Let's Talk Wellness Now

You have a gland in your chest that trains your entire immune system. And as you age, it quietly shrinks and turns to fat.In Episode 284 of The Peptide Files, Dr. Deb looks at thymosin alpha 1, the peptide that tries to send the instructor back to that training academy, including the big trial that said "not so fast."This week, The Peptide Files takes on thymosin alpha 1, or TA1, one of the most well-studied peptides in the entire series. Unlike many peptides making noise online, this one has been used in clinical medicine around the world for decades, with a safety record described in the research as excellent. Dr. Deb walks through what TA1 actually is, a copy of a signal your own thymus makes, why it works as an immune modulator rather than a simple booster, and where the genuine research strength lies, from chronic hepatitis to cancer care.And in keeping with this whole series, she does not skip the part the sales world leaves out: the largest, most rigorous trial of TA1 came back negative on its main goal. Honest science includes the word no, and that is exactly why this peptide is so interesting.In this episode, you will learn:- What the thymus gland does, and why immune function fades as it shrinks with age- Why TA1 is an immune modulator that pushes toward balance, rather than a simple immune booster- Where the research genuinely supports it, including hepatitis and cancer care as an add-on- What the large negative sepsis trial found, and why naming it matters for credibility- Where TA1 sits in the US today from a regulatory standpointHighlighted quotes: "It does not just boost your immune system. TA1 is an immune modulator. It pushes toward balance." "The sepsis trial is the proof that honest science includes the word no."Timestamps: [00:02] Your immune system's training academy: the thymus gland explained [02:24] Where TA1 comes from: the first peptide ever isolated from the thymus [05:00] The conductor, not a soloist: why it modulates rather than just boosts [10:00] What the research actually shows: hepatitis, cancer care, and immune support [13:30] The honesty centerpiece: the large trial that came back negative [18:38] The honest scorecard: what is strong, what is uncertain, and the US statusConnect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Two of the most respected cancer institutions in the country ran the same tests on the same tissue from the same patient and reached opposite conclusions. In this deeply personal episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb shares a real-time update on her family member Kamren’s cancer case and the advocacy lesson inside it that every patient and family needs to hear. Shared with Kam’s full permission as his case continues to unfold, this is a follow-up to his story. A second-opinion pathology review came back and shifted the picture in a meaningful way, reopening the question of where his cancer actually started, and underscoring why a single institution should never be the only set of eyes on a complex diagnosis. Dr. Deb walks through what changed, why second opinions are a clinical necessity rather than a betrayal of your doctor, and why a finding that goes unexamined for years can turn out to be the most important detail in the room. This is a difficult, honest episode, and it carries a lesson that could protect other families navigating a confusing diagnosis. In this episode, you will learn: Why two elite institutions can reach opposite conclusions, and why that is a reason to keep asking questions Why a second, independent pathology review matters in any complex or rare diagnosis Why “normal” on a test only means normal for exactly what was tested, and nothing more Why population-level data is not the same as your own individual biology The questions every patient and family should be ready to ask their care team Highlighted quotes:“If you do not have someone in your corner asking the right questions, the system will not ask them for you.”“A normal test is only normal for what it was tested for.” Timestamps:[00:16] Looking in the wrong place: the finding that went unexamined for years[04:18] Catching up on Kam’s case: the foundation for today’s update[07:00] When the ground shifted: a second opinion changes the picture[09:10] Why find the source: getting the diagnosis right before the treatment[31:20] Speaking directly to you: the questions every patient should ask[37:03] Why this case matters to all of us: advocacy as a necessity, not a luxury Donate – Any amount makes a differencehttps://www.freefunder.com/campaign/rare-male-breast-cancer Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/letstalk_wellnessnow/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetsTalkWellnessNowPodcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lets-talk-wellness-now/ Subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.The post Episode 283: The Lump Nobody Looked At — A Real-Time Update on Kam’s Cancer Case first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

Two of the most respected cancer institutions in the country ran the same tests on the same tissue from the same patient and reached opposite conclusions.In this deeply personal episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb shares a real-time update on her family member Kamren's cancer case and the advocacy lesson inside it that every patient and family needs to hear.Shared with Kam's full permission as his case continues to unfold, this is a follow-up to his story. A second-opinion pathology review came back and shifted the picture in a meaningful way, reopening the question of where his cancer actually started, and underscoring why a single institution should never be the only set of eyes on a complex diagnosis.Dr. Deb walks through what changed, why second opinions are a clinical necessity rather than a betrayal of your doctor, and why a finding that goes unexamined for years can turn out to be the most important detail in the room. This is a difficult, honest episode, and it carries a lesson that could protect other families navigating a confusing diagnosis.In this episode, you will learn:- Why two elite institutions can reach opposite conclusions, and why that is a reason to keep asking questions- Why a second, independent pathology review matters in any complex or rare diagnosis- Why "normal" on a test only means normal for exactly what was tested, and nothing more- Why population-level data is not the same as your own individual biology- The questions every patient and family should be ready to ask their care teamHighlighted quotes: "If you do not have someone in your corner asking the right questions, the system will not ask them for you." "A normal test is only normal for what it was tested for."Timestamps: [00:16] Looking in the wrong place: the finding that went unexamined for years [04:18] Catching up on Kam's case: the foundation for today's update [07:00] When the ground shifted: a second opinion changes the picture [09:10] Why find the source: getting the diagnosis right before the treatment [31:20] Speaking directly to you: the questions every patient should ask [37:03] Why this case matters to all of us: advocacy as a necessity, not a luxuryDonate – Any amount makes a differencehttps://www.freefunder.com/campaign/rare-male-breast-cancerConnect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if your ADHD meds didn't stop working because you built up a tolerance, but because the estrogen that was quietly propping up your dopamine system got pulled out from under you?In this solo episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb breaks down one of the most dismissed and gaslit patterns she sees in practice: the collision of ADHD and perimenopause. She explains the real biochemical reason focus, memory, and emotional steadiness fall apart in midlife, and the root-cause framework to get your brain back.If your medication suddenly feels like it stopped working and you have been told it is just stress or aging, this episode may finally give you the explanation no one else has offered.In this episode, you will learn:- Why is estrogen a master regulator of dopamine, not just a reproductive hormone- How declining estradiol can leave a stimulant dose that worked at 38 underdosed at 46- The role progesterone and GABA play as the brake pedal working against your meds- Why are so many women diagnosed with ADHD for the first time in their 40s- Why do SSRIs often treats the symptoms and ignores the fireA five-step, hormone-aware framework to rebuild the foundation under your medicationWhat Dr. Deb says: "You are not losing your mind. You're not imagining it. And it is absolutely not just aging. There is a real, measurable biochemical reason your brain feels like it fell off a cliff.""Your stimulant didn't stop working because you built up a tolerance. The scaffolding your medication was standing on, estrogen, got pulled out from under you.""You cannot out-medicate a body that's running on empty. The foundation has to be addressed first."Timestamps: [00:04] You are not losing your mind: the meds-stopped-working experience [01:30] Why ADHD and perimenopause are one problem wearing two costumes [03:54] Sarah's story, and the dot three providers missed [05:00] How estrogen props up dopamine in the prefrontal cortex [08:34] Progesterone, GABA, and the gas pedal vs. brake pedal problem [09:00] Why ADHD comes roaring to the surface in midlife [11:00] The data: 43% of women diagnosed with ADHD between 41 and 50 [13:26] Why the system reaches for an antidepressant instead of asking why [16:00] The full root-cause workup to bring to your provider [18:22] Step one: hormone-aware everything, and the HRT conversation [20:44] Step two: re-evaluating your medication for your current hormones [23:07] Steps three through five: feeding dopamine, iron, and magnesium, sleep, and stressConnect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if the safety standards protecting you from everyday technology were built to measure the wrong thing entirely?In this episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb sits down with Dr. Paul Heroux, a physicist and toxicologist, associate professor at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine, and vice chair of the International Commission on the Biological Effects of Electromagnetic Fields. Together, they examine the research showing biological effects on human cells at levels far below what regulators call safe, and why those standards have not been meaningfully updated since 1996.This is a thoughtful, science-forward conversation about the technology woven into daily life and how to think critically about it without giving up the modern world you rely on.In this episode, you will learn:- Why current safety standards are based on heat alone, and what that misses about living cells- How electromagnetic fields can generate reactive oxygen species linked to chronic disease- The connection between EMF exposure and diabetes, neurological conditions, and fertility- What "dirty electricity," smart meters, and always-on Bluetooth are actually doing in your home- Practical, low-cost ways to reduce your exposure without giving up modern lifeWhat Dr. Heroux says: "There is a difference between scientific reality and what is acknowledged as science when powerful interests are involved.""It doesn't have anything to do with heating. It has to do with the fact that you, being alive, have these active currents. The interaction is extremely deep.""I love technology. I think it's wonderful. But we should not use it to shoot ourselves in the foot."Timestamps: [00:06] The reassurance you've been given, and why it deserves scrutiny [04:17] Dr. Heroux's path from physics and engineering into health science [07:50] The lead-in-gasoline parallel: science vs. powerful interests [13:00] Why cell phone safety standards trace back to military testing [16:30] The flaw in heat-based testing, and what keeps cells alive [19:25] Biological effects at fields far below "safe" limits [23:04] EMFs, reactive oxygen species, and the diseases of civilization [29:37] What dirty electricity is and where it comes from [34:36] Smart meters, smart homes, and always-on devices [42:16] Reproductive health and falling fertility [45:20] Faraday cases, air-tube headsets, and what actually helps [49:10] Practical steps the average person can take today [57:13] What Dr. Heroux wants every parent, patient, and physician to knowVisit Dr. Paul Heroux's book: https://invitroplusnet.wordpress.com/home/textbook-health-effects-of-electromagnetism/Connect with him: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-heroux-23781128/Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What happens when a wellness expert becomes the patient?In this episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb sits down with Danielle to share her deeply personal and inspiring journey through thyroid cancer, Lyme disease, and the long road of recovery that followed. What emerges is a powerful story about the mind-body-spirit connection and how healing often asks more of us than medicine alone can give.Danielle opens up about how martial arts, visualization, and faith became central to her recovery, and how learning to regulate her nervous system changed the course of her healing. Her story is a reminder that even in the hardest seasons, resilience and hope can carry us further than we imagine.If you or someone you love has been navigating chronic illness and wondering whether real healing is still possible, this conversation is for you.In this episode, you will learn:- Danielle's personal journey through thyroid cancer and Lyme diseaseThe role of spiritual practices and visualization in healing- How martial arts and nervous system regulation supported her recovery- The powerful impact of stress and emotional health on chronic illness- Why holistic, integrative approaches matter so much in health and healingKey frameworks discussed:The Mind-Body-Spirit Connection, Vagus Nerve Regulation, and Quantum Healing.Simple practices to take with you:Incorporate daily visualization and prayerPractice martial arts or Qigong to support nervous system healthMake space for holistic and spiritual well-being in your health routineIn Danielle's words: "What we focus on is what we become." "Healing is possible. Don't lose hope." "Strive to cope, not to be perfect."Chapters: 00:00 Introduction and Personal Journeys 03:45 The Impact of Chronic Illness 06:31 Navigating Thyroid Cancer 09:37 The Spiritual Component of Healing 12:22 Lyme Disease and Its Challenges 15:01 The Aftermath of COVID-19 17:59 Finding Healing Through Martial Arts 20:41 The Role of Mindset in Recovery 23:30 Current Work and Future Aspirations 26:38 The Need for Accessible Healthcare 29:28 Final Thoughts and EncouragementConnect with Danielle:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellepashko/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesoulhakker/Website: https://www.soulhakker.com/Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if anxiety isn't a disorder to be silenced, but a signal to be understood?In this episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb sits down with Dr. Nicole Cain for a trauma-informed, whole-person look at anxiety, trauma, and nervous system dysregulation. Together, they move beyond symptom management to ask a deeper question: what is actually driving the anxiety in the first place?Dr. Cain reframes anxiety as a spectrum rather than a single diagnosis and explains why understanding trauma as an adaptive response, not a personal failing, changes everything about how we heal. From the gut-brain axis and the microbiome to epigenetics, environmental factors, and even the surprising role of oral health and mouth breathing, this conversation connects the dots between the body and the mind in ways most conventional care overlooks.If you have ever felt like you were only ever handed tools to cope and never the answers to why you feel the way you do, this episode offers a more empowering path forward.In this episode, you will learn:- Why anxiety is better understood as a spectrum, not a disorder- The nine types of anxiety and why a personalized approach matters- How the microbiome and gut-brain axis shape your mental health- Why trauma is best understood as an adaptive event, not a weakness- The surprising connection between oral health, mouth breathing, and how you feel- How epigenetics and your environment influence anxiety- Practical stress management strategies for busy, overwhelmed people- Why lasting change comes from finding the root cause, not just the triggerKey takeaways:Anxiety is a spectrum, not a disorder. The goal is to reduce the obstacles to healing, not just quiet the symptoms. And real progress comes from finding the root cause, not just the trigger.Chapters: 00:00 Understanding Anxiety and Its Root Causes 25:54 Defining Trauma and Its Impact 30:14 The Role of Gut Health in Mental Wellness 40:19 Biological Drivers of Anxiety 44:54 Empowering Personal Health JourneysConnect with Dr. Nicole Cain:Website: https://drnicolecain.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drnicolecain/Twitter: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-nicole-cain/Book order: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737883/panic-proof-by-dr-nicole-cain/Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if everything you have been told about endometriosis is only half the story?In this solo episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb reframes endometriosis as what the research actually shows it to be: not simply a hormone problem or misplaced tissue, but a systemic autoimmune and mitochondrial disease. She makes the case for why the standard treatments fall short and lays out the root-cause toolkit that actually heals.If you have spent years being handed the same options and told this is just how it is, this episode offers a different and far more hopeful path, one built on what is truly driving the disease.In this episode, you will learn:- Why endometriosis is an autoimmune and mitochondrial condition, not just misplaced tissue- How the birth control pill masks the disease while depleting the exact nutrients your mitochondria need- Why oral estrogen is the wrong choice for HRT, and what to use instead- The missing diagnosis almost no one tests for: hormone allergies and mast cell activation- How low-dose immunotherapy (LDI) retrains the immune system rather than suppressing it- A practical supplement, botanical, and peptide toolkit built around the real root causesWhat Dr. Deb says: "Endometriosis is not just a female hormone problem. It's an autoimmune disease. It's a mitochondrial disease. And today I'm going to prove it to you.""The pill does not treat endometriosis. It masks it, and in many cases it makes the underlying disease significantly worse.""Hormones are not your enemy. The wrong hormones, delivered the wrong way, without addressing the immune and metabolic underpinnings of the disease, that is the problem."Timestamps: [00:01] The truth no one tells you: Endo as an autoimmune and mitochondrial disease [02:23] Why does diagnosis still take seven to ten years [04:50] The immune breakdown: NK cells, T reg dysfunction, and inflammatory cytokines [06:00] Mitochondrial dysfunction at the cellular core of endo [09:39] How the birth control pill makes endo worse, not better [11:41] The SHBG problem and why it can persist for years after stopping the pill [14:01] The gut, the estrobolome, and estrogen recirculation [18:21] Why oral estrogen is the wrong choice for HRT [23:09] The missing diagnosis: hormone allergies and mast cell activation [30:18] Low-dose immunotherapy (LDI) for endo, PMS, and hormone allergies [33:00] The integrative toolkit: NAC, DIM, CoQ10, quercetin, and more [41:00] Peptides for endo: BPC-157, TA1, and KPV [44:30] Navigating HRT safely with a history of endoConnect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if the hormones meant to help you are the very thing making you feel worse? In this solo episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb opens with a patient who started bioidentical hormones and, within three weeks, had panic attacks for the first time in her life. From there, she walks through the five systems that determine whether hormone therapy helps you or harms you and exactly what to address before you ever fill that prescription. If you have been told hormones are a simple fix, this episode reveals why readiness matters just as much as the prescription itself and how getting it right can change everything. In this episode, you will learn: Why estrogen has to be metabolized, and what happens when your liver cannot clear it fast enough How gut bacteria and beta-glucuronidase can recirculate the estrogen your body was trying to eliminate Why normal liver enzymes can still mean you are a poor estrogen metabolizer How estrogen can quietly make you functionally hypothyroid, and why TSH alone misses it The histamine connection behind hives, palpitations, anxiety, and panic on hormones The five-point checklist Dr. Deb runs before anyone in her practice starts HRT What Dr. Deb says:“The hormones aren’t the problem. The problem is whether your body is actually ready to receive them.”“Imagine you’re filling up a bathtub, but the drain is completely clogged. The water just keeps rising. That’s what’s happening when you add estrogen to a body that can’t clear it.” Timestamps:[00:01] A patient in tears: panic attacks three weeks into bioidentical hormones[02:30] Why estrogen is not a magic bullet, and the clogged bathtub analogy[04:53] Protective vs. problematic estrogen metabolites, and why testing matters[06:00] The gut connection: beta-glucuronidase and estrogen recirculation[09:42] The GI MAP, and why the gut has to be ready first[11:00] Liver phase one and phase two detox, and where the bottleneck forms[14:27] Thyroid: how estrogen can make you functionally hypothyroid[16:53] Histamine: the overlooked driver of hives, palpitations, and panic[20:00] The five-point checklist before touching hormones[24:50] The patient’s turnaround, and why HRT is a living protocol, not one and done Links:https://mdcustomrx.com/Fullscript: http://bit.ly/4fqqsPahttps://elliemd.com/DrDebMuth Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/letstalkwellnessFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/letstalkwellnessLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lets-talk-wellness-now/ Subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.The post Episode 277: Perimenopause Hormone Therapy Can Backfire. Here’s Why. first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

What if the hormones meant to help you are the very thing making you feel worse?In this solo episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb opens with a patient who started bioidentical hormones and, within three weeks, had panic attacks for the first time in her life. From there, she walks through the five systems that determine whether hormone therapy helps you or harms you and exactly what to address before you ever fill that prescription.If you have been told hormones are a simple fix, this episode reveals why readiness matters just as much as the prescription itself and how getting it right can change everything.In this episode, you will learn:- Why estrogen has to be metabolized, and what happens when your liver cannot clear it fast enough- How gut bacteria and beta-glucuronidase can recirculate the estrogen your body was trying to eliminate- Why normal liver enzymes can still mean you are a poor estrogen metabolizer- How estrogen can quietly make you functionally hypothyroid, and why TSH alone misses it- The histamine connection behind hives, palpitations, anxiety, and panic on hormones- The five-point checklist Dr. Deb runs before anyone in her practice starts HRTWhat Dr. Deb says: "The hormones aren't the problem. The problem is whether your body is actually ready to receive them.""Imagine you're filling up a bathtub, but the drain is completely clogged. The water just keeps rising. That's what's happening when you add estrogen to a body that can't clear it."Timestamps: [00:01] A patient in tears: panic attacks three weeks into bioidentical hormones [02:30] Why estrogen is not a magic bullet, and the clogged bathtub analogy [04:53] Protective vs. problematic estrogen metabolites, and why testing matters [06:00] The gut connection: beta-glucuronidase and estrogen recirculation [09:42] The GI MAP, and why the gut has to be ready first [11:00] Liver phase one and phase two detox, and where the bottleneck forms [14:27] Thyroid: how estrogen can make you functionally hypothyroid [16:53] Histamine: the overlooked driver of hives, palpitations, and panic [20:00] The five-point checklist before touching hormones [24:50] The patient's turnaround, and why HRT is a living protocol, not one and doneConnect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if the root of your chronic health issues has been hiding in your mouth all along? In this episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb uncovers the powerful and often overlooked connection between your oral microbiome and your whole-body health. For too long, the mouth and body have been treated as separate systems. The truth is they are deeply connected, and the bacteria living in your mouth may be quietly influencing your risk for some of the most serious chronic conditions we face. Dr. Deb breaks down the science linking oral bacteria to Alzheimer’s, heart disease, stroke, and autoimmune conditions like lupus, and explains why what is happening in your mouth matters far more than most people (and even many doctors) realize. More importantly, she shares what you can actually do about it, from testing to targeted treatment to restoring balance in your oral microbiome. If you have been chasing answers for symptoms that never seem to resolve, this conversation may reveal a missing piece you have never been told to look at. In this episode, you will learn: Why your mouth and body should never be treated as separate systems How oral bacteria are linked to Alzheimer’s, heart disease, and stroke Why you cannot fix what you have not measured, and where oral DNA testing comes in Which pathogenic bacteria matter most and why Practical, real-world steps to restore your oral microbiome and protect your long-term health Key frameworks discussed:The Mouth-Body Connection, Microbiome Balance, and Targeted Microbial Therapy. Chapters:00:00 The Hidden Dangers of the Oral Microbiome02:30 Connecting Oral Health to Systemic Disease07:16 The Importance of Testing for Oral Health11:28 Understanding Pathogenic Bacteria16:16 The Mouth-Body Connection20:18 Restoring Your Oral Microbiome Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/letstalkwellnessFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/letstalkwellnessLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lets-talk-wellness-now/ Subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.The post Episode 276: The Hidden Link Between Oral Health and Chronic Disease first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

What if the root of your chronic health issues has been hiding in your mouth all along?In this episode of Let's Talk Wellness Now, Dr. Deb uncovers the powerful and often overlooked connection between your oral microbiome and your whole-body health. For too long, the mouth and body have been treated as separate systems. The truth is they are deeply connected, and the bacteria living in your mouth may be quietly influencing your risk for some of the most serious chronic conditions we face.Dr. Deb breaks down the science linking oral bacteria to Alzheimer's, heart disease, stroke, and autoimmune conditions like lupus, and explains why what is happening in your mouth matters far more than most people (and even many doctors) realize. More importantly, she shares what you can actually do about it, from testing to targeted treatment to restoring balance in your oral microbiome.If you have been chasing answers for symptoms that never seem to resolve, this conversation may reveal a missing piece you have never been told to look at.In this episode, you will learn:- Why your mouth and body should never be treated as separate systems- How oral bacteria are linked to Alzheimer's, heart disease, and stroke- Why you cannot fix what you have not measured, and where oral DNA testing comes in- Which pathogenic bacteria matter most and why- Practical, real-world steps to restore your oral microbiome and protect your long-term healthKey frameworks discussed:The Mouth-Body Connection, Microbiome Balance, and Targeted Microbial Therapy.Chapters: 00:00 The Hidden Dangers of the Oral Microbiome 02:30 Connecting Oral Health to Systemic Disease 07:16 The Importance of Testing for Oral Health 11:28 Understanding Pathogenic Bacteria 16:16 The Mouth-Body Connection 20:18 Restoring Your Oral MicrobiomeConnect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if leaving a toxic belief system triggered a full-body health crisis and your doctor missed it entirely? In this episode, Dr. Deb breaks down something she’s been seeing in her clinic for over 20 years: women who escape high-control religious environments and, within months, develop autoimmune disease, hormonal collapse, and chronic fatigue. Their labs look “normal.” Their doctors hand them an antidepressant. And nobody asks why. Dr. Deb does. Drawing on the work of Dr. Daniel Amen, Dr. Datis Kharrazian, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and Dr. Uzzi Reiss, she walks through the clinical reality of what religious trauma does to your nervous system, your immune system, and your hormones, and exactly what it takes to heal at the root cause. This isn’t therapy talk. This is biology. In this episode: Why purity culture dysregulates your HPA axis and ovarian function The autoimmune cascade that follows prolonged psychological trauma What conventional medicine gets wrong — and what functional medicine does instead The clinical protocols Dr. Deb actually uses with these patients If your body has been in revolt since leaving a controlling environment, this episode was made for you. Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/letstalk_wellnessnow/Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LetsTalkWellnessNowPodcastLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/lets-talk-wellness-now/ Subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.The post Episode 275: Religious Trauma Is Destroying Your Hormones. Here’s Why. first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

What if leaving a toxic belief system triggered a full-body health crisis and your doctor missed it entirely?In this episode, Dr. Deb breaks down something she's been seeing in her clinic for over 20 years: women who escape high-control religious environments and, within months, develop autoimmune disease, hormonal collapse, and chronic fatigue. Their labs look "normal." Their doctors hand them an antidepressant. And nobody asks why.Dr. Deb does.Drawing on the work of Dr. Daniel Amen, Dr. Datis Kharrazian, Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, and Dr. Uzzi Reiss, she walks through the clinical reality of what religious trauma does to your nervous system, your immune system, and your hormones, and exactly what it takes to heal at the root cause.This isn't therapy talk. This is biology.In this episode:- Why purity culture dysregulates your HPA axis and ovarian function- The autoimmune cascade that follows prolonged psychological trauma- What conventional medicine gets wrong — and what functional medicine does instead- The clinical protocols Dr. Deb actually uses with these patientsIf your body has been in revolt since leaving a controlling environment, this episode was made for you.Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

What if you could test your cancer cells BEFORE choosing a treatment — and actually watch which drugs kill them?That's not science fiction. That's what we did for Kamren, a 38-year-old man in my own family who was diagnosed with a rare, complex cancer that conventional medicine struggled to classify, let alone treat.In this episode, I'm pulling back the curtain on three precision tests that most oncologists have never ordered and explaining exactly what they revealed, what they changed, and why they matter for every cancer patient, not just his.We're talking about:???? Northstar Response — the liquid biopsy that tracks your tumor's activity in real time through a single blood draw???? Northstar Select — the genomic test that mapped the exact mutations driving his cancer and matched them to targeted therapies and clinical trials???? DATAR Chemo-Scale — the live cell test that grew his actual tumor cells in a lab and tested 70+ drugs against them to find out which ones truly work on his cancerThis episode isn't about hope. It's about data. It's about refusing to let a protocol designed for the average patient be applied to someone who is anything but average.If you or someone you love is navigating a cancer diagnosis, this episode could change the questions you ask — and the care you receive.Ask better questions. Demand better testing. Be seen at last.Donate – Any amount makes a differencehttps://www.freefunder.com/campaign/r...Connect with us:Website: https://www.letstalkwellness.comInstagram:   / letstalk_wellnessnow  Facebook:   / letstalkwellnessnowpodcast  LinkedIn:   / lets-talk-wellness-now  Subscribe to Let's Talk Wellness Now so you never miss an episode, and if this one opened your eyes, share it with someone who needs to hear it.

Dr. Deb Muth 00:03What if symptoms that have been dismissed for years aren't all in your head, but signs of an underlying tick-borne illness or complex chronic condition that needs a different kind of care? Today, we're talking with Ginger Southley DNP, one of the leading voices in Lyme disease, mortgage, and tick-borne illness care. She brings decades of clinical experience and a deeply patient-centered approach to some of the most misunderstood conditions in medicine. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge approaches to healing, and empower you with the tools to take charge of your life.I'm Dr. Deb, and today we're diving into the complex world of Lyme disease, co-infections, more jellins, and the deeper factors that can keep people stuck in chronic illness. If you or someone you love has been struggling with unexplained symptoms, fatigue, brain fog, pain, or a long road to answers, this episode is for you. So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you settle in, and let's get started on today's journey toward deeper healing.You guys can put one of the ads in here, that'd be great. No. There we go. Because otherwise, yes, we're going to get chatting, and we'll forget. I pre-recorded the intro part, so we can just dive in, and I can ask you, like, how you got into this, and then we can start our conversation again.Dr. Ginger Savely 02:01Okay, I can't remember what I said last time, but that's alright, I'll just…Dr. Deb Muth 02:04So, we need to protect them. Well, welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness now. I have a dear lady, Dr. Ginger. She's being so gracious because we already goofed up our first recording we did on Riverside a few months ago, and she's been gracious enough to come back and join us again and do it all over again while we're actually recording. So, Dr. Savely, welcome to the show.Dr. Ginger Savely 02:26Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.Dr. Deb Muth 02:30Dr. Ginger, tell us a little bit about how you got involved with tick-borne disease and Morgellons, because you are truly a legend in this world, and I'd love for everybody to hear your story.Dr. Ginger Savely 02:42Well, I just to very briefly go over, I got into the tick-borne diseases because my daughter was so very sick with it, and I started learning everything I could, and the next thing I knew, I was picking it up in my… population, I was doing primary care, family practice, and I was picking it up in that group. And then word got around, and next thing I knew, I'm treating a lot of tick-borne disease, became 50% of my practice, then 70% of my practice. And then, a few years into it, I started having, well, first of all, Dr. Harvey, who was a Lyme doctor in Houston, Texas, he and I were constantly communicating about things and comparing notes, and he emailed me and said, have you seen any patients with you know, blue fibers coming out of them? And I said, I don't think so, but I'll start looking for it. So, then I did, and I started asking all my Lyme patients about it, just, have you had any unusual things come out of your skin?And once I asked them, then, lo and behold, a certain subset of them said, well, yes, as a matter of fact, I do have that, but I've just learned not to mention it, because people think I'm crazy, so I just never, you know, say a word about it. And so I started picking up a lot of these patients, and you know, of course, since I first came at this by way of tick-borne diseases, Lyme, etc. I figured, okay, these people I know have tick-borne disease, so let's treat that and see if maybe their immune system recovers to the point where they can handle whatever this is causing the Morgellen's disease. And so that's the way I approached it at first, just treating underlying infections, since I had no idea what was causing more dilins. I just noted an association with Lyme disease. And so, I put out a paper about 20 years ago. I published a paper that had to do with Basically, one thing… the main point of the paper was correlatingLyme disease with Morgellins, saying that 97% of my Morgellins patients ended up having Lyme or another tick-borne infection.And, so this is… this is the first publication that basically kind of made that correlation, you know, between the line. And I think it's been taken out of context a lot, misinterpreted. I never for a minute said that Lyme causes more gelins, not at all, and we… that's a leap way too far for us at this point. I just noticed an association. So, whatever that may mean, who knows? But, you know, certain illnesses, like, for example, AIDS patients are famous for getting thisCarpacea sarcoma. And it doesn't mean AIDS causes that sarcoma, because other people get it too. It's just highly associated with the tooth, so… We might be talking about a disease that's highly associated with tick-borne infections, or maybe it's caused by a co-infection that we don't even know about. Or maybe it's something entirely different, and the tick-borne diseases were just suppressing the immune system to the point where The person succumbed to whatever this was whenever they got into contact with it.And so, I began, you know, just experimenting and trying different cocktails of things to see what would work. And as I began to treat, I realized that The more jealous patients did notget better with a Lyme protocol. They got better when I used a Bartonella protocol, a specific group of antibiotics that's used to treat the Bartonella infection. Now, again, I'm not saying for a minute Bartonella causes more gelin, but I'm just saying that when I use the treatment for Bartonella, that's when I get the best results on my mortgageellin's patients. And I also have noticed that my Morgellen's patients tend to have other symptoms that are typical Bartonella symptoms, like a lot of the neuropsychiatric symptoms, neuropsychiatric, sorry, and the, the streaks that they'll get on them, the red tracks. Spontaneous scratches, all that. So those we do see on our Bartonella patients that don't have more gelin.So, I started… it was… my early patients were, I would always say, you're the lab rats, because we're just experimenting with everything, and they were more than willing. I mean, these people were so desperate, they were so miserable, and so… upset by the way they've been treated by the medical establishment, that they were, every one of them, at a point of saying. I don't care what you give me. it… if it… even if it kills me, I'd rather be dead than have to deal with this, you know?Dr. Deb Muth 08:07Try something, right?Dr. Ginger Savely 08:08That's pretty drastic, I know, but that's where they were. They were at a point where, I don't care, I'll take any risk just to do this. However, I've always been using FDA-approved medications, and, you know, it's just… naturally, I'm treating, sort of in my own, kind of invented way, because there's no textbooks you can go to for this, there's no algorithms, there's no treatment protocols for this, because more than half of the medical world doesn't even believe it exists. So, we… you know, I looked very carefully at all these patients in my office with magnified, lighted magnification, and I was seeing amazing things. I mean, I couldn't believe it. Sometimes the hair on the back of my neck would stand out when I would see these things, because You know, bright blue fibers are not supposed to be coming out of the human body. And I would even pull at them with the tweezers, and, you know, they would not come out, so it wasn't like a matter of they were just stuck on there, you know, from fabrics or something, as dermatologists often claim is the case.Dr. Deb Muth 09:24I had a patient once with Morgellons, and she got a magnification glass that she could attach to her phone, and she, like, took pictures of what was coming out of her skin and video recorded it and sent it to me, and oh my gosh, it's crazy. crazy how these things come out. And if you don't see it under a microscope like that, it's really hard to understand what's going on.Dr. Ginger Savely 09:48Exactly. And, you know, what we've always said is dermatologists usually carry about a 12X scope in their pocket, but you need really more like 60X to see this stuff, because very rarely can you see it with the naked eye. I mean, sometimes you can, but you do need that lighted magnification in order to see it. I do have some patients come to me, they have all the symptoms more jealous, but they say, I don't think I have fibers, and I said, well. but you… have you really looked with magnification? They said, well, no, I just thought I'd see them, and I… so then it turns out they actually do have them, but… Yeah. So I… I've been fascinated mostly then in treating these patients by how… diverse each patient is, because I can develop a protocol that's working fantastically on this patient, and try it on the next patient. It doesn't work at all.Dr. Deb Muth 10:49So…Dr. Ginger Savely 10:50So, it's just back to the drawing board, every single patient. And of course, there's a huge variance in degree of severity of this illness. I have everyone… everywhere from people who are totally functional, going to work, and just have this annoying thing going on, all the way to people who are just completely marred and disfigured and can't even get out of bed. So, you know, of course, there's quite a difference there, and naturally, it's a lot more difficult to treat the more severe cases. And often with the more severe cases. Our best hope is reducing symptoms significantly to where they're tolerable....

Dr. Deb Muth 0:05What if your immune system isn't broken, it's just confused? What if chronic Lyme, the autoimmune condition, the food sensitivities, the exhaustion that never lifts what if those aren't separate problems but one problem? A misfiring immune system that nobody taught how to stand down. Today's guest has spent over 15 years doing exactly that, retraining the immune system from the inside out with a therapy so precise, so safe, and so effective that it has changed the lives of thousands of people who'd been written off by conventional medicine. Stay with me. This one changes everything.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we pull back the curtain on chronic illness, challenge outdated medical thinking, and hand you the real tools to heal from the inside out. I'm Dr. Deb, integrative and functional medicine practitioner, medical detective, and your straight-talking guide through the world of root cause medicine. Today, we're going to dive deep into the immune system, specifically something called low-dose immunotherapy or LDI, and also into some hormones, chronic fatigue, and what it actually looks like to treat the cause instead of suppressing the symptoms. If you or someone you love has been told there's nothing more we can do, this episode was made for you. Grab your cup of coffee, Settle in and let's get to work. Now, before we bring in today's guest, a quick word from our sponsor, and then we are diving straight in. I promise. Did you know sweating can literally heal your cells? Infrared saunas don't just relax you, they detox your body, balance hormones, and boost mitochondrial energy. I'm obsessed with my HealthTech Sauna, and right now you can save $500 with my code at healthtechhealth.com/dr-muth-req-25.I want to start you with a story because this is one I've heard hundreds of times in my own practice, and I'm guessing you've either lived it or know someone who has. She's 42. She's been sick for years. Fatigue that doesn't lift with sleep, joint pain that migrates, brain fog so thick she can't finish a sentence, and a gut that seems to react to everything she eats. She's been to her GP, rheumatologist, gastroenterologist, maybe even an immunologist, and every single lab comes back within quote unquote normal limits. She's handed a prescription for something to manage the symptoms and sent home. Maybe she's been told it's anxiety. Maybe she's been told it's aging, or maybe and this one always breaks my heart she's told it's all in her head. That woman is not imagining it. She is not anxious and she's not aging poorly. Her immune system has lost its ability to tolerate things it's supposed to tolerate, and no one has offered her the therapy that could actually fix that. And what we're talking about today with my guest has been practicing integrative medicine for over 15 years. Ty Vincent holds a medical degree from the University of Washington. He completed his family medicine residency in Anchorage, Alaska, and since has built one of the most impressive clinical repertoires I've seen anywhere in this field: acupuncture, Chinese medicine, environmental medicine, bioidentical hormones, hyperbaric medicine, chelation, regenerative peptide therapy, psychedelic-assisted therapy, and nutritional medicine.He lives and practices on the Big Island of Hawaii. He is married has 9 children. Oh my gosh, 9! And he has personally navigated type 1 diabetes, which, as you'll hear, is not separate from his mission. It actually is his mission. And most importantly, he is a world authority on low-dose immunotherapy, a therapy he pioneered in 2008 and since has trained over 200 providers globally and changed the course of chronic illness care as we know it. I have had the pleasure of learning from Dr. Ty Vincent. I have had pleasure of taking his low-dose immunotherapy course when he first started back in like 2008 or 2009. I remember doing it back then and learning more about it in 2011. And this is going to be a great conversation for us. So one quick ask that I have for you guys, if this sounds like something that you want to learn more about and you've listened to some of our shows, please share like, subscribe. It means a lot. It helps us grow our channel. It helps us continue to provide for you different topics, different speakers, and really give you what it is that you're looking for.So without further ado, I'd like to introduce you to Dr. Ty Vincent. All right, so Dr. Ty Vincent, this is gonna be a great conversation. We were just chatting before we went live of my training with you guys way back in like 2015, and I'm excited to hear all the new things that you've got going on. But introduce yourself to the audience. Tell us a little bit about you, how you got involved in this, uh, where you're at, all that good stuff.Tyvincent 5:29Okay. I, uh, it's a long story, but some of the highlights, I guess I was born in Alaska in the early '70s and grew up there kind of wandering around in the woods with my dogs with no one around all day long. It was amazing. You don't get kids don't get that experience anymore. So you kind of learn to be an independent thinker, I think, you know, because latchkey kid, parents weren't home till 6 and you're on your own from early.Dr. Deb Muth 5:49That was a great time, wasn't it? Yeah.Tyvincent 5:51I mean, I have, I have 9 children now and none of them grew up like me. And despite my effort, I mean, I'd have to basically like helicopter them out in the woods and drop them off for a few hours for them to understand what independent kids today are so dependent and parents are so helicopter that, uh, it's changed. Anyway, I, I grew up just really liking science and really loving science, a huge nerd. And, um, and, uh, when I went into college, when I wanted to be a marine biologist and I thought that that was my passion of the ocean wildlife and all that, and then halfway through college, personal Couple things made me change my mind. It was a girl, you know, the usual. And I decided to go to school in Anchorage instead of going I was, I was transferring to Hawaii and I was going to study marine biology. And then, uh, my girlfriend moved back to Alaska where we were from. And I decided to do that instead. And then they didn't have a marine science program.So I decided I'll just get a biology degree and go to medical school. I'm a smart guy. I can do that, but I had no awareness of medicine. I really didn't have any, you know, the passion some people have to be a healer and to go help people wasn't part of the calculus at all for me. I was kind of an Asperger's kid, so that really wasn't the way I thought, honestly. And then I went into medicine and I was really interested in the science, the biology, the biochemistry, all the stuff, the physiology. And before I started medical school, I was reading some Andrew Weil's books and I was, I decided to get a book on nutritional biochemistry because I naively thought that's what they were going to teach me, right? This is how you make people healthy. You figure out how it works and you give them the things that make their body work right. Yeah. And we all know that that's. Not been true for over 100 years now since the Flexner Report. And, you know, the rich people steered the government towards pharmaceuticals.Dr. Deb Muth 7:26Yeah.Tyvincent 7:26But that was my interest. And when I went through the first 2 years of medical school, I just really devoured all of the basic science stuff. And that was what I thought was the most important. And I honestly mastered all that. I scored in the top 1% in the country on all the exams and everything. And it was the top, in the top of my class at the University of Washington. And then you start doing clinical medical training and you discover that they don't use any of that knowledge anymore, really, unless it pertains directly to pharmaceuticals, and that pharmaceutical research is extremely narrow and reductionist, and they only want to try to prove one little effect, and it doesn't translate to real health. So as I got into clinical work and started residency, you know, by the third year of residency, I was like, they didn't really teach me how to help people with chronic illness. You know, I was, I went to family medicine residency, so I was delivering babies.I was assisting with surgeries. I was in the ER. I was doing colonoscopies. I actually did colonoscopies in practice after residency, which family Doctors almost never get to do, but I'm a small town in Alaska. So I managed my own ICU patients and did everything, literally circumcisions in the office. And you're dealing with like hospice and end of life care, just both ends, right? Pregnancy to death. And so I'd realized that if I really wanted to do the job well, which was my goal, I needed to learn other things. And in my, in my third year of residency, I actually did the extra, like, like additional training in medical acupuncture that was put on by the Helms Medical Institute then with Joseph Helms.And that was great. And I had to learn Chinese medical theory and I learned, I did the extra module on Chinese herbal medicine. And it was wonderful because I had to open my mind to a completely different way to evaluate people and illness. And I thought, okay, well then there's got to be more. And as I went, I just became this voracious consumer of broad medical knowledge, not conventional medicine. You notice how a lot of the conventional people call it traditional medicine?Dr. Deb Muth 9:07Yes.Tyvincent 9:07Which annoys the crap out of me because there's nothing traditional about something that's been around for 100 years. I mean, you need time, you need like an epoch to say something's traditional....

Dr. Deb Muth 00:03What if bloating, back pain, and low energy aren't separate problems, but clues from the same root cause? What if your posture and the way your fascia moves are changing how your digestion works and how you feel every day?Today, we're unpacking why symptoms like bloating, fatigue, and persistent pain often come from deeper, whole body issues, and how a multimodal, root cause approach speeds real recovery. You guys can, put our advertisement in here for Venari before we do the intro.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative and integrative care, and empower you with practical tools to heal.I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective, and today we're talking about whole body recovery, how movement, fascia, gut health, and personalized medicine come together to restore function, energy, and confidence in your body. If you or someone you love struggles with bloating, pain that won't quit. Slow recovery after surgery or postpartum, or chronic low energy, this episode is for you.So get comfortable, grab a warm drink, And let's get into it.So today, I'm joined by Dr. Shalini Batt, founder of the Movement Boutique in Toronto. She is a chiropractor and double-certified functional medicine practitioner who builds care around root causes, lady after my own heart. And rather than just treating the symptoms, as we all know, and you guys have heard me talk about before, that is how we get to the other side of things. So, what I love about your work is you blend the clinical expertise and that lived experience, and just before we started recording, we were talking about the difference of fascia.and chiropractic, and even when you're looking at bringing in acupuncture and Pilates and functional medicine, having all those modalities together is so amazing. So, before we dive into all of this stuff. Tell us a little bit about your own story.Shalinibhat 02:49Yeah, well, my own story is that I grew up very steeped in Western medicine. My father's a surgeon, and I had, you know, access to all the allopathic care that was out there, but I kind of had all that, what I call, gray area symptoms. That doesn't make it into, you know, an allopathic answer, so to speak. And so, having access to all of… you know, the best… this specialist and that specialist didn't really give my IBS you know, some type of help, and it didn't really give my chronic back pain some type of help. And I kept, like, tearing my meniscus. I was a dancer, and I just kept, like, thinking, I'm doing all the same things as all these other girls in my class. Why am I the one who keeps tearing my meniscus? Like, what is up with… they… like, we all have the exact same tissues. Why is my tissue resilience so low? that this keeps happening to me. And I seem to be the only one in, you know. from dancing from 3 till I was… when I was 3 till when I was 18, and experiencing this, and I'm looking at everybody, like, what's the deal? And I sort of felt different, but I couldn't really pinpoint what was going on, and probably similar to your story. all the things that were coming at me were just labels and diagnoses, and like, you know, same with my meniscus, they were like, the first time, they were like, alright, we do surgery. I was like, okay, sounds good, like, went and did the surgery. The second time it, tore, I was like, that obviously didn't, do it, because they took out 30% the first time, and then, you know, some of the 70%, you know, tore. And I said, there has to be… there has to be some reason why my My tissue resilience is low, and why that shear force is going through on my left knee every single time, like that same mechanical strain is happening, and fast forward to today, I realized that fascia is this fabric that runs all over the body in huge swaths, and in very large, sort of movement patterns, which we'll get into, but basically, the way that I was, like, standing, the way that I was… my tissue resilience was less, that's what was setting the stage for me to re-tear that meniscus, but nobody was asking those questions. My IBS, like the stealth infections I had, the leaky gut I had, all of those things creating excessive inflammation just in my body in general was decreasing my tissue resilience and making me re-injure that same area. So instead of, oh, I'll just keep getting it, you know, shaved down or taken out, like, why was that same mechanistic injury and strain happening? on that knee, and I started asking different questions, which led me to, instead of going to medical school, say, oh, wait, chiropractors can actually, like, you know. Actually move the body, understand what's going on, spend the time with patients to properly diagnose, and then actually use our hands, because I've always been a very tactile person. Being a dancer, you know you're always using your body, I understand my body, so when I started my kinesiology degree. I… kinesiology was a no-brainer. I'm like, I have a body, I want to use it, I want to learn… you know, when I'm learning about the muscles and the hands and the… like, I have that, so it's… I've always been a touch kind of person, and that makes sense to me, learning about the body. And, that's why I ended up studying in such, let's say, asking alternative questions, so to speak, and that's why even when I finished my kinesiology degree, and even when I finished my chiropractic training, I still went to school to learn acupuncture training, because I still had more questions, and thenI… and concurrently, I was teaching Pilates as well, and Pilates always resonated with me because I thought, yeah, if you have this really strong powerhouse and this really strong core, that always helped my back. And it always helped my knee. And so, translating kind of all four of these modalities, the chiropractic, the fascial release, the acupuncture, and the Pilates, became sort of my… my own little method that I created on how to help people. I probably… a lot of people listening to this, think of chiropractic as, like, you go somewhere and you get crack, crack, crack top to bottom. That actually is not how I've ever practiced, either, becauseeven when I was chronically inflamed with all these issues, even an adjustment would send me into more inflammation, and I would be, in… having aches and pains, so that was not even… I needed it so much gentler, and that's why I started working with fascia and thinking, like, what else is here? And, like, if someone's so inflamed, maybe an adjustment is too aggressive for, somebody in the moment. And there's a time and a place for everything, don't get me wrong, but that wasn't my personal, you know, go-to, so to speak, and so that's why I started working more gently around fascia, and that's why I used acupuncture needles, and pilates training, and rehabilitation, and looking at people's movement patterns, and seeing, okay, where are things going off here, and what's the actual… I hate the word root cause, but that's where we all come from, it's just gotten so crazy. But really, truly, if you have back pain, why are we just looking at the back.Like, if your entire pelvis is off, if your entire, like, body is leaning to one side, and you're putting way more weight on one foot than another, like, why are we… why are we just treating the back? Why are we just adjusting the back? Why are we just, you know, putting ice on the back, or put… or putting painkillers, or rubbing things on the back? We gotta look at the entire body as one whole system when it comes to injury, and that's my very long backstory to tell you how I… sort of amassed these different things that I do, And in my training. Sorry, I forgot one piece in there, and that's… with my gut thing and my IBS, I went back to school and did functional medicine training to figure out what that was about, because, and even when my uncle mentioned it, I think, oh gosh, early 2000s, he said, leaky gut, and I thought, well, people probably think these days, like, wait, there's holes in my stomach? You know, like, what isAnd at that time, you know, way back in the day, the first test was, like, that, flakulose mannitol, like, that really.Dr. Deb Mut 08:53Boom.Shalinibhat 08:53You can get tests. Yeah. Now, obviously, we've come a long way. So yeah, that's how I ended up with all these five random modalities that are sort of enmeshed into one, and that's what we do in my practice. My clinical practice is literally all of those modalities, and we really meet people where they are. So we invite anyone to come to us with, whether they have an MSK issue, and that's the primary thing they want to work on, we can do it by starting Pilates. We can do it by starting fascial training. We can do it by starting acupuncture. We can do it by running labs and seeing where you are functionally if you want to lower that inflammation, or those stealth infections, or whatever it is that you have going on. So we invite anyone to come in and sort of pick their service menu, because I feel we… we should help everyone, but not everyone feels… like, not everyone's like, wow, I want to run a school test with you first. They may have the capacity to be like, okay, I'll try a workout, or I'll try a Pilates class, you know? And then once they're in our space, they're like, oh wait, what else do you offer here? This is really different than where I've been. So that's sort of what my practice is all about.Dr. Deb Muth 09:58I love that. I love that blending of all of the different things, and I think, you know, some of the best practitioners are those who've been through things, and it doesn't have to be that way, but we kind of explore all the different things that could be causing our issues, which allows us ...

Dr. Deb Muth 00:03What if your diagnosis isn't actually your diagnosis? What if the fatigue, brain fog, anxiety, and inflammation you've been told are normal are actually signals your body is reacting to something in your environment? Something no one ever tested.What if the reason you're not getting better is because no one is asking the right questions?Today, we're exposing one of the most overlooked drivers of chronic illness, and why so many people are being dismissed, misdiagnosed, and left without answers.You guys can insert, one of our ads in here, that'd be great.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective. And today, we're diving into the hidden drivers of chronic illness through the lens of functional and environmental medicine.If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with a chronic condition or is struggling with unexplained neurological symptoms, like fatigue, brain fog, numbness, or chronic pain.This episode is for you. So, grab your cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind.Settle in, and let's get started on your journey to deeper healing.Today, I'm joined by Dr. Kelly McCann. A board-certified physician in internal medicine and pediatrics, with advanced training in functional, integrative, and environmental medicine.She's known for her work in mold illness, chronic infections, MCAS, and complex chronic conditions And for helping patients who have been told everything looks normal. She helps them finally get real answers. Dr. Kelly, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here. Share a little bit about what you're doing these days, and who you are, and who you're serving with us.Kelly McCann 02:42Thank you. So, my favorite patient population is patientswho deal with complex chronic illness, and I didn't set out to deal with these kinds of patients, but I kept… needing to be able to solve the puzzles, right? So they would come in, and there would be so many things that just didn't add up and didn't make sense, and it started with,it started with just doing functional and integrative medicine, and GI issues, and hormone issues, and autoimmune issues, and then it was mold as a driver, and then it was Lyme disease and the other tick-borne infections, and then all of those patients, many of those patients developed mast cell activation syndrome.Which I've now gone on and become an expert in, because they all have it.And all the related conditions with MCAS, the Ehlers-Danlos, hypermobility syndrome, POTS, postural orthostatic tachycardic syndrome, and… The one thing that really stuck out to me over the years of treating these patients is the ones who were willing to take a deep look inside. And see how their… their belief patterns, how their thoughts how they perceived themselves, different traumas that they experienced. If they were able to reframe some of the ways that they were thinking about their illness, about themselves, their relationship to themselves, they were the ones who really healed.And not only did they heal physically, they healed emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually. I have some patients who started out disabled, and now are running their own companies. One who, again, same thing, terribly disabled, lots of emotional issues, lots of ups and downs, food sensitivities, oxalate issues, and now she's a medical intuitive. And she's just doing fabulously, and has blossomed, right? So, this is a missing piece that we're not really talking about.Dr. Deb Muth 05:04Yeah, I so agree with you. I see the same thing in my practice, and I treat a lot of the same people you do, and you are so right. Like, if we can get down to a deeper level with them, and address the trauma that happened.And it may be a trauma they never even remembered, right? It could be something that's just seated in their cells and they don't remember it. And you don't directly think it's causing the illness, but it is getting in the way of them healing. If you can address those things, those are the people that tend to do so much better, I think, versus the people who are getting some mileage out of their illness. That there's a reason they stay stuck, there's a reason they stay sick, they're getting something from it, even though they don't realize it in the moment.So let's talk a little bit, before we hopped on the recording, you and I were talking about body, emotion, spirit. A little different than what we're used to hearing with mind, body, spirit. Talk about your philosophy on this.Kelly McCann 06:01So what I've really come to realize is that the mind is getting in the way. And we have this perception that our mind is who we are. Right? We really think that who I am are the thoughts that I have every day. That's me. And when I'm not getting better, it's because my body is not… Falling in line with what my mind and my will want to do. So we set up this adversarial relationship. And this has been the philosophy in Western culture since Descartes said, I think therefore I am. Where the mind is supreme, and it is the all-knowing, and the body is just a vehicle for the mind. And every… Therapeutic intervention, from trauma-informed therapy, from, you know, wonderful people who have committed a lot of help and given great information. Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score, Gabor Mate, you know, all of these folks who have done such great work in us understanding trauma I think… The next phase is really recognizing that the body is actually not against us. It is not our enemy. In fact, it is… The body that is speaking to us as the voice piece of our souls and our spirits, that is saying to us, hey. you're not listening. The path that you are walking down and the way that you are being in the world is not really working for you. It's not who you are. It's not who you're supposed to be on the planet. And we're trying to get your attention, right?Dr. Deb Muth 07:59Yeah.Kelly McCann 07:59I mean…Dr. Deb Muth 08:00this thing, so I'm gonna talk louder.Kelly McCann 08:02Exactly, exactly! It's like a little toddler who only can speak in so many words, right? There's only so many ways that a younger version of ourselves, or our bodies, like, how do our bodies communicate to us? Symptoms and sensations. That's it. Those are the ways that our bodies communicate. And if we don't listen to sensations, well, it's gotta turn it up, it's gotta turn up the volume, and then we have more symptoms. And then if we're still like, no, it's gonna do it my way, it turns up the symptoms some more. And when… We are in this adversarial relationship, we can't bridge that gap. Can't bridge that gap, so… What… what happens is thatUnderneath the symptoms and the sensations are emotions. Emotions that have not been processed. Because we've been stuffing them down, we believe that they shouldn't exist, we don't want to face them, we're afraid of them, they're not acceptable, we're ashamed of them, whatever the reason may be, and they're stuck in the body. And so the way through is to actually just feel our feelings.Dr. Deb Muth 09:26That's kind of scary for some people.Kelly McCann 09:28It's… it's scary for the… it's scary for the whole planet!Dr. Deb Muth 09:32For all of this, right?Kelly McCann 09:33For all of us. When we start to feel our feelings, we don't like it. We've been taught it's not okay. Boys, it's not okay to cry. Girls, don't be loud, don't be angry. You're a B-I-T-C-H if you do that, right? So there's so many taboos about feeling our feelings. I have patients who say, I can't be mad at my father or my mother because I was taught to honor thy father and thy mother. Like, yes, but you're angry, and guess what?] That ain't going nowhere until you express it, so… you have a choice. Express it, or hold onto it, and then you just kind of stay here in this space where it's never expressed.Dr. Deb Muth 10:19Yeah, except in your body, in your physical being, right?Kelly McCann 10:22Except in your physical being. And here's the magic. Emotions are meant to move through us, right? Emotion. They don't last for that long!60 to 90 seconds, really? Maybe a couple minutes? Yeah. You really, really feel them. Right?Dr. Deb Muth 10:44Yeah.Kelly McCann 10:46And we're terrified of that 60 to 90 seconds.Dr. Deb Muth 10:50What might we do to ourselves or to someone in that 60 to 90 seconds, right? I may scream, I may cry, I may not be this person that everybody thinks I'm supposed to be. That person that holds it all together is there for everybody, holds everybody else's space. So well put together, right? If you're not that person, then who are you? Are you human?Kelly McCann 11:16Oh, you're more than human. Yeah, I mean, the way that I would look at it is, I would say, well, you don't have to put on a show, right? This is really for you. Close the door, lock the… close the windows, get out your pillow. Whatever you need to do. I mean, I have some patients who will write it out. There's a way to just, like, freeform write, where you don't actually read it, you just write it out, scribble it out, get it all out on paper, and then burn it, or shred it, or something like that. you can pound a pillow, you can, you know, scream, whatever it is, you can cry. I mean, I think crying is, at least for… for me. Crying is the easiest way to think about it. So, you sta...

Deb 00:02What if I told you that before a single drop of chemotherapy goes into a cancer patient's body, we can take a blood sample, grow their actual living cancer cells in a lab, and test 70 different drugs against those cells, all outside the patient's body, to find out which ones actually work. And what if I told you that the conventional oncology doesn't routinely use this test? Well, today we're going to talk about why that matters and we're going to go through and I'm going to share a story that is very personal to me. It's about a 38 year old man with a rare complex cancer diagnosis and the precision testing that is helping to keep that cancer from progressing. Stay with me. This is one that is going to change how you think about cancer treatment.Deb 01:05You guys can put a little ad right in here before we start the next segment here. Hey everybody, welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I'm Dr. Deb and today we're going deep. I mean really deep. It's some of the most cutting edge cancer testing I have ever seen in clinical practice. Now, normally I don't talk about cancer. And I would not be sharing this story if it was anyone other than my own family. I do have permission to share and talk about this publicly. So I want to do this. I want to make sure that I share this message. And he is giving his blessing to share this story because we both believe that it can save lives. So his name is Cameron. He's 38 years old. And he is my son-in-law. And two years ago, he came to me with a small lymph node underneath his arm and a bullseye rash. So of course, being the lime literate person that I am, my first inclination was to say, yeah, this makes sense. You have an enlarged lymph node because you have this bullseye rash. You got bit by the tick. Let's keep an eye on it. If it doesn't go away, let me know. So Fast forward a year and a half later, he comes to me and says, mom, what do you think about this? This thing is getting a little bit larger. And I said, yeah, it's a little larger. Not sure. Let's keep an eye on it. He wasn't feeling anything. All his labs looked okay. And then one day he was out chopping wood and he started getting numbness in that arm and he felt it again. And it had exploded in size. And so after some evaluation with my daughter and him, we decided to do a ultrasound. And we thought what was going to come back was a fatty tumor. It felt like one looks like one responded to one. He's 38 years old. He's healthy. There's nothing in our mind that's ever thinking the result that we're going to get back.Deb 03:28Is a possible lymphoma. Needless to say, we were shocked by that ultrasound result. And we go fast forward, we have the biopsy. I requested a total excisional biopsy. I was told by the oncologist that that was old school. They don't do that that way anymore. And I need to stay out of this. I need to let the experts take care of this because that's what they do best. And this came from a breast surgeon here in Wisconsin. And so I stepped back for a moment. I let him do his biopsy and what came back was adenocarcinoma of an unknown origin. Had we excised the entire lymph node, we would have had more tissue to work with. I think we could have gotten a better diagnosis. So over the course of the next two and a half, three months, we have some more imaging done. We have some more testing done. They send a pathology out to Mayo Clinic. And what continues to come back is this incongruent test results. If anybody's ever had this, it's extremely frustrating. One test shows lymphoma. Now it shows breast cancer. Then the next week it shows estrogen receptor HER2 positive breast cancer. Two weeks later, another test comes back and it says, no, it's not HER2, it's triple negative breast cancer. And now it looks like it's out of the lymph nodes. Now it looks like it's in the lymph nodes. And we do a PET scan and they can't find cancer anywhere except in this axilla area. But now we find a lymph node on the right side. So it must have spread.Let's go ahead and do a biopsy on that. And so they biopsy the right side and the right side comes back with nothing other than tattoo ink. Now, all of this is kind of crazy. I am not a cancer specialist. I want to start by saying that I am not a cancer specialist. What I am sharing today is from a mother-in-law's perspective, from a medical detective's perspective, I do know how to do research. I do know how to find answers. And so what I'm going to share with youDeb 05:54is totally my opinion and totally my experience. And I'm not telling anybody to do anything different than what their doctors are telling them to do. But I am telling you to ask questions. So I go deep down the rabbit hole and find out that Tattoo Ink can appear like metastatic cancer on a PET scan. And we all know everybody gets tattoos today. They're all over everyone. And yet we're not thinking about how this tattoo ink can cause problems for us down the road, not to mention that there are heavy metals in them and it's a toxin and it's creating an inflammatory process in your body that your body's constantly trying to get rid of. So the surgeon says to us, well, yes, that's normal that that lymph nodes inflamed. It's normal that there's tattoo ink in it. The body's doing what it's supposed to do. It's trying to get rid of a toxin. Okay. I will agree with that, but My son-in-law is covered with tattoos everywhere. And why didn't we mention the tattoo ink that was found in the left axilla? We are only mentioning it in the right axilla. So there's a lot of controversy, a lot of confusion. Many of you would never know any of this because A, you either don't look at your lab results. And if you do, you don't understand what you're looking at. And that creates a problem for us, right? You don't know what questions to ask. So we go into the doctor and the doctor tells us you have cancer and we're going to swoop you in. And in the next two weeks, you're going to be doing chemotherapy and radiation. And six months from now, we're going to be doing surgery and there's no time for questions and you're scared shitless and you're just doing what you can to survive. And I get that. And I totally understand that. And I appreciate that. But I'm telling you that If that is your choice, that is your choice. But as you're doing that, take the time to ask the right questions. When this happened to us, there was a lot of challenging things with the oncology team. Nobody bothered to allow them to be a partner in their care. They dictated their care, but didn't allow them to be a partner. So,Deb 08:17Here's what most oncologists do when patients get a cancer diagnosis. They look at the tumor type, they look at the stage, they look up the NCC guidelines, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and they follow the algorithm. Now, I have an enormous respect for conventional oncology. I really do. Working with cancer is probably one of the hardest things in medicine that anyone can do. The advances in this field over the last 10 years have been remarkable. But here's my issue. Standard treatment assumes your cancer is the same as the cancer in the clinical trial that created the guidelines. It's assuming that you and your cancer are the exact same as everyone else. You are the unique fingerprint, not the cancer. And this is the problem because your cancer is unique, just as unique as if you had your fingerprint taken, the mutations driving your tumor, the drugs your cancer cells are sensitive to, the metabolic vulnerabilities of your cancer. These are all different from the person sitting next to you in the chemo suite that has the same triple negative breast cancer or HER2 positive breast cancer or prostate cancer or colon cancer that you have.So what do do about that? Well, in my world, in the integrative medicine world, we test precisely, intelligently with the tools that most oncologists have never heard of. Or if they have, they haven't incorporated it into their treatment modality for a variety of reasons. Either it's not acceptable by the organization that they work for, they don't understand it, They're not going to be able to change their protocol anyway because they have to follow the NCCN protocol. So they don't do it or they use a portion of it and they don't do anything outside the protocol. So today I want to cover three things with you, three tools that we used that I think every cancer patient should be asking for when they start treatment or wherever you are in treatment at this point.Deb 10:44you need to have these tests done. I don't have any affiliation with any of these companies. I don't get paid to tell you any of this. So let me just start by saying that I understand the chemistry behind these and how important it is to give you precision cancer treatment. And that's why I'm talking about them today. The first one we're going to talk about is the North Star response. This is your cancer surveillance score in the blood. How much cancer is circulating in the blood. The North Star Select, your cancer's genomic blueprint from a blood draw. And the Datar Cancer Genetic Chemoscale, the live cell drug sensitivity test that tells us which drugs actually kill your cancer. So let's go. Let's dive into this. Let me just take a drink here. I'm going to cough a little bit. I apologize. I have this horrible tickle. It just never seems to go away, but that is not for today to discuss. So what is all of this? OK, the North Star response is a test that was developed by a company called Billion to One. And yes, that name is intentional because of the precision involved. It's a next generation sequencing test, meaning it reads DNA at an incredibly detailed level. And it looks at something called methylated circulating tumor DNA or methylated CT DNA....

Deb 00:00:01Imagine your body has a repair manual, instructions written in your cells that tell tissues how to heal, blood vessels, how to grow, and inflammation when to stop. But what if those instructions got lost somewhere along the way? Well, today I'm talking about peptides, tiny protein fragments that act like biological text messages. Two of them, BPC 157 and TB 500.They're showing remarkable promise for gut repair, joint recovery, and tissue regeneration. But here's what nobody's telling you. Women respond differently to these healing signals, especially during hormonal transitions. And today, we're uncovering the science behind these regenerative peptides, who actually needs them, and why your doctor might not know about them.Can you guys put our ad right in here and then I'll go to the standard intro?Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective. And today we're diving into regenerative peptides BPC157 and TB 500. If you or someone you love is struggling with slow recovery from injury, chronic joint pain, gut inflammation that just won't quit,or you just feel like your body doesn't bounce back the way it used to, this episode is for you. Grab a cup of coffee or tea or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let's start you on your journey to deeper healing. We'll do another sponsor break here.Deb 00:01:52So let's start with the question I hear constantly in my practice. Dr. Deb, I'm doing everything right. I'm eating clean, I'm exercising, I'm taking my supplements, but I'm still not healing. What am I missing? Well, that answer might surprise you. Sometimes it's not about what you're putting in your body. It's about whether your cells are actually receiving the repair signals they need. That's where peptides come in. Think of peptides asThe body's original communication system. These short chains of amino acids are like biological post-it notes carrying instructions from one cell to another. They tell your human system when to calm down, your blood vessels when to grow and your tissues when to repair. Now here's where it gets interesting for women specifically. We know that estrogen plays a massive role in collagen production, vascular health,inflammatory response. When estrogen starts declining, whether that's perimenopause, postpartum, or even from chronic stress, our natural repair mechanisms slow down dramatically. You might notice it as my joints are aching more, I'm a little more fluid filled, you know, they hurt when I bend them, my injuries take twice as long to heal.Gut issues that suddenly appear out of nowhere and no matter what you do, they don't seem to repair. Skin has lost its elasticity or just this general sense that your body isn't keeping up anymore. This is where BPC 157 and TB 500 entered the picture. So BPC 157, short for body protection compound 157, is a naturally occurring peptide sequencefound in your gastric juices. And according to a 2024 systemic review published in emerging use of BPC 157 in orthopedic sports medicine, this peptide promotes something called angiogenesis. That's the formation of new blood vessels and they deliver oxygen and nutrients to damaged tissues. Now TB 500 is a synthetic fragment of thymus and beta-4.Deb 00:04:17a protein your body makes naturally during wound healing and research published in therapeutic peptides in orthopedics in 2025 shows that it works like a cellular first responder rushing to injury sites and coordinating tissue repair through a process called actin regulation. But here's what makes these peptides different from just taking another supplement. They don't force your body to do anything.they simply remind yourselves how to heal the way they used to. And for women navigating hormonal changes, autoimmune flares, chronic inflammatory conditions, that distinction matters enormously. all right, let's get into some of these mechanisms because understanding how something works helps you make informed decisions about whether or not it's right for you. So,Let's look at the science. Do these peptides actually work? And if so, how do they work? Let's start with BPC 157. This works through multiple pathways simultaneously. First, it activates growth factor receptors that stimulate fibroblasts. Those are the cells responsible for making collagen and rebuilding connective tissue. And according to research published in Frontiers and Pharmacology in 2023, titled Regeneration or Risk,BPC 157 also modulates nitric oxide signaling, which enhances vascular repair and reduces oxidative stress at the cellular level. So this is really important because many of us are nitric oxide deficient, especially as we get older, especially since the pandemic, we're seeing a lot of people being more deficient in nitric oxide and you're taking nitric oxide, many of you, to help with this process. Butif we're having other issues that don't allow that nitric oxide to get where it needs to go, that could render it completely useless. So in plain English, when we're talking about how BPC 157 helps the blood vessels work better and protects your mitochondria, big word for your energy factories and your cells from that inflammatory damage.Deb 00:06:38Now there's studies in musculoskeletal and gastroenterology models that show BPC157 decreases inflammatory cytokines like TNF-alpha and IL-6. And these are chemical messengers that keep inflammation turned on. So by dialing them down, BPC157 creates an environment where healing can actually happen. Now, where do we know about this?TNFL and IL-6, well, we know it from viruses, we know it from Lyme disease, we know it from mold toxicity. These cytokines are turned up, they're creating a massive inflammatory response in the body, and you're struggling to get these things down because of that or potentially other reasons. So here's where it gets really interesting with women in perimenopause or menopause. When estrogen declines,collagen synthesis slows down. And that's why we see increased joint pain, slower wound healing, and our changes in the skin's elasticity during this transition. We see the little wrinkles, the fine lines, we see the subcutaneous fat going away a little bit more. This is partially why this is occurring. And so from research shown in the Journal of Orthopedic Research in 2023 by Leibowitz and colleagues, thatthey suggest that BPC157 affects on the endothelial layers. So the cells lining the blood vessels and these may mimic some of the estrogen's protective vascular effects without actually affecting your hormone levels. This is really huge because we know that as women lose estrogen, they have a higher risk for vascular events, heart attack, stroke, things like that. And if people have already had a heart attack or a stroke,We typically recommend that they don't use estrogen because that could potentiate the risk for another heart attack or a stroke. But that means that you don't gain the benefits of estrogen either. So if we think about this, we could potentially use BPC 157 to give us some of the benefits that we lost from having estrogen and potentially not being able to use estrogen. And that would be huge for us.Deb 00:08:57And not to mention the reduction of inflammation and the joint pain and the wound healing and the energy and the gut feelings. I mean, there's just so many benefits to BPC 157 that we could talk about them all day long. But we've got to move on. So let's talk about TB 500. Now this peptide works very differently. Its primary job is promoting cell migration, essentially telling repair cells to go to this spotand what to do when they get there. So it sends a signal, puts a little post-it stamp there and says, Hey, when you get there, fix A, B, C, and D. And there was a study in 2024 in cell biology international that demonstrated that TB 500 increases epithelial closure and improves tendon elasticity in models of repetitive strain injury. So let's think about that a little bit. What does that really mean?That means faster recovery from exercise induced muscle damage, better healing of overuse injuries like tennis elbow or plantar fasciitis, improved scar tissue remodeling after surgery or a C-section, enhanced recovery from chronic inflammatory conditions affecting soft tissues. And I've talked about this several times. I have used these compounds post-surgical personally.And I remember going back to see my surgeon at the two to three week mark for follow-up. And she was amazed at how well everything was healing. And when I asked her if she wanted to know what I was doing, her response was no, but keep doing whatever you're doing because it's working. And after three weeks of a major pelvic repair surgery that I had,four hours in surgery, lots of sutures, not comfortable. I was actually walking a mile and didn't have pain and I was recovering really well and felt amazing. And that is just not typically heard of in surgical procedures like mine. It's usually a minimum of a six to eight week recovery before you're starting to do that again. And I give all of the credit to these two peptides.Deb 00:11:17In my clinical practice, I see this play out constantly. Women who train hard, whether that's CrossFit, running, yoga, or just trying to keep up with active kids, often hit a wall where their recovery can't keep up pace with their activity level. And TB 500 helps to bridge that gap by optimizing the body's natural r

Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:09Hi there, how are you?Bob Miller 00:00:10Excellent! Pedaling as fast as humanly possible, but doing okay.Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:14Good, good. Well, I'm looking forward to our conversation today. This should be amazing.Bob Miller 00:00:20Yeah, it should be a lot of fun.Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:22Yeah, anything that's off-limits for you in, our conversation?Bob Miller 00:00:28No.Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:29Okay, anything you want me to make sure we cover for you?Bob Miller 00:00:33Well, I mean, is it okay if we put a little plug-in for our software?Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:35Absolutely.Bob Miller 00:00:36Yeah.Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:37Absolutely. Bob Miller 00:00:36Yeah.Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:37Absolutely.Bob Miller 00:00:38Hey, can we… can we do a screen share? Yes, we can. Yeah, because I want to show you some maps, and…Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:43Okay. Things like that, yeah, so… Perfect. So just let me know when you want to do screen share.Bob Miller 00:00:48Okay.Dr. Deb Muth 00:00:49And yeah, feel free to plug your software wherever you want to.Bob Miller 00:00:53Okay, well, good. Let me pull up a, a slide for that, and give me one second, I just want to shut the door to my office to get the noise down.Dr. Deb Muth 00:01:01No worries.Bob Miller 00:01:16And, how should I refer to you? Dr. Debb? Dr. Muth, what do you like?Dr. Deb Muth 00:01:18Dr. Deb is great, or Deb, either way, I'm pretty informal, so…Bob Miller 00:01:22Yeah, and… Bob is fine for me. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, there you go. Why people feel like they need this, son. Special name, it's like, seriously.Dr. Deb Muth 00:01:33Right? I agree.Bob Miller 00:01:35When I work with my clients, it's like, Dr. Millison, just, just bop, just, just bop.Dr. Deb Muth 00:01:41Yep, that's how I am, too. Just call me Deb, it's good.Dr. Deb Muth 00:01:44They feel a little awkward with that, you know? They're not used to that, but…Bob Miller 00:01:48Alright. And you're a naturopath, medical doctor.Dr. Deb Muth 00:01:52A nastropathic doctor and a nurse practitioner. Oh, nice. Yeah, so I got the best of both worlds, right?Bob Miller 00:01:58Yeah, damn. Okay. Alright, so here we go… There we go. Alright, so I got that ready, and then I will do a, I will do a screen share. I think you're gonna really, appreciate what we've come up with. We've come up with the concept of, Cellular CPR.Dr. Deb Muth 00:02:23Oh, nice!Bob Miller 00:02:24And that is, construct the cell membrane, Protect the cell membrane. And restore it if it's damaged.Dr. Deb Muth 00:02:32Love that.Bob Miller 00:02:34I love that. Yeah, so that's what we're focusing on, and then how, You know, we want to get to the point that, you know, most people think of genetics, they think of, like, 23andMe or Ancestry.Dr. Deb Muth 00:02:44Yeah.Bob Miller 00:02:45And then you have the professional geneticists who are looking at, you know, odd things that could create a disease. We're looking at functional genomics.Dr. Deb Muth 00:02:54Which is so much better.Bob Miller 00:02:56Yeah. Are you familiar with what we do here, or…Dr. Deb Muth 00:02:58A little bit, a little bit. So, it'll be new to me, too, so I'm excited.Bob Miller 00:03:03And how much time do we have?Dr. Deb Muth 00:03:04 We have an hour, give or take a little bit on either side. Do you have a hard stop anywhere?Bob Miller 00:03:10No, no, I put a, I moved my clients around, and I don't have anybody till,3.30, so we're good. Okay.Dr. Deb Muth 00:03:16 Perfect. Alright.Bob Miller 00:03:18It's like we're getting started early as well, so…Dr. Deb Muth 00:03:19Yeah, we're getting started a little bit early, so that's good.Bob Miller 00:03:22Yeah, I just got my office cleaned up, so…Dr. Deb Muth 00:03:23Okay, good. All right, are you all set to get started?Bob Miller 00:03:28I'm good to go, my friend.Dr. Deb Muth 00:03:29I'm gonna just record a little intro and a little bit of a, hook for people, and then we'll get started. I'll ask you to kind of tell us a little bit about yourself, and then we'll just take this conversation wherever it's supposed to go.Bob Miller 00:03:39Okay, you got it.Dr. Deb Muth 00:03:40Alright, sounds good. So what if the reason you're not healing isn't your diet, your supplements, or your labs, but it's actually your genes? Dr. Bob Miller is uncovering how genetic variants, when combined with modern toxins, explain why some of us stay sick no matter what we try. Today, we're talking genetic pathways, detox blocks, and the new science every wellness warrior needs to know. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, exploring cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you to heal from the inside out. I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective, and today, our guest, Dr. Bob Miller, is a true pioneer in functional genomics. He's a board-certified traditional naturopath and the founder of Neutrogenetic Research Institute. And he's the leading groundbreaking research on how genetic variants influence chronic illness, inflammation, and detoxification. His work has been recognized on international stages, uncovering links between genetic expression and conditions like Lyme disease, mast cell activation, or MCAS, and mitochondrial dysfunction. I'm so excited to talk to Dr. Bob today. He is gonna reveal some things that even I don't know about, so I'm excited to learn alongside of you guys. So…Dr. Bob, let's get started. Tell us a little bit about yourself, and kind of how you got on this journey.Bob Miller 00:05:04Well, that's, that's interesting. I was sort of like a mid-career coming to the natural health field, because in my early 30s, I found myself with a severe case of ulcerative colitis.Bob Miller 00:05:15And I was in the hospital for 21 days. probably within hours of death, pleading to death. And they told me I've got one option, and that is cut out the colon and wear a bag. Didn't sound like a lot of fun.Dr. Deb Muth 00:05:27Not an option I would want.Bob Miller 00:05:29So, you know, the medical folks wasn't real happy with me, but I said, yeah, I'd like to explore some alternative things.Never thinking that I'd get into this field, and then I just, you know, worked with some herbalists and things that I found absolutely fascinating. So, that's how I got into this around 30 years ago. And, haven't looked back since, and just having a… having a blast as we now move into how our genetics impacts things. So, that's what we're gonna… that's what we're gonna talk about today.Dr. Deb Muth 00:05:58I'm excited to talk about this genetic thing. When you started over 30 years ago, what kind of patience and problems first inspired you to dig deeper into that root cause healing and kind of get into the genetic piece of it?Bob Miller 00:06:10Sure. Well, you know, as a… now, I'm in a part of the country called Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, where there's a lot of Amish and Mennonite, and they gravitate towards these things.So, this is their first thing to do, and that doesn't work, then they'll go other routes. So, you know, back then, we just saw typical, you know, a little tired, constipation.You know, a little bit of fatigue, arthritis, those kind of things. But things have changed dramatically over the years, as people are now getting more chronically sick. You know, it's worse than it's ever been. And what we're finding is the, the culpritsPrimarily is mold exposure and Lyme disease.When people get those two together, they're just… it's an inflammatory cascade that nobody can seem to unravel. So that's where we spend a lot of our time. And we're also spending a lot of time looking at mental health, like ADD, ADHD. And, we give… this year I'll be speaking at three autism conferences. And we can dig into that a little bit as to why we think we're seeing such a dramatic increase. And aside from autism, that used to be 1 out of 1,000, now it's 1 out of 33, or 23. You know, we're also seeing dramatic increases in ADD, ADHD. People are stressed out. And today, I think we'll have the time to actually go through and show how environmental factors combine with genetics to cause that to happen. So we'll… we should have a fun visit here today. And today, I think we'll have the time to actually go through and show how environmental factors combine with genetics to cause that to happen. So we'll… we should have a fun visit here today.Dr. Deb Muth 00:07:37This should be a fun visit. We can cover lots of topics. I am so excited. So, you founded Nutri Genetic Research Institute in 2015. What did you hope to accomplish, and what kind of surprised you in your findings so far about that?Bob Miller 00:07:51Well, you know, let's back up at what, you know, genetics is used for. Everybody's familiar wi...

Dr. Deb Muth 00:08What if the toxins in your food and water weren't just harming our bodies, but rewriting the very code of human health?My guest today, MIT scientist Dr. Stephanie Sineff, has spent over a decade connecting the dots between environmental toxins, metabolic chaos, and neurological decline. You'll want to hear every word of this conversation.You guys can put our, Serenity ad in here, and then I'll do the standard intro.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective.And today, we're diving into how environmental toxins and nutritional imbalances are silently shaping chronic disease patterns, from autoimmune disorders to neurodegenerative decline.And how we can take back control of our health. So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let's get started on your journey to deeper healing.So, Dr. Sunif, so glad to have you here. I can't wait to have this conversation with you. We were just chatting off-camera a few seconds ago about what we're going to chat about, but tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into this field of looking at toxins and mitochondria.Seneff 01:50Okay, yeah, my background is a bit eclectic, so it starts out with biology. I have an undergraduate degree in biology from MIT. My PhD is in electrical engineering and computer science, so that's quite a switchover. And most of my career, I was writing computer code to train computers to talk to humans in a naturalconversation… conversational interaction with computers. We were pioneers in that space. You can see that it has really taken off now. And actually, by 2006, 2007, I started to realize thatthe kind of work I did already then was getting compromised by the, by the emergence of AI.And I got concerned that, I wouldn't be able to sustain the path I was on. And it's happening now, of course, to the young… many people, young people today, are facing a crisis in computer science, because it used to be if you had skills in hacking code, you were good to go, you know, and that's just not true anymore, so that's another whole story, but anyway, I decided I needed to do something different, and I pivoted in a big way in 2007.managed to get the company that had been funding me, a Taiwanese company called Quanta Computers, And they,We're willing to switch over to funding me to do research on health and toxic chemical exposures.Which was a miracle that they let… they let me switch over to that, and that was fantastic, 2007. So it's been almost 20 years.that I've been looking for toxic chemical exposures and their association with human disease. And I focused initially on autism and heart disease, kind of for personal reasons, because I knew people who had, you know, who had those issues.But it led into a much, much bigger story, and I'm super excited about what's happened over the last 20 years. It's been a continual learning experience for me, and I've just kept broadening my space in biology, furiously reading papers as I discovered new concepts and trying to explore those.opening up new windows, and it's just been a profusion of learning over the past 20 years, and I've published many papers at this point.Peer-reviewed papers on the topics of toxic chemical exposures and disease.Particularly, glyphosate is the one I really focused on, and I wrote the book, Toxic Legacy, how the weed killer glyphosate is Destroying Our Health and the Environment.That was published in 2021. So.Dr. Deb Muth 04:18So I'm sure you have a few thoughts about the administration wanting to bring that back to be made at home instead of China, right?Seneff 04:26I know, that's so interesting. And actually, you know, he makes a point that I agree with, which is that we are relying on China.for importing a whole bunch of stuff that's really toxic, and we're pouring it all over our food supply, so China's probably very happy to poison us, you know? Oh, absolutely. It's kind of ironic that we're doing that, and he makes a good point that we shouldn't be relying on China for these chemicals that are poisoning us, but where he misses the point is he says, well, we just need to poison ourselves, you know? Rather than getting rid of that chemical, we need to really change the way we grow food.I think it's the number one most important thing right now.in America is to change the way we grow food, and it has to be certified organic, regenerative. We need to focus on healing the soil, just as we have to heal the gut. I mean, we've really messed up the microbes in both the soil and the gut, and the consequences, as you can see, are a huge problem with human disease.Dr. Deb Muth 05:20They're devastating. I mean, we have so much chronic illness and so much neurological disease these days, and just the rise of autism, it should be telling us that we're doing something wrong, right?Seneff 05:31Absolutely.Dr. Deb Muth 05:32We have a problem. For those people who are listening that don't understand what the term glyphosate is, can you explain that a little bit to them?Seneff 05:39Yeah, so it's one of the many herbicides that we use. We use herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides in agriculture, all these poisons, and it kind of seems crazy to me that we would think it's okay to pour poisons all over our food supply. I don't understand why we think that's fine.Yeah. You know, categorically. Glyphosate is supposed to be a wonderful chemical, because it's an herbicide that kills all plants except for those that have been engineered to resist it.And supposedly is completely harmless to humans. And that's what gets to be, you know, disbelief, because how can something so toxic to plants be harmless to humans? Just, how can it be?Dr. Deb Muth 06:14We haven't been re-engineered like the seeds that they use from Monsanto, so how can it not affect us if it only affects everything but their seeds that they've modified to make grow beautifully under that condition? It doesn't make any sense.Seneff 06:32Right, and of course, the critical thing they missed is that our gut microbes do have that pathway. It's the chicken mate pathway that it disrupts. Really critical in all the plants, and in most of the microbes.In the soil and in the gut, and so it kills off the microbes as well as the plants, and when it kills off your gut microbes, you gotta watch out, because gut dysbiosis is a huge thing. And we've had so many papers coming out lately thatTalking about the relationship between gut dysbiosis and all kinds of different diseases.Dr. Deb Muth 07:01Do you think that's why we see so much gut dysbiosis these days?Seneff 07:04Oh, absolutely. I think it's not just glyphosate, because we have lots of poisons that are messing up our gut microbes, but glyphosate is a really big one, because the shikimate pathway is essential for many of the microbes, and they use it to make essential nutrients for the host. So we get compromised as well, just because they can't make those nutrients in that.Dr. Deb Muth 07:22It's so…Seneff 07:22lies.Dr. Deb Muth 07:23so much harder today to treat people with gut issues than it was 25 years ago when I started. It was so much easier. And now, it's, like, nearly impossible sometimes to get some of these people back to a good, healthy gut microbiome, no matter what you do, no matter how well they eat, and all the things that they do. It's a struggle, for sure, compared to what it was 20 years ago.Seneff 07:44It's interesting that you have that personal experience, because I think people like you really can see what's happening.Dr. Deb Muth 07:49and appreciate.Seneff 07:50the difference between then and now. I, of course, as a child, autism was not something I knew about at all.Really, when I was a child. It didn't exist, basically. I mean, it was so rare.And now, you know, everyone knows someone with autism, you know, pretty much.Dr. Deb Muth 08:08autism and Parkinson's and Alzheimer's seems to be just so much commonplace. Everybody knows somebody in their family that is affected by one of those disorders, if not multiples, andWe tend to say it's genetic, right? Well, there's got to be a genetic… why wasn't it genetic 50 years ago, or 100 years ago? But now, all of a sudden, it's so prevalent in our environment that we've just become acceptable of it, and I think that's wrong for us to do that. We shouldn't be doing that.Seneff 08:38I know. I find it very interesting how quickly it appears that humans adapt to the new normal, you know?Dr. Deb Muth 08:44Yeah.Seneff 08:45It's normal that you have, you know.3% of the kids have autism, that's normal, you know? It's just like, no, it's not. And also, of course, all the Alzheimer's and dementia and Parkinson's, as you mentioned, in the elderly, those are connected, because they're all related to brain problems that are being caused by chemicals that are destroying the brain.Dr. Deb Muth 09:03Yeah. So, how does glyphosphate interact with our body's ability to absorb those essential nutrients, like sulfur?Seneff 09:12Yeah, well, it's… that's a big… that's a big question. I don't know ...

Dr. Deb Muth 00:04What if the future of healing isn't about replacing cells, but about teaching your body how to heal itself again? We keep hearing the words stem cells and exoomes thrown around like they're interchangeable, but they're not. One is regulated, controversial, and often misunderstood. The other is rapidly emerging as one of the most exciting communication systems in human biology.Dr. Deb Muth 00:33And here's the real question no one's asking. Are we actually regenerating tissue or are we just stimulating the body to remember how it used to heal? Tired of being told your labs are normal, but you still feel terrible? At Serenity Healthcare Center, we don't chase symptoms. We find the root cause. hormones, gut health, autoimmune conditions, chronic fatigue, brain fog.Dr. Deb Muth 01:02We use cuttingedge functional and regenerative medicine to get you real answers and a real path forward. This isn't your average doctor's office. This is medicine the way it was meant to be practiced. You deserve to feel like yourself again. Visit serenityhealthcarecenter.com to book your appointment today. Let us help you heal from the inside out.Dr. Deb Muth 01:28Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I'm Dr. Deb, your host. And if you've been following regenerative medicine, you've probably noticed the confusion. Patients are asking me every week, are exoomes stem cells? Are stem cells legal in the United States? I heard the FDA is shutting down all these clinics. Can I even get this therapy? Do I have to leave the country for treatment? Today, we're cutting through the noise. This episode is not hype.Dr. Deb Muth 01:54It's not sales. It's education so you can understand the science, the regulatory reality, and the clinical difference between stem cell therapy and exoome therapy. And here's what I want you to know right up front. Yes, these therapies are being used in the United States every single day. Yes, they're being offered by highly trained physicians in integrative and regenerative medicine clinics across the country.Dr. Deb Muth 02:22Some are being used in FDA registered clinical trials. Some are being used in observational studies and some are being used in clinical practice under physician discretion. The landscape is nuanced and you deserve to understand it. So, grab your cup of coffee or tea and settle in for a deep dive into the most understood therapies in regenerative medicine.Dr. Deb Muth 02:43what they actually are, how they work, the regulatory landscape, and how they might support your body's natural healing capacity. Let's talk wellness now. So, let me start by asking you something. When you hear the word stem cell, what do you picture? Most people imagine damaged tissues magically regenerating or a torn meniscus growing back, cartilage reforming it into an arthritic joint or damaged brain tissue being replaced with healthy new beautiful cells. It's a beautiful vision.Dr. Deb Muth 03:15And while it's not quite that simple, the reality is actually more sophisticated and honestly more beautiful. Stem cells are powerful and they absolutely work, but the way they work and the mechanism by which they support healing is far more elegant and more so than most people really understand. And if you're going to invest in regenerative therapy, you deserve to understand what you're actually receiving.Dr. Deb Muth 03:44So, let's start at the beginning. What are stem cells? At their core, stem cells are undifferentiated cells. That means they haven't yet decided what they want to be when they grow up. Unlike a heart cell or a skin cell or a bone cell which have already committed to a specific function, stem cells exist in this beautiful state of potential.Dr. Deb Muth 04:05They have two remarkable abilities. First, they can self-renew. They can make copies of themselves, maintaining a reserve of these powerful cells throughout your lifetime. Second, they can differentiate under the right conditions. They can transform into specialized cell types. Bone cells, cartilage cells, nerve cells, muscle cells, even blood cells.Dr. Deb Muth 04:27This is why they've captured the imagination of the medical world. The potential is extraordinary. Now, there are several types of stem cells and understanding the differences matters tremendously for both understanding how they work and understanding how they're regulated. Adult mezzenymal stem cells. We call these MSC's are the most commonly used regenerative medicine.Dr. Deb Muth 04:54These come from bone marrow, atapost tissue, that's fat, and other adult sources. They're what we can call multi-potent, meaning they can become several types of cells, but not every type. A bone marrow stem cell isn't going to become a brain cell, for instance. It has potential but it's directed potential.Dr. Deb Muth 05:19Then we have perinatal stem cells. These come from umbilical cord blood cord tissue or something called Wharton's jelly which is the gelatinous substance inside the umbilical cord. These cells are younger, more potent, and research by Weiss and colleagues published in stem cells back in 2006 showed that Wharton's jelly derived MSC's have superior proliferation and differentiation potential compared to bone marrow derived cells.Dr. Deb Muth 05:48They're like comparing a 20-year-old athlete to a 50-year-old athlete. Both can perform, but one has more reserve capacity, more vigor, and more regenerative potential. And this isn't this is very important because the perinatal sources umbilical cord tissue Wharton's jelly amniotic tissue these are what many regenerative medicine clinics in the United States are using today and they're using them because these tissues are incredibly rich in not just stem cells but growth factors cytoines and exoomes.Dr. Deb Muth 06:21Then there are embryionic stem cells. These are pur potent and they become any cell type in the body, but they're highly regulated, ethically controversial, and honestly, they're not being used in clinical practice in the United States outside of the very specific FDA approved research trials.Dr. Deb Muth 06:41So, when clinics talk about stem cell therapy, they're almost never talking about embryionic stem cells. Now, here's where it gets interesting and this is the part that changes everything about how we understand regenerative medicine. When you receive stem cell therapy, let's say someone injects umbilical cord derived messenymal stem cells into your arthritic knee, those cells do not typically engraft or become new tissue in any permanent way.Dr. Deb Muth 07:12They don't set up shop in your joint and start cracking out new cartilage cells for the rest of your life. So what are they actually doing then? Well, in 2011, researchers Arnold Arnold Kaplan and Dennis Korea published a landmark paper in stem cells translational medicine that fundamentally changed how we understand MSC therapy.Dr. Deb Muth 07:35They proposed that we should stop calling memal stem cells and start calling them medicinal signaling cells. Why? Well, because their primary therapeutic benefit doesn't come from what they become. It comes from what they secrete. Think of stem cells as incredibly sophisticated biological pharmacies. When you inject them into damaged tissue, that arthritic knee, that inflamed autoimmune condition, that injured brain, that don't just sit there passively, they sense the environment.Dr. Deb Muth 08:07They detect inflammation. They recognize the tissue damage and they understand that the immune dysregulation is present and they see that and respond. They start pumping out hundreds of bioactive molecules, growth factors that tell your cells to repair and rebuild, cytoines that modulate inflammation, chemocines that recruit your body's own healing cells to the area.Dr. Deb Muth 08:32And these tiny membranes bound packages called extracellular vesicles, including exosomes, which we're going to talk about extensively today as well. These secreted factors are giving instructions to your native cells. They're saying, "Let's reduce inflammation. Let's modulate your immune response. Let's promote angioenesis.Dr. Deb Muth 08:53" That's the formation of new blood vessels, bringing nutrients and oxygen. Let's stimulate your own resident stem cells to wake up and get to work. Reduce cell death in damaged tissue and restore normal cellular function. This is called paracrine signaling. It's the cellto cell communication. And this is where the real therapeutic power lives.Dr. Deb Muth 09:14The stem cells themselves, many of them die within days to weeks, but the cascade of healing they trigger, the signals they send, the programs they activate in your own cells, those effects can last for months or even years. Now, this understanding is crucial because it explains why both stem cell therapy and exoo therapy can be effective.Dr. Deb Muth 09:38The stem cells are powerful not because they become new tissue but because of the signals they send and exoomes are those signals isolated and concentrated. The biggest misconception in regenerative medicine is that stem cells replace tissue and in reality they coach healing more than they become healing. They're biological educators teaching your body to remember how it used to heal before chronic inflammation, toxicity, and disease turned off all those programs.Dr. Deb Muth 10:12So if stem cells don't exactly end graft and become the new tissue, if their power is in their signaling and then next logic

Dr. Deb Muth 00:03Welcome to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I am your host, Dr. Deb.And today, I have the pleasure of meeting with Dr. James Greenblatt. I've known Dr. Greenblatt for a very long time. We, started lecturing together, gosh, over 15 years ago.And he is an amazing practitioner. Dr. Greenblatt is dual board certified in psychiatry and internationally recognized.as a pioneer in functional and integrative psychiatry. He's widely regarded as the leading expert on the clinical application of low-dose lithium for mental health.Dr. Greenblatt has spent more than 30 years advancing precision medicine-based approaches that move beyond symptom management to address the root causes of mental illness.And after earning his medical degree at George Washington University.Dr. Greenblatt completed his psychiatry and residency there as a fellow in child and adolescent psychiatry.Joined John Hopkins Medical School, and he currently serves as an assistant clinical professor of Psychiatry at Tufts University. He is a prolific author. Dr. Greenblatt has written 9 books, including his newest book, Finally Hopeful.in… available in January of 2026. We can ask him about this today.And his bestsellers finally focused the breathwork, natural treatment plan for ADHD,Answers to anorexia, Functional and Integrative Medicine for Antidepressant withdrawal, and nutritional lithium, and Untold tale of Mineral and Transforms Lives, that heals the brain.He has founded, in 2019, the Psychiatry Redefined, a leading educational platform training clinicians worldwide in functional and integrative psychiatry. He is a sought-after international speaker. Dr. Greenblatt regularly lecturesOn nutritional psychiatry and the transformative role of functional medicine.I am super excited to have him here with us today. This is going to be a pleasure. You guys are going to love this conversation that we are going to have.And I am going to pick his brain today on functional and integrative psychology and psychiatry, and combining nutrition, biochemistry, and lifestyle with mental health care.I'm really, really happy to have Dr. Greenblatt with us, so I am going to bring him on, and we are going to have this amazing conversation with my friend.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I'm your host, Dr. Deb, and I have with me Dr. James Greenblatt, who I have followed for… we were just chatting about this for over 20 years.He is amazing in what he is doing, and we are going to have this conversation today about integrative psychiatry and the future of mental health. So, welcome to the show, Dr. Greenblatt.James greenblatt md 03:20Thank you, Dips, good to be with you.Dr. Deb Muth 03:22Now, you've been pioneering this integrative psychiatry for decades. What really inspired you to bridge nutrition and psychiatry long before it's become mainstream?James greenblatt md 03:35You know, I developed an interest in college, you know, studying nutrition, and then I remember writing papers on orthomolecular psychiatry, high dose, vitamin B3 for schizophrenia.So, I really did not think I'd be a psychiatrist. I wanted to be a pediatrician when I went to medical school, but, just early interest in nutrition and brain function.And it's been my career now for 30-plus years.Dr. Deb Muth 04:05Wow. Can you define what integrative psychiatry actually means, and how it's different from traditional psychiatry for most people who wouldn't be familiar with that term?James greenblatt md 04:17Sure, I mean, I have to add the word functional as well. I mean, I think, you know, I call myself a functional psychiatrist, but for most of my career, and every book, and everything I did, I would have to use words like functional and integrative.Medicine for mental illness. And, you know, I define integrative medicine as the… Adjunctive lifestyle, mindfulness.And diet, sleep, and exercise.Dr. Deb Muth 04:46Mmm.James greenblatt md 04:46And I kind of use the term functional for kind of a deeper root cause dive, looking at nutritional deficiencies, looking at hormones, looking at genetics. And, you know, to treat patients with mental health challenges, we need both integrative and functional medicine.Dr. Deb Muth 05:05That's awesome. You know, in our integrative space, we often kind of joke that there's no such thing as a Prozac deficiency, right? Can you explain to our listeners how nutrient deficiencies, gut health, or inflammation can play a role in mental illness?James greenblatt md 05:23Sure, I mean, I think the most importantBeginning of this conversation would be that, you know, 10 people with depression, there might be 10 different underlying factors.Dr. Deb Muth 05:35Yeah.James greenblatt md 05:35And we do know that there's not an antidepressant deficiency, so we have to look deeper. And… and that's,just different than our current psychiatry model, where it's just symptomatic-based medicine. Everyone who's depressed.It's an antidepressant.And by looking at functional integrative medicine, we're looking at B12 and vitamin D and zinc and magnesium. We're looking at hormones, we're looking at the gut, and we're trying to determine what might be either causing or contributing to that person's depression.Dr. Deb Muth 06:10Is there a particular,flavor that you see more commonly with others, like depression versus anxiety versus bipolar. Is there a particular underlying factor that you see more commonly than others?James greenblatt md 06:27Well, the short answer is no, and that's why this work takes time, because you have to think.You know, every patient that walks in the office is different. I mean, I think the overarching umbrella is nutritional deficiencies, you know, whether… regardless of weight, regardless of diet. I mean, I have people coming in who've been eating…You know, these ketogenic or paleo diets, you know, perfect organic foods, and are profoundly nutritionally deficient.So I think nutritional deficiencies would be number one, and then, you know, the whole host of, you know, infections and hormone problems and inflammatory issues related to celiac disease is really common in the mental health space that's ignored.Dr. Deb Muth 07:14Yeah. Celiac disease is really not paid attention too much, other than thinking that it's damaging the gut. They don't really think about all the other aspects of the body that are being affected by the gut not being able to absorb the nutrients properly and then utilize them properly. It's really sad.James greenblatt md 07:34we find out… and there's research to support it. That's the tragedy. This is not something, as clinicians, that we found. We have many, many years of research showing high rates of anxiety and depression,you know, amongst those with, celiac disorder because of this chronic malnutrition, and many patients present without any GI symptoms, just mental health complaints, but nobody's looking at celiac.Dr. Deb Muth 08:02Yeah. You know, I'm sure there's people that are listening to us thinking, there's no way thatEverybody who's depressed or anxious has a nutritional deficiency. When we're… live in a country where there's so much abundance of food, and the obesity rates are high, and most people are very plump, how could those people be deficient in nutrients? What do you say to people who think like that?James greenblatt md 08:28Yeah, I mean, I think that, you know, we have,what's called high caloric malnutrition, so regardless of weight,I would say the vast majority of patients with a mental health issueI would say my best guess would be 90-plus percent.Dr. Deb Muth 08:47Wow.James greenblatt md 08:47We would find nutritional deficiencies.Dr. Deb Muth 08:51And part of this, we've discovered, is genetics.James greenblatt md 08:56People having, kind of, genetic needs for Higher amounts of certain micronutrients.Some of it is just the kinds of foods people are eating. The kind of ultra-processed food actually strips the body of micronutrients.So, it is just so common, and many of these tests are pretty simple that your primary care doctor could do in the office.Dr. Deb Muth 09:22So, traditional labs can identify some of these nutritional deficiencies. They don't necessarily have to invest thousands of dollars in advanced nutrient testing to find these things out.James greenblatt md 09:35Absolutely. I mean, I think, you know, oftentimes when we're working with a patient who has failed traditional psychiatric treatment, we do need some functional, testing, butI'm quite convinced we could change the trajectory of our mental health epidemic in this country by some labs that are covered by every insurance company on the planet. Like, people think of vitamin D as, you know, building bones or immune function.It has dramatic relationships to mental health problems, demonstrated over 30 years of research. So vitamin D and B12 and folate, all simple blood tests that are covered by all health insurances.Dr. Deb Muth 10:18You know, with the change of genetics, MTHFR is so popularly known these days. It's probably the most popular genetic mutation that people know of.And in the mental health space, it plays a significant role as well in that absorption of B12 and folat

Dr. Deb Muth 0:03What are the answers to your child's chronic allergies, ADHD, or autism?weren't just in another prescription, but in restoring balance to their body chemistry. Today's guest has spent nearly two decades uncovering those answers through integrative and biomedical medicine. That's a mouthful, isn't it?Helping children heal when nothing else seemed to work.This is the conversation about science, compassion, and changing the future of pediatric care.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now.The show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore regenerative breakthroughs, and empower you with the practical tools to heal. I'm your host, Dr. Deb, your medical detective, and today's episode is one every patient should hear.My guest is Dr. Anu Usman Singh, Medical Director of True Health Medical Center in Naperville, Illinois, and the owner of Pure Compounding Pharmacy.And for over 17 years, she has been pioneering evidence-based integrative interventions for children with ADD, autism, allergies, and complex gastrointestinal and metabolic disorders.She's not only a practicing physician, she's a researcher who's investigated copper-zinc imbalances.metallonine dysfunction, biofilm-related infections, vitamin D in pregnancy, and hyperbaric oxygen therapy.Dr. Usman serves on the executive board of TACA, and is a faculty member at MAPS, training other practitioners in pediatric integrative care. So get ready for a conversation that will open your mind and heart to the possibilities of when medicine truly becomes holistic.If you guys can insert the ad in here, that'd be great.Well, welcome back. I'm so excited to have Dr. Usman with me today. I have known her for, oh my gosh, 15, 17 years, something like that. We're aging ourselves.Anju 02:32Oh, yeah, when we were in our 20s, right?Dr. Deb Muth 02:35Yes, exactly. So, welcome back, and I am so excited for you to be here, because you have literally helped thousands of families over the years.But I'd love for you to share a little bit about your journey, kind of who you are, what drew you into exploring integrative and biomedical approaches for helping children and families.Anju 02:58I think my journey is similar to a lot of you out there, the audience. I mean, we're looking to help our families, and our kids, and ourselves, and I was doing my residency at Cook County Hospital, downtown Chicago, in the 80s.And I thought, oh my goodness, if I could take care of the sickest patients, then I can take care of anybody. So I came from Indiana, and I went to Cook County, and my children, my eldest daughter, started having, severe allergies and asthma, really, really at a young age.And I went to, like, my residence, and I went to my attendings, and I said, this baby is wheezing. And they told me, babies don't have asthma.And I said, she has all the symptoms of asthma. She has asthma.And I remember with, in her crib, I would just nebulize her, you know, and I was like, what is going on?And I figured out that she had a lot of food allergies, and I was nursing her, eating the foods that she was allergic to, and back then, in the 80s, you know, we didn't have the internet, we didn't have Whole Foods, and I just…being a doctor, and I didn't even know what to do, and I felt so hopeless. And I thought, gosh, you know, I'm a doctor, I have these, like, skills, I have… people I can talk to, and I still feel so… it's so difficult. And then this… my particular daughter, the oldest one, her name is Priya, and she developed severe, asthma, and I couldn't figure it out. She was in junior high. Every time she would walk into the lunchroom, she would have a severe asthma attack.And I'll be like, what's going on? What's going on? I kept her home over the weekend, she was better. I sent her back to school, she was bad again.And we figured it out that it was other people eating peanuts.Dr. Deb Muth 04:54Severe peanut allergy.Anju 04:56And I went to the school, and I said, she…can you, like, put her somewhere else? Can… they said, oh, no, that's not fair to other kids and their food. And this was in the 90s.Dr. Deb Muth 05:10Yeah.Anju 05:10And so, I just…You know, my heart goes out to families who are struggling to find answers for their kids, and my daughter Priya, the one I told you about, she ended up passing away from a peanut allergy.And so, I've just…Dr. Deb Muth 05:26Yeah.Anju 05:27My heart goes out to parents and my own kids and their illnesses.And so I just started working with families, with kids, andIt just kind of grew from there.Dr. Deb Muth 05:40Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I think being a mom who went through that yourself, and…was seen but not heard, and turned away from the traditional medical community, you're forced to start finding answers on your own. And we always feel like we're on an island by ourselves in the medical world when we're doing that.Anju 06:01Yeah, I, it was really hard when I found out, you know, about…Integrative medicine, and just different…ideas and approaches to diet and supplements, I thought, how come I wasn't trained in any of this?And…Dr. Deb Muth 06:21So angry when I learned some of the things that I learned in the beginning. I was like, same thing, like, how did they not teach us this? And then I think, you know, it's my fault, was I asleep, was I not paying attention, whatever. And then you just realize, like, there's this whole part of the human body.That they just didn't teach us.Anju 06:42Yeah, so then I… I, probably like you, we had to learn it on our own. There weren't, like, classes or any way to learn this stuffAnd I just reached out. There's a clinic that,I don't know if you've heard of the Pfeiffer Treatment Center?Dr. Deb Muth 07:00No.Anju 07:01Do you know Carl Pfeiffer from the attendees.He has a clinic called the Pfeiffer Treatment Center in New Jersey. It was called the Princeton Brain Bio Center.Dr. Deb Muth 07:12And in the 70s, they did orthomolecular medicine for patients with ADD.Anju 07:18And schizophrenia.Dr. Deb Muth 07:20Mmm…Anju 07:21and depression.And they used to categorize them in 3 categories, and at the time, they called them histopenics, histidelics, and pyrolurics.Dr. Deb Muth 07:31Okay.Anju 07:32Histapenix were low histamine patients.Delix were high histamine patients, and pyrolurics were their own kind of category. We added another category of copper-zinc imbalances, and then we would categorize that population into high histamine, low histamine, pyrolurics, and copper-zinc.Now we talk about under-methylation, over-methylation. Sure. So, under-methylation is the, you know, the high histamine people, they can't clear the histamine. And the over-methylators are, you know, what we call about low histamine now.And, and then pyrolurics and copper zinc. So…I lost my train of thought, but in the 80s, when I was going through this, in the 90s, I reached out to the Pfeiffer Treatment Center.He's like, can I calm and just hang out and, like, see what you guys do? Because I need some answers.And I started working there and, started doing research on copper-zinc imbalances, and I did it in children with autism.And that's how people started coming to me, and I kinda got, like. not famous, but I, you know, the word spread about, okay, we could talk about it, and Dr.Walsh was the, you know, PhD there that did a lot of the research, so we worked together for 8 years.Dr. Deb Muth 09:05Isn't it crazy to think that we knew about histamine issues way back in the 70s? You know, I got the pleasure of being trained by, environmental medicine doctors. Dr. Wayne Konetsky and Glenn Toth taught me about environmental medicine, and what we called histamine issues that we call it today, mast cell, right? But when I was learning in the early 2000s, it was labeled as chemical sensitivity. And so it was just people that would react to everything, and we really didn't know why, and they didn't necessarily have this very specific allergic reaction, but we knew they were reacting, and we would try to treat them, to lower the histamine way back then. And it's taken all these years, 25 years, to get to a point where we understand mast cell activation now, and histamine issues.And it's really sad to me that it's taking this long for us to identify things.And we've all got our journey, and I loved back in those days, too, because as I learned, I would call people up and say, hey, I just got a patient from you, and they told me this great story, and I have other people, can I come see what you were doing? And back then, everybody was very open. They were like, yes, please, come, learn. Now everybody's like, oh, we can't teach you, we can't give you our secrets, but…Or pay me $20,000 to come learn with me. But back then, I mean, everybody was just… we were all in the same boat. We were all just trying to learn from each other.Anju 10:36Oh, yeah, oh yeah, and any bit of knowledge you got, you're like…Dr. Deb Muth 10:41Yes.Anju 10:41God, you know, I learned this piece, and…Dr. Deb Muth 10:43Hmm?Anju 10:44We just kind of built from that. I keep thinking about b...

Dr. Deb Muth 0:03What if everything you've been told about getting healthy is backwards?What if chasing symptoms with pills, procedures, and quick fixes is exactly why you're still sick?Tired, inflamed, and frustrated.Today, I'm sitting down with Dr. Holly Donahue, a naturopathic doctor who walked away from corporate burnout to discover the truth.Your body already knows how to heal. You just need to remove what's blocking it, and give it what it's missing.If you're done with Band-Aid solutions and ready for real, lasting transformation, this conversation changes everything.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal.I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective, and today, we're diving into the hidden truth about whole body wellness, and why treating symptoms will never give you the vibrant health you deserve.I'm joined by Dr. Holly Donahue, a licensed naturopathic doctor with over two decades of clinical experiencingHelping high performers heal from burnout, chronic fatigue, hormone imbalance, and stubborn weight issues.She's the founder of Simple Health, and she's here to share the science-backed approach to root cause healing that addresses your body, mind, and spirit, not just your lab values.If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with a chronic condition, or is struggling with unexplained symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, hormonal chaos, or chronic inflammation.This episode is for you. Please share it with them.So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind, settle in, and let's get started on your journey to deeper healing.And we'll be right back after a word from our sponsor.All right. So, Dr. Donahue, let's start with the question that's on everyone's mind, right? How did you transition away from corporate and into the world of, naturopath… natural medicine, naturopathic medicine, root cause medicine, all the wonderful terms we're using for this these days?Dr. Holly Donahue 02:56Yeah, first of all, thanks for having me, Dr. Debb. I so appreciate it, and that is a beautiful question, and I will share with you my health journey and why I got into this, and…how I got to do this amazing work, right? Because I always believed, for me, my higher being is God, and it walked right into me, right? Because I was pretty happy in the apparel industry. So, just as you said, I was in the apparel industry, I, my education doesn't really matter, but double, like, marketing and textile marketing, and I was in design, and I was working in design.from LA to London to the East Coast.And 2 days after September 11th, to sum it up, I got laid off. Even though I had been pulled out of a job where my vice president of the company was like, I want you to come down here with me, and the apparel industry, you're switching every two to three years. For those that don't know it, that's just how the journey works, and I was known as a changemaker in the field.And so, here we are two days after September 11th, and I was seeing a naturopath, and I was, let's see, 29 to 30, right? And so, prior to that, the reason why I searched out for a naturopath was because in my teenage years, and…Up until that time, I was suffering with horrible menstrual cramps and horrible depression, hence why I moved to LA, thinking if I was in the sun all the time, my life would change, which we all do, change our place, change our time, things will change. Had nothing to do with family or roots, but I thought, if I'm around sunshine all the time, I won't be depressed. Well, wherever you go, there you are, because it went with me, right? So I had my foot down to the ground, and I wasjust like, I am committed to not living life like this, right?even at 7 years old, I had strep ear all the time, and my mom's like, we're gonna have your tonsils out, and I'm like, no we're not. And she goes, no, you're gonna feel so much better, no more strep ear. And I'm like, God gave them to me for a reason, you're not taking them out. She's like, okay, like, I was really strong.And so, let's wind up to 2 days after September 11th. Prior to that, I had started to retake chemistry and biology, because I haven't taken it since my textile years, which was a different chemistry, right? And so, I thought, well, I'll just start and see where it goes, because my naturopath at the time.Dr. Dadama was like, we need more naturopaths, and I'm like, I'm really good where I am. I love what I do, I love corporate America, I love designing, I love product development.And he's like, no, no, no, so he kept talking. Well, when this all fell…And 2 days after September 11th, I raised my hand and I said, God, I hear you. I went off to naturopathic medicine school in my 30s.And I never looked back, and I just really believe the gift of healing was, put together for me in so many ways. And so, why do I love talking about natural medicine, naturopathic medicine? Because I was not gonna just take an antidepressant, which is what the medical world… they wanted to give me a pill for a nail, that's what I call it. I didn't need to be on birth control. I wasn't sexually active.Right? So none of that made sense to me. And it wasn't until I really changed my nutrition, began to understand who I am as a person, and what my body really needed, did I heal.Dr. Deb Muth 06:20Isn't that amazing? Like, I think so many of us enter into the alternative quote-unquote world.Because what is happening over here in what is known as the traditional medicine worldisn't working for people, and no one's listening to them, and we just follow the traditional protocol, whether it makes sense or not, this is the protocol, everybody gets it. There's no individuality, no personalization, nothing that happens in that world.And so, people tend to go looking for that… that uniqueness that natural medicine and naturopaths allow to happen. And that's where true healing actually begins, for so many people.Dr. Holly Donahue 07:02Yes, and honestly, once my hormones were healed, hence why I talk about hormones all the time, and my thyroid was healed, and I was eating the right nutrition, and for those of you that are listening, please stop playing with nutrition, like, get on that… get on that connection of what works for you. And I'll be honest, like, none of us as doctors can… we can guide you.what's really good in eating, but figuring it out for yourself is important. And the other naturopath that I saw.Never healed me.I only got so far by just taking supplements and herbs. And I speak that into that, that's why I'm so driven around the foundation of our medicine. I am not just saying this, is your nutrition. And until I changed my nutrition, and I figured out what workouts work best for me, and I took all the toxicity and mucus out of my body, I was just inflamed, and I didn't reallyit. I was eating all the wrong foods.Right? My body can't do searches and simple sugars, hence why I talk about it, and so many people are addicted to sugar, and they deny it.Dr. Deb Muth 08:11Yeah.Dr. Holly Donahue 08:11It's a comfort food, right? So, I always say, I can't heal you until I fix your nutrition and your sugar, and if that's not something that you're willing to work on with me with love, I am not the right practitioner.Because I remember it didn't heal me.Dr. Deb Muth 08:29Yeah.I think we forget that nutrition is our medicine, right?Food is thy medicine. And it's so easy for us to just say, but it's easier to just take 10 supplements than it is to change my diet, cook for the whole family, and then cook for me.Nutrition is really, really difficult for people, because so much of who we are is born into nutrition, right? All of those family traditions of what we make at Christmas, or Easter, or what do you do for a celebration, when all of that changes, you kind of… you have a loss for things. So how do you work around that with people?Dr. Holly Donahue 09:12Yeah, so I look at that as, I'm always suggesting to individuals in all these different celebrations, like, if you're the one, kind of.that is the pinnacle that's creating the celebrations, could you change that, right? So maybe you always have people over for your children's birthday parties, and you have cake, and, you know, you have a spaghetti dinner, whatever it looks like. I'm not judging, I'm not here to judge, I just know what works, right? Then maybe you get to change that. How about doing an outdoor activity with the children? Maybe choosing to go on a hike to the beach where they'reactive.And then, you know, you do a healthy treat with them, or do we always have to have these celebrations around sugar? And I'm talking America, because I never saw this when I lived in Europe, like, the way it is here, right? Or, as adults, we're celebrating with alcohol all the time, right? I removed sugar and alcohol from my diet years ago just because I knew I just didn't feel good with it. I'm not judging that that's what you need to do.So, back to your question, the other suggestion I say, if you can with your family, because I know there's all sorts of…Hidden rules, quiet rules, ways you have to do things to be fit in. First of all, stand up for your own health, so I suggest that. And secondly, how about if you bring something to that meal that you can share with everybody that you know that you can eat? If that doesn't work, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty confident,...

Dr. Deb MuthFebruary 2026, 3 million documents released, a network exposed. But here's what no one is saying.The trauma of trafficking doesn't end when the victim escapes.It doesn't even end when that survivor's lifetime.It writes itself into DNA. It alters the stress response of children not yet born.And it creates epigenetic markers that echo through 3, 4, and even 5 generations.This is not a metaphor, this is molecular biology. And if we don't understand how deeply trauma sees itself.biologically, genetically, and spiritually, we will never understand why autoimmune disease, addiction, and chronic illness are epidemic in families that carry this hidden history.Today, we're going deeper than headlines.We're going into the cells, the genes, and the soul.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. We're here to uncover root causes, explore regenerative medicine, and empower you to heal from the inside out. I'm Dr. Deb, your medical detective, and today we're confronting one of the most important and least discussed wellness topics of our time.How the exploitation and trafficking of women and children doesn't just harm individuals, it damages bloodlines.And if you're someone who carries an unexplained chronic illness, autoimmune disease, addiction, or trauma that seems to have no clear origin, this episode may finally connect the dots.Grab your cup of tea or coffee, settle in, and let's go deep into this subject.Can you put an ad sponsor right here before we get started?Let's start with what just happened.In February of 2026, the Department of Justice released over 3 million pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein. According to The Guardian, on February 2nd, 2026, these files contained allegations that Epstein didn't just abuse women, he provided them to other powerful men.One accuser identified Harvey Weinstein from a photo lineup.Describing coercion and payment.Another FBI document described threats of force.Lativia launched a criminal investigation after the files linked Epstein's network to modeling agencies overseas.But here's what I need you to understand.As a practitioner who treats trauma survivors, Epstein's operation was not new.It was ancient. From Mesopotamian slave codes to Roman markets to the transatlantic trade, trafficking has always been about the same thing.Power, and exploiting vulnerability for profit.The tools change. Private jets instead of ships, social media instead of market squares.But the wound, it's identical.And that wound… It doesn't heal when the victim is freed. It embeds itself into biology.Let me explain what happens when a human being experiences the kind of trauma that trafficking creates.The immediate biological response. When someone is trafficked, their body enters a state of chronic survival mode. The autonomic nervous system, which controls unconscious functions like heart rate, digestion, immune response, it gets locked into a fight or flight.Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, floods the system. At least, at first. This is protective. But when the threat never ends, when abuse is daily, when escape is impossible, cortisol stays elevated for months and even years.And here's what chronic cortisol does. It suppresses immune function, making the body vulnerable to infections, cancer, and autoimmune disease. It disrupts the gut microbiome, leading to leaky gut, food sensitivity, and systemic inflammation.It dysregulates hormone production, thyroid sex hormones, insulin, and it creates metabolic chaos. It damages the hippocampus, the part of the brain region responsible for memory and emotional regulation.But it goes deeper than that. Cellular memory, trauma written into our tissues.Research published in the Biological Psychiatry of 2025 and Frontiers in Psychiatry 2025 shows that trauma doesn't just affect the brain, it reprograms cells throughout the body.Mitochondria, the energy factories inside every cell, shift from producing ATP energy to producing reactive oxygen species, stress signals.This is why trauma survivors often develop chronic fatigue syndrome.That cortisol, over time, starts to dive down, and eventually can't be produced when it's supposed to be during a traumatic episode, and it stays at this low level, creating what we now know as chronic fatigue syndrome.Inflammatory genes turn on and stay on, even after the threat is gone. This is why we see such high rates of autoimmune disease, lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, MS, inflammatory bowel disease, in trafficking survivors.The fascia, the connective tissue that wraps every muscle and organ, stores trauma physically. This is why survivors develop chronic pain, fibromyalgia, and tension that no amount of massage can release.The body literally remembers the violation at a cellular level.The ACE study, Childhood Trauma as a Disease Predictor, the CDC's Adverse Childhood Experiences Study in 2025, showed that 64% of the U.S. adults had experienced at least one ACE abuse.neglect, or household dysfunction. And nearly 1 in 6 has experienced 4 or more.And the data is devastating. The ACE that you have maybe experienced, if you have had this, you have a higher risk for heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes, autoimmune disease, depression, suicide, and addiction.Trafficking survivors often score 8, 9, or 10 out of a 10 on the ACE scale. Their bodies are biologically aged by trauma.And according to the VA's National Center for PTSD, PTSD is associated with excess mortality, meaning survivors die younger, not just from suicide, but from the stress related to chronic disease.Now, here's where it gets even more profound. What is epigenetics? Well, your DNA is like a library of instructions, but not every book is open all the time. Epigenetics is the system that decides which genes get turned on.or off, without changing the DNA sequence itself.And here's the critical discovery.Trauma can change those epigenetic marks, and those marks can be passed to your children.The Science of Inherited Trauma.The studies on the Holocaust survivors and their descendants showed that children and grandchildren of trauma survivors had altered stress hormone regulation, even though they never experienced the original trauma themselves.Research on famine shows in the Netherlands during World War II,Found that children born to mothers who were pregnant during starvation had higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease decades later.This happens because stress during pregnancy alters the developing fetus' stress response system, and when a pregnant woman is trafficked, abused, or living in chronic fear, her elevated cortisol levels cross the placenta, and the baby's developing brain is bathed in stress hormones.And the child's HPA access, the stress regulation system, Is programmed for hypervigilance.The child is born with a biological predisposition to anxiety, depression, autoimmune disease, and addiction.And it doesn't stop there.That child grows up, and if they have children, their altered stress response can influence the next generation through epigenetic inheritance, and through the environment they create.This is why we see patterns of addiction, autoimmune disease, and mental illness running through families, even when there's no clear genetic mutation.It's not just genetics, it's inherited trauma written into gene expression.There is also a spiritual dimension to this. There's something beyond biology here, something that science is only beginning to touch.Survivors often describe feeling disconnected from their bodies, as if their spirit left during the abuse.And never fully returned.This is disassociation, a survival mechanism.But in many healing traditions, somatic therapy, internal family systems, even ancient spiritual practices, there's recognition that trauma fragments the self.And healing isn't just about regulating cortisol or repairing the gut, it's about reuniting the spirit with the body. It's about teaching the nervous system that it's finally safe to be fully present once again.And when that happens, when one person heals that fracture, it changes the trajectory for everyone else who comes after them.So what do we do with this knowledge? Well, first.Trauma-informed root cause medicine. Healing trafficking survivors and their descendants requires more than talk therapy. It requires nervous system regulation, vagal nerve stimulation, somatic experience, breathwork.Gut healing, repairing the microbiome, addressing that leaky gut, and reducing the inflammation.Hormone balancing, supporting adrenal function, thyroid, and sex hormones, detoxification, clearing accumulated toxins that the stressed body couldn't process, both physically and emotionally.Nutritional restoration. Replenishing the nutrients depleted by chronic stress.This is functional medicine. This is what I do every day with my team.Second, we need epigenetic reversal, and that is actually possible.Here's the hope. Epigenetic markscan be changed. Studies show that meditation therapy, safe relationships, and even nutrition can reverse some of the epigenetic damage caused by trauma.Every time a survivor learns to regulate their nervous system, they're not just healing themselves, they're changing what gets passed to the next generation.Third, we have to speak the truth.Silence protects the perpetrators. Truth-telling breaks generational curses. And every time we name trafficking for what it is, a...

Deb (00:03.606)Within the next seven months, up to 1.5 million Americans could lose access to a medication that they've relied on for decades. Not because it's dangerous, but because a pharmaceutical giant may have lobbied the FDA to eliminate their competition. And if you're one of them, your doctor may already have told you about this issue and stopped prescribing it.This isn't a conspiracy theory. This is documented in federal court filings. This is happening right now. And the company that stands to profit, well, they're the same ones manufacturing the only product that might survive.Today on Let's Talk Wellness Now, we're exposing the desiccated thyroid extract crisis, the corporate manipulation behind it, and what you need to do right now to protect your health. Stay with me because I'm about to share what could save your access to the medication keeping you alive.Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, expose regulatory capture in healthcare, and empower you with the tools to advocate for yourself. I'm Dr. Deb, naturopathic doctor, your medical detective, and today we're diving into one of the most consequential and corrupt healthcare decisions affecting patients right now. If you or someone you love takes Armour thyroid, NP thyroid, or any desiccated thyroid extract,for hypothyroidism or if you've struggled to find a thyroid medication that actually works for your body, this episode is absolutely critical. And if you have celiac disease, gluten sensitivity or corn allergies, what I'm about to reveal will make your blood boil. Now grab your cup of coffee, don't forget your notebook and settle in because what's happening to this medication right now is a masterclass in how pharmaceutical companies use regularDeb (02:06.544)agencies to eliminate competition, control markets, and price gouge patients. And I have all the receipts.Deb (02:20.982)Let me start with what might surprise you. Desiccated thyroid extract, or DTE as we call it, is actually one of the most oldest thyroid medications in the world. And I mean old. From the 1890s through 1970, this was the standard treatment for hypothyroidism.Now let's really dive into that. From the 1890s to the 1970s, this was standard hypothyroidism treatment.In 1965 alone, and this is documented in peer-reviewed literature published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism, approximately four out of every five prescriptions for thyroid hormone in the United States were of natural desiccated thyroid preparations.The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism is a very high-end journal. Now think about that. This wasn't some fringe therapy. This was mainstream medicine. Armour Thyroid, the most recognizable brand name, has been manufactured since the early 1900s, well over a century ago.and this is cited again in NIH bookshelf. When the FDA was officially established in 1938, Arbor thyroid was already on the market. And this is important and I want you to understand why. Under the federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, any drug that was already being marketed before 1938 was automatically grandfathered into the system. That means it didn't have toDeb (04:08.112)go through the formal FDA approval process. And this again is cited under the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act, grandfathered drugs and exemptions. And this is crucial to understanding what happens next. By the 1970s, synthetic levothyroxine, brand name Synthroid and generics became the preferred treatment. Hmm, wonder why?It was easier to standardize, came into consistent doses, and worked well for most patients, and could be mass manufactured. By the 1980s, levothyroxine had largely replaced desiccated thyroid in clinical practice, according to the American Thyroid Association 2014 guidelines for the treatment of hypothyroidism. But here's what matters. Some patients...a very significant minority of them, never felt right on levothyroxine alone. Despite their lab work looking normal, they still had fatigue, brain fog, weight gain, cold intolerance, and depression.These patients often found relief when they switched back to their desiccated thyroid, which contains both T4 and T3 hormones, the way human thyroid naturally produces them. And this is not anecdotal. This is documented in randomized double-blind crossover studies published in Endocrine Practice.For decades, that was fine. Their doctors prescribed it, insurance sometimes covered it, patients were getting better, and the system worked really well. Until August 6th of 2025, just a short time ago, everything changed. On that date, the FDA sent letters to manufacturers, importers, and distributors of desiccated thyroid extract products stating that these medications would need an approval.Deb (06:04.654)a biologics licensed application, a BLA, to remain legally on the market. And this is cited in the FDA's official statement, FDA's actions to address unapproved thyroid medications. understand it says unapproved thyroid medications. However, desiccated thyroid, specifically Armour, has been approved since 1938. And this was dated August 6th through 7th, 2025.This wasn't a guideline. This wasn't a suggestion. It was an endorsement of action. And the timeline they gave them? Well, just 12 months to transition patients to another medication before enforcement action could begin.This was also cited by an FDA notice to the industry, animal derived thyroid products notice to industry, August 6th, 2025. Now do the math, that means August 2026, seven months from now, 1.5 million Americans currently taking this medication. And this number comes from the FDA official statement, citing that it's an estimation of 1.5 million patients receiving prescriptions for these medications.could potentially lose their thyroid access. Now, here's where it gets interesting. The FDA didn't wake up in August of 2025 and decide to regulate desiccated thyroid after a century. This decision has a much longer backstory. And understanding that backstory is critical to understanding what's really happening in this industry.The shift started in 2022. Back in September of 2022, over three years ago, an FDA branch chief sent a letter to the National Associations of Boards of Pharmacy noting that the agency had decided to designate DTE as a biological product, which would affect its eligibility for compounding.Deb (08:13.972)This also is cited in an FDA letter to the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy September 2022.Then two months later, in November of 2022, the FDA's Office of Compounding Quality and Compliance sent a softer letter acknowledging that many Americans take medication to treat hypothyroidism and some choose to take DTE products. The letter stated that the FDA would focus enforcement on cases that pose the greatest public health risks, such as serious adverse offense or serious product quality or adulteration.also is cited by an FDA letter from Francis G. Bromel, the director, Office of Compounding Quality and Compliance, November of 2022. Now, let me just think about this for a second. If this drug has been on the market since the 1800s, been FDA approved since 1938, would we not have seen a health crisis long before 2022?I honestly don't know of any other drug that's been around this long that's used by this many people. Now granted, I haven't done the research on it either, which I can do for you guys, but I'm just thinking if a drug is on the market today and it causes harm, it doesn't make it three years, five years before you see lawsuits everywhere. Why are there no lawsuits on this drug? Why are there no major reactions that people are seen having?Hmm, just thought. But here's the pattern. The FDA was already laying the groundwork back in 2022, testing the waters, signaling where this was headed. The August 2025 action. Then this came down.Deb (10:09.806)August 6, 2025, the FDA announced its position publicly and sent formal letters to all DTE manufacturers, importers, and distributors. This was cited by the FDA Enforcement Action August 6, 2025, letters to manufacturers, importers, distributions of DTE products. The agency stated several concerns. First, DTE products have experienced quality and dosing issues.The FDA cited, and I'm quoting directly from their statement, over 500 adverse events reported associated with DTE products from 1968 to 2025. From 1968 to 2025, we had 500 adverse reactions? What is that math equate to?A couple a year? Come on guys, this is insane! With a substantial increase, you, between 2019 and 2020 that the agency suggested was related to voluntary recalls of sub-potent or super-potent products.This was cited in the FDA statement, over 500 adverse events reported associated with ADT products from 1968 through 2025.Second, the agency expressed concern about batch inconsistency. According to the FDA's official statements, tablets made from the same manufacturing batches may not always provide the same thyroid hormone levels. Okay, this was cited in the FDA statement, tablets made from the same manufacturing batches may not always provide the same thyroid hormone levels. Thirdly, and I want to actually let's back up. I want you to remember I said thatDeb (12:11.216)because further down in this podcast, we're going to talk about this. This is an important point to remember. Thirdly, the agency raised concerns about potential impurities from animal source material,...

Dr. Deb Muth 00:03Well, welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I am your host, Dr. Deb. And what is the most talked about peptides in functional medicine? aren't actually FDA approved. Not because they don't work, but because no one's funded the research to prove it yet. The truth is some of the compounds that dominate wellness forums, BPC-157, TB-500, thymosin beta-4, epitalin occupy a fascinating space between breakthrough science and unregulated experimentation. In today's episode, we're stepping into that gray zone, the world of investigational peptides to separate mechanism from marketing. I'm going to walk you through the science that actually actually shows and where it stops, how to evaluate claims when human data don't yet exist and the quality, purity and safety red flags that you need to recognize. I created in a previous episode,Dr. Deb Muth 01:06so go check that one out. And why honesty is the most important prescription in peptide medicine. If you've ever wondered whether these research-only peptides are the frontier of healing or the next functional medicine fad, this episode is for you. So grab your cup of tea or coffee, get comfortable, and let's talk about what it really means to use peptides that are promising, but still under investigation. So we're going to break just for a second here and have a word from our sponsor. It is because of them that we stay on the air. So thank you for this. And we will be right back. Did you know sweating can literally heal your cells? Infrared saunas don't just relax you. They detox your body, balance hormones and boost mitochondrial energy. I'm obsessed with my Health Tech sauna. And right now, you can save $500 with my code at healthtechhealth.com slash dr-muth-req-25.Dr. Deb Muth 02:15 All right, guys, welcome back. Let's dive into investigational peptides, the evidence gap. So the following peptides we're about ready to discuss are extensively in integrative, functional and regenerative medicine circles. They may have intriguing mechanisms and promising preclinical data. However, they lack FDA approval and the evidence quality varies dramatically. from interesting preliminary research to essentially no human data at all. And this distinction is really critical for maintaining scientific integrity. So let's talk about immune-modulating peptides. There's thymus and alpha-1, and this is an international story on the thymic peptides. Thymusin alpha-1, known as TA1, is marketed internationally as zidaxin.Dr. Deb Muth 03:16 It's a 28 amino acid polypeptide originally isolated from thymusin fraction 5, which was extracted from bovine thymusin tissue. Modern production uses synthetic peptide synthesis. The thymus gland is located behind the sternum and is the primary site for T cell maturation and thymic peptides like TA1 play roles in the human system development and regulation. Now, I love thymus peptides. I love thymus glandular products. I've used thymus glandular products for decades. Ground up animal thymus gland is basically what it is. There's a couple of different supplement companies that I've used over the years that are amazing with this. and they do a fantastic job and they really do help to support the immune system. So when thymus peptides came out, it was really exciting because it took the whole idea of thymus support to a new level.Dr. Deb Muth 04:17 The mechanism actually behind the thymus in alpha-1 is complex and involves multiple aspects of immune function. At the cellular level, TA1 enhances T cell maturation and differentiation, particularly the development of helper T cells and cytotoxic T cells. It modulates T cell receptor expression and can influence the balance between Th1 cell-mediated immunity and Th2 humoral immunity responses. And it also enhances the natural killer cell activity and modulates dendritic cell function, which are critical for antigen presentation. and initiation of adaptive immune responses. And on the cytokine level, TA1 influences production of interleukin-2, IL-2, interferon gamma, IFN-Y, and interleukin-10, IL-10.Dr. Deb Muth 05:19 These create immune modulatory rather than simple immune stimulatory effects. This is a very important distinction because TA1 appears to help balance the immune system rather than simply ramping this up which theoretically makes it safer in conditions where immune overstimulation would be a problem, such as an autoimmune disease. Hashimoto's, autoimmune, lupus, Sjogren's, any of those autoimmune diseases, we don't want to overstimulate their immune system. So you want to use a product like this that's non-stimulating. Now, the regulatory status on TA1 is geographically variable and represents one of the challenges in discussing this peptide with patients. It is not FDA approved in the United States. However, it is approved in several other countries for specific conditions.Dr. Deb Muth 06:19 In Italy, it's approved for treatment of chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis C. In China, it's approved for chronic hepatitis B and adjunct immune compromised patients receiving vaccinations or suffering from certain infections. It has orphan drug designation in the United States for certain cancer indications, but its designation does not constitute approval. It simply provides regulatory incentives for further development. So the evidence base for thymosin alpha-1 is substantial in some areas but comes primarily from non-US populations and research groups, which creates challenges in evaluating quality and generalizable information. So in hepatitis B and C, multiple clinical trials, many conducted in China and Italy, have examined TA1 as an adjunct to antiviral therapy.Dr. Deb Muth 07:21 A meta-analysis by Wu and colleagues published in the Journal of Viral Hepatitis in 2013 examined 23 randomized controlled trials, including over 2,000 patients with chronic hepatitis B. The analysis found that combining TA1 with nucleoside analogs like LAMVDUDE or an and TCAVAR improved the hepatitis antigen seroconversion rates by HBV DNA clearance compared to its nucleoside analogs alone. And the effect sizes were modest but statistically significant with the HBE-AG seroconversion rates improving from about 24% with antivirals alone to 38% in combined therapy. Now in hepatitis C, early trials before the development of direct acting antivirals showed that TA1 combined with interferon alpha improved sustained virology responses and compared to interferon alpha,Dr. Deb Muth 08:30 furon alone, particularly in difficult to treat populations like those with a genotype one or a high viral load. However, the advent of highly effective direct acting antivirals that achieve SRV rates, sorry, SVR rates exceeding 95%, the role of TA1 in hepatitis C has become less clear. Now in sepsis and critical illness, More recent interest has focused on TA1 in severe cases of sepsis and septic shock. Ren and colleagues published a systemic review and meta-analysis in the Frontiers of Immunology in 2022, analyzing 18 randomized controlled trials, including 1787 patients with severe sepsis or septic shock the pooled analysis showed that ta1 administration was associated with reduced 28-day mortality relative risk at 0.70 meaning a 30 reduction in mortality compared to the standard care alone and the effect appearedDr. Deb Muth 09:39 most pronounced in patients with sepsis-induced immunosuppression measured by HLA-DR expression in monocytes. Now, this is amazing because going forward, we're going to talk about something that's commonly known as cytokine storm. Now, cytokine storm really became apparent since 2020 with the viral infection that we're dealing with in the world today. But they were already looking at this kind of cytokine storm produced by sepsis or sepsis-induced immunosuppression. And it triggered this hyperinflammatory response called the cytokine storm. And many patients who survived the initial phase of the immune suppressed stata, characterized by a T cell exhaustion, reduced antigen presentation, and increased susceptibility to secondary infections. Thymusin alpha-1, TA1, may help restore this immune competence in this phase. However, it's important to note that patient selection and timing are critical.Dr. Deb Muth 10:43 Giving this immune stimulant during a hyperinflammatory phase could theoretically worsen outcomes. So you don't want to give it to them while they're in the flare up or the sepsis or the infection, but given to them during the immunosuppression phase afterwards might be beneficial. Now there is also some cancer immunotherapy that we see with TA1 and has been studied as an adjunct in cancer treatment with the hypothesis that it could enhance immune surveillance and response to tumors. And a comprehensive review of Garci and colleagues published in Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy in 2007 examined multiple trials in melanoma, lung cancer, hepatocellular carcinoma, and other malignancies. And the results were mixed. Some trials showed improvement in the immune parameters, increased CD4 in T-cells. improved lymphocyte proliferation responses and some actually showed trends toward improved progression free survival but overall survival benefits were inconsistent and the heterogeneity of the cancer types treatment protocols and outcome measures makes a definitive conclusion difficult as a vaccine adjunct several studies particularly from china have examined ta1 as an adjunct to enhance vaccine responsesDr. Deb Muth 12:11 in immune-compromised populations, including the elderly, dialysis patients, and transplant recipients. The rationale is sound. These populations often mount suboptimal antibody responses to vaccines, and TA1's immune-enhanci...

Dr. Deb Muth0:00Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now. I'm your host, Dr. Zab, and we are continuing our discussion this week on0:08peptides. And so, if you haven't heard our first conversation about peptides,0:13please go back and look at that episode. We talk all about the manufacturing, the safety, the quality of peptides, and we0:20dove into GLP1s. And today we're going to dive into peptides for sexual0:26wellness, immune function, growth hormone, and all the amazing fun things0:32we can do with peptides. So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee or tea, settle0:37in, and let's talk wellness now. And we're going to take a short pause from our sponsor. I know we've got to do0:44that, you guys. They're who keep us on the air. So, I'm going to pause for just a minute and be right back after this0:50message from our sponsor. Ladies, it's time to reignite your vitality. Primal0:56Queen supplements are clean, powerful formulas made for women like you who want balance, strength, and energy that1:03lasts. Get 25% off at primal queen.com. Serenity Health. That's primalqueen.com.1:10Serenity Health. Because every queen deserves to feel in her prime. All1:15right, everybody. We are back. And are you ready? We are talking all things peptide and I am opening the show today1:23with sexual wellness. Yes, I'm going there, you guys. I am going there. You1:29know, this has really become a big issue for people um of all ages. It's not just1:34us older people. It's younger people, too. And there's a whole variety of reasons why we have sexual dysfunction.1:42And when we're talking about sexual dysfunction, we're not just talking about it doesn't work, right? Or I can't1:48reach orgasm. A lot of it is around desire and um the thought of it and1:54wanting to connect, wanting to be kinder to one another, wanting to be touching2:00one another. A lot of it resolves or revolves around that. And so there are some peptides that can help us and I'm2:08really excited to be able to talk about those today. So the first one is called PT-141.2:14This targets the brain not the periphery. Right? So for many women I2:20will always tell you sex starts between here. It is a brain thing for us. It is2:26not necessarily a physical thing. For guys that's a little different. It's very physical. For women it's all in our2:32brain. So tip for you men that are listening. You have to prime your woman's brain first if you want her to2:38have sex with you that night. You have to be nice to her. You have to bring her flowers. Do the dishes for her. Do2:45something kind. Bring her a cup of coffee or tea or a glass of wine. Take her to dinner. You have to woo her. And2:51I don't care how long you've been married. That has to happen. And tip number two, don't say anything stupid2:57that day. I'm just being honest. When you guys say things that make us upset,3:03that lingers with us for the rest of the day. And it's it's a turnoff for us. And3:08for a lot of women, we can't get past that when it comes time to snuggle at night. And sex doesn't always have to be3:14at night either. So, you can tell I really love talking about this conversation, but we're going to get into the peptide part of it because this3:21is going to help people. So, um, PT-141 is marketed as I'm going to slaughter3:28this name, Vali, and it represents a fundamentally different approach to3:34sexual dysfunction than the PDE5s inhibitors like Slenden, Viagra,3:40Tedataphil, which is Seialis. And while the PDE5 inhibitors work specifically by3:47enhancing blood flow to the genital tissues, PT-141 works centrally in the brain by3:54modulating neural s neural circuits involved in the sexual desire and4:00arousal. Now PT-41 is a cyclic hpatipeptide. It's seven amino acid4:07peptide arranged in a cyclic structure that acts as a melanoortin receptor4:13agonist and with particularly the infinity for MC3R and MC4R subtypes.4:20It's actually a metabolite of the melanotan 2, a peptide originally4:26developed for tanning that was also found to enhance sexual desire in early4:31studies. Now the melanoortin system in the brain is involved in multiple functions including energy homeostasis4:39but it also is involved in sexual motivation and arousal behaviors. The FDA approved PT-141 in 2019 specifically4:48for the treatment of acquired generalized hypoactive sexual desire4:54HSDD in permenopausal women. So for the first time we have a medication that was5:01approved by the FDA to use for women for sexual dysfunction. We have had all of5:07these seialis tedataphil viagros for men but we had nothing for women. And so5:12this is amazing that this is available for women and approved by the FDA. It's a big deal. This represents the first5:19and only FDA approved medication specifically targeting these circuits of sexual desire rather than the peripheral5:27arousal mechanisms. And this indication is quite specific, meaning it was developed at some point, not lifelong.5:35So I if you've had sexual dysfunction your entire life, this medication was5:40not approved for you. But if it's something that you developed over time, like when you went through pmenopause or5:46menopause or some women have this experience happen after childirth, that's what we're talking about here.5:53Now, it's also not just um supposed to be used if you dislike your partner,5:59right? If your relationship is bad and you dislike your partner, this probably isn't going to fix a ton. It might help6:05a little bit, but that's not what it's meant for. So, you really have to know what you're using it for and why. And6:11the other thing that I would say is this is something that we don't go to if your hormones are not balanced properly. You6:17have to balance your hormones properly before using something like this because it still may not work. Now, the only6:24caveat to that is if you're a woman that has a risk of breast cancer and can't use hormones, then that's a different6:31story and we would have that conversation about whether or not this medication would be appropriate for you. Now, the FDA label specifies PTA1 uh6:39PT-141 as it not being indicated for HSDD in causes where low sexual desire6:46is due to coexisting medical or psychiatric conditions, problems with relationships, like we had talked about,6:53side effects to medications or other substance use. This specifically reflects the importance of differential6:59diagnosis. Low sexual desire can have many root causes and PT-41 is only7:05appropriate when those causes have been ruled out. Now, I have I used PT41 in7:10people who have sexual dysfunction issues as a result of using7:16anti-depressants. Yes, I have. I've used Flynn in that effect as well. And it7:21does work sometimes, but it doesn't work completely. But you need to know that that is not what the approval is for the7:27FDA. So that is done in something that we call off label use. So very important7:33to know. Now in these clinical trials leading to FDA approval, this was published by Kinsburg and colleagues in7:40obstetrics and gyne gynecology in 2019. PT-141 demonstrated statistically7:46significant improvements in sexual desire and decreases in distress related7:51to low desire compared to placebo. The effects manifest over 45 minutes to7:56several hours after the injection and the mechanisms involved modulation of dopamine and melanoorton pathways in the8:04hypothalamus and the brain regions that involved sexual motivation. Now cardiovascular effects of PT 141 require8:12careful attention. This drug causes transient increases in blood pressure about 3 to four points and transient8:20decreases in heart rate. And because of this, it is contraindicated in patients8:25with uncontrolled hypertension or known cardiovascular disease. And it has been studied in patients who've had recent8:32cardiovascular events or sorry hasn't been studied hasn't been studied in patients who've had recent8:39cardiovascular events. So patients need to have their blood pressures checked before starting therapy. Nausea is8:45extremely common. It is one of the biggest things I often will tell people to take an anti-nausea medicine if8:52they're going to do this because the last thing you want to do is inject this medication and think it's going to give8:57you this great time with your partner and you're so nauseated that you can't even perform, don't want to kiss, don't9:05want to do anything. It it can be pretty profound for some people. um it does affect about 40% of the patients in9:12clinical trials which is why many clinicians require or recommend an9:17anti-nausea medication like I had just said other common adverse effects include flushing injection site9:24reactions headache in about 13% of the population whic

What if the reason you're not healing isn't that you need another diagnosis?0:08It's that your cells aren't receiving the right signals. Because the body doesn't run on diagnosis, it runs on0:16communication. And peptides are one of the most powerful, most misunderstood0:21tools we have for cellular signaling, immune balance, tissue repair, gut0:27lining support, metabolic control, brain signaling, sleep cycles, and even sexual0:35wellness. Today, I'm going to do what most people won't. Define peptides in0:41plain English for you. break them into categories by what they're best at and0:47tell you which ones are FDA approved on the list and which ones are commonly0:53used off label or investigational with the evidence that actually says these1:00work. This is going to be a powerful episode and if you've ever felt like you're hearing hype without clarity,1:07this one's for you. So, as usual, grab your cup of coffee or tea and settle in1:13as we talk about peptides that can fit into your healing journey. We're going1:19to have a short word from our sponsor. You know, we got to do that. That's how we stay on the air here. So, we will be1:26right back after this. Did you know sweating can literally heal your cells?1:32Infrared saunas don't just relax you. They detox your body, balance hormones,1:37and boost mitochondrial energy. I'm obsessed with my health tech sauna. And1:42right now, you can save $500 with my code at healthtechalth.com/drmuthqen25.1:54All right, here we go, guys. I am excited to dive into peptides with you.2:00So understanding peptides is foundational, right? And I've been2:06studying peptides now for about nine years. Um, and I find that they are2:13incredible. Um, so I want to break down for you what peptides actually are, what2:19they do, and some of the top peptides that are available today, and how they2:25can be utilized. Because I think it's really important. And I think it's it's there's a lot of confusion out there about what these things actually are and2:32are they safe? Are they not? When do we use them? What's the science behind them? So, we're going to dive in and2:38we're going to talk about all things peptides. So, let's get ready here. Here we go. So, peptides are short chains of2:45amino acids and they typically range anywhere from 2 to 50 amino acids and2:51they're linked by peptide bonds. So think of them as the superglue that holds the amino acids together. They sit2:58between the amino acids and they are full proteins in terms of their size and3:04their complex structure. And what makes peptides particularly interesting in3:10medicine is their role as signaling molecules. They're essentially the3:15body's text messages carrying specific instructions to cells and tissues. And3:21unlike our proteins which often serve as structural roles or act as enzymes,3:28peptides typically function as hormones, neurotransmitters and growth factors and3:33they bind to specific receptors on the cell's surfaces or within the cells and3:39they trigger this effect. It's like a cascade effect of a biochemical reaction3:45that ultimately changes the cellular behavior. So basically, it's changing3:50the way the body's cell structure acts. And this is why peptides can be so3:56incredibly powerful and therapeutic when you introduce the right peptide signal.4:02Now, you could theoretically redirect cellular processes toward healing,4:07towards metabolism, immune balance, tissue repair. Any of those things can4:14be manipulated to do a certain thing once we add the peptide. The challenge4:19in peptide medicine though lies in distinguishing between those peptides that have been rigorously studied,4:26proven safe and effective and approved by regulatory bodies like the FDA versus4:31those that exist in what we call the gray zone of a promising clinical data.4:36But they really lack human validation so far. And this distinction is critical because the presence of a plausible4:43mechanism does not guarantee safety or efficacy in living humans. So, this is4:50really important and we're going to dive in and look at some of the research on all of these different peptides that are4:56available and I'm excited to say there's some amazing peptides being studied right now that unfortunately are not5:01available. But I can't wait to see them hit the market for us because it is going to be a gamecher as far as health5:09and longevity. So there is a quality control issue and there is a hidden5:14variable in peptide medicine with this and it's one of the most underappreciated aspects of peptide5:21therapy particularly for non-FDA approved peptides. It's quality control.5:26When we discuss pharmaceutical medicines, we take for granted that the pill contains what the label says. Not5:32always true depending on where it comes from. You guys, if you've heard my episodes before talk about how many of our medications are made in China and5:41have been contaminated with other things, you will realize that that is not always true. So, just because it has5:48the FDA stamp of approval on the medication, it still does not necessarily mean it's safe and we still5:54need to do our homework on it. So, sorry for digressing on you guys, but you know, when we get a medication, we we6:00think that what the amount says is what is there, doesn't have contaminants, it's manufactured with good6:06manufacturing practices. You'll see that listed as GMP on the bottle, and it's been stored properly, it's been6:12maintained stable, and with research peptides and compounded formulations,6:17none of this can be assumed. So, I will share a story with you. There was a gentleman that was purchasing these6:24peptides online from a research facility and um did not know that they were6:30coming from China and he was ordering a particular growth hormone peptide and6:35after a little while he had he had done fine for the few first few bottles. After a little while he started having6:42some complications. He started getting really irritable and angry and ragy and6:47he didn't quite know what was going on. And so he decided to go get some testing done. He had some blood testing done and6:53his testosterone level was over 5,000. So for those of you who know what testosterone level should be for a guy,7:00they really shouldn't be any higher than about 1,00200 would be absolute max that we'd want to see. Now he was taking7:06testosterone but not to that degree. And prior to adding this peptide, his7:12testosterone was very stable. What they ended up finding out was the peptide that he was getting, whoever was7:18manufacturing it added testosterone to the peptide. They felt like if if it had growth hormone, that was great, but if7:25it had growth hormone and tes testosterone, all the better. And he didn't know that. And this is the7:31problem that we can have with peptides if you don't source them properly. if you're not working with somebody that7:37knows how to source them and can prove that they are what they say they are. Um, I'm sure there's a whole bunch of7:42studies out there too of people getting these peptides and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for them over their7:48lifetime and finding out they were nothing more than just sterile water. So, you really do need to be careful7:53with your quality control. Now, this kind of leads us right into the next topic that we're going to talk about and that's the manufacturing question,8:00right? The FDA approved peptides are manufactured in facilities subject to8:05the FDA inspection rules following our GMP regulations and these facilities8:11must validate their manufacturing process, demonstrate consistency batch to batch, test for purity and potency.8:18They need to test for bacterial endotoxins and sterility and they need to maintain detailed records. So, when a8:25pharmaceutical company submits a drug application, the FDA inspects the manufacturing facility as part of the8:32approval process. If you're getting peptides from a different country, none of that is happening. And there are some8:38ways for us to determine if that is what you're getting. Typically, the rule of thumb is if your peptides are coming8:44with a different colored top, every one of them has a different colored top. Those are typically being sourced out of8:49China. I wouldn't say that's 100% but that's kind of the rule of thumb that people follow. So compoundingies these8:56are thearmacies that make our bio identical hormones. They can make medications in any dose or strength or9:02route. There are thousands of them in every not that not in every state but9:08there are thousands of them around the country right now. So these compoundingies are registered as 503A9:15facilities....

Dr. Deb Muth 0:03Welcome back to let's Talk Wellness. Now, I'm your host, Dr. Deb. If you're a woman who's doing everything right, eating clean, exercising, taking supplements, yet you still feel exhausted, inflamed, or like your body suddenly stopped cooperating, this episode is for you. Today's conversation challenges one of the biggest myths in women's health. That midlife struggles are just about hormones or worse, just part of aging. My guest today is Dr. Deb Heald, a naturopathic physician with one of the most fascinating backgrounds I've ever encountered. Yeah, she's got a really diverse background, which is kind of exciting. She's been an ER nurse, a stockbroker, a Silicon Valley data analysis, teaching machines to learn from microbiome research. And yes, she holds an mba, too. But it was her own menopause crash that changed everything. When the protocols she had been teaching stopped working for her, her, she didn't double down on templates or trends. She did what she was trained to do. She followed the data and what she discovered reframed menopause, metabolism and women's longevity in a completely different way. This isn't about willpower. It's not about another diet, and it's definitely not about copying what worked for someone else. It's about learning to listen to your body and finally understanding what it's been trying to tell you and all along. So grab your cup of coffee or tea, settle in, and let's dive into this amazing conversation about women's health and menopause. And right after our guest is arriving with us, we're going to get a word from our sponsor quick here. And then we are going to come right back to having this conversation with Dr. Deb Heald. Ladies, it's time to reignite your vitality. Primal Queen supplements are clean, powerful formulas made for women like you who want balance, strength, and energy that lasts. Get 25% off@primal queen.com Serenity Health. Because every queen deserves to feel in her prime. But okay. All right. Welcome back, everybody. I am here with my new friend, Dr. Deb Heald. And she has such an amazing background, like I shared with you a few minutes ago. But I would love for her to give us her insight in how she got where she did, because it's rare that you find somebody with a data background and a medical background. So, Dr. Dove, welcome.Dr Deb Heald 2:30Thank you. I am so glad to be here, and it's a real privilege to meet you.Dr. Deb Muth 2:34I feel the same way.Dr Deb Heald 2:35Yeah, it's. I think that the more of us that start to think and practice this way, the easier it's going to be for women going forward. Because it's not easy.Dr. Deb Muth 2:44It is not easy. I mean, I've been in this industry a long time, over 25 years. And every time I think it's getting easy, it's getting harder for a variety of reasons. It's the medical system, it's the. The clients we work with are sicker. It's taking longer to get them to a place where they feel good. There's just so many variables these days. So tell me a little bit about what got you here.Dr Deb Heald 3:06Well, I made the decision when I was graduating from high school to be a nurse instead of a teacher, because those were really still the two options that were common for women. I thought about medicine at that point, but my sister convinced me that if I would spend all that time learning and practicing medicine, I might not be as good of a mom. So I took the path of nurse, because nurse works around kids schedules and that sort of thing. I'd only been practicing about six months before I thought, oh my gosh, there has to be more to it than this, and toyed with the idea of starting med school at that point, but then married and started having children, and I just sort of fell into that pattern. But I typically work emergency room. There was a short stent in the post anesthesia recovery room as well. And emergency room was a place where western medicine actually shone. Right. People come in, they are no longer capable of functioning, they're having a heart attack, they lost limb. Whatever else, they do need the, the bells and the whistles of western medicine. But when you think about it, western medicine was derived out of the Civil War where you didn't have to say what's the cause of the problem. It was a bullet or a bayonet, and it was, it was about patching up the soldiers and getting them back on the front line so they could continue to fight. And naturopathic medicine, which had been a lot around for an awful lot longer than that, just didn't work in the battlefield then. The assessment was done in the early 1900s as to which style of medicine got people back to work faster. The Flexner report was all about how corporations could maximize the value of employees. And naturopathic medicine didn't win because nutritional fixes take a long time. Taking away somebody's stress so that they can just function more capably is. It's a, It's a big ask, right? So the funding of naturopathic medicine went away and western medicine became all that we knew. So in context to the emergency room, it worked. But when I saw the same person coming in, having their third heart attack, I just thought, how is this happening? Has no one told this person what, what's going on in their lifestyle that's creating this environment for them to continue to have heart attacks? And so that's when I made the switch. And that was after 17 years in practice as a nurse to head on over to the naturopathic side. There was a little bit of a, a segue there, but we'd need a much longer interview to get into the details of that. I was a stock broker for six years. Anyway, when I jumped into the idea of med school, it didn't make sense to be practicing the same thing that was already being practiced because I saw where it worked and I saw where it was failing. So hopped into the naturopathic tract. I also had one child that had a lot of physical and emotional ailments that western medicine couldn't solve. Their answer to everything was putting her on amoxicillin. And I, I just absolutely could not convince the medical system that she didn't have a deficiency of antibiotics, but that was their only solution. And so while she was on the antibiotics, her sinuses were clear, her sleep apnea was not an issue, and she appeared better, but her microbiome got decimated. She was on antibiotics for seven years. So, yeah, so my pursuit down the naturopathic pathway was in large part to try and figure out what else could be done for my daughter. And I did take her to a naturopath or I embarked on the field myself. And her GP threatened to call social services. Oh my gosh, yes.Dr. Deb Muth 6:22You hear these stories, I've heard these stories from clients before over really dumb things that they're going to call CPS for. And it always blows my mind that we think it's appropriate to call CPS on somebody who's truly not injuring their child.Dr Deb Heald 6:38So anyway, that started my 17 year path in the naturopathic realm. And after, after I've been in practice about 10 years, an opportunity came up to move to Silicon Valley and research the microbiome and then take what we were learning from the microbiome and program it into AI. So I did that for a few years and it was amazing. There was a huge disconnect between the funding model and what its expectations were and what the research was able to do. There was a time gap, there was a funding gap. And so I thought, medicine doesn't understand what's important to business. And Business isn't understanding what's critical to research. So I went and did my MBA and wanted to be able to be the translator between those two worlds. And then the pandemic hit and then.Dr. Deb Muth 7:24Everyone'S life got turned upside down, right?Dr Deb Heald 7:26Yeah. Yeah. So I'm back in private practice. My, my practice always tended to be more autoimmune focused, which is predominantly women and predominantly middle aged women. But through my own experience of menopause and looking at how I assisted people that were in menopause before I was, you know, that the success rate wasn't as high as it needed to be. And I started to really drill down into the biochemistry behind what was going on and then also realized that my menopause was very different than even my sister's menopause. There we were, the same genetic template, the same lived environment, though very different lived experiences in that environment. And realized that we have to find ways to make it relevant to the person in front of us. And it's not so much which herbs will or won't work historically, it's how is this person's body responding in the immediate term to the diet we've put them on, to the nutritional plan we've suggested to the supplements, and because we've come so far in the data world, our whoop straps or aura rings or whatever else, there's so many devices that are actually able to let us know whether somebody's burning carbs or fat in this moment or ketones. We can see how an individual's body is responding and course correct right now. And it isn't that a ketogenic diet may not be helpful down the road. It's right now it's actually putting more stress on your body than it's already under, which puts you into fight flight, which stops you from burning fat. So, and it's not just the burning fat, it's the inflammation. Right. So our food is completely void of nutrients. And we used to have 24 inches of topsoil, now we've got, so who's eating four times the number of vegetables that we, we used to eat to get the same number of nutrients? We're just not. And our environment is so full of plastic and chlorine molecules and just toxins that our liver says, I have no idea what that is, I have no idea how to detoxify it. And we can't,...

Dr. Deb Muth 0:03There's a quiet shift happening in healthcare right now, and most doctors aren't talking about it yet. People aren't chasing diagnoses anymore. They're exhausted by them. I see it every single day in my clinic. People who come in with stacks of paperwork, portals full of results, and a list of diagnoses longer than their grocery receipt, yet they're still not living their lives. And they'll say to me, Dr. Deb, I don't want another label.Dr. Deb Muth 0:32 I just want my life back. If you've ever been told this is just how your body is, if you've been diagnosed, rediagnosed, and then dismissed, if you've been handed labels but never handed a roadmap, today's episode is for you. Because we are officially entering what I call the post diagnosis era and it's changing everything about how healing actually happens. So grab your cup of coffee or tea and let's settle in to let's talk wellness. Now, before we dive in, we need to take a quick pause to thank today's sponsor. And when we come back, we're going to talk about why diagnoses are no longer the most important thing about you.Dr. Deb Muth 1:17Did you know sweating can literally heal your cells? And infrared saunas don't just relax you, they detox your body, balance hormones, and boost mitochondrial energy. I'm obsessed with my health tech sauna, and right now you can save $500 with my code at healthtechhealth.com Dr. Muth req 25 so here's some truth for me.Dr. Deb Muth 0:47It was three years ago Christmas that I received my Ms. Diagnosis. And I remember it very clearly. It was the day before, two days before Christmas Eve, that I got the call and I heard the words, you have white matter brain disease. That's consistent with Ms. And I immediately stopped in my tracks and thought, okay, well, this is just the way it is. We're gonna fight this. We're gonna figure this out. And it led me down a deeper path of healing and spirituality and emotional growth. And there were some really difficult days ahead for me because I remember thinking, what am I gonna do? How am I gonna practice what's going to happen in my life? And every year at this time, I reflect back to that day that I got the call that really changed my life. And not for the worse, but for the better. It changed the way I was thinking about life.Dr. Deb Muth 3:01It changed the way I was complaining about things being ungrateful for all the amazing things that I have in my life. Not intentionally, but just living the American life. Right.Dr. Deb Muth 3:14And striving for more and wanting more and chasing more and doing more, and never really having the opportunity to just be present and just really think about life and enjoy what the Lord has given us and enjoy what's around me, the people in my life, the family that I have, the amazing practice that I have, and the amazing people I get to work with and change lives with. And it really changed me for the better. And I've watched diagnoses like this change people for the worse and for them to sink deep into a depression and give up and. And live to their label instead of living to their potential. And that's why I think this episode is so important for us, because we all have a choice in life. When we get dealt something kind of difficult, we can let it consume us and let it take every ounce of life from us, or we can allow it to become the fuel that makes us better, makes us contribute to life maybe differently, but in a better way. So, you know, I know that this idea of letting diagnoses lose their power can be really uncomfortable for some people, because there's people that are waiting for that diagnosis. I'm in some. Some social media groups, and I'm listening and reading to people who are saying, I'm so angry I didn't get the Ms. Diagnosis today. I'm so angry I didn't get the Lyme diagnosis today. I'm so upset that they can't find anything wrong with me. And I understand.Dr. Deb Muth 5:20I know the feeling of wanting to put a name to what you're feeling so that you have validation and you have power around this diagnosis, and you can prove to people that what you're feeling is not in your head. I get all of that. But for many people, the original diagnosis is meant to help guide treatment in the conventional sense. It's a created, shared language that we have, and it brings clarity. But for many people, you give that label and that name so much power and so much control over your life and who you are and what you're being. And that's not what the label is meant for. Somewhere along the line, medicine started confusing naming with healing. And today, we have more diagnoses than ever. We have more testing than ever. We have so many thousands of specialists, and yet people are sicker. They're more inflamed, they're more exhausted, they're more confused than ever. And that's not just a coincidence. That is how the system is meant to work. It's meant to confuse you.Dr. Deb Muth 6:44It's meant to keep you dependent on it. It's meant to. Meant to keep you on medical management for the rest of your life. And by doing that, we enrich the pharmaceutical companies to the point where their whole role is to continue to create drugs that you need to be on for the rest of your life. And the hard truth about all of this that I've seen in my practice is for many patients, the diagnosis really becomes their identity. They own it, they gravitate to it. It's who they are. It also becomes their prison because they only live confined inside the diagnosis. I can't do this because I can't do that, because if I do this, this will happen, because I have. They've capped their ceiling of life based on a couple of words that somebody gave them at a point in their life when they were so low and potentially so desperate that they needed that name to identify themselves and what was going on. And instead of asking, why is this happening?Dr. Deb Muth 8:05Why are these symptoms happening? What's causing these symptoms? They're told, this is what you have, and this is what you're going to have to live with. And instead of restoring function, these people become managed. Like I said, they're managed with drugs. They're managed inside the system. And instead of healing, they're monitored with this blood test and that blood test and this MRI and that mri. Instead of providing hope, they're handed a lifelong prescription with expectations that do nothing but decline. So you walk out of that room with this expectation that your life is never going to be the same, that your function is going to decline, your neurological disease is going to take over eventually, you're going to be put in a home, you're going to lose everything you have because you're not going to be able to afford the care that you need. And that's the expectations of our healthcare system today. When you're labeled with a chronic illness diagnosis, and for a woman, especially women, this is magnified because their symptoms are told to them as. It's stress, it's hormones, it's anxiety, it's aging, it's motherhood, and then, of course, it's perimenopause. Like that is some major traumatic thing that should disrupt your entire life. Yet it shouldn't, and it does, and it doesn't have to. And of course, my favorite is always, but your labs are normal. We don't know what's wrong with you. It must just be in your head.Dr. Deb Muth 9:53And this is why women are done being dismissed, why this shift is happening now that we are empowering women to take back Their lives, take back who they are and take back how they're being treated in the healthcare system. And it is one of the most important things that we can do right now is to give women their power back so that they can stand strong in who they are and in their intuition and fight and say, no, this is not happening to me right now. I am not accepting this label. I'm not accepting this diagnosis. I will fight, I will find answers, and I will do what I need to do to be the woman that I want to be. So why is this conversation exploding right now? Well, there's actually three big reasons, and first and foremost, it's over. Diagnosis, burnout. People are collecting diagnoses without solutions. Autoimmune labels, syndromes, vague neurological names, but no one's connecting the dots.Dr. Deb Muth 11:02You see, when you start to stack these labels on top of each other, one after the next after the next, you know, it's celiac disease, it's Hashimoto's, it's fibromyalgia, it's autoimmune. You know, rheumatoid arthritis. It's. Whatever it is, it's long haul Covid. These days, no one is putting these connections together to say, why are you developing so many diseases that are so similar in nature, ones that just kind of domino after each other? Nobody's looking at your immune system. Nobody's measuring it, Nobody's telling you how well it's working. No one's supporting it. They're just throwing these biological drugs at you. And if there's an autoimmune disease and sending you on your way and saying, this is what you have to look forward to for the rest of your life. But don't worry, these side effects are rare, including cancer. It does not make sense to me that we are not looking at the root cause for all of these crazy diagnoses that we are labeling people with today. And I am guilty of it myself, because within the system that we work, we have to label something in order for you to receive the care that you need, for your insurance, to pay for the treatment, for the tests, for the visits. There has to be a label. And that's what we call an ICD10 code. And if we don't have the appropriate label, none of what we're recommending gets covered for you. And that's the label game began. The second thing is long haul Covid. And post viral illnesses.<...

Dr. Deb Muth 0:03Today's guest is someone I'm honored to call both a friend and a mentor, and one of the most trusted voices in medicine for patients with complex chronic illness. Dr. Neal Nathan is a board certified family physician who has spent decades caring for patients who don't fit neatly into diagnostic boxes. Patients with mold related illnesses, Lyme disease, mast cell activation, and profound nervous system dysregulation. These are the patients who are often told their labs are normal and their symptoms are anxiety or that nothing more can be done. Instead of dismissing them, Dr. Nathan listened and he asked better questions. His work, including his landmark book, Toxic, has helped thousands of people finally feel seen, believed, and understood, and more importantly, has given them a path forward when medicine failed them. This conversation is for anyone who reacts to supplements or medications, for anyone who has gotten worse instead of better with treatment, and for anyone who knows their body that something deeper is going on, even if they've been told otherwise. Dr. Nathan, I'm deeply grateful for your mentorship, your integrity, and the way you continue to advocate for the most vulnerable patients. I'm so glad to have you here today. And before we begin, grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever grounds you, because this is the conversation you'll want to settle into. Now, before we go onto this conversation, we need to hear from our sponsors. So give us just a quick moment and then Dr. Nathan and I are going to dive in to his story and how this all started for him and leave you with some nuggets of wisdom that you can help yourself with. Ladies, it's time to reignite your vitality. Primal Queen supplements are clean, powerful formulas made for women like you who want balance, strength, and energy that lasts. Get 25% [email protected] Serenity Health that's PrimalQueen.com Serenity Health because every queen deserves to feel in her prime the right places and then we can get started. All right? So, Dr. Nathan, like I said, I'm so excited to have you here today. Tell us a little bit about how did you start your career? Because you didn't intend to work with the most complex and sensitive patients, I'm sure when you started out. But what did you notice early on that made you realize medicine was missing something?Neil Nathan MD 3:03You know, Deb, actually, I did start out wanting to work with the most complicated cases. My delusional fantasy when I started was I wanted to help every single person who walked into my office. And so when I left medical school, I realized pretty quickly that the tools that I learned there were not adequate to do That I needed to learn more. So I started on a passionate journey of discovery, if you will, in which I started studying with anyone who had anything interesting about healing to talk about. And I want to emphasize that I was interested in healing, not in what I'll call medical technology. So medical school taught me to be a good medical technologist, but it didn't teach me about healing. I graduated a long time ago. I graduated from Medical School in 1971. And the word holistic wasn't even a word back in those days, but that's what I was looking for over many, many years. I studied osteopathic manipulation, homeopathy, therapeutic touch, emotional release techniques, hypnosis. If it's weird, I probably have studied it at some point. I wasted some weekends studying things that I don't think were particularly valuable. And I've had some remarkable experiences with true healers that taught me how to expand my understanding of what healing really meant. So early on, when I first started practice, I would invite my colleagues to send me their most complicated patients because that was my learning. That makes me weird. I know that. I love some problem solving. You know, I'm the kind of person who I get up in the morning and I do all of the New York Times kinds of puzzles. That's. That's my brain wake up call. So actually I did invite my colleagues to send me their complicated patients, and they did. So, I mean, they were thrilled to have me in the community because these were people they didn't know what to do with. And I was happy as a clam with all these complicated things that I had no idea what to do with. But it pushed me to keep learning more, to keep searching for this person's answer. And this person's answer, that constant question is, what am I missing? What is it that I don't know or understand? What questions am I not asking this person that would help me to figure it out? So sorry for the long winded digression.Dr. Deb Muth 6:14No, I'm glad you shared that. I'm very similar to you. I didn't seek out working with the most complex, but as I started that, I was always very curious as well. So I was the same as you. Every weekend I would learn something and hypnosis and naturopathic medicine, homeopathy, and all these quote unquote weird things, right? And there's always a pearl that you learn from something. You never not learn anything, but some of it, you kind of take or leave or integrate or not. And, and I think it, it makes you a better Practitioner, because you have all these tools in your toolbox for helping people that nobody else has been able to help. And. And it's just kind of fun learning. I mean, I'm kind of a geek that way too. I like to learn all those things.Neil Nathan MD 7:00Learning is my passion. One of my greatest joys in life is going to a medical meeting and getting a pearl. Literally. I'm not one of these people at medical meetings that have a computer in front of me listening. And I have a pad of paper and I'm writing down ideas next to people that I'm working with. So that, oh, let's bring this up for these people. Let's bring this up for these people. So it's like, oh, great. Can't get right back to the office on Monday so I can start, have some new ideas about what I'm missing.Dr. Deb Muth 7:38Yeah, I do the same thing. I have my pad of paper and I do the same thing. And as I hear something, I'm thinking about a person that's in my office that I haven't been able to help, or we've been stuck on something, and I'm like, oh, there's a new thing we can try. And it's so exciting. I love that. Let me ask you this. Was there a time when you finally thought, like, if I don't listen to these patients differently, they might not ever get better?Neil Nathan MD 8:04That's a very complicated question. The people that I was treating that weren't getting better were the ones that got my greatest attention. And one of the questions that constantly troubled me still does is, is this person not getting better because of some feature of themselves, or is it because of something that I don't know? So I've wrestled with that for a very long time. My answer to it now is, For a long time, I've been able to see what I will call the light in a person. Call it a healing spark and energy. It isn't truly light. There's just something about that person when I work with them where I know this person will get well if I stick with them long enough. And then when I don't get that, I don't think I've helped any of those people over the years. Yeah, so it was a very long process of really not helping people for five years daily. And I would. I would ask those patients, I would say, you know, I haven't helped you. We've been doing this for a very long time. Why are you still here? And they would say, because you care. And I would. Back when I was Younger, that was enough for me to go. That's true. Okay, I'll keep working at it. But as I've gotten older, caring isn't enough. It's. I'm not sure I'm the right person for you. And so as I've gotten older, when I don't see that spark, when I don't get that sense of someone, I'm more inclined early on in the relationship to tell them I'm not the right person for you. Yeah, you know, see if you can find someone else who can understand what you're going through and help you. Because I, I'm not it.Dr. Deb Muth 10:16Yeah, you, you kind of know that you can help them or not. Yeah.Neil Nathan MD 10:21I don't know how to define that sense, but it's very clear to me. I call it like seeing the inner light of another being. If it's not there, and maybe it's not there for me to see as opposed to someone else can see it.Dr. Deb Muth 10:41That's interesting. So you're known for working with patients who are highly reactive. They don't tolerate supplements, a lot of times medications, or even some of your most gentlest protocols. Why are these patients so often misunderstood?Neil Nathan MD 10:59Because they appear to their family and to many other physicians to be so sensitive that the thought process of families and other physicians is often. Nobody's that sensitive. This has got to be in your head. And that is what is conveyed to those patients. And they're told it's gotta be in your head. Go see a psychiatrist or a therapist. But I can't help you. And unfortunately, we have learned in the last 20 years a great deal about, is making our patients so sensitive. It is a true reaction of their nervous system and immune system, and it is in response to various medical conditions they have. So again, as we've been talking about, those were the people that got sent to me for many years. And I, I have never believed that the majority of any. Anything that someone has experienced is in their head. Yeah, Almost everything I look at is real. I may not understand what is causing it, but for me, doubting a patient's experience is not something I've ever done. And that's what's helped fuel what I've learned and what you learned over the year. That, okay, if this is real, and it is, I'm sure it is,...

Dr. Deb 0:04Today on let&#8217;s Talk Wellness now, we&#8217;re diving into the most cutting edge and misunderstood frontiers in chronic illness treatment. Induced native Phage therapy, or INPT and induced native microbial therapy. My guest is Dr. David Jarrigan, one of the country&#8217;s most innovative minds in biologic and bioregulatory medicine. Dr. Jaragan is widely known for his pioneering work in the treatment resistant Lyme disease and chronic infections and for pushing the boundaries of what&#8217;s possible when we stop fighting the body and instead learn how to regulate it. He is the inventor of multiple advanced diagnostic and therapeutic technologies including biospectral emission sequencing, matrix interface testing, chrono quantum testing, and most recently INPT and inmt, technologies that aim to activate the body&#8217;s own native intelligence to restore balance and eliminate chronic infection. Dr. Jaragan is the author of five books, including the best selling Beating Lyme Disease and trained extensively in Europe, Biologic Medicine and under Thomas Rao at the Paracelsus Clinic in Switzerland. His work challenges the conventional infectious disease model and raises an important question. What if chronic illness persists not because we haven&#8217;t killed enough pathogens, but because we haven&#8217;t restored regulation? This is going to be a fascinating and paradigm shifting conversation. But before we dive in, let me remind you this podcast is about empowering you with knowledge to make the best choices for your health. So grab your tea or coffee and let&#8217;s talk Wellness Now. So for those of you who have heard me before, you&#8217;re going to recognize my voice is a little froggy today. I&#8217;ve been fighting a little laryngitis for the past couple of weeks. So forgive me for my voice sounding a little bit off. You may see me drink a little bit on this episode just to kind of moisten my voice. I am totally fine. I&#8217;m not sick. I am just fighting this laryngitis that just will not go away. So it is clearly telling me something. But I&#8217;m going to keep pushing forward, bringing you amazing guests like Dr. Jarrigan today and I am so excited for this conversation. For those of you who know me, I&#8217;ve been treating Lyme for 20 years. So this is going to be an amazing conversation for me as well as you and we are going to learn some some great things together. So right after we get back from our sponsor, we are going to bring Dr. Jaragan on and we are going to have this amazing conversation. Today&#8217;s episode of let&#8217;s Talk Wellness now is brought to you by Health Tech Sauna. One of my absolute favorite tools for detoxification and cellular healing. If you&#8217;ve followed me for a while, you know I talk often about the importance of supporting your mitochondria and removing toxins, especially if you&#8217;re healing from chronic illness, mold exposure or hormonal imbalance. The HealthText sauna uses advanced full spectrum infrared technology that penetrates deeply into the body to help release stored toxins, reduce inflammation and boost circulation. All from the comfort of your own home. I personally use and recommend the HealthTech sauna in my own home because it&#8217;s medical grade, low EMF and built for serious healing, not just relaxation. And right now my listeners can save $500 off their own sauna by going to healthtech health.com doctordr muth hyphen R-EQ hyphen 25 so run over there right now and get your $500 off your own sauna because healing starts with detox. David Jernigan 4:12All right. I&#8217;m Dr. David Jernigan, and I own the Biologic Center for Optimum health in Franklin, Tennessee. And I&#8217;ve been in practice for over 30 years. I shook Willie Burke Derfer&#8217;s hand, if anybody knows who that is. It&#8217;s kind of infamous now with some of the revelations that have happened about Lyme being bioweapon weaponized. But you know, I&#8217;ve been doing this probably longer than almost anybody that&#8217;s still in the business in the natural realm. It chose me. I did not choose Lyme. Matter of fact, there were many times in my career that I was like, you know, cancer is easier because of the fact that everybody agrees, you know, what we&#8217;re dealing with. And in the 90s, it was a whole different reality where nobody actually understood that you could have Lyme disease and not be coming from New England. I had actually the first documented case of a Lyme disease CDC positive patient that had never left the state of Kansas before. So they couldn&#8217;t say that it wasn&#8217;t in Kansas. And so, so she had actually been pregnant with twin boys and they were born CDC positive as well. So it is transmitted across the placenta. We know. So the history of how I did all this was in the 90s, probably 1996, probably somewhere in there. 97 with this woman. I if you go into Robin&#8217;s pathology books from back then, which we all used medical doctors and everybody else studying, you know, there was basically a paragraph about Lyme disease. And on the national board tests, as you recall, it was probably like, what causes or what is bullseye rash associated with? And you had to guess Lyme disease, of course, but that was, you know, considered to be more in New England illness. And you Would never see it anywhere else. But here was this woman. I knew nothing about Lyme beyond what we had gotten taught in college, which was, like I say, next to nothing. And she would not let me stop feeding me information. I mean, you gotta remember, the Internet wasn&#8217;t even hardly in existence. Dr. Deb 6:36Yeah. David Jernigan 6:36Years. I mean, it was brand new. It was supposed to be this information highway. And so I started purchasing like a lot of doctors do. Even now, they start purchasing every kind of new supplement that&#8217;s supposed to work for bacteria. There was no product in those days that actually was Lyme specific. I mean, nobody was really dealing with it naturally. It was always a pharmaceutical situation and. Dr. Deb 7:05A very short course at that. David Jernigan 7:06Yeah. Two weeks of doxy in your period, whether your symptoms are gone or not. Which she&#8217;d had the two weeks of doxy, and her symptoms and her son&#8217;s symptoms were not gone. And so I absolutely just purchased everything I could find. Nothing would work. I mean, I could name names of products and you would recognize them because they&#8217;re still out there today. Which is kind of a sad thing that natural medicine is still riding on these things that have the most marketing. Dr. Deb 7:37Yeah. David Jernigan 7:38Sometimes the things that actually have the documented research behind it. I am a doctor of chiropractic medicine, and I specialized all these years in chronic incurable illnesses of all types. That may sound odd to a lot of people, but doctors of chiropractic medicine are trained just like a GP typically would be. The medical schools, as I understand it, got together decades ago and said, wow, if all we did was crank out general practitioners for the next 10 years, we wouldn&#8217;t have still enough general practitioners to supply the demand. Dr. Deb 8:17Right. David Jernigan 8:18Everybody in medicine, in medical schools wanted to be a specialist because that&#8217;s where the money was. It was easier kind of also to just focus on one part of the. Dr. Deb 8:28Body and specialize in that, be an expert in that one area. David Jernigan 8:32Yeah. So we all now have the same training. We all go through pre med. We got a bachelor&#8217;s degree. I got my bachelor&#8217;s degree in nutrition through Park University in Parkville, Missouri. And so, you know, when I ran out of options to purchase, I just used a technology that I developed, which was an advancement upon other technologies, but I called it bioresonance scanning. And I coined the term back in the 90s. It was a way to kind of like a sensitive test. You know, like you might think of applied kinesiology, then clinical kinesiology, then chiroplus kinesiology. Then, you know, you can just keep going with all the Advancements that were made, well, this was an advancement upon those things. So I developed, I was the first in my known world of doctors to develop a way to detect adjunctively. Obviously we can&#8217;t say it&#8217;s a primary diagnosis adjunctively detect the presence of given specimen. So we can say, thus, say if my test, it&#8217;s highly likely you have Borrelia Burgundy for a. But I had to have the specimen on hand to be able to match what I call frequency matching to the specimen, which was a brand new concept in those days. And so I was able to detect whether or not my treatments were successful or not. This is something even now that&#8217;s really difficult for doctors because antibody tests, even the most advanced ones, it&#8217;s still an antibody test, it&#8217;s still an immune response to an infection. And accurately. Some doctors will slam those tests saying, well, that doesn&#8217;t mean you actually have the infection. That just means your body has seen it before. Which is a correct statement, kind of. So being able to detect the presence and even where in the body infections are was a way huge advancement in the 90s, for sure. It&#8217;s kind of funny, I think about a conference I went to because I&#8217;m kind of jumping ahead because I ended up developing my own formula just for this woman and her children. And it worked. And I was like, wow. Their symptoms were gone. All the blood tests came back negative in those days. We were using the Igenx Western blot eventually. And the what was called a Lyme urine antigen test. I don&#8217;t know if you remember that because it only decades later did I meet the owner of Igenex, Nick Harris, in person. I was like, whatever happened to the Luwahat test? Because they took it off the market after a while. Honestly, we lost the antigen and couldn&#8217;t find. Find it again. Dr. Deb 11:26Oh, no. David Jernigan 11:27And so. But that was a brilliant test. It was the actual gold standard in those days. Again, the world, it can&#8217;t be understated how different the world was in the 90s. Dr. Deb 11:40Yeah. David Jernigan 11:41Towards natural medicine, even. Dr. Deb 11:43Oh yeah, like, like we think, we think it&#8217;s bad now. But like when I started too, I started in the early 2000s, like we were all hiding under the radar. Like you didn&#8217;t market. We would have never been on social media. We didn&#8217;t run ads, we didn&#8217;t do any of that because the medical boards were coming for us with whatever we did. David Jernigan 12:05Yeah, the word Lyme on my page, my website, you know, not saying that I treat Lyme, just. Dr. Deb 12:14Just talking about Lyme and it&#8217;s funny. David Jernigan 12:17Because once I had this formula, it was something. And I trained in Germany in anthroposophical medicine, been trained in herbal making herbal extracts, making homeopathic remedies in the anthroposophical methodology. And I trained with the Hahnemann versions of homeopathy, which is just slightly different. Dr. Deb 12:40Yeah. David Jernigan 12:41And so I was well versed with making some of my own formulas by that time. And so it was really something that I wrote on the bottle and I had to call it something. So I called it Borrelligen, which is still in existence and still a phenomenal herbal remedy right now. And to my knowledge, it&#8217;s the only frequency matched herbal formula maybe still out there. Because unless you knew how to do my testing, the bioresonant scanning, there was no way to actually do frequency matching. Matter of fact, a really famous herbalist attacked me online saying, oh, none of these herbs will kill anything. And I&#8217;m like, that wasn&#8217;t what I was saying. I was saying back in those days, I&#8217;m saying, well, if. What would the body need to address these infections? You know, not like, what&#8217;s going to kill the infections for the body. Dr. Deb 13:38Right, right. David Jernigan 13:39So it was a phenomenal way. But the Luwat test was amazing because what you do is you would give your treatment like an md would give an antibiotic for a week ahead of time, trying to increase the number of dead spirochetes showing up in your urine one day out of three days. Urine catch. So you, you wake up in the morning, you collect your urine three days in a row, and any one of those being positive is a positive. But it was a brilliant test because it wasn&#8217;t an antibody test. They were literally counting the number of dead pieces of Lyme bacteria. I mean, it was pretty irrefutable. So I had a grand slam on the Western bladder patients and I&#8217;d also have a grand slam on the Luat. And the medical doctors would say, oh, that doctor in the lab are probably in cahoots. Change the lab, of course. Dr. Deb 14:38Right. David Jernigan 14:39And I still see that today. Like, oh my gosh, the better the tests are getting, there&#8217;s still a bias. If you do your own research, if you happen to be a doctor who loves research and you&#8217;re a clinician, so you actually treat patients. Who&#8217;s going to write the research study? Well, of course, the doctor who did the study, well, he&#8217;s biased. And I&#8217;m like, I still can&#8217;t influence lab tests. Well, lab tests aren&#8217;t everything. People scream over the Internet at me. It&#8217;s like, well, no, the negative lab test doesn&#8217;t mean anything. I was like, I get that with the old Western blot testing. Dr. Deb 15:15Right. David Jernigan 15:17More sensitive tests, which are very close to 100% sensitivity, 100% specificity. So, meaning, like they can. If you have the infection, they&#8217;re gonna find it. Dr. Deb 15:29They&#8217;ll find it. Yep. David Jernigan 15:31And if they, if you have the infection, they&#8217;re gonna be able to tell you exactly 100% correctly what kind of infection it is. Back in those days, you couldn&#8217;t. You could just count the dead pieces. Which. Yeah, but it&#8217;s funny because when medicine does that, you know, mainstream medicine that&#8217;s backed by all the nice foundations who donate billions of dollars towards the research, their negative tests are significant. But if you fund your own, yours isn&#8217;t that significant. Dr. Deb 16:04Right. Or what if we call something a seronegative autoimmune disease like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis, because none of the tests are positive, but you have all the symptoms. Here, let me give you this $100,000 a year drug. And instead of looking for what might actually be causing the symptoms, that&#8217;s all. Okay. But what we do is not okay, right? David Jernigan 16:28Yeah, it&#8217;s a double standard. Dr. Deb 16:30It is. David Jernigan 16:30It&#8217;s getting better. I want to do tell the world it is getting. Some of the dinosaurs are retiring and making way for people who are more open minded to new ideas. But getting back to that woman, she. That formula that I made just for her and her son, she went online, which I had never been on a news group. Not even sure I knew what one was. Yeah, imagine I&#8217;m kind of that dinosaur that cell phones were like these really big things with a big antenna sticking out of it. Dr. Deb 17:09Yeah. David Jernigan 17:10So I thought I was pretty hot stuff. Just that I actually had a computer software program that was running my front desk. And even then it was an Apple Iie computer. Dr. Deb 17:21Right. David Jernigan 17:22Probably be pretty valuable right now if I kept it just being an antique. Suddenly people were calling my clinic because the lady with the twin boys that was, well, was telling people on these research, I mean, these Lyme disease forums and boards online. And I started going, oh my gosh. You know, as a doctor, it&#8217;s one thing to treat a person in your clinic. It&#8217;s a different thing to have your clinic name on the label. Like we all are supposed to write everything that&#8217;s on the label and all these guidelines. And I&#8217;m like, wow, I need to split this off. I mean, I definitely want to help people. And this is. I was pretty excited about the results we were getting pre treatment and post treatment. And so that&#8217;s where I developed my nutraceutical business in the 90s called Journey to Nutraceuticals. My advice to anybody thinking about doing the same thing, don&#8217;t put your last name name on it. Because every time negative anything comes out, there goes the journey can name. Dr. Deb 18:30Yeah. David Jernigan 18:30The herbal. You know, there&#8217;s just all these. And especially nowadays with all the bots that are just designed to slam natural medicine. Dr. Deb 18:38Yeah. David Jernigan 18:39And that is out there. And. And just ugly people. Or should we just say people with a different opinion? How&#8217;s that? Dr. Deb 18:46Yeah. David Jernigan 18:47That are being less than supportive. But it was amazing because by 1999, I presented my research, my first research. I&#8217;d never done research. This is what I would say to a lot of people. Go, my doctor doesn&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re doing. I was like going, you know, most doctors don&#8217;t do research. They don&#8217;t publish anything. Their opinion is their opinion, but they don&#8217;t back it up in peer review. Right. That&#8217;s what I always tried to do was back it up in peer review and publish. And so in 1999, I presented at the International Tick Borne Diseases conference in New York City. I&#8217;m telling you, it was like the country boy going to the city. I&#8217;ve got my suit on and I looked all right and my booth was wonderful and all these different things. It was just a big wake up call. Because what we had demonstrated. Let&#8217;s get back to the. And this was what I demonstrated with that first study was that a positive LUAC test. That Lyme urine antigen test for MyGenx was a score of 32. Meaning one of those three mornings urine had 32 pieces in the amount of urine they checked of dead lying bacteria spirochetes. Okay. Dr. Deb 20:13Okay. David Jernigan 20:14With antibiotic challenges. A highly positive was a score of 45. Dr. Deb 20:19Wow. David Jernigan 20:20When I would give one dropper three times a day for a week ahead of time and then do the person&#8217;s LUWAT test, we were getting scores 100, 200. And at that point we only had a couple, but we had had a couple that were greater than 400. Wow. Dead pieces. Where the lab just quits counting. They just drop somewhere over 400. Dr. Deb 20:44Yeah. David Jernigan 20:46Which when the medical system at the conference, you know, I was the only natural doctor in the world that was. Had any kind of proof of anything naturally that could outperform antibiotics. Imagine. Dr. Deb 20:59Yeah. David Jernigan 21:00And they were just. Oh my gosh. Incredulous. They&#8217;re like, I&#8217;ve given the most One guy came up to me, to my face, and he goes, I&#8217;ve given the most aggressive antibiotic protocols and I&#8217;ve only seen one patient over 100. I was like, that makes this pretty significant, doesn&#8217;t it? But it didn&#8217;t just, like, make us take off. Because guess what? In Lyme world, if a pharmaceutical antibiotic made you feel horrible, that meant it was working. Dr. Deb 21:28That&#8217;s right. We used to, back in the day, if you didn&#8217;t herx and had that horrible die off reaction for those of you don&#8217;t know what a hercs is. But if we didn&#8217;t make you hercs, we weren&#8217;t doing our job right. And we weren&#8217;t killing enough bacteria patients to feel horrible. David Jernigan 21:43And sometimes to the level of committing suicide. Dr. Deb 21:46Yes, yes. David Jernigan 21:49And I was the first doctor, I think, in the world to start screaming and hollering saying, stop using the worsening of your patient symptoms as a condition to good treatment. I wasn&#8217;t seeing it with my formulas because I was doing a comprehensive program of care. I think I was also one of the first doctors to say, we need to detoxify these people as we&#8217;re doing this. And you would sit there and say, well, sure you were. I was like, well, remember, there wasn&#8217;t a lot of communication. There wasn&#8217;t anybody on the Internet saying, do this, do that. And it was, it was interesting in those days. It was, how do you, how do you help the world heal from these things that they don&#8217;t know they have? So later, I actually had a beautiful booth at a health. A big health expo in Texas. I remember you spend a lot of money on the booth. Dr. Deb 22:42Yeah. David Jernigan 22:43And you&#8217;re thinking about it because you&#8217;re funding the whole thing. You say, wow, if I only sell one case, so at least cover my cost. Dr. Deb 22:50Yep. Yeah. You&#8217;re grateful for that, right? David Jernigan 22:53Beautiful banner of like a blown up tick&#8217;s mouth under microscope. You know those beautiful pictures of herbs sticking out and how they anchor themselves in your skin. And thousand people walking by my booth and they just like, keep walking because they didn&#8217;t know they had Lyme. There was like, they had Ms. Maybe, but they don&#8217;t have Lyme. And so nobody even knew. Why would I go to a conference in Texas? And I&#8217;m trying to say, no, guys, it&#8217;s everywhere. Dr. Deb 23:23Yeah. David Jernigan 23:24And everybody, you know, yes, you probably have this kind of thing if you are chronically ill, almost in any kind of way, kind of trying to tell people. This is again, in Robin&#8217;s pathology textbooks, one of the few things that it did tell you about Lyme was that it was called the new great imitator because it would imitate up to 200 or more different illnesses. So it&#8217;s been an interesting journey of educating people, writing articles, but it was interesting. The lady who I first fixed the laboratory verified everything like that symptoms went away, like all that kind of fun stuff. Her children were fine. They&#8217;ve been fine for years now. When she went on the news boards and the Lyme disease support groups, it created a war. Oh, my goodness. It was like, how dare you and say that something natural might actually help? Dr. Deb 24:30Right, right, exactly. David Jernigan 24:32And I even had one of those first calls with a marketing company at one point way a long time ago. And the lady got on the phone, the owner of the marketing company goes, I would have blood on my hands if I actually took your clinic on. Yeah, you can&#8217;t treat Lyme disease. Even the big, big associations that are out there are still largely that way. I mean, they&#8217;re getting better, but it&#8217;s just like, you know, a lot of the times, herbs are good, Herbs will help. Herbs are good, but they&#8217;re safe. So it&#8217;s still a challenge to present in mainstream Lyme communities, even because there&#8217;s this fear of doing anything outside of antibiotics. Dr. Deb 25:31Yeah. So let me ask you this. From your perspective. Why do you think so many chronic infections exist these days, like Lyme and the co infections, Babesia, Bartonella, mold illness? And we talked a little bit about herbs and why they antibiotics and things like that fail. But let&#8217;s talk a little bit about that. David Jernigan 25:53So it&#8217;s fascinating. When I trained in Germany, they said that we, as humanity has moved away from what they called the inflammatory diseases. In the old days, it was lots of high fevers, purulent pus generating bacterial infections. As a society, we have shifted from those to what they call cold sclerotic disease diseases, which are your cancers, your diabetes, your atherosclerosis. And they said, we&#8217;re starting to see what used to only be geriatric diseases in our children. That&#8217;s how bad it&#8217;s. Dr. Deb 26:32Yeah. David Jernigan 26:33We have suppressed fevers. We don&#8217;t. We don&#8217;t respect the wisdom of the human body. So, you know, the doctors say, step aside, Bonnie. I will fix this in infection for you with this antibiotic. And so what we&#8217;ve done with the overuse of antibiotics, and this isn&#8217;t me just talking from a natural perspective. Dr. Deb 26:55Right. It&#8217;s well documented. David Jernigan 26:59And I&#8217;ll show you. I could show you a presentation if we can do a screen Sharing about the antibiotic situation in the world because it&#8217;s really concerning. Dr. Deb 27:10Mm. David Jernigan 27:11But what I would say, kind of like an advancement forward is we are seeing mutated bacteria. You know, they talked about. Do you remember when they found the iceman? Dr. Deb 27:24Yeah. David Jernigan 27:25The prehistoric guy that&#8217;s thousand years old. Lyme bacteria. Like he had spirochetes, maybe. Dr. Deb 27:32Yeah. David Jernigan 27:33That isn&#8217;t modified mutated version. That&#8217;s just maybe the Lyme borrelia. Call it Borrelia something. You know, it&#8217;s a spirochete. But what we&#8217;re dealing with today, even under strep or staph, as you know, Pseudopemis aeruginosa, you name it, whatever the kind of infection a person has is not the same bacteria that your grandparents dealt with. Dr. Deb 28:00That&#8217;s right. David Jernigan 28:02Much mutated, stronger, more resistant to treatment type of thing. So I think that&#8217;s one reason. I think it&#8217;s great that we&#8217;re seeing Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Bringing awareness to things that, like it or not. Yeah. Seed oils do create inflammation. And everyone in the natural realm, as you know, has been trying to say this for probably. How long? Dr. Deb 28:32Yeah, 25, 30 years. 20 years at least. You know? Yeah. David Jernigan 28:36You know, thank goodness for people like Sally Fallon and her beautiful book nourishing traditions that started, you know, Dr. Bernard Jensen&#8217;s books way back in the day, Dr. Christopher&#8217;s books way back in the day. Dr. Deb 28:48Yeah. David Jernigan 28:49You know, all of them were way ahead of their time saying, by the way, your margarine is only missing one. One ingredient from being axle grease. Yeah, I think that was Dr. Jensen saying that at one point, probably 50, 60 years ago. Dr. Deb 29:03Yeah. David Jernigan 29:05So we&#8217;ve created this monster. We. We live in a very controlled environment, you know, 72, 74 degrees at all times. We don&#8217;t sweat. We don&#8217;t have to work that hard, typically. And most of us aren&#8217;t out there like our ancestors were. So that&#8217;s making us more and more move towards the cold sclerotic diseases of which even Lyme disease is. Which. Yes, it has inflammation. Yes. But as a presentation, it&#8217;s very often associated with some of these cold sclerotic diseases of mankind that we see now. Dr. Deb 29:46Yeah. So tell me, what is phage therapy? David Jernigan 29:52Well, may I show you a cool video? Dr. Deb 29:55Yeah. I love that. David Jernigan 29:56I did not make this video. This is just one of my favorites because it&#8217;s from the National Institute of Health. Let&#8217;s see if I can just click the share screen thing and get that to pop up. That&#8217;s not what I&#8217;m looking for. But it&#8217;s going to be. So let&#8217;s go here. All right. Can you see that? Yeah. Dr. Deb 30:18Let me see. David Jernigan 30:20Modern medicine faces a serious problem. Thanks in part to overuse and misuse of antibiotics, many bacteria are gaining resistance to our most common cures. Researchers are probing possible alternatives to antibiotics, including phages. Dr. Deb 30:38So bacteriophages, or we like to call. David Jernigan 30:40Them phages for short, are naturally occurring viruses that infect into a bacteria. Dr. Deb 30:46The basic structure consists of a head. David Jernigan 30:49A sheath and tail fibers. Dr. Deb 30:51The tail fibers are what mediate attachment. David Jernigan 30:54To the bacterial cell. Dr. Deb 30:55The DNA stored in the head will. David Jernigan 30:57Then travel down the sheath and be injected inside the cell. Dr. Deb 31:01Once inside the cell, the phage will hijack the cellular machinery to make many copies of itself. Lastly, the newly assembled phages burst forth from the bacterium, which resets their phage. David Jernigan 31:14Life cycle and kills the bacterium in the process. Someday, healthcare providers may be able to treat MRSA and other stubborn bacterial infections using a mixture of phages or a phage cocktail. The process would be first to identify, identify what the pathogen is that&#8217;s causing the infection. So the bacterium is isolated, it&#8217;s characterized, and then there&#8217;s a need to select phage in a process known as screening of phage that are either present in a repository or any so called phage library that allows for many of the phages to be evaluated or effectiveness against that isolated bacterium. Phages were first discovered over 100 years ago by a French Canadian named Felix Derailles. They initially gained popularity in Eastern Europe. However, Western countries largely abandoned phages in favor of antibiotics, which were better understood and easier to produce in large quantities. Now, with bacteria like these gaining resistance to antibiotics, phage research is gaining momentum in the United States once again. NIAID recently partnered with other government agencies to host a phage workshop where researchers from nih, fda, the commercial sector and academia gathered to discuss recent progress. Nih. So that is, that is what phage therapy is in what I call conventional phage. Let&#8217;s see, how do I get out of the share screen? Dr. Deb 32:58Yep. At the top there should just be a box that says stop sharing. David Jernigan 33:01Yeah. So conventional phage therapy as you just saw, is a lot like what it is that we&#8217;re doing. Only the difference is they&#8217;re taking wild phages from the environment, finding phages anywhere, there&#8217;s like a lot of bacteria and then they isolate those phages. And like he said, the gentleman at the very end said, we put them in a library. And so there are banks of phages that they can actually now use. And one of the largest banks that I know of has about 700 different bacteria phages or phages in their bank that they can pull from. Dr. Deb 33:43Wow. David Jernigan 33:43You want to take a guess how many bacteriophages they&#8217;ve identified are in the human gut on average? Dr. Deb 33:52Oh, my God. There&#8217;s got to be millions different kinds of phages. David Jernigan 33:55How many? Dr. Deb 33:55There&#8217;s got to be millions. David Jernigan 33:57Well, in population, there&#8217;s humongous numbers, probably well beyond the trillions. Okay, hundreds of trillions, quadrillions maybe even, but in the gut. A recent peer reviewed journal article said that there were 32,242 different types of bacteriophages that live naturally in your intestines. 32,000. Okay, so if you read any article on the phone, phage therapy that&#8217;s in peer review, almost every single one. In the very first paragraph, they use the same sentence. They go, phages are ubiquitous in nature. They&#8217;re ubiquitous in nature. So my brain, when I find, when all this finally clicked together, clicked together five years into my research, I could not get it to work for five years. I just kept going. But that sentence really got me going. I was like, you know, if you look at what ubiquitous means, it says if phages were the size of grains of sand, like sand on the beach, they would completely cover the earth and be 50 miles deep. How crazy is that? How that&#8217;s how many phages are on the planet? There&#8217;s so many. They outnumber every species collectively on the planet. So it&#8217;s an impossibility. In my mind, I went, huh? It&#8217;s an impossibility that you catching a sterile bacteria. It&#8217;s almost an impossibility. Since the beginning of time, phages have been needing to use a reproductive host. It&#8217;s very specific. So every kind of bacteria has its own kind of phage it uses as a reproductive host. Because phages are. And this is a clarification I want to make for people, just like in the old days, we were talking about the 90s. I talked to a veterinarian that had gotten in trouble with the veterinary board in her state old days because she gave dogs probiotics and the board thought she was giving the dogs an infection so that she could treat them and make money off of the subsequent infection. Dr. Deb 36:28Oh my God. David Jernigan 36:29Nobody actually had heard of good, friendly bacteria in the veterinary world. I guess she said she had gotten in trouble and she had to defend herself. No, I&#8217;m giving friendly, benevolent, beneficial bacteria to these animals and getting good results. Phages are friendly, benevolent, beneficial viruses that Live in your body, but they only will infect a certain type of bacteria. What that means is if you have staff aureus, you know, Staphylococcus aureus bacteria, that bacteria has its own kind of phage that infects it, called a Staph aureus phage. E. Coli has an E. Coli phage. Each type of E. Coli has its own phage. So Borrelia burgdorferi has its own Borrelia burgdorferi type of phage. Whereas Borrelia mul. All right. Or any of the other Borrelia species, or the Bartonella species, or the. You just keep going. Dr. Deb 37:39Yeah. David Jernigan 37:41Has its own type of phage that only will infect that type of bacteria. So that&#8217;s, you know, when you realize, wow, why are we going to the environment? Was my thought. Dr. Deb 37:54Yeah. David Jernigan 37:55Trying to find wild phages and put them into your body and hopefully they go and do what you want want them to do. What if we could trigger the phages themselves that live in your body to instead of just farming that bacteria that it uses as a host? Because what I mean by farming is the phages will only kill 40% of that population of bacteria a day. Dr. Deb 38:19Wow. David Jernigan 38:20And then they send out a signal to all the other phages saying stop killing because they want 60% of the bacteria population left to be breeding stock. It&#8217;s kind of like the farmer, the rancher, he doesn&#8217;t send his whole herd to the butcher. Dr. Deb 38:35Right. David Jernigan 38:36Just keeps his breeding stock. He sends the rest. Right. So the phages will kill 40% of the population every day just in their reproduction process. Because once there&#8217;s so many, as you saw in the video, once the phage lands on top of the bacteria, injects its genetic material into the bacteria, that bacteria genetic engine starts cranking out up to 5,200 phages per bacteria. Who counted all those inside of the bacteria? But some scientists peer reviewed it and put it out there that ruptures and it literally looks like a grenade goes off inside of the bacteria. I wish I remembered to bring that video of a phage killing of bacteria, but it just goes oof. And it&#8217;s just a cloud of dust. So you&#8217;re breaking apart a lot of those different toxins and things. So that was the impetus to me creating what I did. That and the fact that I looked it up and I found out that phages will sun sometimes go crazy. I don&#8217;t know how to say it. Wiping out 100% of their host. It could be a trigger, like change the body&#8217;s ph levels. It could be electromagnetically done. There&#8217;s been documentation of, I think it was 50 Hz electricity triggering one kind of phage to go crazy and annihilate its host population. There&#8217;s other ways, but I was like, none of those fit me. It&#8217;s not like I&#8217;m going to shock somebody with a jumper cable or something to try to get phages to do that kind of thing. But the fact that it could be done, they can be triggered, they can switch and suddenly go crazy against their population. But what happens when they kill 100% of their host? The phages themselves die within four days. Dr. Deb 40:45Because they can&#8217;t keep reproducing because they. David Jernigan 40:47No longer have a host unless they&#8217;re a polyvalent phage. That means a phage that can segue and use one or two other kinds of bacteria as a reproductive host. But a lot of phages, if not the majority, are monovalent, which means they have one host that they like to use, Borrelia. So my study that I ended up doing and I published the results in 2021, and it&#8217;s a small study, but it&#8217;s right in there at the high end, believe it or not, of phage research. Most phage research is less than 30% people in the study, but we did 26 people. And after one month of doing the phage induction that I invented, which only appears to only induce or stimulate the types of phages that will do the job in your body, I don&#8217;t care what kind of phage it is, I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s a Borrelia phage. It may maybe a polyvalent phage that normally doesn&#8217;t use the Borrelia burgdorferi as its number one host, but it can to go and kill that infection. The fascinating thing is there was a brand new test that came out at the same time. I came out with the idea literally the same weekend they presented at the ILADS conference in Boston in 2019. It was called the Felix Borrelia phage test. So the Felix Borrelia phage test, because Borrelia are often intracellular, right? They&#8217;re buried down not often in the blood that much. And therefore doing a blood test isn&#8217;t really that accurate. But you remember how there&#8217;s like potentially as many as 5200 phages of that type erupt from each bacteria when it breaks apart. It&#8217;s way easier to detect those phages because they&#8217;re now circulating those 52, as you saw in the video, 5200 different phages are now seeking out another borrelia that they can affect. And so while they&#8217;re out in circulation, that&#8217;s easy to find in the bloodstream. So 77% of the people, so 20 out of 26 were tested after a two week period after only a four day round of treatment. Because according to my testing, remember, I can actually test adjunctively to see if I can find any signatures for those kinds of bacteria. And I couldn&#8217;t after four days. So we discontinued treatment and waited beyond the four days that would allow the phages themselves to die. So we waited about a week and a half and redid the test and 77% so that 20 out of 26 of the people were completely negative. Which you go, well, it&#8217;s just a blood test. Well, no, we actually had people that were getting better, like they&#8217;d never gotten symptomatic. We had one woman who was wheelchair bound and it took weeks, was able to walk and even ultimately wanted to work for my clinic. I didn&#8217;t want to write about all that. I wanted to write about the phages article. I probably should have put some of those stories because critics would say, well, you got rid of the infection, maybe, but did you fix the Lyme disease? Well, there&#8217;s two factors here that every doctor needs to understand. There&#8217;s the infection in chronic illness. There&#8217;s the infection and then there&#8217;s the damage that&#8217;s been done. Dr. Deb 44:35Yeah. David Jernigan 44:36I have these people that would come in and say, well, Dr. Journey. And it didn&#8217;t work for me. I&#8217;m still in the wheelchair. I&#8217;m like, no, it worked. Repeat lab test over a month says it&#8217;s gone, it&#8217;s gone, it&#8217;s gone. It&#8217;s like we would follow. And 88% of the people we follow long term were still negative, which is amazing to me. Dr. Deb 44:56And then they have to repair the damage. David Jernigan 44:59It&#8217;s the damages. Why you still have your symptoms. Dr. Deb 45:02Yeah. David Jernigan 45:03And that&#8217;s where the doctor has to get busy. Dr. Deb 45:05Right, Right. David Jernigan 45:06They were told erroneously by their doctor that originally treated them that they&#8217;d be, well, they&#8217;d get out of the wheelchair if he could actually kill all these infections. Well, it&#8217;s not true unless it&#8217;s caught early. Dr. Deb 45:18Yeah. David Jernigan 45:18So I love the analogy. And I, and I&#8217;ve said it a thousand times that Lyme disease and chronic infections are much like having termites in the wood of your house. If you find the termites early, then, yeah, killing the infection. Life goes back to normal. The storm comes and your house doesn&#8217;t fall Down. But if it&#8217;s 20 years later, killing the termites is still a grand idea. Dr. Deb 45:45Right. David Jernigan 45:46But you have the damage in the wood that needs to be repaired as well. All the systems. When I talk about damage to the wood, I mean, like, all the bioregulatory aspects of the body, how it regulates itself, all the biochemical pathways, the metabolic pathways we all know about, getting the toxins that have been lodged in there for many years, stopping the inflammatory things that have been running crazy, dealing with all those cytokines that are just running rampant through the body, creating this whole MCAS situation, which are largely coming from your body&#8217;s own immune cells called macrophages, which are not even. It&#8217;s not a virus at all. It&#8217;s part of the immune system. It&#8217;s like a pac man. And research shows that especially in spirochetes, there is no toxin. Now, I wrote four books. I think I wrote the very first book on the natural treatment of people with Lyme disease back in the 90s. Why did I write that? Because I wanted to be famous. It&#8217;s a tiny book, actually. The first one was I was just trying to help people get out of this idea that you will be well when you kill all the bugs. I was saying, you need to be doing this. If you can&#8217;t come to my clinic, at least do this or try to find somebody that will do this for you. And that ultimately led to a bigger book. As I kept learning more, I was like, well, okay, now at least do this amount of stuff, and you need to make sure your doctor is handling this, this, this, and this. And so the third book was like 500 and something pages long, and then the fourth book was 500 and something pages long. Now they&#8217;re all obsolete with the whole phage thing, because this just rewrites everything. Dr. Deb 47:33Yeah. Do you think, though, do you think the war on bugs mentality created more chronic illness than it solved because of. David Jernigan 47:44The tools that doctors had to use? Yes. Dr. Deb 47:48Yeah. David Jernigan 47:51We&#8217;re a minority. We&#8217;re still a minority. Dr. Deb 47:53Y. David Jernigan 47:54And for our doctoring methods, I never had. And you never. Maybe you did, but I never had the ability to grab a prescription pad and write out a prescription. I had to figure out, how do I get. And this was still my guiding thing. It&#8217;s like, how do I identify, number one, everything that can be found that&#8217;s gone wrong in the human body, and what do I need to provide that body? Like, the body is the carpenter that has to do the repair, has to regenerate, has to do everything. Has to get everything fixed. Right. We can&#8217;t fix anything if you have a paper cut. They&#8217;re in the doctor of the planet that can make that go away of their own power, much less chronic illnesses. So all the treatments are like the screws, saws, hammers. The carpenter must be able to use. So a lot of the time, doctors are just throwing the entire Home Depot on top of the carpenter in the form of bags of supplements, Hundreds of supplements. I&#8217;ve seen patients walk in my door with two suitcase fulls, and they were taking 70 bottles, 65 to 70 bottles of supplements. And I&#8217;d be just like, wow, your carpenter, who&#8217;s been working for 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he&#8217;s exhausted. There&#8217;s chaos everywhere. You don&#8217;t know. He goes, you want me to do what with all this stuff? Dr. Deb 49:25Yep. I&#8217;ve seen the same thing. And people thousands, you know, several thousand dollars a month on supplements, and not any better. But they&#8217;re afraid to give up their supplements, too, because they don&#8217;t want to go backwards either. And there&#8217;s got to be a better way on both sides, the conventional side and the alternative side. Although you and I don&#8217;t say it&#8217;s alternative. That&#8217;s the way medicine should be. But we have to have a good balance on both sides. David Jernigan 49:51And I will say, too, in defense of doctors using a lot of supplements, I do use a lot of supplements. Dr. Deb 49:57Yeah, I do, too. David Jernigan 49:58But I want to synergize what I&#8217;m giving the patient so that the carpenter isn&#8217;t overwhelmed and can actually get the job done. Like, everything has to work harmoniously together. So it&#8217;s not that. It&#8217;s not the number of supplements. And why would you need a lot of supplements? Well, because every system in your body. Dr. Deb 50:17Is messed up, and sometimes you just have too many cooks in the kitchen. David Jernigan 50:23Our clientele, yours and mine, they have been sick for decades of them. Dr. Deb 50:30Yeah. David Jernigan 50:31And if they went into a hospital, they honestly need every department. They need chronology, they need their kidney doctor, they need their. Their cardiologist, they need a neurologist, they need a rheumatologist. I mean, because none of those doctors are going to deal with everything. They&#8217;re just going to deal with one piece of the puzzle. And if they did get the benefit of all the different departments they need. Yeah. They go out with a garbage bag full of. Of stuff, too. Dr. Deb 50:57They would. David Jernigan 50:58Patients only. They&#8217;re not synergized. They don&#8217;t work together. You&#8217;re creating this chemistry set of who knows how much Poison. And I want to tell your listeners, I mean, you probably say this to your patients as well. There is a law of pharmacy that I learned eons ago and it applies to natural medicine too. Dr. Deb 51:20Yeah. David Jernigan 51:22But the law says every drug&#8217;s primary side effect is its primary action. So if you listen to tv, you can see this on commercials. I love listening to these commercials because I&#8217;m like, wow. I don&#8217;t want to say a name brand. I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s inappropriate to name a name brand, but let&#8217;s just say you have a pharmaceutical that is for sleep. After they show you this beautiful scene of the person restfully sleeping and everything like that, they tell you the truth. It&#8217;s like this may cause sleepiness. I mean sleeplessness and insomnia. Dr. Deb 52:03Yeah. And headaches and diarrhea and all cancer and. Yeah. David Jernigan 52:13Showing you little bunny foo foo. Dr. Deb 52:15Yep. David Jernigan 52:16Happy, happy people. They tell you this may create depression, severe depression and suicidal tendencies, which is the ultimate depression. So I want everyone to understand, you need to figure out what your doctor&#8217;s tools are that they&#8217;re asking you to take and they&#8217;re wanting you to take it forever. Generally in mainstream medicine, Right? Dr. Deb 52:40Yeah. David Jernigan 52:41They don&#8217;t say, hey, your heart has this condition, take this medicine for three months, after which time you can get off. Dr. Deb 52:48Yep. David Jernigan 52:49You&#8217;ll not fixing it. Right, Right. That on a timeline, there is a point, if it was truly even fixing anything, that you. It&#8217;s done what it should do and you should get off. Even if it&#8217;s a natural product. Dr. Deb 53:02Right. David Jernigan 53:03It&#8217;s done what it should do and if you get off, but instead you go through the correction and out the other side. And that&#8217;s where it starts manifesting a lot of the same problems that it has. Anti inflammatories, painkillers. Imagine the number one side effects are pain, inflammation. The doctor says, well, if you say, hey, I&#8217;m having more pain, what does he do? He ups the dosage. If that doesn&#8217;t work and you&#8217;re still in a lot of pain, which it would be, it changes it to a more powerful thing. Dr. Deb 53:35Yep. David Jernigan 53:35But it starts the cycle all over again. So when you ask me, it&#8217;s like, why are we having so much chronic illness? It&#8217;s because of the whole philosophy. It is the treatment philosophy of mainstream medicine that despises what you and I do. Because we&#8217;re our philosophy from the start is the biggest thing. It&#8217;s like we&#8217;re supposed to striving for cure. That dirty four letter word, cure. We&#8217;re not Even supposed to use it. And yet if you look it up in Steadman&#8217;s medical dictionary, it just means a restoration of health. Dr. Deb 54:09Of health. Yeah. We&#8217;re truly finding that root cause. David Jernigan 54:14I&#8217;m like, remission is a drug term. It&#8217;s a medical term again, look it up in a medical dictionary. It is a pharmaceutical term for a temporary plan or a reduction of your symptom. But because it&#8217;s just symptom suppression, it will come back. Remission is great. I suppose at the end of where you&#8217;ve exhausted everything. Because I can&#8217;t fix everything. I don&#8217;t know about you. Dr. Deb 54:41No, I can&#8217;t either. David Jernigan 54:42Yeah, my phone consults. I try to always remind people as much as I get excited about my technology and say, oh my gosh, I see so much opportunity to fix you, I always try to go, please understand. I&#8217;m going to tell you what most doctors may not tell you on a phone consultation. I can&#8217;t fix anything. Dr. Deb 55:02Yeah. David Jernigan 55:03From all of my tricks, I can&#8217;t fix everything. Not tricks, but you know, all my inventions, Phages too. They are a tool. You know, antibiotics. I think I wrote a blog one time, it should be on my website somewhere that says antibiotics do not fix neurological disease or I don&#8217;t know, something like that. You know you&#8217;re using the wrong tool, right? Dr. Deb 55:32Yeah. You&#8217;re using a hammer to do what a screwdriver needs to do. Right. David Jernigan 55:37And yet you could probably tell that you&#8217;ve had patients too, that they go, Dr. Jernigan, my throat was so sore and as soon as I swallowed that antibiotic, I felt better. I&#8217;m like going, how long did it take? Oh, it was immediate. It was like, dude, the gel cap didn&#8217;t even have time to his bone. Dr. Deb 55:58Yeah, placebo. David Jernigan 56:00It&#8217;s not going to repair the tissues that were all wrong. So I mean, that ulceration of your throat that&#8217;s happening, the inflammation, there&#8217;s no anti inflammatory effect of these things. So I digress a little bit, but that&#8217;s okay. I wrote an article that&#8217;s on the website that&#8217;s setting healthy expectations for phages because they want. We can see some amazing things happen. Things that in my 30 years, I wish I had all my career to do over again. Now having this tool, it&#8217;s just that much fun. When doctors around the country now are starting to use our inducing formulas. There&#8217;s 13 of them now, formulas for different broad spectrum illness presentations. I tell them all the same thing. I was like, you are gonna have so much fun. Dr. Deb 56:53That&#8217;s exciting. David Jernigan 56:54Winning is fun, you know. You know, mainstream medicine may never accept this. I don&#8217;t know. I feel a real huge burden though to do my best to follow a very scientific methodology. I&#8217;ve published as much as I can publish at this time by myself. I never took money from the sources that are out there because what do they do? They always come. Money comes with Stream. Dr. Deb 57:21Yes, it does. David Jernigan 57:23I don&#8217;t trust, I don&#8217;t trust. I mean, if you listen to the roundtable that Secretary Robert F. Kennedy did on Lyme disease last week, the first couple of speakers were like pretty legit. I mean all of them were legit, but I mean they were like senators and congressmen or something like that, I think. And then you have RFK Jr himself who&#8217;s legit. Dr. Deb 57:51Yeah. David Jernigan 57:53They were fessing up to the fact that yes, they were suppressing anything to do with lying. Dr. Deb 57:59Yeah. David Jernigan 58:00Our highest levels of marble halls and pillars of medicine were doing everything the way I thought they were. They were suppressing me. I was like, how can you ignore the best formulas ever? And still, I think Borrellogen and now induced native phage therapy are still. I believe. I&#8217;ve never seen it. I could be wrong. The only natural things that have been documented in a medical methodology in the natural realm. I mean, all the herbs that we talk about, you know, there&#8217;s one that was really famous for a while and it said we gave so many patients this product and other nutritional supplements and at the end X number of them were dramatically better. That&#8217;s not research. Dr. Deb 58:57Right. That&#8217;s observation. David Jernigan 58:59The trick there was we gave this one thing and then we gave high dose proteolytic enzymes. We gave high dose this. But at the end of the study, we&#8217;re going to point back at the thing we&#8217;re trying to sell you as being what did it. Dr. Deb 59:12Right. Which is what we do in all research, pretty much. We tried to manipulate it to do the way we want. Right in. In conventional medicine as well. David Jernigan 59:22Yeah, very often, yeah, in conventional medicine, definitely. Dr. Deb 59:27Yeah. David Jernigan 59:28And it&#8217;s kind of scary how many pharmaceuticals are sold laminous whisk because they&#8217;re. Yeah, there&#8217;s a new one on TV every day. Dr. Deb 59:35Every day, yes. David Jernigan 59:37Like who comes up with these names? They&#8217;re just horrible. Dr. Deb 59:39Yeah. You can&#8217;t pronounce them. You don&#8217;t know what they really do. David Jernigan 59:42Marketing company come up with some or something they go with and like I just made a million bucks. Dr. Deb 59:49I&#8217;ll be glad when that&#8217;s not on the TV anymore, which sounds like it&#8217;s coming. So That&#8217;s a good thing. Dr. Jared, again, this was really wonderful. What do you want to leave our listeners with? David Jernigan 60:00Well, you know, everyone&#8217;s calling for a new treatment. Dr. Deb 60:05Yeah. David Jernigan 60:08I have done everything I can do to get it out there scientifically in pure review, so that if you want to look up my name, I published an open access journal so that you didn&#8217;t have to buy the articles like pub mag yet to be a member. Dr. Deb 60:22Yeah. David Jernigan 60:23Look at a lot of the research. You have to buy the articles. I&#8217;ve done everything, open access so that people had access to the information. I honestly created induced native phage therapy to fix my own life. I used to think I could actually fix almost anything. Gave me enough time and I could not fix her first 10 years. She wasn&#8217;t bedridden. Dr. Deb 60:49Wow. David Jernigan 60:51People go, oh, it&#8217;s easy for you, Dr. Jernigan. You&#8217;re a doctor. Dr. Deb 60:54Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. David Jernigan 60:56Oh, my gosh, how many tears have been shed and how much heartache and how much of this and that? I mean, 90% of our marriage, she was in bed, just missing Christmas. All the horror stories you hear in the line world, that was her. I could not get her completely well and very discerning woman. I say that in all my podcasts because it&#8217;s just amazing. It&#8217;s like every husband, I think, shouldn&#8217;t want our wife. That&#8217;s always right, right? Yeah. Not that you surrender your own opinion, but it&#8217;s like it was literally, I don&#8217;t know, what, six months before the ILADS conference in Boston in 2029, 2019, that she said, are you going to the ILADS conference this year? And I&#8217;m like, no. Been going for like 15, 20 years, however long it&#8217;s been going on. And I was like, nah, I&#8217;m not going to go to this one. And three days before the conference, she says, I think you should go. And I go, okay. Like I said, she&#8217;s generally right. And that I bought a Scientific American magazine at the newsstand in the Nashville airport, started reading a story about phages, and that caught that edition of the Scientific American. It was a good article, but it wasn&#8217;t super meaty. I don&#8217;t very deep on those, but I just was stimulated. Something about being in elevation. Dr. Deb 1:02:22Yeah. David Jernigan 1:02:23Walking your own mountains. I don&#8217;t know. I get all inspired and I wrote in the margins and highlighted this and that until it was like, ultimately I spent the entire conference hammering this out. And it worked, and it&#8217;s been working. It&#8217;s just amazing. It&#8217;s. We&#8217;re over 200 different infections that we&#8217;ve, we&#8217;ve clinically or laboratory wise documented. There&#8217;s a new test from Igenx called the CEPCR line panel. They culture 64 different types of infections and I believe right now the latest count is something like 10 for 10 were completely negative. Dr. Deb 1:03:03Wow. David Jernigan 1:03:03These chronically infected people. And so that, that hadn&#8217;t been published anywhere. So in my published article, remember I was Talking about the 20 out of the 26 were tested as negative for the infection. That doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re cured. Okay. Remember, they&#8217;re chronically damaged. So how we need to look at it, you&#8217;re chronically damaged, you&#8217;re not getting infected. But with 30 day treatment, 24 out of the 26 were tested as negative. Dr. Deb 1:03:33That&#8217;s amazing. David Jernigan 1:03:34So 92% of the people were negative. Okay. The chances of that happening, when you run it through statistical analysis, the chances, when you compare the results to the sensitivity percentages, you know, like 100% specificity and 92% sensitivity of the, of the lab test, it&#8217;s a 4.59 million to one chance that it was a fluke. Isn&#8217;t that amazing? Dr. Deb 1:04:04That&#8217;s amazing. David Jernigan 1:04:05I&#8217;m not sure how many zeroes that is, but it&#8217;s a lot. Dr. Deb 1:04:08That is awesome. David Jernigan 1:04:09Like if I just say, well, it&#8217;s a one in a million chance it was a fluke. Okay. So lab tests don&#8217;t lie. You&#8217;re not done necessarily just because you got rid of the infections. Now that formula for Lyme has grown to be 90 plus microbes targeted in the one formula. So we figured out we can actually target individually, but collectively almost like an antibiotic that&#8217;s laser guided to only go after the bad guys that we targeted. So all the Borrelia types are targeted, all the Babesians, all the, the bartonella, the anaplasmosis, you name it. Mycoplasma types are targeted in that one formula. Because I said, took my collective 30 years of experience and 15,000 patients that I would typically see as co infections and put them into that one formula. So when we get these tests coming back that are testing for 64, it&#8217;s because of that. So there&#8217;s a lot of coolnesses that I could actually keep going. Dr. Deb 1:05:14That&#8217;s exciting. Thank you for joining us. How can people find you two ways? David Jernigan 1:05:23There&#8217;s the Phagen Corp. Company that is now manufacturing my formulas. That is P H A G E N Corp. Practitioners can go there. And there&#8217;s a practitioner side of the website that&#8217;s Very beefy with science. And all the formulas that were used, what&#8217;s inside of all the formulas, meaning what microbes are targeted by each one? Like there&#8217;s a GI formula, there&#8217;s a UTI formula, there&#8217;s a SIRS formula, there&#8217;s a Lyme formula, there&#8217;s a central nervous system type infection formula, there&#8217;s. And we can keep going, you know, sibo, SIBO formula, mold formula. I mean, we&#8217;ve discovered many things that I could just keep going for hours. Dr. Deb 1:06:05Yeah. David Jernigan 1:06:05About the discoveries from where it started in its humble beginnings to now. So there&#8217;s another way. If you wanted to see our clinic website is biologics with an X. So b I O L-O, G-I X Center, C-E-N-T-E-R.com and if somebody thinks they want to be a patient and experience this at our clinic, typically we don&#8217;t take just easy stuff. All we see is chronic, chronic cases from all over the world. Something like 96% of our patients come from other states and countries and typically have been close to 90% for my whole career. About 30 something percent come from other countries in that. So I, we&#8217;ve gotten really good and learned a lot in having to deal with what nobody else knows what to do with. But if you do want to do that, you can contact us. And if you, if you don&#8217;t get the answers from my patient care staff, then I do free consultations with the people that are thinking about whether we can help them or not. Dr. Deb 1:07:13Well, that&#8217;s excellent. For those of you who are driving or don&#8217;t have any way of writing things down, don&#8217;t worry about it. We&#8217;ve got you. We will have all of his contact information in our show notes so you will be able to reach out to him. Thank you again for joining me. This has been an amazing conversation. David Jernigan 1:07:30Thank you. I appreciate you.The post Episode 252 – Induced Native Phage Therapy (INPT) & advanced natural therapies first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

Dr. Deb 0:01Welcome back to another episode of Let&#8217;s Talk Wellness Now, and I&#8217;m your host, Dr. Deb, and today we&#8217;re pulling back the curtain on a topic that barely gets a whisper in conventional medicine. Chronic bladder symptoms, biofilms, and the hidden genetic drivers that keep so many women stuck in a cycle of pain, urgency, and infection that never truly resolves. My guest today is someone who is not only brilliant, but battle-tested, like myself. Dr. Kristin Reihman is a physician, a mom, and the author of Life After Lyme, a book and blueprint that has helped countless people reclaim health after complex chronic illness. After healing herself from advanced Lyme, she has spent her career helping patients recover their most vibrant, resilient selves through her Inner Flow program. Her Healing Grove podcast, her membership community, and her deep dive work on bladder biofilms and stealth pathogens. And what I love about Kristin is that she teaches from lived experience. In 2022, she suffered a stroke. And not only survived it, but rebuilt her brain, resolved lateral strabismus, restored balance, and regained her ability to multitask That journey uncovered her own genetic predisposition to clotting, the very same patterns she sees in her chronic bladder patients. And that personal revelation ultimately led to her Introducing this groundbreaking work that we&#8217;re talking about today. So let&#8217;s get into it, because bladder biofilms, clotting genetics, stealth pathogens, and real recovery is the conversation women have been needing for decades. And we&#8217;ll get started. Where did this one go? There we go. Alright, so welcome back to Let&#8217;s Talk Wellness Now. I have Dr. Kristin with me, and I am so excited to talk to her for multiple reasons. A, she&#8217;s got a fabulous story, and B, she&#8217;s an expert in a topic that nobody&#8217;s talking about, and I want to learn from her, too. So, welcome to the show. Kristin Reihman 3:07Thank you! I&#8217;m so happy to be here, Dr. Deb. Dr. Deb 3:10Thank you. Well, let&#8217;s dive right in, because we have so much to talk about, and you and I could probably talk for hours. So, let&#8217;s dive into this conversation, and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got involved in this. Kristin Reihman 3:23Well, I mean, like so many people, I think, on this path, I had, had to learn it the hard way. You know, I had to find my way into a mystery illness, a complex, mysterious set of symptoms that sort of didn&#8217;t fit the… the sort of description of what, you know, normal doctors do, and even though I was a normal doctor for many years, nothing I&#8217;d been trained in could help me when I was really debilitated from Lyme disease back in 2011, 20212, 2023. And so I kind of had to crawl my way out of that, using all the resources at my disposal, which, you know, started out with a lot of ILADS stuff, you know, a lot of the International Lyme and Associated Diseases Society, resources online, found some Lyme doctors, and then my journey really quickly evolved to sort of, like, way far afield of normal Western medicine, which is what my training is in you know, I think within a year of my diagnosis, I was, like, you know, at a Klingheart conference, and learning all sort of, you know, the naturopathic approach to Lyme, and really trying to heal my body and terrain, and heal the process that had led me to become so, so ill from, you know. A little bacteria. Dr. Deb 4:29Yeah. Yeah, same here. Like, I&#8217;ve been an ILADS practitioner for over 20 years, and when I got sick with Lyme, I was like… how did I not realize this? And I knew I had Lyme before I even was ILADS trained, but when I got really sick and got diagnosed with MS, I never thought about Lyme or mycotoxins or any of that, because I was too busy, head down, doing what I&#8217;m doing, helping people. And I, too, had to take that step back, not just physically, but more spiritually and emotionally, and say, how did my body get this sick? Like, what was I doing, and what was I not doing? That allowed this to happen, and now look at this from a healing aspect of not just the physical side, but that spiritual-emotional side as well. Kristin Reihman 5:13Totally. I have the same… I have the same realization as I was coming out of it. I was like, wow, this wasn&#8217;t just about, sort of, physically what I was doing and not doing. There was something spiritual here as well for me, and I… I feel like it really was a wake-up call for me to get on the path that I&#8217;m supposed to be on, the path that I&#8217;m on now, really, which is stepping away from the whole medicine matrix model and moving into, you know, working with really complex people. Listening to their bodies, understanding intuition, understanding energy, understanding all these different pieces that doctors just aren&#8217;t trained to look at. Dr. Deb 5:46Right? We don&#8217;t have time to learn everything, right? Like, you have time to learn the body and the medical side of things, and that&#8217;s a whole prism of itself, but then learning the spiritual energy medicine, that&#8217;s a completely different paradigm. That&#8217;s a full-time learning aspect, and it&#8217;s so different than what we learn in conventional medicine. Kristin Reihman 6:04Yeah, it&#8217;s a complete health system. Like, it&#8217;s a complete healthcare system. Dr. Deb 6:10Yes, and nobody takes it that seriously, but I, for myself, I&#8217;ve been spiritual healing for decades, and it wasn&#8217;t until I got really sick that I dived deeper into that and looked at what is it in this world that I&#8217;m owning, what belongs to generational things that were brought to me from childbirth and other generations in my family that I&#8217;m carrying their old wounds. And how do I clear some of that so that it&#8217;s not still following me? And then how do I help my kids so that they don&#8217;t have to carry what I brought forth? And it&#8217;s just… a lot of people, that may sound crazy, but that&#8217;s the kind of stuff that we need to be looking at if we want to truly heal. Kristin Reihman 6:54Yeah, and I think it&#8217;s also, it&#8217;s inspiring, you know, because when people… and I would tell this to my patients with Lyme and these sort of mystery illnesses, like, look, you are on this path for a reason, and this is going to teach you so much that you didn&#8217;t necessarily want to learn, but you need to learn. And this… nothing that you learn or change about your lifestyle or the way in which you move through the world is gonna make you a worse person. Like, it&#8217;s only gonna sort of up-level you. You know, it&#8217;s gonna up-level your diet, and your sleep habits, and your relationships, and your toxic thinking, like, it&#8217;s all gonna change for you to get better, and that&#8217;s… that&#8217;s a gift, really. Dr. Deb 7:27It really is, and I tell people the same thing. Like, we can look at this as… something that&#8217;s happening to us, or we can look at this as something that&#8217;s happening for us. And that&#8217;s how I looked at my MS diagnosis. This was happening for me, not to me. I wasn&#8217;t going to be the victim. And you have a very similar story, so tell us a little bit about your story and what kind of catapulted you into this in 2022. Kristin Reihman 7:52Well, by 2022, I was, like, 10 years out of my Lyme hole, and I had been seeing patients, you know, I had opened my own practice, and I was working for another company, seeing, families who have brain-injured children. I was their medical director, still am, actually. And so I was doing a patchwork of things, all of which really fed my soul. You know, all of which felt like this is, like, me, aligned with my purpose on the planet. And so, based on a lot of my thinking, I sort of figured, okay, well, I&#8217;m good now, right? Like, I&#8217;m on my path now, like, the universe is not going to send another 2&#215;4. And then the universe sent another 2&#215;4. And in 2022, I had an elective neck surgery. You kind of still see the little scar here for my two-level ACDF. Because I had crazy off-the-hook arm pain for, like, a year and a half that I just finally became, like, almost like it felt like I was developing fasciculations and fiery, fiery pain, and I just got the surgery, and the pain went away. But when I woke up, I was different. I didn&#8217;t have a voice. Which is a common side effect, actually, of that surgery that resolves after a few months, and in many cases, and mine did. But I also didn&#8217;t have, normal balance anymore, and my right eye turned out a little bit, and I couldn&#8217;t multitask. And my job is all about multitasking. As you know, with very complex people in front of you, you&#8217;re hearing all these pieces of their story, and you&#8217;re kind of categorizing it, and thinking about where they fit, and you&#8217;re making a plan for what to work up, and you&#8217;re making a plan for what to wait until next time. It&#8217;s like all these pieces, right? You&#8217;re in the matrix. And I… I couldn&#8217;t hold those pieces anymore. And I didn&#8217;t realize that until I went back to work a couple months after my, surgery, because my voice came back and was like, okay, well, now I&#8217;m going back to work. And then I realized, I can&#8217;t do simple math. In fact, I can&#8217;t remember what this person just said to me, unless I read my note, and I can&#8217;t remember taking that note. What is going on? And so I had a full workup, and indeed, I had some neurological deficits that didn&#8217;t show up on an MRI, so they must have been quite tiny. Possibly were even low-flow, you know, episodes during my surgery when my blood pressure drops really low with the medicines that you&#8217;re on for surgery. But I, basically had, like, a few mini strokes, and needed to recover from that. So that was sort of the… that was the 2&#215;4 in 2022. Dr. Deb 10:09Wow. So, what are, what are some of the things that you learned during that process of that mini-stroke? Kristin Reihman 10:17Well, the first thing I learned is that, something that I already knew from working with the Family Hope Center, which is that organization I mentioned that helps families heal their kids&#8217; brains, I know that motivation lives in the ponds, and if you have a ding or a hit to the ponds, like, you don&#8217;t want to get out of bed in the morning, you don&#8217;t want to do the work it takes to heal your brain, in my case. And I remember spending several months in the fall of 2022 just sort of walking around my yard. With my puppies, being like, This is enough. I don&#8217;t really need to work anymore, right? Like, I don&#8217;t… why do I need my brain back? Like, I don&#8217;t need to have my brain back to enjoy life. You know, I&#8217;ll have a garden, I have people I love and who love me, like, why do I need to work? Like, my whole, like, passion, purpose-driven mentality and motivation to kind of do and be all the things I always strive to do and be in the world, was, like, gone. It was really interesting, slash very alarming to those who knew me, but being inside the brain that wasn&#8217;t really working, it wasn&#8217;t alarming to me. I was just sort of like, oh, ho-hum, this is my new me.Well, luckily I have some people around me, I like to call them my healing team, who sort of held up a mirror, and they&#8217;re like, this is not you, and we&#8217;re gonna take you to a functional neurologist now. And so, I ended up seeing a functional neurologist who, you know, within… within, like probably 6 visits. I had all these, like, stacked visits with him. Within 6 visits, my brain just turned on. I was like, oh! Right! I need my brain back! I gotta fix this eyesight, I gotta get my balance back, and I gotta learn how to do simple math again and multitask. So, after that sort of jumpstart, I actually did the program that I, you know, know very well inside and out from the Family Hope Center, where I&#8217;d been medical director for 10 years. And, it&#8217;s a hard program, it&#8217;s not… not for wimps, and it&#8217;s certainly… I wasn&#8217;t about to do it when I had no motivation, so I&#8217;m really grateful to the functional neurologist who helped me kind of, like get my brain… get my pawns back, and my motivation back, my mojo. And then I&#8217;m really grateful to the Family Hope Center, because if I didn&#8217;t have that set of tools in my back pocket, I would still have an eye that turns out to the side, I would still have a positive Romberg, you know, closing my eyes, falling over backwards, and I would still have, a lot of trouble seeing patients, and probably wouldn&#8217;t be working anymore. Dr. Deb 12:32I can totally relate to that. When I got my MS diagnosis, you know, there&#8217;s a period of time where you go, okay reality kicks in, and I&#8217;m thinking, okay, how long am I going to be able to work? How long am I going to be able to play with my kids and my grandkids and be able to be me? And I started looking at, how do I sell my practice, just in case I need to do this? How do I step back? And I spent probably about 9 or 10 months in that place of, this is gonna be my life, and it&#8217;s not gonna be what I&#8217;m used to, and, you know, how are we gonna redesign my house, and do this, and that, and… Finally, my husband looked at me one day, and he&#8217;s like, what the hell is wrong with you? And I was like, what are you talking about? He&#8217;s like, this is ridiculous. He&#8217;s like, you fix everybody else. He&#8217;s like you can fix yourself. Why do you think you can&#8217;t fix yourself, or you don&#8217;t know the people that can fix you? You need to get out of this, and pick yourself up, and start doing what you tell your patients. And… and I sat there, and at first I was like just did he know that I&#8217;m sick? Like, I have MS. I took that victim mode for a little bit, and then I went, no, he&#8217;s right. Like, this is my wake-up call to say, I can reverse this, I can fix this, and total, total turnaround, too. Like, I started reaching out to my friends and colleagues, because I kept myself in this huge bubble, like, I didn&#8217;t want anyone to know what was going on with me, because I was afraid my patients wouldn&#8217;t see me, what are my staff going to say? My staff are going to leave, and if I lose my business, what am I going to do? And da-da-da-da, all those fears. And then… when I finally started opening up and sharing with people, people started bringing me other people, and you need to talk to this person, you need to talk to this person. They connected me here and there, and this place, and 18 months later, I was totally back to normal again. And now my practice is growing, and we&#8217;re adding on, and it&#8217;s bigger, and I&#8217;m taking on more projects than I feel like myself, and… and I was a lot like you, too. Like, I couldn&#8217;t remember my protocols that I&#8217;ve done for 20 years. I had to depend on what was in the EHR to pull forward, because I always had them in my notes, so I didn&#8217;t have to type them all the time, but I was like I have to pull that forward, because I don&#8217;t remember the name of the supplement that I&#8217;ve used for 15 years. I don&#8217;t remember what laps I&#8217;m ordering. I don&#8217;t remember the normal values of this stuff. And now it&#8217;s back on the tip of my tongue, but at the time, it was a little scary, for sure. Kristin Reihman 14:47Wow, so scary. Well, that&#8217;s a remarkable story, and why I can&#8217;t wait to have you on my podcast, but I&#8217;m really… I&#8217;m really happy that you had a healing team around you, too, who was like, yeah, nope, that&#8217;s not your… that&#8217;s not the train we&#8217;re on. Get off that train. Come back on your usual train. What are you doing over there? Dr. Deb 15:03Yeah, and you know, I hope that a lot of patients have that, or people that are experiencing this have that, but there&#8217;s so many people who don&#8217;t have that. And they need somebody, they need somebody in their corner, like we had in our corners, to help pick them up and say, this doesn&#8217;t have to be your reality. It can change, but it is a lot of work, like you said. It&#8217;s a lot of work. It&#8217;s not… Kristin Reihman 15:25Yeah, no, it&#8217;s a lot of work. So when I started off. I was work… I was doing probably 4 hours a morning, like, 4… basically, my entire morning was devoted to brain training and healing my brain through the ref… you know, we… I mean, I can get into the details of it, but basically it&#8217;s a lot of, like, crawling on the floor. On your belly, creeping on your hands and knees, doing reflex bags to stimulate, you know, more blood flow to the brain, doing a lot of smells. You know, and just staying with it, you know? And I remember balking, even in the beginning, I was, like, seeing some changes, I was feeling more motivated. I remember feeling this… I started noticing it was changing about 2 weeks in, when I would get up in the morning. And I would… I noticed I would start… I would do my, like, beginnings of the day, I would get the kids on the bus, I would do everyone&#8217;s breakfast, I&#8217;d do the dishes, and I&#8217;d be, like, sitting down and being like, hmm, like, what am I supposed to be doing now? Like, where… What is my purpose today? And because I had this plan, I was just like, well, I know that has to happen, so I may as well do that now. And I would get on the floor, and I would start crawling down the length of our hallway. And within about 8 laps, I would feel my brain, like. I felt like it integrating. I would feel things, like, just coming online, and I&#8217;d be like, oh, right. I know who I am, I know what I&#8217;m doing today, I have these other things this afternoon, I gotta get this done before noon, and I would do it. But it was really interesting, and I&#8217;ve never been a coffee drinker, but when I thought of what that felt like, to me, that&#8217;s how people often describe, like, my brain doesn&#8217;t wake up until I have coffee. I never needed coffee to have… my brain woke up before I&#8217;d wake up, and I&#8217;d be like, bing, and I&#8217;m ready to go. But when I had the brain injury for those 9 months, it wasn&#8217;t that way the whole time. In the beginning, it was very hard to get my brain back in the morning, and it was creeping and crawling that would pull it in. Dr. Deb 17:08Wow. Is there one particular thing that you did that you felt made the biggest difference to rebuilding your brain? Kristin Reihman 17:15Crawling on my belly like a commando, wearing elbow pads, knee pads, actually two sets of knee pads, wearing toe shoes, and just ripping laps on my floor. Dr. Deb 17:26Oh, and that&#8217;s so simple to do. So why does that work? Kristin Reihman 17:31So interesting, and I… this is the kind of… this is the… the story of this is something that I think is bigger than all of us, and I wish everybody knew how to optimize your brain using just the simple hallway in your house. But essentially, if you take a newborn baby. And you put them on mom&#8217;s belly, and they&#8217;re neurologically intact, and maybe you&#8217;ve seen videos of this. There used to be a video circulating about a baby born onto mom&#8217;s belly, nobody touches the baby, and in about 2 minutes and 34 seconds, that baby crawls on its belly, like, uses arms, uses its toe dig with its little babinsky, and pushes its way up to mom&#8217;s breast. Latches on with its reflexes, and there you go. That baby keeps itself alive through its primitive reflexes. So it&#8217;s essentially telling its brain, every time it runs those reflexes, every time it does a little toe dig, every time it, like, swings its arm across in a cross-later, hetero… what do we call, a homolateral pattern. That little baby is getting a message to its brain that says, grow and heal and organize. And because all the reflexes come out of the middle and lower brain stem. That&#8217;s the part of the brain that&#8217;s organizing as a baby. And as a baby grows and does the various things a baby does using its reflexes, like eventually on its belly, crawling across the floor, and then popping up to hands and knees, and creeping across the floor, and eventually standing and walking, all of those things are invoking a different set of reflexes that tell the brain to grow and heal and organize. So it&#8217;s almost like the function creates the structure, and if you run those pathways again and again and again your brain will get the message to basically invoke its own neuroplasticity, and that&#8217;s how a baby&#8217;s brain grows. And it turns out, any brain of any age, if you put it through those same pathways, it will send a message of neuroplasticity to the brain, and the brain will grow and heal and organize. Dr. Deb 19:16That was going to be my question, is why aren&#8217;t we using this for elderly people with dementia, or Alzheimer&#8217;s, or stroke, or Parkinson&#8217;s, or things like that, to help them regrow their brain? Kristin Reihman 19:28Well, because number one, nobody knows about it. Number two, even when people do know about it, nobody likes to be on the floor like a baby, creepy and crawling. And least of all the stubborn old people with dementia who are, like, who don&#8217;t even think they have a problem. I mean, the problem with the brain not working, as I discovered, and it sounds like you discovered, too, is the brain that&#8217;s not working doesn&#8217;t know it&#8217;s not working, or worse, doesn&#8217;t care. You know, and so it&#8217;s tricky with adults. With kids who, you know, you have some sort of power over, you can often make your kids do things that they don&#8217;t want to do, like eat their vegetables, or creep and crawl on the floor for 80, you know, 80 laps before they get to go, you know, do their thing. But adults are a little trickier. Dr. Deb 20:10Is there another way for us to be able to do that same thing without the crawling on the floor? Like, could they do it in a sitting motion, or do they need that whole connection to happen? Kristin Reihman 20:21Well, they need to be moving in a cross pattern, and they need to be moving their arms and their legs in such a way that stimulates the reflexes. But you can do that on your bed, you can do it face down on your bed by getting into a pattern, and switching sides and, you know, moving your legs and your arms in the opposite… in the, you know, an opposite cross pattern, and that will get you some of the benefit. And we, in fact, we have… we work with kids who are paralyzed and who don&#8217;t… aren&#8217;t able to independently move forward in a crawling pattern, who have people coordinating their movements so that they get the same movement, and the brain registers it, and they do make progress, and some of them eventually. Crawl, and then creep, and then walk. Dr. Deb 20:59Wow, that&#8217;s so… and it&#8217;s so simple and easy for people to do. Kristin Reihman 21:04Well, it&#8217;s simple. I don&#8217;t know that it&#8217;s easy. I do… I do… having done it myself, I will say it&#8217;s probably the hardest thing I&#8217;ve ever done, was literally crawl my way out of that brain injury. And I&#8217;m so glad that I knew what to do, and I&#8217;m so glad I had people push me to remind me that it was important, because… I&#8217;ll even… I&#8217;ll share another story of my own resistance. So, about 2 or 3 weeks into it, I was up to 300 meters of crawling on my belly. And 600 meters of creeping on hands and knees, which was really killing my knees, which was why I was wearing two knee pads. And, I started to get this feeling that maybe I wasn&#8217;t doing enough. Like, even though I was noticing changes, and even though I was feeling more purpose, and I was getting organized in the morning, I could tell it was making a difference. I… I knew, I remembered that usually the kids on our program are doing a lot more than that, including my own… my youngest kids, but I made them creep and crawl, even though they didn&#8217;t have serious brain injuries, I just thought, we&#8217;re gonna optimize everyone, get on the floor, get on the floor. Lord so I was… I was nervous about not doing enough, so I… I reached out to the member… one of the members of the team, and I said, you know, hey, Maria, what&#8217;s… what do you think about my numbers? And here&#8217;s a… here&#8217;s a video of me creeping and crawling, what do you think? Am I doing it right? And she said, you&#8217;re doing it right, but how many, how many meters are you doing? And I said, I&#8217;m doing 300 meters of crawling on my belly, and 600 meters of creeping, and she&#8217;s like, oh. Yeah, that&#8217;s not nearly enough for an adult. She&#8217;s like, Matthew probably gave you those numbers because he felt bad for you and thought you were going to be still working. He didn&#8217;t know you were going to take off from patients. Now that you&#8217;re… since you&#8217;re not working, you need to do more. I was like, okay, tell me… tell me how much I&#8217;m supposed to do. And she goes, you need 900 meters of crawling on your belly, and 3,600 meters, 3.6 kilometers of basically crawling on my hands and knees. Dr. Deb 22:51Oh my gosh. Kristin Reihman 22:52And I just shut down. Dr. Deb 22:54Yeah. Kristin Reihman 22:55I was like, okay, screw it. I&#8217;m not doing it. Dr. Deb 22:58And I spent a day or two just not doing it and feeling petulant, and then I was like, you know what? Kristin Reihman 23:01Forget that, I was noticing some benefit. I&#8217;m gonna do my 300-600. So, the next day, I went and did 300 and 600 while my daughter was at physical therapy, and we got back in the car, and I said, hey, I&#8217;m so excited, I finished my… all my creepy and crawling, and it&#8217;s only 10 a.m. on a Saturday, I&#8217;m done for the weekend. And she did this. She&#8217;s sitting in the car, she looks at me, she goes. Was that your whole program, or was that a third of your program? Dr. Deb 23:28How old is she? Kristin Reihman 23:01Well, she&#8217;s, like, 20 now, but she was 18 at the time, and she… she had my number, and I was like, Tula! How can you say that? I&#8217;m working so hard! And she&#8217;s like, Mom? You need to stop seeing patients completely, and do what they tell you at the Family Hope Center. Because we&#8217;re your family, and this is your brain we&#8217;re talking about, and we need you to have all your brain back. And I must have looked terrible, because she goes, too much? Dr. Deb 23:54You raised a good daughter. Kristin Reihman 23:58And I was like, well, let me tell… let me ask you, do you mean that? She goes, yeah, I really mean that. I&#8217;m like, then it&#8217;s not too much. I needed to hear that. Thank you. And I went home, and I finished another 600 of crawls. I didn&#8217;t… I never got up to 3,600 of creeps. It was just too much for my knees. I got to 900 and 900, but that was the end of my resistance, and I just did it. Dr. Deb 24:17I just did it. Yeah, your family needed you, right? I mean, when somebody in your family that you love tells you they need you, that&#8217;s a huge motivating factor. Kristin Reihman 24:27Yeah, yeah, I&#8217;m so grateful for that. So, I did that for 9 months, and at the end of 9 months, my eye was straight and stayed straight, my balance was back, I was multitasking again, and I could take, you know, days and days off of creeping and crawling and not notice a dip. I was like, I&#8217;m done. Dr. Deb 24:45Wow, that&#8217;s awesome. Kristin Reihman 24:46Yeah. Dr. Deb 24:47During this process, you also discovered that you&#8217;re part of 20% of the people with clotting genetics. Tell us a little bit about that. What&#8217;s your understanding in that? Kristin Reihman 24:58Well, so, I&#8217;ll back up. So, before I had my stroke, I had already been seeing patients with really complex, you know, patients like yours, really complex stories, lots of different things going on, kind of the perfect storm for if they got a tick bite, they tanked. Dr. Deb 25:12and&#8230; Kristin Reihman 25:13And I&#8217;m one of those people, and my patients were those people. And about 7 years ago, I had one of these patients who said to me, you know, I&#8217;ve never told you this, but when I was in my 20s, I had so many bladder infections, so much, like, you know, kind of interstitial cystitis, they said it was, and they said it wasn&#8217;t an infection, but it felt like one. And I&#8217;ve been doing a little research, and I&#8217;ve learned about this woman whose name&#8217;s Ruth Kriz, she&#8217;s a nurse practitioner, and she sees Patients, and she has… she works with practitioners, and she basically heals interstitial cystitis. And I want you to work with her, I want you to learn from her. And I was like, I&#8217;m game. That sounds really interesting, I have no idea what she&#8217;s doing, and you don&#8217;t usually hear the words cure and interstitial cystitis in the same sentence, so, like, I&#8217;m in. So I reached out to Ruth, and long story short, I&#8217;ve been working with her for the last 5 or 7 years basically increasing the number of patients who I&#8217;m diagnosing now with these hidden bladder infections that are really often what&#8217;s at the root of these interstitial cystitis symptoms, meaning, you know, you go to the doctor, you pee in a cup, they look for something, they say there&#8217;s no infection here, so, you know, you&#8217;re probably crazy, or, you know, you probably have just a pain syndrome, we can&#8217;t help you. And actually, if you look with a much more sensitive test, and if you break down the biofilms where these bugs kind of are living in the bladder, you find them. And then you can treat them, and then people get well. So I knew about this, and I, didn&#8217;t have any bladder infections that I knew about, and what I did start to think about after my stroke was, well, maybe, since these people who have these bladder infections often have issues breaking down biofilms, the same genetics that lead you to have trouble breaking down biofilms, which are these places where the bugs are kind of hiding in your body, have trouble breaking down clots. And I just had some strokes. I wonder if I have maybe some of these clotting genetics that I&#8217;m looking for in all my bladder people. And so I looked, and surprise, surprise, I had not one, not two, but, like, six of them. Ruth said to me, Ruth said, Darlin, I don&#8217;t know how you&#8217;re standing up. This is more than I&#8217;ve ever seen in any of my patients. And she&#8217;s been doing this for, like, 4 years now. I was like, oh boy, that&#8217;s not good. But in retrospect, it made a lot of sense to me, because having the clotting genetics I have. puts me at risk for severe, you know, chronic Lyme that&#8217;s intractable, which I had. It puts me at risk for trouble with, you know, having surgery and clotting and, you know, low blood pressure and low flow states. It puts me at risk for the cold hands and cold feet that I had my entire life until I started treating the clotting issues by taking an enzyme that breaks down little microclots. I mean, I was the person in med school who&#8217;d put my hands on people, be like, I&#8217;m so sorry. My hands are ice. Warm heart, cold hands, warm heart. Yeah, not anymore, because I&#8217;ve treated it. But yeah, so I was surprised slash not surprised to find that I&#8217;m one of the people in my community who is a setup for chronic infections and, strokes and bladder infections. Dr. Deb 28:22So you just had that predisposition that took you down that path. Kristin Reihman 28:28Yeah, I think so. Dr. Deb 28:30What are some of the layers of biofilm and the stealth pathogens, like tick-borne diseases and things like that, hiding inside us that… what are some of the symptoms look like, and how do they look different in people with clotting disorders versus the common tick-borne disease? Kristin Reihman 28:47I would say they&#8217;re very similar, so it tends to be poor peripheral circulation, so if you put your hands on your neck, and your hands feel cold to your neck difference in the heat, right? The amount of blood flow in your sort of axial skeleton and area as compared to the periphery. And that can indicate a biofilm kind of predisposition or a clotting disposition. It doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean it&#8217;s there, but it&#8217;s a clue, right? Another clue is a family history of any kind of clotting disorders. So, miscarriages, heart attacks, especially early heart attacks, strokes, especially strokes in young people. These things are… are clues that we should probably look for some kind of clotting issue. And of course, in my population, I&#8217;m always thinking about it now, because if you have not been able to get well with the usual things for Lyme disease, for example, or Babesia or Bartonella, all of which, by the way, can form biofilms or, you know, love to live and hide in biofilms, then chances are your body&#8217;s having a hard time addressing those biofilms. And it turns out, so the connection between the clotting and the biofilm piece is that the same proteins that our body uses to break down Biofilms are used to break down microclots, blood clots, and soluble fibrin, which are the sort of precursors to those clots. And so, if we have an issue kind of grinding up those just normal flotsam and jetsam in our blood flow, then our blood flow is going to become sticky, and our blood will become sort of stagnant and sludgy, and that&#8217;s sort of a setup for not being able to heal from infections. Dr. Deb 30:25Is one of the genetic markers you look at MTHFR? Kristin Reihman 30:28I look at that, but I don&#8217;t consider that a clotting issue, unless it leads to high homocysteine. So, homocysteine can be either high or low, they&#8217;re both problematic. And MTHFR can create either an over-methylation situation, and sometimes if people have low homocysteine, it&#8217;s almost worse, because they&#8217;re such poor detoxers that they can&#8217;t actually get anything out of their system, and they get sludgy for that reason. But I think in terms of the clotting, the bigger issue is high homocysteine, which, you know, typically the MTHFRs, the 1298 would be more implicated for that. Dr. Deb 31:02Yeah, it kind of sets you up. Dr. Deb 31:04Yeah, yeah. Kristin Reihman 31:05I&#8217;m curious what you&#8217;re seeing. I know since the pandemic, we see a lot of people with elevated D-dimer levels.Are you seeing some of that in your practice, too? Like, we&#8217;re seeing more of it, and now that you&#8217;re talking about this, I&#8217;m wondering if some of those people are predisposed to some of these genetic makeups, and that&#8217;s why we&#8217;re seeing such a high rise in that.It… and this is connected, and it&#8217;s a piece we&#8217;re missing. Kristin Reihman31:29Yes, I do think it&#8217;s a piece we&#8217;re missing. There was a very interesting study that came out of South Africa. A physician in his office did a clinical study on his patients using 3 blood thinners. So he put people on Plavix, and Eliquis, and aspirin, all at once. It… yeah, you&#8217;d be hard-pressed to find a doctor in the States to, like, you know, kind of risk that, because most people don&#8217;t even want people on aspirin and Flavix at the same time. Dr. Deb 31:55But Kristin Reihman 31:56They put them on 3 different blood thinners, people with long COVID, and in 6 months, 80% of those people were completely free of symptoms. Dr. Deb 32:04Wow. Kristin Reihman 32:05Yeah, yeah. Now, my question is, what about that 20%? Like, what&#8217;s going on with them? And I suspect, they weren&#8217;t looking at the other half of the pathway, because when you give a blood thinner, you&#8217;re not doing anything to help the body break down clot. You&#8217;re simply stopping the body from making more of it. And you rely on the body&#8217;s own mechanisms, you know, plasminogen activating inhibitor, for example to kind of grind up those clots and take them out. But when people have a mutation, say, in that protein, they&#8217;re not going to be able to grind up the clots, and so my suspicion is the 20% of people who didn&#8217;t get well in that study were people who had issues on the other side of the pathway. Dr. Deb 32:44Yeah, they weren&#8217;t able to excrete that out and maybe have some fiber and issues and things like that, and that wasn&#8217;t being addressed. Kristin Reihman 32:50Yeah Dr. Deb 32:51Yeah Kristin Reihman 32:52Of course, COVID makes its own biofilm. There&#8217;s a whole… there&#8217;s a whole new, you know, arm of research looking at sort of the different proteins that get folded in the body when COVID spike proteins are in there, kind of creating these almost, like, little amyloid plaque situations in your blood vessels. So, I do think that people who can&#8217;t break those down are really at risk for both COVID and the shots. You know, the spike protein comes at you for both of those, right? Dr. Deb 33:17Yeah. Did you use any lumbrokinase or natokinase in your situation? Kristin Reihman 33:22So lumbar kinase is what I use. It&#8217;s my main player. I use the Canada RNA one, which is, you know, I think, you know, more studied than any of the other ones, and because of its formulation, it&#8217;s about 12 times more potent than anything else out there. So that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m pretty much on for life. You know, that&#8217;s… I consider that kind of my…My… my main game. Dr. Deb 33:44Yeah, I agree, I love Limerocheinase for that, that&#8217;s really good. So you recently hosted a retreat around this topic. What were some of your biggest aha moments for the participants as they started unraveling some of these biofilm layers? Kristin Reihman 34:00Yeah, no, it was so fun. My sister and I host retreats together. She came out from California and did the yoga, and I did the teaching about biofilms and bladder issues, and it was really fabulous, because a lot of these folks are people already in my community. A few of them were new, and so we had this wonderful Kind of connection, and learning together, and just validation of what it is to live with symptoms that are super inconvenient, you know? Like, one of the… one of the members even, or participants even brought a big bag of, like, pads, and she&#8217;s like, listen, ladies. This is what I&#8217;m going to use to get through the week. If you want to borrow, I&#8217;ll put my little stash over there, and I think they all went by the end of the week. So we… my aha moment was just how powerful it is to be, hosting community and facilitating conversations where people really feel seen and heard, and just how important that is, especially post-COVID, right? When we, you know, so many people just really missed that piece of other humans. And, yeah, I love… I love being able to help people connect around stuff like that. Dr. Deb 35:00That&#8217;s awesome. So, for people who are listening that have that mystery, quote-unquote bladder issue, frequent UTIs, interstitial cystitis symptoms, or pelvic pain, or bladder spasms. Where should they start, and what are the first clues that tell you this is biofilm-driven? Kristin Reihman 35:20So, I think it&#8217;s always a good idea to… to do a test, you know, to take a microgen test. There&#8217;s a couple companies out there, I think Microgen&#8217;s the one that I rely on more than any of the others, and it requires, you know, not only doing a very sensitive test like Microgen, but breaking down biofilm before you take it. So, I always encourage people to take a biofilm breaker like lumbrokinase for 5 days leading up to the test, so you&#8217;re really grinding into the bladder wall and opening up those biofilms so that when you catch whatever comes out of your bladder, there&#8217;s something in there. If you don&#8217;t have bladder biofilm, nothing will come out, and you&#8217;ll have a negative test, and that&#8217;s usually confirmatory. If you&#8217;ve done a good provoking with BLUC or, you know, lumbrokinase for 5 days, and nothing comes out then I usually say mischief managed. That&#8217;s… that&#8217;s a great… that&#8217;s great news for you, right? And most people in my community, when they look, they find something, because, you know, not for nothing, but you&#8217;re in my community for a reason, right? Dr. Deb 36:17And so&#8230; Kristin Reihman 36:18So, yeah, and typically then we need to get into the ring with those bladder biofilms, and it doesn&#8217;t… it doesn&#8217;t usually take one or two tests, it&#8217;s many tests, because the layers are deep. I&#8217;m working with children, too, and even in small kids, they… if they have the right genetics, and if they&#8217;re living in an environment that is… that kind of can also push them to make more biofilms, like living in mold, for example, is a huge instigator of inflammation and biofilms, and also, you know, microclots and fibrin in the body. then those layers can go deep. And so, we&#8217;re peeling the layers one at a time, and we&#8217;re treating what comes out, and supporting people along the way. Dr. Deb 36:57With these microgen tests, can you find biofilms in other parts of the body as well, or is it primarily bladder? Kristin Reihman 37:03No, you can find… you can culture… and you can send a microgen PCR for any… any, you know, secretion you want. So they have a semen test, they have a vaginal test, they have a nasal test, you can send sputum, you can culture out what… you can stick a swab in your ear. There&#8217;s all sorts of… anything that you can put a swab in, you can… you can send in there. Oh, that&#8217;s awesome, that&#8217;s amazing. Yeah. Dr. Deb 37:26So, once you identify the drivers, genetics, environment, stealth infections, what does an effective treatment or reversal process look like for people? Kristin Reihman 37:36For the… for the bladder in particular? Well, I wish I could say it was herbs or oxidation, which are my favorite things for Lyme. I haven&#8217;t found those to work for the bladder, and so I&#8217;m using antibiotics. Which, even though I&#8217;m a Western-trained MD, it was not my bag of tricks. You know, when I left, sort of, the matrix medicine model, I really stopped using those things as much as possible, and I&#8217;ve had to come back to them, because they really, really work, and they&#8217;re really, really needed. So I love it if someone else out there is getting results with something other than antibiotics, please contact me and let me know, because I have plenty of patients who are like, really? Another antibiotic? I&#8217;m like, I know. But they work. We also do a really careful job, you know, I work with Ruth Kriz on every case, and we do a very careful job in finding the drug that&#8217;s going to be the least broad spectrum, and that&#8217;s really only going to tackle the highest percentage bug there. So, MicroGen does this really cool thing. It&#8217;s a PCR, next-gen sequencing, they&#8217;re looking at genetics, so you don&#8217;t have to have it on ice, it can sit on your countertop for a month, and you can still send it in. And they, they, they categorize by percentage, like, what&#8217;s there. And they&#8217;re not just looking for the 26 or 28 different bacteria that you would get if you were looking at a culture in your doctor&#8217;s office. They&#8217;re looking for 57,000 different organisms. Fungal and bacterial, yeah? And so, this is why I say, if there&#8217;s something there, and you&#8217;ve broken down the biofilm, microgen will find it. Dr. Deb 39:06That&#8217;s really great. That was going to be my question, is does it pick up fungal biofilms as well? So I&#8217;m so glad you mentioned that, because a lot of times with bladder stuff, it&#8217;s fungal in that bladder, too, and then we&#8217;re throwing an antibiotic at it and just making it worse if it&#8217;s fungal in there. Kristin Reihman 39:21Yeah, yeah, that&#8217;s… they… and I recently saw one, I had a little Amish girl who came back with 5 different fungal organisms in her bladder. And a whole flurry, a slurry of bacteria, too. Yeah, pretty sick. And that&#8217;s usually an indication that you&#8217;re living in mold, honestly. Dr. Deb 39:37Now, conventional medicine treats the bladder as a sterile organ, and rarely looks at biofilms. Why do we believe that this has been overlooked for so long, and what are they missing? Kristin Reihman 39:53Dr. Dr. Deb 39:53I&#8217;m loaded up. Kristin Reihman 39:54One of the many mysteries of medicine. I have no idea why people are like, la la la, biofilms. I mean, we know, so when I say we know, so when I trained, you know, I trained at Stanford for my medical school, I trained at Lehigh Valley for residency. Great programs, and I learned that, oh yes, biofilms, they exist in catheters of bladders. When people have an indwelling catheter for more than a month and they spike a fever, it&#8217;s a biofilm, but it&#8217;s only in the catheter. Really? Why does it stop at the catheter? Dr. Deb 40:23Yeah. Kristin Reihman 40:25Or, you know, now chronic sinusitis, people are recognizing this is a bladder… this is not a bladder, this is a biofilm infection in your sinuses. But we&#8217;re really reluctant to kind of admit that there&#8217;s, you know, that we&#8217;re teeming with microorganisms, that they might be setting up shop, and for good, right? Like, it&#8217;d be great if they were in biofilms as opposed to our bloodstream. Like, we don&#8217;t want them in our bloodstream, so thankfully they wall themselves off. But yeah, I think they&#8217;re everywhere. I mean, they found a microbiome in the brain, in the breast, in the, you know, the lung. There&#8217;s microbiome, there&#8217;s bugs everywhere. And the question is, are they friend or foe? And the bladder really shouldn&#8217;t have anybody in it. Because, think about it, you&#8217;re flushing it out, you know, 6 times a day. You know, most people who can break down biofilm because their clotting genetics are normal, and because they&#8217;re peeing adequately, will never set up an organism shop in their bladder. Even though things are always crawling up, we&#8217;re always peeing them out. Dr. Deb 41:23Yeah. Kristin Reihman 41:23And then there&#8217;s the 20% of us who… Who aren&#8217;t that way. Dr. Deb 41:30Oh, so you run the Interflow program and a number of healing communities. What tools and teachings have been the most transformational for people going through this journey? And tell us a little bit about the Interflow program, too, please. Kristin Reihman 41:44Okay, maybe I&#8217;ll start there, because honestly, I have to think about the which tools are most transformational. The Interflow program is my newest offering, and we developed it because my team and I were looking around at the patients we had, and so many folks were needing to go down this… we call it the microgen journey, like, get on the microgen train and just start that process. And there was just a lot of hand-holding and support, and… education that they were requiring. And by the way, their brains aren&#8217;t working that great, because when you have these infections, you know, you&#8217;re dealing with, like, downloads of ammonia from time to time from the bladder organisms, you&#8217;re dealing with a lot of brain fog, overwhelm, you know, there&#8217;s just a lot of… you know how our patients are, they… they… they&#8217;re struggling, and they really need a lot of hand-holding, and so we were providing that. But we kept thinking, like, gosh, it would be great to get these guys in community, like you know, we can say all we want, like, you know, it&#8217;s important to check your pH, it&#8217;s important to, like, stay on top of the whatever, but it&#8217;d be great to have them hear that from one another, and to have them also hear, sort of, that they&#8217;re not alone. So, because we had some experience running communities online, which we started during the pandemic and has been super successful, we said, let&#8217;s do this, let&#8217;s create a little online community of our inner… of our, you know, call them… informally, we call them our bladder babes. But, like, let&#8217;s create a community of people who are looking to really heal and get to this deep, deep root that no one else is doing. And that was really the key for me, that nobody else is really doing this. Very few people are doing it or aware of it. I wish that weren&#8217;t the case, but as it stands now, it&#8217;s pretty hard to find someone to take this seriously. Most doctors, if you even take a microgen to them, they&#8217;ll say, oh, there&#8217;s 10 organisms on here, that&#8217;s a contamination. That must be contaminated. Well, yeah, buy your biofilms, but they don&#8217;t know about biofilms, so they think it just comes from the lab. Dr. Deb 43:31Something. Kristin Reihman 43:32I don&#8217;t know. But, yeah, basically it was because I felt called to do this service that no one else is providing, and I wanted to do it in a way that was going to be really optimally supportive for people. So we created a membership, basically. Dr. Deb 43:44Do you see a difference in men and women? Obviously, women have this problem more than men, but do you see a difference in how many men that have these self-infections or live in mold compared to women? Kristin Reihman 43:57I… it&#8217;s hard to know, really, what the, sort of, prevalence is out there, I will say, in terms of who calls our office. Dr. Deb 43:03It&#8217;s, you know, 95% women call our office. Kristin Reihman 44:08And occasionally, we&#8217;ve had someone call our office on behalf of a husband or a son. I just saw a woman whose 2-year-old son is in our Bladder Babes community. But typically, it&#8217;s the women who are seeking care around this, and I don&#8217;t know if that&#8217;s a function of their having more of the issues. I suspect it is, because as you said before, so many more women deal with these complex mystery illnesses than men.But there certainly are men who have them. Dr. Deb 44:33Yeah. So, you&#8217;ve lived through Lyme, chronic illness, stroke, and now biofilm-driven bladder issues, and you&#8217;ve come out stronger. What mind shifts helped you stay resilient through all of these chapters? Kristin Reihman 44:50I think there have been many. I think the first one I had to really, Really accept and lean into and kind of internalize. Was this idea that, I… I couldn&#8217;t… I didn&#8217;t have to do the work that I was doing. Dr. Deb 45:09You know? Kristin Reihman 45:09In order to be of value to the world. You know, I&#8217;d trained in a certain way, I had, you know, I had this beautiful practice. I was working in the inner city, I was working with my best friend, we were seeing really needy people who had no money, and it felt really, like, you know, I felt very sort of service-driven and connected to a purpose. And I think the hardest thing in the beginning for me was realizing, I can&#8217;t do that work anymore. That&#8217;s not the work that I&#8217;m&#8230; needing to do, and to make a leap into the unknown. It felt like, you know, having a baby at 45 and not doing any ultrasounds, or any tests, and just being like, I&#8217;m birthing something here. I don&#8217;t know what it is, it&#8217;s me, but who knows what she&#8217;s gonna look like, or… what this doctor is going to be, you know, what, you know, peddling in terms of her tools. That was a big leap of faith, and I think letting go of the kind of control of needing to be… needing to look a certain way and be a certain kind of doctor was a big step for me, my big initial step. Dr. Deb 46:05That&#8217;s really hard, because you&#8217;re taught and ingrained in who you&#8217;re supposed to be as a doctor, and what that person&#8217;s supposed to be, what your persona&#8217;s supposed to be. And doing a lot of the Klinghart work and some of those things, and I&#8217;m sure on the days crawling through the floor, you&#8217;re like, this is not what I was trained to do. If my colleagues could only see me now, they&#8217;d… they&#8217;d… Commit me, right? But like you said, just giving that leap of faith and saying, I&#8217;m gonna turn this over to your higher power, and you&#8217;re gonna bring me out on the other side, and trusting that, that is a vulnerability for us that is huge. Kristin Reihman 46:43Yeah, and I mean, I&#8217;d like to say it&#8217;s because I&#8217;m some sort of strong person, but truthfully, I feel like there was no other choice. Like, I had to surrender because there was… the alternative was death or something. I didn&#8217;t… I don&#8217;t know, right? There was no other choice. Dr. Deb 46:56Yeah. Kristin Reihman 46:56I couldn&#8217;t move. I was in so much pain. I couldn&#8217;t move. Couldn&#8217;t get out of bed. Dr. Deb 47:01Thank you so much for sharing all of this and being vulnerable with our audience. Where can people find you? Find your book, your podcast, your programs, if they want to go deeper with you? Kristin Reihman 47:12Yeah, thanks for asking. So, I have a website, it&#8217;s my name, kristinRymanMD.com, and all my programs are listed there. I have several, you know, I have a, sort of, a wellness… I have an online membership for well people who want to stay well and pick my brain every week around, sort of, healthy, holistic tools. It&#8217;s called The Healing Grove.I have a podcast that people can listen to for free, where I interview people like you, and you&#8217;re gonna be on it, right? She&#8217;s gonna be on it soon. Dr. Deb 47:38I&#8217;d love to. Kristin Reihman 47:39So I can share stories of hope and transformational tools with people. I also have a Life After Lyme coaching program, which is kind of the place where I invite people who are dealing with a mystery illness to come get some support, community, and guidance from someone like me, and also just from the other people in the room. There&#8217;s a lot of wisdom in those groups. And that&#8217;s… I guess that&#8217;s the answer I&#8217;ll share for what you asked earlier, like, what&#8217;s the main tool they take away? I think they take away an understanding that community really matters, and that they&#8217;re not alone. You know, I think it can be very lonely to be stuck in these… to feel stuck in these illnesses, and people need to be reminded that they&#8217;re… that they&#8217;re human, you know, and that they&#8217;re worthy of love and acceptance. I think that&#8217;s what people get from my… from my community, is kind of like, that&#8217;s the common thread. Dr. Deb 48:23They definitely need that. Kristin Reihman 48:25Man. Dr. Deb 48:26Kirsten, thank you so much for sharing your powerful story. Your work is so needed, and your ability to weave personal experience and advanced clinical insight is exactly what our community craves. And this kind of conversation helps women finally be seen and heard, which is my motto too, and gives them just the real tools to get their life back. And for everyone listening, if you&#8217;re struggling with unexplained bladder pain, frequent UTIs, pelvic discomfort, or symptoms that never match your labs, because they never quite do. You are not crazy, you are not alone. You need to find the answers, you need to be with community, and there are solutions, and conversations like this is how we bring them forward. So, thank you all for tuning in to Let&#8217;s Talk Wellness Now. I&#8217;m your host.And until next time… Kristin Reihman 49:15Thanks, Dr. Dove. Dr. Deb 49:16Thank you. This was awesome. Thank you so much. This was… Kristin Reihman 49:21You&#8217;re so welcome, you&#8217;re such a great interviewer.The post Episode 251 – Chronic Bladder Symptoms, Biofilms, and the Hidden Genetic Drivers first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

Dr. DebWhat if I told you that the stomach acid medication you’re taking for heartburn is actually causing the problem it’s supposed to solve that your doctor learned virtually nothing about nutrition, despite spending 8 years in medical school.That the very system claiming to heal you was deliberately designed over a hundred years ago by an oil tycoon, John D. Rockefeller, to create lifelong customers, not healthy people.Last week a patient spent thousands of dollars on tests and treatments for acid reflux, only to discover she needed more stomach acid, not less. The medication keeping her sick was designed to do exactly that.Today we’re exposing the greatest medical deception in modern history, how a petroleum empire systematically destroyed natural healing wisdom turned medicine into a profit machine. And why the treatments, keeping millions sick were engineered that way from the beginning.This isn’t about conspiracy theories. This is a documented history that explains why you feel so lost about your own body’s needs welcome back to let’s talk wellness. Now the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal.I’m Dr. Deb. And today we’re diving into how the Rockefeller Medical Empire systematically destroyed natural healing wisdom and replaced it with profit driven systems that keeps you dependent on treatments instead of achieving true health.If you or someone you love has been running to the doctor for every minor ailment, taking acid blockers that seem to make digestive problems worse, or feeling confused about basic body functions that our ancestors understood instinctively. This episode is for you. So, as usual, grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind. Settle in and let’s get started on your journey to reclaiming your health sovereignty all right. So here we are talking about the Rockefeller Medical Revolution.Now, what if your symptoms aren’t true diagnosis, but rather the predictable result of a medical system designed over a hundred years ago to create lifelong customers instead of healthy people.Now I learned this when I was in naturopathic school over 20 years ago.And it hasn’t been talked about a lot until recently. Recently. People are exposing the truth about what actually happened in our medical system.And today I want to take you back to the early 19 hundreds to understand how we lost the basic health wisdom that sustained humanity for thousands of years. Yes, I said that thousands of years. This isn’t conspiracy theory. This is documented history. That explains why you feel so lost when it comes to your own body’s needs.You know by the turn of the 20th century. According to meridian health Clinic’s documentation.Rockefeller controlled 90% of all petroleum refineries in America and through ownership of the Standard Oil Corporation. But Rockefeller saw an opportunity that went far beyond oil. He recognized that petrochemicals could be the foundation for a completely new medical system.And here’s what most people don’t know. Natural and herbal medicines were very popular in America during the early 19 hundreds. According to Staywell, Copper’s historical analysis, almost one half of medical colleges and doctors in America were practicing holistic medicine, using extensive knowledge from Europe and native American traditions.People understood that food was medicine, that the body had natural healing mechanisms, and that supporting these mechanisms was the key to health.But there was a problem with the Rockefeller’s business plan. Natural medicines couldn’t be patented.They couldn’t make a lot of money off of them, because they couldn’t hold a patent.Petrochemicals, however, could be patented, could be owned, and could be sold for high profits.So Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie devised a systematic plan to eliminate natural medicine and replace it with petrochemical based pharmaceuticals and according to E. Richard Brown’s comprehensive academic documentation in Rockefeller, medicine men. Medicine, and capitalism in America. They employed the services of Abraham Flexner, who proceeded to visit and assess every single medical school in us and in Canada.Within a very short time of this development, medical schools all around the us began to collapse or consolidate.The numbers are staggering. By 1910 30 schools had merged, and 21 had closed their doors of the 166 medical colleges operating in 19 0, 4, a hundred 33 had survived by 1910 and a hundred 4 by 1915, 15 years later, only 76 schools of medicine existed in the Us. And they all followed the same curriculum.This wasn’t just about changing medical education. According to Staywell’s copper historical analysis. Rockefeller and Carnegie influenced insurance companies to stop covering holistic treatments. Medical professionals were trained in the new pharmaceutical model and natural solutions became outdated or forgotten.Not only that alternative healthcare practitioners who wanted to stay practicing in alternative medicine were imprisoned for doing so as documented by the potency number 710. The goal was clear, create a system where scientists would study how plants cure disease, identify which chemicals in the plants were effective and then recreate a similar but not identical chemical in the laboratory that would be patented.E. Richard Brown’s documents. The story of how a powerful professional elite gained virtual homogeny in the western theater of healing by effectively taking control of the ethos and practice of Western medicine.The result, according to the healthcare spending data, the United States now spends 17.6% of its Gdp on health care 4.9 trillion dollars in 2023, or 14,570 per person nearly twice as much as the average Oecd country. But it doesn’t focus on cure. But on symptoms, and thus creating recurring clients.This systematic destruction of natural medicine explains why today’s healthcare providers often seem baffled by simple questions about nutrition why they immediately reach for a prescription medication for minor ailments, and why so many people feel disconnected from their own body’s wisdom.We’ve been trained over 4 generations to believe that our bodies are broken, and that symptoms are diseases rather than messages, and that external interventions are always superior to supporting natural healing processes.But here’s what they couldn’t eliminate your body’s innate wisdom. Your digestive system still functions the same way it did a hundred years ago. Your immune system still follows the same patterns. The principles of nutrition, movement and stress management haven’t changed.We’ve just forgotten how to listen and respond. We’re gonna take a small break here and hear from our sponsor. When we come back. We’re gonna talk about the acid reflux deception, and why your cure is making you sicker.So don’t go away. This episode of Let’s Talk Wellness Now is brought to you by Primal Queen Supplements, a brand created just for women who are ready to reclaim their strength, balance their hormones, and feel vibrant again. I’ve partnered with Primal Queen because their formulas are clean, clinically backed, and designed to work with your body, not against it.Whether you’re supporting energy, hormones, or detox pathways, you’ll feel the difference when your supplements are crafted with real women in mind. And just for our listeners, you’ll receive 25% off your entire order when you visit primalqueen.com slash Serenity Health. That’s primalqueen.com slash Serenity Health.Your path to feeling strong, grounded, and radiant again. Because every queen deserves to feel in her prime. All right.Welcome back. So I want to give you a perfect example of how Rockefeller medicine has turned natural body wisdom upside down, the treatment of acid, reflux, and heartburn.Every single day in my practice, I see patients who’ve been taking acid blocker medications, proton pump inhibitors like Prilosec, Nexium, or Prevacid for years, not for weeks, years, and sometimes even decades. They come to me because their digestive problems are getting worse, not better. They have bloating and gas and nutrition deficiencies.And we’re seeing many more increased food sensitivities. And here’s what’s happening. In the US, most people often attribute their digestive problems to too much stomach acid and they use medications to suppress the stomach acid.But in fact, symptoms of chronic acid reflux, heartburn, or GERD can also be caused by too little stomach acid, a condition called hypochlorhedria. Normal stomach acid has a pH level of one to two, which is highly acidic.Hydrochloric acid plays an important role in your digestion and your immunity. It helps to break down proteins and absorb essential nutrients, and it helps control viruses and bacteria that might otherwise infect your stomach.But here’s the crucial part that most people don’t understand, and, according to Cleveland clinic, your stomach secretes lower amounts of hydrochloric acid. As you age.Hypochlorhydria is more common in people over the age of 40, and even more common over the age of 65. Webmd states that the stomach acid can produce less acid as a result of aging and being 65 or older is a risk factor for developing hypochlorhydria.We’ve been treating this in my practice for a long time. It’s 1 of the main foundations that we learn as naturopathic practitioners and as naturopathic doctors, and there are times where people need these medications, but they were designed to be used short term not long term in a 2,013 review published in Medical News today, they found that hypochlorhydria is the main change in t...

Dr. Deb 0:01When your body speaks but no one listens, when your pain is dismissed as all in your head, when you're told it's just stress for the fifth time while your health deteriorates, you're not crazy. You're being medically gaslit. Did you know women in America are up to 30% more likely to be misdiagnosed than men? Or that when experiencing a heart attack, women are seven times more likely to be sent home from the ER? This isn't just about feeling heard, it's about survival.Dr. Deb 0:56And what if I told you that mysterious symptoms you've been battling for  years have real physical causes, and that you've been overlooked because of your gender?  But I'm pulling back the curtain on one of the most dangerous epidemics in healthcare,  the systemic dismissal of women's health concerns,  and what you can do to finally be seen, supported, and strong. Welcome back to Let's Talk Wellness Now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic  illness, explore cutting-edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal.  I'm Dr. Deb, and today I'm diving into medical gaslighting and the epidemic of misdiagnosis that affects millions of women.Dr. Deb 1:41If you or someone you have been diagnosed with that you love with a chronic condition or are struggling with unexplained neurological symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, numbness, or chronic pain, this episode is for you. So grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind and settle in. Let's get started on your journey to deeper healing.Dr. Deb 2:03So today's episode, Silence and Dismissed, Breaking Free from Medical Gaslighting in Women's Healthcare. What if your symptoms aren't your true diagnosis? Today, I'm exploring how women's health concerns are systemically dismissed, misdiagnosed, or undertreated in our current healthcare system. I'll reveal the shocking statistics and historical biases that have created a dangerous epidemic of medical gaslighting.Dr. Deb 2:36Many of you know, three years ago, I found myself on the other side of the exam table. After experiencing troubling neurological symptoms, I was diagnosed with MS. And for three years, I lived with that diagnosis, constantly wondering about my future. But recently, in June of 2024, a new MRI revealed something different.Dr. Deb 3:06My brain wasn't showing the progressive lesions typically of MS. Instead, my neurologist now believes I experienced post-COVID peripheral neuropathy. Crazy ride, isn't it? I have lesions in my brain. They're not progressing like MS, but they created some damage in my brain.Dr. Deb 3:30In October of 2024, I did a brain MRI with a researcher, Dr. Goodenow, who you guys have heard me talk about before. And after being on a protocol that he and I developed together to help my condition, my brain lesions have not only not progressed, but I have increased or grown my gray matter of my brain by 1.4, 1.5. Sorry, I got to give that little extra point in there. This is amazing because as we age, we lose gray matter.Dr. Deb 4:01We know that. And up until now, there's really been no way for us to show or even know if we've improved brain health or not. Well, this new MRI technology that he's utilizing has been able to document the protocol that we're doing is actually working and it is growing my brain instead of allowing my brain to shrink with age, which would typically happen.Dr. Deb 4:30We are stopping those lesions from progressing. MS or post-COVID peripheral neuropathy, it doesn't really matter what the name of this problem is. The lesions are there.Dr. Deb 4:43They're affecting my prefrontal lobe. And I am trying to prevent any consequences or any symptoms that could result of that. So what this journey has taught me is essentially the truth that I share with my patients.Dr. Deb 4:57True health lies not in chasing a diagnosis, but in pursuing wellness itself. You know, the statistics around women's healthcare are truly alarming. When a woman enters an emergency room with severe abdominal pain, she'll wait 33% longer than a man with identical symptoms.Dr. Deb 5:20Approximately 66% of women report receiving a misdiagnosis in the last two years. Think about that. Two thirds of women are being told that they have conditions they don't actually have.Dr. Deb 5:35While their real health issues remain untreated, and the condition that they were told they had either isn't treated at all, or they're given the wrong medication because it's the wrong diagnosis. This is not about incompetent doctors. It's about a system built on incomplete science.Dr. Deb 5:57Did you know until the 1990s, women were routinely excluded from medical research and clinical trials? The assumption was that the male body was representative of the human species. So why study women separately? You know, women are not small men. Their bodies function differently at a cellular level.Dr. Deb 6:20And even today, this knowledge gap persists. Medical textbooks still primarily focus on how diseases present in men, while women often experience entirely different symptoms. Take heart attacks.Dr. Deb 6:34Men typically feel crushing chest pain, while women more commonly experience fatigue and shortness of breath, or pain in the jaw, the neck, the back. And when women feel symptoms that don't match the classic male pattern, they're dismissed, as you've guessed it, anxiety or stress. You're just too overwhelmed with raising your children.Dr. Deb 6:56You're burning the candle at both ends. And while some of that may be true, that is not the reason for your symptoms. This misdiagnosis epidemic isn't just frustrating, it's deadly.Dr. Deb 7:11It leads to delayed treatments, worsening conditions, unnecessary procedures, and preventable deaths. And for conditions like endometriosis, did you know the average delay in diagnosis is 7 to 10 years? Not months, years. For autoimmune diseases, which affect women at rates up to three times higher than men, that diagnostic journey can span a decade or more.Dr. Deb 7:42Now we're going to take a break here and have a word from our sponsor, and we're going to be right back to talk more about medical gaslighting and its roots. Welcome back, everybody. What is medical gaslighting anyway? Well, this happens when health care providers dismiss, minimize, or psychologize physical symptoms.Dr. Deb 8:09It's when you're told your debilitating fatigue is just depression, your crushing chest pain is just anxiety, or you're disabling pain. It's got to be all in your head. According to recent surveys, about 72% of the millennial women report experiencing medical gaslighting.Dr. Deb 8:35And for women of color, the statistics are even more alarming. While research showing they face compounded biases at every level of care. But why does this happen? The roots run deep, all the way back to ancient Greece, when Hippocrates first used hysteria as a formal diagnosis.Dr. Deb 8:58And throughout history, women's bodies have been viewed as mysterious, unpredictable, and fundamentally flawed versions of the male body. What a crock. This bias isn't always conscious.Dr. Deb 9:16Even well-meaning doctors operate within a system that has trained them to view women's symptoms through a skeptical lens. And the problem is compounded by several factors. First, there's the knowledge gap.Dr. Deb 9:30As Dr. Mark Gordon, a leading expert in neuroinflammation has demonstrated, male and female brains respond differently to identical triggers. The same is true for hormonal systems, immune responses, and even drug metabolism. Yet most medical protocols don't account for these differences.Dr. Deb 9:53Second, there's time pressure. The average primary care visit lasts a little longer than you probably think, but just 17 minutes. Barely enough time to address one concern, let alone a complex constellation of symptoms that don't fit neatly into a diagnostic category.Dr. Deb 10:15When I see clients for the first time, we're spending well over an hour just having a conversation, and another hour in doing diagnostics in my office, so that we can understand individually what's happening with each client that we see, male or female. A far difference from the 17 minutes. Did you know that practitioners are taught that if someone complains of more than two symptoms, it must be depression or anxiety? That's how our medical system is training these days.Dr. Deb 10:54When I was training, it was completely different, and I was blessed to be trained by a pioneer in medicine who was trained even differently than I was, and trained at a time where we didn't have a lot of medications, we didn't have a lot of testing options, so your conversation, your history, your exam had to tell you what was going on with that client. It makes a huge difference today. This is just, I don't know, it's craziness to me at this point.Dr. Deb 11:25Thirdly, there's implicit biases. Studies show that healthcare providers of all genders consistently rate women's pain as less severe than men's, even when the reported pain levels are identical. Women are twice as likely to be diagnosed with mental health conditions when presenting with symptoms that suggest a physical cause.Dr. Deb 11:53This kind of gaslighting creates a vicious cycle. Women begin to doubt their own experiences, become hesitant to seek care, and lose trust in the medical system. They may stop adv...

Dr. Deb 0:01Welcome to Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now. I&#8217;m your host, Dr Deb Muth, and today we&#8217;re diving into one of my favorite healing tools, infrared sauna therapy and how it&#8217;s transforming detox, longevity and recovery. If you&#8217;ve ever struggled with fatigue, brain fog or stubborn inflammation. You&#8217;ve probably heard me talk about how toxins can overload your body systems, but what if you could accelerate your healing, improve circulation and support your mitochondria, all while still sitting in a warm, peaceful environment that feels like self care instead of like a treatment. My guest today, Tiffany Dubeck, from health tech sauna, is here to help us understand how this powerful technology works and why not all Infrared Saunas are created equal. We&#8217;ll talk about the science behind full spectrum infrared therapy, why detoxing through skin is one of the safest, most effective ways to reduce toxic burden, how to choose the right sauna for your home or practice, and how you can use this therapy to support longevity hormones and brain health. So grab a cup of tea, settle in, and let&#8217;s explore how heat can heal with Tiffany Dubeck from Health Tech saunas, Tiffany, Welcome to Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now. Can you start sharing a little bit about your background, how you got involved with health tech sauna, Tiffany Dubeck 1:34working with high tech health I&#8217;m part of the Science Advisory Board, medical advisory board here, and we, you know, we&#8217;re very research based company, and it&#8217;s just perfectly in alignment with what I love to talk about, what I love to educate about, what I believe in. You know, the natural healing capability of the body and the Saunas are, yeah, just perfect for that. So I head up the practitioner program here, I like to educate our customers with the sauna usage. We do a lot with the science and the data. And, yeah, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s amazing. It&#8217;s the best company out there. So Dr. Deb 2:12that&#8217;s, I love the health of tech sauna. I&#8217;ve had one for well over Oh, I&#8217;m going to age myself probably two decades, at least 20 years, and I love my sauna. I&#8217;ve never had a problem with it ever. That&#8217;s what makes it so awesome, and it&#8217;s so easy to put together. Tiffany Dubeck 2:29Yes, I know. And you know, a lot of people, I didn&#8217;t even realize this when I got into practice, how easy it is to incorporate an infrared sauna into your home. I you know, I would just use it at the gym, or there was different, you know, health facilities I would go to, but, yeah, I didn&#8217;t even think of having it in my home till I was like, you know, actively in my own practice, and, and educating people about that. And, and, yeah, and I love, love it. It&#8217;s so convenient. It&#8217;s amazing. Doesn&#8217;t use up a lot of electricity, and you&#8217;re able to be more consistent with it, so then you can get all those wonderful benefits. Dr. Deb 3:09Absolutely. You know, for those who&#8217;ve never experienced it, what exactly is an infrared sauna, and how does it differ from a traditional sauna? Tiffany Dubeck 3:19Good question. Yeah. People are very familiar with the traditional saunas, the finished style saunas. It&#8217;s different because it uses a different method of heat delivery. So traditional saunas will use convection. It&#8217;s relying upon the air temperature to get really, really hot, so anywhere between 170 usually 200 Dr. Deb 3:43degrees, like our oven, like a convection, like our oven, right? Tiffany Dubeck 3:49Exactly, yep. And then that&#8217;s going to indirectly heat the body, raising the core body temperature, and then you get those healing benefits with an infrared it&#8217;s unique because it has a direct method of heat. It uses radiant heat, and it has the ability to directly penetrate, interact with the water molecules, raise our core body temperature, and then leads to all of those benefits. So it&#8217;s a wavelength from the sun, right? We get it from the sun, the wonderful healing light from the sun. This is invisible, but we experience it as heat. So if you go outside on a cold day, but the sun is out, the warmth that you feel on your skin, that&#8217;s the infrared, and it I like to use the comparison, like if you&#8217;re outside on a really hot summer day, and it&#8217;s 100 degrees outside, and you go in the shade, that&#8217;s like a traditional sauna. If you step out into the sun, that is infrared, right? And you experience it as a lot it&#8217;s a lot hotter, um. You get those benefits faster. Core body temperature is raising quicker and but you&#8217;re able to use them in the sauna at much lower temperatures to get those same benefits. So radiant heat, it accounts for about 50 or 60 degrees. So if you&#8217;re using the infrared sauna at 130 it&#8217;s pretty comparable to a traditional sauna at, you know, 171 Unknown Speaker 5:2580 degrees. Dr. Deb 5:27That&#8217;s a huge difference. I love that the the room temperature in the sauna doesn&#8217;t get that hot, like you can be in there at 140 degrees, and it doesn&#8217;t feel that hot. And if it does get a little warm, you just kick the door open just a smidge, let a little bit of cool air come in to calm the temperature down a little bit so you can tolerate it, but it&#8217;s still completely penetrating your body. And I Tiffany Dubeck 5:50love that, yes, and you&#8217;re getting that infrared exposure within two minutes of starting your sauna. So some people like to get it in right away. We recommend heating it up to around 100 degrees and then getting in it&#8217;s you use it differently as well than a traditional sauna, but yeah, so much more comfortable. You&#8217;re not your lungs aren&#8217;t feeling all that heat and feeling very uncomfortable. I love to crack my door open to every once in a while, but we have a unique feature in our saunas, the active ventilation, the fresh air fan. So when you&#8217;re using that, it&#8217;s decreasing the carbon dioxide build up by 46% and it&#8217;s really eliminating those symptoms of feeling stuffy or claustrophobic that you usually get in the sauna. So again, it&#8217;s just however it&#8217;s like to make it more comfortable and however people can use it more consistently to get those long term benefits that are associated with sauna therapy. Dr. Deb 6:48Yeah, I love that. Can you explain? How does the infrared light support the actual detox pathway on a cellular level? Unknown Speaker 6:56Yeah, great question too. Tiffany Dubeck 7:00It uses has the unique ability to mobilize toxins out of the fat cells and directly out of the body. So you&#8217;re going to get a lot of, you know, cellular health benefits. That way, you&#8217;re removing a huge toxic load out of the body. It&#8217;s very effective for that. And I think, you know, really just raising the core body temperature is going to create some physiological adaptations in the body. When you use your sauna, consistently, over time, you&#8217;re going to become more heat acclimated, and then you&#8217;ll get the production of what&#8217;s called Heat Shock proteins. And these are like the special helper proteins in our body. They decline with age, and when you use sauna, you&#8217;re getting more of a production of them. And they&#8217;re, they&#8217;re going to go in and repair and fix any damage to the cell, so, so that it can&#8217;t lead to, you know, so it doesn&#8217;t lead to disease. So you get, yeah, using your sauna more consistently, you&#8217;re getting that, that great protection for your cells by heat shock protein production. One of the Dr. Deb 8:08things a lot of our clients ask is, what happens to me if I go in the sauna and I don&#8217;t really sweat? Tiffany Dubeck 8:16Yes, so that&#8217;s one of the other things. That&#8217;s one of the we have that happen a lot a lot of people don&#8217;t sweat easily, or they have a really high toxic load in their body, so it takes time, and that&#8217;s again, associated with becoming heat acclimated. So that happens by using the sauna consistently, you know, repetitively, over time, and one of those adaptations that happen, the changes in the body that leads to the benefits, are sweating more and at lower temperatures. So when you become heat acclimated, you will notice you will sweat more as the body becomes more efficient at cooling itself down. So it takes time. You know, some people have a condition, I guess, where they aren&#8217;t able to sweat, and those we usually don&#8217;t recommend, you know, in a sauna, or you work with the healthcare practitioner to address the root cause of that. But for general population, being consistent in your usage, you will notice you&#8217;ll be more effective at detoxing, and then you&#8217;re getting that huge load of, you know, the heavy metals, the arsenic, the mercury, cadmium, lead, a lot of the phthalates that we&#8217;re exposed to, the plasticizers, Unknown Speaker 9:34persistent organic pollutants. I mean, all the things, right? Dr. Deb 9:3785,000 chemicals that we can count to date, right? Tiffany Dubeck 9:42I think the EPA reported there&#8217;s like 20,000 of those that can&#8217;t be really readily eliminated from our body, because we don&#8217;t have those efficient like the detox pathways for them, so they just linger in our cells, mostly in our fat tissues, right? And that&#8217;s why Saunas are so great. Because they mobilize the toxins out of the fat cell, out of the body, and there&#8217;s data that shows where they tested that right? The bus studies, I don&#8217;t know if you&#8217;ve heard of that, the blood, urine and sweat studies, and there will be really high measurable levels of those heavy metals and toxins in the sweat that don&#8217;t show up in blood or urine. So sweating is extremely effective, and I should say to passive sweating through like the infrared sauna, because you&#8217;re not using you&#8217;re not making the byproducts of like that. You wouldn&#8217;t use it or make an exercise. So it&#8217;s even more effective at ridding the body of that high toxic load. Dr. Deb 10:43Yeah, it&#8217;s so important. I think, you know, it really helps to elevate any kind of treatment that you&#8217;re doing. But even if you&#8217;re not involved in a treatment, and maybe you&#8217;re not even feeling sick, but you just want to do something healthy, you know, we have to learn from our European friends who sauna every day, and in the parts of the country where they do that, they live longer, healthier lives, and we&#8217;ve never incorporated that in part of our daily habits. And I really think it&#8217;s something that we need to be looking at as a society. Tiffany Dubeck 11:14I think, yes, I think it&#8217;s so foundational, and it&#8217;s something like that, just this one thing can affect every system of the body, every process of the body, and helps to improve your lifespan, your health span. And there&#8217;s data to support it, which is always exciting, right? Science is there for it, infrared sauna specifically as well. And of course, yeah, much longer it goes back for the just the traditional saunas, but you&#8217;re getting those same benefits. But yeah, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s really impressive, the data that&#8217;s there. And so if people are incorporating that into their everyday lives, we have to it used to be a question of, Do I need a detox? And now it&#8217;s like anyone with a pulse, yeah, detoxing consistently. And so it&#8217;s something you can do, and it&#8217;s relaxing, and it&#8217;s helping to, you know, reduce pain and inflammation. You feel better. It&#8217;s releasing endorphins in your brain. Your you know cognitive health is better. It&#8217;s just, yeah, adding more healthy years to your life, just doing so much right, helping with your sleep, yeah, all the things and just getting in your sauna can help with everything that you&#8217;re dealing with. Dr. Deb 12:37Yeah, I know many of our clients struggle with mold, heavy metals, chronic inflammation. How can infrared help with people that are struggling with these kinds of things? Tiffany Dubeck 12:49Yeah, it&#8217;s really good. So I say, like mold, illness, environmental toxins, right? It&#8217;s incredibly help. Helpful for just reducing that toxic load it&#8217;s going to linger in the tissues, lightens the toxic burden, helps your natural detox pathways function more optimally, and like Lyme and chronic fatigue, there&#8217;s a lot of connection with dysfunction In the mitochondria. Health with that helps with circulation, oxygen delivery, decreasing inflammatory markers. So it&#8217;s really, really nice too, because it has that it&#8217;s raising your core body temperature, gives you like that artificial fever, right, which is very effective for fighting off infections. And improving your immune system. But in the case of like auto immune disorders, where the immune system is already overactive, it has an immunomodulating effect, so it&#8217;s helping to just calm that balance the body balances the nervous system gets us out of fight or flight, yeah, helps with the parasympathetic nervous system. And just, it&#8217;s a great balance for that and just more effective at, you know, helping your body move through those diagnoses. Awesome. Dr. Deb 14:19Are there actually key physiological changes that happen after a session of sauna, like with the circulation or the lymph system. What actually is happening? Tiffany Dubeck 14:29Yeah, there&#8217;s definitely more. You know, increases circulation, it&#8217;s the heat shock protein production, which is, which is huge, right? Toxin removal, mood regulation, Dr. Deb 14:47does it drain the lymph system a little bit, or does the lymph system need to be moved after sauna Tiffany Dubeck 14:53therapy? That&#8217;s a good question. I like to incorporate. You know. Lymph exercises with that, I&#8217;ll jump on the trampoline or the rebounder before my sauna session. But it is moving. It&#8217;s moving blood around. It&#8217;s helping improve circulation. We have people that have that suffer from like Raynaud&#8217;s, yeah, and cold hands and feet and everything where they just, it&#8217;s really painful, or it&#8217;s just, you know, extra sensitive. And saunas improve that dramatically because it is helping with the lymph system, helping to remove that. I like to pair it with some lymph exercises as well. Just to help, of course, you can stretch inside the sauna as well to help with that. Unknown Speaker 15:45But yeah, definitely helping with the with moving the Dr. Deb 15:47lamp. That&#8217;s awesome. What about safety? Like I like to tell my clients to make sure they&#8217;re drinking electrolyte water when they&#8217;re in their sauna. Some people who we know have really bad detox pathways. We&#8217;ll have them use a binder before they go in. Do you have protocols that people can use to help them make a nicer session for their sauna therapy? Tiffany Dubeck 16:11Definitely. Yeah, we we&#8217;re very knowledgeable on our staff. We have a lot of expertise. We&#8217;re all like healthcare practitioners here. So anyone you know, when they call in, they&#8217;re going to be speaking with us, and we are able to provide them with different protocols of use depending on their specific situation. And if they&#8217;re extra sensitive, if they&#8217;re completely beginners with the sauna session, or if they&#8217;ve been using it for a while. They just need, like an overview, but yeah, general recommendations, I&#8217;d say you want to be replenishing your electrolytes. You want to be you know, your trace minerals that&#8217;s going to deplete over time a bit more with electrolytes every session. I love binders with big believer in binders, anything that will help support the body release all these toxins we&#8217;re exposed to. So me, personally, I it just really, I guess it depends on the person, and if they are in, like, a specific, like treatment with another doctor, if they just, you know, follow that. But yeah, I like to take two binders about 20 minutes before my sauna session, and then I&#8217;ll also do that after 20 minutes after the session as well, to bind up. It just really depends on how much of an aggressive approach I want to take with that. Yeah, and Dr. Deb 17:33that for our listeners, that&#8217;s binding like the chemicals and the toxins that your body is releasing, so that you&#8217;re not just releasing them back in where the body&#8217;s going to absorb again. Tiffany Dubeck 17:43Yeah, yeah. And, you know, like you think about people, I&#8217;ve had patients that would be anytime they would go get a massage, would feel so sick after, or right when you start, like a detox protocol, like with the supplements, you can go through the healing crisis, and like with the massage, you&#8217;re just you&#8217;re releasing all the toxins. It&#8217;s just moving around in the system, but it&#8217;s not as effective if your detox pathway, detox pathways are not functioning optimally. So it&#8217;s just giving it that extra support to bind to it release it out of the body, so you&#8217;re not having to deal with those negative, yeah, negative symptoms, and with infrared sauna specifically, because they do bind to, you know, mobilize the toxins and flush it out of the body through the sweat. It&#8217;s not having to go through the liver and the kidneys and where you do have more of, you know, those that healing crisis feeling, yeah, where you have to take it slower. We do. We do recommend that people ease into it, though, because it&#8217;s very effective at detox and just so you can feel better and be consistent with it, so we&#8217;re able to kind of gage where people are and see what they&#8217;re going through, and get them, you know, protocols that would fit, Dr. Deb 19:02yeah. And very important to shower afterwards, not like, don&#8217;t go all day without showering after your sauna, whether you sweat or not, Tiffany Dubeck 19:11yeah, you want to actually, yeah. And if you know, if you&#8217;re using the sauna consistently, you&#8217;ll be sweating more. You want to wipe down your sweat in the session just to help the detox. And yep, I like to I&#8217;ll sweat. My body doesn&#8217;t cool down as quickly after a sauna. So I&#8217;ll wait about three to five minutes just to stop, like actively sweating so much before I get in my in the shower, but I&#8217;m, you know, wiping off the toxin so it doesn&#8217;t get reabsorbed. But, yeah, you definitely want to shower pretty quickly after, after a sauna session, get all the junk out. Dr. Deb 19:53Yeah, exactly. Can we talk a little bit? There&#8217;s so much sauna noise out there, right? There&#8217;s portable saunas. There&#8217;s different types of saunas. Let&#8217;s talk about the differences of saunas. Because I always tell people I&#8217;m not a fan of the portable saunas, like the plastic ones that you just pop up. We&#8217;re trying to get rid of toxins. We&#8217;re not trying to sweat toxins in so I don&#8217;t like that, and I don&#8217;t really care what the manufacturer says about there not being plastics, I don&#8217;t buy that, and I don&#8217;t like the idea of your head being out because your head needs to sweat too. So let&#8217;s talk about some of those different saunas that are out there, and some of the myths and what makes health tech sauna more unique? Tiffany Dubeck 20:36Yes, yeah, it&#8217;s funny, because I actually my first sauna was a portable sauna, and first time I used it, the smell was so bad from the off gassing of chemicals from the material, I had instant migraine and tried it one other time, probably months later, same thing, and I even lathered myself up with essential oils. And I&#8217;m doing all the things because I&#8217;m like, this is supposed to be helping. And, yeah, it&#8217;s just, there&#8217;s just not. We haven&#8217;t found in our company, we&#8217;ve looked into this, we have not found an effective solution for, like, a portable sauna, in that sense, for it to actually be like, we don&#8217;t like to cut corners that are going to negatively impact people&#8217;s health, so we&#8217;re not willing to cut that corner. That&#8217;s a big one. That&#8217;s a big one. It&#8217;s a big one. Yeah, but yes, there&#8217;s a lot of noise in our in the sauna space. Our industry isn&#8217;t regulated, so claims can be thrown out there without any validity, no credibility, no backing. So we are, we&#8217;re big on educating people. We want people to know, like, what to look for when you&#8217;re comparing, because people should compare. You should do your research and your due diligence. Of course, when you have a practitioner that&#8217;s done that work for you, it&#8217;s so nice and so much nicer because you&#8217;re like, I&#8217;m trusting their recommendation. But yeah, we have a lot of exclusive features that really set us apart. And I think the biggest one is our heater technology. So we use it&#8217;s very different from like the carbon panel heaters, that&#8217;s what you usually see, in infrared sauna is the black panels and ours. It&#8217;s our own design. We have patents on it. It&#8217;s a high grade metal, and it has a curved reflective metal backing. So basically it&#8217;s doubling the amount of infrared that&#8217;s directed toward a person. The carbon panel heaters, they lose a lot of energy on the back. They&#8217;re not as effective at raising the core body temperature. So we&#8217;re able to target a large amount of infrared energy to the body heat it up quickly and effectively. We&#8217;ve actually proven this. We have a calorimetry video on our website. I&#8217;m not sure if you&#8217;ve seen that. It&#8217;s right. It&#8217;s just amazing. Comparing our sauna to a carbon panel sauna, and how effectively that heats the water molecules, and it&#8217;s 34% more effective. So in essence, 34% more infrared. More infrared equals more benefits. That means you&#8217;re going to sweat quicker. You&#8217;re going to sweat more at lower temperatures. You&#8217;re going to get more heat, shock, protein production, more baseline level. It&#8217;s going to improve exercise tolerance and recovery and all the wonderful cardiovascular benefits that you get, just all the things. So you want more infrared, more effective at heating the body. Our Infrared Saunas are different. They&#8217;re just powerful. They&#8217;re amazing. A lot of people have tried infrared they didn&#8217;t like it. Not all are created equal, so that&#8217;s really important. Our heaters are exceptional. We&#8217;ve never had a heater wear out in our 27 year history, so the longevity is unmatched. But I would say also the EMF mitigation, the electromagnetic field mitigation, that is very important, because in saunas, I mean, Saunas are notorious for having high EMF levels. And you have the heaters there, you&#8217;re sitting pretty close to them, that exposure has been linked to a lot of damage, oxidative stress, you know, DNA, strand breakage, it can lead to poor sleep, difficulty concentrating, brain fog. Cancers, more pain in the body. It just it&#8217;s flooding your cells with with calcium. The ion channels are opening when they&#8217;re not supposed to. It&#8217;s just Yeah, causing a lot of long term damage, and we see that especially in the brain and the heart, because that&#8217;s where more of those channels are found. Dr. Deb 24:53So yeah, they&#8217;ve done some studies linking EMF to neurological disease and Ms. And migraines, all kinds of stuff like that is starting to come out now, and we&#8217;re starting to see those effects of that. EMF, so if you&#8217;re trying to do something that&#8217;s good for you, the last thing you want to be doing is spending 40 minutes in Asana directly next to some more EMF, while you&#8217;re trying to help yourself instead of you might as well sit in front of your computer. Tiffany Dubeck 25:19Then that&#8217;s what I&#8217;m saying. Yeah, exactly, because you&#8217;re just, you&#8217;re just adding so much more stress to the body as it&#8217;s trying to relax and detox and heal, and you shouldn&#8217;t have to detox from your sauna. Unknown Speaker 25:34So yeah. Dr. Deb 25:36So the only thing I love about your saunas, too is the wood you guys use poplar wood, which is one of the cleanest that you can get, and there&#8217;s no varnish or stain placed anywhere, because that&#8217;s the other thing. A beautiful stained sauna has a whole ton of chemicals on it. Tiffany Dubeck 25:54Yep, yeah, we don&#8217;t do any Well, first of all, it comes down to if you have 100% single weight construction or not, a lot of companies may claim that. But then they add like particle board or plywood into the like the roof, or they hide it in the back, and that can off gas formaldehyde, which is carcinogen. We don&#8217;t treat any of our wood. It&#8217;s 100% Hemlock or poplar wood and Poplar. Yes, the most doctor recommend is the cleanest, healthiest does not have a smell, so even the most chemically sensitive can use it with no issues. We&#8217;re so trusted in our industry, we have, you know, we&#8217;re referred to by 6000 healthcare practitioners. We&#8217;re in cancer clinics. We&#8217;re in these healing centers, because people are actually going to get the benefits that they expect without any of that negative exposure. So, yeah, the poplar is a beautiful wood. Lowest voc and, yeah, no issues with that, Dr. Deb 26:53yeah. How long does a typical session last for you guys? What do you recommend for maximum benefit? Tiffany Dubeck 27:00Typical sessions once you&#8217;re, you know, once you&#8217;ve been using the sauna for a while, I recommend around the 30 minute mark. But you can go, I mean, this, the scientific studies that prove the benefits were all done in the range of 120 to 140 degrees and for 20 to 30 minutes. So as long as you&#8217;re in that range, you know, you&#8217;re getting the full benefits. We have people that like to, you know, that are more hardcore and want to stay in, you know, 40 or 45 minutes. I do that sometimes in the especially in the winter time, if it takes a little longer for my body temperature to rise. But yeah, 3030 minutes is a sweet spot, and of course, work up to that Dr. Deb 27:45and work up awesome. So let&#8217;s talk about how people can incorporate son of therapy into their existing health routines to make it not like another chore we have to do. Right? Tiffany Dubeck 27:59Sure. Yeah. Um, I mean, do you have any recommendations for that? I usually tell people like it just whenever you can use it, however you can use it, however, how often you can use it and be comfortable use your sauna, yeah, because we&#8217;re gonna get those long term benefits there. Absolutely, Dr. Deb 28:18you know, in an ideal world, we would be using our saunas every day, right? But most of us find it really hard to get that into our lifestyle. I tell people, start with at least once or twice a week as you&#8217;re starting out. Start out slow, work your way up, and then if you can try it, just like you try to incorporate it wherever you can. It gets very hard. It gets very hard to find the time. What I love about the the saunas, though, is they don&#8217;t get super hot. So you can take your phone into the sauna with you. If you have to do emails or you want to listen to a podcast or something, don&#8217;t take your whole computer in there. I&#8217;ve done that. The computer doesn&#8217;t like that. Tiffany Dubeck 29:00I&#8217;m like, Oh, it&#8217;s getting quite hot here, but then I&#8217;ll just maybe crack the door a little bit more. I mean, it&#8217;s it&#8217;s best, of course, to disconnect, yes, tronics. But yeah, we live busy lives. People are busy. People will make excuses about that. And yeah, however, you can start using your sauna consistently, because, and for me, what, what helps me to use the sauna more consistently and fight and like, incorporate it into my life and make time for it is looking back at all the benefits, right? Because those long term like the longevity, the health span, all of those long term benefits are from using the sauna at least four to seven days a week. So four four times a week of consistent use, you&#8217;ll see a 40% decrease in all cause mortality, right? Stroke, heart attack, cancer, it&#8217;s all the anti inflammatory effects of heats on protein production. Question, 46% lower risk of hypertension, 63% reduced heart disease mortality. You get a 66% decreased incidence of dementia and Alzheimer&#8217;s, which is incredible. That&#8217;s huge. 66% that&#8217;s huge. I use Yeah, I think one of them was 66 one of them 67 just Yeah, mind blowing stats. But that&#8217;s what helps Dr. Deb 30:31me, yeah, just by using your sauna, just by going in and sitting there and taking a little downtime for yourself, right? Just taking care of yourself. And I always tell patients, you know, you have to look at it this way. You&#8217;re either going to pay on the front end or you&#8217;re going to pay on the back end. So you can either take 30 to 40 minutes a day, even 20 minutes a day, take 20 minutes a day and pay for it on the front side, or you don&#8217;t do any of this and you get sick and now you&#8217;re spending hours going to see the doctor, traveling, taking supplements, 1000s of dollars in protocols and trying to get yourself better. And now you have more downtime from your life, because all of that stuff takes a ton of time and energy. And of course, you don&#8217;t feel good at that point, and you don&#8217;t have the energy to enjoy your life. So you get to choose what you want to do in your life, but definitely pay for it on the front end instead of on the back end, because you don&#8217;t want to get sick. That&#8217;s the whole idea. We&#8217;re trying to prevent those terrible things from happening to you. Yeah, you Tiffany Dubeck 31:30don&#8217;t have your health. You don&#8217;t have anything, nothing. Yeah, you need that for, yeah, for every area of your life. And it&#8217;s nice, you think about it too. It&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s, it mimics cardiovascular exercise. So take your sauna over going for a workout. Yeah? Dr. Deb 31:48Exactly right. You have to choose between going for a walk or going in your sauna. Choose your sauna, especially if you&#8217;re in but of course, in cold climate, Tiffany Dubeck 31:56you&#8217;re gonna double, you&#8217;re gonna double the benefits, yeah? But yeah. I mean, you don&#8217;t really have excuses to, you know, if people are hurt, if they have an injury, they can&#8217;t, you know, they&#8217;re lacking their mobility. Get in the sauna, yeah, if you&#8217;re, if you&#8217;re feeling like your your immune system is, you know, sluggish. You&#8217;ve been eating a lot of holiday candy and the sleeves and stuff, get in the sauna, it&#8217;ll zap it right out, like, yeah, there&#8217;s just Yeah. Dr. Deb 32:25During cold and flu season, great time to use your sauna. Or if you feel like you&#8217;re coming down with something, make sure you get in there and sweat. I did this during the pandemic, and it helped me so much from being sicker than I could have been when I did get sick with the lovely virus, but it also helps prevent me from getting sick, like when I travel and things like that. I want to be coming home and getting in that sauna as quickly as I can so that I can start clearing out a lot of those things that I&#8217;ve been exposed to. Tiffany Dubeck 32:56Yeah, definitely using it consistently, your cells are going to be hardier, healthier, you&#8217;re more resilient. Overall, everything&#8217;s functioning more optimally. Dr. Deb 33:06You know, I think the study about Alzheimer&#8217;s and dementia 66% that is profound. So 30 minutes to 40 minutes in your sauna, four days a week, or a lifetime in a memory care unit, in a place where nobody cares about you and nobody wants to take care of you, and your family can&#8217;t come and see you because they can&#8217;t tolerate the fact that you don&#8217;t know them anymore. Hmm, that&#8217;s a big driver to getting into that sauna and taking care of yourself, for sure, that&#8217;s the number one concern we hear about. Is that that people feel like they are losing their memory, and they are afraid of getting Alzheimer&#8217;s. And if this is something that they can do something so simple as a preventative, my gosh, why wouldn&#8217;t we do this? We wouldn&#8217;t too. Tiffany Dubeck 33:51Yeah, everyone needs, everyone needs a sauna. I agree with benefit. It&#8217;s yeah, it&#8217;s just, it&#8217;s like a staple that should be in your home. Everyone&#8217;s home, Dr. Deb 34:04yeah, how can practitioners, or people that are listening to this, that have a desire to get a sauna in their practice? How can they integrate this so it&#8217;s seamless and it&#8217;s easy? Tiffany Dubeck 34:18Yeah, good question. We we actually will work with the practitioner, help them. There&#8217;s different options for however they&#8217;re wanting to. They can integrate it into their the care plans that they have. They can, you know, do session by session. They can do packages. It&#8217;s really nice to have. We have a lot of practitioners that use that in their practice and and you&#8217;re helping, of course, it&#8217;s just adding another wonderful wellness tool for people to benefit from. And then, usually, once they&#8217;re noticing the the benefits that they&#8217;re getting by using it in the clinic, they want to get one for themselves that you&#8217;ll have even more long term, you know, benefits and it&#8217;ll support. Of the therapy that the practitioners are already doing. So yeah, there&#8217;s different ways that we that we work with practitioners. We do have a great program as well where we can work with education and, you know, things like that, just to make sure that that they&#8217;re all set up and we can help their team as well. But yeah, it&#8217;s mainly comes down to the health of the patient and what you can offer to just positively impact that. Dr. Deb 35:29That&#8217;s awesome. What are some of the advancements that have you excited in the world of infrared sauna these days? Tiffany Dubeck 35:37So glad you asked. We just released our new smart sauna. Know, a lot of people don&#8217;t, don&#8217;t love that word, yes, they don&#8217;t more EMF, but our smart son is different. But we&#8217;ve released that, believe it was last year. And so it does that have that capability to remotely start through an app on your phone, which is so convenient. Very convenient, yeah, especially having, like, the traditional sauna, which I love. I mean, my foundation sauna. Love that, but I would use it more if I had the remote stars. So some people would get the smart sauna just for that. But we what&#8217;s really exciting, this is our own data that went into this program. We have the sauna guide. And I&#8217;m not sure if you&#8217;ve looked into this, but it&#8217;s really exciting. And so it has all the science and research integrated into this program. And you know, all the benefits that I talked about with becoming heat acclimated, and it&#8217;s a bit complex. It does it all for you, and it&#8217;s able to really accurately predict someone&#8217;s level of heat acclimation, or what we call sauna fitness. And you see it all on the screen. You know people are into, like the bio hacking, if you like, to see the data there it is based on research and also specific to you, like the person answers questions at the beginning, and it&#8217;s able to accurately predict that, so it&#8217;ll give you adaptive guidance when you should use your sauna next, and for how long, based on that research specific to you in order to gain or maintain Your level of heat acclimation. So really, it&#8217;s just like taking all the guesswork out of maximizing your benefits of using Asana, usually, with the smart technology, it comes with, like, a learning curve, and it&#8217;s harder, you know, to use. Yeah, it&#8217;s it&#8217;s not like that. It is seamless. It does all the work for you. I always tell people, it&#8217;s smart so you don&#8217;t have to be I love that. Think about it. It&#8217;s doing all this. It&#8217;s telling you what to do. So you don&#8217;t, you know, you don&#8217;t even have to worry about, well, am I using this right? I need to look at my protocol. I don&#8217;t know when the last I don&#8217;t remember the last time I used it. So if you go out of town and you come back, it&#8217;ll get you back on track. That&#8217;s great. Show you when you Yeah, amazing. Everyone in your family can have their own user profile, so it&#8217;s specific to each user. We&#8217;re incorporating that also into clinics and with the healthcare practitioners and helping to tweak certain programs for them. Specifically. That&#8217;s it&#8217;s extremely exciting and it&#8217;s wonderful, and people again tend to use it more consistently because it&#8217;s fun. You see it, it&#8217;s telling you when you need to use it again for your benefits. And yeah, so that&#8217;s that&#8217;s just great. We&#8217;re just trying to get that just more people educated about that. Of course, it also has these wonderful features, other features that are specific to like relaxation. So Guided Breathing programs, guided meditations. We&#8217;re launching a podcast app so we can feature some of our wonderful practitioners, so people are getting educated, or they can, yeah, do the relaxation. They can stream music. It&#8217;s just Yeah. It&#8217;s really nice. And best part, because when it comes to EMF, and we didn&#8217;t even mention, I didn&#8217;t even get to this before, but EMF, you want to make sure that magnetic fields and electric fields are both mitigated. So that includes both, and there&#8217;s, yeah, some some stuff in our in our industry, where you know, they&#8217;re just mitigating magnetic fields, if that, or claiming low EMS, yeah. So it&#8217;s really confusing, but both of those numbers need to be mitigated. And with the smart sauna, you do connect to Wi Fi to heat it up. You get in, you can choose low EMF mode, and it seamlessly reduces that so it&#8217;s just as low EMF as our foundation models. That&#8217;s awesome. Yeah, that&#8217;s very, very important to us to have that EMF exposure lowered. Yeah, Dr. Deb 39:56I didn&#8217;t ask this earlier. What is the difference between. Between far infrared and near infrared? Oh, Tiffany Dubeck 40:03yes, that&#8217;s also, that&#8217;s probably one of the biggest questions that we get to that is confusing. So it is on that spectrum, wavelength of light, and it&#8217;s the it&#8217;s the shorter wavelengths, and near infrared is usually paired with red light for red light therapy. So those red light therapy devices that you hear about, or the you know, the masks that produce them, or the panels, some Saunas are adding red light therapy into the saunas that incorporates red light along with near infrared, so there&#8217;s less less full body benefits. It doesn&#8217;t raise your core body. It&#8217;s not the same as far infrared. That&#8217;s the true workhorse of a sauna where you get all the benefits. Near Infrared is very effective, though, too. Red light therapy has amazing benefits for especially superficial with the skin, there&#8217;s mitochondrial benefits, decreasing inflammation. I love to use a red light therapy device, but when you&#8217;re talking about in a sauna, it&#8217;s never been studied. So all the, yeah, the 40 plus years of research that&#8217;s been 50 years of research that&#8217;s been down infrared sauna has never have been done on like, incorporating full spectrum, or Dr. Deb 41:30it&#8217;s not going to penetrate as deep as infrared. So you&#8217;re not going to get that same kind of detox. Tiffany Dubeck 41:36Not at all. No, you&#8217;re really you&#8217;re going for what&#8217;s called photobiomodulation. So it&#8217;s a different chemical reaction that happens in the body, and it&#8217;s really dependent upon dosage, and the strength, the distance from where you&#8217;re being exposed, all of these things, and it requires what&#8217;s called a hormetic zone, so too little is going to be ineffective, and too much can be harmful. So there&#8217;s a sweet spot that it needs, and it&#8217;s just really hard to get in a sauna because it&#8217;s not, you&#8217;re not actually getting the benefits that were studied from what&#8217;s being advertised, just because it&#8217;s not, there&#8217;s not enough of that to give you benefit. With the foreign with the full spectrum, you know, it could have some some negative health effects. So we, we stick with far infrared. That&#8217;s what&#8217;s been proven. That&#8217;s where you&#8217;re getting all those benefits. And there&#8217;s a lot of benefits that you&#8217;re getting with far infrared saunas that you get from red light as well, like, you know, the skin benefits, the mitochondrial healthy, decreasing inflammation, so you&#8217;re not missing out on any benefits. But I do tell people, if you want to, you know, get your red light device you want to help with, you know, skin some superficial benefits by a separate device. You use it outside of the sauna because you really don&#8217;t want to be your body. You don&#8217;t want your body to be heated up when you&#8217;re using it, it doesn&#8217;t it&#8217;s not able to have that conversion, to have the benefits when you&#8217;re when your core temperature is elevated that much. So use a reputable red light therapy device outside of the sauna for maybe 15 to 20 minutes at the most. That has to be regulated as well. Dr. Deb 43:30Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Tiffany, if there&#8217;s one thing you could tell our listeners about the importance of sauna detox, what would it be? What Oh, Tiffany Dubeck 43:42let&#8217;s see. I would just say it&#8217;s so important, especially as we age, to sweat every day. Sweat often. Just if you keep sweating, you&#8217;re going to live longer and healthier and happier, and yeah, when you&#8217;re using your sauna, of course, you&#8217;re getting that that sweat, all those wonderful benefits, and you&#8217;re just helping to to protect your health, get your family using the sauna as well, make it a bonding experience, like it&#8217;s just yeah, just this, just the one simple thing, this has such Amazing impacts on all areas of your life. Dr. Deb 44:22So So ladies, remember, it&#8217;s not a bad thing to sweat. It&#8217;s a good thing to sweat. Let&#8217;s embrace that and enjoy that. Tiffany Dubeck 44:32It&#8217;s like your anti aging secret. It really is true. Yeah, yeah, definitely. And helping so much with hormones. And you said, ladies, as we age, yeah, yeah, very, very important, especially for that, specifically when you&#8217;re going through the changes and menopause, perimenopause, all of these things that happen. Sonic therapy is where it&#8217;s at. That&#8217;s where you&#8217;re going to be. Protecting, you know, helping your body address the changes that are happening there, and you know, in a healthier way and decrease those symptoms that come with it, helping with hormone balancing, decrease your cortisol, and helping with muscle growth as well right age related sarcopenia that happens Saunas are huge with helping to restore muscle and build muscle, you can build muscle just by sitting in a passive like just by sitting in passive sweating in a sauna. Isn&#8217;t that great? Dr. Deb 45:36Tiffany, thank you so much for joining us today and for sharing your wisdom and how infrared therapy can truly change the way we heal. I really appreciate you being here. Tiffany Dubeck 45:46So wonderful. Thanks for having me. And yeah, if anyone&#8217;s interested, of course, they can call in. We love to speak with them. They can, they can, they can reach us at our phone number, if it&#8217;s on our website. I don&#8217;t know if I have access to that right now, but WWW dot high tech health.com is our website. And then whenever they call in, they&#8217;ll speak to me or one of our lovely, my lovely colleagues, and they can mention this podcast or Dr Deb, and they&#8217;ll get an extra special discount on top of our Dr. Deb 46:21sale. Yes, they&#8217;ve been very generous. They&#8217;re giving us a $500 off for any of you listeners that want to enjoy a health tech sauna in your home. So this is one of your best investments that you can make for your body&#8217;s longevity, the detox and daily well being. So take advantage of that. Christmas is coming. If people are looking for Christmas ideas for you, because you have everything, tell them you want a health tech sauna. It&#8217;s the best Christmas present that you could give anybody you know you&#8217;re giving them health and wellness. So Unknown Speaker 46:52it truly is, yeah, great idea. Dr. Deb 46:56So until next time I&#8217;m Dr dobb, reminding you your body was designed to heal. You just need to give it the right tools. Thank you for joining us today on this podcast, and we look forward to seeing you in our next episode. Thank Disclaimer 47:08you for listening to the podcast. Let&#8217;s talk wellness now brings expert insights directly to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now its management or our partners, each affiliate, sponsor and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today&#8217;s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical or legal, while we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult with a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold let&#8217;s talk wellness now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time, and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcasts. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought provoking listener, discretion is advised. This episode is sponsored by Serenity Health Care Center, where we specialize in uncovering the root causes of chronic health conditions to help you achieve optimal wellness. Visit us at www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com or call 262-522-8640 to learn more. Connect with Dr. Deb: Website: www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com Facebook: Serenity Health Care Center Instagram: @SerenityHealthCenter Twitter: @DrDebSerenity Subscribe &amp; Review:Don’t forget to subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. If you love what you hear, leave a review and let us know how we’re helping you on your wellness journey.The post Episode 248 – Healing Through Heat: How Infrared Saunas Detox, Restore, and Rejuvenate the Body first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

Dr. Deb 0:00Did you know that the average American child today consumes over 3000 food additives, chemicals that were never tested for long term safety, or that since the 1980s childhood chronic disease rates have tripled, while pharmaceutical profits have grown 1,000% Dr. Deb 0:19for 25 years, integrative medicine practitioners have been sounding the alarm while being dismissed as fringe and quacks. Well, now that fringe movement has reached the highest level of government our White House, Dr. Deb 0:34what if everything you&#8217;ve been told about maintaining your family&#8217;s health has been influenced by the same corporations profiting from your illness. Today, we&#8217;re pulling back the curtain on one of the most controversial health crusades in American history. This is not a story about left versus right. It&#8217;s about life versus profit from fringe to mainstream, how integrative medicine&#8217;s 25 year battle for health and freedom reached the White House. Welcome back to Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now this show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine and empower you with the tools to heal. I&#8217;m Dr dab, and today we&#8217;re diving into the hidden corporate forces corrupting our health care system and the controversial efforts by leaders like Robert F Kennedy Jr to make America healthy again. Dr. Deb 1:32So grab your cup of tea or coffee, and let&#8217;s settle in for an amazing discussion. Dr. Deb 1:39You know, I remember when I started practicing, people would come into the office with one blood pressure medicine, maybe an allergy medicine, and they didn&#8217;t have a lot of medical interventions. Now I see people on three to five blood pressure medicines, often three to five other medications. And you have to start to wonder, Is this our environment doing this, where we just can&#8217;t control things the way we used to? Today, Dr. Deb 2:12we&#8217;re going to talk about this hidden health crisis, because it&#8217;s really become a major problem, Dr. Deb 2:22the health crisis hidden in plain sight. What if your symptoms aren&#8217;t your true diagnosis? What if the rising tide of chronic disease in America isn&#8217;t just bad luck or genetics, but the result of systemic changes to our food water and our environment. Dr. Deb 2:42Today, I want to take you behind the headlines and political noise to examine something that affects every single one of us, the forces shaping our health landscape and the controversial figures who&#8217;s now at the helm of our nation&#8217;s health policy. Let me start with something personal. Dr. Deb 3:03In my practice at Serenity Healthcare Center, I&#8217;ve seen disturbing patterns over the last two decades, children and adults coming in with complex, multi system conditions that simply weren&#8217;t common. When I first started practicing, we would see one or two people with these type of symptoms. Now I see five to 10 people with the same type of symptoms. Autoimmune conditions that used to be rare are now commonplace. Developmental delays that once affected one in 10,000 children now impact one and 36 Dr. Deb 3:43and one of my grandchildren is one of those children. As a functional medicine practitioner, I&#8217;m trained to ask why, why are we seeing these dramatic shifts? What environmental factors might be driving this surge in chronic conditions? That&#8217;s exactly what Robert F Kennedy, Jr has been asking for years as an environmental advocate and now as Secretary of Health and Human Services, he has the power to do something about it. His make America healthy again. Initiative isn&#8217;t just a catchy slogan, it&#8217;s a fundamental challenge to how we think about health and disease in America, Dr. Deb 4:26I need to be clear about something important. What&#8217;s happening now with the Make America healthy again movement isn&#8217;t new to those of us in integrative medicine for over 25 years, practitioners like myself and pioneers like Dr Mark Hyman, Dr Perlmutter and the late Dr Bradstreet, along with many others that you would never recognize because they worked in the trenches, witnessing these disturbing health trends and speaking out about them, but not in a public arena. Dr. Deb 5:00Speaking out about them, one on one with the clients they touched every single day. That&#8217;s precisely why so many of us have stepped away from conventional medicine and entered integrative practice. We saw this broken system and wanted to create real change, and I&#8217;m really excited today to see Dr Casey means starting to speak out at a very powerful level on what&#8217;s been happening with the food industry, what&#8217;s been happening with our government and our pharmaceutical companies. It is a brave thing that she is doing, because many who have tried to do what she has done have lost their licenses, lost their livelihood and been turned away by their own families. Dr. Deb 5:50We recognize that our medical system has designed, was designed to manage symptoms rather than address root causes. We see how pharmaceutical interventions were being prioritized over lifestyle changes. We understood the powerful influence that food companies chemical manufacturers and pharmaceutical Giants had on both medical education and on health care policy, and for 25 years, we were often dismissed as alternative or fringe, but now many of the same concerns we&#8217;ve been voicing for decades are being elevated to the highest levels of government policy. This isn&#8217;t a partisan issue. Chronic disease doesn&#8217;t care if you vote red or blue, the companies profiting from both illness and treatment don&#8217;t distinguish between conservatives and liberals when marketing their products, they market to the whole this is about something much deeper. It&#8217;s about how corporate influence has shaped our very understanding of what it means to be healthy. Take our food system. For instance, since the 1950s we&#8217;ve witnessed a complete transformation in how food is produced, processed and preserved. Over 10,000 chemicals are now permitted in our food supply, many without rigorous safety testing or any safety testing. For that matter, big food companies have engineered products specifically designed to bypass our natural satiety signals, creating what scientists call hyper palatable combinations that trigger addiction like responses in our brains. Dr. Deb 7:39Is it any wonder we&#8217;re facing unprecedented rates of obesity, diabetes and metabolic dysfunction, and what has come to save the day for these food companies that have created these chemicals that have made us obese and made us have conditions that don&#8217;t allow us to lose weight? Well, of course, it&#8217;s GLP one, it is the best weight loss product on the market ever that costs $1,300 a month in this country, but yet in Europe, it costs $88 Dr. Deb 8:15a month. And we&#8217;re not just pushing this for adults. They want to approve this medication for six year olds. That means that we have six year olds that are obese enough that they&#8217;re having medical conditions like an adult, and they will need to take an injection every week for the rest of their lives to control their obesity and their diabetes, one that our pharmaceutical companies and our food industries created. Do you see the vicious cycle that goes round and round? They&#8217;re all in this together, making money together, off of all of us, and it&#8217;s time we take this back and join this movement to make ourselves and our country healthy again. Dr. Deb 9:06Similarly, our pharmaceutical industry has evolved from producing life saving antibiotics and emergency medicines to marketing daily medications that manage but rarely cure any chronic illness and create many other side effects that you&#8217;re going to need another medication to manage. The business model here is clear. There&#8217;s more profit in treatments than there are in cures. Dr. Deb 9:35So this brings us to Kennedy&#8217;s controversial appointment and the firestorm it has created in both public health circles and the media Love him or hate him, Kennedy has forced us to confront uncomfortable questions about the intersection of corporate power and public health. Dr. Deb 9:55Robert F Kennedy Jr&#8217;s make America healthy again initiative. Dr. Deb 10:00Of represents one of the most ambitious attempts to reshape American health policy in decades. He&#8217;s requested a $500 million boost in the federal health budget specifically earmarked for nutrition education and promoting healthier lifestyles, a dramatic shift from the traditional focus on disease management and pharmaceutical interventions, Kennedy has already begun pressuring major food companies to eliminate artificial dyes linked to behavioral issues in children. I&#8217;ve known this for a long time. When I started as a naturopath, I worked with a pioneer, Dr kanetsky, who did allergy testing in his office, I had the pleasure of meeting some of the most exquisite physicians in this industry that were doing cutting edge care back in the early 2000s Dr. Deb 10:54Dr Kay had known about what food dice did to children for at least 10 years prior to that, and we used to allergy test kids in that office, where we would give them a dye underneath their tongue, and we would watch them to see what happened, and their behaviors completely changed. There were people that would lose their complete ability to focus. Dr Doris Rapp has written and documented allergy testing in her office for decades, and there&#8217;s one story that she tells that I will never forget, and it was a teenage boy who suffered from depression, and she was allergy testing him in her office, and she gave him citrus, and when she gave him this food that obviously was not completely natural, he would curl up in a ball and he would cry, and he would talk about committing suicide, and 10 minutes later, she would give him a different dilution, and he was back to normal, just like I&#8217;m talking to you right now. But the crazy part of all of this was he had absolutely no recollection of his suicidal feelings while he was in that state. Dr. Deb 12:15This was my first introduction to what food can really do to us and how impactful this can be and if we can find these foods that create these feelings inside of us and eliminate them and neutralize them to what&#8217;s happening to us, we can be healthier and we can be happier. Dr. Deb 12:33So when we think that this is new on these artificial dyes, I can tell you that it&#8217;s not. It&#8217;s been a problem for a very long time, and we&#8217;ve known it&#8217;s been a problem for a very long time, but it is not mainstream. And if it&#8217;s not mainstream, people don&#8217;t know about it and people don&#8217;t trust it. Dr. Deb 12:52So like Bobby Kennedy, has promised comprehensive studies into the rising prevalence of autism and other developmental conditions. I think this is key. My office has treated autism for 25 years. We&#8217;ve seen such a growth of autism in this country that we need to start asking, Why? Why is it affecting one in 36 and primarily boys over girls? Can we really run a country with one in 36 of our men having a developmental condition? What is going to happen to our economy? What is going to happen to our industry? What is going to happen to our innovators? What is going to happen to our military? We need to start asking these questions. Dr. Deb 13:43Now, I know this can be controversial, and he&#8217;s pushing for bans on sugar sweetened beverages in the food stamp programs in several states, arguing that taxpayers shouldn&#8217;t subsidize products that fuel the diabetes epidemic. I know, again, this is a controversial topic, but is soda or pop a food? No, it&#8217;s just crap. It&#8217;s pure sugar, and it&#8217;s destroying our children. It&#8217;s destroying our country. It&#8217;s destroying our health, the obesity level. I remember when I was a kid, if we got soda, it was on a special occasion, and we would get these little juice jars from the grocery store. They were very small. Many of you my age probably remember them. If you&#8217;re younger, you don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;m talking about, but they were maybe about a four to six ounce jar, and that&#8217;s what we would get for soda on a special occasion. Now, you would get a 32 or 36 ounce container of soda at the fast food store, or you&#8217;re drinking two or three, you know, 20 ounce bottles a day. You&#8217;re not drinking any water. Dr. Deb 15:00This is a problem. These products were not meant to be drunk this way, be consumed this way. Did you know Coca Cola has a lobbyist at the White House, at the government, to lobby for them on the food industry. Do you really think Coca Cola is a food now I&#8217;m going to be the first one to admit I love Coca Cola. It is, it is one of my favorite things, but it is a problem, and they should not have the ability to lobby our politicians for anything. I&#8217;m sorry, but they should not. Dr. Deb 15:39You know, these movements align with what many of us as functional and integrative medicine have been advocating for years, addressing the root causes of chronic disease rather than simply managing them. Kennedy&#8217;s focus on environmental health factors, chemicals in our food, our water and consumer products echoes what I&#8217;ve been teaching my patients about creating a clean environment to support natural healing for over 20 years. What&#8217;s fascinating to me is seeing how this movement has grown from dedicated practitioners like myself to visionaries like Dr Casey means, who&#8217;s now being embraced at the highest levels of government. And Dr means has pointed out she left her surgical career precisely because she saw how broken and exploitative our health care system had become. Like many of us, she wanted to focus on keeping people out of the operating rooms, rather than performing surgeries that might have been prevented through lifestyle interventions. What Dr means and other leaders in the integrated health community bring to this conversation is a perspective that crosses political boundaries. The make America healthy again movement isn&#8217;t just conservatives or liberals. It includes functional medicine practitioners, regenerative agricultural advocates, health freedom supporters and many others across the political spectrum. Dr. Deb 17:10What unites them is the recognition that Americans are chronically ill for preventable reasons, and our children are being and bearing the brunt of the corrupted system. Dr. Deb 17:25Kennedy&#8217;s supporters highlight his efforts to reform our food system. Take artificial food dyes, for instance, while the FDA has maintained these petroleum derivative coloring colorings are safe. Let me repeat that, because I think it really needs to be heard. This is a petroleum derived coloring and oil based coloring that they&#8217;re saying are safe, and numerous studies have linked them to behavioral problems in children&#8217;s like I just talked about, and countries like the UK and Norway require warning labels on products containing these dyes, Dr. Deb 18:05yet they remain in our systems. In the American children&#8217;s food Kennedy&#8217;s push to eliminate these unnecessary chemicals seems like common sense to many parents who&#8217;ve seen behavioral improvements when removing these substances from their children&#8217;s diet. Dr. Deb 18:24Kennedy has also questioned the widespread use of fluoride in children&#8217;s dental products and water supplies, a practice that&#8217;s been standard for decades, while previous scientific reviews have generally found water fluoridation safe and effective for preventing tooth decay. Emerging research has raised questions about potential neurodevelopment effects and other certain exposure levels. Are we quite wondering why yet we see so much neurological problems these days? Why are we seeing more als than ever before, or Parkinson&#8217;s disease, Alzheimer&#8217;s disease, dementia. Ms, Dr. Deb 19:05I remember being at a conference. Dr. Deb 19:08Gosh, this had to have been early 2000s Dr. Deb 19:11and there was a lecturer there talking about fluoride and the toxicity levels of it. And he showed a area in another part of the country, Dr. Deb 19:23not country, but world, in a third world, country, I would say, very impoverished. I won&#8217;t say where, Dr. Deb 19:33where leaders dumped fluoride into the soil. Dr. Deb 19:40And after decades of this fluoride being dumped into the soil, he showed a very distinct picture of several men and several children with horrible bone deformities to the point where they could barely walk. Their teeth were gone. They. Dr. Deb 20:00I&#8217;m picturing the picture in my head, and it&#8217;s even hard to describe. It was so traumatic, like bone deformities that were legs were like this, and their arms were crippled, and they couldn&#8217;t walk, they couldn&#8217;t eat. It&#8217;s horrifying to see that. And yet, in this country, research shows that it&#8217;s safe. Well, Dr. Deb 20:27maybe we&#8217;re not dumping the amount of fluoride into the soil here the way they did there, Dr. Deb 20:34but if you could see this picture, you would never forget it in your mind, and it would make you realize that what we&#8217;re being told is not the truth. Dr. Deb 20:47You know these these leaders, they&#8217;re arguing that we need to apply precautionary principles Better safe than sorry methodology, especially when it comes to our children and their developing brains. And I question, how can somebody argue that that&#8217;s wrong? Dr. Deb 21:09How can we sit here and say, let&#8217;s just give the pharmaceutical companies in the food industry and the tobacco industry all the ability to do whatever they want, because they&#8217;re truly not going to do something that harms us. Are we crazy? Are we crazy for saying that, of course, they&#8217;re going to do whatever they want. They&#8217;re going to do whatever they want, because it&#8217;s driven by money, and anytime that we think there&#8217;s going to be somebody else there protecting our children, protecting us. I&#8217;ve got news for you, nobody&#8217;s coming to save your children, but you, Dr. Deb 21:46nobody&#8217;s going to change this, except for you. Dr. Deb 21:54Kennedy&#8217;s vision for restructuring our health agencies includes streamlining the bureaucracy, eliminating redundancy and shifting focus from disease management to prevention, many functional medicine practitioners would agree with this emphasis on nutrition, removing environmental toxins and lifestyle approaches to chronic disease. It is what we practice every single day. Areas of traditionally unfunded in our conventional system. Dr. Deb 22:26Now, however, Kennedy&#8217;s approach has sparked intense criticism for many in the medical and public health communities. His most controversial position involves vaccines and infections of the disease prevention areas where his statements have alarmed many health professionals, including those who might otherwise support his environmental health initiatives, and since taking office, he has made significant cuts Dr. Deb 22:53to this industry and campaigns and infectious disease prevention programs, even as the nation faces concerning outbreaks like the recent measles surge that they say has sickened 1000 people nationwide, he maintains that he is pro safety rather than an anti Vaxxer, and his rhetoric and policy decisions have fueled his hesitancy, according to many public experts at HHS statements said his long standing advocacy has always focused on ensuring Dr. Deb 23:29that these vaccines and other medical interventions meet the highest standards of safety and are supported by the gold standard of science. Dr. Deb 23:38He&#8217;s hiring researchers who have published work suggesting that there are connections between these ingredients and our developmental delays. Dr. Deb 23:50We need to look at this. We need to know for certain that the things that we&#8217;re giving to our children are safe and effective Dr. Deb 24:01as someone who practices functional medicine, I understand more than anything, the desire for personalized health approaches, including thoughtful consideration of medical interventions. I&#8217;ve worked with families who have legitimate questions about medical treatments by also recognize the vital importance of preventing disease and devastating communities. This tension between personalized medicine and public health, between questioning authority and maintaining essential protections, lies at the heart of every debate of every healthcare practitioner I have ever spoken to, Dr. Deb 24:40and this is beyond Dr. Deb 24:44this discussion. It is beyond anything that we&#8217;re talking about today. Personalized medicine should be just that, and every person in this country should have the ability to make their own choice of. Dr. Deb 25:00On how they want to care for their bodies and their children, Dr. Deb 25:05and we should be allowing these children to have safe and effective treatments, as well as their parents and as well as adults. Dr. Deb 25:17Tenant Kennedy&#8217;s tenure at HHS Secretary presents a study in contrast that reflects the complex reality of health policy in America. Dr. Deb 25:27On one hand, we have the push for cleaner food, reduced chemical exposure, and greater focus on nutrition and prevention approaches that align with functional medicine principles and could potentially reduce chronic disease rates. On the other hand, we have skepticism on all of the medications, on all of the things that we&#8217;re giving our children. We have skepticism on our research. Is it accurate? Is it true? What&#8217;s going on with it? And I think personally, it&#8217;s been a long time coming that we ask these questions and that we don&#8217;t just trust the pharmaceutical companies and the big food industries that they are giving us appropriate data, because we know it&#8217;s not, and we need to take away the ability of these pharmaceutical companies to market directly to the public that has never been allowed before, and now every commercial you see is a pharmaceutical company providing and marketing to you on a new drug. Dr. Deb 26:39This should not be happening. Drugs should be coming as recommendations from your practitioner, not from the TV, and we should know exactly if this drug is safe or not. And when we look at the number of drugs that have been pulled from the market after only being on the market a few years because of side effects and complications, we have to start to question all of this. Dr. Deb 27:06So ultimately, what does all of this mean for you and your family? How do you navigate these contraindications to protect your health in a shifting landscape? Dr. Deb 27:18Well, first, recognize that health is rarely black and white. We can simultaneously appreciate efforts to reduce harmful chemicals in our food while maintaining our healthy schedules and our Dr. Deb 27:34evaluations, our physicals, those kinds of things Dr. Deb 27:38we can support nutrition and education, while advocating Dr. Deb 27:45for affordable health care access for all children, we could force our medical schools to provide more than just four hours of nutritional Education during medical school, Dr. Deb 28:00and they provide a lot more time in looking at drug therapy. Second, we can become informed advocates to our own health question sources of information, including mine, look for evidence based approaches that honor both individual biochemical uniqueness and the importance of public health measures that protect communities. Third, you can focus on what you can control. Regardless of policy shifts in Washington, you get to choose what comes into your world. Choose whole, unprocessed foods whenever possible, reduce environmental toxin exposure in your home. Prioritize sleep management and movement. Build a relationship with healthcare practitioners who listen to your concerns and treat you as a partner in your health journey. Dr. Deb 28:53Use natural cleaners, use essential oils, get the chemicals out of your environment. Dr. Deb 29:02But here&#8217;s what practitioners like myself and Dr Casey means have been emphasizing for decades. Healing requires your active participation, as Dr means discovered during her medical training and I&#8217;ve seen throughout my career, you don&#8217;t have to remain trapped in a healthcare system that keeps you sick, you can enter a system with eyes wide open, one that addresses root causes and genuinely heals, Dr. Deb 29:31however, and this is crucial, and you must be willing to change your lifestyle. No doctor. Let me repeat this, no doctor, no supplement and no policy change can overcome the effects of consistently poor dietary choices, chronic stress, inadequate sleep and environmental toxic exposure, the most powerful medicine is what you need to do. Dr. Deb 30:00Every single day. This is what makes integrative medicine so revolutionary. We see you as an active participant in your healing journey, not as a passive recipient of treatments. We partner with you to address those root causes of your illness, rather than simply managing your symptoms. We go and find the root cause, and finally, we engage in respectful dialog about these issues, not in a 10 minute conversation, but more like an hour long conversation. Dr. Deb 30:36Our health discourse has become as polarized as our policies politically, but healing happens in the middle ground where we can acknowledge complexity and seek uncommon understandings. Dr. Deb 30:55Now let&#8217;s share some of our key takeaways from this episode. For 25 years, integrative medicine practitioners have been warning about the same issues now being addressed by the Make America healthy agenda. Dr Casey means and other leaders in the integrative health community have been pioneers in advocating for root cause approaches to chronic disease. The Maha movement combines promising food system reforms with controversial changes to policy, corporate influence in our food and healthcare systems has contributed to rising chronic disease rates. Government policy shapes everything from food safety to medication access with real consequences for families and true healing requires not just policy change, but your willingness to change lifestyle habits. The tension between individual health freedom and public health protections defines the current debate. Dr. Deb 31:56Practical steps to protect your family include choosing whole foods, reducing toxic exposure and becoming an informed health advocate. Dr. Deb 32:06We need science based wellness approaches that acknowledge both environmental factors in chronic disease and the importance of preventing infectious disease. I Dr. Deb 32:19want to thank you for joining me today on Let&#8217;s Talk wellness. Now, if this episode has resonated with you, share it with someone who could benefit from learning how government policy and corporate interests shape the health of our children and our communities. Get involved, if it&#8217;s on a political level, a local level, or just getting involved in your family&#8217;s health reform, you have to take a step forward. You have to take a stand if you want a healthier community and healthier family. Dr. Deb 32:55Remember, wellness isn&#8217;t just about feeling good, it&#8217;s about thriving in every area of your life. If you&#8217;re ready to explore how root cause medicine can help you visit serenity healthcare center.com Dr. Deb 33:09or you can reach out directly through Dr. Deb 33:14our social media channels, Instagram, Facebook. You can also email us on our website. Dr. Deb 33:22If this episode has resonated with you, please do me a favor, like share and subscribe so you don&#8217;t ever miss another episode, and until next time I&#8217;m Dr Deb, reminding you to take care of your body, mind and spirit. Be well, and I&#8217;ll see you in the next episode. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Let&#8217;s talk wellness now brings expert insights directly to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now its management or our partners, each affiliate, sponsor and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today&#8217;s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult with a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold let&#8217;s talk wellness now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time, and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcasts. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought provoking. Listener discretion is advised. This episode is sponsored by Serenity Health Care Center, where we specialize in uncovering the root causes of chronic health conditions to help you achieve optimal wellness. Visit us at www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com or call 262-522-8640 to learn more. Connect with Dr. Deb: Website: www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com Facebook: Serenity Health Care Center Instagram: @SerenityHealthCenter Twitter: @DrDebSerenity Subscribe &amp; Review:Don’t forget to subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. If you love what you hear, leave a review and let us know how we’re helping you on your wellness journey.The post Episode 247 – From Fringe to Mainstream: How Integrative Medicine’s 25-Year Battle for Health Freedom Reached the White House first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

D. Deb 0:00Yeah, so today&#8217;s episode on Let&#8217;s Talk wellness. Now we are diving into the world of mold. Many of you have heard me speak about mold in the past. It has been a pillar in my own recovery of Ms. And today, I want you to meet a dear friend of mine. Her name is Andrea, and she is part of respirari Labs, but she also has been a consultant in the past for people struggling with mycotoxin illness. Mycotoxin illness is a tragedy, as far as I&#8217;m concerned, because it is so under diagnosed and misdiagnosed, because it&#8217;s just not well known by a lot of practitioners, certainly in the traditional world, but in the alternative world, it is a newer disorder that people are learning about, and not everyone is extremely knowledgeable about. And I think it really needs to be the forefront of a lot of these undiagnosed or misdiagnosed cases. We see a lot of mycotoxin illness at the Dr. Deb 1:04root cause of neurological conditions, ALS, MS, Parkinson&#8217;s dementia, Alzheimer&#8217;s disease, and if not treated and addressed, these disorders will not improve and sometimes end very tragically for us. So I want to introduce you guys to my dear friend Andrea today, and she will be a wealth of knowledge for you and hopefully put some of your fears at risk about remediation of your home, but also probably bring up some things that you never knew about, mycotoxin, illness. AndreaThank you for those, those very kind words. It&#8217;s It&#8217;s wild that as I hear stories like yours and mine, so often it&#8217;s it&#8217;s wild how similar they are. And so these topics are so important to bring awareness to, and I appreciate the work that you&#8217;re doing to do that. So thank you for for being here and for letting me be here with you. Dr. DebOh, you are so welcome. So tell us your story. How did this happen to you? Andrea 2:05Got it? So it&#8217;s all, it&#8217;s all very ironic. In 2017 we were living in a rental home in Robbinsdale, and we were renting as we were kind of getting out of debt. I was a pre med student and starting up my family with my husband, who I who I met later in life, and our two year old daughter, contracted lead poisoning from our rental home. She She was chewing on a window sill, and I thought I bet there&#8217;s lead paint on that window sill. How we tested the window sill, sure enough, there was lead paint. Tested my little girl and she had lead poisoning. We weren&#8217;t financially ready to buy a house, but we qualified for just enough. My mom is incredibly smart. She&#8217;s been a realtor almost 50 years, and she helped us find a home. And so we found a home that we liked and a modest home, but clean and built in the 90s, so no lead paint. And we had, you know, a general inspection, and it didn&#8217;t really raise any red flags. And we moved in. So we moved into the home end of October of 2017 two months, almost two months to the date, later, our five year old dog died. She developed a very sudden neurological disorder. It was very rapid and and it was at the time we didn&#8217;t, you know, put pieces together, but it&#8217;s interesting that I, I somehow knew it was environmental, like I can&#8217;t, but I, but I didn&#8217;t put the pieces together. Anyways, my Upon moving in, my health started to decline, but as as it is for so many women, Andrea 3:54I didn&#8217;t connect the dots, because I just had my third child. He was nine months, and I thought, well, maybe this is postpartum. I was experiencing migraines, and that wasn&#8217;t typical for me, without being pregnant, and my ears started to ring, I started to experience anxiety that was not typical for me, and it just kind of snowballed from there. And eventually I went into my doctor and I said, I&#8217;m having anxiety that&#8217;s not typical for me and and for me to go see a doctor over that, if you knew me, you would have to know it was pretty extreme. It was to the point where I couldn&#8217;t go to the grocery store and and so it just kind of got worse from there. And then it progressed into migraines that would last months at a time, and my my worst migraine lasted three months day and night. I mean, three consecutive months day and night. And it was so severe that at the time, my husband had to hide the guns in the house because I was I was suffering, and I was begging him to help me die. I mean, if you&#8217;ve ever had a migraine, maybe you can understand this. But on top of these migraines that I couldn&#8217;t control, I was confused, and Andrea 5:10I couldn&#8217;t remember my children&#8217;s names. At one point, I looked at my oldest son and thought he was my baby brother. There was one day my husband came home and I, I wanted to say to him, did you see the email from Grace&#8217;s preschool teacher? And I couldn&#8217;t find my words. And finally, I just sat there and started crying. And my sweet, loving, patient husband said, Are you asking if I saw the email from Miss Annette? And I said, Yes, yes, that&#8217;s it. So I, you know, we made so many doctor visits and in the ER, and we kept saying to these doctors, you know, she&#8217;s, I&#8217;ve got this migraine, but I&#8217;m confused. And they would do CT scans, well, then it was, you need psychiatric help. You need a psychiatric evaluation. And my doctors were very, very frustrated with me. Andrea 6:01In 2000 end of 2019 2020 I believe I was diagnosed with Lyme disease Bartonella Babesia, and that made sense to me. They think that I&#8217;ve had Lyme disease since I was a teenager. And that makes sense. I live in Minnesota, and I love to fish and be in the woods and forage mushrooms. So that made sense. We treated Lyme disease out of pocket for about a year, and by that time, I hadn&#8217;t worked in two years. I was mostly bed bound. I had inflammation throughout my body. I was dealing with just a myriad of very strange, debilitating health effects. And we&#8217;ve never been a one income family, so we were really struggling. My husband was a chef at the time. It was during, he was during the lockdowns. It was during covid And so his his pay was cut. He was working all the time. And then, you know, then we had like, these crazy out of pocket medical expenses. I said to my doctor at one point, because I wasn&#8217;t getting wasn&#8217;t getting better, I said, I think I might be living in mold. And I I&#8217;ve been reading about the Lyme and mold connection, and he was just like, Oh, I&#8217;m not really worried about that. The next time I met with him, I said, Doc, I know I&#8217;m living in mold. I can, I can see a little bit of it in my basement. And he says, I&#8217;m not worried about it. We&#8217;ll deal with it later. Well, later never came because we ran out of money. So by the time we figured out that that it was very the culprit was environmental. We were tapped out, and we didn&#8217;t have anywhere to go. And so we moved out to a tent in our backyard with our two small children or two dogs, and by this point, I was ready to take my life and and I I listened to your podcast interview, and it was so wonderful. And I love the fact that you mentioned that mycotoxins can cross the blood brain barrier, and this can cause inflammation in the brain, and that&#8217;s important to know, because it&#8217;s important for healthcare providers, for social workers, for professionals and for folks to know that mold exposure can manifest as mental health disorders. It can look like anxiety, depression, pans and pandas and kids, personality changes, dementia, you know, all of those things. And so, besides the fact that I was suffering, I was just very unwell with the swelling in my brain. And so I I rewrote my life insurance policy, and I was very aware of when it would pay out. I tripled the coverage, and then I plan to, you know, to take myself out of this world. And my thinking was is, I can&#8217;t live like this. I&#8217;m suffering. But also I knew my home was toxic. I could feel it. And you know, my husband, who&#8217;s got a healthy immune system, didn&#8217;t, and I knew I needed to get my kids out of this home and so, so we lived in the tent, and I had these plans in mind, nobody knew. And so I said, Well, if I am going to leave my children motherless, I&#8217;m going to fight like heck. So I started reading, because my education was in the sciences. I dove into everything I could. I read textbooks on mold remediation, indoor air quality, environmental testing. I reached out to professionals in the industry. Michael Pinto, he&#8217;s a wonderful professional and an educator. He sent me a free textbook. I read it cover to cover. I read everything I could on mold toxicity. I read Dr Neil Nathan&#8217;s book toxic. All of his suggested reads. Andrea 9:43And I, two weeks into reading, I was talking over the heads of the professionals that I had hired, and that was really alarming to me, and they didn&#8217;t know what mycotoxins were and and I thought, wow, this is really unregulated so, so I became the professional that we so desperately needed. I recovered my health greatly fresh air and and good food and supporting my detox pathways. And we did remediate our house several times. By the way, the the small bit of visible mold in our basement was extensive. It was throughout our entire basement, everywhere, and it was very, very hidden. We just had no idea. Andrea 10:30So by the time I recovered, I found a local company here in Minnesota, and I reached out to the owner, and I said, I want to work for you. And says, Well, I don&#8217;t know what you would do. You&#8217;re hypersensitive. And, you know, we do inspections and mold remediation, and I don&#8217;t know what I would do with you. So I chased him down for three months, and I was, we were about to lose the house, and I knew that this is where, where, where God was leading me to to work. This is, you know, all this education I had this is this was a seed that was instilled in my in my heart, to to work in this industry in some capacity. But how? So finally, after three months, I said to him, I said, Listen, if you don&#8217;t hire me, I&#8217;m going to show up at your doorstep. So he did. He finally and and the first day of work was kind of funny. He says, Well, there&#8217;s a desk. And he says, I have no idea what you&#8217;re going to do for me. And so I worked for that gentleman for three years, and I created my role in his company, which was really exciting, because I could use my own strengths, my passion. And so what I did for him was I was, I remember one day he says, I need to make a business card for you. What&#8217;s your title? And I&#8217;m like, Hmm, how about you know, client advocate and director of education. So what I did for him was I worked to build relationships with doctors like yourself and indoor environmentalists. And that&#8217;s really where my passion is, because if we are going to make progress in these environmentally triggered illnesses, we have to have providers like yourself working with indoor environmentalists, and you would be and maybe you wouldn&#8217;t be surprised to know that everybody is really compartmentalized, and it&#8217;s important that doctors like yourself, you stay in your lane. You know all about the body and how to diagnose the body and indoor environmentalists, they need to stay in their lane. They need to not be giving health advice or saying mycotoxins. What are those? Those aren&#8217;t real. It&#8217;s in your head and so but it is important to work together, because one thing that I want to impart on anybody that&#8217;s dealing with these things is that navigating mold toxicity is is difficult and it can be financially exhaustive. Andrea 12:48It requires a multi faceted approach. You have to diagnose your home, not easy. You have to heal your home. You have to diagnose your body, heal your body, and like so many of us know, it&#8217;s not covered by homeowners insurance. It&#8217;s not covered by health insurance. So you have to go at it very thoughtfully with being very cognizant of your resources. And that&#8217;s hard to do when your brain is swollen and and people are telling you like you&#8217;re nuts, or your spouse is like, well, I&#8217;m fine, you know, I&#8217;m fine. I don&#8217;t if there&#8217;s a problem, you leave. And my husband said that to me at one point. He&#8217;s still alive, by the way, and you&#8217;re still married to him. Oh, my, it&#8217;s molded. Marriage is a topic I like to talk about a lot, because it is, and I want to, I want to make this really clear, it is par for course that not everybody is sick in the home. And what we noticed is once we moved out, we saw things fall away. We saw behaviors from our children fall away. We saw all three of my kid. I have three kids, all three of them had eczema. Never had that issue again. So it affects people very differently. And that that&#8217;s par for course, because these mycotoxins, you know, they get into our body, into our bloodstream, they&#8217;re very small, and so they cause systematic damage. You got genetic predispositions. Gender plays a role past exposure, so it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s very typical to see family members react differently. My husband has an immune system like a wildebeest. He is, he is wonderfully he&#8217;s a good detoxer. But after we moved out, he he notices, noticed a difference. But if you don&#8217;t have your spouse on board, it&#8217;s going to be very difficult, because it&#8217;s expensive. Things have to be done, right? But Dr. Deb 14:50that as well, like so many of our clients, end up their marriages don&#8217;t survive. It&#8217;s too hard. Sometimes there&#8217;s divorces that become very. Ugly, and there&#8217;s, you know, fighting over the children, and one thinks the other one is crazy, and it&#8217;s devastating. It&#8217;s devastating our families. It&#8217;s devastating marriages. It devastates the finances, like you&#8217;ve said. I mean, I&#8217;ve seen people mortgage their homes two, three times over to try to save the home because they don&#8217;t want to leave the home and leave it to someone else who will get sick, or they can&#8217;t afford to leave, or they&#8217;ve invested so much in a remediation, it&#8217;s impossible now to leave, because there&#8217;s so much invested, they&#8217;ll never get their money out of it. There&#8217;s so many stories, and I love what you&#8217;re talking about, staying in in the lane too, because we get asked all the time, how do I clean up my house? And, you know, yes, we can help tell you where to go and what to do and how to start a process. But we don&#8217;t know how to we haven&#8217;t, never seen your house as the healthcare practitioner. I don&#8217;t know your house. I don&#8217;t know what it&#8217;s like. I don&#8217;t know what you have growing in there. I you know we can tell you things, but sometimes the things that we tell you might make your home sicker instead of better, and it is very hard to stay in that lane. You want to help everyone. You want to give them a place to start. But I agree so much having a good building biologist or environmental specialists come in and really evaluate that the airflow and the humidity and look at the house and see what&#8217;s going on, it&#8217;s going to save you a ton of money doing that, versus us just telling you to start doing this and this and this. AndreaYou touched on some good points that I want to bring up, because, you know, a lot of people say, Well, Andy, why don&#8217;t you guys just move? Well, first of all, it&#8217;s not that simple. We&#8217;ve lost equity, and I would never leave my home to somebody else. But also, you know, besides losing equity in our home, we&#8217;re in debt. I mean, I when I first, when I finally went back to work after two years and I was making minimum wage, but so grateful for that income. My wages were garnished for unpaid medical bills, and which was devastating. But also, my home is cleaner than most people&#8217;s, and in that we&#8217;ve had friends that were very well meaning, like, Come stay here, and I&#8217;m like, house is worse. And that&#8217;s something that people need to understand, is there is no perfect house and, and this is not a one size fits all. So you know, there&#8217;s, there&#8217;s people with, like, wooden foundations as wild as that sounds, no thank you. So there are situations where it&#8217;s like, it&#8217;s not worth it. But you know, there is no perfect house, and once you&#8217;re hypersensitive, you&#8217;re hypersensitive, and so I&#8217;m a fan of making your home where you&#8217;re going to choose for it to be, and then allocating your resources to making that home the best that it can be. There&#8217;s a lot of things you can do to improve your air quality. You can invest in a good ventilation system that&#8217;s important, putting up a gutter system, getting, you know, good air purification technology, being cognizant of what products you&#8217;re bringing into your home, Andrea 18:21and that&#8217;s really important. And you know, I there&#8217;s I want to talk about, about testing the home, because this is important, and it&#8217;s often a topic where folks spend really a lot of money that could be better invested. So confusing to people. So when people ask me, I love to read, and I, when I was in school, I loved microbiology, and so I love to read about environmental testing, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s what I do on the weekends. I&#8217;m a real hoot. But people always ask me, you know, Andy, what&#8217;s the best test? And I&#8217;m like, Well, you know, I need to test my home. What should what test should I do? And I&#8217;m like, Well, wait a minute, wait a minute. And I ask a lot of questions first. And the reason is, is that there is no one perfect test, and each test is going to tell you something different. And also, I&#8217;m a fan of very objective based testing, and let me explain. So say, you said, Andy, I need to test my home. You know, what test should I do? I&#8217;d say, well, Deb, do you own or do you rent your home? And that&#8217;s a that&#8217;s a big question, because if you rent your home, your objective in testing, it might be really different than if you own your home. So if you own your home, your objective should be, hopefully, to identify sources of moisture, to identify building defects and to determine exactly what building material is affected by mold, right? It&#8217;s like if you had cancer in your body, you you need to know where it is. You to take it out. Now, if you&#8217;re renting your home, the objective might be, well. Andrea 20:00Well, I know there&#8217;s mold here. I know it&#8217;s affecting my health. I want to get out of my lease, or maybe it&#8217;s for legal reasons. Some renters just want to know is this is my environment a factor? So that&#8217;s the first question I ask. But when you own your home and you&#8217;re starting the process of diagnosing a home, what you don&#8217;t want to do is simply just acquire data points, data points that you that maybe you can&#8217;t fully understand, and that, because that can be dangerous, I&#8217;ve seen people make very big and expensive decisions based on one test. I mean, leave houses behind and everything they own. So you want to start holistic. A good mold inspector is somebody that knows mold and mold testing methodologies, knows the strengths and limitations of each and then also understands the Building Sciences and the building construction. So they should know changing building codes. They should know the anatomy of the home right, very similar to expecting a medical doctor to knowing the anatomy of the body, so that you want to start holistically, looking at the home, looking at ventilation rates, which is CO two levels, and using thermal imaging and moisture meters and doing a very thorough visual inspection people, people always say, oh, air testing. It&#8217;s terrible. It&#8217;s terrible. Okay, well, what kind of air testing are we talking about? Are we talking about? Because there&#8217;s a lot of them. We can test the air for VOCs and mycotoxins and spores. But typically, when people are gruffing about air testing, they&#8217;re talking about spore trap air sampling. And yes, it has a ton of limitations, a ton of them, and it should never be done without the understanding of these limitations. So for those who don&#8217;t know what I&#8217;m talking about, spore trap air sampling is is done with like a pump at a, you know, at a certain volume, and then they take the samples, and they&#8217;re typically evaluated through microscopy, and then they can identify the genera of molds in the air and that can be useful, because A spore of Stachybotrys is going to be representative of long term water damage, but it&#8217;s inexpensive, and so typically, the the initial evaluation of a home will involve spore trap air sampling, and it&#8217;s a piece to the puzzle. Andrea 22:13However, there is a time and a place for for more expensive or focused test. And so about a year ago, my health started to decline again. And I was in the industry now for three years, I had access to more tools and resources than most people, and I was playing that game of, you know, is it perimenopause? Is it Lyme? Am I doing too much? So I traveled, I went away and I and because I wanted to experiment, and I came home, and I was certain that I was being affected in my bedroom. I knew it. And so we started sleeping in a different bedroom, and it was different. Andrea 23:01And then we started sleeping in the camper, and I knew it. I said there&#8217;s something going on in this bedroom. So had multiple inspectors come out. They used all the tools that I mentioned. They had all the knowledge that I mentioned. They did sport trap air sampling came back clean. They did wall cavity sampling came back clean. We did a dust test that looks at mycotoxins. Andrea 23:26Came back clean. There was no issue, but I was really persistent. He said, I know that there&#8217;s something going on in here. So then we ran what&#8217;s called in AMEA a m, a m, e, a, stands for airborne mycotoxin environmental analysis by respiratory and it came back off the charts. With mycotoxins, came back really high with aflatoxins, triglycines and ochratoxin A and man, I cried. Andrea 23:54And by the way, the previous homeowner of our home died of liver and lung cancer at 56 she was diagnosed in January, she was dead by June, and then we bought the house in October. And for anybody listening that that doesn&#8217;t know, aflatoxin is a mycotoxin. It is one of the most known and documented carcinogens known to man, and it is correlated with liver and lung cancer, and actually the precise cancers that the previous homeowner died of. So getting that data point was very validating, but we didn&#8217;t know where the mold was, and so we took out a second mortgage, just like you just talked about, with an interest rate that made me throw up, and we did exploratory remediation. So we re sided the home, we found mold behind the siding near my bedroom. Thanks to a woodpecker, once the siding was off, we discovered the windows weren&#8217;t flashed. Those were moldy. We found a very saturated, moldy sub floor in our master bathroom. We demoed our master bathroom and our bedroom and did the siding. It was very expensive, but we found the mold. Andrea 25:00So I&#8217;m telling this story because it&#8217;s important to understand the limitations of a non invasive inspection. There are going to be situations where you cannot know there&#8217;s mold there until you take it apart. So So I was grateful for this EMEA, because it was the only test and and remember, I ran a number of tests in that room. It was the only one that confirmed what I was feeling. And so, by the way, that that test is through respiratory labs, and I chased them for a year and begged them to hire me, and they just did. So thank you. I&#8217;m a proud new addition to respiratory labs, and I&#8217;m very happy to be there because this this test, it&#8217;s the technology is new, and it&#8217;s very exciting, but it&#8217;s very sensitive, but it&#8217;s important for folks to know that there are limitations to non invasive inspections. And if you have somebody that is in that situation where they feel it, I trust your gut. I&#8217;ve never been wrong. Andrea 26:03We&#8217;ve always found it. And if you&#8217;re feeling stuck, what I tell folks to do is, I&#8217;m in Minnesota, so our time is limited on to do this, but in the summer, put up a tent, get out of your home as long as you can. Andrea 26:18When you travel away from your home, the minute you walk in the door, and I still do this, walk around your entire house, immediately use your nose and and smell the house, because we become nose blind. It&#8217;s a long it&#8217;s crazy. We become Noah&#8217;s blind within I do within minutes, and my husband calls me the nose. I&#8217;ve got the sniffer. But when you take yourself out of an environment, that&#8217;s that&#8217;s how I figured it out. The first time I went to see my best friend, and we&#8217;re struggling with my health, and we didn&#8217;t we knew about mold, but we didn&#8217;t think it was our issue quite yet. And I traveled away. I came home after a week, and after 10 minutes of being home, I said to my husband, I said, it&#8217;s the house, it&#8217;s mold. So just a tip for anybody that is feeling stuck, yeah, and say too. Dr. Deb 27:19Like every house has a smell to it, right? Every house has its odor. It&#8217;s stuff. But you&#8217;re right. When you&#8217;re sensitive, you know, it&#8217;s molded. It doesn&#8217;t always smell musty, that&#8217;s the other thing. It doesn&#8217;t always smell musty, it doesn&#8217;t smell moldy. It doesn&#8217;t smell like old grandma&#8217;s basement or old grandma&#8217;s house. It can smell like so many different things, but you are so right. I remember after I had my sinus surgery and had the fungal ball removed. And he said to me, you&#8217;re going to be really sensitive. So if you walk in some place and you you smell something, get out right away. Go flush your nose. And we were on our way back, driving back from Atlanta, and we stopped at a gas station, get gas, have a potty break. And I took two steps in this building, and I turned around and walked out. I said to my husband, where is my nasal spray? Like I was so paranoid, because I had just had sinus surgery four days before that, and it smelled instantly, and I knew it, and it&#8217;s just one of those things where you go, I&#8217;m not going back there. I&#8217;m not taking the risk. I&#8217;m not even going to go in there to pay and go to the bathroom. I made my husband go in there and pay for everything. And I said, let&#8217;s stop someplace else so I can go to the bathroom. Because I&#8217;m not I&#8217;m not doing it. And you do become very, very sensitive. But the I think the biggest thing is to trust your instinct. Amen. Yes, many times people will say, like, I knew this, there was something, but I didn&#8217;t know what, and I couldn&#8217;t do this, or I wish I would have done that. And you really just need to trust your instinct on these things. AndreaI would agree. And you know, I ask a lot of questions I work, and I&#8217;m not running my consulting business right now because I&#8217;m very excited about the work I&#8217;m doing with respira. I truly but in my consulting work and I I help people just take a step forward. So I ask a lot of questions, but I&#8217;ll ask, does your house smell musty? And oftentimes people will say, well, sometimes, and the reason is, is that when we smell a musty odor, what we&#8217;re smelling is called a microbial, volatile organic compound, or an mvoc. So these are primary metabolites of mold, where mycotoxins are secondary metabolites. So primary metabolites, for those who don&#8217;t know Are, are metabolites rendered by a life sustaining process where secondary metabolites are it&#8217;s like the like the mold switch blades. It&#8217;s It&#8217;s defense mechanism and and mycotoxins are not alive, but m VOCs are commonly known as mold farts. But what&#8217;s the reason that we don&#8217;t always smell them is that VOCs will off gas more readily in environments of high heat and humidity. So people will say, well, our basement smelled musty, but I started the dehumidifier, and now we don&#8217;t smell it. And I want to be really clear. Andrea 30:00Or you&#8217;re mitigating the odor, you&#8217;re not removing the issue. And so in our basement was the same it was. It would smell musty or earthy in the summer, but not in the winter when it was really dry. So it&#8217;s important to to understand that. And if you smell a musty odor, there&#8217;s usually a source somewhere. And by the way, I believe you&#8217;re in Wisconsin, I&#8217;m in Minnesota, and basements are they&#8217;re such an issue. But people will say, Well, I we have a really icky basement, but we don&#8217;t go down there. And I&#8217;m sorry to say but the basement is a very important aspect of your indoor air quality, and that&#8217;s because air moves. It&#8217;s called the stack effect. Air moves from areas of high pressure to low pressure. So besides air moving through pressure differentials, you also have your HVAC system, so great that you don&#8217;t go down there, but that air does. So if you have a crawl space that&#8217;s not encapsulated. If you have a icky, scary basement, you&#8217;re not going to have a healthy home. So I don&#8217;t care how well you seal it up, that&#8217;s it&#8217;s really important to make sure that the the biology in your basement is is very good. So Dr. Deb 31:15I think another myth that I&#8217;d love for us to talk about is new homes, right? Um, no, I will hear people say, and I did it too. I have a new home. There&#8217;s no way my new house can have mold. And I remember getting ready to go for my sinus surgery, and my ENT said, You got to test your new home. And I&#8217;m like, my new home is, like, four years old. It was built in three months. It doesn&#8217;t have any problems to it. And sure enough, my kitchen tested positive for mold. And I was like, What in the hell? This is a brand new house, and we had a building biologist come out, and she did all the testing everywhere. Found a couple of little spots on some floor joists in the basement. Nothing that was Major. But we were like, where is this coming from in the kitchen? It made absolutely no sense to us. It ended up being our countertop. We didn&#8217;t do granite countertops. We had the typical laminate type countertop, and it was in the press board underneath. When we got underneath there, we could see a white film on that press board, and we swabbed it out, and sure enough, it was moldy in there and had it taken out. And I always like, you were talking about smells, I would come into the house and I would be like, What is that smell? And I couldn&#8217;t put my finger on it. It wasn&#8217;t a musty smell, it wasn&#8217;t a nasty smell. And my husband would say, I don&#8217;t know what you&#8217;re smelling. And he has no sniffer. I have a sniff. Vince, that&#8217;s the same thing. And so I said to him, I said, here&#8217;s the thing, we know, this has mold and I&#8217;m going to have this surgery. Why don&#8217;t we just take the countertops out and see if the smell goes away? And he&#8217;s like, Are you kidding me, Deb, do you know how big of a feed that is made of this huge island of huge kitchen? And I&#8217;m like, just put them in the garage. If it doesn&#8217;t change the smell, we&#8217;ll bring them back in. We put them in the garage, and literally, within 24 hours, the smell that I always smelled in a particular spot in the kitchen was gone in 24 hours. And we left it out there for a couple of weeks, and the smell never came back. We had our building biologist come back. She retested stuff. There was no mold in the kitchen anymore. So we replaced the countertops. Never had the problem. But who on earth would ever think you would have mold in your countertops? I would have never thought that Andreathat&#8217;s, I mean, besides your story, that&#8217;s, that&#8217;s the first I&#8217;ve heard that. But yeah, answering a phone at a remediation business for three years, I heard a lot, and I would, I would typically get calls from people that would say, Well, I&#8217;m seeing I have these weird health issues. I&#8217;m seeing this doctor. They think I&#8217;m being exposed to mold. And I, you know, then I&#8217;d ask about their house. Well, it&#8217;s not my house, it&#8217;s a brand new house, yeah, and I won&#8217;t say who, but there&#8217;s a builder, a very big builder, and I got calls from people in their homes frequently. One of them was a young woman, and she lived in my area, and I was talking to her, and I said, Gosh, it sounds like you have mold illness. And she goes, I can&#8217;t. My house is nine months old. And I said, and so she ended up doing an inspection, and there was mold throughout the house, I mean, Deb throughout the house, and it was very hidden. So what would folks need to know is that these houses go up so quickly, and a lot of lumber comes from the lumber yard, moldy, then it&#8217;s encapsulated, then it&#8217;s sitting out in the elements. We were in a small town in the west of the suburbs in Minnesota, and it&#8217;s just blowing up. And my kids are so funny. They just finished the second and third grade, and last year we had a neighborhood like just pop up right next to us. And my kids are so funny. Mom, you should stop by and give those families your card, because did you see how fast those houses went up? Mom, it&#8217;s raining. Do you see all that lumber there? So you have your bad building practice. Andrea 35:00You have subcontractors. I mean, I roofed houses when I was in college, you know, and I didn&#8217;t. I was great at shingling, and I was strong as heck, but I didn&#8217;t have any, you know, building knowledge. And so it&#8217;s, you can&#8217;t trust a new home. And oftentimes, I&#8217;m telling you some of these ticky tacky houses. So for anybody that&#8217;s in a new home, this is what I tell them, is, is be very acutely aware of when your warranty is up, and then get a very, very, very, very thorough inspection prior to that warranty coming up, because if there is an issue, then you can, you know, it in the bud, but it&#8217;s I&#8217;d be terrified to build a house, and eventually we will, but I&#8217;m going to keep it small and simple, because I see what can happen. But the age of the house really doesn&#8217;t doesn&#8217;t matter. It&#8217;s not a factor, in my opinion and experience. And sometimes those older houses, they breathe better. Sometimes they were just built better. So unfortunately, I wish it was that easy, because we were just, yeah, Dr. Debwe forget a lot of these building materials that are it&#8217;s not just traditional lumber. They come from other countries. They sit on a boat for months at a time. They&#8217;re sealed up. They&#8217;re, you know, if they&#8217;re using some things that have been sprayed with chemicals. Now you don&#8217;t just have mold. You have the chemicals. And we forget that people that are mold sensitive are EMF sensitive. They&#8217;re voc sensitive. They&#8217;re normally sensitive. So all those new home smells, quote, unquote, are VOCs that houses problems. We&#8217;re all on Wi Fi these days. Nobody wants hard wired, which makes the mold in this even worse, there&#8217;s so many things that can make your illness and your symptoms 10 times worse than what they could be, but we just have to educate ourselves well, Andreaand thank you for mentioning that, because, just like we should look at the health of our bodies holistically, right? Because health isn&#8217;t just an absence of disease, right? It&#8217;s so much more than that. But the same with the home. You don&#8217;t want to get so hyper focused on on mold, because it&#8217;s like carpet. Carpet is one of the most toxic things you can put in your home. VOCs are. I react to VOCs much like I do with mold, but also these VOCs will will work synergistically with molds and gram negative bacteria and endotoxins can kind of create their own toxic compound. And so when you are buying furniture, mattresses, especially, you want to make sure they&#8217;re green guard gold certified. So if you like, say you&#8217;re shopping on target.com you can go under the the product details, and something that is green guard Gold Certified will be rigorously tested for VOCs. And if you haven&#8217;t heard of that, Deb, I&#8217;ll, I&#8217;ll send it to you, because that&#8217;s that. It&#8217;s very important. Oh my gosh, laundry detergent. Laundry detergent is one of and and scented items. I know that you&#8217;re going to have listeners that are going to yell at me for this, but diffusing essential oils, it puts particulate matter in the air. Voc is, yes, I&#8217;m a fan of essential oils, and I use essential oils, but I never diffuse them. So there&#8217;s so many ways to to compromise your air quality. So it&#8217;s important when you&#8217;re considering your resources. You know that you you look at your home holistically and also your health, and don&#8217;t get so hyper focused. Andrea 38:30I&#8217;ve seen people. I talked to a woman once, and she was giving me gruffs. I can&#8217;t believe you stayed in your house. You&#8217;re never going to get well. And I said, Well, I&#8217;m doing pretty good, you know. And and she was so hyper focused on mold, and she would just leave everything behind, and I&#8217;m talking to her, and she&#8217;s drinking a Mountain Dew and eating fast food, and I&#8217;m just like, oh God, like, so it&#8217;s important not to get hyper focused, because it is not just mold, especially when we&#8217;re talking about environmental factors, is there&#8217;s so much, so much more to it. Dr. DebSo I think that&#8217;s a great thing for us to touch on, too. Is what do we get rid of and what do we not? Right? Well, that&#8217;s a great topic. You know, Dr Schumacher would say, everything has to go. You have to live in a tent. You can&#8217;t do anything else. You can&#8217;t sort of, you know, nothing can stay, nothing can come back in and and I think we&#8217;ve changed our thought process from that a little bit, and for a variety of reasons, we have much better testing, much better treatment of stuff, more knowledge of things these days. So what are some of the recommendations that you make for people about things? Because we love our things? AndreaYeah, no. Thank you for bringing this. This topic up because it&#8217;s really important. The topic of content is a it&#8217;s a personal one, and it&#8217;s also a contentious one. And so we&#8217;ve remediated our home probably seven different times. Now, for anybody that&#8217;s like, oh my gosh, first of all, we did everything wrong the first way, which is why I&#8217;m here. I&#8217;m trying to teach people not to make the mistakes I made. I also wanted. Andrea 40:00Tell people that I made improvement in my health with every remediation effort we did not get all the mold in one swoop, and I and a step forward is just a step forward. So if you&#8217;re feeling overwhelmed and you know you&#8217;re staying in your house, a small step forward is a step forward. But the first, the first time and second time we remediated, I got rid of everything, and it was devastating. And and by the way, I think it&#8217;s dangerous to tell people, because I was right when I was diving into this, people like, you have to replace everything, couches, everything, everything, everything, everything, plus fix your home. And I otherwise, you&#8217;re not going to get better. It&#8217;s all or nothing. And by the way, that&#8217;s when I started to feel hopeless and made the plan to, you know, do what I was going to do. So that&#8217;s dangerous. The path forward is not the same for everybody. So pertaining to contents, this is how I talk folks through this number one, is it sentimental? Does it have Is it is it valuable to you in your heart, or does it hold value? Because the first thing that you should do, I&#8217;m somebody that I need to be taking steps forward all the time, all the time, and so if you&#8217;re waiting for remediation or a second mortgage to go through, purge your items, the last things that you have to deal with, that&#8217;s going to save you time and money. So just it&#8217;s a great remediation. Is a great time to say. Does this serve me? Do I need it? Because we live in a time of we&#8217;re just need so much stuff. Andrea 41:28Non porous surfaces can be cleaned. Okay, you don&#8217;t. There&#8217;s mycotoxins. Don&#8217;t get absorbed into things. I have a piano that is my whole life, my whole heart, I&#8217;m not getting so and by the way, there are surface tests if you do have a valuable piece of you know, maybe it&#8217;s grandma&#8217;s piano or something that you really love that&#8217;s valuable, we do have a surface test through respira, and they you can order these tests by yourself, by the way, which is incredible, but and then I would say, clean it. Try cleaning it, if you can. Now, this is going to be really different for for everybody, because I have friends that are way more sensitive than I am. And so when we were doing things, I put everything in bins and put them in the garage that I I just didn&#8217;t have time to deal with. And then once I started emptying my toxic bucket and kind of getting back to my baseline, what I would do is I would set up outside, and I&#8217;d open each bin, and I think, you know what? I didn&#8217;t even I forgot I had this. I&#8217;m just going to get rid of this. Andrea 42:36And then I would pay attention, oh, I&#8217;m reacting to that. I&#8217;m going to try to clean this. I&#8217;m still reacting. Now I&#8217;m going to get rid of it so there is no one size fits all. And honestly, we&#8217;ve been through seven remediations. We&#8217;ve got three kids. We are we&#8217;re buried, we&#8217;re upside down in bills. If we were to get rid of everything each time, I don&#8217;t know where we would be So, and that goes back again to you have to be how we speak out of both sides of my mouth here, you have to be cognizant that there&#8217;s these tiny terrorists, and they&#8217;re very real. But you also have to be realistic. And so I can you imagine, like, Well, we had a water event. Everybody. Get rid of all your toys kids. We gotta read, you know. And so after the third and fourth and fifth remediation, I was like, I&#8217;m a big fan of microfibers. I go to Costco, I go into their automotive and I have a big stacks of them. And I just, I always have a bucket of mild soap, whatever you want, water and microfibers, and I&#8217;m just, I always clean like that, so don&#8217;t the path forward is going to look very different for different folks. Some folks have a some folks have a wonderful husband, like I do. Some people have a lot of money. Some people don&#8217;t. Some people have family. And so you have to look at your situation, look at your resources, and make a path forward. Dr. DebSo that&#8217;s great. That is great. I love that. And I too, you know, I made the mistake and been that provider that said, if you don&#8217;t get rid of everything, you&#8217;re not going to get better. Because that&#8217;s what we thought 15 years ago, you know. And now I say the same thing that you do, you know, let&#8217;s look through it. Let&#8217;s we know, things can be cleaned. Some things might not be able to be but just like you said, Bin it up. Try it later, when you&#8217;re better. You know, certain things that you don&#8217;t look at, you don&#8217;t use that have been in the basement for seven years. Okay, you probably don&#8217;t really need those things. You haven&#8217;t unboxed them in seven years. Why would you unbox them now, you know, now we take a very different approach today than we did 15 years ago. And we do see people, they get better. They don&#8217;t have to get rid of all of their things. We have different treatment modalities now, you know, you can fog your house with a dry vapor, fog now that we didn&#8217;t have. Four, which can help a ton, but there&#8217;s so many different things available. It&#8217;s incredible how that&#8217;s changed. For sure, Andreathere&#8217;s one thing, so one thing that we didn&#8217;t do, and it wasn&#8217;t because I didn&#8217;t want to, it&#8217;s because we, we just didn&#8217;t have any money. We replaced all the kids beds. I wasn&#8217;t monkeying with that. Yeah, but we did not replace ours, and it wasn&#8217;t because I didn&#8217;t think it was important. We just didn&#8217;t have the money, so we vacuumed the heck out of it. And after our last this was just recently, my shoulder was my towel is in. My shoulders just terrible, terrible. And seasonal allergies is just the histamine dump. But my shoulders were killing me. And I said to my husband, I said, I think we need to replace the bed. And he goes, Well, what if it&#8217;s not what if it&#8217;s not part of it? And I said, well, we need a new bed. Anyways, you know? I said, and in beds get so icky. And so we did. We were we got a different bed. I&#8217;m sad to say that we at the time, because this was recently, right after our our second mortgage and huge remediation. We didn&#8217;t buy one that was low VOC. But that&#8217;s another thing, like, if you&#8217;re going to replace these things, you want to, it&#8217;s equality. But I&#8217;ll tell you, after we bought that new bed, I noticed a huge difference. And I&#8217;m just like, Oh my God, I&#8217;ve been sleeping in a contaminated bed. So if you&#8217;re on the fence about anything, your bed, man like that would be a good one to replace. So and it&#8217;s, I know it&#8217;s expensive, but even me not being able to buy one that was green guard gold certified, I already feel better. Dr. DebSo that&#8217;s we did the same thing when we tested our new house. We had a brand new mattress, and my ENT said, You got to test your mattress. And I&#8217;m like, Oh, come on, really. I just bought this thing. And I made the mistake when we bought the bed. I should have taken it back within the time that I had, because it was a little too firm and I was uncomfortable with it. So I got a nice little foamy mattress topper to stick on top the mattress. Never thinking that that was going to create moisture and take all of that in and make the mattress have mold in it. I didn&#8217;t realize that. And so we took the mattress topper off, tested the bed. The bed was full of mold. It was awful. And we had just spent, I don&#8217;t know, three, $4,000 on a brand new mattress. And and then we got to talking with the the guy who was coming to swap our mattress out. And he&#8217;s like, you might not have to get rid of that mattress. And I&#8217;m like, Are you kidding me? It&#8217;s full of mold. He&#8217;s like, I bet you it&#8217;s your mattress foam topper, not the mattress. And he taught us about the foam topper and how you never put that on there. And so we we took the mattress, did the same thing, took it out of the house for a while, let it air out, and waited about two months and retested it. And sure enough, the mold was not in the mattress. It was actually in the foam topper. AndreaAnd thank you for letting me know that, because we have we, you know, we bought an RV, and thank God it saved our life. And the mattresses in these RVs are, it&#8217;s torture. Oh yeah, they&#8217;re bad. We got one of those home mattresses, and I remember, like, yeah, thinking of X and like, I feel like I&#8217;ve read this, and that&#8217;s what&#8217;s in this. So be a good excuse. I&#8217;ll say to my husband, we have to get a new mattress. We&#8217;ve Yes, yes. Dr. DebThe other thing he had said is, if you&#8217;re going to do them, put them inside of an allergy cover, because then it keeps the moisture off of your mattress. Dr. Deb 48:27So when you&#8217;re sweating, it&#8217;s keeping it off the mattress, and then it won&#8217;t get the mattress moist, and then they won&#8217;t be breeding toxins. And so we were happy. We were able to save the mattress, but I didn&#8217;t sleep on it. We stuck it in a spare bedroom that nobody ever sleeps on anyone anyway, so maybe one person every two, three years comes and sleeps here. So we were like, oh, we&#8217;ll just stick it in there. That&#8217;ll be okay. And we ended up, we did the same thing, bought a new mattress, just because I&#8217;m like, You know what? This is my brain. I can&#8217;t be sleeping my head eight hours a day or six hours a day against something that&#8217;s moldy when it&#8217;s my brain that&#8217;s having problems. I&#8217;m like, I just can&#8217;t do it. And right? I would really encourage patients, like, when you&#8217;re thinking about being sick, think about that. Like, is it worth you risking cancer? Is it worth you risking ALS or Parkinson&#8217;s or MS or or these types of things, by not treating and dealing with the mold, because that is eventually what your fate is going to be if you don&#8217;t deal with this. And I think that&#8217;s the scariest part for people, you&#8217;re not just going to get mass cell you&#8217;re not just going to be sick. You will develop one of these diseases when it tests Andreaand stage mold illness. And thank you for for knowing that and for bringing that up. I was just in the I just went to San Diego for the International functional medicine conference, and I got to meet these folks at healing ALS, amazing folks. And they their, their mission is to, you know, just to show people. Andrea 50:00All of these different factors and that this can be dealt with, and they&#8217;re very set on looking at mold. And I knew this. I knew als was, you know, could be connected to mold, because I have people. I&#8217;m an advocate in my personal life too. I have a group called Minnesota mold illness right now. It&#8217;s just a Facebook group, but I have people in my community who have lost spouses to ALS at a young age, and then they started getting sick and realized they&#8217;re in mold. But I mean long, long term mold exposure like my the previous homeowner of my house, I don&#8217;t know if she was hypersensitive. She was here for 20 years, but she died very young of cancer. And so, you know, people say, Gosh, Andrea, I&#8217;m so sorry that you have this hypersensitivity. I&#8217;m not. I&#8217;m a woman of faith. I believe it&#8217;s a gift from God, because I would do anything to keep my family safe. And for me, it&#8217;s like a sixth sense, and it&#8217;s like, oh, something&#8217;s wrong in here, and and because of that, my family will, you know, will always be in safe environments. Because and I want to make this really clear, because some people just are not grasping this. Andrea 51:06Just because I&#8217;m hypersensitive and you&#8217;re not doesn&#8217;t mean that this isn&#8217;t affecting you. And yes, maybe you&#8217;re not feeling symptoms, or maybe you&#8217;re not connecting them, and your bucket isn&#8217;t full yet. But I want to make really clear these, these, these athletes, mycotoxins are carcinogens, neurotoxins, hepatotoxins, you know, all of the above, and they will lead to cancer, to dimension, Alzheimer&#8217;s and and it&#8217;s just not worth it. I always tell people, like, if I&#8217;m going to fill my toxic bucket, it&#8217;s going to be with like, Andrea 51:39pizza. Yes, exactly, a little pizza, yes, maybe yes, maybe a little tequila, you know, something fun. But and, and, and also, for the people that I&#8217;m I very ironically a mycology enthusiast. And if you could see my home a little better, you&#8217;d see I have mushroom figurines everywhere, which is ironic, but people really like to simplify mold Well, Andrea, molds everywhere. Absolutely. Mold has we use mycotoxins and and antibiotics and and and mold and fungi play very, very important roles in our world. However, yes, mold is ubiquitous. You will always have mold spores in the air. That&#8217;s just fine. That&#8217;s a normal fungal healthy ecology. However, you should never, ever, ever, ever have active mold growth and water damage anywhere within your building envelope. And I don&#8217;t care where it is. I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s in your attic. I don&#8217;t care if it&#8217;s way behind your wall or behind your siding. You Yes, mold is ubiquitous. We&#8217;ve got that, got that, but, you know, it&#8217;s usually these husbands are like, molds everywhere. My wife is nuts. It&#8217;s like, yes, but you should not have active mold growth within your building envelope, period, period, and that means your work environment too. Yeah, and school, schools, Dr. Deboh, my God. A whole conversation about schools, every school is toxic. It just is. I mean, let&#8217;s think about it. They&#8217;ve all been built over 50 years ago. The majority of them there. They don&#8217;t have a lot of money to build them properly. They don&#8217;t have the money to maintain them properly. Things happen all the time. I cannot tell you how many teachers I see that are sick with mycotoxin illness. See that a lot too. Oh my gosh. It&#8217;s terrible. It&#8217;s terrible. And the kids, we wonder why they can&#8217;t learn. We wonder why they can&#8217;t think, why they can&#8217;t sit still. Well, hello, they&#8217;re in a toxic environment for eight hours a day breathing this toxins and the toxic chemical solutions that they use to clean with. Yes, yeah. I mean, we could go on for hours. AndreaNo. And it&#8217;s an important it&#8217;s an topic, a topic that&#8217;s close to my heart. And I was actually just on a panel with a gentleman called Patrick Lee. He&#8217;s got an organization called Clean Air for kids. His kiddo would go to school, fine, and then he would have to come home in a wheelchair some days. And he went to the he went to the school board, and, you know, they did their test. He said, Well, elevated Aspen, my boss at respiratory labs sent him our mycotoxin air test. I love this. And he wore the sampler, and then put the pump in his backpack, and they took a sample incognito, and it came back with mycotoxins. So they pulled the kiddo out of the school, put him in a new school, tested that school, the kid&#8217;s Wonderful. Now he&#8217;s not sick anymore. But this they were just on the news. This is a really interesting story, and this the school district is, I think it&#8217;s in Illinois, I think somewhere in the Midwest. But there&#8217;s all these kids at this school that are sick, and the school&#8217;s not doing anything, and they&#8217;re, you know, and they&#8217;re not taking this mycotoxin testing seriously, because they&#8217;re like, well, there&#8217;s no regulations. Wait, what&#8217;s a mycotoxin? And it&#8217;s just like, at all. But, and we did the same thing at our we have. Great. We live in a small town. We love our teachers, we love our principal, but we had them test the school, and they did. They were so gracious about it. But my kids are reacting to something, and my little girl, she&#8217;s just a canary mom, I was dizzy today. I had a headache and and we don&#8217;t and we don&#8217;t know if it&#8217;s the chemicals, because it&#8217;s my husband too. My husband, that was the I&#8217;m fine, got the doors there now. He&#8217;s like, something&#8217;s amiss in the school. I&#8217;m like, Oh, tell me about it. Andrea 55:32But who knows, because we&#8217;re so sensitive now. And my husband jokes with me, goes, first of all, you have to stop reading, because we&#8217;re not going to be able to eat anything anymore. You&#8217;ve taken the joy out of our lives. And he, he says so very lovingly and jokingly, but he, you know, he, he blames me for the US being so sensitive. He goes, You just, you know, you require such good air quality in our homes that it&#8217;s hard to travel and go anywhere else, so we do a lot of camping. Dr. DebYeah. Well, I think there&#8217;s some truth to that. The cleaner our bodies get, we are more sensitive. We start to notice more things. And I will tell patients that all the time, when you start dumping the chemical load and your buckets getting lower and lower, you will notice when you go someplace that you don&#8217;t feel bad. Because when you feel bad all the time, you don&#8217;t pay attention to it. It&#8217;s your normal. So now that you&#8217;re starting to feel better and you don&#8217;t have these exposures, you&#8217;re going to notice things and pay attention to them. It&#8217;s important. AndreaAnd I would agree with that, because this issue in my bedroom, that was our last remediation. Andrea 56:32It was always there. And I really struggle with that, because I&#8217;ve made progress with every remediation, and I&#8217;m like, How did I not know, but it did. It snuck up on me, and again, my health started to decline. And so my husband said to me, we finished. I mean, it was a really expensive remediation, and, oh my and that year we had to buy a new truck. Our furnace went out. I&#8217;m just like, Okay, Lord, that was three, yeah, send a winning lottery ticket. We said to me, goes, Well, do you think we got it all? And I&#8217;m like, probably not. You know, there&#8217;s probably more. But and for people that think I&#8217;m nuts, my house is it, is it feels better than most houses, I would really does, but you&#8217;re not going to heal your home overnight, and that&#8217;s okay. And so if you&#8217;re feeling if you&#8217;re feeling hopeless, I want you to know that there is hope. Mold. One thing I just I want to say before we end things, because it&#8217;s close to my heart, and I know this because I talked to a lot of people, and I think it&#8217;s important to open this dialog. Mold can cause suicide ideation, and for me, that&#8217;s what it does, and I&#8217;m very aware of it, and it&#8217;s it&#8217;s interesting, and I have some wild theories behind it, but it can cause thoughts of hopelessness, and there is hope to be had. So if you are feeling that way, please reach out. You can reach out to me, and but there is hope to be had. These things are not they&#8217;re not hopeless, and it no matter where you&#8217;re at with your resources. A step forward is a step forward, and there&#8217;s so many ways that you can take a step forward. We are not wealthy people. We&#8217;ve never been wealthy people, not even when we started this journey before we spent all this money on remediation. And I feel very good today, so please don&#8217;t lose hope and and it&#8217;s knowing that mold can do this, you&#8217;re three steps ahead of the game. Truly, absolutely. Dr. DebAndrea, tell us a little bit before we leave our conversation today, tell us a little bit about respirari Labs, what they what you guys do there, and how it can help some of the people that we&#8217;re talking to today. You got it first. AndreaI want to say that if I won the lottery today, I would still be with respiratory labs. And I want to make, I want to make that very clear, I&#8217;m not making big bucks in this job. So respiratory labs, first of all, the technology came out of Australia. There was a couple researchers back in 2016 and 17 that that said, These people are nuts. There is not mycotoxins in our air, it&#8217;s in our food. So they created this, this air test to prove people like me wrong. And then they were like, Oh shoot. So that&#8217;s where the technology came from. My boss used a wonderful man happy to say that he was a remediator in Portland, Oregon for many years, and he would see families. He would do everything right. He&#8217;d pass all the tests, but he would see families remain sick, and it&#8217;s because, again, they weren&#8217;t addressing mycotoxins and remediation. So in 2022 he sold his business. He tried to retire, and then this, this laboratory in Australia approached him with this technology, so he came out of retirement. It&#8217;s fairly new in the US. It&#8217;s been around about three years. I&#8217;ve been working with it in the field in my last job, so I have more experience with it, not just in my own home, but in the field. And it&#8217;s wonderfully sensitive. I. Andrea 1:00:00And it was the only test like, I&#8217;d go along with inspections, and I&#8217;d say they feel pretty good in here, and the air test would come back clean. And then I&#8217;d go another environment, so I&#8217;d be like, I feel a little off in here, and it would come back actionable. But what&#8217;s great about it is we have a do it yourself option. So no matter if you&#8217;re got a lot of people in northern Minnesota that don&#8217;t have access to good inspectors, maybe they just need a data point to start the process right. Because I want to be clear again, environmental sampling is just a data point. So if you ever do get a test that is actionable, it&#8217;s a piece to the puzzle. You need to have a diagnosis. But anybody can go online and order these air tests or surface tests at respiratory labs. Respirare is Italian for to breathe, but it looks like resp, resp for rare, but it&#8217;s, I&#8217;m happy to be with the company. I think that it&#8217;s going to change the industry. I think it&#8217;s going to change the mold paradigm, because the sample collection meets international standards, which I won&#8217;t bore you guys to death, but that could mean big change for legislation, policy reform, but I&#8217;m really excited by it, and I and again, I want to reiterate that there&#8217;s a number of environmental tests on the market, and there is a time and a place for every single one. And yes, I work for respirar labs. I think it&#8217;s great technology, but I might not recommend those tests to you, depending on what your objective is. And again, that&#8217;s that&#8217;s really important. So figure out what what you want to do with that data point, and then pick a test. So yeah, that&#8217;s awesome, yeah. Dr. DebWell, thank you so much for your time today, this was a great conversation. You are so informative on this, and your story is just so wonderful. I mean, you&#8217;ve been through a lot, but you&#8217;ve come out of it in a very positive way, and I appreciate your honesty and vulnerability in sharing some very, very sensitive issues. And I know our listeners can relate to a lot of the points that you&#8217;ve talked about, and I think it&#8217;ll make them feel comfortable they&#8217;re not alone, and just that they have resources out there and not give up. It&#8217;s It&#8217;s really wonderful. AndreaThank you Well, and thank you for creating a platform for me to tell my story and for continuing to spread awareness. I&#8217;m very grateful for the work you&#8217;re doing so well. Thank you so much. Thank Thank you for listening to the podcast. Let&#8217;s talk wellness now brings expert insights directly to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now its management or our partners, each affiliate, sponsor and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today&#8217;s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult with a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold. Let&#8217;s talk wellness now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time, and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcasts. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought provoking. Listener discretion is advised. Dr. Deb This episode is sponsored by Serenity Health Care Center, where we specialize in uncovering the root causes of chronic health conditions to help you achieve optimal wellness. Visit us at www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com or call 262-522-8640 to learn more. Connect with Dr. Deb: Website: www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com Facebook: Serenity Health Care Center Instagram: @SerenityHealthCenter Twitter: @DrDebSerenity Subscribe &amp; Review:Don’t forget to subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. If you love what you hear, leave a review and let us know how we’re helping you on your wellness journey. The post Episode 246 – Andrea on Mold first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

Dr. Deb MuthSo what if your symptoms aren&#8217;t actually your true diagnosis, but rather your body&#8217;s response to toxic mold exposure in your living environment.What if there&#8217;s now a way to eliminate mold throughout your entire home, even in places you can&#8217;t see without tearing down walls or displacing your family for weeks. Today I have an amazing guest with me, and we&#8217;re going to talk all fun things about mold and environment.So welcome back to let&#8217;s talk wellness. Now the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine, and empower you with the tools to heal. I&#8217;m Dr. Dab. And today we&#8217;re diving into one of the most overlooked threats to your family&#8217;s healthhidden mold in your home. And how revolutionary technology is changing mold remediation forever. I&#8217;m super excited to have my guest join me today, Courtney. She&#8217;s from pure maintenance, a company that&#8217;s completely revolutionizing mold removal with their patented dry fog technology. And if you&#8217;re someonethat suffers from mold or someone you love is struggling with unexplained neurological symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, chronic headaches, respiratory issues, or autoimmune conditions. You don&#8217;t want to leave this episode. This could be life changing for you so as always grab a cup of coffee, tea, or whatever helps you unwind, settle in and let&#8217;s get started on uncovering the hidden environmental factors that could be sabotaging your health.Courtney. Welcome to the show. I&#8217;m so excited to have you here today. Courtney Jarman02:30Thank you for having me. Dr. Deb Muth02:32So tell us a little bit about who you are, and how you got involved in this. Courtney Jarman02:37Yeah, sure. So my husband and I built a house because we were always scared ofmold problems. And you know, inheriting a house that has, like all different types of, you know, vocs. And so we built a house, and a few years later we noticed some symptoms like Lyme disease symptoms. I had some Lyme disease symptoms. I actually couldn&#8217;t walk after the birth of my second child, and my husband had a horrible sinus infection that lasted like 3 weeks, and it wasn&#8217;t going away. So at the time I happened to be talking to a friend of mine who he&#8217;s a mycologist.and he was basically telling us that we have a fungal problem in our house, like, based on our symptoms. And I was like, it&#8217;s like a new house like you&#8217;re just wrong about this. He&#8217;s like, just call pure maintenance. He could, because he had a fungal problem in his house in Colorado, and him and his girlfriend were getting really sick, and so they called pure maintenance, and they did like a free inspection. They found out there was like some toilet ring that was leaking which you can&#8217;t see. You know those are things that you can&#8217;t see in your house.They found it, and you know they removed it, and they treated the house. He felt much better, so he told me to call pure maintenance, and we got an inspection, and I had a really high spore level in our home. And I was like freaking out, of course, because I have 2 young kids, you know, and so we had them treat the house, and our symptoms went away. Our symptoms went away beforehe treated the house, because we opened the windows. We went outside. We took antifungals. So we kind of like figured out what it was. So my lyme disease symptoms started to like go away little by little, and then, when we treated the house. We haven&#8217;t had any symptoms after that.Oh, can you hear me or no? Dr. Deb Muth04:21We can hear you. Yep. Courtney Jarman04:22Okay. Dr. Deb Muth04:24Can you hear me? Okay? Still. Courtney Jarman04:25I can hear you. Yeah. Same. Okay, let me know if I&#8217;m too loud, because I can adjust it here. But Dr. Deb Muth04:30Oh, you&#8217;re good! Courtney Jarman04:31Okay, cool. So yeah, we we got a house treated, and I had to ask the guy to come up from Illinois. So I like, you know, booked a bunch of my friends houses to like. Let&#8217;s just check your house from old.and he ended up treating a few houses, and you know, I started to investigate because I was a general contractor on our house build. I learned how to build houses. I was like, really into building science, and I found out in our house we had logs that we brought in from outside that I just like left out like that&#8217;s fine. Let&#8217;s bring them in. They&#8217;re dry. There&#8217;s no mold right? It&#8217;s dry. The house is dry. There&#8217;s no mold that&#8217;s like the misconception, right? Or like, yeah, there&#8217;s like a little mold patch. Here we spilled something on a window, but, like.you know, it&#8217;s not a big deal, andended up that we had like a window sill that. A few window sills with moisture on it, plus these logs, and we closed our windows. We kind of live in a cabin, so we have no Hvac. That&#8217;s like circulating air. So the combination of the the high spore level, and like probably high humidity, and like low air, flow in our house caused a mold problem. So I started educating myself on this. Andyou know I realized that there was nobody else. Nobody in Wisconsin doing this, and you know, every time this guy came up from Illinois is charging like a travel fee which is good for him. You know he has to, you know, travel a few hours. But I thought people needed this in Wisconsin. So it was my background. And you know, medical physics and building. And I just love to be like an active person and helping people. I&#8217;m really into like general health and wellness, I thought, well, this is like a perfect thing for me to do. Dr. Deb Muth06:02Old? Was your house at that point. Courtney Jarman06:05What&#8217;s that? Dr. Deb Muth06:06How old was your house at that point. Courtney Jarman06:08Like 2 and a half years old. Dr. Deb Muth06:10Oh, my gosh! So you know that that is the mystery. Right? We treat a lot of patients, too, and they&#8217;ll say I have a brand new house. It&#8217;s 3 or 4 years old, and they don&#8217;t realize that those wood beams, the logs, all the building materials sit out all summer, or sometimes all winter, and they get wet, and when the contractors come in they put it up.and if it&#8217;s damp or moist they still put Drywall over the top of it. And this is a lot of times how we end up with mold behind the walls that we don&#8217;t recognize. It&#8217;s not always a damage that comes in most of the time it is, but sometimes it&#8217;s not, and this is how our brand new houses can still be sick buildings. Courtney Jarman06:49Yeah. And that&#8217;s a big, that&#8217;s a good point about closing in the walls when they&#8217;re wet, which actually, I was very picky about our walls being super dry, and it&#8217;s sometimes the interior building materials like you don&#8217;t know what happened in the factory, you know, when you get into this. You just hear stories. I&#8217;m sure you hear stories and stories, you know, like, how could my house have mold in it? And I was recently in a house that was 7 years old. They&#8217;ve never had any water damagethat they know of, like none. It&#8217;s just like, you know, it&#8217;s perfectly dry. And they did an Ermi test because they actually got a blood test for Mycotoxins. It was a urine or blood test. Dr. Deb Muth07:24Hmm. Courtney Jarman07:25This lady&#8217;s an Md. So she recognized it, and her daughter got the test, and it came back really high for Mycotoxin. So they did an Ermi test which is like the whole house test. It was. Dr. Deb Muth07:34J. Courtney Jarman07:34Super hot this off the charts just off the charts, you know, so it&#8217;s like aI didn&#8217;t have a motion, you know, to come in and sterilize it. Essentially.Yeah, there&#8217;s nothing wet you gotta take out. There&#8217;s nothing really. You have to fix.So. And so we should talk about how mold works in a building right? Because people when they think about mold, they&#8217;re like, Oh, there&#8217;s some visible mold, or like the house is dry. And this was like, I was confused on this for a long time.So basically, once you have mold you have spores, it&#8217;s spores are like the seed of the mold. Essentially it sends out the spores various times, not always. But then those spores mix into your house&#8217;s dust, your house&#8217;s air. They get into your house&#8217;s building materials, and they&#8217;re very, very small submicron, I think, like, between like 300,000 and 1 million can fit on the head of a PIN, you know. So they&#8217;rethey can be everywhere. And then, you know, you essentially, when you have a whole house problem eventually, because you have little pockets here, little pockets there, a little thing here. And so your spore level just goes up and up and up. And once you deal with these spores they&#8217;re not going to go down. So that&#8217;s kind of like the premise for the technology. Instead of, you know, ripping out little spot treatments here, cleaning this cleaning that we deal with the spore level and the whole mold level in the house.So that&#8217;s you know that was what that was what was confusing to me. When Iinto this and dormant mold, even though it&#8217;s dry, dormant mold, you know, it&#8217;s basically it can last for thousands of years those right? And so you breathe that in it finds moisture in your body. It finds moisture in your dishwasher. It finds moisture. You can&#8217;t even see it a lot of times.So. Dr. Deb Muth09:05It&#8217;s so hard, you know, so many of these building materials, too. For a while we had contaminated Osp back in the early 2 thousands that came in from overseas, and people would put Osp up in their house and not know that it was contaminated with mold spores. So when we worry about how we get some of this. We don&#8217;t always know what comes in. I love the analogy that you&#8217;re giving. You know, we can cut things out. We can put holes in walls, we can dig for things, we can find things.but we&#8217;re still not eliminating the mold spores, and if those mold spores are still there, dead or alive, they can still make us sick.So can you talk a little bit about your dry tech technology, dry fogger technology.Oh, yeah.And what makes that different than the traditional mold remediation process. Courtney Jarman09:52Yes, definitely. And that&#8217;s what people usually want to know. SoI&#8217;ll start with the traditional remediation process. Usually you get an inspection right? And the inspections is like $1,000. Because you get a mold inspector that wants to find out is the mold. Here is the mold, there they test the dust here they test the dust. There I&#8217;ve heard of like inspections going up to $15,000, and what the question that they&#8217;re trying to answer is.where is the mold? What do we have to rip out? And so then, after they find, you know, they write an assessment which you know there&#8217;s varying, there&#8217;s there&#8217;s good inspectors, and there&#8217;s bad inspectors, and once they write.And you know, you&#8217;re basically going to go with what they say and what building materials for about. Then someone comes in with a bunch of like, basically Hepa fans and filters and contains a specific area where they think the mold is. And it&#8217;s about a thousand dollars a day for one guy so per day, and the reason is because they have the equipment. So they have the overhead. So that&#8217;s about twice the cost of a regular contractor, and they.you know, rip out this or that, and then, if you have a good mold remediation company which most of these are disaster companies, they&#8217;re forgetting the water out. They&#8217;re not for resolving the mold.Then they will come back, and they will hepa vacuum all of your surfaces and wipe it down with a cloth, then have a vacuum again sometimes, and tell you to throw out all of your possessions. And so that&#8217;s how they do like the whole house cleaning is like with a vacuum.which is fine, but it doesn&#8217;t get everything. And this is just story after story. I&#8217;ve heard of people just not feeling right? And you know, the testing Limited the testing options for like finding what&#8217;s going on are very limited because you just have to keep sampling. You&#8217;re taking tiny snapshots here and there. Dr. Deb Muth11:36And so you know what you get is just like kind of like a hodgepodge of like spot treatment. And then, like vacuuming. This is opposed to the vapor treatment. We say dry fog. I like to say vapor, because that&#8217;s basically what it is. It&#8217;s the technique was developed for sterilizing hospitals. So it&#8217;s basically a hospital grade, sterilant liquid, which is parasitic acid and hydrogen peroxide. Courtney Jarman11:58And we turn that liquid into an extremely small particle like 7 microns, and because the size of the particle, it changes, state very quickly to a vapor, and that vapor, combined with the air pressure, basically pressurizes the whole house with a positive vapor pressure. And you know, we talk about like Bernoulli principle, fixed law. Basically, the whole house is like pressurized with a vapor, and we measure, like the parts per 1 million of the vapor. The humidityto make sure that it&#8217;s up to the rate that we need to kill.Essentially, 100% of the mold spores. And you know, when I say kill. It&#8217;s basically a process of oxidation, oxidative Lysis. And this is very important. Because I heard you mentioned the dead or alive thing, which is like one of the main questions right? And people see that. And inspectors like, well, it&#8217;s dead or alive. You have to remove it. Well, that information comes from 2 sources. The 1st one isin the sixties and seventies. People tried to kill mold with bleach, and then they were still sick, and it didn&#8217;t work, so they said, oh, dead mold can hurt you. The second myth is basically from there&#8217;s a few lab studies out there, and what they do is they take a live mold spore, and they very carefully extract a very specific protein from a live mold spore, and they prick that into a person&#8217;s skin. And they say, oh, they&#8217;re allergic to it. So dead mold can hurt you. Right? Those are the only data out there.So you know these proteins? Yeah, I mean, they are, they do spike the allergenic or immunological responses. However, that is in opposition to what this oxidative Lysis, what the definition is of these, this parasitic acid that we&#8217;re using. So if you look at like the EPA labels, microbiology textbooks, there&#8217;s lots of peer reviewed studies showing that parasitic acid.the way that it functions. The way that it kills or denatures a spore or a cell is by rupturing the cell wall. This is called Lysis, and then unraveling the proteins, all these proteins that they&#8217;re, you know, carefully extracting and picking into people, unraveling, that, destroying the lipids and the enzymes and metabolites and interrupting the cells, metabolite.metabolic processes, the organelles rupture. So it&#8217;s like a complete obliteration, basically of the cell. Nobody has tested, you know, like, what does an obliterated cell do? But these people are getting better. So it&#8217;s like we can assume that dead mold in the way that pure maintenance kills. Mold does not hurt you. Dr. Deb Muth14:30Well, that&#8217;s amazing. And so when you&#8217;re using this fogging system, you know, traditional methods are trying to figure out where things are, they often miss what&#8217;s behind the walls or in the Hvac system, and a lot of our porous materials. So when you&#8217;re doing the dry vapor, can you get to these hidden areas where we may not actually be able to test. Courtney Jarman14:51That&#8217;s a great question. So there are limitations of the vapor. It&#8217;s basically it&#8217;s sterilizing your interior space right? So anywhere you can imagine a vapor can get.or we say, Peer maintenance headquarters says anywhere mold spore can get the vapor can get, and that&#8217;s true. At the time of treatment, so you can imagine there&#8217;s spaces like behind a wallthat a vapor cannot get. So there&#8217;s 2 ways that we deal with this or talk about this. The 1st one is, you know, if someone&#8217;s like super sensitive. And we like know, there&#8217;s actually, if we know there&#8217;s mold behind a wall, we just basically pump the fog back there. We just cut a hole in it and just fog it back there and then I talk. I like to talk about diluting your air, because the solution to pollution is dilution. And so you always want to bring in fresh air to your home. That&#8217;s kind of the whole.The whole process is, you know, if you go into a house and just fog it without assessing, like what&#8217;s going on in the building, it&#8217;s just like, yeah, you can clear it. But the mold&#8217;s going to come back right. So you want to think about bringing fresh air to your home, and when you do that like is the wall is the. If your walls are dry inside your wall, cavity.Is that going to affect your interior space? And how much is that going to affect your interior space? Well, if the building&#8217;s pressure is done correctly, then, if you have the right kind of pressure in your house, you&#8217;re not going to be sucking air in the walls. That&#8217;s not good, not just for mold spores that&#8217;s not good for fiberglass and breathing in air behind your walls.So how much does it affect? How much does the exterior, like internal wall cavity, really affect the breathing space?Not that much, and it&#8217;s in the same way air moves in a house from the basement to the attic basement affects your airspace so much like people are like. Oh, it&#8217;s in the basement, but like literally, that&#8217;s your Hvac. Your air conditioning and heating system is right next to that. And it&#8217;s just like lost on people. You know that that could be a problem. So I like to think about where air is moving in a building.So you know the limitations. Yeah, it can&#8217;t get behind a wall unless you pump it in there, but we can easily pump that in there. And as far as sorry could you remind me with this, I think there was a second part of your question. Dr. Deb Muth16:58It was. How do we get to the hidden areas. Courtney Jarman17:00Yeah, well, yeah. So it&#8217;d be. Dr. Deb Muth17:02You know the ace back. Courtney Jarman17:04Yeah. And it&#8217;s really, it&#8217;s a good question, because you really have to be a good mold inspector to understand how to treat a house, and you have to know what the problem is and where it&#8217;s coming from. Like, I was just at a house yesterday and they had remediation right? And I&#8217;m like, okay. So let me just you know there&#8217;s not feeling well. I go in the basement. There&#8217;s a water all over the floornext to the Hvac. And I go upstairs, and there&#8217;s I don&#8217;t know if you know about the houses with the attics that are like next to you, so like usually like. If they want to like, tear out part of an attic and then finish it, and then, like you&#8217;ll have an attic. Well, I open the door from a bedroom. It&#8217;s like there&#8217;s an airspace there, you know, exchanging air. It&#8217;s like a horror show in that attic, and I&#8217;m like, Oh, my God like. I cannot believethat there this was not mentioned to these. Dr. Deb Muth17:46People. Courtney Jarman17:46You know. So it&#8217;s likeyou really have to find those areas that the vapor is not going to reach. And that is the job of a good mold inspection and good mold inspector is to reallydo a full assessment of your house where it&#8217;s coming from, like, you know, finding the moisture intrusions essentially, and finding how your air mixes in your house, and how what&#8217;s going to affect the residents or not? Dr. Deb Muth18:15That is true. So I&#8217;m really fascinated by the process that you guys use. That doesn&#8217;t just kill mold, but it also kills bacteria and viruses as well.I know with mold. We talk a lot in the human body about developing a bacteria for mold called actinomyces. How does killing mold bacterias and viruses create a healthier environment for people overall that could be sick from Mycotoxin illness or some other kind of issues. Our houses are not quote unquote, sterile environments. Typically.But do you find that by getting rid of all these other bacterias and viruses, as well as mold, makes a big difference per person versus us, just addressing the mold issue. Courtney Jarman19:00I mean.that&#8217;s more of a question for you. I guess if you&#8217;ve seen people go through, I mean, maybe you haven&#8217;t seen the pure maintenance technology. But and I&#8217;m just starting out in this business. But I&#8217;ve heard so many stories of people just getting the treatment and not getting the pure maintenance treatment and not treating their bodies and feeling better like right away.You know, I me personally in my business. I&#8217;ve had people that their sinus issues went away. They&#8217;re out there. They get off their second inhaler. They didn&#8217;t do anything else besides the pure maintenance treatment, so as far as like how it affects people&#8217;s health, like.as far as what I know about mold and health. It is more of a mold can like set off like genetic factors, or like mold and bacteria. As you mentioned, they can set off different diseases, and people are like, well, my anxiety and depression isn&#8217;t from, you know it&#8217;s not from mold, but like could partially be, it could set off these other diseases. So yes, I mean, like you can get out of your body.You know the Dr. Schumacher of surviving mold.com is like the source love people. You got to get it out of your body. You got to get it out of your house, you can&#8217;t be living with it. I mean, you can take the mold binders and treat yourself. But if you&#8217;re returning to the environment. It&#8217;s, you know, depending on your sensitivity. You know, certain people have the gene. They&#8217;re more sensitive. Dr. Deb Muth20:16People can. Courtney Jarman20:16Be around, you know, high levels of mold and not feel anything so. Dr. Deb Muth20:21Do you find? Commercial buildings? Are they interested in keeping a cleaner environment? Have you had many commercialbuildings interested in using your process. Courtney Jarman20:34I&#8217;ve had laboratories ask for testing, but as far as commercial buildings.you know, it depends. My understanding was my limited understanding of this. They generally hire somebody called an industrial hygienist, and that person assesses the the hygiene of a building, and I know that there are definitely certain businesses in Wisconsin thatare very interested in, you know, keeping their building clean. It&#8217;s obviously would be an amazing source for offices, because people have varying sensitivities and old. They&#8217;re there in the building. But you know, that&#8217;s I have limited knowledge of that. To be honest of, you know, if they&#8217;re interested. Dr. Deb Muth21:14I mean, it would be great to see our school systems, our bill school buildings using a technology like this because so many of our schools are old. We treat a lot of teachers who&#8217;ve been sick from Mycotoxin illness because of the place that they work because of the school. You know most of these buildings are50 plus years old. They have water damage. They don&#8217;t have a lot of funds correct for keeping things healthy, so it&#8217;d be nice to see this. And then, you know, if we just talk about the number of people that come from another building that have moldon their person. They walk into another building, and they can transport spores all over the place. It would really be awesome, I know, from a business perspective, and it&#8217;s not where you want to spend your money, for sure, but when you have a lot of people coming in and out bringing bacterias and viruses.it would have been nice to see somebody during covid time be interested in using your technology to kill the viruses in their workplace for their people. But I&#8217;m sure that didn&#8217;t happen very much. Courtney Jarman22:17Now, there is a peer reviewed study on our website that someone did with showing that it does kill Covid. Somaybe it was just like a little too late or something. But my! So in my experience many times, the schools dormitories they don&#8217;t want, and it&#8217;s like the board right, the school board, or whatever they don&#8217;t want testing done, because it&#8217;s just like, Oh, mold! But they&#8217;re not aware of the solution right? And so the way that I want to structure my business isa lot of pro bono work for schools, for preschools, you know, and daycares, because those are the. It&#8217;s like these kids are so young. How could you expose them to this? Andyou know, this is how actually, I didn&#8217;t say this in my story, but I, the the very 1st thing that I did had tested was my son&#8217;s school, which is like so moldy andthey didn&#8217;t do anything about it schools. And actually, they moved locations to a spot that I consider maybe worse. So we left that school. But yeah, people are pretty averse to really testing it. Dr. Deb Muth23:24Yeah, well, and they&#8217;re really afraid. And I understand. Like, if you find mold, then their mindset is you can never get rid of it. You have to disclose it. Nobody&#8217;s going to want to buy your building, if it&#8217;s moldy. But then you&#8217;re just passing on another sick building to another innocent person instead of fixing the problem. And and there are ways that we can kill, mold, and make the house safe again, so people can live in it, and I think there&#8217;s not enough conversation about that. Courtney Jarman23:53Yeah, I agree with that. I know. Dr. Deb Muth23:56So tell me, what&#8217;s the typical timeframe from an initial inspection to completely getting a mold free home that our listeners are probably thinking sounds pretty like too good to be true. Type thing. Courtney Jarman24:10Yeah, exactly. So. Yeah, the main the biggest. This is not really what you asked, but I&#8217;ll get to it. The biggest expense in mold remediation. The biggest kind of time suck is is finding out where the water is coming from. You know where the leak is coming from. SoI have a referral from you, actually, that, you know, she has a bunch of windows in her house that are leaking, and she&#8217;s like 40 something windows, and it&#8217;s like when they. Dr. Deb Muth24:34Hmm. Courtney Jarman24:35Mold nowadays is basically a. It&#8217;s awe&#8217;re victims of bad construction. And so you know, the. Dr. Deb Muth24:41Yeah. Courtney Jarman24:41Be wrong of all for windows. And it&#8217;s like, Yeah, I can come in there next week, but it&#8217;s gotta be dry, you know. Dr. Deb Muth24:46So. Courtney Jarman24:46So the timeline is like it could be very quick if you don&#8217;t have any moisture in your house. I mean, it could be like. Dr. Deb Muth24:52If you. Courtney Jarman24:52Days, or, you know, a week or so. But as far as you know, the inspection, I typicallyI usually take cultured samples when I come in and inspect a house. I think they&#8217;re more. Dr. Deb Muth25:03I&#8217;m curious. Courtney Jarman25:03And I take dust samples. They&#8217;re just more accurate than air samples, and soI&#8217;ll I&#8217;ll usually that takes about a week to come back. I might take a do a non culture sample. Just so we can see any red flags. So it&#8217;s like, the next day, you know. 2 days later. We can just have like aa timeframe. But if a person already knows they have mold, you can see it. That&#8217;s that&#8217;s like internationally recognized that if you have visible moldthen you have mold in your home, you know, so that sometimes people just want it, and I just always take the samples before and after. But I I can come in, you know. We can come in a few days, or a week, or something like that. Dr. Deb Muth25:38Yeah.And I think we should talk to like the mold that you&#8217;re seeing doesn&#8217;t necessarily have to be black to make you sick. It can be white, it can be green, it can be pink, it can be black. It can be any shade of color, just because it&#8217;s not black doesn&#8217;t mean it&#8217;s not toxic to you. Courtney Jarman25:54Yeah, that&#8217;s right. It depends on the species. And actually the substrate that the species is on. So you know, people think about black mold, black mold. But, like, what does that even mean? They usually mean stachybotrys. But there&#8217;s like aspergillus niger. So there&#8217;s like all different colorsdepending on the species in the substrate. And then, you know, people say, well, is it the type that makes you sick or not? Well, are you allergic to that type? Is your body react to that type. And then, like past a certain level of mold or mold spores, anybody is going to react. So like if it&#8217;s like hundreds of thousands, you know, and like a little tiny bit.Anyway, it&#8217;s gonna react, no matter what kind of mold it is. Dr. Deb Muth26:31So is the dry fog treatment safe for kids and pets and people with chemical sensitivities. Courtney Jarman26:39Yeah, it&#8217;s so the product that we use is basically used in the organic farming industry to they spray it on the vegetables afterwards to like clean them. And it&#8217;s essentially like a very strong vinegar and hydrogen peroxide, and after the treatment it breaks down into acetic acid, which is vinegar, oxygen and water so extremely safe. So I should mention that there is a second step to the process thatmost people got. And it&#8217;s like sort of the standard pure maintenance process. I didn&#8217;t get the second step in my home because I I wasn&#8217;t given enough information by the licensee, but when I started the company. I looked into it more than I actually did spray this antimicrobial. It&#8217;s an antimicrobialon the walls, on the surfaces, especially like the windowsills, wet, dry surfaces and sinks. And what it is is. Basically, it is a carbon and nitrogen molecule that forms a covalent bond with your surfaces. So it&#8217;s like you have to sandpaper it off. It&#8217;s invisible, you know. It&#8217;s it bonds to your walls, and then it has a positive charge, and it attractsnegative pathogens, negative charge pathogens. So they kind of float around the air, and they eventually go and and are killed on the surface by these spikes. There&#8217;s like a million spikes per inch or something. So it&#8217;s like a mechanical kill of the spores on, and bacteria any pathogens on the wall. So you know, that&#8217;s called Gold Shield 75. And there&#8217;s a lot of safety data on it, and as far as likethe situation where I wouldn&#8217;t use it is in. If there&#8217;s a lot of dust and dirt and grime, because it does bond very well, but if it&#8217;s bonding to dust, and that dust is going to get in the air. And there&#8217;s been toxicity studies of gold shield many. So it&#8217;s like 79 studies to show that in its diluted form, which is what we use. It&#8217;s food safe. It&#8217;s EPA food. Dr. Deb Muth28:38Same. Courtney Jarman28:39However, some people don&#8217;t trust the EPA, and I understand that. And it&#8217;s like, you know, what is this product? It&#8217;s not something that I know and like, you know, is it? If it gets in the air, you know, and I&#8217;m breathing a ton of it, you know. Is it safe, and so I can&#8217;t. I can&#8217;t personally recommend that people use it unless their surfaces are clean. Dr. Deb Muth29:00How soon can families return to their home after treatment&#8217;s done? Courtney Jarman29:05So for a typical 2,000 square foot home. It&#8217;s about an 8 to 9 h treatment, and then I recommend, like one or 2 h after. Dr. Deb Muth29:13Oh, wow! Courtney Jarman29:14Yeah. Dr. Deb Muth29:15That&#8217;s great, because most of the time in traditional remediation, people can be displaced for weeks before they can return back.Courtney JarmanCourtney Jarman29:22Sure. Dr. Deb Muth29:23That&#8217;s really awesome. I that&#8217;s exciting. So are there anylike hidden red flags that homeowners should watch for, that might indicate they have some mold problems or hidden mold problems. Courtney Jarman29:39Yeah, so like the mold symptoms which you can. You know you know better than I do. So like rashes. I mean, it could be. Depression could be like joint problems could be stomach issues, you know. Usually it&#8217;s like a number of confounding issues all altogether, and then that you can get a blood test or aa blood test or a urine test to see. You know, if you have toxicity, that&#8217;s like one. Ask. That&#8217;s 1 way people come to me, and then another way is like they have visible mold. They like see the mold right?and then, but not everybody. There&#8217;s situations where not everybody is sick in home. There&#8217;s a lot of situations, because even likeand guests can&#8217;t guests come in like, oh, man, this house is moldy, and then, you know, don&#8217;tto come back.But so in those situations it&#8217;s usually one person will figure it out whether they live there or not, and then I would say, like anytime you buy a home, you know, because you&#8217;re buying a home, andyou know you can have a dry home with very beautiful clean surfaces. You don&#8217;t see any mold. Who knows what kind of flood or leak happened? Sewage things? Pipes are all over. They&#8217;re all over your house. They have the leaks happen, you know. And so you don&#8217;t really know the spore load. So then anybody in a real estate transaction should just get an inspection, in my opinion. If possible. Dr. Deb Muth31:02Recommend from a prevention standpoint. So somebody&#8217;s got a house that has mold. You guys come in and do dry fogging.Is it a 1 and done, or may they have to do maintenance on it to keep the spores down? I&#8217;m assuming if they don&#8217;t fix the water problem. Obviously they need to do something else, but if they can fix the leakage, do you recommend serial treatments. Courtney Jarman31:24Yeah, that&#8217;s a good question. So some this from some practitioners, some people are very sensitive to mold. Andyou know, if they don&#8217;t want the gold shield, especially the second step, and those people do get treated every year. So our our charge is a dollar square foot for the home. And so how I look at it is an investment in a mold free home, and so that. Dr. Deb Muth31:46That is. Courtney Jarman31:47Like.basically, it&#8217;s a permanent solution unless you have, you know, unless you don&#8217;t maintain your home. Or if you have future water leaks. So one aspect is like, so you invest in this mold free home. We come back and treat for a year afterwards, no matter what happens in your home. If you have like another leak, or whatever the second year we come back and treat for 50% of the cost next year, it&#8217;s 60, 70, 80, whatever it goes up. So that&#8217;s 1 aspect of it. If you do have these like events, the other aspect of it is.you just have to maintain homes. It&#8217;s a pain in the butt, but you do. It&#8217;s like I have a whole document, and it&#8217;s long, you know, but it&#8217;s like you. Can you have to put caulk around your bathtub where you know. Dr. Deb Muth32:23Of the one. Courtney Jarman32:23Just comes out, and there&#8217;s like caulk in a home is like one of the ways that we keep water out of the building materials which is insane, but you have to keep up with it. And the way that we build houses now, my husband does natural building, and we&#8217;re really into the natural building with a clay sand straw. There&#8217;s other ways to keep water out besides caulk, but, like most houses, you just have to.you know, keep up with the the flashing and you know. Look at that! Make sure the roof isn&#8217;t leaking these kind of maintenance things. And then there&#8217;s also the big one that people don&#8217;t realize is that mold can form after 60% humidity, and so keeping your humidity down. One that I see all the time is these April air whole house humidifiers, and they these were introduced like 20 years ago, or something, and April air didn&#8217;tstructured them in a way that you could change the pad. So they like literally had this like moisture and dust in their air system, for, like decades. And I just treated a house that that had never been changed, and the people turned off. They turned it off.you know, but they never turn the valve, so it&#8217;d been like leaking into their system for like years. So taking out whole house humidifiers not using them, and if you are using them, changing the pad a few times a winter. They&#8217;re only used in the winter, usually. And then I will say that the gold shield does. There&#8217;s some data to show that even if you have a human house, gold shield will keep that mold load down, but in general it&#8217;s airflow and humidity, and then keeping the water intrusions out. Dr. Deb Muth33:53You find that insurance typically will cover your type of remediation if they&#8217;re working with an insurer. Courtney Jarman34:01So I&#8217;ve talked to someone who&#8217;s in the insurance industry. And I asked him this, I was like, you know, what is, how can people get this covered. And he said, This is a small company. I can&#8217;t remember the name, but he said that if you buy there&#8217;s definitely insurance for mold but you have to find the right insurance company that offers that type of insurance. So if you want to insure a tractor, you have to find a company that insures tractors. You know that they invest in that that type of insurance, so you can find one that.you know will cover more than the standard, which is 5 to $10,000, and I&#8217;ll get into that what that includes.But generally, unless you&#8217;ve already you found that company, and you&#8217;ve you&#8217;ve purchased that beforehand. It&#8217;s not going to be covered except for 5 to $10,000. So what is this? 5 to $10,000. So this is for disaster, relief. And so all these companies, you type in mold remediation.These are disaster relief companies. There is a big difference between what they do and what I do. And so this 5 to $10,000 usually covers like, if there&#8217;s a flood or like a pipe burst or something, you know, and you&#8217;re away from the house, andyou know a bunch of mold forms or whatever. So you&#8217;re going to have like these disaster relief companies. They dry everything out, they usually rip everything out, so it includes the drying out aspect and the mold treatment which they don&#8217;t do a good job. That&#8217;s not like their job is mold treatment, really. So you have a lot of mold left. Soyes and no. If there was some money left over from this 5 or $10,000. There&#8217;s definitely a box you can check for fogging, and that it is included so ideally. It would be better if these disaster relief companies or these traditional remediation companies actually use this technology in combinationinstead of just one thing or the other, because I&#8217;m not knocking like. Sometimes demolition is needed to see what&#8217;s going on, or if you have, I do demolition. If there&#8217;s mold behind a drywall, there&#8217;s no behind a drywall, and it&#8217;s sandwiched up in between, like, you know, Drywall, and then like a plastic sheet in the back. Well, I can&#8217;t fog that, or if it&#8217;s like exterior insulation that&#8217;s really tight back there. Dr. Deb Muth36:04To remove. Courtney Jarman36:05And you know, get to that, or if you know, I feel like 2 things. 2 materials are sandwiched up against each other, you have to remove one. So I you know my personal opinion isto use it in combination with thewith a desk, disaster, relief, or or traditional mediation and kind of like a have a mergingof them. So yes and no. Yes and no. It&#8217;s included. Dr. Deb Muth36:27Yeah.so pure Maintenance Company has treated over 30,000 homes nationwide, which is amazing. And I&#8217;m sure your company sees different things in different areas. Florida is going to be different than the West Coast versus the East Coast versus the Midwest, for sure, and your business is located in Wisconsin. But I&#8217;m sure as a group and a company, you guys chat, do you see any patterns? Or do you see any patterns locally in the Midwestwhere we have environmental factors that really make a big difference for people in their homes. Courtney Jarman37:03Yeah, it&#8217;s a good question. Well, first, it&#8217;s 250,000 homes. Internationally. Dr. Deb Muth37:06Oh! Courtney Jarman37:07So yeah, that&#8217;s awesome.But yeah, there&#8217;s absolutely and so the differences regionally are going to be basically humidity. And then, like wind driven rain. And so those make differences. As far as like.you know, there&#8217;s something called a dew point. And this is, if people want to educate themselves about mold, basically, if you bring a can of cold beer outside on a humid day, you&#8217;re going to get condensation on the can. And that is because when you have water in the air, and you have water and warm air. When that air becomes cold it has to release some of its moisture and into a form of condensation. And so.you know, this is important for how structures are built, and in in Wisconsin, you know, being built right in Wisconsin. The wintertime obviously is cold. It&#8217;s humid indoors in the winter, but in Wisconsin it&#8217;s humid outdoors in the summertime, and you know, cool indoors. You have this likeboth sides of the coin in Wisconsin. Where in Florida, it&#8217;s basically always humid and hot outside, not always cold. Inside other areas. It&#8217;s just dry. But all the homes are similar in that.you know, there&#8217;s still this water intrusions. There&#8217;s pipes in a home. The one thing I&#8217;m actually there&#8217;s 2 things in Wisconsin. One I&#8217;m very blessed in to not have crawl spaces. Not many crawl spaces crawl. Spaces are a huge problem, and then 2 Field stone Wisconsin has a lot of old field stone basements, and this can be a problem. We talked about the stack effect, you know. Air in the basement air inhouse moves bottom to top, so attic doesn&#8217;t affect you as much unless you&#8217;re on the same level with it. But basement affects your airspace a lot, and when you have this field stone, these are these like big stones that you see in the basement. Have you ever seen those you walk in? It&#8217;s like, Oh. Dr. Deb Muth38:58Yeah. Courtney Jarman38:59So many.And and they&#8217;re basically like porous. And so they&#8217;re inmoist earth. And so they&#8217;re kind of like, just damp, you know. And so you have to take measures. Usually it&#8217;s like outside the house you just have like you never want to. You never want to trap them in on the inside. Never want to put somethingwaterproof on the inside, on the outside it&#8217;s like a gutter issue, or, like like soil not sloped away from the house, or like water running off the driveway into a specific area. That kind of thing. There&#8217;s various solutions for field stone. That&#8217;s kind of a tricky one. But in Wisconsin I recommend absolutely dehumidifying your basement. You just have to dehumidify your basement. You have to keep all levels of your house at the sameat a similar temperature, because otherwise you have this dew point, which is the point, the temperature at which the air is going to drop its drop, its moisture. So you don&#8217;t want condensation between levels of your home, between the basement. Dr. Deb Muth40:02Numbers. Courtney Jarman40:02Floor for different temperatures, and you don&#8217;t want in the basement to have condensation on the exterior surfaces, so like the rim joists or the basement walls or behind the Drywall. If you have a finished basement, you can have this, you know cold surfaces touching up against the earth, and then the interior humid air in the winter or the summer.So yeah, there&#8217;s, you know, that&#8217;s I can just keep talking about this. But you asked me a short question, and I have a very long answer for it. So I mean, I could just talk, for I usually tell a client all the things they need to do to prevent mold in their home after the treatment. Not just, you know, spray and leave type of thing. Dr. Deb Muth40:39Yeah, that&#8217;s awesome. So if someone&#8217;s listening to us right now, and they suspect mold might be affecting their health, and they suspect their house is the issue. What would you recommend for them as a 1st step to identify what&#8217;s going on in the home. Courtney Jarman40:57Yeah. Good question. Mold inspection. I mean, there&#8217;s good mold inspectors, and there&#8217;s bad mold inspections.you know. Either. And or a blood test. Dr. Deb Muth41:13Yeah, we use that a lot. Courtney Jarman41:15Yeah, my medical lab, so getting the blood tests and then gettinggetting it. You know, some samples taken basically, and in a visual inspection, because sometimes when I go into, I&#8217;m sorry there&#8217;s a long when I go into a house I can see people are like, well, we&#8217;ve had like a little bit of a dishwasher overflow, or a washer overflow.And they always think that&#8217;s the problem right? And then I go in there, and it&#8217;s like I go below in the basement, and I see. Oh, on the decking of you know, flashlight above or previous leak, you know. Oh, previous flood over here you can just usually not always because there&#8217;s remodeling and stuff like that, but it&#8217;s part of. Dr. Deb Muth41:52Right. Courtney Jarman41:53Whole home assessment as a if you&#8217;re a good mold, inspector, you will do not just a couple of samples and leave, but you&#8217;ll look at the whole mold load of a home. That&#8217;s what we do. We look at kind of like yes or no mold like yes or no high mold load or so. Dr. Deb Muth42:06There&#8217;s like. Courtney Jarman42:06The dust samples that we do, and then, if you know, we don&#8217;t catch a red flag right away, which you know there&#8217;s some there&#8217;s so many false negatives, there&#8217;s so many limitations. Dr. Deb Muth42:14Right. Courtney Jarman42:14We do an army test. So that is a.Basically, it&#8217;s a DNA test of the dust in your house. You take a standardized weight of dust and you send it into the lab and takes about 2 weeks. And it&#8217;s compared with 2,000 other houses where this test has been done in the Us. The EPA developed it to find out howhow moldy a house was. It wasn&#8217;t for research purposes. There&#8217;s a long story. But anyway, so you compare the dust. The lab compares the dust. To these 2,000 other homes a thousand of the homes had definitely had mold had like floods, and, you know, leaks and stuff. A 1,000 of them didn&#8217;t. So it&#8217;s like a environmental relative moldiness index Ermi. So you get this all the species of mold in a very accurate test andand then all the the levels basically. Dr. Deb Muth43:07So how can people get in touch with your company? Peer maintenance? And what should they do to initiate a process if they&#8217;re listening to this, and they&#8217;re like I need to have Courtney come out and take a look at my house and figure out what&#8217;s going on, and I don&#8217;t want to demolish the house. I want to treat it. How can they get in touch with you? Courtney Jarman43:26Yeah, you can go. Well, our phone number (608) 893-6620. But you can go to our website. There&#8217;s so much information on there references. A lot of blog posts it&#8217;s pure maintenance wi as in wisconsin.com and so you can just check out some information there. And then, you know, if you call us or email us, basically, I&#8217;ll have my team book an inspection, and thenwe&#8217;ll come out, and it&#8217;s essentially it&#8217;s between 2 and 2 50 for an inspection, depending on what your what your home looks like, and then we&#8217;ll take a few samples and do a full assessment, and then that money is refundable if you go with treatment. So it&#8217;s like we&#8217;re going to come out there. We need some money to come out there and assess your home, but if you&#8217;re going to go with treatment, you know, we give it back to you.and as far as you know, location. We are located in Madison, but we do travel. So that is, you know, if you live few hours away, we&#8217;re willing to travel. Just talk to our team about that. Dr. Deb Muth44:28That&#8217;s awesome. Do you have any final advice for homeowners that are dealing with this, that you think that they should know that we haven&#8217;t already covered. Courtney Jarman44:37Oh, I&#8217;m sure I can. Just you know I talk a lot, but open your windows, go outside. Sunlight is super important. Sunlight is antifungal. You know, if you&#8217;re dealing with a fungal issue, and you can&#8217;t resolve it right away. I always tell people open your windows, go outside try to get off the computer. You know, it&#8217;s sort of at this point. People don&#8217;tnecessarily believe the whole Emf and fungal connection. But it&#8217;s peer reviewed. It&#8217;s like on pubmed out there, showing like mold in a petri dish with wi-fi mold in a petri dish without wi-fi the mold with wi-fi just grows like 10 times more. So inside your body, you&#8217;re out. So you know, have a have a computer that&#8217;s plugged in to the Internet, not it&#8217;s not Wi-fi, which, of course, I&#8217;m doing right now.Dr. Deb MuthDr. Deb Muth45:19Yeah. Courtney Jarman45:20But then, you know, try to get away from your Emf. Try to turn off your wi-fi at night when you&#8217;re not using it? Get outside in the sunlight, fresh air. Dr. Deb Muth45:28Great advice. I love that.Well, Courtney, thank you so much for joining me today and sharing this revolutionary approach to mold remediation. It&#8217;s been great, having you as a guest. Courtney Jarman45:39Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Dr. Deb Muth45:43So if this episode has resonated with you, please share it with someone who could benefit from learning about hidden mold exposure, and how it might be impacting their health.So many families are struggling with chronic symptoms that could be resolved by addressing their indoor environment. Remember, wellness isn&#8217;t about feeling good. It&#8217;s about thriving in every area of your life, and that includes creating a clean, healthy home environment. So if you&#8217;re ready to explore how environmental factors and functional medicine can help you get to the root cause of your symptoms. Contact us at serenityhealthcarecenter.com contact [email protected] if you suspect mold at any time might be affecting you. Please don&#8217;t hesitate to reach out to any one of us, so that we can help you until next time I&#8217;m Dr. Deb, reminding you to take care of your body, mind, and spirit and your home environment to be well, and we&#8217;ll see you in the next episode. This episode is sponsored by Serenity Health Care Center, where we specialize in uncovering the root causes of chronic health conditions to help you achieve optimal wellness. Visit us at www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com or call 262-522-8640 to learn more. Connect with Dr. Deb: Website: www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com Facebook: Serenity Health Care Center Instagram: @SerenityHealthCenter Twitter: @DrDebSerenity Subscribe &amp; Review:Don’t forget to subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. If you love what you hear, leave a review and let us know how we’re helping you on your wellness journey. The post Episode 245 – Courtney Jarman and Toxic Mold first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.

Dr. Deb 0:00Welcome back to Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now, the show where we uncover the root causes of chronic illness, explore cutting edge regenerative medicine and empower you with the tools to heal. I&#8217;m Dr Deb, and today we&#8217;re diving into the revolutionary world of regenerative medicine and how it&#8217;s transforming the treatment of chronic conditions. If you or someone you love has been diagnosed with a chronic condition or struggling with unexplained neurological symptoms like fatigue, brain fog, numbness or chronic pain, this episode is for you, so grab a cup of coffee, tea or whatever helps you unwind, settle in and let&#8217;s get started on your journey to deeper healing. Dr. Deb 0:43What if your body already contains everything it needs to heal? In this episode, I&#8217;ll explore how regenerative medicine is revolutionizing the way we treat chronic illness by harnessing your body&#8217;s own remarkable healing abilities. If you&#8217;ve been told you&#8217;ll just have to live with it or that medication is your only option, this information could change everything for you. The truth is, conventional medicine often focuses on managing symptoms rather than addressing what&#8217;s actually causing your health problems. But regenerative approaches are different. They aim to repair, restore and regenerate damaged tissues at the cellular level, targeting the root causes of your own symptoms. Today, I&#8217;m going to break down the science behind these groundbreaking therapies, share inspiring patient stories and offer insights into how these treatments might help when traditional approaches have failed you. Dr. Deb 1:48You&#8217;re going to learn in this episode how regenerative medicine differs from conventional symptom management, the science behind cell therapy and who it might help, why platelet rich plasma PRP, that&#8217;s a mouthful. Therapy is offering new hope for chronic pain and the latest research on regenerative approaches for autoimmune conditions, how these therapies might help with previously untreatable conditions, questions to ask your doctor about regenerative options and so much more. So let&#8217;s start by understanding what the heck is regenerative medicine anyway? Unlike conventional treatments that often rely on medications to mask symptoms or surgeries that remove damaged tissues, regenerative medicine focuses on actually repairing and restoring function to these damaged tissues and organs. It&#8217;s exactly what we talk about on this show all the time, finding and addressing that root cause rather than just managing symptoms. And that&#8217;s precisely what makes regenerative medicine so revolutionary for chronic illness. This field encompasses several innovative therapies, but today I want to focus on two of the most promising approaches, cell therapy, also called stem cell therapy and platelet rich plasma treatment, or PRP. First, let&#8217;s talk about stem cell therapy, or cell therapy. Stem cells are essentially your body&#8217;s raw materials. They&#8217;re cells that can transform into many different types of specialized cells, from heart muscle to brain tissue to bone, and when introduced into damaged areas, they can promote repair and reduce inflammation and kick start your body&#8217;s natural healing processes. What makes this particularly exciting, though, is that in many cases, we can use your own stem cells harvested from bone marrow, adipose tissue or fat tissue that help reduce the risk of rejection and harness your body&#8217;s own healing capabilities. We can also use other people&#8217;s stem cells, in the case of umbilical or placental stem cells that come from donated participants, to help regenerate your own tissue as well. Dr Raphael Gonzalez is a leading immunology expert in this field, and explains that stem cell therapy can help repair a fatigued immune system, potentially reversing age related decline and restoring balance after illness or injury. This has profound implications for conditions ranging from autoimmune disease like multiple sclerosis rheumatoid arthritis to neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson&#8217;s and Alzheimer&#8217;s disease as well. We&#8217;re even seeing promising applications in cardiovascular disease, diabetes. Dr. Deb 5:00And chronic pain conditions. I recently spoke with a patient named Bob who had been living with debilitating rheumatoid arthritis for over a decade, and after trying nearly every conventional treatment with limited success, he underwent stem cell therapy. Six months after his treatment, he was able to reduce his medications by half. The morning stiffness that used to keep her in bed for hours decreased dramatically, and for the first time in years, he could open jars and button his own shirt without pain. While it wasn&#8217;t a miracle cure, it gave him quality of life that he looked after forever, Dr. Deb 5:43his experience isn&#8217;t unique. Many patients are finding relief where conventional medicine fell short at the best part, these treatments are typically minimally invasive, often performed on an outpatient basis with relatively little downtime. Now let&#8217;s talk about PRP platelet rich plasma therapy. This treatment uses a concentration of your own platelets, tiny blood cells that play a crucial role in healing, to accelerate the repair of damaged tissues. And here&#8217;s how it works, a small sample of blood is drawn and placed in a centrifuge, a device that spins your blood, which separates the platelets from the other blood components, kind of just like we do when we take your blood for a normal blood test, but this concentrated solution of platelets is rich in growth factors. It&#8217;s then injected to an area that needs to repair or heal. Dr. Deb 6:41PRP has shown remarkable results for joint injuries, arthritis and soft tissue healing. Athletes have been using this therapy for years to speed recovery, but now it&#8217;s becoming more accessible to everyone dealing with chronic pain and degenerative conditions. The benefits are compelling. It&#8217;s minimally invasive, has little risk of rejection, since it uses your own blood and can significantly improve symptoms, sometimes reducing or eliminating the need for surgery or long term medication. Beyond stem cells and PRP, researchers are developing exciting new approaches, small molecule drugs that can activate the body&#8217;s own stem cells to repair tissue affected by age related diseases are showing great promise. These therapies are being developed for conditions like osteoarthritis, inflammatory bowel disease and even heart failure. Dr ADIL KHAN, another pioneer in the field, emphasizes that the combination of stem cells, exosomes, which are tiny vesicles released in the cells that facilitate cell to cell communication, and peptides, can regenerate damaged tissues, reduce inflammation and either slow the aging process itself. What excites me most about regenerative medicine is how it&#8217;s changing our approach to chronic illness from resignation to hope by focusing on tissue repair and immune system balance, these therapies aim to modify or even reverse disease progression, not just manage your symptoms. The treatments are personalized to each person&#8217;s condition and biology, and while they&#8217;re not a cure all, many patients experience lasting improvements in pain, function and quality of life, especially for conditions that previously had limited treatment options. So what does the future hold for Regenerative Medicine? Clinical trials are currently exploring stem cell therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome, Long Haul covid and various autoimmune diseases. These researchers are also working to make these treatments more accessible and affordable. As Dr Khan puts it, we&#8217;re at the beginning of a new era in medicine, one where we don&#8217;t just accept chronic illness as inevitable, but actively work to reverse it by harnessing the body&#8217;s own healing capabilities. If you&#8217;re someone living with a chronic condition, what should you take away from today&#8217;s episode? First, regenerative medicine offers genuine hope, not for symptom management, but for actual healing. Second, while these treatments are becoming more mainstream, they&#8217;re still evolving. It&#8217;s important to research thoroughly consult with specialists who have specific training in regenerative medicine and have realistic expectations. And finally, the field is advancing rapidly. Treatments that seem cutting edge today may be standard care in just a few years. Remember, healing is possible when we address the root cause, and regenerative medicine is giving us a powerful new tool to do. Dr. Deb 10:00Exactly that. Dr. Deb 10:02Thank you for joining me today on Let&#8217;s Talk wellness. Now. If this episode resonated with you, share it with someone who could benefit from learning about regenerative medicine and its potential for chronic illness. Remember, wellness isn&#8217;t just about feeling good, it&#8217;s about thriving in every area of your life. If you&#8217;re ready to explore how regenerative medicine and functional medicine can help you visit us at Serenity healthcare center.com, or reach out to me directly through functional mbi.com, Dr. Deb 10:34until next time I&#8217;m Dr Deb, reminding you to take care of your body, mind and spirit. Be well, and we&#8217;ll see you on the next episode. Thank you for listening to the podcast. Let&#8217;s talk wellness now brings expert insights directly to you. Please note that the views and information shared by our guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of Let&#8217;s Talk wellness now its management or our partners, each affiliate, sponsor and partner is an independent entity with its own perspectives. Today&#8217;s content is provided for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered specific advice, whether financial, medical or legal. While we strive to present accurate and useful information, we cannot guarantee its completeness or relevance to your unique circumstances. We encourage you to consult with a qualified professional to address your individual needs. Your use of information from this broadcast is entirely at your own risk. By continuing to listen, you agree to indemnify and hold let&#8217;s talk wellness now and its associates harmless from any claims or damages arising from the use of this content. We may update this disclaimer at any time, and changes will take effect immediately upon posting or broadcasts. Thank you for tuning in. We hope you find this episode both insightful and thought provoking. Listener discretion is advised. This episode is sponsored by Serenity Health Care Center, where we specialize in uncovering the root causes of chronic health conditions to help you achieve optimal wellness. Visit us at www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com or call 262-522-8640 to learn more. Connect with Dr. Deb: Website: www.serenityhealthcarecenter.com Facebook: Serenity Health Care Center Instagram: @SerenityHealthCenter Twitter: @DrDebSerenity Subscribe &amp; Review:Don’t forget to subscribe to Let’s Talk Wellness Now on your favorite podcast platform so you never miss an episode. If you love what you hear, leave a review and let us know how we’re helping you on your wellness journey.The post Episode 244 – How Regenerative Medicine Is Revolutionizing Chronic Illness Treatment first appeared on Let's Talk Wellness Now.