Molecular Mimicry: A Primary Mechanism Initiating and Fueling Autoimmune Diseases

Hello everybody, and I'm very, very happy to be having with me here Dr. Tom O'Brien, uh, who is ahead of the other doctors, I would say, in bringing concepts of health to everyone. The best part about Tom O'Brien, what I like is, uh, and I don't— and I think Dr. Tom also don't know that— is that I feel Dr. Tom always has very practical advice, and he's very passionate about creating a healthy community, healthy environment around. And, uh, that of course what it leads to is he targets the right thing at the right time. And therefore has been contributing a lot in making people healthy. A very, very good topic which he spoke about during our Indian Association of Functional Medicine conference in December was molecular mimicry. We are seeing it every day, and post-COVID especially, the incidence has risen beyond proportion, I would say. And therefore, today, Dr. Tom, I would request you to simplify your scientific concepts for a patient to understand so that they start trusting themselves, their intuition, and therefore start healing their bodies and living a healthier life. Thank you, Dr. Tom O'Brien, for being here, and we are very, very excited to be learning from you.

Thank you, Dr. Preeti. It's a pleasure to be with you also. Thank you so much.

Thank you. So, Dr. Tom, my first question, you know, while I was listening to your talk at IFM, if you had to explain molecular mimicry to a 12-year-old, how would you describe it or explain it?

Well, I'd like to take a step back. Before answering the question on molecular mimicry and to the question, what is autoimmunity? And your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It's the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines. We call them IgG, IgA, IgM, cytokines, different branches of the armed forces. They're all there to protect you. And autoimmunity is when the armed forces get activated and end up attacking your own tissue. It attacks your muscles, or the immune system will attack your heart, or it'll attack your thyroid. That's the most common one, is the thyroid. It might attack your skin, and that's psoriasis. It might attack your nerves, that's multiple sclerosis. But the immune system ends up attacking your own tissue. Now it's not supposed to do that. So the million-dollar question that everyone should be asking of their doctors, excuse me, is why is my, army attacking my thyroid or my brain or my bones or my skin. It doesn't matter what autoimmune disease you have. Part of the path to healing is to find out why is my immune system attacking myself, my heart, my lungs, my liver, whatever the autoimmune disease is that you've been diagnosed with. And the answer to that question is a PhD-level study, but there are 6 basic mechanisms why this happens. And the most common one is called molecular mimicry. And that's a geek term that can be really confusing. But to understand what molecular mimicry is, something is mimicking. So your immune system is trying to attack something. And instead of attacking the threat, whatever the threat is, it begins attacking your own tissue. And it's because your own tissue kind of looks like whatever it is that the immune system thinks is a problem. I'd like to give you an example of that, that it'll show it very clearly, very, very clearly. And if we use the autoimmune disease alopecia, which is when you lose your hair and it's the immune system attacking your hair follicles, whether it's on your head or on your body, It's attacking the hair follicles. So why does that happen? And if it's okay, I would like to share a few slides with you to identify why that may be happening. So let me bring up my screen here. I need to put my glasses on to see what I'm doing. Okay, now let's go to share screen and I'm going to share my screen now and I'm going to be looking here and here. Can you see my screen now? Okay, good. So we're going to talk about the autoimmune disease alopecia. That was caused by— remember, there are 6 different mechanisms, but this, the most common one, is molecular mimicry. So here's a 43-year-old man who came to the dermatologist because he was losing his hair in his scalp and his beard, and it looked like this. And I always point out to the doctors that on the chin, on the face. This is alopecia. There's no evidence of any stubble, even though he shaves every day. There's no stubble here like there is here. Okay, so that's losing hair. And he had gone to dermatologists and they had tried steroid creams and nothing had worked. They also put him on an antidepressant because, you know, he was depressed. He was losing his hair. But it wasn't, it wasn't because he was depressed that he was losing his hair. So he went to these new doctors and he told them that, yeah, you know, I'm losing my hair, but yeah, sometimes I've got an upset stomach. I get a little heartburn. So they checked him and they found out that he had a bacterial infection called Helicobacter, which is very, very common in India. Very common.

Yes. And, and sorry, Dr. Tom, but I must say here that I was telling somebody the other day that the success of my practice or the success my patients achieve is because I have mastered the art of testing and treating this.

Good. Yes.

Very commonly prevalent. And it really affects all the systems of your body.

You need to have a very good questionnaire as a doctor to find out what else is going on with the patient because they come in very concerned about their migraines or their hair loss or their joint pains. But you can't just focus on the symptoms. You have to find out why they're happening. So they gave this patient the antibiotics to treat the bacterial infection Helicobacter. And what happened? And he was told, stop taking that medication for the alopecia. It's not working. Stop taking it. So he took the antibiotics to kill the bacterial infection that he had, and it was gone. The bacterial infection was gone within 6 weeks. And this is what happened to his hair. So here we are at 4 weeks on the antibiotics. And you can see he's got some hair coming back. See this middle picture? There's some hair. And over here you see there's some stubble coming in where there was no stubble before coming in. And here he is at 8 weeks. And here he is at 16 weeks. And here he is at 44 weeks. Now, and here's what the whole study looked like. That, and I just took each different timeframe to show it to you, but you can see how he got better and better and better. And he stopped taking the antibiotics after 6 weeks 'cause the bacteria was all gone. So he stopped the antibiotics, but he kept, but the mechanism had stopped that had activated the immune system. So the immune system was fighting a bacteria But molecular mimicry means that the immune system fighting this bacteria was looking for the bacteria everywhere in the body. They're called antibodies that come from the immune system to fight something to protect you. They're called antibodies. Antibodies are special forces. They've got high-powered rifles. They're not the army. Lots and lots of members of the army, but special forces, there's not that many. So in the antibodies, there's not that many, but they've got laser rifles to kill whatever it is they're supposed to kill. And when the antibodies, these special forces, are trained to go after bacteria, now your bloodstream is just a highway Lots of traffic on the highway, right? It's all going the same direction, but there's lots of traffic on the highway and there's no lanes in your bloodstream of traffic. It's like driving in Delhi. That's the one city in the world I will not drive in. I'll drive in Rome, I'll drive it, but not Delhi, because in 3 lanes of traffic, there's 5 lanes of cars. These cars are— I'm not going to do that. That's like the bloodstream. You know, everything is everywhere. So how do the special forces in the bloodstream find the bacteria? Because everything's bouncing around in there at the same time. How does it find the bacteria? It's looking for the protein structure of that bacteria. It's trained to look for the protein structure. Now here's the problem. The protein structure of the bacteria that the special forces are trained to go after kind of looks like it mimics the protein structure of your hair. So if you have the antibodies going through the bloodstream looking for the bacteria, they go, oh, look over there. and they see what looks like the protein of the bacteria and they fire their chemical bullet and they attack your hair. That's molecular mimicry. And it doesn't matter if it's your hair or your joints for rheumatoid arthritis or your thyroid for Hashimoto's or your gut for celiac, it doesn't matter. Molecular mimicry can occur when your immune system is making the antibodies to try to protect you from something. So the million-dollar question, critically important question is what is the immune system trying to protect you from?

Right.

Because when you identify Do you have bacterial infections? Do you have heavy metals in your body like aluminum or mercury? Do you have mold in your body? What is it that your immune system is activated trying to protect you from? And because of molecular mimicry, the antibodies that are going after the mold or going after the bacteria may also go after the collagen in your joints. That's rheumatoid arthritis. May also go after the insulation around your nerves called myelin. That's multiple sclerosis. So this is not the only thing you do with autoimmunity, but you must always ask the question, what is my immune system trying to protect me from? And then you do the tests to find out what your immune system is trying to protect you from.

Thank you, Dr. Tom. So, Dr. Tom, this brings me to another question. How can we manage molecular mimicry? And is autoimmunity, after it starts, reversible, or is it permanent?

What was the first question about molecular mimicry?

Is molecular mimicry reversible, or how can we manage it?

You can't manage it. You have to get rid of it. And the only way you get rid of it is by identifying what is it that's activating your immune system. You cannot take a drug, you cannot take a vitamin, you cannot, well, you can change the diet. And if your molecular mimicry is with gluten and you change the diet, you go gluten-free, The result is you do so much. As a matter of fact, let me share my screen again. And I'm going to show you about what happens when you identify that the molecular mimicry is coming from gluten. So here is a world-famous immunologist, that's a medical doctor that specializes in the immune system, talking about gluten. And he says, despite the nutritional value of gluten-containing grains, they're not essential to the diet and their value is not high. I mean, if there's nothing else to eat, they'll save your life. Of course. Of course. So Professor Schoenfeld looked at 83 different studies, and what he found is that a gluten-free diet for patients with autoimmune diseases benefited 65% of the patients and This was confirmed in 79% of the studies. So it's not every patient every time, but certainly more than half, certainly more than half. And the auto— so the ages were from 9 months to 69 years old, gluten-free diet from 1 month to 9 years. And what they found, autoimmune thyroid was the best responder to gluten withdrawal. And they put this drawing in here, which, you know, you, you can't understand what that is. So I put the list here of all of the different autoimmune diseases that they found in the science that get better 79% of the time on a gluten-free diet. And you see your heart, your pancreas, your skin, your gut, your liver, your brain, your inflammatory bowel disease, your kidneys, and the list just goes on and on and on. And these are not celiac patients. These are patients who went— who were diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, and they went on a gluten-free diet. 65% of the studies confirmed that 79% of the time people get better on a gluten-free diet. And why is that? Because it's often molecular mimicry. The special forces soldiers are going after gluten. They're going after gluten everywhere. And the protein structure of gluten looks like a lot of different tissue in our body. Some of the brain tissue, some of the joint tissue, some of the skin tissue. So the immune system trying to protect you from gluten may accidentally attack your own skin, your own heart, your own pancreas, your own liver. It just depends on your genetics as to where it might happen.

Great. So, Dr. Tom, this brings me to a question which most of my autoimmune patients ask me. It is, now, is— will I be able to reverse it, or is it permanent and I will always have this autoimmune condition?

Oh, you can arrest— the science is very clear. The language they use is arrest. You can arrest autoimmune diseases, and we often find we can put them into remission. They don't go away, they're always there. That's the weak link in your chain. You pull at a chain, it breaks at the weakest link. It's at one end, the middle, the other end, your heart, your brain, your liver. The pull on the chain is the activated immune system creating the inflammation. So, but you can calm down the immune system by eliminating the bacteria, eliminating the food, eliminating the, the toxins in the air. I mean, whatever your immune system is fighting, get rid of the trigger and your immune system will calm down. And Mrs. Patient, you have an entire new immune, entire new body every few years. Every cell in your body regenerates. Your immune system, it's 120 days. You have an entire new immune system every 4 months. So when you eliminate the triggers, certainly for most of our patients, very quickly, within a couple of weeks, they notice they're feeling better. But certainly within 4 months, you should be much, much better. And you can't cheat. There's no such thing as a cheat day. Some of the doctors, some of the doctors, you know, I'm on stage, I'll yell at them. Don't ever say that to a patient. It's okay to have a cheat day. Nonsense. Because when you're exposed to whatever the cheat is, like gluten or whatever it is, your immune system gets activated for 2 to 4 months. From one exposure. So you completely reverse all the benefits that you've got when you have a cheat day.

Right. So, Dr. Tom, on this, you know, I think in Indian culture, it's very easy for us to explain to people that cheat day is, is not something we will allow you, because I tell them, if you are married, Right, the situation is the same. So you decide whether you want to be a single— have a single partner, or, you know, you want cheat days in between. Yeah, right. And that gets stuck here. So therefore, most of my patients don't do cheat days. But Dr. Tom, here the question comes that we know that gluten, Epstein-Barr virus gut infections, your SIBO, SIFO, mold, which you've just said. Post-COVID, of course, we are seeing a lot more infections than we were seeing before. Dental infections. All of these trigger molecular mimicry or autoimmunity. Other than these, do you think there are any other reasons which you are seeing in your practice which is leading to more autoimmune cases today?

The world is much more toxic than it was 15, 20 years ago. Every autoimmune disease is going up 4 to 9% a year, every year, every one of 'em. Why? Because the world's more toxic. What does that mean? It means that when you breathe dirty air, there's more dirt in your lungs and more dirt in your body. It means when you eat food that's loaded with chemicals, there's minute amount of chemicals that accumulate in your body. And, you know, you eat a conventional tomato, fine, it's healthy in many ways. But if it's got pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides on it, little bits of that accumulate in your body. And what happens is over time, that accumulation gets to be enough to where the immune system says, whoa, wait a minute, what is that over there? That's a threat. I better fight that. And now you make antibodies to fight whatever that toxin is in your body. And the antibodies going and the toxins because of molecular mimicry may look like your thyroid, or because some of the toxins like bisphenol A, BPA, it's in plastic water bottles and plastics of all kinds. BPA likes to accumulate in your thyroid. So the immune system starts attacking the thyroid. And then because it's attacking the BPA in the thyroid, the thyroid cells get damaged. It's called collateral damage. When the thyroid tissue gets damaged because the BPA is accumulating in there and your immune system is trying to fight that stuff to get it out, you damage the thyroid cells. When you damage the thyroid cells, your immune system makes more antibodies to your thyroid to get rid of the old and damaged cells to make room for new cells. And that mechanism is a very common mechanism that's occurring. The most common is molecular mimicry, but BPA doesn't look like human tissue. It's just that it's a threat. It's accumulated enough in your body to where the immune system is going after it now.

Right. So Dr. Tom, can one infection trigger multiple autoimmune diseases?

Oh yes.

Cross-reactivity or some other?

Oh my goodness, yes. It's so very common. It's almost like a miracle sometimes. You're startled when patients come in and say, Doc, my brain is functioning so much better. My multiple sclerosis, the symptoms are much less, but you know what else is happening? My skin's clearing up, or the pain in my joints are gone, or my energy is— I'm sleeping so much better. That other symptoms because of other systems in the body are cleaning up at the same time when you're addressing what the immune system is trying to fight. Because it's rare that the gluten will accumulate and cause thyroid problems and only. Thyroid problems for a person. That's very rare. They usually have other symptoms of brain function, cognitive decline, energy problems. The list goes on and on. It just depends on the individual. So there are multiple symptoms that can occur from many different tissues in your body.

So what happens, Dr. Tom, is a lot of times these autoimmune conditions, people are able to diagnose very late. You know, they come to you 10 years later or 20 years later, and this time, this 10 years, 20 years of since, you know, their immune system has been attacking their own body cells, this means that it takes a longer time and more effort to arrest it also. So can you share a list of some warning signs which patients today should be aware of and watch out for so that they can diagnose their autoimmune conditions a little earlier so that less work is needed to arrest those conditions? And, you know, it happens.

Yes, I understand the question. Unfortunately, by the time you have symptoms, it's pretty far along. So I'm going to share my screen again. I'm going to show you another study that gives an understanding of what we're dealing with here. So let me find the right slides. Let's see. Here we go. Okay. So this is an article from the New England Journal of Medicine that came out over 20 years ago. We've known this for 20 years. It's really terrible that so many doctors don't know this. This is so important. Dr. Melissa Arbuckle was at the Veterans Administration in the US, and she looked for people with the autoimmune disease lupus, systemic lupus erythematosus. So it's an autoimmune disease that affects your joints and some of your organs, your lungs. It's a pretty nasty autoimmune disease. She found 132 people with lupus in this one hospital setting. Now, if these patients are in the veterans hospital, they're veterans. If they're veterans, they were in the armed forces. And if they were in the armed forces, they had their blood drawn many times when they were healthy. In the Army or healthy in the Navy many, many times. And what most people don't know is that the government has been freezing most of that blood since 1978. They've got tens of millions of samples of our service people's blood. Well, Dr. Arbuckle knew this, so she asked for permission to look at the blood of the currently diagnosed lupus patients when they were healthy in the Army or in the Navy. And she got permission. And what did she find? She found that these antibodies to lupus are there years before there's ever a diagnosis. Years. And every single person had these antibodies elevated when they felt fine, every single one of them, and that the level of the antibodies follow a predictable course, more every year, more every year, more every year. And she put this drawing together. Now, there are 7 different antibodies, and each colored line is a different antibody. And the zero line on, on the left side, you see the zero line That's normal. That's not zero antibodies. It means elevation. And you see the least problem is about 10%, elevation. Next one's 22%, 23%. And it goes, and every year it goes up, up, up, up until this bottom graph are the symptoms. And first the symptoms are really mild. There's not much, not much, not much. The symptoms start here. Here is when they get the symptoms because down here, this is all dysfunction before there are symptoms. But the symptoms of lupus start in this graph 5 years before they, or after they have a problem with the antibodies. Some of the antibodies, 11 years. 9 years before they ever have a symptom. So what she's showing us is that the problem is going on for years when the patient feels fine. And she put this drawing together, which says everything. That first we have a normal level of antibodies, okay? That's normal in the blood. Then you have what she called benign autoimmunity, meaning the antibodies are elevated, but there's no symptoms. Then you get symptoms. That's called pathogenic autoimmunity. And then you get diagnosed with a disease. And she identified way back 20 years ago that it's genetics and the environment. Now, you can't do anything about your genetics, but you can do a lot about your environment, and that's the key. Is it bacterial? Is it food? Is it toxins? What is it that's in the environment that you're being exposed to that activated the immune system? But the point on that study is that the immune system was activated years before you ever had a symptom. So by the time you have symptoms and you go to a doctor, you're pretty far down the path. But still, even with that, Professor Schoenfeld shows us that 79% of the people get better on a gluten-free diet. And it doesn't take long. A few weeks and you notice that you're feeling better. It doesn't take long at all if we're comprehensive in getting rid of the trigger problems activating the immune system.

All right, thank you, Dr. Tom. And but Dr. Tom, then this tells me that we should keep testing for antibodies because the earlier we diagnosed it, you know, then we know that we have—

Here's the rule. Yes, here's, here's the rule. The, the rule is In God we trust. All others require data. You have to test. There's no way to know. Yeah. Is the threat from autoimmunity for me in my brain or in my thyroid or in my joints or in my heart? I don't know. And I can't tell by looking at you. The only way— your symptoms, of course, give us an idea of what system of the body is possibly at risk, but you have to test. You have to know what your starting point is. There's no other way. And you can shotgun, you can certainly go on a complete gluten-free diet, no cheating, and just see how you feel. But there's rarely just one trigger. There's usually more triggers. And until you test and you identify where are the autoimmune antibodies and then where are they coming from? So there's two tests you have to do.

Yes.

One is an autoimmune test that looks at many different tissues of your body. Is your immune system fighting your skin and you've got alopecia or fighting your hair or your skin with psoriasis or your joints with rheumatoid? You have to see which antibodies are elevated So then you can monitor and 6 months from now you test again, you're feeling so much better and you say, Doc, I think I feel great. My joint pain's gone. I think I'm done with the nutrition and the diet. Can I go back to my other way of eating? The answer is no. You go back and it all comes back because you never get rid of an autoimmune disease. You can put it into remission so there are no cysts, symptoms, but you never get rid of it.

Great. So Dr. Tom, in this autoimmunity panel, how many antibodies generally you check in your practice? In my practice, many antibodies. So yes, what does it do?

Yeah, I'll do a general panel that looks at 48 different antibodies.

Okay, okay. And then along with that, you check viral titers and other infections.

Yes, we check. See, I see about one patient a week by Zoom. That's it. I love to work with patients, but I'm too busy preparing to teach doctors. But I love to see like one a week. But I won't talk to 'em until they've done 5 tests. And when they've done the 5 tests, I review the tests before I talk to them, and I want them to send me 5 years of their health history and the tests that have been done in the last 5 years. And I study all of that before they come in. But the tests that we look at, one specific for antibodies in the brain, looks at 53 antibodies in the brain, one to look for sensitivity to gluten, because it's so very common that people have a sensitivity to gluten with or without celiac disease. You don't just test for celiac. If a doctor tests you for wheat and he does the celiac test, says, no, you don't have celiac, you're fine eating wheat. That's a doctor that doesn't understand because celiac is a huge problem and you of course have to identify it. But The majority of people who have a sensitivity to wheat don't have celiac. You saw how many different autoimmune diseases Professor Schoenfeld showed us get better on a gluten-free diet. Of course, celiac does, of course, but many others do. So we check for that. We check the gut to look at the good guys and the bad guys in the gut and how much inflammation's in the gut and is there a leaky gut? We look for the total toxins for mold and chemicals and heavy metals. So we do a number of tests before I'll ever talk to them, because when I talk to them, I want to have the understanding of what's been going on in their body up to this point. And so then once we have this information, it's really pretty easy to figure out what to do. You know, our moniker, if you go to my website, my website is thedr.com, thedoctor.com. Don't spell the word doctor out. If you go to our website, right, big bold print, making it easy to do the right thing. That's our goal, is to make it easy to do the right thing. Now, it's not easy to go on a gluten-free diet sometimes, you know, but you, you understand what it is you have to do. I mean, when you know how many toxins are in the body, how many heavy metals, what food sensitivities are there, what autoimmune antibodies are elevated, it's easy to know what the next step is.

I have realized after working with so many patients in the last 11 years is sequence matters. Yeah, if I check for SIBO, SIFO, mold, and I keep trying to treat those but I have not checked for H. pylori, Helicobacter pylori, everything will fall back.

Yes, yes, you have to be comprehensive.

Exactly. So, and then you need to decide what is it, where is it that you need to start first, and how do you need to build that healing, you know, in that person. So I think it has to be very personalized. And yes, you need data. Without data, it is very, very difficult to plan, you know, how we can help address these autoimmune conditions. Now, this brings me to another question, Dr. Dom, and I'm— I think I'm asking too many questions, but we all want to know answers from you. Should family members of autoimmune patients also be screened preventively?

Oh goodness, yes. They carry the same genes. You know, if you pull at a chain, it breaks at the weakest link. Always, it breaks at the weakest link. It's at one end, the middle, the other end. It's your heart, your brain, your liver, your hair. Wherever the weak link is, that's where the inflammation is going to show itself. The pull on the chain is inflammation. And when you identify what is activating the immune system, heavy metals, mold, toxins, parasites, bad gut, out of balance. When you identify what is activating the inflammation and you reduce that, you detox or you go gluten-free, whatever it is, what happens is the pull on the chain relaxes and the link is stronger. Your symptoms start to go away. So the key here is to be comprehensive. But once again, in God we trust, all others require data.

But what you're trying to say is that yes, because genetics are common, all the members should get tested at some point of time so that—

yes, yes, it's, it's the genetics. As a matter of fact, my sister just sent me a message this morning that her dearest friend that she grew up with— and this is my younger sister, 7 years younger, and so I know this woman very, very well. She's now in her 60s, but she grew up at our house often, and I tormented her. I was the older brother, you know, with my sister's girlfriends, just tormenting them. But she now has been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease of the eye. Called macular degeneration, and it's very serious. And my sister said her friend's sister, older sister, was diagnosed and is now legally blind. That's what happens with macular degeneration. So she said to me, what should Chris take? What vitamins should she take? And my answer was— and excuse me, but, you know, I was talking to my sister— how in the hell will I know? Because I don't know what's wrong with her. I don't know, is it gluten which can cause this problem? Is it parasites? What's pulling on the chain that's causing the symptoms at the weak link that is genetic? It's genetic for her. So, because her older sister is now blind with the same condition. So yes, family members carry the genes they often carry the same vulnerabilities as the person who's been diagnosed with the autoimmune disease. That's why you test, you don't guess. Perhaps the person with Helicobacter infection causing alopecia, the loss of the hair, they've got a brother whose hair is fine. His hair is okay now, but if he also has a Helicobacter infection, just wait a little time. Or if he has another trigger activating the immune system like gluten or something else, just wait a little time and he will likely manifest the same autoimmune condition of the hair. Alopecia. So yes, should family members be checked? Absolutely, yes. And you know, the longer you wait, the more difficult it is to turn around.

Right. So, Dr. Tom, what are the top 3 daily habits that can calm an overactive immune response, which you will want all your patients to be aware of and follow? Any 3 habits?

Give me the first part of that again.

Any 3 habits, 3 daily habits which people can do to calm their immune system?

To calm their immune system? Yes. Well, the daily habits. Well, you know, the first thing you can do, you can take your fingers and you rub them across your tummy, skin contact. So the nails, you're not tearing your skin, but you just like this, 1, 2, 3, across your tummy. And when you do that, you look and see if there's a red streak within 15 seconds or so. That's a histamine reaction. That means that your immune system is very active fighting something. You can take, pull your socks down, or at night when you go to bed, do you have sock marks? Where your socks were or underwear line. That's edema. That's water retention, likely due to some trigger activating your immune system. So daily habits, clean up your air. You're there in India. You have some of the worst air in the world. And that's not today's discussion, but we now know every child that's checked in metropolitan Mexico City, every child at the average age of 14, if they passed unexpectedly from disease or from some trauma, a car accident or something, and they did autopsy, 202 out of 203 children, average age 14, had evidence of early Alzheimer's. 202 out of 203. It's the air pollution they're breathing. It's going right up to the memory center of the brain. And I went to the World Health Organization because I said at the beginning of this show, we're going to put a seminar together in India. On this. I went to the World Health Organization and New Delhi's air is 14 times worse than metropolitan Mexico City. You people need to wake up as to what's happening to your brains right now. And you think you're fine. No one is getting out of this. No one. You're all breathing the same air. So you have to learn the daily habits to protect your brain, to have clean air, cleaning up the air. Um, wake up.

Yeah, so Dr. Tom, have you seen documented cases where antibodies normalize completely?

Yes, of course. That's—

other cases where they don't normalize?

Say that again.

Antibodies normalize completely?

Yes.

And another group where they don't normalize.

Oh yeah, sure.

So what is the difference you see in these two groups?

Ah, yeah. When an autoimmune disease goes into remission, that means not just that the symptoms go away, but that the antibodies are down to normal, normal levels. That's remission. And yes, you can, of course, put an autoimmune disease into remission. And, and for those that it doesn't happen, the doctor hasn't identified all the triggers. There's more triggers.

Right.

Bottom line, that's it.

Yes, I agree. So, uh, Dr. Tom, you have all obviously emphasized a lot on environmental toxins, and, uh, we understand that is very, very important, especially in this time where autoimmune conditions are really increasing and spiking. Right, but what I'm also seeing in India is a lot of patients— we never used to have mold infection so much or Lyme disease so much, but now we are seeing all of that in our patients. So in patients where you see mold, anything you have seen which works well for them? Because these are the cases where what happens is relapse keeps happening because their body is not able to detoxify.

Well, their body may— either the detoxification process is not complete that the doctor is recommending, or the person's being continually exposed to more mold. It's their home, their work environment, somewhere they're exposed. And it's not just the mold that you can see, It's the mold that you can't see. I'll give you an example. I had a patient, very, the president of a big bank, and so very important guy in the world of banking and in Chicago, and I lived in California, and his secretary called and said, 'Hi, Mr. So-and-so would like to send his private jet to bring you to Chicago. And I said, no, I'm not going to Chicago. I don't want to go to Chicago. He can come here. And so he made a holiday out of it with his wife, and they flew to San Francisco and they rented a camper van and they drove down Highway 1, the classic drive down to San Diego. I lived in San Diego. But he couldn't think anymore. His brain wasn't working. He was 48 years old, and he had been to world-famous brain centers. They'd done every test in the world on him, and they couldn't find anything wrong, but he couldn't think. And so he had to take a medical leave of absence, and he went to many doctors from France and Mayo Clinic and a few others. So he comes out to California, has a very resting drive down the coast, takes a few days to do it. And I didn't have an office. I was working remote by Zoom. So I met him at a coffee shop. We sit down and we have coffee. It took me 5 minutes. And I said to him, when did your basement flood? And you, how did you know my basement flood? I said, you live in Chicago and I know the suburb you live in because I lived in Chicago for 25 years. And so I know the kind of homes that they build there. When did your basement flood? Well, it was about 2 years ago. And when did your symptoms begin? Well, about a year and a half. Do you think that had something to do with it? Because his basement flooded and they had the insurance people come in and they cleaned the carpet and they dehumidified, they took all the water out. But the walls in the basement are made of drywall. And when the drywall gets wet, it dries eventually. But on the other side, the backside of drywall, mold often will start growing.

Yes.

So I said, go home and just bring a mold inspector out to your house. So they did that. And the whole wall was black mold that they couldn't see in an expensive big house. They couldn't see that there was any mold, but they were breathing it every day. And so you have to identify what's the trigger and it took him about 3 months and then he was back to work. I got a nice letter from them.

So, Dr. Tom, what did you do for this patient?

I just told him to go home and check his mold.

Right. So once mold was checked, they got it cleaned and everything.

They got it cleaned out. And then we detoxed. We recommended some detoxification protocols, some things to take to pull the toxins out of his system. We built the good guys in his gut. Rebuild more of the good guys in his gut. He was a little low on that, but he kept breathing this mold every day, every day, all day.

We are seeing such cases in India also now, which I never was seeing in the beginning of my practice. But last 4-5 years, I am seeing this, uh, right, left, and center. And the unfortunate thing about this is, at least what I am seeing, is that all these patients tend to go into adrenal fatigue. So it becomes a chicken and egg story. You work on the mold, but the adrenals are not working. Immune system is compromised. You leave it here and they keep just doing like the seesaw, but they never get well unless you take control of everything in one go, like you said.

That's right. That's exactly right. You, you have to be thorough because there's often more than one thing that's activating the immune system. There's a primary, it might be gluten, it might be mold, it might be heavy metals, it could be a bacterial infection like Helicobacter. There's a primary, but it's rarely alone. That's why the test that we do looks at 18 heavy metals and 28 different mycotoxins, the exhaust of mold, and 36 different chemicals. All that is done in one urine sample. And so we've got a picture here. Oh my God, look at this. And you see all of the different things that people's immune systems are trying to protect them from. It's not an immune system problem. When you have autoimmune disease, it is not an immune system problem. It's an immune system that's trying to protect you.

Right.

So once again, the million-dollar question is, what is it trying to protect you from?

Yes. So do dental root canals or hidden infections also contribute according to you, Dr. John O'Brien?

Oh, tremendous. Triggered walking my son to school this morning. A mom and I were walking back to our cars and she was talking about how she's starting to feel some autoimmune symptoms. And the first thing I said to her is, I said, "When you brush your teeth, do you have pink water?" Meaning, you know, when she rinses out, it's a little bit of blood in the water. She said, "Yes." And she said, "I have gingivitis." And I said, "Yes." There's over 800 families of bacteria in the mouth, 800 families. And many of these, if there's too many bad guys and not enough good guys, they find that bacteria in the walls of the blood vessels of your heart, causing atherosclerosis. They find the bacteria from your mouth is in your brain of patients with Alzheimer's. It's in the plaque in the brain that you can't have. The, the geek term is dysbiosis. It means not enough good guys, too many bad guys. And if you have too many bad guys in your mouth, then you are inoculating your whole body with bad. We swallow a liter a day of saliva, adults. Now imagine a liter bottle of spit and drink a liter bottle of bad bacteria. And now you can understand why sometimes headaches, Migraines are triggered because of too many bad bacteria in the mouth.

Yeah. So, Dr. Tom, can vaccinations also trigger molecular mimicry?

Yes, unfortunately, yes. Lots of science on that.

What is your input on peptides, low-dose naltrexone, or immunomodulators? Are they helpful?

They are helpful, but they're not the primary treatment. They, they are primary treatments for symptom relief. It helps people feel better, but you must identify why is the immune system activated. There are many, many studies, and I have many friends that use low-dose naltrexone as an example in cancer cases, in autoimmune cases, and it really helps with the symptoms. And very, very little risk of any side effects. But you can't just do that if they've got a house full of mold or if they've got so much bad bacteria in your mouth that every day they're swallowing and they're inoculating themselves with more bacteria every day. You must be comprehensive. In God we trust, all others require data.

Perfect. Yes. And do you think only doing fasting can reset the immune cross-reactivity?

No.

Great.

I've never seen a study on that. There are many, many, many benefits to fasting. Many, of course. But I've never seen a study that it quiets down cross-reactivity.

Yes. So, Dr. Tom, I have asked you so many questions, but I have one last question, and then there are a few questions from the people who are watching us. And my last question is, if you had early Hashimoto's today, what exact 90-day protocol would you follow personally?

Test, don't guess. Uh, I won't rec— well, what with Hashimoto's, I, I would say this. Professor Schoenfeld is the godfather of autoimmunity. He's in Israel. And in the article that I showed you earlier, 65% of the papers confirmed that 79% of autoimmune patients get better on a gluten-free diet. He identified in that paper Hashimoto's thyroid disease was surprisingly the one with the very best results. 87% of Hashimoto patients get better on a gluten-free diet. You can't argue with that. Well, you can if you want, but it's a losing argument because the science is really clear. I mean, it really helps. Your autoimmune thyroid antibodies start going down. On a gluten-free diet. So the only thing that I would recommend, uh, with a Hashimoto's patient before testing is of course to eat clean food, uh, real food, uh, and go gluten-free while you're getting your testing done. Just start immediately completely gluten-free. See our nutritionist, let her walk with you down the aisles of the store Showing you what foods are safe and which ones are not so that you're not trying to learn it all on your own. But with Hashimoto's, that's the one thing I would do before the test results come back.

Thank you, Dr. Tom. Dr. Tom, Kalyani wants to know, can finger psoriasis and lichen planus be corrected?

Can— I'm sorry, can what?

Finger psoriasis. Finger and lichen planus?

Yes, yes, of course, of course. It's the same as any other autoimmune disease. You have to identify what are the triggers activating the immune system.

Perfect. And then I have one more question. Namita wants to know, I am suffering from H. pylori, duodenal ulcer, and lichen pigmentosa. What can I do to heal myself?

I assume you've already tried the medications and they're not working. There is a natural remedy that sometimes is very helpful in those cases. And if you Google byelori, B-Y-E-L-O-R-I, L-O-R-I, by Lori, you will find that, and they list some of the science as to why this particular nutrition can be so helpful with a resistant Helicobacter infection. But you might also need to be looking at why did the treatments not work. It's so easy if grandfather grandfather takes a drink from his cup and then the grandchild takes a drink from the same cup, they get Helicobacter. I mean, it's that easy. So it's not just the person that needs to be tested, but her family, because she could be becoming reinfected regularly from the family.

Yeah. And I see this very, very often now. So the last question is, I, Priya wants to know, I have primary biliary cirrhosis autoimmune. What can I do to heal myself?

That's a really good question. And that's a very dangerous autoimmune disease. It's the same, but you need to work with someone who really knows what they're doing on this, has the big picture view. and you target, you target changing the lifestyle that created the problem, and you monitor your antibody load, I would say every 3 months because you have an entire new immune system every 2 months, but you monitor, you monitor it every 3 months to make sure the antibodies are coming down. If you're comprehensive, the antibodies should be coming down. When you get the antibodies down to normal, that may take 6 months, a year, depending on how advanced you are. When you get it down to normal, you then begin working on rebuilding healthier tissue. Every cell in your body regenerates. So are you regenerating sick cells or healthier cells? That's an autoimmune disease that requires really focused attention.

Right. So meanwhile, Dot Dot Diet has asked one more question. Can we completely cure type 1 diabetes and vitiligo?

I'll do the second one first. My daughter, when she was a teenager, started to develop a little bit— vitiligo, you refer to it, I called vitiligo. And she said, Dad, Dad. And I said, oh honey, okay, this is what you do. Don't cheat, don't cheat. And we put her on a gluten-free diet and our home was gluten-free, but she went at school and with her friends, she was not. So she understood. So she went gluten-free, dairy-free, and you check the genetics for folate. Metabolism. Very common that people don't use folate very well. That's a B vitamin, and she had that, and so we gave her a different form of folate, and, and it went away within, I don't know, 6, 8 weeks. 4 years later, she calls me from college, Dad, Dad, it's back! Oh, it's back! I said, well, honey, you remember what the problem was before? Yes, I said, and you're living at college now, right? You're out with your friends partying and eating garbage food. Well, not too often. You can't do that. And so she cleaned it up. It took about 4 months that time, and her skin was fine. Type 1 diabetes, it depends on the age and how long it's been going on. Children, we have much better full remission. Adults, sometimes we get full remission, often we get great improvement. But with diabetes, the first thing you have to do is a CGM, a continuous glucose monitor. It's like a nicotine patch on your arm and you have the app on your phone And every time you eat, you just turn on the app and say, what's my blood sugar right now? And then what about an hour from now? And you keep measuring. You say, wow, look how my blood sugar yo-yos when I eat rice. But then 2 days later, you try quinoa, same amount of quinoa. And then you say, oh, my blood sugar is good here. 2 hours later, oh, it's still good. Oh, oh, so my— and then you try rice again. And your blood sugar goes yo-yo, then you know, for whatever reason, your body doesn't do well with the carbohydrates of rice. But every diabetic should have a continuous glucose monitor. It's, it's, it's not malpractice, but you got to wonder, why wouldn't our doctors recommend that to people? It's inexpensive. And it's hard evidence. When you do this, when you eat this, here's how your body responds. You want to keep eating that food? Fine.

But now it is the best way to change your eating habits.

That's right.

Because then every time you eat something and see the sugar going up and then down, your mind after 2-3 times says, no, I will not eat it.

That's exactly right.

Change habits, it's very, very useful.

And also, also useful to lose weight for those that are carrying extra weight. When you use a CGM, you see what your current lifestyle and your food choices are doing.

I feel it's a beautiful anti-aging, anti-aging tool also.

I agree.

What levels stay within a range your AGEs are less and of course you age slower.

Yes, you're absolutely right. And I avoid the word for me, anti-aging. We all age. But I like the idea of graceful aging. So, Mrs. Patient, you can go from getting older to graceful aging. Right. And people can accept that. They understand that. So I don't want people to have the impression that they're not going to age. We all age. You know, but yes, aging gracefully where your body says thank you every day, it's functioning, and you, and you're able to do what you want to do in your life. That's the goal.

Thank you, Dr. Tom. Do you have any message for all of us, especially people in India? You have obviously told us that we need to be really aware of all the toxins we have in the air we are breathing in. Anything else you want to share with us?

Yes. This is such basic information. I know it'd be difficult for people watching this to repeat it because it's some ideas you've not heard before, or it's hard to remember them all, but it's just basic information. Your immune system does not go haywire on you. It's trying to protect you. When it gets activated and you have these antibodies creating an autoimmune mechanism, it's trying to protect you. And the million-dollar question is, what is it trying to protect you from? And when you identify that and eliminate that irritating trigger, whatever it is, you get better. Your energy comes up, you feel better, life moves forward in a way that you're more comfortable with.

Perfect. So the question is not why immune system is going haywire. The question is what it is trying to protect.

That's correct.

And I think this shifts the way we think about autoimmune conditions, and I'm sure it will shift the outcomes, uh, we see with autoimmune diseases. Thank you, Dr. Tom, for being here. It was a real honor, and thank you for sharing your knowledge so openly. Um, and I'm sure this will help a lot of people— patients, coaches, doctors— to help their patients better, and for patients to take that one step in their healing journey which they are still debating on whether I should check my heavy metals or not, whether I should do testing or not, you know, whether the doctor is telling me right. So I'm sure a lot of people are now thinking that they should go ahead and check and then find all the triggers and see how they can calm their immune system.

I hope so.

Thank you, thank you. I'm sure that this will happen. Thank you, Dr. Tom, and see you in India whenever you are here. For your event.

Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thank you.