Speaker 1: Welcome to Spark Faith with me, doctor Chris Sargent. This
Speaker 1: show is about renewed health, rooted in truth and restored
Speaker 1: by grace. What does finding health look like for you?
Speaker 1: Do you have a vision for your future self and
Speaker 1: a way to get there. I'm doctor Chris and after
Speaker 1: thirty three years in functional medicine and a lifelong journey
Speaker 1: through brain health, weight loss, hormones, mindset, and faith, I
Speaker 1: know that real transformation doesn't come from willpower or white
Speaker 1: knuckling your way to wellness. It comes from gratitude.
Speaker 2: Honoring your body as the temple that God created.
Speaker 1: This show is about body stewardship, not shame.
Speaker 2: It's about rewiring your mindset, your metabolism, and your spirit
Speaker 2: to find lasting health without the grind. I'll help you
Speaker 2: cut through the noise, see opportunities instead of obstacles, and
Speaker 2: finally live a.
Speaker 1: Healthy, purposeful life you were created for. Let's spark faith
Speaker 1: and transformation together. Spark Faith starts now. Hey Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: I am doctor Chris Sargent. Welcome back to the Spark
Speaker 1: Faith Show. And if you haven't joined us in the past, welcome, Welcome, Welcome. Today,
Speaker 1: I am going to share a little bit more about
Speaker 1: my own experience like I did last week, and we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about regulation and dysregulation and how the
Speaker 1: heck did I get here? Right? How many times have
Speaker 1: you asked yourself that, whether it's something emotional or physical
Speaker 1: or spiritual, like you ask yourself like, how did I
Speaker 1: get here? And it can be in a good way, right,
Speaker 1: but it could also be in a way that you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: the question sounds more like, oh, how did I get here? Right?
Speaker 1: So we're going to talk a little bit more about
Speaker 1: physically how do we get here? But you know, functional
Speaker 1: medicine incorporates all those big pieces in parts of our
Speaker 1: emotions and our environment and you know, just our circumstances,
Speaker 1: our spiritual life, all of those our mental and emotional health, Like,
Speaker 1: all of those pieces get rolled into this thing, right,
Speaker 1: So if we focus mostly on how we feel today,
Speaker 1: that's it's going to encompass a lot more than just that, though,
Speaker 1: when you really step back and take a look at it.
Speaker 1: And so really the core idea today is that the
Speaker 1: body gradually adapts to the environment that we repeatedly give it.
Speaker 1: And I know that I have said this before. We're
Speaker 1: going to take a little different turn on this and
Speaker 1: that is because this regulation rarely happens overnight. Right, It's
Speaker 1: just one small adaptation at a time, and we're gonna
Speaker 1: end on like this really big place of hope because
Speaker 1: the same body that adapted towards dysfunction can adapt back
Speaker 1: towards good regulation and health. Right. So I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: ahead and ask you that a question, and maybe not
Speaker 1: the question that you think, but if you'll just stop
Speaker 1: for sec right, when was the last time you felt
Speaker 1: absolutely amazing? Like, get up in the morning, not really achy,
Speaker 1: You get out of bed pretty easily, right, like, don't
Speaker 1: have to have that cup of coffee? Right, So just
Speaker 1: stop for a second and take inventory of how you
Speaker 1: really feel. Right? Are your shoulders all tight? Right? Are
Speaker 1: your joints achy? Are you hungry? Right? Are you actually
Speaker 1: really tired and can't or won't admit it? Does life
Speaker 1: feel like ladies? Does life feel like all you do
Speaker 1: is get up? Can't get to your coffee fast enough
Speaker 1: so you can wake up, get the kids out the door,
Speaker 1: go to work, work all day, run around with the kids,
Speaker 1: have dinner, and finally, like sink into the couch trying
Speaker 1: to watch your show, and you just crash out right,
Speaker 1: only to wake up and do it again the next day.
Speaker 1: Or maybe you're a guy and you're in that same cycle, right,
Speaker 1: you just get up, have your coffee, go to work,
Speaker 1: like see your kids, but you're not really present, or
Speaker 1: just sort of like walking through life looking at it
Speaker 1: like you're just seeing a movie of your life, right,
Speaker 1: kind of brain foggy, not all together. Right, So when
Speaker 1: I ask you, when was the last time you absolutely
Speaker 1: felt amazing? Not like, oh, I'm okay, right, or I've
Speaker 1: felt worse right, not like, well, I guess this just
Speaker 1: feels like what getting older feels like. I mean, when
Speaker 1: was the last time when you really woke up rested
Speaker 1: and had energy, and your head was clear and you
Speaker 1: felt strong and you felt excited about your day and
Speaker 1: your body just felt good, not like you had to
Speaker 1: push through mud. Right, So, can you remember or has
Speaker 1: it been so long that you've kind of forgotten what
Speaker 1: it even feels like to feel good. So one of
Speaker 1: the things I've noticed after more than thirty years of
Speaker 1: caring for y'all patients clients, is that very few people
Speaker 1: can actually tell me when they stopped feeling well. They'll say, well,
Speaker 1: it just seemed like it just happened, or I don't
Speaker 1: really know, or one day I just woke up and
Speaker 1: I just didn't feel like myself. Here's this fascinating, right,
Speaker 1: when we begin to talk through their story. Right, when
Speaker 1: I take a history as a functional medicine doctor, I
Speaker 1: like to make a timeline. And so when we began
Speaker 1: going through their story decade by decade by decade, it
Speaker 1: almost never happened in one day. It happened over years. Right.
Speaker 1: It's that one stressful season where you compromised yourself and
Speaker 1: ended up with having poor sleep, or drive through dinners
Speaker 1: longer than the season maybe required, or skipped workouts. Right,
Speaker 1: Maybe addiction became part of your story, or some poor
Speaker 1: choices that just basically turned into a habit, the path
Speaker 1: of least resistance. Right. And again, this is not about
Speaker 1: feeling bad about yourself. This is not to shame anyone ever, right,
Speaker 1: not ever. This is an exercise in becoming more aware
Speaker 1: of how you got to where you are right now
Speaker 1: in your health. Right. Maybe it was just one hard pregnancy,
Speaker 1: or one really challenging promotion at work, or a season
Speaker 1: of caregiving. Right, that's when mine really started to have
Speaker 1: been where yes, I was going to the gym. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was eating healthy, but I was doing the same
Speaker 1: things that I had been doing in my early fifties,
Speaker 1: like carrying all those things through whether they were working
Speaker 1: or not, because I wasn't paying attention to my health.
Speaker 1: I was taking care of my mom who had dementia
Speaker 1: at my house, so and you know, she was always
Speaker 1: there and she needed care and she needed somebody with her,
Speaker 1: and all those pieces. If you've ever been through it,
Speaker 1: or know somebody who's been through it, it was just
Speaker 1: one adaptation after another, building on other adaptations over time,
Speaker 1: right until I just really realized that I was not
Speaker 1: feeling my best right, and that not feeling my best
Speaker 1: became my new normal, right. It just becomes our new normal,
Speaker 1: and then we just don't see it anymore. It's like
Speaker 1: when you drive to your kid's school or the gym
Speaker 1: or the grocery store, right, you don't even know how
Speaker 1: you got there, right, because you've laid down this track
Speaker 1: in your brain and you don't even realize, like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just that's how we got there. It's normal. So
Speaker 1: our health declines so slowly that this new normal is
Speaker 1: down here instead of where it used to be. So
Speaker 1: today we're going to talk about a little bit about
Speaker 1: how that happens, and because understanding how we got here
Speaker 1: might be that first step to that a little bit
Speaker 1: more awareness around what's going on in your world and
Speaker 1: waking up to that first step of getting somewhere that's
Speaker 1: better than where you are right now. Right, So call
Speaker 1: this the slow drift. Right, that makes complete sense. We
Speaker 1: just start kind of drifting off our path. And we
Speaker 1: a lot of us think of illness as a lightning strike. Right.
Speaker 1: It just happens, And that's for the most of us.
Speaker 1: That's how how health happens or doesn't happen. Right. We
Speaker 1: get a cold, or we get the flu, or you know,
Speaker 1: maybe you get cancer or you have a heart attack,
Speaker 1: and it's just this acute happened right now. But in reality,
Speaker 1: seventy percent or more, maybe eighty to ninety percent of
Speaker 1: the diseases that particularly Americans have right now are chronic.
Speaker 1: These really are more like the tide coming in from
Speaker 1: low tide. Right, you don't really notice it until right
Speaker 1: it's like, oh, it's all the way up the shore,
Speaker 1: and your body works much the same way. Right, You
Speaker 1: don't just wake up one morning and you're insulin resistant, right,
Speaker 1: or you don't just well, you might just wake up
Speaker 1: one morning and have hot flashes. That's true, but anyway,
Speaker 1: and you probably saw it coming. Honestly, if we're really
Speaker 1: honest with ourselves, right, we probably saw it coming. So
Speaker 1: what about the inflammation? Right, You might not even feel inflammation.
Speaker 1: You might not even realize that you have inflammation. You
Speaker 1: might not realize how exhausted you are, or that you
Speaker 1: have high blood pressure. It's a silent killer, right. Instead,
Speaker 1: you just adapt to how you feel. And every day,
Speaker 1: your body is going to ask you one question, right,
Speaker 1: given the environment that you've placed me in, right, your
Speaker 1: body talking to you, what do I need to do
Speaker 1: to help you survive today? And y'all we've talked about
Speaker 1: survival and thriving and all those things. So I don't
Speaker 1: really want to I don't want to dive into that
Speaker 1: like that. I want to have this episode be more like, oh,
Speaker 1: I didn't realize that thing XYZ was part of what's
Speaker 1: happening with me or what happened to me. Right, Because
Speaker 1: you have one night of poor sleep, that's fine, you'll compensate, right,
Speaker 1: short period of high stress, you'll compensate too little movement
Speaker 1: for a couple of weeks, you'll compensate ultra process food
Speaker 1: for one meal a week. Not a problem, too little recovery,
Speaker 1: You can compensate for that short periods of time. Right.
Speaker 1: The bigger problem comes in where now you have too
Speaker 1: little muscle, right, and your metabolism is being run by
Speaker 1: the habits that have been slowly but surely eroded away
Speaker 1: into different habits that don't support a healthy body. Right,
Speaker 1: and that compensation is starting to break down, And now
Speaker 1: you have symptoms and you may or may not even
Speaker 1: realize that you have those symptoms, like falling asleep at
Speaker 1: six thirty or seven o'clock on the couch, even if
Speaker 1: you're getting up super early. You eat and you just
Speaker 1: crash out, like that's that's not that's not healthy, right,
Speaker 1: that's not healthy. It's this is where I think we
Speaker 1: can justify things. Right. Your body doesn't wake up every
Speaker 1: morning going wow, how can I make life harder for
Speaker 1: my human? Right? It wakes like up like again, given
Speaker 1: what we've got here, how can I help you survive? Right?
Speaker 1: And so the body isn't just trying to stay the same,
Speaker 1: it's really just trying to stay alive. So and that
Speaker 1: distinction can shift some things. Right, your symptoms that you
Speaker 1: don't even realize you might be having right now, because
Speaker 1: you're not aware that these are symptoms. It's like your
Speaker 1: body is taking notes, right, y'all know I'm in seminary, right,
Speaker 1: I'm going to take notes, take notes, take notes, but
Speaker 1: eventually I have to create a paper out of that, right,
Speaker 1: And so your body's been taking notes, and eventually it's
Speaker 1: going to hand you a report. Right. So anyway, this
Speaker 1: is where we get into a lot of disregulation justification, right,
Speaker 1: dysregulation justification. And this is the part that, y'all, this
Speaker 1: is the part that breaks my heart for my clients
Speaker 1: because after a while, we stop noticing. I stopped noticing, right,
Speaker 1: And that new normal that's down here is dysregulation justice notification.
Speaker 1: It's the collection of all the stories. Here's what this
Speaker 1: mental and emotional health comes in. It's a collection of
Speaker 1: all the stories we've told ourselves to explain to ourselves
Speaker 1: why we don't feel well anymore. Right, and we're believing lies.
Speaker 1: And we talked about the lies that I believed around
Speaker 1: under eating and losing weight and becoming smaller and all
Speaker 1: of those things that were literally terrifying, right, but they
Speaker 1: were lies. And so you know what, lie are you believing?
Speaker 1: I'm just getting older? I'm just a mom stop y'all right,
Speaker 1: You're not just anybody, right. You are a child of
Speaker 1: the most High God. You are made in his image.
Speaker 1: All right, you are not just anything. So I'm just busy.
Speaker 1: Everyone is tired, right, Oh, that it's my menopause. It's menopause. Well,
Speaker 1: my whole family was overweight, right I have. I've always
Speaker 1: just had so much anxiety. And I'm not saying that
Speaker 1: that is not a key thing. It probably is, and
Speaker 1: getting to the root of it may shift your whole life. Right. Oh,
Speaker 1: I've just never slept. Well, that's the biggest excuse I
Speaker 1: hear is Well, that's just how I am. And here's
Speaker 1: the danger. Right, those statements begin as explanations, but eventually
Speaker 1: they become your identity. So let me say that again,
Speaker 1: that whole dysregulation. Justification begins as explanations, but they eventually
Speaker 1: become your identity, and identity determines behavior. If I believe
Speaker 1: this is simply who I am, why would I expect
Speaker 1: anything else to change? Right? Our brain loves efficiency when
Speaker 1: it becomes familiar it's like this well worn path. Think
Speaker 1: of the path to your grocery store, your favorite sidewalk
Speaker 1: that you hike every day, or a hiking trail that
Speaker 1: is well worn. Right, you don't have to pay attention,
Speaker 1: there's not any roots in the way. You can just
Speaker 1: get there. Everything's fine. And so once something becomes familiar,
Speaker 1: stops paying attention. And that's true with our behavior, right,
Speaker 1: And it's true with our emotions, and it's true with
Speaker 1: our physical symptoms. We don't just normalize dysfunction. Eventually, we
Speaker 1: defend it. Right, We don't just normalize dysfunction. Eventually, we
Speaker 1: defend it. You know, our our body really whispers before
Speaker 1: it screams. And this is one of my favorite things
Speaker 1: about the human body. But it's also one of the
Speaker 1: reasons why we ignore it, is because it doesn't talk loud. Right,
Speaker 1: it whispers a long time before it screams. And maybe again,
Speaker 1: it starts with some digestive thing or sleep or afternoon fatigue,
Speaker 1: or you don't recover well, and you just ignore it
Speaker 1: and you work out harder. Maybe those workouts are feeling harder,
Speaker 1: Maybe you're a little more irritable and moody. Maybe you
Speaker 1: just like don't want to do things, you're unmotivated. Maybe
Speaker 1: you started avoiding stares because your knees heard, or this
Speaker 1: happened or that happened, and none of those little things
Speaker 1: seem like emergencies. But each one of those is a
Speaker 1: piece of information, right, So let's not ignore that. The
Speaker 1: body is going to communicate through symptoms. But they're not enemies,
Speaker 1: they're just messengers. So we don't want to silence the
Speaker 1: messenger without asking why did you? Why are you here?
Speaker 1: What are you trying to tell me?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And if we try to silence all the symptoms, then
Speaker 1: we're going to miss what the body has been trying
Speaker 1: to tell you all along. So our beautiful God designed
Speaker 1: our body to communicate, and part of stewardship is paying
Speaker 1: attention to the communication. Right if your kid or your
Speaker 1: favorite person felled it out and skinned their knee and
Speaker 1: you're like, you just ignore it, right, Like, you wouldn't
Speaker 1: do that, So stewardship means paying attention. So here's the
Speaker 1: key though, Right, I'm not going to leave you down
Speaker 1: here feeling crappy about all this stuff today, and shame
Speaker 1: and guilt have no place in this conversation. So if
Speaker 1: you've already all of a sudden been like, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: I did not realize that that's what was happening and
Speaker 1: how I got here. This is not to make you
Speaker 1: feel bad about your choices. This is to say, we
Speaker 1: can you can make I made, We can make different choices, right,
Speaker 1: We can make different choices. Your body can learn from
Speaker 1: you every single day. Regulation or disregulation isn't one big
Speaker 1: decision usually, right, It's an accumulation of small decisions over
Speaker 1: the over time. And here's the part I don't want
Speaker 1: you to miss. Again. Everything that I've described can sound
Speaker 1: really discouraging, but it can actually give you a tremendous
Speaker 1: amount of hope because that adaptation works both ways. If
Speaker 1: it adapted to dysfunction, it can adapt towards how not overnight,
Speaker 1: because dysregulation didn't happen overnight either, right, but consistently, Right, consistently,
Speaker 1: we did things and we ended up very disregulated. Now
Speaker 1: consistently we need to you know, that well worn trail,
Speaker 1: we need to take a sharp right turn and grab
Speaker 1: some new tools and forge a new trail. Literally, right,
Speaker 1: We're gonna have to cut down some trees. We're gonna
Speaker 1: have to wear waiters. So that we don't get poison
Speaker 1: ivy and we're gonna have to like move through some
Speaker 1: challenges that we might not have seen to forge that
Speaker 1: new trail, and it's gonna feel uncomfortable and you're gonna
Speaker 1: want to turn around and go back to the comfy trail. Right, However,
Speaker 1: you know where that and where the end of that
Speaker 1: trail is, right, So this is not happen overnight. It
Speaker 1: happens with consistency, and progress is so much more impressive
Speaker 1: than perfection. Right, So every workout can teach a new adaptation.
Speaker 1: Every healthy meal teaches adaptation, Every good night's sleep teaches adaptation.
Speaker 1: Every walk protein for breakfast, stress management like taking a
Speaker 1: five minute like breathing break in the middle of your day.
Speaker 1: Every act of stewardship gives your body some new information.
Speaker 1: And really the coolest, most remarkable thing is your body
Speaker 1: will listen to that too. It's never too late. And
Speaker 1: you know, it's not going to listen to one perfect day.
Speaker 1: Oh I did great yesterday, so today I deserve or
Speaker 1: it's not going to listen to that one perfect day.
Speaker 1: It's going to listen to the repeated patterns. So what
Speaker 1: are you repeating? What are you repeating My change didn't
Speaker 1: happen overnight, y'all. I had to trust the process. I
Speaker 1: talked about that last week. You can go listen to
Speaker 1: my episode from last week about the new foundation that
Speaker 1: I'm I'm having to tredge out right, a new path
Speaker 1: for myself. The confidence about that didn't change overnight. My
Speaker 1: strength definitely has not changed overnight. It has been three
Speaker 1: to four times a week in the gym for the
Speaker 1: last eighteen or twenty weeks. This is not something that's
Speaker 1: going to happen in a moment. My metabolism is shifting,
Speaker 1: that's it is in process. Right, Little by little, my
Speaker 1: body's adapting to a healthier environment, and so will yours.
Speaker 1: I'm sixty two. Most of y'all are probably younger than me.
Speaker 1: So if I can, you can so your future, your
Speaker 1: health is being built on the patterns that you repeat today,
Speaker 1: and twenty years down the road you will read whatever
Speaker 1: you sew today. And if you're realizing that, Wow, I
Speaker 1: have definitely fallen into this spiral and I want to
Speaker 1: get out of it. Hey, give me a shout on
Speaker 1: out on Instagram or Facebook, you know hit you can
Speaker 1: grab a free session with me and we can talk
Speaker 1: about it, right, And that's one way to start pulling
Speaker 1: out of some of these things. And the cool thing
Speaker 1: about scripture is that stewardship is found almost every time
Speaker 1: in ordinary stuff. Right. It's daily, consistent, faithful in the
Speaker 1: little things. And our health is so much like that,
Speaker 1: you think that God designed it right. And it's not
Speaker 1: about earning God's love. We're responding to it like, Hey,
Speaker 1: God did give me this body, and maybe I haven't
Speaker 1: taken care of it the way I need to, or
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't realize that this is a way to
Speaker 1: gently worship Him and respect what He's given, this gift
Speaker 1: of our health and gift of our body, right by
Speaker 1: faithfully caring for this great gift that He entrusted to us.
Speaker 1: So just one little decision at a time. So if
Speaker 1: today you realize that you've slowly drifted right, the slow
Speaker 1: drift again, you do not need to feel guilty about this.
Speaker 1: I want to encourage you because your story isn't over.
Speaker 1: That same incredible body that has spent years adapting to
Speaker 1: survival can begin to adapt towards thriving right, a new
Speaker 1: life of thriving and not one giant aha, not any
Speaker 1: of that, but hundreds of small, faithful decisions every day,
Speaker 1: and honestly, living fresh is always about that, right. This
Speaker 1: is progress is more impressive than perfection, not quick fixes.
Speaker 1: So anyway, I know that you all rarely notice the
Speaker 1: slow drift into dysregulation because our bodies are designed to adapt.
Speaker 1: But that same adaptive capacity that carried you into dysfunction
Speaker 1: can carry you back towards health through consistent and faithful stewardship. Right, So,
Speaker 1: love you guys, hit subscribe and like and reach out
Speaker 1: to me. I would love to hear from you. And
Speaker 1: this is all about renewing your health rooted in truth
Speaker 1: and restored by grace. Love you, guys, Bye bye, I
Speaker 1: see you next week. You've been listening to Spark Faith
Speaker 1: with Me, Doctor Chris Sargent. This show is about renewed health,
Speaker 1: rooted in truth and restored by grace. Tune in every
Speaker 1: Thursday morning at nine thirty am Pacific on the Transformation
Speaker 1: Talk Radio for more simple, faith fueled steps to live
Speaker 1: the vision God placed in your heart. Are you ready
Speaker 1: to take the next step? Schedule a discovery call or
Speaker 1: connect with me at doctor Chris Sargeant dot com. That's
Speaker 1: Dr Kris Sergeant dot com. While you're there, download my
Speaker 1: free ebook Endless Energy, The six Non Negotiable Keys to
Speaker 1: Endless Energy, and sign up for an upcoming masterclass. Don't
Speaker 1: forget to subscribe, like share the show, and I'd love
Speaker 1: to connect with you on social media at doctor Chris Sargent.
Speaker 1: Let's keep sparking faith and transformation together. You can't wait
Speaker 1: to see y'all next time. The State to the Bastaate