Stop Masking Symptoms: The Truth About Healing Your Body From Within

You can believe all things are right, say all the right words, follow everything you were taught, and still you feel completely out of line in your life because something's just not naturally right. I'm your host Edna White and this is Keeping It Real On Purpose. Real stories, real hurt, real recovery, real strength. Turning your life's pains into purpose one story at a time. Today I'm joined by Dr. Aaron Chapa, a leader in natural health, detoxification, gut health, and overall wellness with decades of experience helping people restore their bodies from the inside out. But today we're going to go really deep. He's going to talk about all of this with his special twist on his faith, identity, and healing and what it takes to come back in alignment naturally. So welcome to the show. Edna, Edna, Edna, that was a great intro. Thank you. I love it. I love it. Taking back, you know, our health one step at a time and I really like how you said one story at a time that changed and I've got, you know, two and they're quick. The first is, you know, that whole saying that sticks and stones may break my bones. Oh my gosh. Such a lie. Such a lie. Such a lie. Who in the world? I was 15 years old walking from the swimming pool at the junior high to the locker rooms and I was on the swim team and these two girls were walking, you know, polar to me and they said, what is he doing wearing that? He is so fat. Oh, you can only imagine a hormonal pubescent 15 year old crushed in a moment's time. And I don't even know if they knew that I heard him say it, but I heard him say it. And you know, it was so detrimental that literally I went to the locker room. I don't even remember the locker room experience. All I remember is walking out the back door of the school, not checked out. I didn't call anybody to pick me up. I literally got dressed and I walked out the back door, walked home and I had a little conversation with myself in the mirror and said, Chuck, never again are we going to have somebody make fun of us for being overweight. Yeah, it's going to happen. And I said, what can I do to change the trajectory of that outcome? And no word of a lie, that's where my healing journey began. I literally got off sugar and I never for five years did not consume a single sugary product that was in the form of a liquid, no sugar tea, no Kool-Aids, no juice boxes, nothing of the sort because I was just so like that was the seemingly obvious thing to do is to drop sugar out of the system. Now, interestingly, I lost every bit of 55 pounds inside of three months. And so that was truly a life altering shift for me. And so it was so obvious that something shifted. I had to reintroduce myself to people in the next at the beginning of the next school year. People thought I was anorexic because I had lost so much weight. And I was absolutely eating. So I got the opposite. So instead of like, hey, good job for losing weight, we're excited for you. Now people think I got an eating disorder. So judgment everywhere. I can't win for losing at that point. And literally you lost. And so I literally get frustrated when I hear people looking for answers and not knowing what to do. And so that led me into this wellness journey. But even then still, I wasn't a hundred percent sure what I was going to do or how I was going to do it. And that led to the next story. The next story was really fascinating because at 19, I got the world by the tail. I figured out what it is I'm going to do day in and day out. And lo and behold, guess what? I did. I figured out real quick, fast in a hurry that life is fragile. It was a Friday morning, October 8th, 1999. And I had chosen the night before not to go out to breakfast with my father and my mom. And every morning for the last six months up to this moment, we had gone to breakfast every day, Monday through Friday. And so God's providence that this opportunity happened and I got to hang out with my dad and my mom together at breakfast. And so this particular Friday morning, I wake up to a silhouette of a man in the doorframe of my bedroom. And I know who it was. It was my dad. But I'm like, it's six o'clock in the morning. I was out late, you know? And he was grabbing his chest and he was saying, Aaron, Aaron, it hurts. It hurts, Aaron. And he's like, and I'm like processing. You got to think yourself at six a.m. It's the first thing that you see. Yeah. It sounds like you're like, am I dreaming? Like what's happening? And all of a sudden it was as if he was gone, like just disappeared. And I'm like, what the heck just happened? I jump up, grab my cordless phone. That was how long ago it was. And my cellular phone that I had was not a flip phone, but to his bedroom. And he's crawling in bed. So he was there. And so he hadn't dropped dead, but he was struggling. And he was just like my chest, my chest. And again, I'm 19. I don't know what's happening. I don't know. I know something's wrong, but I don't know what's happening. And he couldn't really tell me. At that moment, I figured out I'm calling 9-1-1. So I call 9-1-1. And so calling 9-1-1, they're on their way, dispatched. The second phone call that I made, anytime there's a trouble that you don't know what to do, what is the, what's the next right thing to do? Call your mama. I called her and she, I said, mom, you got to get home. There's something crazy going on with dad. I don't know what's going on. Well, she's on her way home. And then I sat with my dad and it was in those next moments where the, where the world got real intense. Because I had no way to help my dad. I had no knowledge of where his drugs were. I had no idea what drugs he was on. I wouldn't even have known what nitroglycerin was if he had grabbed it. Aspirin was, I didn't know what any of this stuff was. And, and, and so in this story, the first is, you know, life change through choice. And then the second story is life change through, you know, unforeseen circumstances, the storms of life. And I, and I could manage the first one better. This one was a little bit more challenging because at 19, I got the world by my, the tail. And I feel like I can, you know, I know what tomorrow's going to look like. And now I don't. And in that moment, I felt like I needed to hold my family together. And that led me to just a dark, unrealistic place of being able to manage adult responsibilities with no job, no education, and not truly, you know, understanding of what I was going to do with my life. I had ideas, but not really any clear, clear direction. And I worked through that for a few years, went through some, you know, the, the perils of grievance. And it was in the next three years that, you know, God really shaped me, showed me who he was. His, his, his fatherly divine presence found me in my bedroom on the floor, praying, crying out, God help me. God help me. I don't know what to do. I don't know where to go, who to call. And interestingly enough, I happened to hear a John Hagee sermon on TV the next day, who was a fireball preacher back in the day. And he was talking about fasting. And I, you know, got, did a fast. And in that fast, clarity started to come. Over the course of about 30 days, I had a dream about medical school. And, and I knew where this school was. I knew exactly where it was, but I didn't actually, never, I'd never had been there before. And, and then I had a dream right after that, where I literally saw the school in my hand, and I crushed the school in my hand as if I conquered it. So I knew that that could be a, an avenue of a place I could go. And, and that's what I did. I scheduled an appointment and I went to school to be a chiropractor and came out of functional medicine nutrition clinic. And the first two years in practice, I never even adjusted a patient. I literally only worked with people with metabolic syndrome-based disorders, everything from high cholesterol, blood pressure, skin disorders. And truly I saw that nutrition was the fundamental backbone that drove everything. See, what you eat's important, but what you don't eat is more important. And teach people that they're only as good as the food they can absorb. But if they can't digest it, they'll never absorb it. Digestion becomes the number one place to start. And food is a violent activity. Digestion is the most violent sport on the planet. Taking a hamburger and turning it into a pile of poo is a, is a, is a complex process. And so, you know, I've spent the last two decades taking all kinds of health issues and converting them into wellness stories, migraine headaches, hormone dysregulation, you know, insomnia, or real metabolic disease processes, diagnoses, and helping people through one food choice at a time, one detox program at a time, one gut restoration program at a time, that they can, too, reverse illnesses that they have developed over time. So, you know, if there was one good message that we could give to people is to hold on and hold fast the confession of our hope, because God designed our bodies to heal. And anything our bodies can develop, praise be to the God, it can undevelop. And that is where my heartbeat is in taking patients forward through the health and wellness journey. One story, two stories. Yeah, that's good. Thank you for sharing that, because that's such a story. It's a turning point for you. And I know a lot of people listening have experienced the same helplessness in different ways. So let me ask you, what shifted you after that? And then the second part is what changed you and how you saw health and healing? Yeah, so I went to a program where these two doctors got up, and they started talking about the Merck Manual, which is the Bible of medical science. So it's got every diagnostic protocol and program disease pathology found in it. And they listed out for two hours, a, what do y'all want to learn? And people were like, I want to learn about eczema, and I want to learn about cholesterol, and I want to learn about cancer, and I want to learn about ulcerative colitis, and I want to learn about whatever. And you name it, there was two, three, four sheets of paper of diagnosable disease processes that the class came up with in that timeframe. And I remember Dr. John looked over Dr. Joe and says, you got them all? And he says, I got them all. And he goes, all right, ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to teach you guys over the next 14 hours how to fix every one of these conditions without drugs and without surgery. And that was where the story opened. Then Monday morning, I had a guy walk up to me covered in psoriasis, bloody skin on his low back, and his hair just looked like it had basically a cradle cap, a dandruff galore. His joints were inflamed, and he had a version of psoriasis and arthritis, and his joints were just inflamed. But his body was riddled with this stuff so bad that he couldn't even take his kid to the local swimming pool. And he goes, can you help me with psoriasis? And I look at him, I go, why? I mean, why would you ask me that? He goes, I don't know. I just was wondering. I mean, almost like rhetorically, I wish I could fix this. I guess he was having a bad day. And I said, well, actually, I can. And he goes, well, great. Tell him what to do. So I emailed Dr. Joe and Dr. John. I said, hey, help me through this case. I got one. I want to see if I can fix it. And I thought I might get some results in 30 days, in some results. But you know what? The guy had a 95% remission of his situation in 18 days. It was incredible. And so I said to myself, that was wild. Well, then somebody else came up to me with blood pressure. We did a blood pressure protocol. We changed their diet. We put them on some garlic and a double garlic, particularly. And we opened up some channels in their liver with some beef liver fat. And boom, blood pressure shifted. Another person walks up to me with eczema. Same story, 18 days, 85, 95% remission. And I wasn't making but one or two diet recommendations. And I was just healing the gut, detoxing the liver. And so I go, okay, wait a second. I got to figure this out. So I did my very first detox. And I lost 20 pounds more. And my wife said, dude, this ain't right. You look too thin. And maybe I did, but it was toxins coming off the body. You see, nature's solution to pollution is dilution. So if you're bloated, if you're inflamed in your joints, if you're percolating trash out of your skin, that's a sign that your body can't handle the toxic load well. And it's symptomatically crying out saying, help me, somebody help me. Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely. Body's been designed by God to show you where the glitches are. And medicine today has just lost the art of reading the signs. And then I had two doctors walk up to me and say, hey, how'd you fix that psoriasis case? Hey, how'd you take care of that blood pressure case? And I realized these are the doctors asking me, a student at the time, how to fix medical situations that I was even shocked that I was able to assist in. And lo and behold, I had an answer that these guys were looking for. And I realized, oh, wow, what's the difference between me and them is I am doing biochemical work. I'm changing biochemistry of the body, enhancing the body, detoxing, cleaning the body, just like if you changed your air filters, rotated your tires, maintenance your oil, you know what I mean? Cleans your house. Everybody loves a clean kitchen. Everybody loves a clean bathroom. And when we take care of our body in the same manner, we see symptom patterns that we were not genetically born with begin to go away. And so then I started doing detoxes with people. And then one full body liver lymphatic detox led to a gallbladder detox, led to a spleen and blood cleanse, led to a lymphatic wash. I started just figuring out that every system of the body has the ability to clean itself, but sometimes it needs a little extra help. And that's where a coach comes in. And think about it. How many of your growth coach clients needed you to get to the next level? Because they couldn't solve their problem at the same level that the problems were created. They needed a different lens. And so I see biochemically the underlying issues by turning over all these stones and going, there it is. Guy comes in today, for example, and he's young, 26 years old, no real issue that he spoke of, knee pain. And as we got to talking, I discovered mold was hiding in his liver that was causing his knee pain. And he lives in a tiny house that has moldy air vents suspected. And he goes, you know, for the last eight months, I've noticed my training endurance is gone. And I go, dude, when were you going to tell me that? And this was like 35 minutes into the visit. And he even notated on his energy log, because I have people fill out this check sheet coming into the office. And he didn't indicate fatigue in any way, but he recognized it in his workouts through our conversation. And mold, yeast, will cause the body to internalize external output energy to go clean up a mess on its own inside. But it can't do both. It can't power through well if it's doing all this internal cleanup without additional help. And so now we were able to reload him up on B vitamins and minerals and clean out the gut of the mold and then figure out a way to fix this mold problem in his home. Because that's the next most logical step out of that moldy environment. There's always you gave us a lot right now. I want to I want to I want to break this up because the audience needs to break up. You gave us a lot. So I want to bring it back to, you know, you brought it to the health. Now, let's talk about what patterns they may have, because, you know, a lot of my audience and they're going to ask is, you know, yes, we have these things that we do, right? What patterns you see people when people when it comes to their health and their beliefs, because there's got to be, you know, something's going on with their belief system as well as their health. Something's happening there. What's going on? Yeah. So when most people, the complaints they come in with are headaches, fatigue and digestion issues. And yes, hormones, yes, weight loss. But when you get to the underlying whatever their number one complaint is, we see that the underlying issues is the digestion is slow, delivers back up and the body is just screaming for help. And so when I start asking questions and let's just go down the anxiety, emotional trail, most people come in and they are stressed out. The world doesn't stop for anybody. And most people on a zero to 10 scale are living on stress overload between a seven and a 10. That's nervous, overwhelmed, anxious or panicked at seven, eight, nine, 10. And so when I'm working with people, if they are living at that seven, eight, nine, 10 zone, I literally have to come alongside them and cool that jet. And because when the stress levels are in that seven, eight, nine, 10 zone, and that's a good scale for people to kind of go, am I anxious or am I overwhelmed? Am I nervous or am I panicky? If they can kind of figure out where they're at, they can determine if they're at a seven, eight, nine or a 10. And that's how you know you need intervention. You need help. And I use herbals to calm the nerves. I use herbals to feed the adrenals. I use nutrients to calm the mind and see that the body can shift from a fight or flight seven, eight, nine, 10 zone to a five, four, three, two or one zone where your body can actually heal. They call that parasympathetic. So fight or flight or rest and digest. Rest and digest as well. Real healing happens. But nobody lives there. We wake up stressed. We go to work stressed. We come home stressed. We go to bed stressed. And we're all looking for vices or checkpoints to get through our day, whether it's coffee, whether it's sugar, whether it's some other addiction. I would say that's the number one deep rooted issue that people are dealing with, even if they call it stress. Right, right. How does gut health play in overall wellness? Yeah, so let's just keep on the same trajectory as the stress button. The higher the stress, it tears apart the gut lining, tissue damage. There's three reasons people get sick. They have tissue damage. That could be a broken bone to gut lining tearing apart called leaky gut, ulcerative colitis, ulcers, Crohn's disease or irritable bowel or just belly pain or constipation. Like if you leave a trash bag on your back porch and you let it just sit there for a week and you pick it up, you might see some bugs underneath that bag. If you pick up that, you might see a weird ring of stuff and you're like, what in the world? That is essentially how bed sore starts to develop. And that's due to heavy weight on a piece of tissue with it not being able to breathe. So that's tissue damage. Okay. Secondarily is malnutrition. We live in the land of the empty harvest, and we are chocked full of what we call the sugar blues. And people are literally eating themselves sick and unable to control the restoration cycles because they're putting inflammatory food, fake food, make-believe food in, which is the third reason that people get sick is they're poisoned. So sugar, if introduced into our society today, would be a controlled substance. And people don't realize it, but they're consuming anywhere from 180 to 300 pounds of sugar per person per year. I know that's extreme, but cookies, candies, cakes, ice cream add up fast. And rice, cereal, pasta, potatoes, corn all convert to sugar. And there's something interesting about the sugary world. There is no such thing as an essential carbohydrate, but yet we are overindulging in these carbs. And a lot of these carbs are processed in a way that is laden with chemicals. So we are poisoning our population. We are starving them in the empty harvest because they're eating fake food. And the tissues aren't able to repair themselves when they are damaged or just needing to be overhauled and repaired. So those three areas, especially at the gut level, is now amplified with stress. When cortisol levels are left unchecked or adrenaline is left unchecked, you can't regulate your blood sugar. And again, further inflammation and acidity sets in. And now it's not just the gut lining that's starting to tear apart. The arterial lining is starting to get weak. The blood-brain barrier, your protective shield to your brain begins to deteriorate and break apart. And you're literally falling apart one bite at a time, one tissue at a time, one toxin at a time. And so we live in a culture today that we have to repair the gut, we have to feed the gut, and we have to activate the gut. And those three things can be done supplementally and through good diet and through good choices of not inoculating or eating certain foods. That's why we say what you eat is important, guys, but what you don't eat is more important. Absolutely. I can attest to that sugar thing. I can really... I moved to China for about nine months and I came home and I thought I was going to gorge on all the things that I didn't have. And boy, it got me... I was sick. I actually had a seizure from it. And that was the first day, the day afterwards. And it was so funny because the doctor that I had at the emergency, he says, you're generally healthy. They checked me for parasites because I was in China or whatever. And he's like, you're fine. What did you eat? And then I was like, well, I had this and that. She goes, can you just go ask whoever who cooked for you? And I said, my son. So he just asked me if he could read something off the package. And so he had one of the things and he said, I think you might have built up an intolerance to some of the stuff that we have here. And she put me on a strict test diet and no milk, no rice, none of this stuff. And she was telling me all this stuff and I was like, oh God, what am I going to eat? And the first thing she said was sugar. I hear that a lot, actually. Yeah. And the first thing she gave me was sugar, no sugar. And so ever since then, and I came home from China in 2012 and I haven't had sugar, that white substance since then. Yeah. But it made a difference. It made a big difference in my life. And what's more, it's still making a big difference. The next step where I would take somebody like that, that has already understands the impacts that sugar has on the body. Nancy Appleton wrote a book called Lick the Sugar Habit. This one that was pulled up is William Duffy's Sugar Blues. And it just talks about 150 different ways that sugar impacts negatively the brain, the cardiovascular system, skin, hair, nails, aging, vitality, energy, all the things. Where we would take you is go, all right, let's see what else might you be doing inflammatory. You nailed it with dairy could be a contributing factor, believe it or not. That was the second thing. Yeah. Second thing I took away. Yeah. You build up, right? And sometimes it's a, I hate to say a permanent thing, depending on the situation, but a lot of times you can heal the gut lining and every disease process that comes in as a root issue in the digestive tract. And it could be parasites, it could be yeast, and it could be just flat out damaged tissue. And so we are constantly trying to coach people to manage the insults from the outside world food and to rehab the inside of their body. Cause you're, you know, from your mouth to your hind end, you're 30 feet of intestines. And so we maximize absorption and digestion and manufacturing of nutrients. People don't realize it, but your energy is low because your gut lining's inflamed and you're not making B vitamins. Your gut lining manufacturers get, this is my favorite, 3 million more neurotransmitters are produced in the digestive tract than there are in the brain. 3 million to one, that's insane. And so recognizing that your stomach and digestive system are absolutely critical in well and lifestyle. And so we have to get this right whenever we're working on patients, cause you could eat the right food, but if you can't break it down and digest it well, you're missing a huge piece of the nutrients that you're working so hard to put in your body. And then that puts the strain on the system. And then the body compensates for that strain and a new symptom of adaptation pops up. And that just leads to another symptom. And then you go to a different doctor and what do they treat you? They treat you with another drug. No, no, no. Fix the underlying issues in the body and give the resources it needs through vitamins, minerals, essential fats, gut repair, liver detox, lymphatic washing, and boom, you will begin to see the body start working like it was originally designed. That's great. That's right. That's great. Are people really actually healing or just managing the systems that you've seen when they come into you? So I would say that if a person is willing to see the power of food and choose to eat right, rightly, people go, but Dr. Chopra, I want my cake. I want the donuts. I want the alcohol. I'd go, guys, if you knew you were eating poison, would you do it? And they're like, no. But it tastes so good, they say. And I go, I understand, but it's chemically designed that way. It's marketed that way. We sold a bill of goods, this old food pyramid, and people have a line and sinker that grains, we need six to 11 servings a day. And they don't realize that those grains are clogging your system up with 10 to 15 meals caked up inside of you. So people fight it, but absolutely, people heal. Absolutely, diseases are reversed. Absolutely, anything your body can develop, they can develop. But if you don't follow the right recipe, you won't get the right result. If you follow a chip cookie recipe, you should get what? Chocolate chip cookies. But if you follow a diabetic recipe, what are you going to get? Diabetes. If you follow a wellness plan and you mitigate what you're putting in in the form of inflammatory foods, you will literally see wellness pop out on the other side. And one of the things I've been teaching people for years is that air is the most important nutrient we have. And respiration, learn how to belly breathe, deep breathing exercises, meditation in that respect is powerful. Learning to discover what's called the still point where a person breathes in for four seconds, they hold their breath for four seconds, they release for four seconds and they hold their breath on the release for four. That's called block breathing, four second intervals. And you can do it differently, but that's just an easy four, four, four, four pattern. That still point, that space between where your breath starts and stops and starts and stops is healing and restorative to the vagus nerve. Healing and restorative to your parasympathetic system, resting and digesting in the still point, powerful. The second nutrient we need is sleep. And you go, well, that's not really a nutrient, but yet it is because if you don't sleep, you'll go cray cray. And it doesn't take long. And to see that manifest into a bad day, a moody day, an irritable day, a high blood pressure day, an anxious day, a ongoing repetitive bad habits ongoing from bad sleep. So sleep is my second most important nutrient. The third is sunlight. You need sunlight. I need sunlight. We need to be out in the sun more. And we live in a culture today that is indoors, that we close our blinds. We don't want the sun in. And heaven forbid, we go outside barefooted because we don't want to get bit by ants or anything like that. So that's the third nutrient that we need, sunlight. And that's where you get your vitamin D. That's where you activate a lot of these nutrients, calcium, magnesium, and other minerals to get into the cell. It's like a gatekeeper key. The fourth one is water. And drinking enough good quality water, we become dehydrated. And nature's solution to pollution is dilution. So if we are eating fake food, make-believe foods, sometimes foods, it stores up in our body. And our body literally becomes inflamed and toxic very quickly because of the high concentrated rate of accumulation. And that's why detox is so important. And then, of course, the last one is going to be what? Food. And so this is where we start eating real food and maximizing the digestive process. But where in societal history have we ever had access to so much food? Never, right? No. So I'm helping people realize that intermittent fasting is a great key- Oh, absolutely. ... way for living well. Doing rhythmic fasting throughout the month is a great tool. Managing the type of essential fats and essential amino acids. So healthy fats like olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, lard, butter, all safe, where it freaks people out when they hear me say that. Or healthier proteins, chicken, fish, turkey, eggs, beef, lamb, are great for us. So teaching people how to eat the essential right foods and avoid the artificial fake foods is a key ingredient in that fifth stage again. And so we play in this realm all the time. How do we get you moving and grooving? How do we get your body healthy and strong? How do we help you move from where you were to where we want you to be? And where does a person want to be? They want energy. They want vitality. They want longevity. But no one wants to get to the end of their life and wish they had better health. So this is where the whole concept of building a better version of yourself today. When's the best time to plant an oak tree? 20 years ago. But when's the second best time? Today, right now. And so your life, your health, your choice. So we just teach people how to live better, be better, stay better through choice and making that choice. Well, yeah, yeah, thank you for that. I will say that I was, I meditation, I started meditating, I think about the same time I gave up the sugar. And it has brought me to all of these knowings about myself and about my diet and about all of this just knowing it just it just, just like, Oh, no, you're not not fat. So I'm so thankful that you're saying a lot of this and audience, listen, this stuff is really important. I hope you have your pen. Or if you do, you know, you don't have it, then make sure you press the button and pause it, pull it back. And here's some more of this. But this is really important. You know, I want to ask you audience, where are you out of line with food? You know, how are you feeling after eating the meal? That's what I had to ask myself. Like, you know, I felt bloated. What am I eating? That's are you ignoring your body? I know in the black community, we do that a lot. We ignore our bodies, right? We don't eat the fattening foods. And then we sit down and we go to sleep. Are we ignoring those things? And what is what is your body trying to tell you? What patterns are repeating? And that's keeping us up. I can truly say that the patterns that I was taught is, you know, you have Sunday dinner, you sit there and you go and everything, you know, and you go to sleep, you know, and those are patterns that we learn. But I had to turn that around because I wasn't really a soul food eater, as it were. I wasn't one of those people. I wasn't one. I wanted salads and I wanted to taste a lot of everything. But, you know, those things are all patterns because the next level requires us to shift. Just what Dr. Chopra said is that we need to put more effort into learning and listening to our body. That's what we need today. Read the signs. That's absolutely right. Thank you, Dr. Chopra, for being here today. So, guys, you heard the story. Now let's talk about not talking about it anymore, but do it. If you're ready to stop guessing and stop repeating the same patterns and start creating real alignment in your life and your health, you need clarity. And this today was clarity. We identified the pattern, shift the mindset and create a direction that actually produces results. Thank you so much for being here today. I am your host, Edna White, and my esteemed guest, Dr. Chopra. And we're saying goodbye for now. God bless you guys. Have a fantastic and lovely evening. And yes, let's do it. One.