165: My Health Journey with equi.life Part 2: Results with Dr. Stephen Cabral

Hello again, everyone, and welcome to today's show. If you're one of the 130 million people that are dealing with Sirs Lyme disease, autoimmune disease, or other conditions that are impacted by mold on a daily basis, and you need to learn how to eliminate that exposure, then you're in the right place. My name is Brian Carr and you're listening to Mold Finders Radio.

Hey, everyone, how are we doing? So today is episode two of our four part series. A few episodes ago, out we had episode one of this series of Brian's Health Journey with Equal Life. And so the first episode, for those of you didn't listen, you can go back and listen to it. It was with Erica hall, she's VP of health over at Equal Life, and she basically ran through the plan of how we get started to assess me, to figure out where I am. Part of that included tests that were going to be specific that I was going to do. So to recap, I did three different tests. I did a, a heavy metal and nutrient test, which I'm sure I'm saying it wrong, but that was one of the tests that I did. I did a candida and metabolic and vitamins test, and I did a mycotoxin test. Um, so those are the three that I did. I put some stories out where I had a patch of bald hair in the back of my head from where I cut my hair out. And since then I got a haircut and I'm looking great. And. And so that's where we started. In addition to that, I also went through and used Equal Life's Detox Weekly, you know, seven day Detox program. And I was kind of sharing that, you know, as that was going on too. So today is step two. I actually have the man, Dr. Stephen Cabral on. And so I've got the top man to come on and help me talk about what's in my results, what it means, should I be concerned, if so, how much this, that or the other, and all that good stuff. And so with all of that, Dr. Abraal, this is, this is number two with you and I on the show. So happy to have you back.

It's great to be here. Appreciate you having me back and, you know, look forward to our partnership, working with each other and helping people on both ends of the spectrum. I mean, you are the experts at what you do at finding the mold, remediating the mold, getting rid of it. And what we do on our end is we test the person, not just the home or the Office or the dwelling and then help them get rid of that if there is any as well. And so yeah, it's great to be back. Appreciate you having me on.

Cool. So I've got three labs up in front of me on my computer. Results. We're first off, I think I said that it the, the first lab wrong so you can correct me on what it's called. But it was the hair test where I went bald in the back and it was, it was like a mineral and heavy metal test, right? Is that what that one is?

Yes, it's a minerals, It's a minerals and metals test. Yes, it looks at heavy metals and the minerals in your body. So basically it's looking at all the positive minerals, the electrolytes like calcium, magnesium, sodium, potassium. It's looking at copper and zinc for the immune system, phosphorus for your bones and muscle tissue, selenium and chromium. So blood sugar, thyroid, et cetera. And then it looks at lead and arsenic and cadmium and mercury and aluminum. And those are the ones that we don't want elevated, certainly in the body. Cause they can cause oxidative stress, neurological issues, brain based issues like Alzheimer's in the future. So those are all part of the overall equation. And just a couple snips of hair. So we're going to have to have someone give you that little snip of hair in the back next time instead of maybe you, if you did it on your own.

Can I tell you how this went down? So I have short hair, right? So like in the instructions, like lift up your hair and cut behind it. But like you have hair like the length of me. And it came, it comes with this little scale and we kept doing like My wife is sitting back here with scissors. It was a disaster. And she like, we keep filling the scale like it's not enough of a scale. And she just, by the end of it I look like, I don't know, like a leopard spots on the back of my head. And then I had my hair cut like, like three or four days later. And my, the person that cuts my hair, she looked and she's like, I didn't tell her. I was just gonna sit down and like get her reaction. What the hell happened to you? It's like. So then I watched.

Surprise. Yeah, so so. And I've given the, I call it thousands of pretend haircuts in my practice in Boston. And what I always did for guys with short hair like myself as well, you know, around the sides is you just start to go up higher where your, your hair's a little longer on the top and we just use a little bit of that longer hair in the back and that, that's it. You just take. And for women it might be two to three snips that obviously they would never see missing. For guys, I'll do more like six to eight and just make them smaller and so you won't see them missing from there. But you know, we, you know, we live and we learn. You'll do this again in maybe six months.

Tutorial video on how to do this.

100%. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cool.

All right, so, so yeah, I'm hand it over to you. Let's talk through and, and guys, just everybody listening. So the point of this is to really understand like how these conversations go. So I'm a patient that's working with Dr. Cabral right now. Right. Like that's what's happening. And so this is how these conversations go. So we haven't really talked about it beforehand, so we'll see how it goes.

No, this is, you know, you're just getting your lab results today. So what we do is we have PDFs of your lab results. Um, it's gonna be in your hopefully easy to read methodology of red is out of range, yellow or orange is starting to become elevated, lower, high and green is optimal. So you, you know, people can really start to understand their results. That's the whole goal with at home lab testing with functional medicine testing is giving control back to the wellness client or the patient like that. That's really it. And then it gives you a summary in the right hand side. So without people having these results right in front of them right now, what we look at first are your calcium levels, your magnesium, your sodium, your potassium. And we don't look at these as, again, these are snips of hair. So basically hair mineral analysis testing has been used now for many decades. NASA uses it, NIH uses it, they use it for heavy metal testing in pregnant women to make sure there's no elevated levels of mercury, et cetera. So drug testing for FBI, et cetera has always used hair testing. And what here does it, It's a protein and it catches whatever is being excreted by the body. And so the greater level of excretion, the higher the number on the minerals and metals test. Because all that happens is the lab gets a sample of your hair, they turn it to an ash, and then the ash just like food. You then see what is the mineral content or metal content of that ash. And that's how you actually figure out all the different mineral levels in food as well. So you, you have a very normal level of calcium, little bit lower on magnesium, elevated sodium, potassium. And although for us the most common thing we see is elevated calcium and sometimes magnesium shows higher stress in the body, for you, the elevated sodium potassium actually shows greater adrenal output. And you can look at it a few ways. Basically you're just saying that the body is producing typically more of a hormone called aldosterone. Aldosterone is sodium spirit. It helps to raise blood pressure when the body's stressed or there's like an acute output and now the body's doing fine in terms of calcium and magnesium for the most part. We want to add a little bit more magnesium to your diet or through supplementation. And then also lifestyle based exercises to lower the stress response. This could be breathwork exercises, it could be sauna, it could be going for a walk. It could be any of the things to kind of balance stress outside of the day. And also keep in mind your hair is really short. That means we're looking at no more than a 30 day sample for women or men with longer hair. If they give us an inch and a half sample, we're looking at about 90 days because the average person's hair grows about a half an inch or so per month. So for you, 30 days could be stress over the last 30 days for whatever, you know, was going on, work, life, et cetera. And that shows just a little higher stress. Does that make sense?

It does. I actually have a couple questions already off of this.

Yeah, absolutely.

So.

Having higher sodium potassium is indicating just general higher stress levels. Is that what, is that what I'm kind of understanding?

Yes, for the electrolytes we're not looking at. Oh, you know, Brian's on a higher sodium diet that's typically knotted. Or higher potassium diet. These are based on the central, the central nervous system or autonomic nervous system. Apologies. My glucose sensor is going off right now. And low blood sugar. My sodium potassium spikey right now. So the, the interesting thing is that when the body's in the sympathetic nervous system, it actually excretes higher levels of calcium. And sodium, it just means that it's drawing more calcium in to get you into more of the sympathetic nervous system. Fight or flight. And same with sodium. And that increases blood pressure. Vasoconstriction gets us ready for basically fighting or fleeing. Right. Running potassium is the blocker of the fight or flight pushes you into more parasympathetic and magnesium slows that fight or flight as well. So you always have what's called antagonist. So calcium has magnesium and sodium has potassium. Now your body is very well balanced. So when your sodium starts to get elevated, potassium is there to basically keep it at like a one to one so things don't get out of check. Now some people we see their bodies aren't necessarily as resilient or strong. So we'll see really elevated sodium and calcium and then low magnesium and potassium which is not what we want to see.

Got it. So when you look at this, it's less about like I'm eating too much sodium or potassium and it's more about how, how my body is like stress response in the body as opposed to.

Just general like for these stress based electrolytes. That's correct. As we start to move into the other parts of the test, we'll start to get into what levels intake wise are a little higher or lower. But since your autonomic nervous system regulates a lot of these reg these electrolytes, we need to look at it as total stress response. Now we can manipulate these a bit. I'm not saying that we can't. If we increase magnesium in your diet through food and or supplementation, we'll actually be able to then balance out. Calcium and magnesium will also calm the central nervous system. So we don't want to overdo magnesium, we don't want to make you too sleepy and tired. But we'll use it the latter half of the day. Maybe one capsule at lunch and then two at dinner or maybe a little bit before bed. We use a full spectrum magnesium and a calming Magnesium. Calming is the powder based magnesium and a lot of people use that before bed because ideally let's say you're working during the day 7am to 7pm we'll just say like kind of that's the fight or flight based time. We don't want it the whole time but you know, ups and downs. We need to turn that off at 7pm and get you into good night's sleep and rest at night, even before bed till seven in the morning. Then we have a more balanced nervous system if that makes sense.

That does make sense. So the fact like, like I do element. Element electrolyte powder.

Yes.

So obviously that's for those who don't know. Not obviously, but it's sodium, potassium, magnesium are the three key things that are in the element powders.

But it's a very high sodium. So sometimes we do see this, this is actually, this is a good point. I'm I appreciate you bringing that up. Element electrolyte, I have no issues with it. It's really meant for though, someone who sweats a lot. And why that's important is that it is not a balanced sodium to potassium. And I'm not saying that in any negative way. If you sweat a lot, it replaces that sodium. But for someone, if they're not sweating like on a daily basis, you just need more potassium, then that's actually really important to note. That whereas an electrolyte that I look for, for like an everyday person that's not sweating all the time, I'm not gonna name any brands. It's just look for one that's a two to four ratio, maximum of sodium to potassium. And so I look for like a 1 to 1 or 2 to 1 of sodium to potassium to replace that lost sodium. And that's assuming that you're not using like Redmond's real salt or Himalayan sea salt or Celtic sea salt during the day. Because if you're taking a thousand milligrams of sodium, you know, in a, let's say an electrolyte packet from Element, and then you're adding more sea salt a day, or are you just overdoing the salt if you're not sweating a lot? It's something that, it's something that people should ask themselves.

Interesting. So you feel like that could be something that might be a part of this. Because, like I sauna four days a week, so I'm. I'm sweating four days a week. I work out four to five days a week. But my workouts are more like strength based, not cardio. So I'm not doing a whole lot of sweat in like the weightlifting port, like a little bit. But then I hit the sauna right afterwards and then I'll sweat kind of after that. So that's kind of tie the knot on that in terms of kind of what my normal day looks like.

Well, I would say. And people know too, like, if you sweat and you can actually taste the salt, you're definitely, you're someone that excretes more salt than a lot of other people. If you start to get a little lightheaded, especially at the end of the sauna or after a cardio session where you're sweating a lot, then you, you absolutely may need that sodium to be replaced at that higher level. But look at it as, you know, an aggregate through the whole day. You know, how much sodium are you taking in? And I'm not against sodium by any stretch of the imagination. I just like to make things a little bit more bio individualized per person. And so maybe it's. You use that before the sauna days, but not on the off days. Or maybe use a different electrolyte. Or you just use a pinch of sea salt and a whole lime or lemon, which is kind of adding a lot more potassium in there as well.

Oh, very cool. Okay, awesome.

All right.

That, that's all I had on that piece, so I'll let you drive it.

You can get as in depth as you want. What we do for everyone in our practice, we always leave you with a, you know, a personalized plan. So. But these conversations, since oftentimes we'll. We'll do a little intake, helps us to buy bio. Individualize it based on the person. And I think that that's, you know, really important. And then there's also self experimentation. Yeah, you might feel better with a half a packet of element or. And then some days you try a full packet. Like you'll be able to work with yourself now that you know this and say, okay, how do I feel with this? Maybe I take my blood pressure, maybe I see how it's affecting me. And then you, you really begin to take control of your. Your overall health.

Cool. Yeah, I'll. I'll share that plan out so people can see what this conversation turned into on the back end. Cause I think that's pretty cool. So.

Perfect.

All right, so we're in the next phase then.

As we move to your nutrient minerals, we don't. So the only one that we want to make sure is that iron does not elevated. So iron should always be low on a minerals and metals test, a hair test. And the reason is, is that iron should not be high in either men or women to the point where it's being excreted. Iron stays in the blood, so it's a homeostatic fluid that stays in that blood. Best test for that is a TIBC and a transferritin iron saturation rate. You. You have that done basically when you run your blood work. So that's where you wanna look at that. But if it's elevated, which sometimes it is in men, which could be a sign of what's called hemochromatosis, then we of course alert you, we let you know that. But it's very rare. Um, luckily your iron levels are great. Your copper levels are lower than we would like them. I'm gonna go over that in a moment. Manganese is a little bit lower. That can lead to lower energy, lower mitochondrial output. Low copper can lead to Grain of the hair, it can lead to thinner hair, skin, nails, it can lead to lower mitochondrial output, lower thyroid output. Your zinc is optimal, your chromium's a little bit low. Your selenium is, is pretty great. It's almost in that optimal range, which we don't often see it there as much, especially if you're not supplementing or eating things like brazil nuts, which are higher in selenium. And your phosphorus looks good. So when I talked previously, because we want to work on that copper to a greater degree, if you're supplementing with zinc, we see this a lot. We started to see it a lot during the pandemic. People are supplementing with just zinc. And I talked about earlier, everything has an antagonist. So if you increase zinc, it pushes down copper. If you increase copper, it'll push down zinc. And so the nice thing is we know how to fix this. So we add a little bit of copper and then we either draw back on your zinc or we just use a product called balanced zinc, which contains 1 milligram of copper for every 15 milligrams of zinc. Because even though you want them in balance, you have to keep in mind in nature, you get a much smaller amount of copper than you do zinc. So again, we're huge advocates of zinc for your hair, your skin, your immune system, your nails, your muscle tissue growth for exercise or just repair. And so that's an important one. So we would have you use a product that has a little bit of copper, not eliminating your zinc, but adding a little bit more copper, which I think you'll see a difference then in that mitochondrial output, you know, again, overall focus. Hair, skin, nails, all that.

Cool. Well, so far I, I don't really have a lot of gray hair. So put this in the back, in the neck.

No, you're doing well.

Same head of hair that I got. There you go.

That looks good. That looks good. And in kids, it's important we look at copper because there can be a actually elevated copper. There can be what's called a copper toxicity. And copper toxicity can lead to executive functioning disorder, emotional mood based outbursts. It can lead to difficulty focusing. So it's important for kids that we look at that. And, and it's something that we see quite a bit in our practice too.

That's actually interesting. How many kids do you have that go through these tests? Like how, how many kids are getting tested?

Quite a few. Especially for the three that you ran. Because we work with a lot of children, maybe on the autism spectrum based disorder, or we're looking at environmental allergies, sensitivities, you know, what could it be? We're looking at gut health issues. So what you ran is called a starter kit for the minerals and metals test and the Candida metabolic and vitamins test. And since it's so easy to take a couple snips of hair from a child three years and up and then a urine sample, we, we do run a lot of those labs.

Got it. Okay.

It's, it's much easier than drawing blood. Nothing obviously wrong with drawing blood, but blood only shows you disease based diagnosis and we're looking for the underlying root cause issues. So for example, on the next and last part of your minerals and metals test, uh, we look at lead, we look at mercury, cadmium, arsenic, and aluminum. And these are all in the environment. And so you actually had elevated levels of mercury and then you had, you had mildly elevated levels of aluminum. Um, I'll talk about aluminum first. So aluminum we see unfortunately on about 70% or more of first time minerals and metals test wellness clients. And the reason is it is in everything from tap water, ice cubes out at a restaurant, the, the water that you're washing your veggies and produce with, it's in antiperspirants, aluminum pans, the aluminum spatulas, aluminum foil, it's in most baking powders. So it's in a lot. And that is why it's showing up more and more in people's unfortunately, blood and then in their hair. And so we'll, we, we're able to help get rid of it, which is great. But we also then want to work on not just heavy metal detox, but actually on the lifestyle part of it. So like, how might you be exposed to aluminum? And oftentimes, yeah, it's the aluminum perspirant, other items like that, tap water. So we're, we're doing that. But often we look at it as the pans that you're cooking with every day, as they get older, you just scrape them with a metal spatula. Just these micro particles of aluminum can get in there and over time they begin to accumulate. So instead of having somebody replace every pan they own, we say, what's the one that you cook with the most often? You know, everybody has like a saucepan that they typically, or a frying pan, whatever it is. All right, let's start there. Let's use parchment paper, non bleached parchment paper instead of aluminum foil. And then let's use a water filter. Already we've cut out about 80% of where your exposure would be cool. So simple changes like that and then mercury. I'm interested as to how the exposure may have taken place for mercury. So there's two to three main ways. The first way is through larger fish. It's tuna, it's swordfish, any of the large fish. The second way is mercury amalgams in the malt. So those silver fillings, those contain mercury. And after you've had them sometimes for 10, 20 years or more, they can start to upturn a little bit in the edges. And every time you chew, you can get a little bit of mercury particles into the body and the blood. And the last way is, is just accumulated shots over the years. Even food sensitivity shots or food, sorry, environmental based allergy shots can have aluminum or mercury in them. A lot of them have been taken out now. But those could have accumulated in the body. And if you've never done anything to get rid of it, now you're doing a lot of sauna now, which is fantastic. It may have, it may have accumulated over time. So this can be not recent exposure because we don't have a previous lab test for you. This could be many decades. It could be a decade plus ago of exposure.

Okay, so a couple thoughts on those things.

You said. Fish you said. What was the second thing that I. That. Oh, the teeth stuff. So let me talk about the teeth stuff. So I have had, I have.

Three implants.

So it's not like amalgam fillings, which is what you said. But I actually have like titanium implants, plants. So I know that's not necessarily mercury. I don't know if there's a connection there, if it truly is just the filling piece. So that was kind of my first question on that.

Yeah, usually they're using titanium or now sometimes zirconium, which is fairly hypoallergenic. So most likely not from that. Most likely I can't say for sure, but yeah, most likely not.

Cool. And then the fish thing, I mean I've definitely gone through my spurts of eating sushi and stuff like that. So I imagine that's where a lot of people sort of get this. It's tuna is. So what are kind of the other main ones just so people can.

Tuna, swordfish, bluefish, marlin, mahi.

Larger Chilean sea bass, any of the larger fish that eat other fish. So the ones that I can just give people a tip that are mercury free are the sardines, the mackerel, the anchovies, the wild trout and wild salmon. Now all of them are small, basically, except for the wild salmon. But the wild salmon, it, it does not eat other fish and that's why it doesn't accumulate the mercury over time.

Got it. All right. Yeah. So for me personally, it's a lot. We Chilean sea bass, whenever we go out, usually that's kind of like the seafood that we'll get. And then, you know, sushi once every couple weeks or something. I try to stay off of like raw stuff on my sushi as of late because I went through a whole parasite thing like a year ago and I was like, you know, I'd really love to not have to do this again. So I try to hang a little bit, but it does happen every now and then.

So.

Yeah, so that, so those are maybe the couple things there.

Yeah. So I would look at that. The nice thing is this, this is what I really recommend for people. Brian, this is your first time running these labs, but now for the rest of your life you'll always have like your baseline at, you know, whatever age you are now. And if you run them once a year, then you'll know, oh, okay, the exposure happened over the last six months or the last year from the last time that you tested it. And, and that's a really nice piece of mind, knowing that you're always going to be able to catch things quickly. And so what we're going to do is that what's called a heavy metal detox, it's different than a functional medicine detox. Functional medicine detox opens up, opens up the liver pathways, secondarily the kidney pathways, and enables you to eliminate all toxins from your blood and at a much faster rate. So that's all it's helping your liver, your kidneys do a better job in what they already know how to do. Now, a heavy metal detox is different. It contains specifically a antimicrobial product or an, I should say an anti metal based product that has herbs. So the herbs are natural chelators. So we don't do anything in intensive, anything harsh on the body, things like crexil, chlorella, kelp, et cetera, that helps to lock onto them and pull them out. And as they're being pulled out, we're using two other things. One's a biofilm disruptor. Okay. So that's really important that we're able to help. If there are metals in the biofilm of the intestine. So a biofilm is basically a fibrin or gel like structure that can be created in the intestines that can be protecting Bacteria or parasites or even yeast. So we help to break that down with natural enzymes. And the last part is a binder. And the binder not only is a gentle lower histamine binder, because a lot of people with mold have histamine issues. But, uh, which we, you know, I've been working with many people in our practice that way. So it's formulated that way. But it also contains silica from bamboo shoot. That helps as a heavy metal chelator and detoxifier as well. So that's what you use. It's eight weeks. It's actually. It's very simple. And then it helps to pull those metals out of the body. Now you have to let the hair grow back, but you could test that again in six months if you wanted to, to make sure those levels are down.

Cool.

Yeah. And by the way, eating tuna once a month, maybe twice a month, once your levels are down, it's not an issue at all. It's not that you need to completely eliminate those fish. It's just you. Some people, like I used to do in college, ate a can of tuna every single day. Right. To get my protein in and on that. So that is not a wise thing to do. And I just had to be told it. I'm like, oh, okay, I see my numbers. That's not good. And so I stopped doing that.

Hey, real quick on that can thing. Because it actually. So we do have canned tuna. I don't eat it very often, but we have it. But then also like, like canned. Like anything canned. Let's just say anything canned. Are we talking that's an aluminum issue or is that a different metal? Like if we're eating food out of. Out of a can like that?

Yeah, it's. It can definitely be an aluminum issue. That's for sure. As well as. Which this doesn't look at. There's another environmental toxicity test for that. But there can be plastics, PCBs and other issues in those cans because almost all cans are lined with a plastic film of some type. And that's so that the aluminum doesn't corrode at a lower ph. So believe it or not, they have bisphenol A and other essentially plastics in them. Yeah.

Did not know that. So that's good to know. Okay. This all seems not too bad.

Yeah, the glass jars whenever possible. It's. It's just. And it's not about being perfect. Like, that's the thing. None of us can be perfect. We have canned. Some canned food in our house as well. So that you don't, it's just like, okay, does this also come in a glass jar? If we can. Okay, let's get the glass jar. When instead of using aluminum foil, which we used to do, you know, back in the day, we use parchment paper and instead of a metal spatula, we're using like a bamboo spatula. So it's just, it's these small little switches you can do over time that make a big difference. Then of course always filter in your tap water. Even if your city says everything's fine, just be careful on that one. Okay, so a little summary. We would be working specifically with you on that. Sodium, potassium balance, maybe through electrolytes, maybe just through stress, lifestyle, calming the sympathetic nervous system, adding a little bit more magnesium to your diet or through supplementation. Because again in that electrolyte packet it's very small amount of magnesium. We're talking about for you, more like 300 milligrams or so per day. And then copper, we don't need a lot more copper. We're going to be using daily nutritional support or the daily activated multi plus a specialty product called a balanced zinc, which includes zinc and copper, not just copper alone. So then you'll get 2 milligrams, again, it's not a lot, but you'll get 2 milligrams a day of copper because you don't need a lot, you just need enough to get your body back into balance.

Cool.

And then a heavy metal detox when you're ready that just gets added onto whatever you do in your daily life. It's not complicated. It's literally three nutritional supplements and that's it. Instead of doing a chelation based therapy which can remove healthy minerals as well.

Got it. And yeah, I'm actually glad that you wrote that down. Cause sometimes we hear detox and it sounds like it's this big thing that has to happen, but really from what you're saying, it's like we're just adding a couple targeted, you know, supplementation that's going to help achieve a specific goal. Right. And so that's what it is.

Exactly right.

A lot of sense.

The same herbs, like they've used herbs for thousands of years for parasites. Same ones, like different ones of course, but herbs, the same type of mentality for metals than an enzyme and a, and a binder, that's essentially, that's what you're doing. More natural way to do it. Much gentler and yes, you're right. I'll think a lot of people confuse like an intestinal cleanse With a detox and they're very different. So we're not talking about, you know, having to run to the bathroom or anything like that, which is a concern. I mean people think about that when they're doing a detox for sure.

Very concerning. If you're on a podcast and you gotta run to the bathroom. Um, that's right. One more, one more quick question. Just tied into like metals. So my understanding is that parasites often feed on heavy metals. I don't know if this is totally true or not, so you can correct me if I'm wrong. But when you do like a heavy metal detox, let's say specifically here, is there any like secondary impact on parasites and will that maybe you know, incur some sort of hertz reaction or something because they're not getting what they want? Like is there any relationship there?

It's a good question. So how we use all of our protocols, it always goes parasite protocol first, which is called a parasupport protocol. Then it goes to a gut health protocol. If there's anything going on with the gut, we use something called the CBO protocol. And then we would then do the mold protocol or we would do the heavy metal detox, whatever the person needs next. So you basically work from most egregious to least and that enables the body to not have this big herxheimer based reaction. And you might say, well, why would the mold be at the end? Cuz mold is something serious. Correct. I totally agree. But as you're working on the parasites and the cbo, like the gut, you're actually working on the mold at the same time. Because one of the most invasive issues with mold is mold's ability to start to shut down the immune system. And so 80% of the immune system actually lives in and around the gut. We need to fix the gut and the immune system and then the immune system will actually start to attack the mold itself in the body. So that's, that's how we work those.

So does it. So we did the starter kit here. Does it make sense to be adding the other pieces beforehand or like if we're talking about you would detox in that order, should we be testing in that order? It's just good to kind of get your thoughts on that. Cause I know we started here and, and, and also I guess to understand like, why is this the starter kit? Like why is it set up that way with you guys?

Yeah, so the thing, we're always going to call it the starter kit, but we're actually going to be Renaming it in the future as well, because it's where you start your overall health journey for children and adults. However, it's something you ideally want to run every six to 12 months because it looks at. It's a picture of the underlying root causes that lead to the blood work being off and then lead to a disease diagnosis. So we just did your minerals and metals test. Now we're going to go over your Candida metabolic and vitamins test. Lot of words, but basically what it's looking at is gut health. It's also secondarily looking at molds, and then it's beginning to look at your mitochondrial function for energy, and it's looking at all of your vitamin levels. So there's so much that it looks at. That's why if you do the two together, we call them the starter kit. They're a combination. You get all of your mineral levels, all your vitamin levels. You get your gut health plus heavy metals. So it's just a great place to start.

Got it. So you're getting coverage in the other tests, even though it's not called, quote, gut test. I gotcha. Okay.

That's right. Yeah. So this is. They call it. We know. We call it Candida because it's part of the gut. There's many different ways to test your gut. There's a stool test, there's a food sensitivity test. Although we offer those, we. We don't make them part of the starter kit. And the reason is, is that if we ha. We all people always just say. Cause we have the big five, the big five kind of tests, everything. But they said, well, if I can only do two, because I've run a practice for a long time, what would those two be? And it would. It would be these two. They're the easiest to test. You don't to take a stool sample for three days. And so it's just. It's an easy one to run. And so as we're looking at yours, it's a few pages long. I'll go over kind of the highlights. The first page looks at yeast and fungal markers, healthy bacteria, but it can be overgrown, as well as clostridia, Clostridia dvcl that we don't want to see overgrown. And so the first few numbers, 1 through 9, there are five actual markers for a mold substance as well Aspergillus, that we look at. And that is it. Although it's not testing specifically from mycotoxins, which we'll talk about towards the end, it is giving you an indicator it is possible there's potential crossover that these may actually be coming from a mold in the body or a mycotoxin in the body. So when I look at yours, all of them look overall really good. There's one that's right on the borderline and that's a rabinos. So if someone has a little higher level of, let's say yeast, meaning like high optimal, they may have this number a little elevated. And so yours is elevated borderline, not enough for me to do anything specifically because you don't want to. And again, we don't diagnose, treat or give any medical based advice. But I'm going to use the word treat in air quotes. We don't treat something just because there's a minor partial thing in the body. Because you're not looking to change the gut microbiome. You're not looking to change anything unless there is actually something to work on. And we'll talk about that in just a moment. So the next we look at what are bacterial markers, but for the most part beneficial. And when we look at your markers, we see one that's elevated called hipparic acid, one that's mildly elevated and that's just something called hydroxy benzoic acid and that's coming from the intestines. And another one, um, this just borderline is the beneficial bacteria. So the interesting thing is we've, we've run tens of thousands of these labs, just this one specifically. And I can tell you that number 10 hepuric acid that's elevated is sometimes elevated in not necessarily a negative manner from those people that are drinking greens, drinks that are using collagen based products or. Yeah, those, those are the main ones. Or a lot of blueberries and berries in their smoothies. We've been able to correlate this, we've spoken with the lab and, and they, they can actually show that. So just wondering if those are things that you take a lot in and if so, that might explain that result.

Um, so you said blueberries and berries.

So yeah, blueberries, berries and then concentrated greens powders. Like we use the daily fruit vegetable blend. I don't know if you're using that or using the different greens. Um, it can sometimes be elevated because of that.

Got it. Okay. So I don't do shakes really super often, but I do eat a lot of blueberries and strawberries and just general diet on the, on that front. And as far as collagen goes specifically, there was a period in time I've kind of stopped probably in the last, I don't know, maybe six months or so. But I was putting collagen in my coffee every morning, um, for, you know, a year or two probably. Um, so that might be part of that. I don't do any grains, powders really right now. Um, but I do eat a lot of berries, so that's kind of the Context on number 10.

Okay. No, and it, it may just be elevated bacteria, but I do like to ask, because sometimes we see that and anything. So the nice thing is this is a urine sample. It's really just what's going on in the body over the last 24 to 48 hours. So I would say that, yes, possibly from the berries, but we want to take it all in context, so that's why I ask, of course. But then when we go down below, we see a little bit of a marker called Clostridia, and it's a form of bacteria that we don't want to see elevated in the gut. So what we're going to do, it's number 16 and 17. So we've got a byproduct of the Clostridia bacteria, HP, HPA, and then we have four Cresol, and that is a form of the main bacteria, which is Clostridium difficile. So C. Difficile. Okay, so this is an overgrowth in the gut that can move through the gut wall. It can be filtered, of course by the kidneys and it can come out through the urine if we see an elevated level. Although your levels aren't very high, like on the lab test, anything, we want it less than 102. Yours is 110. So not greatly elevated, but elevated. Right. And then the other one for, for Cresol is. Or Cresol is above a 39 and yours is a 49. So we're not talking about 150 or greatly elevated, but elevated enough that we would want to knock this down a bit. Meaning, like lower those levels. Because it's not that your body's supposed to be devoid of it, it's just not supposed to be overgrown. And so what we would use is what we call a modified version of our CBO protocol. And it's for those people that don't have very highly elevated levels. We do a 12 week protocol called the CBO protocol, but instead we have a one month modified protocol to lower those levels. And that's exactly what we're gonna do for you.

Got it. All right, so that makes sense. Follow up question on when we're Talking about bacterial markers and that hip, hip uric one that was elevated. So your, the range here was 241, sort of the high end of the range. And then I was at 660. So is that like an excessive high level? Like, because I know sometimes it depends on the thing like what you normally see.

Yes, that would. So if you're looking at anything 2x and above, definitely yes, it's a high level. So yours is closer to 3x for what we would even want is like our normal value there. And so for me, if, let's say that you only had that level elevated and you didn't have any of the Clostridium DVCL elevated, I, I'd say, okay, we're gonna maybe attribute this then to the berries and to other things. But since you had two other markers that should not be elevated, elevated, I say regardless if that's the berries or not, we're gonna take care of that because we're gonna be getting rid of that clustridia overgrowth. Does that make sense?

Yeah. And just for some historical context on this, I did the, the GI map a few years ago, which is a stool sample that will show, I don't know if it's showing this stuff, but it shows bacterial overgrowth. I actually.

H. Pylori overgrowth. Um, I think I had a couple other things, but I know H. H. Pylori is, you know, a pretty big red flag when, when that gets brought up. So I don't know if that add context to this at all or anything, but wanted to throw that out there.

But it certainly shows that a history of gut based imbalances, because H. Pylori is a bacteria that actually affects stomach acid digestion, can lead to acid reflux, can lead to all sorts of issues with the gut. So as long as that was taken care of, that's obviously a great thing. What we're looking at now is more downstream in the intestines where H. Pylori typically lives, more in the stomach. It can be in other parts, but typically in the stomach is where now you find it on a stool test because it has to come out of the body, which is great, you tested for it, but hopefully that's been eliminated.

So I did nothing to eliminate it. So I'm pretty sure it's not been eliminated. Um, just quickly, I guess. Like what's, how do you attack an H. Pylori overgrowth? Cause I know a lot, a lot of people have it and like whenever I bring it up to somebody, they're like that's the one that you don't want. Like, that's a pretty big problematic one and it's hard to address from what people have told me. So just love to get your thoughts on that.

So again, I can't give any medical advice and we're talking now about a medical based disease of the body. But I can tell you what I do and what many of the wellness clients in our practice choose to do. So having having known that now we would do the CBO protocol because we want to make sure that we get that and anything else. And we add a product called mastic gum and we use 2 to 3 grams of mastic gum per day for eight weeks. So I've had H. Pylori twice when I was in my twenties, really just learning about all these health based things. And my daughter had it. Unfortunately she got it when she was only about 4 years old from food poisoning at a restaurant. And unfortunately she did get it. I saw the symptoms, bloated belly, things like that, as a child, especially upon waking. And so did a stool test with her. Turns out she had H. Pylori. And good news is we knew how to fix it. We did mastic gum, we did that for eight weeks. And, and she got rid of it, which was great.

That's cool. So with the CBO protocol you mentioned earlier, a modified version that was a mub, would you switch to this 12 week version now, knowing what I just told you, or would you keep it there and then just add the mastic gum piece?

Well, we, we allow the wellness client like yourself to say, okay, what, what do I want to do? Do I want to do a stronger four week protocol or would I rather do a gentler build up 12 week protocol where I'm using three products per day for 12 weeks versus three products per day for four weeks? And the stronger ones are basically for the first four weeks, we just dive right into it.

Plus you would add the mastic gum onto that. And so it's not let's make a Deal. But I always like joke around with my, you know, clients, you know, what, what, what do you think will fit you? Because ultimately at the end of the day, I need to make sure that you complete it, that you're consistent with it and that we keep in touch. And so after four weeks, five weeks, if you're, if you're just don't feel like a marked improvement in digestion or whatever it might be, because many people come to us, they have bloating, they have gas, they have Constipation or diarrhea, um, is we. We want to see a marked improvement in that. And so then if the first four weeks didn't get it, we can always add the full 12 weeks CBO protocol.

So am I hearing you right when you say, like, a.

More.

A stronger version in a tighter timeframe. Is that what this one week is? So there's basically, like, different concentrations, if you will, on. On the strength of. Of the pills that would. Or the supplements that would be happening. Is that the difference between the 4 and the 12?

Yes, but also the level. Meaning that if you had elevated yeast markers, elevated bacterial markers, and you had the elevated clostridium markers, you would be using a longer protocol, because four weeks most likely wouldn't be enough to turn everything around. So it's basically a yes on both. Yes, it is stronger only for three to four weeks. But even stronger does not necessarily mean better when you have a lot of overgrowth. You just need more time. And usually a gentler approach is better where it's not as strong. Month one gets stronger month two, and then strongest month three. But by the time you get to month three, you've pretty much eliminated everything. So you don't feel any die off, you don't feel any of the negative effects.

Got it. So what you're seeing in this is that I have some overgrowth, but not like, a whole lot. And so the idea is then to say, let's do maybe the. The stronger version of it in a tighter timeframe. Is that. Is that what I'm.

And then add the mastic gum for eight weeks. That's correct. Yes, exactly.

Okay.

That's what I'd recommend to you.

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay.

Okay, so then page two, we're looking at oxalates. We're looking at the mitochondrial function mitochondria. Basically, the engines inside of each of your cells that give you energy produce ATP for exercise, but also just things like walking up the stairs. Like, if you didn't produce ATP, you'd be exhausted by the time you got to a top of the flight of stairs. Um, and then we look at the neurotransmitter metabolites that also help with mood. And so I want to go over the mitochondria first. So your oxalates look good, your mitochondria look great. They really do. Yes. There's one marker that's a little low called aconitic acid. But you look at. When you look at the Krebs cycle or the citric acid cycle, which is Basically how your mitochondria produce energy, it's not one marker. Basically they move in a clockwise circle. We'll say using B vitamins like niacin, B3, and they're using all of these different enzymes, amino acids and proteins in order to produce energy. And so if when we're looking at them, they are all within range with yours are one that we caught at that low time, it's only because it was already transferred then to another. However, if we see three or four markers, low or high, we can see low mitochondrial output, low energy output typically or excessive based on high levels of stress. Makes sense.

Cool, that does make sense. And this, hey, one of these where you're like, hey, this looks great.

This looks great. Well, it is my job to nitpick as well. I will say, you know, I look at, not necessarily all the gold stars, but okay, what do we need to work on? So the next part, I think you have very good levels of dopamine and serotonin, but lower level. So dopamine is basically the rewards. Neurotransmitter gives us drive, it gives us energy. Serotonin is the happy, feel good neurotransmitter. So your drive and your, you know, the leadership, the go, go, go. That neurotransmitter is your highest out of all of them. And your serotonin one is a little lower. It's still right on that, like that, right on that edge of being good. And that's the happiness, that's the feel good, that's, that's the serotonin, the antidepressant one. And then norepinephrine though, that's basically the gas for the car. Like that is the get up and go. Not the, not the I want the reward or I want to achieve. That's what dopamine is. Norepinephrine is the actual energy that is a neurotransmitter or we'll call it a stress based hormone that comes from that sympathetic nervous system. And again, it's a little on the lower side. And if I were looking, because I like to use your minerals and metals test as well, I would say we're actually seeing a little bit of a over time. Again, this happens over years. The body's becoming a little worn down. Not a lot, but a little worn down based on energy output over the years versus recovery and rejuvenation. So with you, these markers are not out of range. But what I would say is I would be working on making sure that your workouts and your sauna and all your work and your go, go, go are also balanced by recovery rejuvenation before you get into your 50s and, and 60s and beyond. So that we're not trying to play catch up. Does that make sense?

Yeah. So that's what the, the recovery is.34 norepinephrine and epinephrine. Is that what you're saying? That's kind of the recovery piece.

It, well, it's a sign that your body's no longer putting out the same output as it once did as easily as it once did in terms of your stress hormones.

Okay. So most likely your body is becoming again, I'm nitpicking here because they're all within range, but not optimal. And so what I would say is that there's more energy going out than energy coming in and over time because this doesn't just happen overnight. It's starting to wear the body down. Now, having said that, I do like to use all of the labs, including the minerals and metals test that we did to say to you that this is a snapshot in time. I don't want to over exaggerate anything. I always listen to the person's story and if it matches up, great. We begin to work on the lifestyle and those types of things. If it was just a, you know, a last 30 days, yeah, I was, I was training harder. I wasn't getting as much sleep. There was a little bit more stress. All right. This was a moment in time. Right. But let's still be aware of that. And so we don't have more of those months on top of months. That's how the body truly gets worn down and exhausted.

So I was going ask this follow up and you might have just addressed it there. So, and, and it was, how do you address the energy coming in portion of it. Right. So like what are, what are the actions that you take in order to address that?

So the, the number one thing is getting. So if you're someone that outputs a lot of energy through mental or physical, you want to make sure that you're in bed for eight to nine hours, sleeping for somewhere between seven and nine hours and you want to get 90 minutes of deep sleep. So deep sleep is rejuvenating for the body. And REM sleep, where you want to be two hours or more, is rejuvenating for the brain. It's oversimplified, but that's basically how it works. So when you're using a whoop strap or a ring, whatever you're using, look there now I see I see it on your wrist right there. You wanna make sure that you're getting at least 75 minutes, ideally 90 minutes of deep, and that you're averaging two hours or more of REM. So that's gonna be great recovery. The next thing is anything that's we call like non sleep, deep rest. Could be pmf, could be sauna, but not overdoing it, not letting the heart rate get too high. It can be Epsom salt baths, it can be massage, foam rolling, acupuncture, any of the things that bring energy into the body rather than the output which is the mental and physical.

So I almost wanted. Cause you're, you're actually saying a lot of things that I do. And so now I'm kind of wondering like if I'm doing a lot of these things and we're still seeing this kind of at this lower place. So for some context, my deep and REM sleep are always great. Like they make up 40 to 50% of my sleep cycle throughout the course of every night. So the numbers that you were saying, I'm typically higher than that in terms of the rate. You know, just the, the numbers of what it is. Now my total sleep is an issue because I got, you know, kids that wake up at 6:30 and I have to do my workout in the morning and I have to work on. So like my total sleep and my sleep debt is probably my biggest challenge there and how that works. But PMF mat I use nightly before I go to bed and sometimes during the day while I'm sitting. Sauna, like I said, four days a week. You know, some different things. Like. So I mean it feels like it really is just a sleep component almost just like a, the, the time of sleep from kind of everything that I'm hearing.

Well, I work with a lot of, you know, high performance, a lot of CEOs, a lot of executives think about it as how many hours you're on, not just sleep versus how many hours you're off. So. And parents as well. Think about, you're. You're balancing a job, your exercise, your kids, family. And so if. Let's just. I'm just gonna make this up. Let's say you're sleeping from midnight to 6:00am all right, so that's six hours out of 24. So for, what is it, 18 hours. So for 18 hours you're on and six hours you're off. And so start to think of it that way is not just. I was talking about a little bit earlier. You know, I try to, I try to work with people in a, in a reasonable fashion, myself included. Although I wake up well before 7am my on time is basically 7, maybe 7:30 once I start helping the kids get ready and all that till about, let's say seven in the morning till seven at night. So 12 hours of on. Now I try to take some off time during that time. Taking a walk, those types of things get in my own workout, which has a relaxation effect. Not during it, but after it. And then trying to turn things down after 7pm really around 5:30. Six is when we have dinner. So at that time. So the goal is just turning down the idle, the RPMs right in the car for more hours per day. That's how I would look at it for you.

Got it. Yeah. I mean my, my day marriage, yours a lot. I'd say I go to bed on average at 9:30, I wake up at 5. But when I wake up it's straight to gym because that's when I can do my time. So I'm up at 5 and I'm working out at 5:15 basically. And then sauna afterwards when the kids wake up and like all that. So my on starts like right when I wake up as opposed to kind of easing into a day.

That's the, and I, and I know what you're saying and everything is a compromise. I get it. But your sleep time is fantastic. Even being in bed that seven and a half hours, you're going to bed earlier. So you're taking advantage of the deep sleep time, which is fantastic again. So you do what you can. I, I, if I was. Yes. If I could, you know, rewrite your entire day without all the other things that you have to do, I would allow you to ease into the day for an hour or two. Yes. But that's not always the case. And so let's not, let's not over weigh in on one marker. If we really thought this was an issue. There's another test called the stress mood and metabolism test. And that would look at your cortisol levels throughout the day and it would look at your testosterone, your thyroid and other markers. And if we saw thyroid elevated, we saw testosterone dropping, and we saw cortisol low in the morning and high at night, then yes, I would say, Brian there, we do need to take, we have to take action on this. Yes. But this lab, I'm not gonna overdo that based on this one marker.

Okay. Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. Just, you know, I, I'd love to get context. Not only. Cause I Feel like if I'm thinking this stuff, other people are and it's, it's nice to be able to connect the dots and things.

So. Okay, cool.

So let's move.

I mean, this and this is, this is putting all the pieces of the puzzle together. And if people do want to run all the labs, the labs called the big five, and you get the starter kit, these two, plus the stress mini metabolism test for all your hormones, which is just simple saliva test and blood spot for the thyroid, vitamin D, et cetera, food sensitivity tests. And the last one is the omega three to omega six inflammation test. So but you know, people should just start where they're ready and sometimes maybe that's too overwhelming. Um, and that's, that's okay too. So then as we move to the next page, we're basically looking at your ketone markers that I wanna chat about and your vitamin levels and mineral. Your vitamin levels. Okay, so we look at the first, the folate metabolism. Yours is fantastic. So really great numbers. I'm gonna actually skip to the vitamins. You've got great B12, good B5, pentanthenic acid. You've got, let's see, great B2, riboflavin. You've got good CoQ10, which is great for the energy of the cells. You've got great NAC as a detoxifier and great biotin. Again, that's hair, skin, nails, as well as carbohydrate metabolism. Vitamin C is low and B6 is low. So vitamin C is needed as a great powerful antioxidant. Again, if you're not supplemented with vitamin C and you're exercising a lot, you use the sauna, you can deplete it. It's just a powerful antioxidant that helps with oxidative stress. If you create oxidative stress, vitamin C simply helps with oxidative stress. Now, B6 is an interesting one because B6 would actually improve the markers. We were just talking about your serotonin and your calming of the sympathetic nervous system. So for you, if you're not already using the daily nutritional support or if you don't like powders, the daily activated multi, that'll have the B6. But if you're already using those, then we would add on top of that something called the activated B complex that would contain 50 milligrams of of B6 to get that, that level up. Vitamin C is very easy to get. I mean, you can take that typically we say away from your workout. So you can take it in the morning or for you, you're doing your workout in the morning, we would just do it then in the evening or, or afternoon. And that's, that's very simple to get anywhere from one gram to two grams a day. Not a massive amount, but just a good amount to keep up with your workouts.

Yeah, I was actually asked that cause I know they usually come in milligrams, so it's a thousand milligrams or one gram. Um, so for me, because it looks really low like from these numbers. So if you're, you're low kind of range, here is a 10 and I'm at 0.5. So is there a different amount I should be taking? Do you view this in a way where like I need to catch up or do you just sort of like start where you are and do what you need to do? Like how do you approach that?

That's a good question. Yeah, because Coq 10, you build up. So that's a good question. But um, vitamin C, you don't. So vitamin C, like your B vitamins are water soluble and so what you're gonna do is you're just gonna get a little bit on a daily basis. So that's how we feel with most vitamins, a little bit on a daily basis rather than a mega dose. Now there's a time and place for a large dose. Like if you have a virus or you're not feeling well, sure you can, you can increase that to 5, 10 grams or so per day. But for everyday use we like to keep it at 1 to 2 grams, maybe 3 grams maximum. And for you, 1 to 2 grams is right where I see you at. You're not 200 plus pounds. I don't think that we need a huge dose. You're not running Ironmans, you're, you're, you know, you're getting a good workout in and you just take in a normal amount. So and of course then you can retest this. Right? So if you're taking vitamin C, we want to see it then on the higher side we'll probably actually look for like 300 or 400 on the chart because we want to make sure that your body has plenty of it, knowing that it's a water soluble vitamin.

And what's the amount of B6 that, that you should be targeting in a day?

So for most people, fifty to a hundred milligrams a day, I like to stay a little on the lower side, closer to 50 milligrams. Typically our formulations are 25 milligrams per serving and so if you needed two, then you would simply take two of the servings. But you have to keep in mind multiple products are going to have B vitamins. So like in the daily nutritional support or the activated multi, about 25 milligrams. And so that might be enough for you. If you're not taking any right now, you start with that. But then if you felt like, oh, I need more or I'm getting big benefit from this, then you can add on the activated B complex, which then adds on top of your multi. So people should know that. Meaning that if you're using multiple products, there can sometimes be a sum in each product. So start to add them together.

Yeah. Is this one. So you said COQ10 is something that accumulates over time, if I understood you correctly a minute ago, yes.

Whereas.

But these water soluble, like B6, B12, is that the. Is that the same or is it kind of like vitamin C where you just sort of start taking it and that's what you do.

That's right. So they're only gonna last in your body hours to days, maximum.

Yeah, got it. So I take no vitamins, FYI, Just like body bands. So it seems like we're stop the fat.

Well, you're getting most of it from food. Like, that's the thing is that's what we try to share with people. But we tell people like, I'm sure you're eating a fantastic diet, but we tell people all the time that it is impossible if you are exercising, you're a busy individual, you have some stress in your life to get every micronutrient. Because we're not talking about macros, not proteins, fats and carbs. We're talking about micronutrients. It's impossible to get everything from a balanced diet. I mean, I take, I use advanced apps that look at all the micronutrients and all the foods that people eat, even the antioxidants, and people fall short. Um, so that's. Okay. So that's why I always say you don't need a lot. We use something called the daily foundational protocol. It's not mega doses of anything and you add it on top to what you're already doing and then you just go about your day like you don't have to worry about, you know, making sure that you meet your nutrient requirements, which we don't want anybody to have to scrutinize, you know, every food that they're eating.

Cool. Okay.

All right. So the last one in this lab that I wanted to talk about, and we'll just move on to glutathione is you had elevated levels of what's called adipic acid S and sebastic acid. Typically we see this in people and I bet this is gonna be you who drop into hypoglycemia or low blood sugar or do an extended fast. Again, I don't know if this is you because I don't know your diet, but this to me looks like.

Someone that doesn't necessarily have a lot of gut based issues, but someone that is producing more ketones because of longer intermittent fasts and maybe even fasted exercise.

So this is very interesting. Um, I was on a. I've talked about it before too. Probably say like ninety to a hundred days or so. I was like looking back at it, but where I was intermittent fasting every day.

Like 16 to 18 hours probably or like maybe like 14 to 16 hours. And I was doing that every day. So I started like learning like what the body does at certain points. I'm like oh, super interesting. Like I want this to start happening inside of my body. Hoffy sounds great. Um, and so you know I was doing that for a period of time. I not sure when I did these if I was still doing it. I might have been. But I've since then because what I started noticing is I was actually losing.

Muscle mass from working out every morning. I'm a very skinny person for everyone who's, you know, not watching a video right now. And so I'm working out in the morning, fasted and I actually noticed like I don't need to lose weight. Like a goal for me has never been weight loss. Like if I'm working out is actually to try to like maybe put something on. But in fasting I wasn't giving my body like anything to put on basically. And so I started actually now I eat breakfast every day because I feel like I need that more than not. And so yeah, a lot of that I was happening. How long do these particular. So for anybody who has run this, it's 43 to 49 on the line item in this test. How, how long do these sort of last or do they change really quickly based on how you change your, your lifestyle?

Besides the yeast and bacteria ones, they change very quickly.

Yes.

So days. And so this at least is showing from the night before to that morning. You are producing more ketone based markers, most likely not definite dropping into a little bit lower blood sugar. And I would completely agree with you. More of the ectomorph body type or vata Body type, you're gonna lose muscle faster and it's gonna be difficult for you to put on a whole lot of weight. Like, meaning like that, that. So that's why everybody has different goals, everybody has different body types. So what I give to you would be different from someone that was 5, 8, 225 pounds, always find it challenging to keep the weight off, but they were able to always keep muscle or mass on their body.

Right.

So for them, yeah, a little longer, intermittent fast. They don't utilize glucose as well with their body. I know that doesn't make sense. I don't, we don't have time to kind of go through all of that today. But their body converts it more to body fat. Right. And for you, your body burns through glucose and carbohydrates and all of that quickly. So you're not someone that I would ever put on a low carb diet. You need it for both the brain and the body. And it would be more balanced. I mean, you'd be eating a good amount of protein to keep the muscle mass on the body, but you'd have balanced carbohydrates with that. That would actually be the vast preponderance of your diet. And then enough protein to keep the muscle on, build the muscle, and then a moderate amount of fat. And so when we look at this, we would want next time we ran this lab for all of those to be in the optimal range so that we weren't dropping again. Because what happens is when you go into low blood sugar, it's a stressor on the body. It, it, it is a stressor on the central nervous system and your body. Then you get signals then to your adrenal glands to work harder to produce something called glucocorticoids. And over time that can stress the body.

Yeah, I just want to like add something to this cuz this just the, the frame on this. So I, and I did this all on my own. It's what everybody does. They go out, they find, find something on social media, they read somebody's book, they do whatever and they're like, yes, intermittent fasting is, it makes so much sense. I want all of these things. And over time I just kind of started feeling like, you know what? Like, I don't know if that really is like the thing for me. And just because something technically works in a lab or we've run tests and we know that this is just foundationally how science works, doesn't necessarily mean that that's how it needs to work for a specific Individual. Right. It happens with us when we're in houses and how you handle things. It happens with you, with how you're treating and writing things up. And this, if this is what this is, which I imagine it probably is because you guessed it and I don't know exactly when I turned it off, but it was somewhere around here, then it makes a lot of sense. Right. And then if, like for me, my thought has been if I want to get some of those benefits that come instead of me doing it every day like I was doing it before, I might go like once a month or two months and say I'm going to do a 24 hour one day or a 48 hour one day and just kind of hit it like quickly and have that happen and then come back to being able to kind of run optimally, you know, throughout the majority of my time. That's, that's kind of where I've settled on it. But I think a lot of people do the same thing. Oh, I saw this makes so much. I'm going to do this right. And then it might not make sense for you, you know.

That's right. Yeah. And that's the nice thing is the, the labs prove out what's working, what's not working and then you can continue to tweak for your body. And I, and I think that's important. And plus, you know, it's sometimes just the quantity. So 16 hours isn't right for me. But what does work well for my body is about 13 hours. So I stop eating around 6 o' clock at night, 5:36. And then I start eating around 7:38 in the morning. And so the perfect sweet spot for me, once I start to ramp up my day, my body needs the fuel. Some people can go a little bit longer. And so eventually you do find what works best with your body. And sometimes honestly it's based on where you're at in life at that moment. And that's okay too. But like you, I save longer intermittent fasts for once a week and then, and that's sorry, three times total a month. So not every week. Exact. And then once a quarter I do a longer functional medicine, detox for seven days and that includes a two and a half day, almost three day longer liquid based fast. So yes, time and place for everything. And you'll start to see just like yourself losing muscle and eventually not as strong, not as energetic and you're like your body's a more catabolic state. That's not ideal. It's not a Good thing.

Yeah, yeah, very cool.

All right, we've got one more page here before we move on to the mold based test. All of yours look great on this page, so I'll kind of cut right to the chase. Your glutathione levels, which helps with detoxification, looked excellent. Your methylation, which is essentially easiest way to say it is DNA reading and writing, replication for inflammation, all looks good. No high ammonia excess, which is like, can be tissue breakdown or even gut based tissues. And then no excessive. I'm assuming you're not taking in any aspartame or salicylates. Not a high level. And there's no excessive GI bacteria. So that's why when I look at this as well, I know we have some GI issues, imbalances, but not major. There's just not major issues here. So that's why again, led me to do that four week. All of your amino acids look good in terms of how they're breaking down. And then your phosphoric acid, which is really a measure of vitamin D, calcium, magnesium for the bones, all of that looks excellent. So overall this was a great lab. I mean, we talked about a bunch of things. We went in depth, but certainly beyond really looking at the blood sugar, intermittent fasting, um, and the first page, which was a little bit of bacterial overgrowth. Overall it was a great, it was a great Candida metabolic and vitamins test. It really was like, this is, this was a great reading.

This is, this is awesome. You know, it's funny is I have suspected and again, I think this is just from like all the things you read. And like, I talked to a lot of people like you and I've talked to all these other people like, oh yeah, you got this one symptom. You should think your gut, this, that or the other. And like, I've just inherently thought that like, I have this like big gut problem that I need to get handled and addressed, but I've never really tested it in any like, strategic way to actually understand. So it's like all this external information coming in and I've just like created this, this story that isn't even necessarily true in my head on what's going on after we're looking at, you know, what you're talking about here. And that's awesome and it makes me very happy, but it just makes me wonder who's listening to this that has done the same thing with something else in their life. And there is a reason that you need to see the actual information as opposed to this narrative. That we start creating in our head, because it can. The thing about narratives in your head, at some point you start believing them yourself, and then you just assume that they're true without the actual validation to show that they're true. And it puts us down paths that we shouldn't be going down. Right. So, like, if you're taking, you know, that the lab reads are awesome for those who really want to get into it. I'm very thankful for it. But if you're taking like a broad scope, like, takeaway from this, it's, let's not tell ourselves stories that are not necessarily true and then start believing our own hype and think that that's the case. So that that's something that I'm seeing out of this particular lab here in our conversation. So I'm, I'm happy about that.

Excellent. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And the last one that we went through was. So first one was a hair sample. Second one was a urine sample. This third one's a urine sample as well. So really easy again for children and adults to do. We're looking now, so a lot of people. There's a little confusion around this one. It is our mold and mycotoxins test, but when you test for mold inside the body, you're actually looking for a waste product of mold called mycotoxins, basically a metabolite, a. A not quite a die off, but more of a waste based product. And that shows you ma, based on the level of that mycotoxin, how much mold there may be exposure to in the body or in the body itself. So I think that this will, this'll be a fun one for us to go through. This is your field, actually. I would love to have a little fun with you. All of these words are always, you know, easy to read, not easy always to pronounce. Let's go through. Let's see if we have the same pronunciation of them. Because we're basically.

Mold species. It's like nobody knows the exact pronunciation, but we're looking at Fusarium. Are we on the same page for how you say that?

Yeah, I say fuse. I say fusarium. Yeah.

Okay.

Some people say fusarium.

Aspergillus. You say aspergillus.

I'd say aspergillus with a soft G.

Okay, Soft G. Penicillium.

Yep, that's how I say it. Got it.

All right. Alternaria.

Altern area. Yep, that's how I say that.

Okay. And then cleviceps.

Or do you pronounce the clavis I.

I do the long A. Yeah, I do.

Okay. Yeah, yeah. So we're, we're pretty much on the same page. It's funny because you always hear them pronounced differently, but basically those are all forms of mold based species that we look for. And then what? So then you look for as well. What we do then is look for the mycotoxins. So we're looking at a urine based assay that's going through these major markers and then we'll go over what ones, if any of yours were elevated. Okay, so we're going through.

Aflatoxins. Ochratoxins.

Let's see if you have a pronunciation on this one. Tricothecines. Go ahead.

I say trichothocene.

Trichothocene. Even better. And then how do you pronounce the last one? I always just say za.

Yeah. Honestly, I'll the time to you. I say zearone. And I'm not totally sure if that's how you say it.

That's how I say it as well. Zarellanone. So we're looking at those and then we've got just a couple others and other mycotoxins which we want to talk about here today. Chetaglobsin, citronine, a niatin gliotoxin, mycophenolic acid. And then let's see if I can get this one. Sten. I don't know if that's the pronunciation, but we always just say stc. Yeah. And so these are other microtoxins. Sorry, go ahead.

I said that's in the. Yeah, that one's a tough one. The first one is, it's cataglobacin for the mold cotomium. So that's the, the one that ties to that.

Perfect, Perfect. We appreciate that, like your input on that. And so this test now is a little bit different in how it measures it. So basically there's a low level that we want everybody to be below. So it's basically like equal to or less than. It's very much like the first page of that Candida test that we just went through. And then anything elevated is out of range. So on your lab, all of yours looked great. They really did. I believe this was the first mycotoxin test you'd have ever taken. I'm not sure if that's true.

I actually have. I did one with the same lab in. I just pulled it up right now and.

Okay. Yeah, I'd love to hear if you have previous results.

Yeah, I'm trying to see the date on this 2019. So I have one from 2019 that I did as well. So I'd love to kind of compare these back and forth and kind of see.

So anyways, yeah, so I don't have your first results, but on this one and I. This is, this is important context. The Otoxin A OTA should be 7.5 or less. Yours is 9.94. So it's in the red, it's elevated. But when we create. So we're basically creating our own what's called structured data and summary on these to make it easier for people. I would have a. I would have a line that's actually graded, has a gradient, because as we look at this, up to 10, up to 15 would be a green fade, meaning, like it's not. Not optimal, but it's, it's not ideal. So, so you are still below that. So you're elevated. But since it's in the red, it makes it look as bad as if it was a hundred or 150, when really, you know, you're like three points maximum out of range, let's say about two and a half points. So I'm not as worried about that. Ochratoxin A, of course I want to still work on it, and we will, but it's not. I always tell people this is not as one to be worried about. Now, your citronate is one that is elevated, and that one is basically double the elevation we want to see it at. So double the max elevation. And when we look at that one, although not as egregious as that Ochratoxin A, where can it be found? It can be found in dry goods, we call it. So basically like grains and cereals and things that might be affected with this specific mold. Because if people not are not aware, and I'm sure you've. We talked about this on the show and other places, but let's say that any of those nuts or seeds or beans or oats or anything has just a little dampness in it, and then they seal the bag. You can actually get some of that mold or those mold spores. And the mold spores could even be in the, in the manufacturer that are in that package or begin to grow at a microscopic level. Nothing that you would typically ever see or taste, but that is a real possibility. It's also found in things like wine and other products, sometimes even olive oil. So it's. It's important to know that there can be exposure to those. And then of course, for the citronin or citronine you'd want to look at the same thing. Mold from water damaged, typically walls, Sheetrock vents, et cetera.

Mm.

How does that compare to your previous ones? Because I'd love to see if it's better about the same what that looked like from before.

Yeah. So Otra Foxen is almost exactly the same. So again, I ran this just 2024 right now I ran this like four and a half years ago, this last one.

Yep.

I was 9.11. We're 9.94 here on Oshatoxin. So that is pretty much the same. By the way, when I ran this before, I got the same sort of explanation for my functional doc that I was working with on. On like yeah, it's elevated. But at the time when I did this other one for some context, I was in houses every single day at this time during inspection.

Yeah.

So now obviously we've, you know, kind of established the company and I'm not going into every house. I go every now and then and then I help support on all the other things. So like my exposure personally has gone down a lot for my day to day from environment as opposed to what it was.

Now. Previously my citronin was at 14, so now we're at like 51. So there's a big swing there. The other big swing that happened here is before my Microphenylic acid was 160.

And now it's like not even showing up, which is kind of interesting too.

Yeah.

So yeah, that's kind of where it's at. I mean, so. So I, you know, from what I have now in here.

Right.

So we're seeing citronin. So just to kind of recap that piece of it. Do you see maybe it's just a general about all the molds like we could talk about or the mycotoxins. Do you feel that food environment.

Is one more prevalent than the other? Is it tied to the specific toxin that you see where that comes from? Just curious to get your. Your input on that.

That yeah, definitely tied to specific toxin. Some are almost all water based damage. Like realistically sure, you could get some from these, but it's really from water based damage. Um, now I will tell you this is important that we bring this up and that we had this, you know, chat about the Ochratoxin a cuz if you are just consistently a nine. Well, it's like everyone, we almost never see war minerals and metals test where anyone's aluminum is a zero. But we see all the other metals at basically a zero. But Aluminum, almost never. Why it's so pervasive in the environment. Same with this. Mycotoxin, ochratoxin A. So it's like, I've never seen anybody come back with basically zero. It's just. And you can, you know, share your knowledge and experience on this. If you're living in an area where there's just more mold, like, environmental as well. Not even just in the home. I think we have a level of exposure that is part of nature. And so, like, we're gonna have maybe some level of exposure, but the one, the citronin, and I don't wanna jump off the. The. The thought too quickly there, but it. It can come from foods. It really can. So the way that we store grains, anything that's been, like, fermented or that can ferment or that is stored, that can last for a long time, like bear and cheese and wine and, you know, anything like that, even.

Cured meats like beef jerky, things like that, can all have this as well.

Yeah, I mean, that's interesting. I mean, for where I am now, right. If there's. If there's one thing that I feel confident is that I don't have a major mold issue in my house. So I know that the environmental component of this specifically, like, yeah, there's one or, you know, there's one or two things that I know that there's something going on. Honestly, I haven't even tested them. Because my solution, if you think about it's like, all right, I know that there I'm seeing cues of water damage in maybe two spots. I don't own the house, not really going to be able to fix it if there's an issue. And frankly, every place that you walk into to only see one or two things that you're in is like. It's like, how did I find this place basically, right. You know, for my situation, like, yes, there's a couple little things, but in the grand scheme of things, I have a good sense of, like, what's good and not good and this, that or the other. So I would kind of settle on that. So is it possible that there are some aspergillus or penicillium species that happen to be in, like, one of these places in my space that I might be getting close to? Like, I suppose that's possible, but I'm also doing a lot of, you know, I'm doing sauna. I'm doing a lot of detox too. So, like, how does that counteract, you.

Know, what's going on well, it very well may be, yeah. It's very possible that your numbers would be higher if you weren't doing your exercise and your sauna and eating well. All of these things in life, that's why we do them. You know, I wrote the DE Stress protocol diet, exercise, stress reduction, tox removal, rest, emotional balance, scientifically backed supplements and success mindset. It's like you don't do one, you do all. You don't have to go all out in any one. And it helps balance then the things we are exposed to because we can't live a super pristine life where we're never exposed to anything. So the goal is to really make the body strong to get the rest it needs, then allow the body to heal and do what it needs. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean we can't give it a little bit of help, right? We can't. We can do a heavy metal detox, we can help with the gut, we can help with these things because that's also giving our body back some of its strength so it doesn't have to use all of its own. So that's how I look at it. I think it's, you know, super important. I know for myself growing up in New England in the fall and late spring, my allergies to mold were awful. And my house didn't necessarily get worse, but all the dead leaves in the fall and then the snow melting them and causing, you know, mold on the grass and the leaves as well, it really taxed my immune system and, and overflowed that rain barrel, for lack of a, you know, different terminology. But it was brutal. I mean, it really was. Now it lasted for a month and like late October and really bad in April. And then after that it was better. And so like, was I better? No, but like, I wasn't exposed to large amount that I was, you know, during those couple of months and. But that's what we try to share because if you were to lower your overall mold level, improve your immune system, when now. So again, I'm the same human with the same genetics when I. When October comes around, or especially the month of April, which they were the worst, when pollen's out, all those things, um, I'm not saying that I. My body is not still susceptible, but I don't have any symptoms. And that's because everything else is much more balanced. That's what we try to help people with. Not become perfect, but much better balanced humans.

Yeah, I, I preach the same thing with everyone I talk to as well. Um, so. So let's talk about. So we have this mycotoxin result. We have our Otra toxin. A. That's sort of there, but not terrible.

And if that was the only thing, I would do nothing with that. Just to let you know, Brian, like, I wouldn't. I would not do anything with that small marker right there, because that is most likely some type of ongoing exposure that I could put you on a mold protocol. But.

It'S. It's. Again, it's like aluminum. Like, it's. It's like. Yeah, it's there. We want to. We don't want that to start to get elevated. If it's elevated, it's an issue, but it's really not an issue where it is right now. But the citronin I would start to look at. Okay. Are there any foods that could be exposed to? Like, that's where I would go first. Like the beef jerky, the dried meats, the beer. Like, I would look at those things and say, that's most likely the culprit. I'd begin to eliminate those. But I would most likely, after the four week modified CBO protocol we put you on, I would move to the mold protocol just to zap out that. That last amount that is there and could be. Which I know for you previous exposure as well, you. You had this already elevated, right? On your. Your previous one, Citronus.

This one was elevated. Not as high, but it was elevated before. Yeah.

Yeah. So I'd want to see if it's like an ongoing. Like, have you eaten the same type of thing, same company for five years? Because that's always possible. I mean, it really is. Or, you know, is it. Has this been in your body and now we need to get rid of it? Just like the mercury.

Yeah, I. So I just want to revisit the food piece because I think for. For me, that's probably a big piece of this. So you said dry goods, wine, olive oil, cheese, cured meats, anything that's stored for periods of time. Is that kind of.

Was there anything? Yeah, and I would say it's more. I did say olive oil, but usually it's more olives. Like, think about the things that you can keep in your refrigerator forever. They just kind of sit there, right? It's like you can have like a jar of capers, a jar of olives, pickles. Those things can get moldy over time. And they sit there and they can just fermented. They can get mold. Um, so that's it. That's. That's a big Part of it you're, you know, even like, oh, I know they're lower ph, so they're not supposed to get mold. But over time they can when exposed to air, like the jams and the jellies, like just think of anything that typically sits there for a while and then on top of that, the aged food. So aged cheese, cured meats, and then wine and beer, which are all fermented as well.

Is there different aged cheese and other types of cheese specifically?

Yes, there is. So like you can get a fresh goat cheese, a fresh mozzarella. Those are gonna be your softer cheeses typically. And then your harder cheeses, they're not all hard, are the ones that are aged. So anything that's higher in histamines could also be potentially a little higher in mold.

Got it.

Not always, but they, they correlate quite a bit. So anything what's called aged, fermented or smoked.

Got it. The fermented thing is interesting cuz again you, you see on reals tears, that and the other places of. Yeah. Eating sauerkraut, this fermented, that is good for your gut. It's good for your gut. Right. And it's like.

Okay, that's true. Yeah, yeah. That they have good probiotics. However, if you have overgrowth, not so good. If you have a high histamines, not so good. And then if you have mold, well, not so good. Now if you have low gut bacteria. Yeah, positive. So it's always like, who are we recommending this to? And in the social media world, it's an all for one. Like sauerkraut's good for everyone. Well, not necessarily good for everyone.

Cool. Well, I, I think this is all helpful. So my key takeaways out of this are the few.

The process that you talked about, which would be that one month CBO protocol, the mastic gum, which would be a specific target for H. Pylori. Then moving to the mold protocol to help address the elevated mycotoxin issue on that piece. Vitamin supplementation in these areas where I'm low.

And figuring out how to sort of get some more relaxation downtime, switch into that parasympathetic mode more often. Is that kind of my takeaway out of this?

Yes. As well as balance zinc, you'll take at dinner, one of the with just one capsule and then magnesium that you typically take at dinner or after dinner as well. And that will help really push the body more out of fight or flight and more into with the parasympathetic nervous system, which is the Rest and relax. So that's the main takeaway from the plan, without a doubt.

Magnesium or potassium at dinner. Sorry? Magnesium as easy on jar.

Yeah, we typically never supplement with potassium. Not, not a problem. You can get it in certain things, but it's really easy to get in most fruits and vegetables and by squeezing a lemon or lime in your water you get a some good potassium there. So that is how most people like we, we have in our practice get their potassium. The magnesium though most people are deficient in from a functional perspective. And that is nice to take at dinner because it really then calms the.

Nervous system and the balance. Zinc was the one that had copper with zinc in it was. Is that exactly my memory?

Yes.

Got it.

Yes. Correct.

Awesome. Well, this sounds pretty doable and not terrible.

Yeah, that's the thing is, and you ran a good amount of labs too. And so, you know, this is a in depth plan and what we do is based on the person, based on their comfort level. You might say, oh, you know, I don't want to start with all of it. Can I start with this? Yes, here we go. We're going to start with this and then we kind of build it out from there. So even for you, you know, we're going to go four week modified CBO with the mastic gum. Then after that we'll move into the mold. Okay. And then after that there's no rush. We can then do the heavy metal detox and then that'll enable you not to be overwhelmed with supplementation or even protocols. But keep in mind these are pretty easy to do. You know, we give you there, you can get a little supplement box and just put them in that and you just do your upon waking up, your breakfast, your dinner before bed and you're done. So it just, you know, takes seconds to just kind of. You can pre bag them, you can do it however you want and it's easy to do and you let the herbs, the enzymes, et cetera go to work and then you again, we want you to continue. People have a busy enough life to continue as they on their day. But I do always want to recommend that it's not just about supplementation. You're already eating the right foods so we don't have to change that, you know, dramatically. We talked a little bit about intermittent fasting, but it is also about the whole de stress part protocol. It's about your exercise. You're doing that, you're doing the sauna, which is great. You have to look at the sleep. You want to look at downtime. And, and all of those things matter in the end. It's not just one thing. It's. It's essentially eight parts that we speak on. And. And that really leads to a much more balanced, healthy life.

No, this is awesome. So as someone who's working with, you know, with your coaching team as they're going through this, so you have this conversation. I'm sure it's probably not as long as ours was, but it's. It's probably in depth still. Um, so what comes out of this? Is it something where then like, something gets sent on? Like, here's your sort of like, custom pack of things that you get. Is it some sort of, like, when you leave your regular doctor, you go to. You get some sort of like, summary? Right? Like, like, how does that process work with you guys?

Yeah, so we, we send you the, the labs themselves. You actually, it's in a private HIPAA compliant app, so it's completely private. Doesn't get sent to anybody or insurance or anybody. It's just private. And then that comes with a summary of your results. So you'll of course be speaking with a health coach, but sometimes you want the summary there too, has the graphics. It's very easy to read of your results. And then at the bottom is your personal recommendations. And then what we typically do is so Equal Life is our website, Equidot Life. You can purchase protocols there. You can get anything you need, or if you don't want to, that's okay. You can always look at what we use and decide to go with another company.

And that's.

That's okay as well. And so all of that is sent by links. And then you're the one who decides basically if you want to use all of it, great, you're starting the full protocol or you want to purchase some now and then begin the protocol in another. Like, you might start, okay, modified CBO now, plus massive gum, plus these vitamins. Not going to order the mold protocol until after four weeks. Great. Then you get that and not going to order the heavy metal detox until after another eight weeks for the mold protocol. So that's. Yeah, people are welcome to get started how they want. We like people to stay consistent. That's how you get results. Don't have to be perfect every single day, but ideally, 90% of the time you're on track and you'll get great results.

This has been awesome. I'm excited for that email to come so I can start clicking links and getting things. I will, I will say that I've always wanted a very custom version of what I need to be doing for myself. And you know, throughout my time, like, I've spoken with a lot of people, it's like, you should do this, you should do that. And I always felt, I'm like, yeah, I get it. Like, this is how you do. This is how you do that. This type of experience is, you know, what we strive for to do with our clients too. But, like, to be on the other side of it, to be like, oh, this is, this is for you, the way that you go and attack this and then here's your next steps. This is awesome. And like, frankly, like, I, I think I've known that I've wanted and needed to do this, but now that it's come, it's like, like, man, I have needed to do this for a long time. And like, I ran that mycotoxin test in 2019. Like, like, I was thinking about it way back then, right? Like, that's when I started doing this stuff. And so I'm very excited for all of this stuff to come through. Very grateful for you, the. The man himself to come here and do the walkthrough with me. So I appreciate that. And we'll be updating in the next the version or the. The episode three of this four parter, kind of how things are progressing and how all that goes.

Fantastic. I appreciate you having me on and getting to chat with your community. It's always a good time, so. So thank you.

Awesome. All right, have a good one.

You too.

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