The Doctor Who Beat Addiction — Without A 12-Step Program

 

Dr. Sharon Stills started drinking at twelve. By nineteen she was sitting in a parking lot in the Hamptons, too high to walk into the party — and that was the night it broke. She got sober at twenty, without AA, without rehab, and thirteen years later became a naturopathic medical doctor.

In this episode she explains addiction the way she sees it after twenty-five years of practice: not as a moral failure and not purely as a brain disease, but as a nervous system trying to regulate itself. Which is why, as she puts it, we don’t quit addiction — we graduate from one to the next. She’s blunt about her own: coffee, work, the phone, hot yoga.

Recorded live in front of our clients and staff at Camelback Recovery in Phoenix, with about twenty-five minutes of unscripted audience Q&A at the end.

WHAT WE GET INTO:

• Why the physical body has to be fed before trauma work can land
• The nutrient deficiencies she finds over and over in newly sober patients
• What’s actually happening when someone says they’re crawling out of their skin
• How progesterone, testosterone and estrogen drive cravings through GABA, dopamine and serotonin
• Perimenopause as an unrecognized relapse risk
• The “backpack” model of toxic load
• Why she’d rather you eat a Big Mac in joy than organic food in stress.

ABOUT DR. SHARON STILLS, NMD — Naturopathic medical doctor, 25 years in practice. Graduate of Sonoran University (2001). Trained in European biological medicine under Dr. Thomas Rau at the Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland and served as a co-lead North American lecturer for the Paracelsus Academy. Board member, Bio-Regulatory Medicine Institute; former board member, the Archive of Healing at UCLA. Former host of The Science of Self-Healing podcast. She practices at Lasting Wellness Center in Scottsdale, Arizona alongside her son, Dr. Ben Stills.

FIND DR. STILLS — Website and newsletter: drstills.com · Instagram: @drsharonstills · Her free five-day online summit opens for signup September 1 and runs live starting September 12, with 40+ expert interviews. Join her newsletter at drstills.com to get the invitation.

ABOUT THIS PODCAST — Tim Westbrook is the founder and CEO of Camelback Recovery and holds an MS in Addiction Counseling. The I Love Being Sober Podcast records live every Wednesday at 10 AM in front of the clients and staff at our Phoenix outpatient center.

If any of this sounds like your situation, a conversation could be a reasonable next step: camelbackrecovery.com

This episode is educational content and is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment, and it is not a substitute for clinical assessment by your own physician. Products and brands mentioned are named at the guest’s discretion; Camelback Recovery has no sponsorship, affiliate, or financial relationship with any of them. Views expressed by guests are their own.

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The Doctor Who Beat Addiction — Without A 12-Step Program

My guest is Dr. Sharon Stills, a naturopathic medical doctor with 25 years in, trained in Europe in biological medicine. She runs a menopause summit that reaches 100,000 women a year, and she just opened a 7,000-square-foot clinic in Scottsdale with her son. Here’s why she’s here. Dr. Stills does not see addiction as a moral problem or even just a brain problem.

She sees it as a nervous system trying to regulate itself. The drink, the phone, the shopping, the work, the food. Same behavior, different costume. She has her own story with this, and she’s willing to tell it here first. Start thinking about your questions now because we are going to open it up to the room at the end, just like we always do. Please help me welcome Dr. Sharon Stills.

Thank you.

I’m grateful to have you here.

Nice to be here.

Her Own Story

We’ll tell everybody about the Lasting Wellness Center here towards the end, which is an amazing 7,000-square-foot clinic in Scottsdale. You told us that you talk about your own experience with addiction, so that’s what I want to hear about. Take us there. What was it, and what was it doing for you?

How long do you have? I’ll try to give the short version. I started drinking and drugging when I was twelve. I lived in a very chaotic house. There was a lot of anger and instability. I had a brother who, now I understand, was on the spectrum, but we did not understand that back then. There was a lot of fighting between him and my father. It just was not a very safe place for my nervous system. I felt like no matter what I did, straight A student, star basketball player, believe it or not, even though I’m sure softball, band, all the things, that I was never good enough.

I was not getting the accolades back from my father about it. I remember making a decision one day that whatever I did was not good enough. I was just going to be good at drinking and drugging. At age twelve, I went to my first job interview, and it was at St. Vincent de Paul to be a secretary there, and it just turned out that everyone who worked there was an alcoholic, which was just a weird thing, but everyone had booze under their desk and was drinking all day. Not sure about what the nuns were doing, but all the workers.

St. Vincent de Paul in downtown Phoenix?

No, this is in New York. The same for donations and stuff. I would just go to work drunk, and they were all drunk, and no one knew any different. I used to just hide bottles in my closet. When I was at home, I’d go get a glass of soda from the fridge, and then I’d go in the closet and pour my rum into it. I’d go sit down with my parents and watch TV, and I’d be drinking, and whether they knew or not, I said nothing. My parents are gone now, and I love my parents, and they were doing the best they could do, and I was doing the best I could do for myself at the time.

I spent all my teenage years in a blur of alcohol and cigarettes, and I had asthma, and I would smoke, and I wouldn’t be able to breathe. Marijuana was just like cigarettes, and got into cocaine, LSD, mescaline, pretty much everything, except I never shot heroin. I remember, we were invited to a party out in the Hamptons for New Year’s Eve, and we were so coked out, we never even made it into the party. We just sat in the parking lot, and something about that just hit me like, “This is not working for me. This is bad.”

The addict personality, the addict brain, is always with you. Share on X

How old were you?

Probably nineteen, just about to turn.

Graduated from high school?

I graduated from high school.

Were you not in college yet?

I did not go to college because I remember saying, “Why pay a lot of money or make my parents pay a lot of money to go to college and party? “I can just stay home and party. I did not go to college. I met my first husband at a carnival. Anyway, he was in the car with me on New Year’s Eve. I thought, I have got to stop this. This is really bad. It turned out I was pregnant with my first son, who I now work with, who’s also a physician.

I always say he saved my life because I just couldn’t do drugs while I was pregnant with him. How I quit is maybe unique. I did not really go to AA or do rehab. I just stopped on my. I was pregnant, and that was more important to me. It was like I was 20. I had been drugged and drunk for eight years, starting early. I just stepped into a new life. The addict personality, the addict brain, is always with you. The last addiction I just gave up in March was coffee. I never drank coffee, and five years ago I started drinking it and got really into it hardcore.

I was having heart palpitations. I was having all these symptoms that I’d never had before, but the addiction to it was winning. I downsized it, so now I’m a chai drinker. Even in that, like, I haven’t had chai yet because I came here. There’s the phone, there’s work, there are people and relationships, and so there’s hot yoga. What I’ve learned along the way is that if I am going to engage in addictive behavior, at least it’s going to be an addiction that’s healthy for me.

 

Let’s go back to, so you got pregnant, and then you quit. I’ve seen that happen where a woman will get pregnant and she’ll quit, but then after the pregnancy, she’ll go back to the drinking, the drugging, the addiction. In my experience, or in my opinion, what happens is that they go back to their old environment. Why do you think it was that you were able to stay away from drinking and drugs after you had your child, and you went back to it?

I was in a new environment. I had moved off Long Island. I had moved upstate, and I met someone who was really into holistic medicine and started teaching me about natural medicine, and it really made sense. I became addicted to learning everything I could about how to heal the body naturally. The person I met was a friend, and her brother was really into it, and like he was addicted to coffee enemas and colonics, and like he can be addicted to anything. It was like, “I was being introduced to it by an addict, and it made sense, and I wanted to heal.” I got very involved in that so much that then made it my life’s work, my career, and my profession.

Because you did not go to college, how did you decide to go back to school and go on this path?

I went to college after I had two babies and got divorced. I had my first son at 21, my second at 23, got divorced nine months later, and then decided I was going to become a naturopathic physician. I did not realize you have to do undergrad, so then I was like, ten years of school. I did not become a physician until I was 33. I did it backwards.

Your path is your path. It just goes to show that I went back to school when I was 35 to get my master’s in addiction counseling. I went straight from high school to my undergrad at UC Davis. There was a long time, fifteen years almost, until I went back to school and got my master’s in addiction counseling. You can go back to school whenever. It’s like everybody has their path, and it’s never too late.

It’s crazy that we expect eighteen-year-olds to know what they’re going to do and to go right to college. I’m a totally different person than I was back then. It’s literally like, and it’s so far away and all the drugs. My memory cannot be the greatest sometimes. A lot of it is hazy, but it’s just looking back at things like, “Who was that person? because that’s not who I am.”

I was talking with somebody about this the other day. It’s just like even people and men in their 30s and 40s are like, I remember myself in my 30s, I just turned 50 in November, and I’m a lot. I do not know if I want to say smarter. I just have more life experience, and when you’re in your 20s, 30s, 40s, you just do not have that much life experience yet. I look at some things that people do that are in their 30s and 40s, like men.

In your twenties, especially for men, your frontal cortex is not really even fully developed to make good decisions. There really is a lot of truth to the idea that as you age, you get wiser. I’m 58, and I feel that every day is like, “I would never go back to being 30.” I like the wisdom I’ve accrued, and some of it is from just hard lessons and learning things. That’s just part of how life is, and I’m grateful for those experiences, but I like being sane now.

I wouldn’t want to go back. Being 50, I look at some people in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, and I just shake my head. I’m like, “I can laugh because that was me.” I just know where I was, and they just have not had enough life yet, and it’s okay.

Part of the journey.

What was it like to be the doctor, the person everybody comes to for answers about their health, and be sitting there with that at the same time? Were you still in your addiction when you became a physician?

No. As I said, not drugs and alcohol, addiction to other behaviors, to coffee, a person, or the phone. That’s something we graduate from certain addictions to other addictions. I do not know that I’ll ever not have an addictive personality, but I’ve made peace with that. As I said, at least if I am addicted to things, I really sit with it and look at it like, “How am I behaving in this? Is this something that’s starting to overtake my life in a negative way? Do I need to do some work around this?”

 

I’ve never done, as I said, any of the twelve-step groups or been in an inpatient, but I have done a lot of work, whether therapy with somatic work, with healing, with meditation, with mindfulness. I feel like as humans we’re always just peeling a layer and getting to another layer of knowing ourselves and being honest with ourselves.

There are a lot of people speaking to the twelve-step program. The twelve-step was what really worked for me in my first couple of years. I went to meetings every single day, 1 or 2 meetings a day. I sponsored people. I had service commitments. I had a sponsor. I was full. There have been other things that I’ve done which I believe have helped me tremendously along the way.

It’s everything from trauma intensives, yoga teacher training, Ironman, CrossFit, going to mastermind groups, Consumer Health Summit, Genius Network, like all of the Psy Seminars, Landmark. All these other things that have been massive compliments to my recovery and, to your point, peeling away layers of the onion because there’s always going to be more layers of the onion, and there are lots of ways to do it.

Even twelve steps, right? You can become addicted to the meetings. You get addicted to the meetings, you get addicted to the donuts, or the cigarettes at the back of the room. It’s really an inquiry into where this is coming from in my nervous system, in my psyche? Is this putting me at peace? Am I able to relax? Am I able to exhale? Am I doing this? Is this still the same addictive drive because I’m getting something from this that’s enabling me not to look at something I do not want to look at? For me, it was that I did not feel special. I was not being seen.

As humans we're always just peeling a layer and getting to another layer of knowing ourselves and being honest with ourselves. Share on X

I was not getting the love I thought I deserved. I started doing all these other things. They did not really give me that either, but it numbed the pain, and it gave me something else to think about, and I think that’s something we always need to be looking at. Just two weeks ago, I had a really quiet day, and I was semi-retired, and I just opened up this new big business, and I knew going into it, like, I’m going to have to work my ass off for a couple of years. Last week we had a day where, just like everyone rescheduled, and it was really quiet, and I was all caught up. I was not in the “I got to work, I got to do this.”

I almost felt this numbness for a second. I was like, “My nervous system still reverts to that. I have got to be in fight or flight, I have got to be in stress.” When it went away, all of a sudden I was like, “I feel really numb and flat.” I had to work through that. It’s always lurking. I think it’s not. To me, it’s accepting all the parts of ourselves and being open, honest, kind, and compassionate with ourselves while also staying accountable. If we’re just compassionate but we’re not accountable, we can be enabling. If we’re just accountable and we’re not compassionate, then we can get into shaming ourselves, and nothing ever comes out of shaming ourselves, although it’s a very easy place to go to.

What Everybody Else Misses

Being a naturopathic medical doctor, when you look at addiction, what do you see that gets missed in the conventional conversation entirely?

A lot of things, because I think addiction, just like any disease process or any imbalance, has to do with the psyche, your spirit, your physical body, and your emotions. I really look at patients very holistically because everyone in here, even if we all had the same exact addiction, there’d be different reasons driving it. It’s important to know what those reasons are for you. The scales are weighted for everyone. If you are deficient in certain nutrients, that can drive the addictive brain and the addictive behaviors. If you have inner child work that you still have not done, like everyone, but not many of us had this perfect childhood.

When a patient tells me they had a perfect childhood, I’m like, “Let’s unwrap that because you’re probably in denial.” It’s different for everyone. From a physical perspective, you cannot be feeding your body the right nutrients. You cannot get the sleep you need. Simple things like that. You cannot be hydrated. It keeps us not balanced. When we’re not feeling good in our physical bodies, then addictive behaviors are easier to go to because we do not feel good. I believe that a lot of things are energetic or emotional and are affecting us. If we do not work on that process, it goes into the physical body, and then we get symptoms because it’s hard to ignore symptoms.

If they get louder and louder, if you have a really bad backache at some point, you’re not going to be able to like it. You’re paying attention to it. Even though I believe that things start in the energetic realm, I usually start with the physical realm when I’m working with patients because it’s also very hard to do the hard work of going back and looking at abuse you dealt with or trauma or whatever it is for you when your physical body feels like crap. I like to get the physical body fed and nurtured. Your vessel’s in a better place to do the harder work. The harder work is also for some patients who are not addicted.

It’s easier to take a vitamin than to delve into their childhood trauma or whatever it is. When you have an addictive personality, just telling you, “You need to eat healthy and drink eight glasses,” can be really difficult too. Everyone needs to be worked at where they are. A lot of times I’m just starting with the basics. We overlook the basics, especially in the society we have nowadays, like everything’s getting so tech and so advanced. We forget about just like, to me, one of the most powerful things you can do is learn mindfulness meditation to put yourself in the present moment. I actually teach and was trained to lead eight-week MBSR courses, which is mindfulness. Do you teach that here?

When we're not feeling good in our physical bodies, then addictive behaviors are easier to go to. Share on X

We do not. Do you know Paul Sugar?

Yes, he’s my mentor and my nearest friend.

That’s one of the other things. I took his class years ago. It was amazing.

We like Paul.

He was at the Franciscan Renewal Center. It was before COVID. I actually got to go to the class every single week, and I learned how to be bored.

That is learning how to sit in silence and be bored because a lot of times addictions are just taking us out of our discomfort of being with ourselves. Being like, and I’m struggling with this myself, but the phone, yes, it’s great and we’re in touch and all these things, but it’s such an easy way to just tune out and be in your addiction and not be in your present moment and just be zoning or, whether you’re addicted to the games on there or scrolling Facebook or porn or whatever it is, right? It’s just another way, like learning how to put your phone down. It’s like the demise of our society. I really worry about our future generation.

It’s an easy way to escape. It’s an easy way to not feel your feelings. One of the beautiful things about being in recovery is that I’ve learned to feel my feelings, not just the good ones.

I always say that all feelings matter. There’s a great Rumi poem that I love that we actually use. It’s called MBSR. It’s called The Guest House. It just talks about inviting your feelings in and not sweeping them under the rug, actually inviting them for a cup of tea. That we’ve decided, like, it’s good to feel happy. It’s good to feel joy. It’s good to feel excited. It’s bad to feel jealousy. It’s bad to feel anger. It’s not bad to feel anything.

All feelings matter. It's really about balance and being present with what you're feeling. Share on X

When it gets to be a concern is when you’re stuck in it, and you’re looping it, and it’s affecting you because every emotion does affect you from a traditional Chinese medicine perspective. If you have grief, it can affect your lungs. If you have anger, it can affect your liver. If you worry a lot, it can affect your stomach and your spleen. Even joy, which we consider a really good emotion, even excess joy, can negatively affect your heart. It’s really about balance and being present with what you’re feeling. With addiction, we tend not to like being present.

If you’re in your addiction and then you’re beating yourself up about your addiction, then it’s taking you away from dealing with what really could be troubling you, which could be not being able to sit in silence because we do not appreciate silence. We do not appreciate peace. Regulating your nervous system has to be at the basis, the foundation of everything you do because there’s a saying like, “Is it how you do everything or how you do anything is you do everything.”

If you are eating healthy, so you can be, there’s a term, I think it’s orthorexia. I’m probably saying it wrong. It’s like you can be addicted to eating healthy. Now I went through this when I first found out about natural medicine. I would not go out with friends. I would not go to a restaurant. God forbid it was not organic or anything. To me, it’s the middle road. I still believe eating organic is healthy, and I eat that way predominantly, especially in my house. I will not skip a social where I can have some fun and connect because I’m judging that it’s not organic and they do not take care of themselves.

It’s really, as an addict, I like to swing all the way to one side, and I’ve learned to come back, and the middle is where the balance is. That’s really reflected in traditional Chinese medicine, where even too much of a good emotion can affect you negatively. How you do anything is how you do everything. If you’re eating healthy because you’re still doing it from the addictive persona, then it’s not really that healthy for you because it’s coming in with that energy of stress and angst. I’d rather you eat a Big Mac from McDonald’s and be in joy than eat organic tofu and brown rice or broccoli or whatever it is that’s going to be healthy.

It’s really about learning how to honor your body and wanting to take care of your body. When we’re talking about good nutrition, it’s like, “I’m doing this because this is going to feed me, and I know this apple has fiber and I know this apple is going to help hydrate my cells, and I need happy, healthy cells.” When we do things with a balanced nervous system, we get much better results, and it’s really more about who you are and how you’re experiencing it than what you’re doing at first.

The Nervous System

You describe addiction as an attempt at self-regulation. Let’s break that down. What is a dysregulated nervous system actually doing, and why does a substance feel like the only thing that works?

A dysregulated nervous system is a body that’s not in touch with each other. Without getting too geeky, we have a whole terrain in our body and everything. Like that’s why, as a naturopathic doctor, I do not specialize in just your gut or just your cardiovascular system because they’re all interconnected. We have our main nervous system, our autonomic nervous system, which is our sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. Even nowadays, we’ve villainized the sympathetic nervous system. It’s fight or flight. It’s keeping us stuck, it’s stressing us out, and no one knows how to get into the parasympathetic, which is the rest, relax, digest.

We need the sympathetic nervous system. If you walk out of here and you step off the curb and there’s a car coming, it’s your sympathetic nervous system that’s going to spring you into action and get you back on the curb and save your life. It’s just when we get stuck and everything. The sympathetic nervous system evolved when we were cavemen and women, and we were running around, and there were saber-toothed, and we were trying to kill them so we could have dinner, and they were trying to kill us so they could have dinner. Yes, that was a really life-threatening event.

Now we’ve turned everything into a life-threatening event. When we’re dysregulated, we cannot really discern if this is life-threatening or not. We are just stuck. An overload, and so everything is coming at us, and everything is intense, and everything we want to escape from because it’s just too much to handle. A regulated nervous system knows how to breathe. If you ever think about infants, like when they cry, and they’re like crying hysterically, and then at the end they’re like, and they like that’s us as babies when we all started that’s a normal mechanism to regulate our nervous system.

Our breath is truly free. It’s our best friend. It’s always with us. It’s how we know you’re in the world and staying because you take that first breath, that first cry. When we exhale, our final exhale, it’s how we exit the world. People come and go in our lives, but ultimately we are the stars. Everyone else is a co-star. Our breath is always with us, and so it’s free, and it’s the most powerful tool to use to regulate your nervous system. It can be something as simple as box breathing, where you’re inhaling for four, you’re holding for four, you’re exhaling for four, you’re holding for four.

 

Even just doing that 3 to 5 times can shift your nervous system. Depending upon how you experience it, but like somatic, being able to feel yourself tapping, shaking, all of these things, which is like what animals do. You see animals in the wild, and they’re shaking it off. We have the ability to do all these things on our own. I love, as a practice, legs up the wall, which is a yoga pose, and just doing that like every night for even five minutes. People say things like, “I’ve tried meditating, and my mind is racing, and I cannot do it. I’m not good at meditating,” but everyone’s mind is racing, and no one starts out good at meditating.

It’s just like, if you want to build a bicep in the gym, you do not walk in once and try to lift the heaviest thing, and you cannot lift it, and you go, “I suck at this. I’m never doing this.” You keep going back. You start with lighter weights, and you increase your reps. It’s the same thing with learning how to meditate or be present. You have to keep gathering your mind and coming back to the present moment and celebrating that I was present for a second. As we want to, “I need to be present for a half hour. I need to sit and be a monk for a half hour.”

That’s not how it is. I’ve been meditating since I was 24. That’s well over 30 years, and I still am not a monk. It’s easier to be a monk because then you’re just like away in the mountains and the Himalayas, and it’s quiet, and no one’s bothering you or pissing you off, and you know, you do not have life going around you. It’s really learning how to be mindful, to give yourself grace and to acknowledge yourself.

We’re so easy to beat ourselves up and “I fucked that up again, and I did this.” Instead of, like, “I breathed. I did not make it for the five cycles, but I did it for two cycles. I actually was able to do two breaths, and my mind did not wander. When your mind does wander, we always say, just kindly gather it and bring it back. It’s really about learning moments. The definition of mindfulness is being present moment to moment, paying attention on purpose moment to moment. I always like to say, be kind and graceful to yourself about it.

The definition of mindfulness is being present moment to moment, paying attention on purpose moment to moment. Share on X

By the way, MBSR stands for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.

Paul has a class starting next week.

During COVID, you started doing them online, which I was not really into online. I did it in person. Is he doing them in person again?

Yes, I think he is a hybrid of them. We’ve talked about what we’re going to teach at my clinic. We just have not gotten to that point yet because we’re still opening. It’s a great course. We are always kids. Taking the stress reduction class is stressful, because it is. It’s eight weeks, and there’s homework every night. If you’re not used to being present like that, that’s stressful. If you do it, it can really be a life-changing experience.

I remember when I was taking that class, we had four gentlemen who were in our program. We were sober living at the time, and these guys were going to stay at the Four Seasons, but instead of staying at the Four Seasons, they stayed at our sober living home. You can imagine our sober living home was not the Four Seasons, and they were not very happy with it. I remember we went in and had a meeting with them, and one of the guys was just like going off the rails. He was yelling, and he was so angry, and I was just sitting there.

I was probably four weeks into the MBSR class, and I remember he paused and he was like, “I’m just really concerned that Tim is not giving us more of a reaction.” I was like, “Oh man.” I went back to Paul Sugar, and I shared that story with him. It’s like, because he talked about adrenaline and people being addicted to adrenaline. Because I was not giving him a reaction, it was just too flat. It was not something that he wanted. It’s like when you’re trying to fight somebody, and they do not fight you back.

We can be addicted to being angry, to being sad, to being a good girl, to being a good boy. There’s no limit to what we can be emotionally addicted to.

When someone in early recovery says, “I feel like I’m crawling out of my skin,” what is physically happening to them?

Withdrawal is real, and so we’ll do a lot of nutrient IVs. We do a lot of minerals, we do a lot of lymphatic work, and touch work to ground you back into your body because your nervous system is fighting. It does not know. It’s like addictions are what they’re like cunning.

Baffling and powerful.

They’ll find a way. They are creative. It’s literally a fight for your life when you’re crawling out of your skin, because your nervous system is so used to bypassing and going to addictive, distracting behavior. It depends on what your addiction is. Your physical body, your brain, your biochemistry, your hormones. I do a lot of work with hormones with women, but also with men, but more with women, and, like, when you know, for the women in the room, like when you are a cycling woman, or you’re going through perimenopause, or you are pregnant, like your hormones have a lot to do with your brain neurochemistry.

They are real. Your anxiety or your need to use or whatever it is, like some of it can really be driven by not having enough progesterone, not getting GABA receptor sites activated. It could be that if you’re deficient in testosterone, your dopamine pathways can be off. Same with your estrogen and your serotonin. You can go into depression. As I was saying before, getting your physical body balanced just helps. It’s not going to fix everything if there are still emotional and spiritual things. It’s going to help make the journey so much easier.

If the nervous system is the problem, what actually regulates it?

Some of the things we’ve talked about, ultimately, I think it’s always doing that self-inventory. Where is this coming from? Is this being driven by that addictive pull in me? Is this being driven? Am I truly enjoying things? Sometimes it’s just going back to the simple things and the mundane things and learning to find pleasure, like in Zen Buddhism, we say, like the child’s mind, the beginner’s mind.

If you’re fortunate enough to have a young one in your life that you can hang out with and see the world through like a child’s eyes, that really helps to regulate the nervous system because they see everything as new and exciting, and things that we’ve just brushed over, they’re not important anymore. We’ve seen them so many times, but have you ever really sat and stared at the clouds or smelled a flower or jumped in a puddle so that a childlike mind can really help to regulate the nervous system as well?

The Body Underneath

When someone walks into your office who is newly sober, what deficiencies are you looking for?

We’re certainly looking for micronutrient deficiencies, including electrolytes, sodium, potassium, magnesium, and calcium. We’re looking at B vitamins for sure. We’re looking at the microbiome because the gut is like the second brain. We’re looking at how the microbiome is, or is imbalanced, usually, whether you’re addicted or not. Usually, everyone’s microbiome is out of balance to some degree. We’re looking at neurotransmitters. We’re looking at hormones and what their levels are. We’re looking at toxic loads because there are so many.

When I first started practicing, it was like, “Are you toxic?” Now it’s more like, I know you’re toxic. How toxic are you? Does your body know how to get rid of those toxins? Toxins range from mycotoxins, which are the toxins mold excretes, to heavy metals from mercury and lead, to solvents, to phthalates, to plastics, to pesticides, to herbicides, to EMFs. As for the unseen toxins, that’s a whole other huge issue. All these toxins, I look at it like we’re all born with a backpack, and some of us get little backpacks, and some of us get big backpacks.

If you have a little backpack, you get some toxins, you get some deficiencies, you get trauma, and now your backpack’s filled and it starts to spill over. That’s where we have symptoms, disease, and imbalances. Someone who has a large backpack, it’s like the hundred-year-old woman who’s like rocking on the porch, and she’s drinking her whiskey and smoking her cigarettes, and she’s like, fine. She has a big backpack.

It doesn’t matter what comes at her, but most of us do not have such large backpacks. We do not have such a good constitution. All these toxins contribute, and they can mimic. Toxins can make you depressed. They can make you anxious. They can contribute because they have these qualities. Mycotoxins can do that. A lot of times, when we’re struggling, it’s because our bodies are just being bombarded with toxins. We look at how strong your toxic load is. How is your liver functioning? Can it excrete and help you get rid of these toxins on a daily basis, or do you need some extra help?

What do you find over and over in people who are newly sober?

As far as toxins?

Yes, is there anything that you find that’s more common in people who are newly sober or people who are essentially putting their bodies through the wringer?

Essential fatty acid deficiencies. Like fish oil. Omega-3s, B vitamins, vitamin D, electrolytes. Those would be liver function needs support, which also will go to the gallbladder and bile because we do a lot of excretion. I find dehydration not like dehydration, you have to go to the hospital, but subclinical dehydration, where your cells just are not hydrated. I find the lymphatic flow, which is how we excrete a lot of toxins in our body, is very congested. Movement needs to be integrated. Those are some things off the top of my head. I’m sure there’s more.

Speaking of salt, I just saw a video, and they were essentially discounting the importance of salt, or they were saying that LMNT with a thousand milligrams of sodium was not necessarily what we needed. Most people do not need as much salt. Most electrolytes are sodium, right?

Not the ones we use. There is more potassium.

There’s potassium, there’s sodium, and then you have the minerals, which are fulvic acid and fulvic and humic. What would you say, as far as someone who needs to stay hydrated that’s here in Phoenix, Arizona, what do you recommend for electrolytes?

I recommend testing so you know what you need, because some patients do need more sodium and some do not. Some need more potassium. A good one, I think they sell it at Sprouts, like Ultima is a good electrolyte. It’s got good potassium in it. They have all different flavors. It tastes good. They sell it in single sticks there, I believe, or you can get a canister. That’s a good one I like that people do really well with and it helps to get them rehydrated.

It’s important to drink good water to the best of your ability and to always have some electrolyte in it or squeeze a lemon, a lime, or some celery in it to get some minerals from the celery. Realizing that you do not just need to drink water to get hydrated. Coconut water is a really good way, and it has a lot of potassium in it, but just a very hydrating food. An apple a day is very hydrating. Cucumbers are hydrating. Chia seeds are very hydrating. If you like chia seed pudding, you can also get hydrated through food and not just through water.

If someone just drinks plain water, are they missing something? Is it just going to go straight through you, or are they actually hydrated?

Everything always, I do not like making general statements. That’s where we get into a lot of trouble, especially in our society of influencers making all sorts of claims that may or may not be appropriate for your body. If you walk around all day and you drink no water or you drink like one glass of water, then let’s just get you used to drinking water. Let’s work your way up, get you some water, and get into that habit. We can start talking about healthier water, structured water, or getting electrolytes in your water.

Yes, it is better to have something in your water so you hold the water and it just does not go through you. Everything is like, I like to meet people where they’re at. That’s really important, and you should always meet yourself where you’re at, and whoever’s on your team needs to be looking at you and dealing with where you’re at and not some idealized version. You can get there, but it’s much better. There’s a term in Japan called Kaizen. It’s about making change because, in the art of making change, we want you to make changes that are actually going to stick.

If you’re like, “I want to go to the gym and start exercising because exercise is a great tool for regulating antidepressants and getting movement and getting brain chemistry up,” of course, within reason. You do not just go from sitting on the couch to “I’m going to go to the gym seven days a week,” because you’ll end up going to the gym for seven days, and then you will not go again.

It’s like, “The gyms are always really crowded, and New Year’s, new year, new you.” By the end of January, they’re empty again. Better to think about exercising and get a fun workout outfit and put it by the door and just start, maybe walking ten minutes, three days a week, and like listening to yourself. It’s always about checking in and listening to yourself. Slowly build habits that you enjoy getting out of, like, “I’ll start on Monday,” or, “I messed up, so I might as well just mess up for the rest of the month.”

Again, it goes back to mindfulness and the present moment. Who cares what just happened? What’s happening right now? How can you get back on track? I ask patients this all the time, like, “Do you know how you respond?” Like, “Are you a dive-all-in and you actually stick with things, or do we need to go slow so you do not get overwhelmed?” If they do not know these things about themselves, I always revert to saying we’re going to go slow and not overwhelm you.

Going back to hydration, I like to drink Spindrift, which I do not think is sparkling water. I think it’s soda. It’s soda water. Spindrift, LaCroix, there’s lots of sparkling water, Liquid Death. Are those hydrating as well? What’s your opinion on those? Because there’s no sugar.

If we’re going high-level, like what’s the best way to be hydrated? You want to be drinking hydrogen-structured filtered water. The structure actually allows it to hydrate in your body so you can receive it. Hydrogen is an antioxidant. You’re getting a lot of medicinal benefits from filtered water because our water is dirty. Everything’s dirty out there these days. That’s the best water. I would not just drink Liquid Death all day. I do not know what it’s leaching out of those cans, for one thing, and it’s dead water.

If you’re hiking and it’s 105 degrees, yes, drink that. It’ll help. On the whole, you want to have electrolytes in your water, and then you want to know what you’re doing. Some people just need one electrolyte a day. Some need three. A lot of that then depends upon your adrenals and your aldosterone, and whether you’re peeing it all out. Are you losing your sodium? Are you keeping your sodium? Again, it goes back to what you need? In that case, like the labs, the data shows us what you actually need.

Do you have an opinion on LMNT?

No. First of all, they lied and said it had like a little bit of maltodextrin in it, and it has a lot, and I think it’s too high in sodium.

It’s so good, though.

Go to Sprouts and get some Ultima.

We have a lot of women who are in their 40s and 50s who are part of our audience, and they’re trying to stay sober. They’re in the middle of perimenopause, and nobody warned them. What’s happening to them, and what does it do to relapse risk?

Hormones And Sobriety

It does a lot because when you go through perimenopause, you think you’re going crazy. All of a sudden, these hormones that were feeding your brain, because our hormones are feeding every part of our body, not just our uterus, to have a period, they cliff jump, or they go on a roller coaster ride, and they’re up one day and down one day. You can definitely feel it from a psychiatric perspective. Anxiety, depression, sleepless nights, not feeling like yourself anymore.

It can really throw you off-kilter. First thing is to know, like perimenopause can happen in your 30s. It can happen early. A lot of times you’ll go to the doctor, and they’ll be like, “That’s not your hormones.” I say, “BS.” It most likely is your hormones. Again, I do not blame hormones for everything, but it can be, if we think of it like a wheel and there are eight slices of pie. Especially for women in perimenopause, it could take up a couple of those slices. It’s a big issue.

Anything like, do you have any suggestions for them?

Getting proper testing so you know what’s actually happening with your hormones is helpful. You can still be in perimenopause and still have regular cycles. If you’re starting to have migraines, if you’re having unexplained weight gain, if all of a sudden you cannot sleep. If you just do not feel like yourself anymore, you feel like you’re going crazy. It throws you off-kilter, and then you want to go back to addictive behaviors to try and get some stability or control in your life, like nutrition and sleep. All these things are really important.

Trying to think in general things, I always go back to like making sure you’re moving your body, making sure you have purpose, making sure you have joy, making sure you have connection, making sure you have community. Ultimately, if you are losing your hormones, then we look at the root cause. The root cause is that you’re losing your hormones, and those hormones need to be replaced. Finding a doctor who will work with you, who will listen to you, who will take you seriously, and who will not dismiss you.

If you historically have had challenging periods, heavy periods, missed periods, bad cramping, migraines, if you have a history of fibroids, if you have polycystic ovarian syndrome, which is now called polycystic metabolics, and they changed the name from PCOS to PMOS. If you’ve had problems getting pregnant, a history of miscarriages, like all these things are hormonally related, and if you’re suffering from these in your younger years, there’s a very high probability you’re going to suffer more when you get to perimenopause and menopause.

It’s important to find a doctor who understands this and will work with you initially to help you. A lot of the things that we think are normal, like PMS, bleeding heavily or having to lie in bed because you have your period, or getting cramps, are common, but they’re not normal. They’re a sign that there’s a hormonal imbalance, or a lot of times it’s your liver not being able to process the hormones. It’s getting that help early to get your cycles and to get those symptoms under control. When you do get older to that age, it’s an easier transition.

That’s something that you run a group, and then you also have your clinic, and we’ll share more about you, your group, and the clinic at the end of the show. What we’re going to do is we’re going to open it up to questions.

Restoring Hydration And Testing For Critical Minerals

You said the electrolyte thing, like the really good one is called Ultima or Ultima?

Ultima.

Have you heard of this stuff? It’s called, I do not know if it’s like what exactly it is, but it’s called gray salt, and they’re adding it to water? It’s supposed to have extra minerals or something.

Using therapeutic salt. I used to always say like Himalayan salt or Celtic sea salt. The problem now is that there are microplastics in a lot of the good salts, and plastics are another problem. Redmond’s salt is clean, and then Vera. Those are two salts that are certified microplastic-free. Again, for what you can get and so forth, like yeah, some broad spectrum. Not table salt. You do not want to be using table salt. You want to be using pink rock salt things. You do not have to put an electrolyte in, and you could put some salt in. A quarter of a teaspoon could be really helpful.

It’s because my wife and I had been doing some research, like electrolyte stuff. That’s one of the things that we had seen was that salt that I just mentioned. I want to mention to her the Ultima stuff because I worked on construction. I do not think I’m going back to construction, but I had a stroke four years ago, and I do not know if it’s because I took a blood thinner or just the way my body reacted, as we covered. I overheat really badly, and I have a bad salt stain, like I sweat badly and it’s like sweat a lot of salt out. I used to take those liquid IVs, but I want something that’s better than that stuff.

For someone like you, the LMNT is, if you’re really sodium deficient, could be helpful for you, especially since we live in ridiculous conditions here in the summer. That could be helpful for you. If your doctor can run, even just a comprehensive metabolic panel will give you, like, your sodium, but then if you can get them to run, like, a red blood cell potassium and a red blood cell magnesium and an ionized calcium, this will give you better information than what you get just in the comprehensive metabolic panel.

We’re looking inside the red blood cell, and that’s where these electrolytes and these minerals should be concentrated more than in the serum, which is what the comprehensive metabolic panel looks at. We get more accurate information, and then you can see what your levels are doing and where you need to really focus on replenishing. From a nervous system perspective, magnesium and potassium help to relax the nervous system. If your nervous system is stuck more in that sympathetic tone, that fight-or-flight, usually calcium and sodium could be more prevalent, and you do not have enough magnesium and potassium to balance it.

Regarding magnesium, I take a lot of magnesium, and I’m still deficient in magnesium without looking at my labs.

Are you checking it in the red blood cells?

I do not know.

That’s common. Magnesium is burned up by stress. Magnesium is probably the most common mineral deficiency. It’s common. We’re getting into the intricacies of what type of magnesium you’re taking.

It’s magnesium malate and magnesium glycinate.

You just may not be absorbing it. I do not know what you mean by you’re taking a lot.

I’m taking more than triple the recommended amount.

The recommended amounts are like super low. What you’re taking, I might feel like, “Of course you’re low in magnesium. You’re not taking enough. You need much more.” I really like magnesium glycerophosphate. That’s what we use. It’s just absorbed better in that form. It’s dropped off into the intestines and absorbed much better. I do see a lot of people who take a lot of magnesium, and they’re deficient, but then you’ve got to look at, like, “Why is my body using this so quickly?” A lot of times, it’s just stress.

If I’m eating based off of minerals and stuff so I can have my electrolytes and stuff like that.

From your food, you mean?

From my food intake, yes. I drink water throughout the day. Does that count? Will it absorb, or do I have to be eating the meal with the water for the water to be absorbed?

No, I mean theoretically it’s best to drink our water away from our meals if possible so we can absorb. It’s best to drink your water at room temperature, not ice-cold, which I know is a hard ask when it’s so hot out, even though I drink some ice-cold water sometimes. I’m not perfect. Part of the problem with that is that the soil these days is really depleted. Even if you’re eating a very mineral-nutrient-dense diet, it’s still a question of whether you’re getting enough minerals.

The orange of 60 years ago, and I’m just making up these numbers, gave us like 600 milligrams of vitamin C, and the orange we eat today gives us like 25 milligrams. It’s a global problem, which is why supplementation and using things like electrolytes and supplements play an important role, because you can’t eat the perfect diet. I see it. I have patients come in, and they eat a perfect diet, and they do not want to take supplements. I test them. I’m like, “You’re still depleted.” The other thing also is like if we’re eating a perfect diet, so we say like you are what you eat, but truly you are what you absorb.

You are what you eat, but truly you are what you absorb. Share on X

You could be eating a great diet, but are you actually absorbing it? That goes into the conditions of eating. Like, are you really chewing and liquefying your food? Are you eating slowly? Are you putting your fork down between bites? Are you eating till you’re only 80% full? Are you sitting down in a parasympathetic state, or are you eating in the car, rushing, or standing? That has a lot to do with how we absorb. Mindful eating is a very powerful tool.

Even if you’re doing that, then how are your digestive enzymes? Do you have enough stomach acid? Is your pancreas putting out enzymes? Is your gallbladder putting out enzymes? Is your alkalinity and your acidity? There are a lot of steps that go into it, and most people who have problems with absorption, if they have problems and they feel heartburn, then they take an antacid, and that doesn’t solve the problem.

It only makes things worse because it suppresses your stomach acid, which is usually what you do not have enough of. Usually, indigestion is from too little stomach acid, not too much, and it’s the too little stomach acid that doesn’t allow us to break down our food, and so then the metabolic waste from undigested food, food that’s not all the way digested, starts to wash back, and that’s what makes us feel uncomfortable. It’s a great question, and in theory, yes, but in real life, probably no.

I have one more question. I’ve done a lot of research on glyphosate, pesticides, and stuff like that. It seems unavoidable. What are the things to do to, like, armor up for that?

Lowering Your Toxic Load

What I find, because I test glyphosate levels in my patients, the more you eat organic, the more you’ll still have glyphosate because it’s ubiquitous. It’s everywhere. Even if you’re eating organic, it’s in the air, it’s in the water, being sprayed, but the levels will tend to be lower. If you cannot only eat organic, then washing your fruits and veggies, like washing your foods good. Try to eat locally, eat in season. We have tons of farmers’ markets.

Getting to know the farmers, because some of them, they cannot say they’re organic, but if you go to the markets and start to get to know them and talk to them, you’ll find that some of them aren’t putting spray and stuff, but even though it does say organic, because I know organic can get pricey. Washing things good and really soaking them, not just a quick washing, can be really helpful. Making sure that you have good amino acids, you’re getting good protein, and that you’re supporting your liver so that you can detox what you’re getting.

As I was saying before, we’re never going to get to zero toxins at this point in the game. Even babies in utero are exposed to hundreds of toxins through the umbilical cord. It’s just about how we can lower our risk without getting crazy and into fear and into addictions, because then you could get, you know, like where everything is bad. It’s more learning, like, what things are like when we take our shoes off. We do not let people wear shoes in the house or in our office.

 

It’s because you’re outside. You do not know what you walk through. You’re tracking pesticides. There are little things you can do that move the needle a lot. If you’re going for a walk, try not to walk on the street where there’s all the car exhaust. Try to walk in nature. You’re getting away from that. Golf courses are heavily sprayed, so do not walk on a golf course. You’re never going to get to zero, but you can do things to lower the impact and then help your body get rid of it.

Have you read The Web That Has No Weaver?

A long time ago, yeah.

Do you recommend it? Do you think that the information in it is pretty reliable?

That’s an old one. I must have read it like 30 years ago. That’s a classic. It’s definitely a good read.

Earlier in the conversation, you had mentioned that during this day of calm, you realized this sense of numbness. Other signs that you look out for, or someone in recovery can look out for, that let them know, like their addictive mind or addictive behaviors, might be taking more control in their day-to-day lives?

It’s internally reflecting journaling. I really like EFT tapping. It’s free. There’s a gazillion things you can do, but it’s really paying attention. That paying attention moment to moment, like, are you falling off your good habits? Are you isolating? What’s changing and what’s healthy for you? Everything is such a balance. Isolation is not good, but some private time and some solitude are very healthy. It’s this constant inquiry that was just like something I realized last week. I haven’t really sat with it more.

 

I definitely think there’s like a fine line. I never watch TV. Now I watch a lot of TV. Now I’m going like, and there’s a point like I work hard all day and my brain is going and I’m helping people, so there’s some balance to like coming home and spending an hour numbing out and just letting my brain relax and watching a show. Am I doing that just for an hour, or now my like, “Next episode.” Paying attention to things like that and being honest with yourself and then having support to talk it through. It’s good to get someone who you know has got your back and loves you and trusts you, who can reflect back to you also.

Thank you.

My question for you is in regard to, and hopefully this makes sense, but when women are pregnant, is there any relationship, correlation or science behind what they physically pass on to the infant in regards to what you mentioned, like with the backpack? You are born with toxins and whatever you’ve inherited, but I was more so thinking of a hormonal imbalance in the mother. Would that then create a hormonal imbalance in the infant?

Yes. Certain things I know are like, if you are carrying a toxic load, heavy metals, the baby will chelate a portion of that. It’s happening all the time. I’ve been practicing for 25 years. I can count on maybe not even two hands how many women have come to me and said, “I want to get pre-toxed before I get pregnant.” Usually, we just end up pregnant. You cannot detox when you’re pregnant. There is a degree. There’s also a degree of stress and transgenerational stress.

Not even just from the mother, but epigenetically, what we pass on from our ancestors. I really love family constellation work. I do not know if you guys do any of that here, but it’s really looking at the whole constellation of all your ancestors because we’re just one big spider web and someone who had, whether it was trauma in a war or whatever it was, or a baby you lost, like that’s all dynamically playing into who you are and what you’re carrying and what you’re expressing.

A lot of times, that needs to be worked out. If a mother is very anxious or has a lot of nervous system dysregulation, the baby will definitely like them in the third trimester. The baby will chelate a lot of things from the mom. The third trimester is when the baby’s cortisol starts coming on board. If the mother is very depleted and stressed, she’ll actually start to pull it from the baby. The baby will be born stressed and already with adrenal fatigue and wiped out. There’s a lot of interaction in that way.

That’s truly what I was trying to get at, in regards to, like, ultimately what the baby is born with in regards to generational trauma, in regards to any type of, for lack of a better term, like the mom had anxiety. Now, the baby’s born anxious, like such and such, because I’m so interested in how that is passed down from generation to the next and, ultimately, how that would essentially like predispose the infant to grow up and then have issues with mental health, addiction, whatever the case may be.

There’s definitely a lot there, and I think it can be broken. As women, we cannot beat ourselves up, because I also believe the baby, the soul, chooses, and we all have lessons to learn. Sometimes the soul wants to come in because they wanna have some challenges. We all have challenges, but there’s a lot to that. There are some people who really do research on that, but there’s a lot to it for sure.

That’s good. If you do not mind, have one more question. Is there room to go about a holistic approach to your health? As you mentioned, you wanna get the whole body settled or neutral before you start digging into the deeper topics. Is there room for both the holistic and the generalized medicine that’s available to us?

Absolutely. Everyone does what they want. They can work side by side. You can be on medications that I have patients on if they’re on medications and they’re really helping them. I’m not like, “They’re medications, and we need to get you on a vitamin.” I’m like, “No, we need to get you feeling better. If medication is part of that, and it’s working, great. Let’s look and make sure this medication might be known for depleting B6 or magnesium or whatever. Let’s support you in that way, and let’s do the work that you need to do and eat healthy,” and all those other things.

Thank you so much.

Great questions. We got one more question in the back, and then we got to wrap it up.

What would you recommend for somebody who has high liver enzymes?

How high?

Pretty high.

You have to understand why. If you have high liver enzymes, that means the liver cells are lysing, they’re coming apart, and the enzymes that are supposed to be inside the cells are spilling into the serum, and that’s why they’re high. We have to know why. Is there a virus going on?

Due to addiction and substance.

Looking at glutathione looking at IV therapies to replenish could be really helpful. Milk thistle is a good herb. Looking at bile and maybe supporting bile flow and making sure you’re having good bowel movements. Castor oil packs, have you ever heard of those?

Yes.

They’re a great thing to do for your liver. You can do them at home. They’re really inexpensive. Acupuncture can be really helpful for your liver. The liver is anger, so work on any anger you may be carrying because there’s definitely an inverse energetic relationship. You can have a lot of anger, and it can affect your liver, or your liver can have issues because of an addiction, and then it can feed back, and then you can become more angry.

Also, are you familiar with endometriosis?

Yes.

Do you have any recommendations for somebody who has endometriosis?

That’s an inflammatory process. Figuring out what’s fueling the inflammation, and it can be a hormone imbalance with hormones. We’re always thinking about the liver as well. Do I say glutathione for your liver?

Yes.

Getting the inflammation down. Sometimes we’ll use proteolytic enzymes, which are like enzymes you can take to help digest your food. If you take them on an empty stomach, they’ll help digest inflammation, which is often helpful. A lot of times, endometriosis can be estrogen dominance. It might not even be that you have too much estrogen. It might be that you have too much estrogen in relation to your progesterone because they’re like the yin and yang hormones. Looking to see if you need more progesterone can often help with that as well.

Thank you.

You’re welcome.

Is there anything I missed?

Reclaiming Your Health

I do host an online summit. It’s not endometriosis. It’s a lot about hormones. It’s a menopause summit, but honestly, even for the men in the room. It’s like getting a lot of good information about just everything from fascia to movement to all sorts of things, and it’s free, and it just happens to be coming out soon. You can sign up for it starting September 1st, and it’s going to go live on September 12th, and it’ll be live for five days. There are like over 40 interviews. I’ve interviewed experts in the field. My son did some of the interviews, so it’s a good resource that you could check out. Can you maybe send it in?

We’ll give them all the information in the Team Recovery app for the people who are here, but do you want to plug it and tell people how they can find it or learn more about it?

If you join my email list, then you’ll get an email on September 1st inviting you to join. If you do not want to join my email list, maybe you can put it on your email list or something. I do not know.

You just have to tell them how they can sign up for your email.

You go to DrStills.com. There should be a place where you can sign up to get my newsletter. On September 1st, we’ll send an invite to sign up for the summit. If you like my newsletter, you can stay on it. If you do not, you can unsubscribe, but you can at least sign up for the summit. There’s a lot of free information on there that I think can be valuable.

Anything else you want to promote? How can people find you? How can they connect with you?

I try to hang out on Instagram. If you’re on Instagram, I’m not very good at it. I go in and out, but I’m just Dr. Sharon Stills on social media. My newsletter is probably the way we communicate most with our audience. We do. I just told my assistant yesterday, “We need to go on Instagram again.” We were doing really well. We fall off, but I have a very love-hate relationship with social media because I think it can really take you out of your moment, and so I go back and forth. Yet I know it’s a good way to share information and help educate people, so it’s reflected in how often I post.

Understood.

We just do some fun things there, so it’s fun.

Awesome. Anyway, how can we help you? Anything you need from us, from me, or from us?

No. It was nice hanging out with you all. I hope this was helpful for you. I just came to hopefully help and be of service.

Amazing. I sure do appreciate you, and this was a great conversation. I know you guys learned a little bit. We learned a little bit. Thanks for being here. Let’s give it up for Dr. Sharon Stills.

 

Important Links

• Dr. Sharon Stills
• Dr. Sharon Stills on LinkedIn
• Dr. Sharon Stills on Instagram
• Dr. Sharon Stills on Facebook
• The Web That Has No Weaver
• Camelback Recovery

 

About Dr. Sharon Stills

Dr. Sharon Stills, NMD, is a naturopathic medical doctor who has spent 25 years working with chronic illness, hormonal health, and what she describes as the terrain underneath both.

She graduated from Sonoran University of Health Sciences in Tempe, Arizona in 2001, then pursued extensive training in European biological medicine under Dr. Thomas Rau at the Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland — training that shaped her approach to treating the whole system rather than an isolated organ. She was later invited to serve as a co-lead North American lecturer for the Paracelsus Academy. She is recognized as a leading expert in Computerized Regulation Thermography, sits on the board of the Bio-Regulatory Medicine Institute, and previously served on the board of the Archive of Healing at UCLA. She has been a longtime physician expert contributor at Women’s Health Network.

She founded and ran one of the largest naturopathic clinics in the country in the early 2000s, and hosted The Science of Self-Healing podcast. Her annual meno(pause) summit, produced in collaboration with DrTalks, is in its fifth year and reaches up to 100,000 women.

She now practices at Lasting Wellness Center, a 7,000 square foot clinic in Scottsdale, Arizona, alongside her son, Dr. Ben Stills, where they work with cancer, autoimmunity, long COVID, nervous system regulation and hormonal health.

She got sober at twenty, and became a physician at thirty-three.