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The Radiant Mission
The Radiant Mission
167. Healing Fevers Naturally: What Every Parent Should Know About the Immune System God Designed
Most of us were taught to fear fevers and throw reducers at every spike. We take a different path: what if a fast fever is a sign of strength, and your job is to help the body finish what it started? With Dr. Vaughn, a traditional naturopath and iridologist, we break down how the immune system works from a design perspective and why gut health often decides who breezes through a bug and who crashes for a week.
We dig into the practicals. You’ll learn a simple three-step approach to support fevers safely: move the bowels, open the skin with heat and steam, and cool the gut to slow fermentation at the source. We talk pain relief without derailing recovery, including when a short cold bath can quickly calm inflammation. Stomach bugs get their turn too—how short-term binders like activated charcoal or clay can help in a pinch, why you shouldn’t lean on them long term, and how castor oil can support a faster cleanout. Along the way we clarify terrain vs germ theory in plain language and explain why focusing on the terrain yields better outcomes for families.
From daily habits to deeper root causes, we connect the dots. Fermented foods, fiber, and sunlight earn top billing for building resilient immunity. We touch on targeted support like blended immune formulas with vitamin C, zinc, and quercetin, plus medicinal mushrooms for intelligent modulation. For those stuck in a cycle of lingering illness, we outline how mold, Lyme, and reactivated Epstein-Barr can suppress the immune system and mute healthy fever responses, and why identifying and addressing those blocks restores hope.
If you’re ready to swap fear for understanding and quick fixes for true support, this conversation gives you tools you can use tonight and habits that build resilience over time. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs immune clarity, and leave a review to tell us which takeaway helped your family most.
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Hello, and welcome to the Radiant Mission Podcast. My name is Rebecca Toomey, and I'm here with my amazing co-host and sister, Rachel Smith. Hey everyone. We are on a mission to encourage and inspire you as you're navigating through this life and in your relationship with Christ. And today we are joined by our very favorite, Dr. Vaughn, to continue in our health series. So thank you for being here. Yeah, thank you, Dr.
Rachel Smith:Vaughn.
Rebecca Twomey:Yes, excited. Awesome. As a quick reminder, if you've missed the episodes with Dr. Vaughn, listen back because uh we talked about some pretty great stuff. He is a traditional naturopath and iridologist and is focused on helping people discover the root cause of their chronic illnesses. Dr. Vaughn looks at health and the human body from a design perspective, helping people to understand the links between God, creation, health, sickness, and disease. He founded Spirit of Health in 2010 with the goal to spread the vision, to partner with God, to bring healing and restoration to all creation. Again, be sure to listen back on the very first episode we did with Dr. Vaughn to hear more on that. His practice is based in Grandview, but Dr. Vaughn and his team aim to help others transform their health no matter where they're located. So if you're listening, you can still work with Dr. Vaughn no matter where you are, because he works virtually. And if you're looking to connect with him, be sure to visit his website, spiritofhealthkc.com, store.spiritofhealthkc.com, or you can find him on Facebook, Instagram, or YouTube at Spirit of Health or Spirit of Health KC on Instagram and on YouTube. So yeah, this is very exciting. I'm so glad to have you back. We're doing this again and we're gonna we're gonna keep going forever.
Dr. Vaughn:I'm down.
Rebecca Twomey:Permanent staple on the show, Dr. Vaughn.
Dr. Vaughn:I love it.
Rebecca Twomey:So today we're gonna be diving into the topic of the immune system. During the last few episodes that we did together, Rachel actually wasn't here because she was recovering from the flu. Yeah, because her immune system needed some support and some help. And I know so many are coming down with a flu or stomach bugs, colds, things like that. So we really want to talk about that and how to how to combat, not only prevent ourselves from falling into those sicknesses or illnesses, but then what to do if we do. So first, I want to ask you, Dr. Vaughn, is there something that we should know about these varying sicknesses? You know, why do some people get sick a lot and then other people don't?
Dr. Vaughn:Wonderful question. Uh boy, so much we could cover. Where do you even start? Uh, I'd say the basic concept that we need to understand is that it really comes down to the health of the person, the health of the individual. Um, it makes total sense. I mean, you have a family of five people and three get sick and two don't. Or you look at COVID, for example, like lots of people, you know, or affected per se, but some people literally it hits them like a sledgehammer and they're in the hospital. And some people are like, yeah, you know, I had a cough and a runny nose for a couple of days. So why the extreme variants? Yes. And I even mentioned this uh with pregnancy, because women might be told they have gestational diabetes or coliostasis or any number of preoclampsia, any number of these pregnancy-related conditions. Well, that condition was already there. The pregnancy exacerbated it because pregnancy is a stressor on the body in a good way, it's a good thing. But if there's already an underlying condition, a stressor of any sort is going to actually give you an indication of where your health's really at. So, in other words, if you get hit with uh a cold or a flu or an infection or whatever, and your lungs are in terrible shape and you're coughing for weeks, you can barely breathe, you you already have a lung condition. You've you've had a lung condition for a long time, which means you have congestion, mucus, buildup, you know, junk in the system, but it just took that infection or that stressor, or that bacteria, or that virus, or whatever, to basically highlight or exacerbate the condition that was already there, if that makes sense.
Rebecca Twomey:That does make sense. That's very interesting. I know our within our family, our mom was the one who never got sick. She just always She seemed like Wonder Woman. Yeah.
Rachel Smith:She always back then anyway when we were young.
Rebecca Twomey:We'd all get sick and she wouldn't get sick. So it was a very interesting, it was a very interesting thing. I don't feel that way with my kids.
Rachel Smith:I get sick from them almost every time. But um something you said actually brought a question to my mind, just because I'm fresh coming off the flu, you know, a few weeks ago. And it was my whole family that got it. It started with uh my older son and me. And then a few days later, my other son and my husband. And the three of them, all of their bodies responded pretty immediately with a high fever. That was the first symptom all of them had. For me, I've noticed this even outside of pregnancy. I barely ever get fevers. Like when my husband and I both had COVID at the same time, we had a lot of the same symptoms, but his body spiked a fever. I never got a fever, but then all of my symptoms last longer than him. And so I guess my question is is that like not having a fever a sign of a poor immune response? Like, is their body's immune system better than mine, or what what's the deal with that?
Dr. Vaughn:This is gonna be so good. Like, I'm so excited. Like, I don't know how many podcasts you have out there, but this is gonna be, I'm gonna hope this is your most listened to and watch podcast ever. This whole thing about fevers and sickness and kids is so misunderstood that this is gonna be like like my point. Awesome. So, not to build it up too much. Um, you're exactly right, and I'm gonna explain why. Okay. Um, you want to spike a fever, and the quicker the better, and the stronger your immune system, the quicker you're able to spike that fever, kill off the infection, and get through it. Right. So basically, that would say that your immune system is a little more down, or you know, we've heard that pregnancy can kind of suppress the immune system a little bit, and so yeah, it took your body a little bit while uh longer to respond, and therefore it took you longer to get over it. All right. So here's kind of the mind-blowing part. And uh I've always told people, and I'll continue to share with people that the best books that you can read on this subject or pretty much any subject in health, if you can find a medical book written between 1800 and 1900, you have gold. Okay, anything after 1900 has been uh compromised by the current system.
Rebecca Twomey:We can we cover that in in the episode about Rockefeller. Yes.
Dr. Vaughn:So um that's a bad word. So yeah, there's uh a book I read. Um, I'll just mention it. It's called Lewis uh Kuhn, K-U-H-N-E. He was in the mid-1800s. Um, I think it's called The New Art of Healing, or or something to that effect. Um and I found this to be true too. So I'm gonna explain what a fever is. Okay, it's always related to an infectious organism. We kind of know that. And what it comes down to is this fermentation process, the fermentation of the gut. Now we know we can eat fermented foods and we have good bacteria, and we need prebiotics and probiotics, and we need to eat sauerkraut, and we need to feed the good bacteria and have good gut flora. It's the pathogenic bacteria or the quote unquote bad bacteria, or there's another turd called commensal bacteria. Commensal bacteria are supposed to be in the gut, but they can be out of control, like candida supposed to be there. E. coli supposed to be there, certain clostridia organisms supposed to be there. So those are commensal bacteria, they're supposed to be there, but when the gut's unhealthy or out of balance, and they start to grow out of control, and this fermentation process is taking place, then the body will spike a fever to knock that infection back before it takes over the body, takes over the bloodstream, starts to cause too much hurt and damage throughout the entire body. So this explains why people get sick in change of season or when we're moving from into spring or into fall, because the the the changes in the weather will affect the growth of bacteria.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay.
Dr. Vaughn:It's all related to the fermentation processes happening in the gut. So why are these bad fermentation processes happening in the gut? Well, certainly a lot of it has to do with diet. A lot of it has to do with diet. And so, you know, say the immune system's down, it's winter, you go to a birthday party, you eat a bunch of sugar, you know, you feed all these bad bacteria, the body's like, ah, problem, red alert, signal the immune system, spike a fever, kill the infection. That's how it's supposed to happen. That's the natural process. Uh, we don't really understand it, so we get scared of fevers and we do aspirin and all these different things. But like, if I told you in this episode exactly what you do for a fever for your children or for yourselves, like it's a gold mile, right? Because it's like one of the most confusing topics out there.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah.
Dr. Vaughn:So, number one, the problem is in the gut. So, whatever you can do to move the bowels. And you want to know age-old remedy that you can do to help clear somebody's bowels very quickly is castor oil. And that's been used for centuries. I have multiple books on castor oil. Castor oil in Latin is palma criste, which is palm of Christ. It is one of the most healing things known to mankind. Like we could do a podcast on castor oil, that'd be super fun. But doing a little castor oil just to force those, you know, make those bowels move, because the problem is this fermentation process happening in the gut. Okay. So if you can get some stuff out of there, you're one step closer to healing the fever. Number two, open the pores of the skin. So what um Dr. Kuhn did back in the mid-1800s, and others like him, is they would do steam baths. So they would take the person and they'd lay them on a table and they'd boil water and they'd put pots of boiling water underneath the person, cover them with a blanket, and the steam would open the pores. And when you open the pores and you sweat, you allow the infection and the toxin to leave the body. Okay. So that is a very ancient remedy that works. The other thing you always want to do. Now, my parents didn't know much about health, but they did know that when I had a fever, they would load me up on blankets and you'd quote unquote sweat out the fever, right? You'd break the fever. But the best way to do it is the child should always sleep with the mother, ideally, skin to skin.
Rachel Smith:That's so interesting you say that because I didn't know any of this, and all of this would have been super useful for me like a month ago. Well, and we'll be in the future. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. My instinct when my kids are sick and have a fever is they have to be in bed with me. And it it kind of like annoyed my husband a little bit because like none of us were sleeping good and all of us were sick. But I'm like, whatever my intuition is, they have to be right next to me when they're they have a fever like that. Part of it might be my anxiety, like I just need to be close by.
Dr. Vaughn:Totally, totally. So that is that's natural, that's instinctual. Almost every child will want to be with their parents when they're sick. Yeah, that's how animals take care of their young when they're sick, is they cuddle up with them. And so, um, so number one, uh, move the bowels.
Rachel Smith:Yeah.
Dr. Vaughn:Okay. Number two, open up the skin pores with a steam bath, or even if you just did a, you know, uh made your own steam room or steam sauna in the shower, or did a, you know, a bath, hot bath or something like that. Just you want to open those skin pores. Number three is you want to, so you know, a lot of times when we have a fever, like, oh, we just put a cold rag on their head. We're just trying to like, okay, the problem isn't here, the problem is the stomach. So the cold should be put on their stomach. So, what do we do when we want to slow down the fermentation process of something? We put it in the refrigerator, right? Right?
Rachel Smith:Yeah.
Dr. Vaughn:So you want to slow down this excessive fermentation process happening, put a cold pack on the tummy. Now you can put one on the head too. But basically, if you look at what you're doing, you're doing hot cold therapy. So those are the three things. If you do those three things, you can break any fever. Now, back in the 1800s, they would use this technique to take care of all of these uh diseases that they were so fearful of that all related to fever, like measles and uh scarlet fever and diphtheria. And some of these diseases were deadly, but it was all related to this bacterial fermentation issue happening in the gut. So if you do those three things, you can really knock out anything.
Rebecca Twomey:Very interesting. I want to ask you to talk a little bit about what a lot of people probably are doing right now when they they're they have a fever, their child has a fever, and that's give them fever reducers. Can you talk a little bit about why we don't want to do that?
Dr. Vaughn:Well, it's so it's so it's it's the it's the mindset of the modern medical system that whatever the body's doing is wrong, and that's the problem, and we need to stop it from happening. That's the medical theory. Yeah, the way if you look at it from a godly perspective, a biblical perspective, a design perspective that says God is good, we're made in God's image, whatever the body's doing, it's what's supposed to be happening. How can we partner with what the body's doing so that we can help the body work through this? And so, what an uh an aspirin does when you have a fever is it it's an anti-inflammatory that it immediately stops the process that's trying to occur. So, what you're doing is you're effective, you know, you you're you're you're reducing the fever, you're you're stopping the crisis, but you're not doing it in a way that assists the body to work through it. You're basically arresting or stopping what's trying to happen, which is what causes sickness and disease to manifest and deepen within a person that creates more chronic illness later.
Rachel Smith:Yeah.
Dr. Vaughn:So, I mean, if I have medications, same with allergy medications, all of them are designed to stop natural processes.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah.
Rachel Smith:I I have a question then about that process of just because all this is fresh on my mind of going through it. One thing I noticed in my family that all got fevers except for me, is um they it was causing body aches. Like my son couldn't even walk. I had to carry him to go to the bathroom. And so, and you know, my what I was visualizing of what was happening is I was thinking that the fever is doing its job, that we will get past this. But, you know, as a mother, it's like I want to help him, you know, once it was over 24 hours, I want to help him to be able to not be in so much pain. So, do you have a recommendation for pain management outside of a you know, one of these medications that also reduce fever?
Dr. Vaughn:Cold bath. Okay. Cold bath completely shuts down the inflammatory process. Okay. I mean, it does. Why are people doing hot cold therapy and cold plunging and all this kind of stuff? There's a whole lot of research coming out to the benefits of it, which is a laundry list of amazing benefits. But one thing cold does, so think about you you get an injury, you sprain your ankle, what do you put on it? Ice.
Rebecca Twomey:Ice.
Dr. Vaughn:Yeah, why? Because it immediately stops the inflammatory process and takes the pain away.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay.
Dr. Vaughn:Now you you only want to do that for like the first 24 to 48 hours, and then you want to do heat and or alternate hot and cold.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah.
Dr. Vaughn:But the fastest way to completely stop an inflammatory process is cold.
Rachel Smith:Okay. Good to know. Man, this episode, I'm like gonna have all these notes for the next podcast ever, man. Totally. And I know that a lot of moms are. I should be writing down what you're saying, but I know we're recording.
Rebecca Twomey:So I know a lot of moms get really nervous when their kids spike a fever and have a fever for, you know, a day or two days. But you've given some tips here that if they're able to move through these tips, it's it it sounds like the body is just gonna do its job. Do do what it's supposed to do and work through it.
Dr. Vaughn:So just to clarify, if you understand what I'm saying, the th the things I'm recommending to do is help the body get through the process that it's already working on.
Rachel Smith:Yeah.
Dr. Vaughn:Versus man-made pharmaceutical drugs just artificially force the body to act and interfere with the process that's happening.
Rebecca Twomey:Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I want to ask or talk, since we're on this topic of the stomach, because the stomach flu or stomach bugs or whatever you want to call it, it's something that's also interesting because Rachel had the flu and it there was a stomach element to it, obviously.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, only one of my kids threw up, but the rest of us didn't. Yeah.
Rebecca Twomey:But then here there was a stomach virus that went around. And I am not familiar with these because I've never, I've never really experienced that before. I hear of a lot of people that their kids are getting stomach viruses all the time at school. And this actually happened here, like I mentioned, um, someone from our church, a kid threw up at church. And then a couple of days later, my son threw up. And I didn't make the connection at first because I I don't even think about these things because they haven't existed yet in my world, right? But then the next day, 24 hours later, he threw up again. And I was like, wait a second. And as we were talking, we realized, wait a second, a couple of days ago, someone threw up at church. So then we realized people were having this stomach bug. Well, Rachel had already had the flu, and she said, you know, something that I learned about was activated charcoal and that it can like basically absorb the contents of your stomach. So my husband and I took that, and I was the only one that didn't get this stomach bug. Now he interestingly spiked a fever and then didn't get anything out, nothing else happened to him, and then he was fine. So it got to his body, and even though I got puked on twice, I didn't get anything.
Rachel Smith:So superwoman immune system. What's that?
Rebecca Twomey:You got that superwoman immune system, apparently, or it was this activated charcoal, and the oh, you know what else she told me to take Dr. Von? She said to drink organic grape juice because something about the skins on grapes or something. I don't know.
Rachel Smith:I listened to her because it sounded legit. It sounded like it did it work. I mean, maybe I don't know. So I'm Dr. Von can tell us if it worked.
Rebecca Twomey:I'm interested in your thoughts on activated charcoal. If it's something that you use, or if do you think that this was just like a fluke? I just didn't get it.
Dr. Vaughn:Uh very well could have been the charcoal. Yeah. So uh I like clay, I like charcoal. Uh they are spent carbons, uh, they're not active. Um, so they're great for acute issues. They're great for food poisoning, they're great for mopping up poison in the gut for the exact reason that you took it. It's the only time I use it. I use it for an acute issue, I use it for a crisis, and that's it. Okay. Uh, there are other binders, other carbons that are therapeutic. There's specific binders I use for heavy metals, specific binders I use for radioactive elements. I work with people with uranium and cesium toxicity. There's specific binders for mold and parasites. Um, so different binders work for different things. Okay. Uh, so that charcoal and clay fit that category of a binder, but they're not good to take long term, especially charcoal, because of the strength of it. And because charcoal is such a strong binder and it's a spent carbon, it can grab anything. So it can grab your good stuff, so to speak. Whereas a lot of the other humic and fulvic uh carbons and binders that I use do not do that. And that's that's just a chemistry thing.
Rebecca Twomey:That's a good point. I I did a little bit of research before I took this, and I thought it was interesting that everybody said, you know, every resource that I I went to said, don't bother taking any other vitamins because it's just gonna absorb all of it. It's uh you know, it's gonna suck up everything good that you've got going on right now. So once you're done taking this, you know, you're you're gonna want to make sure that you're eating good and remineralizing your body so that that lines up, makes sense.
Dr. Vaughn:Yep. But just short term, you should only need charcoal for a day or two for whatever the crisis is. Exactly.
Rebecca Twomey:I took a dose of it the night that this, you know, the of the second throw up child or whatever it was, and then the next day I just took one because I was like, I don't I don't want to go crazy with this. And um yeah. You're on it. Good to know. Is there anything else that you would recommend or that you would personally prefer over using charcoal or clay for a stomach virus? Like, would you recommend doing castor oil instead to clear out the stomach contents?
Dr. Vaughn:Or yeah, if I if I had uh like my own children, um, yeah, I will use castor oil. I will use something to move the bowels because I know that's where the problem is. So I I do believe that's important. Um, I might think about or pray about like when to do that, um, but but probably the sooner the better, because you know that's where the that's where the problem is. You're you're trying to remove the problem. We're trying to remove the offending agent or the offending organism. Uh, it's the same reason a doctor is gonna prescribe an antibiotic that's gonna work too, but obviously just a safer, healthier way to do it for the body long term. So, yeah, in that kind of situation, yeah. I don't know if there's anything else I would uh recommend. Now, you can certainly take your slew of immune stuff, and I think that's kind of uh where I think that's awesome. I just think that's the limitations of where people's knowledge is at. And so that's why I shared what I just shared. Because most, you know, crunchy granola mommies know to go to the store and oh, yep, you know, I'm gonna get my elderberry and I'm gonna get my vitamin, I'm gonna take my, you know, my echinacea and like awesome. Like that's all good stuff, and it will help, but nothing will help more than what I just mentioned prior.
Rebecca Twomey:Sure, yeah. I like the elderberry too, but I like it as a preventative more than anything because once you're already sick, I mean, you're you're sick. It could it could help shorten it if you make it at home and you're not taking elderberry gummies, in my opinion.
Dr. Vaughn:Elderberry actually stops the replication of viruses, and that's that's the documented study. Um, so it it it can help shorten the duration.
Rebecca Twomey:Shorten it, yeah. Yep. If if you catch it on the onset, right? Right, right.
Rachel Smith:The only thing I I wonder about stomach bugs, because it seems like me and my kids get that about once a year. And it it can vary. I don't, you know, I guess there's probably different viruses that cause it, but sometimes it's just throwing up, sometimes it's just diarrhea, and sometimes it's both. So for you know, if it's the both or just the diarrhea, would doing castor oil be necessary because our bowels are already doing moving, or yeah, I would still do it, yeah, because your body's naturally trying to get the infection out. Yeah, get it out faster.
Dr. Vaughn:Just help it get out faster.
Rachel Smith:Yeah.
Dr. Vaughn:And um, and yeah, there's just there's different, there's different critters. You know, we we use the term stomach bug, which I think is accurate because it's it's a bug, it's an infection. We don't necessarily know what bug it is. Um, I just had a gal who came in, did a stool sample, we got our test results. She was really high in a bacteria called Campylobacter, which is a common, like nasty little bug. And I was like, when you took this test, did you happen to be sick? She's like, you know what? Our whole family was sick, they were throwing up. I was a little bit sick. And I was like, Yeah, I think your whole family probably had this bug. But we use this term stomach virus, and I'm not saying there's not a viral component, but it's almost always, always, always a bacteria.
Rebecca Twomey:Okay. Yeah, I I didn't know if you wanted to go there or not, but I'm curious about what your thoughts are on lately. People have been talking the last couple of years about this idea of terrain theory versus, you know, it is something really contagious, or is it the terrain or what's going on? And you know, then people say, well, it can't be coincidence that my whole family's sick at the same time. Right. So, what do you have any thoughts on that?
Dr. Vaughn:I I don't I I would say it's a little bit of both. It's a little bit of both. I mean, there's no doubt that you know things are spreading from person to person. So, how is that happening? You know, that's uh, but it really does come down to the terrain. It goes back to why do some people get sick, why do some people not, why do some people get really, really sick, and some people just get a little bit sick. And so that is why the terrain theory, and even if you want to believe somewhat in the germ theory, that's fine. But what importance of which theory is the most important, we should be spending 95% of our time and research and study and effort on terrain and 5% on the germ, but it's flipped. We spend 95% on the bug. Why? Because it creates fear and panic and control, and they use it to you know put in new laws that steal our freedoms. And you know, it's it's used as a political tool. Yeah. So that propaganda is fear based, which is why we focus on the bug and the germ. Like that's why there were 20 some movies about a virus leaking. And like destroyed the world. It was like brainwashing us for what was coming, right? Yeah. So that's all very, very real. And so uh, but the real thing we should be focused on is the terrain.
Rebecca Twomey:Well, that's a great lead-in question because my next question is about how to build a strong terrain. What can we do to prevent getting colds, flus, illnesses, whatever it might be? What can we do to prevent that from happening? How do we build a strong immune system?
Dr. Vaughn:Yeah, awesome. So it's a lot of things. Uh, I kind of a big picture guy. So I might start like big picture and come in and try not to make it too long. Uh, but big picture would be, you know, it's definitely gut health. And so I run a test called a gut zoomer that I absolutely love because a gut zoomer is going to tell you what's going on with your gut, inflammation, leaky gut, what your probiotic levels look like, bad bacteria, pathogens, if you have inflammation in your gut, your immune stuff going on in your gut. It's just a really it's like an all-gut test. It's called a gut zoomer. So that it can kind of tell you like where you're at and what you need to work on. You can get really specific with a probiotic you give to somebody or different supplements. So I like that. I'm definitely a fan of um fermented foods, uh, like sauerkraut and kimchi. Uh, I like apple cider vinegar. I do think diet really matters. And so, again, if you eat things that are gonna cause gut rot, sorry to use that term, but if you're gonna ferment your gut, you can expect problems. So, how do you ferment your gut? You drink beer or alcohol, you know, you eat lots of uh sugars and starches and breads and and things that that are yeasty that cause basically like fermentation in the gut. So, how how do you stay healthy? You eat lots of fruits and vegetables and things that help clear the bowels and has soluble and insoluble fiber so that your bowels are moving all the time. And so, yeah, so I think the diet matters. Um sunshine is the single most important element on the planet for your immune system. No, none of us would be alive if it wasn't for the sun. So God gave us the sun because we needed it for survival on this earth, and so animals know that, plants know that. Humans for some reason think it's scary. So I'm just very, very deceived. And I've done whole videos on the sun and breaking it down because people are like, well, it causes skin cancer and da da da da. So I've I've broken all that down in the past. I think it's really important to understand the misconceptions related to the sun. So I'd say your gut health, your diet, getting sun, getting tan are the best things you can do for your immune system. And then um, I love advanced immune support by Mother Earth Labs. I want to mention that product because people are coming into our store saying, Oh, I heard about quercetin, I heard about zinc, I heard about vitamin C, I heard about this, I heard about that. It's all in advanced immune support because people are buying like five, six, seven, eight things. I'm like, no, it's like it's all in here. So I like the advanced immune support because all those things do matter for upregulating and you know, hoping you have a strong immune system. I love the elderberry you mentioned. I have a local gal here um called the Moxie Mix, and she makes a local homemade elderberry with a bunch of immune herbs in it. I love it. The other thing I really love is power immunity. Um, it's it's actually one of our products by Spirit of Health. Um, it's a tincture and it's medicinal mushrooms. And so all the medicinal mushrooms, the raisis and the cordyceps, and all these mushrooms are very, very well known to be one of the most powerful things to upregulate and improve immune function. Uh so yeah, there's probably a lot more I could say, but those are some of my favorite things.
Rebecca Twomey:Awesome. I will add those to the show notes. So check the show notes if you'd like to see a link to those resources mentioned. Um, but I was smiling a lot when you were talking about fermented foods because folks that have been listening to the podcast for a long time probably know Rachel's story. And she was suffering from chronic Epstein bar and from Lyme disease. And fermented foods were one of the things in her protocol that were used to heal, along with kind of a paleo type diet. I mean, she was on a very strict AIP diet, and that protocol, along with some herbs and supplements and things, helped her to recover and heal from that. So that's obviously more of the chronic illness side of things than general immune system health. But that can be a lot of the reasons why people are getting sick, is because there is an underlying root cause.
Rachel Smith:I think that that my body responding in that way, like I what caught on to the practitioner I was working with that I had these viruses, was that I had extreme estrogen dominance. And the first thing was there was something off of my gut because I was clearly not detoxing it out, something off with my liver. And then some other symptoms, you know, we found that it was a very low-level type of Lyme. So it wasn't the big issue, but the big issue was I had had chronic Epstein bar and it was active. And both of those things just showed that my immune system was not functioning properly, it wasn't doing what it should have been for that Epstein bar to have been in remission. So healing through diet, and which was very extreme. And like Rebecca mentioned, one of the extremes for me is I've never eaten fermented foods in my life. And I'm now all of a sudden putting sauerkraut on you know everything. And and I made my own like fermented carrots and stuff. I I tried that once, um, and the sliminess was a little gross for me. But um, but I I really worked hard and then I did an herbal supplementation pro uh protocol, and it kicked the Epstein bar into remission. So it got my immune system doing what it should have been. And um, so yeah, I think that's that's really cool, all the things that you mentioned that to keep us in a state of health and not just doing it when we're in a state of crisis like my body was.
Dr. Vaughn:Right. And you make a good point on the infectious disease because you know, we can do all the things I mentioned diet, sunshine, herbs, and those are all great things. Um, but if there is an underlying root cause, if there is an underlying immunosuppressant, so like mold, for example, I work with a lot of mold sick people. You have an organism in your body that's proliferating and it's an immunosuppressant. Your immune system is shocked when you're mold toxic. Same with Lyme. So these infectious organisms uh are why people get sick, stay sick, can't get well, can't get strong enough to stimulate an immune response to heal their body. Like the body's designed to do these things, but it's so immunosuppressed that it can't even stimulate a healing response. There's a fascinating book I read one time. I can't remember the name of it. It was written by a doctor from Japan who was an oncologist, and the whole book was about how heat kills cancer. And what he would do is he would induce fever in his patients, and the cancer would go into remission.
Rebecca Twomey:Wow. So very interesting. Yeah, that is fascinating. Is there are there any um obvious symptoms for folks to keep an eye on if they might suspect they have uh toxic mold issues or issues with mold? Because I know that's a really common one. Yeah, I mean, I would just differ for every person.
Dr. Vaughn:Yeah, well, no, I mean it's it's just the sickest of the sick people are usually mold and lime. Okay. So they're not sure. They know they don't feel good. Yeah, when you're when you're sick and you're down and your immune system shot and you're trying to be a mom and you're like, I am done. I could just if I could sleep for a week, that'd be awesome. Yeah. So like when your system's just shot, it's it's those things. So mold is uh extreme fatigue, you know, headaches, joint pain, especially moving pain if it moves around different parts of your body. Sensitivities is a big one. So you're sensitive to you know loud noises, or you're sensitive to sunlight, or you're sensitive, you know, food sensitivity. So sensitivities is a is a big one I see with a lot of mold people. Um there's a lot, a lot of symptoms tied to mold, but it's usually really sick people. Okay.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, that's it, it it really is like kind of crazy how how used to being sick so many of us become because we don't think or we don't know anything is wrong with us when it's affecting our whole life, like something like mold or lime or the Epstein bar that I had.
Dr. Vaughn:Yeah, because when you're normal and you don't even, yeah.
Rachel Smith:Yeah, exactly. I thought I it was just I was a tired mom, keeping up with two boys. It honestly, I don't know if I would have pursued my health if it wasn't for me trying to get pregnant and not being able to get pregnant, and then going through, you know, the whole spiel of that. And once I sat in front of my NP and she went over my blood work with my husband next to me, that I was really sick, and he said at that point it really hit him how much I had been struggling. Like it almost took the diagnosis to for both of us to realize how hard life had become for me. And while it wasn't necessarily fun news to get, it was relieving because I honestly felt like if everything came back normal, then I was just crazy. Totally.
Dr. Vaughn:And that's the hard thing about trying to get information that that gives you hope and that gives you an answer. And that it's crucial. I mean, every patient I work with, I'm like, I just I want to give you real answers so that you have real hope and that you know you can get better, which again is totally opposite of anything else you get out there from the medical system.
Rachel Smith:Absolutely. I I love that. I think that that's that's so important in what what you and your your practice are doing of empowering people to um you know take hold of their health because that is what that is what God wants for us, and he wants us to live life and to live it abundantly, and he's created our bodies to be able to do that.
Dr. Vaughn:Right.
Rachel Smith:So that's awesome.
Dr. Vaughn:Our mission statement.
Rebecca Twomey:Yeah, I researched a little, right?
Dr. Vaughn:We declare God's rightful place in medicine through education and empowerment.
Rachel Smith:That's awesome. I did not know that, but it sounds like we aligned. I love it.
Rebecca Twomey:I love it. Well, I wanted to share one last thing before we wrapped today's episode. I had put out a little short reel today, just kind of letting people know that our health series is coming out. And I had one person send me a message and say they saw the video and they thought, very cool. Um, I was just telling my wife, the best thing that ever happened is when I opened my business and didn't have health insurance, it freed me from Western medicine, made me take more kind of accountability for my own health. And he said he was over able to overcome Lyme disease with nothing but herbs, and was just really excited that we're talking about health outside of the Western medical, you know, system, that we're we're talking about healing in a very real way and partnering with God and all that kind of stuff. So I was very excited to talk to you again today after you know hearing those testimonies, that encouragement that people do see healing from this. And I mean, you have a million testimonials on your social accounts and on your YouTube page and on your website. So definitely, folks, go check out Dr. Vaughn's resources. I'll mention those again. You can find them at spiritofhealthcasey.com or on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube at Spirit of Health, or on Instagram and YouTube at Spiritofhealthcasey. So thank you so much. I didn't know if you had any any last words, anything we missed on the immune system. No. We can okay, we could just hone in on one specific thing, right? We're gonna do the castor oil one day. But I enjoyed it. Thank you so much. As always, we appreciate you. Thank you. God bless. And thank you for tuning in and for being on this journey with us. If you'd like to follow along outside the podcast, join the mission on Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube at the Radiant Mission. And if you're loving the show, we highly encourage you to share it with a friend. And today we're gonna close with First Corinthians 6, verses 19 through 20. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you are bought with a price. So glorify God in your body. We're wishing you a radiant week, and we'll see you next time. Bye, everyone. Bye.
