Dr. Krywiak is a podiatrist and integrative medicine practitioner who recently started One Ripple Effect to investigate the root cause of physical and emotional turmoil. We discuss divorce, Spravato and ketamine infusions, depression, and also ask awkward questions about whininess and expressing emotions. Since “get to the root cause” is a bit overplayed in functional and integrative medicine, we talk about how the method of differential diagnoses in medicine does help us determine how to prioritize problems to increase the chance of actual healing (rather than multiple billable appointments).

[Music] hello and welcome to the Ascend Health show I’m your host Nick Angelis I’m a nurse anesthetist and the owner of Ascend Health Center and I’m here with Dr K from one ripple effect–how are you doing Dr?

I’m doing excellent how are you Nick?

I’m great so this is technically our second show together since the first one was canceled due to covid and that’s when uh I was in my $680 a month apartment in Fairlawn waking up and trying to talk to you about rumination and probiotics

that’s okay we had fun doing it

yeah it was a great show you should go back into when was it 2021 and see everything we did

yeah let’s change your life

so today we’re not going to talk about probiotics and again we’ve already done that and I think this is my 54th show so I’m going to try to talk as little as possible because anything that I think I’m going to say that’s wise or insightful I probably said it sometime in the last 53 show so I’m out of interesting things to say

oh no

but hopefully you’ve got some so tell me a little bit more about one ripple effect your latest project

my latest project so I you know you know I’m a podiatrist by training but I realized people needed so much more so I started Integrative Health Management which was a functional medicine based practice helping people get better getting to the root causes but then what I noticed is people have a lot of stress they have a lot of problems and if we don’t fix those problems that are few fueling all the health conditions guess what people don’t don’t get better so I always joke and I say you know I can give you zillian supplements but if you’re hate your mother-in-law and you’re living with her you’re not going to you’re just not going to get better because there’s too much stress and frustration and those sorts of things so I created one ripple effect to change those couple of things in life that will change everything for you so I search and I’m really good at that like I call it intuitive introspection where I find that thing that needs to change so that everything in your life changes is Health included

okay so almost from a medical standpoint it’s almost like a differential diagnosis where you’re telling me this is my problem and a lot of times we see this at ascend where a patient like “wait that’s not what I came in for” we’re like “yes we know but part of the way that medicine works is that we have to look at a couple other options that you may not have considered or that Google didn’t bring up on that first page of of potential results and maybe that’s what the real issue is”

correct I always say it’s not my pneumonic but I heard it from somebody else when you’re in the bottle you can’t see the label right so we often don’t see what we need to change mhm so you’re the one that comes by and says oh actually here’s the root cause or here’s what we really need to focus on or here is the first step yes yeah it’s it’s almost like a train where you know it has so much force but then you stop it and you just put a little wedge in front of the wheel and then that train isn’t going to go anywhere so your job is to pull the wedge out correct okay nice so a lot of what you do is in seeing your videos is you deal a lot with men and their mental health and their problems and um and just to warn our viewers that some point in this show you’ll probably be offended by something I say is community television we can say what we want I gave you the example of our buddy Hank how we had a a show where I was like well you’re a shaman and I’m a preacher son let’s talk about Jesus and Energy Medicine let’s make sure to hit all the bases and offend everybody so this might be a little bit like that uh so what I’m going to say is I used to say men really should Express their feelings and then once I heard men expressing their feelings I was like oh wow this is um we sound really whiny when we express our feelings I do in particular and I feel other men often do as well so how is men’s mental health important and how can we find that line cuz I didn’t think there was one I thought like I said we should just express ourselves all the time and then I slowly realize no it’s not always good for society to hear every complaint that a man has just spewing out of their mouth in real time well we shall talk about but if you look at the history of men and the Paradigm that’s been running you think about it you know men in war millions of years ago if you were if you cried if you whined you got shot you died right that’s true so so as time has gone on it has not been a Forefront for men to really Express their feelings and men don’t enjoy to hear that word let’s talk about feelings right because we have a paradigm that not we you have a paradigm that uh you have to maintain a certain Integrity as a male but I say you know physiologically men and women are different maybe we process information a little bit differently and emotions a little bit differently but at the end of the day we are still human beings right and we still have the same soul level so I do think things are changing it’s just that we’re reaching this Paradigm where what was the structure millions of years ago is not fitting the structure that we have now but it’s kind of embedded in your DNA so we kind of got to switch that because it’s not good for men to keep repressing things it affects Health tremendously so it’s so important yeah I was at work yesterday and Mark garrettson our nurse practitioner who was thinking of coming today in fact for we had another show earlier and we had a seat for him and I was like we might have a special guest and know I think people could probably think during that show is where’s a special guest who is he but he told me something yesterday which was Nick I don’t think you have a sympathetic nervous system because things don’t rattle me and that has plenty of advantages I mean you know a nurse and NST paralyzing people for surgery all that sort of thing but sometimes it could mean that maybe I’m repressing a little bit more than I need to that’s happening a lot but that’s that’s just what what men I think are accustomed to in today’s day and age right and I’m not saying you got to go spew things out like as women do sometimes but no offense to anybody but uh I I think really reaching a more balanced equality of you know better communication and better alignment is the goal and that’s not happening well it’s starting to happen but I’m there to help that happen right um because there’s a need for it and then how does that work for and this is going to be a complicated question I just thought of so I feel our society is really into a gig economy because we don’t have those connections anymore so instead of spending the night at your cousin’s house you have Airbnb instead of convincing your buddy to give you a ride to the airport you have Uber instead of sharing somebody uh your feelings you have a therapist that you pay so you can like vomit all your issues and they can be understanding so how do we grapple with the fact that that’s how how reality is you got to pay for this stuff but also um make it not seem so transactional it’s kind of a weird question that’s a loaded question with a lot of go uh how do we grapple with it well therapy in itself if you think of therapy it feels very heavy right I have to see a therapist there is something wrong with me have the problem and and honestly that’s partly the insurance system that if someone comes to ascend and they see a therapist like unless we think of something that’s wrong with them the insurance company is not going to pay because they’s going to say there’s nothing wrong with this person we’re not going to pay you money to talk to them so it pathologizes everything correct so it puts a stamp on you so a lot of men I think avoid going to that but you even step into that energy of oh god well I got to see a therapist something’s wrong with with me so okay something’s wrong with me and now there’s a diagnosis and there’s a there’s a slap of a of a stamp that there’s some there’s a problem when that’s not the sense we just we have Minds that need processing and just you know becoming our whole self and self-mastery is what I call it so there’s nothing wrong with that so whoever you go wherever you go however you achieve that I don’t think it matters if that answers your question because you’re basically saying like look maybe you as a man maybe you spend money at the gym or maybe you work out or maybe you biohack with all these supplements cuz you know both of us being a bit into that alternative medicine natural medicine we see a lot of that so it’s it’s a little bit similar where uh well you’ve worked on your body so much it’s time to work on your mind and bring those two into two congruence you have to have those two and two congruence you have to be in alignment with both because if the mind’s out of whack I’m telling you the body’s going to be out of whack and we’re going to talk a little esoteric but spiritualism is is really important having don’t not forgetting that you’re you’re a soul inside a body it’s not just your body where do you think you came from where do you think you go after absolutely we’re not just going to go in the grave and then that’s it we’re done there’s way more to it energy is has always been and will always be and that is part of the mind and the subconscious mind so and I used to see that a lot so I have an extensive history working in the ICU before I was a nurse and athetist and I’d see families with uh vague spiritual ideas who would not let their loved one go like we would say no they are here in the ICU like there’s nothing going on there’s no hope and they like well wait let’s set this alarm and then that’ll wake him up they just have all these superstitious ideas because they hadn’t grappled with what they actually thought about the afterlife or sometimes it was like well I wasn’t connected to my father and so I need to do all that now it’s like no you the chance has passed and you need to let them pass but that gets into obviously very difficult ethical and spiritual issues it does there’s a lot of high highways a lot of roads to travel a lot of angles and I think what you’re saying too is that you do have to get to the root of it that with your work it’s not like well let’s just work on you doing some self-affirmations it’s more like we need to get to the root of what the issues are correct and I think I forgot to mention I also have a degree in Psychology so I’m bringing all these angles together so uh working on the the body and the mind are connected so if if the mind’s not doing well and the ego will essentially can make you sick and we talk about the ego I’m not talking about something you know big it’s the subconscious mind the programs that we have that run that literally can make the body sick if we’re not handling it properly sure or in the best way that we can in creating that alignment no that makes sense CU in that same conversation where I was told i’ lack a sympathetic nervous system we’re talking about the early days of ascent Health Center where we worked even more on pain management using ketamine infusions and some of the patients could tolerate it we would try to prepare them they’d say no I don’t have any mental health issues this is all strictly pain and then they take us substance like ketamine which works as a mirror showing you what you are and everything that’s been repressed comes out and they would’t be able to tolerate it they would be like no I I’ll just keep the pain thanks I don’t want this treatment anymore I mean since then we’ve done a lot of work where we’ll do small injections and kind of ease them into the process but at the time I was like I don’t understand it they said they had no mental health problems then I slowly realized well at least someone who knows that they’ve had issues they’ve been exercising their mind again with that gym analogy so they can take this altered state of being the altered state of consciousness and work with it but if you spent all your life saying nope this is just a physical problem there’s nothing wrong with my brain and just shutting down that ability to really self-actualize to really see yourself as you are it’s very traumatizing to suddenly come face to face with reality yeah two interesting points that you bring up let’s face it we’ve all had little tees and big tees we’ve all had the little traumas of being left at the grocery store for 15 minutes and our parents are gone some of us have had bigger traumas that are very deeply repressed and so it’s interesting I come across this a lot people say they want to get help they come to your door right get rid of the pain but when you start telling them well this is kind of the source of your pain it’s like no I’ll keep my pain because if you get rid of the pain then what you really have to look at the Deep stuff that some people are just not yet ready to look at and that’s okay and they’re ready they’re ready mhm but a lot of times it’s um cheaper for patients if they’re willing to at one time just get rid of even if it’s forged a little bit to your identity if we get to the root cause of your problem even if it causes some pain and discomfort um unfortunately there really aren’t any painless ways to get better once you get to a certain point and that’s just the reality of it so um but I did want to ask specifically and maybe we even talk about my own story I doubt it because again the whole no sympathetic nervous system don’t always get into it but uh you specialize especially right now I want to see how many times I can use the word special in a special sentence but in divorce for men so how did that come about and why has that been something that one Ripple effects really working on yeah so I want to clarify I’m not excluding anybody it’s just like I have a happy marriage she’s not going to see me for nothing I’m not excluding men or women I I help everybody so I want to clarify that but it’s a need that I saw I had a lot of friends that are going through divorces and they seem to just come to me with oh my gosh this is going on how do I fix it right so again as I traveled through my journey and I I did Integrative Medicine there was so people would just start talking about I’m having a problem with my marriage or my job or relationship with my boss or with my family so it’s it’s divorce and relationships because those are such challenging problems for people and they cause so much stress right so typically I have to start working on dealing with some of that and I have very specific techniques to do that um healing techniques that I really extract issues and things and clear that up so that they feel lighter and brighter but I noticed divorce was just such an issue so I’m kind of just helping that area in the moment um and seeing if we can shift that a little bit because the the divorce rate is last I look statistically was like 60 61% or 67% which is really high so I think the Paradigm of marriage the way it used to be is not working so well in today’s society not not for everybody I’m not I’m not including everybody here so we’re not offending anybody talk we’re just talking and besides I I already told everyone that we’re going to offend them so it’s F we’re offending you I’m not saying don’t get married I’m saying there’s so many different things going on that what marriage used to be 8 million years ago when we were evolving the men were out shooting animals and and the women were having children well today’s Paradigm isn’t like that anymore it is I mean somebody has to make a hide out of this Mammoth I just speared ain’t going to be me sorry continue yeah but things have just shifted women are now doing a lot of that women are the head of the household men are in the kitchen cooking so I think things have shifted and I think the stressors of Life marriage is interesting that it’s just it’s creating the divorce rate is so high that it’s like people will go in and get married yet again when they’ve already gotten divorced three times so I have to ask what is going on that needs shifting and so that’s why I’m like okay let’s work on this area a little bit Let’s Help men a little bit because there’s something going on here right and sometimes it’s a visible sign of the breakdown of society like there’s a lot of things that we can hide and it’s not really a topic that people talk about often like if you look at a lot of societal ills even mental illness poverty a lot of it’s related to relationships just not working out and you end up with broken families and generations of this cycle that um continues so you’re basically saying that in each case you can find the root cause of like what happened to your relationship and probably in some it’s let’s work on reconciliation and in others it’s like well let’s learn as much as we can through this pain correct I I joke though but if we get rid of marriage you get rid of divorce don’t we really you know I’m not saying again I’m not saying not get married if that’s your thing and you love it do it it it it but it’s just weird what’s going on right now in that way but divorce is such a box marriage is also a box so if we can create some Freedom around that maybe create better relationships then a lot of that will start to subside so I thought give it a chance and help people out that are stuck in those areas because it’s so heavy well I think too sometimes it’s a big te that people think is a small te to use your trauma example meaning that because of the fear of divorce there are a lot more relationships that may last three four five years and then there’s a breakup and there’s not quite the support of like oh you they’re like what just your boyfriend like what’s a big deal but that is a huge trauma because it that is equivalent to what would have been you know marriage 40 years ago because you’re living with this person you’re with them for 4 years so and especially when there’s differing ideas of spirituality it’s hard for people to really even comprehend like what did this mean what can I take from this other than like some pithy saying about you know if you can’t handle me at my worst you don’t get me at my best or you know just CU there there are jokes about that memes of like oh well this person’s putting all these like they oh now they only have their middle name on Facebook and now they’re saying all inspirational quotes what’s going on with their relationship so it’s almost like we’ve been sucked into like this is how you react once this happens yeah it’s relationship with self too I think that’s what we ignore a lot of times we have all these little tees big tees that start to happen that we didn’t really clean up and now we’re dragging them into the future and trying to resolve them within all of our relationships so that’s the key thing it’s not just marriage it’s your family your boss your your siblings your friends it’s a it’s relationships in general right yeah because it’s a unique time too when a family fractures that um it’s almost like everyone opens up that you have this moment of time where people are more willing to see themselves because you know we use it the term let your heartbroken like you literally well not literally cuz your aort is fine and your inferior V vnea is still doing what it needs to do but we don’t know that we don’t really know that well you are right though because there there can be there’s proven fact that there’s significant cell damage from what we consider like oh this is just a traumatic experience for your brain no your entire physiology reflects what happened to you absolutely it’s almost like a time stamp on your body that your individual cells are no longer working because this sad thing happened so I guess in some cases literally like when we say heartbreak it means that well now there’s a fissure there there’s a crack and there is a chance to actually meet your inner self the one that you’ve been trying to hide or the one that you’ve shielded for all these years and so that’s the important thing is that during this traumatic experience can you through this pain actually form a better self correct so there’s often when you talk about fissures there’s a fissure a little esoteric there for all of you but there’s a fissure in your aura and so in your energetic field and there’s also a fissure in your physical field so often people get sick broken heart syndrome is a scientific you know event now when when one spouse dies you often see you know the other one goes in late age so it it creates a physical manifestation as well as an energetic manifestation so this is a pure example of how both work together so we kind of got to clean both up right so yeah so do you find uh men saying like well I wish I had been able to tell my ex-wife this or almost trying to clean up after the fact like how do you they I think they want to clean up after the fact I think the key Point here is things start to spiral down or they were already there however when intelligence is high or I’m sorry when it when emotions are high intelligence is low so when we’re really angry we say wrong things when we’re in love we kind of say wrong things as well we’re just we’re out there we’re not thinking straight so there’s often signs things are spiring downwards we sweep it under the carpet we deal with it and before you know it like the day comes here’s your divorce papers and it’s like where did this come from right so that’s often what I’m hearing it’s it’s either blindsided comes out of blindsight out of nowhere or things have been wrong for a while but we haven’t dealt with effectively because we just didn’t when we could have been saved and it could have been remedied uh but it wasn’t so probably those are the two scenarios that come along well that makes sense because we see that with physical health like well I’m taking this pill because the rheumatologist told me to and this pill because the cardiologist told me to and this inhaler because the the pulmonary specialist told me to but then after while I was like well wait we never addressed whatever the actual issue was and you can sometimes see that collapse where they end up in the hospital and have to restart it everything where did it start cuz it starts somewhere it just doesn’t come out there’s always something creeping underneath that we are not looking at not dealing with it’s fine and then before you know it it’s exploded into something different right so then how do you do you have any practical tips or cu the worry is that and you I alluded to this earlier sometimes we’ll be like well quick fix me up so I can go get another relationship and keep going and again we’re not addressing the root causes so how can we make sure to like pause long enough to actually get the healing we need to find our own uh I guess our own fault in either a relationship or what led to this so it doesn’t happen again well we often blame so we we don’t want to look at where our contribution to this was and there’s always our contribution um so I think the biggest thing is to start pausing and taking some time out for yourself first often people start to get into another relationship immediately or they start seeking their friends or you know divorc men it’s it’s also Arena of who do you talk to because your buddies are all Angry they’ve gotten divorced some of them maybe not all of them the ones that are married maybe don’t want to hang out with you don’t want to have time to hang out with you right like is it catching I don’t know if I should hang out with you am I going to get use some hand sanitizer the the others but who do you talk to your family is probably giving you an opinion your friends are giving you an opinion but there’s there’s who do you talk to that’s neutral that’s nonjudgmental that’s actually going to help you work through things sure and some people don’t want to go therapists M therapists are there to listen I listen and clean things up like I literally have ways and we don’t have time to get into that today but I have ways of just cleaning things up for people physically mentally emotionally and you know healthwise as well if it’s affected your health so it’s really important to look at all those aspects absolutely but yeah finding the bless and the mess as Hank says too there’s always something good whether you have great children that came came out of this whole thing maybe your children are really good May maybe you know you at least have parents that are really good parents-in-law that are really good there’s always something find that one thing and avoid focusing on bitterness because we have an addiction to focusing on the thing our problems talking about our problems what complaining talk about more about your Joys and life will change try for 30 days try talking about your joys for 30 days start finding them and your life will change guarantee it things will change no and some of that is our culture because I’ve traveled overseas a lot and you know like when I’m in Greece what a men my age talk about we talk about uh a good slice of bread we had we talk about what our favorite feted cheese is like it’s not about it’s not about our Prestige what we’re working on you know complaining about the kids or the wife or this thing so sometimes it is just a mindset of like okay I know that my mind automatically wants to go to this problem that I have but I don’t have to do that again we’re not ignoring our problems but it’s just that going back to my original point that you know sometimes as men if we do get into that one need to express my feelings it’s pretty intolerable for everyone around us so it’s having wisdom and when is it time to share and maybe because you’ve repressed them for too long yeah there could be a lot there could be a lot there it does it happens it goes sideways when you don’t manage the energy that’s going on inside it will come out sideways in the wrong ways and then everybody around gets offended and that goes on for too long and then things happen so that’s usually why I tell patients at a send cuz you know we’ll do ketamine infusion sometimes it can bring up repressed memory sometimes it can which I’m really making these sound terrible but they’re really not I promise not but uh a lot of times they’ll have someone like revisit some grease they hadn’t completed and I’m like no you you have to go through these and it has to be through your own power because if you don’t you’ll still go through it but not at the time and place of your choosing so I was like well just like several times a day all of us choose when to go to the bathroom and it works out great if you don’t choose when to deal with your grief you depression your anxiety it’s going to be a big embarrassing mess for everybody involved absolutely absolutely and I have to tell people what’s on the other side of walking through that door is amazing I mean it is freedom you can heal in an instant MH it’s where do you want to be right and for my own personal self I had the opposite problem where I’m like well let me sit in this pain as long as possible to get everything possible from it so again this is a rare case because I’m a strange person but there is also the the problem of like look youve wallowed this and try to get everything you could it is time to move on and allow yourself to enjoy life and allow yourself to heal rather than wait maybe there’s some more wisdom I can get from this terrible experience absolutely but if there’s a miracle on the other side do you want to feel good or do you want to stay and wallow in the pain it’s a choice so have you ever you know told the client of your like actually you’re you’re good now we don’t have to meet this often like you know you’re better because absolutely absolutely people like like oh my God I have so much more energy now I I can think clearer now yeah you’ve been sitting in this space for so long that you can’t see straight you can’t think straight it’s affect now it’s affecting your health brain fog you can’t function at work nothing’s going right so clear it move on why stay in that space of course you could choose to stay in that space But why right so uh before we finish because we have about a minute left do you have any like one practical tip that someone can do in these situations or I you can leave us with I have two number one start practicing gratitude so finding that teeny weeny little thing there is something find it find the needle in the hay stack of what you’re grateful for whether that’s a cup of coffee whether it’s you have a house whether it’s you still have your business whether it’s you’re maintaining your sanity somehow number one write that down every single day for 30 days just two three things three things for 30 days number two focus more on Joys rather than having this addiction break the pattern of complaints bitterness spewing stuff out and just finding the start talking about your joys for 30 days yeah joy and gratitude are very powerful and because I was really going to ask you about how do we keep this from just being some positive saying but I think that’s the answer is through joy and gratitude because those aren’t superficial emotions those are like the opposite of what people suffer through what they have pity parties for and it’s it’s not something that’s ignoring the problems just like well I also have this so right it’s both but gratitude is so powerful I can’t even tell you the magnitude it’s changed my life ABS I just did a 28 day course on this W an action step every single day that by the time you’re done we deal with finances relationships Health everything and it’s lifechanging but it’s not just about saying oh thank you it’s so much more there’s so much more to that so amazing find some Joy there it’s there find it absolutely so if you’re still struggling you can reach out to us at a sent Health Center we have counselor psychiatrist like a mention we do ketamine infusions TMS a lot of different interventions for treatment resistant depression anxiety a lot of these issues or they can reach you at and it’s the best way through your website or how can they best website or through the phone number either or text message is fine there it’s my business text so you can always shoot me a text hey I’ve got something going on so or check out the website we can just chat and see how best I can help pry you out of wherever you’re stuck absolutely well thanks for coming on today thanks Nick [Music]