Dr. Will Cole: Autoimmune Crisis? Uncover Mold and Toxins Harming You | TUH #159
Conversation between Dr. Will Cole and Gary Brecka on metabolic health, autoimmunity, environmental toxins (mold, mycotoxins, glyphosate, PFAS, microplastics), gut health, the gut–brain axis, emotional/trauma influences, testing, and therapies. Dr. Cole emphasizes widespread metabolic dysfunction (many Americans insulin resistant), key lab markers to watch (triglycerides, HDL, fasting glucose, A1C, hs‑CRP, homocysteine, NMR small dense LDL), HLA and methylation genetic variants that increase biotoxin sensitivity, and a staged approach: assess gut + toxins + genetics, prioritize lifestyle (sleep, diet, stress reduction, breathwork, gratitude), then targeted testing (blood/urine for mycotoxins/viruses, microbiome, Vibrant/Cyrex) and interventions (dietary 'soup' phase, binders, glutathione/NAC, sauna, sweating, ozone, selective chelation/sauna/ozone/HCOT). He also stresses bio‑individuality and combining emotional healing with detox and metabolic optimization.
Questions this video answers
Upwards of 93% (Dr. Cole's cited figure).
Triglycerides above 100 mg/dL and HDL below 59 mg/dL (ratio indicates metabolic risk).
Fasting glucose under 90 mg/dL; A1C (three‑month average) at the very least under 5.6%.
hs‑CRP: under 1 mg/L preferred; homocysteine: under 7 µmol/L.
Microbiome labs and toxin panels (blood/urine); vendors mentioned include Vibrant Labs and Cyrex (and previously Dunwoody, renamed).
Chapters
There's so many health issues that are going on beyond the surface that conventional medicine has not caught up with.
I think the absence of disease is not the presence of good health.
We have upwards of 93% of the United States metabolically unhealthy in some way. They're not checking all the boxes of saying, I'm in great metabolic health.
We hear about metabolic health, metabolic flexibility, metabolic syndrome, but I don't think most people understand what that really means.
People that have sexual abuse growing up and physical abuse growing up, neglect growing up, we have to look at these emotional toxins too.
The emotion doesn't create aflatoxin. It's the dysregulation of the nervous system because of your emotional state.
It's a piece of the puzzle. These mental, emotional, spiritual, or the part of gut feelings impacts the physical health stone life.
A lot of choice that I think the average American is forced to make is if they have one of these conditions, how do you best suggest that they go about healing the gut?
Yeah. So the first part of the question you said, how do they find out?
Ultimate Human. Hey, guys, welcome back to the Ultimate Human podcast. I'm your host, human biologist Gary Brecker. We go down the road of everything, anti aging, biohacking, longevity, and everything in between. And my guest today is a guest that my team and I have been watching for a long time. You know, I've been deep down the rabbit hole lately of all autoimmune conditions of gut health, of inflammation, metabolic health, and he is an absolute expert in all four of these categories. I can't wait to dive into this with Dr. Will Cole today. Welcome to the podcast, brother.
Gary freaking Breca. I can't believe, I can't believe this is happening, man.
Really? Yeah. You know what's so, you know, you know what's so crazy is I have people say that, and I feel the same way, like, like God is so good, because I, I, I feel like once he revealed his purpose to me, the kind of people that have come into my life, people like yourself. Yes. You know, that, that I hold in such high regard. You know, there's so many mentors of mine like Dr. Mark Hyman and, and Dave Asprey, and some of these guys have just walked through my door to sit down on this podcast and they go, man, thank you, Jesus. It's just, it's, it's so amazing to sit here with you, and the fact that you feel the same way is very flattering to me.
This is going to be great because.
You Know, I don't see myself like that yet, but, you know, eventually I will because I look at functional medicine practitioners like you that are making a real change in the world, and it's. It's just so inspiring. And I think finally the work that folks like you do is coming out of the shadows. Yeah. You know, and it's getting a deserved seat at the table. Yeah. Yeah.
It's a special time.
Yeah.
Such a time as this, for sure.
It's a special time. So, you know, lately what I. I've been deep down the rabbit hole of toxicity because, you know, early when we started our, our functional medicine clinics, you. You have those clients that are just unresponsive, that are having significant symptoms, and you don't find it anywhere on the labs.
Right.
You look at the labs and you're like, well, you know, you. Your hormones are in, in a good range. You got a decent amount of D3. You know, your, your triglyceride and cholesterol is not, you know, off the charts. Your C reactive proteins, kind of normal. And they're like headaches, fatigue, brain fog, mood numbness, all the things that are just robbing them of their daily life. And I started then to really look at toxicity maintenance. The. Mainly mold, mycotoxins, metals, parasites, and, and viruses.
Yeah.
And in almost every one of those cases, we. We found one of those to be the underlying cause. I know that you talk a lot about metabolic health, metabolic flexibility. I wonder if we just talk about what is metabolic health and metabolic flexibility. And then I want to go down the road of, you know, for the folks that are watching, where would I start, you know, testing for some of these things to maybe find out what's at the root of my autoimmune disease.
Sure. Yeah. This phenomenon that you're explaining is something that I see on a daily basis. People that have things like brain fog, fatigue, digestive problems, anxiety, joint pain. Yeah, yeah, joint pain. What the world may call mystery illnesses. They're falling through the cracks. They'll be told from conventional doctors. Well, it looks autoimmune, but they're not like, checking all the boxes.
Right.
There's somewhere on that autoimmune inflammation spectrum. And exactly what you're saying, where it's like, yeah, metabolic labs are pretty much okay. C reactive protein, high sens, high sensitivity. C reactive protein looks normal, homocysteine, sometimes suboptimal, but nothing crazy. These inflammation markers. That's what I mean, conventional inflammation. But you're right. When you look at things like TGF Beta 1 C3A, C4A, MSH. These sort of other immunological labs that are conventional labs but aren't typically ran in the conventional setting. You will typically find that for that subset of people those labs will be off. And then when you start looking at biotoxins.
Yes.
It confirms those conventional labs in my mind.
Yeah.
It confirms things like mold and bacteria and viruses and why and almost 100%, I don't know if you found this but almost 100% of these people that fit the check all these boxes, what the world would call mystery illnesses have these HLA gene variants.
Yes.
Like they're all which for people that don't know that's human leukocyte antigens. It makes your body more sensitive if you will to these biotoxins like bacteria, viruses and mold. So whereas you know, mold is everywhere.
Right.
Bacteria and viruses, humans have been with symbiotically for a long time. But these people, their immune system doesn't know how to calm down when they're exposed to these pathogens.
Right.
And, and then we could talk. I think in my mind there's a environmental toxin component to it. When you talk at about glyphosate or forever chemicals. I think there's something man made that is exacerbating these biotoxin sensitivities.
Well there's no question. I mean if you just look at big data, if you just take us zoom out for a second and you look at parabolic rise in skin cancers, parabolic horizon in all autoimmune conditions across the board. 80, roughly 80% of which are in women. Yeah. You look at parabolic rises in type 2 diabetes, morbid obesity, multiple chronic disease in a single biome. The earlier the you know, the onset of metabolic syndrome, getting down into teenage years now. Yeah, right. Where we just thought man, I can't be killed by a bullet at 15 or 16 or 18 years old. You know, and you have to think that it, that there's an environmental component to that.
Whereas like yeah, maybe the mold, it was the straw that broke the camel's back. But then it's like the analogy that I use like we all have different bucket sizes. Right. That's your bio individuality for how much junk can I handle.
Right.
And environmental toxins man made and biotoxins like bacteria, virus and mold are kind of be contributing factors. But then stress, unresolved trauma, you know, not sleeping well, foods that don't love you back. I mean it's a confluence of foods.
That don't love you Back. I like that. I like that.
America loves those. Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, we do.
You know, they love to be in a toxic relationship with things that don't love them back.
Yeah. And, and, and we very often I read Dr. Perlmutter's book Grain Brain and Gut Brain Connection. It was the first time that the switch flicked for me that, wow, man. Our gut bacteria really drive our cravings and, and not necessarily for the right things. Right. You know, the more highly processed food we eat, the more highly processed food we crave, the more sugar we eat, the more sugar we crave. We get dependent on this dopamine cycle. And, and, you know, I, I, you know, early again in my career when we were doing lots of labs on people, it was, it was really confounding because you think when you talk about I have an autoimmune disease or my immune system is, like you said, you know, lit up, you know, in, in a fight for one of these auto, these environmental toxins, classically, you think, okay, the white blood cell counts through the roof and the, and the cbc, the complete blood count would be lit up like a, you know, like a Christmas tree. And that's where I think these evade capture.
Right.
Because they're hiding right in plain sight. And, and I think most primary care physicians are not trained in functional labs.
Yeah.
And so, you know, these poor people are going back to their primary care doctor over and over again. They're like, you're fine. I'm not fine. I can't sleep. I'm depressed. I have no libido. I've got, you know, crush. Days of crushing fatigue, My joints ache. You know, I've got. Now I got pcos. I've got positional orthostatic tachycardia syndrome. I got this pots. Yeah. And so it can't be normal.
No, but you're right, there's so much medical gaslighting going on to these people. Not intentionally, most of the time. Right, Right. Because they're just, they're a squig square peg in a route hole. Like, they're just not fitting in the conventional system, which, you know, it is looking at the diabetes, is looking at the heart disease, looking. There's. They're being screened for these things.
Right.
But this. There's so much things. There's so many health issues that are going on beyond the surface that conventional medicine has not caught up with. They're seeing it on a daily basis, but they don't know how to help these people. Yeah.
And I think the absence of disease is not the presence of good health. Right. Because you don't have type 2 diabetes or don't have hypothyroid or you're not particularly hypertensive, doesn't mean, well, then everything's fine. Just means you don't have those diseases. Yeah, yeah. And I, and I, I, I want people to thrive in, like, ways that they never thought possible. That's what God put us on this earth for. He merely meant for us to have it all. And so I want to start with metabolic syndrome and metabolic health in general. Yeah. And then I want to work my way into some of the specifics, like mold, mycotoxin, virals, pathogens, some of these. And I certainly want to get into gut health. But, but, but for, for folks that we, we hear about a lot about metabolism, metabolic health, metabolic flexibility, metabolic syndrome. But I don't think most people understand what that really means.
Sure. So depending on the study that you cite, we have upwards of 93% of the United States is metabolically unhealthy in some way. They're not checking all the boxes of saying, I'm in great metabolic health. But you're right, it is kind of, kind of abstract, nebulous term. People maybe think of, you know, weight gain, which is a part of it, so much more than that. Right. So, yes, it can be weight loss resistance or trouble losing weight, but poor metabolic health can manifest like low sex drive. It could manifest as sleep issues. It could manifest as brain fog, fatigue, anxiety, depression. It doubles your rate of that.
Right.
When you're insulin resistant, that's really what's going on. I mean, there's a central seminal event that's happening in most of these people. It is some degree of insulin resistance. There's somewhere on that insulin resistance spectrum, which if you're saying, if you're looking at that statistic. Seven, only 7% of America that is metabolically healthy. And I would say that's kind of, they have loose standards. Like, if you, as, you know, like in functional medicine, we're looking at a tighter range. Where does vibrant wellness live? Which is where we get our name in functional medicine. Where does the body function the best? So we want triglycerides even tighter than what they want in the conventional setting. And most people, a lot of Americans have triglycerides above 100.
Yeah.
And that is like that proverbial Paul Revere. Yeah, Paul Revere.
Not the LDL cholesterol. I'm glad you said triglycerides. Right.
Yeah. Triglycerides above 100 is typically an indication that the body saying, I don't know where to put this blood sugar, so I'm going to store it as circulating fat or triglycerides. It's going to store it around the liver and spike those liver enzymes, AST and ALT. It's going to start raising that A1C. That three month average. And there's depending on the study that you cite, that's about four to 10 years prior to someone having type 2 diabetes, that somewhere some these people were on this insulin resistance spectrum. For most people it didn't happen overnight.
Right.
And that high triglycerides and that low HDL. So triglycerides above 100, HDL below 59, that ratio is a proverbial metabolic. Paul Revere. And if you're a history nerd like me, Paul Revere didn't actually say in effect the British are coming. But to use that analogy, it's saying diabetes is coming.
Yeah.
And if you don't do something about this and this, you may feel fine, you may feel like I'm just getting older, may, I'm just a little tired. Those are check engine lights.
Yeah.
That your body's saying, you know, let's figure out what's going on. So metabolic health. And when I say metabolic flexibility or when we talk about metabolic flexibility, it's the ability to burn both sugar and fat. It's the, the flexibility to be, have energy and have optimal mitochondrial function. Most people are stuck in the sugar burning mode. They're hangry, which is hungry and angry is evil spawn. They're irritable. They're, they're, they're, they don't, they feel like a shell of themselves.
Yeah.
And then they, they gaslight themselves and then they say I'm just getting older. They get gaslit from doctors because the doctors are just screening for these big pathologies and then they go for years not living their best life and they settle for it. So that's what we're talking about with metabolic health.
That's great. And a lot of people's emotion is so tied to food, which is another indication that, you know, your mood shouldn't shift before you, after you eat. Not by much anyway. I mean. Right. But when you have these, an emotional roller coaster that follows your hunger patterns and eating patterns, I mean that's a sign that you are metabolically unhealthy or metabolically intolerant, whatever you want to call it. Because, you know, if I, I don't have to eat, I don't have to eat. I don't have to eat. I have to eat right now. And then you're hangry.
Yeah.
And you eat and then your mood returns to normal and then it tanks again as your blood sugar crashes and you have an afternoon crash. I mean, so those kinds of cycles are not normal, pathic in terms of how our motion and, and eating should be, you know, tied. Tied into each other. Like many of you, the hardest thing for me is to shut off my mind at night when I want to sleep. And it's funny because sometimes I'll wake up tired already thinking of when I'll get back to bed again. But exactly the moment that I lay my head on the pillow, it feels like the machine of crazy. What if thoughts has turned back on? Does this happen to you? Let me tell you my new secret to deal with this. You may have heard of Magnesium Breakthrough by Bioptimizers and how great it is for sleep and promoting calmness and relaxation. What I found out is that the brains behind Magnesium Breakthrough have taken it to the next level with a product that specifically designed for sleep. It's called Sleep Breakthrough and it's been a total game changer for me. Sleep Breakthrough combines the power of magnesium with other natural ingredients to help us fall asleep faster, stay asleep longer, and actually wake up feeling refreshed. Since I started taking Sleep Breakthrough, I've been waking up feeling rested, energized, and ready to tackle the day ahead. I highly recommend giving Sleep Breakthrough a try. Trust me. Visit BI Optimizers. That's B I optimizers.com ultimate and order now. Oh, and in addition to the discount you'll get by using the promo code ultimate, they're always amazing free gifts with your purchase. That's also why I love shopping at Buy Optimizers. Go now to buyoptimizers.com ultimate to get your Sleep Breakthrough and find out this month's gift with your purchase. Now let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. So what would be the big markers for people to check? So check engine light is triglycerides, over 100 HDL below 59. And you know, what kind of supplementation addresses that, you know, omega 3 fatty acids or what have you. And, and, and what are some of the other markers that they should be looking at?
Some other ones that I would recommend. And look, these are conventional apps like, yeah, we can run them in functional medicine and we do for people around the world, but you don't. You can go to your PCP, your GP, your endocrinologist and ask for these. So a 1C, that's just three month average. Every blood sugar, we want it at the very least under 5.6.
Yep.
We want fast.
The doorstep of pre diabetes. I mean, ideally.
Yeah, exactly. So this, it's these ex. These exist on a spectrum. We want fasting glucose to be under 90. I want. I mentioned triglycerides, HDL, so triglycerides under 150. HDL above 59. I want the. I think these. When you look at metabolic syndrome, these people typically will have high sensitivity C reactive protein to be off. So you'll see hscrp, even if it's not through the roof, you'll see it above one, which the American Heart association at the CDC want it in the optimal range. Under one. We would want it under one as well in functional medicine. Homocysteine, which I mentioned earlier, it's an amino acid. It's supposed to be recycled down into methionine, but it acts like a neurotoxin, even subclinical, like just slightly elevated homocysteine has been linked to increasing blood brain barrier permeability, or what they call leaky brain syndrome, which is. And when I say it, it's kind of like people like, what brain is leaky? It's not. Right. It's linked to cardiovascular disease too. So we want homocysteine to be under seven. We would run what's called a nuclear magnetic resonance NMR test, which I'm sure you run too. It's like we want those small, dense LDL particles to be as low as possible. Those are the. Not the cholesterol. They're the protein carriers of cholesterol. So it's not the cholesterol that's the problem. It's the inflammation or oxidation of the particles that the protein that carries cholesterol, that's the issue.
So glad that you're saying that. So, because you know, I liken cholesterol to a fireman, right? I mean, when there's, when there's a fire, the fireman shows up, put it out. When there's damage to the endothelial wall or other cascades going on, you know, cholesterol shows up to sort of plug the hole, if you will, or repair it. And. And then we blame cholesterol, because it's at the scene of the crime for pulling the trigger. And we try to shove cholesterol down as low as we possibly can, especially LDL cholesterol. I actually did an amazing podcast with Dr. Asim Malhotra, so. Oh, yeah, you know, yeah, he's A great, great, great dude. I, I want his accent. You know, I feel, I feel like anything you say in a British accent, just like if you're a dude, it makes, and like more intelligent. And if you're a chick, it makes you much more attractive. Like, I thought about actually developing one.
Yeah, we just, we just have some.
More airy diet, but, but then I would forget to do it.
So we may have a, like Sean.
Connery was like the ultimate, you know.
And then your wife would be like, why are you walking around with a British accent?
I don't know, babe.
Just doing it now.
It's bloody, it sounds bloody well to me, you know, but, you know, I, I, I had a, I did a podcast with him. We talk, went deep down the rabbit hole of, of cholesterol. But then, you know, conventional medicine comes in, shoves cholesterol down as low as they can. 40s, 50s, 60s. Not addressing the underlying metabolic issue, not addressing the toxic soup that people are bathing their cellular biology. And that got them into that place in the first place, just using medication to lower that one marker. And what we saw in the big data pools was, you know, then there comes the joint pain and the, and, and the brain fog and the short term memory loss and, and all the other consequences to cell walls, cell membranes, hormones, you know, that, that sort of thing. And so I, I, I, I love that we're talking about becoming metabolically healthy because I feel like this is the hub of the wheel. Yeah. And you can affect all the spokes by, by fixing your metabolism 100. Right. And that has a lot to do with what you put in, you know, what you're drinking, what you're eating, how you're serving your body, how you're sleeping, how you're exercising. It's all of the, I even like to term lifestyle medicine more than functional medicine.
Yeah. It's more descriptive to the average person.
Out there because it makes people realize that my lifestyle has the greatest impact on my health outcomes.
Yeah.
And I don't care how good your physician is. If you're not sleeping and you're eating a highly processed diet and you're not moving your body and you've got unresolved trauma and you're not in any kind of circadian cycle at all, there's almost nothing that they can do for you other than manage your, your symptoms.
Yeah.
And it's so empowering to know that if I took these lifestyle choices back under my control, I would have these incredible, you know, health outcomes.
And so many Americans, they feel Disempowered. They think there's something like above that them, like they can't, it's inaccessible.
Right.
And they see social media as a double edged sword. Right. We see all everybody's highlight reels and you feel like I could never do that. But a lot of the things that we would say, probably some of the biggest needle movers for the average American or person out there, Westerner out there, anywhere you live, are accessible. I mean a lot of my telehealth patients, you know, contrary to what you may hear on social media, are just normal nine to five people.
Right.
Like they're just people that have a why bigger than their excuses and they're realizing I'm going to break generational cycles, I'm going to change the culture of my family. You do not have to be a 1 percenter. And look, I totally agree. You don't.
Yeah.
Right. And that we're there for those people too. But I don't want to limit this to just being like this elite thing where it. No, I want this. I was on a call with some heads of Walmart the other week because they want to know about this whole Maha thing because the Walmart customer is wanting. They're becoming literate when it comes to reading labels.
I love that.
So to me this is about that special time that we're talking about.
Yeah. Yeah.
That it's like we're hopefully there's more aha. Moments from people that shop at Walmart. That is normal nine to five people that are like, you know what? I can't do all the things but I want to do something for my health. Which is more than we can say historically.
The fact that the awareness is making it down to that level. I mean my excitement about Maha and for the record, I'm not, I'm not in any kind of official government position or anything.
Right.
With, with Maha. Other than that, you know, we, we support the movement and we're, we support Bobby Kennedy and you know, we're go to events, get the word out that, that, that sort of thing and, and try to have a positive influence on how this, this gets implemented, at least in the court of public opinion. But what's so exciting to me is the opportunity to potentially affect public policy.
Yeah.
And really go from the top down and had to be, you know, someone at the top because of the corruption in our nutritional research, because of the corruption in our food supply, because the unnecessary levels of, of poison in our food supply, because of unnecessary subsidies. In my opinion, for some of the most highly processed foods on the planet. And a lot of choice that I think the average American is forced to make is, is a choice based on price and availability. And it's grains, corns, flowers, soy. Yeah, wheat. Those are all your most affordable, most widely available and inexpensive products. And so obviously your dollar is going to go a lot further if you're buying these subsidized commodities and foods than if you even tried to go organic. You know, I heard Max Lugaver say one time on a podcast, he's like, if you're, if you're grocery store has a health food section, what does that say about the rest of the store? What's the rest like? It's so true. Why should we have a health food section? Why wouldn't it just all be health food? Yeah.
Why are we there?
So, so let's take a step further because, you know, my audience is pretty, pretty educated on, on metabolic health and they're, they're very interested in some of the specifics. Everybody is on this journey, you know, to, to be the best version of themselves. I call it the ultimate human version themselves. And on this journey, the things that we chalk up to a consequence of aging, brain fog, weight gain, water retention, poor sleep, poor focus and concentration, you know, lack of libido. And when you bring in the toxic burden on, on people. I'd like to talk a little bit about how the toxic burden is impacting autoimmune conditions. Because the one thing that we absolutely saw in our clinic system and especially lately, like last five years, is this just parabolic rise. Everybody has Hashimoto's Crohn's high a titers, you know, speckled a a titers. And then they go to the primary care and they're like, that could be ms, it could be, it could be lupus. You start dropping words like that.
Right.
On somebody.
Yeah.
Even though they're not necessarily indicative of those spec, but they're, they're, they're markers that your immune system is in a fight.
Yeah.
And then they don't know where to start.
Yeah.
And most of the time they're told, because I have clients that I'm working with right now, including some very well known clients that everybody listening to this podcast knows that just recently went to their physician, had these high ana titers and in a four month pan span of time, we're told they have Hashimoto's autoimmune thyroid and now are being told that they've got autoimmune markers for something potentially more sinister like Lupus or scleroderma or some connective tissue disorders because of these high speckled DNA titers. And it absolutely freaked them out.
Yeah.
And in my conversation with them in the clinical team, we calm them way down to say, listen, we're just going to complete clean up the environmental burden.
Yeah.
And then we'll see if this helps address that issue. So let's start with thyroid, like Hashimoto's, because that is a massive one.
Yeah. It's the most common autoimmune disease.
Right.
And I think historically the first, maybe the first autoimmune condition discovered in science. I think it was early 20th century maybe. And I always find it interesting that guys wanted to name an autoimmune condition after themselves. Right. Hashimoto's, Addison's.
Is that. Is that where Hashimoto. I didn't think it was.
I think it was.
I never really thought about that.
I don't. Maybe if your life's work is that, maybe you would. But to me, it's like, I don't want a disease. Yeah.
I think I want disease. Or Breca's thyroiditis.
No, I mean, more power to them. I'm sure they were brilliant people. But anyways, it's autoimmune thyroiditis. There's over a hundred different autoimmune conditions. Hashimoto's is the most common one, but then there's a additional 50 above that. 100 different diseases that have at least an autoimmune component. And then every few years we hear about more and more autoimmune components to this and to that and to this. The things that we weren't even classified a decade ago as autoimmune now are finding autoimmune components. So if you break that word down, auto, that prefix, self, immune, it's when the immune system turns against itself at that event, that sort of seminal event within autoimmunity called molecular mimicry, that case of mistaken identity when the immune system is tagging antibodies, flags for destruction to destroy. So against the thyroid, it's against thyroid peroxidase, the enzyme that makes the thyroid or thyroid globulin, which is the thyroid protein itself. But then that you can think about ulcerative colitis. That's in the gut, Crohn's. It's in the gut, Mississippi, it's in the myelin sheath. Sjogren's. It's the connective tissue, Lupus, it's the connective tissue. Sjogren's Impact, you know, the. The dry eyes and the dry mouth and Rheumatoid arthritis, the joint. So we can go on and on. But that molecular mimicry is that connective mechanism within all autoimmunity. And then you think of how researchers even describe molecular mimicry. It says the immune. They describe it as the immune system losing recognition of self. Which you think about that on a physiological level that's happening. But then you think on a mental, emotional, spiritual level, the immune system, that person losing recognition of self. And then the research around stress and trauma. And when we talk about Hashimoto's specifically, there's a lot of stress and trauma component where these genetic variants that are associated with autoimmunity like MTHFR is highly associated. It's not. Yeah, but genetics, depending on the study that you cite, it's anywhere between 77 to 91% of the autoimmune inflammation puzzle is due to epigenetics. It's the lifestyle stuff that we're talking about here.
Totally agree.
So genetics are part of it like mthfr, like hla, other, like other gene variants that researchers endocannabinoid system too. But the majority of it is environmental. So that's why we're seeing this epidemic rise of Hashimoto's disease. You're right. These levels, these tpo, tga, thyroid antibodies are high in so many people.
But how did, how did the. How does. What is it about the toxicity that causes the immune system to then say okay, I'm going after the thyroid peroxidase antibody. I'm gonna.
Normally there's different areas, but if you look at the.
When does the switch get flicked?
Breach of the intestinal lining. So undigested food proteins and bacterial endotoxins called lipopolysaccharides, these bacterial toxins and gram negative bacteria are passing through the gut lining because there's these proteins that govern gut lining permeability called occluding and zonulin. Think of the Z and zonulin, this protein that protects the gut lining, the tight junctions of the gut as a zipper. So there's increased zonulin antibody activity, increased zonulin activity. You're going to have things breach getting from the gut into the bloodstream. And that is at least part of it that researchers have looked at for the past 15 to or 20 years or so as this event of what's happening as to why this molecular mimicry is happening. Because the immune system sees undigested food proteins, sees bacterial toxins and says what the heck. It's not actually saying what the heck, but I'M saying I'm speaking for your immune system right now. And it is tagging the undigested food proteins with that flag for destruction, the antibody and then cross reacts because it's similar enough in structure. The thyroid is similar enough in structure that it's attacking the thyroid, but then it could be the joints, the gut, the brain, and for anything. So we have to look at what's destroying that gut lining.
Yeah.
And these environmental toxins like glyphosate.
Oh, yeah.
You talk about herbicides and pesticides, what it's doing to decimate this gut garden.
Yeah.
The gut microbiome, big part. Microplastics. When that's what they're finding at 90% of human tissue.
Yeah.
And Mike, there's not a healthy amount of microplastics in the human body.
Right.
We should not be like microdosing microplastics, but we are doing more than microdosing these plastics.
Yeah. I heard on average was Dr. Gundry that I saw on a podcast, I heard on average, you know, about a credit card a week.
Yeah. So you just like statistics.
Instead of throwing your credit card away, just eat it. And that's.
Yeah, don't do that. But we are doing that without even wanting to do that.
That's what I mean.
Yeah.
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Yeah.
And so I, I, how does somebody go about, if they have one of these conditions, first of all, how do they go about testing to find out what is it that, and then how do they, how do you best suggest that they go about healing the gut?
Yeah. So the first part of the question you said how do they find out?
Yeah.
If we're looking, and this is a oversimplified Venn diagram, but the, the when we started the conversation with these people that don't necessarily have high, these conventional inflammation markers like hscrp, they don't have maybe super high homocysteine. The metabolic labs look pretty normal. There are obviously a lot of people that have, As I mentioned, 93% of the United States don't have great looking labs. But then there's this other group of people that have the, these normal markers but these other biotoxin inflammatory immunological type labs. And then of course many people can have both. Right. So and, and you're right, if someone has a poor metabolic health, it's going to exacerbate all as a gasoline on that inflammatory fire. And somebody has insulin resistance. So you want to check all these boxes, like look at metabolic health like we talked about. Look at those, those labs that I mentioned. But then look at these other autoimmune type labs and things that will perpetuate these inflammatory flare ups. So to understand inflammation, 75% of that's in the gut. So if I'm thinking of the average person out there, like how do I get more bang for my buck on where do I understand the predominance of the, where my immune system resides. It's going to be in the gut.
Right.
So getting a good microbiome lab is a good place to start to look at this landscape. Depending on the study, you know, upwards of 100 trillion bacteria in the gut, we have about 30 trillion human cells. We're exponentially more bacteria than human.
Right.
Sort of this. Oh yeah, I think you know in the 90s when there was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, remember the villain Crang where the brain was inside of the robot? I don't know. Yeah, I'm like, that's how I feel. Like we have all have crangs that are like given regulating our mood and our immune system and all of that stuff. Well, that's two thirds of the immune system. So to look at where inflammation originates, there's a lot of gut centric drivers of inflammation. So I would look at the gut and then look, look at these environmental toxins. I get a good blood, urine, blood and urine tests. To look at these biotoxins like bacteria, viruses and mold. Look at the environmental toxic load like these herbicides, pesticides, microplastics and forever chemicals and heavy metals. Look, we have to understand the two thirds of that autoimmune puzzle. We have to look at the epigenetic variables of why people have these issues and then we have to look at the one third because I think looking at genetics helps you understand your own bio individuality. Because you can say, oh yeah, I don't methylate as well. Oh yeah, I don't detox.
Right.
Oh, I have this HLA gene variant. So my immune system isn't as good at calming down whenever I'm exposed to a stressor or a virus or something like this.
I've used one called Vibrant Labs.
I like them.
You like them too? Are there any others that you recommend? Yeah, and by the way, I have no connection with Vibes at all.
Vibrant Labs is great. There's a lab I always forget because they changed their name. It was called Dunwoody Labs but they changed their name.
But yeah, they're not usually the conventional ones that you get like Quest or, or LabCorp or one of the conventional big labs.
I always forget because they changed their name. It was called Dunwoody Labs but they changed their name.
But yeah, they're not usually the conventional ones that you get like Quest or, or LabCorp or one of the conventional big laboratories. Unless your doctor's really skilled at.
Yeah. Putting this look at Environmental toxin panel. Cyrex is another one.
Cyrex, okay.
Yeah, there's a lot of, I would say blood, urine, saliva, labs that will look at the immune system in this way. Both the gut microbiome immune system and then these environmental toxins, both man made and nature toxins.
And you know, you talk to a lot about the emotional connection with the gut.
Yeah.
And I rarely hear functional practitioners talk about emotion in the gut and, and laboratories. Unless your doctor's really skilled at.
Yeah. Putting this look at environmental toxin panel. Cyrex is another one.
Cyrex, okay. Yeah, there's, you know, I talk about the blue zone studies all the time because I don't, I think people shoot past the, the, the deeply emotional connection there that, that there was no continuity between diets in these centenarians. But there was a few things that were contiguous and, and non negotiable. One was sense of community and purpose, which I think is another way of saying our emotional state, our emotional well being and the lot of, I would.
Say blood, urine, saliva, labs that will look at the immune system in this way. Both.
The other was, you know, mobility into later in life. And so I want to come back to that emotional connection with the gut because I think this goes right to the heart of why the majority of autoimmune diseases found in women, the gut.
Microbiome, immune system and then these environmental toxins, both man made and not nature.
And you know, you talk to a lot about the emotional connection with the gut. Yeah. And I rarely hear functional practitioners talk about emotion in the gut and, and you know, I talk about the blue zone studies all the time because I don't, I think people shoot past the, the, the deeply emotional connection there that, that there was no continuity between diets in these centenarians. But there was a few things that were contiguous and non negotiable. One was sense of community and purpose, which I think is another way of saying our emotional state, our emotional well being. And the other was, you know, mobility into later in life. And so I want to come back to that emotional connection with the gut because I think this goes right to the heart of why the majority of autoimmune diseases found in women and I think historically, if you look at female behavior within a familial setting or relationship setting, they tend to be sorry guys and I'm one of you, so I'm not throwing us under the bus. But they, they tend to be more selfless, you know, more put putting other people first before the needs of themselves.
Yeah.
And there's only so many debits you can take, you know, from the account before you know, you need, you need some credits. And by that I mean so, so far you can put yourself in the back seat. So I'd love to talk about the emotional connection.
It's massive part of my telehealth clinic, like for people. I didn't say this but like I started the first functional medicine telehealth clinic like 15 years ago. So I'm like a super nerd when it comes to this stuff. 10 hours a day. I need to get out more. That's why I'm so excited. It's a, to hang out with you, but also I don't get out of that dang room all the way.
Oh because you're just doing telehealth.
Yeah, just. I'm in a room talking to people online, which I love. It's a blessing. I'm super. It's a sacred responsibility for me. But I need a break too sometimes. So this is my. I go to Gary breakfast place to hang out.
Yeah.
So have some, have some hbot. Yeah, the. So that's my. For people that don't like my. The context of which I'm speaking with is not some theoretical pontification. It is like just real people getting them healthy. And I love what I get to do. Sorry, what was the question?
Yeah, the question is, the, the question is about the emotional impact, you know, I mean because, you know, I think that we use stress as this sort of catch all frisbee. We toss, toss in the air and I can't tell you how many people go to their primary care doctor. There's nothing really wrong with you, you know, just get stress out of your life. What the hell does that mean? I mean, do I just quit my marriage, you know, not talk to my kids and, and not go to work? Yeah, because that's where I get my stress from.
You know, do that. I would not recommend everybody do that. Some people should.
No, I'm saying like it's, it's sort of. It's not. Nobody drills into it and says we'll get stress out of your life. Well, how do I do that? First of all, how do I identify?
Well then they stress about not stressing because they're like, oh yeah, you're telling me. I already know stress isn't good, but how do I actually decrease it and not just talk about it? Which adds to those ruminating stress thoughts. So the gut and brain are actually formed from the same fetal tissue. So when babies are growing in their mom's womb and we all were there, the gut and brain are formed from that same fetal tissue and they're linked for the rest of our lives through what's known as the gut brain axis. So the vagus nerve is the largest cranial nerve in the body. It gets its root word from the, you know, I think it's Latin wondering, the wandering nerve. And it's responsible for that parasympathetic aspect of the autonomic nervous system. The resting digesting the hormone balance, the anti anxiety state. So we have to look at vagal nerve tone for a lot of this conversation. It's innervating, it's connecting the gut and the brain. The gut is known in the research as the second brain. Most of Your listeners know that. But if you think about it, the intestines kind of even resemble the brain. 95% of serotonin is made in the gut. 50% of dopamine is made in the gut, stored in the gut. So our pleasure and our happy neurotransmitters are made in the gut, stored in the gut. A lot of them are and they work, they don't pass through the blood brain barrier. The mechanism seems to be they are communicating through the vagus nerve, they're working on GI motility, they're cross talking between the gut and the brain and the brain and the gut this bi directional crosstalk. So why we have to look at the feelings like I wrote a book about this and I called it Gut Feelings because I saw that cliche of, you know, gut feelings. I just, you know, feel it in my gut. I have butterflies in my stomach. A gut instinct. But gut and feelings and how the gut impacts the feelings and how the feelings impacts the gut or our physiology is an important part. And you can't look and talk to people with autoimmunity and other mystery illnesses that the world would call that. You can't do that for 10 hours a day for and 15, for 15 plus years and not see the mental, emotional, spiritual component of this. You're not going to get them better if you ignore it. So I think that as a clinician it just was, it was compulsive because it was so obvious. We're how we're talking about things like unresolved trauma as a kid and chronic stress in your present life or both. And how when you look at the research around the ACE questionnaire, the adverse childhood events or experiences, we have every telehealth patient fill that out and we're talking about like really heavy stuff like yeah, sexual abuse growing up and physical abuse growing up, neglect growing up, substance abuse growing up, what's your parents relationship growing up and the higher your ACE score you're more likely to have these autoimmune issues or metabolic problems or you know, obviously mental health issues. So it's a piece of the puzzle. These mental, emotional, spirit, spiritual or the feelings part of gut feelings impacts the physical health so much. So it's, it's part of what dysregulates. So we're talking about environmental toxins. We have to look at these emotional toxins too that are stored in our body. So it's, it's an essential part of healing.
When you say emotional toxins are stored, you mean that the trauma is stored so we're kind of stuck in, in this, in this feedback loop because it's not a, the emotion doesn't create like a specific, you know, aflatoxin or something. It's, it's that, it's the dysregulation of the nervous system because of your emotional state.
Yeah, exactly. The body has a memory, so it's living out the past as if it's still happening to some degree.
Right.
So the autonomic nervous system, again simplistic way of describing it. But you have the sympathetic, the fight or flight or freeze or fawn, that sort of hyper vigilant response. You're being threatened. Right. That's the sympathetic and the parasympathetic. That resting digesting state. Most people that seesaw is out of balance. Like sympathetic is overactive and the parasympathetic is underactive. What's governing that parasympathetic is the vagus nerve. So people have researchers will refer to as poor vagal tone. It's a weak vagus nerve.
Yes.
And the environmental toxins, like all that stuff we talked about, unhealthy gut foods, inflammatory foods, etc all contribute to poor vagal tone. But so does the mental, emotional, spiritual stuff.
Right.
So yeah, it's, it's not that it's literally. Look, we're discovering these mechanisms every couple years. Yeah, I'd be, talk to me in 10 years, we'll understand even more. But as we understand it now, yeah, it's contributing to the, the nervous system and neural pathways. Living in this hyper vigilant state and doesn't know how to calm down and even that exists on the spectrum. Dysautonomia is the sort of end part of that. So very severely dysregulated nervous system. But a lot of Americans are somewhere on that dysregulated nervous system. They're stressed, they're wired and tired, anxious and exhausted. They're wired, don't know how to calm down.
Right. You know, and so what's the, what's the first step towards recognizing and maybe putting, implementing some lifestyle habits that are going to actually bring down my emotional stress or lock trauma or just my overall level of stress induced, you know, secondary syndrome?
I would say. Yeah. And for people to keep like there's so much self gaslighting with it around this topic because it's very easy for you to find someone that's gone through worse than you and say well yeah, they had trauma, but you know, I don't have trauma. Like it's not that bad, it's not the event, it's the pers. It's the experience of that person. Right. So there's even bio individuality with that. Like you could have siblings that go through the same childhood and have completely different memories.
Divorced parents and one, one it's highly traumatized and one was one it let it go.
So it's like what's your even bio individuality to and perception in which you handled that event in the past. So I would say an ACE questionnaire is a good way to go. It's not exhaustive because it's just talking about childhood and there's a lot of things that could be missed if you're as a clinician, if you're just looking at the ace like I have to look at like relationships in life after childhood. And these are things that I'm talking about. Yeah.
I think historically if you look at female behavior over an hour and a.
Half to two hours on an initial online console because you have to look at these things that maybe you never even went back to and gave it much credence. But it's a piece of the puzzle. It's not the entire puzzle but something to look at. But, but you know, I would start we could just assume it's going to be at least a piece of the puzzle as dealing with that stress and trauma component. For some people it's a big piece of the puzzle. For some people it's a smaller piece of the puzzle. But I would say bringing in acts of stillness in your life is a good way to check in with yourself and start to like look at this thing head on. Maybe it's the first time you've ever looked at it. You know, things like breath work and meditation can be very uncomfortable for people.
Yeah.
Because they have never quieted their thoughts. They're so looped up and thinking that their thoughts and emotions and not that observing presence of them. It's very scary. I mean when you think of people closing your eyes and doing some meditation, creating panic attacks, that's there's a reason why. Or then the average person, it may not be that extreme, but they may be doing some breath work and meditation and be really not good at it. You know. And it's the people that say, well meditation is not for me. They're typically the people that need to do it the most.
Yeah, right.
Because their nervous system so disquieted, so used to being distracted, numb like they want to be scrolling the FOMO inducing content on social media. They want to be numbing themselves with food. They wanted to be doing anything but being rooted in the present moment. And that's a sign that that nervous system dysregulation is an issue that you are avoiding what is within to heal it. And you have to, you know that cliche of you need to feel it to heal it. It's very true when it comes to stress and trauma.
And you've seen people that address stress and trauma have dramatic changes in their health outcomes.
100 yeah. For some people that feelings part of gut feelings is a significant player. And I, I talk to people and they'll be like, oh yeah, well I, I got the food down, I, I, I got the environmental toxin thing down. But I never dealt with this feeling side. And for them that's a big catalyst. And for some people it's the opposite, right? They, they've really dealt with the feelings part, the mental emotional stuff. They've done therapy, they've done emdr, they've done trauma work, they've done somatic practices, but they have an unhealthy gut, they're eating inflammatory foods, they have environmental toxins. So a both and not either or approach is how healing happens. What however it's manifesting. Believe me, as someone that talks to people all day long, this is a human issue no matter who you are. Like you said, really wealthy affluent people have these issues. And very everyday normal people, nine to five people are having this issue because we all live in the same dang toxic soup.
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Head to theultimatehuman.com forward/vip. That's theultimatehuman.com forward slash VIP right now to become one of my ultimate human VIPs. This is your fast pass to better health, so don't Miss it. Now, let's get back to the ultimate human podcast. So for people that, you know, not fully embracing the, you know, the therapy or meditation route, just like you said, finding time to just be still and finding time to be present and silent, which I, I do every morning and with breath work, you know, it's really interesting. I just had a. I just had a free challenge that I do every quarter or so online. It was an ultimate morning routine challenge, and I invited some of the most impactful people in the world onto it. Laura Renning, Lauren Rentinger, his, you know, one of the few true female billionaires in the world. I had Mark Wahlberg on there. He called in from France and he was on. On a movie set. Had Stephen E. Smith on there from espn. The reason why I captured these people was because I, I wanted to show some of the most visible, very busy, you know, like, nobody would argue that, you know, hey, Stephen A. Smith is. Does. Doesn't have a very, really busy schedule on espn. He doesn't dictate. He doesn't dictate his time.
Yeah.
Schedule of games and appearances dictates this time, which actually adds a layer of stress. And I, and, and what was really interesting, I found that I had four or five folks on men and women, both. All different areas of entertainment, sports business. Every single one of them, without me prompting them, said that one of the greatest practices that changed their mind was the practice of gratitude in the morning. And I will tell you, five, eight years ago, I would have been the first person to take issue with that. Yeah. Even though I, I've been a Christian for a long time, a big believer in prayer. Really didn't understand the impact.
Yeah.
Of being silent, of being still, of being present, and of just taking a few minutes for yourself. Whatever higher power you believe in to, to be grateful.
All.
Every one of them said that same thing. And, and then taking a few minutes to just breathe and not a lot of time. It's. It's had a huge impact on. On my life. And it really hit me on this challenge because I was like, here's people. Totally different spectrums of the world.
Yeah.
But all at the highest end of the socioeconomic spectrum for their field. And, you know, without prompting him, they're like, you know, Mark Wahlberg says, first thing I do, I wake up in the morning, drop to my knees and pray.
Yeah.
Stephen A. Smith said, I find quiet time, and I just say a little prayer of thanks for what? You know, what's going well in my life. Lauren Rentinger, who Just recently lost her husband, you know, very, very tragically. And her best friend, you know, said, I, I look in the mirror and I say, laura, you're, you're, you're great. And I. And the fact that that basic mindset of being still and present in the morning, that small practice of self, you know, of gratitude.
Yeah.
Self awareness, I think that does go lost.
Yeah, it does a lot. And yeah, you're absolutely right. Gratitude is a powerful medicine. And it's like it should be prescribed in every PCP office. And that's not to.
Well, you'll see pharma go crazy. What did you Prescribe?
You know, 30 milligrams of gratitude.
Gratitude.
But the reality. And that's not making light of what you've gone through. Right. If somebody like, just be grateful, just have positive thinking. That's not what this is about. This is about what really a present moment awareness of just being surrendered to the present moment and looking at the good things within it and then facing the dark parts and healing that through that. And I think intimately connected to gratitude and self compassion. Like, I saw a study that measured. They had people doing math and public speaking, two things that stress people out. Right. And they measured Interleukin 6IL6, which is an inflammatory protein. And they found that people that practice the most self compassion had the lowest interleukin 6 levels.
Wow. And how do you practice self compassion?
It's. Well, it's so much connected to gratitude. It's a gratitude practice.
This is how you talk to yourself.
Yeah, exactly, exactly. Like, talk to yourself like you would a good friend. Like, so many people are really harsh on themselves or this inner critic, and they're not really grateful. They're fomo. There's a lot of, you know, comparing yourself to other people in your life. There's not a lot of gratitude. There's not a. There's a lot of self judgment. And we have 30 trillion cells that are eavesdropping on our thoughts and emotions about ourselves and about other people. Yeah. And whether it's compassion to the world around us, which. That's a whole other level. Like, there's so much lack of compassion or to other people that think differently than us or vote differently than us or are differently than us. We need. But that. So that compassion begins with yourself.
Yeah.
Normally people that are really judgmental to other people are really judgmental about themselves.
Right, right. They're. They're not content.
They're not content.
Yeah, they're content with them themselves.
They're dysregulated Right. And it's easy to lash out. Yeah. So but these things are more nebulous because it's easy and more prescriptive for me to say, well these foods do the X, Y and Z or environmental toxins do this protocol. It is a lot more abstract, it's a lot more non linear to say, well, like don't have that trauma or don't have that, that ungrateful heart.
Right, Right.
It's like you need to practice it. And they call it a practice for a reason.
Right.
We all suck at it. Yeah, we all do. That's why we need to do it.
Yeah.
So whether you're in is breath work or meditation, whether you're in Israel prayer and really surrendering to God all the, you know, the Bible says the, our body is a temple of the Holy Spirit. So if you have in any faith is going to have some sort of similar concept. But like how are we treating that temple? Right.
Oh gosh.
And it's not just what we're feeding our body with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Like what are we feeding our head and our heart on a daily basis about ourselves and other people and clean crap out. Like elevate that temple because it's, it's important because that shifts your biochemistry in a powerful way.
I totally agree with that. So you know, back to the gut. You know, I, I first of all, I wholly agree with you that you know, finding a practice of gratitude or just taking some time to be silent or yeah, you know, aware breath work. I try to post every morning and I, I sort of do a, you know, play on words. I'm like, I'm taking my, any morning antidepressant, you know, and cost me zero or I'll say, you know, because I take a video of me doing the, just getting natural light in the morning every morning, sunlight in the morning and doing, doing breath work. And I'll also often write down the side effects of improved mood, you know, better emotional stability, you know, clear memory.
And no negative side effects.
Yeah, no negative side effects at all. And it's free. And if we would just realize the impact that it could make, maybe we'd actually make an effort to do it, you know, every day. Because it's also portable and people can take it with them.
Yeah.
And, and maybe the presence of that would be the absence of their SSRI or some of these other things. In fact, I, I actually saw a clinical study Joe Rogan turned me on to about you know, exercises versus SSRIs and exercise had I Don't want to misquote it, but like a fourfold increase in the, you know, positive outcomes versus taking a. Yeah. An ssri. So, you know, again, back to. To autoimmune, because I think the basis of autoimmune disease and so many people listening to this either have an autoimmune condition or they know someone that has an autoimmune condition. Every single one of us. Every single one of us know somebody suffering from an autoimmune disease by the time you had thyroid and Crohn's disease. And, you know, some of the big, big autoimmunes, it's everyone. And. And the fact that it could be this dysregulation from an emotional state, but also a dysregulation from the, you know, the presence of these pathogens. So let's, you know, pick one in. In particular, because, you know, we're in Miami. This is the mold capital of the world. I found out from one of the doctors I had on my podcast. I was like, oh, great. I live in the mold capital of the world.
We have a lovingly. When we have a telehealth patient from Florida, we're like, you're probably moldy, but.
Yeah, you're probably moldy.
Probably moldy. Where do you live?
Miami. Yeah, you got probably moldy.
Probably a piece of the puzzle.
Yeah. So first of all, how do we test for it, and then what do we do about it?
So remember mold. The context around this is mold is everywhere. Right. So we're joking about Miami. It really can be any state. I have patients in very dry, arid place. And it's not, you know, in Arizona, for example, it's not the desert that's necessarily moldy, but it's. They're piping their plumbing within their home. It's leaking behind the walls. So the more humid a climate is, the more obviously it's going to be, you know, conducive to growing more. But don't count yourself out if you live in a dry area place, and they go, I don't live in Florida. I'm fine, really. It really can be anywhere. It's just more likely to be a more humid area. So how. And the other context is not all mold is toxic. So we have to understand what type of mold are we talking about? How much and how long have you been exposed to the mold? And then what's your bio individual tolerance to that mold, that genetic epigenetic puzzle. Right. So all these variables matter, because I think one accusation that we can get in functional Medicine is like fear mongering around something like mold, but it's. People lose the context and the nuance. Like you. When I do a social media post, it's not a two hour consultation. So forgive me if I give you statistics about mold.
Right.
And realize that yeah, I don't want everybody to be freaking out. But the reality is it is a piece of the puzzle. And yes, when you talk to people for a living, it's something that's missed very often. So I wouldn't want to shut up.
And I just want to bring the awareness.
Exactly.
Like.
Exactly. So to answer your question pointedly, just it's a blood. A blood test or a year. So to answer your question pointedly, just it's a blood. A blood test or a year and. Or a urine test. And I would say both are important because I want to look at the immune system's response to the pathogen, whether it's a mold, bacteria or virus. And I want to look at if you can measure it and a lot of these things you can actually quantify the mycotoxins in the body. So looking at the blood and. Or a urine test and I would say both are important because I want to look at the immune system's response to the pathogen, the immunological and the toxic burden of mold and then these other man made toxins that can be exacerbating it. And a lot of these like Epstein Barr virus and other things that can be reactivated are because of these other toxins. Because like the statistic is like somewhere like 90 some percent of people have Epstein Barr virus antibodies.
Right.
90% of people don't have reactivated EBV. So just because you have antibodies doesn't mean it's a reactivated.
Yeah, yeah. IGM and IGG too. So I can see the difference between dormancy and.
But I see a lot of people, they'll see like antibodies and then they'll automatically think it's a reactivated. Not necessarily, but it can be. And mold and man made toxins can be something that's perpetuating these whether it's a mold, bacteria or virus. And I want to look at if you can measure it and a lot of these things you can actually viral reactivations. So that's where you would start. And then I would look at the genetic component because you almost always it's going to be this big aha moment. I'm like oh, that's why I don't my. I'm sensitive to mold, but my spouse isn't because there's a lot of like marital quantify the mycotoxins in the body. So looking at the relationship gaslighting going on where it's like they think they're a hypochondriac. Like the husband, not to generalize, but the husband typically is like yeah, she's hypochondriac, she's just making it up. But you measure, you run his genetics. He doesn't have the same methylation and HLA gene variants. So you could be in the home. And she's reacting very hyper vigilant. Her immune system is very sensitive to it. But he's not, it's not healthy for the family. Our telehealth patients are typically that canary in the coal mine for the family. Because these things are carcinogenic.
Yeah.
It's not healthy for anybody. So maybe the guy, it's just going to be this immunological and the toxic burden of mold and then these other man, slow burner for decades.
Right.
And it's going to be fueling cancer over 15 years. But she's having problems right now and she's going to save his life by getting that mold remediated.
So. Good.
So these are the type of things that it's not uncommon really.
Yeah. And you know we see this with metal toxicity and other forms of toxicity. I mean our bodies clear heavy metals like they clear light metals, just at a much slower rate. Yeah, but you could have 10 people sit down and eat the same amount of mercury laden tuna fish, you know, over and over and over and over and over again.
Yeah.
And you'll have, have component of them have you know, critical mercury poisoning. Some have elevated mercury levels and the other don't look like they had any at all. So I think you're, you're, you're really on point, you know, pointing out this individuality and, and, and how transulfuration and detoxification, glutathione pathways, all of these things matter in terms of getting waste out. And sometimes we don't think of the.
Cellular way and made toxins that can be exacerbating it. And a lot of these like Epstein Barr virus and other things that can be, react.
Right. We don't think of this process of metabolism. Cellular metabolisms are really kind of a dirty process. And it creates a lot of junk that we have to get rid of through, you know, transofuration through, through you know, our detoxification pathways, glutathione pathways. So your genetics play a role because very often they predispose you to either healthy or slower amounts of waste. Elimination. And I'm talking about cellular waste. And so those people can, you know, like you say they can be more, more. More sensitive.
It's like that bucket analogy that I mentioned earlier. Like this. Our patients typically have smaller buckets. Right. Because of the methylation detox. HLA gene activated are because of these other toxins. Because like it's a statistic is like somewhere like 90 some percent of people have Epstein Barr virus antibodies.
Right.
90 of people don't have reactivated EBV. So just because you have antibodies, you can't change your bucket size. You can't change your genetic tolerance to handle stressors, but you can change what you put in the bucket.
Yeah.
So maybe like, I mean the people that we're talking about here, they're like, I can't get away with anything. Right. It's like I. I look at my friends and family and they're eating whatever they want.
Right.
And I can't like look at a food and I'll have a flare up if I look at a food that doesn't like me back.
Right.
So yeah, it's. That doesn't mean it's a reactivated.
Yeah, yeah, there's IGM and IGG too, so.
Exactly.
I can see the difference between dormancy and.
But I see a lot of people. It's the epigenetic genetic interplay.
And then so then specifically what do they do? Like if you found it found patients with high aflatoxins and, and mold toxicity and different variants. Are you activating their detoxification pathways like sauna glutathione.
Well, first I would say come to Gary, break his house.
Come on over.
Yeah, come on. I'm sorry, I got everything here.
Machines, hyperbaric, sauna.
Yeah. So I mean, look you. Yeah, I mean what we do if they have access to these biohacks and tech tech devices and therapies. Yes, let's give it to them. But it starts with some basic stuff, right? It starts with let's clean up the gut. Let's lower inflammation levels in the body. Let's see how resilient you can be by just allowing your body to do what it was created for.
Oh my gosh. Amen.
So it's like you, most people. Yeah. Like let's. They'll see like antibodies and then they'll automatically think it's a reactivated. Not necessarily, but it can be. If we need to jump to hyperbaric, we will do that when we need to. But most Americans, they're not there. Like let's just see how much of a needle moving capacity with the free and low cost and accessible stuff.
I totally agree with that.
That and then from there then we have in such, we live in such a blessed time where we do have access to technology that our grandparents, great grandparents, all the generations before us never had access to. So. But yeah, so I would start with really if we're saying 70, 75, some percent of the immune systems in the gut really focusing on gut health. So we do a lot of souping and, and mold and man made toxins can be a. Something that's perpetuating these viral reactivations. So that's where you would start. And then I would look at the genetic components doing like things that are really gentle, calming to the gut instead of lots of raw foods being on very like a proverbial siesta for the gut. This sort of break, this reprieve, this, this, this Sabbath where you can allow. It's when you're broughing and souping like just think having hearty soups for meals and they could be bone broth based with lots of good meats in them and pureed vegetables or some soft cooked vegetables. And then when they have fruit, I even cook the fruit down or have people cook the fruit down as sort of a compote like an inside of a pie. Because these people, their immune system is stressed. It's digesting even healthy foods is stressing an already stressed out gut immune axis.
So by like boiling them down, steaming them down to break up some of the hard digestible fibers, things like that to, to really soften them, release some of the nutrients and take the, take.
The pressure and not everybody has to start there. But I'm talking about if you're, you have to meet your gut where it's at and a lot of people are there because we've really messed up microbiomes in our culture today. But you know, carnivore, carnivore adjacent gaps. There's a lot of different therapeutic food protocols that could be helpful to from a clinical nutrition intervention standpoint to calm inflammation, to untangle these inflammatory cascades. As far as like supplementation is concerned like glutathione or some glutathione precursor like N acetylcysteine. A great binder is going to be needed like some charcoal, activated charcoal, zeolite. Exactly. Diatomaceous earth modified citrus pectin. We're seeing some great success.
And where do you fall in like sauna and I, they we.
It's a, I don't want to say Non negotiable. But it's, it's on my list of non food, non supplement protocol. It's one of the first things if not the first thing that we recommend. So if they, even if they don't have access to a sauna, like even a sauna blanket, like just getting the body sweat get some exposure to infrared or traditional sauna and obviously there's a lot of, you know, better better, you know, good better best when it comes to all of these things. But doing something versus nothing is going to move the needle. Most people aren't sweating enough. So yeah supporting sweating detoxing is. Is supporting detoxification pathways through sweating is definitely a. One of the first things we do. Ozone is another game changer, I believe.
I totally agree with that too.
We were talking about that. Yeah. Hawk in the.
And how about fasting? I know that you've talked a lot, you've talked really extensively about fasting and, and why fasting works for some people but not for others.
Well, it's a, it's a hormetic therapy, right. It's. It's subject to the law of bio individuality just like all these other things we're talking about. Right. It's like he that for people that don't know that hormesis it's that the dose makes the poison basically. Right. And I, I've heard, I don't know if it's true or not, but the, the legend is it was the concept of hormesis was a king and in the middle ages that thought he was going to be poisoned and he thought his mom was going to poison him. Which if you know anything about history, there was a lot of royal poisonings going on.
Oh really? Just move the older brother out of the way so I can sort of got the kingdom.
Yeah, exactly. So this is the legend of hormesis is that the king took low doses of poison. So if he was poisoned he would have built a tolerance to it. That's what fasting is. It's not poison but all hermetic effects in the body which cold plunge hormetic sauna, hormetic fasting and fasting mimicking diets like the ketogenic diet hormetic. So the dose makes the poison or the dose makes the body more resilient. It's not a poison. Meaning that if you're always in a cold plunge it freeze to death. It's not good. But just to say that cold plunging isn't good is it's losing the context of it. Same with, with Sauna. You're not always in a sauna. You would die if you're always in a sauna. So intermittent fasting. Fasting is still subject to that. It's like, okay, who are we talking about? How long are we fasting? So the, the, the. It's the science and art of these therapies. Right. It's. It's pushing the body to be more resilient. It's tapping into what Paracelsus, you know, one of the fathers of. He was known as. He was father of toxicology. He was known as the Martin Luther of medicine. In the early 1500s in Switzerland, he called fasting the physician within, which I think is a beautiful way of putting it.
It's like, wow.
It's like an inner doctor that we can for free tap into. Some people need more of that inner physician, some people need less.
Right.
So too much hormetic effect, just like any of these other therapies that I talked about, could impact thyroid hormones negatively, could impact, you know, a lot of things with putting too much stress on the body. But to then to throw the baby out with the bathwater, which is a horrible cliche, but it is so striking, that balance. Where it is a needle mover is where, like my part of my job is like, it's like, okay, don't be all or nothing. Like, what's like the way we can bring this tool within your toolbox. And for some people, maybe they shouldn't do it at all. Right, Right. But I think a lot of people should. We should find a way to use it because it is a way to tap into these healing pathways, like increasing sirtuins, these sort of gate.
I mean, it's pretty much nobody that couldn't just do a 2012 fast, you know?
Yeah, right? 1212. Yeah. Not go too late at night. Just allow your body to fast through the night. Yeah, it's. I think we overcomplicate things back to our sort of addiction and dopamine. We're always wanting to consume, consume, consume, consume. So we're going to come up with all the excuses in the book to say why we shouldn't consume for a day, you know? Right. But the reality is most Americans could benefit from some time where we're giving the body a break.
Yeah, I totally agree with that. And then we go down the road of, you know, we talked about mold, you know, mycotoxins, virals, metals is another really, really big one. I actually accidentally got metal toxicity from. From a water machine that I got from, from this doctor that Convinced me that it was, it was structuring my water. And I'm, I'm never that guy that just takes the device from somebody. He's like, oh, I'm just going to start using it. Or, you know, give me your multivitamin and I'll just start taking it and see how I feel. I always am an incessant tester on things. You're talking about this before the podcast.
Yeah.
I started drinking. It turns out this, even though he's well credentialed, it was a modified welding machine that, that actually had lead welds in. It was from China. So I got metal toxicity and I've been very transparent about that with my community and how I'm walking myself out of it. You know, I, I, I did a provoked chelation test and then 8 hour urine. Spotted. Spotted. The metals.
What did you use for the chelator?
Yeah, the msl. Yeah. And another one E. I'll get you the second one. So I take two. Okay. I take them orally. 1:00am, 1:00pm Chelation, sauna, detox. I help my glutathione use gut binders. I space them out between meals. Yeah. And if I had dramatic drops and I do ozone on a regular basis. Hogat. And I'm walking my way out of it and I'm slowly in my VIP community. I'm posting about it so that, so that people can see, you know, are these, are these levels coming down? Because I figure if I can get it, anybody can get it. And, and I think as we're wandering our way through life and, you know, you've got, you know, these, these, these aluminum toxicity in the air. You know, if you live in Los Angeles, you know, just think about lighting a home on fire. What smoke, you know. Yeah. What kind of volatile organic chemicals and polyfluoro alcohols and bisphenols and all kinds of things. Accelerants, leads, I mean, older homes. And, and so I noticed that, you know, they publish out there the particulate matter level. And, and I'm like, it's not the number of particles in the air. It's like, what are those particles? That's, that's what matters is what are they particles of. Yeah. Right. I mean, because if it's, you know, if just like dust, tree bark and.
Yeah.
You know, sand, that's not any, you know, that, that big of a deal. But if these are accelerants because of, you know, you incinerated.
Yeah.
A structure. Yeah. Has all kinds of things in it. Paints and dyes. Tar. That's a whole different ballgame. Yeah. And so I think we're going to see a lot of, you know, unfortunately for people that were stuck in those environments, a lot of toxicity. Yeah.
But the people are the. It's analogous, I would assume times, you know, exponentially more as 9, 11. The people that were at ground zero at 9 11, the things that they were breathing in. I mean, this is an entire, you know, metropolitan area.
Right.
Of these toxic things that people are breathing in. Yeah, it's. It's not, it's not great.
Yeah. So. So the final one is metals. So what. When, when we. And first of all, I, you know, testing for metals is, is. Is tough because I actually did urine and blood and they were mediocre. And then I did the provoked test and that, I mean, they shot off the charts. Yeah. Provoke means, you know, I did a chelation to pull them out of the tissue. And then that's common.
That's common because they're stored in the fat tissue. Right. They're stored in the, the body. And it's not in the urine just floating around all the time. It's not in the blood always floating around. The body's trying to protect you by storing it in the tissue.
Right.
So you have to provoke and put the lab in context. If it's provoked, of course it's going to be higher, but it's. That's in the body.
Right.
That's not health.
Just come from nowhere.
Yeah. Right. It's not like you are artificially spiking it. It's just being chelated out so you can measure it and see what is hiding from the basic tests. So you're in provoked tests for anybody where it's clinically appropriate. We should be looking at heavy metals because it is an issue. So, yeah, we have to.
We ask when somebody finds out that they have them, you know, where do they go from there?
Um, well, look, I think the chelators, the binders that we talked about, the glutathione and glutathione pre precursors, sometimes more advanced chelation like the dmsl. There's other chelation tools that we could do, but sometimes it's spirulina chlorella. Right. It's just like the basic food is medicine to be supporting the body. Yes. Sometimes we need to be more advanced with chelation and detox. But I wouldn't start there if you've never done this, I would start with seeing. Have you had the issue do the things that I talked about with lowering Inflammation, allowing your body to be able to handle this stuff. And things like spirulina chlorella can be great. Cilantro can be great. The I mentioned glutathione, liposomal glutathione, antioxidants like vitamin C can be wonderful. So sweat and sweating, right. A lot of the things we talked about with the biotoxins.
Yeah.
Making sauna, whatever you have access to, whether it's a sauna, blanket, infrared sauna, traditional sauna in the gym, making sweat like at least six times a week. Start off low and slow, building up a tolerance to it if you're sensitive. But these are the things, over time we can start getting that number down. The body's amazingly resilient if you give it the chance to, to do what it is designed to do.
Yeah, I totally agree.
Some people have more impediments than others, but it's, it's not, we're not fear mongering but you have to know what you're dealing with to do something about it. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist to look around and say, yeah, we are sicker than ever before.
Yes.
And we're up against things that our ancestors grandparents didn't have to deal with.
Yeah, they did.
A lot of this stuff is post World War II and a lot of this, a lot of this stuff is like since the 1980s and 90s. So it's like, yeah, they were not living in the world we're living in. So of course we have to be talking about these things because we've never been exposed to more in such a short period of time.
What are some of the daily habits that are most contributing to the underlying cause of inflammation? You know, I often say inflammation is the root of all evil. Right. But you know, what are some of those daily habits where they're, you know, that, that are, that are leading to increased levels of inflammation?
Well, I would say we have to start with food because food is something that people are doing every day, should be doing every day. What I call the inflammatory core. Four are going to be. The four food or food additive ingredients are going to be the most problematic. And there's bio individuality, there's nuance in context to this. Like there's always better for you versions of all of these things. Right. So it's not black or white, but I would say gluten containing grains would be up on my list. Now the interesting.
Would you also say because they, they probably have the highest levels of glyphosate.
Yeah, right. Is it, is it the gluten or is it what we've done into it? I think it's more cheap. Yeah, right, exactly. It's herbicides, it's sprayed with things. We are the soil microbiome. It's. It's hybridized. So it's not like in biblical times, like ancient grains. Einkorn. It's not what people are consuming now.
Right.
But historically grains stored well during times of famine. But now we're feasting on a famine food and we're not properly preparing it, we're spraying it with tons of stuff and we're. Yeah, we're over consuming it.
Yeah.
So there's a lot of like. Okay, it's not all or nothing, but it's something that a lot of people should look at because it is a gateway food. Because of the, the occluding and zonulin, the leaky gut syndrome that it can trigger. Then it really creates a cascade for lots of things.
I've never heard of gateway food. I've heard of gateway drugs, but yeah, it's a good gateway food.
I would say gluten with glyphosate is a gateway food.
Gateway food to more inflammation.
Yeah, exactly. More food sensitivities, et cetera. Yeah. So number two would be of the inflammatory core. Four would be dairy. Again, it's what we've done to it, not the dairy.
Right, right.
It's homogenized, it's pasteurized, is denatured. The protein isn't what it once was. The enzymes that help break down the lactose and the casein is beta A1, not by 8. So humans would have consumed grass fed A2 raw dairy for thousands of years. But we've sort of. It's a shell of what it once was. People are having. And so that would be number two. Third would be seed oils, which is a little controversial, but I don't know.
Why it's so controversial.
It's being looped up in all politics, but it shouldn't be controversial. The over consumption of omega 6, not enough omega 3s. The omega 3, 6 and 9 ratio matters.
Yeah.
Plus the manufacturing and processing of these things matter.
Yeah. When you degum things with hexane and you. And you deodorize them with sodium hydroxide.
What could go wrong?
Bleach to, to, to clear. My favorite thing is then the American Heart association comes and puts a heart healthy label right on there. And so that's gonna end. You know, the average consumer is like cruising down the aisle and they're, you know, if, if I'm a mom and I'm getting this stuff for my kids and I'm cooking in the kitchen, I'm grabbing the heart healthy label.
Exactly.
Right.
Yeah.
So I, I, I don't think the jury's out on seed oils.
No, I don't. Oh, exactly. Well, yeah, it's, it shouldn't be controversial. Now there are, you could make the argument. I don't know if I would, but you could make the argument that there are probably better versions, like an organic sunflower oil. Probably is better than.
Yeah. Cold expeller press.
Right, exactly. So, yeah, I'm not making blanket statements, but you have to look at simplication. And fourth would be sugar. Right. Obviously. Even, even the, even the nicer sounding euphemisms like agave nectar is a nut. One that's like, A lot of people within wellness are like, yeah, I'm having all these packaged foods that are healthy, but it's still a lot of added sugar. And it, if it looks like agave nectar, it's, it's almost greenwashed in a way where it's like somebody just squeezed the agave and poured it in the cup. And it's so natural, but it's still high fructose, lacking fiber, so it's going to impact blood sugar negatively.
Right.
So that's the inflammatory core four. And then if I could add one, it would be alcohol, which I lose friends every time I talk about.
But yeah, I mean, I've completely eliminated it. I drank once last year. It was on New Year's Eve and I regretted it.
How was it?
Yeah, just.
What did you drink? What was it?
Tequila.
Okay.
But, you know, I was like hearkening back to my old, you know, days when I, when I drank. I was like looking for that, like, awesome. Like I was looking for my, you know, my night was going to go from a five to a nine and a half.
Yeah.
And then I would just suffer the next day. And it went from, you know, it just stayed at a 5 and I still suffered the next day.
Well, isn't that interesting? I mean, that's a testimony, right? Because people, nine and a half.
I would have been like, okay, maybe that night was worth it, you know?
Yeah, right, it did. You just need some methylene blue and some hyperbaric.
Yeah, yeah, well, I did, of course, then I punched myself and I was like, you know, I did hyperbarics and red light. My whole, you know, my whole, my whole circuit.
Yeah, you see, you're getting, you're getting the euphoria on Things that love you back with not without the crash. And I think a lot of people, they, when I talk about alcohol or those foods, they think like, oh man, like that's a miserable existence. It's not like avoiding things that don't love you back isn't restrictive.
Yeah.
It's self respect. So we need to get out of that sort of insane, unhealthy relationship with things around us. Like, because continuing to eat things that don't love you back and wondering why you're still miserable, it's like staying in this toxic relationship.
Totally.
And wondering why you're still miserable. Get out.
I call cold plunging my drug of choice because, like, nothing makes me feel better for longer. If you've ever been high on your own dopamine for six hours, it's like you won't want to do anything else and you'd start getting addicted to cold plunging.
It's not about living exactly. It's not about living this sort of acidic, monk like life. It's, it's really, it's, it's the best of life. Feeling great is a, is a blessing.
Yeah. Well, I mean, Dr. Cole's been amazing. I'm, I'm, I absolutely am bringing you back on the, on the podcast for, for, for round two. I think you're doing amazing things in the world. I really, I deeply appreciate you coming on. You know, what we do now is I, for those that are part of my VIP community, we go into a private room and I allow the community to have some access to you because they, they knew you were coming on and they're gonna can ask you some specific questions. So if you're interested in becoming an Ultimate Human VIP, just go over to theultimatehuman.com and sign up to be one of, one of my ultimate human VIPs. This is the community that I'm building to change the world. And I can't do it by myself, but I can do it it with all of you guys. But before I end the podcast, we always ask every guest the same question. And there's. If you've seen my podcast, you know it's coming. There's no right or wrong answer to it. But what, what does it mean to you to be an ultimate human?
It's being, it's having deep gratitude and it's living the life that God has called me to and being not thinking. I have that entirely figured out.
Yeah.
Right. Being open to not becoming overly identified with what I do. Right. But just being a vessel for him in this life that's what it means to me.
Wow, that's amazing, man. Well, Dr. Cole, where can my audience find you?
Yeah, thanks, man. Everything's@drwillcole.com the information about the telehealth clinic, the books, the podcast. My podcast is called the Art of Being well.
I'm about to be honest, beyond it.
Thanks. Thanks so much. Yeah, but everything's there. I'm on at DrWill Cole on Instagram and Tick Tock and all that stuff.
Amazing, guys. So we'll link all this stuff in the show notes, and as always, until next time, that's just science.
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