Prepare to have your health questions answered
here on Safe, Effective Natural Solutions with
Dr. Todd Binkley, owner of Binkley Healing Center
in downtown Ventura. Now, here's Dr. Todd. Good
afternoon. I'm Dr. Todd Bankley, Board Certified
Doctor of Non -Force Chiropractic and Practitioner
of Functional Medicine. I am excited to welcome
you to the 100th episode of Safe, Effective,
Natural Solutions to Almost Any Health Challenge.
Wow, it's been just over two years now since
I started this show with a few breaks. This is
the 100th episode each week. I highlight for
you some of the latest medical research into
documented ways you can heal yourself and naturally
reverse disease, reduce the risk of getting disease
in the first place, and especially reduce your
risk of ending up dependent on drugs. for the
rest of your life. So oftentimes I'll present
case studies of actual patients that I've treated
who've gotten truly amazing results. And apropos
of nothing, I recently rewatched the 100th episode
of Seinfeld, which was watched by millions who
loved it, who still continue to rewatch it on
Netflix just like me because Jerry Seinfeld and
his co -writer Larry David and his three co -stars
on the show who played George, Diane, and Kramer
are comedic. Geniuses. Well, I'm not a comedic
genius loved by millions, but I might be one
of the most competent, effective, skilled, and
experienced clinicians you or someone you love
might ever meet. to help you identify what's
causing some condition that no one else has ever
been able to figure out. I've been doing this
for over 35 years, and I've had some truly amazing
results. I've been blessed to have the opportunity
to help people that were in a really bad way,
whose lives I've been able to help change profoundly
in ways that some of them actually called, their
words, a miracle. So I'd love an opportunity
to help do that, to change the life of someone
you love or someone that needs a little help,
a little support to figure out what's actually
causing the problem that they're having that
no one else has been able to figure out. Give
me a call. Send me an email. You can even text
me at 805 -218 -3939. And I'll set up a consultation.
I'll send them a questionnaire to fill out in
advance and review their answers to that question
to identify what tests might be appropriate.
to identify what's causing the problem that you
have and follow up when those test results come
back. To give you my recommendations, I usually
do a 55 -point blood panel through LabCorp. And
LabCorp is nationwide. If you have friends and
family that live in Massachusetts or Oregon or
Colorado or Kansas or Florida, anywhere in the
country, I can send them to their local LabCorp
to get the blood drawn. And other tests that
I order are done for toxins and hormones and
things like that are with kits done through the
mail that you FedEx the samples in yourself that
you collect at home. a saliva test or a stool
test or a urine test, etc. And then when all
the tests come back, we can consult on the telephone,
on a FaceTime call, on Zoom. I'll make all my
recommendations. I can even show you a place
called Fullscript where you can get all the top
shelf supplements, the best research -based supplements
online with free shipping. So I have patients
in a couple of dozen states all over the country
that I've done this with for many years now.
This is the level of care my mother gets, and
she is 83 years old, lives in Kansas, and for
her age is in fantastic health. Do you need a
last minute gift? For as little as $100, you
could gift someone with a half hour consultation
that would motivate them, because it's already
paid for, to come in. And at least start the
process of finding out what could, what needs
to, what do they need to do different? What do
they need to find out about what could change
their lives going into the new year and forward
to make them feel amazing again? There's a great
story that came up in the news press recently,
medical press, headlined, music can help ease
pain from surgery or illness and scientists are
listening. I love this. It's the perfect time
of year. People are listening to music already.
The healing power of song may sound intuitive
given music's deep roots in human culture. But
the science of whether and how music dulls acute
and chronic pain, technically called music -induced
analgesia, is just catching up. So no one suggests
a catchy song can fully eliminate serious pain.
But several recent studies, including in the
journals, pain and scientific reports have suggested
that listening to music can reduce the perception
of pain and enhance a person's ability to tolerate
it. So what seems to matter most is that patients
or their families choose the music selections
themselves and listen intently. not just as background
noise. So a lot of people are, a lot of us are
listening to Christmas music this time of year.
I listen to, I have CDs, hundreds of CDs I don't
listen to anymore. I listen to Pandora online.
Most people listen to Spotify. These are places
you can get to stream music online. There's a
great jazz holidays station that I play in my
office a lot that so many people say, what is
that? What are you playing? That's amazing. That's
fantastic. Jazz holidays on Pandora is wonderful.
And another one is folk holidays. something a
little more mellow folk F -O -L -K, Folk Holidays
Station that you punch in on Pandora is just
a bunch of music that someone else has chosen
or the algorithm of the computer has chosen.
It's really, really nice to listen to this time
of year. So anyway, for the point of trying to
use music, what a simple thing, right? I love
to give people simple solutions. If you want
something that's as simple as possible and basically
free, listening to music. So it's not just randomly
listening to music. Everyone often has random
music playing in the background. No, this study
specifically says that what matters most is several
things. One, you choose the music. It works best
if you or whoever you're going to suggest try
this. They pick their own music, something they
really like, and then listen intently. So what
does that mean? That means, I used to do this.
Have you ever done this? Like when you go to
a concert. You're not looking at your phone.
There's no TV on if you're with someone or not.
The only thing you're doing is listening to music.
I used to have some really amazing music I loved
to just put on a record and listen to in the
dark. The point is, you're not occupying your
eyes with distractions to think about. or anything
else that needs this drawing your attention away
from the music. You're just sitting or standing
and dancing maybe, but just listening to music,
music that you really love. This is what this
study is showing that can have profound effects.
So pain is a really complex experience, says
Adam. Dr. Adam Hanley, PhD, a psychologist at
Florida State University. It's created by a physical
sensation, by our thoughts about that sensation
and the emotional reaction to it. So two people
with the same condition or injury may feel vastly
different effects of acute or chronic recent
onset or pain that's been around for a long time.
Or the same person might experience pain differently
from one day to the next. It's different from
day to day. But acute pain, recent onset pain.
It's felt when pain receptors in a specific part
of the body, like from a hand touching a hot
stove, send signals to the brain. These receptors
send signals to the brain, which causes the short
-term response of a sudden onset pain. Chronic
pain, however, usually or alternatively involves
long -term structural or other changes in the
brain, which heighten overall sensitivity. to
pain signals. I love this. I'm going to say that
again. Chronic pain usually involves long -term
structural and other changes to the brain which
heighten overall sensitivity to pain signals.
Well, this is something as a non -force chiropractor
I see all the time. I suggest, I strongly believe
that most... Chronic pain. Most of the pain that
people have that didn't result from an injury
they had last week, even if the pain started
last week, you know you've had some problem with
your neck or your low back or in your knee or
your ankle or your foot or your shoulder for
years. It comes and goes, and you think if it
goes, then when it comes back again, that it's
just starting then. No, if that part of your
body has ever had pain before, then it is a chronic
pain. And this almost always involves some kind
of long -term structural change in the mechanisms
your body uses to prevent you from injuring that
tissue again. So if you whack your thumb with
a hammer, or even if your stomach just tightens
up when you get scared or horrified at seeing
a car accident or witnessing some other traumatic
event for someone else even, or a pet, all these
things are ways that your body is designed to
protect you. from hurting yourself in the future
from a similar situation. So if you get in a
car accident, for example, and a certain song
is playing on the radio and you're looking out
your windshield at a certain building or it's
hot or cold, all the sensations that are impacting
your body, your sense organ, your sight, sound,
taste, touch, and smell organs, your brain is
perceiving all of these things at the same time.
These are things that get encoded with a traumatic
event. This has everything to do with what underlies
PTSD when soldiers come home from the battlefield
and hear a sound that sounds like a helicopter
or an explosion or something they heard on the
battlefield that can trigger a whole... overwhelming
response, physiological response in their body
that's kicking into gear to try to protect them,
to save their life, to prevent something bad
from happening again. So the PTSD in a soldier
or a rape victim, I've treated many of both and
helped them, helped their brains identify that
those sensations they're experiencing are things
that were important reactions at one time to
protect them in the past. but they're no longer
necessary. I'm getting a little bit off track
here. That's a whole other talk. There are ways
to provide new information to the brain to replace
that feedback that's saying, oh my God, this
thing is really dangerous. I need to tighten
up this muscle and create a spasm that's painful
or create sensations in the gut that aren't necessary.
Your body is just trying to protect itself and
it will do that no matter what until you give
it new information that enables it. especially
your brain, to realize that that reaction is
no longer necessary. So this is one of the things
that they're identifying that music can help
with in really profound ways. Pain is interpreted
and translated by the brain, says Dr. Gilbert
Chandler, MD, a specialist in chronic spinal
pain at the Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic in
Florida. And these signals to the brain ratchet
up the signal. or down, depending on the situation.
And researchers know that music can draw attention
away from pain, lessening these sensations. These
sensations that are just there on kind of automatic
mode in the background because of something that
happened in the past that's no longer necessary
and focused listening to music you like. And
only listening to music, not doing anything else.
No phone, no TV, no distractions. Just sitting
and listening to music that you love can help
dull that pain. They've tested this. Much more
than listening to podcasts or any other distractions.
Music draws your focus away from the pain. But
it's doing more than that, says Caroline Palmer,
Dr. Caroline Palmer, psychologist at McGill University
in Montreal, who studies music and pain. She
says, quote, we know that almost all of the brain
becomes active when we engage in music. This
is one of the reasons that so many studies have
shown that playing music for infants in the womb
and young children is so powerful because it
engages the entire brain. It changes the perception.
and experience of everything that's impacting
the brain. Because it involves so many parts
of the brain firing at the same time, it helps
build connections that are useful in a young
person, and it helps rebuild connections in a
person that are better than the ones that they're
firing off over and over again now that are not
helpful, and that changes your perception and
experience of pain. and the isolation of pain
and the anxiety of pain. It rewires your brain
to a certain extent. It can actually rewire.
When I say rewire, there's lots of studies that
show that what you really want to think of when
you're trying to change an impact, think of the
way a skill is formed in your brain. There are
so many nerves in our brain that we never even
use. Most of us lose a huge percentage. percentage
of our brain cells as we get older. And that
underlies chronic neurological diseases like
Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, losing that brain
tissue. But we're not using far, a small, we're
using a small percentage of the total available
brain cells most of the time anyway, maybe 20,
30%, some studies suggest. What really matters
is, in many cases, what matters is the connections
between the cells you have. You may have lost
10, 20, 30 % of your brain cells, but you can
always do something to reestablish. more connections
between existing brain cells. And any time a
professional athlete or an accomplished musician
or any of these superstars that can do these
superhuman feats, physiologically what underlies
a lot of that, those skills that they develop
through practice, through doing 10 ,000 hours
of something, playing the piano over and over
again, what they're doing is they're developing
more connections between the cells of their brain.
So when they want to deliberately repeat, heat
and activity that they've been studying over
and over and over again, it's easier for them
to do that again and do it better than you or
I can do it because they've done it so many times
and that's literally changed the physiology of
their brain by increasing the number of connections
between the cells in their brain. So all the
cells in your brain are connected to other cells,
but the number of other cells that each individual
cell is connected to. varies tremendously. Some
of your brain cells are only connected to a few
other brain cells, and some of them are connected
to hundreds of other brain cells. And activities
that force you to think on your feet, to develop
a skill, to do something that requires repeated
activity over and over again, the result of that
activity, the beneficial results of that activity,
is in large part because of these dramatically
increased connections between brain cells well
something as simple as listening to music music
that you like and only listening to music with
no distractions not watching tv not doing anything
else at the same time just listening to music
does the same thing these studies are showing
pretty strongly it's not proving but strongly
indicating because of the similarity with other
studies that what you're actually doing there's
many studies that show that music involves all
parts of the brain so it's very likely that this
is part of this benefit when you listen to really
amazing music that you love and do nothing else
just listen to music it can change your brain
in ways that among other things can reduce your
perception and experience of pain. So the idea
of using recorded music to lessen pain associated
with dental surgery, for example, began in the
19th century, before local anesthetics were available.
Well, today researchers are studying what conditions
can make music most effective. Researchers at
Erasmus University in Rotterdam in the Netherlands
conducted a study on 548... participants to see
how listening to five different genres of music
classical rock pop urban and electronic and you
guessed it everyone was expecting classical music
to make the biggest difference and the result
came in all music helped it didn't matter what
kind of music all music helped the more people
listen to a favorite genre of music the more
they could endure pain. And what matters most
is just simply that you listen to what music
you like. They theorize that it may partly be
because familiar songs activate more memories
and emotions, and the simple act of choosing
the music itself can have a benefit. So says
Dr. Claire Howland, Ph .D., Director of Music
and Health Psychology Lab at Trinity College
Dublin, who co -authored a study that suggested
allowing patients to select songs improved their
pain. Tolerance, because it's one thing that
people can have control over if they have a chronic
condition, and it gives them agency. It gives
them something that they can do at will, anytime,
that can actually make a significant difference.
I'm Dr. Todd Binkley. You're listening to Safe,
Effective, Natural Solutions to Almost Any Challenge.
I've created and am funding this show to provide
you with the latest research into ways that you
can use natural methods to reduce your risk of
many diseases and heal yourself. This often requires
ordering more tests than most doctors order and
doing a more progressive analysis of those tests.
So in addition to screening for full -blown disease,
I'm looking for places where normal health has
been lost. Where do your kidneys and liver and
digestive system and immune system need a little
extra support? How is the health of your gut
microbiome? How would you know? Well, if you
have gas, bloating, constipation, or diarrhea,
it's probably not great. But if you have an autoimmune
condition where your body is overproducing antibodies
that are attacking healthy tissue, and your thyroid,
for example, or your... nerve tissue like multiple
sclerosis or in your joints, rheumatoid arthritis,
there's a good chance that that has its origins
in a lack of healthy bacterial balance in your
gut. Maybe your hormones are a little bit out
of balance and you need some support there. The
way those are often tested and treated by standard
medical practices are not always getting people
the results they need. Maybe you've been exposed
to mold, chemical, or heavy metal toxins that
are putting a constant strain on your nervous
system and your immune system, causing rashes,
brain fog, fatigue, and a whole host of other
symptoms that no one else can figure out. What
is causing that? When we identify these things
that other doctors miss, solutions involving
mainly better food, exercise, and evidence -based
supplements can make all the difference. You
can feel like a whole new person again. So who
do you know who isn't feeling great, who has
been to other doctors and is told there's nothing
that can be done? Maybe they've been told there's
nothing wrong with them. But if they don't feel
right, then there probably is something wrong.
They just haven't figured out the cause yet.
So I'm here to help. A consultation to get someone
started on a healthier path is a great Christmas
gift they can take with them far into the new
year for as little as $100. We can do a consultation
and get them started. Here's some exciting news.
It's not really new. It's been around for a while.
Peanut allergies are debilitating for children.
It's really frustrating because peanuts are everywhere.
Nuts are really, really healthy snack foods.
If you like to eat other nuts, a lot of times
they're processed. facilities that also process
peanuts in a tiny amount for some, especially
children, can cause an anaphylactic shock where
you need to get an EpiPen or their airways are
going to close off and they'll suffocate and
die. So it can be a really serious condition.
But for several years now, they've been doing
studies where they show that if you introduce
peanuts to an infant and a young child's diet,
At that age, their body will adjust to that and
they won't become familiar with it, so they won't
develop an allergy to it. So this has been going
on for several years now. Studies show the protective
effect of recommending peanut product consumption.
In infancy, allergy rates dropped. This is published
in Pediatrics. Just came out just this year,
2025. Fewer toddlers developed peanut allergies
after guidelines recommended introducing peanuts
in infancy. A large primary care registry study
showed physician -diagnosed peanut allergies
in children ages 1 to 3 declined by 27 % after
the key trial and resulted... And new guidance
and peanut product introduction in 2015 reported
researchers led by David Hill, Dr. David Hill,
MD, PhD of the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
in Pediatrics. Exposing babies to peanuts by
11 months was shown in a 2015 LEAP trial to reduce
the development of peanut allergies, which resulted
in another update in the guidelines. Prevention
of peanut allergy guidance of 2017 from the National
Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disorders.
which recommended the introduction of peanut
allergy, peanut products by 11 months for low
risk infants and by six months for those at high
risk. And although adherence to these guidelines
has been slow, the study showed that the cumulative
incidence of peanut allergy dropped 45 % compared
to before they started these new guidelines.
How exciting is that? What a debilitating. Anaphylactic
shock potentially inducing allergy like that
can be totally reversed. You can help your young
growing child to prevent that ever happening
by preparing the immune system in early life
to adjust to that so that peanuts are no longer.
And irritant, that could be life change for someone,
especially if they're at high risk. If you have
somebody that's already have someone in their
family that's at risk for that. This is well
documented. If you heard about it, but you're
not sure if it's safe to do, send me an email.
I'll send you the specific guidelines. You can
look them up online, but I'm happy to send them
to you myself so that you can feel safe about
doing it. But this is really exciting news because,
yeah, no one wants to spend a lifetime worrying
about going into... respiratory failure just
because they got a little peanut in some snack
that they weren't expecting. I'd love to have
you join me for the next presentation live at
Binkley Healing Center, my office in downtown
Ventura. 961 East Main Street, every first Wednesday
evening. This will be 6 p .m. on January 7th
on how to reduce and reverse diabetes, how you
can lower your blood sugar, reduce your risk
of heart attack, stroke, get more energy, lose
weight, and feel amazing without drugs. I'll
do a 30 -minute keynote presentation. We'll have
some light refreshments, and then there'll be
plenty of time for questions and answers, which
I would love to be able to provide for you face
-to -face. in my office here's the final tip
before you go out to each of those holiday gatherings
that you're going to stuff yourself with some
healthy fruits and vegetables before you go take
some nuts with you dense nutrient rich snacks
keep get your belly full before you're tempted
by all that starch and sugar that you know you
shouldn't be eating and then of course most importantly
of all have a blessed holiday with your family
have a very Merry Christmas. Take advantage of
this opportunity to ask questions for yourself
and for your loved ones because our health matters.
Join him next Friday at 2 p .m. for safe, effective
natural solutions here on 98 .3 FM, The Word.