Since You Put It That Way

Scurvy In Our Communities? What??

• Mary Louder, DO • Season 3 • Episode 8

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Yes, you read that right! Dr. Ramona Wallace, an osteopath who does research and teaching in the public health sector, has found scurvy among her patients--often, in fact, and along with other deficiencies in micronutrients (vitamins and minerals) that can have a deep, lasting effect on health from childhood through old age. In this episode, she and Dr. Louder discuss common signs that one might be suffering from a deficiency, the connection between adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and micronutrient deficiency, and what to do if you think you or a loved one might be deficient in a nutrient based on the conversation in this podcast episode. This is one to share--the more people know about the signs of nutrient deficiency, and the fact that health issues like scurvy can and do still happen, the more people can find help and recover their health and well-being. 

Intro for "Since you put it that way" podcast.

Outro for "Since you put it that way" podcast

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Hi, Dr. Mary Louder here. Welcome to our episode of Since You Put It That Way. Today, we're going to be in conversation with Dr. Ramona Wallace, who is an osteopath like I am. And we trained at the same medical school, Michigan State University. And she's going to be bringing to us her information and exciting research that she's doing regarding micronutrients, adverse childhood experiences, and actually finding scurvy in our community, if you can imagine that. So, I guess I didn't know we had a bunch of pirates here, right? So Scurvy is Vitamin C deficiency. And so we're going to be talking about the influence of some nutrition on our health from a micronutrients, which is going to be vitamins and minerals. So stay tuned for this episode of Since You Put It That Way. And it's a very, very interesting conversation.

Mary Louder:

Great, well, welcome everyone to our conversation with Dr. Ramona Wallace, who is a fellow, or shall I say, sister, osteopath, here in Michigan, and some of our paths parallelled but not exactly crossed until recently as colleagues. So welcome to Since You Put It That Way.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Thank you. Thanks for inviting me, and I appreciate you taking the time to do this.

Mary Louder:

You're very welcome. We've got a really fun topic today. It's an important topic, about understanding nutrition, adverse childhood experiences, and really looking at a component of nutrition called micronutrition. Now, for our listeners, what micronutrition is, is the

vitamins:

vitamin C, vitamin A, vitamin D, minerals, zinc, things like that, that make the cells go round. Macronutrition is going to be carbohydrates, fiber, fats, proteins, things like that. And so the body requires both of those things to work well and both of those things to have adequate components for a healthy functioning of our biochemistry or physiology, or anatomy, our immune system, everything. So basically, it's the, the components of what makes our world go around as humans, right, in a large part. So Dr.--Dr. Wallace, share with us--I'm going to call you Ramona, you okay with that?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Absolutely. Go right ahead.

Mary Louder:

Wonderful. Share with us your background as a physician and what drew you into this particular topic of micronutrients and nutrition and things like that?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Okay, super. Well, thanks, that's actually a really good segue. When I was in high school applying for what am I going to do with the rest of my life? My mom's a nurse anesthetist, so of course, naturally, it was either nursing or medical school. And I really loved physiology in high school. I really enjoyed physiology at MSU. I, Dr. Stevenson, I still remember him and that was a long time ago. He was fantastic. And he made physiology makes--make sense. So medical school really made sense than I looking at osteopathic versus allopathic, and surgery, yeah, that was interesting, but the osteopathic approach really resonated with me because it looked at really, n equals one. It looked at the person you're dealing with right in front of you using evidence based, of course, and really the approach was, here's the person, what's their, their story? And of course, at my entrance into medical school was, Why do you want to go to medical school? Well, you know, I love physiology and I love helping people, and I really enjoy helping people understand, and put the pieces of the puzzle together. So, through this journey, and being in private practice for a And when I got to Muskegon, it was kind of interesting. They long time, I--about 17 years into practice, a friend of mine called up and said, Hey, what you're doing with childhood put me in charge of the childhood obesity workgroup. And obesity with childhood asthma, allergies, we really need you in I said, Well, you know, the first order of business is that this public health sector in Muskegon to work at a federally qualified health center. And I thought wonderful, because what I'm seeing is not being promoted in the literature. It was this pharmaceutical, that pharmaceutical, and I'm thinking okay, there's a disconnect here. we need to change the name of this workgroup, and they said we really don't have a problem with childhood obesity here in Muskegon, and I thought, huh, really, I don't know what you guys are thinking, but that made me realize--I said, Show me your, your statistics and your data. Because Muskegon was a particular interest of mine to work in because it was 82 among 82 of all counties in the County Health Ranking in healthy behaviors and health outcomes. So a lot of these things didn't make a lot of sense about statistics and reporting and stuff. And come to find out what the disconnect was, is that we weren't talking about growth charts and percentiles with children. We were saying a BMI of 30 in a child is obese. If you wait to kid as obese, with with a BMI of 30, we've got problems. So then I started to make you know, connect the dots and say, I think we are lacking data. And we are really getting misinformed. So I started digging deeper. Allergy immunology, working with some of the companies that, that did allergy testing, and really putting pieces together and and having the opportunity to work with Esther Dyson, and The Way to Wellville. Then she brought in the adverse childhood experiences, realizing that communities that have significant trauma, that have big divides as far as the haves and the have nots--and that's what Muskegon is, you have a lake shore, and then you have an inner city, and never the twain shall meet. And it was really interesting, because they were trying very hard to help the health and wellness of the community, but it wasn't until Esther Dyson from The Way to--she put together this Way to Wellville, brought in some very important people who helped dispel the myths, who helped merge the information and bring out the accurate data, then, I learned about functional medicine, at the Institute of Functional Medicine was an add-on to my allopathic and osteopathic training to really explore on an evidence based level to put together the N equals one and use the statistics and then use this aggregate of data to really apply it to what is important to you as an individual and how you've experienced things. And then a whole new world opened up for me to understand, what are the person's--what, what is their life experience? And how did it impact them? So you were earlier talking about and last night talking about inflammation. What is inflammation? And what does it mean to you? And you know, you made a really good point with long COVID and fatigue. Why do some people have it? Why don't other people have it? And it's really our genetics, right? Our epigenetics, our metabolomics. And then what happened from point A to point B to get us there? So, I started to say, Okay, I want to put this down on paper and the best way to, in my mind to do it, was to get connected with the university and start publishing. So it's taken me five years to convince the university to say, hey, the population that's struggling the most are the population that had these micronutrient deficiencies, and they're like, we don't have micronutrient deficiencies. I said, we have scurvy. We have vitamin A deficiency--

Mary Louder:

We have scurvy? Vitamin--

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

We. Have. Scurvy. And that was their--

Mary Louder:

Like pirates on the ships.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

That is the response. And they said, Okay, prove it. So I just--okay, Il prove it.

Mary Louder:

That was, that was a great challenge for you. Right? Great.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Oh, it was perfect. I said, I'll prove it. So about two years later, mind you, I see, I see about 100 or--I work two half days a week seeing patients, a lot of them are repeats and stuff like that. And I work in the hospital about five days a week, every month. So I don't have--it's not like 100 patients a week, right? I was able to document and describe 171 people with scurvy.

Mary Louder:

Just with that small population, you have.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Tiniest population, but I knew what to look for. You know why?

Mary Louder:

Why?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

I looked in the Merck manual. Remember the old Merck manual?

Mary Louder:

I do. So for our listeners, the Merck manual is a manual that describes physical exam characteristics, how to complete physical exams, as well as diagnostic approaches to the patient, long before we had imaging, high tech, and no touch. It was all touch back then, and listening to the patient, taking their history, understanding what was at that time, the known pathophysiology, right, which means pathology of disease and what's happening in the process of the body, and how and what you would see in the patient for a sign, which is different than the symptom. Symptom is what the patient experiences. The sign is what you find on the body objectively. Right?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Very, very well put. You just wrapped it up in a beautiful package. And which brings me to the point of why that was so significant, why when I pulled out the Merck manual, Scurvy is in pirates, James Lind described it a long time ago--

Mary Louder:

I'm just gonna do one for the pirates, arrrgh! Yes, it is.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Arrgh! Arr, matey. And so it wasn't that Smoking causes oxidative stress. Then hard to, to, okay. You go in the dental literature, it is flooded you dive into literature, I don't have to prove anything. with information about in one month of low vitamin C, you get periodontal ligament weakening, you talk to a dentist about vitamin C deficiency, they're all over it right? In in kids, and then you start talking about smoking. We know smoking, I don't have to prove any of that. Smoking interferes with the vitamin C, and its ability to be metabolized or synthesized. It's an antioxidant, vitamin C. Because it's been proven, written, the only thing that I have to prove to my peers is that we've lost the critical thinking pathway that the Merck manual gave to us a long time ago about the pathophysiology of disease.

Mary Louder:

Yeah.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Right?

Mary Louder:

Yeah. So that's super interesting, you know, on so many levels. And I'm like going, okay, where--oh, my gosh, we have only so much time. But this is, I think we're going to--this is great. This is great. Because if I think of that, what we've lost and that, and that's right in front of us, because I want to go back to what myths you found. But first, I want to say what we've lost with all of our high tech is just our ability to go back to the basics.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Absolutely.

Mary Louder:

Medicine, what happens is we get trained now to understand anatomy, physiology, and then treatment. But the treatment is just told to us, what the treatment out--algorithms are.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Correct.

Mary Louder:

You try this, and then if that doesn't work, you go to that drug. If that doesn't work, you go to that imaging, if that doesn't work, you go to that test, you go to that drug, then you go to that specialist. And there isn't anything in there that is critical thinking, because it's all algorithm-driven.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Correct.

Mary Louder:

And it's not going back. So Sir William Osler, who was the father of modern medicine said, listen to the patient, because they will tell you what's wrong with them. That has never failed me. I actually have that above my desk here in my home office, that has never failed me. And then I put a caveat on that, when in doubt, go back and re-examine the patient and take the history again. And that has never failed me in 30 years, that has never failed me. That's not high imaging, that's not going and doing more testing. It's like, what am I not understanding in the patient's story? That's right there.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

So, what you said is exactly--which led me to what I've learned with teaching residents and medical students. Who's easier to get to see this process do you think when I'm trying to teach?

Mary Louder:

I'm going to--I don't know.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

It's, so, I'm sure--my medical students are little sponges.

Mary Louder:

Okay.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Right next to their, their one hour of nutrition education, because they are aware that Vitamin C is an issue. They're like little golems so they they are not corrupted thought wise. And--

Mary Louder:

Like the residents would be already.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Exactly.

Mary Louder:

It's really just a matter of two or three years away in the distance. That's not far.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

That isn't far. My medical students pick it up like that. And it's amazing because so many of them come back and say, You know what, you can't unsee what you've shown me. And now that I see it, and I can't convince anybody else, and when I make them draw a vitamin C, and they get a low level, they say, Oh, that's a one-off. But they're right, it's not a one-off. It's not a one-off.

Mary Louder:

Because it's interesting that they say it's a one-off, because in residency, it was always the joke about who has porphyria, which is this weird blood disease, someone has porphyria, and I'm not trying to, you know, dismay you at all, but I'm just saying it was always the red herring, it was always the weird thing. It was always the unknown, you know, don't forget the unknown. Well, if you hear hoofbeats, it's going to be a horse, not a zebra, because there are more horses than zebras, right. And that's another thing that we learned in medical school, common things occur commonly. But one of the myths that you, I would dare say that you learned from the community you were in, was that basically denial. This just doesn't happen anymore. Because we aren't pirates on a ship, and we are in a modern world. So this, this just can't happen anymore.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

And if you look in the literature, every time I look at a case study, a rare disease long ago, not common, all these phrases about scurvy, if I can go and find 171 people with scurvy in a short period of time in a small select group of patient, it's not that hard. I mean, it really isn't. And I'll tell you what they are. If the person, number one, does not eat sufficient amount of fresh fruits and vegetables, right, they're not taking supplements, they're not doing anything, they're, they're depleted on their intake for at least a month, because it takes one month to deplete your body stores vitamin C. We don't synthesize it, we need to consume it. So that's why I really like vitamin C because it demonstrates this beautifully. So, that's number one. Number two, usually are smokers, or they're exposed to secondhand smoke, whether it be an adult or a child, right? So that depletes your vitamin C, because if you're a man, you need 75 to 85 milligrams a day. And if you're a woman, you need about 95. But if you're a smoker, you need 135-40 milligrams of vitamin C a day. Right? If you're not getting it and you're smoking, you need higher amounts and you're not eating it. Then I look for the physical signs, fatigue, periodontal ligament loosening and dental loss or dental caries. And then I look for chronic pain. Pain, pain, pain. Jeffery Lin--or, James Lind. They described it 300 years ago. The joints ache. They get bleeding and bruising. And it's interesting. I've even had my patients say, yeah, when the orthopod got into my knee to do the replacement, they said it was all black. That's scurvy.

Mary Louder:

Oh, fascinating.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Isn't it?

Mary Louder:

It is, and I've been on the inside of a number of knees and I, I have never--I never saw it, number one, interesting now that I know what it would have looked like, I never saw that. But fascinating that it's right there.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

It's right there.

Mary Louder:

Also super interesting about this myth of it doesn't exist anymore, is, we don't--because it's the modern world and we use so many pharmaceuticals, we don't have a disease, a disorder, or signs and symptoms because we lack a pharmaceutical.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Ah, good point.

Mary Louder:

I mean, it's not you know, it's because there's something within the physiology that's gone awry. Whether it's excessive inflammation that influences the psychoneuroimmune system, endocrine system, whether it's a vector meeting an infection, or chronic stress in some level, and so, and emotions, how they play in. And none of those are there because we lack a pharmaceutical. It has its influence within our environment, our genetic exposure, our predispositions, and then our basis of nutrition and those components as the building blocks.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

They are their basic components. And so it's interesting because working at a federally qualified health center the here's the adverse childhood experiences, right?

Mary Louder:

Yeah. Do you want me to list--let me list those for our listeners.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Absolutely.

Mary Louder:

And I wrote them down because I wanted to make sure I had all of them. So adverse childhood experiences are those things that occur in early childhood, that affect and we know have increased effect on chronic illness in youngsters, teenagers, adults, well into our old age. So they are in no

particular rank order:

if a person experiences domestic violence within the home, a parent abandonment through either separation or divorce, a parent with mental health issues, being a victim of abuse, whether it's physical, sexual and or emotional abuse, being a victim of neglect, a member of the household is in prison, and then a substance use disorder within the house. So that could be alcoholism, that could be drugs. That type of thing. So in the research, there is--what, and what's fascinating just supers, quick caveat. I spoke at a medical school in the fall--was our, it's our alma mater. And I talked about ACEs, they went blank.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

It--it is probably the largest public health study done Venetti and, and, and oh, gosh, Andy and Venetti. At this, it's very, but it was done on 18,000 people. Kaiser Permanente did the study. Huge study, great evidence base, the amazing job, and is probably one of the most important public health studies that we did. It's interesting because the adoption of that is very slow. But it's so significant and impactful. From a micronutrient level. You take a child who experiences trauma, right? Fight or flight. We all experience trauma. We can't fix any of it, right? But think of it from a micronutrient level. Kids are picky. They don't eat a lot of green vegetables. They don't like nuts. They don't--you know, they like carbs and starches, which is where we're at. Then you take somebody with a genetic, single nucleotide polymorphism. And you take the methyl tetrahydrofolate acid reductase enzyme, the MTHFR where you can't methylate folic acid, and you don't have the intake as a kid with ACE-- ACE scores trauma, what happens to the brain? And what happens to the metabolic memory?

Mary Louder:

Okay, that was--thought you were asking me a question.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Yeah.

Mary Louder:

Anxiety and ADHD is what happens to that child.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Bingo. Bingo, exactly. Now you throw on parents who smoke in the home, their vitamin C is low, because they don't like their fruits and vegetables. They're tired, they're not focused. They have an MTHFR they can't metabolize, or they can't methylate, they can't make an ATP. They, their whole system is now wearing, but they have the resiliency because they're a child--until they crash and burn at 30 or 40. Because you have kids, you have the allostatic load of, of motherhood or the stress of fatherhood, and all this that goes into it. And we dismiss these micronutrients and we dismiss what a metabolic memory is in our system and how we're neuro programming, right? This gets into really deep science, but to me, it's fascinating and looking at people with these variants like the met-met variant of the catecholamine methyl transferase. Simple, real simple, but means you can't break down the catecholamines at the same rate, the norepinephrine and the epinephrine. So you get frightened and you have an inability to break down these stress fight or flight genes, and it goes on for days and then it takes 12 hours for us to relax after one traumatic event. Who goes 12 hours without being stressed, right? So we get into this stress cycle, stress cycle and blood pressure goes up, heart rate goes up, sugar insulin response goes up, all the stress response. And if we're chronically in this, and we have a genetic inability to break these fight or flight defenses down, how do we sleep? By the time we're 30, we're not sleeping, by the time we're 40, we're not sleeping. And it begins very early on in micronutrients, and our ability to metabolize them starts in utero, we get mother's folic acid, why do we give them folic acid, right? We check their iron, or we checking their C, their B6, their--no, we're not looking at any of it. We're throwing at them vitamins, but we're not helping them understand food, nutrition, and how their body works, and who they are as a person, to understand how to mitigate some of this. All basic premise of functional medicine, right?

Mary Louder:

Right. So it's interesting when you talk about the folate and mothers and things like that, and why moms get on, pregnant moms get on, you know, multivitamins and prenatal vitamins, what's the one thing that comes up, and only? Spina Bifida, right?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Which is it?

Mary Louder:

Yeah. Which is the end result of really a bad, you know, inability to methylate. But that's into the skeletal system. And Spina Bifida is where the the spinal bones, the structures of the spine, the bones don't fully form and leave the spinal cord exposed. And so there's instability and that stays with a person their entire life. But that's the only reason we talk about folic acid, right? And, but really we're looking at setting neural pathways, first in embryologic development, are we--

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Let's talk about autism.

Mary Louder:

Yes.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

PTSD, right? We, we can jump right into all those neurologic and the connection, and why don't we talk about MTHFR? No pharmaceutical company is going to support broccoli.

Mary Louder:

Right, so MTHFR is one of the main genes, which they do not operate alone, that's my thing. That is a thing. I have it on the wall, polygenomic multiple genes influence our health, not just one gene makes a--unless it's a, of course, something that's a mutation, or an insertion, or like a Trisomy 19, and things like that. We're talking that there's influences upon the genes, but it takes a group of those genes who have an overriding influence together and how they work in concert. And what Dr. Wallace, what Ramona is saying is, because the vitamin C is a key component in so many steps in the methylation pathway, which, by the way, influences 300 pathways in our body, at minimum, that this is an underpinning. So this micronutrient becomes literally a major player.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Folic acid, B12 thiamin, and we can't produce energy.

Mary Louder:

And selenium goes, fits in there, too.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Absolutely.

Mary Louder:

There's a lot of folks--

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

And selenium. I can't tell you the number of people who come in, I feel like my thyroid is a problem. I've looked it up, I have all the symptoms, but my TSH is normal. We've heard that story a million times. And I say look at your B6. And look at your selenium level. And lo and behold, they're both low. People--then my residents, Oh, that's a one off. You got lucky. Okay. I must be a very lucky person.

Mary Louder:

I'm taking you to buy a lottery ticket right after we're done, then. Because your the best. We'll be able to fund whatever research we want, right?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Absolutely. And getting into this micronutrients. It starts with the kids. It's easier to prove in adults because, you know, insurances do cover if you have micronutrient deficiencies, and if you have symptoms, it's covered. Kids--you know, parents don't want to bring their kids in. There's so much stigma behind--you know, Yeah, I don't want you to do bloodwork on my kid. I don't know it's--holy cow, we're missing, we're missing so many kids, we could help.

Mary Louder:

So we've got this paradigm of the ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, being in the public health domain. So in your research that you're doing, and you I think you mentioned you're waiting for a new set have data to come through.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Yes.

Mary Louder:

And I think--this is something that I think down the road, we need to come back to our listeners about, because you and I have a few meetings on the books with some folks within our state of Michigan regarding this topic and how to influence, from a public health standpoint, some outcomes just based upon the data that already exists, which is really quite exciting. And I, I'll say that I shared this with my local state representative, and her eyes just popped that how easy, number one, the fix was. So certainly with adverse childhood experiences, you want to go upstream, right? Is there generational things, right? Time and influence. The quick fix is to give a vitamin C tablet, to give a multivitamin if needed. So, and that's not to downplay anything, but that is to fix what we have in front of us, and then begin to influence the reasons why.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Right. And to recognize, right? We have to recognize and validate that this is the problem. And when people say, I have depression, I have fatigue, those are labels that have been developed so that we can design a nice screener so that we can put you, oh, you meet other required criteria for this pharmaceutical. So we're learning to screen for the right pharmaceutical, but we're not--we've lost what you and I have been taught. And that's basic physiology, and diagnosis in the individual. And to me, looking at these patterns of who they are. And, you know, it's not why you're this way, but it's what happened to you along the way. It--that pattern has been lost, right? Because it's a 15 minute office visit. Right?

Mary Louder:

But to be sure, you and I have thought this way, because that's how we're wired.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

It is. Good point.

Mary Louder:

So, we're storytellers. And we look at the person in front of us, as, you know, a set of data with a soul. And so to be sure, that is where in medicine, healing can be infused. That's where connection can be infused. That's where the humanitarian aspect of medicine that goes just beyond the clinical recognition of a diagnosis. I mean, diagnosis is great for hierarchy and billing and organization. But that's not what the person is. That's just how we've categorized them.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Oh, I like that. I'm glad you recorded that. Because that's, that goes in a book. Yeah. We need to infuse that healing. And I really liked what you just said,

Mary Louder:

Thank you. I am writing a book. Stay tuned, everybody, it's coming out in the middle of 2024.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Put me on your list.

Mary Louder:

I'm in the final, final stages of writing, which is kind of fun. So okay, so then we've gotten really, through looking at--and I want to circle back about that myth. So you know, we have the myth that it doesn't exist ,or that you need to be a pirate to have it. That's a fun myth. I'm going to stick with that one, because it's a fun story. Do you think there's any could you think of, you know, another one or two myths that emerged in your understanding when you looked at micronutrients? Or is it we're just being, you know, not aware anymore as physicians or to think that that's oversimplification?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Oh, absolutely. One of the--it's, it's more a bias than it is a myth, I think.

Mary Louder:

Excellent.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

And that is, people won't change. And oh, my goodness, I--the population that I get to work with, the underserved, the marginalized, absolutely embrace these changes, as long as I explained to them, they have the capacity and the competency. They may not have the access to food, they may not have had the education to the food, what you need to do eating, I get more adoptabil--adoption--

Mary Louder:

Yes.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

--of lifestyle changes in the population that I'm currently working with, because family is priority. And when they start saying, oh, this is why I don't feel well. This is why My son doesn't feel well, my daughter, my mother--family is super important. So it becomes a whole unit that they change. And everybody starts feeling better, and the connectivity increases. So that bias or that myth that people won't change is not true at all. It's almost--and people, and the other big myth that I get that just blows my residents minds, they won't give up their their substance use, whether it be meth or cocaine, or--they won't change. Not true at all. You get feel--people feeling better, because they can't imagine without the alcohol without the drugs, that they'd actually feel better. Right? But--

Mary Louder:

And they're self medicating often, because--

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

When I identify and validate that they have scurvy, or they have another micronutrient deficiency, and I replete and replenish it, and get them to eat better. You know what, they feel better. They say, I could have my life back, because they actually feel better. So those are huge myths.

Mary Louder:

Actually, does--

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Everybody changes when you feel better. Because that's why we pick up those maladaptive behaviors. Right?

Mary Louder:

Exactly. So-- It's just--I have goosebumps, okay. So if we look

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

They're using it to cope. at this, the ACEs. Trauma that occurs to us, is what happens in our body. The traumatic event is what happens to us. We have, don't, we don't have control over that event, we have control--and we don't really have control what happens initially in our body, it's how we process that. But that all that trauma causes us to dissociate. Yes.

Mary Louder:

Every single time.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Beautiful.

Mary Louder:

And so what happens is that dissociation has this tether, a cord, that we're connected somewhere to ourself, when I say self, I mean our soul. First, who we are, what our purpose is being here on this planet, our soul. And so that tether becomes long or short, based upon how close we are connected to ourselves. And everything on that tether becomes the maladaptive behaviors that keeps us tethered. And that could go all the way to the point of addiction, or that could just be dysfunctional behavior, or whatever, whatever. The goal of trauma-informed therapy and treatment is to restore that individual back to themselves through self compassion, and awareness, and understanding, and reconnection. If you're connected to yourself, you can then connect with others. We're hardwired for love, belonging and connection. If we don't have that, and we are now unable to connect with others, it's largely because we've never fully reconnected or connected to ourselves first. And so--

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

What you just said, is so foundational, and I hope you do put that in your book, because what does it mean connecting to yourself? There's, there's a big, right? That's a journey.

Mary Louder:

That's our life's journey really is--

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

That's a journey. But when you're so disrupted inside and you can't relax, because your whole metabolism is either not being nourished, meaning you don't have enough vitamin C, you're tired, you're not producing ATP, the unit of energy, you're not able to break down your catecholamines, your epinephrine, norepinephrine are running hog-wild in your system. You feel anxious, hypertensive, you know all this, you name it, how can you connect? So it's really restoring the foundation of the micronutrients that you said in the beginning, not over indulging in the macronutrients, but really looking at the micronutrients that are basic building blocks and restoring that foundation. In order to be able to make your prefrontal cortex function. You get rid of the brain fog when you're in your 40s and 50s. Because you're understanding how Vitamin D plays a role. You're able to de stress because you're now methylating. You understand that you have this genetic variant. Your autistic child, wouldn't that be wonderful to help--

Mary Louder:

Yes.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

--that function and neurotransmit properly.

Mary Louder:

Anxiety is off the chart right now with all young people, 100%. And we're blaming the pandemic, but I don't know that it's the pandemic, I think it's micronutrients.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

It is.

Mary Louder:

And true pandemic. I can't say that, but I'm saying, you know, kind of tongue in cheek, maybe that's one of the, you know, one of the true things coming through.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

We've got a lot of work to do.

Mary Louder:

We do. And so, Okay, a couple of takeaways for our listeners, one, get your micronutrient levels tested. What? Vitamin C, vitamin D, zinc, selenium. What else do you recommend?

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

It consume alcohol, thiamin, B12. The standard blood testing, it tells your current micronutrient. So it's like a blood sugar. It's a shot in the place in time and they're water soluble.

Mary Louder:

Right.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

So the problem with testing it is, if you've been on supplements, don't test it, it's going to be normal. Going to be absolutely normal. A lot of the test--the tests like urine and metabolites. And those don't have the big studies behind it. The reason I'm able to capture this is because I'm looking at a true population that do not have access to food, typically don't eat, they're coming in fasting because they haven't eaten for days, their nutrient patterns, or their, their eating patterns are really reflective of chronicity. So if, if you have night blindness, poor night vision, you've had your gallbladder out and you, you do consume some alcohol or you have some liver-related disease, and you have night blindness, get your Vitamin A tested. No questions whatsoever. If you have bleeding problems, certainly get your Vitamin K looked at. If you are a smoker, you don't take supplements, you don't eat fruits and vegetables, your teeth are having some problems, do a vitamin C level.

Mary Louder:

Yeah.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

If you have mood issues do--and gut issues, B6. Thyroid issues, B6 and selenium. These are repeated patterns that I'm putting the evidence behind so that they can actually bubble up to the surface of medical school, to teach our providers to say, oh, yeah, this could be a problem. If your provider gives you push back, bring the evidence in. But if you're taking a supplement, all bets are off.

Mary Louder:

Yeah.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Labs are going to be normal. That's the big key takeaway.

Mary Louder:

Yeah. Okay. All right. Excellent. So--well, thank you very much for this aging, enlightening, and important conversation. I really appreciate it. And I'm just going to invite you back when you have more data. So there.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Thanks for giving me a platform to talk about this stuff so that hopefully people can get out there and spread the word and help our kids and help our communities be healthier. So, thank you for everything that you're doing to give us all a voice of some of the things that aren't really flashy, right?

Mary Louder:

Absolutely.

Dr. Ramona Wallace:

Thank you. I really appreciate the time, and talk to you soon.

Mary Louder:

Yes, and speaking for all the pirates, arrgh, thank you for being here.

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