S5E1 Functional Medicine with Magic Barclay

Functional medicine involves looking at the systems of the body. It looks at what each system does and how it works with the other systems. We often say, “no system works alone.” We particularly look at the root cause because if you don’t look at that, then other issues keep arising.

If people don’t believe in themselves, they’re not going to get well. We see a lot of people just given diagnosis after diagnosis, label after label, and they start believing that’s who they are. Magic believes that this is a really awful way to live because you’re a person, you are not the label that was given to you by your doctor. You are still a person. So, what they do in functional medicine is uncover: Who is that person? And who do [they] want to be?

If you find yourself around people that increase your stress, don’t be around them or decide to be around them for five or 10 minutes. Give yourself a time cap and tell yourself after 10 minutes “I’m out of this situation and I’ll be okay”. If you find you are stressed by work, a doctor’s appointment or driving, either take yourself out of the situation, find an alternative, or give yourself a time limit so that you know internally it’s not forever. And don’t sit there thinking, “I’m so stressed,” as your body hears that and guess what? It replies, “Really? This is a low level of stress, you want to be stressed? I’ll raise the bar.”

Geoff Allix   

Welcome to the latest edition of the Living Well with MS podcast. And this edition, we are talking about functional medicine with Magic Barclay. After a long struggle with cancer, diabetes, Lyme disease and lymphedema Magic’s life was turned upside down when she could no longer work due to how bad her illnesses had got, she subsequently dedicated herself to learning and healing, employing techniques from all over the globe and decided to join forces with other holistic health practitioners who had been in a similar situation. So welcome to the podcast magic. 

 

Magic Barclay   

Thanks for having me. It’s great to be here. 

 Geoff Allix   

I’m excited to start off with Could you introduce yourself and tell the listeners a bit about your background, your health journey and your professional life? 

 

Magic Barclay   

Sure, well, my professional life, I am the lead practitioner at Holistic Natural Health in Australia. And I got here because I was following the medical model, the Western medical model, and it kept letting me down. And so I wanted to see what else was out there. And certainly when all my conditions all came to a head, I had to look at my options. So I started looking at natural medicine, functional medicine. And what I’ve done is I’ve put together modalities from both of those. And now that’s what I work with. So, you know, I’ve applied these practices to myself and to my family. And now that’s what I help clients with. 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

So what is functional medicine? And how is that different from the traditional medicine that we might be used to from our GP or from our neurologist? 

 

Magic Barclay   

So functional medicine is looking at the system to the body, it’s looking at what each system does and how it works in with the other systems. So we often say “no system works alone.” And particularly taking a look at the root cause. So not just what the condition is that you have. But what caused it, what started it because if you don’t look at that, then other things keep happening. And autoimmune is a good example, there’s a label called polyautoimmunity. And that’s when you have more than one autoimmune condition diagnosed. And that’s because the root cause is still there, you can chase the symptoms, or you can chase the root cause. The medical model, the Western medical model. Unfortunately, doctors are time poor, they’re resource poor. And you know, we’ve got insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies and the like getting in on the piece of pie as well. And so what that encourages, is treating in reductionism, which is treating the symptom or the diagnosis that you’re coming in with, rather than what caused it. 

 
 Geoff Allix   

So you’re not, this isn’t talking about crystals and things like that, you’re talking about sort of scientific stuff still. But looking more into into what’s causing things. 

 
 Magic Barclay   

Yes. But having said that, I do use essential oils, because there is a lot of scientific evidence out there that says, you know, they have antimicrobial properties. They’re the smallest molecule that crosses the blood brain barrier. And so there’s numerous conditions that involve a damaged blood brain barrier. So I’m going to want to use what crosses that other than a pathogen. So something on the side of good look, I do love crystals, not too sure on their healing benefits, but I love the look of them. A lot of my friends are crystal people. But yeah, that’s not quite what I use in practice.  

 
 Geoff Allix   

So what is the difference between a holistic approach versus a reductionist approach to your health? 

  

Magic Barclay   

So with a holistic approach, we’re using holism. So we’re looking at the whole body as a whole, we’re looking at trauma, we’re looking at what happened in the psyche. So what our beliefs, what our values are, we’re basically looking at the whole thing you cannot expect to get well, if you still think that you’re unwell. That’s one thing. So you know, we have to look at is this person holding themselves back and I’m not victim blaming or shaming here. But is this person holding themselves back from unlocking some potential wellness that could be there? Because we know that with the PNEI of trauma, for example, which is a Psycho-Neuro-Endocrine-Immunology of trauma, these things, these body systems are all linked back to how we think, how we feel, what we believe, and what we make out of a traumatic event. So with holism, we’re looking at all of that and we’re looking at all of the body systems. We’re also looking at the environment. We’re looking at the support system someone has, and we’re looking at how they feel about themselves, so treating in whole. 

  

Geoff Allix   

So then certainly the placebo effect is a is a documented thing, isn’t it? They know that if you give someone a fake medicine, then a proportion of those people get better. Because they believe they’re going to get better. So there’s definitely it’s not, you know, this is scientifically proven, isn’t it? It’s known. A lot of these things are, you know, they’re known about, but are people doing anything with them? That’s the problem, isn’t it? I think, 

 
 Magic Barclay   

Well, that’s it. And so that’s where beliefs and thoughts come into it. And you know, you can give someone a plant or you can give them a pill, it really doesn’t make a difference. If they don’t believe in it, they’re not going to get well. And if they don’t believe in themselves, they’re not going to get well. And that’s the main thing. So, you know, we see a lot of people just given diagnosis after diagnosis, label after label, and they start believing that’s who they are. And you know, that’s a really awful way to live. Because you’re a person, you are not the label that was given to you by your practitioner, or by your doctor, or by your specialist, you know, or by whoever you’ve been talking to, you are still a person. And so what we do is we uncover who is that person? Who do you want to be? What do you want to be? Do you want no pain? You know, do you want a proper gait or movement style? What do you want? And why do you want it? Why is it important to you? And that’s a really big part of treatment. 

 
 Geoff Allix   

So you mentioned PNEI what is that?  

  

Magic Barclay   

Yeah, it’s something that Dr. Gabor Mate, he spoke about in his book When the Body Says No. And when he published that it was just an emerging field in science. So it’s looking at what the limbic system. So our central part of our brain, where are our thoughts and emotions, feelings are all created, what that has to do with the nervous system. So it sends messages to the nervous system, what that then has to do with the endocrine system. So it brings in some hormones to back it up. And then what that means in the immune system, which is usually where we get an autoimmune as a result of all these other things going unchecked along the way. So you know, it’s really fascinating stuff when you see it all link up. And that’s what we work with. 

 
 Geoff Allix   

And a couple of other things that terms, I think about terrain theory and germ theory and how that relates to autoimmune disease. Could you describe those a little bit? 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

So when we look at germ theory, we’re looking at, you know, treat the germ. So we’re looking at things like antibiotics, for example, not just antibiotics, but it’s a good example. So you’re treating the germ, but what you’re causing is another imbalance. So we know that viral cells, bacterial cells, and fungal cells all keep each other in check to some extent, okay, they’re the big three. If you have one over flourish, the other two will respond. And if you take one out, the other two will respond. That’s germ theory, right? So it’s treating the germ, rather than the terrain where the germ is living. So where the pathogen is, why is it there? What’s it doing? What systems are involved in trying to fight it? So when we’re looking at Terrain theory, we’re really looking at what the systems of the body are doing, again, rather than just prescribing a medication or just prescribing one thing. So it really comes back to holism versus reductionism.  

 
 Geoff Allix   

So it’s like, if I get an infection, and the doctor says, I should take antibiotics, I think is good thing that gets rid of the infection, but then I know that would kill off all of the flora in my gut, which I know a lot of that is good. And then I need to build that up. So I’m sort of like, is that what you’re sort of saying? It’s like you killing off because it just kills everything. And you know, a lot of those things are good things. 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

Yeah. The other thing that taking antibiotics does is, of course, it kills off all of their bacteria and not just the bad ones. So then what we often see is a fungal flourish. So we see a flourish of Candida. You know, I can’t even count how many times I’ve spoken to someone just in passing, and they’ve been like, “I’ve been on antibiotics and now I’ve got thrush” or “now I’ve got a UTI, I wonder why that is.” That’s because that Candida, that fungus has now accelerated and flourished because there’s no bacteria keeping it in check. And so same thing, someone will come down with a cold after antibiotics, that’s viral replication. Because there’s no bacteria keeping it in check. The other thing that will happen is good bacteria in the gut are very responsible for neurotransmitter production. And also for things like serotonin and melatonin. So someone after a long course of antibiotics, may have problems sleeping, they may feel quite depressed and just not able to feel happy. They could be doing, you know, something that makes them happy in a normal time. But post antibiotics, they just feel that lowness, they can’t sleep, they get UTIs or thrush. And the cascade continues. And so  this is why we have to look at these big three pathogens in sync and together, and why treating terrain is important. The other issue with terrain theory is if you don’t treat the terrain, you’re going to get sick again. So imagine a fish tank, okay, you’ve got a fish tank, the fish are looking sick. So you take them out, you clean the tank, and you put them back in, but you haven’t cleaned the pipes and the filters underneath. We all know that under the fish tank, cabinet there’s all that, you know, filtration. So this is germ theory, the fish go back into a clean tank, and a week later, they’re sick. Again, they’re dying, they’re floating, you know, it’s not fun. But if we look at Terrain theory, we take the fish out, we clean the tank, we change over the plants, we look at all the gravel, and then we flush out the filtration system, we make sure that is all working, all the stuff that you don’t see in the cabinet underneath the tank, then you put clean water in pH balance it, put the fish back in have happy healthy fish. So that’s the difference. That’s terrain theory. 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

And so is that connected, because I’ve heard you’ve eliminated harsh chemicals from your home and life. So I’m guessing that’s connected? And also, how would you go about do that? How would you start to do that? 

  

Magic Barclay   

Yeah, so in my home, we don’t use chemicals at all, the place smells like essential oils at all times. And so what we’ve done is we’ve replaced things like our dishwashing detergent, we’ve replaced things like what we mopped the floors with, the toilet cleaner, with things that are naturally based. So we’ve reduced our toxic load in the home, which gives our bodies a chance to cope with what’s around them. And it’s quite simple, you don’t have to spend a lot of money, you can look at things like lemon juice and bicarb, something that we often have in the cupboards in the fridge at all times or growing in the garden. So with that you can add vinegar, and you can clean your toilets, you can clean your floors, you can clean your sinks, you can wipe down your windows. And so it’s now eliminated about four or five different toxic cleaners just with three everyday products. And this is what’s important because when we’re looking at toxicity and chemicals, we’re really looking at the liver. Okay, and the liver is your burning furnace organ. It has to go through every single blood cell goes through there every single day, every thought every feeling and every enzyme, every vitamin, every mineral, basically every chemical process in your body, the things that you’re breathing in, the things that you’re touching, the things that you’re eating, your liver has to categorize whether it’s friend or foe. And so when we reduce our toxic footprint, we’re giving our liver a chance to do the job it needs to do and that’s certainly important with any condition not just an autoimmune. Any condition for long lasting health you have to reduce your toxicity. 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

There’s all sorts of stuff obviously on the internet. And I’d this probably doesn’t apply in Australia it shouldn’t do but it might do that horse chestnuts like conkers which we have this time of year. We’re in the autumn or fall in the UK.  I know we’ve sent a lot of things from the UK to Australia that we shouldn’t have like rabbits. I don’t know if that’s one of them, but they actually use conkers and apparently you can you can use for washing clothes. And it was used historically this sort of back in time and they said, actually, it’s perfectly good. And it’s like put your chemical free and does a brilliant job washing clothes. So the’re called soap nuts here.  So a couple of things. So we talked about PNEI, and you use a technique called Feeling Result Action. Could you walk us through what that involves? 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

Definitely, I love this technique, because anyone can do it. And I don’t often give techniques away, but I thought this was important for your audience to hear. So Feeling Result Action is, I feel: so “I am grateful,” for example, that’s the feeling, right? You’re looking at the result that you want, “I am grateful that now I am pain free.” That’s the result and the action that you took, “because I have reduced my toxicity or because I have focused on me.” So anytime that we come against something that’s stressful, we can do the Feeling Result Action technique, and change our internal dialogue. And really stop the P from the PNEI cascading another trigger or, or flow of symptoms. So another one, I am grateful, I’ll use grateful again, just before this podcast, my desk actually broke. I’m going to use that one. I look like my desk is sinking on the Titanic. But “I am grateful that my desk is stable because I used half my bookshelf to prop it up.” There you go, feeling result action. I could be sitting here going, Wow, my desk broke, right before a podcast. You know, but I’m not. I’m going I’m grateful that I had those books there. So when we do a Feeling Result Action, we’re changing that internal dialogue. And that in itself is something that we can do every day to stop that raise in adrenal hormones that keep us in a stress state. And the reason this is important is when we’re in a stressed state, we get sick. 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

And so there’s a lot of research about stress, and certainly something that Overcoming MS promotes is stress reduction. That’s one of the key pillars. And there’s a lot of research that stress causes or exacerbates symptoms, and leads to inflammation. So what tips would you have to reduce those levels of stress? 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

Sure, well, the first thing is change your thought patterns, right? So your body, hears what you’re saying, what you’re thinking, what you’re feeling, and it will match you. So if you walk down into your lounge room from your bedroom first in the morning, and you’re going, “Wow, I’m in so much pain,” your body hears that. And it says “you’re in pain, I better keep that going. You’ve just told me it is so. So I will make it so.” So then you will get more pain. If you walk out the bedroom down into the lounge room and you say “Do you know what? I think I’m going to be able to get such and such done today,” then you’ll get such and such done today, you’re really languaging what is going on there. So when we’re in a stressed state, our body hears that. And that’s where this Feeling Result Action comes in. Because it’s just one simple technique to lower your stress. The other thing is recognize what stresses you. Okay, so some people will have hot flashes when they’re stressed. Some people will feel pain, some people will withdraw. So look at what that is, and then take yourself out of a stressful situation. Nothing in life, and I say nothing in life is worth you dying from stress. And yes, you can die from stress because it does cause inflammation, it triggers inflammation, it adds to a whole lot of other things. You know, it just starts to snowball of all the systems of your body meeting that point, that stress point. So take yourself out of the situation. If you find yourself around people that increase your stress, don’t be around them or decide to be around them for five or 10 minutes. Give yourself a time cap and tell yourself after 10 minutes I’m out of this situation and I’ll be okay. If you find it’s work, if you find it’s a doctor’s appointment, if you find it’s driving, again, either take yourself out of the situation, find an alternative, or give us have a time limit so that you know internally it’s not forever. And don’t sit there going, I’m so stressed as your body hears that and guess what? It goes, “Really? This is a low level of stress, you want to be stressed? I’ll raise the bar,” and you just don’t want that happening. 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

And some other things. Some of our listeners might be familiar with a Th1 and Th2 immune responses. But there’s also Th17. So could you go over all of those actually, if people are unfamiliar, and how they relate to autoimmune conditions, like MS. 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

Sure. So there are actually five known immune types at the moment, and they’re doing a whole lot more study. And I’m excited to see what else they come up with. But we start with that innate immune system. So this is our immune type that we’re born with. And our innate immune system comprises all our barriers. So blood-brain barrier, gut, digestive system, skin, you know, the barriers, and then from there, that has three to five days to incur the pathogen and put it back into a latent state. In layman’s terms, you get sick, say, a cold, snotty nose feel like your head spinning for three days. And then you’re fine. It’s like, Oh, what happened? It’s gone. Great. Your innate immune system’s done it. Now on top of that, we have an acquired immune system. And most of the time, we sit in what’s known as Th3, which is a neutral system. And imagine Th3 is the conductor with his sticks. And I don’t know how many podcasts I’ve said this, I should know what they’re called. And I still don’t, I still don’t. So Th3 is a conductor, right? And something happens like a pathogen that the innate immune system can’t cope with, in three to five days. So kicks it to the acquired system. So Th3 or T regulation says go to Th1, right, that’s your infection fighting system. So th one is characterized by aches and pains, joint pain, no heat in your knees, when you’re walking, a good example of this is the flu, we get the flu, and it’s almost like your hair hurts, like everything hurts for another three to five days on top of the first three, and you want to sleep and you’ve got the hot sweats. And, you know, you just you feel like if you walk down the hall, you might shatter. It’s bad. But then you come good. So you jump out of Th1 back to Th3 and then we have Th2. Now Th2 is the opposite of Th2. So Th1 breaks down things. So it breaks down pathogens, and Th2 is anabolic. it nurtures things. So we need to go to Th2 for things like pregnancy, for when we get a parasitic infection that drives Th2 because if it doesn’t, the parasite has no host you can live with. So it wants to be nurtured rather than be broken down. So we jumped back to Th3. Now there’s one more, and that’s Th17. And this is your broken barrier system. So broken skin barrier looks like psoriasis. A broken gut barrier can look like Crohn’s down the line. And a broken blood-brain barrier can look like MS, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, because undigested proteins have crossed that broken barrier, gone to the brain, and now you have inflammation. And so this is where some of these conditions, there’s a lot of study and a lot of research papers out there. And they’re saying these are Th17 immune response-based conditions. So not relegating it totally to well, you know, if you correct the immune response, you correct the disease, but contributing to it. So when we’re looking at broken barriers, you know, we’re looking at some of these bigger conditions. And the last place you want that is the blood-brain barrier, as I said, not much crosses that. Pathogens do undigested proteins do. But very few, you know medicines or supplements do. Fortunately for us essential oils do. So that’s where we can go after a root cause go after a pathogen and put them back into a latent state. And we have to do that before we heal the blood-brain barrier. 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

So, the blood brain barrier, there are some essential oils that can help in that area. And also the other one you mentioned was leaky gut, which I’ve heard a lot about with with MS. So that’s when something passes from the gut. into the bloodstream that shouldn’t presumably? So how how do you know if that’s a problem with you? Can you do something more with ourselves? 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

You can. So leaky gut, you know, when I talked earlier about a root cause? These undigested proteins are coming from the gut. So they’re things that have made it through a broken barrier in the gut, now, might not be a full broken barrier, as in Crohn’s, but it is a leaky gut. And so many people are diagnosed with leaky gut. What that means is the junctions between the cells in the gut, gut wall or gut lining have been pushed apart. And it’s enough to let an undigested protein go through. And you know, we’re not just talking protein from what you’re eating it’s proteins from the things going on in your body as well. So when this gets into the bloodstream, it’s not supposed to be there. So it then gets moved on to the next port of call. And it’s when these broken barriers, let the proteins undigested proteins into the bloodstream, they can get to the blood brain barrier. And if your barriers are broken long enough, those undigested proteins will get into the brain area. And so particularly things like Parkinson’s, there’s a lot of study out there saying that is folded proteins that are up in that brain area that shouldn’t be there. And you know, MS. There’s more research going on about that. But again, there’s so much saying it’s stemming from a leaky gut. So what can we do with leaky gut? Well, we can reduce that toxic load as the first thing, we can try and eat as organically as we can. Right. So you’re reducing your toxic load, you’re going to try and eat locally produced stuff as well. Because, you know, if you’re going to eat something that’s been on a track in in a freezer and a transporter for two weeks, it’s probably not going to have the right nutritional value for you. So try and source your food locally, seasonally, and organically. And that alone will give you a fighting chance to help your gut. And the other thing is, you know, try and avoid really inflammatory things. And we’ve heard this a million times, avoid your storebought convenience foods, avoid soft drink, avoid, tap water, tap water has a lot of stuff in it, that is not good for your gut. So you should be drinking structured water, you know, it’s filtered water, and you add in some of the goodness to it. And so there’s a lot of things we can do with leaky gut. Unfortunately, it is the precursor to a lot of these conditions. 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

So to wrap up, would you say if people look to eat a locally produced organic, whole food diet and look at stress reduction, then that would help with the holistic approach to health care? Or is there any other tips that are sort of like just as a quick catch. 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

That’s a really good start. And you know what, it’s about getting started. So one of my mentors has a saying, and he says, ‘it’s not about getting it, right. It’s about getting it started.” And so with our health, we want to do that as well. We want to get started on supporting our body, on reducing that toxic load, whether it be from what we’re eating, what we’re doing, what we’ve got in the home, or what we’re thinking and feeling and bringing that stress down, because that is going to give us a good start. And anyone that’s had chronic illness knows how stressful that in itself can be. So it’s about really looking at that and going “Okay, today’s a good day, tomorrow can be a better day.” And not kind of living in the ‘I’m in pain. I’m so stressed” because as I said, keep saying that your body will match you. So say “look today’s good, but it could be better.” 

 
 

Geoff Allix   

Okay, and with that, I first I’d like to say that there’s a lot of extra information in the show notes. So I’d encourage people to check out the links in the show notes. And have a look at more information about Magic Barclay’s work, and I’d like to say thank you very much for joining us Magic Barclay. 

 
 

Magic Barclay   

Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.