Dr. Bill Rawls: Why Your Detox Isn't Working And What's Really Making You Sick | TUH #284

With the volume of substances that we have to process today, we're losing liver cells. People's cholesterol goes up as they age, right? That's because we're losing liver cells and we lose the ability to process toxic substance.

Yeah, because 85% of our cholesterol is made by the liver.

So protecting liver cells is really important in the detoxification process.

A lot of times the damage is coming from what's going on at a cellular level and not from these big macro toxins in the environment, even though they have over that for sure.

Our goal is not eradicating all the things that you have in your system. That's impossible. The goal is to restore your body's ability to keep those things contained.

What's a classic journey for a patient of yours look like?

The first step in detoxification is increasing flow, and one way to do that is Hey guys, welcome back to The Ultimate Human Podcast.

I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecka, where we go down the road of everything anti-aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And I am so excited about today's podcast. I didn't even read my podcast guest preparation sheet because I am so deeply interested in this physician's core competency. I have been on this journey myself. I've been on the journey with my family, my daughter, my wife, and so many of you that are about to watch this podcast have been on this journey too and didn't even know what the underlying cause was behind some of the chronic symptoms that you are chalking up to a consequence of aging that are not a consequence of aging at all. They are a consequence of micro invaders in your body. And we're going to talk about how do we identify them, How do we care for them? What are the right courses of treatment? And I'm just really excited to have you on the podcast. So welcome to The Ultimate Human, Dr. Bill Rawls.

Well, thank you.

Yeah, it's good to be here. You have a very similar journey to a lot of my podcast guests. I say this all the time, you know, some of the most impactful, purpose-driven, powerful people that I've ever met are not necessarily the most credentialed. Uh, they have solved a problem in their life. Yeah. And I wonder if you would talk about your, um, earlier years, you know, having practiced as an OB-GYN for so many decades and then found yourself completely swept under the rug by the symptoms that you're not supposed to have as a clinician— chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, you got dysbiosis, and, and how that shifted your journey as a turning point into what you're doing now.

Yeah, yeah, you're not supposed to, right?

Yeah, you're not supposed to, right? It's like being a skinny chef. You're not supposed to be a skinny chef, right?

Right. But, but at the time that I got sick— it's gotten a little better now— but at the time that I got sick, physicians had some of the highest mortality in the country, and OB-GYNs and radiologists We're at the top of that list. We had the highest because of not sleeping with the OBs and radiologists because they were exposed to so much radiation at that time. So these factors, and we just, you know, we were tough, we just pushed through it. And so I went into OB/GYN because it was dealing with healthy people bringing life into the world. And it was great, you know? And my father, my grandfather, did that. So they were also OB-GYNs, fourth generation. Wow. My, my great-grandfather was a horse and buggy doctor a long, long time ago. Wow. And, and, um, so I went into it and really wasn't attracted to management of chronic illness because people never got well and they just stayed sick on all these drugs. Didn't really want to do that, but OB-GYN at the time in a small town I was sharing call with 2 other people, and a lot of times somebody was on vacation. So I was on call for the hospital and labor and delivery and the emergency room every 2nd to 3rd night. Wow. Every 2nd to 3rd weekend from Friday morning till Monday morning. And so most of the time when I was on call, I might get 4 hours of sleep.

Oh boy.

But life was busy, hectic. Didn't have time to eat well, even though I was telling my patients about diet and all these lifestyle things, but I wasn't doing 'em 'cause I didn't have time.

Classic.

I was eating on the run. And unlike my partners who could crash while they were waiting for a delivery, man, if somebody was in labor or in the hospital, I was awake. I was just one of those people that's like, I need to know what's happening with this person. And I was awake. So, but then on my off nights when I wasn't on call, that was my catch-up time. So I was, you know, and there was this thing back in the '90s where they were going, do we really need to sleep? Can't we just get 4 hours and that's it? And I bought into that. Yeah, sure, I can just push through. I could do it in my 30s. But like so many people, I got toward the end of my 40s and my whole body started breaking down. I ended up having to stop OB just because I couldn't physically do it anymore. And, but it wasn't like just, well, you haven't slept well, and so, you know, you're not on call anymore, you can just sleep again. I lost the ability to sleep and my whole body started breaking down. I started developing heart issues, joint issues. I mean, by the time I was 50, my joints were so bad I could barely get up and walk across the room. Wow. So it was just neurological symptoms, brain fog, everything. And conventional colleagues had nothing to offer but drugs. And I was satisfied with a diagnosis of fibromyalgia 'cause nothing else really fit. It's just a blanket. And I wasn't sick enough. It's like I had a lot of MS symptoms, but I wasn't sick enough to define it as MS. So I was just kind of stuck in this state, and I started looking outside of conventional medicine, became certified in holistic medicine, just not giving up, you know, and started asking that question, what's driving my illness? And I kept coming back to, is there a microbe? And like so many people in the beginning, tested positive— tested negative for Lyme disease. But kept coming back to this. Like, I grew up in the woods. I got bitten by ticks all the time. Certainly, you know, I could have picked that up or something like that.

And what part of the country were you in?

I was in North Carolina.

North Carolina, okay.

Yeah.

That's a tick belt for sure.

Yeah, different places in the state. But wherever there are ticks, there are microbes.

Yeah.

I mean, you know, there's just Borrelia, the Lyme bacteria. It has been found from the tropics to the Arctic Circle. Wow. True.

Arctic Circle. Yeah, that's a tough—

there are— they have amber in the Dominican Republic that has ticks in it that have Borrelia that is millions of years old. Wow. It's everywhere. Okay. But it's not just Borrelia, of course. There's a lot of stuff. So eventually I was able to find that I was carrying the bacteria, and it's like, oh, antibiotics, I'll be well. And I did a few courses of antibiotics and just got sicker instead of better. It wrecked my gut. And my intuition was saying, there's gotta be another way. And at that point, I was running a small practice. I didn't have the resources to go and see Lyme doctors and all of these other specialists out there and do all these different therapies. And my default was herbal therapy. I kept reading about an herbal protocol and it's like, yeah, maybe, I don't have a lot of faith there, but it's cheap, it's probably not gonna hurt me, let's give it a shot. So I ordered all these different extracts and my wife thought I had truly lost it. I was taking handfuls of capsules.

Is your Einstein Laboratory going?

And I started getting better. And I thought, you know, if it's really killing the bacteria, it's gonna wreck my gut. It didn't, it made my gut better. Wow. And I finally gradually got better. And it was a learning curve that took me years to really master it and figure out all the things that I had to do. So I, you know, of course improved my diet, my lifestyle, getting sleep back was a really, really big challenge. That was an enormous hurdle. Um, but I finally got better over about a 5-year period, and I actually had heart damage. I mean, I had a cardiac cath. They were— they found areas on my heart that were damaged to the point they weren't coming back. By then I was in— I was having skipped beats every second or third beat, PVCs, constant chest pain. My exercise capacity was down to walking about a quarter or half a mile. And I— but they didn't have much to offer other than maybe beta blockers, and I just couldn't take them. The side effects were too bad, right? And over a 4 to 5 year period, all the heart symptoms went away. Wow. My joints recovered, my neurological system recovered.

Wow.

Everything got better. So it was a big eye-opener. Yeah.

Now, can we, can we talk about like, uh, more specifics about that journey? So you just inherently knew that there was a low-grade infection going on or low-grade, you know, immune response going on. And, and, you know, it's important to highlight a lot of these things don't show up on traditional labs, you know. And this is where patients are told, you know, you're fine, there's nothing wrong with you, or it's in your head. Um, and most, most physicians don't drill into the symptoms. But yes, Doc, I'm, I'm, I'm exhausted and I'm not sleeping and I've got crushing brain fog and, and crushing fatigue and my my joints ache, and, you know, my short-term recall is off, and you just know that something's not right. And like you said, these are not the cataclysmic symptoms that drive you to the ER, right, or, or force you to the urgent care. They're things that people can quote unquote live with.

Yeah.

Um, even though they're in misery, they're walking around at a 4 or 5 out of 10, but they're not at a 1.

Yeah.

And I have been such a champion of doing the types of testing that have us looking for mold, mycotoxins, parasites, viruses, heavy metals, these, these, these invaders that, that engage our immune system in this low-grade fight and just sap our, our energy. So what was it specifically? So you, you tested negative for Lyme, but you tested positive for the bacterial co-infection for Lyme. And was that the Tadamo?

I did have a positive test later.

Oh, you had a positive test later. Okay.

But And other things. But you said a word that I don't interpret the same way anymore. You said the word infection. Yeah. Right? I don't use the word chronic and infection together any longer. So an infection is when a new pathogen, microbe, virus, bacteria, whatever it might be, enters your body for the first time. It's an unwanted invader.

Mm-hmm.

And what they want is a host. They want a platform to get a little food, to hang out, reproduce, spread to another host.

Mm-hmm.

That's what they want. So what happens with Lyme, chronic Lyme disease, what happens with so many things that I think are not being recognized is the microbe becomes an ill-fitting resident inside your body. So what I said was I picked it up when I was a child, right? So 90% of the people that I've talked to that are struggling with chronic Lyme disease do not remember being sick around the time of a tick bite. So what that tells you is these microbes can enter the body and be silent for months, years, decades before you get sick. And people that get sick are like me. They have a lot of stress in their lives, and it can be different stress. For me, it was not sleeping, not eating well. Other people— I've talked to people that, well, you know, I was in an automobile accident and I was, I was in the hospital for months and I just never got well. So that's the nature of these bacteria, uh, So the Lyme bacteria, it does two things. Its mission is persistence in the body, which is really important to understand. It doesn't need to make you sick to be persistent. And you think about this thing, what they want is a platform to spread to other hosts. That's what all microbes want. Different microbes do it different ways. You get exposed to a cold, and it's like a wildfire going through your body. The microbe is making you respiratory, giving you respiratory symptoms, so you'll cough and sneeze and spread it to others. So it blazes through your system, your immune system gets rid of it, and it's on to somebody else. That's not the strategy for these bacteria. Hmm. So what they want to do is exist inside a body. So they use a couple of things to do that. So one is they grow really slowly. So like if you get pneumococcal pneumonia, you get a respiratory infection and then pneumococcal bacteria invade on top of that, that's really aggressive. Those things are doubling. They're doubling their mass every 20 minutes. They're growing really fast, which means somebody can get really sick really fast. That's where antibiotics are necessary. They depend on fast growth to work.

Mm.

So when you look at Borrelia, its doubling time, 12 to 24 hours.

Mm.

So growing really slowly makes it resistant to antibiotics, but also less of a target. The immune system is looking for fast-growing stuff. That's what's scary. If you're just kind of hanging out, you're less of a target. Not to say that the immune system doesn't recognize it. As soon as you get bitten by a tick and it's coursing through your bloodstream, the immune system is on it and starts cleaning it up. But that's okay because all they need to do is the second thing, which is invade cells. So they are coursing through the bloodstream. And, you know, I said this, the growth is very slow, but the spirochetes are really fast. So they're going through and they invade cells in the brain, in the heart, end muscles, different places in the body, and they invade cells. And if the cells are healthy, they go dormant and they can stay dormant. So dormancy is a really—

miss these really—

dormancy is a really important mechanism. So right now, while we're talking, 60% of the mass of microbes on Earth are in a dormant state. It's a survival mechanism. So if they can go dormant inside cells, they're protected from the immune system, antibiotics, testing— can't find them— and they can be there. But it's not just Borrelia. You know, you hear about co-infections. There's Babesia, Bartonella, and then outside of that, you probably have mycoplasma in your body, maybe chlamydia, Epstein-Barr. And so you look at the list of things that we can test for It's pretty long, but then there are lots of things that we don't. And beyond that, there are microbes right now while we're talking coming from our gums, our sinuses, our gut, crossing over to our bloodstream, invading cells. So we collect things as we go through life, and as long as we're healthy, we're okay, right? They stay quiet.

So then, but as our stress bucket gets full, that's right, and slowly we get overwhelmed, you know, metabolic syndrome, poor sleep, lack of exercise, you know, highly processed foods, you know, uh, what I would call microtoxicity, you know, glyphosate, Paraquat, heavy metals, you know, my— a mold infection, a mycotoxin, you know. These things in and of themselves as individuals are not going to cripple you, but the cumulative stress is adding up until eventually the bucket's full.

That's right.

Um, and so with, with your patients— and I— and listen, I would say the vast majority of people have some or one of these going on right now. Um, you know, every time I go deep down the rabbit hole of, of testing, which is either, uh, viral, parasite, uh, um, looking at toxicity in urine, I'm always surprised how much is there.

I, I, I am too, but I, I don't actually do that much testing anymore because you can just make the assumption that a lot of things are there. We all pick up things. I mean, the, the tough thing is it's hard to know what's inside a person's cells because we don't chop healthy people up and look inside their tissues, right? And occasionally, so we get little bits of information from biopsies, from autopsies, you know, and, and it does appear that this exists. But there are animal studies that support this. So the more the knowledge just keeps accumulating that this is a very real possibility. And you look at the mechanisms of how the symptoms of any chronic illness evolve And explaining it without this micro factor is really challenging, no matter what you're talking about.

People ask me health questions every single day about their labs, their sleep, their supplements, their genetics. I want to help every single one of them, and that's why I built Just Ask Gary. It's an AI trained on everything I know, including my protocols, my research, and my methodology. You ask the question, you get my answer any time of the day. Go to theultimatehuman.com/ai and check it out. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast, right? And, and like I say, you know, these are not the things that jump off of classic labs, you know. That's right. Your hormones can, can look relatively balanced, you know. Your classic inflammatory markers like C-reactive protein or, um, high sensitivity C-reactive protein or homocysteine— I mean, these things— your PSA can be normal, um, and you can be a, you know, an, an average or healthy-looking lab specimen from the lab panel, but it's like the symptomology is of, you know, something low-grade that's just going on that you can't put a finger on.

Yeah.

Do you recommend that people that have these types of symptoms that are not fitting normopathic lab diagnoses that they do some form of testing, or is there a safe standard herbal protocol that you can do, that anyone could do to, to address these? Because I'm very interested, very interested in that. Um, because, you know, I've done detox challenges and other things on my, on my platform, and I think it's always shocking to people when they realize, uh, when they do start looking for these things, the number of things that they find, yeah, uh, that they didn't even know existed. You have Epstein-Barr, cytomegalovirus, you know, chronic Lyme, uh, heavy metal toxicity, you know, other microbial infections. Um, so is there, you know, I know you have this, uh, you call it the Restore 180 Protocol. Is that what your daughter's running? Is she? Yeah. Okay, great. And congratulations.

How old is she? Uh, she is 40. Okay, just turned 40.

Good for her, man. My daughter works, uh, with me too. It's the greatest blessing in life to have you.

It's been quite a journey.

Yeah, it's a lot of fun. Did she— is She in the healthcare field because she sort of grew up in dad's footsteps, or—

No, she graduated from the University of North Carolina with, uh, business, public relations, and all— and an entrepreneur. They had a new entrepreneurship program, and she did that. And at that point, I was in my office, and I had this extraordinary experience that I was sharing with patients, but it was really hard to find good products. So this is back, you know, 15 years ago, I guess, in my office. And I was, you know, trying to find good products and really just struggling to find packages of things that people could use. And I found this manufacturer that would do small, relatively small runs and would, make things to my specifications.

Of different herbal tinctures and all that.

Yeah, can't do that anymore. None of them will do those kind of small runs anymore. Right. And so we started having these small runs made just for my patients in my office. And people loved them and we had great responses. And so it was just serving, and she finished school and was doing another job, and it's like, yeah, we should do something with this. And so for about 5 years, she was working, I was working, and we were just kind of doing it on the side for the local community. But then we started growing, getting some investors, and realizing how big a problem this was and how we could help solve it. Yeah. And it's just been growing. And, you know, we've been building out not only supplement protocols that are primarily herbal, um, but also, uh, programs and pathways for people to follow, for people to get the support they need. Um, what is it—

what's a classic journey, uh, for a patient of yours look like that has one of these microbial infections? Um, whatever it is, be it, you know, EBV, chronic Lyme, cytomegalovirus, or any number of other things. Um, what is that what does that herbal protocol look like for them? And what are some anecdotal stories you could tell us about patients coming in in a certain state, going through this herbal protocol, and then ending up in a completely different state?

Oh man, the stories.

They're very gratifying.

Yeah, we've had some really, really good responses. For a long time, it was just a supplement package. It was really high-grade, I mean, super high-grade herbs and high concentration, which is what it takes. And I learned that in my recovery. Yet you have to have a certain level of the phytochemistry of the herb to really make a difference. And we had support, but it was like an email series and I had written books and there were things for them to follow. So about a year and a half, 2 years ago, we built a community. So it's kind of like a private social media network within something called Mighty Networks that we could, you know, people could interact with one another. And, but I could also do courses and programs and build out content. And from feedback over the years, we found that a lot of people were just, they were such in a state of turmoil, they couldn't really tolerate these high-grade, high-concentration extracts. So we found that You know, we needed to step back. And when your whole body is in distress, your fight or flight response and your cortisol is just out the ceiling. So we found that, you know, starting with herbs like ashwagandha, and I use a combination with theanine and some other calming herbs.

Amazing.

To calm that down, but also getting him into yoga and qigong and various kinds of meditation, progressive relaxation, And, you know, so we do this through this network that they have video demonstrations, and I do a whole series of lessons. So we tackle that first and start them out with a very, a lower concentration herbal tincture with antimicrobial herbs that isn't quite so aggressive. And, and so we really found that you have to lower that sympathetic activity, calm them down before you can detox, before you can get the gut working again, before you can open up and make them receptive to healing. So we do 2 months of that. And then the next 2 months, then we move into opening detoxification pathways, restoring your gut. I built a diet years ago working with some really desperate people. So it's a phased diet that we go, that we move them through. And finally, then we get to that last phase of cellular recovery. So it's a full 6-month, 180-day thing. Mm-hmm. And I don't expect for people to be well by 6 months because healing takes a long time, especially if you've got neurological symptoms and that sort of thing. And I don't see it as, you know, this is your replacement for a conventional doctor. We have everybody see some kind of physician, functional or conventional, along with this journey. It's supporting that. They still may need medications, labs, other medical care. Mm-hmm. But we're doing the things that the medical system really isn't set up to do. Yeah. And so where we would like, where I want them is at a point where they're proactive, they know what they need to do to move forward. They're not helpless, they're not a bystander in their recovery. And that has some really wonderful impact.

You know, I applaud you for even addressing that, the nervous system, you know, out of the gate, because I talk about this all the time, how the vast majority, about 85% of autoimmune disease is found in women, not because it's selected by sex, but because it's selected by weakness. And that, you know, women have a tendency to— and we knew this from mortality data— develop something called caregiver syndrome, where they essentially spend their lifetime putting the needs of other people before the needs of themselves. Like you did in your early career, putting your patients' needs in the hospital and being on call before the needs of yourself. And you essentially wrecked your circadian clock and you were probably very much trapped in that fight or flight state, that autonomic state of being sympathetic all the time. And the degradation that we now know it causes to the immune system's ability not only to defend us but to police us is pretty catastrophic. And, you know, again, it's not one of those things that happens overnight where you wake up and drive yourself to the emergency room. It's one of those things that happens slowly over time until one day you wake up and you go, how the hell did I get here and feel like this?

Yeah.

And, and so to start by, you know, the foundation of, of calming people down, to return them back to a sensation that they feel safe in their own bodies.

Yeah.

And that their nervous system feels safe enough to let go of this sympathetic state, return them back to parasympathetic state. You know, I use sunlight, grounding, breathwork, and, and, you know, initially gentle exercise to try to transition people into that same thing, fixing their circadian clock, fixing their sleep. I have a huge sleep challenge coming up in a couple more days where I'll take tens of thousands of people through a sleep architecture to draw their attention to their sleep, bookend their sleep, and teach them good sleep hygiene. Because I think that's the— truly is our human superpower, um, is the recovery we get from sleep.

Oh yeah, it's essential.

Yeah. Um, and, and so you, you, you, you start with a, uh, 2 months of calming herbs and, and, and practices you know, a lifestyle of, of calm and, and feeling safe in your nervous system.

Yeah.

Okay. And then, and then the transition is into, um, the, the cleansing, the detox phase, right? Um, and, you know, there's sort of, you know, opinions are all over the map on this. And, you know, during the detox phase, um, you know, I've talked about the importance of phase 1, phase 2 liver detoxification, uh, of having regular bowel movements, of staying hydrated and urinating, you know, regularly, and using sweat, um, and, you know, uh, you know, lymphatic circulation as sort of the basics of, of getting our own active detoxification pathways going. But, um, how does that— how does that transition phase work? Are you looking at glutathione transsulfuration? Are you looking at the cellular waste elimination pathways and sort of bolstering those?

Yeah, glutathione, NAC are key parts of the supplement protocol. And then just, um, yeah, calming that sympathetic overactivity allows a lot of things. Everything is stagnant and stuck up. I mean, you know, we, we look at gut dysfunction and we always try to relate it to food. Food is a factor, of course, but most of it is just high sympathetic tone stops the gut. And if you stop the gut, then bacteria overgrow, everything gets backed up, and that backs up the detoxification system too. Um, but it's also just people aren't moving. And I think it's really important that detoxification starts at the cellular level. And I think this is, this, this is key. Toxins are doing— toxic substances are doing damage to our cells. And what happens is if you've got all this turmoil, you've got reactivated microbes that are breaking down cells, it creates a lot of debris and congestion. So for cells to get oxygen and nutrients, but also to purge toxic substances— so cells are constantly trying to get rid of anything that might be bothering them. But they have to do that in a very narrow space called the extracellular space. Our cells are packed together, and everything that they have to get through to survive and everything they get rid of has to go through that space. Well, if you've got a lot of dead cells and debris, that clogs that space up, right? And that's basically what inflammation is, you know. And the immune system sends in cells to clean it up. They use potent acid-free radicals. That can be toxic in itself. So the first step in detoxification is increasing flow. And one way to do that is exercise. But if your whole body's in pain, getting out and exercising is, is a challenge, right? So you know the other option— sauna. Heat the body up.. And, and that moving blood flushes that space and, and allows the cells to breathe again.

Yeah.

And starts clearing that congestion. Once it starts moving, it's moving toward the liver. Yep. The problem is though that people's liver has been compromised, and that's a big deal.

Yeah. These phase 1, phase 2 detox pathways in the liver. Yeah.

Well, the liver cells themselves, right? So I was a gynecologist. I scoped people 2 or 3 times a week. I'd look inside with a laparoscope, and you always look through the whole abdomen. So I'd look at people's livers. That was just part of our routine. And somebody in their 20s, nice beefy, red, healthy-looking liver. But you look at people by 40 or 50, they're starting to have kind of a mottled yellow liver. So with the volume of substances that we have to process today, we're losing liver cells. Oh, 25% of the American population has fatty liver. So you lose liver cells, replace them with fat cells. So your detox, your, your capacity to process toxic substances go down, down, down. So it doesn't matter what you do on the other end. If you don't have processing ability, it's— you're going to be compromised. So one of the herbs we use is milk thistle. Another one is dandelion. Milk thistle has actually been found in studies to, uh, to regenerate liver cells. How does it do that? It protects the liver cells from the detoxification process that that phase 1 that is happening in liver cells is really toxic. It creates a lot of free radicals, kills liver cells. So milk thistle protects those cells and allows them to regenerate. Because unlike many cells in your body, we can build new liver cells, but you have to take the pressure off. So another thing is, you know, people's cholesterol goes up as they age, right? That's because we're losing liver cells and we lose the ability to process toxic substances. So I've been taking milk thistle probably 15 or 20 years.

Wow.

Cholesterol is about the same or maybe a little better than when I was in my 30s and 40s. And so my—

it's because 85% of our cholesterol is made by the liver.

Made by the liver but recycled by the liver, right? So we lose that ability to process it, to cycle it, so it just hangs out in our system. Um, so protecting liver cells is really important in the detoxification process.

So I've been working out with my son lately, trying to keep up with him and his HIROX competitive athletes, and I've been starting to use this Perfect Amino pre-workout. I really like it. It's got BH4, it improves nitric oxide output, but it actually seems to stay after the workout and not crash. There's no stimulants, so no caffeine, no ma Huang, nothing that gives you that kind of amped feeling. You just feel like you're maybe better able to move during the workout, like you have better blood flow. So if you're in the market for a pre-workout, check out the Perfect Amino pre-workout. It's my favorite now. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. You're moving into this detox phase, um, you know, where now you're starting to add things, hopefully movement. Um, you must be, uh, fixing the bowel so you have regular bowel movements, hydration, sauna, uh, sweats, or using the skin as like this secondary route of waste elimination. And then at a cellular level, because I think a lot of people think of waste as stool and urine, but the truth is there's a lot of cellular debris, like you talk about cellular waste, you know, our lymphatic system in our brain is removing that during our deep phases of sleep. And a lot of times the damage is coming from, you know, what's going on at a cellular level, right? And not from these big macro toxins in the environment, even though they have influence over that for sure. So Um, so milk thistle, glutathione, NAC, you know, sweat, bowels, urine. Um, you get these detoxification pathways going again.

Yeah.

And then, um, when you get to do what you call the restore phase— or have we gone through the full detox phase yet?

Well, that's 2 months.

Okay.

So we work on that. We, you know, we give plenty of people plenty of time, and, and we're teaching them, you know, they're doing lessons, you know, created a lot of videos of little short lessons of just bringing them to a higher level. Because if the smarter I can make someone about their own situation and their body, better outcome they're having.

No doubt.

Because once you know what's making you sick and what you have to do to get it well, most people are going to do those things. So education is just so important. And that's, that's something I've been doing my whole career.

What surprises you most about going through this protocol with so many, um, patients? Like, what, what surprises you most about where they start and where they end? Um, you know, what, what is— what are some of those, like, Perry Mason ta-da moments that you've had? You know, I'm dating you, by the way, by saying Perry Mason. Like, half my gen— no one in Gen Z knows who the hell that is. Yeah, yeah, great generation. I Love Lucy, you guys missed out. The Fonz was a great— it's a great genre.

It's, I don't know, just seeing the testimonials of the people, the responses that people get.

Getting their life back.

But, and of all ages too. I mean, you know, we have people in their 80s and 90s that are, you know, not, you can't reverse aging, but boy, you can make somebody a lot healthier. I mean, I think, you know, whether you're talking about a performance athlete or somebody struggling with a chronic illness, It's about moving from one stage of health to a higher level. And that's about restoring health at that cellular level. I think that's really important. But it's just people learning to take care of themselves. We're a society that people don't know how to take care of themselves. Yeah. You know?

Yeah.

I mean, it's—

Well, there's a paucity of information about how to properly detox. I mean, you get on Amazon, you can buy these detox kits or juice cleanse, and people really think about that as detox. And yeah, and, and a lot of times they do these and they get really, really sick, and so they never go back and do it again. Um, and I think, you know, your approach is, you know, low and slow wins the race because the body's very often been in the state for maybe decades.

It takes a long time to heal.

It's not going to end on a weekend juice cleanse. Um, you know, these things have invaded tissues and cells and, you know, connective areas of the body, and the immune system has been trapped in this fight, you know, very often for a long period of time. So it's not like turning off a light switch, right? Um, so how, how do we emerge out of that next phase, uh, you know, before we go to the restore phase? And, and of detoxification?

Well, by that time they're at a whole different level as far as their body is in a better state. They're less symptomatic. They're starting to feel better all the way around. They're getting outside more. They're starting to be able to exercise more. They're, you know, at least walking, you know, at least getting around. But the healing's not done and So whether you're talking about chronic Lyme or any kind of illness, you know, I'm making more and more connections to these kinds of microbes, the what we call stealth microbes that grow slowly, that enter the body, can stay inside cells for long durations. So it's not just the Lyme bacteria. There are a lot of things out there and different microbes invade different cells. So you get— I really think that's one of the things that defines what illnesses somebody is going to get is what microbes they've picked up and how they might reactivate in their body. But, you know, so it's— so if you can imagine that, you know, you just, you have this reservoir of these things that you've collected through life, and if you're healthy and things are fine, you're in your 30s, you can get away with stuff. You've picked up some things, they're quiet, they're not bothering you. But then you start, you know, doing things, you start aging, your health habits deteriorate, you start having some symptoms here and there, but it waxes and wanes. But a lot of times people have this perfect storm like I did. It just builds up and builds up and builds up and you just hit this point.

Yeah.

And I call that the boiling point. And the significance of it is that that point is the point that the microbes are driving the cellular stress that's driving more reactivation, and it becomes that vicious cycle that holds things in place. And at that point, just improving your health habits alone isn't going to get you well.

I agree with that.

And so that's where the high-grade herbal extracts, um, And here we're using some herbs that were actually, uh, have been evaluated at studies out of Johns Hopkins University. Um, some of these herbs have antimicrobial properties that are as good or better for these particular microbes. Um, so there was a whole series of studies done around 2020 and a couple of years after that, looking at the— in proving that these, these herbs actually did have, you know, really well documented antimicrobial properties. But it's using the higher grade extracts with the higher concentrations of the high phytochemicals that really get people, you know, that that's what brings them down below that point. And, and so our goal is not eradicating all the things that you have in your system. That's impossible. And I think this goal of you know, we're going to eradicate the Lyme bacteria from your body. I don't think so. Yeah. Um, I, you know, no telling what's in my tissues, right? Um, the goal is to restore your body's ability to keep those things contained.

Yeah.

Um, but, but the nice thing about the herbs is you can keep going with them. I mean, if you want an anti-aging program If you're— if you don't have herbs in that, in that protocol, um, you're really missing out on the one thing that can help you the very most. I've been now taking pretty significant doses of herbal extracts for almost 20 years, every day. Wow.

And do you stage these throughout the day? Are they part of your morning protocol?

Are these— I make it easy.

Travel with—

I make— yeah, I do travel with them.

Okay.

And they've saved me a couple of times. Yeah, um, like, uh, you know, we were in a— on a vacation in Puerto Rico about 6 months ago, and on the airplane I could tell I had a horrible cold coming, bad sore throat, all of that.

Bummer.

I started dosing up on the same herbs that I use for Lyme disease because they have such a broad range. I was able to completely suppress my symptoms for the whole Wow. I knew it was there, but I went snorkeling and diving and did all this stuff. And at the end, it was, you know, I was taking so much of these powders that it was starting to bother my stomach. Yeah. So I stopped and I kind of got the second half of the cold, you know, when you're clearing all the mucus and everything.

Yeah.

So it's, yeah, I always travel with my herbs, but I've experienced some of the best health in the past decade that I've had in my whole life.

Wow.

And you have to, you have to look at me now. My body was broken at age 50. I'm 68 now.

You're 68.

My body was broken. My joints were shot. Wow. I had some pretty serious heart injury and I'm doing everything I want right now. I mean, I'm still kite surfing and things like that.

Yeah.

And so it's just amazing what you get back.

So, so, so we, we get through this detox phase and you, you, you provide these herbal remedies and in, in ways that are easy to administer. Um, are they in liquids? Are they in powders? Are they in a little bit of both? A little bit of both.

Yeah.

And so, um, and now that I emerge from the, uh, detox phase and I'm in uh, you know, month 5 and 6 on, on this journey, uh, what does the rebuild phase look like? Because, you know, I'm, I'm keenly interested in how you rebuild the gut, um, and, and restore, you know, healthy immunity.

Yeah, well, we get them on a good diet. That's all in that phase 2.

I mean, it's a good diet. What does that look like? Whole foods, absent processed foods, I would imagine.

You know, my, my variables for diet— where, you know, where start with is, you know, I looked at all the foods that could cause food sensitivities, problems with oxalate, problems with histamine, all of these different things that people could have because everybody has leaky gut. I mean, I was sensitive to 75% of the foods I was eating. Sure. When I was going through this. So we cut that out. So they're on a basic assortment of vegetables, chicken, and rice, and most people can tolerate white rice. And a lot of people need it for the calories, but it's a really basic diet in the beginning just to get them so they can eat something, so they can get some nourishment.

No fish?

No. Some fish, you know, certain kinds of white fish, but mainly it's just chicken in the beginning. Okay. And because, but I've had a few people that had to like order kangaroo from Australia because they were sensitive to all the meats that they were eating.

Wow.

So leaky gut, you're sensitive, you become sensitive to a lot of things that you're eating.

Sure.

Um, but, uh, so then we progress as their gut is healing. We can progress to more other, to a wider variety of foods. And ultimately my basic food guidelines are eat whole foods as much as you possibly can. And you know this, and organic as much as you can. Second to that, eat more vegetables than anything else. I think vegetables are really the thing that most people are missing the very, very most. And then divide everything up pretty evenly. You know, if you can tolerate gluten, you can probably have a little bit of wheat. Most people can at that point. And some meat, lean meats, healthy meats, you know, preferably grass-fed, farm-raised, that sort of thing.

Yeah.

Um, um, so meat is on the list. I mean, you can get by without meat. I think it's a little harder. Um, so divide your foods up like that. Um, I try to keep my carbohydrate count below 130 grams of carbohydrates.

I'm a big fan of that.

130, 150. That's not ketogenic. I found that it's not ketogenic was— it's just, it's hard to be comfortable and it's hard to eat. It really cuts down on your variety.

I use it as a transition but never, yeah, permanency.

So, you know, I try to do that target. I don't walk around a little bit keeping a record, but I have a mental list, you know. I know what different foods are, so I— so if I can keep that, and I, you know, I, I do a hemoglobin A1C every 6 months and I keep it like 5 to 5.3, sometimes a little below 5. Um, and you know, most people are like 5.6 to 6, and they're eating way too much carb. Yeah, so I monitor it, keeps me honest. Um, and then intermittent fasting, try to cut that eating window down to around 8 hours or less.

Okay. And, and, um, uh, and anything specific to rebuild the gut? Do you use any peptides? Do you use colostrums? Do you use pre-, pro-, or postbiotics? Or do you try to do that with food inoculation, like fermented foods? Or, or do you do it with herbs?

Um, yeah, fermented foods are a really good way to repopulate the gut, except it tends to be high histamine. A lot of people are having histamine issues, mast cell activation syndrome, so that cuts it out for a lot of people.

Um, I do super well on fermented veggies. I mean, you know, in fact, every morning I have the same thing: 3 eggs, a fistful of berries, and a healthy serving of sauerkraut. And that— when I do that at least once a day, I try to get a second serving later in the day. I'm telling you, like, the difference in my bowel regularity— and, you know, nobody wants to hear this, but bowel consistency and stool consistency It's night and day.

Yeah, you sound a lot like me.

No diarrhea, no constipation, sauerkraut.

But, um, most mornings I do an egg and then I sauté salad greens with mushrooms and artichoke and things like that.

So yeah, yeah.

And I love it.

And I'm also one of those creatures that can eat the same thing every day and just be fine.

I, you know, I try to eat variety, but that's, that's a nice breakfast that I like. It's just a good way to set your watch by it.

Is it same every single and it's just, just— and when I get off it, you know, I, I, my, my gut, you know, uh, changes when I travel. And I, uh, but that's like my anchor breakfast. But, um, and then obviously a variety, almost exactly what you're saying. Um, and, and you feel that even without probiotics, because you've removed a lot of these invaders, um, with a healthy diet, that's, that's where you're getting—

most people, if you get the vegetables back in their diet and you get them on a diverse diet, they're going to repopulate their gut.

I would agree with that.

Um, probiotics, we're still figuring it out, you know. Um, the companies that are doing testing— I know there's Viome and others— I think we're getting there, but it's still a pretty inexact science because, quite frankly, we don't know what a healthy gut microbiome is, and it's probably a lot of different ones. Yes, for a lot of different people. Um, so We've been kind of back and forth on, you know, I'm not, I don't have a problem with people doing a probiotic, but sometimes people run into problems with probiotics.

Oh yeah, for sure.

And it's really hard to define it. So I think it's an area of promise. I'm just not sure we're there yet. And I found that most people, if they're on a decent diet, they'll do fine.

Yeah.

But we also protect the gut with slippery elm. Um, which is— it's, uh, it has mucilage. So part of the problem is, you know, when you have slow motility, everything stops and you get mucoid plaques and all of this. What the problem is, is bacteria grow as long as food is present, and that includes— you have bacteria in your small bowel, and if you slop, slow things down and there's food there, they just keep growing, good and bad bacteria. And eventually, I mean, all cells are food. Our cells are in our gut, are protected by a mucus layer from the bacteria in the gut. Well, if you've got bacterial overgrowth, they start slip stripping that away and damaging those gut cells, and that's what causes the leaky gut. So slippery elm has a substance called mucilage, and it— that is very much like it. So if you're taking that then it basically replaces that missing layer. It's really beneficial.

Protective layer.

The product has dandelion, which enhances bile flow, protects livers, and brings in another level. And then berberine, which is really good for killing bad bacteria.

Berberine or berberine? Berberine. Yeah, yeah. Um, and glycemic control too.

And right, yeah, so it just has some really nice properties. For people with really bad gut irritation though, um, sangre de grado, dragon's blood, that's a really good one. Have you heard of that one?

I've heard of tiger's blood because—

no, this is—

that he had.

This is really interesting stuff. You should, you should have some of them. You should have a little bottle of dragon's blood. Dragon's— it's a sap from a tree. I think the, the tree is actually from Malaysia, but it grows all over South America. Okay. And they tap the sap and it's red. Just looks just like blood. And they put it in a bottle and it has the effect of like if you get a scrape on your skin, you put dragon's blood on there and it'll seal the wound, coagulate the blood, and sterilize it. Wow. And it's like a little Band-Aid. So I keep a little bottle of it in my kit. Now you can take it orally. It tastes terrible. Yeah, but you can get Sangre de Grado capsules. And I actually found a study that— so, so this substance binds to damaged tissue. There was a study in South America that they found that it worked really well for stomach ulcers, that people were taking capsules of it and it was helping to heal the stomach ulcers.

Now, is it doing that because it's really cool repairing the tissue? Because, you know, usually the stomach ulcer also be, well, you know, Helicobacter pylori and whatnot, but, but because you've eroded this mucosal layer too. Yeah, right. And now you have—

that's it, that's it. You know, cells are food for bacteria, right? Most of the time they can't get at cells. And we talk about, um, Helicobacter being the, the, the cause of stomach ex— uh, ulcers, but it's actually a secondary infection, right? So what happens is people are eating all this bad food, they've got slow motility, their stuff is just sitting in their stomach, and it starts stripping away the protective layer. Yeah. And it digs in. Um, it's food, right?

Right.

So the Helicobacter, the, the, the H. pylori, is, is, has been there 40% of people carry it without being sick, so it's there, and if it's an opportunist, if it gets an opportunity, it digs in. So the, uh, so this herb is actually binding to the tissue and sealing it, but it's also helping to suppress growth of the bacteria.

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Visit drinkh2tab.com— that's drinkh2tab.com— and upgrade your hydration today. Now let's get back to the Ultimate Human Podcast. So when they emerge from this 6-month protocol that you, you, you put your patients on, um, what are some of the sustaining herbs that they stay on for life, like what your protocol is? What is— what does that look like?

We keep them on a lot of the same products and The nice thing about the herbs that I use for, for my own benefit, I was— I gravitated toward herbs that had very low drug-like effects, right? We wanted antimicrobial effects, but we didn't want it acting on our system, our hormone, our enzymes, right? So we wanted it to have what we call an adaptogen effect. So adaptogens are herbs that don't have a drug-like effect True adaptogens actually help balance stress hormones, like ashwagandha. Ginseng is one, very stimulating. It's not a favorite of mine.

Um, and why is that?

Because it's stimulating. Ah, and I'm one of those people that just doesn't do well with caffeine. All those years of not sleeping, um, I don't like things that are stimulating. So I was looking for herbs that didn't have a drug-like effect. They weren't, you know, you weren't going feel something when you take them, right? So we wanted them for their cell protective effects and their antimicrobial effects. Um, so I'm starting to call them adaptogenic antimicrobial herbs.

Okay.

Um, and all herbs— I mean, every single herb has some antimicrobial properties.

Yeah, every single antiparasitic properties.

So basically what we're doing is we're borrowing the defense system from another organism. But unlike an antibiotic, and you know, everybody thinks that antibiotics come from some smart scientist that dreams up this chemical that kills bacteria. They all come from nature, right?

Oh yeah, they're all—

every single one of them, right? They either come from a mold, a bacteria, or a plant. All of them. Um, ivermectin that everybody talks about came from a bacteria on a golf course in Japan out of a swamp. It did. But we're not smart enough to pull the whole defense system of that organism. We just pull one chemical and then patent it and potentiate it. Yeah, because you have to change it. Of course. So when you take an herb, you're getting hundreds and hundreds of chemicals that are just this whole defense system of the plant, plus the regulatory system of the plant. So plants have to balance cellular functions with changes in seasons and weather. And they do that with hormones that are very similar to ours. So when we take a plant, we're getting some of those same chemicals. Different plants use different chemicals, different signals. So caffeine is a phytochemical that the plant is using to send signals to regulate cellular functions, as is, you know, so many things. Opium, you know, the plant is using that chemical for a purpose. So we're looking for things that don't have chemicals that have those effects, but have effects that are regulating and improving cellular functions. Where do you—

sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. Go ahead.

No, sorry. I want you to finish that. So when you take a plant, you're getting the whole system, not just one chemical. And that's important because you get a wide spectrum, a very broad spectrum of coverage to bacteria, viruses, fungi, protozoa, but it's selective for pathogens. And that's why it didn't wreck my gut, right? Because it suppresses pathogens in the gut. And that's another thing— taking herbs, I found, is better than taking probiotics because it's actually helping to regulate the gut bacteria and suppress pathogens in the gut. Yeah, so we kind of gave up on the probiotics. We used to have one a long time ago. We found the herbs really work better.

Wow.

So, and they don't generate resistant pathogens like antibiotics, but all of these herbs, I call them adaptogenic because what they're doing is they're just extraordinary cell protectants. So the, the plant is producing these chemicals to protect itself from not only microbes, but free radicals, toxic substances, radiation, all of the things that our cells are exposed to. Yes. The plant is being exposed to. So when we take one of these adaptogenic herbs or take a spectrum of them, because, you know, plants, different plants have different stress factors in their environment, so they're building out different kinds of systems. Well, you take multiple herbs, so you're getting all this overlap and just— so it's, it's a pretty extraordinary thing.

Where do you fall on like digestive enzymes?

Um, you know, for people that are— that's one of the things that we recommend.

Yeah.

Um, just because you get backed up and everything, nothing is working, so you need to enhance that digestive process as much as you can.

Because I noticed, you know, my, my, uh, my father's 82 years old. You just met him out there, Captain Brecka. And, um, you know, he had very poor gut motility. Had— he had a catastrophic diving accident years ago. It caused him some motor coordination problems on the one hemisphere of his body. And, and, um, he really doesn't absorb nutrients. He eats very healthy and eats a lot, um, but, uh, but he's very deconditioned because, you know, he's just not absorbing. His blood work looks malnourished, um, even though So he's not malnourished, and in my opinion, he's malabsorbed. Um, but I will say that when we added digestive enzymes, um, I started to see the recovery in some of his lab works, just proteins and, and, and another level starting to return to, to normalcy, because, um, he was at least able to extract more nutrients, um, from the food that he was eating post, you know, digestive enzymes. Yeah. So, um, we didn't change anything else about his diet, uh, other than adding those, you know, during, during each meal, sort of midstream. He eats a little bit, then takes the digestive enzyme, continues to eat. But it definitely improved the absorption of these nutrients. And maybe because with that level of gut dysbiosis, you know, it was able to break things down so that he could extract nutrients from them. And so those are, those are the herbs that you stay on longer term. And you, and you suggest that people benefit from these for a lifetime by having this sort of myriad of protective mechanisms. Because once you've gotten some of these bad invaders out or got them at bay, it's not going to stop you from being reinoculated with them just through the course of life.

Well, you know, we have things, you know, microbes are opportunists and we have things that are coming from our gut. From our gums, from our sinuses. Um, you know, we are starting to make connections, um, to so many illness. I mean, you know, when you look at a cardiovascular plaque, it starts with friction. Your body starts healing that, but then it, it becomes like a biofilm that microbes from different sources in our body get planted in there, and they survive in that plaque. So we're seeing them in a lot of different places. And that extra protection, you know, it's almost like it's missing from our food supply because if you look at our ancient past, it's foraging, right? 97% of the time that our species has been on Earth, our ancestors foraged. Well, what did they eat? Well, most of the evidence suggests that they ate about 2/3 plant matter and about 1/3 animal matter, varied a little bit on different locations. And what they were eating wasn't cultivated plants, it was wild plants. It was wild berries, stems, leaves, roots, whatever they could find. Well, it didn't have much calories, so they were having to eat a lot of it. That's why we have such a long gut, is because they were getting lots and lots of fiber. They were also though getting lots of this phytochemistry of plants that, and those were wild plants. So they were getting some, they were basically eating herbs. So would you look at our cultivated plants now, our cultivated plants are cultivated to produce calories.

Yes.

And the trade-off has been they don't know how to protect themselves anymore.

Right.

We've cultivated plants in these controlled conditions, lowered their stress so they'd produce lots and lots of calories.

Right.

Well, they gave up the ability to produce all these protective phytochemicals that protects from microbes and all of these stress factors. It's why we have to use so much pesticide and junk on our food. Food and why it's so hard to grow things organically, because those cultivated plants aren't like their wild predecessors.

Yeah.

And they're missing that phytochemistry. So when I look out there of the big thing that's missing from our diet, it's this protective phytochemistry.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense.

Yeah. And, you know, and 10,000 years ago, we traded foraged foods, all of that, for basically seeds and beans. We started farming, but people kept that past. They were using culinary and medicinal herbs, so they were getting it. And we gave all that up about 100 years ago.

So it makes so much sense. I mean, I've said for years, you know, more of what God gave us, less of what man makes us. Okay. And we're definitely aligned philosophically on that. So, so Dr. Rawls, where can my audience find out more about you? Where can they find you? Where can they get more information on your Restore Protocol?

Sure, yeah, the easiest place is I've got a website called RawlsMD.com. A lot of information there, articles, or R-A-W-L-S, and, um, that can link to a lot of other kinds of things. I've written several books if people want to go a little bit deeper. So lots of good information out there. I'm, you know, from day one, I mean, I've been doing this over 40 years, and I've always considered myself an educator as much as anything. So I, I, I enjoy talking to people about their health and helping bring people up to a higher level.

Yeah, well, you're doing an amazing job of it. Um, you know, I, I wind down all of my podcasts by, by asking my guests the same question, and there's no right or wrong answer to this question.

Good, good.

But what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?

It's just, it's a privilege to be a human. But, you know, when you look at this thing, no matter how you think about it, this body is our vehicle for experiencing this life. I mean, it's as simple as that. This body and how well you take care of your body is going to greatly influence that experience. So the better that I can make my body, you know, going through the turmoil that I went through and coming out on the other side, and I'm just, I'm so introspective about what's going on in my body, and taking care of my body, it's just enhanced my life so much. I, yeah, I just wouldn't trade it for anything.

That's amazing. Well, Dr. Rols, thank you so much for coming on The Ultimate Human Podcast. I know my audience is gonna love this podcast. My VIPs are waiting for you in our VIP room. They had a whole host of questions for you, um, so they, you know, we let them know that you were coming on the podcast, so they, they've got some questions ready for you, but Um, I hope you come back again. I'm gonna, you know, I'm gonna follow your journey. Um, thank you. I may even try your 6-month protocol. I mean, it's— I'm, I'm very intrigued by it. I don't feel like I've got any issues going on, and I feel pretty, pretty amazing. But, um, you know, my wife and I always enjoy going on these journeys together.

And, oh, that would be wonderful. Yeah, we'd love to have you.

You know, I don't think it could hurt to have us go through it.

Yeah. Uh, well, this special detox protocol, the whole idea is to make it cost effective for anyone. To give people something that's a structured pathway, that's cost-effective, that they're getting a lot for their money. And then that community support, that people are not just in there by themselves. It's a safe place. It's not like so much of social media. And they're not alone, you know, that they have somebody. It's not like, you know, you may pay a lot of money for a fancy doctor. Try to get in and ask a question, you know? And it's a place where they can ask questions, get it answered, find information. So yeah, we put a lot of time putting it all together.

Well, congratulations. Thank you. Guys, until next time, that's just science.