Dr Joe Mather's Mold Illness Success Story Using The Gupta Program

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 Russeau Institute for Functional Medicine. And as many of you have probably heard of the Russeau Institute, 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 about. And so it's going 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 yes, Joe, 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. Right. 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. Ruscio, 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 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. And I cleaned the AC closet, the building next to us, changed their air conditioner, change 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 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 idea, 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, 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, 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, any supplements. And what, 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, 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 so I really found that. So I ended up doing, really, two months 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 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.