Ashok Gupta interviews Dr Joe Mather, Ruscio Institute for Functional Medicine

Hello and a warm welcome to the Gupta program. And I'm delighted today to have a wonderful guest with us, Dr. Joe Mather, who is the medical director of the Rousseau Institute for Functional Medicine. And as many of you have probably heard of the Russeau institute, it's here. Dr. Russeau is a world famous clinician in the area of functional and integrative medicine. And we're delighted to have Joe with his medical director. And Joe himself has used the Gupta program to heal from conditions that we'll talk talk about. And so it's going to be a really interesting interview and really delighted to have you here. Joe, how are you?

I am fantastic today, Ashok. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. And yeah, so, Joe, I, first of all, I wanted to start off with, I suppose, your personal journey, because many of us have come into this area as a result of our own experiences, our own kind of difficulties that we've gone through. So, very interested to hear your story. What first brought you to this type of medicine?

It was really curiosity and dissatisfaction with conventional medicine. I got to the end of my conventional medicine training and I looked back at my clinic one day and I realized I'd been seeing the same patients for three years and they weren't better. Right. So I knew I was missing something. I knew I was a good doctor and doing the best guidelines and all the medications I was taught, but they weren't getting better. And ultimately I became a doctor because I wanted to help heal patients. And so that opened the door to functional medicine and many excellent mentors later, including Dr. Gruschaud, Dr. Neil Nathan. I'm now happy to be the medical director working with Michael Ruscio.

Yeah, fantastic. And I guess obviously you've used the Gupta program and we'll go kind of deeper into that. But where did you. When did you first start noticing your own kind of challenges in this particular area? And what was the journey from then on?

Yeah, so it started a few years after I had opened my private practice. So like many retrainers, there was a period of intense stress. And I've since learned that up to that point, I had never really taken a break, ever. Right. Overachieving all the way through high school, to get to college, through university, to get to medical school, through medical school. And then I couldn't just get an md. I had to get a master's in public health at the same time. Really became inspired by functional medicine and wanted to open a private practice. So at one point, I was working three jobs to be able to fund the opening of a private practice, started a family, opening my practice, growing that business as a solo practitioner. And then Covid hit. Right. And then my office got moldy.

Right.

And I cleaned the AC closet, the building next to us, changed their air conditioner, changed the pressure. And here in New Orleans, we've got wet, moldy air. And my office became moldy. So I cleaned the AC and downhill from there. Right, right. That was the trigger and. And that was the start of my illness.

Right. So it sounds like almost a kind of perfect storm of various kind of factors coming together. And we talk a lot about this ide the bucket theory where, you know, there's a certain amount of stress that we can kind of handle. You know, mental, emotional, physical, biological stress. And when the water gets the top of the bucket, when it pours over, then the body then adapts in some maladaptive form. That's not great for. Isn't it? Is that how it felt at the time, looking back?

Absolutely. At the time, it was just despair, just deep fatigue, pain. You know, I've always been interested in fitness and nutrition. And I remember at my worst, I had a kettlebell. It was a, I believe a 20 pound kettlebell in my office. And I would, in between patients, just swing the kettlebell around to keep myself moving. And at my worst, I realized I did six kettlebell swings and was in bed the entire next day, just completely shut down and, you know, barely functioning, barely holding on for a little while, Pain all over, fatigue. And a lot of the symptoms that I, I now see in my mold toxicity patients were just devastating. So where, when I realized I, I needed limbic work was I. I've been treating mold patients for about 18 months up to this point. So I knew what to do. I started myself on binders, but minuscule doses of binders just, just rocked me. I would have pain all over, anxiety, palpitations, worsening fatigue. And Dr. Neal Nathan said, joe, you need to do the Gupta program. And so I said, yes, sir.

Yes, of course. Dr. Nathan as well, for those who don't know, is one of the foremost experts around the world in mold illness and similar conditions. And I know him quite well, and as you said, he prescribes the Gupta program. So it's great that you had that, that kind of interaction and that advice and many more patients, they are just too sensitive to be able to handle anything external, any medications, any supplements. And what impact did it have then on your life? I mean, you've described some of the symptoms, but can you go deeper into kind of Mental, emotional, physical consequences of that.

Absolutely. So it's interesting to look back at that period of my time, because I'm a very different person now. And when I was in the middle of it, there was a lot of depression, there was a lot of anxiety, there was agitation. I'd become angry. And I've historically been a very cheerful, optimistic person. I think if you would ask many people, they would say, he's always smiling. He always seems to be happy. And that just turned off. And that was and has been very challenging to feel like my personality had really betrayed me. Right. And that was very disturbing. And it became hard on my wife and family. Right. And. And so I. I really found that.

So.

So I ended up doing, really, two months of. Of your program before engaging in treatment specifically for the mold toxicity. And that's when things started to shift. And it wasn't overnight, Right. But it was daily use for two solid months initially, before I could then tolerate the binders, the charcoal, the clay, the chlorella, the things we use for mold toxicity. After that two months, things had calmed enough that I could then take the treatment. And then things started to shift. The mood started to ease. Right. The energy started to come back up, and my resiliency went up so that I could right. Then take more treatments and then invest more in myself. That was the beginning. And I then used the program daily for nine months, just solid, every day. When I set my mind to something, I tend to do it. So I really did that. And just to skip a lot of maybe details, I stopped doing the program and thought I was better. Yeah.

As many people do. Yes.

We physicians are not immune to this. And we can know this intellectually and we can know this because we see it in our patients, but when it comes to us, we have blind spots. Right. And so I. I convinced myself I didn't need it, and I have recently restarted back up. I learned I just needed that extra support to keep me operating at a high level. And without it, I was becoming more reactive to treatments I could tolerate before some of the antifungal medications. Right. The mood was souring again. Right. And so I was really, really kind of going backwards. But happily, you know, in the past month, particularly, I've been doing it back every day. And the second time is even better than the first.

Okay. That's a good messaging for all of our retrainers, actually, that, you know, it. It really is one of those things where the amount of energy that you put into the program or, you know, the effort you put into program, it will pay back. And the nature of our mind is that complacency. It's natural that, okay, I'm feeling better, I don't need that anymore. You know, we very much link inputs and outputs. I do this, I get this output done, you know, and as you realize, and many of us realize, and I realized when I had to go through my own process, it's a lifelong process of maybe not the entire Gupta program, but certainly certain parts of it continuing as part of our lifestyle to ensure health. And maybe that's our own body's messaging telling us to. To kind of keep healthy for the rest of our lives as well.

It certainly made me more understanding of my patients. At the Ruscio Institute, we treat a lot of patients with chronic bowel disease, right? And so we're using a lot of GI medicine. We're using dietary interventions and probiotics and herbal treatments, and our patients get better. They do great from a GI perspective. And the ceiling gets higher, and so they then do more, and then their ceiling gets higher. And then what happens is they end up bumping their head on the ceiling. They do too much, right? And they realize that they have just overstretched themselves or over committed. And. And then we say, oh, that's okay. We just need to maybe go back to what was working. Right?

Yes, yes, exactly. And I think it's as we've talked about, I think when we spoke before, that many people, nutritionists, naturopaths, functional and integrative doctors, they will notice that there can be certain things that, you know, even without brain retraining, there are certain things that definitely help and support people's health. But what they also tell me is as soon as a really big stressful situation comes into that person's life, suddenly they can go back to square one again. And that's really puzzling for the clinicians because how can it be that they've had that improvement for those interventions and yet they can go back to square one? And what we say is that definitely the downstream aspects of this triggering that we talk about in the Gupta program, in the brain, the impacts on the body can definitely be improved, obviously, with all these various treatments. But if the brain suddenly gets into that hyperactive mode, it will re trigger all of those defensive responses, no matter how the body is dealing with it, downstream. And is that what you've experienced as.

Well, that that kind of personally and professionally? Right. So that's exactly how I felt when I let myself become overwhelmed. I think I had dropped too many of the supportive Treatments, and I felt like I was back at square one right now, just a few weeks into restarting some of the supportive treatments and particularly Gupta program, I feel back where I was. Right. And so I'm at that level where I was much, much quicker. Right. It took many, many months of work before, and now it's been a few weeks. And so. Yes. And professionally, I see this all the time in my patients. Right. And I'm having many patients use the Gupta program as one of the initial steps that we do as we work together. And I find that it's accelerating healing in a number of conditions. Autoimmune conditions, gut conditions, toxicity issues like mold. And so it's been. Been really helpful for my patients. So the biggest reason I'm excited about this interview is just to be able to tell patients that it works. And thank you. Right. Because you've made a big difference in my life. Yeah.

Thank you, Jay. Appreciated that. And in your patients, I think it'd be interesting. You've mentioned a number of different conditions there. Are there any conditions that you've been surprised by that have actually improved using the Gupta Program tools? Yes. Yes. Okay.

So just a word about our clinic. We primarily treat chronic complex disease, and our average patient has been through multiple physicians before seeking our help. And so we've had to get really good at what does this patient need and maybe what was missed. Right. So I see a lot of areas where your program helps my. Helps my patients. The thing that's been most pleasantly surprising is in a condition called mast cell activation syndrome. This is notoriously hard to diagnose and manage. And while we often see this improving with a number of antihistamines and supplements or medications, I have been so thrilled at the response of some of my patients with mast cell. I remember one patient, she's a 45 year old gal with mold exposure, a lot of anxiety, chronic fatigue, and reactivity with food and treatment. Right. So classic case of mold toxicity, limbic dysfunction. Right. She did your program, and in three months, I was like, okay, well, tell me how the Quercetin and the dao, the Claritin, you're still using those? She said, oh, no, I haven't been on those for a month. I'm not reacting to anything anymore. The thing that I changed was she had been doing the Gupta program. So that, to me, tells the power of retraining your mind. Because we're talking about the mind, the hypothalamus, the nervous system engaging the immune system. The mast cell is kind of the soldier on the ground. You could retrain the brain and the soldier stands down.

Exactly.

It's quite amazing. It's quite amazing and profound. And, you know, until I had done it myself and seen it work one or two dozen times, it would have been hard to convince me that this is that powerful. But it is.

Yeah. I mean, it's so pleasing for me to hear these types of stories because it's. It's once again reinforcing the work that we're doing. And when we see a clinician like yourself with such experience and expertise saying this, then it's, you know, it really propels us forward to. In the research arena as well. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And do you want to go through perhaps a couple of case studies? I mean, you mentioned one there with a lady with. With mold. Anything else you'd like to share that may kind of inspire others?

Absolutely. So I see a lot of patients with mold toxicity, and in my experience, patients with mold toxicity are uniquely vulnerable. And this seems to be the major cause, at least in my world, of limbic dysfunction. I think that the mold itself is so toxic to the nervous system and brain that it generates a really, really strong negative response in the body and is uniquely primed to cause limbic dysfunction. The other main issue is simply, let me say two things. One is being ill for a long time. There's something uniquely disruptive about the time in which someone is ill and feeling bad and suffering. I think that's another trigger. And the final thing I would want to mention is I think a lot of my colleagues in integrative and functional medicine are inadvertently causing too much fear in their patients. They're saying that if you eat a single bite of gluten, that you're going to flare autoimmunity. Right. They're saying you need to be on 8 cups of spinach a day, or you're not getting the fiber and B vitamins. They're saying you need to be on this strict diet and these protocols and this ozone treatment. And I can't help but think they need to stop. I can't help but think that our field is too heavily being influenced by fear. And I think people need to kind of step back and ask, are the recommendations they're giving really serving their patients, or are they causing more disruption?

Joe, I really want to pick up on this point, because I think this is something that we share with most of our clients, and I'd love to get your thoughts on this, is that in some ways, many of us in this alternative space, we've come into it because we've seen that the mainstream medical model is brilliant for certain types of conditions, but doesn't correctly diagnose or treat these kind of more functional conditions or ones which, you know, it's a different type of medicine. And we've been railing against the kind of reductionist approach, which is treating the body like a car and saying, right, there's something wrong with the engine, right, Fix that. Something wrong with the tire. Let's fix that. Let's fix the whole body. And yet, as we as you say, there's a danger that we have that when we start measuring certain levels of hormones or vitamins or enzymes, we start working with exactly that reductionist philosophy, which is, look, that's 10% lower, right? You're not going to get better until we fix that. Or this is 5% high. We need to fix that. And.