Dr Bradley Campbell

Hey, breastie. Welcome to Keeping Your Breast. I'm your host, Dr. Jenn Simmons. I walked away from breast cancer surgery because I couldn't stay inside a system that promotes fear, dismisses root causes, and calls itself healthcare. This show is dedicated to you, your education, your clarity, your confidence, and your power. Here we have transparent conversations about real health, the kind that actually changes outcomes. We're talking prevention, hormones, healing, longevity, and the truth behind the choices you're being offered so you can stop outsourcing your decisions and start leading your life. Here, you're going to hear from the disruptors, the innovators, the shining examples, and the unsung heroes who are proving that there's a better way. So give me the next hour of your life and I'll make sure you leave with something that makes you healthier. Because, as I always say, breast health is health. So stay tuned for this week's episode of Keeping a Breast. Hello there and welcome back. I'm so happy to see you. I think that you have to be like somewhere in some other universe to not be affected and not to see the amount of autoimmune disease that has been exploding. Exploding around the country and probably around the world. And as a physician, our training with regard to autoimmune disease was so surface level, and maybe it's because I went to medical school thirty years ago, but we simply did not understand the mechanisms behind autoimmune disease, why people get autoimmune disease, and the triggers that exist now are. Are so much in excess of what was around when I was training. And as a result of decades of practitioners out there really not having the basic knowledge, and this includes the rheumatologist, not having the basic knowledge and not having modern knowledge of what's happening with autoimmune disease, a lot of people are overlooked, told they're crazy, told, you know, their labs are normal or they're abnormal, but they're Not abnormal enough, or not specific enough, or whatever it is. And I think the average person with autoimmune disease—it takes years for them to get that diagnosis, even if they get the diagnosis. And then the cycle of how it's treated and incorrectly treated starts, and people often get a lot worse after their diagnosis because of the way it's treated. And what I'm referring to is that in Our conventional medical system, no one is looking to get to the root cause. And unless you correct the reason why people are sick, they don't get better. So I thought this was an important topic to talk about. And I have been listening to Dr. Bradley Campbell a lot and hearing his perspective and it's refreshing and necessary. And so I thought that I would invite him here on the pod to talk about it. So, Dr. Campbell, welcome.

Thanks for having me, doctors. Jenn, I really appreciate it.

It's my pleasure. So let me ask you to start. When you set off to be a doctor, did you have a particular interest in autoimmune disease, or is this something that found you more than you found it?

Yeah, it definitely found me. I thought I was going to be helping injured musicians or people who had severe concussions like I had as a kid. And, that got me into chiropractic school, then that got me to learn more naturopathic school, and then got me to acupuncture school. And just, I kept getting friends, family, and patients who had really chronic, complex, rare autoimmune diseases. And, out of a necessity of how do I help these people because their regular doctors are not helping them, I just kept reading and learning and reading and learning and figured out what actually got results for these people.

What was the tie-in with musicians? Why did you think you were going to help musicians?

So I was torn between doing pre-med and I was a music performance saxophone major in college.

Wow.

Yeah. And I'm glad I went the way I went. I was really thinking I was going to do a master's and a doctorate in saxophone performance. And I liked playing, but I found out once I started teaching lessons, I didn't like teaching as much as performing. And so, I figured I just wanted to make a bigger impact on people's lives than playing 1 or 2 recitals a year that only 10 or 20 people showed up to. I was like, I don't know, it didn't seem like the impact I wanted to have with my life when I looked back at it even though it was fun and I liked the challenge of it. But, all the medical doctors I talked to convinced me not to go to medical school because they said it's hard. Most of them were divorced, a lot of them were on psych meds. They were really down about the stress of— school and clinic and internships and rotations. And, they were just all not in a very good mental or physical health state. And, when we had rounds of 5 medical doctors came and talked to my undergrad, they all sort of were like, don't do it unless you really want to do it because you have to push through a lot. And then, every chiropractor or naturopath I talked to was like, this feels amazing. You should get into it. If you're entrepreneurial, you can create your schedule you want, you can make as much as you want, you can help as many people as you want. And, they were all vitally healthy in their physical body and their mental body and had good relationships. And, after having my parents get divorced, I was like, I definitely don't want to go through that again. So, that kind of steered me into the chiropractic naturopathic lane. Also, because I had musical injuries playing saxophone where I had a thumb that needed surgery and a carpal tunnel that needed surgery, went to my chiropractor and in one visit, he was able to fix the issue and prevent the surgery. So, I was like, that's cool, maybe I'll do that. Then, I realized musicians just have the exact same health issues everybody else has.

Yeah.

So that's what got me into a broader spectrum of helping people.

Wow. I'm not surprised at all by the advice that you got from medical doctors. And I have to be honest, I mean, I think I'm guilty of that as well, in that it is a really, really hard road to hoe, right? And I think it's a row to hoe. You know, I have said from the beginning, I would I, of course, if my children really wanted to do it, I would support them. But that I have told them from the beginning, if there is anything else that you're interested in, do that. Now listen, do I regret going to medical school? No, of course not. Do I regret being a surgeon and having done a surgical residency and then a fellowship afterwards? No, of course not. But I also have Probably the equivalent of six years of training beyond my medical school surgery residency and fellowship, and I am a lifelong learner. And I have actually had to step outside of my lane in conventional medicine in order to make an impact. Like had I just stayed a surgeon, I would have never had the impact that I have today. Had I just stayed a surgeon, I would have never written my book because I would have never gotten that pers. perspective to have the knowledge to write that book, to have the experience to write that book. So while medical school is a foundation, it is definitely not enough. People do not learn anything about health in medical school. Nothing. Nothing.

That's hard for people to hear, I think, because you spend so many years doing that and then you're like, wait, this is— I thought I would get everything I ever needed in that schooling.

Well, you get everything you need to write a lot of prescriptions. You get everything you need to recommend a lot of procedures. You are an excellent, excellent, excellent arm of industry. But what you're not is a vehicle of health. You're just not because you may want to be and you may be motivated to be. The truly motivated have to go outside of the system in order to learn how to do that. Unless you were so, so, so lucky as to have grown up in a house that understood that from the beginning, and you were raised in an environment that, that fostered health all along the way, and you could contextualize what you learned in medical school. But unless you had that privilege, and that privilege is rare, especially in this country, unless you had that privilege And you got the same kind of education that I got, which you know I went to one of the finest medical schools in the country. But they're all teaching the same thing. They're all toeing the same line. Their their purpose and their intention is the same, which is that they are all supported by the pharmaceutical companies, and our agenda is to be trained. To be excellent, excellent advocates for the pharmaceutical industry. That's what we're trained to do. And I want to be clear that I think that people who go to medical school are extremely well-intentioned. And when they get out in practice, they are equally well-intentioned and they are doing a good job at doing exactly what they were trained to do. With caring and purpose, all of that. It's the system that's broken, right? Like in this situation, we have to blame the game, not the player. Yeah, totally.

I was just making a video about that the other day. It's like you wouldn't trust a chiropractor to do brain surgery, and you wouldn't trust a brain surgeon to maybe adjust your neck. Or maybe you trust your chiropractor or physical therapist to do a grade three, four, five mobilization, but you're not gonna. You know, it's just it's interesting when people are like, I don't trust doctors anymore. Especially, I hear that a lot. lot, unfortunately, since the pandemic. I just say, well, trust them to do what they're trained to do because they're very, very excellent at what they're trained to do. Yeah. Save your life, recommend what they're recommending, like prescribe medication, whatever it is they might need. It's just a tool for someone. You wouldn't recommend a plumber when someone needed someone who did electricity, right?

Exactly. And quite frankly, like if you have a ruptured appendix, You don't want to go to the chiropractor. You don't want to go to the acupuncturist, right? Like, the acupuncturist taking the pain away there is not the right solution, right? What you need is your appendix removed, and you want a surgeon who's done that 1,000 times to do it.

Yeah, 100%.

And so, we need to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, but that's what we tend to do. And we, we tend to be so like black and white. It's either all good or all bad. And that's simply not true. And I know I deal with that all the time in the world of cancer. People say to me, I'm coming to you because I don't want to have surgery, radiation, or chemotherapy. And I'm like, well, you picked the wrong girl because I don't say that. I never say that. I say you get what you need and what you need might be surgery. And it might be radiation and it might be chemotherapy because it depends on what you have and what you're walking into my door with. So I don't make any guarantees, just like, you know, there's a big kerfuffle in, in the breast imaging world right now because I am anti-mammogram for screening, for screening. But if you have a lesion in your breast, or if you have a symptom, if you have nipple discharge, if you have a mass that you can feel, if your nipple is suddenly inverted, if you If you can visibly see something, this is not a screening situation. You have a symptom that and you need the help of a breast surgeon, and the breast surgeon is not going to see you without a mammogram. So go get a mammogram with my blessing, and please know that that one mammogram is not going to hurt you. And what I am against is doing screening mammograms every year starting at forty or God forbid before then. In asymptomatic women, we cannot justify that. But am I saying that no one should ever have a mammogram again? No, of course not. I know that people like to put out those viral clips of me saying something, you know, and you take like a five-second excerpt from my hour and a half talk, and everyone's up in arms that I'm killing people. But the truth is that. I actually am probably the most reasonable person out there because I'm saying, let's not get rid of anything. Let's make the best decision that we can for the individual sitting in front of us. And I think, I'm not gonna put words in your mouth, but I believe that that's what you're saying is that every person who comes to you comes to you for a different reason. So maybe every single person with autoimmune disease is not gonna present the same way, but if you look at the person and you listen. in, you can figure out what's wrong with them and help them to get better.

Exactly. Yeah. It's so complex and nuanced, and everyone just wants that simple, like, everyone's got this. They want the one-size-fits-all approach that does really well for viral clips and certainty and confidence on social media. But in clinical practice, everybody's a little different. And you recommend— you can have 10 people with, let's say, breast cancer, and you're going to recommend 10 completely different things for them depending on who they are, how old they are, their overall health, what type of cancer it is, what their imaging says, and a bunch of other factors. Yeah, absolutely.

And breast cancer isn't breast cancer. Breast cancer is autoimmune disease. I mean, I had 2 people last week, 2 people who were diagnosed in their— one was 50 and one was 60 with celiac disease. And the only reason anyone checked for celiac disease was because they were diagnosed with breast cancer. So they had some— because 40% of people with celiac disease have no GI complaints. I don't know if you were aware of that statistic.

Yeah.

But these ladies happened to both have lifelong gastrointestinal issues and no one ever checked for celiac, ever. Wow. Blows my mind. Now, I might have a particular bias because I've had this happen to me. Like every single year, I diagnose at least someone with celiac disease, and the first presentation was their breast cancer. So I check everyone because like it's just another add-on onto the slew of labs that I run on everyone. And you know, it it's no harm, no foul to them. But if I find it, it's really meaningful. So I check everyone and I'm beginning to think that that should be routine in people who are diagnosed with breast cancer. But it astounds me that something like that, that can be so life-changing for people once they know, and that's not even routinely checked for.

I totally agree. I check gluten sensitivity and celiac levels on every single patient. Every single one. And, I do the more advanced stuff, either the Wheat Zoomer through Vibrant Miracle or their typical 4 screening blood draws on every single patient because it gets missed all the time.

All the time.

You're like, that's why I have gut issues, that's why I have joint pain, that's why I have fatigue, that's why I can't absorb iron. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. And, we have so many women who are coming in who are like, my hair's falling out. Okay. Well, has anyone checked your iron, your ferritin? And then someone with a ferritin of 4. 4. And of course, she has celiac disease, like, and she's been taking iron supplementation for years, and no one's asking the question why she isn't getting any better. It's just, it's astounding to me. Band-Aid, Band-Aid, Band-Aid, Band-Aid, Band-Aid. And part of it is that Our conventional medical system is really not designed in a way for anyone to really take anything like this on, in that if you're expected to see 40 patients in a day, even 30 patients in a day, right? Even 30 patients in a day, you're not getting to the bottom of anything. There's no possible way that you're getting to the bottom of anything seeing 30 patients in a day.

No, unless you work 20-hour days.

But even if you do, do you know what your mental energy is like at the end of that day? Right? It's just— I realize you can't work 30-hour days. But, you know, I'm someone who works easy 12 and 14-hour days. And I know that the work that I'm doing at 10 o'clock at night, Is far different than the work that I'm doing at 8 a.m. It's far different. It is. It is. So you know, I try to leave the easy stuff for the end of the day when I know that I am not at 100%. But still, sometimes, sometimes the difficult stuff creeps in, and I'm like, nope, I just don't have the capacity for this. And I know that that's what's happening. People in conventional medicine. are just getting through their day. That's all they're doing. They're just getting through it.

Yeah. I feel like that's how we used to see— a lot of my family have a lot of nurses in my family. I feel like they were the ones who were like— the joke was they would drink and smoke too much to kind of cope with the difficulties of patient care. And a lot of substance abuse for nurses. And I feel like doctors are getting that same level of pressure and stress and Work environment stress these days.

For sure. For sure. And I think that doctors do still represent a fair percentage of the addicts because, you know, for the most part, they're not out there walking in the sunshine or grounding to reset their nervous system. And, you know, they're having a drink after work, hopefully not at work, but that happens too. And, you know, they're taking pills and it's just the reality of, of that situation. And I don't see it getting better anytime soon until we change over our insurance system and reward health rather than rewarding sickness. There's kind of no incentive for anything to change.

Right, totally. It's kind of like a follow the money thing, and if the insurance companies are paying out for X or the pharmaceutical companies are paying out more for X prescription, then that's probably going to get pushed. Unfortunately, yeah, yeah, exactly.

And you know, it would be stupid for a doctor to say, "Well, you know, I just want to spend a lot of time with you that I'm not going to get paid for and make you really healthy so you'll never come in again." And then, you know, I mean, that doctor and it's. It's not— they're not doing it knowingly, right? But they're not trained and there's no incentive for them to do that. It's not like they get paid more if their patients are healthy. They get paid less. It doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. One of my— my mom's a nurse at Northwestern University's medical system and they actually had a few doctors get let go because they were taking too many people off of their prescriptions and they weren't prescribing a high enough percentage of their patients prescriptions in endocrinology. Yeah. So, they got let go, they started their own clinic elsewhere, started going to IFM, doing functional medicine, opened up a private concierge practice. And, that's what I see a lot of my medical doctor friends doing is they're all opening up concierge because that's how they can actually feed their families and help.

Yeah. And, I mean, that is what needs to happen because that way they can control the cadence, right? They can control How many people they see, how long they see them for. And they get— and they're actually incentivized to make people healthy because they're still paying, but then they have to see them less. So that, that is the right system. It just, it excludes people who want to rely solely on their insurance to pay for their medical care. Right. And unfortunately, insurance became something that I don't think that it was supposed to become in that it became a payment plan for your medical care rather than being for what it was supposed to be, which is a way to pay for catastrophic events. Right? Like we, when I was growing up, we paid to go to the doctor. You just paid the doctor, and if you went once, you paid once, and if you went ten times, you paid ten times. There was no copay. There was no nonsense because the insurance didn't pay for you to go to the doctor. The insurance paid when you know I broke my arm once. I broke my leg once. I broke my foot three times. Like, and that's what insurance paid for—the the catastrophic things. Not that that was a catastrophe, but you know what I mean. Well, when I broke my elbow, it was a catastrophe. But in any event, that's, that's what it was for. Or when I had to have my tonsils taken out when I was 17. Actually, I wonder if I really did need my tonsils out. Well, that's a talk for another day. But I had like 50 bouts of strep throat. And so they finally just took my tonsils out. But that, that's what it should be for. And now people are just using it as a payment plan.

Yeah. Well, the average American, their health is a catastrophe, kind of.

Yes. But I think that is part and parcel because we're in this whole game of whack-a-mole. Like, you have this symptom, let's suppress it. This symptom is coming up, let's suppress it. Oh, now we have this system— symptom, let's suppress it. And so we're in this never-ending game of whack-a-mole instead of saying, okay, why did that symptom first symptom happen, let's work to correct that. So this is the autoimmune— I'm coming back around. This is the autoimmune world that you're in. And I would like to talk about some of the recent cases that you've seen and the delay in diagnosis and help people to ask the right questions early on so that you don't have to suffer for 3, 4, 5, and 6 years. Before you get help?

Yeah, I see most of my patients are coming in over 5 years of suffering before they get help. I had an Orthodox Jewish father who came in who's 40 years old. He's been suffering since he was 10 years old with chronic joint pain and gut issues, and he's, he's had positive ANA markers for 20, 30 years. And the rheumatologists tell him like, sorry, like Your RF is negative, your CCP is negative, so you're fine. And they'll run x-rays and say your joints aren't getting eroded, your hands aren't getting mangled. And so we don't know what to do with you. And it's wild. They've tried a few medications, he reacted to it. And so he just kind of gets passed around every year or 2 where he'll just say, I just have to deal with chronic pain and suffering. And they say, well, that didn't work. We have no other options for you. And I was the first person to run a more extensive test panel that found, no, you really do have rheumatoid arthritis. You do have some autoimmune condition. Your hs-CRP is through the roof at 32.4, and we need to deal with this. So, I ran some root cause tests as well and found he's got major gut dysbiosis. He probably had to take tons of steroids, like they tried steroids and antibiotics in the past for various conditions that ruined his gut flora. He's got some family history of autoimmune like most autoimmune folks do. He's starting to get better, which is great. But I just see people going 5, 10, sometimes in this case 30 years without a diagnosis or just getting told their ANA is normal or that it's normal for iron to be low or it's normal to have chronic digestive distress. And it's quite unfortunate, but luckily there are more practitioners like you and me who are out there starting to say we need tests and patients are getting better at advocating for their own tests. And there are more companies now. who are offering some of these tests to the general public. So, you can go buy some of the tests yourself through different labs because then you can at least bring it to your primary care and say, hey, I do have this thing that you refuse to test me for. And, do you know how we can start working on this?

Yeah. I'm afraid that won't be such a rewarding conversation, but I do want to start to talk about—

I would actually go about talking to your doctor. That's what people like my patients are thinking. They're like, why did I not want this test? I asked 3 times. I did get it. And then I usually recommend they go to their doctor and say like, hey, I got this other practitioner, or like, I was able to get this test and I just wanted to get your opinion on this or see what you think.

Yeah, but then they don't know and they've never seen that test before and it doesn't mean anything to them. And then they get all up in arms and they confuse I don't know with no. And yeah, that's how that goes. Okay. Tie in the iron thing because we've— I mentioned it, now you mentioned it. So, let's tell people why we pay attention to that and what that means.

So, to me, low iron, if someone is eating enough iron, if they're not like hardcore vegetarian vegan where there's very little food-sourced iron, but if someone's got low iron consistently and maybe they've tried supplementing or maybe they're not losing blood internally or externally and And, they're doing what they need to to try to get their iron up with food or supplement sources and it just stays low long-term. To me, that's a major red flag for digestive dysfunction whether it's gluten or something.

You're not absorbing it.

You're not absorbing it. So, there could be lack of stomach digestive capacity. I think classically they used to say it was low stomach acid. Sometimes I see that in people who are on acid blockers and PPIs. I actually have a Heidelberg machine at my office which tests the actual pH of the stomach, which is neat because most people who think they have low stomach acid actually have liver gallbladder dysfunction and they have low stomach enzyme production or liver pancreatic enzymes and then they have reflux from their small intestine upwards. So usually, I find it's actually small intestine or middle digestion function in the liver, gallbladder, pancreas, small intestine rather than the stomach. But, yeah, it's usually they're not having the enzymes or acid to break it down or they have some issue that's damaged the lining of their small intestine that creates a malabsorption or they're not absorbing the iron the way that they really should be.

Yeah. So, it's interesting. I think we should talk about the acid thing a little bit because we have vilified acid in an attempt to market Proton pump inhibitors, right? And proton pump inhibitors, and I'm talking about like Protonix and Nexium, that kind of thing. These are readily prescribed, very, very easily prescribed. And when they were approved, they were approved for short-term use. 2 weeks. 2 weeks is what they were approved for. The average person who gets put on a proton pump inhibitor, and this is like anyone who comes in complaining of any upper digestive complaint. Automatically gets put on a proton pump inhibitor. I mean, those prescriptions are given out like candy, and the average person, I believe, is on them for four years. This is very, very damaging in the long run because acid performs very vital functions in our stomach and is the signaling pathway for everything that happens beyond the stomach. So, in the stomach, it breaks down food because. Chewing and saliva will only go so far. And really, to break down food to its elemental components, you need acid. The other thing acid does is it destroys bacteria. So if you don't have enough acid in your stomach, you are going to be prone to dysbiosis, that overgrowth in your gut, but also more infections. I can't tell you the number of times that When we check the stool and we see staph and strep, staph and strep are respiratory organisms that when they're swallowed, if there's enough stomach acid, they're supposed to be destroyed, but they're not because we just don't have enough stomach acid. And then as the food moves through the system, acid triggers the release of bile, acid triggers the release of pancreatic enzymes. So if there's not enough acid there, That's not happening. And then there's a whole bunch of digestive complications as a result, because if you don't have bile and you don't have digestive enzymes, pancreatic enzymes, you're not going to break down your food and you are going to have immunogenic responses. So I think the low acid story is a big one for a lot of people, especially given the judicious use of proton pump inhibitors.

Yeah. So, we have, like I was saying before, this Heidelberg machine, which is basically you attach a long string. You don't have to use a string. We attach a long string to a capsule that people swallow and you use the string to put it right into their stomach. And, it gives a radio frequency, an AM frequency to a signal capturer that then tells you the exact pH of the stomach. And, you have them do it fasting and then you have them drink an alkaline solution. that then takes what should be a resting low pH acidic stomach up to a higher pH and then you see how quickly the stomach reacidifies. It gives you instant real-time data of how good their stomach is at being acidic and reacidifying or not.

Wow.

And, it's fascinating because you find exactly whether people need more stomach acid, whether they need more pancreatic or bile support, Whether they need more betaine HCl or occasionally they actually have high stomach acid because that's often like the— I find the first response is sort of a hyperacidity that can happen when someone is more stressed, anxious. And then, we do things to kind of calm that down naturally without a PPI or most of the time it's stress reduction techniques that help lower the stomach acid initial response. But, I see a lot of low stomach acid in patients that have been taking proton pump inhibitors Or histamine antagonists for a long time. And then, that causes, like you said, digestive distress farther down the channel, down the small and large intestine. So, it's fascinating. But, I see even more so than the low stomach acid, what I see in people who think that they have low stomach acid is that they have a little bit of functional low stomach acid, but even more than that, they have major issues with bile flow.

Yeah.

And reflux from the small intestine up. So, a little bit of a SIBO, small intestinal bacterial overgrowth, a little bit of SIBO where they're getting reflux from their bile and from the pancreatic enzymes and the small intestine upwards into the stomach from the pyloric sphincter. So basically, it's pyloric sphincter reflux for the doctors on here. But, it's really been interesting to see. We've run it on a couple hundred people over the last 8 years and it's fascinating to Like get the actual data of like, here's what's really going on. And most of the time it correlates with a lot of the way people feel when they take, you know, betaine HCl or stomach acid support, but it doesn't always correlate. So it's nice for people to have the test results to know for sure what's going on.

Yeah, that's really interesting. So, okay, so iron is often a digestive symptom, right? Low iron is often a digestive symptom. What else Are you looking for when you are evaluating someone and you believe that they have autoimmune disease? Like, what are you doing that the rest of the, the rest of the providers that they have seen before are missing?

Am I doing? I think I do a lot of different diagnostics. So I went to acupuncture and Chinese medical school. So I'm also looking at their tongue, some of the ear and pulse diagnosis, but I also run Autoimmune screening blood work on everybody. So, at the very least, I'm going to run an ANA, antinuclear antigen test, and usually an ENA panel or some type of 6 to 20 most common autoimmune marker panel on folks, especially if they've got other autoimmune issues. Every time we have a thyroid patient or fatigue patient, we're always running for antibodies to the thyroid, at least anti-TPO and anti-thyroglobulin. We're running the ANA and some of those ENA panels. But, when I see fatigue, any long-term digestive issues, even if it's just, oh, I'm a little constipated or I'm a little tired in the afternoon or I'm not sleeping well, pretty much any chronic inflammatory stuff, any joint issues, any skin issues, any asthma, any history of allergies, or people say histamine or POTS or long-hauler COVID, Any chronic fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, myalgic encephalitis, vaccine reactions. I got sick and then I've been worse ever since. And especially people who are off after pregnancies because pregnancies have a big impact on your immune system and hormones. So, we'll check full hormones and autoimmune panels. When people said this started after I had kids, we'll look at that too.

Mm-hmm.

And cancer. I don't want to leave out cancer.

Yeah, of course. So can you talk a little bit about the autoimmune triad and what makes people vulnerable? Like what the process of developing autoimmune disease looks like?

So you're talking about the triad of just like genetics, gut, trauma?

Mm-hmm.

Yep. So there's the simple one. Genetics, gut, and trauma. So you have to have—

Or trigger, trigger, right?

The trauma. Yep. So, it's genetic predisposition. So, usually, you'll see allergies, asthma, skin issues, food reactions that run in families, gut issues, or other autoimmune conditions that run in families. So, there's a genetic predisposition that kind of loads the gun, so to speak. And then, you have leaky gut, which makes the terrain not as good or gut inflammation. Some people call it gut dysbiosis or gut dysfunction. But, there's some digestive issue. It could be anything from the start from your lips all the way down to your bum. So, it could be major dental issues, it could be heartburn in the stomach, it could be liver gallbladder even or small intestine overgrowth or Candida issues. It could be just a history of taking more than a couple antibiotics or you had a really bad reaction to one antibiotic. So, the second one is the gut dysfunction. And then, the third one is a trigger. So, I usually talk to patients about the 3 main types of triggers that are either structural, biochemical, or emotional stress triggers. So, you could have a structural trigger because we know now that concussions cause leaky gut or gut dysfunction. So, it could be something like a concussion or a physical broken bone or physical trauma, a car accident, just the physical strain of giving birth could be enough to be a physical trigger. But physical trauma or trigger, then the biochemical could be a medication.

Okay.

Lupus is fairly common and there's more and more drugs we're finding that induce lupus in people. So, it could be a medication, it could be a food that you reacted to like gluten, which is probably really because— forgetting the gluten thing— really because everyone pesticided the gluten to the wazoo. And so, a lot of people are getting reactions to gluten because of the way gluten's processed. But, it could be a food, a drug, a bad infection. So, the COVID spike protein, whether it's from a natural infection or The COVID shot that could be doing it. It could be an Epstein-Barr virus when they got bad Epstein-Barr or cytomegalovirus. Really any infection—the Taco Bell lettuce diarrhea that's going around from Taylor Farms right now—could be anything. Could be they went to Mexico. Had a patient this week who went to Mexico and got traveler's diarrhea. Turns out she actually—we ran a PCI Center Parasitology Center Institute. We ran their stool test for parasites, which is my favorite one. And, she has roundworms.

It's called Parasitology Center. I never heard of that.

PCI. They're the ones, pcowellness.com. They're the only ones that I've found that actually will do best quality parasite testing where sometimes GI Maps or Vibrant's Gut Zoomer will pick it up, but theirs is less than $200 to look for parasites, which is nice. And, they look at biofilm and yeast and things and find it pretty often. We've been using them for a decade and they've been nice to use. But sometimes it's parasitic infections in that second category of from not the structure or biochemical, but then they have triggers that are emotional stress. So divorce is a big one, financial stress, job losses, even a new job that's highly stressful could be tough for somebody or a toxic relationship at work or in their personal life. Tough parenting, have people check their ACE score, ACE, Adverse Childhood Experiences score. If they haven't looked at that, that's huge for autoimmune as well because if you have a score of 4 out of 10 or higher, I don't know the exact statistic off the top of my head, but you're much, much, much more likely to develop autoimmune issues if you've had a tough upbringing. Yeah.

Before we move on, I do want to talk about parasites for a minute because I feel like that's a little bit of a controversial topic. Some people say treat, some people say don't treat, some people say treat every year. How do you feel about parasites and do you think they're symbiotic? Do you think that they are always predatory? What do you think?

I think they probably have a purpose, but they, like anything, it can be too much of a good thing. So some of them are probably more pathogenic, some of them probably have some beneficial qualities to them. I think if you have a healthy terrain, then you're not going to get as much of an overgrowth of the parasites.

Mm-hmm.

So, it also depends where you're at in the world. People who are in first world countries like we are in the United States generally don't get as many legitimate super intense parasitic illnesses and infections. So, I think for us, it's mildly overblown, but I do catch a lot of protozoan parasites and autoimmune issues, especially with Hashimoto's. See a lot of Entamoeba histolytica and some Blastocystis hominis that show up for chronic thyroid conditions. But I do think they serve a purpose, but they can get overgrown just sort of like weeds. Weeds are often super healing and therapeutic, like dandelion is a weed but has huge medicinal benefits for detox, liver, kidney support, your lymphatic system. And but if you have if your whole yard is dandelions and it starts growing in. your house and it's all over your bed and now you're getting yellow all the time and people think you're jaundiced because you're just rolling in dandelions, then that's going to be problematic. But, if you have a couple dandelions here and there, you're like, oh, that's really cute, not a problem. So, I don't think you always have to go kill, kill, kill all the things in the body because some of that will have a negative impact. When you take an herb or medication, it's not always just going to target that one specific strain, it's going to have other impacts on the gut flora too.

So, you have to look I saw a really interesting paper. I don't remember where it was. It was a case report of a woman who developed a skin lesion. She had a history of breast cancer, and so they biopsied it and it was a breast cancer, but they saw the spike protein in it, not the anti- Not the nucleocapsid protein, but the spike protein. So they know that this woman was never— she was vaccinated, but she never developed the disease, because if you develop the disease, you also have nucleocapsid protein. And this is the first time that I saw it. It's not causative, right? Like, we can't extrapolate that, but we can just say that there's a signal here and we need to pay more attention to it.

Right.

Do you— has— I have definitely seen an uptick in young breast cancers since 2021. I don't know, have you seen an uptick in autoimmune disease? And do you think that there's a signal there as well?

I would say definitely. I think the vac— like all vaccines are designed to create an immune response. And, that typically is an inflammatory immune response. So, when I tell people who are more pro-vaccine because I'm kind of moderate on the whole vaccine thing, I guess since the pandemic started, I'm kind of, I guess, more anti-vaccine because I'm just for informed consent, which means you're allowed to choose. And, at least during the pandemic, people were not always allowed to choose or felt like they couldn't choose or pressured.

Well, if you had to choose between your job, your livelihood, putting food on your table and supporting and clothing your family, then that's not exactly a choice. Right. Right. So I don't— many people were not given the opportunity to choose.

Right. It's like, here's your choice. Either you take the vaccine or we ruin your life.

It's like, yeah, it's like, like your kids can't go to school and you can't leave the house. And, you know, it wasn't a choice. They said it was a choice, but it wasn't a choice.

It feels— felt like the mafia. It's like, here's your choice, kill this guy or kill this guy. Great, I have a choice.

Excellent. Yeah, thank you.

Yeah, but I have seen that for sure. I've seen a lot of pseudo-ALS for some reason where people developed ALS that was not neurotypical ALS. It's not standard, but they got it soon after the COVID vaccine. I've seen cases of MS in one of my family members actually who got MS a week and a half after their no COVID infection, but got the COVID vaccine and got MS. They now no longer have MS because they saw some really great people I referred them to. But I've seen MS, I've seen definitely thyroid issues and really just the whole spectrum of autoimmune stuff. But the tricky part about autoimmune is you might have that trigger and not notice it for weeks months or a year or 2 afterwards.

Yeah.

The other tricky part is that the spike protein was generally quite inflammatory for people as well, which is why one of the main symptoms that I was telling patients was if you have back pain that is really bad, worst ever headache, worse, a terrible headache, terrible back pain, it's more likely COVID than just like a flu because it's just so intense. The inflammation levels that a lot of people had when they had COVID infections were really intense. But the COVID spike protein, for whatever reason, was what they decided to put into the vaccine. And so, whether they got the vaccine or the natural infection, people just got a huge inflammatory dose of a spiky, somewhat damaging product. And so, I'm seeing the infection and/or the COVID vaccine causing problems and autoimmune reactions because that spike protein could be so harmful for people.

Yeah. Yeah, it's it definitely complicated what is already clearly a complicated picture because autoimmune disease has exploded, exploded. And granted, we did not have the challenges, let's say ten years ago. We definitely didn't have them twenty years ago, right? So the environmental challenges that we have now are with. Without question contributing, right? And what happened in 2021 definitely didn't help. It didn't make us better. It didn't make us stronger. And in fact, it gave us even more toxicity and toxic challenges. So I have, I have a very dear family friend who was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis. And he was young when he was diagnosed. He was about 19. And he saw the head of rheumatology at MGH. Who told him that what he eats doesn't matter and nothing he could do will matter and he just needs to go on a biologic because without going on a biologic, his joints would be destroyed and his life ruined. So he is now on his 5th biologic because while they work in the short term, By blocking the immune response, the immune system is really smart and realizes that there is a trigger there that it wants to get rid of, and so it learns to ignore or overrule whatever that particular blockade is. And then you introduce the next one, and you get a little bit of response, but the immune system finds a way around it, and yada yada yada. So how why is that? the wrong approach without like calling anyone out, but what should we be doing differently? What should we be thinking about differently when we encounter these autoimmune situations?

I think we really want to think about shifting our mindset from the immune system is malfunctioning and the body is broken and we have something to— we need to stop, block, repair. Into the new mindset of, okay, the body and the immune system are pretty intelligent. They're pretty good at trying to do the best it can with what it has. In chiropractic, they say it's got an innate intelligence. But how do we look at the immune system and say, okay, let's say this autoimmune is actually serving a purpose or trying to do something to help you, not attacking my thyroid and it's going to destroy it and I'm going to be sick forever. But, how do we think about it as what is my immune system trying to do with this autoimmune process and how can I help it to actually do what it's designed to do and trying to do to make me healthier? And oftentimes, that is looking at those 3 things we talked about, those triggers that could still be there. It's looking at gut dysfunction and the balance of healthy bacteria and healthy and harmful yeast and maybe parasites. It's looking at viral patterns. It's looking at different, often toxins and infections that get lodged in tissue. The body is trying to get out of that tissue or it's looking at maybe it's food reactions like gluten that could cause joint inflammation that then creates rheumatoid arthritis or creates psoriatic arthritis or creates a skin lesion or creates AS. So, it's looking at all the things inside of us that we're putting in or that we already have inside of us that our system is reacting to, trying to say, stop putting that in me, or get that out of me, or let's get healthy enough so that I don't have to keep reacting or I can overcome this challenge of this infection. And then, a lot of times mysteriously, the autoimmune just sort of goes into remission.

Yeah. What is an autoimmune diet? When people talk about that, what does that mean?

So, I think a lot of people refer to it as the autoimmune AIP diet, right? The autoimmune protocol diet, which is a very strict diet that I highly rarely recommend unless someone's really struggling because I have other tools and the compliance rate for my patients is pretty low. And, if they're in a lot of pain or they're really suffering a lot, they oftentimes will say, I'll do anything. I'll eat just chicken and rice if that's all And so, sometimes they'll do that or they'll do a home food sensitivity elimination where they only eat 5 or 10 foods and they slowly add them back in if they don't want to pay for food sensitivity testing or do all those things. But, that has its challenges too and people aren't always self-aware enough or in a relaxed enough living environment state or work state to be able to notice what they're responding to. I do like food sensitivity testing from some of these people, but the AIP generally cuts out eggs, Dairy, almost all grains, legumes, nightshades, nuts, seeds, seed oils, coffee, and limits a lot of other things as well. So it's a pretty restrictive diet for people. I think, who's the one who did, had the MS book with AIP?

You're talking about Dr. Terry Wahls.

Yes, Dr. Terry Wahls, I think, kind of popularized a lot of the AIP diet. Yeah, we found it super helpful. Yeah. And, it does help people. It's kind of an easier way than just eating 5 or 10 foods. It just removes the most common food sensitivities. So, if someone's really up for that or wanting to try it, I will recommend it. But usually, we'll just run really good quality food sensitivity testing and remove the foods that show up there instead because it's just— for me, it's worth $200 to $400 to test their food sensitivities rather than Put him through like three months of intense food restrictions, especially right now. It's hard. Now and go to Cubs games.

Yeah, it's hard. Actually, my son just started the what is it called TB fifteen Tom Brady the Tom Brady diet, which admittedly is a very healthy diet. But you know, he said to me, "I'm not eating any nightshades," so. Let me ask you, what's wrong with nightshades?

I mean, I don't think nightshades are that problematic if your liver is functioning well. I find most people who have nightshade issues have liver issues, but nightshades do have solanines in them and they can be mildly toxic for some people. I think people like to pick on gluten, casein, they pick on whey, they pick on lactose, they pick on oxalates, they pick on histamine. And they just say like everyone needs to avoid all the foods because you never know what you're reacting to. But luckily we have tests now that can tell you if you are really reacting to those things or not. But nightshades, for people who don't know, include cayenne pepper, black pepper, white pepper, tomato— or no, not peppers.

Yeah, most peppers, tomatoes, eggplant, potatoes.

Oh, the white potato in French fries is huge for people. Even things like goji berries that people do to be healthier is a nightshade.

Incidentally, I am not giving up French fries. It's really hard. I don't eat them a lot, obviously, but if you ask me like what my one thing that I'm never gonna, you know, because I gave, I successfully gave up birthday cake. I was a birthday cake addict, but I can't confidently say that I'm gonna cut out French fries.

I know.

Because that's my one Achilles heel.

Have you tried the Jesse& Ben's or Roots home frozen?

No, no, I don't know that. Do I need to know that?

Possibly, yeah, because Roots makes a really good organic one with avocado oil for home. And then Jesse& Ben's uses a tallow and sea salt one. And they even sell, I think, the Jesse& Ben's at Target, but they're quite delicious. And so, when we're craving a late-night snack of some sort, occasionally we'll just throw Those in the air fryer for 10 minutes, and it's a great, like, salty, savory little potato snack.

All right, I'll do that. Even though, like, you know, the acrylamides are bad no matter if they're fried in— I mean, I would never eat, like, McDonald's french fries or any of that garbage, but, uh, yeah, I do my— I do like myself some fried potatoes. I do.

You air fry it, it's less than at least Cook me in the vat of oil.

Yes, I agree, and that's what we do. And I did learn that sweet potatoes are not nightshades. Yes, yep. I did not know that. But there's some other family of something that I forget what they are. Are you pro or anti-nightshades? No, I'm neither, because I don't believe that there's any one food group that's bad for us universally, with the exception—and this is what I tell people. So first of all, we have no nutritional need for grains. And if we never ate another grain again, we would suffer no nutritional deficiency. Now listen, if you're of normal weight and you have good insulin sensitivity and your genes are such that you don't get terrible insulin spikes and glucose spikes from grains and you wanna eat whole grains and you have a source of whole grains that is not chemical-laden, Have at it with my blessing. However, for most people, and in my world, everyone has breast cancer, and 90% of people that have breast cancer have metabolic issues. They have anywhere from slight to severe metabolic dysfunction. In these people, they in general don't do well on high glycemic diets, and most grains are high glycemic. So no nutritional value, high-glycemic food, probably not the best fit for someone who is actively cancering, right? Now, if they're 20 years down the line and their diagnosis is in their rearview mirror and they have recaptured their metabolic health and they're doing great and they want to eat rice with their dinner or whatever, God bless, right? I'm all good with it. But for someone who is actively cancering, I don't think that grains give any benefit, and it's all risk. So that's how I feel about grains. Dairy is a different story for me. Again, I am not saying that no one should eat dairy, but dairy is in fact a big fat bolus of growth hormone because the purpose of dairy is to take baby cows, goats, sheep, whatever, and make them into big fat Cows, goats, sheep, whatever, right? If you are actively cancering, the last thing your system needs is another growth signal. We're already we we already have growth signal in abundance, right? We don't need more of it. So I don't think there's any place for dairy in someone who is actively cancering. Again, if your cancer is in your rearview mirror, if you have reset your metabolism, if you are in a good place at a good weight, and you want to add. A little clean dairy into your diet, okay. Like, I'm not going to tell you not to put a little Parmesan on your escarole salad. But for people that are actively cancering, I don't think it's a good idea. And if you are trying to lose weight, if you are actively trying to lose weight, I don't think that dairy is a good addition to your diet because Growth hormone and trying to lose weight are opposing forces, right? So you're kind of stepping on your own foot. So that's how I feel. Beyond that, I'm not— I mean, listen, I think Gundry is a brilliant guy. Do I think lectins are the problem? No, I do not. I do not think that our obesity crisis is because people are eating the seeds in their cucumbers.

Right.

I just don't think that that's it. And one time I ran into Mark Hyman and I, I don't know, I just, I had just read Gundry's book and I was like, what, what do you think of Gundry's book? And he said, I think that we're already as a society not eating enough vegetables. And to have someone out there with his level of influence saying eat less vegetables is probably not the messaging that the world needs right now. Yeah, I agree. And so, you know, where I fall in all of this is that I, I'm not paleo, I'm not carnivore, I'm definitely not vegan. I am whole food, plant-based, low glycemic, because I think that that's what everyone needs and benefits from. And then, you know, where you get your protein is where you get your protein, and I don't feel like fighting with anyone about it. And I— if that makes me wishy-washy, then that makes me wishy-washy. And if the plant people are mad at me because I don't care where you get your protein, then okay, they'll be mad at me. And if the carnivores are mad at me because plants are poison, okay, they're mad at me. But I, I just want us all to agree that processed food isn't good for anyone, and we should all be doing our best to eat foods that are in their original form and stay away from things that drive up your blood sugar. And for some people, that's saturated fat, right? It's not always a carbohydrate-driven thing. So, but I think you can't go too wrong if you are eating a whole food plant-based low glycemic diet. Like, I think you're going to be in pretty good shape no matter what.

I totally agree. And I think when people balance their blood sugar with a low glycemic diet, their energy is better and their mood is better. And so many people struggle with energy and mood, and they haven't really looked at What their blood sugar does with the CGM or they haven't just tried eating more protein from any source. And, that stabilizes so many people's mental health, it stabilizes kids' focus and performance in school. Guys had an ADHD kid yesterday come in. He's eating zero breakfast and he has a tiny lunch and they're wondering why he's tired at the end of the day. I'm like, because he has zero fuel to go on. He's just running on ketones that he's probably not even good at burning. So, we started getting him at least a protein shake or something he'll eat in the morning to get his brain a little more fuel to go.

I just saw something horrible about protein shakes. What did I see? Something about that no matter what brand you get, there's a ton of heavy metals in all of them.

A lot of them, yeah. A lot of them have— are like super tainted with heavy metals.

Yeah, that's depressing. But then, you know, that goes down to like Why I tell people to eat whole foods? Because all of these processed foods, and even if you think that oh mine only has seven ingredients or whatever whatever, it is so highly processed to get it into that powder. And unless you're having like freeze-dried bone broth or something along those lines, it is so it is so highly processed to get it into that powder. And I don't care how good the ingredients on your protein bars say they. It's garbage. It is. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to all the protein bar makers out there who think that they're doing a good thing. I tried one the other day and it was so disgusting. I was like, I can't believe people eat this. It's vile.

I'd rather just eat some fruit and meat or some eggs or veggies. Like, just had a cucumber from our local farmer market. I'm like, that was so much better than anything processed. Yeah.

Yeah. In months.

Honestly. But, occasionally, what I will do because parents ask me about their kids with sensitivities because they'll come in, they're like, they'll only eat mac and cheese and chicken nuggets because they've just gone down that rabbit hole. And so, I'll be like, okay, get them a smoothie that's really clean and then slowly drip in more of this vegetable powder. And then, their subconscious will start to recognize that they're eating vegetables even if they're not tasting it. And then, I'll get them to go to the grocery store and every week pick out a new food to try from the produce section. You don't have to eat the whole thing, but you got to pick one out and something new and try it. And, that starts to open up their palate and their taste buds a little bit. But, I almost have to sneak in some of the healthy stuff in these gummy vitamins or in powders or smoothies or protein shakes because then they'll start to be like, okay, I actually feel a little bit better even though this is a really bad version of it. But, you also have to drip them into health because some of these kids are so Like violently rejecting anything that could be healthy.

Well, I know that I had this problem in my own house because I really didn't come into my knowing until, I mean, I think my kids were probably 10 and 8 at the time. So there was a violent uproar when I was like, we're getting rid of all of this stuff. And I went from like being the house where there was good food, according to my children, good food, to, Mom, there's nothing to eat in this house. It's disgusting. I'm embarrassed. I can't bring my friends over. Where's the soda? And they were just horrified. And I remember I read this book called, I think it was From Mac and Cheese to Veggies, Please. In an attempt to try to get my children to eat. So basically what they said is you just have to go cold turkey and for 3 days or 4 days or whatever, just whenever they're hungry, offer them fruit and vegetables, right? And we got through, I don't know, like 2 hours. And my husband was like, enough of this. You're insane. So I didn't get well supported and I didn't make any impact on them for years. And then my older son turned 17 and like something in him clicked and he, he was like, I'm not eating this junk anymore. And he went cold turkey, no junk, no processed, no anything, started lifting weights every day and building up his body. And I mean, what happened to him was like miraculous. And he became a better student. He became a better person. He became a better everything. It was really amazing. My younger son did not care for the transition and said, like, you're all crazy and I'm eating my own food. So it's still a journey. But what you were talking about, about kind of easing it in, I think that that was Jessica Seinfeld's whole thing where— wasn't she putting Broccoli and her brownies, yeah, and and kind of doing that. I I tried that; it was an epic fail. My my kids are like, "No, hell no! It's too much." Well, this has been wonderful. I hope that we helped some people out there who are struggling with autoimmune disorders and. Giving them some hope. I know that when I first met Terry Wahls and when she told me her whole story about how she went from a zero-gravity wheelchair to riding 20 miles a day just by asking the why that hadn't been asked in all of her journey with MS. And she was someone who, she was a Midwest doctor, had access to every imaginable drug protocol, clinical trial, and just got worse and worse and worse. And the reason that she got worse and worse is because if all you're trying to do is manage the symptom, you're never going to get to the root of the problem and you're never going to affect the progression of disease. And this doesn't only apply to autoimmune disease. It applies to breast cancer. It applies to dementia. It applies to osteoarthritis. It applies to osteoporosis. It applies to heart disease. It applies to all of it. And that's what we all have to realize is that we can positively affect our health. We can even reverse these conditions that we have been repeatedly told are irreversible. And when I trained, we were told that you can't do anything about diabetes, but we know so much better now that we can reverse these things that we're told are irreversible, but you can't do it by doing what was done before. Right? And it's the definition of insanity to do the same thing and expect a different outcome. And I'm so grateful for you and for the work that you're doing and for you using your voice and your platform to help people to ask more questions and demand answers.

Thank you, Jenn. Yeah, likewise. I can't wait to see what you're going to do in the next decade.

Oh, well, strap in because we're moving fast. I know that you are starting up your community again. Can you tell people a little bit about that and then how to find you?

Yeah, they can find me on Instagram. It's just Dr. Bradley Campbell. And if they go and send me a DM that actually says Oh Baby, O-H-B-A-B-Y, I'll send them the link to get on the waitlist for the membership, which reopens, thank Usually, we open it around 4th of July and Thanksgiving to Christmas time every year and New Year's. And, it's basically a way to meet with me weekly in a group setting on a live Zoom call where I answer questions. I teach different health topics every week. We have a health workshop class every month on a different health topic, everything from digestive function and thyroid and adrenals and parasites and HRT and perimenopause and weight loss. And all the fun health things that people wonder about that the members get to choose the topic on. But, we have hundreds of videos, thousands of hours of content in there for them to search for. There's guides and protocols and you can order lab testing that might be hard to get for you elsewhere. And so, it's just a community of people that are interested in healing. And usually, we get a lot of the 30 to 70-year-old women who are just wanting to geek out and learn as much as possible about their health, get healthier, learn new things, and truly find a community of people that can support them on their journey.

Can I ask you before we go today what your feeling is about the GLP-1s?

Yeah, I think they're great how they've been used for a long time, but when you get someone who just wants to lose 5, 10 pounds but does not have Diabetes or obesity, then it becomes a bit of a problem. So I worry about some of the thyroid cancer risk that was identified a little bit with them. I worry about the fact that it is just getting overused for cosmetic reasons rather than for helping with metabolic dysfunction. So I think for some people it truly can be way better than a lifetime of like glipizide or metformin or other diabetes medications, and it can be helpful for some people.

Yeah.

For certain addictions and cravings, but I see a lot of downsides with it and people who lose weight but don't make the lifestyle changes that need to be made or the dietary shifts or learning how to cook real healthy food. And then, they end up going off the GLP-1 for whatever reason and they rebound worse than they were before. So, it's not a miracle cure-all, but it is a useful crutch for some people. But, I just think for people who want to lose Typically, where I see it is they want to lose 10 to 20 pounds or 25 pounds and they're in that 40 to 60-year-old female age range. That's where I think the problem is because you really have to work towards gaining muscle mass as the primary driver and eating protein. And, most women are not doing that and most women are just wanting the quick fix solution rather than going to fix the actual internal immune health, metabolic health, mental health, Sleep regulations, circadian rhythm, hormones, all the stuff that you help people with.

You don't have to answer this, but I— and I am using GLP-1 selectively, so I'm going to put it out there and say that from the start. And I also have a concern that these drugs were intentionally designed to change something and be addictive so that people who go off them have huge rebounds in hunger and cravings and things like that to necessitate staying on them for a lifetime. I don't know if you've seen that, but I have seen the people trying to get off can't.

Yeah. A lot of the people I know, it's like 50/50. Some really struggle getting off, other ones stop and never noticed it. But it's the ones I think where it's particularly the craving side of it that are struggling People who had food cravings before that then go on it, it helps them and they struggle to get off. But I then usually work with people to figure out where those cravings are really coming from and kind of snip it at the source rather than, like you said, playing whack-a-mole for forever.

And my last question for you, which might not be a short one, but how much do you think stress is contributing to autoimmune disease and chronic disease in general?

I think stress is huge. I think it's— I mean, research shows 80% of the reason why people go to the doctor is because of stress-induced problems. And I think we live in a society and a culture that does not really honor our feelings and we don't slow down enough to just be quiet and feel whatever's going on. So, I say, I have this phrase, you have to feel it to heal it. And, a lot of people just cognitively acknowledge it because we have such a huge frontal lobe as Homo sapiens that a dog could lose its leg and not have any— they don't have a screen to look at, they're just feeling their feelings for a day or two and then they're no longer depressed where a human could lose his leg or her leg and then be depressed for the rest of their life.

Yeah.

I think a lot of mild depression, anxiety can come from— and just generalized anxiety and stress can come from too much screen time, not enough quiet time because the average person spends less than 30 minutes a day in quiet, which is wild. So, I think we don't have enough quiet time in nature to really think, introspect, process, and just feel our emotions and reflect on our life. And so, we're kind of more bored and more lonely than ever but louder than ever. So, it's like people are kind of bored and lonely but they're not actually bored and they're not actually alone in quiet time. So, everyone's like, we're the lonely generation. I'm like, no, we actually need more loneliness. People need to go on a camping trip by themselves for a weekend and they'll probably sort their whole life out and deal with a lot of their stress. We do need more community for sure. But I think even in community, we need more time of just talking with each other without cell phones. And I think when people get quiet and they get— they're able to actually feel their feelings and feel safe and secure enough to actually hold space for their feelings, a lot of that stress starts to dissipate or a lot of people start having their own come-to-Jesus moments with themselves and doing what they really need to do to get their lives in order.

Yeah, I agree. I agree. And I think it's so underappreciated. Even the women who I see with these breast cancer diagnoses, and they say they don't know why they got breast cancer, and they seemingly have no risk factors. And then you talk to them, and they were raised by an alcoholic parent and sexually abused. And no, no, no, I've put all of that behind me. And I'm thinking, you think you did because you bottled it up, but that what happened to you then is probably still affecting you today in that you don't feel safe. And an unsafe body doesn't heal.

Right, exactly.

Wow. What a great time we've had.

Yeah. Thanks, Doc.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Thanks for having me on your podcast.

It's been great. And thank all of you for joining me. And if you like this conversation and you think it was important and you think it's important for someone in your family or someone in your community to hear it, then please share it and know that I will be back next week, same time, same place. It's Dr. Jen. Bye for now.