Guy Odishaw was a great guest the fist time and he’s back to share his knowledge about thermography. Guy told me about this technology in a conversation we had off camera, and knew immediately that I had to try it.

In this episode we discuss my results as well has how you can use thermography as a noninvasive technology to help you identify problems very early while you have time to prevent future health issues.

Guy is the founder of Bhakti Wellness Center and the cofounder of CerebralFit Brain Training.

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Cheryl McColgan (00:00.37)
I need to get a shirt like that. Hey everyone, welcome to the Heal Nourish Grow podcast. I am back today with Guy Odishaw. He is, you’re actually the first guest I’ve ever had on twice, which is a great distinction. So excited for our show today. And I was, I was just, after I hit the record button, I was just telling Guy that I’m glad his

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:02.37)
Yes.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (00:14.707)
interesting

Cheryl McColgan (00:22.834)
Logo is showing because as you heard in his bio, he is part of cerebral fit. He talks all things brain health, which is one of my favorite topics. But today we’re gonna chat about something slightly different. It actually came up in our conversation either before or after we recorded last time. And I said, I feel like a lot of people don’t know about this topic, and I would love for you to come back and share this information. And so it’s all about thermal imaging. So I’m not gonna say too much about it other than I went and did it so that we could talk about this.

But first I’ll let Guy tell you about what it is, what we use it for, and why it’s not standard practice to use this imaging, because it’s kind of interesting. So I’ll let you take it away from here.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:02.99)
All right, thank you. And thank you for the opportunity to come back and talk with you and for going off and trying my crazy idea and the whole thing is very, very brave of you. So this falls kind of in the general area of bioelectric medicine as I define it, which is really when we use technology in the area of healthcare. So it’s a very big umbrella. But here, what to say about…

thermal imaging. So I just want to say a little bit about imaging in general. So most of us are all familiar with X-ray, and then, of course, MRI. And then depending on how involved in the health care system you’ve been, you’ve maybe heard of a CAT scan, a PET scan. If you’re really, in a sense, unfortunate, you’ve heard about a SPECT scan, because it’s a very specific scan for the brain.

And then there’s the kind of neuroimaging we do in our clinic, which is QEEG. So EEG neuroimaging So we have all of these different devices for doing neuroimaging and then probably well ultrasound I shouldn’t leave that out, you know, so a host that I haven’t mentioned, but these are common ones and And thermal imaging goes right in there with all of these other kinds of imaging We think of MRI is maybe kind of our gold standard. I think everybody think well an MRI

That’s the top of the food chain. But there are things that MRI does well, and then there’s things that MRI is terrible at. And so you’d only want to use MRI for what it’s good for and not for things that isn’t good for. And an example of this would be, MRI is really good at detail of anatomy, but it isn’t really good for function. Now there is functional MRI.

So that’s a little bit of a caveat there. But still, if we think of something like a concussion, MRI is not good at finding concussion. Unless the concussion has risen to the level of anatomical damage, then OK. And then if we have anatomical changes, it can spot it. But even then, it just spots the anatomical change. Versus, say, something like EEG, which is

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (03:24.13)
better at looking at function. So it’s highly, in the time domain, very good at spotting brain function. So we can see functional changes, which may correlate with a concussion. So it’s the whole thing of using the proper imaging for what it does well, and then not for what it doesn’t do well. So thermal imaging is basically, I mean, it’s a camera that is detecting temperature changes on the skin.

So when you go for thermal imaging, you’re just standing in front of a camera, looks like a regular camera, and it’s just gonna take a picture of you. And so that’s nice, and there’s no contact, there’s no harmful rays, whether it’s X-rays, or in MRI, it’s the magnet, or you’re doing a CAT scan or PET scan, and you might have to take a tracer, and then you’re taking a radioactive something, so that’s not necessarily great for you. In thermal imaging, you’re just having a picture taken. So there’s no downside.

It’s not very expensive. So you’re not paying $1,500 or more out of pocket for your MRI. You’re spending more in the hundreds for your thermal imaging. But again, what it does well is it detects temperature changes at the skin level and then a little bit deeper than the skin. But the deeper you go into the body, the less reliable the

Thermal imaging is because that temperature has to migrate to the surface, so it diffuses. So a deep source of heat or cold will look more diffuse on the surface, whereas something on the surface could be quite accurate. So that’s what thermal imaging does well. And one should use thermal imaging for that and not for anything else.

Cheryl McColgan (05:14.79)
Yeah, and one of the things that I think, I’m sure we’ll get to this at some point, but I think people are kind of maybe wondering at this point, well, why would I use this? And so the context of how this came up in my previous conversation with Guy were two reasons. Somehow we got on the subject of there being a lot of cancer in my family, and one of the applications that you mentioned that this could be really good for is detecting breast cancer. So very early on, it’s much better at detecting.

things early or if someone has previously had cancer, it might be a tool that you want to use to follow up on yourself a year or two, three years down the road and just make sure that things kind of aren’t progressing in a negative way. So maybe you can say a little bit more about that in the context of using it as a preventative tool. And then the other area of interest that we were kind of talking about is people that have chronic pain. So I was mentioning how I have this.

ongoing jaw pain, we were talking about it in relation to dental work. So maybe we could just kind of focus on those two things. There’s probably many, many other applications, but I think that those are two that are probably easy for people to understand and easy to see how they could, you know, maybe this is something they might want to try.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (06:26.338)
Sure. So one of the most common uses is, again, breast cancer detection ongoing maintenance. And so, again, just to say a little bit about what’s happening in the body that would make thermal imaging even be relevant. So what happens early in the process, even before there’s a tumor, the body is moving in the direction.

of forming a tumor, those cells that kind of disconnect from the local mind, the local activity, say in the breast, it’s breast tissue, that are no longer functioning as breast cells, but are now gonna be the beginning of a tumor. They’re gonna call into place increased circulation because they have a higher metabolic demand. And it’s…

On one level, it’s that change in circulation and circulatory system that can be detected by thermal imaging. So just the increase of blood flow, blood is warm. So it’s going to bring more temperature to that area. That’s what gets detected. So one of the first changes that can be spotted, thermal imaging in breast cancer, is the change in the circulatory system. And now the actual cells that are

you know, in potentially heading in the direction of becoming a tumor, there’s, there are too few of them and too small to even be called a tumor at that point, or even to be detected by standard. If you went for a mammogram, chances are at this early stage, they’re too small to show up. And again, this is one of the advantages to thermal imaging is it has the potential and I want to say potential. There’s a lot of factors here.

that can pro-con around this that maybe we’ll touch on. So just take everything as these are possibilities, statistical possibilities that lean in the direction, given the pro-con of it, the safety, the cost of it, that in general make it worth doing. Catching it before it really has risen to the level of being a tumor, where it’s still very susceptible to changes in diet and lifestyle.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (08:52.782)
to be able to change the course of those tissues and move them back into being healthy breast tissue and not continuing down the path of becoming a tumor. And so to me, that’s the biggest advantage of it is that early detection. And if you look at the literature, there’s quite a range, and again, take everything as statistical possibilities and not absolute, but you’re looking at the possibility of picking up something that…

could potentially become a tumor about eight years earlier than it presenting as a tumor. And then we know from the research that there are people who’ve had thermograms that showed a positive who did nothing, and that did eventually turn into a tumor that had to be treated in the standard allopathic cancer process. So we have these longitudinal studies that show that there is truth to this, because it’s actually turned out this way in many, many hundreds of thousands of people’s.

lives. So the ideal is we can we catch it that early, we make diet and lifestyle changes, and we avoid the unwanted, you know, arising of a cancer altogether. Or catching it anywhere along the line earlier is always better. So it may be progressed enough that there is a tumor there, but that thermogram is what gets you to go and have a mammogram, which then they confirm maybe

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (10:21.038)
years before you would have otherwise, because again, you’re detecting it sooner in its life cycle, and it may not have been palpable, even if you were doing a physical breast exam, to notice it yet, so early detection. And then the other place is, so let’s say, you’ve had a tumor, you’ve had it removed, whatever, chemo, radiation, surgery, whatever the process was, now you’re on the other side of it, and now you wanna…

kind of keep an eye on things. So again, thermal imaging becomes a safe and affordable way to do those preventative checks on a more regular basis because the medical community has its pacing of how often you do a mammogram and then it kind of drops off over time. But the patient might have a sense of kind of anxiety, which I see this, you know, pretty much 100% in my…

post-cancer clients is the ongoing fear of it returning. And so this is a way to kind of give you a little bit of a sense of kind of control and measure and being proactive, and you’re not just waiting for the scary news, you’re doing something. And again, it’s a very affordable way to do it. And it is medically helpful, can be medically helpful, but even if it isn’t, if it’s just psychologically helpful, that is…

highly valuable to the person going through this process.

Cheryl McColgan (11:51.45)
Yeah, I can, there’s a huge application there and just to share a little background with people. So because I do have that in my family and other risk factors for other cancers in my family. So for example, they’ve done my risk calculation and I probably have about it, depends on the model you use, these are all algorithms and all taking into account a lot of different things, but something like a 22 to 25% chance of breast cancer in my lifetime and on the yearly basis, I wanna say it’s like.

5% or something like that, but increased incidence over the general population, basically a one in four lifetime chance. So this is a big reason that I do a lot of the crazy health related things that I do because I’m aware of this and I’m trying to do the best I can to mitigate some of that. And so when you go to a high risk breast cancer group, which I had to establish a new one here in Salt Lake, their protocol for that is really a mammogram every six months and an MRI every six months. And because of what you said before, they each have their pros and cons.

For example, mammograms are awesome, but they’re not great on dense breast tissue. And then you have the MRI, but you do have to take a tracer. They think what you’re taking is safe, but they don’t really know. And then so adding something like this where it’s literally zero risks, it gives you peace of mind. I think this is a hugely valuable tool. And I’m kind of going through this process right now when I’m reestablishing this, thinking about, okay, am I going to use this as part of a tool?

Maybe I cut back the MRI with the tracer thing once every two years or something because I’m also doing this as an adjunct, for example. So there’s a lot of different ways to think about it, but I think that the mental aspect that you mentioned about it is absolutely a huge part of it. Because if nothing else, it makes you feel like you’re being proactive. It’s not super expensive. I’ll share with everybody the one I found.

here in Salt Lake to do the thermal imaging. They were having a deal. I just happened to catch it at the right time. So they did a full body for $200. I think, Guy, that you shared with me, you probably see anything from 200 to 500, depending on if they’re doing just breast imaging or doing the full image. But in the grand scheme of things, I know I realize everybody cannot necessarily afford that. But if you have a serious reason to do it, it’s often significantly cheaper than some of the other options. So.

Cheryl McColgan (14:11.238)
I think the mental health aspect is definitely huge. And I would love to hear, so when you’re working with patients or people in your clinic and they have this history of either increased risk or they’ve had breast cancer already, you mentioned, you know, trying to make things healthier, doing lifestyle changes, doing, you know, maybe different things with exercise. Can you share maybe some of the things that are maybe general recommendations? Obviously, that’s not medical advice.

but healthy behaviors people wanna do when they see, oh, I have this area of increased, it could be an early sign of something. What do I do with that information?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (14:51.458)
So I wanna just loop back one step and talk about the oral side, and then we’ll kind of jump into the, you know, what to do about it with some of these findings. Yeah. So the oral piece and the breast piece are not disconnected, although they can be standalone, but surprising the link between an oral infection. So let’s say a root canal that has become chronically infected.

Cheryl McColgan (14:56.336)
Oh, yes.

what we do about it.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (15:20.318)
A person can be subclinical in the symptomatic presentation. So maybe the person has a sensitive tooth, but they’re like, oh, I had a root canal and it’s just that. There’s a lot of ways to just kind of wave it off as not a big deal and you just go through your day with a little bit of a sore tooth, but so what. But what’s happening in there, and we see this in the thermal imaging, is people go in and their jaw will be just bright red.

and then the streak running down their neck and then down the sternum and into a breast. And that’s the infection moving through the lymphatic system that’s now going down and pooling in the breast. There’s a strong correlation between that and breast cancer. And so again, one of the reasons why we recommend the thermal imaging is to check out the oral cavity to make sure that you’re not one of those people. And you may not have that condition happening.

But a person may have a much smaller kind of smoldering infection in a root, and they didn’t know about it. Because it’s really non-symptomatic at all, or just so mild that you don’t think about it. And then you see it, and then you can do something about it. So that’s, again, the value of why have it done. And generally, I do recommend people do the whole body, because we can’t do it.

Talk briefly in yours, there was maybe a reason to think about some thyroid. But also, it can pick up neuropathies in the arms and in the legs related to a diabetic neuropathy or a post-chemoneuropathy or a back, a disc impingement neuropathy. And these things also are important to find because in the case of a limb.

kind of getting poor neural information, the tissues aren’t getting good instructions. And this is going to lead them open to something like a carpal tunnel or a cubital tunnel or any number of degenerative changes because those tissues aren’t getting the information that they need to continue doing their function on an optimal basis. And so we have a degradation of

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (17:47.17)
health. So thermal imaging has to show you a lot of things. And we’re going to talk today mostly kind of focusing on the on the breast health and oral health. So if the thermal imaging shows a either a hot spot, so probably inflammation, infection inflammation, something like that, it’s high metabolic activity, or a blue area, which is

low metabolic activity. Those are basically the two findings we’re looking for. There’s too much of something or not enough of something. And then, of course, we want to look in and find out more detail around the something, and then how to treat it. And I would say probably the most common way that this goes is then a person looking to functional medicine. And so, again, a visit to your functional medicine provider.

but that also could be a Chinese medicine provider, an Ayurvedic medicine provider, but somebody who’s gonna look at kind of diet lifestyle and then some type of nutritional support that isn’t merely food-based, but is into supplements or herbs, something of that nature. So that’s gonna be the number one. It’s gonna be lifestyle, diet, supplements. Go ahead. Yeah.

Cheryl McColgan (19:08.362)
Just to backtrack a little, I was just thinking when you’re saying this, because I’m like, yeah, if you take these images to a traditionally trained Western medicine doctor, they’re probably going to be like, what do I do with this? They’re not even going to know what to do with this. We’re probably looking in this, you know, you want to look for a holistic medical practitioner.

to see this new primary care doctor I established. And so I’m feeling if I took this, I’d be like, what is this? Like, why are you showing this to me? And then they don’t work with you on sort of the diet and lifestyle changes. Like you’re talking about to make sort of a treatment plan based on what we’re seeing on the images. And you brought up so many good points there about just function through the whole body. Like when I did mine, they did.

find a little bit like I’ve had back problems in the past. I think they mentioned that some like maybe degeneration. And then I think my left glute showed less thermic activity than the right. And they said, well, that could be like a little bit of spinal compression on the nerve or something. And then I believe in that same leg down to some thrombosis or something. And I remember my mom had some kind of vein issues and stuff in her legs when I was growing up. So, you know, it’s funny how it does, you know, it’s nothing that’s giving me pain. It’s nothing that

is a problem right at this moment, but it’s probably telling me like, hey, those are areas where we need to pay a little bit more attention going forward so that they don’t become a degenerative situation in the future. So just kind of wanted to backtrack there because you mentioned several of those things. We’re gonna focus on, as you mentioned, the breast health and the oral health connection, which I’m glad you remembered that because that’s actually how we got to both of those before. I think we were just talking about the tooth and you said, hey, you know, there’s a big connection there between oral health.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (20:44.128)
I’m out.

Cheryl McColgan (20:50.951)
and breast health. So glad you racked track on that.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (20:53.878)
Yes. Yeah. And so try and stay focused here, but you just opened up exactly that. Like the value of the thermal imaging is early detection of things that probably aren’t a big problem yet, but left ignored will be. And I mean, worst case, you go in, you have it done, you’ve got some information and then you ignore it. And then, you know, five years later, when you have…

that sciatic problem, you can look back and tell yourself, I told you so. Just generally, people are not good at prevention. They’re good at dealing with acute symptoms that are troubling them or threatening in the moment. People are good at that. They’re not good at prevention. But this is where thermal imaging really comes in and shines. We use thermal imaging with professional athletes.

Cheryl McColgan (21:28.101)
Right? Well, ideally we’re trying to do something about it.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (21:52.322)
so that we can spot the potential of an injury before it happens and do preventative care. And why? Well, because those athletes are worth a lot of money. And if you can prevent that injury, that’s potentially saving millions of dollars. So there’s a high stakes game. So they’re willing to use this technology that, again, that just the medical community hasn’t caught up to. And I like your point, like, yes, if you showed this to your…

primary care and, first of all, you should be careful because you never know when any one primary care, any one doctor has done their own continuing education and has a knowledge base. But in general, in general, the allopathic community, this is roughly nonsense to them. And so yes, you probably are gonna need to look at a provider who has self-selected.

Cheryl McColgan (22:23.21)
I’m gonna go.

Cheryl McColgan (22:33.066)
Absolutely.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (22:50.958)
to be in a niche and is paying attention to these things that allopathic medicine has basically pushed off to the side, and you want somebody who specializes in those things that are off to the side.

Cheryl McColgan (23:02.054)
And I’ll make sure that I share in the show notes, Guy provided me with a couple, when we were talking about this earlier, provided me with a couple of links to some studies, to one of them was a presentation at a medical conference, I believe, that you sent the link to. And so I’ll share that with people just in case, if you do decide to go down this road and you do have a doctor that’s more caressed, or even if you don’t, you’ve got some information on like, why are you doing this? And that way you can share that with people. So, well, now that we’ve given the background.

Should we actually share with people the image of what this looks like? And I’m not going to, I didn’t share all of them, but I shared the one that’s kind of the upper chest and the jaw, because that’s what we’re really going to primarily talk about today. So if you’re just listening to this on audio, you may want to pop over to YouTube at this point if you want to see the image. Otherwise, we’ll do our best to describe it to you. But guys, since you’re the…

expert in this situation. I’ll just let you chat about whatever you happen to be seeing here and just for reference, it’s my right cheek that’s the one that’s the problem child. So.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (24:05.854)
OK, so again, and just for context, the only data I have is this image. I don’t have a full report. This is just me looking.

Cheryl McColgan (24:16.774)
Right, normally in clinical history, you’d learn all about all, we’re just doing this for kind of for fun for people to see, number one, what the image looks like. And number two, if you’re presented with this information, kind of what is it that you’re looking for here?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (24:29.598)
And that without a lot of detailed information, there are some things that you can just immediately pull out based just on kind of normative data across looking at many, many thermograms. There’s just some things that jump out. So we’re looking at kind of these. So again, we have this range of red, kind of bright red to deep blue. And then it’s set against a temperature.

And depending on the equipment being used, that equipment can be more or less sensitive to fractions of degrees of temperature change. And so that matters actually when you’re going to do this is the type of equipment that the person has and how sophisticated. It does not need to be the most sophisticated. This can be done today. In today’s world, you can actually do a version of this with an attachment to your iPhone. And it’s…

equivalent to the thermal imaging that was the most expensive equipment 10 years ago now for $200 you can do on your iPhone. I mean, that’s just technology for you. So we’re looking here and we see some red kind of on the sides of your neck, but again with the carotid artery and jugular vein passing through there, we’d expect to see red there. So that doesn’t really jump out. Again, up on the temple, there’s a patch of red, but again, here we have vasculature that’s right close to the surface.

Cheryl McColgan (25:36.35)
That’s amazing.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (25:57.59)
that doesn’t particularly catch my attention. But on the side of your nose and cheekbone, that doesn’t necessarily just intuitively make sense. We’d expect some, but there’s more there than we would typically expect. So just me at a glance say, well, there’s probably something going on sinus-wise. And then we see down at the corner of your mouth and into your lower jaw.

Cheryl McColgan (26:20.606)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (26:27.058)
a little red where we wouldn’t necessarily expect to see it. And we see a high contrast of blue, so deep blue, right next to an area of red. And there again, that brings up this question of like that. That isn’t normative circulatory thermal data. Something’s happening there. And then we see this kind of a little bit that’s running along.

again, probably like the side of your trachea. You don’t get anatomy in a thermal image. You just get thermal information. So you have to guess a little bit. But I would be thinking thyroid. But that would just be a just general. We would, of course, look into more and find out if that indeed is the case. And then the other thing that stood out to me was just the deep blue kind of by your armpits.

Cheryl McColgan (27:04.222)
We’ll see you next time.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (27:25.65)
And you’d have multiple versions that would show this better than these. But just as I glanced at these, those were the things that jumped out to me is sinus, jaw, thyroid, as, you know, there’s something, looks like something is going on there from the too hot standpoint. And then here in the axilla or armpits, the deep blue just brings a question.

Cheryl McColgan (27:57.062)
Right, and as you said, you don’t have a clinical history and you don’t have the full set of images, so obviously everything’s in context, right, just for people to remember. So you wouldn’t see this and necessarily freak out, but you might also think something. And the other question I was thinking was like, well, I can’t really tell which side of my face is this because it’s a reverse, because it’s a photo. Because I do have probably more inflammation on one side of my face than the other. And so that’s kind of interesting to me, just like whether it’s…

anything related to what we’re seeing there with the contrast.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (28:30.339)
Yeah. So I think good to just show the image so people have a sense of it, but also, you know, again, me just kind of taking a quick peek at it resonated with you for what they had kind of given, the information they had given you in the report. And

Cheryl McColgan (28:46.67)
Yes, because the people that read it, are they, I mean, I guess they’re obviously just specialized in this field, but they sent a report. I think they have three people look it over and kind of come to a consensus, or maybe they talk about it if they’re seeing things that maybe don’t make sense, but they send you kind of a full report afterwards. And so from that perspective, let’s say you were working with somebody at the clinic who you did see, for example, say a breast hot spot where you’re concerned like, hey, this is something that may…

be a problem in the future, how then would you begin to work with that person on the diet and lifestyle changes just in a general sense? Because it’d be specialized to that person and whatever their specific situation is, but just some overall things that people could, you know, and these are probably good practice. Like if you’re worried about this in the future, I know whatever you’re going to say, it’s going to be like, you should just be doing this all the time if you want to prevent cancer, right? So love to hear what those are.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (29:39.21)
Yeah, so a couple of things here in response. So one, any finding should be referred out to the appropriate medical professional. So if it’s oral to at least a dentist and maybe somebody higher up the food chain, if it’s concerned around breast health, probably to the primary care provider for some evaluation, and just to start that process.

As a clinician, it’s the responsible thing to do. If you see a finding that is outside of, in my case, like my specialty, then my responsibility is to refer that person. So that would happen is I would refer the person to the appropriate medical expert. And then also around this question of the functional medicine piece, I would also refer somebody to a functional medicine doctor for a full evaluation around what to do.

not my area of expertise. My thing is the bioelectric medicine. So I can say more about what I would do there. But, you know, if we’re looking at, you know, and you named it well, like a lot of the recommendations are going to be the standard thing that you could go on pretty much any blog today and read about in a top 10 list or anything else, right? We’d want to, you know, kind of look at exercise.

Cheryl McColgan (30:44.763)
Yeah. Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (31:07.214)
And I’m a fan of more moderate exercise, not extreme exercise. The downside of extreme exercise is it, it takes more out of the system than it puts in, so it’s a net deficit. And so I’m not a fan of that. Um, so I think moderate exercise is a, is a net gain in terms of building resilience and giving the body more resources. Uh, so it would be that looking at what form of, of exercise is a person doing. Uh, of course.

Mental emotional health and maybe exercise can be a place where both of those come and if possible, that’s great That’s an ideal form otherwise looking at what’s happening there Then looking from a nutrition standpoint all the standards. Can we cut down any processed foods? I’m a fan of kind of more of a keto flex type diet so it would be really looking at high protein high fat minimal carbs and

moving the body in that direction to kind of, you know, certainly sugar, you know, it’s just gotta go. You know, those would be the general recommendations that, and you know, the hope would be that would handle it. If we catch something soon enough, those changes can be enough to make the correction. And then if we need to kind of step it up.

Again, if a person’s further along in the process, if we’re not catching it really at its early stages, we’re catching it medium or towards the end of it turning into an acute healthcare issue, then we may need to step up and then moving into supplements. And we can get into our kind of dietary anti-inflammatories or we can move up into some of the more supplement-based anti-inflammatories.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (33:02.102)
Yeah, I don’t like to mention brand names, no favorites, but there are some really good nutrition-based anti-inflammatory, supplement-based anti-inflammatories out there today that a person could use. And it’s more potent than food, but it’s not moving to the level of a drug yet, in terms of being able to control inflammation. So I know that’s very…

Cheryl McColgan (33:05.906)
rain.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (33:31.574)
general, but that’s how the bulk of it is going to be. And then in the specific case, in any one person’s case, again, might order a panel, like a blood panel, and just look and see if there’s some low-hanging fruit in terms of, as a person low in vitamin D, if you’re here in Minnesota, you can pretty much guess that everybody is, so that’s a standard. I had a client who was just,

Cheryl McColgan (33:55.154)
it. Right.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (34:00.966)
you know right next to zero on B vitamins and That was because of the medication that they had been on and they’d been on that medication Really like the current doctor was three doctors back the current doctor really didn’t have any rationale for why That patient was still on that medication other than it had just been grandfathered in doctor to doctor and so those are first things we said is like

Cheryl McColgan (34:06.259)
Oh wow.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (34:29.474)
can we get her off that medication? And doctor said, yeah, makes perfect sense. There’s no current reason. It was a protein pump inhibitor, which is known to block bees, and got her off that, got her on a strong bee, and sort of marvelous change on her energy level and just general kind of functional capacity, getting her B vitamins back. So there’s things that are very specific to the individual.

versus just kind of a shotgun approach saying everybody should take D and everybody should take B. Not that helpful.

Cheryl McColgan (35:05.778)
Yeah, and that’s a great general reminder to people just like when you switch doctors or even if you’re with your same doctor, reevaluating, you know, doctors are great at putting people on medication. They’re not as good at taking them off. So

always taking that time to reevaluate, why were you on this to start with? Is it still serving you? Does it make sense anymore in the context of the changes you have made in your lifestyle or any of those kinds of things? I think that’s, I always like to have, there always are many takeaways when I talk to you, but that’s a good one. If nothing else, just talk to your doctor and make sure you still need the medication that you’re actually on. So what…

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (35:39.41)
And I’ll say the same thing for your functional medicine doctor. We encourage, I encourage my clients to have a review, whatever that is, annually, quarterly, whatever makes sense. But my doctor isn’t always the happiest when I send people for this, but they’ll come in and they’ll have a shopping bag full of supplements.

Cheryl McColgan (36:02.482)
Hahaha

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (36:06.37)
They’ll sit down with the doctor and they go through every one of those supplements and the question being, should I be on this? Is this still appropriate for me? Is this a good form of this particular vitamin or conglomeration of vitamins that I’m taking? Are there redundancies across these? And almost the answer is yes. Like, again, when somebody has, you know, it’s just not.

Many of my clients, not because I have suggested, it’s just what I see coming in because of the prevalence of functional medicine right now, is on average 15 supplements. The person is on 15 supplements. And I just think there’s a genuine question of, are all 15 of those necessary?

Cheryl McColgan (36:56.97)
That actually makes me feel better because as a person in this space, I’ll often hear about a new supplement or something. And just to call this out again, because I think this is important for people to notice, because there’s a lot of garbage supplements out there. Just always look for the GMP label, which means good manufacturing practices. That means at least the FDA goes in and looks at their factory. And it’s not a perfect system, but at least there’s some kind of regulation. And then even better is if the company gets third party testing and they…

those results. That way you know what you’re getting is pure. It doesn’t have any contaminants in it. So yeah, so just always look for that stuff before you try it. But then once I do that, that’s all clear, sometimes I’ll just try something just to see, just to see if I notice a difference. But at the end of the day, it’s like, okay, well I can afford to do this and it’s kind of entertaining because it’s kind of my job. But I can really say there’s only, I don’t know, maybe two or three supplements over the years that I can tell.

significant difference even after I’ve done it for an extended amount of time. So that probably just tells you if you’re exercising, you’re eating pretty well, there’s probably not a whole lot of extra stuff that you need. It’s just all kind of for fun or entertainment or testing and not to say that there are things that people could get benefit from, but I would just say in general we’ve kind of get sucked into this thing about taking supplements and it’s not necessarily something that you need to do.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (38:18.958)
Absolutely. I mean, there’s So much of it. I mean, it’s just constant, you know being marketed to peak performance brain take thymine and the average individual has no idea if they need more of that and

Cheryl McColgan (38:35.678)
No. And actually, you know when you can tell the most sometimes is when you go off of it. Because I will say there was one that I took consistently for three months. It was a nootropic. And the name is escaping me. I have to go back and look. Because I actually did, after I went off of it, I’m like, I need to get this again. Because about a month later, I was thinking, oh, this, I do think I can tell a difference. So sometimes it takes going off of it to see if it actually worked.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (38:57.932)
Mm-hmm. Absolutely, absolutely. Yep.

Cheryl McColgan (39:01.578)
Because when it’s an incremental improvement, you’re like, oh, yeah, I feel fine. This is the same, but it’s not always.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (39:06.83)
Well, that and our nervous system, just evolutionarily, we are wired to detect negative more than positive. And so when we’re taking something and it’s helping, we’re not really wired to notice that because there’s no evolutionary advantage to noticing that. But there’s an evolutionary advantage to noticing if something is bad for you, if it’s harmful.

Cheryl McColgan (39:18.279)
Mm-hmm. That makes sense.

Cheryl McColgan (39:36.846)
Yeah.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (39:36.894)
And so our nervous systems and our brain are just more wired for the negative than the positive. And so, yes, this is a really common thing that we see is people will start whatever it is, a supplement, a medication, one of our bioelectric devices, and they may not report that much on the positive side, but then they go off of it, that’s most often where they’ll be like, oh yeah, I got worse.

And that’s the reinforcing behavior is then they get back on it. And I would say it’s not uncommon for people to have to make that cycle three times to link the positive with the behavior. It’s just what we need as human beings is to, you know, we’ve got to go up, down, up, down a few times to be able to say, yep, okay, I got it. Me putting this pill in my mouth or me putting this device on is, is connected with the benefit that I get.

Cheryl McColgan (40:14.22)
Mmm, interesting.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (40:35.102)
a month later. And yeah, so it’s just the way we are. So yes, I think.

Cheryl McColgan (40:37.958)
Yeah. And sometimes it is hard to tell when you’re changing multiple things. That’s why you should really only institute one new tool so you can evaluate it instead of adding 5,000 things at once. Speaking of that, so we were kind of talking about these, to go back to the thermal imaging, you know, somebody finds something we’re talking about diet and lifestyle stuff, but then you also have a bunch of tools, devices and kind of brain training tools.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (40:54.998)
Yes.

Cheryl McColgan (41:03.794)
Are there any of those that you would use in that instance? Because I think you called out last time, and I thought this was really great, how we always think of our brain as just being sort of the cognition and the memory part. But really, when we have brain decline, it’s also affecting all kinds of body processes that are happening. And so theoretically, one of these things that we find on the imaging could be related to our brain health. So I’d love to hear how you use any of those tools when this is the situation with imaging.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (41:33.102)
Sure. So in your case, from our discussion, I had suggested maybe you try one of the red, blue, light mouth guards. And so the blue because of the suspected infection. So we still don’t know if that’s there. But it looks like there’s at least inflammation that may or may not be connected to infection. But we can say that there’s probably inflammation, and that’s the increased.

heat that we’re seeing. So using light for its benefits of mostly being pro-vitality, so increasing mitochondrial activity, decreasing inflammation, increasing circulation, so just pro-health. The blue is one of the few forms of light that we use that is an anti, and so it’s an antimicrobial.

So it’s going to help if you’ve got a bacterial or viral or fungal infection. So that’s the one thing that is kind of an anti. Otherwise, we stick with red and near-infrared, which are pro health. So again, if somebody does thermal imaging and it shows up, it looks like they’ve got a hot spot in the oral cavity. The recommendation would probably be red-blue, so that we’re kind of covering both sides of that. And again, the nice thing with thermal imaging,

it’s relatively affordable, especially if you’re just going to go in and have, say, one done, just kind of an, you know, just a shot of the, uh, the oral cavity. It’s low cost. There’s no downside. So it’s not like an X-ray where you have to worry about getting radiation. You could go in, you could treat with the mouth guard and then, and in three months go and check and in, and then in six months go and check and, and see, like, is it working? And hopefully the answer is yes. Then you have that confirmation. You’re not just.

Cheryl McColgan (43:27.518)
Mm-hmm.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (43:31.886)
kind of hoping that it’s working. And then, you know, for, again, if we’re talking about kind of changes in breast health and maybe we’re seeing something, the caveat being referral to the appropriate medical professional, referral to functional medicine or Chinese medicine or something where it’s gonna be handled. But then for me, like what part of it would I handle? It might be something like,

microcurrent therapy, or again, red infrared light therapy. So here we’d maybe move to one of our domes. And so you’d have a set of kind of panels, as I call it panel dome, that you would put over the chest and treat with the red infrared light. And that would again be about vitalizing the tissue so that it’s more resilient against any pathological process that is in place.

how can we give the body the resources it needs to defend itself against that? All right, so again, be more like on the pro health side than the anti-disease side. We’re just trying to vitalize the system. So again, red, near infrared light, and I would do that for somebody, again, who’s maybe showing on thermal imaging, a change that is concerning, great, but I equally would do that for somebody who, and I do,

for somebody who has a confirmed breast cancer or is post-treatment, and anywhere along in there, we would do these same things, which is let’s use red infrared light to optimize the body’s natural defenses against this. And then depending where we are in the process, we’ll use whatever allopathic tools are needed as well. And then microcurrent therapy.

So microcurrent, where light kind of has the same 12, 17 benefits, no matter where you put it, no matter what the source, if you’ve got a valid source of light therapy, that light is going to have the same effect. It’s just what light does. You get these benefits. There it is, nice and simple. With microcurrent.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (45:56.478)
it’s, especially if we’re doing frequency specific microcurrent, it’s driven by the protocol. So if we’re doing say an anti-inflammatory product protocol, then we’re specifically driving down inflammation through a number of different pathways. But we could be doing, you know, a detox protocol. We could be doing something that is more just kind of an immune support protocol. So, you know, kind of in the cancer world, there’s more.

happening kind of in the immunotherapy side of treatment. And so from a frequency-specific microcurrent, we can do a similar thing. What we’re going to try and do is augment the function of the immune system to help the body take care of this naturally. So then there’s an emerging model of cancer that’s saying that what cancer is when a cell or a group of cells become dys…

connected from the local information. So again, if you have breast tissue, the breast tissue is connected with a local intelligence that is informing those cells how to be breast tissue cells and what they’re supposed to do. When they get disconnected from that information source, they revert back to a single cell organ whose sense of its boundaries are self and everything else is not self.

And that’s kind of the definition of cancer. So this kind of emerging model is showing. And it’s not just a theory. I mean, they’re able to make a tumor come and go through this process of using bioelectric medicine to connect and disconnect a cell, individual cell, or a group of cells, so a tissue, from the local information network. When they disconnect it, it becomes a tumor. When they reconnect it, it becomes that.

comes back to being healthy, normal functioning tissue again. So in that same idea, we’re using microcurrent to try and accomplish that same process of bringing those cells back into the bioelectric gradient of the normal flow of information between in that tissue type. There’s a company out there called Novicur that is using a form of this. They call it, what is their name, tumor treating fields.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (48:25.418)
where they’re able to use, they would say not a microcurrent, I’ll say a microcurrent, to affect what’s happening at a cellular level to inhibit the process that is happening that produces a tumor, but not inhibit the process of normal cell function, physiology, metabolism, cell reproduction that happens in healthy tissue, but they can affect it as a…

happening in tumor genesis. And so there’s a lot of things that are emerging in the bioelectric space based on this kind of new idea of what cancer is. And so those are some of the approaches I would use. Light therapy, microcurrent therapy, working the healthy side of the system in a number of different ways to try and.

kind of reverse this process that is tumor generation, or, again, if we’re talking about the oral cavity, we’ve got an infection, how can we resolve that for a person and give them a management tool that doesn’t involve another root canal or having an implant put in or something of that nature? Like, this is a management strategy going forward.

Cheryl McColgan (49:50.214)
I think most people, before we go off the microcurrent, I think most people at this point are pretty familiar with red light therapy, photobiomodulation. There’s tons of research on it. It’s basically good for everything, as you pointed out. And I think most people can kind of associate that now with the big red panel or it’s a red dome device that you put on your, you know, something like that. I think everybody has a good idea about that. But microcurrent, when you say that, I mean, the only familiarity I have with it personally is, you know, being a woman in…

you know, how women have all their potions and lotions and things that they do their face. There’s like a device that’s got two electrodes that you actually use to work your face. Is it a similar thing if you’re treating other parts of the body or what does that process look like if you’re getting some kind of microcurrent therapy?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (50:31.182)
Sure. So there’s a whole range of microcurrent, and different approaches, different paradigms. So the frequency-specific is a particular paradigm in the midst of the world of microcurrent therapy. And I generally use frequency-specific microcurrent, although I have other types of devices that I’ll use as seems necessary. But my point is, I’m not going to use them.

primary go-to is frequency-specific. And I’d say the main difference between the frequency-specific paradigm and maybe just more of a standard paradigm of microcurrent is they’re using two frequencies at the same time with the understanding that it’s the resonance of the two frequencies that creates the effect. So their whole thing is the resonance effect. And so when I’m writing protocols,

for frequency specific, we’re doing frequency pairs. So let’s say there’s a frequency for, let’s say, collagen. And what I want to do is kind of increase the secretion in collagen fibers. So then I have my frequencies for collagen and increased secretion, and I put those together. Or increase circulation in a muscle fiber. So then I have a.

frequency for muscle fiber and frequency to increase circulation. I put those together or I want to reduce inflammation in a nerve. So then I’ve got a frequency for a nerve and a frequency for reducing inflammation. And I pair those. So when I, when I write a protocol, it’s, it’s a little bit like writing software for a computer you’re putting in, this is what I want to happen now. And then this, and then this, and then this, and then a protocol might have 10 or. You know, 200.

lines of code, frequencies, that are kind of giving information to the cell or tissue around here’s what I want to have happen. And so that’s how we’re changing the electrical gradient at the tissue level to move that gradient in the direction we want it to go and kind of move it away from the direction we don’t want it to go. So we’re…

Cheryl McColgan (52:52.158)
And it’s just a physical tool that goes on your skin that has, that produces the current. Just so people get, I mean, I’m a little worried they might get, like, I like this stuff. They might get a little bit too, like, but they’re like, but yeah, but how, what is it, what does it do? Does it feel like a zap? Do you put it on my skin? How does it work? You know?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (52:55.983)
Sure. So, yep. So the…

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (53:04.535)
Yep.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (53:10.926)
So the actual device is pretty small, about the size of a smartphone, but maybe twice as thick. So it’s a relatively small portable device, has a couple of wires coming off of it. They’re gonna go to four different leads. So that’s our two channels.

Cheryl McColgan (53:25.138)
Okay, so it’s leads, not necessarily like probes or something.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (53:28.91)
Correct, although it could be attached to probes. Most of the time for the home user, the probe isn’t the ideal form of application. Although,

Cheryl McColgan (53:39.55)
So is it maybe more like a 10s unit for people that are familiar with that? Like when you go to a physical therapist and they put these two leads on you and then it just kind of contracts some current basically. That’s my basic explanation.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (53:42.698)
it

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (53:49.902)
Correct, yep. So yeah, perfect, perfect. So the tens is a really good model. Most people have encountered tens. Tens is about a thousand times more current than microcurrent. So it elicits that oppositional response from the body, which is actually what you leverage to get the change you want. So make a muscle contract is a way to exercise a muscle. Microcurrent is really designed as a bioidentical current.

Cheryl McColgan (54:02.711)
Oh, okay, interesting.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (54:18.498)
So we shouldn’t feel microcurrent. Now, the skin is naturally electrically resistant. So you can feel the prickles, that’s impedance, and that’s your skin telling you it can’t move the current. And it’s not bad, but it’s not good. It’s a little bit like if you’re trying to fill a cup with water and the water’s overflowing. So that’s a sign that the cup is full. And that’s what impedance is. It’s a sign that your skin can’t move the current.

and you’re feeling the prickles, the impedance. So really, we don’t want to feel the prickles. It’s a bioidentical current, so it’s running at the same amperage as our normal physiology. So it really comes in under the radar, and we don’t notice the application of it. What we want to notice at some point is the effect of it. And that could be quick in the sense, so nerves respond really quickly to microcurrent because they’re electrical.

Cheryl McColgan (54:52.874)
Okay.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (55:15.334)
organs, so they change with electricity quickly. So somebody could have pain because of neural inflammation and we put on a nerve protocol and maybe within seconds or minutes they’re like, oh my goodness, that’s so much better. But if we’re trying to change tissue, tissue changes slowly, tissue changes in hours and days, and so you put it on, a person doesn’t necessarily feel anything.

This is nothing there to feel but what you hope is over Period of days or weeks you start to notice the effect of that tissue changing which would be like a restoration of function and so in Let’s say for well, let’s say so when I’m treating macular degeneration We’re putting currents into and around the eyes to affect a number of tissues and functions in the eye

But at the same time we’re doing that, we are putting current kind of through the skin around the eyes. So one of the most common things that happens for my clients who are treating for macular degeneration is they get a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months into treatment and their friends start to comment, like, what have you been doing? You look younger. Have you’re, you know, are you using a new product? Have you been going someplace for something? Because…

Even though the microcurrent isn’t specifically for a facial, and it doesn’t necessarily have the frequencies in it for changing collagen, which we have protocols for that, nevertheless, just putting microcurrent through the tissues does have an optimizing effect. And we get what’s called collagen conversion. And these things called wrinkles, which are when one type of collagen, normal, healthy,

collagen starts to fibroses and you get a line of fibrosed collagen in a sea of elastic collagen, it pulls in and you get this thing called a wrinkle. Well that, if we can reverse that process of fibrosing, the wrinkle goes away because there is nothing there pulling in on the skin, so it goes back to being as normal, healthy, relaxed, elastic tissue.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (57:38.858)
And that’s, sure enough, what we see when we do microcurrent facials, is we’re able to reverse the process of aging at the level of the collagen. So I use this example just to say, even when we’re not trying to do it, the microcurrent itself has that effect. So my clients who are treating for macular degeneration have this side effect of they also start to look younger.

Cheryl McColgan (58:04.862)
So not only are we learning that this is applicable in disease prevention or treatment, but that microcurrent actually does do something. So good to know.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (58:06.734)
Thank you.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (58:14.122)
Yes. So they would ask me about application and I wandered down that path. So what I do when I work with, with folks is really try and look at what’s the specific reason they’re doing it. And then what’s going to be most adaptive for that person’s lifestyle. So it could be, like you said, the 10 sticky pads that you put on. That’s that’s easy, simple, cheap. Great. That’s like, that’s the baseline.

But then we have a whole array of specialized electrodes. So let’s say, for example, somebody has neuropathy in their feet. So we have silver thread socks. So the whole sock is an electrode. You put the sock on and snap one end of the electrode to the sock. And then you might put on like a silver knee brace and put the other there. So you’ve got a positive and a negative, one on the foot, one on the knee.

And now the current is flowing back and forth through the lower leg, treating the neuropathy. And so in that case, we’re using these specialized socks. And then on and on. So again, for the eyes, I’ve got a special eye mask. For treating hands, we have gloves and we have little handheld electrodes. So I really try and match the mechanism of delivery to the person and how-

how they’re more likely to do this treatment on a daily basis. Because, optimally, people are doing their microcurrent an hour or two a day, depending on their condition. And then, again, we do a lot of at-home treatment. So people have the device at home. They’re treating on a daily basis. And then, again, depending on the condition, the treatment might be months, years, lifetime. It just depends on what we’re treating. Is it an acute issue?

somebody who’s had surgery and we want to try and minimize the chances of post-surgical adhesions. We want to optimize the scars so we don’t get overgrowth of scar tissue. We want to maximize the regrowth of blood vessels so that the scar stays supple and kind of a normal color to it. So again, we were talking about breast cancer. I do a lot of work with folks who are post breast

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:00:39.63)
and we’ll use microcurrent post-surgery for all of the reasons I just said, so that they really have an optimum outcome from the surgery and they have fewer complications a year or five years or 20 years later from that surgery.

Cheryl McColgan (01:00:57.886)
So thankfully microcurrent, good takeaway here is that it’s painless, that you can do it at home. Any final thoughts before we wrap up for today on the thermal imaging, just maybe like a quick summary or takeaways. Same thing with that, non-invasive, pain-free, possibility to detect early dysfunction. Any other things you wanna just add as the wrap up?

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:01:02.104)
Mm-hmm. Okay.

Guy Odishaw, CerebralFit (01:01:22.922)
Yeah, so a couple of things, and I think you ran into this, and it was part of our conversation off the show, was, so the technology today is much more affordable. It’s high quality compared to what it was even a few years ago. So it’s not all that difficult of a business to get into. So you get a variety of people.

get into this. And because it’s not mainstream, it’s alternative, you’re going to get more of your alternative types in it. So you’re just going to potentially have that experience if you look around in your area to see if there’s thermal imaging. It’s probably not going to be in a doctor’s office. See, chiropractors do this in terms of if you’re looking for somebody with a medical degree.

more likely to find a chiropractor doing it than an MD. Maybe an osteopath might be into it again, a little bit on the, but you’re more likely to find somebody who isn’t, doesn’t have a medical degree that is offering this as a service. That’s perfectly fine. So again, what they’re doing is operating a camera and we don’t need an advanced degree to operate a camera.

Now there are some basic things you want to know about how to do it, how to do it reasonably well. But we just want to keep in mind, this is a fairly simple process. You’re gonna go into a temperature controlled room, you’re gonna disrobe, usually it’s done with the lights off or very, very low lighting. Somebody is gonna take pictures, depending on their system, they may not even be in the room with you, it may all be remote control, so you’re in the room on your own, it’s private.

you’re having the photos taken, those photos are then sent to a medical professional to be read. This perso