Dr. Terry Harmon: Autonomic nerve system. What is it? So my definition of it is different than most people’s definition of it. I’ve studied it like you can’t even imagine. So it’s the brain. So the health of your brain is going to impact the autonomic nerve system. It’s your spinal cord. It’s your peripheral nerves. It’s your vagus nerve. That’s the signal back and forth from between the gut and the brain, the gut and the brain.
There’s cardiac nerves. That we talk about we can feel things, we talk about a gut feeling, but there’s also a heart feeling. So there’s nerve branches associated with the autonomic nerve system in the heart. It’s the enteric nerve system, which are the nerves in the gut, which is different than the vagus nerve. And it’s also your soul and your spirit. All of this comes together to manifest as the state of your autonomic nerve system. All of it comes together. Okay? This is your autonomic nerve system.
So what do we want to work on? What do we want to work with? What do we want our effort to be? We want our effort to be there. Because as that gets healthier, you get healthier. As that gets sicker, you get more sick. Absolutely crucial.
Right? So if your soul gets healthier, guess what happens? Your autonomic nerve system gets healthier. If your spirit is allowed to express itself, your autonomic nerve system gets healthier.
More studies. So there’s not just one study on this. There’s hundreds, if not thousands, of studies. Heart rate variability has a prognostic factor for cancer what?
Audience: [inaudible]
Terry Harmon: Come on, you got to wake up. It’s Sunday. You’re almost done. Let’s go. Come on. Heart rate variability has a prognostic factor for cancer what?
Audience: Survival.
Terry Harmon: Who the frick wants to survive?
Speaker 2: All of us.
Terry Harmon: All of us. Ultimately, we want to thrive, right. We want to go from surviving to thriving. And it says here the sympathetic nerve system induces a metastatic switch in primary breast cancer. I’m going to say that again. Because you all are an educated audience. The sympathetic nerve system induces a metastatic switch in primary breast cancer. Which means that when you’re in sympathetic dominance, and you have primary breast cancer, sympathetic dominance is a switch that facilitates metastasis. You see that? And it says there’s a 30-fold increase in metastasis in sympathetic dominance.
Now, this is amazing. 2013 oncology letters. This is in it. Neuro-neoplastic synapses. I hope to chat with you all, but if you come talk to me, I’m going to say, “What did I talk about right there?” Like, literally. Don’t talk to me about turmeric or grass-fed beef unless you know this. Neuro-neoplastic synapses. There now has been discovered a direct connection between the nervous system and tumor cells. The nervous system … what’s that word?
Audience: Modulates.
Terry Harmon: Modulates the process of metastasis, cancer cell invasion, colonization, angiogenesis … what’s next?
Audience: Bone marrow.
Terry Harmon: Bone marrow, what’s next?
Audience: [inaudible].
Terry Harmon: What’s next?
Audience: Inflammatory pathways.
Terry Harmon: Inflammatory pathways. Is excess inflammation good? Say no.
Audience: No.
Terry Harmon: What modulates inflammatory pathways?
Audience: [inaudible].
Terry Harmon: Wake up, come on. What modulates it?
Audience: Nervous system.
Terry Harmon: Your nervous system modulates the inflammatory pathway. So if we curcumin it up, right, we have curcumin parties, right? Let’s just load up on curcumin. If you’re in sympathetic dominance, you’re going to have these inflammatory pathways activated over and over and over and over again. You are the greatest doctor that you could ever hire. Right? Don’t look for the guru. Yes, you want to work with really good people. But you need to understand what you have. Right? You are fearfully and wonderfully made, right? And you want to find doctors that work with that. Work with that, right? And then, the second part of that, remember, is that your soul knows well. Because that changes everything.
So again, sympathetic heart rate variability, when you start to test, is typically below 50. Parasympathetic is above 50. And there’s more to it than that, right? But you look here. This is your number. Crap. Right? This is your number. Heart rate variability. This is more studies. Role of the autonomic nerve system in tumorigenesis and in metastasis. This is all the research. The research is clear. It says, “Look, when your nerve system’s out of balance, when your nerve system’s sick, it literally facilitates cancer.” And along the way, it brings with it a whole lot of other stuff, like jacked-up hormones and gut issues and fatigue and poor sleep. Depression, all of that.
Correlation between the autonomic nerve system and neo-plastic disease. Again, all of this. So it’s funny, like Ty … you do this long enough, you become kind of battle-tested. You become battle-hardened. It’s like, when I hear the word quack, I just crack up, like it’s just funny. It’s kind of a funny word. And yet, this is the research. This is the science. This is our design. This is what we’ve been given. Each one of us, this is what we’ve been given.
Understanding design more. Both sympathetic and parasympathetic arms of the autonomic nerve system are instrumental in orchestrating what?
Audience: Neuro-immune.
Terry Harmon: Neuro-immune responses. So what’s controlling the immune system? Pause.
Nerve system controls the immune system. Right? The autonomic nerve system … this is all the science. The autonomic nerve system contributes to tumor in initiation and progression. Stressed-induced neuro-activation … what’s that first word?
Audience: Stress.
Terry Harmon: Stress-induced neuro-activation, increased primary tumor growth, and tumor cell dissemination. Central nerve system modulates immune function. tly, 2016, the sympathetic nerve system’s been implicated in cancer what?
Audience: [inaudible]. Progression.
Terry Harmon: Progression. Right?
So let’s look at this, right? Sympathetic nerve system is fight, or flight, or freeze. When you’re in sympathetic dominance, you’re going to be fighting something or somebody. You’re going to be freezing, like you’re just paralyzed, right? Or you’re going to be running. Right? This works great if you’re attacked by a tiger, or you have a deadline, or you’re in a Crossfit competition, right? It’s amazing. We need the sympathetic nerve system. God designed it. It’s just not designed to be in dominance and out of balance. Okay?
However, when you’re in sympathetic dominance, digestion shuts down, hormones go out of whack. So if I’m working with a patient, and they’re like, “Ah, test my hormones, and I went to this doctor and that doctor, and I’m estrogen dominant, and I don’t have testosterone, what kind of botanicals do you have?” I say, “We need to work on getting your nerve system healthy, because once your nerve system’s healthy, your hormones are gonna be healthy.” Right? We need to work on getting your nerve system healthy, because when your nerve system’s healthy, guess what’s going to happen? Your gut’s going to be healthy. You see how that works? Otherwise, we can just patch, right? “Oh, I found this, I found that, and that …” No. Screw that, right?
Studies have shown that overall mortality is related to autonomic imbalance with sympathetic dominance shortening both lifespan and healthspan, a measure of how long a person will remain healthy. So do I have you convinced yet? Say yes.
Audience: Yes.
Terry Harmon: All right, good. That’s a good answer. So until you check your HRV, you are very likely to be wrong. Right? I love people who say, “I’m really in tune with myself. I really know.” I’m like, “No, you don’t.” You really don’t. Right? I’ve done this for several, several years now. Until you
check your HRV, you’re very likely to be wrong on what your HRV is.
Getting to really know you. This is fun. This is where it’s at. Getting to know you by checking heart rate variability on a daily basis, you begin to … over time, if you pay attention, you’re going to discover the things that are going to push you into a healthier nerve system state, and the things that are going to tear you down. With that information, now you get to make choices. Now you get to make, in many cases, very courageous decisions. When you discover that when you go to Aunt Judy’s house for Thanksgiving, and your heart rate variability plummets, you’re
like, “Oh, crap. What am I going to do?” You’re not going to go to Aunt Judy’s house again. Right? You’re not going to do that, right?
When you discover that every day you go to work, and it pulls your HRV down, “What do I do, Dr. Harmon?” I don’t know. Die or make a thriving-based decision. Right? “Well, I can’t quit my job today.” Okay, well, develop a plan. Develop a plan. Right?
Should we be vegan, should we juice, should we eat cow testicles? Like, what should we do? What should we do? How about we just eat and experiment and test? Right? Because maybe, just maybe, you should eat kale, but you should … well, grass-fed beef, right? Why don’t we just find out? Why don’t we just discover that? Right? It’s amazing, right?
Every time I go play basketball, like play basketball like BillyDee, he surfs, right? Every time I play basketball, that elevates my HRV. When I don’t play basketball for two or three weeks, it just starts to drain. Starts to drain. Right? Absolutely amazing, right? So how long is it going to take? It’s right there.
Audience: Three to nine months.
Terry Harmon: Three to nine months. Right? I love you. Don’t call me next week and say, “I haven’t got this thing figured out.” And I’m like, “I told you.” It’s going to take three to nine months of you journaling and charting what’s going on, right? Because you’re fearfully and wonderfully made.
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