Can You Turn Off the Stress Area of Your Brain? – with Dr. John A. Lieurance

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, Resetters, have I got an episode for you? I am bringing you my dear friend, Dr. John neurons. And what you’re about to hear is truly a one of a kind conversation. And it’s one of a kind for, for a lot of reasons. One, I want to give you a little context, as you listen to this episode to what was going on behind the scenes. For starters, I was in John’s clinic, and he has one of the most amazing regenerative functional medicine clinics that I have ever seen. Literally, the minute I walked in the door, you could feel the love, you could feel the healing. And he and his team have something so special there. And not only did they love on me and take me through all kinds of fun, regenerative hacks, but what you’re gonna hear is that I was actually getting an IV and had just finished all of my therapies when I sat down with John to have this conversation. So you might be hearing a little more of a parasympathetic calmer version of me, it truly was so special to sit with him in that state. Because the second thing that I really want you to gather from this conversation is that one of the things I love about John is that he is what I call a wizard, he is so intelligent, and yet so connected to his heart. And so when he brings big concepts to the world, people sit and listen, including me. So some of the big concepts that he has already brought to the world. And I’ve brought him on other podcasts, and we’ve done Instagram live together. He’s brought the power of melatonin, he has a whole book on melatonin, he was one of the first to talk about methylene blue and the power of methylene blue, and many of you are off getting methylene blue IVs. And what you’re going to hear in this conversation is that he is now bringing us a part of the brain called the blue spot. It’s really fun and what he has discovered is that there’s a part of our brain that needs to turn off at night in order for our stress cycle to stop. And this blue spot is not being highlighted enough. And we’re not being given enough tools on how to turn this blue spot off. And so in this episode, you’re going to hear not only about methylene blue, which he’s passionate about, but you’re going to hear about what we can all do to get a deeper restful sleep, but to turn the stress spot of our brain off at night. So we can start the next day and there’s so many nuggets of information in here. So I’m not I’m not going to tell you anymore, because it was a profound conversation that definitely changed the way I look at the brain. And I think you’re going to hear some things that people aren’t talking about. And I’m so happy that Dr. John is bringing it to us. So Dr. John neurons, I won’t say anymore. Just sit back, enjoy. You might even want to take notes. This is a heck of an episode. Enjoy. A Dr. Mindy here and welcome to season four of the resetter podcast. Please know that this podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself. Again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you. Enjoy.

Dr. Mindy  

So for starters, I just want to thank you, John, for being here. For me being here. I mean, but for your love and your knowledge and sitting down with me to have this discussion. Not only do you have so much knowledge, but you just feel your heart from the moment I met you. And it’s just really, really impressive. So I’m excited to sit down and have this conversation. What I just witnessed here. I’ve been in a lot of biohacking centers, I’ve been in a lot of nature and I grew up in natural health. Whatever you’ve got going on in this clinic, it is magic. So I just want to honor that because we’re filming here in your clinic and it’s truly incredible. So thank you for that.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, I’m so I feel so blessed to have you here and it’s my honor to serve you and it feels amazing to have you say those words. Very beautiful.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, yeah, thank you. So of course my neuroscience brain wants to unpack everything that I’ve done today with you. And then of course my hormonal brain wants to put it through the lens of hormones and through so much you and I talked quite a bit about a lot of the suffering that’s going on in women Health. And we’re being left out of so many conversations and women don’t quite understand how to take back control of their health. And what I witnessed here today is that you have a lot of tools that can start to help women. So what I want to start off with is just this idea, and you and I chatted about cellular health. And can you help us understand what happens? What’s the senescence cell? What happens to our age ourselves as they age? Because I don’t think even that basic concept people understand enough.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Yeah. Well, women have, I think, more stress on their bodies than men do with respect to that. And, then there’s this shutdown with the hormone production. And, and so having an opportunity to, for lack of better words, biohack, that process, right, so that we take advantage of that second part of of the life and it’s possibly better than the first, you know, and in order for that to be manifest, we need to have cellular vitality, we need to be able to build that lifeforce and allow that Universal Intelligence to fully flow through the body, right. So in order for that to happen, the physical body has to be aligned, like we did some adjustments, you and I talked about some of the things we’ve done, I’m really big on the cranial component to that, and releasing those adhesions to the to the tough mother, you know, that wraps around the brain and the spinal cord, the dura mater, and releasing that, that restriction of that cerebral spinal fluid that flows around the brain and spinal cord. Yeah. And allowing the the pineal to be fully activated that connection to the divine. And then there’s a lot of conversations with regards to structure that I’m sure you’ve spoken on other podcasts with, you know, the spine and you know, just the physical body, right?

Dr. Mindy  

If we go back to just the endo nasal, so just so everybody knows what what we did all explain it from my standpoint, and then you explain it from yours is it’s a balloon that goes in one nostril, and you push air up into the cranium, and it moves those cranial bones, especially the inner ones, because you can’t really move those from the outer structures. It’s a unique way to move those. Yeah. And it felt like a lot of pressure in my sinuses. And then I felt euphoria. And like, I felt like my eyes were open. I told you, I’m like, I think you have the secret to natural Botox, because I’ll be interested to see over time, I want to keep coming back and see if it changes some of the the wrinkles in my face because it would make sense to me if the cranium is collapsing in, of course, the skin is going to collapse in Yeah. But then underneath, we’ve got the rigidity of those those parts of the brains that is controlling hormones and the pineal pineal gland controlling Well, we can talk about the difference between why pineal pineal but then the seat of intuition. Yeah, so that’s the way I read it. But you tell me,

Dr. John Lieurance 

well, Weston Price really pioneered this aspect of the fact that our craniums are becoming more narrow. And that healthier Aborigines, people that live off the land, they’re the cranial structures are wide, their palates are wide, they don’t have to have wisdom teeth removed. Right, right. And so there’s also going to be a natural opening to the nasal passage with that. So as the as the cranium collapses, the roof of the mouth kind of moves up into the airwaves. And it causes like a collapse and like that, that that people talk about a deviated septum, well, then when that deep when that septum gets pressure on it, it buckles and it’ll deviate either to the right or the left. And I’m always asked, you know, does this work fixed deviated septums but you know, of course, it really helps quite a bit. Because you’re, you’re actually bringing that structure back just like one of those, those cards where you open it up and it kind of like a building comes out of it. The name of those cards, but there, you open them up and they kind of like they Oh, like

Dr. Mindy  

a like a birthday card. Yeah, I don’t know if they had, maybe they have a name. But yeah,

Dr. John Lieurance  

so when the skull opens up, you know, it just it kind of like allows the structures to just like expand, and it pulls a lot of that, that space back open in the nasal passage. And there’s all of these sensors up in the nose. And there’s been a lot of books written about nasal breathing. And there’s been a ton of studies with people that are mouth breathers and you know, it’s just absolutely detrimental to your health to breathe through your mouth. So nasal breathing, does a lot things one is we bring in a lot of our nitric oxide through the microflora and our nose, which helps to improve our cardiovascular system, our hormones, right? There’s also filters, so the air is filtered through our nose, right? So anybody that’s like mold, or you know, they have allergies or something like breathing through their mouth is probably going to make it a lot worse. Oh, I’ve

Dr. Mindy  

never even thought about that. Yeah. So if you’re breathing through your mouth, and you’re living in a moldy home, you there’s no filter, it’d be like having no filter within your your house. Oh, wow, I never thought about that. Okay, continue.

Dr. John Lieurance  

And then the air is warmed up a bit through the nose. But there’s this, there’s this aspect of the nervous system. And this integrated state of the nervous system that has to do with these rhythms. And they call these rhythms oscillations. And these oscillations, they oscillate between two and 14 Hertz. And all of the different brain centers are taking a lead from other brain centers, so that they can like communicate and have this orchestra. So everything kind of yokes together. And everything works in a symphony, okay. And in order to do this, it’s basically all hinged on respiratory cycles, and the respiratory cycles pace, these neural neurological oscillations. And so when you start getting into these oscillations, you start, you start to have some implications into the default mode network, which I know you’ve been really interested in with some of the conversations you’ve had about psychedelic therapy, and so forth. And the salient network, which allows us to focus our attention on certain things like the spotlight where we can keep our focus. And then the area of the brain that’s gotten me most fascinated is the blue spot.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so talk about the blue spot for a moment, because you told me that that when you walked in, we were geeking out on the brain. And you talked about this part of the brain that I’d never really even heard of. And then somewhere along the line of therapies today, when I was doing some breath, work and visualizing, I could see a blue around blue, something. And it was like breathing with me as I was visualizing. Now I do meditation every morning. I do breath work every morning. I’d never seen that before. I’m

Dr. John Lieurance  

like, well, it might have been related to the methylene.

Dr. Mindy  

I was gonna think I thought it was like, is it Where’s this coming from? But it’s all converging into one really interesting thought for me?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, I got, I found it really interesting. When I did a deep dive into this respiratory, these respiratory oscillations, they also call them limbic oscillations. Because like, the limbic system is our emotional state right now and responding to emotions. And there’s so much of that wrapped up into the the blue spot or in the medical term for the blue spot is the locus Cyrillus, which means blue spot and Latin. Okay, and it’s in the pons, which is the midbrain. Okay, and you don’t you could almost correlate the locus Cyrillus, like the adrenals to the body, the locus Cyrillus is to the brain, right? Because it’s the main producer of norepinephrine in the brain. Okay. And so norepinephrine has a lot of kind of similarities to cortisol, you know, yeah, very subtle differences. But there’s some similarities, like they’re both kind of pacing our circadian rhythm. And they’re both stress hormones, right. And so and they’re also both can be bad if there’s too much of it too often, right? And they, they need to be like, deeply calmed down, you know, and that’s not happening in our society. So the locus Cyrillus is, it’s in order to, for us to be vital and to and to be healthy, we have to be able to pause the locus Cyrillus. In other words, it has to be like, able to just completely calm down at night when we’re in REM. Okay, so if we’re not able to get into REM, and we don’t get enough REM sleep, which happens commonly with women where they’re lower estrogen in their cycles, right. And obviously, after menopause, I was just saved even more. Yeah, think of a problem. And you look at the graph of, of estrogen and age 40. I mean, it just drops right down crazy. Similar to a lot of graphs that we might look at, like, like heart rate variability, kind of does the same thing at 40. Yeah, right. Melatonin does the same thyroid

Dr. Mindy  

function. Yeah. I mean, wait, the BMI goes up. It goes the other direction. Yeah. Yeah. So what activates this part of the brain, the locus really is and what I’m understanding is we want a pulsing in and out of that part of the brain.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, so before we get into that, I because I can imagine people are watching this and they have no idea what the Lucas Cyrillus really does, right. So to kind of build some context on how important this area of the brain is. So it is the primary regulate regulatory regulator area for norepinephrine in the brain, it has connections with virtually every part of the brain, right. And so in order for us to draw attention to something, the locus Cyrillus is kind of like hardwired to this salient network. We also have to when we get our attention, we have to be able to move and act on it. And so the dope our dopamine centers are hardwired to this as well. Oh, wow, the co2 sensors. So if when we hold our breath, like all this stuff that we’re doing with breath, holding, and breath work, like we’re really working on the local Cyrillus, because those sensors when our co2 levels go down, where we get that kind of like emergency feeling, we’re like, emotionally, and we maybe there’s a little fear, because there is it’s like, I’m going to die if I don’t breathe, right? That is all coming from the locus Cyrillus.

Dr. Mindy  

So what how does it differ from the amygdala, because I always think of the amygdala as the fear center. That’s and I’m very conscious of my amygdala, because I find that in a day to day, I’m often like scanning, you know, I find my brain looking for the next problem to solve, right? And then I realized, wait a second, this is just my amygdala trying to keep me safe, right. So when we talk about the limbic system, the amygdala is, and that is the locus Cyrillus. And the locus

Dr. John Lieurance  

Cyrillus is projecting nor norepinephrine to the amygdala, right? So it’s kind of like a deeper structure. So it all of your fear responses, your anxiety, depression is really hardwired in that locus Cyrillus a lot of pharmaceutical companies really look at this as fixing this area for solutions for you know, for depression, okay? So when, when you start looking, it’s like hardwired, like I had mentioned about the circadian rhythm. And then there’s an aspect of the locus Cyrillus, because it has to do with memory, right. And there’s also something really interesting, I want to circle back on with regard to degenerative neurological disorders, please. But so we store all of our short term memory in the locus Cyrillus, right, so are working short term memory. So during the day, we’re having experiences, and these experiences need to be integrated with our, all the other experiences that we’ve had. And if that doesn’t happen, we don’t really mature, right? And, and we don’t really make sense of our life, our environment, our connections are things that we study, things that we see things that we experience. And so, you know, I’ve seen this with friends that are alcoholics, right. And, you know, most of us have had friends, and they don’t seem to mature and there seems to be a lot of mental emotional turmoil with these people. And one of the main reasons is because alcohol prevents you from having REM sleep. And so it’s really understood in the sleep worlds that REM has a big impact on our mental emotional aspect. And the reason being is that it’s the locus Cyrillus, that is able to, to pause when we and transfer that data up to the higher brain centers, in RAM. So you don’t get the rim, you don’t get this, this pause of the local Cyrillus, which is where we’re really talking about the health of this area, the brain requires like this deep pause when we’re sleeping. So not only do we need REM to be healthy, but we also need to have our stress hormones low. So like for people that are working late, right, and they’re maybe we’re getting into an argument later at night, and they’re their cortisol is high, or they might be stimulating some norepinephrine, the locus Cyrillus has a hard time dumping that memory consolidation and having that pause. Estrogen plays a big role in it SSRIs surprisingly, really have a negative impact on this memory consolidation as well. It’s counterintuitive. Yeah, well, there’s, there’s a lot to the approach to depression, that with SSRIs is really, which kind of leads me to methylene blue.

Dr. Mindy  

I was just gonna say so let me just recap so everybody can make sure we’re following is that this part of the brain takes in all of our experiences throughout the day, at night, when we go to sleep. It transfers those experiences to the hippocampus, probably. Yeah, and and asks it to store it there and it’s almost like giving it a clean slate. And then next day, it does the same thing. And we do this day to day after day after 111

Dr. John Lieurance  

explanation might be let’s say that you have a party at your house. and you have it over and over, but you never clean it right? And how junked up it gets. That’s how it happens to the brain and our memory if we’re not having this deep pause to the look of Cyrillus.

Dr. Mindy  

So what’s interesting about that is memory is a major issue for women as they go through menopause. And my and you’ll hear this tomorrow when we’re talking when at the, at the women’s event, which is why we’re here is that what we know about extra dial the most important form powerful form of estrogen is that it can stimulate glutamate and it can stimulate acetylcholine, which are two key neurotransmitters for memory. So when we lose extra dial, our memory goes off. And then now I’m pairing that with what you just said, which is, and if we’re not getting deep REM sleep, and we’re not getting the locus really is Cyrillus to be able to calm down at night. Now we’ve got a double whammy on memory.

Dr. John Lieurance  

So another really fascinating aspect of this is progesterone is impact on the on the blue spot. Okay, talk about because progesterone helps to activate beta endorphin. So this these endorphins, in the in the locus Cyrillus helped to calm it down. And that’s one of the reasons that when we when you it’s pretty well known you take progesterone, it’s one of the hormones that calm us down. Oh, yeah, very neuro protective.

Dr. Mindy  

Believe me. I’ve knew I noticed it when she went away. And then I’ve been dabbling in some bioidenticals. Now, and it’s really profound.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Yeah, yeah. So and that’s where the, the, the impact is. Because if you think about this blue spot, being the center of stress, anxiety, depression, and then you’re able to go and have an endorphin release in there, it’s calming that down. So that would be something that would support a pausing of the of the locus Cyrillus as well. And so if you’re running really low with with progesterone, you could be having some challenges with the blue spot,

Dr. Mindy  

the blue spots, just still running, even though you’re sleeping.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, you want it to stop running, right? So that so the blue spot pulses between one and 15 hertz, okay? Okay. So during the day, it’s going because it’s, it’s stimulating norepinephrine and that norepinephrine is, is allowing us to be able to get things done, right, right, to be able to focus on things to be able to keep our attention on things, okay. And, and be alert, it’s like activating the cardiovascular system. It’s, it’s helping the gut work, like all of these things that are really, really important, right? And at night, it pauses and you get this memory consolidation. And so when the locus Cyrillus is too fired up, you have too much norepinephrine, so you have too much of these fear responses. And when the body is in a chronic state of that, that’s what wears us down, right? So if we can have deep rest, and minimize the spikes and stresses, that’s where you can have a healthier individual and more longevity. So

Dr. Mindy  

you know what the negative feedback loop of that is, is that when we start to see nor epinephrine go up, the body goes into fight or flight, progesterone shuts down. And what I just heard is progesterone actually is key for making sure that the locus realist turns off. Yes, it helps it to calm down. Right. So it’s a negative feedback loop. Right? Yeah. Which is crazy, if you think about that, because, right, because now you’re activating more fight or flight, which in a woman is shutting down more progesterone, which is causing more running of this blue spot, which is I mean, you can it just starts now we start to see why, you know, in my opinion, women are suffering mentally as they go through menopause. Because we’re so we’re so subjective to our environment, a lot more than men. And stress just kills us, it kills us. And I actually have a theory, and I don’t have any proof on this. I’d be curious, your thought, thoughts. When we look at why women have more Alzheimer’s and dementia than men? I believe that yes, we can look at you know, insulin resistance and all of that we can look at the ES, you know, keeping your estradiol levels up. But I think over time, stress wears us down so much from a brain perspective, we check out.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, I agree with you. And what’s really interesting is that Alzheimer’s seems to start at the locus Cyrillus Oh, and move up. And this is really because all of the symptoms related to you know, the beginning of Alzheimer’s, you know, not able to keep their attention, memory, right. digestive issues. I mean, it’s all it’s all like there. So there’s a there’s a study I’m going to be bringing forth and the talk I’m doing tomorrow, but there it seems to move through the trigeminal nucleus, which could have a pretty good argument for endotoxins entering that system through the nasal and the mouth

Dr. Mindy  

oral, it’ll go straight to the blue spot. It goes

Dr. John Lieurance  

up because the that that that nerve comes up into the locus Cyrillus. And so what they’re finding is a lot of these neurofibrillary tangles and and tau protein seems to build up there first. And then it starts to move up into the brain. So way before even stage one of Alzheimer’s, they’re seeing that as a as a beginning indication.

Dr. Mindy  

Wow. So Okay, talk about methylene blue, because, again, what I’m seeing is a bigger picture than what I even knew about, about the brain, but specifically from a woman’s lens, and specifically from menopause. My, as we I was sharing with you and my passion right now is I feel like what happens to women over 40 is, is we’re suffering and the only answer that we’re being given is take hormones. And yet, if you look at the the trajectory of a woman’s body and brain, we’re supposed to lose hormones, because we don’t have eggs to be released anymore. So what’s the consequence to the brain? When we lose hormones, and the solution, there’s consequences, huge, but the solution shouldn’t be throw more hormones at it, because in some sense, that’s going against our natural cycle. And what I think is happening is that more and more women are struggling because of other subtleties, like we’re talking about right here. So if you’re listening to this, and you’re like, wow, like I never I can see the negative feedback loop. I’m not getting enough sleep, I can’t get myself out of my stress loop. And this is the seat of the brain that needs to be posed in and out. How do we go about doing that? And where

Dr. John Lieurance  

are you? Oh, now we’re getting into some good stuff. Right. So how do we take care of the blue spot? Yeah. So hopefully, up until now, anybody listening to this or watching this is going to be like really excited about the potential to really care for this part of the brain? No, this has become something that I’ve been obsessed with. I love this. And so I call it blue spot therapy. Tell. I hope this is a you’re hearing it first look.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, it is. Okay, go for it.

Dr. John Lieurance  

So I have a I have a schematic that I did that is basically showing all of the different things that will have a positive or a negative impact, right. So obviously, any type of oral or dental hygiene issues right, so cavitations taking care of your doorways is kind of the broad idea here. So when I when I say doorways, I think nasal passage, oral and also your colon, right? Oh, yeah. So these are the primary areas that endotoxins get into our system. Okay. Right. And so endotoxins are going to activate these inflammatory responses, which then you have the cell danger response. So there, there’s the other huge aspect of of negative impact on the locus Cyrillus is mitochondrial function, okay? Because there is a huge need for lots of mitochondrial power in the locus Cyrillus. So when we start having low mitochondrial output, then we start having some problems there with high oxidation. And in the beginning of the talk, you know, we were we were kind of alluding to this idea of like, what’s happening with aging, right, what’s connected to that, and that you had mentioned senescence cells. And so it’s really comes down to this basic idea that we become less efficient at converting oxygen and glucose into fuel into ATP through the mitochondria, right? And then this idea of these zombie cells and these senescence cells that can be cleared up, and you’re the expert on fasting, which is the best way to clear that it’s just

Dr. Mindy  

gonna say, my brains, like how does how does fasting affect the blue spot? Keep going?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Yeah, well, it’s going to help it because lowering inflammation is going to really support it. So they’ve shown that higher inflammatory because you think about inflammation in general, it’s a it’s a stress trigger, right? So anything to do with sleep is going to be a great conversation for the locus Cyrillus and the blue spot, right? Does

Dr. Mindy  

it need sleep,

Dr. John Lieurance  

you need that REM so you look at like, you know, I mean, you got it, we could deep dive into sleep for a while but the basics are, you know, light pollution at night, avoiding stressful types of things, you know, at night, not eating too late. A cold dark room, right. And so, you know, just getting the basics down with the sleep and then honoring the circadian rhythm. You know, so like doing some sun get we talked about sun gazing, right? And one of the most powerful things you could do is watch some you know, the sunrise. Yeah, I love that idea. Yeah, and then Secondly, if you can watch the sunset, and so this is pacing the brain so that the brain can appreciate the sleep wake cycles. Some of the work that I do with the endo nasal is really powerful because you’re talking about pacing, these oscillations which become problematic. So not just that, but also the the negative impact that a collapsed nasal passage might have with the the microbiome that’s in the nasal passage and the possibility of, you know, infections out gassing these endotoxins that then enter the body and get into the brain, because it’s so closely related, especially with the face,

Dr. Mindy  

you know, I was talking to I interviewed, you know, Heidi havoc, do you remember her she’s a brain researcher. And she’s been looking at what the chiropractic adjustment does to the brain. And one of the things I learned in my conversation with her is that the brain is always reading the stress from the body. And when the body gives it a stress single signal back, it actually starts to create a stronger signal back to the body. And so again, negative feedback loop of something. And so it’ll tighten muscles, it’ll contract, you know, our masseter starts to tighten, or temporalis starts to tighten. And we tend to think of stress as so exogenous, we think of it as it has to be something out in our environment, but what the brain is doing, and I just heard that, and what you were saying is that it’s reading what’s going on inside the body, and the body will tell it if it should be in fight or flight or not. So if your cranium is jammed up, and you’re not getting that flexibility, that’s another level of stress, it’s also sounds like it’s another level of not being able to clear out endotoxins. So you’re building up endotoxins in the body, which, again, is creating this feedback loop that is so detrimental to humans, but especially women, because when cortisol goes up, progesterone goes down. Now we got a problem with Locus release,

Dr. John Lieurance  

right? And that’s a good point. So hormones are another really important aspect of taking care of your locus Cyrillus you know, and, and, you know, those are some really good points that you have, it’s like, nature has just created such a perfect symphony, right. And there’s all these checks and balances. And the more we can understand this, the more we can start to kind of intervene and like support and kind of grease some of these things so that they move a little bit with less friction,

Dr. Mindy  

I think at the root of all biohacking. And probably even in here, for sure in here is what you’re doing is you’re restoring a very primitive healing power within the body that has been taken away by the modern world. And so the reason we’ve got so many bio hacks now, so many IVs, so many interesting therapies, is because the modern world is taken away.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Right? We weren’t meant to be swimming and all these stressors, right? Yeah. So now we have to look at things like high dose melatonin, which I talk a lot about methylene blue, taking care of your doorways, right. I mean, this is a big part of what we do with a lot of, you know, our patients, you know, the clinic is we get them doing science, you know, this 30 Day sinus protocol that I love to do with gluta stat. And we use essential oils, we have a blend called Boca Zan, where, you know, it’s something that is used in the mouth, and it helps to support the gums.

Dr. Mindy  

So you’ve what I’m hearing and that is you feel like so much that’s going on in our sinus area and in our mouth is affecting our brain. Specifically, the locus realists

Dr. John Lieurance  

Oh, big time. Yeah. And when you look at the research, and you see how these could, because the proteins, the neurofibrillary tangles and the tau and the beta amyloid, that’s all basically immune response, right? So it’s endotoxins, right, that are that are activating this immune response in the brain and in the brain takes these proteins, wraps it around these toxins, to protect it from continuing to activate the glial system, right, which basically is like this, like really negative inflammatory system in the brain. So it’s like, it’s like a protective mechanism, right? And so we, we need to look at different routes that these endotoxins get into our body. And, and, and slow those down or minimize those. Okay, so

Dr. Mindy  

now let’s go back I there was one thing that you said that I really want to cycle back to because the other part of this conversation that I want people to grab is how intricate the stress cycle is. And what you’re bringing to my attention I never heard of the locus realist until this morning is that I’ve been so focused on the amygdala and the overt hyper vigilant amygdala causing the constant cortisol rise because it’s constantly looking for fear signals. But what I’m seeing with the locus Cyrillus is that it also impacts that stress response you You gave us some lifestyle tools that we can use. But talk to me a little bit about like methylene blue. Well, I did an IV of that this morning, I will tell you my reaction of doing it, and then you gave us some breath work. And then you gave me some magnesium. Within an hour of those two, I just could feel euphoria is that have to do with changes that are going on in the brain?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, it’s, it’s calming your nervous system down. Right? And it’s improving vascularity. Right. So the magnesium, most most of us are deficient in magnesium. And, you know, it actually takes a bit of energy to bring magnesium in. And that’s why a lot of people even though they take a lot of it, they’re still deficient. One hack is they can take Nicotiana mide along with magnesium, get it to kind of take it at the same time, but you’ll actually find some really neat benefits. I think at some point, you know, I might consider making a supplement those two together because it’s magic. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

yeah. That’s your your wizardry. So that IV

Dr. John Lieurance  

we call Luma. Blue. And so it starts with a high dose of magnesium 2000 milligrams, and and then we did a, an IV of silver. And so silver is complementary to methylene blue because it enhances its photo dynamic capacities. Yep. So the methylene blue has an affinity to mitochondria. Okay. And that’s what makes it really good to help for people to do dissections when they stain like the brain or different types of tissues, because you can see tissues that require a lot more energy are going to have a denser population of mitochondria. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

by the way, if severe Second, do you know what has the most amount of mitochondria in the in a woman’s body? More than any kind of gave it away? But more than any other cell in her body? What’s that? It’s actually the eggs in our ovaries? They have the highest density of mitochondria, compared to any other cell in our body. Wow. Okay, so I’m putting this in terms of maybe even fertility. When we’ve got egg viability as being a major challenge for fertility. I know now we’re off on a totally different tangent. But when you speak about mitochondrial health, my female brain goes, Wow, man, if everything you’re saying right now about mitochondria health, mitochondrial health, portrays to the ovaries, and within the ovaries, we’ve got the eggs. Yeah. And if though, if your mitochondrial health goes down, your ovary health goes down your egg viability,

Dr. John Lieurance  

really, really sensitive to oxidation. Yeah, I’m really, really sensitive to that. And that’s one of the reasons why there’s a wealth of research on melatonin, to support for fertility.

Dr. Mindy  

And that you wrote a whole book on it. Yeah, I love it. I love it.

Dr. John Lieurance  

So but you know, back to this idea, because because the methylene blue actually plays into the blue spot as well, right? Because it’s support to the mitochondria. And so this this blue, it was originally a dye that which is why the name is methylene blue. It has an affinity to the mitochondria. And once it gets into the mitochondria, it acts as both an electron donor and electron acceptor. So basically, it’s an oxygen, and an antioxidant, which means that it can kind of sit in there and just really finesse this energy production within the mitochondria. And it’s about 30%, more effective, more efficient. So anybody that takes it is going to find that they’re going to be about 30%, more robust. And it’s one of those things that I’ve seen, just tremendous feedback from people that I start on methylene blue, they really feel it.

Dr. Mindy  

And so you feel it in the sense of your energy goes up. But then if it’s feeding the blue spot, then it’s also helping you get into a deep a deeper REM sleep,

Dr. John Lieurance  

you will for sure it will sleep is an active process. So low, when you run low in cellular energy, it’s harder for you to go to sleep because you’re actually your brain, you know, the nervous system is that circadian rhythm needs energy to to be half strong. Both sleep and wake.

Dr. Mindy 

Yeah. Do you think one of the ways I look at some of these centers of the brain is it’s a little bit like a record that just keeps getting skipping? Yeah. And it’s like, you have to literally go and use something to pick up the needle and put it into a new spot. Would that be like an accurate way to look at the Lucas realists?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Yeah, that I mean, there’s so many different ways to look at it. And it’s fun to make analogies like that. Yeah. So I think that’s a good one. But it’s, I think, if you look at all of the biohacking things that we do, you know, I mean, even cold plunge therapy, right. You look at saunas, you look at sleep, you look at exercise, all All of these things have a commonality on how they support the locus Cyrillus. And how important taking care of this part of our brain is not just to prevent degenerative neurologic disorder, but also to be happy and to be able to get up and actually focus on things and remember things and integrate things. It’s just, if,

Dr. Mindy  

if it keeps going, if it keeps running, and I’m getting that epinephrine signals to the amygdala, and I’m in that hyper fight or flight, I then focus will become difficult. Is that a correct way to look at that? Oh, for sure. Yeah. And is that because the brain is still trying to assess all the stressors that are like it hasn’t gone into that parasympathetic place where it can relax, and there can be expansion and we can move to the prefrontal cortex? Like, is it because we’re primarily designed to find something that’s going to injure us and kill us?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Yeah. So it’s that fight or flight response is going to be shunting muscle, you know, blood to our muscles, so that we can run and escape and fight. Right? You know, so we don’t necessarily need to be like, you know, figuring things out as much as you know, we might if we’re like building something versus being chased. Right. Right. So so

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, cuz you have one singular focus. Yeah. So the rest becomes more difficult. So when we do like methylene, blue IVs have been quite the rage lately. And we’re pouring this nutrient into the mitochondria, we know it affects this part of the brain. I’m gonna say it affects the eggs in the ovaries. I’m gonna also say it probably affects dramatically the ovaries because they’re so rich in mitochondria. What? Are we just putting in a nutrient that these parts of our body need because of the modern chemical, physical, emotional stressors we’re under? And is it just bringing us to baseline? Or is it actually like reversing aging? Do you see where

Dr. John Lieurance  

I’m going with? Oh, no, I love that question. And I get that. So there’s going to be some net gains, which there can be some shifts in some things in the body that are going to be things that we could continue on and benefit from. So in other words, if I do methylene, blue for a short period of time, and then never do it again, you know, would I be able to have some sort of a gain from that moving forward? So because it’s very antimicrobial, and in fact, it’s fantastic for a lot of infections, a lot of research shows, you know, a lot of people dealing with, like epstein barr, and different types of chronic viral infections,

Dr. Mindy  

which, by the way, I just read a study yesterday, that when estrogen goes down, Epstein Barr rears her ugly head. And that so again, back to what we were talking about before, I’m wondering why we’re not talking enough about what happens to the female brain when our protective?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, why is it possible the low estrogen is not allowing the cause we talked about before is that estrogen when it goes down, you don’t get as good REM sleep, right? I mean, that’s really solid and research. So estrogen helps REM sleep quite a bit. And so if you’re not getting the REM sleep, you’re not getting that, that that rejuvenation, the you’re just you’re going to be more you’re going to have a higher propensity to like anxiety, and fears and even depression, right. And so this is going to be up regulating cortisol. Yep, we’re going to be more than a stress response. And we’re not happy, right? And what happens to the immune system?

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, it’s it shuts down, it shuts down, or it becomes hyper vigilant. And then we got out that’s why we got, man,

Dr. John Lieurance  

right. Yeah. So So then there’s Epstein Barr just sitting there. Wait, yeah. Right. Right. And, and so then it all kind of goes right back to the

Dr. Mindy  

right. Okay, great. So take it back to the blue spot. So but that’s, that’s the beauty of what you’re saying. Because if you take all the pieces that we’ve been talking about, it’s easy to get overwhelmed and have it be complicated, right. But if we go back to how the body is designed, if it all comes back to the blue spot, then we only have one part of the brain to focus on, which is the blue spot, and we can change everything that we’re talking about. Right?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, so for people that are maybe having a hard time with depression or anxiety or their immune system, or, you know, there might be if they’re tracking their sleep, and they see that their REM sleep, you can start realizing that, oh, I could maybe start doing things to support my mitochondria and things to support my hormones and things to support my circadian rhythm. And why am I doing this? It’s because it’s all converging in on being able to really care for this part of the brain. You don’t care for this part of the brain, then, you know, you’re you could potentially have much worse things happen because that’s where a lot of these degenerative neurologic disorders to actually start and stem from,

Dr. Mindy  

and what So again, my brain goes to like, why aren’t we talking about this? Why is the world not talking? Why did it take Dr. John neurons to bring this to the world, when we are living in the most stressful time, physical, emotional and chemical stress, full time, people are suffering, women are suffering. And we can boil it down to too much stress. And then we boil it down to the blues blue spot. Why aren’t we talking about this?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, I have a feeling we talked, we’re talking about, like, different subjects that we have brought, you know, like, you brought fasting to women, right. And it was a big wave that came in and you got in, and you were responsible for that wave and the wave was ready to happen, right? Yeah. And I’ve been able to be fortunate to kind of get in and I think melatonin has made this big push recently, and I wrote a book and I feel like this could potentially be another wave. I think it’s that big of a deal. And this is the first podcast I’ve really like, delved into it, I’m so honored. And you guys keep following me because I am like, just like really in the middle of really understanding this and owning it. So

Dr. Mindy  

I well. So I want to keep geeking out with you on it beyond this moment, because what I am the elephant in the menopausal room for me is that when we look at estradiol and progesterone going away, we also see these neurotransmitters go away. And the way I’m explaining it is it’s like a neuro chemical armor that just comes down. And when that neuro chemical armor comes down, my belief is a lot of our traumas come up, a lot of our cellular dysfunction comes up, which is why we have so many women having all these symptoms, so many women having depression. And if we were to tell every 40 year old woman that’s about to happen to you, your neurochemical armor is about to come down, you’re going to need a game plan, you’re going to need to look at the next 10 years as this opportunity to rebirth yourself. Right. And in that comes, we have to turn the stress response off. Sure. So if the stress response is really being activated by the blue spot. That’s awesome. It’s an integration of our work, right? Yes. And so I want as you dive into that more, I love that idea. And then especially knowing that progesterone can control that blue spot switch a bit.

Dr. John Lieurance  

And that’s its beta endorphin receptors in the blue spot. Yeah. So you know, what’s really hitting me here. And what might be a good take home for people watching or listening to this is that you’re going to have, you know, different, different situations for all of us, right, and some people are not going to be taking care of themselves. And they’re going to have a much, much more difficult time with menopause. Yeah, when you start to have a drop in these hormones, and you haven’t done your work and you haven’t been doing your self care, it’s going to be a rough rough ride. Super. Right. So this is where we want to start looking at, like, what’s really happening when this thing goes south, because that we start to have the inability for our body to deeply deeply relax, and to process the experiences that we’ve had. And to make sense of it and not not develop all of these fear, knee jerk fear responses to every little thing. Yeah. And that’s what happens when we can’t really fully Pause, pause that blue spot. And so, you know, if you look at, like a spiritual view of our life, like my feelings are that if you can get if you can clear all of your fears, like completely, like you have no fear at all, no fear of death, right? That’s like the ultimate because all of these little fears might trigger that that one deepest fear, which is that you will be annihilated you no longer exist. Yeah, I don’t get my peanut butter and chant sandwich like Johnny, you’re not you’re not having your peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Oh, my God, I’m gonna die. Right? So we learn this as a kid. And so everything kind of converges in on that core fear response, which is governed right in that one little blue spot. Right? That’s crazy. And so if we can take care of it, and we can calm that down to the point that we can accept life and, and take on life, the way life presents in front of us, right? And do that in a calm way. We’re not in a chronic state of stress and anxiety. You know, and then if we’re in a chronic state of stress and anxiety then then like you said before, right, we’re not going to be sleeping right then it’s not going to pause the the blue spot Yeah. So it’s like these these cycles. So we have to at some point, just sit down and say, Okay, enough, enough’s enough, right. Like, give me a plan of action is to stop this cycle, right? That’s what I think we can do.

Dr. Mindy  

And so let’s go back again to just so we can do the check. I’m a checklist person, what would you call it blue spot therapy. So if you’re listening to this, I think, by the way, I think what you said is so at the heart of what I’m trying to teach women is that it all boils down to stress. And, and it’s and if we can handle this one word, we can start to really dramatically change everything else, every other symptom you’re trying to change, go through the checklist again, and go through our lifestyle checklist and then go through like therapies like you’re doing in here checklist.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Okay, so hormones have an implement inflammation. So progesterone supports it. Okay. Estrogen supports it. Okay. pregnenolone seems to be beneficial because it spills over and it supports both of those hormones. DHEA DHEA does, yeah. When you look at the cycle that the blue spot takes, it needs to be calm. So it has to be either a one or lower hertz. So that site that that that frequency that it’s firing needs to be like, either one, or like point five. So it needs to calm down and pause, right. And it won’t, if you have what’s called catecholamines. And if you have like adrenaline, right, and cortisol, and so when we look at our daily activities, and we start thinking about the afternoon and evening, and from dinner, to go into sleep, what types of things would promote us to be more deeply relaxed before we go to bed so that we have an opportunity for our blue spot to completely shut down and calm. So doing things like breath work and meditation and really protecting those hours? Don’t argue and we don’t do work that’s going to stress us out, right? Look at the like, you know, light pollution, right? So anything that’s going to change our brains going on this beautiful cycle of sleep way.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so we’ve got hormones that that will help regulate it, we’ve got light. But I’m, I’m putting it in the context of melatonin and because you is that the way or were the two separate subjects for the blue spot?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Well, they’re both part of that circadian rhythm.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so so it’s all under circadian rhythm. Okay, so hormonal balance, circadian rhythm balance. Okay, what else do we need to be able to keep the blue spot? So

Dr. John Lieurance  

I mean, in essence, if you think about it, like, you want to be able to deeply relax at night. Yeah, right. And so if you’re not honoring that, then the locus surrealist with a blue spot can’t go and really go into a deep state of rest. And if it doesn’t, it’s holding on to all of that. I mean, they really see this as the primary cause of PTSD, right? Because you have an event, it’s a stressful event, and you have a memory attached to that and that, and that memory just sticks in that locus Cyrillus. And most of these people, their stress hormones never really calmed down even at night when they’re sleeping. And so they preserver it on this over and over again. And so there’s a lot of interest with the locus Cyrillus and PTSD, it’s been the primary area where that’s, that’s the issue.

Dr. Mindy  

Fascinating. Okay, so continue on in the checklist.

Dr. John Lieurance  

So then taking care of your doorways, right, and endotoxins is huge. And primarily, I think, the the doorways that are poorly. Were recognizes that primarily the nasal passage, right. And there’s been some some studies that are really suggesting that this is a big deal and more more attention needs to be looked at it. Because of the the, the tau protein buildup in the local Cyrillus. And how there’s a deep connection with the trigeminal nerve and nucleus.

Dr. Mindy  

So we need to be a nose breather, not a mouth breather.

Dr. John Lieurance  

The the nose breathing is the pacing through the respiratory cycle. So the air hitting those higher olfactory centers in the nose, that’s gonna be a that’s that’s between, say, four and 12 hertz, okay, right. And so these are oscillations that then pace our limbic oscillations or neuro oscillations.

Dr. Mindy  

Okay, so continue on. Yeah. So

Dr. John Lieurance  

we think about how we are encouraged to take care of our mouth, right, but dentists have a financial gain to be that person who has the financial gain to tell you to take care of your nasal passage, right. Oh, maybe I do. A little bit.

Dr. Mindy  

nasal passage. Nobody advocate. Right,

Dr. John Lieurance  

right. There’s some E and T ‘s, right. So it’s a very underserved area that people aren’t really realizing is such a big deal to brain health and neurological health, wow. And then the oral, you know, oral and then the microbiome and just think about the amount of inflammation that can possibly be caused by a dysregulation in the in the microbial growth in those areas. From my microbiome, I minimize resistance resistive starches, right? So you can, anybody can get online and kind of look at, like what foods are more in the resistant starches, and some people will really promote these as like, like prebiotics and really important, but the reality is a lot of people have a lot of gram negative colonies in their gut. And you just, if you don’t want to feed those, if you have a lot of gram positive, you know, that might be okay. lectins can also be a negative for the gut. So eating organic is really important. So like pesticides, you know, they, they, they are very damaging to your microbiome. There’s a number of toxins in our environment that, that that are that are so and so we want to look at, you know, anything related to our digestion, we want to be eating, you know, good foods, you know, and eating with low stress, right. So we don’t want to be like, that’s our food while we’re, you know, driving and putting our makeup on. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

Right. It has a very much a similar effect to just eating the bad fit, right? It does. Yeah, that’s crazy. When you think about that, yeah. Anyways, continue. So microbiome of the gut.

Dr. John Lieurance  

So one of the things that has really helped me personally, as well as a lot of the people I work with, is I make yogurt. And I make a coconut based yogurt, okay, and we call it pro bios on yogurt. And we’ll be happy to provide you with a recipe. It’s really easy. Oh, it really takes Yeah, once you figure it out, you get the right stuff, and everything’s like ready to go. It takes like 10 minutes to make it. And then you let it ferment for, you know, two or three days, most of the people that make yogurt only let their from their yogurt ferment for 12 hours, because they have to use that machine to make another batch. But when you start fermenting it for like 36 and 48 hours, you start getting trillions,

Dr. Mindy  

you know, William Davis says the same thing from Super gut, I interviewed him. And he said that that’s that exact thing, that we’re not letting it ferment long enough to get the beneficial bacteria. Yeah, yeah. Let me finish up with this thought. I always, I mean, we’re gonna keep talking and and I really love this expansion you’ve given me on the brain. And then of course, I feel like I’m always putting it through my hormonal lens. So thank you, that was awesome. Each season, I have a different question that I ask every guest. Okay, so I’ve asked two questions this season one is, what’s your self love practice? And the second one is, if you had to name one superpower you bring to the world, what do you think that would be?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Okay? Well, for me, self love is just a knowing that I am infinite. And I am love. Right? So it’s not an act of I’m loving myself. It’s just realizing that that’s what I am. And sitting in that and love that. And so contemplating that, I think would be my, you know, my back.

Dr. Mindy  

I actually am a huge contemplator of life. And I think it is a form of self love, because you don’t stay stuck in the same mindset. When you keep asking yourself questions. It just your mind gets more expansive.

Dr. John Lieurance  

So and the other really cool thing about self love is that when you find yourself in a relationship, and you’re like, oh my god, I love that person. You know, you fall in love. Yeah, you’re actually falling in love with yourself, as you’re showing up with that other person. Amen. So that’s a great realization. Yeah. Love that. And to remind yourself with that, when you’re in those situations to reinforce that, you’re bringing that love, it’s inside of you. Yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

I love that. Okay, your superpower, what’s your superpower? Yes. Well, I mean, I would say your superpower is multifaceted, but the biggest is your, your curiosity around the human body. And then you’re a little bit of a wizard. I don’t know if people say that. But your ability to put combination of nutrients together, I’m gonna encourage everybody to go to your website and look up some of the things we talked about today. We’ll put the link in there. Okay, but you’re like a medicine man. And I don’t I haven’t met very few people like that, and it’s much needed in this day and age.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Thank you. I think one of the things that helps me be that way is this powerful, artistic aspect of my brain and scientific? Yeah, I don’t think that a lot of people are just Just generally born into the world that way. So well, I did a human design. Have you heard of? So I don’t know much about it. I’ve heard of it. I did that a couple of times. And that’s what came up with that. And I’m not really big into a lot of astrology stuff. Like, I think it’s interesting, but it just phenomenon to me, right? Yeah. So. But I do find that that that does seem to ring true. And I, I started to, to get involved with art to the point where, after my first year of practicing, I thought I made a terrible mistake. And my, my, my calling in life was to become an artist. And in fact, there was this thing in my family on the front, you know, the French side. Last name is Lawrence. Every fourth generation there was going to be born a famous artist. So I was the fourth generation. And there’s another cousin of mine who got into art. And I think it turned out that he that’s probably it was that was it? Yeah. But I dropped out. practicing medicine and chiropractic Right. And, and I went into painting full time. And I was in showing an art galleries in Maui and in Dallas, and here

Dr. Mindy  

artisanal mazing. Yeah, thank you. Amazing. It’s interesting, what you say about the what I heard is your right and left brain are very integrated. That’s a unique quality.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Yeah, so that helps when you’re, when you’re, when you’re trying to figure these things out. Like we’re talking about the locus Cyrillus. And there’s, there’s so many different ways of looking at it. And it’s, it can be abstract, and then you’re trying to look for things that are patterns, right? And then you’re trying to like pull things out of thin air to like, make sense of things that it’s like that intelligence that is just there, right? It’s like when you quiet your mind, it’s like the informations there. You quiet that locus Cyrillus. Down?

Dr. Mindy  

Well, probably, then the other parts of the brain can start talking to you.

Dr. John Lieurance  

Right? Right, including

Dr. Mindy  

the pineal Yeah. wonder, you know, here’s what you gotta go look at what’s the connection between the locus Cyrillus and the pineal gland? How do they connect? Like the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex there? They’re doing this dance all the time ones on ones off?

Dr. John Lieurance  

Yeah. Oh, they’re, they’re deeply connected, because it’s all circadian rhythm. Yeah. Super cosmic nucleus. And yeah, they’re they’re very hard wired together.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. John, this was amazing. I can keep I keep forgetting where even on a podcast but thank you. Just the world needs you. So really appreciate ya. Thank you. And be in this with you. Yeah, thank you. And we’re gonna together agreed agreed. I think the more we can empower people on how the friggin a their own bodies work, the more we’re going to heal the world. So thank you. Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode, I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it. So please leave us a review, share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is.