Dr. Tania Dempsey: Mast Cells, Chronic Fatigue, & Hidden Inflammation | TUH #270

Right now in my practice, 100% of patients with PCOS have mast cell activation syndrome.

Up to 17 to 20% of the population may have mast cell syndrome and not know it. It mimics dozens of other conditions: allergies, IBS, anxiety, chronic fatigue, skin issues.

Mast cell activation syndrome. It's a chronic inflammatory multisystem condition. Everyone has mast cells. Mast cells are your frontline of your immune system. They're helping us, but they can also damage us.

They're chemical messengers and when their system is faulty, they can chronically secrete these without an invasion, as if one was occurring.

Let's look at the root and understand, you know, that the mast cells are affecting the motility, they're causing inflammation in the gut, they're making it more difficult to tolerate certain foods.

This is such a fascinating, underserved area of medicine where we start really looking at root causes and how symptoms don't necessarily link back to the pathology that people are diagnosed with. It may be something even deeper.

But also, I want to hope, because I think there's so much that we can do. And that's why I do the work that I do, because I help people every day.

For someone that's watching this, what would be some of the category of potential symptoms or ailments, right, that they would be suffering from where you would say this might be at the root of that?

I always think about it as 3 themes that we see very commonly in people who have this.

One is in 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. Today's podcast is going to be one of those in-betweens. I'm so excited about this guest. I was actually first turned on to her because of my VIP community, my most loyal followers that are part of my subscription program. It's an amazing community, and I let them know who comes on the podcast before I bring them on the podcast, and I also ask them for suggestions on guests that they'd like to see on the podcast. They find some of the most innovative people in all of modern medicine. A lot of the guests that have been on here— MDs, PhDs, researchers— the people that are really moving the needle for humanity but don't yet have a voice have landed here because of my VIP community. So I just want to give a shout out to you guys. Thank you so much for finding, uh, Dr. Tanya Dempsey. I am so excited for this podcast.

I'm excited to be here.

Because I believe that your expertise, and you're board certified in internal medicine from Johns Hopkins, but you're also an integrative medicine specialist, which I find that it's like being an artist and an engineer. Like, they usually don't exist in the same, you know, person. It's very, I think it's the ultimate use of the left brain and the right brain. You know, because medicine for so many decades has been so algorithmic, right? Like, if this, then that, if this, then that, you know, get to a diagnosis, just slot it into one of the 38,000 categories that exist for us to define pathology and disease. And very often you have to zoom out and look at the whole person. And, you know, as I did the preparation for this, uh, podcast, I, I pulled Malia aside, my, my podcast manager, and I was like, this is going to be one of the best guests we've ever had on. Oh my gosh. So I'm really— I'm, I'm super, super excited about this.

I'm honored to be here. I mean, this is—

yeah, and I'm honored to have you. Um, you know, you have a core competency in, in something called mast cell syndrome, and, and I'd love for you to give my audience a, you know, a little definition of what that is. But what's fascinating about it is it's underlying so many of these other conditions that people are suffering from but just can't put a finger on.

Yeah.

Um, so what is mast cell syndrome?

Yeah, mast cell activation syndrome is a, um, it's a, it's a chronic inflammatory multi-system, uh, condition. Um, it's a syndrome, right, not a disease. We have to, we have to be clear. But there's a— it's a huge spectrum. Um, the way I think about it is I like to start at the biology level. Let's talk about the mast cells, because everyone has mast cells. Mast cells are your frontline of your immune system. So anybody faced with an infection, strep, flu, whatever, their mast cells will fight, will help fight. They get into gear and they call in the rest of the soldiers to help them fight off the infection. So everyone has them. They help us deal with the environment. They help us deal with our external environment, our internal environment. And they're pretty much everywhere. They're in every organ of our body. They're in our skin, in our brain, in our stomach, our lungs, our respiratory tract, like just basically everywhere.

Kind of waiting to protect us. They're waiting.

They're our frontline. They're part of that primitive immune system that just fights. And the way they fight is they manufacture these various chemicals. We call them mediators. And they will explode and release these chemicals. In attempt to fight what they see as foreign, as bad, as danger. And when they release these chemicals, they not only affect what they're trying to kill, but they actually affect the tissues that they're releasing these chemicals in. Okay, so there's the good side of the mast cell and then the bad side of the mast cell. So they're helping us, but they can also damage us. So in mast cell activation syndrome, what happens is the— so again, everyone has these, but in the syndrome, these mast cells are already dysfunctional. They're not just waiting waiting for the next attack, they're actually constantly sensing that something is wrong.

Ah.

So at baseline, they're leaking these chemicals out, causing a baseline of inflammation. And that inflammation could be anywhere in the body, in multiple places in the body. But most people will know that they always have, let's say, gut issues, or they always have joint issues, or muscle issues, or, you know, they usually know that there's a specific area where their inflammation is. Mm-hmm. But sometimes it's very subtle. And then what happens with mast cell activation syndrome is those mast cells that are already, they're already primed, they then, when they see a foreign attack on them, they explode even more. And then they basically go into this state of continuous activation, constantly releasing these chemicals, causing more and more inflammation. So, you know, everyone was talking about the cytokine storm during COVID That's partially due to the mast cells.

So these are cytokines, histamines, uh, other inflammatory factors.

Over 1,200 different chemicals actually have been identified that mast cells can make. Everyone talks about histamine because histamine is an easy one to talk about.

Histamine is sort of a category, right? There's a number of histamines. Cytokines are kind of a category too. It's not just a cytokine. Um, so these have— they're chemical messengers and when their system is faulty, they can hyper-secrete or chronically secrete these without an invasion, as if one was occurring.

But then, but then there are invasions, there are triggers in the environment. Could be mold on the outside, it could be other chemicals, toxins on the inside, it could be hormones, could be— basically, the way I think about mast cells is that they're really, they're monitoring change. Changing the environment on the outside, changing the environment in the inside again. And again, they're supposed to help us, but in mast cell activation syndrome, they become dysfunctional, they overreact, and then they start to react to things that they really shouldn't even react to. Like normal people who don't, well, people who don't have mast cell activation syndrome would not even notice a particular scent, a particular chemical or toxin that, yes, all toxins are potentially dangerous, but this is, This is at a level beyond what others would feel. And unfortunately, then it leads to this sort of multi-system inflammatory state where they are, again, constantly in this inflamed position. Some of them have allergic-type symptoms or allergies.

You don't have to have— Asthma, chronic fatigue, IBS, those kinds of things.

Correct, correct. But you don't have to have allergic-type phenomena to have mast cell activation syndrome. I always think about it as 3 themes that we see we see very commonly in people who have this. One is inflammation for sure. And then we say plus minus allergic phenomena. So some people have those obvious signs of allergy and some people have, they feel like they have allergies to pollen or food or whatever, and they get allergy tested and very often it's all negative and the allergist doesn't even know what to tell them. Like, what's the reason that they're reacting, right? The reason is because these mast cells are dysfunctional and they are involved in allergy in some patients. But in this case, it's an allergic phenomena very often. And then the third, thing that we see quite often, which is a theme, is what we call, um, dystrophisms, or abnormal, um, growth and development of, of cells. So we see things like tumors, we see things like, uh, like cysts, we, we see things that affect the, the connective tissue, things that are affecting any growth or repair.

So even things like sarcomas and, and potentially— really, potentially. What is the, um, what is the condition with the fatty deposits under the skin?

Uh, well, there's lipedema.

Lipedema.

Yeah, which is, which is, uh, actually pretty, pretty, uh, we're pretty clear that it is a mast cell-driven phenomenon, right? Yeah.

So, um, you know, my daughter was, um, diagnosed with POTS, now this positional orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, when she was, when she was younger. She's 27 now, but when she was in her early 20s, she would have issues. Um, and, and, you know, it's positional orthostatic, but she didn't have to change positions to feel this, like hypotensive episodes, right? I mean, she would just feel faint sitting in a chair like we are right now. Um, sometimes it would happen when she changed positions, you know. And eventually we went down the rabbit hole. Um, she was later diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos. Um, so she was, you know, hypermobile. And so this connective tissue, um, issue led to all kinds of consequences, because when you have hyperlaxity in your joints, you also have it in other connective tissue. So, you know, Bowels are hyper-relaxed, joints are hyper-relaxed, um, so this causes gut disruption.

That's right.

Um, and you know, I didn't really ever subscribe to the fact that she had this POTS because even though she had some of the symptoms, um, uh, I refused to believe that it was just idiopathic positional orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. So we just embarked on a massive journey to clean the tank, right? You know, when a fish gets sick, we clean the tank. When humans get sick, we don't do anything to the tank. We mess with the human, we worry, we worry, leave them in the tank.

Yes, right.

Yeah. And, um, and so there were, there was heavy metals, um, she had a mold mycotoxin infection. She's been very public about this. We've talked about it on some of my detox challenges. And, um, she had the MTHFR gene mutation, so we began supplementation uh, methylated multivitamins for that, red light therapy. But after we cleared the mold and the mycotoxin infections, fungal infections, and reduced her heavy metal toxicity, it all went away.

Yeah.

Um, now she still has hypermobile joints, right? Gut issues have cleared up, recurrent sore throats have cleared up, skin inflammation, you know, has, has cleared up. And, and I wonder if what we inadvertently did was fix a mast cell activation syndrome. It may have very well been what was going on with her.

Yeah, what you did was you taught the mast cells that there isn't anything to fight anymore. The mycotoxins are gone, the heavy metals are gone. All those things are making the mast cells more reactive. So now they're quieter. Mast cell activation syndrome probably doesn't go away. And I think that's like the unfortunate thing that people don't want to hear sometimes. It may still be there. She may still be susceptible, but they're quiet.

Yeah, anytime she gets exhausted or run down, boom. I mean, you know, red eyes coming back from LA, or, you know, when she doesn't get, you know, sleep, or she's in a high stress state for a period of time, like when she was going through nursing school, we would see these conditions coming more frequently.

Yeah, they pop up, 'cause you know they're there, but there's so much you can do. And this is what I love about the work that I do, is to give people hope, right? Yes, there are these unfortunate things that can happen to the body, but there's so much you can do. When you recognize what you need to do to keep your body healthy and how to keep your mast cells safe. It takes time for a lot of people. It's not as quick a journey because they don't know the stuff that you know, thankfully. You know, you're in the business, you sort of understand, but a lot of people don't know, right? And they're suffering and they're reacting and they can't leave their house, but no one has been through it with them to understand, you know, maybe the house that they're in, that they're sick in, that they can't get out of is actually full of mold. Maybe that is, you know, maybe If they left or they were able to remediate, then their mast cells would settle down and they would recover. And some of the things that they—

What would be some symptoms that somebody could be suffering from right now that's watching this podcast? 'Cause a lot of people watch this podcast for answers to questions they haven't been able to get. And by the grace of God, some of the guests I've had on here have really changed a lot of lives. And so for someone that's watching this, what would be some of the category of potential symptoms or ailments, right, they would be suffering from, where you would say, "This might be at the root of that." Yeah.

So really starting from like the top of the head and all the way down.

Yeah.

Headaches, migraines, underappreciated, basically due to mast cell activation syndrome, most of the time, at least in my practice. You can see a number of different symptoms related to the respiratory tract. You know, people who have chronic postnasal drips, people who have chronic respiratory issues, sleep apnea even, I would maybe even put in that same category. Gut issues, for sure. You know, this term irritable bowel syndrome is a ridiculous term.

It really is. Just a category. It just takes all of the symptoms and gives them one name.

Yeah.

Instead of giving— it's not even a thing.

It's not even a thing.

It's just gas, bloating, diarrhea, constipation, irritability, and cramping.

Yeah. Here's an antidepressant to help you. This is sort of like what's provided, right? But let's look at the root and understand, you know, that the mast cells are affecting the motility. They're affecting— they're causing inflammation in the gut. They're making it more difficult to tolerate certain foods. So like, you know, that's a condition in IBS that I think that we need to just stop calling it IBS and think about it as a mast cell driven phenomena. And again, I can go all the way down, hormonal issues for women. You know, we often see women have more symptoms around puberty. That's a sign of, there may be some MCAS related issues. PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome is a mast cell related.

Oh, wow, that's a huge one right now. Huge, huge.

Yeah. You know, when I started my practice, or when I started practicing medicine 30 years ago, I was really interested in women's health. And so I saw a lot of women with PCOS. So I was really passionate about it. When I figured out MCAS, I realized that they're actually the same thing. And I would say, and as a doctor, you always have to be careful about saying anything is 100%, but right now in my practice, 100% of patients with PCOS have mast cell activation syndrome.

Wow.

So it is actually the same thing.

Wow, that is phenomenal. So is there a definitive test for MCAS, for mast cell activation syndrome?

There is, there is.

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It is challenging to test. Okay. I'm lucky because I've set up a lab in our, in our office where we can do the testing that's necessary. What we're looking for to diagnose it is we're looking for those chemicals that they're releasing. And now, they release 1,200 chemicals. We don't have tests for all 1,200. We have a couple handfuls of mediators that we can measure, and we can measure it in the urine, we can measure some in the blood, but the samples have to be so carefully taken care of. They have to be refrigerated at all times. The lab has to process them properly. So what we find is that in the community, a lot of people are trying to get a diagnosis, and they're told, "We can't find anything. There's nothing there." We have a little bit better luck because of the equipment that we've invested in in our office to be able to— to do the testing, but, you know, in a sense, it's a clinical diagnosis, and I always tell patients this, you know, if you have these, you know, set of symptoms, and we know that you have an inflammatory multi-system condition, and we don't have any other explanation, most likely it's this. It would be great to test. We actually published a paper called the Consensus II Criteria for—

I saw that. You've actually published a number of papers, not just that one. You've been a busy woman. Very busy woman.

I really think, 'cause the work that I do while I'm in the integrative functional medicine world, I also come from from that conventional world, and I understand what publishing really does. Like, it really gives me credibility in the work that I do, right? I'm not just pushing supplements for no reason. I'm not just doing the things. I'm doing it because I'm studying it.

Yeah, I love that. Now, you're talking about the publication, 2026, Diagnosis and Management of Patients with Mast Cell Syndromes.

It was 2020.

Oh yeah, I've got another one here in 2020. This is a very, very accomplished young woman, by the way. Yeah, 2025, she— the, the utility of GLP-1 receptor agonists and mast cell activation syndrome, which is, um, we should definitely talk about that. I'm also, also very, very interested because, you know, these GLP-1s, uh, now especially, uh, um, retatrutide, um, are being kind of implicated in their ability to reduce a lot of these inflammatory disorders and neuroinflammatory disorders and hormone balance and cognitive function. You know, I'm reading a lot of— they're not well I think the conclusions are well authored, meaning there is certainly an impact. They always say you just need further research, but they seem to be consistently pointing towards supporting a better, a lower inflammatory state. I don't have the expertise to know what the causal link is between those. Maybe you do.

Well, I can tell you what I think, why I think it's helping mast cell activation syndrome. What we did for the study is we looked at 47 patients. We did, it was a case series, essentially.

And which GLP-1 did you use?

Actually, it was, we included both semaglutide and tirzepatide for that study. So retatrutide, we don't have the research yet. We don't have enough patients on that. And of course it's not, you know, fully FDA approved yet, but I can tell you my anecdotal, you know, experience with it. But in that study, we just pulled in patients who were both on semaglutide or tirzepatide, and we looked at, you know, before and after, basically, what their symptoms were before, what their symptoms were after. We included only patients who met this criteria consensus to criteria for mast cell activation syndrome. So they had to have a formal diagnosis. They had mediators that we found, so we knew that they had mast cell activation syndrome. And what we found was this incredible improvement across so many different, you know, parts of the body. And what we understand is that the mast cells, this is what's so fascinating about the mast cell, the reason they are, you know, basically monitoring the environment is because they have receptors on their surface. So not only they make these mediators inside, but on the surface, they have these receptors that are like, like, I think of them as like satellites. They're basically scanning the environment, and things can bind to these receptors and send a signal. Well, mast cells have GLP-1 receptors on their surface. They have GIP receptors on their surface. So these drugs are literally binding to the mast cell. Wow. And sending a signal, you know, basically all is well, nothing to do, calm down. Right. So it's basically stabilizing the mast cell. Now the mast cell is not releasing all these cytokines and chemicals and inflammatory -inflammatory mediators, and now the body can start to heal. And that's what, that's what we're seeing. So it's a direct effect on the mast cell, which is really fascinating.

That is super fascinating, you know. And I think so many of these chronic low-grade underlying infections— Lyme, mold, mycotoxin, fungus— you know, there's, there's a whole, um, class of allopathic physicians that think that mold is completely nonsense. Um, and, uh, you know, I've been besmirched for that too, that everybody has mold, mold exists in our body, it's been around for centuries. Mold's not the issue. Um, I would take the polar opposite side of that coin. Miami happens to be the mold capital of the world, so, um, congratulations, Miami.

Yeah, I have a lot of patients from Miami who come up to see me and they don't know where they're—

your clinic's in New York, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Um, in, in—

we're in Westchester County, Westchester County.

Yeah. Okay, so, um, uh, and, and you have this lab in there and it— you do blood, urine, saliva? Just blood and urine. Blood and urine.

And look for these mediators. We do all this, you know, we do these other kits that are saliva kits. You know, we do a lot of different things, but the mast cell stuff is blood and urine.

But a really good, reliable test is something you should probably do in office. Yeah. Right. So that you get the proper treatment of these things.

I like to make a diagnosis because it opens up treatment options, right? But sometimes you just can't. And, you know, I think like you have to treat the patient, not the lab work. And that's the problem with medicine in general, right? Everyone looks at labs and they say, "Oh yeah, your thyroid looks normal. It's in the normal range, and this is in the normal range," right? We have to be careful. The same thing with mast cell activation syndrome. If I'm measuring 10 mediators and they're negative in this patient, but there are 1,200 mediators that their mast cells could make, but I can't measure all of them, but they have all those signs and symptoms of it, I have to treat the patient.

What's your frontline defense? Like, where do you start on a course of treatment? Um, so do you then, once you decide that they have mast cell activation syndrome, do you then start looking for the villain? Like, are you now— are you going on a dive for metals, for mold, for mycotoxin, maybe an underlying, uh, Lyme virus, which is probably the most mismanaged virus in all of modern medicine? Misunderstood. Yeah, the bacteria the, the parasitic co-infections, um, and, and how tricky the virus is itself. Dorsal root ganglions, you know, hiding in the dorsal root ganglion, its, its capacity to undulate, you know, um, go asymptomatic for periods of time and be symptomatic. I think it doesn't behave like a normal viral infection.

Um, well, Lyme is a bacteria, but you mean viruses in general?

The viruses in general.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, um, so when, when So now that you have somebody with mast cell activation syndrome, what's the next course of action?

Exactly what you said. We have to identify triggers. I always say step one is you need to know why they're reacting this way. Now, there are definitely gonna be people who had triggers years ago and their mast cells just never stopped. And so I can't find any current triggers. That's a small number. Generally speaking, we find, you know, they might say, "Oh, I had Lyme 20 years ago, I was treated," I don't think that's the problem now. And then I test them and they have chronic Lyme, chronic Bartonella, chronic Babesia, chronic Epstein-Barr, et cetera, et cetera, right?

Epstein-Barr is another one that, I don't know for what reason, maybe it's long COVID, maybe it's related to everybody emerging from the pandemic and having weakened immune states, but even the level of titers in dormant, what we would consider dormant EBV, are off the charts.

Yeah, I've never seen so many positive PCR tests for Epstein-Barr. Neither have I. Pre-COVID, we would make some assumptions. If they had something called an early antigen antibody, we would say, maybe it's reactivated, you know, it looks like, you know, but now we have PCR that's showing that the virus is actually replicating in the blood, and one after another, after another, I've never seen so many. And that's proof.

And recurrent and dormant and recurrent and dormant, I mean, and these cycles go on for years.

Exactly.

Um, and, and they just wreak havoc on their daily life. I mean, they're exhausted, they've got brain fog that interrupts their sleep patterns, it just disrupts their hormones, it gives them sort of non-viral symptoms that seem to be like, um, mood and mental disorder kind of related, um, uh, you know, symptoms, um, exhaustion, vertigo. I mean, the, the number of of symptoms that I've seen come out of these patients that have these reactivations of Epstein-Barr is probably just as broad as mast cell.

But it's the virus, the symptoms are really, I think, through the mast cell. 'Cause all those symptoms—

It's the virus triggering the mast cell.

Triggering the mast cell, the mast cell triggering the vertigo, the fatigue, and all these others, 'cause all those symptoms are actually caused by the mast cell. So I think it's the infections that are constantly spurring them on, spurring the mast cells on, just like, please, Just keep going, keep going, keep fighting. And so these keeps these people in this inflammatory, you know, soup constantly.

Yeah. And do you see this on their CBC? Do you see that on their white blood cell count? And where do you find this chronic low-grade inflammation? Cytokine panel?

It's a good question, right? So again, like these mast cell tests that we do, we can identify, we'll look for histamine, we'll look for metabolites of histamine in the urine called methylhistamine. So those are inflammatory mediators, but sometimes, Sometimes you have to look elsewhere. You have to look at other inflammatory markers. Interestingly, a lot of mast cell patients don't have elevated, let's say, high sensitivity C-reactive protein, for instance, right? Sometimes it will be elevated, but I'm surprised at the level of inflammation some people have and they have normal CRPs. Sometimes you'll see a little bit of like the sed rate, ESR, you know, maybe that will bump up a little bit, but still the level of inflammation that they feel and have, it's not always so detectable in the blood. You know, there are other markers. Sometimes I'll look at a VEGF. That's an interesting marker that can sometimes tell us a little bit about mast cells actually release VEGF. Some people believe Bartonella also makes the body release VEGF.

Wow.

So we can kind of use some markers as a gateway to understand like what other things we have to look at. That's kind of how I—

So what would be the typical villains that you would start to test for as soon as you saw, as soon as you confirmed the MCAS diagnosis?

So what I usually do, you know, when I see a patient, I'm not only thinking about MCAS, I'm also always thinking about the triggers and the other things that could be in that soup in them, right? So, you know, I take a history, and if there's any history that suggests exposure to animals, exposure to cats, exposure to fleas or ticks or lice, or, you know, there are all these questions that I ask. I make an assumption that they could have a vector-borne infection. And so I'm sort of testing almost simultaneously. I'm saying, you know what, I think you have mast cell activation syndrome, let's prove that, but you have risk factors for vector-borne infections. So let's test, you know, Lyme, Babesia, Bartonella, maybe some other infections. You have fatigue, you have some of these other things. Maybe they have a history of feeling worse after COVID. Then I'll do all the viruses, Epstein-Barr and CMV and HHV-6. Many of them are reactivated. And so I'm kind of like casting a pretty wide net because I know that these patients are not gonna, it's not gonna be a simple process of like identifying MCAS and treating it. I know that there's all this other work that I have to do. I'm also gonna concentrate in helping I can help put them on things to calm those mast cells down, but I know that I won't achieve that until I get rid of this other stuff, right? The toxin load, the mycotoxins are always, I get that history of, you know, were you ever exposed to mold? Do you have water damage? Do you have any, you know, evidence to believe that you might be exposed? A lot of people will say no. And you have to dig. Dig in, right? Sometimes you have to show them the test to prove that they have something for them to go the next step. The next step, but it's, you know, because people don't wanna believe. And also mold doesn't always show up. It's not like—

It's not always that pungent smell of mold.

No, sometimes it's not.

And that's usually bad, bad.

Right, by then it's bad. But it could be in the HVAC system, you know, blowing in, you don't even know it. That's the most commonplace, right? So you can have a beautiful house, brand new, no water damage, but it's in the HVAC system because it hasn't been cleaned properly and it's literally blowing throughout the house and now making you sick. And again, people don't recognize that because they don't know what to look for.

So what do you do when you— I'm always curious about how you address EBV, these recurrent EBV infections, because I'd love to talk about EBV and Lyme specifically. So, you know, Epstein-Barr is not really a virus that you caught, sort of one you've had for a long time, and it can be mono being, you know, showing up as Epstein-Barr later in life. So what makes it reactivate? And is that a weakened immune state? Is it, you know, is it— doesn't necessarily need to be a full-blown autoimmune deficiency, but, but, but it's just a weakened immune state that doesn't allow the, you know, the virus to stay dormant. Um, I mean, there's a lot of replicatory cycles. I mean, and I think, you know, few people realize this is actually wound into your, your DNA, right? I mean, the virus is, is in there, and every time it's zipping and unzipping it has a chance to raise its ugly head. And so it potentially causes cancer and other things too, which people don't appreciate. I think so too. I mean, I mean, there's a whole thread of, of, of evidence now of, you know, viral links to, to cancer, because all cancer, regardless of its form or its origin, was at one time a healthy cell. So something caused the metabolic shift, right? It's— it could cause the metabolism, that shift, to break down. I'm metabolism of that cell to break down, and now you have a cancerous cell. So the question is, what broke the machinery, the metabolic machinery of the cell? Um, but when you see these recurrent EBV infections, um, you know, I've used, uh, a lot of these homeopathic remedies, 8-week EBV remedies, with some level of success. How are you addressing those chronic viral reactivations?

Yeah, so, you know, so just to give a little background, right, so most people by the time they're an adult have had mono, mononucleosis, right? Some people remember it.

Yeah, everybody's had EBV.

Right, but some people don't remember it, right? And so they'd say, "How the hell can this be? I don't remember ever having mono." Right. It could be a very mild respiratory infection you think is a cold, right? Some people have it more severe, some people have it more mild. So you have it. And then these types of viruses, Epstein-Barr is part of a family called the herpes virus family. These herpes viruses, reactivate. You know, people who have, let's say herpes virus, herpes simplex 1 or 2, you know, they get cold sores or whatever, right? They reactivate, they go quiet and they come out. Epstein-Barr is the same way. So they're supposed to just sort of sit around and sit in the cell and not do anything, right? But as the body gets stressed, as the immune system gets dysfunctional, if the immune system is trying to fight something else, if it's trying to fight Lyme or it's exposed to mold, or you have a really traumatic event or stress in your life, or you're not sleeping well, I'm not sleeping, right? There are all these different factors that then allow the Epstein-Barr to start replicating and leaves the cell. And once it leaves the cell, it activates mast cells and activates other parts of the immune system. So actually the immune system becomes more dysfunctional, right? This is the problem. It becomes a vicious cycle of immune dysfunction becoming worse and worse with more and more of these infections kind of taking hold. And so I always think about it about Epstein-Barr and Lyme and all these other infections as the really, the way to get to it. We could talk a lot about protocols and things that I use, but the reality is what I say to patients is that you're never gonna kill all the Epstein-Barr, you're never gonna kill all the Lyme, you're never gonna kill all your Bartonella and all the stuff in your body. It's there. We carry it all through our lives. Even strep, by the way, which is interesting. You never really get rid of it. It can live in your gut. But the key is to build your immune system up so that it can handle the infections. So how do we do that? So we think about, I think about, because, you know, my lens is the mast cell, so I'm a little bit obsessed about the mast cells. So my—

Yeah, no, I love this. I mean, it just explains so much.

Oh, I'm glad.

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So, you know, I think about it as if I can stabilize the mast cell, then I'm going to also help the immune system handle the infections better. But I also have to lower the load of the infection so that the mast cells and the rest of the immune system can recover. So I think of it as a dance, you know, so we have to do a little bit here and lower the load. We're not gonna kill all of it, but we've gotta get them back into hiding. But we also have to work on that immune system so that it recognizes that it just can keep it at bay, right? So that the body can recover and heal, right? So that's really like my approach to all infectious diseases at this point. Sometimes we have to lower the load and we have to go at it with, let's say, antivirals. We can use medication antivirals if we're talking about Epstein-Barr. We have herbal antivirals. We can do homeopathic things. We can do a variety of different types of IV therapies that we use that have antimicrobial properties. Ozone, you know, IV ozone. We use a couple of different ways that we do it. That is, it's a, disinfectant, essentially, so it kills. We can use other things to help, again, the immune system recover by lowering the load, and that's what we do. Now, one of the treatments that I'm really excited about that I think really has a more holistic kind of way of approaching this, but also a really molecular, scientific way, is to use a technique called supportive oligonucleotide technique, or saT therapy. It's also now called Q-Restrain. And it's basically a lab that's able to create an RNA to match the DNA of the virus or the bacteria or parasite or whatever you're trying to focus on. And you actually can directly bind to that infection and cause it to stop multiplying. And actually they die. That's my favorite treatment actually.

So it's like a trained mRNA.

Yeah, essentially. Wow.

And they make this synthetic mRNA?

Yeah, to match specifically the infection that you have.

Where do they do that?

Well, I do it.

You do it?

Come to New York, yeah.

You're like the Elon Musk of viruses over here.

Well, I have a lab that I work with. I'm not the only one, but this is like, to me, really exciting because—

No, it's super exciting.

It allows me to avoid a lot of antimicrobials, a lot of medication, especially in my patient population that they're very sensitive. Positive. Yeah, even to herbs.

And a lot of— there's, there's very little in the way of targeted immunotherapy out there in the, in the world right now. I mean, it's— there are a lot of blanket immunotherapies, um, but, but nothing that is targeted, um, like this. And do you ever use things like peptides, like thymosin alpha, to build the immune system?

Love. That's my favorite one.

I'm working to get the FDA to allow that back on the bulk list Marty, if you're listening.

But, you know, it needs to be accessible because peptides are a game changer for so many patients. So you put some people on thymosin alpha, you know, there are different ways to dose it sometimes, you know, twice a week, but it just, it really does allow, you know, their T cells to come online, for the body to start working. And sometimes I even see people feel their fatigue get better just with thymosin alpha. Alpha, which is not specifically supposed to help fatigue directly. No, but the immune system is recovering.

It's indirectly good. You know, it's, it's interesting. I got asked a really, um, introspective question on a stage talk a few months ago. Somebody asked me, they said, if you were to put the top 50 experts in the world, top MDs, PhDs, researchers in longevity and aging in a room and, and ask them to agree on one theory of aging, what do you think that theory would be? It's like, wow, that's a, that's a really good question. Um, I think we would all agree on the theory of immunofatigue. You know, this, this, um, I'm not saying it's the only theory in aging, but, um, a slow progressive overwhelming of the immune system. You know, back to the fish in the tank analogy, um, little algae grows in the tank, fish is a little tired, fish is doing just fine. You know, you add 2 drops of chlorine, he's fine. Then you add 4 drops of chlorine, and then you add a little bit of bromide, and then you clog the filter. And, you know, eventually this microtoxicity toxicity overwhelms the immune system, and the tank, the environment, is too dirty for the immune system to properly function.

And now I love that analogy.

I've heard you use that freely if you'd like.

Yeah, no, I've heard you use the fish tank before. I love that.

It's just, it's just to get people to start thinking about their environment and toxicity. And like, um, you know, I'm a big fan of a lot of these new blood filtration technologies in use for ESIS. Therapeutic plasma exchange.

Therapeutic plasma exchange. We're doing it in my office. Are you?

You guys do everything.

I know, that's why my kids are always like, oh no, what's she gonna come back with?

Her kids are off camera, but has she always been the mad scientist? Like, I can see you guys growing up and like, mom's in there with like the chemistry set, you know?

Pretty much.

It's like a Back to the Future movie.

Yeah, and they were my subjects, right?

Yeah. They've tried a lot of things. They look pretty good though. They look pretty healthy.

They're healthy. Yeah. No, they're healthy.

I mean, he's got a little bit of a foot coming out of the side of the head there, but I'm sure— okay, no, but I, I, I, I think that, um, you know, finally the frontier of medicine is opening up, and we're actually starting to believe more in what God gave us than and less than what man makes us. Meaning, like, um, the best defense we have to live a long, healthy, happy life is, is our God-given immune system. And, and when it gets run down and disabled, it, it not only can't protect us, it can't police us, right? I mean, because it does a lot of functions internally to regulate cellular autophagy and cellular senescence. And, and, and so this really is like, um, you know, as a single source, healthy immune system is really our best defense against all-cause mortality and infection disease. So, so you, you, you, they— you have a patient that's positive for mast cell syndrome syndrome, um, you begin to start looking for the villain. Um, you find Epstein-Barr, maybe underlying Lyme. Um, a lot of people had Lyme years ago, they did the doxycycline for whatever, 21 days, um, they felt better and they're like, okay, I don't have Lyme anymore.

Exactly right.

Just like when I get influenza and I'm, you know, I'm down for a week and then I'm back up, I'm like, okay, I don't have the cold anymore. Not realizing that you may still have it and be asymptomatic, and it may just be waiting for its opportunistic moment for the immune system to get run down again so we can again rear its ugly head. So these therapies of walking somebody out of these syndromes— I want to read some of the, um, the, the, the links to this mast cell syndrome because it— up to 17 to 20% of the population may have mast cell syndrome and not know it.

Correct.

Um, it mimics dozens of other conditions: allergies, IBS, anxiety, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, POTS, skin issues. And, and this is why patients kind of ping-ponging around to different specialists, because medicine is hyper-categorized. You know, you're a neurologist for this, you go to internal medicine for this, you get infectious disease for this, and nobody's actually looking at the whole picture. Um, and so, so for these people that find themselves in this, in this myriad, um, where do they start? What other conventional therapies are you using? Are you using things like sauna, gut Do you look at diet, gut microbiome? Is this all a part?

Yes, yes, yes.

Okay, okay, great. This is all a part of.

It's all a part of it, yeah. But I think it also has, what I love about, you know, my center's called AIM Center for Personalized Medicine. So it's all personalized, right? So not everyone is gonna be able to tolerate a sauna. You know, mast cells can be very heat sensitive. So I have a subset of patients, interestingly, that do really well in sauna, but I have a lot of patients who don't do well in sauna, right? So maybe some of them just need to work up, you know, to it, so we have to start slower. Sometimes we're never gonna be able to get them into a sauna, so we have to find other ways to detox. And so we're always looking at ways to, again, approach the toxicity load that we have to deal with, right? 'Cause the reality is we're all constantly dealing with this.

No question.

Yeah, I mean, this is the life we live. And so a lot of people will say, well, why do you need all these technologies? Like, why do you need to do all this stuff? And it's because even if we're as healthy as we think we can be, even if we eat eat, you know, perfectly, even if we sleep perfectly, even if we do all those things right, we still have to fight against what we're constantly breathing in and being exposed to, right? So I think, like, people should know that even healthy people still have to keep up with, you know, our bodies. But for people who are sicker, obviously, it's a little bit more advanced, a little bit more complicated. So, yeah, so I do all those things. What I love is we do red light therapy. We have a red light bed. I saw that you have a red light bed as well, right? So for a lot of mast cell patients, that has actually been really, really helpful. Helpful in reducing inflammation.

Yeah, interestingly, that was— not to cut you off with that, but that was one of the biggest things that we implemented for my daughter when she had POTS. And, um, uh, which— and the more you're— the more I'm talking to you, the more I think it was mast cell activation syndrome by far. And we just inadvertently calmed them down by getting toxicity out of her body. Yeah. Um, and, um, and, and then, you know, I pointed to the mold and the metals and But really those were just the triggers, not the actual issue.

Not the root.

Not the root. So I didn't go deep enough into the soil, but red light therapy was amazing for her, so.

Yeah, yeah, and it is for a lot of patients. So that's why I bring in all these different modalities, 'cause I have to figure out what's gonna be the easiest way, right, to get to the root, to all the roots. I love therapeutic plasma exchange as a detox. I know it's a little bit aggressive.

It is aggressive, but I am—

Have you tried it?

I've done it twice.

Okay.

And I've also done INEOS for years. Where they return the plasma. Yeah, so they filtered the plasma. Was fascinating to me. So my wife and I did it, um, for our anniversary. I mean, talk about nerd.

Um, you know, that's definitely something I would do.

Hey babe, I got you something great for your— you're gonna love this. We're going over to this clinic and we're gonna get, you know, these dual cannulas put in and we're gonna— yeah, but we'll have side-by-side beds and they'll play nice music. But, uh, we, we did it in Dubai and, you know, unfortunately you can't get the inus pheresis here.

Yeah, yeah, not yet. It's, it's coming.

Yeah, I hope so.

No, no, they're working on it.

Oh really? I, I really hope so, because this whole idea of subtractive medicine to me is, is very fascinating, right? Not adding anything to the body, removing, removing what it's dealing with. You know, that's why, you know, sweat, stool, urine, detoxification binders, you know, um, therapeutic plasma exchange, inuspheresis, EBO2 ozone, with filtration. And I'm always fascinated by how much stuff comes out of that collection tank. And you know what we did was we sent it to the lab as urine. Okay.

Oh, right.

So, you know, we collected in there, and 'cause they actually wouldn't run the sample.

They won't run it, yeah.

Yeah, they won't run it. So hopefully the labs aren't watching this, but so I sent it as urine. It shows that you're in kidney failure, so you have to ignore that part 'cause it's not actually urine. But, uh, but the list of toxicity that comes out of those treatments that ends up in that collection tanker tank and, and causes all that foam, um, and everything— sometimes the top comes right off and it's foaming out of there. Um, that has got to be good for you to take it out.

And the same with the, with the plasma. Um, we're still trying to find— I have a lab that I think is going to help us test the plasma that we're getting out of people.

But you could see sometimes really good too because Right now they don't do it. Like Switzerland does it.

Yeah, we don't do it, but I have somebody who may be interested in doing a study with me.

Wow.

But you could see the color of the plasma, and the more you do the treatment of TPE, you'll see the plasma starts to get clearer and not as cloudy. But we're doing blood and urine analysis on patients pre and post. And actually, so we may not be able to directly test the plasma yet, but we will. But we can test the body, and we can see the level of toxins go down. BPA comes down, PFAS, forever chemicals. We're doing a study right now on forever chemicals. And it looks like, you know, it is removing it. Microplastics, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it looks like it's removing it. That's so good. So that's what's amazing about it.

It's exciting now too, because you can actually test the levels of microplastics too. Yes, that's what we're doing. I've been reading a lot about the presence of microplastics in these fibrinogen bonds that are in these atherosclerotic plaques that are causing hardening, narrowing, soft placking in the arteries.

Biofilm for people who have long COVID and some of these other infections and they can't get rid of it. Everything is sort of like clumping together in the blood.

And what do you do for those kinds of things? Nattokinase?

Biloki, lumbrokinase, all the kinases are great. And therapeutic plasma exchange actually does pull out some of the biofilm, which is really, I think, exciting too, because some of them are just really resistant. So I love the supplements, I love being able to break them down, Sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes we have to use anticoagulants, actually.

Like heparin?

Like heparin or Eliquis. There are a bunch of different ones that you can use. Sometimes you have to just really kind of thin the blood out as much as possible to get the bugs out of these biofilms. You know, I think of biofilms as like a spider web. It's just, you know, holding onto everything, and until we can get them out, all the treatment in the world, all the ozone and all the things, all the antimicrobials, even this SOT therapy, like nothing is gonna work if everything is in this kind of fibrinogen, platelet, it's just a soup of, yeah, exactly, clump.

And a lot of these pathogens are attracted to heparin. Yeah. I mean, heparin binding sites, there are filtration technologies, one called XTERRA, which I've also done, that use heparin binding sites to draw out certain pathogens. Fungi, mold and mycotoxins, certain viral pathogens, even CTCs, circulating tumor cells, that, that are, that are, that like to bind to these heparin binding sites. It doesn't put the heparin back into the body, but they do clump around these heparin binding sites.

I think it's interesting because mast cells make heparin. Okay, it's the one cell in the body that actually releases and manufactures is heparin.

Really?

Yeah, that's one of the mediators that we can actually test for. So it makes me wonder, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, it does make me wonder too. Is that like, so you see elevated levels of heparin in the blood?

Yeah.

Because these mast cells are—

Yeah, that's how we identify them.

Which makes a lot of sense because you don't want clumping and clotting if you have pathogen, right? You don't wanna wall it off or seal it in, you wanna actually—

Presumably, yeah, I mean, you wonder like why the mast cells make all these things, right? So maybe that's part of it. But where I think it manifests very often, not to get too off topic, but I think about women who have really heavy menstrual periods where they're—

High estrogen, you said, could activate as well.

And can activate, exactly. So I think with the mast cells, what's happening at the level of the uterus is they're releasing heparin. And so these women are hemorrhaging, they're having these really, really heavy periods because the mast cells, which are being, yes, are being triggered by changes in estrogen levels or other hormone levels that are releasing heparin. Now that blood is thinner, and it's coming out faster.

Wow, so they have these menorrhagia.

Menorrhagia.

It's such a hard word to say. Amenorrhea, amenorrhagia, whatever it is, but lots of bleeding during their menstrual cycle. Again, so fascinating. I mean, especially given the percentages of the population that may have mast cell syndrome.

Yeah, like 20% is tremendous, right? Think about that. It's like 1 in 5, and that's probably more. I think there's more, more than 20, but that's the study. Study was like 17%.

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Yeah, that's a good, that's a good starting place. So we do a lot of stool analysis, we do microbiome analysis, we do parasite testing in the blood and in the stool. And yeah, parasites are, you know, actually quite pervasive.

They're pervasive and they're very real. In fact, you know, I was reading a study on multiple sclerosis on this parasitic theory. They call it the clean hands theory, where, you know, the over-sanitation and reducing the healthy parasitic colonies, right, maybe causing the immune system to hyperactivate to some of these cestod nematodes and these helminth parasites. Sites, um, in, in, in MS patients. And, um, at least this one study that I looked at, which was postmortem autopsies, um, they, they found, um, similar or identical deficiencies. And I want to misquote the study. I'll actually put a link to it in the, in the show notes in case I misquote it. Um, they found similar or, or identical colonies that were vastly missing from these patients with MS. And they hypothesized that this oversanitization, you know, where you actually don't have the healthy parasitic colonies, were actually causing the immune system to have this autoimmune reaction to myelin. And they found corkscrew parasites in some of the locations where the immune system was attacking. Because if you think about it, you know, why the immune system can dissolve myelin or attack myelin, why isn't it sort of uniformly attacking it everywhere? Why does it seem to be taking rifle shots.

Oh, that's, that's an interesting—

seemingly randomly, um, around the body, or maybe concentrated in areas of the brain. Um, I mean, there's myelin coming, covering all of our nerves, so why is it not affecting or evenly dissolving this? And I, I thought it was very, you know, very interesting that there could be a bug theory behind it.

Yeah. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm one of those people, I think there's a bug theory behind almost all the chronic diseases.

I disagree with with you at all?

I just, every single patient, every single patient I test for who has Parkinson's or Parkinson-like infections, or I mean conditions, Alzheimer's, you know, I can look at different manifestations of mental illness, OCD, anxiety, depression.

They almost always have gut issues.

Yeah.

All of them.

And they almost all test positive for vector-borne infections. I find parasites in them and I find Bartonella almost across the board.

Yeah, our clinics are actually director had a, uh, Dr. Carrie Sarda. She had, um, uh, a patient she was treating that came down to see her for Parkinson's. Been 6 years, uh, diagnosed with Parkinson's, completely unresponsive to traditional therapies. Neurologist couldn't figure out what was going on— the mood collapse, the dystonias, the dysdiadochokinesias, the whole sequence of events. And, um, when she did the, um, uh, viral testing, it was one of the highest not Lyme titers, West Nile titers, that the lab had ever seen.

Oh, wow.

And ironically, he had an office in South Beach and was commonly visiting South Beach when the largest Zika mosquito outbreak in South Beach, going back 12, 13 years, 11, 12 years, there was a period where even customs was not allowing pregnant women, you know, that were coming through, to, to go to Miami Beach because there, this, uh, Zika mosquito was so prevalent. And they got it under control, but that's what carries the—

it also carries West Nile.

Um, and it was one of the highest titers that they'd ever seen. It was active. Um, never tested for it. Um, and so she went after the, you know, the, the virus. Um, and I won't say all of the symptoms went into remission, but I would say it's 75, 80 80% improvement in his symptoms because he didn't have Parkinson's, he had Parkinsonisms from the viral infection. And a lot of these viruses seem to have very similar etiologies, or at least presentations, to things like Parkinson's, which are very often diagnosed by observation.

Yeah, um, well, it's an inflammatory response. It's just, I think that there's a vulnerability. I always think of it like, people will say, well, why did I get this condition, Parkinson's-like condition, and somebody else got, you know, a different, you know, got Crohn's or colitis or got, you know. So I think there's a vulnerability that people carry and maybe it's genetic, maybe it's hard to find, but then there are these, you know, infections or triggers or toxins, whatever, that then triggers that genetic vulnerability to come out. And it's presenting in this way. And so you have to, you know, alleviate or remove the triggers. You might still have some symptoms left because some of that is maybe even genetic to some extent. That are already turned on.

You mean like methylation pathway issues or poor waste elimination or things like that?

Yeah, like some things you're just never going to be able, let's say the damage is done. I like to think that I can reverse all, you know, all damage in everybody, but it's impossible, right?

Right.

So some damage is already done, but if you remove, let's say, that infection, maybe you can heal a lot of the damage. Right. That's the goal.

Yeah, calm them down, boost the immune system, because immunodysregulation inflammation, you know, the consequences of that encompass all of the things that we've talked about so far, and it mimics so many other pathologies. These poor people are just literally running around the country or running around the world sometimes trying to figure out what could be causing this. And I, I wouldn't disagree with you at all that I think, you know, the bugs are related to a lot of, um, a lot of these issues. Um, let's go, go into the gut for a minute. Yeah. Um, if you don't mind, um, how important is gut dysbiosis, the gut microbiome, you know, that single-cell layer of protection that we have on the luminal wall of our gut, sort of separating our inside environment from our outside environment. What can we do to care for it? And how often do you think that there is a gut-related anomaly in mast cell syndrome?

I mean, again, I think—

You're probably gonna say 100%.

Yeah, right, I was gonna say, like, 99, 98, or whatever. And it's interesting 'cause I do have patients who swear they have no gut problems at all. And the gut is not their problem. They have all these other neurologic and other systems involved, right? And I go, "Really? You have like, no, nothing? Like, I almost never see it," right? So then I'll have them do a test. You know, I'll do some stool testing, right? And I'm like, "Well, you actually have it. I don't know why you don't feel it, but there's definitely something going on there." And that's where the bulk of your immune system is, right? Is in the gut. 70%, As you can imagine, there's so many mast cells that line the entire GI tract.

Oh yeah.

So, you know, you have to think like, if they have a mast cell condition, the mast cells in the gut are involved on some level. Maybe some people are more sensitive to feeling it and some aren't, right? But I think, listen, in the toxic world we live in, it's very, very difficult to maintain, you know, a proper digestive system.

I would agree with that.

Right? The food that you eat, you know, the pesticides on the food, the toxins, the glyphosate, Things like, you could be so careful and still get exposed to things that are gonna eventually, like, break down that layer. Early antibiotic use, you know, as children, right? Frequent strep infections very, very commonly will cause a dysbiosis, right? So people may not notice anything until it's sort of like the straw that breaks the camel's back, right? So they're living with some dysbiosis, they're not, you know, they're not in, they don't have a lot of symptoms yet, but there's usually then something that then brings it out fully. They get another course of antibiotics, or they get, again, they have a stressor in their life, they get COVID, they get something, and then all hell breaks loose, and then now they have major gut issues. And so, you know, it's about, you know, feeding the good microbiome there, right? So a lot of that, A lot of the good stuff is gone. There's a lot of bad stuff, right? So it's actually finding that balance between killing some of the bad and getting more of the good, right? And so there are a lot of tools and supplements.

What does something like that look like? What does a—

What would I do?

Typical protocol look like? I know it's not a one-size-fits-all. Yeah. I mean, and in terms of gut testing, are you doing GI MAPs? Are you doing the, like, a Viome stool test?

I'll do, like, Gut Zoomer from Vibrant Wellness.

Gut Zoomer, okay.

I like that one a lot. Sometimes the GI-MAP, I don't wanna say anything bad about it. I've just found some inconsistencies with their testing. You gotta be really careful with the testing. And they're actually, I know several people who are trying to do comparison studies between the different labs to see, you know, why, you know, some labs are picking up parasites and some labs are not picking up parasites in the same samples, right? Wow. So we're just trying to, we're trying to, so the testing is actually in some ways a little bit rudimentary. Complementary, but I've been pleased with some of the GI tests that we've tried.

Yeah, I use Vibrant a lot.

Yeah, Vibrant.

No affiliation with them, but I've been using them in my detox challenges and things.

Yeah, and we use their urine test for the Total Tox before we do the therapeutic plasma exchange, you know, and after, right? So we like a lot of their stuff. So gut somewhere could be a good place to start. I love doing parasite-specific parasite testing. I don't rely on any one lab to pick up the parasites, 'cause parasites are really, They are, yeah. I think of it, I use this analogy with patients, right? I think of parasites like they're like Spider-Man. They have like suction cups on their hand. They don't have hands, but you know, like the imagery. So they're like sticking to the wall of the intestine. And so when you have a bowel movement, they may fall into that stool, they may not. And so you may not find it until you test and test and test. So I have a lab that I really like that has been really good at finding a lot of these parasites. And I am really shocked at what we find. What we're finding. And not to go too off topic, but you know what's really interesting to me as a, when I was doing my residency at NYU in the city, we saw a lot of HIV patients, patients with that type of immunodeficiency, immunocompromised states, and they used to have this, we used to find this parasite in them all the time called Cryptosporidium. And I was taught that Cryptosporidium is a parasite that only infects people with really suppressed immune systems, cancer patients, HIV. I see it probably in 75% of my patients. Wow. But they're not HIV or cancer patients, right? So that tells me that part of this mast cell activation syndrome and all the other things that I'm seeing is suppressing the immune system so much that we're seeing parasites that should not be in relatively healthy people.

Wow. And are you doing regular frontline things, ivermectin, fenbendazole, memendazole? Okay.

Those are really effective. Alinea, Alinea, and all the, yeah. I usually do a sequential type of protocol with them. I find, listen, I love herbs and I love natural stuff, but for parasites, you need—

Yeah, I've heard the same thing.

You need the drugs.

You gotta bring the big guns. You gotta bring the big guns.

So again, so when I'm approaching a patient, if they have the parasites, I'm gonna do a parasite protocol. If they don't have parasites, you know, maybe I'm gonna start with some other stuff, right? I'm working on the diet. A lot of the patients have low short-chain fatty acids, you know, so I may use a butyrate.

Sauerkraut even. Fermented vegetables.

Sometimes, but some of my mast cell patients can't tolerate it 'cause it's high in histamine. So, you know, so it's again, that's a good point, yeah. We're a little challenged because we like, things that we think are good may backfire. So, but we have to, you know, kind of inch towards that. I have a patient right now who is able to, had really bad mast cell stuff, but like started to be able to introduce sauerkraut and stuff. So that's amazing, right? Like, wow.

Fatty acids in there, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, but we can use butyrate, we can use some other things. We can, you know, again, it's about balancing the gut. We can use immunoglobulins, like, you know, like an IgG type of product that has, you know, it's basically bovine serum immunoglobulins. You can use colostrum if people can tolerate dairy. All these things, I mean, again, there's like, there's no perfect way to do it. It's just finding the right way for the patient. So it's about balance and it's about killing sometimes, And it's about quieting those mast cells down in the gut directly so that the immune system is not constantly in this kind of cycle.

Hyperinflammatory state.

Yeah.

Dr. Dempsey, this has been absolutely fascinating. I really hope you'll come back on the "Ultimate Human" podcast, 'cause I wanna follow this. All right, I'll come back. My VIPs are so excited for you in the VIP room. They got a whole litany of questions for you. Um, and I appreciate you too also agreeing to stay today for, uh, to, to speak to them in a live format. This is, this is such a fascinating, um, I think underserved area of, of medicine, uh, where we, we start looking at really looking at root causes and how, um, you know, symptoms don't necessarily link back to the pathology that people are diagnosed with. It may be something even deeper a copper that has caused this immune system, mass cell activation, but caused the immune system to be so run down that it's, you know, essentially can't protect itself anymore.

Yeah, exactly. And it's more pervasive than we can imagine, right? This is the thing. I think the more people, the more toxic our world gets, the more COVID and all these other things that people get, or the more like, you know, weird infections, like this winter was kind of crazy with a lot of weird infections.

Oh my gosh, monkeypox, I mean, you name it.

Yeah, so the more that immune system just gets revved up and revved up, unfortunately, I think this is like really a pandemic in a way of mast cell activation syndrome. And so, I think everyone really needs to know this, right? 'Cause the thing is, people listen and say, "Well, this doesn't apply to me. I do all these things and I'm healthy." But it may apply to somebody that's close to you. And it may apply to you eventually, hopefully not. But also, I wanna give hope because I think there's so much that we can do. And that's why I do the work that I do, 'cause I help people Every day.

Yeah, this is so fascinating. For my audience that wants to know more about you or where they can find you, where can they find you?

Okay, so my center, AIM Center for Personalized Medicine, my website, drtonyadempsi.com, Instagram, drtonyadempsimd, Facebook, drtonyadempsi, you know, like all that stuff. I have YouTube.

I'll put all that in the show notes for you.

Yeah, I'm trying to think what I'm missing. And then my podcast, Mast Cell Matters.

I saw you had a podcast, Mast Cell Matters. I love that.

I'm going to have to have you on that.

I would love to be on there. We see eye to eye on a lot of things for sure. Yeah. So absolutely fascinating, guys. Please, I'll put all of that in the show notes below. I'll put the study that I referred to earlier in the podcast. And until next time, that's just science.