Toxins, Parasites and Infections: Why Your Hormones Are Out of Whack with Dr. Jaban Moore

So she walks into my clinic, and I've been working with her. She's 50 years old, and she's like, "I got a bone to pick with you." And I'm like, "Oh, what'd I do?" She goes, "I started menstruating again. I didn't sign up for that." And I go, "You did say you wanted to feel younger." We had worked on the toxins and the infections in her body, and after we dialed that in, her hormones re-regulated, and her cycle started back up because she wasn't to the point of life where that actually was gonna happen.

Parasites versus mold versus heavy metals. I think these are a lot more common than people realize.

Go to ChatGPT and ask how common parasites are found in the United States statistically. There's more than a million hospitalizations yearly in the United States. There are tens of millions of cases of parasites in the United States alone every single year.

Wow. This is definitely something you're going to want to listen to probably a couple times to take notes, and then grab the free training that Dr. Jaben Moore put together with this, 'cause we're gonna dig into chronic infections. And this might be something that you've been ignoring or avoiding because A, you didn't know how to figure it out, or B, it just seemed too scary. But these chronic infections, and we're talking about Lyme disease, parasites, environmental toxicities, PANS/PANDAS, these can actually be at the root of a lot of things that look like they might be perimenopause or, you know, some hormonal imbalances are creating this or just compounding those issues. So we're gonna dig into all of that today. I've been wanting to do this for a while since I met Dr. Jay Ben Moore. He's a chiropractor who's, you'll get why he's gotten so deep into functional medicine and specifically focusing on chronic illnesses. I'll let him tell his story here. As it's pretty wild. We're going to talk about how you can actually figure these things out for yourself and do something about it. He kind of blew my mind, and I'll share with you at the end one of my top takeaways because it was something I'm not doing that I am absolutely starting. In fact, I was taking notes going, when I get home, I am starting this right away. So he's got a team with him. They work at Redefine Wellness, uh, and he does online consultations, has resources, and is also doing a Balance the Biome training that he's gifting you for free. You can get that at jjvirgin.com/jaban, J-A-B-A-N. And I will be right back with Dr. Jaben Moore. Dr. Jaben Moore, welcome to Well Beyond 40.

Thank you for having me.

Well, I've been waiting for a while. I've been wanting to have you on cuz we have not really gotten into chronic infections, and especially talking about them related to women. And I guess the obvious first question is, because look at you, big strapping healthy dude, how on earth did you get into this area of specialization?

So I personally ended up with Lyme disease when I was in probably undergrad. I don't really know when. I loved being outdoors. I was an athlete my whole life. I was a collegiate All-American multiple times. Just to give you— it can take down anybody that gets into this situation the wrong way. I I went to chiropractic school. I was like, I'm gonna be working with athletes. I wanna give back to the community that helped me, that I was so passionate about, which was sports. And here comes this crash. I was 200 pounds. I had a six-pack. I was squatting 600 pounds. And then the, it just felt like the floor fell out. Erectile dysfunction, brain fog, body pain. So I went down the search of why is my body not operating well.

And I mean, I know— How many years ago was this?

25 years old age. I'm 39 as of now.

Okay, we'll do some math. So 14 years. Because I— and I— the reason I asked this is, you know, in the last 5 years or so, Lyme disease is much more out there. But back then it was something that happened in Connecticut.

14 years ago, we didn't have Instagram, Facebook, ChatGPT, where you just type in a symptom and there was somebody talking about it. So I felt really alone. I mean, I went from doctor to doctor starting with more chiropractors, 'cause that's the school I was in. And then that went out to functional medicine, medical providers, naturopaths, that went out to regular medicine. 'Cause I was just looking for answers. I was getting nothing with the, just what felt like compounding symptoms over time. And you know what I got? Here's a little blue pill. Take L-arginine. Well, just work out more. You're, you're just, you're just stressed.

Yeah, because 25-year-olds have erectile dysfunction all the time. Totally normal.

No, and I, I'm not the person that's willing to accept that ever, that it's just normal to have these problems. I mean, I get— so here's, here's the thing, like, I'm now working primarily with women. I'm 90, 93% women in my clinic. I think honestly, cuz women are just simply smarter about taking care of their health or more motivated, whatever you wanna put it.

We usually just drag the men in. So exactly. If you work with the women, you'll get the men, right?

Or, or I get a man and I'm like, oh, I get to see a guy today. Awesome. And I'm, it's his wife that's talking to me and he's sitting there, you know, just kind of like, well, and don't you find it?

I'm gonna, I'm gonna like, you know, kind of blow you up a little bit with this, but you talked about all these other symptoms and then you said, and erectile dysfunction, you wanna get a man's attention. Back when I used to see a lot of people one-on-one, If I wanted to get the guy to comply, I'd go, listen, you know, if you don't do this, do you have these symptoms? He's like, oh, it was like the way to get them their attention. So you're seeking this out at 25, getting offered all sorts of stuff. How did you end up figuring out what the heck it was?

I was sitting in a conference with 100 doctors and somebody says, well, have you ever heard of Lyme disease? And I was like, well, I've heard of it, but I don't know anything about it. And they're like, well, maybe you should look into that. I'm like, Tell me more. And they're like, well, I don't really know. Nobody knew anything back then. So finally I did find a guy that knew something, drove to Wisconsin. He was able to identify through clinical diagnosis that that was what I was dealing with. Gave me a protocol to work on, which was more functional medicine oriented herbs, frequency-specific technique. Took me a month, I started seeing a change. It took me a year to get really results. But I can say now, 14 years later, I go to CrossFit and I'll compete with the 25-year-olds. I am fine. So I want to make sure that anyone hears that. It's like, you can overcome these chronic conditions. When we get into this, it's going to seem like, oh crap, you can overcome it, but you got to do it right.

You want to know if this is your situation so you can handle it correctly and you can get through it. You know, my son had Lyme and Bartonella, so it's, it's a thing. And there's more to it than that. So let's talk about some of the different common chronic infections that women may be struggling with. Because again, I, where I see a challenge is especially women in perimenopause, or now I, I was just at our mastermind meeting and they said, yeah, the big thing now is they're telling women they're starting perimenopause in their early 30s. I'm like, oh my gosh, no they aren't. Like, let's not, like, let's not get confused here. But you look at it and go, okay. You've got joint pain, fatigue, headaches, moodiness. So now you've got to unpack what is it, right? Is it perimenopause or do I have something else going on? So what are some of the common chronic infections? What are some of the common symptoms of these things?

Well, let me give you the story. As I walk into this, I ran into a previous client like 2 weeks ago down in Cabo. We're sitting at the pool and she's like, you remember that time I came in and gave you some crap? And I'm like, oh yeah, I'll never forget it. I've talked about it a dozen times. So she walks into my clinic and I've been working with her. She's 50 years old and she's like, I got a bone to pick with you. And I'm like, oh, what'd I do? And she goes, I started menstruating again. I didn't sign up for that.

And I go, yeah, we don't want that.

I go, well, you did say you wanted to feel younger. Yeah. So, so what we had done is we had worked on the toxins and the infections in her body, Epstein-Barr virus. We did find several parasites and some bacterial dysbiosis in her gut. And after we dialed that in, her hormones re-regulated and her cycle started back up because it— she wasn't to the point of life where that actually was gonna happen. Her older sister was 53, still cycling. Her mother didn't stop cycling till 55. So for her family, this was a normal thing to still be doing. And she She then after that smiled and started laughing at me. And she said she had to go to the OB and she went to the OB and they were like, "Yeah, you're fine." But just to your point, no, we're not going into menopause at 30. I've seen a 27-year-old go into menopause, menopause, or let's call it stressopause. Her body was stressed with infections and toxins and life and kids and everything else. So the most common infections that I run into with women, let's just start with, The easy one, Epstein-Barr virus. 90 to 95% of Americans or people in the world tested are going to have Epstein-Barr virus. This doesn't mean it's active and it's the major problem, but it's there and it can reactivate under stressful situations. We call opportunistic infections what this is. But then Lyme disease. Lyme disease is this thing that, like you said, it's still only, by the way, thought of as in Connecticut. But I've tested people in whether it's the Netherlands or Africa or California, um, all foreign places to me. They all can have—

they're kind of the same. I mean, a couple things too. It's like, it's not like we're staying in one place. So A, we're traveling, but B, can't you get— I mean, like, there are ticks everywhere, right?

Well, sure. And people are, well, the ticks are only in Lyme, Connecticut. I'm like, oh, because last time I checked Ticks obey state borders? Yeah. No, they get on birds and those birds migrate. They go to Mexico, they go all over the place. We go on vacations. And by the way, tick-borne illnesses, it's, it's the wrong name. It's vector-borne illnesses. So vector meaning it could be a spider, mosquito, a tick, a flea, a mite. If it's carrying the organism inside them, which is a bacteria, Lyme disease is a bacteria, but it's also Babesia, which is a parasite, and Bartonella, which is another bacteria. It's also infections like parasites such as nematodes, which, by the way, if you poop and you see little things that look like rice and it's something you haven't ate recently, that's probably a parasite. So these things can be inside of vectors. So these insects that bite you and then, and you carry them along with you. There's even some studies and some information out there to show that it can be passed down families, right? So there's some other cases where we think that some of these types of infections, not specifically Lyme, but they can be sexually transmitted. Epstein-Barr is the mono virus. It absolutely can be. It's the kissing disease, right? Like it can be crossed through saliva. So I've talked about bacteria, I've talked about parasites, viruses, and then some other just things that can happen that, that don't get talked about nearly enough is mold toxicity, which is a toxin. But if you are in mold long enough, it can colonize you as a fungus. So if you've heard of thrush, where you get white on your tongue, this is Candida. That's a fungus. If you see this yellowing of the skin, almost like a filminess, that can be a fungus. The cradle cap can be funguses. If you have athlete's foot, this is a fungus. So these infections, these— they get in your body and they cause problems. And instead of somebody looking at you as a woman and saying, You know, maybe you're not going into perimenopause at 30 or 40. Maybe there's something stressing your body that is causing your body to shift to where it's not anymore, anymore worried about reproduction. No, it's worried about survival. And that's why your body's shifting the hormones. We're just going, oh, this is all in your head. This is the time of life. This is your body. It's, it's crap medicine.

Well, and I also wonder if, you know, if you have some of this in your body and then as your hormones start to shift and it creates that additional stress, if then it becomes more opportunistic. Like if someone's having really bad perimenopause symptoms, maybe it's not just perimenopause either. Oh yeah. Because you think about this and unless you're going to someone who's pretty forward-thinking and innovative, no one ever tests for these things. Like, in the reality, we should be looking for parasites on a regular basis, like once a year. And I'll tell you a funny story. Vibrant Wellness just sent me a bunch of labs. They're like, "We wanna do some lab testing on you." I'm like, "Okay." And generally, I do a bunch of stuff every year just to see where things are. And they send me a total tox test. Well, we have a recovery room in our house with a big sunlight and sauna, and then a smaller sauna, and an H-bot, and a cold plunge. And the cold plunge, we discovered, was leaking. Now, at first we didn't know it was leaking, and I was like, honey, the floor in the recovery room is bubbling. Like, what's up with the floor? Like, there's something wrong with the floor. And Tim finds out that it's all leaking. And then we pull out the cold plunge. And then before we even look at the floors, I get the tox test back. And guess what? I'm like, uh-oh. And you know, we pulled the floor up and it is like black mold. It's ugh. In our recovery room that we've been sitting in one of the, sometimes we go in the sunlight and sometimes we go in that sauna with the, you know, up to your neck. So we're sitting in the sauna in the room with the outgassing of the black mold. I'm like, oh my gosh. It can happen all over the place. And I think this needs to become more of a foundational test that we do.

Mm-hmm.

But it just really, it really isn't. And I think especially with women in their 40s, it's so often you just get dismissed of, oh, okay, well that's just normal. Who does someone go to for this? How would someone know? What, what are they looking for?

If you're looking to get answers, you need to go to somebody that's not using outdated testing at this point. Even the studies that are coming outta the CDC, let's say Lyme disease testing for instance, shows that it's gonna miss 50 to 60% of cases. The CDC, I believe it was 2015, said, hey, we caught 25,000 people with Lyme disease. We think it's more like 300,000 to 1 million. So if you're using standard of care testing, it's not going to give you the information you're looking for. And just to your point, talking about, you know, cycles and even difficult periods, I've had women come into my clinic with debilitating cycles like they're shut down, can't work, can't function. And when we figure out they're dealing with parasites, I'll talk about parasite testing here in a moment. Their cycle is like normal. You go to Japan, you go to active cultures, PMS isn't a thing. They don't even know what that means. So when you're looking for a doctor, you need to be looking for somebody that is forward thinking. They're wanting to do a deep dive on quality, up-to-date testing, right? Like if you go to your, your standard of care doctor, in most cases when you're asking for a Lyme disease test or a parasite test, it's like getting DOS on your computer. Remember that black screen with white typing? And we're in the AI age now. Like, let's not go backwards. Let's use good testing. Vibrant America—

Well, what is good testing then?

Vibrant America has great Lyme testing, has great mold toxicity testing. You can use organic acid testing, which is a urine test. It doesn't even need the needle. And this is gonna show you mitochondrial markers. It's gonna show you toxin markers, methylation. So, are you able to detox toxins out of your body markers?

It can show you— I love organic acid tests. I actually used to teach way back when for Metametrix, their organic acid test. I think it's one of the most valuable tests and it's no one ever does it. Yeah. Like it's just conven— and I guess because insurance doesn't cover it with a lot of—

Insurance doesn't cover it. I ran 1,000 last year and I was teaching for Mosaic Laboratory. I think they have one of the best tests right now for organic acids. Because the big thing is this is like we got to stop chasing symptoms and start actually getting down to causes so we can get results. So you need to find a doctor that's a detective, that's somebody that is actually willing to do the work to give you an answer of why you don't feel well. Because the reality is this: if you're 40, if you're 50, outside of some injuries that you've had, Right? Like I've dislocated my knee 4 times. I know it's gonna be a little achy. There's things I can do for it, whether it's stem cells, exosomes, rehabs, keeping my body mass in a healthy place. Outside of stuff like that, you shouldn't feel bad.

Early on, my nutrition mentor goes, yeah, you shouldn't get sick. Cuz every January I would get sick mainly cuz I was a weight loss expert. So January was a nightmare and by the end of January I was destroyed. And I was like, oh, he goes, you shouldn't get sick. Like it was such a reframe because I think we frame illness as normal. When it really isn't. And aches and pains and all these things is normal. I mean, go to the pharmacy, go to any, you know, Walmart or whatever, they— CVS. And it's like, what is all this constipation, pain, and everything, and heartburn med? So back to the organic acids, because I, I'm so on board with this. I think if people just started there with organic acids, they'd save so much time and money.

Agreed.

Not chasing symptoms. Someone going through an organic acids test, what would they find out by looking at this? Because I always likened it to— it's like taking your car to the mechanic and being able to look at the exhaust for all the problems.

Oh, I love it. So I, I call the Mosaic Organic Acid my physiology test, and here's why. The first 18 markers are different types of infections, so Candida yeast, mold, bacteria. After that, we go into oxalates, which are products that are problems. They are molecules that are in your body that can irritate you. They can make burning, numbness, body pain, aches. They slow down your mitochondria. They even, if you're urinating them out, can cause a little bit of burning. So you feel like you have that chronic UTI. So if you're a person with interstitial cystitis and you're like, ah, you know, is it that? Is it something else? This could be another thing you could look at. Beyond that, you're looking at your ketones, your Krebs cycle. So this is your ability to make energy. If your mitochondria are suppressed, you don't make energy right. You're gonna end up being vulnerable to everything. You can get sick, you're going to be tired, you're going to be brain fogged. So you really want to see if your mitochondria work. I mean, that's one of those, uh, magic words out there in functional medicine these days. Mitochondria is looking at neurotransmitters. So, you know, that addictive personality you have may be due to an overabundance of dopamine that's coming from a bacterial dysbiosis. You could show nutrient absorption, amino absorption, And all of these things, detox pathways, are all on an organic acid test. So it gives me this big overview of your physiology. And from there I go, hey, it looks like we might be dealing with mold or a uranium toxicity, or, you know, you're not breaking down fat very well, which maybe is another reason why you're not able to lose weight. Your energy is low because your Krebs cycle is suppressed. So let's figure that out. And it gives you the, the, big vision of how to do this. When I see more than 2 markers in the Krebs cycle that are off, I know there's a toxin that is messing with your electron transport chain. So I go find that toxin through like a total toxin panel from Vibrant America. And by doing this, I get to the root of it. So the question you just asked was, how do I know if I'm going to the right doctor? Well, they're one, being the detective. Two, they're offering you solution-based medicine. So they're not saying, I'm gonna put you on a pill that you're gonna take forever and you're gonna come back to me once a year to stay on this pill. They're giving you a, your body's full of mold. Let's solve the problem by getting you either out of the mold or getting it out of you, depending upon your situation, so that you can go back to being vibrant and just worry about lifestyle stuff. Just eat well, exercise, the basics.

Yeah. I will tell you a trend I'm seeing that I do not like. Is that in some cases of like integrative medicine, all they're doing is switching from giving you medicines to giving you supplements. I go, that is not the point of this. We still have to figure out why this is happening. Like just giving you the supplements to stop it from happening didn't figure out the problem in the first place. So what you're saying makes a ton of sense. So someone goes through this and let's like, I'd love to unpack parasites, versus mold versus heavy metals, like what these things can look like, and then what the heck you would have to do for these things. Because I think these are a lot more common than people realize. One, you know, but they're also all fixable once you figure it out.

They are. And you know, I'm going to give you some statistics, some, some research-based data that, that might scare some people. But remember, all of these things are fixable and all of these things have solutions that are obtainable. So one, 50 to 70% of buildings found by the EPA were water damaged. So that's half plus buildings that can have water damage and mold. Somebody's out there is going to say right now, well, mold's everywhere. Yes, it's literally in every house built. I don't care whether you're in Scottsdale, Arizona, in the desert, or you're in Florida through hurricane season. You have water in your walls, so water can be in your home, or you have a kid that spills a drink and you don't deal with it. So mold can be there. So we do know that mold is very common, but if it's a problem which can easily be tested through the Vibrant America test, then you can go and, and deal with it. Right. And by dealing with it, maybe you got a little bit of remediation. Sounds like you got some floor stuff that you have to do. Yep. Mm-hmm. Um, for me, I, I had a little leak from a replaced roof where they didn't seal a nail and it dripped onto my ceiling in my kitchen and I had to cut a big hole out and then put a new piece of sheetrock up. Right. Like, And I didn't do that. I had a professional team do that. But parasites, how about that? How common are parasites? Well, if you go to your, your typical Western doctor, they're not, they're not common at all. But here's what I want you to do. Go to ChatGPT and ask how common parasites are found in the United States statistically. Giardia is a single cellular parasite, so it's not a big worm. There's more than a million hospitalizations yearly in the United States. If you look up Strongyloides, this is a nematode parasite, so it looks like a grain of rice. Again, still not a big long worm. 100 million cases known. And this is World Health Organization puts that on there. There are tens of millions case— of cases of parasites in the United States alone every single year. So parasites are very, very common. But since our testing is so poor for them, you just get told, oh, you have IBS. You have Crohn's, ulcerative colitis, you have a bad menstrual cycle, you have fibromyalgia because Babesia, which is a protozoan parasite that comes from Lyme disease family, it's not from Lyme, but it's associated to it, can get in your muscles and make you achy and hurt. It causes grinding teeth, these parasites can, gut bloating and dysbiosis. So if you have SIBO or H. pylori and it never goes away, Parasites, a good reason for that. So both mold and parasites are significantly more common than what we're told, and they cause a myriad of symptoms that are not just, you know, parasite-wise, you got a worm coming out of your butt. That's what you see on TV or on the TikToks. Or mold, you have allergies. It's not that symptom. So I'll just break them apart for a second. Mold, the most common symptoms that we hear about are going to be allergies or lung issues. That's the beginning. As the stress increases, it can become liver toxic, kidney toxic, neurologically toxic, because there are hundreds of different toxins that are produced by different types of molds. Yes, there's the black mold, but there's a lot of other kinds of molds too. And each mold toxin can do something different to you, but mostly they're generating inflammation. That affects a part of your body. So a lot of my clients come in, they're like, you know, I moved into this house and everything was fine. And over the next 6 months to a year, which they don't even recognize, symptoms started increasing. Or they had a storm, fixed the, the whatever happened during the storm, but they didn't get all of it. Symptoms started increasing. Their kids started having frequent urination. They started getting more tired. They started having mental health issues. So for me anymore, when somebody comes in with a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, overwhelm, burnout, I'm not looking at them— or irritability or moodiness— I'm not looking at them going, oh, you need a therapist immediately. Although I think they need to consult with one, but that's not my immediate, like, that's what it has to be. It can also be that you have inflammation on the brain because both mold, parasites, and Lyme and Epstein-Barr, all of these things, as they generate immune problems in your body, they can generate something called molecular mimicry. And molecular mimicry is where the body actually is so stressed out, or this organism is creating a byproduct that looks like your tissue. So then you, instead of attacking just the problem, the infection, you attack yourself and generate autoimmune conditions to your brain. It's called autoimmune encephalitis. So Mold is really big on this. I see a lot in kids. I see a lot in adults too, where you see molecular mimicry leading to autoimmune brain. So now we have all these brain symptoms associated. So that's mold. Now parasites can be a little different. It creates histamine reactions just like the mold did for the sinus and the breathing, but more in your skin. So you might get rashing a lot more. Although mold can do that, it's not as common. Parasites can cause you to have a lot of hair loss because it's stressing your body and depleting your nutrients.. It's gonna cause more GI issues so that you have a lot of bloating, cramping. So if you need that, you know, omeprazole, you have an acid reflux, is it a parasite? Maybe. If you're having some constipation, parasites are notorious for this, but they can go the other way too. Like that Giardia I mentioned earlier, they can cause you to have diarrhea. So there's just all that GI discomfort can happen from parasites. The biting the teeth down. So the grinding, the headaches are really common parasite side effects too. So whenever all of these common symptoms come up for me, I don't immediately go, oh well, that's just your genetics, you got to deal with it. I go, no, let's rule out some of these main players.

So someone has parasites, which I would find it unusual to not have some, right? I have— I've actually got a buddy, a doc out of Albuquerque who works with a lab in Africa, and you send your blood and stool there and they test it. It's, it's pretty wild. And then he sends you these African plant juices that you use. They're the most disgusting things ever to kill off whatever the things are that you have. But it makes sense that they would be very forward-thinking in these different countries.

Mm-hmm.

And know how to look for these things. But like the whole family did it. Everybody had something.

Mm-hmm.

Because how would you not? You're eating vegetables, you're eating meat, you're traveling. Like how would you not get into some of this? We have dogs and cats and, you know, and, and I think that's one of the common things. We think we're in a first world country, we're safe, but where would someone pick up a parasite?

I love this question because exactly, we are the antiseptic bleach country, right? Like, My mom taught me growing up, if you smell bleach, it's a good thing. By the way, bleach, the smell of it, super toxic to your lungs. So just a sidebar there. But where do parasites come from? Do you eat raw anything? I don't care if it's a lettuce, a strawberry, a blueberry, blackberry, a sushi. If you like your not well-done meat, so medium or rare meats, these are all potentially going to carry parasites because you're not cooking it out of there. So any of that, who's got their dog that they love to cuddle with and it kisses them on the face or scoots its butt across your bed? How about that? You're leaving parasite residues in there because you deworm your animals. They live in the same environment you do. And to be frank, I'm going to guess a lot of your listeners probably deworm their dogs or animals yearly and they feed their animals better than they feed themselves as far as an avoidance of parasites kind of mindset because they're likely either cooking their food for them or they're giving them, you know, the little dog food that comes out and has to be tested for organisms. And then they pour it in the bowl to eat it. Right. So they're in the same environment we are. So you're going to pick up all the same crap that we can pick up just as easily. And then, you know what your defense against parasites is? Because if you're healthy, by the way, so like you and I, when we're healthy, and we're forward-thinking, your body actually will defend against parasites. I was on a summit a few years ago and it was the Microbiome Summit, but it was from a perspective of specific strains of bacteria. There are bacteria in your digestive tract designed to defend you against Strongyloides, Giardia, Babesia. But you know what we've all done to our guts? We've taken a ton of alcohol. Junk food, preservatives, antibiotics, and dumped it down our digestive tract, which has dysregulated our gut, killing off many of those protective bacteria. So what I like to tell people is your body's designed to heal. It's designed to be well. You got to do the work to get there. But in the meantime, be realistic about your environment. Parasites are in your food. They could be in your water if you've ever swam in a lake, a pond, They're definitely coming off your animals. And if you've ever put your hands in the dirt, which I highly recommend you do, and then touched your face or your mouth, you probably just put some sort of spore into your mouth. So the reality is it's not, we should try all these things to avoid the parasites. We just simply need to do the work to make our body robust enough to defend itself.

In a perfect world, we would have a great microbiome. We'd be in the dirt. We would be eating raw things and we'd be fine because our gut microbiome is awesome. In the interim, we're gonna have to kill off some of those things while we're getting our microbiome back in shape, right? Because things have now are opportunistic because we brought our defenses down. So you're saying bring your defenses up, but in the interim, like launch a little bit of a warfare to get yourself back to baseline. Is that it, right?

Absolutely. Get your, uh, in your case, African juices. In my case, I use a lot of different herbal tinctures. And on an occasion, I have medical providers in my clinic will use ivermectin, albendazole, posaconazole. The prescription antiparasitics do work. It's just, one, can your liver handle it? Can your body handle it? And is it the right and best option for you? So I just take a wide variety of look at this. It's like, okay, we need to modify your lifestyle to allow for your immune system to be strong. Because by the way, if you're overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, depressed, which is the mental health things we were talking about, it's going to increase cortisol, it's going to increase weight gain. But on the side of that, it decreases your immune function. So now you can't defend yourself as well. It dysregulates, by the way, stress decreases hydrochloric acid in your gut. So you're decreasing your defense mechanism to parasites when you eat those foods or you touch your mouth or you get kissed by your dog. So maintaining your health is a multi-pronged approach.

So I remember during the pandemic when we were taking ivermectin every week and hydroxy— now I can say it. Back then I was like, shh, you know?

Yeah.

But one of my girlfriends who's a naturopathic doctor and lives kind of between Europe and the US, says, you know, we still take, we take ivermectin every month because we live on a farm, we've got animals, we're doing all this stuff. And I'm like, oh, huh, because I know in a lot of the African countries, they'll take ivermectin every, I think they call it their Sunday pill. Yeah. So I don't know what you think about that. Is that a good or a you're crazy?

You know, I don't think it's crazy. I would, you know, for me, I'm like, is it necessary to take it that often? I'd probably take some herbs just to switch it up, because I'm, that kind of guy. I don't think it's unnecessary to do something. I have farmers that I work with that said, you know, when they were growing up in the, the '60s and '70s, it was normal. Deworm the cow, deworm yourself. Little for you, little for me. Like, it was just common practice. But because we became this 'we're too good for parasites' mindset, 'we're too good for organisms' mindset— 'ooh, gross, I don't want to think about that' mindset— we've lost the basic knowledge that these organisms exist around us and with us. And by the way, your body will use parasites on purpose to bring them in to detox you from metals and other toxins. So let's go back 200 years. You drink from a spring, that spring has too much metal 'cause the ground shifted and it let stuff out of the soil or out of the rock bed. You drink it, too much metal, your body will bring a little parasite in, allow it there, Soak up the metals because parasites love the metals. They carry 6 to 8 times their body weight. And then guess what? Your body's immune system kicks them out. Today it doesn't work that way because we are constantly bombarded. Unless you are actively doing something about it, you are constantly bombarded by toxins. So those parasites are just feeding and growing, feeding and growing until they become problematic. So I do think that in our culture we need to make it commonplace. To do one, a parasite cleanse, probably at least every quarter. And two, you need to be actively engaging in an anti-toxin lifestyle because if you're not, you're getting full of it.

Back up to the parasite. So parasite cleanse every quarter at least. Oh, at least. What does that look like?

So for me it's simple. I, I like a few different herbal companies. So one would be Cellcore, another would be Byron White, a third would be Systemic nutrition. So let's just take Para-3 from Cell Corp. I would do Para-3 for 10 days. I would do that alongside of Mimosa Pudica, which is another herb that's like a parasite glue. I would take those two things at a dose for my body size. I'm about 200-pound male, so 30 drops 3 times a day for 10 days. Para-1, like I said, glue. So I take it away from everything. I do that at 2 to 4 pills a day. 1 hour from anything else because it's going to stick to it all. I do that and then I add in some glutathione, some NAC, some milk thistle, along with a little bit of Tudca. So Aegis Formulas came out with a new Tudca Max that has all those things neatly tucked together. So I'm going to take that with my other 2 supplements for 10 days once a quarter. That's a general easy thing to do. There's a lot of other ones that I like to pop in there just because I personally love to rotate things so that I know that I'm catching all the little pieces? Because I'll tell you this, I've had people come in that were on Sharkman's protocol, which was this— what I used to think was a really heavy-duty protocol. It was ivermectin, it was posacol and ibendazole, all three rotating for 2 years. And then I would bring in herbs on top of that, and they would have Herxheimer or detox reactions where they would actually feel worse. So that got me to thinking, those 3 really powerful meds are doing a good job, I'm sure, but they didn't catch everything. So for me, it was about variety with the clients I'm working with. I'm always switching things up, changing it. So if you work with me, I'm gonna give you a quarterly cleanse and it's just a different thing each quarter to make sure that you're staying ahead of the game and that you are keeping these organisms guessing so that, you know, let's say ivermectin worked really well for everything but Strongyloides, the next quarter we're gonna get that one.

What about the mold piece of this? Ah, like, how common is mold? Because it seems like this is really underreported.

It is massively underreported. It's massively underreported. Like I said, it's 50-70% of buildings. But I'm gonna give you guys some, some wins and some losses here. The win is that there's only about 25% of the population that is extremely sensitive to mold. They have an HLA-DR gene. And then from there, there's some people that are more sensitive but not as sensitive as them, the MTHFR, which is about 40% of the population. That's a genetic type also. You don't processed B12 or folate as well. And then there's a lot of other genetic types that can make you a little bit more vulnerable because they decrease like your vitamin D, glutathione processing. So if you've ever run the genetic testing, you can look at that, go, oh, I might be a little more vulnerable to mold. But if you assume that 50% of buildings— and if you have a flat roof, by the way, I'm going to make you like 90% likely to have a mold leak at some point because flat roofs are horrible. So mold is going to be pretty common. We're all going to run into it somewhere. Is it your church? Is it your your mom's house? Is it the school you went to? The dorm you lived in? We're all going to run into it somewhere. How vulnerable you are is going to make you more problematic or less, but we're all going to run into it. And mold, no matter who you are, um, I don't have any of those genes, and I was in a moldy basement that had mold 6 inches up the wall in undergrad. I didn't care. It was cheap and I was poor. That's all that matters. I can stay here. It just stinks. My girlfriend was like, oh, it's gross smelling. I don't want to come down here. And I'm like, I get it, but it was like $200 a month. And for me, that's how I was gonna get through school. Well, hindsight's 20/20. When I lost my weight out of being a shot putter, all that toxin flushed into my body and here comes Lyme.

Oh yeah.

So there's my origin story for you. So mold is really, really common. I would say that 70% of people at some point in their life is gonna be around a toxic mold situation that can cause a problem to their health. Some of them are going to get over it and detox it on their own when they leave it. Many of them are going to see me or you or someone else, and they're going to have a decreased function. So what they need to do is, if you have symptoms, you're listening right now, get to the, the health detective that you need to go to. Get to this person that you trust to be your health advocate. Get mold testing just to rule it out. And then if you have it, make sure that you find out that your current environment is safe. And that's the big piece. If it's from the past, you know what, it's fun to think about it, but who cares? Make sure your current environment is safe. You can run what's called an ERMI test, an ERMI test. You need a competent person to read it, which is just a screening tool. It is not the end-all be-all test for mold, but it's gonna tell you, is that kind of mold that's on your test in your environment? And is it at a level that is going to be problematic? And then you can get an expert building biologist, environmental technician into your home to deal with it if you find it. And that's, that's my first step. So test yourself, test your environment, and then go from there.

So a detox lifestyle, you know, I wanna bring this up as kind of our closing piece because the influencers would have you think that this makes that you do a little 5-day juice cleanse and you're cool. No. Which you brought up something before and it's so important to hit home. We store toxins in our fat. In a perfect world, we would never embark on a fat loss journey unless we were adequately, optimally rather, detoxifying so that we didn't make ourselves worse, which is what you just described when you dropped all that fat. So what are some of the things, as someone's listening to this, that they can do right now to start minimizing their exposure and getting rid of some of these toxins?

Toxins. Yeah, so I want to give you the dos and the don'ts. Don't go to someone that get a one-size-fits-all detox protocol. Do go somewhere where they run testing and give you a customized program designed for you based off of your biomarkers. Don't go to someone who says this is going to be done in 30 days if you're dealing with mold or Lyme or parasites or any of that. It's, it's going to be a long time, and a long time can be 4 months to 2 years, depending upon what you find in your custom Lyme or other testing, right? Because this is not going to be fast if you've got a lot of different biomarkers. If I see Lyme and bacteria, I'm like, that's at least 3 different protocols that last at least a month apiece. That's the minimum. So if you have symptoms, you go get this testing and you're like, I want to go down the route of real detoxing, you one, have to get the right testing. You two, have to prep your body. So this is not just, ooh, I have parasites, give me ivermectin, because that's gonna trash you. So if your detox pathways, if your body isn't optimized to be ready for it, it's going to take energy from you that you don't probably already have if you're dealing with this, and it's gonna make you actually increase cortisol, and crash and burn and feel worse. So if you've ever, you know, worked too much, slept too little, and you crashed, same kind of thing, but add the chronic infection on top of it. So what I talk to people about when they're coming into my clinic is we got to make some radical lifestyle choices if you're in a really bad spot. So sleep optimization. Look, we're talking about women here today. Primarily women were shown that they need somewhere between 8 and 9 hours of sleep minimum. And this is not like 8, 9 hours of sleep every now and then. This is every day. Because to make hormones properly, you need that rest. You also need time for your body to detox. Your glymphatics, or your brain, detoxes at night. So if you want your brain to be healthy, you've got to give it time to rest, recover, and detox. So sleep. You got to eat healthy anti-inflammatory foods. I still remember that you were one of the first books I ever read where it was the autoimmune diets. It was avoid these 7 things, which is still true to this day. Avoid sugar, decrease your gluten, decrease all of these foods that are stressful to you so that you eat a healthy and a whole food, low processed diet. Make sure your air is clean so you're not retoxing, right? If you're in mold, you're bringing more toxins into your body every day. Don't retox. And then look at your hygiene products. What are you putting on your skin? Is it the latest greatest, "Oh, I'm gonna make my skin so soft by pouring in parabens and estrogens and other toxins?" Well, then when you go to detox, what are you doing? You're just, I mean, at best, you're getting rid of the stuff that you're putting in every day. That's the best case scenario. But oftentimes, because you're bringing new toxins in and trying to move old stuff, your body gets more stressed out and crashes. So I'm always talking about the environment. Don't forget about your teeth and don't forget about implants in your body. So these can also be issues and areas that we evaluate next. Okay.

You wanna hear a gross one? Yeah. I went to Dr. Sanda Moldovan, who's in our mastermind, who's amazing biologic dentist nutritionist, like just incredible. And she just like, oh, come see my office. She did a CT scan on my jaw. Now I've gone to so many dentists over the years. I forgot that in my early thirties I had my wisdom teeth pulled. Old and the guy left roots that became a cavitation. And no one could figure out why my immune system always looked weird and fired up. And, uh, they were like trying to figure it out. No one's ever been able to figure out. Massive infection in my jaw.

Ah, yeah, common.

I'd gone to all the— like, I'd gone to really good dentist. Yeah, no one's—

they— Jerry and I were doing a, a talk and he said 86% of wisdom teeth removals that he sees has a cavitation associated with it, which is a hole in your mouth, like you said, like have an infection. That's a lot.

Yep. And, and then no one asks. I was like, I forgot it even ever happened until she brought it up. I'm like, oh yeah.

I mean, my mom's health crashed after her wisdom teeth were removed at 40.

Wow.

That's a piece of the puzzle that I never forget about. It's literally in my paperwork. You have to answer all kinds of dental questions coming into my functional medicine clinic. But then the next piece I was going on to which you'll love this, is nervous system. So do you feel safe in your environment? And that doesn't mean your environment is not safe, 'cause a lot of the women I'm working with, they've cleaned up their environment, they still don't feel safe. They still feel fight or flight all the time in their environment that they've curated, that they've detailed, that they've made sure had no mold and all these other things. So then they have to do nervous system work, right? Like your mind matters. Meditations, Breathwork, limbic and somatic retraining has been a secret sauce that I pour on to every recipe that I'm working with people on because I wanna make sure that they're not stuck in the old brain patterns. I used to do a lot of neurofeedback in my brick and mortar. What I would find is you get people all the way to zero on all their infections and their toxins and their environment. It's all perfect and they're still in having an anxiety pattern. And I go, I bought this machine and I mapped their brain. I'm like, holy crap, their brainwaves were trained to be anxious by all the stress they've been in their whole lives. You literally have to do physical therapy for your brain to get out of that pattern. So that's a part of the detox for me, is detoxing old brain patterns.

Yeah. And I love that you call it physical therapy for your brain. That's a great way to frame it.

I use Primal Trust a lot, which is a woman physical therapist, DPT. And she, better than anyone that I've seen, is able to speak to women in a format that is just accessible, implementable, right? Like, that's so key for me is can my client actually implement what she's asking and then want to do it? And I've had so many women tell me like, thank you, thank you so much for putting me in that program, which of course makes me happy and I keep referring to it. So all of this is what I call the safe place and the feel safe section in my note before I even get to the detox. And that's where we have to make sure your lymph is draining, you're pooping, your liver's working, your gallbladder's working, which is using different things like castor oil pack, coffee enemas, lymph dry brushing, using the herbs I mentioned earlier, the glutathione, milk thistles, NACs, TUDCA to actually open up all that drainage. So that when I actually get in your body and give you something like an ALA, an iodine, a binder, an antimicrobial, something that kills organisms, that your body can actually get that stuff out.

That is like the key biggest takeaway I want everyone to hear because I think it is my huge concern with so many of these detox things out there. It's like you're not ready for that. Mm-hmm. Don't go there yet. You first need to make sure your body can actually eliminate it. Don't free it up if you can't get rid of it. Yeah. Now you just unleashed, you know, unleashed the enemy in your body where they were tucked safely away.

If you don't do those things that I said, feel safe, so your environment, your mental health, like your nervous system retraining, which maybe you have to do that alongside of everything else we're doing because you still have enough infection, your body's gonna stay in that fight or flight, and then open up the drainage. That's like going and signing up for a marathon and running tomorrow when you've been bedridden. It's the same equivalent. Don't do it.

Good metaphor. So you see people, you do this online.

I do this virtually all over the world. I'm supporting people because when I was sick, all I wanted was to find answers. And my, like, my little slogan has become this. I said on a podcast, I said, I don't wanna be your next practitioner. I wanna be your last.

Yes. Well, and what's great too is you had to drive, what, like 12 hours to go find a practitioner. So when someone's sick, the last thing they wanna do is have to do that. So that's fantastic too. And I know a lot of these labs are urine or poop, blood spots, so easy enough to do from home. So we are gonna put how they can access you at jjvirgin.com/jaban, J-A-B-A-N. But you also have a training that you are gifting everyone. 'Cause obviously I told you before we started, I'm like, oh yeah, it'll be like 20 to 40 minutes. I'm like looking at going, oh, we could go another hour. I haven't asked you even half the questions. However, I know you do have this training. Tell us about the Balance the Biome training you're gifting everybody.

Yeah. So everybody thinks, you know, when they get into health, they're looking for balance my body. I just want my body to work. Give me the mitochondrial aid, give me the NAD+, give me the BPC-157. Peptides are the craze right now, right? And yeah, and I just stepped back and I said, look, everybody, Yeah, you need to balance your body. You need to detox your body for sure. But what about your environment? You've got to deal with the environment. You also have to deal with the organisms that are inside your body. So balancing your microbiome, that's the bacteria, the viruses, the fungus, the parasites, bringing them all into harmony inside your body. When I look at a stool sample and I see all these pathogenic bacteria high and all these normal gut flora low. It's balance that you have to bring it to. So I'm— the Balance the Biome training and the piece of the puzzle that people have to understand, it's about bringing your environment, your microbiome, and your body all into balance, which is gonna give you success.

Nice. All right, that will be at jjvirgin.com/jabin. Obviously you need to come back, so we'll figure that out. And I really appreciate you taking the time to walk through all of this in a non-scary way.

Well, thanks for having me. Like I said, with the nervous system work, I respect your nervous system and I want to keep you in a place of positivity. I joke with clients every day, the more we find, the better. I just try to set them up for success. The more junk we find in your body, the better it is, because then there's a reason for why you're seeing, why you don't feel well. So it's all about getting your brain and your body to work together to create success.

Well, thank you. You're doing amazing stuff, Dr. Jaben Moore. Appreciate you.

Thanks for having me.

Okay, here was my mind-blown moment: the quarterly parasite cleanse and rotating the types of things you're going after. Because it's been in my brain, and especially since I went and did the Vibrant America test, the Total Tox, where we discovered, yes, we did in fact have black mold in the house where the Cold Plunge leaked, and, you know, the gut zoomer, it's been in my brain. I think we really need to be looking at not just, of course, really restoring our gut microbiome, but going after some of these parasites on a regular basis. For me, I was thinking that was once a year, and how Jaybin described doing a quarterly parasite cleanse, I was like, that makes so much sense, and it's a doable thing. So I am starting that one when I get home. And crazy thing is, I literally just got introduced to someone who just sent me a parasite cleanse. So I was like kind of going, oh, I don't need it. Oh yes, I do. So that's a big takeaway. And the other two important takeaways from this are— and he mentioned this, he started to talk about when he started to lose fat and started to feel sick. When one of the big things I focus on is taking a muscle first approach to body composition, that before you start to focus on losing fat, focus on putting on muscle. But on the flip side of losing fat, before you start thinking about losing fat, you really want to make sure that your detox pathways are working well, that you've got good gut microbiome, because as you free up toxins, you want to make sure you're getting them out. So that is where, um, this Balance the Biome training can really help you and, and getting your, your biome up to speed, getting your detox pathways cranking before you start to lose fat. So it was another one that I want to emphasize there was that. And then I wanted to pull out the Organic Acid Test. I feel like this is one of the greatest tests out there that just is not focused on enough, that can give us so much key information on how your body is actually working and where you need to focus, which saves you time and money. Right, and remind you that you're not crazy, that we do really need to focus on a regular basis on optimizing, 'cause our lifestyles have gotten so far from where they need to be. Even when you're doing everything right here, just our food and water and air and travel and all that, you know, just puts a little hammer on things. All right, so again, jjvirgin.com/jaban, J-A-B-A-N, and thank you so much for tuning in. If you loved our show, it would be such a great thing to leave a review. I super appreciate it. It makes a big difference. So I appreciate that. And be sure that you like and subscribe so that you get notifications on the next show as well. And if you've got someone who's struggling and can't figure out what the heck is going on, forward this show to them and you might be just saving a life. Thank you.