling, you can use kinesiology, muscle testing, you can use getting in touch with your gut feeling and how that works. You can use some specialized writing techniques. Those are so I teach people ways to really get to the essence of what your body wisdom or your deep knowledge is.] Okay. And so people who talk about cause in, in the world that treats or claims to affect the unconscious and subconscious is a lot of dialogue about there are, there is disempowering dialogue. Let’s say that you, you can’t, you don’t know what it is because it’s hidden from you.

Dr Hughes :                        26:42                    Yeah. So, yes, absolutely. And so what’s interesting is I’ve worked now with enough clients and thousands and thousands of patients to realize that there’s a very very similar set of those disempowering, limiting beliefs that we’re all walking around with. It’s kind of like we’ve got two arms, two legs, and this set of beliefs, like my body is fragile and my body is frail. And so we go right into those because every single solitary person I work with has them to some extent as far as the human condition. It’s part of the human condition, right? I think the first time you stand up, first time you fall over and skin and knee something clicks in, it’s like, Oh my goodness, I’m mortal. I can be hurt. And, and the beliefs get sort of just compounded and layered on from there.

Dr Manon :                         27:44                    So is that how you see so let’s see. Trauma, right? How do you, and again, if this is not your ……. your expertise is stress, but obviously trauma, that trauma is you know, it could be physical trauma that has an emotional basis as well, whichever, but you know, like incest or like how, which at least I’ve noticed that, that people don’t always remember it’s been so cut off from them. Right. But when they’re actually healing, these memories become available to them.

Dr Hughes :                        28:26                    Yes, yes. And it can be extremely distressing. And this, I have techniques to help people sit with these memories and a safe way so that they can then get peace and non-attachment almost like they can see a picture of it happening to them on a film, but it doesn’t have that same emotional grab that it does. And, and that’s a process. And we do that because lots of people, I mean there’s, there’s unprecedented amount of violence and frightening things that happen to people. And even if it didn’t seem like a big, you know, big capital T trauma, it’s still traumatic and right. And I think everybody could use redoing some memory.

Dr Manon :                         29:17                    Yeah, I would agree. Okay. okay. No, that’s that’s fascinating. So mindset, like tell me a little bit more about your views on mindset and, and the importance it has in healing.

Dr Hughes :                        29:36                    Oh yeah. So as part of my re ed education or my real medical education, I read basically every self-healing book that I could, you know, the, the books on. I healed cancer. I cured multiple sclerosis. I, you know, and I read thousands of case reports of people in medical journals and it all struck me that it came down to a point, each and every one of these these accounts, I’ll call it these, these stories that people had came down to this point where they said to themselves, I can do something different. I mean, people, people voice it in different ways. People will say something like, I know there’s a solution and I’m going to find it, or my body made this cancer, my body can get rid of it. But there was that some sort of moment of switch that went from something bad is happening to me to, I have the ability to affect what’s happening to me. And I think that’s an incredibly important component of, yeah.

Dr Manon :                         30:45                    Yeah. It’s like from victim to agency, right? It’s, it really, it, yeah. I concur. That’s the, the shift where then opportunity shows up.

Dr Hughes :                        30:57                    And I liken it to the elite athletes. Elite athletes spend much more, they don’t work out all the time, the way you might think they do. They spend a lot of time on their mindset and you know, and that allows them to do these inhuman impossible things. And when you talk to someone who’s survived stage four cancer or major trauma, they had the same mindset as the elite athletes. I can do it, I can, you know, do the impossible. And that’s the, the key things.

Dr Manon :                         31:31                    Well there’s definitely a lot of room in the, so-called combating, and I’m, I’m using that word in brackets because I don’t like the, the term per se. The diseases we are told are incurable, then there’s room for people to make things possible in the impossible. Right. And, and I think in a strange kind of way, it’s like, it’s a, it’s a strange motivator, but I’m trying to find some good things to say about the, the disease focus, disease management, disempowering kind of health that, you know, this century medicine has become, you know, so I’m just like, that might be it. But so how, how do you look at again or put it this way, have you received much flack from other MDs or, or even naturpathic doctors? I know you mentioning you were in a clinic with, with other naturpathic doctors and it was what happens. Like, because there’s a real shift there and I, I know what you’re studying, right? So what has been your experience?

Dr Hughes :                        32:53                    So a lot of my colleagues professional, you know, graduate school level colleagues will sort of go, that’s very nice and one I want to talk to someone else now. But there are people then who will come to me and say, can I have your card? I need to talk with you. It’s almost like it’s this secret society of people who are thinking about that. And I, and I would say probably 50, not quite 50%, but pretty close to 50% of my coaching practice is medical professionals, doctors, naturopaths, RNs, people, therapists. I see a lot of therapists, people who have this advanced training in the medical model who have that same feeling that there’s something not right about it. So maybe officially they may not want to talk about it that much, but you know, they, they’re interested.So, and how do you, this is another one that comes up because, you know, naturopaths and You know, im a naturopath myself, we’re up against a lot of credibility issues. One because the public doesn’t know how much we actually have to study and they don’t know that it’s, you know, four year full time, you still need your science degree, you still need clinical, like, you know, and we do, we read all the pathology and you know, all of that stuff. So our governing bodies and associations are, are extremely hard on, you know, double-blind or science-based studies. And so how do you deal with all that yourself?

Dr Manon :                         34:51                    well is it, is it science-based?

Dr Hughes :                        34:55                    Oh, for what I do? Well, so if we’re talking, I mean really about the basis of the science of self-healing, so let’s call that what we’re working on. We’re talking about the science of self healing. There are thousands of studies published every month that prove it is the placebo effect. That is the science of self healing. And we were talking earlier about the biases. Well, the placebo effect works, but we’re taught that it’s not important. It isn’t valid because the doctor didn’t do anything. We discount what the patient does for themselves. And so now when I a new medication comes out and I read,it you know, like the science and the actual difference and sometimes you find out that you know, half or more of the effect of a new medication is the placebo effect, you know? And so you’re like getting better is getting better, is getting better. It doesn’t matter who does it. And so anybody who says, well, this isn’t science-based, I was like, you know, here’s the, here’s a stockpile of articles that prove it. It’s just, we’re not looking at it. We’re, we’re, we’re prejudiced against the concept that people get better on their own.

Dr Manon :                         36:23                    Right. So placebo is the positive ability to get better without outside guidance,

Dr Hughes :                        36:36                    Right. Or in the absence of an active medication .

Dr Manon :                         36:44                    in the absense of a medication. Okay.

Dr Hughes :                        36:46                    . And then it really is a science, like in that sense, you know, because I was looking at, I looked at it a little bit differently as in it’s the, our bodies are, made to heal and so if you go to a medical doctor and they tell you, well, you’ve got, unfortunately, this is the bad news. You’ve got whatever, a slipped disc and now it’s going to impinge on this and check out your bladder because whatever you’re creating a a no_cebo effect

Dr Hughes :                        37:24                    Absolutely. Oh, without a doubt. Hear that word. No_cebo until, 15 years after I graduated from medical school. Like it’s not taught, Oh my God, I didn’t know. Doctors don’t know what no_cebos are. And we do it all the time. Just exactly what you said.

Dr Manon :                         37:45                    Yeah. Oh that makes sense then because I was thinking, you know, when I hear these, I’m so sad tales, you know, of a patient’s coming in feeling like they’ve had the verdict of death. Now you know, and it’s, I don’t mean death, but like worse dying for the rest of their life. You know, to me that’s like, how could they say that to anyone? Like you’re taking away any hope that there’s an, the fact that there’s actually other options which may come out outside different outcomes. Right,

Dr Hughes :                        38:19                    Right. There is always, always the ability to repair yourself under any circumstance. And if someone were to come to me with a situation like that, I would do say, believe the diagnosis slipped,disc don’t believe the prognosis one. They do not naturally lead to onto that.

Dr Manon :                         38:43                    Exactly. Yeah. I say separate them to remove the story.

Dr Hughes :                        38:47                    Right. Right. And then look up everything you possibly can about anyone who ever recovered from this on their own. Because if one person did it and they did, you can do

Dr Manon :                         39:00                    Well. Exactly. That’s how it, again, that’s a statistic thing, you know, it’s like who’s in charge of the statistics about, you know? Absolutely. Okay. Well, so so how can people, I mean I’m going to have your, your website up and I’m gonna have your your bio, but anything you’re writing a book right now So if people want to find out more or be in touch with you you’ve given me everything that they can so far to get hold of you.

Dr Hughes :                        39:32                    Yeah. So it’s, it’s my name Elizabeth Hughes, md.com, and that’s Elizabeth with a Z. So yes. And those information there. And I’d happy to have, you know, have people find me, read my blogs, look at my videos.

Dr Manon :                         39:50                    Yeah. And the other, Oh, the other thing I completely forgot. For those of us who are in this sort of science-based kind of paradigm. could you give us a list of, of these studies or where to get that, where to get educated on the placebo. But there’s more than that. There’s, you know, there’s plenty more. Do you have resources or books that people………

Dr Hughes :                        40:19                    Yeah, So I’m going to give you four and you know, I will send them to you too so they can add it. So the first, I’m going to give three books and then a one person, the first book is the biology of belief by Dr. Bruce Lipton. He’s, he does epigenetic research, brilliant man. The next is the molecules of emotion by dr Candace PERT. She founded the the study of psychoneuroimmunology, how our thoughts and our emotions affect our, how our body works. And that’s it’s wonderful, wonderful work. And it’s, it’s approachable if you’re not super duper sciency, but it’s still, it’s good for those of us who have the science background. The third book I’ll recommend is when the body says no, by dr Gaber Mate You know, it, it’s a great book. It’s a wonderful book. And then the, if you’re interested in placebo research, dr Ted Kaptchuk, K a P T C H U K he runs

Dr Manon :                         41:34                    The incident the center for placebo studies at Harvard. Okay, great. Yeah, no, those are great recommendations. And actually dr GabourMate…….. was just on …recently you know, really talking about addiction, and what, what we have to look at to understand that that’s the symptom of, you know, and it’s like, it really changes how, yeah, how we’re diagnosing and what, what we’re making the diagnosis mean, you know. So anyway, that’s a great recommendation. Yeah, he’s a, he’s a, he’s done so many interesting things and I think this is one of his earlier works before the addiction work that he’s done, but so it’s still awesome. It’s awesome. It is great. Okay, well thank you so much for sharing all this with me and my audience and well I look forward to reading your book when it comes out. Absolutely. Thank you so much, And this is wonderful.

Speaker 1:                          42:55                    Thank you for joining us. For more information, go to DrManonBolliger.com