How Hydrotherapy Can Regulate and Heal the Body with Dr Marcus Coplin, ND on The Healers Café with Manon Bolliger

informs the community identity. And I was fascinated with this question. And in the midst of this, I had a friend who was visiting me, and he happened to have this little health pamphlet like 70s style health food store pamphlet on Iris diagnostics, the German system of Iris diagnosis, that was popularized in the United States by Bernard Jensen, he was a chiropractor in the 70s. And, you know, so I started reading this book, I thought, Oh, this is kind of weird and cool and interesting. I had never even considered this before. And but the idea that the eye focuses, the IB is a neurological microcosm for the, you know, the, the tissue system of the body was, I just couldn’t put that down. And so, I was still in University at the time and I started like, investigating different avenues what, you know, what is this alternative medicine that was what I was looking at the time. And, you know, it just led me to a few survey courses, you know, apprenticeships with different acupuncturists and Chiro’s and now ayurvedic healers are just kind of just trying to get as much information because I was fascinated by it. And eventually, that led me to the door of Baster University in Seattle, Washington, where I did my naturopathic medical education in the early 2000s. To your other question about how did I get into the…how did my interests in kind of health resort culture emerged, that all happened during my time in medical school. So, I went there, kind of, you know, I was still quite young. I was in my early 20s went to get started medical school and I I have this very ideal, idealistic view of, you know, I’m going to go, this is going to be, you know, medicine that comes from my garden. I kind of had this this beautiful vision of some, I think, you know, the Lord of the Rings had just come out, you know, it’s like, I had this vision of the Shire, and, you know, herbal medicines, and just a very kind of bucolic life, pastural life. At any rate, while I was in school, I learned that the tradition of naturopathy really comes from the German water cure system, and that there were these health resorts. I mean, there, they were called sanitariums. They were called nature care centers. But they were these places where people would go and spend a period of time, like a health vacation in which they would undergo a series of treatments. They would be put on a specific dietary regimen, sometimes herbal medicines, sometimes manual therapies, always rest and exposure to the natural environment were components. And I just became obsessed with this idea. And I started saying, Well, where are these places in the United States? Where are they and save for a few kind of little vestiges of that practice, there really wasn’t much in North America in general. But I found that in Europe, that concept had never really gone away, like what happened in the United States is we had this very robust culture of this, and it kind of died out in the early 20th century, as with most kind of, we’re talking a little bit before we started recording about the Flexner Report and kind of the consolidation of the medical model under one paradigm. Well, before that, these kinds of what weren’t called Health resorts at the time, well some were actually but this concept of these places where you can go and spend a focus time to heal, they were relatively common, or at least popular. Now again, so in Europe, that tradition is still active, and has modernized in these interesting ways. And so I just I took it upon myself when I graduated, I did a postdoctoral research sabbatical throughout Europe and went to these different hospitals and just learned as much as I could from these different physicians who were running the shows there and it was amazing.

 

Manon Bolliger 07:32

Fascinating, and also like mud baths and wraps and hydrotherapy obviously is in big use.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 07:42

Totally and so that’s that was kind of an interesting thing that I didn’t really understand the nuance of it until I was on the ground there but yeah, there’s you know, there’s hydrotherapy, which really is kind of the app like any therapeutic application of water, hot water, cold water, wraps, immersions you know, anything that has to do with water in any of its forms, ice, steam, whatever can be classified under hydrotherapy. Then there is this kind of subcategory or adjacent category called balneology, banyo some people will if you speak Spanish, you might recognize that term, but balneo is the Latin for bathing. And, specifically, this is the study of bathing and the use of therapeutic mineral spring water. And that’s what I was seeing a lot of in Europe is these hospitals that were actually built on mineral springs, Hot Springs, or cold springs, even where the mineral waters were being used either as baths or as steam or lavages for the nasal cavity or muds, muds were often what they’ll do is they’ll take the Thermal Mineral water and they’ll take their local mud and they’ll mature them together for up to a year. And that creates this this medicinal substance they call a P Lloyd. And the P Lloyd is you know, it holds heat and minerality and it has all these kinds of amazing research analgesic anti pain and anti-inflammatory effects and yeah, it’s an incredible system that’s very well you know, very well administered very well understood. It’s categorized it was it blew my mind. I had no idea that that existed, you know.

 

Manon Bolliger 09:33

I went to one in Switzerland, my family’s my dad’s Swiss. My mom’s from Belgium.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 09:39

Oh, wow.

 

Manon Bolliger 09:40

We went to these mineral baths and you know, it’s, yeah, it’s definitely a different culture. But where did you find most of the active…I think I thought it was more like in Eastern Europe that is much more alive and well. Mmm, maybe also in Austria, where were you able to find?

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 10:06

Right. Well, there are actually hot spring, you know, resorts or places where you can go and utilize the water therapeutically all over Europe, I’ve been to them in France and Germany and England and Spain, you know, on them, you know. I don’t know of a country in Europe that doesn’t have a right, you know, but to your point, the Eastern European cultures and the culture that had a heavier influence with the Soviet Union, they tend to have more robust offerings. When it comes to this and the Soviet Union, you know, in its heyday, you know, whatever the heyday, I don’t know what to say, but sometime between the, you know, the 40s, and the 70s, they invested very heavily in developing these health resorts and creating these hospitals, this very well administered and well researched hospital system, because they didn’t have access to the modernity of Western medicine. So, they developed their own tools and the state kind of put investment in their population, they said, you can go to these resorts as part of your healthcare and a lot of kinds of former Soviet states. And not only but a lot of the states that have kind of like socialist kind of government policies, they still allow for up to, you know, two to three weeks, depending on the country of hot spring care as part of your medical care. Meaning you go to the doctor, you have a particular diagnosis, that doctor thinks it would be good for you to go stay at a spa, they write your prescription, you go to that spa, you meet the doctor there, and you take that course of therapy and your insurance pays for it. When you know…

 

Manon Bolliger 12:02

I’m waiting for the day.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 12:03

Well, we’ve got a little ways to go. But you know, I don’t think that it’s that far off, I think it’s just it’s going to take one company, one insurance holder that really can be a little bit more forward thinking and realize that if they can actually rehabilitate their clientele and keep them healthy, you know, their bottom line is going to be lower. And that’s the key thing.

 

Manon Bolliger 12:30

I think you’re right. It’s the insurance company, right. It’s in their benefit to get this right, like, but there is kind of a discordance right, in our Western system between you make more money keeping people sick.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 12:47

Well, I mean, certainly. I mean, that if the business model is to, you know, maintain a certain level of pharmacological suppression of a symptom over time, if you can reverse that pathological state where people no longer need that medication, then, yeah, you could make that argument that there’s, there’s a financial reason. It’s hard for me to believe in a world where that really is the reason why people do things, I think that ends up being kind of like more like, I don’t have our mind focused on, you know, what our purpose is, things can kind of just go askew. And I think just more that business models have kind of entrenched themselves in this kind of automatic behavior. And no one’s just stopped to say, hey, wait a second, like,

 

Manon Bolliger 13:41

Yeah, where’s this leading if we do this?

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 13:44

Right because you can make money selling pharmaceuticals and the insurance company and the pharmaceutical companies have a very clear kind of business model for how that works. So to change that business model, you’d have to be a very innovative and forward thinking and have a little bit of risk aversion. You know what I mean, have low risk aversion. Yeah. Not be not be worried about the risk as much and you know, just that you don’t see big businesses dealing with multiple millions of dollars, do that very often.

 

Manon Bolliger 14:16

But insurance companies do have a, like, I know when I was, you know, I don’t know if you know, Bowen therapy, I run Bowen college in Canada. And in Ontario, because of the many car accidents that I ended up dealing with. These are okay, we need to know what this therapy is. Because we don’t need, you don’t need that many visits, all our people are getting actually better. Whereas doing some of the more traditional ones, it’s like takes two years and it costs them a lot more. So they were like, Okay, how do we get this insured and then it became political and then it didn’t all happen but If there was sincere interest in, you know, financial interest because it cost them less because people got better, you know. So that’s also a, you know, it’s hard to know. But I think the main thing is people, it’s his getting people to realize that this feels good. And, you know.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 15:18

Yeah. And I think that that really is the key, right? Because again, I mean, even if we just, I mean, I think you and I got into medicine, because we have a deep kind of resonance with that process. And you see the sacredness in the healing process. And, you know, there’s something very beautiful and poetic, and for me, very philosophically, you know, satisfying about medicine, especially natural medicine and systems thinking and all this. However, I mean, I think there is a reality to the world, and certainly to medicine is not outside of this reality of business economics and how they function and it’s like, but I think, to your point, there is a growing market demand for therapies that have different outcomes, then I’m going to be on painkillers for the next 20 years to deal with this pain. You know, the idea of actually rehabilitating pathological state, whether it’s functional, whether it’s, you know, immunological, what have you, there’s just the conventional paradigm of medicine tends to just go one way. And, you know, that’s great for an emergency care model, where you have this acute emergency in front of you, and you need to medicate or surgically alter the situation in order to save somebody’s life. But what happens is, outside of that acute state, they apply that same model of care long term, there’s no concept of convalescence or actual rehabilitation.

 

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Manon Bolliger 17:34

Yeah, yeah. I think that is the paradigm shift that I believe is happening. Yeah, it’s really coming back as people are getting a little bit disillusioned. And, you know, unclear about what they’re being told at this stage. You know, as the narrative kind of has shifted and changed, you know, at least very recently, it’s been very hard to follow. You know, so I think a lot of people are going well how do we take care of ourselves? And I think that’s…I think we’re in that time, and then I don’t know, if you, I don’t follow astrology, but I hear we’re in the Age of Aquarius, and I hear that that’s all about you know…

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 18:27

Maybe not so much with astrology, but musical theater.

 

Manon Bolliger 18:31

Exactly. That’s how I came across it.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 18:34

That’s not actually true. I actually, I actually do have an astrologer that I consult with once a year. And I, you know, I was such a skeptic about astrology until this particular person, and he kind of like, was like, well, let me just look at your chart. And he’s like, Well, this that that, and he told me some real specific things. I was like, All right, I’m listening. What else do you got? And yeah, I have a really nice relationship with him now. So, you know, there’s something, I don’t know what it is. But you know.

 

Manon Bolliger 19:00

Ya no, it’s funny, you know, probably a lot of people feel about us as naturopath the same way, as you know, but the idea is you have to, you have to open try it test it. See, see for yourself, give it a chance, don’t worry about what people think, you know, and even if you don’t understand at all, you know, like astrology, I’m no expert in it. But I agree, I have had some insights that, you know, they’re hard to deny.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 19:30

When it comes when it comes to naturopathic medicine and kind of just, you know, I think I think this is a common thing that you see is that people who, people who come, a lot of my patients anyway, are people who’ve already been through kind of a conventional process with their health. And so, there is this level of like, I don’t need to understand it because I just know that it’s different from what I’ve been doing and what I’ve been doing isn’t working for me. But I think when we talk about this kind of reemergence of this type of culture, what comes with that is a need for practitioners of, you know, integrative therapies and whether that’s naturopathic medicine or, you know, that’s the spectrum to be able to explain and talk about and have a grounded basis for what we’re doing. That we need to be able to meet need to be able to punch with in the big leagues, you know, even though I’m crossing sports metaphors not really. But you know, what I’m saying, like, we need to be able to, we know what we do works, we’ve seen it work, and we know that there is a scientific rationale behind what we’re doing, most of most of my therapies are based in straightforward anatomy, physiology, biophysics, you know, of course, nutrition and herbalism, which also is having a growing body of evidence behind it. Well, these things, we need to be able to talk about these things in a rational, and, and, you know, easy way for people to understand because what I’m seeing is more and more people are wanting a different approach as their first line of care, not their last line of care. And I think that they need to be comfortable and understand what they’re getting out so that they can make informed decisions.

 

Manon Bolliger 21:22

But there was a survey done. I probably shouldn’t even state it, because I don’t know, the…I’m not sure the year it was done. But in BC, that physicians were the primary physician of choice in BC. The naturopaths were, you know, which is kind of interesting that it could also be because there’s, like, I was on a list and took over four years to find an M. D, because I, you know, I think it’s important to, you know, to have a team, so it’s not just one naturopath or one, whatever, you know, physical therapist of sorts, or you know, and also naturopath, they all tend to have special angles, that they are, that that’s their thing, you know. But they and they know everything else, just like it, you know, an MD generalist, kind of, but you know, you wouldn’t want to go to them for a sports injury, you would go somewhere else, right. So, I very much believe in having a team, you know, that is, you know, so but it took four years.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 22:39

This is kind of one of the major problems with health care, in general is that the onus is on the patient to piece together a team of professionals that they need, you know, we don’t have these truly integrated systems, you know. It’s kind of set up in this kind of hierarchical way where it’s like, Okay, you go to your primary care, MD, they refer you over to a specialist, if the specialists allows you to get PT, their insurance will cover it back. And you know, and it goes, and there’s that loop. I read some tweet recently, I was it was so accurate, it was like, you go to the doctor who sends you to the pharmacy for your prescription, the pharmacy calls the insurance company to get approval for that prescription, the insurance company calls the doctor to make sure that you need that prescription. It’s like excuse me, like the doctor anyway, it’s like, who’s the superfluous piece of this puzzle here. But, you know, I was going somewhere else with that. But, you know, the point being that I do think that like, so in the work that I’ve done, I you know, I have, you know, quite an extensive experience dealing with oncology patients. And, you know, that is not ever one doctor’s job that’s always a team care. But, you know, I very much understand what my therapies do and how they are important in kind of a comprehensive approach to cancer therapy. And I’ve worked with oncologists, I work with you know, with people in the rehab team, the whole the whole deal, and you need to be able to kind of talk the right language so that the oncologist feels comfortable with what you’re bringing to the table and that you’re not just throwing the kitchen sink at these people that you have an actual rationale for your therapy. And it was hard, you know, there are some usually younger oncologists who are newer in practice, they’re more open, they’ve been exposed to kind of the concept that maybe it’s not just chemo and that’s going to that’s going to be the only thing and I’m not…like chemo there’s a lot of time where I My goal is to keep people strong enough that they can receive a little bit of chemo and that can really get where they need to go. But the other the other side of that spectrum is the docs who are retiring. Who apologists who have seen a lot that have been around the block a few times and they see the difference that patients who have come in with more of an integrative team on their heels what that looks like. And that has made a difference. It’s the docs in the middle that I’ve had to have some toe to toe with. And again, you know, if you can feel confident if you understand the rationale for what you’re doing, and you’re doing it from a, from a grounded place, you’re not doing it just because somebody told you that this is a good therapy or I read this here, but you actually have you understand the rationale and you can jive with that in the face of an oncologist who’s calling you a quack you know, that’s opened up care teams to patients who would have maybe not had that in.

 

Manon Bolliger 25:50

Right. What would you say like that? Because there’s people listening that…I mean, there’s plenty of doctors listening, but there’s also the public, you know, that is listening. What would you say in layman’s term, like what hydrotherapy does? If you have cancer, can you explain it in?

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 26:14

Well, here’s the thing about hydrotherapy. I mean, let me just say what hydrotherapy has a variety of actions on the body. There’s so much that you can do with it. I don’t, I don’t think of it as a specific treatment for Cancer. I don’t use hydrotherapy to treat cancer. I use hydrotherapy, in pretty much almost every case that comes into my office, I’m able to have a rational and judicious application of hydrotherapy because basically, it breaks down to this water as a very unique property, when it comes to substances, we find an earth which is that it can store a tremendous amount of heat energy, without losing its state. So, you can heat water all the way up from zero degrees centigrade to about 99.9 degrees centigrade, and it’ll stay water. Whereas, you know, if you change that much heat energy in wood, it will combust into flames. That gives water this ability to transfer a great deal of thermal energy. And so when you when you make a thermal application, either with a hot towel or an immersion in hot water, you’re actually transferring a bunch of thermal energy into the body, just the nature of heat, that’s how heat will move. And that starts this whole process of a whole bunch of different biochemical and physiologic processes and improve circulation improves distribution of blood into the tissue into the interstitial spaces, it improves the oxygen release from hemoglobin, so you get better oxygenation of tissues. And there’s other things, you know, all sorts of kind of what are called cytokines, these kinds of markers, that kind of guide and direct inflammation, you can manipulate those with thermal applications. And the immune system actually activates and starts to become more active and will increase its number of cells that you’ll find. So, all of those things will have a benefit on regulating the health of the body. Cancer is not like catching a cold, it’s a process. And so, you know, everything that I do, so let me just finish and say, that’s everything I do with hydrotherapy, with nutrients with herbs, is to support the body in keeping itself well regulated. So cold water has a whole other host of things that you can, you can utilize. And oftentimes, I’m using a contrast of the two, which creates this strengthening of the systems of the body, improving digestion, improving lymph circulation, improving distribution of that kind of metabolically active blood that I just described with the hot application, we can move that and distribute it into specific locations in the body, depending on how we use these hydrothermal and hydro therapeutic techniques. There’s really just no end. I mean, it’s simple and it’s application, right? So, it’s the most basic thing. But to utilize it therapeutically, it’s actually quite sophisticated. And there’s so many ways that you can do it. So, if you understand the pathology and then you understand the need of the patient because again, we’re always treating the patient we’re always looking this see where is this particular case? Where is this person’s systems and physiology deregulated? And how can you bring that back into a state of regulation? You know, cancer is oftentimes a combination of some sort of onca, what we call an oncogenic event, something that is created an abnormality in the cell. And then the immune system’s inability to recognize that and destroy it in a timely fashion, which happens all the time every day in all of us but cancer as a disease is when the immune system was unable to do that for a variety of there’s a variety of reasons why that’s possible. So, helping this body better regulate itself, you can help the body better kind of scan and attenuate to whatever conditions are present. But you know, I don’t…I want to be clear that I’m not saying you should forgo any type of conventional cancer workup and just take a bath. Not at all but hydrotherapy as a component of a comprehensive program of cancer care.

 

Manon Bolliger 31:09

Yeah, I know I use that with my kids you know, to regulate a fever so that it was at the right level for the immune system to fight the best you know. And there’s so many so many amazing uses of hydrotherapy.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 31:26

Fever management’s a huge one, I that’s one that I think like every, if you were talking about kind of, if you’re just a non-medical person listening in here, I mean, using hydrotherapy, just like you said, to either bring a temperature up to stay where the body can actually enact an immune response to rid itself of a virus or maintain in temperature and a range where it’s not at a danger to the body, but it still can do its job of, you know, kicking out the agent that’s causing the dysfunction in the first place. The fever is the body’s healing response, you know, physicians throughout time have recognized that, you know, a well managed fever can do more than any physician could ever do. So our goal is to help guide that fever into the right zone and let it do what it’s doing. And we can discuss all the like intricacies of what happens to the body during a fever and why chemically suppressing a fever with Tylenol or Aspirin is a bad idea. But fundamentally, you know, the body the body knows what it’s doing. And we can help guide that into it really, you know, a beautiful result.

 

Manon Bolliger 32:38

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. So our time is literally up any last word that you would like to share?

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 32:47

Oh, gosh, I feel like I’ve talked so much. I appreciate you, bringing me on and getting to talk this talk, it’s so nice to have a person to kind of, you know, chat with about this. I would say that fundamentally, you know, we’re at this time where we just really are trying to build out the next evolution of what healthcare is going to look like in North America and globally. And that the emergence of spaces like hot spring resorts, urban bath houses, health retreats, health resorts, these are places where people are going to be actively able to go and spend a focused amount of time to go through a process of healing, under properly trained guidance. With beneficial results and for their longevity, and ultimately, their cost effective cost effectiveness for their overall treatment.

 

Manon Bolliger 33:37

Well, I certainly appreciate you sharing all this. Lots of hope, and I can start visualizing the possibility of this because I’ve been wanting to go to one for so long, just to you know, have real like down time that is completely healthy, and managed.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 33:58

If you ever make it to Colorado, let me know and then Marietta Springs is going to be opening in November of 2023.

 

Manon Bolliger 34:05

There you go. Like yeah, I might put this on my list.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 34:08

Come on down.

 

Manon Bolliger 34:10

Well, thank you very much, Marcus. It was lovely. meeting you.

 

Dr Marcus Coplin, ND 34:13

Pleasure. Have a nice day.

 

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.