Stop Chasing Pain

In this Mini Podcast episode of the Stop Chasing Pain Podcast, Dr. Perry explores the surprising connection between your eyes, nervous system, movement, balance, and chronic pain.
Your eyes do far more than help you see. Eye movement communicates constantly with the vestibular system, cerebellum, brainstem, and the muscles that prepare your body for movement. That means problems with eye tracking, coordination, or gaze control may influence how you move, how you balance, and potentially where you experience persistent tension or discomfort.
Dr. Perry breaks down the relationship between eye movement and the cerebellum—the part of the brain heavily involved in accuracy, balance, coordination, and timing—and explains why the principle "where the eyes go, the head goes, and the body goes" can be important when looking at chronic pain and recurring injuries.
You'll also learn how moving the eyes can activate the suboccipital muscles at the base of the skull, creating a potential connection between visual function, neck tension, headaches, and jaw discomfort.
The episode also introduces the cranial nerves involved with vision and eye movement, including the optic, oculomotor, trochlear, and abducens nerves, and why these pathways provide such a powerful window into brainstem and nervous-system function.
Dr. Perry finishes with simple eye-movement exercises you can experiment with and encourages you to notice changes in movement, pain, sleep, and overall nervous-system state.
If you've been chasing the painful area without getting lasting results, it may be time to look somewhere completely different.
Think systems. Not symptoms.
Eye Mojo Class Link: https://education.stopchasingpain.com/courses/eye-mojo-webinar-Oct-2026
Eye Exercise Video Link: https://youtu.be/RdOf-Isk0IU?si=2-LSlpluSTT-_4Zh
#ChronicPain #NervousSystem #EyeExercises #BrainHealth #VestibularSystem #Cerebellum #PainRelief #FunctionalNeurology #StopChasingPain #TheLymphDoc

In this episode of the Stop Chasing Pain Podcast, Dr. Perry sits down with board-certified cardiac surgeon and author Dr. Philip Ovadia for a wide-ranging conversation about heart disease, metabolic health, nutrition, and what it really means to take control of your health.
After more than 25 years as a heart surgeon, Dr. Ovadia brings a unique perspective to the conversation—not only from the thousands of patients he has treated, but from his own health journey. Once morbidly obese and pre-diabetic, he began questioning the conventional nutritional advice he had been taught after realizing it wasn't working for him. He ultimately lost more than 100 pounds and made metabolic health a central focus of his work.
Dr. Perry and Dr. Ovadia explore how our food environment has changed over the last century, the rise of processed foods and refined carbohydrates, and the long-running debate surrounding dietary fat, cholesterol, and cardiovascular disease.
They also discuss why nutrition can feel so confusing, how conflicting health information leaves people unsure of what to believe, and why looking at the relationships between multiple health markers may provide more useful context than focusing on a single laboratory value.
The conversation also dives into Dr. Ovadia's new book, Stay Off My Kitchen Table, the follow-up to Stay Off My Operating Table, and his goal of giving people practical tools to better understand nutrition, digestion, metabolic health, and their own blood work.
Topics discussed include:
• Why heart disease remains such a major health challenge
• Dr. Ovadia's journey from unhealthy heart surgeon to metabolic health advocate
• How processed food changed the modern diet
• The history and evolution of dietary guidelines
• Low-carbohydrate nutrition and metabolic health
• Cholesterol and the debate surrounding LDL
• Blood sugar, blood pressure, weight, and cardiovascular risk
• Why one laboratory marker should be viewed in the context of the whole person
• Understanding and interpreting your blood work
• Moving from managing disease toward building health
• Giving people the knowledge to become more active participants in their own health
This episode is ultimately about asking better questions, looking beyond isolated numbers, and understanding the bigger picture of health.
Dr. Philip Ovadia — Ovadia Heart Health Stay Off My Kitchen Table — Official Book Page Dr. Ovadia's Books

In this powerful episode of the Stop Chasing Pain Podcast, Dr. Perry sits down with Dean Hall, therapist, two-time cancer survivor, extreme-distance swimmer, and author of The Wild Cure: From Death to Life on Oregon's Longest River.
Dean shares the extraordinary story of swimming 187 miles of Oregon's Willamette River while facing leukemia and how the experience transformed his relationship with his body, grief, fear, and the natural world. What began as a challenge to leave his daughter a legacy of courage became a profound lesson in resilience, purpose, and refusing to let a diagnosis define your life. Dean describes how immersing himself in cold water and nature changed his mental and emotional state and helped him reconnect with life after years of illness and devastating loss.
Dr. Perry and Dean explore why reconnecting with nature may be one of the simplest ways to change the state of the nervous system. They discuss water, cold exposure, movement, fractals in nature, grief, human connection, purpose, resilience, and the feeling of becoming part of nature rather than merely observing it. Dean shares how his relationship with the river evolved from something to conquer into what he called "Mama River," and how that experience helped reshape the way he viewed himself and the world around him. This conversation is ultimately about much more than surviving cancer, it is about remembering what it means to feel alive, reconnecting with the environments humans evolved within, and discovering how powerful small steps back toward nature can be.
Connect with Dean Hall on Instagram:
@DeanHallOfficial on Instagram
Get Dean's book — The Wild Cure: From Death to Life on Oregon's Longest River:
Official The Wild Cure book page
Learn more about Dean:
The Wild Cure Way
#StopChasingPain #TheWildCure #DeanHall #NervousSystemRegulation #HealingThroughNature

In this solo mini-episode, Dr. Perry breaks down why the liver deserves a serious look for anyone dealing with chronic pain, chronic inflammation, or chronic disease. The liver performs over 500 functions in the body, and problems there often don't show up on standard blood work until things are already seriously compromised.
Dr. Perry walks through a simple self-check: pressing under the angle of the right ribcage to feel for tightness or tenderness, a sign the liver's fascia may be inflamed or under strain. He explains the liver's deep connection to the lymphatic system, since it produces 25–50% of the body's lymph, which drains through the thoracic duct and splits unevenly between the left and right venous angles (75/25). He also cautions against jumping straight into liver detox supplements without first clearing the lymphatic pathways, since an overburdened liver can make people feel worse when the "pipes" aren't clear yet.
Key symptoms covered that may point back to the liver:
Itchy or reddened skin
Referred pain into the right shoulder, neck, and trap (sometimes migrating left)
Brain fog and memory issues from disrupted vascular flow and intracranial pressure
Yellowing of the eyes
Unexplained weight gain tied to estrogen elimination
Chronic fatigue and easy bruising
Swollen ankles and feet
Body and back pain
Cold or dry hands and feet, tingling/numbness
Dry eyes and dry mouth
He also introduces the cisterna chyli, the body's largest lymphatic sac, sitting midway between the navel and sternum — and how stagnation there backs up into the liver.
Takeaway: The liver is a major detox organ under constant assault from modern toxins, poor food, and supplement overload — and it deserves direct attention, especially for anyone with chronic pain, inflammation, or lymphatic issues.
Youtube Video link
Liver Self Care Video Link
Organ Mojo Course

What if supporting brain health isn't only about neurons, neurotransmitters, and blood flow—but also about how effectively the brain moves fluid and clears waste?
In this episode of the Stop Chasing Pain Podcast, Dr. Perry sits down with Shalin Bhatt for a deep dive into the rapidly evolving science of brain drainage, the glymphatic system, meningeal lymphatics, cerebrospinal fluid, and neuroinflammation.
They explore a fundamental question: How does the brain keep its internal environment clean and maintain fluid homeostasis?
The conversation examines emerging research suggesting that cerebrospinal fluid, the glymphatic system, meningeal lymphatics, the venous system, and peripheral lymphatics may function as interconnected parts of a much larger brain-fluid network.
In this episode, you'll discover:
Why scientists once believed the central nervous system had no lymphatic drainage
The discovery and renewed interest in meningeal lymphatic vessels
What the glymphatic system does in the brain
How cerebrospinal fluid moves through different brain compartments
The connection between the brain's fluid systems and the deep cervical lymph nodes
The Cerebral Lymph Hypothesis and its fountain model of interconnected fluid compartments
Why fluid homeostasis may be critical for maintaining a healthy brain environment
How impaired clearance could potentially relate to neuroinflammation and brain fog
Why amyloid and tau accumulation raises important questions about waste removal—not simply waste production
The relationship between the nervous, immune, vascular, and lymphatic systems
Why sleep and circadian rhythms may be important for glymphatic function
The emerging concept of looking at the brain through a neurofluid rather than purely neurocentric lens
Why curiosity, systems thinking, and asking "what if we're missing something?" continue to drive discoveries in neuroscience
This conversation is about looking beyond isolated structures and asking a bigger question:
What happens when the systems responsible for moving fluid, maintaining homeostasis, and clearing waste can no longer keep up?
If you're interested in brain health, lymphatics, neuroinflammation, chronic pain, brain fog, cerebrospinal fluid, or complex systems, this is an episode you won't want to miss.
Subscribe to the Stop Chasing Pain Podcast for more conversations exploring the connections that are often overlooked when we focus only on where the symptoms are.
#GlymphaticSystem
#BrainHealth
#LymphaticDrainage
#Neuroinflammation
#BrainFog
#LymphaticSystem
#StopChasingPain
Link to the Breaking Points Video
Pub Med Artile by Shalin Bhatt