How Healing Your Nervous System Can Help You Recover from Chronic Illness with Mel Hopper Koppelman

This is the transcript of an interview hosted on Ruth’s Feel Better. Live Free. podcast.

Ruth Soukup: Let’s be real. How many times have you been told it’s all of your hormones or all your gut or all your lab work? So you take the supplements, cut the gluten, run the tests, and still feel like garbage. But what if the real issue isn’t in your blood work, but in your brain? If you’ve been stuck in chronic fatigue, autoimmune flareups, or mystery symptoms, no one can fix.

For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Ruth Soukup and I’m the founder of Thinlicious and the creator of the Thin Adapted System, as well as the New York Times bestselling author of seven books. And today we are chatting with the incredible Mel Hopper Koppelman.

Program director at Synthesis Health Lab and an absolute powerhouse when it comes to helping people recover from chronic illness even after everything else has failed. With over 15 years of clinical experience and two master’s degrees in acupuncture and nutrition, Mel has developed a revolutionary approach that combines Chinese medicine, functional medicine, and developmental neurology.

Her methods have helped thousands of patients dramatically reduce their symptoms from conditions like fibromyalgia, autoimmune disease, and chronic fatigue. Not by adding more pills and protocols, but by finally addressing the root of it all, the nervous system. And if you’ve been feeling burned out, overwhelmed, or like you’re stuck in survival mode, this conversation is probably going to resonate.

I can’t wait for you to hear what Mel has to say. So let’s get right into it. Mel, thank you so much for being here today. I’m so excited to talk to you. I’m excited to be here. Thank you. Awesome. Well, let’s just start with kind of a background. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do, and how you got to be doing what you are now.

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Yeah, sure. Uh, so I. Practice. Uh, I would call, I call it integrative medicine. So I have a background in Chinese medicine, uh, and a background in nutrition and functional medicine. Um, and increasingly in the last few years, I’ve been deep diving into the nervous system because it turns out that that’s actually kind of important for health.

Um, and you know, as I, you know, I enjoy listening to your show and as I’ve been listening to it, I’ve been thinking about a lot of the themes that you talk about, about the kind of incredible confusion that people have been. Given around nutrition, uh, and weight loss. And that actually, you know, I have a pretty resonant story, kind of early childhood story around that.

Um, because my mom is a retired physician and a medical researcher. Oh, wow. So I remember. In the 1980s, especially when this was being really kind, mainly implemented into our family, that we were not allowed to eat fat. We were not allowed to eat butter. We were only allowed to have margarine. We were not allowed to have steak.

Um, but also I remember my mom struggling with her weight and so I remember, um, you know, she ate a lot of salads and a lot of healthy whole grains and. You know, plastic margarine on everything. And then at a certain point, I remember her going to weight wa watchers, and so I kind of watched this thing unfold that she was, uh, you know, implementing the kind of the most cutting edge best advice from the American Heart Association into our home.

Um, and you know, for me, I just remember. Always being hungry, not out of poverty at all. You know, that’s very fortunate. But out of being fed the lack of nutrition. Yeah, lack of nutrition. I was on, I was on a, a high carb, low fat diet and I was starving. So, um, when I think about your, you know, your journey and what you talk about and educating people so they understand, I’m like, oh yeah, I’ve got, I’ve got some stuff around that.

Ruth Soukup: Man. And doesn’t that just make you so like, like it makes my heart hurt to hear that like, here, here’s your mom. Right? As a mom, I think about that. Like, you think you’re doing the right thing for your family. You think you’re being healthy. She’s a physician. She’s like listening to all the advice and, and here it’s like actually the opposite and ugh.

Is your mom still alive? My mom is still alive. She’s, she’s doing great. Um, she does, she still, 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: does she still buy into that stuff? No, she eats butter now, in fact. Oh, good. I mentioned this to her and she had no recollection of it, but I was like, no, this is, uh, really, this was a real thing. It was, it was only, I can’t believe it’s not butter.

Um, but yeah, so no, she, I, I 

Ruth Soukup: listen into that too, that I can’t believe it’s not butter. Yep. That’s all we ate in our house. That’s all 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: we ate. And uh, and it’s just, it’s interesting to me, especially looking at my family in the greater theme of our country, you know, my. My mom’s mom was from France. She, and she cooked, you know, so, and my grandfather cooked too.

So they were raised on real food butter that tasted delicious and butter, lots of butter, lots of cheese. Uh, and my mom, bless her, she worked full time. I don’t know how she did it, to be honest. She worked full time at a very demanding job, um, at a hospital. Uh, and she would come home and cook most evenings.

And at a certain point in my childhood, it transitioned to TV dinners, uh, that were microwaved and plastic. And I, I say that with zero criticism because I, I still dunno how she did it, but there was, there just wasn’t an understanding that that was problematic, you know? Yes. I’m sure those TV dinners had all sorts of health claims on 

Ruth Soukup: them.

Oh, probably. They’re like link cuisine or whatever, right? That’s right. They were supposed to be so healthy for us. Oh. Oh my goodness. It’s, it’s just, it’s so crazy to me, like what we’ve been indoctrinated into and all of these things that like still stick with this. And I see it now with like, with my clients, right?

That, that even now, 30 years later, even though it’s all been debunked and demystified and yet it’s like those. Old habits are, and old paradigms are still so, so strong and, uh, yeah. 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Well, I mean, the way I usually think about it, I mean, I, I was fortunate enough to live, um, in the UK for nearly 10 years, and you just see different, I don’t know, different culture, different attitudes, but, you know, comparatively British culture is, has some similarities with American culture compared to other countries in the world.

But the way I see it is that here we’re like fourth generation confused about what to eat, right? So it’s like that’s a great way of putting it. Yeah. You know, it’s so, you know, like for, but you know, someone my age, growing up in the uk, they may have grown up having a Sunday roast dinner, for example. So they know what that looks like.

Whereas, um, I, you know, I was born in the early eighties, I don’t think I knew what a sausage really was, you know? Yeah. Just these like square things or whatever, you know, so people, um, it’s really, you know, there’s, uh. An important component about tradition and the loss of tradition. Um, but when, yes, when it is like third or fourth generation, if you don’t even know what food is, then there’s a lot of, uh, there’s a lot of like, you know, education, uh, and reeducation to do first all yes.

Culturally. 

Ruth Soukup: Yes. So much so, and you think about like, even just, it goes back to the marketing on the food, right? Like you think people think they’re making healthy choices because they’re buying smart pop and because it’s so smart is skin or skinny pop, right? Like, oh, this is skinny, this is healthy, this is locale.

And Oh, I know, I could, I could, we could talk about this for half an hour, but I don’t wanna talk about that. We’ll get started. I wanna talk about the nervous system. So Sure. Let’s just kind of start with like the. Basics of what is, what’s the deal with the nervous system? What is the vagus nerve? Why is it such a big deal, um, when it, especially when it comes to chronic illness and all the research that you’ve been doing.

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Yeah, sure. Um, the nervous system is fascinating and. I am kind of amazed at this point that I was able to go so far into my education and career without kinda learning anything about it. And I think that’s for a couple of reasons. Um, very few people, including clinicians and educators, know much about the nervous system and those who do.

Tend to be at a level of detail where they can’t explain it very well and they can use it sort of in very specific clinical context. So maybe they know how to treat like a brain tumor or something with Parkinson’s. But there is very little applicability for you and mean just people who have brains and bodies and may or may not be trying to lose weight.

Um, so, but the nervous system is very cool and it’s worth learning about. Um, so there’s a few angles. One is that the nervous system is like a tree Actually our, our all living things are like trees. And so you, our body, we grow and develop from the bottom up. Um, and then we come and it comes forward. And so part of what I discovered is that, um, a lot of people who have health issues, um, which may or may, you know, they may have diseases or they may have symptoms or they may have weight issues or energy issues, which actually a lot of weight issues are tied to energy issues.

Um, uh, that a lot of that. Not always, but sometimes actually started in development. So it started early on, things were a little bit off course, and maybe they didn’t show up as issues right away, or maybe they did, you know, there’s different trajectories, but then at a certain point things kind of go wrong and we maybe, if we’re having digestive issues, we look for solutions there.

If we’re having, um, you know, mental health issues like anxiety or depression or, uh. You know, attention issues or memory issues, then, uh, we might look there. Uh, if we’re having inflammation, we’re looking o over here. But there, um, you know, most people are not yet aware, and I want way more people to be aware that nervous system development can play a role and that you can do something about it, even if you’re an adult.

But it’s often the thread that ties things together. Um, and it’s just extremely overlooked. It’s extremely overlooked. Mm. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. So when you talk about development, are you talking about like in utero development or like all, all the way from childhood development or what does that mean? 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Yeah, Bo, great question.

So both, um, so it’s, you know, if we kind of tell the, the. If you tell the story of your life, and I understand as well, um, not everyone knows about what their mom’s experience of was, of being pregnant with them. A lot of that depends on the generation you were born. Not entirely. Mm-hmm. But, you know, I’ve asked patients, they’re like, we didn’t talk about things like that.

You know, or what was your birth like? Like, we didn’t talk about things like that. But no birthing 

Ruth Soukup: plans. 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Exactly. Yeah, that’s right. You know, it was just, you could have just came home with the baby, you know? Um, so, so some people don’t know, but that, and that’s fine. But, um, when you, when you look at the story of your life, you can, you look at what you know about, um, what was going on for your parents and your mom around the time you were conceived.

And, uh, you know, during that, that. Gestation what the delivery was like. Um, and then early childhood and, and then we, we kind of can put threads together. So, for example, actually let me, I’ll, I’ll back up and explain a little more specifics and then I’ll tie it back to, to my story. ’cause I’m, I’m familiar with it.

So, um, when we are born and when we’re developing a utero and we’re born. Um, we aren’t able to make conscious movements, right? So everything’s set up so that we can survive, um, and that we can have this long developmental period, right? Like humans are nuts. Like right? We’re not, we’re not Apple until like we’re 25, which is not usual, um, for most animals.

And so. We are able to do these movements, and these are reflexes that come from the brainstem, which is the most bottom part of our brain, and is concerned with survival. Things like your heart beating and breathing and things like that. And it also lets you do these, these baby movements like turning your head to feed at mom’s breast or to roll over a little bit or to.

You know, if you get startled to, to alert for help. Um, and so these reflexes help us navigate The first few months they actually play a role in the birthing process, which is pretty interesting. And then as the months move on and we are moving and we’re feeling sensations and we’re, uh, developing, then the brain grows on top of it.

On top of these, uh, the brainstem and comes down and inhibits them, right? So if like a tree, the crown is growing and then it’s coming down and giving shade below. Uh, and so the, these reflexes, which are very helpful, should be inhibited and integrated by the time we’re like six months to 1-year-old. So they should no longer be there.

And, um, and so what is increasingly commonly kind of, uh, found or acknowledged is that that doesn’t always proceed as it should. And so many people still have retained primitive reflexes that are both, um, like an objective sign that something is not quite right with your nervous system. So if it’s because.

The brain didn’t develop in a balanced way in the first place. Um, then is telling us that, um, there are other reasons why they can be present. So maybe you have a head injury, and so that, that crown part is not inhibiting anymore. N neurodegeneration can do it. Um, I would say unhealthy aging. It’s, uh, the, the literature considers it a normal, like a, a normal.

Sign of aging only ’cause it’s so common. But to me it’s just an objective sign that your brain’s shrinking. And I think we can aim higher, um, than not being normal. That’s just me. Um, and so when those reflexes are there, they are both, they’re creating noise in the system because, for example, one of them fires when you turn your head, but that’s only supposed to happen when you’re like.

You know, from when you’re born to when you’re four months old, so that’s still happening when you’re an adult, it’s really hard to have a healthy neck and a healthy shoulder, and it’s creating interference, but it’s also telling you that the higher levels of the brain, um, that we associate with adulting aren’t working optimally.

Um, and so, yeah, so this is, this is really key, but downstream of all that talk about, you know. Primitive reflexes can be things like inflammatory disorders or, um, dysautonomia is like people having a racing heart when they stand up, or, uh, postural hypotension when their blood pressure, blood pressure goes down, when they stand up, or attention issues or emotion issues, um, or even immune issues.

So there isn’t really any system that is not downstream. Of your nervous system. And I’m not saying that this is everyone’s problem, but I am saying it’s very overlooked and that I think everyone should be screened for it, like as part of a normal, healthy workup. You know, if we’re, if we’re doing health checks, what else are we doing?

Ruth Soukup: Making sure that this 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: is working well. 

Ruth Soukup: So, so you’re saying, let me make sure that I understood all of this, that, that whatever was happening in our development, whatever needed to happen, to start to calm down those reflexes, so they don’t happen anymore. Like at age six months to a year is, but some of those reflexes are still happening, and that is, has the trickle down effect that it’s affecting our health as an adult adult, is that right?

That’s exactly right. It’s both, uh, a cause and an effect. It’s both, yes. A sign and a problem, huh? That’s crazy that I’ve never heard anything like this before. So what, like, no, nobody talks about this. So what does that actually mean then? Like, what do you, what do you like number one, how do you know that that’s.

It could be a factor. And what is the effect that it’s ha And that’s number two is what is the effect that it’s having on you? And then number three, what do you do about it? 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Awesome. Uh, so how do you know it’s impacting you? I mean, the most direct way is to get it assessed. Now that’s, this is like a less than 10 minute exam.

It’s non-invasive. It’s not rocket science. In my online program, which is mainly just about. Complex chronic health. I teach people to have their spouses like, or friends do it on them, you know, and then record it. So, mm-hmm. Even though I’m not gonna suggest that that replaces going to some sort of center of excellence, it’s so much better than nothing, and it can be life changing.

Um, so that’s how you would directly assess for it. But what might give you some indications that this was going on? Um, us, the most common pattern is that, uh, you know, we, we have two sides to our brains and a left and a right. And they’re almost like two brains, you know? Uh, like we have two eyes, you know, and we have two legs and, and it’s really like two brains and they really.

Uh, make different contributions to what we’re doing. And so what we see and increasingly common now, but also if you’re an adult, is that one side of the brain develops faster than it really should, and the other side develops more slowly. And that leads to, uh, something that’s called functional disconnection syndrome.

What that means is that. You don’t have, um, like a, a lesion or an objective finding that something’s wrong in your brain. You don’t have like a brain tumor or you don’t have anything like that. It’s all there, but it’s not talking well together. Right. Hmm. Um, and so like a, a hint that you might have some of this going on is, let’s say as a child, you found you were gifted in certain subjects or gifted in certain things and that you were behind in other ones.

So it, for example, if someone’s left. Hemisphere of their brain is developing faster than their peers, and they’re gonna be, uh, you know, gifted at math and they might start talking or reading early. Um, that’s a common one. But the, uh, like the, your sense of your own body, your interoception is mainly housed.

In the right hemisphere. So they might be clumsy, they might, um, not dress appropriately for the weather. Uh, things like that. A lot of our emotional intelligence is over here at the top of our, the front of our right brain. So we have no emotional intelligence and also we have different types of attention.

And when we like deep dive and go down rabbit holes, that’s kinda a left sided focus attention, but. All the other types of attention, including deciding what to pay attention to lives in the right hemisphere. So now we’re de describing like, um, a big and growing group of people who may have labels like a DHD and autism or Asperger’s, although I know that term is becoming less, uh, popular as, um, Mr.

Asperger is getting canceled. But, um, but this, this type of, um, whether or not he should be, but this, this, this type of, um, pattern and then. The right hemisphere dominant pattern is, uh, associated with dyslexia. Although sometimes we get different patterns of that. It’s, uh, associated with that more, um, sort of absent type of attention, like kind of looking out the window.

It may be associated with giftedness in, um, certain musical abilities, certain. Creative endeavors. Um, and also can just be a slower processing speed. And one thing that comes up when I talk about this is that there was this whole discussion about the left and right hemisphere that became, as we became more aware of it, and then there was this like silly pop si.

Article that was written about it in the 1970s that really kind of butchered the whole idea. And so, um, it fell outta popularity. But it is very true and real. So I’m not saying that there’s like two types of people and it’s not like male and female and, you know, I don’t wanna over simplify it. Yeah. But we don’t really throw the baby out with the bath water.

It is very well established that, um, the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of the brain and the different parts really do things differently. Yes. So that, so this is how you might know if you’re like, oh, you know, you’re like, yeah, 50 and you’re getting this diagnosed with a DH, adhd, and now you’re saying my whole life makes sense.

Well then maybe you might think maybe I should get my retain primitive reflexes assessed. 

Ruth Soukup: Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, even as you were describing that, I was like thinking about. One of my kids and I was like, oh, I can see where she’s like very gifted in one area. And then the, like all the stuff that you were describing, I’m like, she must be left brain dominant.

But if, if so, how, why does that happen then? Like why does that develop differently if it’s not supposed to? 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Yeah, great question. Um, so there’s a, there’s layers to this, right? So one is that there are just normal healthy familial traits. So no problem, no functional disconnection, no diagnosis, that some families, you know, uh, are, have certain things going on and they pass them down and they’re, uh, adaptive, right?

And then we can, um, overlay these tendencies with the kind of like toxic chemical soup and the non-native EMFs. Um, and the kind of. Over interventionists of industrial industrialized medicine, um, different practices that happen in early childhood, you know, especially in the United States, but other countries.

We, I don’t think we could do too much more to, uh, impair healthy childhood development. Um, you, you can do it. There’s a lot of ways to, to break, to break the complex system so you can, yeah. You know, have a, a small child, you know, looking at a screen too much. Um, you can have, you know, an unhealthy outdoor environment, not getting enough healthy sun, you know, light exposure.

So a lot of these things can happen. Um, there’s really great, uh, explanation that I was given by my mentor, uh, Dr. Robert Malillo, and he said, you know, if you want to. Breed for, uh, like award-winning fast race horses. Then you wanna breed for long, skinny legs, right? So that’s the trait that you are breeding for and it’s adaptive and it’s gonna win.

But if you take that too far, then you get broken legs. Right. So with the, the left brainin dominance, we see the highest rates of autism, um, in our technological centers like Silicon Valley or the equivalent in the Netherlands. They did a study, so where you have, um, like nerdy programmers having children together, um, a lot of autism and a DHD.

Ruth Soukup: Oh, that makes sense. Yeah. Huh. So then what, like if you do determine this, right? Like you start to recognize you’re listening to this, you’re starting, you’re like, Ooh, I recognize some of those, those symptoms. Like what is the solution for that? Are you saying like, it, is it reversible? Like once you’re.

Nervous system is set. Is it set forever or how do you, what do you do? Yeah. What do you do about it? Yeah. 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: So I only look for problems that are solvable. So I, I am like, not that we’re gonna assess for anything that we can’t do anything about. Right? Um, so in this case, I, you know, um, in, I used to say this more from like a psychological perspective, but it’s never too late to have a happy childhood and is never too late to finish your infantile development.

Um, so if you find that you have retained primitive reflexes, there’s a number of ways to integrate them. The first, um, and you know, and this is getting a little bit specific, but I’m really happy to share with your audience. Um, the first is that by stimulating them, and that’s how we were supposed to integrate them in the first place, that when we stimulate the reflexes, it fires up into the brain and it causes the, the, uh, level above to develop, you know, um, just like when you, uh, you know, if you lift weights in your arm, it causes the muscles to develop.

So we, we, um, integrate it by using it, but often if someone also has this. Unevenness of their hemispheres. Because the other thing to understand is that one of the main functions of the left hemisphere is actually to inhibit the right, and one of the main functions of the right hemisphere is to inhibit the left.

There’s this balance that happens. So when you get one side that’s developed faster than the other, then you kind of get this little double whammy and then the stronger hemisphere starts trying to do everything. Even the stuff that’s not, wouldn’t be as good as as its friends, right? So we wanna, you know, do.

Stimulation really, uh, and different approaches that would help to balance that up out. So you can use, we can use kind of devices for that. We can exercise in a certain way for that. Um, and then the, I guess the third thing that I would mention is that many, if not most of the people who fit into this category usually have stuff going on with their health.

So they might have, um, an autoimmune condition. They might have chronic fatigue, they might have chronic infections. Um. The right hemisphere calms down the immune system. The left hemisphere ramps it up. So if we are right hemisphere dominant, we might be like, uh, more prone to suffer chronic infections that we can’t kick.

So this, you know, this person coming in with chronic fatigue and chronic Lyme and dyslexia, I’m like, okay, we need to look at your neuro development. So, um, the point is, is that we can change our brain. That’s called neuroplasticity, but it’s not magic. So it’s helpful if we. Uh, understand enough about how our system works so we can get it to work well.

So the first point is that if you have chronic infections or mold, or you’re, um, you know, full of environmental toxins, your brain’s not gonna be in a super plastic state. Mm-hmm. Um, it, because when you’re asking the brain to change, you’re, you need to overcome its bias, which is to say that it. However terrible you might feel you are alive.

And so the brain is happy to continue doing what it’s doing, even if it’s not, uh, like optimized for a vital life because you have survived. And so you need to overcome that, um, that tendency so that it’s feels safe enough to change. So we, um, start off. You know, first helping support to clear immune triggers.

Then we focus in on the gut, and then when we look at the brain and the nervous system in stage three of, you know, the step-by-step approach, it’s much more happy to play. We 

Ruth Soukup: play along. Interesting. So it’s like a multifaceted process then? Oh yes. ’cause I was curious about that, right? Like, ’cause we obviously on this podcast, we talk a lot about the food and the.

Toxins and all, and all of that kind of stuff. And I was curious about how that all plays together, but it certain, it certainly does, like the, if you’re having to kind of take those, those multi-steps. 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Yeah. And I think what I would add is that, um, you know, our, if you, the, the defaults of our society kind of gear us towards being unhealthy.

Right? And so people. Yeah, so if you’re kinda just following along with the culture, which is normal, you know, um, then at a certain point you might start to realize that things aren’t quite right and so people might fall into roughly two categories. One who I feel like you maybe speak to more are people who are just kind of like on the standard American diet, and that they realize that that is not food and they shift and their whole life changes, which it sounds like kind of your story that.

The weight comes off, you no longer need to diet, you just need to eat like human food. ’cause you’re a human, you, your energy’s better, your brain works better and all of that. So that’s kind of one sort of rough trajectory. The other is that you do that and you might find some improvements, but you’re still sick, so, so making those changes is necessary, but sometimes not sufficient to.

Like to bring this complex system that may have crashed in a number of ways back to optimal health. So if, um, you know, someone’s listening and they have made those changes and they are eating real food, and they might have, I’m guessing most people would feel some improvements, but if things are still not working, then what I’ve found is that people really need a structured order and a step-by-step approach where they can, um, be very strategic and interpret their feedback so that they know what to do 

Ruth Soukup: next.

So. How does that, how does that work then? Like when you, when you’re like, okay, I’ve, I’ve tried all these things and now I need a more step-by-step approach. What does that actually look like? 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Yeah. Um, I mean, so with, I can tell you in the case of the, the work that I do, I mean for I, yeah. For many years, I, you know, I treated one-to-one.

I, um, did acupuncture and I also did a second master’s degree in functional medicine and nutrition. So I was doing a lot of lab testing, a lot of supplement based nutrition. Um, I was able to get some, some benefits with patients, but really it was not working as well as I wanted to. And so, um, that combined with my own, uh, health issues was when I started to retrain and really, I really want to understand the first principles of how people work.

And so, um, I now. Do a lot less lab testing, and when I do, we hold it at arm’s length, um, just to, to guide our progress. Um, and I’ve learned a lot more about the nervous system and a lot using a lot more botanicals, um, and herbs, which is what we’ve actually co-evolved with rather than single nutrients. Um, interesting.

And so, um, when, you know, when I work with people, it’s actually in a group setting. Um, I see people. All over the world and it’s really, you know, guiding people through this step-by-step process. So, um, I currently do that over at Synthesis Health Lab. It’s, um, it’s free to apply, to join as a guest and that allows you to be in the group with members and see, um, you know, to celebrate wins in real time and help see how I troubleshoot.

In real time because, you know, making, you know, setbacks are inevitable when you’re recovering from complex chronic illness. There’s a lot of resources there just about this way of thinking, which is actually quite different, um, than most people have. And then after that period, if it feels like something that you wanna move forward with, then we have an annual membership with that group support.

Ruth Soukup: Interesting. Interesting. And what are some of the chronic illnesses that you’ve helped people, um, sure. Work through? I’m, 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: I’m, I’m very happy to answer that. Um, transparently. I also say that I don’t treat diseases, you know, this is, um, yeah, for educational purposes only work. But I’ll add all the disclaimers.

All the disclaimers. Yeah. So, um, I’ve, I help people with their health, but sometimes that when they’re starting, they report that they have, uh, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, autoimmune, um, autoimmunity, Lyme. Mold. Um. Uh, post, uh, long covid, uh, covid vaccine injury. Um, people maybe have had a history of cancer and it’s, it’s in remission, so that’s usually in the past, but that’s actually so far, always in the past.

Um, and I mean, those are the main ones, just the kind of chronic inflammatory things, uh, that people get really stuck with. And most of the people I see have been around the block quite a few times with this. So, um, mainly people come. I would say people have been sick for a couple years, up to decades before they come in.

Wow. And it’s just really just, uh, it’s just such a, a, a wonderful environment and community. It’s very positive. Um, it’s very real. You know, people come with their stuff. Yeah. Um, but it’s, uh, by working in the right order. Which is basically the kind of, um, order that the bio that our biology is kind of adapted to, people are able to make progress where they had tried really intelligent things in the 

Ruth Soukup: past and they weren’t able to get it to work for them.

Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s, it, I, I don’t know if you watched it when, when RFK got. S um, signed in or sworn in in the Oval Office, um, a couple months ago, and he said, what did he say? Something about, you know, there’s, millions of Americans have a dream, but 60 or 60% of Americans who aren’t, don’t feel healthy.

They only have one dream. Okay. And like that has just stuck with me ever since he, like, ever since I heard him say that. Because it really is so true. Like the, when you’re, when you don’t feel good. There’s only one thing that you want is to feel good and it really, it impacts everything else that you do.

And it just like the, just to hear you talk about like the hope that that must give for people to finally have a solution of just being able to feel good after feeling crappy for so long. It’s, it’s, there’s, there’s nothing else like that. Like it’s a real, it’s such an amazing, it’s such an amazing gift.

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Yeah, no, I mean, I feel so fortunate at this stage of my life for so many reasons. Um, I think, you know, all the parallel threads of my own health journey where, you know, eight years ago my brain wasn’t hardly functioning at all, you know, and I really was really, really struggling. And then that gets compounded, you know, um, I have, I have a 6-year-old daughter and.

Basically I was able to function well enough to keep her alive, but my system was always telling me to sit down and so it, you know, and it’s, it’s heartbreaking and it’s so frustrating ’cause I know that at every moment I was doing the best that I could, but that was always. The minimum. Um, and, you know, and, and the, I don’t know, I think the kind of the anxiety and the attachment issues that, that creates.

It, it’s frustrating because I, I, I’m kind of educated that I know that, and yet I couldn’t do anything about it at the time. And so at, at this point, I’m always just trying to keep getting stronger and faster so that I’m faster than her. And, um, and also able to model energy and have. Something extra to give so that I can come to her and say, Hey, let’s do this thing rather than let’s keep you entertained and enriched enough so that I can sit down, um, until I can, you know, collapse.

Um, but also, you know, my, I, I’ve always just sought the best teachers I could find, the best knowledge I could find, and my early education. You know, gave me a great foundation, but ultimately I was frustrated with the, um, kinda reliability or cons consist the cons, consistency of the results that I could get.

Mm-hmm. Um, and now I just feel so fortunate that really if the person is, um, I would just say I. Uh, self-responsible and emotionally mature enough to be guided through a pro process where they’re looking to be guided rather than me to fix them because I can’t, you know, no one’s, no one can. Um, then I really, you know, do take people in who have all sorts of, you know, scary sounding things or have had problems for a long time, and I’m just, you know, thrilled and humbled and blessed.

I see them, you know, I see them getting better and it’s really, 

Ruth Soukup: really cool progress. It’s amazing. Yeah, it’s amazing. So what do you think of our current model of medicine? Even, uh, like even functional medicine, right? Like, which I think is obviously better than just the traditional path, but I, I feel like it’s still failing a lot of people, especially with chronic illness.

Yeah. What do you think needs to change on a larger scale? 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Oh, boy. Yeah. So, I mean, I talk a lot about functional medicine, and that’s because I went so deep into it. Okay. I, um, you know, I mentioned that my mom was a doctor, but I, you know, her father was a chemist and his, uh, his brother was a chemist. Um, so I really loved.

I had this sort of like illusion that I was like Dr. House, you know, and I could run these labs and, you know, we, um, humans have a, a need for certainty, you know, and that reduces our fear and our anxiety. And so labs provide that certainty. But unfortunately I found after really, really deep diving that it’s a false certainty and that.

There’s no there, there. Um, and I, I wanna be respectful to my functional medicine colleagues. I still use some of it, but what I would say is that it’s an improvement on industrial medicine, um, in many ways, but it has its own, um, challenges and weaknesses. So one is that, um, because it’s, I think it’s because it’s coming from industrial medicine.

A lot of different types of clinicians can practice functional medicine. So there isn’t one functional medicine practitioner, but you know, I have a master’s in it and I’ve done a lot of like year long mentorship, so I feel like I’m kind of familiar with the standard models. And the standard models don’t really involve much bedside examination.

So they’re not being taught how to use their eyes and ears. At, at baseline to help with the case. And so there’s a lot of, um, I would say often lip service pay to this is patient centered and we’re just using the labs to support what that in practice often looks like. It’s very hard not to focus in on the labs, you know?

Mm-hmm. And they tend to trump. Um, but also it doesn’t come with a skillset that really allows you to effectively navigate the cases without the lab. So what you. End up with is a very long and expensive feedback cycle of whether or not you’re going the right direction. Mm. So if you, um, you know, if, if, if someone with complex chronic illness comes to see me, I run between $502,000 worth of labs and then I’ve got like my kind of sheets of certainty and my biochemical education, and now I can sell them.

Well, you need vitamin A and you need this and you need that, and you need, your homocysteine is high and all, you know, this is your snips, blah, blah, blah. Um, now. If they immediately start feeling better, then everyone’s happy. That does not happen most of the time. And so, um, because, because otherwise they would’ve been in the category of people who could change their diet and feel amazing and they wouldn’t have needed all those labs.

Right. Right. Um, and so then if they’re not feeling better now, how do you navigate? And what I commonly see, uh, the standard is. Yeah, you, you just haven’t given it long enough. Um, ’cause we know we’re doing the right thing because of the labs. So, you know, I, we saw that your thyroid was messed up and here’s your thyroid support and, um, you know, if you’re not feeling well, you, maybe you’re not gluten-free enough, or like, maybe you, you still need to manage your home stress.

And it’s this really, uh, like kind of, um, I would say fragile model, unfortunately. Mm-hmm. And it’s the best that most people know of. Mm-hmm. And so. I had a lot of, I would say, you know, because of the certainty it gives you in the kind of the, um, chops you get for, for knowing the biochemistry. I had a lot of arrogance about it, you know, in my own mind.

And when I found, when I went back and said this is not working, I was able to find excellent teachers. I. What I would call like a pragmatic approach to Chinese medicine and it unlocked things because then I learned how to use my eyes and ears and was able to use, um, tools that could help people get feedback within days and not months.

Mm. That’s pretty huge. Often for free. And also I’m teaching them how to do it rather than me being the expert in the labs. Um, and it’s, and the, uh, we use, we use kind of everything. We use, uh, nutrition, we use, you know, circadian, uh, you know, things that people have heard of. Right? Yeah. We’re using them in a strategic way.

I’m, you know, mainly using botanicals and herbs instead of supplements and they’re so sophisticated, uh, and that you can do things with those that you really, I would say I can’t do with supplements. And so there’s maybe just a cultural barrier. Mm. A lot of people who are coming into functional medicine, um, are not.

They’re just not aware. They don’t know what they don’t know. And then a lot of people who have studied Chinese medicine, perhaps in a way that’s not pragmatic and is a little bit confused, they’re not, they’re having trouble getting it to work for them. And so then they’re being attracted to functional medicine because of the kind of a higher perceived value.

Um, and so I. What I really wanna bring it back to is if we can relearn, uh, how to see things with our eyes and how to understand the basics of how things work, which is really traditional knowledge that most people had for a very long time before we were told that it was superstitious and pre-scientific and stupid.

Um, then we can really make great headway and we can use things like labs if we need to. Um, just, you know, if it’s, if it’s helpful. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it’s more of a process of like learning how to listen to your body and teaching people how to listen to your body. 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: It’s, it’s, it’s a process of learning how to listen to your body with a little bit more guidance than sometimes comes behind that phrase.

Yeah. 

Ruth Soukup: Yeah. I love that. So, final thoughts. What, uh, like last word of advice, if you could, if you could teach women one thing about. Listening to their bodies, especially through the lens of the nervous system. What would you want them to know? And first and foremost, 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: oh gosh, that’s, that’s a really great question.

Um, I, I like the movement towards just, you know, kind of checking in, becoming aware, becoming centered, the practices that help support that. Um. If, if, if you are someone who has tried those things, and again, you’re like, okay, I’m listening and I feel I feel anxious, or I’m trying to meditate and it’s not happening, then um, it’s not your fault.

Um, and sometimes it really is just certain missing distinctions that once you see them, they change everything. Um, so often, you know. Your listeners, like you, whoever is listening to this, you are, you are smart, you know? Um, and so often if you’re not getting things to work for you, it’s because the, you know, most advice is good advice.

It’s about when it’s helpful, right? That, yeah. That’s great. It’s learning how to, learning how to make those distinctions will help you make these things work for you, um, by going the right order and by making those distinctions. Yeah. 

Ruth Soukup: i love that. So smart. Well, Mel, this was so informative and, and so helpful and I’m sure, um, anyone who is struggling with chronic illness or just been doing all the things and looking for more help, would love to know how to follow up with you.

So let us know where we can find you and of course we will add all of that to the show notes as well. 

Mel Hopper Koppelman: Uh, sure. So, um, if you come over to synthesishealth.co, um, you will find the place to apply. To be a free guest in the group. Um, I read all of the applications and if you’re clinically a good fit for the group, and also we just screen to make sure everyone’s like, kind of are ni nice humans, you know?

Right. Very important. Yeah. It, it, it’s like a really awesome part of, so be nice. Nice. And then I know you will be, you know, um, then, then you can come in and you can see what it’s all about. You can, um, you know, look over my shoulder, you can see, see what the community’s like. Um, you can ask me any questions that you have, um, which is cool.

And then, um, and then you can, if you wanna go, go forward, you can. I also have, um, a blog where sometimes I’ll like, kind of get pent up enough to go on a rant and write, you know, and so, uh, that’s over at essays.synthesishealth.co.