What Doctors Miss About Chronic Illness and Aging with Dr. Jess Peatross

I've worked in both the conventional world now and the functional world, and I'm much more fulfilled in my career helping people get off of medication and seeing lifelong results that change rather than a Band-Aid for the rest of their lives.

You hear more and more about all these weird symptoms, all these chronic conditions no one can figure out. Why is it that no one's figuring these out yet?

There's money that goes behind published studies. Sometimes there are vested interests. Really? Ulterior motives.

Imagine that. So what are some of the things that, that someone could do to just help improve drainage.

Sauna has a myriad of benefits, so this helps people to heal. Breathwork can be a huge detox for people too. I love binders as well. My favorite binders are the humic and fulvic acid binders.

What were you taught that you now believe was just fundamentally wrong?

I was taught, especially as a hospitalist, that if you have a problem, you can spot treat.

I want to start with the truth that most people don't hear until they've lost literally years of their lives to exhaustion, anxiety, brain fog, and normal lab results. Now, if you still feel terrible, it's not because you're aging or you're dramatic or you're making it up or you're crazy. It's because your body's sending you signals that people haven't been trained to understand. Right now, there are hundreds of thousands of women stuck in health no man's land. They've been told they're fine when they know something is not right. In fact, It could be very wrong. And today we're going to explore why that is. The reality is that it has almost nothing to do with calories or hormones and everything to do with hidden toxins, stealth infections, and biological blind spots that doctors rarely look for because they haven't been trained on it. My guest, Dr. Jess Peatross, used to practice conventional medicine until she realized that the sickest patients weren't getting answers because no one was looking in the right places. So if you're someone who's ever been dismissed, told your labs are normal or felt like your body is betraying you, this conversation may be the missing chapter in your health story. I will be right back with Dr. Jess Peatross to uncover why. Stay with me. Dr. Jess Peatross, welcome to my house and my studio.

Thank you for having me.

I'm honored. Yes, and Well Beyond 40. Well, I've been wanting to dig into this for a while because I love your work with all of these kind of like mysterious chronic conditions. And so let's kind of peel it back from the beginning as to when did you start to realize that mysterious conditions actually, or mystery conditions rather, weren't really mystery conditions. They were just conditions that we hadn't figured out yet. Take me back to that point.

Well, I would say this is a blend of patients that taught me over the years and then even my own personal health journey. So it was early in my career. I was working at Whitaker Wellness. I just got out of the conventional hospital realm. Was working in functional medicine, trying to learn all the different trade tricks of the trade.

He was one of the first too, Julian Whitaker.

He was a pioneer. I learned a lot from him and also how to be rebel. So, so, you know, that was in you. Yeah, he brought it right out of me, I'll tell you. So, you know, during that time I had this patient that came in. He was having trouble sleeping, he was having really bad insomnia, heart palpitations, really bad anxiety, a number of other— myriad of other conditions. And I missed the problem. I missed the root cause. And so in my desperation, I referred him to my colleague who also worked there, Dr. Mark Filadé. And he took one look at his labs and his symptoms and said, you know, I think this guy has something deeper, probably chronic Lyme disease. And I thought, chronic Lyme disease? They didn't teach me anything about that.

I was just gonna say, had you even heard of that back then?

Like, isn't that 2 weeks of doxy, doxycycline and you're good, right? So I was a little shocked and shook back then, but it, I never missed it again after that. And with me, I feel like you always sort of have to go through your own health health journey to understand how, just how sick and broken the system is. You don't really understand what your patients go through until you have to go through the system and get a label or have someone figure out what's wrong with you. And for me, it was just accumulation of medical school and residency and living the trauma of life over the years that piled up. And I really had burnout, adrenal dysfunction in the HPA axis. I had my labs were a mess.

What would that mean to the layperson?

That would mean wired but tired. Okay. So not really sleeping properly. Not feeling your best during the day, lots of brain fog, difficulty feeling regulated and energized throughout the day.

And how, like, going through medical school and residency, which seems like probably the most unhealthy, high-stress situation, I still don't understand why it has to be that way. And I've heard all these rationales for why it has to be that way that none of them have convinced me that this needs to be this way. Was it just like a slow decline?

Yeah, I was—

Into this?

Slow, painful death by a million paper cuts.

Right. So you think it's normal?

Yeah, right. Because, you know, you put the frogs in the boiling water, they jump out. If you put the frogs in water and you turn up the heat slowly, they don't realize the water is boiling, which is what happened to me in medical school with my health. So, yeah, it was just really irritated mood issues, anxiety, depressed, not sleeping at night. Then my labs started to be in the red. I had a vitamin D of 10. Wow. And a CRP of 8. It was supposed to be less than 8, and that indicates systemic wide inflammation. I was— wait, a CRP of 8?

8. Isn't it supposed to be 0.5?

It's supposed to be 0 to 3 depending on the lab, but yes, 0.5 is really what we want to aim for.

Yes. Looking back at that time and everything you were being taught, what were you taught that you now believe or now know is just fundamentally wrong?

Yes, there's many, right, as you know. Really, that there's a pill for every ill. I was taught, especially as a hospitalist, that if you have a problem, you can spot treat.

Really? Were you really taught that?

Yeah. Right, exactly. And if you have a side effect from this medication, we have this medication for you.

From an exercise and weight loss perspective, we're taught you can never spot treat, you know?

I know that now, but back then in school, I mean, we were pretty naive and gullible, you know? And on top of the probably 4 to 6 hours of nutrition that I had been taught in school, which was more than most of peers. Yeah. I mean, I'm so glad I know my essential amino acids, but didn't know about like processed pesticides and processed convenience food as well.

Well, that's what you were probably getting served in the hospital, so. Sadly, right? Wow. Okay, so one of the things that you talk about, which I think is pretty interesting, is that you say that most common causes of chronic symptoms are invisible to standard labs. What do you mean by that?

What I mean is that blood work has not changed in about the last 30 to 50 years. You can really get some great things from a number of different cumulative blood work. I'm not knocking on it completely, but it does miss root cause things like mitochondrial dysfunction, which is the powerhouse in every cell in our body except red blood cells. And they make ATP or energy for us. So you have to have a little bit of energy to make energy. And it's really what powers every single process in our body. It's why every single organ in our body works is because the cells make the energy for the organs.

And how would we look at that?

So an organic acids test, it's the— not perfect, it's a snapshot in time, but it's really the best we have right now. I will say there are a lot of different blood tests coming out that are gonna be able to target the mitochondria and which step it's faltering in coming soon.

We can see some of that in an organic acid test. We can. You can see that a lot of the people listening have no idea what an organic acid test is.

Right.

So they're going, huh, so what is that test?

So this isn't one functional test that we're talking about. There are many more for other diseases that go, or labels that go even deeper. But this one is a urine test. They ship it to your house, it's ship kit. You follow instructions in it. Easy urine test, and it looks at breakdown products in the body, things that break down products like amino acids from proteins, or, you know, breakdown products from mitochondrial function, right? And it's byproducts that it's looking at in the urine, as well as markers for mold and yeast and nutritional markers too. So it looks at a number of different things, not just mitochondria.

It was one of the first tests I learned about. I actually used to lecture for the lab. Oh, on it way back when.

Yes.

Um, I kind of got thrown into it because someone didn't show up who was supposed to teach. And I went, "What? I'm just supposed to do the nutrition side of this. What are you talking about?" It's such a cool test because it's sort of like taking your car to the auto mechanic and looking at the exhaust and seeing where the problems are.

That's good.

But yet no one knows about it. And it's such an easy test to do and not really, it's not expensive.

It's a great starter test for people, I think, just to see baseline where they're at too with energy. Yeah.

Cool. Well, what do you think are some of the biggest drivers behind some of these unexplained symptoms, especially we're talking well beyond 40, so women 40 plus. What do you think?

Well, again, use my own personal experience and what I see in every single patient now in clinic is most people are in flight, fight, or freeze. And when that happens with the nervous system, it sounds very simple for me just to say off the cuff, but honestly, everything is released differently in the body from the porosity of the voice, the size of the pupils, the immune responses, the way your, your body handles fuel metabolism is changed based on your autonomic nervous system. And most of us, especially in Western countries, are pushed into this fight or freeze where our every hormone, neuropeptide, and neurotransmitter is released differently in the body. And there's just not a pill to fix that.

You know, when they talk about the studies, they said, we compared a stressed group and an unstressed group. I go, where'd you get the unstressed group?

Yeah. Where are they coming from? Seriously, different planet at this point. Yeah. It's, it's really hard because it's just about everyone. It's the degree to which they're in it and how much it's affecting their physical health. So how would you know? Right. Some blood work can tell. You could tell in my blood work when I was really stressed out.

And what blood— what was it showing?

So just a regular CBC, complete blood cell count. There's a marker called an MCV in there, mean corpuscular volume. Mine was 106, which is really high. We, we usually want it 95 and below. And this measures the size of the red blood cells. So they get bigger when you need B vitamins or there's a lot of stress in the body. Mm-hmm. That can tell you need B vitamins, which you burn through when you're stressed out.

I was just gonna say, so when you're stressed, you're blowing through your B vitamins. Yes. And then Interesting.

Yes. The other one is like a CRP that can show inflammation and stress as well. Homocysteine, which is another marker with a need for methylation and B vitamins that can show stress. And you want it less than 10. Mine was 13.5.

I kept seeing people who had great diets and they had their triglycerides look great, but yet their fasting blood sugars.

Oh yeah.

And I was finally like, oh, explain what happens there.

So fasting blood sugars, when they, when they start to get high for people, unfortunately what I see is there's this cortisol-liver connection. It's almost like the, the endocrine system is a stool with 4 legs. One leg is the liver, one leg is the adrenals with cortisol, one leg is the sex hormones, and one leg is the thyroid. If any of them are unscrewed, the whole stool is wobbly. So there's a connection with cortisol and liver. The liver tells the body to break down glycogen, these big packets of glucose, into small little mini packets of single glucose so you can sustain your blood sugar in between meals. So if the liver is stagnant, it's not working at peak performance, you're really going to have trouble with fasting blood sugars. And in general, if you're stressed out, in general, the cortisol can pull out the fasting blood sugars for people, and it's just really up and down for people. I've seen it too low.

Yeah, I was going to say, it sounds like you also have a lot of too lows, but then you'd have a rebound that would overcorrect.

Exactly.

And then you'd really have trouble sleeping.

Oh my gosh. Because yes, absolutely. Anytime the blood sugar falls, cortisol spikes, wakes someone up in the middle of the night, which is, again, sometimes why people suffer from insomnia.

As well.

Yeah.

What other like drivers are you seeing besides the stress one, which again, I think is, you know, I was talking to you before this started. I just looked at everything going on. I went, nope, not, I am shifting some things down. Like I think we all tend to do this, pile on, pile on, pile on. I know it's how I deal with my house. I pile stuff on until things get like too messy, outta control. Then I go crazy and I clean the whole thing up instead of just keeping it just.

I do that too, actually. Yo-yo cleaning. So other drivers within the system, I would have to say besides the flight or fight response, it's also stealth pathogens. So when you think about things like water damage in the house, most people don't think the place that they spend most of their time and breathe 80% of indoor air most of the time is causing them to be sick. I see that a lot. I see stealth pathogens like Epstein-Barr virus, parasites, SIBO or SIFO. These are big causes as well.

And SIBO or SIFO stands for?

Small intestinal bacterial overgrowth or small intestinal fungal overgrowth. We now know that mold and yeast can colonize the small intestines just like bacteria can and cause issues too. Another stealth hidden thing that causes people's health to tank and is hidden is things like dental issues. So, or, you know, like, uh, root canals, infected root canals. Mercury fillings are now becoming more— it's becoming more widely known.

The challenge with mercury fillings is a lot of that's already been like, I remember looking at one study they did with rabbits showing that the minute they got the fillings, they started releasing mercury and they started getting into their tissues. And yes, by the time you realize this and take it out, you already have a big problem, I would assume.

That's right, because mercury is not easy to get out of the body. It stays layered in the fascial tissues and in the lymphatic system. It doesn't stay in the bloodstream unless there's an acute toxicity that's happening. So yeah, it's very hard to get out of the the tissues.

So you have all of these things, which it feels like you hear more and more about all these weird symptoms, all these chronic conditions no one can figure out. Yes. Why is it that no one's figuring these out yet? Is it that we just don't have this into the standard of care? Is it that, like, what's going on?

I often say, you know, science is slow, logic is fast. And so yes, there's about a 15-year lag behind published studies and it getting put into place in clinical practice and practicality for people. So that's part of it, is that the results just don't translate to doctors right away, sadly. The other thing is, I think that there's money that goes behind published studies, and sometimes there are vested interests. Really? Ulterior motives. Imagine that. And so if there's not money to look at food or vitamins or minerals or other things behind the system, then the studies don't really get done.

But here's the reality with these studies that I think is people need to understand is that they're really expensive to do correctly if they're not done well, like double-blind placebo control, which you can only do for certain things. You cannot double-blind placebo control exercise. So there's certain things that don't even lend itself to that model. But if you don't do it that way, then all of the critics attack you for not having the study done that way. And the reality is, with a lot of the things that you might be looking at, it's so expensive to do, and there's really no one behind it that would want to fund it. Correct. And it's so, it's just, it becomes, you hear the noise of like, oh, so-and-so funded that. It's like, well, okay, so the Beef Council funded the beef study. Someone needs to pay for it. So, you know, it does come down to, it's really hard to get funding for a lot of these things. Yeah. And it seems like to me, especially in the area of like environmental toxins or mystery illnesses, the physicians who've gotten to be really great at it are people who's family member, or they got it. And a lot of times you don't even see much in a blood test.

Yeah, the blood tests only get you so far. They're like the first step.

Well, and I've heard too with like organic out, oh, that's not valid.

I'm like, what do you mean it's not valid? Yeah. I mean, I've heard so much about this, about the testing and how it's not there to back some of the functional studies that we do. But I've worked in both the conventional world now and the functional world, and I'm much more fulfilled in my career helping people get off of medication and seeing lifelong results that change rather than a Band-Aid for the rest of their lives, which is what I saw in the hospital system a lot.

Well, I think there's two different, like thinking back to when my son was in the hospital, like they saved his life. The things that they were able to do with a kid who was basically dead on the pavement and pull him back and so, you know, fix his torn aorta, get the pressure off his brain. It's like miraculous. And then that's what they did. That's all they had. Like that's, and they basically said, this is what we have now.

Yeah.

You know, so I don't know why there's a divide between all this stuff that we need all of it. Like I think emergency medicine's amazing. Yes. But it's not amazing for chronic conditions. Correct. I just think one of the big issues that's just not being talked about are all the environmental toxins.

Yes, I agree. It's a shame. I think people see and they think, oh, there's such a tiny parts per million here. You know, let's say like my yoga pants have, you know, these forever chemicals in them, but it's like 0.2 parts per million. Who cares? But what we don't— we aren't educated on with these toxins is they're fat soluble and they're forever chemicals, meaning they don't break down in the environment or in our bodies very well at all. And so it's a cumulative exposure over and over and over that adds up in the body because they're persistent.

Your body is— I used to say it wasn't a bank account. Now I say it is a bank account and it's a chemistry lab and it's a history book. You know, if I was going to have one tool in the house, it would be a sauna.

Me too.

We actually have two saunas.

I love it.

You know, because it's like, let's try to get this stuff out.

Yeah.

Because if you look at just the forever chemicals, the plastics, xenoestrogens.

Yeah.

It's wild.

And you're right though, you made a really good point. You can sweat these out. I don't think everyone knows that, that you can sweat out some of these chemicals you just mentioned.

I think the first part is how would you know if you've got a toxic exposure? I know way back, like when we first started looking at all these things, just in the nutrition side of it, I would see people that were really reactive to food. We were like, why is that happening? It's not the food. They didn't, like, they didn't all of a sudden start reacting to all these things. What's really going on here? And you can say stress, but it's like, okay, but what pushed it over? Like, and then you look at, well, what's stressing this? And what I saw time and time again is that when people really start to get a big toxic burden, they start reacting to everything.

Yes. It makes them like hypersensitive. It's almost like their liver, the biggest filter organ, is overburdened and their mast cells are just going crazy in their body.

And a mast cell is?

It's the first defender white blood cell. So it's the one that kind of raises the white flag and says, hey, there's a problem here. We see a foreign intruder, a toxic whatever, release this noxious substance from our cell membrane. And that's 200 different chemicals, including things like histamine, trypsin, prostaglandins, which cause swelling, itching, redness, all the things that make us feel just not so sexy.

And what would happen? Like, how do you know if you've got something going on with your mast cells?

Cells? Absolutely. So that's a great question because mast cells are all over the body. They can release histamine in these substances in different parts, in different organs. So depending on where your histamine receptors are being pinged, you might have a different reaction than your neighbor who has a histamine problem. So if it's in the brain, it's things like brain fog, anxiety. If it's in the gut, it's bloating, sometimes loose stools or alternating stools. It's on the skin, it's hives, swelling, dermatographia, it's in the bladder, it's interstitial cystitis. If it's, you know, out in the— in this— on the— in the allergies or in the sinus cavities, it's things like itchy, runny eyes, sneezing.

But how would you know? Because those could be other things too. So how does one know?

Well, usually there's, there's certain labels they'll give people, things like histamine or mast cell activation syndrome, if you will. And this is a collection or constellation of symptoms that they usually meet 2 or 3 criteria before you get labeled with this. And sometimes, I'll be honest with you, JJ, it's really hard for doctors to diagnose. It gets mislabeled all the time. Time with people because it's a catch-all for so many symptoms. So it's kind of like you have to see when you're reacting and why you're reacting and match it up with those symptoms. Is it right after you eat and you're having some sort of histamine response with bloating and brain fog? You know, is it, you know, um, after you have exposure on the skin and then you get hives all over and itchy skin? When is this happening? And sometimes that can be a clue for people too.

What about toxic exposure? What would be some of the things make someone start to go, hmm, —then of course they have to figure out what the toxic exposure is. But what are classic symptoms, or are there any? Yeah, of course.

And it's really people have to pay attention to their body because it's before you're going to get a label or ICD-11 code in the hospital. It's those symptoms beforehand where the—

Insurance really messed everything up in forcing a label.

They did. I have to say, because what happens is when you go into doctor, they can't find anything. Your labs are normal. You look good even though you don't feel good or look well at all to your liking. And they'll say, you know, come back. When watchful waiting, they call it, come back when symptoms worsen or this happens or that happens and things worsen your condition so we can give you a label and then you are indicated for that drug. And that's how the system works. So for most people, they're not going to get a label for like brain fog. So maybe mild joint pains, feeling like you got hit by a bus in the morning, even though you felt like you slept the night before.

But if you looked at your sleep, if you were really able to evaluate it, would it look like good sleep or not?

Heck no. Okay. It's not deep sleep. Sleep. If you have, if you have something to track it with, you're going to see that it's broken sleep at night. You're not getting enough REM or deep sleep. You're not rejuvenated in the morning. And if you feel that way, the results are probably going to show it on something like an Oura Ring. These little questions that I try and spend time with to elicit from patients tell me a lot about if their body's in homeostasis or not. And if it's not, it's really just a matter of time before they get that label.

But I want to catch them beforehand. It's now that there are so many ways that we can look at things from CGMs and sleep trackers and HRV, it's like you're able to at least start to find things that you can say, there is a metric showing that things are not okay. Yes. Right? That I am not a crazy human. Yeah, absolutely.

There are tons of things that can tell us that now. But like I said, it hasn't, it's logic, but it hasn't made into conventional medicine yet for people.

I have a standard of care theory, and I feel sorry for the doctors stuck in that system because— Me too. We all know they don't wanna be there either, but I know I was brought in to bring nutrition into a practitioner training program, but they were trying to figure out how they were gonna get it into the test and how the students would still pass their other medical boards and all the, like, I was like, wow, this became such a thing to teach a basically short course on nutrition. I was like, oh, it's wild. But then you look at all of these things that were, you have standard of care and then you have the insurance codes, you have all of these things. That you get stuck in where you might see different things, but they're not accepted yet. So then they're not gonna get covered by insurance. So, and then you're gonna be treated if you're crazy if you do that. And as a doctor, you can get in trouble doing it. It's, it's a really, there's so disastrous situation.

So many hoops to jump through for doctors and, and patients to get what they need that the insurance doesn't cover. I mean, you should see, it's impossible. It's, it's impossible to get a vitamin C IV in hospital. Impossible. Really? Impossible. You can't.

And it's not that expensive. No. So, I mean, I think a couple things, like, I really love what Mark's— Dr. Mark Hyman's done with Function Health because, you know, $500 a year for all that, twice a year, actually 3 times because you do a double test the first time. I know because I'm in the middle of doing my second year, but like, they do ApoBs and vitamin D, like, just the most— the things that we know that they need to get done, all of it gets done, and it's cheaper than adding on a couple things to try to get your doctor to do it. So. Right. This is fantastic. Some of these other tests are really not that expensive compared to the amount of cost of trying to figure it out. Mm-hmm. And going from doctor to doctor and all the time you lose. So what about stealth infections? What are they and how would we figure that out?

For sure. So stealth infections are things that don't come up normally in just routine blood work and just a routine visit with your doctor. They're not talked about daily, and they hide really well in the body. They're not bad at their jobs. And some of them, like parasites, have been around as long as we have. You know, I mentioned one. There's parasites— there are thousands of different kinds. 30% of them are microscopic. So there's a wealth of knowledge there to learn about. Another one are things like mold and mycotoxins and water-damaged homes. I would like to note that in water-damaged homes. It's not just mold. Gram-positive bacteria called Actinomycetes and gram-negative endotoxic bacteria can all grow in water-damaged buildings too, and that's often missed. There's also things like viruses.

How would you know if you had it?

Yes, so first of all, there are certain clues for people, but in general, if you wanted to test your home, you would look at an ERMI test. So it's an Environmental Relative Mold Index test that's developed by the EPA, Environmental Protection Agency, and it's a do-it-yourself at-home test that you swab and vacuum and send in. And I look at them every single day, so I've kind of got it standardized in my head at what you wanna look for. And you can do it yourself.

You don't need an expert to come in. What about the mold sniffing dogs?

So I have recently got into this with my patients and I've had some good luck. Good luck. I've really had good luck with it and I like it because there's sometimes you can get an Army test and it says, yes, your house is bad. There's stuff here, but you don't know where it is.

I was just gonna say, and what if you miss it? Like I'm looking at this, I did the dust test. Yeah, that dust test. Yeah. I'm like, what if I miss? And I mean, it was a lot of work too.

It is a lot of work. And people get worried, maybe I vacuum or I clean too soon, or it's not dusty enough. People have this question for me all the time. So there is some doubt there when you do it yourself. But the people you come and have it in your house, they are not all created equal. You have to be really careful and do your due diligence and vet everyone who comes in.

How do you even know what you're vetting? For.

Exactly. That's the thing. That's the problem.

Okay, so what about those dogs? The dogs.

I like the dogs. I've had good luck with them with my patients. In fact, we got some, a number of them, I can probably count 4 on my hand right off the top of my head that we couldn't get. Their RMI was bad. It was, you know, up in the 20s. We knew they had water damage somewhere and no one could find it. And who wants to rip all their walls up? Right. So the dogs came in and they absolutely found the areas. Amazing. So yeah, I've had good luck with that actually. I like it a lot. So when you're stuck, go get a mold-sniffing dog for sure.

Yeah. I wonder how you train your dogs just to be mold-sniffing dogs.

Man, I've often wondered how. Wouldn't that be great? Yeah, I would own that dog. It's kind of on brand.

Yeah, well, I had, we, so we have downstairs, we have a recovery room and it has a big sunlight and sauna. Mm-hmm. And then it has like Joovv red lights, Bon Charge red lights, a sunlight and red lights. I can like stand in there and get like from every, side and all the Hyperice, like vibration stuff. And then, and an HBOT. And we had a cold plunge. I know it was really fantastic. We have a cold plunge and the cold plunge leaked. Uh-oh. Now I kept asking Tim because I'm like, the floor is like puffing up. He goes, oh, you know, it's the way the floor was laid. I go, really? Because this doesn't seem right. Then I had a Vibrant Wellness They were like, they go, we should take some tests. I'm like, okay. Every year or two, I take all these tests just to make sure everything's cool. Stools test, tox test, et cetera. They're always fine. Yeah. Not this time. It was horrific. Like, and it was both my total tox test and my gut test, which to me shows, you know, toxins can crash your gut. So I'm like, yes, they can. And sure enough, black mold. There we are in our sauna.

Sauna. I think you're detoxing. That's right. Oh gosh. But now mold spores are pulling more in.

But the important thing is like, I didn't have any symptoms. I was gonna ask. Both of us, like we are pretty resilient humans. And so we didn't have any symptoms. And that's why it's really important to think about these things because when we left our house in San Diego, I was pulling some stuff out of a closet and there was all this black mold. I'm like, oh. You know, I mean, we just never felt it.

Yeah. You know, that's the thing is I feel like even if you're— if your drainage is open and you take care of yourself, even if you've got an exposure, the test is measuring what's coming out. It's not measuring what's layered in the tissues. It's measuring what you're urinating out. And if you've got your drainage open, you can sweat, you can poop, your liver and bile move freely, you sleep at night, your body's in regularity. Like it's nothing.

Then how do we ever know that you have a whole bunch in there that needs to come out?

Yeah, usually people have symptoms and they will go into labor. You didn't have any symptoms because your body was eliminating it as soon as it came in. It's when it stacks up that people start to feel it and their pathways get blocked. Their body can't rid itself of the problem.

The stealth infections, how would one find these?

Yes, absolutely. So stealth infections, if people have certain labels, I'll say something like rheumatoid arthritis is Lyme disease until proven otherwise for me. Sarcoidosis, though, in the studies is mold and water damage in the homes until proven otherwise for me. So there's certain labels that make me wanna look a little deeper for people. Epstein-Barr is connected to 7 different autoimmune conditions now.

Doesn't everybody have Epstein-Barr?

Yes. And there are some people who have sensitive genes where it can actually trigger different autoimmune conditions within their genetic makeup. Most people get it. 95% of people are seropositive for it and they don't remember having mono sometimes. So it's really dependent on the person and what else is in their toxin bucket.

All I ever heard about mono was it was the kissy disease. Yes. How would you know if you even ever had it?

So there's a simple blood test you can do, and it's—

but you could tell with the— if you have Epstein-Barr, but would you remember?

Like, I always— one of my questions I ask every patient is, did you have mono growing up and did it knock you out? Like, were you out for a month or more just laying in bed, fatigued as could be, with swollen glands? And oftentimes those people will be the people that still have recurrences of it where it's relapsing on them. You can get Epstein-Barr IgM, which is acute antibodies, or IgG antibodies, which show a chronic infection. But there's also a simple marker that you can add on called Epstein-Barr early antigen. And this one, if it's positive, shows that this little sucker is reactivating on you. Oh, interesting. So anytime you're down and out, this thing is very opportunistic. It will reactivate and cause the same symptoms: scratchy throat, swollen glands, fatigue. You mentioned dental work.

Um, our buddy Dr. Sanda Moldovan had me— she's like, have you and Tim need to come into the office. I'll do scans and do all this stuff. I'm like, okay. I go in. I've had this chronically elevated white blood count and no one could ever figure it out. I go in, she does a CT scan. She goes, cavitation. So let's talk dental and all that kind of stuff. So I think people don't think about that. Like, I'd forgotten. I totally forgotten about the root canal I had. It was a traumatic experience. The guy left part of the root in. He yelled at me. He told me he was going to end up breaking my jaw if I didn't stay still. I was like, it was so awful. Yeah. That I just blocked it out of my mind until she said, have you had a root canal?

I'm like, oh yeah. Oh yeah. They pulled that one out.

Was that good or no? So she just dug in there and got— Okay, good.

Yeah, but cavitations are an issue we have not talked about. People don't know what cavitations are. This is where most of us had our wisdom teeth removed. Ripped out. I know I did in college, and I had a lot of impactions too. So this is the first place I've actually said out loud that I have an upper left cavitation I have to take care of as well. And it probably is draining my energy. Yes. Sanda, Sanda, she's the best. So, you know, this is where the place where the wisdom tooth was doesn't heal up properly and the gums don't heal up properly, especially someone who had a dry socket. This is an indication that you probably have a current cavitation if you had a dry socket. It. Oftentimes they'll give people like a little clove packet and tell you it's okay and it heals up, and it's really not. The body hasn't fully healed there, and there's a simmering pocket of infection back where those wisdom teeth were. Yeah, and then your body can't get to it. And as you can see, was that the culprit for your high white blood cell count? It was.

What could be other culprits for a high white blood cell count if someone had just one chronically elevated? But I mean, they were all trying to figure out what it was, and they're like, It's EBV. I'm like—

That would be on my list for sure. On my differential diagnosis too is like something like a chronic stealth pathogen, like a long COVID or Epstein-Barr. You know, something like Lyme disease or a coinfection could also do that, can cause a high or low white blood cell count depending on the person. So definitely a stealth pathogen. Your body's seeing something, right?

Yeah, makes total sense. Yeah, I tested for all those, nothing on anything. Although it was interesting when the whole COVID thing came and they tested for your antibodies, I had antibodies No nothing. And then when everybody else got COVID, I'm like taking care of them all.

I'm like, nothing. You're protected with your antibodies somehow.

That's awesome. Well, even when I got it again, I didn't even, I wasn't even aware I had it. I just had a little sniffle. I was like, oh, I guess I should just check. I mean, that was the extent of it. It was like a sniffle. Yeah. So I also don't tend to get sick. Neither does my older son.

Well, your body's got your soldier cells prompt and ready. You've already got a robust number to go after anything.

So yeah. There you go. Warrior. Warrior, warrior. Talking about like, okay, so you've got these infections. I know that you say order matters. Like when you hear about these infections and you hear about parasite cleanses and do these things, you just feel like you wanna go out and just destroy everything, which no, that would be a no. So walk us through what you do.

You know, early in my career I made this mistake and I used to just kind of go out and start—

Scorched earth.

Yeah, 'cause you know, as a hospitalist, we just started antibiotics on anybody that came in and killed everything. What exactly is the hospitalist thing? Hospitalist? So this is kind of the quarterback of the team in the hospital. The emergency department, whenever someone would come in, they would stabilize them in the ER and then they would call me if they needed to be admitted. So, um, if they couldn't discharge them from the ER, they came to me unless it was an acute emergent surgery. So I admitted everything from diabetic ketoacidosis to heart attacks to a foot ulcer, whatever you wanted. I had to know a little bit about.

Wow, but that's what a great broad knowledge base.

Yes, it prepared me for a lot, I have to say.

What made you choose to do that?

You know, I had a really good doc on my team as well as residents on my team in, in residency. It wasn't— I was an intern. I loved them. I loved all of them on the internal medicine team. And I think I had such a good month with everyone and learned so much in that environment. It made me want to choose that profession. Plus, out of internal medicine, you can do a bunch of different specialties, things like rheumatology, nephrology, cardiology. All these are different types types of fellowships that you can do after internal medicine. So it's kind of like this broad base that you can jump and do niches from.

So we know you don't scorch the earth with it. So what do you do?

Yeah, you know, that was early in my career. So now I, I've learned to be nice to my patients. If you want them to come back and like you, then you could— you can treat their body a little bit better. So now I try and get them out of flight or fight. That's the hardest part of my job, to be honest with you. How do you do that? I do it with a combination of supplements and lifestyle changes. So I really like things like vagal nerve stimulators. I really love PEMF mats.

I really love red lights. And what is a vagal nerve stimulator for people who are like going, what the heck is that?

Yes, I actually saw it when I've had a traumatic brain injury before and gone to a brain clinic. My mother went with me because she was stuck in fight or flight and they gave us both these nerve stimulators and I was hooked after that. It's— there's different variations of them. Some come on the wrist, some go around the neck and they vibrate right here on the carotid sheath where the vagus nerve is. Some go right on the sternum here where the vagus nerve is. Nerve runs, and it's like a soft vibration. You can change the setting to do what you want. Um, but does the Happy do that? Oh yes, it's similar to that as well. And Apollo Health, the Pulsetto is another one. Um, and it's great because it, for whatever reason, this soothing vibration calms the vagus nerve and puts it in the right tone, which controls how our body functions and how nerves function in the body. Vagus nerve connects from the back of the brain all the way down, connects connects to different organs all the way down to the small intestines. So kind of a catch-all for everything. I'll do that. And then I'll also use like liposomal GABA with L-theanine. I'll use high-dose minerals because the nerves need a potential or charge to fire. And that charge comes from minerals. So that regulates the nervous system.

And I think we are classically having low mineral status 'cause everyone's filtering their water. Mm, yes. That was my take on it. 'Cause I was like going, why am I getting leg cramps where I never used to? Oh, I just, everything is filtered.

You know what I noticed was that when I started putting reverse osmosis water into my dog's bowl, she refused to drink it and she would drink tap water. Wow. Tap water, but not RO water. And I was like, what does that tell me here?

My dog's maybe— I wonder if we need to mineralize her dog's water.

Yeah, that's definitely, take a note on that. I started doing that after that. I did. Learn something new every day. So yes, I start with the nervous system and regulating that with people. People, do my best to get them out of flight or fight, although you can't always be successful depending on someone's life right then. Next, I open drainage, and that means you have— everyone has these natural emunctories, the naturopathic doctors call them, or ways to release toxins. You guys poop because we release toxins. That's the whole purpose. And sweating helps cool us down. It also releases a ton of environmental toxins, as you mentioned earlier. The liver is one of our biggest filters besides the skin. Helps to process everything out of our body with the kidneys. And so if these things are stagnant or not working at peak performance, people begin to collect toxins in their toxin bucket. And eventually when that toxin bucket begins to overflow, you garnish a label, unfortunately. And so I prep the body because if I start killing things off and then I— you can't poop or you can't sweat, gosh, you're going to feel like you have the flu and then you're not going to want to talk to me anymore. So it's nice to make sure we don't recirculate those. Those are the two steps I take before you do any sort of killing or eradicating.

And how do you know what you're killing off?

Sometimes I'll test. Sometimes with parasites, we— I don't have a great test, or people don't have the money to pay $500, $600 for an extra test for just for parasites. So oftentimes I'll start with broad spectrum herbs, holistic herbs that I know cover things like Lyme, parasites, and bacteria and other things like yeast. Yeast. And that's— and I'll have tests that can quantify some of those, but not parasites.

Any gross things that you've seen from that? Oh yeah, for sure.

I've seen disgusting— I've seen people pull worms out of their nose. I joke that no pictures, any other sexy pictures that you ever slide into my DMs, it's parasite poop picture. That's so funny. That's it. That's all people send me.

So if someone's listening right now and they're like I have felt kind of stuck for years. I have these low-grade symptoms, and I think that's the problem is there's like these creeping up low-grade symptoms. So it's sort of like boiling the crab. Yes. Or you go and try to find them and they can't find them and you, that's just your normal.

What's the first step? The first step really is to start, I think, find someone who will listen to you. I mean, a good doctor, they're not gonna spend 8 minutes with you. They're gonna spend an hour with you getting your history triggers and antecedents. They know what to test for, and the functional tests really do take it a step deeper than a lot of the conventional tests. So it's— I always say, test, don't guess. And then also find a doctor who wants to get you off of medicine rather than spot treat everything and put you on medication, and wants to listen to your story. It's really important that you resonate with someone on that. And it may be easy for me to sit up here and say it— I mean, look on the Institute of Functional Medicine's website. There are a lot of different places you can find a good practitioner these days.

You guys have— yours is all virtual, right? Yes. Yes, yes, it is. How many states can you see people from?

Yes, so right now we've got a bunch of different practitioners with different licenses in different states. I've got 3 now, so I'm moving on up. Where are you now? Which— so Florida, of course, West Virginia, Texas, and Missouri right now. Are you from West Virginia? I'm from— oh, good memory.

Good memory. Yeah. Well, you catch it every once in a while with some of the words you use.

Yeah, I know. I, I tried so hard to get rid of that twang and I never went away.

Now back to drainage, cuz I feel like that's something everybody can benefit from. Yes. And I remember early on in the space, like people would go and do these detoxes and they didn't ever even check to see if they were like, don't free those toxins up. Yeah. That's a problem. So what are some of the things that, that someone could do to just help improve drainage and removal.

I love it. So the biohacking world really had a lot right. Sauna is my favorite. I think we talked about that.

Sauna is my favorite for so many things. Let's talk sauna. Like, why do you love sauna? What, what are some of the different things it does for you?

So sauna has a myriad of, of benefits. I mean, honestly, I love some of the research that shows what it can do with neurodegenerative diseases and how it, um, refolds misfolded proteins based on heat shock proteins. It's activating heat shock protein is? HCL protein is something that happens when we're looking for hormesis. It's a stressor on the body, right? And so it really helps the body to, I think, take a second look at something that it may have misfolded and refold again. It calls for proper genes, actually. So this helps people to heal.

Okay, so we love the sauna. What else?

Sauna is a beautiful thing. I actually like just simple things too. Castor oil packs, dry brushing, breathwork is huge.

People always go, what is dry brushing? I go, it's a brush. You're dry, it's dry, you brush.

And sometimes people tell me it hurts when you go on the, on the shins and the calves. And that's an indication for me that there is toxic load there. Oh, and there's a little bit of tenderness. So as you go on and you get better with the dry brushing and moving the toxins, that sensitivity often goes away for people. Breathwork is a big one. The lungs detox about 70% of the toxins. They're one of the first line of drainage pathways that we don't talk about enough. So breathwork can be a huge detox for people too. I love binders as well. Binders are something nice that if you're remineralized, you can take while traveling or during a detox. Tell me, okay, you just said two things people won't understand.

Yes, you said binders, and then you said you can take them if you're remineralized, which I don't know how they know. So first of all, what are binders?

Yes, so binders are sticky substances that help pull things from the tissues in the body and then bind them up so that you usually poop them out, to be honest.

What are some of the examples of them?

Sure. So zeolite, bentonite clay, and most people have heard of activated charcoal. It's a great one if people drink too much or have a hangover. That's a great way to fix the gut really quick. I wouldn't say fix the gut, but help the gut feel better. And then my favorite binders are the humic and fulvic acid binders.

And so I've got downstairs, I've got a fulvic bath soak. Ooh, I like it. So I did it the other day, but I don't— what's it do?

So yes, it can actually pull things from the tissues, from the skin. One of the things I do is if someone gets a tick bite, I do a binder poultice. So I open the fulvic and humic acid binders, mix them with distilled water, paint it on where the tick bite was, and it sucks the toxins, the actual bacteria toxins from the skin.

You behave like a naturopathic doctor.

Yes. Yes, I do. Disguised as a medical doctor. Yes, I do. You're right. I absolutely do. I actually have been told I'm more naturopathic than some naturopathic doctors. So, you know, the binders are pretty amazing. I love them. But what you want to do is make sure you take them away from food and other supplements so you don't bind up the minerals that you're taking. And so that leads me to the next point about remineralization, because some binders, not fulvic and humic, that's why they're my favorite, but some of the clays, the charcoals, can actually bind up minerals and food from mineral or minerals from food that you've eaten. And so you want to be careful because obviously if you're stripped of minerals, your nervous system doesn't work properly. And then we have a whole other beast we have to deal with. Yeah. So, so make sure you've got your minerals, you've got your electrolytes, you're not sweating 5 days a week for 40 minutes, 150 degrees.

I know more is not more is not more.

That's right. That's right. It's moderation here. So, you know, Binders are great as long as you're remineralized, you're taking the ones that don't bind minerals up, but they can be awesome for food poisoning, for acute illnesses, or, you know, if you're doing a parasite mold cleanse, something like that, for binding up what you're killing off.

Love it. Yeah. If someone was looking at their home and they, they're saying, first I want to get a sauna, but what's one other thing that they could change in their home that they might not be thinking of that could make a big difference? Absolutely.

You know, I always look at what people are like burning in their house as far as candles go, what you're spraying as far as like cleaning, household cleaners and laundry detergents and things like that. That's something that's a pretty easy swap for most people if they just do their research and see how many things aren't regulated in that industry and what they're putting in and what we're eating off our dishes and wearing on our clothes every day.

I was still using, I don't know what, like I was like, how did I do this? I have switched everything over, like over the years. I mean, this is years I've been using all good cleaning products and safe cookware, and I had plastic cutting boards. I'm like, what is wrong with me?

It's like a disconnect. Yeah. But the other thing that people can change in their house is just grab a good air filter.

I'm just gonna do some rapid fire if you're ready. I'm ready. You ready? Yes. One test you love.

Ooh, the Total Tox Burden by Vibrant Labs. My favorite. I've gotta redo mine.

One test you think's overrated. Food sensitivity test. I used to be such a fan of food sensitivity, and now I'm like going, it's just an indicator of other things.

Yeah, exactly. It's not root cause.

It's not the root cause.

That's right. It's not. Yeah.

It's like you've got all these food intolerances because of the other thing.

It's like, don't blame the food if it's a healthy food. It's like there's your gut is making—

It's like fix your gut. Yes. You know? Amen. Pull it out while you're fixing your gut. Fix your gut. Yes. It's not the food, it's the gut. That's right. One red flag symptom you never ignore.

Weight gain and constipation. I never ignore those two. It's a sign that future problems are coming.

Fill this one in. Here's the blank line. Healing is mostly self-awareness. Now, I know you have a parasite checklist of some sort, I think, or an ebook, something you said you were going to give everybody. Walk me through what it is.

Yes. So this is going to talk all about education on parasites. Let's do the ebook. It's much more robust and it's It's multiple pages. It's going to describe crazy pictures. Yeah, absolutely.

We're going to get it for the pic. That's right.

Just for the pic. So you guys can compare what's in your poop. I know you want to do that. So yeah, there's the types, what they look like, what to look for, the symptomatology, my favorite test, how to get rid of them, all that kind of stuff.

Because at some point everyone's going to have parasites.

I mean, they don't understand about borders. People told me, live in the United States, like parasites understand borders. You think we have a great food system here now? Yeah.

Come on. 'Cause I'm just eating food from my backyard that's totally washed, although we're supposed to get the dirt. So, well, I will also link to your Instagram 'cause you have a great IG presence. Do you have a podcast?

I'm launching one actually. It's Dr. Jess Unfiltered. So I'm in the middle of recording right now.

That will be great. Yes, yes. Okay. So yes, we'll put all of that at jjvirgin.com/unfiltered. Dr. Jess, I so appreciate you making the trip across— across the what?

The bridge? Across the bay. That's right. No, thank you for having me. It was awesome.

If you've been struggling with symptoms no one can explain and you've maybe even started to think, gosh, is this just in my head? I hope today gave you something essential: language for your experience. You're not broken and you're not being dramatic and you're not imagining it. Your body is wise. It communicates in symptoms. And the problem isn't you. It's that no one's really taught us how to listen. The truth is you don't need to be fixed. You need the obstacles to healing removed. And that's hopeful because with the right lens and the right sequence, your body knows exactly what to do. So if this conversation resonated, if you saw yourself in these stories, I just encourage you— we talked about some things you could do just to get started. To just take one small step. Quite often it's just that one little thing that can totally change the trajectory of your health and of your life. And as a reminder, I put a bunch of great stuff at jjvirgin.com/drjess. Be sure, of course, to like and subscribe. I really love comments and ratings. It helps the show a lot. It helps me a lot. I'm always looking for how we can uplevel and what you loved about the show so I can do more of it. So thanks in advance for that, and I'll see you next time.