Are Parasites Driving Your Autoimmune Or Gut Issues? with Dr. George Papanicolaou

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

When you see parasites, you should be thinking immune system, and you should be thinking, you know, something is amiss in the immune system. But you should also be thinking about the fact that there's the good side and that we need to have a diverse microbiome that includes bacterial diversity, that includes parasitic diversity, Hey everybody, it's Dr. Mark.

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Welcome to Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman, that's the Pharmacist in FpAce for Conversations that Matter. and if you ever wonder if you had parasites and if they're affecting your health, this is the podcast you got to listen to because that's what we're going to talk about today on this special episode of Doctor's Pharmacy called House Call with none other than our Dr. George Papamichael from the Ultra Wellness Center, an extraordinary doc, friend, and just a hero of mine who's so committed to helping patients and doing such a good job. I just think we are so blessed to have him here at Ultra Wellness Center. Welcome back, George.

Mark, it is always a pleasure to be here to talk about what we do here at the Ultra Wellness Center and helping our patients get to the root cause of their conditions and then helping them get better using treatments that match, they make sense for their biology and their environmental lifestyle.

Absolutely. All right, let's say today we're going to talk about something that seems like on a weird topic, which is parasites. and worms and stuff that, you know, kind of creeps people out. And there's this whole phenomena in the wellness health world of like, oh, you got parasites. You need a parasite cleanse.

Oh gosh.

It's like a whole thing.

Yeah.

And you and I have been looking at poop for longer than most people on the earth have been alive. And I think, you know, we have seen our share of parasites and our share of worms. But I'm not so sure that it's the cure for everything.

No.

And I don't think it's as prevalent as people think, although it is common. I do think that it's a completely underappreciated, underdiagnosed, and under-treated problem for many people with gut issues, with autoimmune diseases, with all sorts of problems that are kind of overlooked. And part of the challenge is, And we'll talk more about testing and how we find it and so forth. The challenge is that most doctors don't think of checking for parasites. They might do a stool test, oh, you've been to India or you were in Mexico, maybe we should check you for parasites if your stomach's not right. But mostly if you come in with an autoimmune disease or some other weird thing or irritable bowel, they're not really thinking about parasites. And then the testing they do, is so antiquated. Basically, think about it like this. You have a guy looking down a microscope, looking at stuff swimming across his field, and hopefully one of those critters swims by and he goes, oh, I got that one. And then he identifies it. The problem is a lot of parasites are from the developing world or people get, and a lot of people don't know how to look for it. So, if you're in Texas and someone drives by in a Volvo, you're like, what's that? Like, that's kind of, I don't know what that is, but if you're in Sweden and someone drives by an evolving, oh, that's a, that's a ball.

Right.

So I, I think we, we really have to sort of take a step back and, and we're going to dive deep in this conversation about, you know, why we get parasites, what the symptoms are and, and, and what our approach to diagnosing and treating it is quite different and how it help, how it can affect so many different issues. So How come we got parasites?

How come we got parasites? I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. Let me tell you why we have parasites, because God made parasites, right? And God put them on this earth for a reason. And maybe the fact that our tests have been so antiquated for so long has been a good thing, because I think if we had really good tests all the time, all along, we'd realize that most everybody has parasites, and they're in our gut for a reason. They really become a problem, because there are some that are more pathogenic than others. but the real trick and trigger is, and I think why we see more parasitic based chronic disease is the immune system. If you have a hampered immune system, if your immune system is suppressed in any way or is out of balance, you're going to start to feel the impact of those parasites. And so why do we have them? Because they're part of the the biologic ecosystem that works for plants and animals and for humans as well. It's when you get a big dose of a pathogenic organism, you happen to be immune compromised at that period of time, and give you that opportunity for that parasite to take hold in your intestine, and now you're going to have either an acute illness. And most people have experienced parasitic illness as acute, like, you know, Campylobacter, Giardia, you know, Shigella, you know, Salmonella, you.

Have- those are bacteria though, those aren't parasites.

Those are bacteria, but your Giardia is your- Entamoeba histolytica. Yeah, that's about Entamoeba histolytica. Those are like two of the major ones. Yeah, amoebas, those three. And those are the ones that people have experienced the most. But the diagnosis to get to Giardia or Entamoeba histolytica, it can take months to years.

Years.

To years for somebody to figure out your chronic diarrhea is caused by one of those two or three parasites.

Yeah.

I mean, I had a woman who had chronic fatigue, terrible about food sensitivity. She was, like, miserable. And there was, like, an extremely well-connected wealthy woman who had access to the best medical care. And she had Giardia that she picked.

Up somewhere, and she was miserable and no one found it. And it was very hard to find. I mean, you know, you have to, you know, one of the, one of the standard ways that it used to be used. And now I think they, they use capsules to, to go in and look for it, but these to, you know, go down into the intestine and it'd be almost like fishing for the Giardia and see if they could pull any Giardia out and do biopsies. It's very difficult to diagnose, but we have new tests, but we'll talk about that.

Yeah, and people get parasites from water, from food, what kind of food and water.

Yeah, so you get water food, you can get it from meats, uncooked meats, and you can get it from your pets. So, if you have a cat who's going out, it happens to be an outdoor cat that likes to kill things, they're going to get parasites from the rodents and the small creatures that they eat, they're going to bring it back. And if you're not careful cleaning their litter box, then you're going to be at risk for getting a parasite with cats, it's toxoplasmosis. I actually have a patient who has schizophrenia and I just did, you know, because they, I'm trying to find out a root cause, I did testing and I tested him for toxoplasmosis antibodies and he had very high antibodies of toxoplasmosis and there's a link between toxoplasmosis and mental health disease, particularly schizophrenia.

Incredible. Right.

Even if it's treated, the inflammation and the antigenic nature of the toxoplasmosis has an ongoing impact on the brain in such a way that it can lead to the symptoms of schizophrenia. So it was interesting. It was an interesting case.

Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. So that sort of brings together, you know, like a different train of thinking, which is these parasites are in your gut, but they can cause problems that have nothing to do with your seemingly have nothing to do with your gut. and I remember one kid with autism who was really quite sick, but had a lot of gut issues. A lot of kids with autism have gut issues. Oh, yeah. And we're like, oh, well, we'll treat his, let's look at stooling, a giardia.

Yeah.

And we treated that. And literally, the kids autism dramatically improved. Started talking. I was like, whoa, the whole.

Yeah, there's.

Yeah.

So talk about the, the ways in which these parasites are common. And what are the most common ones we see? And how do we sort of start to think about what they're doing in the body? Because in a way, you can make a devil's advocate argument and say, well, we all grew up in nature and we weren't living in a sanitized hygiene world. And we all were exposed to parasites and we all had worms and amebas and bacteria, like maybe they have a role in our health.

Right.

Are they all bad?

Yeah, so they're not all bad. And so, you know, since you brought it up, I mean, that's the hygiene hypothesis. And the hygiene hypothesis says that industrialized countries where we have sanitized everything, including our food, we have lost some of the important elements of our gut microbiome, particularly parasites. And there's mounting evidence that parasites actually have a important role in modulating in a positive way the immune system. That when you, there are particular parasites that will, there's a balance in your immune system and there's an inflammatory side and anti-inflammatory side and the parasites that are in our body actually produce certain proteins and long chain carbohydrates and fat molecules that will balance out the immune response so that there's the T helper cells that are more inflammatory are shut down. And so that can limit autoimmunity. And we know that autoimmune illnesses and autoimmune, autoimmunity is the base of many of our chronic diseases. And so there's more and more evidence that having a healthy microbiome that includes some parasites can be very helpful. And I know we're probably gonna talk about this, but it's called Helminth Therapy. And although you don't hear a lot about it, it is becoming- that's a worm. Yeah, Helminth is a worm, and they're being used to modulate the immune system. And we'll talk, I have a case that we'll talk about later in which I've used Helminth Therapy. So that question mark about, Can parasites, are they good or are they bad? They're both.

It depends. There's a really a couple of good books. One is called Missing Microbes, which is about the damage to our microbiome and the lack of the right bugs that keeps us healthy. And then was it called the Epidemic of Absence, which is a brilliant book where this guy literally went to South America, Mexico, and was suffering from allergies and asthma and autoimmune issues. and treated himself with worms and actually got better. It was fascinating. But, you know, this is such a crazy idea that people are like, wow, treating people with worms, that sounds like we want to get rid of the parasites. Right. But it's a mixed bag and you have to sort of figure out what's going on with the patient. So let's talk about one of the, I mean, obviously digestive symptoms, right? If you have a parasite, you have diarrhea, you can have bloating, you have.

Gas, cramping, cramping, all that stuff.

Right.

You're gonna have increased appetite. You feel like you're never full. You're gonna have muscle ache, joint pain, you're gonna have skin rashes, itching hives, you're gonna have brain fog, fatigue. And in real severe cases, when you have a 35-foot tapeworm hanging out in your gut, you could be anemic. You know, significantly anemic. Iron deficiency.

It would be an iron deficiency. Nutritional deficiencies. I've even seen cystic acne. I mean, parasites. so they're common and they cause a lot of issues and they can lead to all these autoimmune issues you mentioned. And, you know, there's a lot of bugs in your gut, right? There's bacteria, there's viruses, there's fungi, there's parasites, there's worms. Did I forget anything? Prions probably or something.

Yeah.

You know, and I think the, it's a complex subject. It's a look at the ecosystem in a gut. So essentially it's like, if you're a functional medicine doctor, it's like you're being a rainforest ecologist.

Yeah.

There's all these different directions and all these dynamic connections, but the problem is really common and the diagnosis is often missed. So, but often when I see parasites, I feel like they really need to be treated.

Absolutely.

And so tell me about how do we go about diagnosing this? What is wrong with traditional diagnosis?

Right.

How do we start to diagnose this?

Yeah.

So, you know, I just want to just go back to that one comment you made because I think it's really, it's really profound. And I just want to just really just make it the last statement on this is that when you see parasites, you should be thinking immune system, and you should be thinking, you know, something is amiss in the immune system. But you should also be thinking about the fact that there's the good side and that we need to have a diverse microbiome. That includes bacterial diversity, that includes parasitic diversity, because that those organisms have evolved with us. They make compounds for us and they educate our immune system. See, if we don't have parasites and we don't have bacteria, then our immune system doesn't know. It doesn't know what to respond to. And so when you now have a sterile diet and without the nutrients that you should have and you're not eating fresh vegetables and you're not eating grass-fed beef, you're not going to get the full complement of bacteria and even parasites that will educate your immune system. What will happen then is your immune system will then over respond. It's been in isolation all these years. It's almost has agoraphobia. It's afraid to go out of the house. And it goes out of the house and all of a sudden it's a Gillette Stadium and it's completely having a panic attack. And when it does that, it over responds. You get these autoimmune and inflammatory responses that lead to chronic disease. And so it's really important to understand that we need, we need to eat our food from really healthy soil. We need to eat whole food and vegetables that have these organisms on it, because that's gonna help us have a diverse gut microbiome that has an abundance of good bacteria that helps protect us. And parasites are part of that. So that's the good side, right? Now, on the bad side, when you do have that problem, we talked about some of the signs and symptoms. How do you get to that diagnosis when that person's had chronic diarrhea or they've had this itching and this bloating and now you're suspecting, okay, they've had all this testing done and I can't, and nobody's figured it out. See, that is an advantage we have because we are oftentimes the doctors of last resort. And so I get to look at everything that's been done and I get to say, you know what, they did this and that, but oftentimes, in 20 years of practicing conventional medicine, I think I had one positive O and P test.

Yeah, one.

Right, right, right. GI doctors, chronic diarrhea, let's do an O and P. So what the O and P is basically is you have somebody in a lab looking under a microscope at multiple slides of somebody's poop. You have to look at hundreds of.

Slides to capture one- yeah, and then good luck if you might not recognize.

The guy's not trained. And what are their- and you're right about that not trained. It's, you know, there are fewer and fewer lab techs that, you know, like we don't, like if you and I saw, you know, well, we'll probably get it, but if we wouldn't recognize smallpox because we've never seen it, right? So most of the techs these days when they're trained, it's all on biochemical assays and they're not not getting the microscope, you know, training to. And they don't see.

It may not be as common, like then some of the bugs might not be as common here. So if you're an Indian, you're like a pathologist, you're looking, you probably see thousands.

Oh, I recognize that. So using an OMP is. So if somebody comes here and you open parasite test, I've had three of them, and I've been told I have no open parasites. Well, there's new technology called qualitative, quantitative PCR. So what that does, it's going to look at the DNA material, look for DNA material. of parasites and it's going to be able to multiply it until you can measure it. That's what the PCR does. It's a polymerase chain reaction. So you get this DNA.

We use for COVID, right?

Yeah, exactly. For diagnosing the acute phase of COVID So that test is very effective and it's in part of one of the tests that we do. Look at the gut microbiome. I use this one particular lab and they do the quantitative PCR. and they're very, very sensitive and they pick up parasites.

It's like 6,000 times more sensitive than looking at poop.

It is. It is 6,000. It is.

That's crazy, right?

Okay, so we have that diagnostic tool.

So let's talk about the approach to looking at parasites. We use a special test. We use what we call GI effects test here.

GI map.

GI map.

I do, I use, I like the GI map because of its, its quantitative PCR. It's very sensitive, almost too sensitive.

Yeah, it can pick something that may not be actually.

But, you know, you get that with, you know, often.

Yeah, there's a difference between sensitivity and specificity in medicine. Sensitivity means if you have it, it will for sure find it.

Right.

But it can over, over report it sensitive. Specificity means if you have this, it's for sure there. It's that thing. So, you know, I kind of might over diagnose stuff on some of these PCR tests because you may have like a fragment of something or it passes through and it may not be a real problem.

You use your clinical judgment and what's going on with the patient to really, then that's how you, that's the cognitive process that we go through all the time. And we don't treat tests, we treat patients. But we use tests so we don't guess. So that's how it works.

Let's talk about then how we would really approach dealing with someone with chronic parasite infections. And then I want to get into talking about worms, because parasites and worms are quite different. I normally wouldn't give someone a parasite, but we sometimes in medicine are now giving people worms to treat them.

Helminthic therapy.

So talk about what is our approach. We do the diagnostic tests. what is our approach to treating a chronic parasitic infection? And we find them through these tests where other people don't find them.

So.

You know, we've gone through the process now, patient comes in, we've clued into the fact that they have a parasite, we did great testing, we did the GI map, we found our parasite, and now what are we gonna do? So there are, of course, in medicine, there are some drugs that you can use, but they are very potent and they have lots of side effects to them and they like, you get more diarrhea, you can get more cramping, you can have hepatotoxicity with them. So you got to be really careful. They're, they can be effective and I've used- Flagyl or Flagyl, Flagyl, Flagyl, Flagyl. So, but what we, what I, the two things I think about when I'm dealing with the parasite is there is a, if they have a symptomatic parasite, then their gut microbiome is significantly disordered. And you usually see not only the parasite, but you're also going to see other markers of disorder. You're going to see an overgrowth of pathogenic bacteria. You're going to see Candida, because those are the markers of a disordered microbiome that will allow a parasite to really take hold and become pathogenic.

Yeah.

I think first off, you know, it's the five R's. So I need to get rid of the parasite. So we use botanicals. So the botanicals that are really helpful are oregano, herbs, yeah, herbs. So we use oregano, we use garlic, we use black walnut, we use wormwood. So I use berberine.

Berberine extract.

And you can use them individually. Yeah, and you can use them in combination. There are some great combo treatments out there that will cover a host of your parasites and also treat those dysbiotic or pathogenic organisms. So the first thing I want to do is I want to start them on a therapy that's going to finally get rid of that organism. So it's a direct attack on the organism. But then we have to look at.

The entire- Before you do that, I just wanted to share a story. I was once giving a talk at Yale and it was through a bunch of doctors and naturopaths and we were talking about the gut. And I mentioned a parasite, a particular patient.

And.

The, this, this naturopath got up because I was saying, well, I tend to use these drugs. And because I, I kind of tend to use drugs more for parasites. And, and he starts going on and on about all the herbs and how these words work against parasites. and the minute later, this other guy got up who was a naturopath as well, but he was an older guy. Yeah. He's like, you know, the truth is, I'm a naturopath and I primarily use herbs, but often they don't work as well as the medications. So you can try herbs, but I wouldn't be afraid of the medications. This is a short-term thing that deals with the cause.

Yeah.

And it's amazing. I mean, I. I mean, ear and bowel is so prevalent and it's such a big problem for people.

Yeah.

And there's many causes of it, but sometimes it is a parasite. I had a patient recently who was a very famous lady and she was really struggling with chronic gut issues and we treated a parasite and boom, she was instantly better.

Yeah, so yeah, so again, Blastocystis hominis, which is a parasite, and another one called Entamoeba histolytica, they've both been implicated in IBS as triggers for IBS. Yeah, so if you can't find a reason for somebody's IBS and you should be looking for one is IBS is just not the diagnosis, there's a trigger for it. you should, you know, and you haven't been able to get to the bottom of it, you should be looking for those two parasites.

Unbelievable.

So we're treating, so we're treating, you know, I will start with herbal therapies and then I will advance to using pharmaceutical agents if necessary. But then I want to make sure the rest of their gut is working. So we look at their digestive processes. And oftentimes, why do we have the parasite? Because their digestive processes aren't working well. They're not making enough HCL in their stomach because they're under chronic stress. They might not be producing enough pancreatic enzymes. They may have some issues with their gallbladder that's limiting or and their liver that is limiting their production of bile or release of bile. So we want to make sure they have all their digestive enzymes. We want to make sure that their gut immune system is working well. So we want to create that environment. Besides treating, I'm going to want to make sure that they're getting the types of foods and supplements in their diet that will support a healthy gut microbiome. Good prebiotic foods, the cruciferous vegetables. I want them to make sure they're getting things like broccoli and asparagus and Brussels sprouts and dandelions. My dad was Greek and, you know, we lived in a suburban community. And in the springtime, my dad would go around the yard and he'd get all the dandelions and he'd bring them in the house. and he'd steam them up and boil them, and he'd mix them up with garlic and oregano and garlic and oregano and dandelions. Right? What are we doing? We're giving our gut great prebiotics to feed the good bacteria and giving natural, natural herbs and botanicals to make sure that we keep a healthy gut microbiome. So dandelion's really good. Artichoke's really good. Konjac root with glucomannan is really good prebiotic. So I want to not just treat the organism, I want to create a really healthy gut microbiome that has a healthy immune system that will prevent further disease down the road.

Yeah, so really it's about not only killing the bug, because I've been in traditional medicine, we're like, Kill it.

Kill the bug.

Okay, carpet bomb it and let's move on. Forget it. And the problem is that most people's gut don't get back to normal on their own. And I often see this even with celiac patients, they will be told, oh, you have celiac, don't eat gluten. but they still struggle for years with all kinds of digestive issues that they cannot handle certain foods or they have bloating or gas. And it's even after they've eliminated gluten. So you really have to go through this whole gut restoration program. We've talked a lot about on the podcast, but it's such a key part of functional medicine, this five R program where we get rid of the bad stuff, foods, bugs, whatever, and then we kind of put in the good stuff and help the body kind of repair and heal.

Yeah.

So that's really an incredible approach. And we've seen patient after patient have had amazing, and I've seen, I've come across really crazy things. I've seen people with Shistosomiasis from Africa, and I've seen people with Endomyiasis, and I've seen a lot of parasites. Blastocystis is one of the most common ones.

Yeah.

And it's often thought to be not a pathogenic one, so it's not bad. But it often does cause symptoms. And if people have symptoms and they have Blastocystis and the Irritable Bowel, I tend to treat it. Treat it, absolutely. So let's sort of jump to this final topic, because I think that it's such an interesting topic.

Right.

And, and it has to do with worms.

Yeah.

So, like, look, we all co-evolved with living with all these bugs.

Yeah.

And we had them and they live with us. And what's interesting is that, you know, in the Advent of, of sort of modern civilization, we've become over sanitized and we've lost the contact with the natural world. And I, you know, I think we've seen this uptick in allergies and asthma and autoimmune diseases and inflammatory diseases.

MS, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis.

And all these diseases, and the question is why? Because when you go to the developing world, you go to a hunter-gatherer culture, they don't have them. No. There's just no allergies, no asthma. And I was seeing by the other day, I grew up every summer spending three months on a ranch with horses and poop and outside and being dirty all the time.

Absolutely.

Dirt and sleeping outside. Couldn't wait. And being outside, and I don't have a single allergy or anything. and I think, you know, there's this whole phenomena where you see what the kids who grew up on farms don't.

Get allergies and autoimmunity. Oh, my. I mean, if mothers today saw what you and I were doing when we were kids, mucking around in Creeks, holding on to salamanders. Yeah. You know, feeding, you know, we had a horse farm near us, and, you know, I would feed the horses, you know, apples through the fence, and they're.

Licking my hand and, you know. Yeah, yeah. Mother's Day would be, like, freaked.

Right.

Exactly. So. so we've sort of over-sanitized ourselves. And there's a number of books like the Epidemic of Absence, you mentioned, it really talks about this. And there's a really good science behind using worms, reintroducing worms into the body. And when you look at the part of the immune system that has us deal with worms, it's the same part of the immune system that helps us deal with allergy or asthma, which is fascinating to me because it's like, oh, it has nothing better to do because it's supposed to be fighting the worms all the time and keeping everything under control. But if you don't have the worms to fight, all of a sudden, the directing gets turned on you and your body starts dealing with attacking.

Exactly.

Becoming more allergic or autoimmune related.

So there's an interesting observation. There's, you know, observational study that looked at people with autoimmune diseases in sub-Saharan Africa and in underdeveloped countries. And they looked at those in regards to the severity of disease, progression of disease, and response to treatment compared to developed countries like the US. And they found that those patients in sub-Saharan and they compared it along the lines of the load of parasites. And they found that the patients in sub-Saharan Africa and the hypothesis is that it's because of the parasites, they have their disease, their rheumatoid arthritis is less severe, it progresses more slowly and it responds better to therapy versus developed countries where there's less parasites and we, you know, we have this, you know, the operation of the hygiene hypothesis where we just live in too sterile of an environment that our immune systems just, like you said, are going to get confused and they're more likely to have an autoimmune response to something that's coming through the system that they maybe should not even respond to. That's called immune tolerance. Your body actually has to have immune tolerance. You have to tolerate your own antigens, but you have to tolerate the of other organisms, because if you're responding to everything that comes to your body, then you're gonna be constantly inflamed. So your immune system has to have a mechanism by which it can appropriately tolerate organisms. And in that particular setting, those organisms that are being tolerated may be doing something good for us. So if we were having immune tolerance for a parasite that isn't harming us, it's getting some benefit, but it's creating compounds that actually modulate and balance our immune system. That's a win-win.

Yeah.

So I know this sounds completely wacky, right?

But it's true.

Dr. Hyman and Dr. George are giving patients worms.

Well, you know what?

They quacks or what's going on here?

I will bring in a patient and she will sit here and tell you that she is a believer in Helmin therapy because she had severe psoriatic arthritis. and we worked on everything. And her goal was to be able to either come off of or greatly reduce her need for her immunosuppressive Humira. When she came to see me, aches and pains in all of her joints, tired, fatigued, really having difficulties. And I did all of the things that we do, and we've talked about on this podcast and functional medicine. But one thing I brought up, you know, we've, I, I put her on a lot of things that could impact your immune system. Helman therapy. So I started her on Helman therapy a year and a half ago when she was in the worst, well, she was actually getting better from her pain, but she could not get beyond two and a half weeks without needing her next Humira. Started on Helman therapy, helping her to get to that goal. She's now, she can go every six weeks before she needs a Humira shot.

Yeah.

And that started once she started the Helman therapy. so she's getting parasites, she's getting helmets, she's getting these worms, she takes them in capsules, we get them from a really high level company and it really does work.

It does, you know, and I would say I've been shocked and I use it very selectively and patients who are really struggling and the usual functional medicine stuff doesn't work and I think that I've been shocked at some of the things I've seen. I had this one kid who was on the autistic spectrum.

Yeah.

But he was also extremely allergic, and he had really high levels of IgE, which is the antibody against sort of allergens when you have allergies, like asthma allergies. And I'm like, I told them, I said, look, I don't know if it's going to work. I think the risk is very low. We use rat tapeworms, which sounds gross, but they don't actually get take up residence and they don't actually cause any real problems long term. They just pass through, but they can help regulate immunity on the way in. You want to try him? She's like, sure. Was it really a miracle? This kid not only had reduction, all his symptoms and allergies and everything, but his IgE levels, which normally should be like under 100, were a thousand. and it came down to normal. Wow. On this therapy.

Wow.

And I've had other people that have autoimmune diseases, or just kids. It's really quite striking. So there's something to it. You have to pick the right patient.

Absolutely.

And we'll figure it out.

But I just think that in functional medicine, the idea is that, you know, it's not like, you know, we just decided, oh, you know what? There's nothing else to do. Let's just, you know. I heard about witch doctors in Africa using helms, I think I'll try that. There's a lot of research. I think we pride ourselves here at the Ultra Wellness Center in getting to the root cause, but really combing the literature for real data that says it helps us find new therapies that are going to be beneficial. And so we do that. And there is a lot of studies that support Helfman therapy in reducing the severity of symptoms and response to medication in people with rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, MS, and asthma.

Pretty amazing, right?

Yeah, it is.

So, it's, you know, this is-- and it's actually in the mainstream medicine. It's mainstream medicine. And your doctor's really not doing it. And, you know, we're a little kind of on the leading edge here at the Center for Functional Medicine, I mean, at the Ultra Wellness Center. And we're really focusing on what's going to work for the patients. And we use criteria as like, you know, is there scientific evidence? Yes. Is it safe? And if, you know, yes. Does it have bad side effects? Hopefully not. Is it reasonably priced? Okay. And if it meets those things, you know, we find a great therapy, but it's a million dollars a dose.

And some bases.

Or it doesn't work. But so we really try things that are, are potentially helpful, and we work with our patients in ways that I think are pretty unique and inspiring and allows us to really see remarkable miracles where we often don't. So, if you're listening to this podcast and you've struggled with gut issues, if you have autoimmune issues, if you have allergies, if you have cystic acne, if you have who knows what, you gotta start with the gut.

Yep.

And, you might have a parasite, you might have a worm, you might need to get treated with a worm or get rid of a worm. And, that's part of the finesse of.

Folks who are really good at this.

We're either gonna get rid of one or give you one.

So exactly.

And we figure out, you know, how to do that. And that's really the personalization approach. So if you've been listening to this podcast and you struggle with gut or health issues and you want to share how you've succeeded in getting rid of your worms or parasites or what you've learned, we'd love to learn from you and share with everybody subscriber, every time you get your podcast. And if you know anybody with problems you think they would benefit, please share this podcast with them. I think they might get something out of it. and hopefully we'll see you next time on the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey, everybody, it's Dr. Hyman.

Thanks for tuning in to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I hope you're loving this podcast. It's one of my favorite things to do and introducing you all the experts that I know and I love and that I've learned so much from. And I want to tell you about something else I'm doing, which is called Mark's Picks. It's my weekly newsletter, and in it I share my favorite stuff, from foods to supplements to gadgets to tools to enhance your health. It's all the cool stuff that I use and that my team uses to optimize and enhance our health. And I'd love you to sign up for the weekly newsletter. I'll only send it to you once a week on Fridays. Nothing else, I promise. And all you have to do is go to drhyman.com/picks to sign up. That's drhyman.com/picks, P-I-C-K-S, and sign up for the newsletter and I'll share with you my favorite stuff that I use to.

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Better and live younger, longer.

Hi everyone.

I hope you enjoyed this week's episode. Just a reminder that this podcast is for educational purposes only. This podcast is not a substitute for professional care by a doctor or other qualified medical professional. This podcast is provided on the understanding that it does not constitute medical or other professional advice or services. If you're looking for help in your journey, seek out a qualified medical practitioner. If you're looking for a functional medicine practitioner, you can visit ifm.org and search their find a practitioner database. It's important that you have someone in your corner who's trained, who's a licensed.

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