128- Ways to Treat Fibromyalgia with Dr. Rodger Murphree

Bryan Carroll: [00:00:15] If you suffer from systemic pain, soreness, and fatigue. And you haven't been able to find out what is happening to you. Then you definitely want to listen to this episode.

Oftentimes it takes years to reach a conclusive diagnosis for different conditions. And in those years, your condition can worsen quite a bit. If you find a practitioner that knows what to look for, then you can catch signs of these conditions early on, which will give you the best chance to keep it under control.

What's up everyone. I'm Bryan Carroll and I'm here to help people move more, eat well and be adventurous. And one of the conditions we'll be talking about today is called fibromyalgia. Dr. Rodger Murphree specializes in fibro and other complex cases. So he knows exactly what to look forward to help people out is actually hosting an online summit, starting on Monday, September 8th, all about fibro, which he will have.

A few dozen practitioners on the summit to speak. It will last about a week and each day new interviews are released. So to learn more, go to summitforwellness.com/fibrosummit. And before we chat with dr. Roger, I am looking at running a, a 100 squat challenge during the month of October to help people build leg strength and endurance and lower chances of injury for the upcoming winter ski and snowboard season.

This would be a donation based challenge, and you can choose how much to donate and all profits will go to Northwest avalanche center who help provide avalanche education and daily avalanche forecast for the Northwest. With so many unknowns with the upcoming ski season. I think a lot of people will be heading into the back country, which is why I want to support and wack to help spread avalanche awareness.

If I get enough people interested, then we will have 31 days of squats in 31 different positions. So if you want to do the challenge, go to summit for wellness.com/squat challenge to sign up. You can register for as little as free or donate, whatever amount you want. Okay. Enough chitchat. Let's dive into my conversation then with Roger, dr.

Roger Martin free has a medical clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, where he focuses on fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, cardiovascular disease, mood disorders, and other difficult to treat illnesses. He is also a lecture author and we'll be hosting a fibromyalgia summit that begins on September 28th.

Thank you for coming onto the show. Roger. 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:02:55] Oh, Bryan, this is, this is going to be fine. Really? Thanks for having me. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:02:58] Of course. And I'm excited to talk to you about such a important topic with fibro, but before we get into that, let's dive into your background and learn a little bit more about you. 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:03:08] Well, so Bryan, I'm a board certified chiropractic physician board certified nutritional specialist.

I've been in private practice 29 years. And every, every time I say that, I think, Oh my gosh, has it been that long? but the last 20 years, the last two decades, I've specialized in fibromyalgia and I've written a few different books, but my book, treating and beating fibromyalgia chronic fatigue syndrome is now in his fifth edition.

The sixth edition will come out in November. And, I, you know, I started out as your typical chiropractor. I had a real busy chiropractic practice and doing hands on. treatments for patients with migraines and low back pain and neck pain. And I got interested in functional medicine early on and started taking all those courses really before we had a name for it.

It was just called nutrition. Jeffrey bland, the father of functional medicine. And, that just grew, you know, I started getting medical misfits that were referred to me here in Birmingham, Alabama. They count that, you know, kind of been everywhere and weren't getting held by the traditional medical community here.

And one day I had a patient that came to me that had fibromyalgia. This was 20 years ago. I didn't know what fiber, what was fibromyalgia, how to even pronounce the thing. And I just started working with her and all I did was the stuff I was doing for my other patients. my practice had gone from, you know, 80 patients a day down to about 20 or 30 cause I was just doing functional medicine and, and I just, I changed her diet.

I did some testing and, you know, in, in, in two months she was well. And, and I, you know, I naively thought, well, if that's fibromyalgia, okay, that's what, you know, come home and bring them on. And, and I quickly learned, you know, that they're not that easy. And in, I got flooded with new patients cause no one really knew anything about fibro and, you know, I had a decision to make, I could either, I could either just say, I don't want to take care of these complicated patients or I could try to do everything I can.

Could do learn what made them tick and that's, what's fueled me for the last, 20 years. Yeah. Yeah. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:05:09] And it's interesting that you talk about, people with difficult, chronic States that they're in because you know, these people, they've tried a lot of different things before they come to you. And so if you can make a difference, you've just completely changed their entire world.

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:05:23] Yeah. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:05:24] Yeah, it's super cool. So, let's dive more into fibro. What is fibro? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:05:29] Well? So he does a lot of myths understanding about fiber Majaila, you know, unfortunately there's still some doctors that don't believe fiber magic exists. The fibromyalgia is a syndrome. It's a group of symptoms. That people have, and we give it a name.

So it's, you know, these common symptoms are diffuse, achy, sometimes disabling pain, low, low energy brain fog, restless leg syndrome, irritable bowel, sometimes anxiety, depression. And then there can be some other things that come in underneath it, as you can, you can tell it's a, it's a, a syndrome made up of these diffuse.

Type of symptoms and we give it that name. It affects mostly women. So 98% of the people that have it are women. And there's about 10 million people worldwide that have fibromyalgia or 10 million people probably in the USA, they main or so in the U S and, typically females between the age of 36 and 70.

And. It is a, it's an illness that, as I mentioned is really not very well understood. And so they typically fall through the medical cracks cause doctors really don't know what to do with them. Hmm. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:06:34] So do you have any ideas or theories on why it's mostly women that deal with it? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:06:40] Well, it's a great question.

And one that I've really been trying to tackle for 20 years, I think, you know, and obviously the first thing you think about is hormones, right? History, Jim progesterone in particular. And I think there's some role that estrogen and progesterone play with the, the brain neuro, the brain neuro hormone, serotonin serotonin is the happy hormone and.

Individuals with fibromyalgia are low in serotonin that's. I mean, that's the thing that makes it fibromyalgia and yeah, women tend to be a more, we're likely to be low in serotonin mint and be more likely in norepinephrine. Now that's a, that's not to be sexist or, you know, that's kind of a sweeping statement, but from just doing this for so long, I wrote a book years ago, treating and beating anxiety and depression.

With orthomolecular or orthomolecular medicine. And for period of time, I worked with a lot of anxiety, depression patients. And what I found Bryan was that men typically they had problems with the stimulating hormone, norepinephrine. Women had a problem with low serotonin. And so I think that there's some role with estrogen dominance that really drives you serotonin level down.

And when that happens, that's when fibromyalgia starts to rear its ugly head. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:07:56] Interesting. So do you think environmental impact and, all these, different types of estrogens that's in the environment can also impact that for women as well? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:08:06] You know, I'm not sure because I still haven't. We're not, there's not anything that is definitive about that theory that the other people have had that theory as well.

And we've looked at it. There's certainly these exogenous. estrogen polymers that are out there that sabotage, you know, women cause them have endometriosis and fibroid tumors and those things that are out there. I think they certainly could play a role. You know, the thing that really gets individuals with fibromyalgia, what brings it on is stress.

And I gotta be careful that when I say that, cause a lot of times, if I don't explain that a little further, people think, Oh, those fibromyalgia patients are a bunch of wimps, but they're not, you know, because you and I would agree as functional medicine practitioners. No, probably 90% of the people we take care of that's stress that brings on their condition, whether that's short term stress or years of stress, eventually their body breaks down.

So a fibromyalgia it's, you know, it's stress that has finally. cause they're self healing, self regulating systems to go haywire to break down. They, they, they blown a few, you know, they're hyper, they're almost pituitary adrenals they're self-regulating autonomic nervous system glands that regulate everything that gets under too much stress.

And then one day there's a straw that comes up a straw that comes on the breaks, the camel's back. And that could be, that could be a hysterectomy. You know, it could be a surgery that could be death of a loved one. It could be a trauma and auto accident. it could be, you know, something that comes along and then they're just never the same.

Bryan Carroll: [00:09:42] So if someone does have fibro and, you know, they treat it, they get, they feel a lot better than pretty much any type of big, stressful type of event could trigger it again. 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:09:56] Yeah. And you know, the thing was fibro is it's a lot of doom and gloom out there, unfortunately, because the medical profession has pretty much given up on fibro.

Because conventional medicine is a dead end and that's not to bad mouth. Conventional medicine is just, you can't drug your way out of fibromyalgia. You know, as you mentioned, as I just mentioned, there's just so many symptoms, you know, they can't sleep. So they have insomnia, they're exhausted. They have this chronic pain, they have irritable bowel, bloating, gas into gestion.

sometimes they have CBO all these symptoms. And so in the conventional medical world, as you know, it's all about treating symptoms and there's certainly a place for that, you know, but. For this community, if you're treating, you know, if you're, you're giving a drug for every symptom before, you know, it they're on half a dozen to a dozen drugs, you know, drugs to put them to sleep a drug, to wake them up a drug, to, to speed them up a drug, to slow them down.

And, you know, they get on that medical merry-go-round and pretty soon what happens and as the drugs are creating more side effects and more symptoms that you can't even separate, is it fibromyalgia? Or is it the side effects and they get into that, into that challenge pretty quickly. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:11:05] It's interesting because we know that a lot of different medications can impact gut health, and influence the microbiome.

And if people are taking a lot of different, medications, and we don't really know their interaction with the microbiome, then it could cause some pretty severe imbalances. And we also know that a lot of serotonin is created in the gut. So are you looking at gut health for fibro patients? Yeah, absolutely.

And then, what, what type of stuff were you doing for the gut in that case? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:11:35] Yeah. So let me make sure I don't neglect your, your question just a moment ago. here's the thing about fibro? So the doom and gloom is, is once you get it, you have it forever. You just have to learn to live with it. Now, I don't believe, and I'm sure you don't either that anybody should learn to live with chronic pain, no energy irritable bow, where they don't know whether they can leave the house.

No, no, that's not living that's existing. So, but you can get your life back if I were Moussa. And, and that really, the only hope of that is getting healthy and that's, and that comes with functional medicine, right. Finding and fixing the underlying causes of the symptoms because fibromyalgia is just a name.

Right. It's a name given to describe these symptoms, but it doesn't cause anything. So what we want to do is to look for the causes and as we start to unwind their symptoms fit fine and fixed underlying causes, we see that they get tremendously better as they get healthier and healthier, and then they can go in.

It doesn't matter what you call it, remission cured a matter, but you're right. They're always vulnerable. To stress that is their Achilles heel for the microbiome and for the gut and health that's part of the four, Four steps that are part of the, what I call the Murphree method. the jumpstart protocol, number one, restorative sleep.

Number two is saturating the sails with high doses, but the right doses of vitamins minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids. Which are the building blocks of the hormones that they become depleted in. The number three is fixing adrenal fatigue, their stress coping glands and number four, but certainly not last is you've got to fix anything, wrong in their either their digestion or their elimination.

So the GI. Any kind of GI disorders have to be fixed because if not, they're, they're always gonna regenerating inflammatory chemicals, whether that's from leaky gut or they're always going to have issues with absorption because of CBO or a yeast overgrowth, or, you know, a malabsorption. So, food allergies.

but yes, I spend a fair amount of time working with them to make sure we clean that gut up and make sure that they don't have any food allergies or any kind of. bugs that are creating inflammation or the inability to absorb their nutrients, that they should be getting in their diet. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:13:53] So that method that you just said, is that in the step by step order?

So one, two, three, four, that's the order that you follow? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:14:00] Well, I'll say this, you know, the number one thing is sleep. Okay. That's it, that trumps everything. So really in a lot of ways, and even in the early days in the early 1990s, the people that were writing about fibromyalgia for really knew a whole lot about it, Medallia skin, some of these other people that were the big researchers in fibro, they said they really know if I were manager really is a sleep disorder.

Now I don't know where that went because we really do. You don't hear a lot of people talking about that, but if they would spend time. You know, focusing on that yet, see some really good results. The reason why sleep is so important is because of this, this whole thing about your, your, you know, the serotonin.

And, and I like to use this analogy that we're all born with a stress coping savings account. And in that stress coping savings account, we have certain chemicals that allow us to deal with stress. You know, all day long, we're under stress, right? I mean, traffic jams, loud noises, taxes. COVID I mean, you name it.

We got stress, right? And so anytime we're under stress, our body is releasing chemicals, hormones like serotonin, the calming hormone or cortisol or DHA that allow us to be able to deal with the stress pantothenic acid magnesium, the more stress we're under, the more chemicals we need. But if you're not careful, you can bankrupt that stress coping savings account.

And then, then you're at the mercy of, you know, any stress that comes along. So the way that you make deposits into your stress coping savings account is deep restorative Delta wave sleep. When you sleep at night, that's when your body's healing itself. And it's replenishing your stress coping chemicals.

So when you wake up the next day, you're ready, you know, you're ready for whatever life is gonna throw you. But what happens with fibro, they get under all that stress Braun and they, they deplete these, these chemicals, including serotonin, and that sets up a vicious cycle because they can't sleep. Part of that is because of the stress.

And we know that. serotonin is the happy hormone, the higher your serotonin level, the happier you are, the less anxious you are, the higher, your serotonin level, the higher your pain threshold. It blocks a hormone called substance P. So when your serotonin levels elevated, your pain threshold goes up, but when your serotonin levels low.

Your pain threshold goes low. So pain is magnified. So, to answer your question, the number one thing that has to happen, you know, is sleep. And if you think about it and it makes sense, right? Because if you're not sleeping, you're going to be exhausted, right? So there's the low energy. If you're not sleeping, you increase your inflammatory chemicals by 40%.

So you're going to have more pain. And then it is a thing called aloe donea. which you're familiar with a medical term just means a low pain threshold. if you're not sleeping, you're going to be a little more likely to have brain fog. You know, I mean, if you're not sleeping, you probably don't have some mood disorders develop restless leg syndrome.

And you, you are, you certainly mentioned you have more serotonin receptors in your intestinal tract, then you do in your brain. You know, that's why, when you get nervous, you get butterflies in here, your stomach, right? So, when you deplete that serotonin, now you have trouble regulating. your motility.

So you have trouble regulating your digestion and your elimination and, so serotonin and sleep or got to get that, right? Yeah. And then, and then after that, probably saturating the body with the high doses of the vitamins minerals, amino acids, and essential fatty acids. Cause you, you got to have these building blocks.

If you don't have them, you can't make the chemicals that the body needs. It just that, you know, it's not there. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:17:40] Yeah. The reason I'm bringing up sleep is because if you have a lot of inflammation and pain, how do you get really restful sleep? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:17:49] Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's the quandary for these people is they can get comfortable and they wake up throughout the night and then that sets up this vicious cycle.

They don't sleep well. Which creates more pain, which creates poor sleep, which creates more pain, you know? And so they get in this vicious cycle. and unfortunately a lot of these individuals they'll wind up on sleep medications. The problem with those is that many of them don't put them in a deep sleep, so they don't get there.

They don't wake up refreshed. They still have a depleted stress coping. Savings account, you know, they're just knocked out for six or seven hours, whatever it is. And, and, you know, the problem with the sleep meds is they increase your risk of death by 500% across the board and matter whether it's due to cancer or heart attack or stroke, or Alzheimer's, it doesn't matter.

So that's how. Dangerous those medications are. And that now, you know, I'm not, you know, please don't stop any of your medications, you know, work with your, your healthcare practitioner. But now that I've said that, and you know, that I would encourage you to, to learn what are some natural things you can do to start to, reestablish good, healthy sleep patterns.

Bryan Carroll: [00:18:58] And can you share one or two ideas on how they were? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:19:01] Yeah. So, you know, the thing about, low serotonin is, you know, I think one in 10 women, I think. is on an antidepressant in the United States. And, and, you know, and no one has, Alexa pro deficiency, you know, no one suffers from an antidepressant deficiency.

Now those medications don't make serotonin. They only help you hang onto what serotonin you have. But if you've gotten run down over the years and you're either depressed or you have fibromyalgia and you have this low serotonin, if you're taking a drug. That's a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, and there's nothing to re-uptake.

It's not going to do, it's not going to do anything. It's like using a gasoline additive in an empty gasoline tank. You know, if you're running on fumes, it really ain't gonna help you. serotonin comes from the amino acid trip to fan, and which turns into five, a drops tripped to fan. Now amino acids. Or what makeup protein.

So anytime you eat protein, you're going to get amino acids and some proteins, like people for me with Turkey had more trips the fan than others, but, in the fibromyalgia community, We see that a lot of them cannot convert trip to fan that they get in their diet to the next step, which is five, a dropsy trip to fan there's a, there's a block in their pathway.

So I recommend that patients take five HTP. If you have low moods or you have a thought or imagined, then I would recommend you start with five HTP. And typically you take a start with a hundred milligrams of five HTP, 30 minutes before bed. With a little bit of grape juice. It doesn't take much just about an ounce mixed with water and the grape juice is going to cause your body to release insulin and help pull that serotonin across the blood brain barrier.

The purpose of the five HTP is that, if you, it increases your natural sleep hormone melatonin by 200%. So then the question is, why don't you just take melatonin? Well, you can, however, if we look at depression, you need the serotonin. Not the melatonin. If you had fiber Maji you definitely need to get that serotonin level up.

Raises your pain threshold helps with you. Your mood helps lowers anxiety. A lot of times that will straighten our dramatically improve. IBS helps some mental clarity. So you start with a five HTP, a hundred milliliter, 30 minutes for bed. Anyway, it's not, you increased by a hundred milligrams to get to 300 milligrams.

If you still find that you can't fall asleep. Or you can't stay asleep. That's when I would add sublingual melatonin, starting with three milligrams and go all the way up to 12 milligrams. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:21:41] Yeah. A sublingual that's a lot different than taking a cab or, a pill form, right? So you don't need as much melatonin if you take it a 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:21:50] usually you don't need as much, but, you know, as you know, as the advantage of that sibling goal is when you let it dissolve it or use your tongue, it's going to bypass and get right to, you know, bypass your stomach and get right into your bloodstream and go work right away.

So you're waiting there to go to sleep. You want that to happen as quickly as possible? 

Bryan Carroll: [00:22:09] Perfect. Yeah, we had a whole episode on sleep if people want to hear more. And I think that was episode one, zero eight. he would probably be a good guy for you to talk to you too. Michael Granor. he's a sleep researcher.

He's got a lot of great information. 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:22:24] Yeah. I'd love to get his contact. We're good. So, the patients that I work with are running into some really hardcore insomniacs, you know, because that's, I'm telling ya, that is that, that is the biggest piece of the puzzle for them. If you can get that, right. I'm not saying it all comes together, but if you don't get that piece of the puzzle, it's like, you never find the corner.

You know, when you're putting a puzzle together, if you can just ever find the corner, you know how you know, God help us, please let me find the corner. Then you can start building the thing and it comes together. But if you don't get that sleep right, you're in, you're in the middle of the puzzle and you're just, you know, you're in trouble.

Bryan Carroll: [00:23:01] Yep. So people that have fibro, what about like movement practices? Are they able to do any type of exercise, whether it's light exercise, heavy exercise, or is that too difficult for them or stressful? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:23:15] It depends on where they are. Okay. So if they're not, if they're not working with someone. Who's trained in fibromyalgia like myself, that really spends time with them.

they gotta be careful because, you know, stress, you know, if we're talking about exercise and you probably tell them that some more movement stuff, we'll talk about that too. But, you know, stress is, exercise is super healthy. I think to me, exercise is the, is the great equalizer. You know, you can get away with your dad being a little loose here and there.

Right. You know, maybe not taking care of yourself like you should, as long as you're really exercising, you know, that's always worked for me anyway. but for fibro, you know, exercise, you know, it's another stress and they can't handle it at least initially not initially once they start going into deepest storage of sweep, they're saturating the sales and the right vitamins and minerals.

They're fixing their adrenal glands and they're fixing their gut and they feel strong then, and only then could they handle additional stress, which typically, you gotta even be careful with changing their diet, but, but then they can start doing some low impact exercise, like walking, just something simple, but, is far as movement.

I think one of the best things for them is things like Tai Chi. You know, if they're willing to put the time in for that, our yoga, which I know you, you know, you're really big into yoga. I'm a big fan of that. And, so I think, you know, just stretching and you know, some of these things definitely can be beneficial for sure.

Bryan Carroll: [00:24:43] Perfect. So let's say I have fibro, you know, I've been to 12 different practitioners. no, one's been able to help me. I'm on six different medications right now. And then I come to you. Can you walk me through, what are the steps that you would take me through to assess me, test me. And then I get me feeling better again.

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:25:03] So my practice is a little bit unique. in 2003 had a medical practice where I had. Had a very large integrated medical practice for five medical doctors or work for me. And then when I sold that practice, I lectured for, a few years around the country and then it just evolved to where it's all virtual.

So I don't do a hands on exam. Like I used to having said that. Yeah, though, Bryan, by the time somebody comes to see me. They've already been to Mayo and Cleveland, and they've been all, you know, they I'd been to the, all these different places. So what I'm looking at is, I'm looking at their new patient paperwork.

And if I can get the, the past two years of their blood work, because I look at blood work differently, just like you do as a functional practitioner, we look at it differently. And then, you know, I'm going to pepper them with a bunch of questions I'm focused in on. You know, are you having trouble with your sleep or are you, you know, how long does it take you to fall asleep?

Do you sleep through the night? And, and, you know, I'm, we'll go through their medications and I'll explain to them why the common medications, like Lyrica and Cymbalta are probably doing more harm than good. And of course also I tell them that the stopping their medications. until they, you know, if I accept their case and we're working together, once I get them doing tremendously better.

And then, and only then when I start weaning them off their prescriptions. But as I go through this dialogue with them, I'm in, you know, I'm, I'm making mental notes about where. One of the clues that they're sharing with me that need to be followed up. if they're telling me that, that they, that lateral authority of their eyebrows that thinned out their hair's falling out, they got dry skin, brittle nails already know they have a lot of fatigue.

and I look at their blood work and I see the only thing that's been tested is their TSH, which is typical. I'm already thinking well, okay. They need a full thyroid panel. if, if they're sharing with me that they have all these in, they always do have IBS and problems with their, with their digestion elimination.

I'm thinking, okay, well, I got to have a food allergy test and the lies of tests. So, so I'm putting together kind of these different panels of what testing they need. And then when we finish up, as I explained everything to them, then I give them options about proceed forward, either through testing or. some, some other options, but, it is probably, it is similar to what you do when you do a workup with your clients.

You're really just trying to look at okay. you know, they're telling me this, but no, one's really explored that. I mean, that's, it's not usual to every time you eat to blow up like accurate eight months pregnant, you know, something's wrong. Yeah. You've been to. You know, you've been to the gastroenterologists and you've got a parasite cleanse, you've done this, you've done that.

Have you ever done a breath test placebo? You know? So, are your listening to them talking about them? They feel better when they go away on vacation and then they come back and they're miserable. And then you ask them, how old is your house? Have you ever had any mold issues? You know, you just, it's those kind of things that you and I do.

That separate us from, and this is not to pick on anybody, but we have to dig a little deeper and think a little harder, I think, to do the detective work, I think then than the conventional medical practitioner, a lot of times, because, number one, we, we're not prescribing prescription medications, so we can't just give them something and, cover it up.

And the other thing with the complicated patients, I'm sure you work with. And I, and I do too. You're if you don't do that, you're you're not going to get, you're not going to get very far. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:28:34] Yeah, exactly. Like you said, you know, if you're not looking for the cause and you're just chasing the symptoms, you're just throwing darts at a dartboard and hoping you strike a, a bullseye, you know, you can be so far off target and then maybe, maybe you'll hit something every now and then one out of a hundred patients or whatever, but that's not how you get the population healthy.

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:28:55] Yeah, exactly. It's so true. And you know, with fibromyalgia, they, I think they learn a lot of them learn along the way. That traditional medicine has failed them. So they're always looking for something. The problem is, you know, they're, they're always going from one thing to the next. And there, there is kind of a shotgun approach.

They're are working with practitioners who probably really don't understand fiber. I think it's really unique. What works for a type two diabetes patients or works for, someone with heavy metal, you know, I mean, it's just, it's just different, you know, and, A lot of times, they try to put the cart in front of the horse and people don't get better.

So they get discouraged and they give up, which is a shame. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:29:39] So how long do you think it takes before someone should start feeling some type of results, even if at the minor? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:29:47] Well, so on my website, there's a thing called the jumpstart. Protocols, and this is something I just give away for free. And it goes in all about deep restorative sleep about the bath, the vitamin supplements, the adrenal, fixing the adrenals, and then the IBS.

If they'll do those things on their own, these are things they can do on their own. They'll see results within two weeks. Now they're not. You know, they're not jumping tall buildings and, you know, going back to work and that kind of thing, but it gives them hope because they're within two weeks, they're probably sleeping better.

Typically IBS for my patients goes away in two weeks on the protocols I use. And so they see that and that gives them the, the momentum. They keep pushing forward and do things like the elimination, diet, and other things that I share with them. so the results are fairly quickly. If someone's working with me one on one and not trying to do it themselves, then typically we're, we're, we're going to see dramatic improvements within the first, you know, six weeks.

And then, then, then it's all about teaching them. Then a lot of times, Bryan it's then weaning them off medications. They don't name. Cause you have to do that slowly and then teaching them about what they need to do to continue to get healthy. and then what do they have to do to stay that way? 

Bryan Carroll: [00:31:07] Perfect.

Is there any other final things that you want to touch on with fibromyalgia and what patients can do for that? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:31:15] Well, I would just say, you know, I wouldn't, I wouldn't buy into the doom and gloom, so the people tell you that, you know, there's a there's. we're doing a summit right now, as you know, and, and, and we're reaching out to a lot of these support groups, which when I first started years ago spoke all of the countries, different support groups.

And finally, I just, I wouldn't do it. And the part of that, and this is not true. They label anybody or talk down to any anybody that's trying to be helpful. A lot of these groups it's all about woe is me. You know, it's, this is my, this is my pain. This is my misery before today. And if you surround yourself with those, what kind of people, those doom and gloom kind of people, it's pretty easy to buy into.

You can never feel better. And. You gotta, you know, so I would say if you're, if you've got a fiver magic, please don't give up and find another group of friends or another support group, you know? you, you, you've got to, you got it. You give up the Zig Ziglar used to say, you got to give up that stinking thinking and you got to look for you gotta look for something, positive and, You know, and I've, and I've shared this.

So if you want to be proactive then yeah. You know, there's people like yourself that do incredible work that can, that can work with fibro and then myself, you know? And, so hopefully, you know, that message will resonate with some folks. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:32:34] Yep. And you mentioned the fibro summit that you have coming on, for people that don't know what summits are, is where you have a collection of different practitioners coming on to talk about, different ways to approach a certain subject in this case, it's fibromyalgia.

And, how many practitioners do you have or how many presentations do you have available for this summit? 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:32:56] functional medicine, health, Burke, health experts from all over the world, different countries that have joined me for this free online fibromyalgia summit. So you can, you can watch it in the safety, you know, the safety and the convenience of your home.

And there's over 30 different presentations. So there's presentations on sleep, obviously. And then there's presentations are moaned and CBO and interstitial societies. Hormone replacement therapy, adrenal fatigue, leaky gut gluten intolerance, food allergies. dr. Jacob Teitelbaum is one of the leading specialists in fibromyalgias.

We've spoken on stages together and he he's on there. Jennifer. Lipton is the bestselling author of the fibro manual. She and I, we do a whole thing on pain and she does a great job. She, both of them do conventional and functional medicine, which is great and there to a world renown, fibromyalgia, magic experts.

And then Tom O'Bryan, you probably know Tom O'Brien and the functional medicine circle. He does a great thing on leaky gut and, Margaret Christianson has probably the world's foremost mold specialist she's on there. So we just got some incredible talent and people on there who are sharing information for free.

That even if you get one or two little things nuggets a day from it, you're going to be so far ahead of anybody that's out there trying to navigate your life back. No, you're just going to be, you're going to be so far ahead. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:34:23] And that starts on 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:34:25] September one, September 20th. Yay. Through October 4th. And again, now it's free.

It's free online. You can watch any of those. whenever you want to, during that week, you can tune into those and watch them. And then the following weekend, it'll be another replay for the weekend. It'll be a free weekend. and that's the fi the fibro summit.com is the thing. And I know you'll have that in your notes, the podcast now it's rice for so they can find it there.

I'm sure. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:34:52] Yep. We have a link for it. Summit for wellness.com/fibro summit, and a link to you as well. is at summit for wellness, dos.com/one, two eight. So people can go to your fibro doctor and learn more about what you have available over there and what the virtual. A practice that you have going on.

Well, Roger, thank you so much for coming on. I appreciate it. there's like you said, there's a lot of people that suffering from this and they don't really know where to turn to, to get support. So hopefully they can start finding this information and get the support that they need. 

Dr. Rodger Murphree: [00:35:26] Bryan, thank you so much for having me on here.

I really appreciate your work. It's desperately needed. People are looking for answers that are falling through the medical cracks and the, you know, they need people like you and they need, you know, your podcast I think is amazing. You're doing a great job and, really appreciate the opportunity to come on and share.

about a topic that I'm so passionate about 

Bryan Carroll: [00:35:46] starting Monday, September 28th, the fibro summit will begin. So make sure to go to summit for wellness.com/fibro summit to register for free. There are a lot of great guests that will be presenting over the next week. Also, if you are interested in the squat challenge for October, head over to summit for wellness.com/squat challenge to register.

Remember it is donation based. So you get to choose how much you want to donate to join the challenge. Next week, dr. Alison Danby is on the show. Let's go learn about her. I am here with dr. Alison Danby. Hey, Alison, what is one unique thing about you that most people don't know? 

Alison: [00:36:29] before I became a naturopathic doctor, I was actually a high school math teacher.

so very exciting subject. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:36:37] Well, at least you're still doing math with a medicine. 

Alison: [00:36:40] Yeah, that's right. And education, lots of education. I love that Pat at the park. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:36:45] And what will we be learning about in our interview together? 

Alison: [00:36:49] So I think we're going to be diving into autoimmune kind of one Oh one. So we're going to look at what are some of the triggers we're going to talk about why you have an autoimmune condition, a testing, and we'll talk about how you can actually gain control over this condition.

Very frustrating condition. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:37:07] And what are your favorite foods or nutrients that you think everyone should get more of in their diet? 

Alison: [00:37:13] So no one has ever died of overdoses vegetables. so I definitely love vegetables, broccoli and sweet potatoes are two of my favorites, that I think are so important to include in our every day eating or at least. Kind of at least weekly eating. and the other one I think is really important is getting a clean 

protein. So making sure that you really are mindful of where your protein is coming from, you know, free range, antibiotic free, if you can get that, I think that makes a big impact. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:37:43] And what are your top three health tips for anyone who wants to improve their overall wellness?

Alison: [00:37:48] So I do have a killer bedtime routine. So sleep to me is one of the first things that we need to do. And it's also the first thing that we give up when things get busy or hard. I love walking with gratitude. And so it, you know, getting out to nature 10 to 15 minutes a day, or even a few times a week, and using that time, just to think about all the things that you're grateful for, it can be so powerful.

And the other thing I think that's really important is trying to get a green vegetable with every meal. Breakfast can be challenging, but there's lots of ways you can do that. 

Bryan Carroll: [00:38:22] We'll be covering a lot of auto-immunity information next week. So until then keep climbing to the peak of your health.

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