Kim Vopni (00:01.838)
Hi Brandi, welcome to the podcast. We saw each other recently in Sarasota, freezing Sarasota. And now I'm back in freezing Vancouver. But yeah, it was really nice to connect with you in person and learn a little bit more about your business. And I'm excited for you to share your wisdom with my audience. If you can start out by telling us a little bit about you. So how did you become?
a doctor in clinical nutrition. What was your path that led you to now serving pregnant and postpartum women?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (00:36.23)
course, yay, I'm so excited to be with you again. Yeah, we kind of got gypped on the Florida weather. Like what's happening? Although it was like the day after we left it snowed. So at least, I don't know, at least we missed that. So my journey really first started when I was in high school. I started having really bad chest pain, just sporadic, really bad chest pain where I couldn't get a full breath. And my mom would take me to the ER and they would do a chest x-ray and they would draw blood.
Kim Vopni (00:41.367)
I know.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (01:06.138)
would prescribe me a bottle of Vicodin and send me on my way. And even then at like 15 years of age, I was like, you know, this can't be the play. Like, is this really what the answer is? And I started experimenting with going gluten-free, which this was like way before gluten-free was a thing. And I didn't have any more chest pain. And I was like, my gosh. And that was the very first time I had connected that what we eat could influence how we feel. And then I...
Kim Vopni (01:25.068)
Good.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (01:35.012)
went on to graduate and went to college. I did my undergrad in business management. But I always had an interest in health. And then I circled back around to start studying nutrition. I was just super interested in it and opened my practice. And then, then things got real. And then I started having really debilitating symptoms. I later found out it was due to toxic mold and I was, I had extreme vertigo. couldn't.
Kim Vopni (02:01.491)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (02:03.462)
I had something called erythema nidosum on my shins, which is like big, hot, hard, red nodules on your shin that hurt really bad and really bad brain fog and anxiety and I was gaining all of this weight and I was like, my gosh, what's happening? And nobody could figure it out. So many doctors, ENT, screen for manures, like I was doing all the things, chiropractor, everything, nothing was helping. I finally found this practitioner.
Kim Vopni (02:24.459)
Okay.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (02:32.41)
that was able to figure this out for me. And after that, then I went right into, I also had a miscarriage during that time, I went right into getting pregnant again. And I was at this time, I'm working on my master's degree. And through that experience, I was really experiencing firsthand the massive gaps in support that women experience in that timeframe of their life.
Kim Vopni (02:54.314)
you
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (03:00.358)
And I just, I just couldn't believe it. It was just like example after example, after example. was like, oh my gosh, really? You know, it was the first time, mom, you're on high alert, right? You're trying to do all the things right. And so I kind of came through that fast forward a few years and I went back to school and started working on my doctorate degree and I got pregnant again. And the same thing, I was just like experiencing so many examples of
Kim Vopni (03:27.853)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (03:30.052)
you know, being gaslit or being dismissed and not being listened to. And then once I finished that, you know, I used to, I used to work primarily in the fertility space, but once I kind of came out of that, the sentence that many moms kept telling me is things were never the same since I had kids. And I just heard that over and over and over again. And I was like, I cannot ignore this. And so I really shifted my practice to just focus on
listening and hearing and connecting the dots and putting the puzzle pieces together for these moms who are like, what is happening? And nobody's able to figure it out. So that's how landed here.
Kim Vopni (04:09.128)
All right. It's kind of a sidebar question, but what was it when you were 15, as you said, before the world knew about gluten-free, what was it that...
highlighted you to think that gluten was potentially a contributing factor.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (04:25.446)
actually had a cousin who is, I think she's like 25 years older than me, so quite a bit older than me. And she was actually experimenting with it at the time. I'm not sure where she picked up on it, but she was talking to me and I was like, gluten, what the heck is that? And so I just tried it because she brought it up in passing.
Kim Vopni (04:51.198)
Wow, that's crazy. Okay. So coming back now, when you were talking about your, you've gone to school and first of all, I need to highlight the fact that you were doing your masters and your PhD and your two pregnancies, raising children. That's a lot. Um, plus you had some health conditions. So, um, yeah, that's, that's incredible. And the pandemic. Oh yeah. Then there was that. Um, that's a lot. That's a lot.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (05:06.074)
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (05:10.084)
And there's a pandemic.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (05:16.485)
I don't recommend it. Zero out of ten recommend.
Kim Vopni (05:17.713)
So you talked about, yeah, yeah, totally. You were saying that there's that one sentence, things have never been the same. And there's actually a book that I have written by a physician and it's more in the pelvic health space, but it's ever since I've had kids dot, dot, dot, and same sort of thing. It's a very common, it's a huge transition that I don't think we necessarily are prepared for.
We don't necessarily acknowledge that there's maybe some prep work we could do, some need for recovery. There's a lot that's happening. So when people are saying that, what are the common signs and symptoms that they are bringing to you and talking about under that umbrella of it's never been the same since kids?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (06:07.568)
A lot of it is a lot of brain fog and feelings of extreme overwhelm that kind of blur into some anxiety type symptoms, skin rashes and other skin issues, joint pain, constipation and other like GI distress, hair loss, fatigue. I think those are the main ones. And the problem is that those are so broad sweeping, right? That they could be connected to a lot of things. And we...
Well, the women that I work with are often just told that it's just part of being a mom. You're just a mom now. This is just how it is. No, I don't stand for that for one second.
Kim Vopni (06:47.657)
Yeah, yeah. And the symptoms you listed are.
When I was going through what I now know was perimenopause, which I didn't know the term perimenopause at the time, I had two young children. I was running two businesses. We had moved away from family. So we didn't have any support where we were living. It was a new community. And I started experiencing a lot of these symptoms that you just talked about. I did never have joint pain, but I had constipation, feeling very anxious, weird rashes on my skin, poor sleep.
heart palpitations, like all these crazy things. And everybody kept saying, you know, have a glass of wine. And I would have a glass of wine and feel worse. Or they would say, maybe it's just stress. Like it's just stress and reduce your stress. And I think, you know, like I've always been able to manage stress very well. Yes, it's a lot of the time, but I started to do stress management things and nothing was changing. as you say,
It could be perimenopause, it could be thyroid dysfunction, it could be postnatal depletion, it could be all the, and maybe all of those things all together. So when someone comes to you, how do you help them navigate and get to their root causes to figure out what actually is their contributing factors?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (08:06.84)
question. I use a combination. I have a very thorough intake form. You know, I'm very good at asking questions. I'm very good at kind pinpointing where the defect is, so to speak, you know, and kind of where that is. And that is a huge, really a huge component of how I practice, you know, like have you ever been to the doctor where like they send you your forms that you have to fill out and then the doctor's like literally reading them right in front of you like flipping through the clipboard and you're like
Why was it so important to build those out? You know, I have a rule in my practice. You have to have those in 72 hours before our appointment. Like I really read them and use those. It's such a powerful clinical tool for me. And then in addition to that, proper testing. I'm not interested in wasting time. I'm not interested in throwing Betty at the wall. Like let's just figure this out and let's go from there. You know, so common tests that I like to look at, I like to look at
Kim Vopni (08:37.4)
Yeah, yeah.
Kim Vopni (08:58.21)
you
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (09:04.334)
an organic acid test, is a nice overall snapshot of your health. I like to do a look at toxicity testing and see like what's our total body burden. Like, you know, is our liver really struggling and therefore we're not metabolizing hormones and therefore we're having, you know, endocrine type symptoms, you know, like what is it? And then I also do stool testing as well and genomic testing as well. You know, there's a lot we can do to kind of turn our genes on and off or impact how
Kim Vopni (09:16.386)
you
I've heard about organic acid tests. I've never done one myself. I don't really know what it is. what is the test? it blood, saliva, urine?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (09:32.218)
genes are expressing physical symptoms. so anything we can do to kind of stack the deck in our favor, let's do it.
Kim Vopni (09:54.009)
And what, from a results perspective, what do you actually, like what are organic acids and what is it telling you about what could potentially be going on in my body?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (10:03.238)
I love organic acid. It's one of my favorite tests and it's a urine test. so organic acid testing is looking at metabolites of different compounds in your body that's in your urine that you excrete. And so it's a really nice overall snapshot of how our body is doing. So on the organic acid test, there's going to be a section of gut markers, which is going to give us an indication if we have an issue with Candida.
yeast and fungal overgrowth. It can also give me an idea on if we have mold colonization in the body. So a lot of people will run like a mycotoxin test, myself included, but it's one thing to be exposed to mycotoxins. It's a totally different thing to have colonization and growth of mycotoxins in the body. So the oat can give us indication on if there's colonization or not. It also tells us about neurotransmitters. So it lets us know.
Kim Vopni (10:34.175)
you
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (11:01.222)
how we're doing in terms of serotonin and dopamine and epinephrine and norepinephrine. So if you're having any kind of like anxiety type symptoms or this is a very good test for anybody who has like ADHD or kids with autism, it's very helpful in that regard. And then it also gives some insight into some nutritional insufficiencies that might be there, things like glutathione and vitamin B6 and riboflavin.
People like to really sleep on riboflavin. Riboflavin is like key nutrient that you need for mitochondrial health and increasing energy production in your cells. And then it also looks at mitochondrial markers and kind of where there might be trouble in your biochemical pathways. And so how we're metabolizing sugars and fats and amino acids and kind of how those biochemical pathways that are churning in our mitochondria
Kim Vopni (11:39.97)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (11:59.536)
how well they're doing. Because if they're not doing so hot, if we have one spot that's kind of getting backed up, that just backs up the whole chain prior to that. So we need to get those pathways back online. Those are, and then it also gives markers of like detoxification, how well we are detoxing. So it's just really lovely to kind of like zoom out and have this snapshot because it gives us insight into
Kim Vopni (12:07.846)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (12:29.54)
what to do next, right? If we have a lot of issues in like the gut, the fungal, mold section, well that's where we're gonna start. You know, if we have more issues in neurotransmitters, then we're gonna start there. If we need more nutrient or more detoxification support, it's just nice to help identify where we start because when we're talking about broad sweeping symptoms that have a whole host of potential causes and contributing factors.
It's like really overwhelming if we try to do this all at once. So we just gotta be very methodical.
Kim Vopni (13:01.932)
As you're talking, I'm thinking like, I've never had that test done, but now that you're talking about it, I'm thinking I'd really like to have that test done. And when I think about, especially, you know, that when we were in Sarasota, the group of professionals we were with, all health entrepreneurs, health business entrepreneurs, all of us, you know, even the t-shirts we wear rebels with a root cause and, or without a root cause. And so when,
When I think about our health care systems, the sick care systems, a simple test like that seems like when we think of an annual checkup, which I don't personally necessarily do. I do a lot of things along the way. But when you think about the potential of meeting with somebody once a year, that could cover a lot of things off for a, let's just check and see how things are going as a preventive type thing. Would you agree with that?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (13:56.038)
100%. I love the organic acid test. And you know what's interesting is like, I work with a lot of people that come to me that have worked with other practitioners and they'll bring me their Dutch test, their hormone test. They'll bring me their stool test. They'll bring me like whatever testing they've done and whatever they've been doing, they're still having symptoms. That's why they're in my office. And it's like, I'm all for looking at hormones. I'm all for looking at what's in your gut. But my question is always why?
Why do you have this overgrowth of Candida? Why do you have, know, why is your progesterone in just tanking? Why? And we have to look more upstream. We have to look more at a cellular level to figure that out. And so, you know, if you've had, let's say you get a stool test and then you do like a gut health protocol and then you're still symptomatic. Well, it's because that was just, you're trying to mask the symptoms. It wasn't really addressing what's driving those symptoms and the imbalances.
and the OAT test is amazing. In addition to blood chemistry, you know, that is one thing that, I don't know, kind of a pet peeve of mine with the functional medicine world is that a lot of practitioners like to jump to these functional lab tests because they're pretty and colorful and sexy and exciting and edgy and new or whatever. And I just, to me, in my opinion, as a functional...
Kim Vopni (14:55.702)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (15:18.63)
practitioner, I feel like you have not earned the right to start running these tests until you know how to properly analyze blood chem. Like you can get so much information for a much lower price point. I just, I just want to mention that cause it's like, yeah, I love the oat. And also let's not forget about how much we can glean from proper blood chemistry analysis.
Kim Vopni (15:39.752)
Yeah, yeah, okay. So let's start with the gut because the gut is something that a lot of people in my community, in my world will struggle with. Chronic constipation, IBS, alternate, you know, consturia, kind of the blend between constipation and then diarrhea. So when you see, let's take the oats or you talked about the stool test as well. So whatever testing you use, when it's pinpointing
gut dysfunction, what are some of the root causes that you uncover and then how, obviously there's different protocols for different types of root causes, but what is sort of a plan of attack for some people?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (16:18.726)
Okay, so based on the information that I have, a root cause could be, I see a lot of issues with mold and mycotoxins. That could be a root cause that causes a lot of issues, especially if we're seeing high mycotoxins and then we're seeing colonization on your oat. That is something that can cause massive symptoms. That's my personal story. I've experienced it firsthand, especially GI symptoms. Because then if we start having colonization of mold, we start having issues with yeast, we start having candida.
And then we're not able to absorb our nutrients as well. So we're going to start then having biofilms and we can't get our nutrients as well. And then we can also have damage to our intestinal lining. So that's one piece of it. And then I would also look at other environmental toxicants can really interfere with our gut health and our immune system and our microbiome. So I am definitely big on like looking at what are toxic.
Kim Vopni (17:02.824)
Thank
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (17:17.102)
load is and how that could be interfering. Then I'm also looking at, course, like what are we eating? You know, like what are the raw materials that we're giving our gut? Because that could be helping or pulling us further away from our goals, could be causing damage to the microvilli in our intestinal lining. So that's part of it. And then thinking about like constipation, bloating, those types of issues specifically. The most underrated thing that people
Kim Vopni (17:41.137)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (17:46.726)
do that people miss is their light exposure. You know, we have photoreceptors in our eyes and on our skin and on our digestive tract. That is not by accident. That is that is very purposeful. Purposeful. So when people come to me and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm constipated. The first thing I want to know is like, what are you doing in the morning? I don't want to talk about fiber. I don't want to talk about how hydrated you are. Yes, yes, yes. That can all come into play. But I want to know what are you doing in the morning?
Because if you can get your stomach exposed to that infrared light that's in the sunrise, that helps to stimulate that migrating motor complex and keep things moving. And people think that there's like, there's no way that that impacts us or like they're supposed to hide from the sun because the sun is dangerous, right? And I'm telling you like what, if we can dial in your light environment, which is number one, timing when we are outside.
because every cell in our body wants to know what time it is. And it has a physiological response to what time it is. So we want to get outside and tell it what time it is and also protect ourselves from exposure to artificial light that can interfere with that signaling. so, sinking our light, exposing our, our eyes to that early morning sunrise and get, if you can get your bare stomach exposed.
Kim Vopni (18:43.701)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (19:11.918)
It's amazing how when they dial this in, how fast they can see results because we talked about getting those biochemical pathways to come back online. This is even acting underneath those biochemical pathways, more like a quantum level and quantum moves even faster than our biochemical pathways. And so when we can do this piece, I mean, I've had, I've seen people with chronic constipation see improvement in like three days. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (19:37.315)
Wow, that's crazy. What about if, like, would the same be, you know, kind of in that circadian
circadian rhythm lifestyle. I think about, for instance, now here I live in the Pacific Northwest and it is dark until about 730 in the morning and I might have already been up for an hour and a half to two hours. So to start light is red light something like I was sitting in front of a red light panel trying to mimic as much as possible. Is that a next best thing if I couldn't be outside and in light?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (20:14.532)
Yeah, that's helpful as well. And then like if you're getting up for two hours and you know that you're going to be like in your house and you're going to be turning the lights on in your house, you're going to open your fridge and see the light in your fridge. You're going to, you know, turn your coffee pot on that has a light on it. You can use blue light blocking glasses in your house while you're kind of interacting with these other sources of light until the sun comes up and you can get outside, take your glasses off, like get that that signaling and that message from the sun. So your body's like, got it.
Kim Vopni (20:35.057)
We
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (20:44.494)
I know what time it is, I'm going to respond as such. And then we're not interfering with that signaling. And another very interesting piece of this, which people do not think about either, you know, a lot of times I've heard about, I've learned about how important it is to like eat seasonally or eat locally, you know, and in my head I'm like, okay, well that's because it supports the local economy and that's because we're reducing transportation costs, you know, and
Kim Vopni (21:04.88)
Okay.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (21:11.726)
and emissions in the air and pollution and all of that. But the biggest benefit to eating seasonally and locally is that the food that is grown in your own backyard, so to speak, has the same light imprint that you do. And when we eat those foods, we're getting, we're syncing up. That's a message that matches what we're exposed to and our body responds to that on a physiological level too. So I just like to throw that out there too. Yeah.
Kim Vopni (21:38.082)
That's super cool. Yeah. You mentioned two terms. just want to clarify for people in case they haven't heard the term. Mycotoxins and biofilm. So what are mycotoxins? You mentioned mold and mycotoxins. So if you can differentiate and then you talked about potentially somebody having a biofilm, what does that mean?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (21:48.838)
Hmm.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (21:59.14)
Okay, great question. So there, there's molds and then molds can produce toxins and those toxins that they produce, those are the mycotoxins. Not all molds produce mycotoxins. And so usually in like this space, the words are used interchangeably. Like people say, I had mold illness. You know, really it was probably mycotoxin illness because that's really where we have a lot of the issues. So just to...
Just a small differentiation in definition there. And then biofilm. So what can happen is, have you ever seen one of those old Spartan type movies where the two armies are coming at each other, right? And there's arrows that they're shooting and they all have shields. And then one army, all of the members of the army will all put their shield up and they'll hide underneath and it just looks like this big shield.
Kim Vopni (22:33.219)
.
Kim Vopni (22:40.558)
Okay.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (22:58.106)
That's kind of like what a biofilm is. We have all of these microbes that are all together in kind of this gooey gelatinous substance and they're hiding under this biofilm. And so they can evade the immune system and not be as visible to the immune system because they're hiding, because they're hiding in these biofilms. And that's one of the reasons why when people start going down a detoxification pathway,
Kim Vopni (23:08.91)
No.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (23:24.3)
if they don't do it correctly and safely and in the right order, they could start busting up a lot of these biofilms. They're full of of garbage, know, toxins and pathogens. And when we start stirring all of that up, yeah, you're not going to feel so good if we didn't do things in the in the right order. And the other thing that biofilms can do is interfere with our nutrient absorption. So now we're even more depleted because we're not able to absorb our nutrients properly.
Kim Vopni (23:53.968)
Got it. I remember doing a stool test and I needed to, the person, the practitioner I was working with, I took, I can't even remember the name of the product that I took, but it was meant to.
break up the biofilm before you do the stool test. So is it basically to try to uncover what could potentially be hiding so that it does show up on the stool test? Yeah.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (24:16.602)
That's right. Yeah, that's right. the thing about stool testing is that stool testing usually will test for parasites, but is notoriously a false negative because if there wasn't a parasite or an egg or something in that sample, you miss it. You get a negative result. so and parasites are toxin sponges. They they are there.
in a way to protect you, to kind of soak up those toxins, and they like to hide in biofilm as well. And so that's another reason why like parasites could be negative on a stool test, even though you might have an issue with parasites.
Kim Vopni (24:58.542)
Yeah, on the topic of parasites, I've asked this from a couple of people that I've heard, you know, there's a lot of people that are all about eliminating and doing a parasite cleanse every full moon and multiple times a year. And then there's other people that are saying, well, hold on, parasites can play a valuable role. So when you're looking at stool testing and you see, I guess there's
The stool testing is identifying certain types of parasites that could be problematic versus the ones that aren't. Is that fair to say?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (25:28.45)
Yes, it is and you know, it's man parasites are so Excuse me such a hot topic on the interwebs right now and you know You know, it's like you get on like parasite side of tik-tok and you don't have to scroll very far to just be Blasted this message that if you just parasite cleanse, it's gonna like it's gonna be this magical thing That's gonna cure all of your symptoms and it just doesn't work that way
Kim Vopni (25:45.738)
Thank
Kim Vopni (25:54.294)
you
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (25:55.014)
And I think the biggest thing that people misunderstand and don't realize is that they are toxin sponges. They are there. Your immune system is not attacking them and going after them. Your immune system is like, okay, we'll take all the help we can get. We got all this toxic sludge going on. And so the key, can they cause symptoms? 100%. And that you can look at the literature of this. There's examples of
of cancer being dis-diagnosed as a parasite. There's tons of literature on this. So can they be problematic? Yes. But just deciding to like jump on the bandwagon and go down a parasite cleanse in the beginning, that is not the play because your body's not ready for it. You're going to have negative symptoms and you might, have to simultaneously be lowering the total toxic load. So then your body is not as hospitable to have
Kim Vopni (26:25.153)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (26:49.914)
high parasitic load in the first place.
Kim Vopni (26:52.509)
Yeah. So let's talk about the toxic load and what would potentially create the need for detox. And that's another word that gets shared around. You have to detox, you have to open your detox pathways, everybody has to detox, detox. yeah, we do live in a toxic world in many things. So what are some of the things that contribute to, what are the most common things, let me say?
that you see that contribute to a toxic load. And then we'll go down the detox side of things afterwards.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (27:26.32)
So I think a lot of it is air quality. And I say that, and I think most people are gonna be thinking about like pollution in the air. I'm talking about the air in your house. know, houses now are built to be airtight and we have HVACs and we just live in our airtight house and just call it good and set the thermostat and call it good. We need to open up those windows. We need that air to be circulated because...
Kim Vopni (27:41.991)
Thank
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (27:52.428)
In many instances, the air that's inside your house can be much more problematic than the air that's outside of your outside of your house. Even if you're living in like a city, you know, where there's a lot of emissions going on. So that's part of it, especially post pandemic, where a lot of people are staying in their houses more, a lot more working from home. And we've lost that connection to the outdoors and to nature. And we're not getting that fresh air. That's a huge part of it.
Kim Vopni (27:53.299)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (28:21.232)
The other thing is that our food source, right, has a lot of herbicides and pesticides that are sprayed on it and that can cause problems, especially in people who are living like near a golf course or who are living in an agricultural area. All of that spray that they are near can impact and accumulate in your body. Our water quality.
Kim Vopni (28:34.341)
Thank you.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (28:50.02)
Our water quality is not great. There's a lot of uranium in our water quality or in our water systems. And so that can be a big contributing factor as well. So really I think about like food, water and air as the big kind of buckets. And then we have this whole other fourth bucket of the products that we purchase, our hygiene, our cosmetic, our cleaning products that we're bringing into our house, putting on our bodies and using on a daily basis.
Kim Vopni (29:16.678)
And then once we have identified, you've educated somebody to look into their air and their circulation and their food and their water, so water filtration, changing their food. What would you recommend from a, before we go to the...
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (29:19.332)
This can also include, you know, like feminine products, yoga pants, tampons, things like that. We're just exposed to so much more than we were before.
Kim Vopni (29:45.529)
or well, maybe this is a question in and of itself. Would you detox and then change their food or would you change their food and then detox? What order would you put that in?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (30:00.998)
probably change. It depends on the person. It's not a set answer. Mostly, usually, anytime we can lower the total body burden first is probably a good idea because like you were talking about, how you were talking about opening up drainage pathways and everything, you know, we do need to make sure we're working on that. We need to make sure that our liver is capable.
Kim Vopni (30:01.251)
Or is it one and the same?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (30:24.93)
of processing, you know, and eliminating these toxins. We have phase one and two detoxification. We also have phase three, which is how our body excretes it. We need to make sure our bile is nice and thin and flowing and not thick and sludgy. Bile is expensive from an ATP standpoint to make. So our body likes to recycle it. I think of it kind of like, you know, how fast food places will like use their oil again and again until it's just really gross. And then they swap it out. Kind of like that. want nice
Kim Vopni (30:37.475)
Yeah.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (30:53.776)
thin flowing bile, we don't want sludgy bile. We need to make sure we're pooping. Like all of these pathways we do need to make sure. So I would never put somebody on like a detoxification protocol where we haven't done this foundational work, where we haven't identified our exposures, where we haven't put in the effort to lower our total burden because that just results in not feeling well and not getting lasting results, which is not good for anybody.
Kim Vopni (31:19.389)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What does it mean? I said the term and you just repeat it back.
opening the detox pathways. What are our detox pathways and how do we open them?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (31:32.358)
Colon is a big one. We have to make sure that we're pooping and eliminating that waste. Our liver is a big one, like I mentioned. Our lymphatic system is so huge. Our lymphatic system doesn't have a pump. So our lymph needs to move somehow. We can move it manually. So thinking about like vibration plate, dry brushing, lymphatic massage, that type of thing. Or we can move it with voltage. And we get voltage from that early morning sunrise.
So it's not just to support our digestive system, but it gives voltage to our lymph so our lymph can move. And lymph is a huge part of our detoxification pathways. Then we also have the glymphatic system, which is how our brain cleans up toxins and drains, although brain drainage sounds really bad, but in the right conversation, it's a good thing. And that glymphatic system is activated almost exclusively while we sleep.
Kim Vopni (32:08.161)
Okay.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (32:29.702)
So if we're not sleeping, imagine the downstream consequences that we're going to have of that. And it's not just about being tired. It's that our brain literally couldn't clean up from the night before. And then we have kind of adjunct drainage pathways. So this would be things like our kidneys and our lungs and our skin. All of these play a role in helping to excrete. The body is so smart, so much smarter than we will ever know.
and it knows how to deal with this in the right environment. The problem is that we're just living in environment where we have heavy exposure, where we are very disconnected from nature and the things that kind of build our natural resilience to our world. And so then we got to give it a little bit of help.
Kim Vopni (33:04.96)
I want to circle back to your story. So when you said you finally found a practitioner and that puts you on the path of healing, how did you approach it? What were the things that you did to reclaim your health from
from everything that you've talked about, the food and what was your detox story.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (33:39.45)
Yeah, I am so grateful to this day that I found that person. I actually went to a conference that I wasn't even feeling well enough to do. I was sitting there actually waiting for the keynote speaker who was very excited about to see and I just couldn't. I was so out of my body. was so dizzy. I was so anxious. I was like, I can't do this. I had to go outside. I had to go take a nap under a tree. I just couldn't function. But at that conference, I met this person and you know, the universe just really has your back sometimes.
Kim Vopni (34:01.344)
Thank
Kim Vopni (34:06.592)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (34:08.494)
And so I started working with him. He has a genetic expertise. So that was kind of his angle that he approached, you know, chronic illness. So we did a lot of genomic testing and other testing and then, you know, a big food switch to make sure that based on like my genetics and what I was predisposed to maybe need more of, making sure that I had exactly what I need, all the nutrients that I need.
Kim Vopni (34:14.335)
Okay.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (34:37.046)
very targeted supplements. Again, it was a lot of like feeding. You know, a lot of people think about detoxing and they think about killing and removing and there's a feeding process that has to happen first. We have to give the cells enough raw materials to be able to deal with all of this, you know. Every supplement that you take requires ATP to break it down. Well, if you're not making any ATP, if you're chronically so exhausted, well then that's probably not...
Kim Vopni (34:42.954)
you
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (35:05.232)
where we want to start, you know? And so it was a lot of feeding myself what it needed and the proper raw materials and nutrients and then getting things moving as much as possible. So I was doing a lot of sauna. I was doing a lot of, you know, things to move my lymph. I was doing a lot of liver supportive things. was doing a lot, you know, like guarding my sleep like it was my full time job.
Kim Vopni (35:10.621)
Okay.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (35:32.644)
Honestly, it was my full time job. I had to quit my job because I could no longer work in that building, which is where I was exposed. And I was at such a low point where I was like, I have to get better or I just want to transition off this earth because I cannot do this. And so it was my full time job. I was all in 100 percent. And I'm not saying that you have to do that or be that extreme in order to reclaim your health. It's just the the
direness of the situation that I was in at the time and sometimes we got to do what we have to do and it was like a freaking light switched in my body like I could literally feel myself coming back alive I could feel myself coming back online I could feel myself like re-entering into my body and I was just like my gosh this is actually gonna work I am gonna be okay and I will forever be so grateful
Kim Vopni (36:09.724)
What do you think about the post kind of coming circling back to
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (36:28.374)
that person and that's what I try to be for others now.
Kim Vopni (36:39.301)
Pregnancy postpartum being a trigger for a lot of this depletion and overload that we face. What do you feel, what is it about pregnancy and postpartum that can be the trigger that puts us down this path of toxic and overload and just so many burdens?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (36:59.224)
Yeah. Number one, we get no care until we're like 11 weeks pregnant. So nobody's talking to us before we get pregnant. We don't have like this preconception prep period where it's just standard of care, where we need to be increasing our nutrient reserves and preparing our body and maybe doing some detoxing, although caveat, I wouldn't do that right before you want to get pregnant. We need to give yourself time to recover from that. So that's part of it. You know, I remember after my miscarriage when I got pregnant again,
Kim Vopni (37:25.562)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (37:27.648)
I called the doctor to make my appointment and when they told me to come back when you are 11 weeks, I just remember being absolutely floored because all of the neurodevelopment is happening in that time. And I'm like, I'm literally making a brain over here and you have nothing to say to me. What is happening? You know, I don't understand this. And so that's part of it. You know, we're not preparing ourselves properly because we don't know and we're not being taught. We're not being told. And then the other part is that
Kim Vopni (37:32.506)
Okay.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (37:57.39)
We need proper nutrition during pregnancy to make sure that we are building up those reserves. You know, and I think this is getting a lot better, but I'm still hearing lots of stories of just like, eat whatever you want. You're eating for two, like, you know, and no garbage advice. So that's part of it. And then we have a baby and we're living in a time where we no longer have a village. We don't have support systems. We're doing all the things.
Kim Vopni (38:05.025)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (38:23.418)
we go to our six week appointment and it's like, it's essentially just an appointment to figure out if you're cleared to have sex again, you know, like nobody's talking about your actual health. You know, for me, it was like, what do you want to do for birth control? And you're cleared to have sex, have a nice life. And I was just, again, it was like all those examples of like, I can't believe this is how we're treating our women. So that's part of it. And then of course, sleep schedule is changing literally overnight. And...
Kim Vopni (38:35.024)
and
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (38:52.622)
We are oftentimes, most times, still have to wear all of the hats that we were wearing prior to having a baby. and by the way, now you have to, you know, take care of this tiny human and keep them alive and make sure they're meeting their milestones and feed them the right foods and make their doctor's appointments and just all of the mental bandwidth. And we're losing connection. We're losing connection with nature, with our food source, with our community, with past wisdom, with who we are, with who our purpose is.
Kim Vopni (38:56.444)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (39:21.508)
That's why my resilient program, it's an acronym and R is reconnection because that is paramount. And then we're having rapid rebound of hormones, which can contribute to symptoms. We can also have during birth, there can be something called microchimerism, which is like mixing of blood from mom and baby. And we can have more microchimerism happening in a C-section birth. And sometimes that can contribute to launching an immune response.
Kim Vopni (39:22.679)
I'm sorry.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (39:49.862)
So it's part of the reason why we see more postpartum autoimmunity happening. But again, like are we taking care of our C-section mamas? Are we screening them for this? Are we running the proper panels? Are we looking out for this? No, we're not. Nobody's talking about this. So it's just a perfect storm of all of these things. And then the other thing that can happen with the toxin piece, we have bugs inside of us all the time. The point is not to be sterile of the bugs. The point is not to fear our environment and recoil.
Kim Vopni (39:51.862)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (40:19.364)
The point is to be resilient and interact with our environment in a robust way. And so we have the bugs inside of us. What can happen after we give birth is now based on how much our environment has changed, our stress, our sleep, all of those things I just mentioned, the bugs can undergo something called polymorphism where they are literally changing shape. And now they're becoming problematic and presenting and manifesting as physical symptoms where, you know, maybe we're still living in the same oldie house we were.
Kim Vopni (40:32.022)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (40:49.156)
before, but now we're having issues because we've lost resilience and we can't interact with our environment as robustly as we could before. So just like it just keeps adding and kind of spiraling. And that's why people are, you know, people say they were never the same since I had kids.
Kim Vopni (41:07.213)
Yeah. Can you, as we're wrapping up, talk about what all the letters, like what the full acronym is? You mentioned R for reconnection. Can you mention the rest of them?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (41:19.14)
Yeah, so we have R and then E is environment. I'm of the belief that nothing heals the body as well as the body heals itself, given the right inputs and environment. And so we need to make sure that our terrain is promoting health. Then we have S, which is for sleep and stress. And then we have I, which is for inflammation and really that kind of root cause mechanism for what's going on here. You know, it's funny.
Kim Vopni (41:30.132)
which
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (41:46.512)
for the Resilient Motherhood Summit, I interviewed Tom O'Brien and he was like, I wish practitioners would stop saying root cause. It's not a root cause, it's a root mechanism and it all leads back to inflammation. We had this really great talk about that and he's right. We have to make sure that we're supporting the immune system and the inflammatory responses that we are seeing. Then we have L, which is proper lab testing.
Kim Vopni (41:50.484)
Thank
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (42:11.556)
And then the other I is improved digestion, really focusing on our gut health so we can get those, those nutrients in and we're absorbing things and we're not launching an immune response that we shouldn't be. Then we have E which is energy and mitochondria. So this really goes back to what those biochemical pathways and getting those churning and back online the way that they should. N is nervous system. This is a non-negotiable. This is paramount. You will not close that healing cycle if your body doesn't feel safe.
on a cellular level. So we got to figure that out. We have to send those messages of safety to our subconscious. And then we have T, which is the toxins part and making sure we're supporting total body burden, detox pathways, drainage pathways, everything involved in that.
Kim Vopni (42:49.138)
So last question, kind of leaving people with, how do we, like thinking of that acronym, but also thinking about the, as you were talking about the environment, the nutrition and our water, what would you say, how can we reduce inflammation?
reduce our toxic burden, how should we be eating, sleeping, that kind of wrap it up in a little bow, if you can, of the things that we can do to help reduce the likelihood of this becoming challenges for us in the future.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (43:32.314)
Yeah, you know, a lot of people ask me like, where do you start? Like, do you start with the R and you just keep going through the T and then no, you don't do it in that order. It depends on the person. You know, if somebody's like super sensitive, sensitive to smells and sensitive to food and sensitive to supplements and they can't do anything, they need nervous system support, you know, and that's where I start. So I just want to preface this by saying your starting point is different than somebody else's and it's okay. No matter where you are in your health journey, in your
Kim Vopni (43:53.211)
First of all.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (44:00.762)
Finances in your relationship no matter where you are There's always something we can do and that's something I really want people to hear me on because we have a tendency to feel stuck and Accept our situation as what it is and just deal with it No, no matter where you're at and what the situations are. There's something we can do the number one thing Which you might not be surprised that I'm saying this if I could just like put tight on a bow and just be like start here Is that light piece?
Kim Vopni (44:26.108)
.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (44:29.188)
you know, protect your eyes from that artificial junk light. Get outside in that early morning sunrise and throughout the day as well. If the sun is going down, turn off your overhead lights, match the positioning of your light to where the sun is outside and use, you know, lamps and peripheral lighting at that point. Use blue light blocking glasses. Maybe you could change your light bulbs to like amber or red bulbs and kind of go into dark mode at sunrise. That impacts everything we just mentioned. The inflammation.
our resilience, the total body burden, all of that gets better when our light environment is dialed in. And then everything else you do after that, it's easier, you feel better faster. Like, I cannot emphasize how important that piece is.
Kim Vopni (45:16.644)
Yeah, yeah. I hear so many more people talking about
They've been talking about it for a while, especially in this biohack space about light, but it's just so fascinating when you start to go down the pathway of learning about all of the different frequencies and all the things that you do unknowingly that are interfering with things you didn't even know. It's super fascinating. So thank you for everything that you've shared. Where can people learn more about your work, follow you, and potentially even work with you?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (45:25.508)
Yeah.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (45:51.28)
So my website is resilientmotherhood.health and that's also my Instagram handle, resilientmotherhood.health and so, and that's where I am most active. And you know, I just had this thought and I just wanna share one more thing about this light piece if it's okay with you. So the other benefit of syncing up this light is that it will increase the amount of water that your cells are producing.
Kim Vopni (46:06.692)
Please.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (46:17.286)
So a lot of people talk about hydration and just drinking more water, putting electrolytes in your water. That's great. I got no issues with that. But what I'm really interested in is how much water are our cells making? Because that's what's truly going to hydrate us. And that water that your cells make, that is what increases your resilience to these toxins, parasites, viruses, fungi, bacteria. Because it's like a gel-like substance. so the more...
Kim Vopni (46:20.141)
Good luck.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (46:44.076)
water your mitochondria is making, which improves the more you sink your light environment, the more that piece of the resilience part is gonna go up when talking about toxins. So I just wanted to throw that out there, because it's an important piece as well, instead of thinking like, my God, everything's toxic, the world's toxic, what am I gonna do? No, no, no, don't stress, just start there.
Kim Vopni (47:06.888)
Yeah, yeah. Is that, I don't want to go down a whole pathway about it, is it structured water is what you're talking about? Is that what becomes the structured water in ourselves?
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (47:16.196)
Yeah, it has a very special structure to it. Sometimes it's referred to as exclusion zone water. It's called exclusion zone because it keeps certain things out that shouldn't be in there. And, you know, when people have issues with like histamine especially, oftentimes we're just not cellularly hydrated. We're not hanging on to that structured water or producing it.
Kim Vopni (47:36.823)
So get in the light and we will get better with our structured water and our exclusion. Very cool. Okay. Dr. Brandy, thank you so much for your time and everything that you shared. I will have everything in the show notes. I really appreciate your time and your knowledge and your expertise. And thank you for everything you're doing to serve women's health.
Dr. Brandy Cummings, DCN (47:55.642)
Thank you so much, Kim. Have a great day.
