Dr. John Kim: On Mold Toxicity, Mycotoxins, Heavy Metals, & Cellular Detox | TUH #276

Mold is not just about the immune dysfunction or having allergies. It actually causes mitochondrial dysfunction deep into the cellular level, down to the DNA.

Cells are like human beings. They behave in communities. This is the way that cellular activity influences other cells and how metabolically healthy cells can become metabolically sick because they're in an environment with other metabolically sick cells.

So it's vital for the cell membrane to function well. Unfortunately, dealing with mycotoxins and mold in general, it actually damages the cell membrane integrity.

Unfortunately, these are not the types of infections and chronic conditions— that drive you to the ER. They're ones that people learn to deal with.

This is the reason why when I work with clients, I want to empower you to be the best doctor for your own. And this is one thing that I'd like to teach, is enhancing cellular resiliency.

I think there's such a paucity of expertise out there on what to do once you find these infections. How do we actually eliminate mold from the body?

One of the things that worked out really well for patients, and you don't need to spend a lot of money on it, and there is a company that supports this. I do.

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 should add mold, mycotoxin, parasite, virus, heavy metal, and everything that's affecting your body. Um, you know, today's podcast, this is, this is a guest I've wanted to have on for a long time because I have been deep down the rabbit hole with many of you for the better part of a year now, talking about how these chronic low-grade infections are leading to systemic disease and pathology right before our eyes, not showing up on your labs and causing all kinds of conditions that we are chalking up to a consequence of aging or repeated infection, or we're chalking these up to a consequence of our environment or stress or our job or career or kids. And it's none of those things. Very often it is preventable toxicity. And today we're going to talk about some of the big offenders and how we can get them out of our body. Welcome to the podcast, Dr. John Kim.

Gary, thank you so much.

It is such a pleasure to have you. You know, before the cameras started rolling today, I talked about a lecture that I gave in Salt Lake City going back about 2 years. And the first, the morning lecture, which was about genetic methylation, I actually got a standing ovation from this crowd of, of physicians. And then that afternoon, um, I had— I did a 45-minute talk on toxicity, and we talked about mold, mycotoxins, uh, heavy metal toxicity, and some of the consequences. And I was quite ridiculed, and, and I don't want to say laughed off the stage, but I could tell they were just being tolerant until my talk ended. And I actually had some EENTs, um, come, come to me after the lecture and tell me that they didn't believe in mold, uh, or mycotoxins, um, that these were— everybody, they say, uh, they commented, everybody's got mold, it's in and out of our bodies. Um, they're basically tired of the mold cult. Um, and I think over the last 2 years, um, through the detox challenges I've had, the experts like yourself that I've had on the podcast, people are accepting that these are real toxic loads with very real consequences. And I've been a part of— I've been really blessed to be a part of the journey of several people who have had young children with repeated sore throats, um, where they were just about to remove their adenoids and they found a functional medicine doctor and said, Put the brakes on. This, this child has heavy metal, mold, and mycotoxins. Let's do a detox and see where we stand. And now they're 3, 4, 5 years, uh, symptom-free. So if, if I could, for my audience, I'd like to back up to your story because, um, a lot of the mo— the more influential and impactful people, really passionate people that come on this podcast are passionate and purpose-driven because they solved a problem in their life, a big problem. And at 33 years old, you had a major heart attack. I did. And I hope it's okay if I say that, 'cause I already said it.

No, it's okay. It's okay. I call it the pain to glory story. Yeah. Everybody has their pain to glory.

I wanna talk about that. I wanna talk about that journey because it gives my listeners the why. You know, why are you here? Why are you so passionate? And at that time, I'm sure there were not a lot of resources available for you. You had to become your own citizen scientist. Thankfully, you're a PharmD, so you have an intricate knowledge of cellular biology, pharmacokinetics. So at least you had a vantage point to start from and maybe intelligently evaluate what was out there in the world. But I'd love for you to share that story.

Yeah, absolutely. So I was 33 years old. I just got back from my friend's wedding down in LA, and this was exactly June 1st. And then 3 days later, on June 4th, that's when I started having this heartburn. I always had a heartburn issue, and I always had some kind of gut problem to begin with. I completely ignored it. And that particular day, for some reason, that pain was resonating even higher. And the evening, that pain shot down right into my left arm. Completely ignored it, went to sleep, woke up the following day like an idiot. And then having to go back to work. And then mid-afternoon, that's when I decided to go to the urgent care center instead of ER. And then the urgent care center doctor's like, you're having a heart attack right now. We have to get to the ER right away. Got into the ambulance, got to the ER, and even the ER physician, even the attending cardiologist, didn't believe that this 32-year-old guy who actually got the cholesterol lab report from my doctor 6 months prior, they were looking at this. There's no sign of possibly actually having a heart attack, but this guy's having chest pain. So they were trying to rule out as being a pericarditis. And then when they did an echocardiogram, they found out that my left ventricle wasn't pumping well. So it's actually a sign of ischemia. They brought me to the cath lab, 85% blockage in my LAD.

Widowmaker. Widowmaker. Oh my gosh. Most people are not that lucky.

Especially for young people, right? Especially when you're in your 50s and 60s, you have a compensatory mechanism in terms of your new-formed blood vessels, basically, right, to take care of that blockage. But generally, for younger patients, they actually die quickly.

You know, I had a cardiologist— I watched a cardiologist give a lecture, and he said, what is the first sign of advanced cardiac disease in, I think it was, 35 years old and younger? Yeah. And people gave all these answers, and he said the first sign of advanced cardiac disease is sudden death. Yeah, that's the first symptom.

Absolutely.

So God's got a plan for you, my friend.

That was something that, well, I didn't know that, but then I end up having to be in the cardiac ICU unit, staring at a wall for 3 days, wondering how did this happen? And then especially question in terms of what led to this process, right? Having to have an early cardiac disease at age of 33. And then I had this overweight physician coming in and telling me, to cut out all meat, cholesterol, and everything else. They put me on atorvastatin 80 milligrams, and I was like, this is nonsense. There's something wrong here. So I got home and I just sat there for 7 days just wondering, like, what could I have done differently? So I went to my functional medicine doctor who I'm good friends with. She actually asked me, I think you're dealing with tick-borne illness. All I wanted to do was a vitamin C drip.

Tick-borne illness.

Wow. So she did a blood work, and then after a month and a half later, that's when we tested positive for Aspergillus antibodies, IgM, IgG, Bartonella infection, Mycoplasma pneumoniae, Epstein-Barr, mercury poisoning on top of parasitic issues. So why does it occur? Well, there's endothelial damage that occur from a Bartonella infection, which is a cat scratch fever, which is common you could get— you get from a tick-borne illness, including spider bite. So I actually was in Boy Scouts all my life. And I probably end up having to contract it that way. Okay. And then I lived in a very moldy house to begin with growing up.

Mm-hmm.

Right. And then also lived in a very stressful environment growing up as well. You know, living in an immigrant family, parents are constantly working, busy, etc. So that led to a lot of the neuroinflammation that I was dealing with. And as you know, all the cascade in terms of inflammatory response goes from the gut. So I always had a gut problem. And that was something that I should have caught, but I was just busy. And the unfortunate thing is that a lot of Americans, including entrepreneurs and executives and people that you work with, of course, you have the same issue where—

We don't listen to our bodies. It sends us signals.

It does. And I wasn't listening. So that's when I already had an existing problem to begin with. I had anxiety left and right. I could not sleep that well when I was in my 20s and 30s. And then when I actually had that heart attack, that's when I stopped to listen and figuring out what's going on. And I got the answer. Now, it took me about 2 years to clear it out, but it was a very tough process. And that was the moment that I found out how cellular integrity is so vitally important for your health. And this is when I started diving into lipid membrane medicine, right? And utilizing phospholipid therapy and phosphatidylcholine, IVPC.

Specifically— I've done that too.

Yep. But specifically at that time, I got connected with Dr. Ed Kane, who's a founder for BodyBio, and he actually read my red blood cell fatty acid analysis. And that particular test is very special, run by Kennedy Krieger, looks— looking at the entire structure of the cell membrane, looking at the lipoperoxosomes and the renegade fats, looking at the fluid index of the actual cell membrane. And he designed a customized lipid therapy that I had to go through. And my goodness, for 4 months I was severely sick because all that toxins dealing with was just getting dumped out and my body, especially my nervous system, was not ready for it. And I learned a lot from that point on in terms of how I approach the clinical approach in dealing with mold toxicity, MCAS, and all the different hyperbiotoxin issues that people dealing with. My approach is very different compared to what I had to go through back in 2015. So this is how everything came into play. So I was able to clear out Bartonella, mold toxicity issues, heavy metals.

Can we go into some of the details of that? Because I think there's such a paucity of expertise out there on what to do once you find these infections. How do we actually eliminate mold from the body or some of these mycotoxins? How do we cleanse the body of heavy metals? I'd love to start with mold because I really do feel like the medical community is finally starting to grasp these are real infections. They have real consequences. Like we were talking about before the podcast started, unfortunately, these are not the types of infections and chronic conditions that drive you to the ER like your heart attack or take you to the urgent care. They're ones that people learn to deal with, right? They just tolerate them. You tolerated the gut issues probably for years before it manifested in something that drove you to the ER. And getting a hold of these at that stage, when, you know, for people that are tuned into their body, you know, why do I have constant diarrhea, then constipation, then cramping, then irritability, then bloating, then gas? And it seems to be intermittent and not related to what I'm eating. You know, am I fatigued all the time? Why do I seem to have brain fog at such a young age? These are sort of signs your body's throwing up there, you need to pay attention to. What was the detox protocol? What did that look like for you? You said you did the PC.

So at that point in time, my doctor put me on bodybell PC from the get-go because we had to deal with the intravascular inflammation that I was dealing with. So that was something that's really vital there. But also, when you're looking at the disease states of a heart attack or any type of cardiovascular or even types of infection, that's a sign of a mitochondrial dysfunction to begin with. That's when the lipid membrane medicine is so vitally important to adding in the proper fat to quench the actual inflammation that was going on. So you're working on the upstream issue instead of the downstream problem that the person's dealing with. Ah, right. So that was really, really vital there. And at that point in time, um, my doctor noticed that I was dealing with biofilm issues as well. So adding a biofilm buster— and there are companies out there utilizing different things. I mean, you could end up using prolytic enzymes like nattokinase or serrapeptidase, N-acetylcysteine, phospholipid like BodyBio PC I mentioned before. That actually—

great company. Great company.

PC, right? So it actually acts as a biofilm buster as well because it dissolves— it's an emulsifier. It dissolves the biofilms, right? And one of the intricate part of biofilm is that when you have a history of taking antibiotic, for instance, right? And then overexposure to deal with mold heavy metals and immune dysfunction on top of this inflammation cascade, increased cholesterol cascade as well. All these are playing into the biofilm structure. And when you have a biofilm, it's very difficult to utilize antifungal antimicrobials to cut infection. This reason why people, even though they might be gone through heavy amounts of antifungal protocol, they cannot get to the root of the issue. So that's where Oftentimes just using binders or antifungals alone, it's not going to fix the problem. You got to really get to the root of the problem, which is biofilm, mitochondrial dysfunction. But another thing that goes into play is the fact that these patients have trouble getting mycotoxins out to begin with because of their sympathetic nervous system is overdriven. Yeah, things like detox, gut work, lymphatic drainage, all these are deal with your parasympathetic nervous system state. And oftentimes when you deal with mycotoxins, they already had existing nervous system dysfunction to begin with. But when you're dealing with mycotoxins, especially trichothecins, which is a black mold coming from Stachybotrys, it actually causes neural inflammation across the blood-brain barrier, especially gliotoxins, another one.

And neural inflammation, I want to define some of these terms like biofilm and neural inflammation and not assume that my audience knows what those mean. Let's back up to biofilms. I mean, I— I have this image of like Saran Wrap kind of wrapped over your cells, sort of preventing things from getting in and out, and then the cell building up this level of toxicity, but also not being able to get the nutrients. But how would you describe biofilms? You know, what are they?

The easiest way to explain is let's just say you go to a lake and then you have a flat surface of a rock in the lake itself, and you see that there's a film, slimy film, that's biofilm.

—Okay.

—It's part of our entire ecosystem for the microbials to protect itself from the environment. I see. But when you're dealing with mold, it colonizes in your system, in your body, and actually has to have that particular defense to protect itself from the immune system, right? And one of the interesting part about mold is it causes immunosuppression, is one thing, but they also deal with the biofilm issues. And then when you have mold, there's always heavy metal getting involved. So I don't tackle the heavy metal issues. I tackle that mold first. And then when you're utilizing proper lipid membrane medicine, especially using phospholipids, using essential oils, and then butyrate has to be another play to effect because butyrate is a chemical chaperone to help decrease that DNA adduct issue coming from these biotoxins to be able to get the permanent removal of these things um, to the mitochondria in the DNA.

Listen, there's what I share on this podcast, and then there's what I share with my inner circle. If you've been following me for a while, you know how I hold nothing back here. But my VIP community, that's where the real magic happens. Picture this: you're struggling with energy crashes, brain fog, or just feeling like you're not operating at your peak, and you don't know where to get real answers. But here's what really sets this apart. You're not just getting my insights. When I have incredible guests on the podcast, VIP members get to submit questions for a private podcast podcast segment. So that world-renowned expert we just interviewed— you get exclusive access to their knowledge tailored to your specific situation. This section is under the private podcast section in the Ultimate Human community. And speaking of exclusive, you're getting my personal protocols, the exact tools I use for water fasting, gut optimization, and morning routines that have taken me decades to perfect. This isn't theory. This is what works in the real world. The community launches challenges throughout the year where you get direct access to me and my network of experts. It's like having a personal health advisory board for less than $100 a month. Your health is your wealth, and this investment pays dividends for life. Join the VIP community at theultimatehuman.com/vip and step into your ultimate potential. Now let's get back to The Ultimate Human Podcast. So when you remove these films— yeah, that is essentially a secretion from these toxins to protect itself from the environment. Um, when you remove these films, now that bug is exposed. Exposed. Right. And once they're exposed, now you can kill them off and get rid of them.

With antimicrobials. But you gotta be careful too. There has to be a step-by-step method there. So I know you had another guest here who talked about itraconazole. Yeah. Yeah, and deal with that. Yeah. But one of the things about those type of pharmaceutical drugs is that it's great, it works really well. And for people who are having overcolonization deal with mold, Echocardiogram is a great option. Unfortunately, it actually causes hepatotoxicity. At the same time, it actually inhibits cytochrome P450 3A4 enzyme, which is vital in the cholesterol transport chain. Oh no, cytochrome P450, which is a— Oh, cytochrome P450. Yeah, which is a phase 1 metabolism, right? So major drugs out there, statin drugs, for instance, diltiazem, which is a blood pressure medication, those drugs are metabolized by cytochrome P450 3A4 enzyme. So when you have a patient who is actually on those particular drugs, which a lot of people do, right? And especially we talk about mold actually increases cholesterol production in the body. Yeah. These commonly actually are on statin drugs. You cannot put itraconazole on those patients right away. So you either have to take off the statins and then add in the itraconazole for a short period of time. But because of the hepatotoxicity issues, you got to do it for short bursts. You cannot be putting on a patient for 6 months straight. So this is the reason why instead of actually going after those things, you got to fix the vital point. What is that? Your gut function, right? There's a causation of mold in your gut, and we could talk about why later, but that's something that first you have to do. And then while you're doing that, you try to lower the actual mold burden in the body. And then once it gets lowered enough, that's when you start to work on the systemic issue, the mycotoxins there.

So what would be, um, what are some of your go-to tests for somebody that's having the types of symptoms that we've been talking about on the podcast? Um, brain fog, chronic gut issues, weight gain, water retention, poor focus and concentration, hormone imbalance, because a lot of these are estrogen mimetics. Yeah. Um, They're going to go and get a standard panel and they're going to get told they're fine.

You could still do a standard panel. There's a lot of story that could be told from a standard panel. Unfortunately, not even just that. The issue is that conventional medicine right now does not know how to read functional blood work correctly. So there are blood panels in terms of the ranges, and then there's the functional ranges and there's optimal ways to look at the blood work correctly. So you could tell about the story of what the person's going through, But another thing is that you have to look at— the biggest question is, what are you trying to find? Right? So we talked about your mycotoxin, for instance. So standard lab that I like to look at is real-time lab, urine mycotoxin testing. Okay. So this is something that looking at the metabolite of the mycotoxin that's coming out of the urine. There are certain limitations. There's no perfect test out there, but that's a gold standard I am to recommend.

Okay. I'm going to put a link to that.

Yeah. So that's the number one thing. And I also looking at, looking at organic acid testing. Why? We want to look at the mitochondrial dysfunction. How's the Krebs cycle functioning? So looking at lactate, pyruvate, right? You're also looking at the glutathione production as well. We were based on the organic acid testing. You could also looking at neurotransmitters. So these patients oftentimes very burnt out, low dopamine levels to begin with. So you got to work on their neurotransmitters.— but it's not the point of giving more supplements. You got to get them outside to get the sunlight. UVA right into the eye actually helps to create that natural dopamine the body really needs. And oftentimes when you deal with mycotoxins, they have photophobia, they have very high levels of sun sensitivity issues, they get burned very quickly. So you got to build up that sun callus, but it has to be the focal point into getting the circadian rhythm really balanced there. So that is one of the things that we could talk about later. But organic acid test is really vital and important. The next test we're looking at is a comprehensive stool testing. I like to use a Vibrant Wellness Gut Zoomer 5.0. We're looking at the full spectrum in terms of their gut inflammation markers. You're looking at the colonization of the actual bacteria, looking at some of the pathogens, especially talking about like parasites, other things like Citrobacter and other types of E. coli, other infection type of it, you want to rule out whether that person's dealing with small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. Because if they actually have SIBO, most likely they have SIFO as well, small intestinal fungal overgrowth in the system. So you have to look at the comprehensive in that sense of it by also looking at how well the gut is able to produce short-chain fatty acid.

And as soon as somebody gets SIBO, they put on high doses of antibiotics and just buying themselves a problem down the road. Huge.

And you cannot use probiotics to— do much in this scenario. Oftentimes, if you're using the right supplements at the wrong time, you get hurt very bad, right? And this is a part where use of the right probiotic but also use of immunoglobulins is very important. So the company called Microbiome Labs, they produce immunoglobulin G, so IgG. It actually is a binder that actually binds to selectively for E. coli, Strep, Enterococcus, lipoprotein saccharide, which is LPS, which is, which is a biotoxin itself that E. coli produces. And then the other aspect is it binds to some of the mold colonization in the body. So that's more of a gentle way into getting the gut function back. And I'm really looking at to utilizing spore-based probiotic there as well because that's less reactive on the patient dealing with SIBO. But the spore-based probiotic actually acts as an antimicrobial to deal with a bacterial overgrowth the person's dealing with. So you have to do more of a step-by-step approach in terms of sequential ways in terms of getting these issues instead of actually just throwing the whole thing at the person and trying to see what sticks.

So we've done the test for the secretions from biofilm. We've done a gut stool test.

Yeah. There's no perfect markers out there to looking at biofilms. There's none. I mean, there are muscle testers out there who are very talented to check if the person's dealing with biofilms, but when you're dealing with overcolonization of mold, there's always a play. And then there's all the multiple infections, there's always play of biofilms. And if you actually look at the person's history, if they grew up having strep throat issues, including that ear infection, they had years of taking multiple antibiotics for a long time, there's definitely biofilm issue as well. So you gotta understand that that is an integral part of the entire protocol, but there's no perfect test out there to check for that. I wish there was, but so that's how we— So that's the reason why a lot of doctors, including functional medicine practitioners, they don't often miss that part, right? That is vital, but they often miss it. So I was looking at it and says, all right, so what is— How's a person's history? How's the function person's happening, but also how reactive are they, right? If they actually are reactive in terms of food, chemicals, especially if they go in an Uber, for instance, and then they actually have a car freshener in there and they're getting reactive, they're having brain fog, they're wiped out for 2 days. That person has major issue dealing with MCAS, which is mast cell activation syndrome issues, hypersensitivity, but also play the fact that there's a big play of biofilms that's happening there.

Right. You know, it's also important not to go too far too fast with these patients. You know, early in my journey in functional medicine, when we opened up our clinic, you know, a lot of people were coming in for weight loss. This is pre-GLP-1s. Yeah. One of the things I noticed about very obese patients that go through rapid weight loss is they become so toxic. Migraines, rashes, crushing fatigue, like fatigue where they can't even get out of bed. I'm not talking about somebody lose 15, 20 pounds. I'm like, somebody's gonna lose 100 pounds, 150 pounds. And the release of these toxins without fixing their detox pathways, which is something that I learned, was kind of fascinating to me because there are a lot of these toxins that are trapped in these fat cells. And the same thing is true when you start going after some of these infections, um, especially sporulating infections, infections that are, that are secreting these, these biofilms. That in and of itself becomes another toxic load. Huge, right?

It actually causes more activation of the immune response. So that could be a big problem. So for, in case in point, talking about mold itself, like mycotoxin is lipophilic. —actually lodge into fat cells a lot more readily and the tissues itself. So that's why when you're doing a urine mycotoxin testing, let's just say a person's obese, they've been chronically exposed to mold toxins in a moldy house. Oftentimes when you're doing urine mycotoxin testing, their levels of mycotoxins are very low. Sometimes you don't even see it. So what's going on? The fat is basically holding on to that. So you need to really do a provoked urine testing to get the urine mycotoxin out. —Yeah. —So you've heard of provoke urine testing for heavy metals? —Yes. —Same thing in this scenario.

I didn't know you could provoke it for—

Yeah. So what you do is you want to utilize minerals and bioflavonoids to solubilize mycotoxins and getting that out through the kidneys. So use of molybdenum, for instance, is great to solubilize gliotoxins. You actually have resveratrol and turmeric, another good bioflavonoid in there. So there's a— company out there, the company name is A-Lyte. My mentor, Dr. Jill Krista, she formulated that thing, that entire supplement just for mycotoxin purposes. And I use it a lot. And one of the key supplements that I utilize now is called the ColorGuard. Utilized all those things in there to help to solubilize mycotoxin so that you get the patient for about 2 weeks prior to collecting urine so that you get a proper reading on it. So that's one way of doing it. There's some doctors who— And those are oral? Oral. Okay. There's some doctors who utilize sodium butyrate, for instance, which is why sodium butyrate is a chemical chaperone. It actually removes the DNA adduct of these mycotoxins that binds to the DNA, removes it. So that's another topic that we could talk about too. But this is a really integral part of why mold is not just about the immune dysfunction or having allergies. It actually causes mitochondrial dysfunction. Deep into the cellular level, down to the DNA. So when you affect the DNA, it actually affects the epigenetic expression of the actual tissue in itself. And reason why, especially for women, why is it that they're dealing with a lot of things like lupus, you're talking about Hashimoto's, right? So these are all interplay in terms of why these type of DNA adduct changing the epigenetic expression of the cell and the tissue itself resulted in in actual disease state that we see right now.

So there's always a root cause. Yeah, and I've seen so many of these. So when someone has this suspicion, they do these tests. You said that you did the IVPC, the phosphatidylcholine, or the PK protocol, similar to PK protocol. I've done that too. I had some claudication in my veins, so I stopped after a little while.

All my veins are completely clogged. I had to go through 14 IV sessions using IVPC, and it's very, it's great. You get your mitochondrial function back very quickly. It's just that it's very caustic for your veins.

Yeah. And it takes a long time to come back. It's not life-threatening or anything. It's not. It is a little unnerving when you look down and they're all hard and you can kind of roll them. And you go, I feel like that's a clot. And if that leaves, am I going to?

It's not gonna happen that way.

No, it doesn't happen that way.

I was scared initially. Yeah. But it's also, you know, IV piece is great. Now the issue is that when you're looking at the entire phospholipid complex, you're not just talking about phosphocholine, you're talking about phosphatidylserine and ethanolamine as well. So 4 different lipid, I'm sorry, phospholipid complex that we're seeing. So when you look at a cell membrane structure, for instance, about 70% of the cell membrane structure, the outer membrane especially. So when you— audience out there, people don't know what cell membrane is, is a bilateral structure of your entire cell, right? And that bilateral structure dictates in terms of how nutrients go in, waste going out, and then as well as that cell membrane potential to allowing different hormone changes and functions and everything else that goes on. So it's vital for the cell membrane to function well. Unfortunately, dealing with mycotoxins and mold in general, including other biotoxins like Lyme, it actually damages the cell membrane integrity. So specifically mold, for instance, it actually causes lipid peroxidase. So it actually— and then also depletes the cardiolipin in the inner part of the membrane as well. And then when you're looking at the structure in itself, the early stage of cell danger response is the mitochondria's role to cause a lockdown of the particular cell by increasing phospholipid production inside the cell to lock the cell in. And this is the issue where the lack of cell-to-cell communication that goes on. But that's an early sign of cell danger response and why people are stuck in this process and why it is so vital that you work on that cellular health by utilizing these types of special lipid to actually help reverse these things as well.

Can you describe what cell danger response is? Yeah, sure. Cell danger response.

Sounds terrible. Yeah. So cell danger response was a term coined by Dr. Robert Naviaux. He's an MD-PhD out of UC Davis. And he's still working right now and really doing— he has a different metabolic lab that he does a lot of things and he's able to prove what his theory was at that point in time. And he explained why certain disease states, especially like autism spectrum disorder that he was working a lot with, why these patients are stuck in their healing process. Everybody goes through a cell danger response. You woke up, that's a cell danger response. You waking up, your cortisol levels shoot, shoot, riding high, and you got to do all these different things. That's a cell danger response. Everybody goes through it. But why is it that some people going through A certain case scenario, and I call it the Humpty Dumpty effect. Reason being is the Humpty Dumpty sitting on a wall, it's fine. But if someone comes in or some wind or something comes in and poked him aside, he falls over, his shell completely cracks. And that's how unstable people are right now living. And unfortunately, COVID happening, it blew up the lid into how unstable these people were to begin with. So that's why a lot of people dealing with long COVID sequelae issues right now. So that's all sign of cell danger response. So why, what is that? It is, cell danger response is an evolutionary protective mechanism that the cell actually had built into the process to protect itself. From what? From biological issues like mold, bacteria, fungi, talking about parasites, including viruses. And then all the things like, physical trauma issues, right? Could be TBI, traumatic brain injury, for instance, or other things like UV radiation. There are other things in terms of psychological traumas, in terms of emotional or psychological or PTSD, for instance. And then there are chemical stressors like heavy metals or glyphosates, right? All these different things. But these are causing that much stress onto the cell in itself So instead of mitochondria making ATP, now it's actually shuts that ATP production down, shuts oxidative phosphorylation, goes to complete defense mode. So this is where mitochondria dictates in terms of how the body's gonna shift. But if the stress response is overwhelming, I talked about the toxic bucket effect, right? Everything's later in. If that response is overwhelming, the mitochondria cannot get back to homeostasis. And then it's completely in that on threat mode.

Yeah, that sympathetic state, that fight or flight state.

So when you think about like a fire alarm, for instance, it's keep on turned on. Doesn't know when the fire was gone, but still keep on turning on. So this reason why people who, you know, had removed themselves from a moldy environment, for instance, they're still sick because the overall cell danger response has not been resolved correctly. Result in mitochondrial dysfunction and they're consistently sick in dealing with autoimmune disorders, brain fog, fatigue problem, etc. You could do all the NAD you want to do. You could do all the analytics, all these different things. But if you have an unresolved issue cellularly in dealing with toxicity, you cannot out biohack yourself out of that. You got to resolve that cell danger response correctly.

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Yeah, absolutely. So the reason that I came up with this particular Encore method was after learning and diving into the whole cell danger response method, when you look at Dr. Robert Naviaux's work of cell danger response, it's very complex. It's very difficult for you to take that information and put into clinical use of it. And so I was just thinking, like, what can I do to utilize this correctly for people who are dealing with biotoxin issues? Like, if it was me back in 2015, if I had a particular methodology, what would I have done differently? The first thing was basically environment factor there, right? Environment. If you are stuck in the same environment that made you sick, you're not going to get better.

No chance. I always say that, right?

You cannot out-biohack on that part, right? The environment is the best thing that you could actually end up fixing. And this part is often difficult. The reason being is you live in a house where it's very moldy. It could be costly. It could be costing you $5,000 to remediate up to $150,000 or more. Right. So people who have limited budget, that becomes a very triggering issue. So you got to— you got to— first off, what you need to do is you need to calm, you need to really settle down in terms of, all right, so what are the issues that we're dealing with right now? Where the most problematic areas. You need to find the right testing company to come in and assess the overall damage of the actual issue at the house. So I recommend a company called We Inspect. We Inspect. We Inspect. Great company too. That's nationally recognized and they are one of the pinnacle in terms of looking at how proper mold testing should be done at a house. It's not just about air sampling. That's the worst thing you could do, doing air sampling tests in the house, because depending on whether air is being stagnant or being flowing, that mycotoxin testing is going to be affected. Right. Right. Also, that's the reason why I prefer going with more surface testing. The reason being is mycotoxins especially rise on the dust particles like a, like a carpet on a ride. So that's where mycotoxins settle in. So this is where when you want to looking at the overall sediment of the mycotoxin burden that goes in the house, you're looking at that. So IRMI testing is a good one to looking at. And there are other testing companies that you could do as well on your own if you like to. Doesn't give you the overall comprehensive issues because it doesn't necessarily check for like water damages behind the wall, for instance. So a company called the Dust Test is a great one that I like to utilize. Dust Test. Okay. Yeah, it's like $279. You could do one sampling of the area to figure out, so how much of a mycotoxin issues I'm dealing with. Right, right. But it's just going to give you some pictures. But this is where you got to have to work with a professional company to look at that. Okay. The second thing I would also recommend, if you could hire the same people that does it, great. But building biologist, right? Non-native EMF. Why is that? And this— I'm a strong believer in this part now more and more. The reason being is why is it that people are getting sicker and sicker even though we have advanced medicine and such. I mean, you could talk about food, the glyphosate and all these things. But when you look at the bombarding issue dealing with the cellular stress that we're dealing right now with non-native EMF, it's over than anything we could actually fathom now, right? Compared to what it was 100 years ago, it's much, much greater. So you are looking at reducing that non-native EMF exposure. So especially hardwire everything in the house, maybe you want to reduce the exposure dealing with Wi-Fi signal. Cell phone signal is another problem too, right? So you got to get in terms of removing that, but that could actually oversensitize a person who's dealing with hypervigilant state. Like for instance, if you're dealing with MCAS, I think you have Dr. Demsey on recently, right? Amazing. Yeah. So I mean, she's a foremost authority in the topic of MCAS. But when I see clients with MCAS issues, —it's not the fact that mast cell activation syndrome— it's not the fact that the mast cell is triggered by mold, but it's just the over-response of cell danger response that has gone wrong, that the body is in that hypervigilant state. And you got to talk about non-native EMF. That's the really important factor.

What do you mean by non-native?

Non-native EMF. So especially talking about Wi-Fi, cell phone signaling, right? There is going to be EMF naturally, right? There's always different cosmic rays that actually occurs up in the sun, everything else in the universe. But when you talk about these non-native EMF that is artificially driven and built because of today's technology that we actually have is bombarding ourselves and non-native EMF issues. What it does is cellularly, it actually impacts— it ligates the cell membrane, number one. Number two, it actually activates the voltage calcium ion channel. So you have an influx calcium going into the cell and then bumping out magnesium. So you have all these people who actually been taking magnesium supplements. They can't get it up. They cannot get it better. Why? Maybe they're getting overexposure to non-EMF and mold issues that you're not even aware of. Yeah. So anytime looking at the environment factor in terms of the Encore Method, non-EMF is one of the top things I tell people to do. And then second thing is blue light toxicity issues as well. So obviously I'm having a blue light blocking glasses.

I usually wear mine too. What happened to my glasses, guys? Are those yours? Now I need to wear them. Give me those fat actors. All right. Thank God.

So, blue light issues. Blue light actually affects methylation. Not anymore. Yeah, well, but think about it. People who are dealing with already MTHFR issues to begin with, and then they are already getting bombarded with different types of environmental factors, and then you're getting the issue dealing with blue light toxicity, it overwhelms the response. Why? Because blue light affects the methionine pathway, so you can't methylate well. So all this discussion about methylation, all different things— listen, you're the first one that's been out there speaking a lot about methylation. I appreciate that. Thank you. But in a scenario like a person dealing with hypersensitivity issues, you got to look at the environment as well. That's just about the whole environment.

I've been learning this the last 2 years especially, and I'm always trying to evolve. There were those cases where, 'cause we had about 200,000 patients that came through our functional clinic. And I would say the majority of them, healthy young adults that were dealing with some challenges there, you fix methylation and there was some shift in the positive direction, sometimes dramatic shift. Other ones, there was no change at all. And sometimes they would start over-methylating, they'd even have negative consequences. Those are the ones that I really started to focus in on. And in the last 24 months, I'm starting to realize that it's more than just methylation, right? And that it's— you can see the genetic breaks, which makes them susceptible, but it doesn't guarantee their outcomes. It's like the epigenetic model, but Now that I'm further down the rabbit hole on these environmental toxins, that was the missing link in our practice that we hadn't quite closed the gap. You know, we got the ball like 80 yards down the field. We just couldn't move it that last 20 yards in a lot of people, and they were very resistant to treatment. And this has a lot to do with what you're talking about. This has a lot to do with toxic load.

Yes, completely. And then there's another issue where overmethylation, you just mentioned before, So in my practice, what I do is instead of actually going after methylation first, I look at the methyltransferase choline pathway. So if you look at that pathway itself, it's part of the whole homocysteine cycling. If you look at that, what is body producing? Phosphocholine and creatine. So if you supplement those two, it puts less stress on the homocysteine pathway. Person is not overreactive.

Leaving more methyl groups for homocysteine to methionine. And, you know, The other big one that we uncovered was the SAW, this hyperhomocysteinemic symptoms, not coming from hyperhomocysteinemia, but coming from elevated S-adenosylhomocysteine. And that's a very difficult one to test for, at least it has been historically, because of the stability of how you have to keep the sample and everything else. And that was another big key that we unlocked. But what you're saying is supplement for the methyl groups that are being overutilized in the homocysteine pathway so that you can leave more of that methylation cycle for the recycling of homocysteine, which has its own set of consequences. Most of these hyperhomocysteinemic patients, but in fact, above a certain level, we saw hypertensive, you know, results because of the vascular constriction. We saw all kinds of— consequences. And it's actually rarely tested even on cardiac panels. Yeah. We're all looking to see reactive protein and CK and the classic markers, but not looking at what could be irritating those pathways.

Yeah. So these are things that we are looking at there. And then looking at the environment, more factors in terms of the person's trauma, how the relationship they are living inside the house. Are they living in an abusive household? How's their work environment? All those things are really important. Their generational trauma is a big one too. Yeah, right. So this is the part— the E, the N of the ANCHOR method— dealing with nervous system regulation. Oftentimes because of the mycotoxin causing neuroinflammation, these patients are in a hyper-driven, hypervigilant parasympathetic nervous system state. So how do we create that parasympathetic? One of the things that worked out really well for patients, and you don't need to spend a lot of money on it, and there is a company that supports this. I do HeartMath breathing called the Heart Coherence Breathing Technique. Wow. So, I mean, you've probably heard of box breathing technique.

Oh yeah, yeah. And heart coherence too.

Yeah. So heart coherence, why there's such a different thing is that when you're doing that Heart Coherence Breathing Technique, it creates the coherence state from your heart to your brain. And that actually helps to calm a lot of the issue dealing with mast cell, immune dysfunction, and then much more in terms of the hypersensitivity the person's dealing with. So how do you do that?

Yeah, I was going to say, can you describe this for us?

Very easy. All you need to do is close your eyes and then focus on the center of your heart. And then afterwards, you want to focus on what is making you happy, joyful, and grateful about. So when you think about those 3 positive things, what it does is shift your overall brain state. Into a coherency based on a positive affirmation and thoughts. And while you're doing that, you're going to breathe into the nose 5 seconds and you're going to exhale out 5 to 7 seconds. Inhale through the nose again. Exhaling out. One more time. Inhale. Exhaling out. And that is it. Better. Yeah, that's all I do. And so what I also recommend patients to do is I give them— actually, it's called a HeartMath device. It actually checks for your coherency state between your heart and your brain. It's a biofeedback device. You just put it in your ear, and the company called HeartMath actually sells this. HeartMath? Yeah, HeartMath. So that's an institute that trains physicians and clinicians out there to doing this particular breathwork and management of nervousness dysregulation by creating coherency state and not only affecting positive ways into the body, but also working in terms of deep-rooted issues, just a trauma issue as well. Why? Your heart actually is another nervous sensory. It has 40,000 different nerves stemming from the heart. And then is able to take in all that information and bring it to your brain, not the brain to the heart itself. So think about a person dealing with trauma issues, hypervigilant state, all these different things. Once you create the coherency state in the heart, a lot of symptoms end up have to disappear. I'll give you a perfect example. I had a client who actually lost her son 18 years ago, had a boating accident. The son fell off a boat, watched the son die. Oh my gosh. She's constantly dealing with hypervigilant state, anxiety, et cetera. Was affecting her life and she was not ready to do— to work with me. And I do work with clients one-on-one. Yeah. And all I did was taught her how to do this particular breathing technique. Her resting heart rate used to be 90. After 6 weeks, her resting heart was at 60. Wow. Yeah. Crazy. I couldn't even believe it. That particular change. And one thing that you start noticing is that the person's face completely changed as well. Why? Because they're not living in the stress response state anymore. You're in a coherence state.

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So this is why when you're working with people dealing with biotoxins, it's so vital that not only you work on the environment, work on the nervous system.

I love that.

Because environment, nervous system now affects your cellular health, right? Your mitochondria is not just about making ATP— immune system as well. So it's not just about making ATP. Mitochondria is a sensory organelle, is able to dictate everything that goes in the body, including the mitochondria dictating just how you methylate, also how you detox, but also how you heal.

So fascinating, the interconnectivity. You know, I've always said that some of the worst experiments that we do are when we take structures out of the body, cells out of the body, what have you, and we look at how they behave in a laboratory. And then we assume that when we put them back in the body, they're going to behave the same way. And they don't. I mean, because cells are like human beings. They behave in communities. And there's something in psychiatry called the herd mentality, right? When you're in a crowd, if the crowd starts surging and everybody just starts running one direction, you'll just start running. You don't even know why. It's like everybody else is running. This is the way that cellular activity influences other cells and how metabolically healthy cells can become metabolically sick because they're in an environment with other metabolically sick cells. And it's kind of analogous to this herd mentality. And maybe nothing that we can do would touch the entire system simultaneously as things like heart coherence. And getting our autonomic nervous system out of this sympathetic state into a parasympathetic state. As a singular intervention, I can't think of anything that has more of a systemic effect and more of an immediate effect.

Exactly. And one thing that I learned more and more about cell membrane medicine is that cortisol especially push the body to producing phospholipase A2 enzyme, which ligates the cell membrane.. So the higher stress response you're dealing with affects the cell membrane, right? So like the works of Dr. Bruce Lipton, for instance, he talks a lot about the mindset and the feeling and how that affects the cellular health. It's all connected there and it's really vital there. So one of the things that I do, obviously we talked about the lipid membrane medicine. The first thing I tell people to do is getting your circadian rhythm balanced. That's the first thing, right? So that light day cycle aspect of it has to be really dialed in. So I actually utilize an app called My Circadian. It was actually formed by my friend Sarah Kleiner. And that particular app tells you when the daylight, a daybreak is going to be occurring to get that person out the door. And that's initial start of that blue light emitting from the sun and the infrared. The infrared affects positive changes within the overall mitochondrial function.

But this is the first, what, 45 minutes?

I would do about— obviously, you know, people have busy lives and, you know, I'm not saying 45 minutes outside.

I'm saying within the first 45 minutes of the sun cresting the horizon, what they call first light.

I would recommend the first thing. So for instance, like we're in Miami, obviously, and the daybreak for this morning was at 6:45 a.m. So I usually like to go out between, you know, within the 10-minute window of that time. Okay. So start to getting that blue light emission there. Okay. So once you start having this blue light and this first light, it actually helps to lower cortisol response, right? Also helps with proper fatty acid metabolism and metabolic process. But another thing that the sunlight does is, obviously you know this, our mitochondria makes its own water. So that structural water that goes in the cell. Gallons of it every day. Right. And that structural cell, structural water is a vital point in doing cellular detox.

I wonder if the stress response increases the production of deuterium. It does. You know, it does. It does.

So we know that destroys the Krebs cycle. Yeah. So, you know, sometimes that is very hard to discuss with clients, but I started using a company called Light Water. So, so, you know, 5 parts per million is one good thing to start with. You don't want to do too high of a deuterium depleted water too fast. I mean, that causes another level of issues because now you're dumping everything out. So you gotta be very careful with that. Another water that I started using is Gerolsteiner sparkling water at the supermarket. So the higher the altitude where the water is sourced, the lower the deuterium state. Ah, I did not know that. Yeah, so that's really vital.

'Cause deuterium water is hard to get ahold of. There's like a place in, I wanna say Bucharest.

Bucharest is one, but then also one part of Mexico, Tijuana. Okay. There's a crater, I might be wrong on the location, but there was one part of Mexico where the meteorite hit that area. So that area is deuterium depleted water source there. So a lot of these mitochondriacs apparently go down there. Did you just make up a word? No, no, no. This is a term by actually Dr.

Jack Kruse. I've heard of hypochondriacs. Mitochondria.

Mitochondria. Yeah. Dr. Jack Kruse, I mean, he's foremost in terms of looking at this whole, you know, cellular health and looking at circadian rhythm. But no, it's really the powerful part. Even like deuterium is very important to— when you— the studies out also, I think it was 6 weeks in terms of drinking deuterium-depleted water was able to reverse type 2 diabetes.

Yeah. No, I've read these studies and, and deuterium, you know, our bodies make this intracellular water and And estimates are as high as 100 gallons a day. When you start telling people that you make 100 gallons of intracellular water every day, they go, that's impossible. I only drink half a gallon of water. We make it the same way we make it in space. You take 2 hydrogens, 1 oxygen, you slap it together, you have a water molecule. So we're not capable of drinking enough water to feed our mitochondria. So we manufacture this from a gaseous state. And when you add this extra proton, it becomes heavy water. Or deuterium. And, and deuterium, when it enters the Krebs cycle, is like the Tasmanian devil— it breaks it. Um, and yeah, I've been talking about this and being— been a fan of it for, for a long time because, um, and stress and, and other things, we, we produce a lot more deuterium water. There's a lot of evidence even that, um, keto dieting and being in a ketotic state, um, increases the production of deuterium-depleted water. Yes, it makes— it does.

Okay, it does. Yeah. And then, and then certain things like seafood, for instance, like oysters, wild-caught fish. So the, the cold water fish and seafood are great for dechim depleted food source. Eating things more seasonally based on where you are is really important there. So anytime we're good, these type of biotoxin clients, you probably could ask, ask about, you know, what kind of diet is good for you? Yeah, paleo-based seasonal diet.

Paleo-based seasonal diet. Love that. The seasonal.

Why? Because depending on where you are, that sun codes a different message into the food. And that actually helps to empower your mitochondria to function well. It's not about picking up avocado somewhere up in the North Pole. That's not what you wanna do. Right, right. You don't wanna eat banana in the middle of the winter either. That actually impacts more on the cellular function there. So you could do all the biohacking you wanna do.

It's fascinating how we were just designed to be in sync with nature. Yes. You know, and Western medicine has been using, or Eastern medicine has been using forest bathing and things for, for centuries very effectively. And I always say, if something has been around for centuries, like acupuncture or what have you, it's probably because it works, right? Things don't last 5,000 years that don't work. And I think our reluctancy is to put our faith back in the basics, you know, very often, because, you know, we believe a lot more in what man makes us than what God gave us. I mean, you even, uh, are a leading expert on drug-induced mitochondrial dysfunction, which I find a whole should do a whole podcast on just that. Yeah, I want to finish the Encore Method. Yeah. So we went through the environment, we went through the nervous system.

Cellular health right now. Cellular health. So basically about the circadian rhythm and why that's an important part. Grounding is another thing that you could definitely do, really impact that.

I'm being so vindicated right now.

Yeah.

So all my hate—

really impact in terms of doing that. You're watching this? Why? Because that overall grounding actually increases redox potential in the cell membrane. Right. So all those things there. So the next— and then what we're doing that we could incorporate doing is like lipid membrane medicine. So phospholipids, so BodyBio PC specifically, I recommend all the time.

I just take it prophylactically every morning. Yeah, you know, with that too.

But I— when I work with clients who deal with biotoxin issues, generally what I would recommend is around, you know, 10 to 15 mL of PC liquid from BodyBio. Okay. So that's one of the vital things. But when I work on cell membrane, I'm looking at in terms of how these biotoxins cause DNA damage. So DNA adduct we talked about, right? And we talked about how butyrate actually acts as a chemical chaperone.

And most of us are so butyrate deficient. We're not getting enough fiber, we're not getting enough soluble fiber, insoluble fiber.

So, and you could do a stool analysis to see that the short-chain fatty acid production is down, keystone bacteria down. So all these things are affecting your butyrate production, and butyrate is vital to protect your DNA. Not only about digestion, not about feeding your colonocytes, but really impacting the DNA function.

Correlated links to cancer are mind-numbing.

Absolutely. And butyrate also actually affecting positive changes in your metabolic process, especially glucose, right? So GLP-1 especially, right? Those are things. But one of the things about the DNA adduct I mentioned before is that these things like aflatoxin, including even mercury, heavy metals, these things end up bind to the DNA structure, change the epigenetic of how the particular cell is supposed to function. And these reasons why your chronic disease states. What butyrate does is acts as a chemical chaperone, cleaves that off, and then you have phospholipid, like PC for instance, comes in sweeping that while helping to mend the actual cell membrane structure by adding in— and this is where the other things like bioactive oil, like Balance Oil from BodyBio, adding in linoleic, which is omega-6, and alpha-linolenic, which is omega-3, help to restructure the cell membrane, Adding in gamma-linolenic like evening primrose oil help to further decreasing the inflammation pathway, right? Adding in things like special pro-resolving mediators, right? So SPM-based fish oil is really vital there. So BodyBio actually has a product called Resolven. And why am I adding SPM is that in the early stage of cell danger response, I mentioned about the ATP production is not there anymore, right? What the mitochondria does is it dumps out that ATP out of the cell to act as an extracellular ATP is something called a DAMP. It's a danger-associated mediator property. DAMPs and PAMPs. Yeah, DAMPs. So that signals to all the cells that there's a danger going on. Well, thing is, everything in terms of the body is a—

So we talk about herd mentality. Here's the actual mechanism that it's creating. It's poisoning its environment.

Yeah, exactly. So DAMP situation is unresolved issue that goes on. So what— The body does is taking, taking that extracellular ATP and then turns into SPM. Our body produces its own special pro-resolving mediators, SPM, to shut that inflammation down. And oftentimes with ongoing inflammation, that SPM reserve goes down, right? So this is where getting proper fresh cold water fish is very important and just adding it to a particular diet. But I like to use SPM as an actual supplementation to resolving it. And then the other part that I mentioned before, the cell membrane, how the DNA adduct. Well, these type of mycotoxins also causes protein misfolding, right? When you have a protein misfolding, that in itself affects how the tissues and proteins are being synthesized. So how do you resolve that? Adding in tatka, which is secondary bile salt, releases pressure on the endoplasmic reticulum as a de-stressor. But also helps to unfold the protein misfolding properly. So this is how you able to get the cellular impact damage from the mycotoxins there. So this is, this is really important. Then you start working on the optimized detox pathway. Specifically, gut function has to be number one. You got to reestablish bowel flow as well. And mold and mycotoxins, it actually affects, uh, bile flow, specifically, uh, mold, for instance, like aflatoxin— I'm sorry, ochratoxin and trichothecins, for instance, those end up having to impact something called cytochrome 7A1. So I talked about the cytochrome P450 3A4. Well, there's a particular enzyme called 7A1, which is needed as a rate-limiting step for bile production. Unfortunately, mold affects that.

So it reduces the secretion of bile, production of bile, right?

Production of bile. And then the other part is there's a transport chain called BSAT, which is the biosalt export pump. And that particular pump gets shut down by mycotoxins as well. So you cannot produce it and you cannot even get the proper bowel flow going on. So this is where people cannot get to do the natural detox they're looking to do. So this is why adding in—

It's impairing fat metabolism and all kinds of things. Correct.

Even estrogen metabolism. So like when you're doing comprehensive stool analysis, I see that the person's beta glucuronidase is elevated. That's the number one sign that there's mold and there's a bowel flow that's affected. So they're recirculating, basically detoxifying the entire body because of lack of bowel flow happening.

That makes so much sense.

And then rebalancing the microbiome. So this is where the proper use of antifungals is really important there. I mentioned about the spore-based probiotic, but antifungals, I would recommend decreasing the fungal overload in the body, then working on the mycotoxins. And there are different herbals like golden thread, milia, all the different, different type of things including olive leaf. And then the last part is the use of pharmaceuticals. And I don't say not to— I use it at the last. I recommend using itraconazole for about 2 weeks just to get the internal colonization deal with mold permanently. And this is where oftentimes when I work with clients, about 5 to 6 months able to reverse their mycotoxin issues there. Wow. Unless they're dealing with hypersensitivity issues, but some of the minor non-complicated issues, they tend to get to recover from mold and mycotoxins within 5 to 6 months.

That's fantastic. Yeah. Wow. I hope you'll come back on the podcast again because I would love to do an entire deep dive on drug-induced mitochondrial dysfunction. I'd love to. Because I think the leading scientists in longevity and aging now are inside the mitochondria. We've actually found, like, the deepest tip of the root. And we understand that most of these bugs, mold, mycotoxins, parasites, viruses, heavy metals, at the end of the day, they are all disrupting this critical organelle. And the consequences of that are so vast. There's such a myriad of consequences. And even in the functional medicine space, we, we still do chase these consequences instead of getting deeper, deeper, deeper down into the mitochondrial function. So I'd love to bring you back to even just do a whole deep dive on that.

May I add two things there? Yeah, of course. So one thing you talked about, the drug-induced mitochondrial dysfunction, is something that I'm always passionate about. I'm also passionate about pharmacogenomics. This is why I looked at the whole cytochrome P450 enzyme structure. That's what your PhD is into.

Yeah.

One of the things that was interesting when I was looking at the mycotoxins is that we have some drugs out there that are derived from mycotoxins. So there's a drug called mycophenolate. The brand name is called CellCept. They utilize a particular drug for kidney transplant patients. You don't have an organ rejection. Well, that mycophenolate, that's a drug name derived from mycophenolic acid, which is a mycotoxin itself. Wow. So utilizing mycotoxins to derive that particular medicine, that's how powerful these mycotoxins are of causing immunosuppression. Reason why a lot of times when you're seeing— I'm quite sure there's parents out there listening, kids who are dealing with constant strep issues, Right. And colonization dealing with these things, they are derived from mold, especially aflatoxin, ochratoxin causing that problem. Yeah. When you're having chronic UTI issues also. Why? Because mold and mycotoxins unfortunately affect the mucosal lining of the bladder. Right. And then you have a higher issue dealing with UTI. Yeah. Right. So why is it the woman dealing with chronic UTI issues and they're trying to get to the root of it? Use multiple antibiotics and I can't do it? Mycotoxins. Yeah, specifically citrulline and ochratoxin. Those are the big ones that— those are showing up on everybody's urine test.

You know, we do a lot of Vibrant Total Toxicity testing, and that one is always pegged on there.

And the second thing I want to add is that this is where the enhancing the resiliency part is coming. As you start to increase the redox potential in your cell membrane, a lot of issues deal with mold, parasites and all these different toxins is not of an issue anymore. Reason why is you built that cellular resiliency and that negative ion charge and then the electric potential in the cell membrane, your body's mechanisms to repel those out. Unfortunately, we are losing that ability. I think, and I strongly believe it's because of the environment is one thing, but I think it's non-native EMF issues and blue light issues that's bombarding our entire system that The body doesn't have that. So this is the reason why when I work with clients and I jokingly say this, is this, is that at some point I don't want to ever see you again. Yeah, right. It's not because I don't like them. It's just that I want you to be self-reliant on yourself to be the right doctor. I want to empower you to be the best doctor for your own. And this is one thing that I'd like to teach. And this is what— this is the reason why part of the Encore Method is enhancing resiliency, cellular resiliency, that is.

Love that. Right. Love that. So I wind down all of my— we're going to go into my VIP group because these are the group guys that I let know ahead of time who's coming on to the podcast. They, they know that you're coming on. They've got a lot of questions for you. So I saw the questions. I want to get to my VIPs, but, but I always wind down my podcast by asking every guest the same question, which is what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human? There's no right or wrong answer.

Of course not. The ultimate human. Is to have cellular resiliency to live your full life to your potential that God has given you. Wow.

I love that. To have the cellular resiliency. Hear that, guys? The cellular resiliency. I love it. Thank you so much, Dr. Kim, for coming on The Ultimate Human Podcast. I have a feeling that you're going to be a regular guest. Such a paucity of expertise in this area and And even though you provided the scientific background, I think you made it understandable for my audience. Thank you. And we deeply appreciate that. And guys, until next time, that's just science.