What Nobody Tells You

James Ferrigno+ (00:00)
Welcome to What Nobody Tells You. I'm your host, James Farinho. today our guest on What Nobody Tells You is Dr. Jaclyn Chan. Dr. Chan is an osteopathic physician. welcome, Dr. Chan.

Jacqueline Chan (00:11)
Hi, thank you, James, and thank you for inviting me to be on your podcast.

James Ferrigno+ (00:17)
My pleasure, my pleasure. So let's just start right in here. you started out studying philosophy and then went to finance and Wall Street. So what happened that made you realize medicine was your true calling?

Jacqueline Chan (00:31)
You know, it's very interesting, but I was not raised with a gender bias, but I had one. And so essentially I thought only men became doctors and women were nurses and my my mother was a nurse, my father was a doctor, and I thought that

James Ferrigno+ (00:51)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (00:52)
nurses gave injections and I would like pass out at a needle. So it's like I could never be a nurse 'cause I could never give somebody an injection.

and then my father, I was spending the summer in Spain with my father in my early twenties. I just graduated from college and f as a philosophy major and was working at a bank. because banks were recruiting pretty hard for liberal arts majors, because we make great, you know, young bankers. I was recruited to be in a multimillion dollar like lending

you know, as a lender and you know how to have proper table manners in Japan, you know, speaking to, you know, mul basically lending out millions to like a TV show or blah blah blah. And I was bored, bored stiff. I would like fall asleep during my lunch hour and anyways. So I spent the summer with my father in Spain and he had a back injury and he went to a chiropractor and it was

James Ferrigno+ (01:58)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (01:59)
a woman.

And she had all these supplements on the shelves and she also t coached him on nutrition. And I was like, wow, this is like a woman who is a she's knowledgeable about physiology, but she but she also is holistic and she's very feminine. And I was like, wow, I wanna be like her. But I'd actually

James Ferrigno+ (02:22)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (02:23)
never met a woman like that. And when I was living in New York City,

on Park Avenue, my my boyfriend at the time was in medical school at Mount Sinai, but my two roommates were also at medical school at Mount Sinai and they were both women. And I just thought, you know, I was not masculine enough to be a doctor. I didn't have, I wasn't smart enough, I wasn't like kind of brutal enough, you know, like doctors or, you

James Ferrigno+ (02:53)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (02:54)
know, like making these major decisions.

But I ended up living with these two women and I had met this other woman in Spain who's very holistic. And I finally actually have like a like a female model. And I was like, wow,

James Ferrigno+ (03:07)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (03:08)
I could do this and I could still relish being a woman. You know, I don't have to lose all my femininity to be a f male physician. So it was this internal

James Ferrigno+ (03:19)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (03:20)
bias I didn't even realize I had. And

And so that's that unfortunately deciding after you've graduated from college in a

James Ferrigno+ (03:32)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (03:32)
very expensive Ivy League school that you actually want to be like pre-med. So then I went back to school and did my my pre-med majors in in like a summertime intensive.

James Ferrigno+ (03:45)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (03:46)
And you know, it was really good for me because I tried the the thing, you know, like I tried doing what I thought.

I was supposed to do, which was working on Wall Street and wearing a three piece hounds tooth suit. And, you know, I where I worked the bank that I worked at, you know, they interviewed two thousand people and there were only thirty people who got the job and I was one of the thirty people and you know, I'm like, I have this great salary and so I did the thing. I was living in the city, I was doing the thing

James Ferrigno+ (04:16)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (04:17)
and my soul was dying.

James Ferrigno+ (04:19)
Uh-huh.

Jacqueline Chan (04:19)
And so

by the time I decided to go into medicine, I was like, no, I really want to go into medicine. It's not I'm not going in because my parents wanted me to. I'm not going in because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I'm not going in for the money because I was making plenty of money in New York. I was going in because my heart was really choosing it. And one of the things that I've learned about myself is, especially growing up, I would often make

the wrong decision in order to find out what the right decision was. Like I would go in the wrong direction and be like, this doesn't

James Ferrigno+ (04:53)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (04:54)
feel very good. And then I would steer myself into the right way. I did not have the benefit of just going the right way. You know,

James Ferrigno+ (05:02)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (05:02)
I didn't do that at first. I would just go the wrong way and then be like, ooh, it doesn't feel good. No, I'm gonna quit and go the right way. So that's that's

James Ferrigno+ (05:12)
Well, that's how we learn,

right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (05:14)
Yeah, that was one of the ways I learned.

Yeah. But I just to just to backtrack, in high school, I loved biology. I mean, I loved dissection lab. I remember the first earthworm I ever dissected, and I was like fascinated by it. And to me, the more I learned about the body, the more there was evidence of God. Like there was just pure evidence of like how could the human body

be this complex and this harmonious and this genius, like this is surely, you know, there must be some infinite wisdom that exists that's beyond the human mind because this is incredible. So I loved studying biology. You know. Mm-hmm.

James Ferrigno+ (06:03)
Hmm.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. I like that.

Jacqueline Chan (06:10)
No.

James Ferrigno+ (06:12)
what was it that attracted you to osteopathic medicine specifically?

Jacqueline Chan (06:18)
Well, you know, I as I said earlier, I met a woman who's a chiropractor, so I thought maybe I should be a chiropractor and I knew that they worked with their hands and so I thought, well, I should go to a chiropractor first. And so I went to a chiropractor in New York City and he cracked my neck and I left with like an ice bag on my neck and horrible pain and I was like, I don't wanna do this. I don't wanna be like cracking

James Ferrigno+ (06:45)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (06:45)
people.

And in chiropractic, it's kinda like the faster you go and the more people you see, then the more money you can make and all this kind of thing. And I I was really interested in emotional health and mental health. And my father was a psychiatrist. And so

James Ferrigno+ (07:03)
Hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (07:04)
I thought maybe I'll wanna be a psychiatrist, but I didn't know that ostropathic medicine existed and then I was at a pre-med dinner that was held by a local medical school.

And I met an osteopathic doctor and he said, Well, we have full scope of licensure, meaning that, and this is in the United States, you know, meaning that you can become a surgeon, you can prescribe morphine, you can you can be exactly like a physician, you can work in a hospital. In fact, one of the surgeon generals, C. Everett Koop, was a DO.

James Ferrigno+ (07:37)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (07:40)
but we also are trained to do osteopathic manual manipulation.

Which is what chiropractors, the first chiropractor was an osteopath before

James Ferrigno+ (07:50)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (07:50)
they before they started prescribing medicine, like pharmaceuticals. So I was like, wow, this is like the best of both worlds because I could go into psychiatry if I wanted to. I could I have the I have the legal ability to prescribe whatever I want. I can go into whatever area I want. I have a lot of options, but I can also use my hands.

And I love the osteopathic philosophy. There at the time I went to medical school, there were 15 osteopathic medical schools in the United States. I'm sure there are more now, maybe even double.

James Ferrigno+ (08:24)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (08:26)
but when I met osteopathic physicians, they were primarily focused on one of their their principles of in their education is that the body is a un app operates as a whole unit.

And that we have everything inside of ourselves to heal. And and that structure function follows structure. So they also embrace, you know, when things are flowing, the nervous system, nerves are functioning appropriately, our arterial oxygenation and blood flow and venous outflow to detox, then the body

can optimally heal and I was like I love this philosophy. So and people, osteopathic physicians tend to be they really stress healthy bedside manner, and they tend to go into family practice. and the hospital was not so much research oriented. So most allopathic medical training in hospitals is very research oriented and

James Ferrigno+ (09:40)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (09:41)
I learned

very early on that research you gotta you gotta tie it down to one thing and one thing that you're looking at. And then you have to prove that that one thing works and you have to eliminate all the other things. So it's extremely

James Ferrigno+ (09:53)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (09:54)
separating and isolating. And I was like,

James Ferrigno+ (09:56)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (09:57)
I I don't, you know, and then it's extremely in influenced by money. And

James Ferrigno+ (10:02)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (10:02)
who has the money is the pharmaceutical companies and da-da-da. It's kind of like a quagmire of

you can make research look however you want it to look, you know. And

James Ferrigno+ (10:12)
Yeah. Yes.

Jacqueline Chan (10:14)
so I didn't really embrace research. I mean, to me I thought, you know, if but the anatomy of the human body doesn't change. Like anatomy is

James Ferrigno+ (10:23)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (10:24)
anatomy. And so I just loved the holistic aspect of osteopathic medicine and also the scope of licensure and freedom that I had in the United States.

to kind of, you know, become whatever I wanted to become. So yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (10:43)
Okay.

Yeah, that's that's a very interesting point. That

The other areas are more research oriented and thus influenced by money, so that doesn't always work out so well as far as ethics go. is osteopathic medicine by nature holistic? Is it mm hmm?

Jacqueline Chan (11:03)
Yes.

Absolutely, yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (11:06)
So

it's a type of holistic medicine?

Jacqueline Chan (11:10)
You know, that's a great question.

James Ferrigno+ (11:12)
Uh-huh.

Jacqueline Chan (11:13)
I would say that osteopathic manual therapy or OMT,

James Ferrigno+ (11:17)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (11:19)
which is the hands-on aspect of you know, that kind of looks like a blend between chiropractic and physical therapy, that

James Ferrigno+ (11:27)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (11:28)
that is holistic, yeah. But only 20% of osteopathic physicians in the United States do OMT.

So a lot of osteopathic physicians are gonna pretty much look like a regular allopathic physician, you know. Yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (11:46)
so what are

they what are they doing? If they're not doing that.

Jacqueline Chan (11:52)
labs and prescriptions and x rays and MRIs and and yeah. Yeah. And the

James Ferrigno+ (11:56)
just everything else. Okay.

Jacqueline Chan (11:58)
reason why is really it's really economic. So

James Ferrigno+ (12:01)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (12:01)
when I do an osteopathic manual therapy, I may spend anywhere from a half an hour to an hour evaluating

James Ferrigno+ (12:08)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (12:10)
the tension patterns in the person's body and balancing them. But insurance will only reimburse like nine dollars per region. And then when you start

subtracting all the overhead, it you go broke, basically, as a doctor with your reimbursement.

James Ferrigno+ (12:26)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (12:27)
So the doctors who do osteopathic manual therapy successfully, they usually don't bill insurance. And they're

James Ferrigno+ (12:34)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (12:35)
in a what's called a cash practice model. And a lot of physicians are scared to do that. They're like, I don't know if I'll get any patients who are willing to pay cash out of pocket. It's kind

James Ferrigno+ (12:45)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (12:46)
of like if you were

working for an organization versus being an entrepreneur, you know.

James Ferrigno+ (12:53)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (12:53)
And I tend to be entrepreneurial. I like the freedom of creativity and expression. And I've learned to get comfortable with the a monetary aspect of it. So

James Ferrigno+ (13:05)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (13:05)
whenever you're an entrepreneur, it's kind of like it can go up and down and there's you know, not so much predictability with it. And

James Ferrigno+ (13:13)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (13:14)
but I would rather do that and have the

The freedom of expression of what gets me excited than be under the regulations. There's a ton of regulations

James Ferrigno+ (13:24)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (13:25)
in an insurance model. You know, they demand, they basically say you can't order these labs because they're not under standard of care. You basically can't think outside of the box.

James Ferrigno+ (13:36)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (13:37)
And I'm like, my soul's gonna die if I do that.

James Ferrigno+ (13:40)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (13:41)
I gotta be able to think outside of the box. Yeah. Yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (13:44)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, my experience with the insurance industry has not been a pleasant one. I

Jacqueline Chan (13:52)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (13:53)
think as most I think Americans and really people from other countries would attest to as well.

Jacqueline Chan (13:58)
Yeah, I I agree.

James Ferrigno+ (14:00)
there are a lot of models that aren't really f functioning properly.

Jacqueline Chan (14:03)
And I

agree.

James Ferrigno+ (14:05)
And I've seen a lot of change in this area, but I've noticed at least in Northern California, most of the healthcare practitioners that I know and have gone to don't take insurance. They're on the cash model. And

Jacqueline Chan (14:19)
Yeah, I think of it it's kinda like if you went grocery shopping and you went

to Safeway or whatever and you got standard like food that had been shipped and pesticides versus the local farmers market. You know?

James Ferrigno+ (14:34)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (14:34)
So we're like the local farmers market, you know. and so yeah, the anything you get at the local farmers market is probably gonna be more expensive than what you get at the

regular grocery store, but the nutrient content and the taste and plus you're supporting a farmer and their livelihood and you're not supporting like the chain. So it's just a it's not like the it's bad or good. It's just kind of like personal choice. And so for me, because

James Ferrigno+ (15:03)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (15:04)
your health is so foundational for everything

James Ferrigno+ (15:08)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (15:08)
in your life, I wanna have like it's okay for me to invest in my health.

Also one visit. okay, so in the realm of functional medicine, about most doctors, most of us are seeing patients with at least five different diagnoses and who have been to at least 10 other doctors and haven't gotten an answer. So I

James Ferrigno+ (15:35)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (15:36)
get a lot of answers where people have not gotten answers from even Mayo Clinic.

I'll give you an example. I had a patient recently who was going to be she was only twenty-one and she had this horrible groin pain after it was a terrible response to like an injection she had by a chronic pain specialist for in the groin that they thought was maybe an ovarian cyst or endometriosis. She had this groin, you know, it's like in the right area of the right ovary and

James Ferrigno+ (16:12)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (16:12)
she it wasn't

it definitely was not anything that was from her female body parts from her ovary. And she got full body pain to the point where she basically couldn't go to school. She couldn't function, she couldn't go back into college, she could bar barely

even socialize with her friends. She was pretty much bedbound, and they were gonna put her in the hospital at UCSF.

chronic pain for a month. And they said, we don't know the cause of your pain. So we're going to hospitalize you for a month. And you're going to get acupuncture and pain medications. And when she came to me, you know, I have a nose. You know, I I'm like a dog sniffing and I go,

James Ferrigno+ (17:01)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (17:02)
you know, I think this is a spirochetal infection. Everything you're describing, the electric shooting pain, the da-da-da. And I said,

James Ferrigno+ (17:09)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (17:09)
I actually think we need to screen for that.

So I used a lab that is never covered by Kaiser or regular insurance. It's called IGENX, and it was based in Palo Alto, and it's very good at at looking at these infections. And sure enough, she had an infection that causes a hundred percent of her symptoms. I like read it out to her and she goes, my God, that's exactly what I have. And I said, You have an undiagnosed and untreated infection, and let's

treat it, you don't need to go to the chronic pain clinic. And so this is going to change her entire life because it had she gone on with that undiagnosed infection, I mean, it could have she

James Ferrigno+ (17:51)
No, yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (17:52)
could have like never gotten her energy back. So it's really we keep we being the realm of functional medicine, integrative medicine, that's what you're paying for. You're paying for thinking outside of the box, using different labs

and having treatment options that are also different that aren't part of the part of the medical industrial complex.

James Ferrigno+ (18:17)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (18:18)
So so in the end, even though it's maybe a little bit more money up front, it's very efficient because we've discovered that literally in two visits. And this is this has been, you know, so in two visits we got to the answer. So yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (18:33)
Yeah, th that th

that's that's great. That that aligns with my experience as well. I mean, I

Jacqueline Chan (18:39)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (18:39)
have traditional insurance and healthcare, you know, where I go to the standard doctors. And I do use it first if it seems appropriate, but I quite a few times, a lot, I have just gotten to the end of what they will do. And there's

And then it's, you know, you're really fighting with them to get them to do something, you know, provide you with the type of care that you want. physical therapy, for instance, is just really have a hard time trying to get that. anything besides exercises. And many times, and then eventually I give up. I go pay cash to someone who

you know, not doesn't have to stick to the insurance model. And every time, you know, that's the solution and I get healed. So and like you

Jacqueline Chan (19:35)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (19:35)
said, too, it usually happens in one or two visits. You know, it doesn't usually take a long time. And often I know what it is. I can tell what it is, but they won't treat for that or the treatments that they give just aren't effective. So yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (19:53)
There definitely needs to be kind of an overhaul, I feel like, of, you know, medicine.

James Ferrigno+ (19:59)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (19:59)
and that's another whole conversation. But what I do is I I have like emergency, like if I got in a car accident or broke a leg or needed surgery, then you know, that's where conventional medicine really shines. and and then I try

James Ferrigno+ (20:17)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (20:17)
to get the kind of like the highest

premium or deductible and just kind of keep that as an emergency backup. But then I use my other spending dollars for preventative and and physiology optimization. I do think that we're coming into a very exciting time in medicine because of peptides. So,

James Ferrigno+ (20:39)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (20:40)
you know, and that's another whole I'm not ready for to talk about that today, but I'm I think peptides are revolutionary and they're outperforming pharmaceuticals.

And they're not part of that pharmaceutical industrial complex political triad. So

James Ferrigno+ (20:58)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (20:59)
there's actually or they're I'm seeing people heal in two years and like in and what would normally take two years to heal, like from these chronic infections, are taking

James Ferrigno+ (21:08)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (21:09)
two or three months with peptides that

James Ferrigno+ (21:11)
Wow.

Jacqueline Chan (21:11)
boost the immune system. And I'm just peptides are amazing. So same

thing

James Ferrigno+ (21:16)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (21:16)
with

cognitive decline, the peptides for helping your brain. Which I did want to actually mention that I wrote a book, James, I don't know if

yeah, I've written a book which really talks a lot about health and all the different I have a wheel of wellness with

James Ferrigno+ (21:34)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (21:35)
these different spokes of the wheel that address different aspects of your health, different kinds of labs, how how it all interplays. And I even give supplements

And dosages of supplements and diet, and the book is called Regenerate Your Brain, Creating a Breakthrough Plan for Your Brilliance. And so it's for mental health, anxiety, depression, ADHD, adrenal fatigue, insomnia, and also prevention of Alzheimer's, neurodegenerative conditions.

James Ferrigno+ (22:07)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (22:08)
So there's a and it's available on Amazon. It's just,

James Ferrigno+ (22:11)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (22:11)
you know, Dr. Jaclyn Chan, Regenerate Your Brain.

it was

James Ferrigno+ (22:15)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (22:15)
the number one Amazon bestseller when it came out. And then it came out right before the pandemic. So I didn't do any book tours or anything like that. And then I'm like,

James Ferrigno+ (22:23)
okay. Right.

Jacqueline Chan (22:24)
yeah, I wrote a book and it's actually a really good book. So there's a lot of great information in it that really explains this kind of medicine because what's good for your brain is good for your whole body. You know. And I my interest has been in the central nervous system, you

know, so

James Ferrigno+ (22:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (22:42)
brain.

And nervous system being parasympathetic, sympathetic, our stress response.

James Ferrigno+ (22:50)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (22:50)
You know, to me, our nervous system is how we it's how we it's the source of our beliefs, our thoughts, our

James Ferrigno+ (22:59)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (23:00)
emotions, our perceptions, how we respond, which it really kind of creates your relationships.

your experience of the world, it's it's the most important aspect of our body.

James Ferrigno+ (23:13)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (23:15)
and so that's what I've chosen to kind of focus on. If your nervous system is good, then your chances of going through life are pretty darn good. So I really respected Dr. Daniel Amen. I'm not sure if you've heard of him,

James Ferrigno+ (23:30)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (23:31)
Dr. Amen in the Amen Clinic, because he was a psychiatrist who said

Rather than label somebody with a personality disorder, let's look at their brains and let's see if there's something wrong with their brain.

James Ferrigno+ (23:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (23:44)
Let's fix their brain and then see

James Ferrigno+ (23:46)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (23:47)
if that helps with their personality disorder. And oftentimes it does. So you

just need to

James Ferrigno+ (23:53)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (23:54)
fix the brain. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (23:58)
Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I'm with you a hundred percent on that. Yeah. The nervous

system, that's what I've seen in my work too, and being an an emotional awareness coach is like really emotions and people's

Jacqueline Chan (24:13)
Yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (24:13)
state, the sympathetic and parasympathetic. I mean, that's it just underlies everything. You know, that's the reason

Jacqueline Chan (24:18)
Yeah, exactly.

James Ferrigno+ (24:20)
for everything. and I notice it with myself as well. It's

Jacqueline Chan (24:25)
Right.

James Ferrigno+ (24:26)
really powerful. And I don't know how I missed your book doing my research. I did not find it, but what what's the title again?

Jacqueline Chan (24:31)
Okay.

Regenerate your brain, creating a

James Ferrigno+ (24:36)
We okay.

Jacqueline Chan (24:37)
breakthrough plan for your brilliance. I can go to my bookshelf right now and grab it. okay,

James Ferrigno+ (24:42)
sure, yeah, go grab it.

And from the way you've described it, it sounds pretty amazing. I'm gonna I will put a link in there for if you're listening, there should be a link in the description that will go directly to the book.

Jacqueline Chan (24:55)
Awesome, thank you.

James Ferrigno+ (24:56)
What about the more energetic aspect? Like how does that integrate with the nervous system? Like how are those two connected? No, grounding and energy medicine.

Jacqueline Chan (25:08)
Mm.

Right.

Well, the two tools that we use

James Ferrigno+ (25:18)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (25:20)
when we do what are what's called energy medicine, if you start using your intuition more intentionally,

James Ferrigno+ (25:29)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (25:29)
then the two tools that you use are your focus and your intention because

James Ferrigno+ (25:35)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (25:36)
our focus allows us to direct energy.

And it allows us to do things like ground, like like be interoceptive and move your energy into your legs and feet and connect to the earth. So you actually have to have a lot of focus to do that. And so

James Ferrigno+ (25:58)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (25:59)
some people lack the focus because they actually don't have the brain chemistry for focus. So some of the things that you need in order to be able to focus are serotonin.

So serotonin

James Ferrigno+ (26:12)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (26:13)
helps you feel calm, it helps you focus. whereas and if you've had a lot of stress in your life or cortisol, that downregulates the amount of serotonin that your body makes. It also down regulates the number of serotonin receptor sites. If

James Ferrigno+ (26:32)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (26:33)
you have heavy metals like mercury from eating a lot of fish, then that's going to actually block.

the serotonin

James Ferrigno+ (26:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (26:41)
receptor sites or a lot of microplastics those are also endocrine disruptors

James Ferrigno+ (26:49)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (26:49)
so it's like we need healthy brain chemistry in order

James Ferrigno+ (26:53)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (26:53)
to perform intuition medicine and in and and to have like healthy perceptions you know so that's just one kind of small example

But it's interesting because

I, as a physician, I have observed that the nervous system in particular is prone to other people's energy. Okay. And I had never really heard, well, certain certainly in medical school, we don't talk about other people's energy affecting you, meaning psychic energy. In the world of intuition medicine, we call this sometimes cording, energetic cording.

James Ferrigno+ (27:46)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (27:47)
So

that's when someone wants something from you or is angry at you and they're so angry or they they actually can send an energetic cord through the auric field that blocks the flow of energy in the chakra system. And

James Ferrigno+ (28:06)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (28:07)
I've noticed that the central nervous system, the autonomic chain ganglion and

Thoracic area is often where an energetic cord will go. And then

James Ferrigno+ (28:19)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (28:19)
that really disrupts the person's sense of who they are. It disrupts their own ability to ground, feel like their inner authority is very clear to them. It can be incredibly disruptive. And so it's interesting because.

Sometimes it is that other person's energy that's the the source of the issue. So it's

James Ferrigno+ (28:49)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (28:49)
a it's a little complex. I've even seen deceased relatives affecting the central nervous system.

James Ferrigno+ (28:59)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (29:01)
and so yeah, I'm gonna pause there because that's that's a lot to say. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (29:07)
Okay. Yeah, yeah, there's a lot going on there. Yeah, let's

maybe unpack a little of that.

I'm energetically connecting with people to be able to help them most of the time. And that is was not only true with if I'm working one on one with someone coaching, but it was true teaching special education.

And working with students and if you think about it, it's okay to be skeptical of this, you should be skeptical. but if you think about if you look at couples, like one will get angry, then the other one gets angry. You know, one can relax the other one by being more relaxed. And it's people do their emotional states connect and one person will

pull the other person into their emotional state and it it happens all the time. And if you just observe the world, you'll see that people are really linking and matching emotional states. And some people are doing it on purpose. Most people are doing it without paying attention to it and without being aware of it. But it is really powerful. I've noticed working with

people who are difficult cases, people who were violent or very anxious or impossible to focus, or even people that are nonverbal, that

Connecting with the person, holding space for them and kind of linking with them and having my calm emotion be the dominant emotion, it will eventually go to them. It may take some time, but it it's a very powerful technique for helping someone relax and kind of connect with themselves just through sharing your groundedness with them. so it's something I've done a lot.

Jacqueline Chan (30:55)
So, thank

James Ferrigno+ (31:03)
And it it's it's really powerful. So it's not it might not be something that we're all paying attention to and aware of, but but it is there and you can you can see it if you just watch other people.

Jacqueline Chan (31:19)
Yeah, that's that coherence phenomenon.

James Ferrigno+ (31:22)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, yeah and I found that's really the basic for when I'm helping someone heal, which is often emotionally but sometimes otherwise, that's the most fundamental part of it, really.

Sometimes it's all that's necessary. There's a book by David, Dr. David Hawkins, Letting Go of the Pathway to Surrender. I've mentioned it on other podcasts, but he talks about in there how he had a very a woman who was who was scared of everything. And she wouldn't she wouldn't go to the doctor because she was too scared of it. She couldn't leave the house because she was too scared. She couldn't and

I think I can't remember how he did the very first step. They got her to pick up the phone and just listen. And he started out just by holding space with her. So just pick up the phone and nobody would speak for the whole time.

Jacqueline Chan (32:16)
and

James Ferrigno+ (32:17)
And he wasn't even there. You know, so it just started on a very, very low level. But eventually she would speak and then eventually she would leave and come into the office. Then he would still just hold space, you know.

Jacqueline Chan (32:29)
you

James Ferrigno+ (32:30)
But it she eventually became functional from that. But it really just started at zero. Just sit there and hold space for her, you know.

Jacqueline Chan (32:35)
you

James Ferrigno+ (32:37)
And it's very underrated. This is incredibly powerful to do that when it it seems like the person is doing nothing. You know.

Jacqueline Chan (32:45)
You

know, conscious witnessing is one of the greatest gifts we can give someone, especially if being in the presence of someone conscious is something that they've never experienced. Or

James Ferrigno+ (32:59)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (33:00)
especially if usually when at a young age, like before the age of five or before the age of three, they weren't able to co-regulate with their mother.

then they don't know how to regulate. So one of the things I learned, this was from the Neurobiology of Wee by Dan Siegel, who's a psychiatrist from Harvard. But as he said, that the peripheral nervous system doesn't, it doesn't really form until age three. So from one, the time you're born until age three, the only way an infant can regulate their nervous system is through mom.

So through eye

James Ferrigno+ (33:42)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (33:42)
contact and presence, and if mom couldn't regulate herself for whatever reason, like in my life that was one of my issues, my mom couldn't regulate, then

James Ferrigno+ (33:57)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (33:57)
baby can't regulate. So then they just kind of live in sympathetic, and then they have to actually develop as an adult.

they actually have to learn what safety feels like because all healing happens in safety. So, and they actually have to learn like their nervous system has to develop to feel safety. So, yeah, I would bet with that in that case that woman's trauma was infantile

probably.

James Ferrigno+ (34:31)
Mm. Yeah,

that's a good chance. I it's pa it's a good chance that I think that's the way I started out. It took decades to really learn to relax. Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (34:43)
Yeah, you know,

I I floated on the ceiling when I was born, because,

James Ferrigno+ (34:48)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (34:48)
you know, my mom was aware that my father was having an affair and, and, and it was, I mean, I literally, when I've gone back, I didn't want to be next to my mother's skin, because I could smell the cortisol, you know, the stress hormone in her skin, didn't want to suck.

James Ferrigno+ (35:09)
okay.

Jacqueline Chan (35:10)
breast you know and then that makes a mother even more anxious if like their baby's not feeding and then it creates this anxiety loop and she was in a foreign country she had no other family members to help out there was no one present so all these circumstances and and so i one of my earliest memories is i'm floating on the ceiling and i'm

James Ferrigno+ (35:32)
Wow.

Jacqueline Chan (35:32)
going down the hospital floor and i can hear all the

the teacups and the chinks, because it was in Scotland, so they're all drinking tea. And so that's how I got intuitive. I was immediately in my astrobody floating around from the time I was born.

So a lot of the intuitives have had trauma, because that's what made them live in their astrobodies and float all over the place. So, know.

So I was grounded when we did the six week module at the Academy of Intuition Medicine on the astral body. They're like, you're not going anywhere because your astral flow way too much. You actually have

James Ferrigno+ (36:10)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (36:11)
to learn how to ground, you know, and then, and yeah. So looking at not, and also that was the other thing I learned that was powerful. And you talked about your question around energy medicine and also the nervous system.

So

the nervous system, the spinal cord forms at about the sixth week when the sperm and the egg meet in the embryo.

James Ferrigno+ (36:36)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (36:38)
And it's like our, the spinal cord is like saying, I exist. It's like, that's what can now become who you are as an ugo structure, a James Farigno, as a, know, is

James Ferrigno+ (36:50)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (36:51)
when that sperm and egg meet and the actual egg starts to spiral.

there's a spiral

James Ferrigno+ (36:58)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (36:59)
motion and the pacemaker of the heart comes online in the periphery. then, and so what happens is that I talk about the spinal cord in the brain being like the flagpole on the land saying, this is my territory and this is like

James Ferrigno+ (37:14)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (37:14)
my territory. Like this is where I'm going to live. That's where your core blueprint is for your energetic blueprint is for yourself. And so,

James Ferrigno+ (37:24)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (37:28)
Sometimes in first trimester, something happens like traumatic to the mom or the dad, or even in a previous lifetime when you were

James Ferrigno+ (37:41)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (37:42)
recycling, how you die in a previous lifetime definitely affects how you come in and the next. And I've witnessed that when I've worked with clients before, and I definitely know that about myself. And so,

The beauty of energy medicine is that you're going beyond linear time and space

James Ferrigno+ (38:03)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (38:04)
and you can look at the past and you can look at before this lifetime even or in utero in womb and that's where the core healing can occur. The most powerful healing can occur. So that's the other piece that I found to be

tremendously just kind of like revealing and powerful

James Ferrigno+ (38:31)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (38:32)
in what energy medicine can offer because that's way beyond lab work and it's also kind

James Ferrigno+ (38:37)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (38:38)
of way beyond psychology, basic psychology.

James Ferrigno+ (38:41)
Yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (38:41)
We're not talking about the emotional body, we're talking about the energy body and spiritual sovereignty as it's coming in into inception, like true spiritual sovereignty.

And

there have been, if we say that we carry the blueprint of who we are from lifetime to lifetime, and if in this lifetime you're intuitive, sensitive, caring person, then those types of people have been under, there was a time period for hundreds of years where they were under horrific attack.

James Ferrigno+ (39:26)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (39:26)
like

not good, you know, and so when you die under horrific attack, you know, and this is getting into some of the religious wars, Spanish

James Ferrigno+ (39:36)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (39:37)
Inquisition, Roman Catholics attacking, blah, blah, blah, and I'm Roman Catholic, but I, you get it,

James Ferrigno+ (39:41)
Witches, yeah.

Jacqueline Chan (39:43)
right? You get into that where your spirit, your spiritual being and your spiritual sovereignty was attacked. That's the worst violation that can happen, the absolute worst.

James Ferrigno+ (39:53)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (39:54)
And so then you can be born after an attack like that already kind of weakened, like deeply weakened in a certain way. And then part of this lifetime is to heal from that and to re-empower

James Ferrigno+ (40:07)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (40:09)
yourself. And so that's the gift of that trauma.

James Ferrigno+ (40:16)
Mm-hmm.

I love that. I haven't thought of that in exactly that way before. But yeah, that's powerful.

Jacqueline Chan (40:25)
Yeah, I was very clear that when I started teaching part-time at the Academy of Intuition Medicine that what I was doing was creating a safe space for intuitives to convene because in a

James Ferrigno+ (40:42)
Mm-hmm.

Jacqueline Chan (40:43)
previous lifetime it had not been safe. know, I mean, think about like the slave underground.

and the Christian underground too. Like they had underground systems because it wasn't safe to come out. And so I realized that for me to actively create safe space for intuitives to gather was part of the healing from not being able to gather safely in the past. Yeah. And so when you...

when you start doing the thing that's healing the trauma from the past and ends up being a tremendously joyous experience, it just feels so good and you don't quite understand why or how. And that's why I love teaching live, meaning either on Zoom live or live in person because that's when I get that juice of people actually being able to gather.

And then that's

James Ferrigno+ (41:44)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (41:45)
the like, this is so sweet because that was taken away from me or I was denied that, you know, in the past. So,

James Ferrigno+ (41:52)
Mm.

Jacqueline Chan (41:55)
yeah.

James Ferrigno+ (41:58)
Yeah, yeah, that's powerful.

Jacqueline Chan (41:58)
Mm-hmm.