Shownotes
Allison is a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner who specializes in gut health. Her treatment approach aligns with mine and we nerded out on some biochemistry that I think you will find relevant. Did you know that accumulation of copper can cause infertility, increase chance of pregnancy loss and complications for mom and baby in general? Tune in to find out more.
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Key Takeways
0:42 Pregnancy and fertility challenges
7:05 Liver Detox and Healing
13:16 Zinc's role in health
18:52 Reinfection and treatment protocols
23:47 Patient's recovery journey
33:30 Copper's impact on hormones and health
39:53 Copper and Ceruloplasmin
45:31 Historical research methods and clinical observation
51:32 Healing generational disease and personal growth
57:38 Copper Protocol Explanation
1:01:41 Zinc Absorption and Dosage Discussion
Memorable Quotes
"Anytime I'm talking with somebody about copper and especially zinc and stomach acid, that if you're increasing zinc, I usually don't see a great absorption until we know that stomach acid levels are getting to appropriate levels. But I personally am never giving someone stomach acid until I know whether or not H. Pylori is there."
"I had a couple clients who we made really good progress. We know we're killing pathogens. We're making good progress. And then you kind of plateau. And my thing, I always do, is I just go back and say, what data do we already have? What do we know? And how can we associate your symptomology with the data that we have?"
"If you can shift it to a little bit of 'This is interesting that I didn't have this symptom yesterday and I do it today,' first off, you don't get all the panic hormones, AKA fight and flight, AKA cortisol, et cetera, adrenaline. But additionally, you become more friends with your body. You don't feel like your body's an enemy."
Connect with Allison Jordan
Website - https://betterbellytherapies.com
Podcast - https://betterbellytherapies.com/podcast
Instagram - https://instagram.com/betterbellytherapies
Connect With Dr. Jane Levesque
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Website - https://www.drjanelevesque.com/
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Transcripts
Anytime I'm talking with somebody about copper and especially zinc and stomach acid, that if you're increasing zinc, I usually don't see a great absorption until we know that stomach acid levels are getting to appropriate levels. But I personally am never giving someone stomach acid until I know whether or not H. Pylori is there. H. Pylori is in about 35% of the American population, but in developing countries is as high as 80%. So, yeah, I've had clients who we can actually trace their. I'm always very interested in can we trace your health history to look at what were key significant factors? Because no one comes to me with one issue, right? It's four issues, it's five, it's 10. But when did they pick up each issue? Was it childhood? Was it in utero?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Pregnancy is a natural process. So if it's not happening or if it's not sticking, something is missing. After having a family member go through infertility and experiencing a miscarriage myself, I realized how little support and education women have around infertility. I want to change that. Jane I'm Dr. Jane Levesque. I'm a naturopathic doctor and a natural fertility expert. Tune in every Tuesday at 9am for insightful case studies, expert interviews, and practical tips on how you can optimize fertility naturally. If you've been struggling with infertility, pregnancy loss, women's health issues, or you just want to be proactive and prepare yourself for the next big chapter in your life, this show is for you. Hi, Alison, thank you so much for being here. I'm really excited to connect. Thank you for reaching out.
Allison Jordan:Dr. Jain, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Tell us how you got into the space. Constipation, digestion, acid reflux, give us a little bit of a backstory. And then we have some exciting things we want to talk about that I think most people are unaware of around copper and fertility and all the other health issues that it can cause. But I just want people to get to know you a little bit first.
Allison Jordan:Of course. So back in 2015, I developed my own set of health issues. Very common opening story, my health issues, I always like to say they were called because, you know, doctors give us names for things, but then we end up finding out later like, I didn't have ibs, I had a parasite, I didn't have constipation, I had low stomach acid. That being said, they called it IBS with a constipation leaning. It was really horrible. Nothing worked That I was like the perfect patient. I did every perfect compliance, though I was definitely suggested to me on several occasions that my failure to improve was lack of compliance. But, you know, did the low fodmap diet, was gluten free, dairy free, ate lots of fiber, drank water, made my own kombucha, did probiotics, tried every probiotic anybody recommended to me, thinking, that must be it. That must be.
Dr. Jane Levesque:This is the one. After a while it gets old, right? You're like, I don't know if it is, but I'm going to try. And then after a while you're like, no, I'm just done.
Allison Jordan:Yeah. And spent about two years. In that two year time period, I started losing hair. So if you look back my pictures back then I cut off all my long hair because it was getting so thin, it looked really bad. I lost my period. I had no period for about two years. And after several rounds of medications failed to start my period. My gynecologist and, and my GI doc at the University of Michigan. So like people who think they're really fancy both said, it's your stress, you need to quit your job now. I worked at a nonprofit, I was right out of college and I thought, well, I guess I should quit. So I quit and did a different job. Now no job is without stressors, but I just thought, you know, I'll change up what I'm doing here.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Sure.
Allison Jordan:And of course nothing helped. And so after that point, I basically accidentally fell into and got exposed to the things that ended up healing me. And as I found those things, I started having this thought of like, what a shame I can't learn how to do this with for other people. And then I actually learned, no, there's ways that I can learn to do these things. There's places I can get education. There's ways. And so basically from 2017 on was just a matter of gaining education, becoming a functional diagnostic nutrition practitioner, just getting lots of experience, working one on one with clients, coming in with a lot of humility because I didn't come in as like a doctor. Right. It wasn't like I have all the answers. I'm like, I don't have any answers because I worked with all the mystery cases, but then I started solving those mystery cases. You start to see the patterns. And then you're like, we need to start a podcast or something to tell people about what people aren't being talking about for sure.
Dr. Jane Levesque:What were some things that you, because you said as you started to get out of it and you Stumbled upon some things that worked. What were those things?
Allison Jordan:Very first thing was craniosacral therapy and visceral manipulation. So manual therapies in the osteopathic tradition, hands on treatment. And it was super random because I went to a pelvic floor therapist within the University of Michigan, and that is not normal, like PT or pelvic floor therapy training. She just happened to have recently taken the first level of both of these four modalities. She just happened to. And she, like, did all her pelvic floor testing, the balloon there or the balloon treatment and testing. And she's like, okay, you check out, you're perfectly fine. Your muscles work, your breathing works, your poop works, at least the muscles for poop pooping. And she's like, I'm just gonna try these new modalities I happen to have. And I know the story because she and I are friends now and we feel like attended seminars together, right? So that was the first thing. And I remember thinking, once I learned those modalities, because I be then became a massage therapist and did these modalities, I thought, was I the fluke? Was I, like, the freak accident that these two things helped my GI conditions, or is this applicable to more people?
Dr. Jane Levesque:And it was like actually her just going in and like manipulating your intestines.
Allison Jordan:And the nervous system. So spinal cord, cranial bones, helping the whole central nervous system talk to the peripheral and the enteric nervous system and vice versa, releasing adhesions, visceral adhesions around organs so the organs can rotate and move so that you get that better motility and peristalsis. And that was just like. That was probably. I would give it a 25% minimum improvement. So it was very notable. I was curious, if I just maintain this long enough, I'll heal. And I didn't. And that's when I started stumbling across other things. But it was such a notable improvement. I thought my life.
Dr. Jane Levesque:What was the next thing, I hit the jackpot.
Allison Jordan:The next thing was when I did my functional diagnostic nutrition training. They force you to do your labs that you're learning how to analyze on yourself. And I was very haughty at this point. At this point, I'm like, guys, I'm so much better than I used to be. Everything's great. And I get this test pack, and it's like, you got Blastocystis hominis, which is a parasite. It's microscopic. For those of anyone who doesn't know, some parasites come in the invisible form. So don't think Worm. Think, like cell. The size, like, very tiny, Right?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yep.
Allison Jordan:And so have this little guy in me. That's one thing. I also had H. Pylori. Another thing. I had low stomach acid. Another thing. Liver was super congested, which, I don't know if you use that terminology on your podcast specifically.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Sure, yeah.
Allison Jordan:But just means that my liver wasn't detoxing at optimal rates by any means. So I just worked on things like helping my liver detox better and getting rid of old crud in it and getting rid of a parasite, all with herbal method methodologies. And really just that was when things switched again and I did another big wave of healing that I didn't even know was an option.
Dr. Jane Levesque:For sure. Yeah. I use the analogy for the liver as, like the toll booth. And so everything has to go through the toll booth. And so you might have only one open, or you might have five, and you might have 10 cars, you might have 50. And so if you have one toll booth and 50 cars, it's going to be slow. Right. That's what I'd say congested liver is. It's like, it's just slow. Things are moving. It's very backed up. And you can experience that, obviously, as constipation, while some other people experience that as diarrhea. Right. Or skin or like acne, eczema, psoriasis, that kind of stuff. But the liver is the king, if you will.
Allison Jordan:I mean, it's amazing how many problems you can fix just by supporting the liver. But you also want to know, where's the traffic coming from? And so you want to tackle from both ends. But that's hilarious. I love that analogy.
Dr. Jane Levesque:So what I'm hearing, because I'm a big proponent of right therapy, right person, right time, and I love that it wasn't just one thing that quote, unquote, fixed you, because I find that's actually very, very rare, where you just go to a visceral massage or osteo craniosacral, and then it's like magic and everything works. I find it is more of that 20, 25%. But what I love is that you didn't just give up. And then there was like, what's the next layer? Because even if I can talk to you about copper and like, how do you know about copper? What do you know about copper? Why is it important?
Allison Jordan:Oh, I love this. So copper was, again, one of those things that both as a practitioner and as a self healer, you just aren't thinking about never.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Like, I've been in practice for 10 years. And this is the first year where I'm like, huh, this is important, isn't it? And now, like, that's all I test all the time, all my women. I'm like, you need to know what your cupper. And I mean for men as well.
Allison Jordan:Like a light switch. I find that practitioners that understand just enough, you just, like, smacks you in the face like a rock. And you start to realize, because I'm guessing, did you do h. I don't know what type of testing you do primarily for copper. I rely on the HTMA test for the most part. Is that.
Dr. Jane Levesque:No, I do blood.
Allison Jordan:You do blood. Okay.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah. So I don't, to be honest, from my mentor, Dr. Leah Hetchman. She doesn't do a lot of the hair because there isn't enough research for her to see. And then it's like, it's too late in the fertility world anyways. It's too late to see. Cause it's what happened three months. And, like, she needs to know now. So we do blood, and there's validity.
Allison Jordan:That's why I kind of asked there. I think there's pros and cons. I'm not saying HTMA is the end all, be all, but that's why I was already running that test with clients when I knew, because I got trained in the htma. I knew about copper toxicity. But it'd be really interesting when clients came in. I still had this worldview of still thinking in terms of, what pathogen do you have? What toxin do you have? Maybe even, what, heavy metal. But copper is inherently not a heavy metal. It's actually a healthy mineral. Right. Which is why it's kind of shocking to people to be like, no, isn't copper good for you? It's in prenatals. It's in food we eat. And what happened is that I had a couple clients who we made really good progress. We know we're killing pathogens. We're making good progress. And then you kind of plateau. And my thing, I always do, is I just go back and say, what data do we already have? What do we know? And how can we associate your symptomology with the data that we have and I found with those few clients? Oh, you got this copper thing that I learned about, and it actually correlates with this acid reflux you're getting. Because copper can cause histamine problems, and histamine problems can cause acid reflux. Or this copper issue correlates with your anxiety and your insomnia issues. Because copper can cause it's like an excitatory mineral. So if you have a lot built up in your system and it actually tends to get stored in your neural tissue. Right. You're going to have a lot of neurological symptoms potentially as well. So lots of anxiety, lots of insomnia or nightmares.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Migraines.
Allison Jordan:Fatigue. Yeah, you said migraines, which I haven't seen as much of, like, specifically with that, but it's kind of like once you see it, you don't unsee it. So now once clients come in and they say it's. And I have anxiety and I have PMS and I can't get pregnant, you're like, ah, we really need to see what your copper levels look like in our testing.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yep, absolutely. Yeah. Again, I've been learning from my mentor, and I started running. So when I run the index, like, I'm looking at the copper and zinc ratio, I'm looking at the free copper percentage and then the seroplasmin levels, because that's obviously. Right. That big connection.
Allison Jordan:Yes.
Dr. Jane Levesque:And the seroplasm into the immune system. So for those of you who are, like, nerds on figuring out the root cause, which obviously, like, we're those nerds. What I am finding, and, Allison, I'd love to hear what you're finding, is that it's like there's layers to the root cause. Because you could say, oh, it's this copper that's causing the issue. But it's also like, well, what's happening with the other minerals? And then why is the zinc lower? Why is the seroplasmin low? And then there's something going on with the immune system. And then the immune system is basically your gut microbiome, which is, you know, going to transfer across the entire body. And then the gut microbiome is probably getting impacted by the environmental toxins. So I still find that the microbiome is essentially at the root cause of all issues. But what's impacting that microbiome is going to be different for everyone. That's kind of the conclusion that I have come to so far. But that might change.
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:When I learn more.
Allison Jordan:I mean. And the thing is, we're always, like, changing our. How we're perceiving our mental models for how we're seeing the body. And you use that model until some client breaks the bank. You're like, the mental model isn't working or whatever it is until you see a new pattern. I love that. Yeah. I mean, you bring up zinc. Zinc has a huge role. You can actually have almost normal Levels of copper. But if you're zinc depleted, which is a really big problem with my client base, my client load, I huge. Everybody I know, I'm like, it's a little bit like, feels like it's everyone. A client recently told me, should you just take zinc as like just something everyone should be taking the rest of their life? I'm like, I can't say that for sure. But it seems with my client load that there's so many ways for us to get depleted in zinc. And here's the catch 22 with zinc is that it's a part of creating stomach acid. You actually have to have zinc to create stomach acid, but you also need stomach acid to absorb zinc. So if you've ever been put on a ppi, if you've ever had H. Pylori, that then will lower your stomach acid levels. If you have anything that interrupts your stomach acid levels for long enough, then you are going to now become zinc depleted. Once you're zinc depleted, you set yourself up to more easily become copper imbalanced because zinc and copper balance each other. So it's almost, I mean, you could have almost normal levels of copper, but if your zinc's out of whack, you're still going to get some copper toxicity symptoms.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, it's crazy how the body works. What I mean by that is like, if you're spiraling down, you're spiraling, spiraling down. Because it's like if you start taking the PPI now, you're not absorbing. It's not just zinc, right? Like it's your proteins, it's B12s. Like it's basically everything is going down. And then it's hard to like, you get the heavy stomach, you're not digesting things. And so it's just like this really negative spiral. But then the opposite is also true, you know, because then, okay, you get some zinc in there and then all of a sudden your stomach acid goes up, your immune system is functioning better, so then it can overcome the infections easier, the H. Pylori, the parasites, the bacterial viral infections, whatever it is. And so like it starts to spiral up as well.
Allison Jordan:If you're talking about root cause and something I really like to caution anytime I'm talking with somebody about copper and especially zinc and stomach acid, that if you're increasing zinc, I usually don't see a great absorption until we know that stomach acid levels are getting to appropriate levels. But I personally am never giving someone stomach acid until I know whether or not H. Pylori is there. H. Pylori is in about 35% of the American population, but in developing countries is as high as 80%. So, yeah, I've had clients who we can actually trace their. I'm always very interested in, can we trace your health history to look at what were key significant factors? Because no one comes to me with one issue, right? It's four issues, it's five, it's 10. But when did they pick up each issue? Was it childhood? Was it in utero? And I have one client who. Her symptoms really skyrocketed after her husband took a business trip to Mexico. He came back not feeling so great and getting acid reflux. Well, now she has acid reflux, but also all these other issues like PMS and acne and eczema, and she ended up developing gastroparesis, which is its own whole story. But she. We could not safely up her zinc or even effectively up her zinc until we could up her stomach acid. And we couldn't safely up her stomach acid until her stomach could actually handle the acid, both on a visceral level, like visceral adhesions, which. She had a car accident, so she couldn't actually. She had all these adhesions keeping her stomach from functioning properly and managing its own stomach acid. And then she also had the H. Pylori. So just to say, if someone's listening to this, it's not always the best idea to just start throwing zinc at yourself. You might not absorb it. Or it's not always the best idea to just say, I'm going to give myself some BTC and zinc. You also might feel worse.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, right person, right therapy, right time. And that's. I'm always very cautious when people are like, should just everyone do this? Should just everyone do ubiquinol for pregnancy? And I'm like, in theory, yes, but can you absorb it? Like, what other nutrients are you taking? What's the gut function? There's a lot more to it. In theory, yes, it's a fantastic. But you have to keep everything else in mind. There's two things that came to mind, though, when you were talking about this case is, number one, like, this is why we need to treat males. You always treat couples because it's microbial transference. Right. Even when my. I have a couple people who reach out to me who are not fertility and I'm like, I will take you on if it's X, Y and Z issues. So, like hormonal, because it's basically all the same anyways. Just the end goal is, I Want to thrive instead of, I want to have a baby. Your partner has to be on board. He's like, but he doesn't really have stuff. He has lots of stuff. He just doesn't know it. And you don't know it. And you're probably are right. Just transferring that back and forth. I can't treat H. Pylori in one person or treat east or parasite in one person and assume that the other. Like, I've had patients who have to have their dogs treated at the same time as them because it's like, you guys are just. That's the home, the microbiome. Right. The microbiome of the home. And that parasite is in every single aspect of the microbiome. We need to get it out from everybody.
Allison Jordan:I love that. Yes. My clients definitely are a little shocked when I kind of wait till they see the evidence. And I'm like, okay, H. Pylori gets passed via spit.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yep. Totally. Yep.
Allison Jordan:He has to do this. And it's really interesting. They'll either be like, oh, my gosh, my husband, he has like all these symptoms. It like totally matches up. Or they'll be like, my husband has no symptoms. I'm like, well, his immune system might be handling it really well, but that doesn't mean that we're going to take any chances with him not doing this protocol well.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, I actually see that all the time, where the woman is the one that's struggling and he is, quote, unquote, fine, but he's the one that's the carrier, you know, and it's like she's getting reinfected all the time. So anytime. I mean, I do vaginal microbiomes, sti, std, obviously, like anyone pops up on anything. People are both being treated. It's not a and if or but, you know, otherwise it just doesn't work. It's like you want to spend hundreds of dollars worth of supplements and then not have it work.
Allison Jordan:And that's what's so sad, is people are doing that sometimes because they're DIYing stuff. Sometimes their practitioners are either ignorant or, like, afraid. Afraid. Like, well, if I say that they have to double the amount of work they're doing, they won't work with me or whatever it is. But we have to deal with the truth, even if it's ugly, if we want the results we want. So I always love it when I meet practitioners like you who are. We're having to share the hard truth, but it gets results.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah. And I bring up the other practitioners too. Like, if there's lots of practitioners who follow me, and it's like, listen, it's hard to tell the wives to tell that the husband also needs to be. It's not easy. But I don't want to feed into the cycle of pretending that. That I can solve her problem without him being involved, even if, quote, unquote, everything is fine on his side. Like, it's just not how it works.
Allison Jordan:I love this. You know, can we talk about the sources of copper? Because.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, can you. One more thing that came up that we didn't finish. And then let's talk about copper, because there's a lot more about it. The gastroparesis. I have had a couple patients, and sometimes it's male, sometimes it's female, and their conventional system is just like, it's genetic. What are your thoughts? I love that there's nothing you can do about it.
Allison Jordan:Yeah, no, it is, except maybe take.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Some things to speed up the right. Like laxative or.
Allison Jordan:Yeah, that's what they're told. So, you know, what is the truth, Allison?
Dr. Jane Levesque: Allison Jordan:I would say I wish I had more gastroparesis cases under my belt to give a. At least to say, here's the patterns I'm seeing. I have one, and I don't know if that's just. I'm not hitting the right population. I can tell you I learned a. A ton from that case, and I would bet tons of money like that. What I learned, even if I don't need every step for a bunch of other gastroparesis clients, I bet that these are things that are other clients are dealing with. And when I was working with her, I was doing lots of research, and it's. Some people classify it as an autoimmune condition. Some people, you know, so there's lots of different stuff. Like, who cares if it's genetic? It doesn't mean it's irreversible. Like, autoimmune conditions can be genetic and you can put them into remission. It just means that part of their body likes to go haywire and that part specific way. Just like some clients, when they get. Have an issue, they're going to get constipated. That's me. Some clients, when they have an issue, they're going to get a migraine. I like to call it the Achilles heel. So I usually don't see it in any black and white, like, oh, you're a goner.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Totally.
Allison Jordan:It's really. We want to be more curious. And so when this client came to me, I Did a physical evaluation, since that was my background in training is we're always pairing lab work and biochemical, like, listening for how the cells are functioning with the physical. So the structural. How the body was working. And I did a quick evaluation of her, and it was like, all these restrictions on her left side, and the stomach's primarily on the left side. I'm like, what happened to your left side? She's like, well, six months ago, I got in this car accident, and she was on a motorcycle, and she got flung off the motorcycle and landed on her left side. She had frozen shoulder on her left side, which she didn't even put in her intake form because she's like, well, I'm here for gut health stuff. And I'm like, like, of course you are.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Like, gastroparesis, right?
Allison Jordan:Yes, but like. But her doctor had said, you're lucky. Her GI doc at the University of Michigan, you're lucky. Your gastroparesis is only 10% of what other people's gastroparesis is. She's like, how is this lucky? I'm on three PPIs a day. One in the morning, two at night, because it's worse at night. I sleep on a wedge. I can't eat anything. I'm losing weight. I'm a skeleton. Like, how is.
Dr. Jane Levesque:You're lucky?
Allison Jordan:How are other people in a better position? And so she was hoarse. So this was another really interesting part of her case. And I know that this is not true for all gastroparesis clients, but she was chronically hoarse, and so it hurt to talk. And she was basically depressed because she couldn't socially connect with people. And I didn't know that coming in either. But it was only in that first session. I'm like, look, we're gonna run some lab tests. We're gonna see, like, I want to know if you have H. Pylori. I want to know. I just want to know everything. But we did just some visceral manipulation releases her lung pleura. So anatomy guys, we're going to go deep if you want to know this, Dr. Jane, tell me. If you don't. I do.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah.
Allison Jordan:Her lung pleura had adhesed to her rib cage, right? So, like, the musculature of her rib cage. And so her lung pleura on the left side couldn't drop, and it couldn't lift. So you know what? Her arm couldn't lift because you have fascia that transitions up into the shoulder, the left shoulder, and then also it goes down into the left eye.
Dr. Jane Levesque:And that's why she had the frozen shoulder.
Allison Jordan:So she had the frozen shoulder and the gastroparesis were like. She was bound on the left side, right? She couldn't move. I mean, she could not. Well, but she said she'd already gotten. It was like. When I saw her, it was gobs of PT because it must have been about six months of PT and had no improvement. And the PT said, you just need to do these exercises the rest of your life if you ever want to have any progress, of which she was having done. She had tons of neck pain, of course. Like, they're like, oh, it's the car accident. But nobody thought. Well, the gastroparesis started about three months after the car accident. Nobody thought it might be the car accident that caused the gastroparesis or was a component of it. However, let me just say craniosacral therapy and visceral manipulation. While her frozen shoulder was gone, in about four sessions, she could wash her hair again. She could get a mug out of the cabinet. She was off of that third ppi also in about the same amount of time. We had to do a lot of work on everything else. She did have H. Pylori. It took a very long time for us to be able to safely give her betaine hcl, though. And we knew her zinc was low. I mean, it's just abysmal because there was just something going on. And we ended up discovering that it was actually mostly psychological. It took us a couple about two years of really refining her microbiome. She was eating more, she was gaining weight. Lots of things were good, but we just couldn't get her off that last ppi. She eventually was just on one a day, and then eventually one every other day. And I said, well, let's try something different. Let's. And I had actually her whole time we were working together, I said, is there any chance that there's an emotional component to it? Like, do you see that? Like, do you feel stressed in your job or do you feel whatever? And she admitted that she felt depressed when she couldn't talk, her hoarseness went away so she could talk normally again. All of that improved. Her neck pain went away, and she's like, no, there's no emotional component. Well, after about two years, when she's doing the best she's done in, like, 10 years, she says her sister comes to visit, and her entire, like, her acid reflux had been so low, and this was the first time she had to go back to two PPIs a day was when her sister was home, and I was like. And she said, and took a couple days, and then it went back down after her sister left. And then she went back down to one PPI every other day. But she was like, she could feel. It was the first time she really connected with her body. And I really think this is not a judgment thing. Like, she. And I was trying to be very open with me. There was no part of her that I could tell, wanted to withhold information. I think she didn't know she had this information in her body of stressors. And as soon as she saw that, it was like a light bulb went off. And she's like, I want to deal with this emotional component. We decided through talking through different options, and I think there are a lot of options with dealing with the emotional component of things. We decided to go with DNRs, dynamic neural retraining System. I'm blanking on the woman who.
Dr. Jane Levesque:How does that compare with emdr?
Allison Jordan:It's really similar, but emdr, you need a facilitator. This you do on your own.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Okay.
Allison Jordan:So of course it is technically different, but there's overlap. And EMDR is.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, I mean, you're actually retraining the nervous system and how it responds to trauma and.
Allison Jordan:Yeah, on a subconscious level.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yes.
Allison Jordan:And so she was working through that, and she had a couple other, like, events happen. Like, a co worker chewed her out at one point, and we were tracking her symptoms, and she was like, I can see it now. And we could tell the last vestiges of her symptoms when she would get these acid reflux bumps for no reason. And she'd always say, allison, could I possibly have H. Pylori again? I'm like, look, I'm not really big into just saying, let's do another GI MAP test. Let's do another round of H. Pylori protocol. And that's what people get stuck on, is every time a symptom relapses, they say, I just need to do another parasite protocol. Maybe you do, but maybe it's something that's not on your radar, and maybe that's.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Well. And even if you're redoing it all the time, then the question is, like, why are you really dealing with a parasite? Do you know what I mean? Because it's like the energetics behind the bug is really why they're there. If your body is continuing to welcome them in, you haven't made a shift. And that's the emotional component, which is a great topic.
Allison Jordan:And we won't be able to do it justice in this. But for her, that was her last thing. So really, it started with physical release of fascia, fascial restrictions. It moved on to more of the biochemical component of things. Some of it was dietary, some of it was, you know, pathogens, toxins, liver. And then the last chunk was emotional. And she, right now, no PPIs, eats whatever she wants, Gaining weight like a champ. No pain in her body. Actually, the last thing we found was Lyme. There was an emotional component, and then we discovered lime.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I'm not sure there's ever, like a last, last thing. You know what I mean? Not just because the body evolves, but it's how you live with it and you change in the interaction. It's because, you know, I've been at this for 10 years. My mentor is at 30 years. And it's like, I don't want to say I'm always working on something, but I'm always discovering and learning and. But it's not. I'm not debilitated. You know, When I first started my journey, it was like, I can't. Like, that's fight or flight. Whereas now it's curiosity. It's learning my body on a deeper level. It's, why are these bugs still here? What are they trying to teach me? What's the energetic component of it? Some of it is generational, you know, like, you're not going to overcome that. There is no timeline is what I'm trying to say. But it's right therapy, right person, right time, and having more curiosity as opposed to what's wrong with me, you know?
Allison Jordan:Yeah. And like, in your work, if someone gets pregnant successfully and carries a healthy baby to term, even gets pregnant the second time, third time, it doesn't mean that they never need anything else.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Oh, my God. The whole pregnancy will rock you and change you in the way that it needs to. You know what I mean? Like, there's pregnant. Even when you do all the prep and then whatever. This is where I say it is a journey for you on a soul level. You don't know what this soul is here to teach you. And I think, like, you know, deep down, when you're not aware, though, you don't, you know, like, you have no idea. That's what happened to me. And the first time, I'm like, it's gonna be easy. It's gonna be fun. And then, like, I got rocked into it and it was like. Like, oh, okay. I have very little control of what I'm doing here. Like, this is, you know, it's not about me anymore. And that's just like the selfless act of being a woman and being a mother is you get to be the vessel, you know?
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Let's talk about copper. Thank you. That was a huge sidetrack, but, like, I just. That was really beautiful the way you laid it out as well. I don't think that there is one therapy that's gonna fix everything. It's very much. I've been talking a lot about. Like, we're just these antennas. And if you're in tune, you can actually know exactly what the next right step is for you and which right practitioner to work with, which right therapy. Because if you're in tune, like, your inner wisdom will tell you this is working, this isn't working. I'm missing something. I need to do more testing. And I really like to educate my patients to, like, if I'm not the practitioner to help you, I don't want you to be showing up on appointments because it's like, what are we doing here? You know? And my job is to clue in really quickly where it's like, hey, this is an emotional thing. We're gonna have to work on this over here. Or this is a physical thing and you need to get some visceral work done. Get an osteopath, get a massage therapist, whatever it is, physio, to just get this moving, because there's no amount of supplements that's gonna help that, you know, you have to get somebody in there and. And do the dirty work.
Allison Jordan:A good practitioner knows when to delegate. And you're looking for those signs of, like, if your goal is to help them get to their goal, it doesn't always mean it's going to be by you every step of the way.
Dr. Jane Levesque:100%. Yeah. I think it's silly to think. I used to think that I was like, I can do it all. And then it's like, I don't know if I can.
Allison Jordan:Right?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Because. And this is how I've changed. That is because I've met some practitioners. Like, I remember my physio. He's phenomenal at what he does. Like, I mean, it's just crazy. He could look at your spine and, like, poke at you. Don't even tell him history. He's like, does this hurt? Does this hurt? Does this hurt? And you're like, how do you know me? And he can put those. Because he just looks at you and he can see where you're carrying the pain and the tension and how to fix it. I don't have that. I can see that uncertain. Right. But it's like there is a time and place for that, you know, and it's beautiful. And so I think you're, you know, like, you're right. We have to be able to know who to send when because it can be really powerful for people. Talk to me about copper. Yeah, I mean, we can talk about sources. I'm more curious about, like sources for sure. I'm more curious about how does it play in infertility, in pregnancy loss, even complications during pregnancy, postpartum, that kind of stuff.
Allison Jordan:It really honestly links into even like how copper affects hormones and all the rules of hormones, particularly for women who are trying to get pregnant. Right. That also links directly into the sources of copper. So I want you to think, you being the listeners, why do copper IUDs exist? Because copper is pro estrogenic, meaning copper encourages estrogen to hang around. And even if you've never been on a copper implant or copper iud, if you've been on birth control, if you've been on an IUD that has hormones in it, estrogen is pro copper. So if you've ever been on synthetic estrogen, and by the way, also consider fragrances, endocrine disrupting things that look like xenoestrogens, meaning false estrogens that can also encourage copper to hang around that you're just getting exposed to, maybe in food sources, but also potentially water sources, etc, so like pipes, copper piping in a home, or whether it's your city water or your actual home piping, you can get copper from there. But basically once you have this copper in your body, it now just plays with your hormones, primarily estrogen. But now, so your estrogen can't fall the way it needs to. So you're going to have a hard time having healthy periods. It might have play roles in just disrupting. You're having higher levels of inflammation, so it can cause a lot of high histamine. Basically you're not setting yourself up for anything that's healthy, normal. And I'll give a really great example. I had a client come to me, she was trying to conceive for about a year. She was a history of a marathon, running, very fit, very healthy, ate sufficient calories, never had any calorie restriction history, but couldn't get pregnant. She'd actually had no period for about six months prior to seeing me. She had been working with conventional medicine system and they were looking at, you know, is there any way that she. Of course she doesn't have a Period. But they're also looking at, does she have endometriosis, does she have chirp pcos? And she did have some endometriosis. They did a laparoscopy to remove that. She had a uterus that was a little misshapen. They did a surgery to do that to fix it or support improving it, but she still couldn't even have a period. I'm like, look, if you have the perfect body and you don't have a period, this is not going to help. So we look at some stuff. She's got H. Pylori. She's not getting nutrients, like protein out of her food. She's not getting all these things. We work with all the stuff that I just talked about, we talked about H. Pylori and stomach acid and zinc and she gets her period back. Well, the last thing is she still has this mountain of copper in her body, like a mountain of copper. And we don't know where it came from. She's looking at all, she's like, I've never been on birth control, blah, blah, blah. We have ideas. We think it must be from childhood. Could have been a childhood house, could have been from her mother herself. It can be passed in utero. If the mother had high copper levels for any reason, it could be that the mother was on birth control for a long time. Could be that the mother used copper cookware or had copper cookware used for her when she was a child. But copper can be passed in utero. However this client had it, we wanted to make sure she wasn't getting current exposure to it. So no more oysters for her. She actually didn't need oysters. But I had one client who had really high copper who ate oysters all the time. Oysters are super high in copper. So sometimes there's a food component. Usually I find if there's not oysters involved, it's usually not food source. Food source is a copper, but it doesn't allow your hormones to perform naturally. Imagine trying to get pregnant with a copper IUD in you. You'd be like, well, that sounds difficult. Well, that's what copper toxicity can be. It's like a permanent copper IUD messing up everything.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, the copper actually gets elevated, so it should be one to one ratio with zinc for like in normal cycle. When we as women get pregnant, you should be. The shift goes to about 2 to 1 and then as we get further along in the pregnancy, it like it can go up 3 to 1 in a size 4 to 1. And the higher it's going, the copper is getting higher the closer the woman is to labor, essentially. And so you can actually start to see when she's going to go into labor just by tracking those numbers. And so if the woman is walking around with a 2 to 1, it is as if her body thinks that she's pregnant. So that's basically like it just can't get pregnant because it already thinks that.
Allison Jordan:You had a look in your eyes, and I was like, Dr. Jane is thinking something and I am not.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Well, no, no, no. It's because I look at it right in the pregnancy and in the fertility world, not just like neurological disorder. And for Copper, so, number one, it's that 2 to 1. So that can happen just with a pregnancy and a miscarriage. And so what happens for some women, obviously for this case, that wasn't the point because she couldn't get pregnant. But for some women, they will get pregnant, miscarry, but that copper doesn't go back. And so then they either can't get pregnant or they'll get pregnant, but it'll just miscarry again. And that copper just kind of continues to accumulate. And then that becomes an issue. Because even if, like, I have women who have been able to get pregnant with a high copper, I didn't know about it at the time, you know, and then you're looking at, okay, well, they get really sick. The chances of them having intense morning sickness is really, really high. Obviously, the chance of miscarriage is high. The chance of then having complications later in the pregnancy, going into early labor, premature labor, and the neurological symptoms for the baby, whether it's ADHD or autism or all of these behavioral things that we're seeing now, I don't think anything is ever linked to one thing. Do you know what I mean? I'm like, it's not because, yes, even with the copper toxicity, there's so much more that's coming. There's usually infections, there's usually some sort of other toxicity, and it's just that copper is out of balance. So we have to help to mitigate that so then we can get rid of the symptoms. But you usually have to work on the root cause, which to me is going to be microbial or environmental toxin of some sort that's screwing it up in the first place.
Allison Jordan:I did not know that. And I am, like, dying on the inside. I want to go and like, like, do a bunch of research now. Thank you. I mean, that is so like, when my clients are detoxing copper, Once we get to that protocol, which Is not the God.
Dr. Jane Levesque:No. Yeah, do.
Allison Jordan:By any means. Good Lord, please don't. But once you get to that point that menstrual cycles can be much more painful because we have the highest amount of copper. I knew about copper elevating in levels in the body as you approach menstruation.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Because estrogen is elevated. Right. So those two things go hand in hand. And so it's like you have to understand why the estrogen is there, because if you don't fix the estrogen, the copper will continue to hang out.
Allison Jordan:I love it. Yeah. So if you. Exactly. So if the estrogen. For a menstruating woman, if the estrogen's leaving at appropriate times, the copper is going to come out. But if copper is detoxing because you're in a protocol, you'll get these, like, a couple periods that are just really gnarly. I also get clients when they detox copper, they get really bad nightmares. It's one of the most common symptom is they'll be like, I had horrible nightmares, three days of this.
Dr. Jane Levesque:That's interesting.
Allison Jordan:Is that the copper. And I'll be like. Like, that's what every other client detoxing copper says. Not every, but like a bunch. It's a high rate.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, that's interesting. No, I love it. It's new space for me, but I'm definitely looking into it a lot more now. And in the fertility space, it's like you just don't have the luxury of time a lot of the times.
Allison Jordan:Yes.
Dr. Jane Levesque:You know, so then you have to test more and you have to test more frequently, just so then you can see how the body is moving, hence.
Allison Jordan:The blood work for sure. Which, I mean. And that's a huge benefit with the ceruloplasmin. And you just, like, hinted at it, but ceruloplasmin. And you probably. You might have your own way of describing it, but it's made by the adrenal gland, so you really want to have nothing bothering the adrenal glands. Everything from caffeine to pathogens or even foods.
Dr. Jane Levesque:And, I mean, it is a protein. That's like the biggest connection that I make to people. And they're like, why do you need to eat protein? Like, it's a protein. Like ferritin is a protein. Lh. Fsh. Those are all amino acids. They're peptides. Right. So if you don't get enough protein and you're like, I don't have any hormones or I don't have any of this, or my immune System isn't working. It's because like we're literally are made of amino acids and bugs.
Allison Jordan:Ceruloplasmin. And to throw another one in there. Bile are two big chelators of copper. So sometimes you have high copper because your cerulean plasmons in the pits, because your adrenal glands are in the pits. Or maybe you're not eating enough protein in this case.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I never find it. It's one thing, right? It's usually multiple. Yeah. It's never one thing.
Allison Jordan:And then, you know, same with. If your liver is congested, you're not producing sufficient bile, then bile is also a big chelator of copper. And so again you could almost have normal copper exposure. But if you're not having if your systems to get rid of it, that not tariff. What did you call it? The toll bridge.
Dr. Jane Levesque:It's a toll booth.
Allison Jordan:If your toll booth is congested. Yeah. That copper is not getting out of there too. Just like your poop or whatever for sure.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Well, yeah. And a lot of the time it's like, oh my God, the cholesterol is elevated. If you just start pooping, the cholesterol goes down because you just get rid of the excess cholesterol, Right?
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:For some people it could be really simple. Do you have your own story with copper, like measuring it and nothing crazy?
Allison Jordan:Here's the only story I can give you. I'm primarily testing copper, which atmas occasionally I will double validate or I'll seek deeper information with blood work. But I miscarried. So this is my story. I miscarried my first child, end of 2020, and you know, got a pretty basic standard conventional medicine, like, sorry that happened, good luck. We're not going to do anything until you miscarry three times. And I'm like, this sucked. I'm not waiting until the third time happens.
Dr. Jane Levesque:No, no, no, no. That was the same as me. I'm like, there's no way in hell I'm doing this a couple more times before you give me any testing.
Allison Jordan:So I got some advanced blood work done, meaning I knew what blood work I wanted. I told my do, this is the blood work I want. She was super sympathetic. She's like, I will do whatever you say. You just miscarried and it had histamine and homocysteine on it. And my histamine was super high and my homocysteine was super low. And I was like, okay, I'm going to look at a couple things. And that helped guide my additional functional testing because I'm like, the blood work still doesn't tell me what's wrong necessarily. I still want to how I find it.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I say, blood work tells us what's wrong. It doesn't tell us why it's wrong.
Allison Jordan:That's what I say. Yes. I was like, I wanted to say it, and I didn't want to, like, cause problems. If you, like, totally.
Dr. Jane Levesque:No, no, that's exactly what it. Because I'm like, if it shows us homocysteine is high, it doesn't tell us why.
Allison Jordan:Exactly. So now. But it did give me enough guidance to say I already knew what testing I'd done on myself in the past. And I was like, do I need to retest those? Or is it new testing I haven't done? And that gave me enough insight. With high histamine, I thought, I want to do another htma. I want to get a new, fresh insight into my mineral levels, including copper, because copper can impact histamine. I'm gonna look at my food. So I did a couple food sensitivity tests, tests on foods I hadn't tested yet, like corn and rice, which I ended up coming back really high. So I'm on a grain free diet, massively changed my life. And then on that second htma, I did find I would consider a small amount of copper toxicity. I didn't look at it and be like, yeah, it's not there at all. But it also wasn't like a 2 to 1, 3 to 1 ratio when I'm evaluating it. And again, I know you, you're doing your blood work analysis, but I did a copper protocol, and I'm making these other changes as well, because I don't think it was just about the copper. And I go to a conference for a business conference, and I'm in this business conference, and I'm like, my back is hurting so bad. It's never hurt. Like, it does not hurt this bad ever. And it's. I'm like, I'm not sitting more than normal. There's nothing I didn't get on a long airplane. I don't have back pain. It's. It's just I've. This is not a normal Allison symptom. And I decide I'm, like, doing some palpation on myself. I'm like, it's my freaking kidneys, right? And so my theory is that I was starting to copper dump and that my kidneys were doing a lot of work and that I was getting pain for my kidneys. And about three days later, it just subsided, had some Weird smelling urine for a bit and then it got better and maybe it was something else. But my big theory is that it was just a little bit of a copper dump.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Huge.
Allison Jordan:I mean, for you, huge. So I would say as soon as.
Dr. Jane Levesque:The kidneys, I was like, oh, my God, totally makes sense.
Allison Jordan:It's all clicking.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yes.
Allison Jordan:And so I'm so glad you say that too, because when I tell other people, like my dad, who's a physician, he's like, he's a surgeon. Specifically, he's like, could have been a kidney stone. How do you. I'm like, but I was doing a copper protocol. Didn't just like happen at any time?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Like, this is where the intuition comes in. Do you know what I mean? Like, you have to listening to your body. I think sometimes people on the conventional side, I don't want to say, like, they're just so taught that the body does this and this is what you do versus the inner wisdom of the body. And again, one of my mentors, she's like. Because I'm like, I need to do more research. I need to spend more time reading more papers. And she's like, no, you don't. I find what I see in practice, I then go find research to support it. And it's like, what? Give me a second to digest that. You find in clinical practice what you're seeing and how the body's working and how it's responding, and then you're going out and finding research to support it, not the other way around.
Allison Jordan:People actually have done for up until like only the last hundred years when research has really skyrocketed in large. There's a lot of reasons for that research skyrocketing the way it has. I would blame pharmaceuticals a lot, but prior to these last hundred years, where we've just been able to even just the technological advances to really get so specific in our research, which is beautiful. But prior to that, it was clinical observation. It was. I observed this thing. And then you have to like literally wait for your patient to die and then do a biopsy and be like, right. I know. I'm just being like, honest. Like, they have to.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I know. It's hilarious though, when you say it out loud, you're like, this doesn't make any sense. Like, how is this a process? Wait till they die and then we'll find out.
Allison Jordan:But that's just because they didn't have any way to look into the body. But all that being said, they had to look clinically at what made sense. I even wonder. I Don't do any Chinese medicine. But tcm, traditional Chinese medicine has. It's always impressive to me as a non practitioner, but how often it correlates with exactly what I find as a non practitioner of it. When my friends who do tcm, who are acupuncturists or herbalists, they will find the same thing. And I think, I bet those Chinese doctors from thousands of years ago were just so clinically attuned, right?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yes. Yeah, for sure. It just gave me permission to be like, okay, I need to understand the physiology, I need to understand the biochemistry. I need to understand how these pieces work together. Like, you know copper, I don't remember learning about that in school, but now it's like, oh, it turns out copper is over here and it's over here. I do remember this little mineral on the electric transport chain that shows up and then it, like starts to just click, right? And then it adds it all in. And so I think it just gave me more permission to, hey, obviously I do everything on myself before I recommend for my patients. Obviously, like, not all treatments I can do on myself because if I don't have endometriosis, but if I'm doing a protocol to clear the uterine line lane, I can do that for myself, too. It just is going to feel a little bit different. But then I can walk people through it. So, yeah, it's powerful. It's trusting the gut, it's knowing and following along where the back to the kidneys. To me, it's like when my body is flaring. Before, I used to get scared. Now I get excited because I'm like, ooh, my body's talking to me. What is it trying to tell me? Every time I get sick, every time there is a rash, there's. Every time there's anything, I'm like, this is exciting because it's coming out.
Allison Jordan:Yes.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Right. The bug has to express itself. The toxin has to express itself in order to get out. And then I visualize everything that I'm doing is rebuilding those cells. So then, now that place has taken. It's taken anymore. You don't have room for it. You know, you don't have room for this parasite because there's really good bugs in that place now. But the expression of that might not feel very good. I might be more agitated, I might not feel like myself. I might have a hard time sleeping, I might be pooping out something weird, all that kind of stuff. But if I welcome it with this energy of, like, it's coming out so I can rebuild It, I think, you know, it makes a big difference.
Allison Jordan:And this would be like a great, I think, worth its own podcast episode in many ways to digest, but just to tell people we're only about to scratch the surface of this concept. But you've said multiple times now in the podcast, curiosity, this curiosity, whether it's not going to research and getting too brainy and heady. And I think some people are blessed with that. Like, they just love it. That's actually energizing for them. But sometimes it can totally up where you feel you're waiting for permission.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I'm not that person. I've always known that. I was like, but I need to become that person. And then like, I'm so glad my mentor stopped me because I have colleagues who freaking love it. They can just sit in research for days and I'm like, I will poke my eyes out. Like I want to be in front of the people.
Allison Jordan:You know, Said curiosity. And I find that the difference something's really powerful. If someone's really sick and they're listening to this, I'm often encouraging my clients and it's not easy. I'm not gonna say that it's gonna be easy for me to say hard to do. But being able to shift from essentially panic when a symptom happens. And that's kind of the extreme. Maybe it's not like a panic attack, but it's this, like, you know, coming. Dr. Jane, my headaches are worse or I had another month where I didn't get pregnant or because there's so many emotions wrapped up when you're sick. I can remember 2015 being my sickest. Losing my hair, telling my hairstylist is my hair falling out. And she's like, no, right? You're like, you're lying to me. The truth is not in you.
Dr. Jane Levesque:We have these wigs that are available for purchase.
Allison Jordan:Oh my gosh, that's hilarious. No, but like, how can you be curious when you feel like your world is falling apart? However, I'd say it does. It's going to start small, but if you can shift it to a little bit of. This is interesting that I didn't have this symptom yesterday and I do it today. First off, you don't get all the panic hormones, AKA fight and flight, AKA cortisol, et cetera, adrenaline. But additionally, you become more friends. You don't feel like your body's an enemy. And I think that really is what happens when you have these long term healers where we're at peace with where we currently are at even with its imperfections. Maybe it's the wrinkly skin, maybe it's the random rash we get on our shoulder, maybe it's the congestion. We haven't quite figured out whatever it is and we're aware of it, but it doesn't make us think black and white, like, I'm so sick or I haven't done anything or gosh, I still have all these things to work on even with all the work I've done or money I've spent. We see it really differently and I think it brings a gentleness to the process that we're all inherently craving. So I know that wasn't like the topic, but I heard you say it several times and sometimes I just think sometimes we're listening to podcasts and we're listening for the what are the exact steps I should do, Dr. Jane or Alison? You know, like we're looking for that hardcore, like what's the research? And maybe like it's the gentleness you walk away with or the intuition or the things that we've a little bit.
Dr. Jane Levesque:More grace through the process and yeah, totally. No, thank you. It's just like I love from the get go when you're explaining your process, it wasn't one thing that fixed it and I think if people can walk away with that, there isn't one thing that will fix it. But I just actually reposted this on my social media yesterday. When the flower isn't blooming, you're not blaming the flower. You're not going, oh, stupid flower, why aren't you blooming? You're probably going to check the soil, the hydration levels, you're going to look at the lighting, you're going to make sure it's in the right spot. And so for fertility especially, I'm like, you are the flower and you will bloom, but if you're not blooming, don't blame yourself. You know, look at your environment and what's causing it. And not just the environment. You're current. It's also addressing the past. I have a client with, I don't know if she has premature ovarian failure, pcos. I can't remember now, but like she has so many hormonal issues and we look at her upbringing, it's like her mom smoked when she was pregnant with her. Her mom smoked the entire time from 0 to 18 until she lived and got out. It's like, do you think that you would have a different genetic predisposition, if you will, or you would have a different Leg up. If that wasn't the case, you know, it's like, that's just a shit hand. And like, pardon my French, but, like, that sucks, you know, and now you have to. That's healing generational disease. Yeah. You have to do extra work somebody.
Allison Jordan:Else doesn't have to do.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Exactly. And that is what healing generational diseases, you know, and it's not going to be one easy thing, but it's absolutely possible. And there is your own version of what it feels like to feel happy, confident, and fulfilled. You know, you might not go to the Olympics, but maybe that's not what you want to do anyways.
Allison Jordan:Just want to get pregnant.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, well, that's it exactly. But it's like some people, everybody has different goals, and it's just know what's right for you and learn to live in your body and heal your traumas, as opposed to comparing yourself to literally anybody else. Because it's like, we just have no idea.
Allison Jordan:Yeah. Well, so. And so only had to do blah, blah, blah to get.
Dr. Jane Levesque:You have no idea. You have no idea what they've got. And like, now, having my own kids, I'm like, the amount of intention that I put into them and how much work. And it's like, I know that hard work will pay off because some things will be really easy for them.
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:You know, but I will remind them, and I remind people all the time that it wasn't easy. It was intentional. So then they can do something else with that. So then they don't have to deal with the asthmas and the digestion issues and the hormonal issues. They can just figure out who they are in the world and do their thing instead of worrying about their health. You know, it's like, that's not easy. That's so much work for me now. But I know I'm making that sacrifice because I know what I'm trying to build, you know, And I think another.
Allison Jordan:Missing link or another maybe layer to this is that what you're describing is super honorable, super powerful. Takes a lot of effort on the healer. So the woman who, like the mother, did not take resources to stop smoking, she's having to pick up that labor of not physical, not like baby labor, but like hard work, labor of redoing that. But interestingly enough, in society, if you do that on a financial level, you are treated like, oh, I'm the first person to go to college in my family. I am the first person to be out of debt. I'm the first person to become a millionaire. I'M whatever it is. I retired at 40. Like, anything that's a financial story of rerouting something that has not been true in your family is usually like, oh, you're such a boss. You like, you're amazing. But if you're like, I'm trying to heal myself. People are like, you're weird, you're crunchy, you're like, overly sensitive. I hate the overly sensitive one. Can I like someone for that?
Dr. Jane Levesque:That's such a good parallel, Allison. I love it because it's true. And I can. You know, it's amazing when someone makes it to college when they came out of nothing and that they. But, like, why can't we do that for health as well? Because it is like I. The example that I gave, like, that's a battle that nobody knows about. And they should because there's a bunch of other people who are also going through that.
Allison Jordan:Yes.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Even like the kids with obesity. If you think about that, I'm like, I've seen kids with like full on bottles of Coke at 2 years old. You think like, right. Like, that's harsh. Those kids are gonna have to do a lot of work if they can even get there.
Allison Jordan:Yeah. So I mean all that to say, whoever's listening, like, if you need that, take that with you. That's like yours. Say, own that. Right. What you're doing, the work you're doing is admirable. And maybe not a lot of people are going to say that.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Maybe, maybe they don't understand you, but do you need them to understand you?
Allison Jordan:Yeah. And it is sad. Like, at the end of the day, there are a few illnesses you get treated for a warrior, for addressing cancer being a big one. And I remember being pissed for a long time. If I just had cancer, I'd have a little bit more compassion, you know, if I had just had cancer, I'd get a little bit more friends being like, oh, you're in pain. Oh my goodness. Can I bring you some food now?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Of course.
Allison Jordan:You're like, if you have a GI issue, you're like, no, actually, food's not the best.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah.
Allison Jordan:But that being said, it's a little unfair in health that we. It's not built into our society to have to believe people to have compassion. There's just suspicion of like, or even infertility.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Right. Like, most people have no idea. And it's like, that would be one of the best things. Like if someone shows up at your door and says, hey, can we just hang out, eat some chips, drink some kombucha, and play a game or something when you're struggling with infertility instead of being invited to another baby shower. Baby shower? Yeah. Like, it would be amazing, right?
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:So one step at a time.
Allison Jordan:We can't change society, but we can give grace to ourselves. And you can receive it from Dr. Jane and I. We give it.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yes. Slowly, though. Like, no. That's why I love Connected, because I think it is slowly infiltrating. And it just takes. Takes time, you know, it just takes time to get to the places. Okay, before I let you go, I do want to know, what did you take for the copper to help get the copper out of your body?
Allison Jordan:Yeah, so my copper protocol. Sometimes I forget protocol stuff. Like, I'm gonna just go grab. I actually pulled up my copper protocol just in case I had to, like. You don't want to, like, reference it? Yeah. So my first part of my copper protocol for anybody is basic minerals. I call them the big four. I don't know if your training ever refers to them these ways. Calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium. I was particularly deficient in potassium and sodium fairly common with a lot of issues with mineral imbalance. And then partly also because they're regulated by the adrenal glands. We're back there with ceruloplasm. And now potassium and sodium regulated by aldosterone. So I always start there, like, high dosing minimum. A thousand. A thousand can be high, though, for people, like. So sometimes it's even less than that that I'd already been dosing. Magnesium and sodium, calcium, magnesium, and then potassium, sodium. I'd already been high dosing it, like, a thousand milligrams at least once a day. So then I doubled it. 2,000 milligrams, again, mostly just, like, Himalayan pink salt, which I know some people give it bad rap, but I've found it's been fine for my clients. And then like, cream of tartar. Honestly, I use a lot of cream of tartar because I just don't always want to eat, like, high potassium food, even though I know it absorbs really well. And that was my first thing. That was when I got my copper dumping. And then after that, it's molybdenum, some type of something to help bile release. So sometimes it's been bitters, Sometimes it's been like, basically tatka. Have you used on tadka a lot? I know some people, like, love it. I don't dislike it, but I just like, why do you hate it?
Dr. Jane Levesque:I know I love it.
Allison Jordan:Oh, you love it?
Dr. Jane Levesque:I love it. Cell core advanced tadka. My body's like, give it to me.
Allison Jordan:Yeah. I think I was just doing bitters and then.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah, bitters are great too.
Allison Jordan:Yeah. But by the time I got to the molybdenum and zeolite, it was really. When I started high dosing my potassium and sodium and then I was doing coffee enemas with the push catch kit from Quicksilver Scientific. Really like that push catch kit. It's a bit of a pain, but when you're just like focusing on a certain type of detox, I find it's just phenomenal.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Love it. Thank you for sharing that. I'm always curious. I mean, that makes sense. Why the kidneys with the sodium and the potassium on the higher dose.
Allison Jordan:Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's kind of like, I see how this was gonna happen. I also would have been taking zinc at the time. Zinc for me, already a part of another protocol. So it's almost not really in the copper protocol because it's assumed that you're going to be taking zinc before you get there. Right. You basically want your body to naturally be getting rid of copper as much as possible before you then start pushing it with bigger factors like molybdenum, which is going to start really shaking things up. But, yeah, I'd say it's amazing how I literally had a client start this protocol recently and she'd already been doing sodium potassium, but started adding in the molybdenum, zeolite, the push catch and the bile support, additional bio support. And she had the gnarliest period. She's like, I was so angry at my kids and like. And just like, it was painful. And is this because of that copper.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Dumping syndrome, just some detoxing? Yeah. I find when people are detoxing like that, it's because you've had that there just at a lower dosage and now we just, like, magnified it because there was nothing there. You wouldn't have those symptoms.
Allison Jordan:Exactly.
Dr. Jane Levesque:You know?
Allison Jordan:Yeah. And I always tell them, just wait till next period if it gets better. You probably passed your height at least. Least we, like, unless we double your dosage or something to try and speed something up. But the height of your detoxing, if it gets worse, we're still climbing the ladder. The period. Pain and discomfort is a fascinating component during a detox.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I do find that, I mean, in general, I'll get. I kind of say, like, hey, the period is just going to be all over the place for the next little bit. Meaning, like, it might still be 28 days or 26 days. But you might get a really light period. It might get really heavy or clotty or whatever. Yeah, we're changing a lot. Things are just going to change. And that's okay. It's just data. Exactly how high on zinc do you go? Just curious.
Allison Jordan:Now we'll bring in research here because I've been really curious what like absorption rate of zinc is. Some people say you can't really do more than 15 milligrams at a time. So like some like. And I actually came across this when I was. Side note was learning and building out a protocol for P roll disorder where you're chronically losing zinc and B6. And a lot of people say be 15 milligrams, like morning and night. I will generally be between 15 and then or 30 once a day. And I find that I get similar results. So like, again, I take the research lightly where I'm not like mega do it like there's no reason for me to get up to like a hundred or anything. Like nothing's gonna like, I've never had any reason to think anything different's gonna happen at that. So I'm in the 15 or 30. 15 twice a day or 31.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I have gotten higher now.
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Again with like, Leah. Because there's like when you start looking at genetics and seeing their SNPs methylation and where they need it.
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:So 100 milligrams I have gone up and like myself. Yeah.
Allison Jordan:But usually maybe you have to know there's like another snip. Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:You can look at SNPs, you can look at genetics, you can look at just methylation and where exactly. I think you can just where they're kind of clogging. Exactly where they're clogging in the cycle and then just based on what they need, you know, like if they have a lot of infections and they have like. I really like the true cellular zinc 7. I think like my body feels very different when it's on it versus anything else. I just feel like I'm absorbing it and I've gone up in really high doses and I just like feel better. And it depends, you know, on the person. Some people need to be on high doses for a while, while others don't. You just test. Right. You test and see. But that's something. Again, I just learned from my mentor and I started to have a bit more confidence to play with it. And then of course you meet the patient who needs the higher dose because it's like the 15 or you like, learn it. Well, that's it. Yeah. You're like, oh, my God. You're this person that like 30 milligrams is doing nothing for you. But as soon as I double that, they're like, yep, I'm not getting sick anymore. All of a sudden I started passing parasites all of a sudden. Because now you need the energy. Right. To overcome the pathogen. And so if the body doesn't have the energy, it just kind of lingers. And I find when I give the body the boost, then all of a sudden all the pathogens can come out.
Allison Jordan:That is because I've had different. The mineral. I've had better experience. Just like going crazy with dosing is molybdenum. If I'm gonna. And again, I'm like, ooh, how can I play with the zinc?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Totally.
Allison Jordan:But I've done molybdenum a lot more, mainly because of exposure that I've had.
Dr. Jane Levesque:With molybdenum is also important for the methylation.
Allison Jordan:Yeah.
Dr. Jane Levesque:In the methylation. It's one of the first. The Sahi to Sammy or the Sammy to Sahi. That transition when it gets locked. Molybdenum is really important in there as well.
Allison Jordan:And sulfur and sulfur metabolism. So with people who are having sulfur sensitivity, which I find I'm usually not getting full blown cases. But I'll see. Like, I bet sulfur is a part like something with. That is a part of what's.
Dr. Jane Levesque:And then like histamine is going to be a thing there.
Allison Jordan:Exactly. Then we'll dump them. Well, and molybdenum is super supportive. It's usually not going to make them detox like crazy if there's some of that going on with the sulfur. So I'm usually like doubling. Tripling quadrupling molybdenum as like my play mineral. But now I'm curious what zinc's gonna do.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I know I'm gonna play with the molybdenum and you play with the zinc. And we will report back. Thank you so much for being here. Allison. Is there anything else that you. We didn't mention that you the listeners need to know?
Allison Jordan:I mean, if they want to come hang out with me as. Can I share that, please?
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah. Where can we find you if they.
Allison Jordan:Want to come and hang out and learn more about anything that. That we talk about? So it's. You're gonna go to. Betterbilly podcast is my podcast. It's a top 1% global podcast. And then also just to have like a free tool and resource for people if they want any more information, which is just go to betterbellytherapies.com training and it just is like a free little training for that I've found can elucidate people in their minds of why if they haven't gotten better, why they haven't and honestly they might find that it, it sounds similar to today because as you've already mentioned, Dr. Jane, it's like it's not about the one thing, but I talk about something called the 5 toxin trap. So it might be another chink for them to be thinking about.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Yeah. Betterbellytherapies.com training. Yeah. And better belly therapies on Instagram.
Allison Jordan:Yeah, thanks.
Dr. Jane Levesque:I love like Instagram is how I connect with all my people and then obviously getting them to the podcast is great because then this is you can can hear a bit more of the conversation. But thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you.
Allison Jordan:Thanks for having me.
Dr. Jane Levesque:Thank you so much for listening. To read the full show notes of this episode, including summary, timestamps, guest quotes and any resources that were mentioned on the episode, visit drjanelevesque.com forward slash podcast. And if you're getting value from these episodes, I'd love it if you took 2 minutes to share it with a friend. Rate and leave me a review@ratethispodcast.com Dr. Jane the reviews will help with the discoverability of the show. And who knows, I might share your review on my next episode. Thank you so much for tuning in and let's make your fertility journey your healing journey.
