Detoxify and Thrive: Strategies for Reversing Inflammation and Autoimmune and Chronic Diseases with Dr. Tom O'Bryan

Welcome to The Perfect Stool: Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome. This is your host, Lindsey Parsons, and today I'll be speaking with Dr. Tom O'Brien. Dr. O'Brien is an internationally recognized speaker focused on food sensitivities, environmental toxins, and the development of autoimmune diseases. Dr. O'Brien is considered a Sherlock Holmes for chronic disease and holds teaching faculty positions with the Institute for Functional Medicine and the National University of Health Sciences. He's the author of You Can Fix Your Brain and The Autoimmune Fix. But before our conversation, if you haven't yet followed or subscribed to the show, be sure to do so. And if you want to get transcripts of the podcast, pop over to my website, HighDesertHealthCoaching.com, and sign up for my newsletter. You'll also get my free ebooklet, Finding Your Root Cause Through Stool and Organic Acids Testing, when you sign up. And if you haven't yet done my quiz on which stool test would help you get to your root cause, you can find a link in the show notes and take that. Now on to the show. Dr. O'Brien, I've seen you appear on many a health summit, so I was very excited when your folks reached out to me. So welcome to the podcast.

Go! Thank you so much, pleasure to be with you.

I know you published a recent book on environmental toxins, and I would like to get there eventually, but first I'd like to focus on autoimmunity. And I often get clients reaching out and asking if I've worked with someone with their very precise autoimmune disease, and I usually reply something to the effect of yes or no, but it doesn't really matter because all autoimmunity has common roots. Would you agree with that, or are there specific antecedents that differ by autoimmune disease?

Well, there are antecedents, uh, in terms of you may have a genetic vulnerability for one weak link in your chain versus another. Mrs. Patient, when you pull at a chain, it always breaks at the weakest link. It's at one end, the middle, the other end. It's your heart, your brain, your liver, your kidneys. And that's determined by two things, your genetics and your antecedents. And antecedents is a geek word that just means how you live your life. You know, for example, if you eat tuna fish 2 or 3 times a week, you likely have mercury toxicity because most, if not all, the tuna is high in mercury. And that's an antecedent, how you live your life. That's what determines the weak link in the chain. So when your body crosses a line of tolerance, where are you gonna show the symptoms? Wherever the weak link in the chain is. But what's the pull on the chain? It's always the same. Always. It's inflammation without exception. The Centers for Disease Control tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. It's always inflammation.

Mm-hmm.

And, and that's what we are talking about in our upcoming event.

Okay. So what signs might your body be giving you that it's moving towards a full-blown autoimmune disease?

Oh, that's a really good question. And it comes down to anytime you don't feel well, it doesn't matter if your body's not working the way you want it to, something's out of balance. And I don't mean performing in a particular athletic event at a certain level, that's training and how you take care of yourself. But when your body's not functioning at levels that you consider acceptable, if there's something out of bounds, My friend, Dr. Rodney Ford, who is a pediatric gastroenterologist and allergist, triple board certified. He used to answer that question this way. He says, well, anyone who is sick, if you are sick, your body's not working the way it should be. And that means your inflammation levels are high. And wherever the weak link is in your chain, that's where you're gonna develop your symptoms.

Mm-hmm. And so autoimmunity in particular, or I mean, it could be blood sugar dysregulation, say, and you could be heading towards type 2 diabetes, but does that necessarily mean that you might also develop an autoimmune disease?

It's most common that with our metabolic imbalances, our immune systems are activated trying to protect us. And the trigger that contributes to the metabolic imbalance that you're referring to is always inflammation. And that inflammation is going to manifest. And it's extremely rare. You know, if you do the testing, the right testing, and there are tests where you can look at 24 different antibodies to your own tissue in one blood draw. And we helped pioneer that test. I was part of the lab that pioneered that test back in 2010.

What's that called?

It's called— lab is Cyrex. Mm-hmm. And the test is Multiple Autoimmune Panel. I think that was the name of the test, but anyway, it's still available. It's a great test. And it was extremely rare for anyone who came to see us with any health complaint that that test comes back normal. Mm-hmm. It would happen. But in general, when you're looking at 24 major different antibodies to your own tissue, 6 to your brain, 3 to your digestive system, 4 to your heart, 2 to your thyroid, the reproductive system, the liver, Uh, when, when you're looking at comprehensively, almost always we see that someone has an autoimmune mechanism going on.

Mm-hmm.

And those mechanisms go on for sometimes decades when you have elevated antibodies. And by definition, when you have elevated antibodies, you're killing off more cells than you're making. Mm-hmm. So if you have elevated antibodies, your thyroid, you're killing off more thyroid cells than you're making. You may feel fine right now. But you're killing off more thyroid cells than you're making. And then eventually you will develop a thyroid imbalance set of symptoms. Cold hands and feet, hard to get up in the morning, wish you had 20 more minutes in bed, chilled most of the time, energy low, a little bit of depression, weight gain. Even if you exercise, you can't burn it off. So all are signs you better check your thyroid, but it takes a while before you kill off enough tissue that you start having symptoms.

Right. So I was gonna ask that, and you sort of jumped right before my next question was how long it takes you to go from healthy to a full-blown diagnosable autoimmune disease.

Well, I'll give you an example from this morning. I will see on Zoom maybe one patient every two weeks. I don't see patients very much anymore because I'm teaching all over the world. I was in Brazil in November and Rome in December and India last month. And when I was in Brazil, someone actually came hundreds of miles. I don't know how far their town is from São Paulo, but they said it was an hour and a half flight and all. They came and just waited outside in the hall where I was speaking to talk to me. And it was, I was really touched. It was a very nice mother of a 7-year-old boy. And she said, no one can help my son. Would you please help us?. And, you know, I can't say no to something like that. And I said, okay, contact this person on my staff and go through the paperwork and we'll do it. And he was a celiac, but he wasn't getting better. And he was squeaky clean, gluten-free. When the family traveled, mother also brought cooking utensils and plates and silverware to make sure there was no contamination at all. But he wasn't getting better. And I had published a study a couple of years ago on a 14-year-old boy like that and who had been to 3 world-famous celiac centers and no one could help. And we figured it out. So this mother asked, so we ran a bunch of tests and what we found out was that he was very high in mold metabolites. Mm-hmm. And she had her house checked and they couldn't find any mold anywhere in the house and they had it professionally checked. And they couldn't figure out when they started to challenge the test, is the test right? I said, well, you're welcome to do it again, but this is an extremely accurate test. It's very rare that it's not right on the money. And the science is clear on that. So maybe you should investigate a little bit more. And the boy was spending one day a week at his grandmother's house for an overnight. And in the wall behind the headboard in the bedroom of grandma's house, was black mold. Oh man. You can't see it. It's in the wall. You can't see it. So they found it. But in the midst of our testing, we had found that he has one antibody slightly elevated, well, which is a marker to the autoimmune disease lupus. Now there are 7 antibodies to lupus, 7, and the literature is really clear on this, but the mother just emailed me, um, yesterday, extremely worried. Is my son gonna get lupus? I mean, he's doing so much better. Thank you. But his blood test showed that he was elevated to the antibody of lupus. And so it took me about a half hour to write the response to her. And I was really proud to take the time to do this one-on-one. Started off by saying, Dear Mrs. So-and-so, the concerns of a mother whose child has an abnormal blood test are never to be ignored. So allow me to take the time to explain this to you. Most doctors don't know this. There are 7 antibodies to lupus, but every single one of them is elevated for a minimum of 5 years and quite elevated before there's ever a symptom.

Mm-hmm.

Your son has no symptoms and he has one antibody elevated. It's 20.07 and the range is up to 20. You know, so it's not, it's not 300.

Yeah. It's, yeah.

And I said, there is absolutely nothing to be concerned about. If this were my son, I would put zero attention on this. Now we'll recheck it in a few months and it should be coming down, but there is good science behind mold can trigger that antibody to lupus being elevated. And your son has a mold infection. And so I sent her the study on the mold infection and I sent her this study on the antibodies to lupus. All 7 are elevated years before there's ever a symptom and multiple years before there's a diagnosis. And that was a paradigm shifting study because what it showed was that you have the elevated antibodies for years before you've killed off enough tissue. And that's the mechanism, you know, you have to be killing off the tissue before you're gonna develop an autoimmune disease. So if you have elevated thyroid antibodies, by definition, they're killing off thyroid tissue. Mm-hmm. They're elevated, you know?

Yeah.

So I said, just breathe easy, relax. And she wrote back and said, I started crying when I read your message. Thank you so very, very much for taking the time to do that. It took me a half hour. You know, I don't have a half hour to answer those simple questions. But I felt good that I did, you know? Yeah. So what, what we all wanna understand about autoimmunity is that the antibodies have to be elevated for years. What we have to understand about Alzheimer's, the antibodies are elevated for 20 years before there's ever any cognitive decline. So there's a group of them. The test is called the Neural Zoomer Plus. It looks at 53 antibodies to the brain.

Tyrex.

Uh, no, no, this is Vibrant Wellness. And, but it's years. Your blood sugar has to be out of bounds for years before you're ever diagnosed with diabetes.

Mm-hmm.

Your pipes have to be plugging up for years before you ever have coronary artery disease. And my goal is to educate people on how do you look for the earlier markers How do you look for the markers that say you got a problem here? And if this isn't addressed, this is the path that you're heading towards. You're on the spectrum of developing lupus, or you're on the spectrum of developing MS. I mean, it doesn't matter what the disease is that you want to identify that as early a stage as possible. You know, there are a lot of healthcare practitioners that claim They're dealing with root cause and root cause medicine. And when you read what they're writing about or talking about, they're talking about something, some aspect, and then something to sell for it. There is no root cause to all disease. There are many causes to all disease. There's one root mechanism, one, and it's inflammation.

Mm-hmm.

And The Center for Disease Control tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death in the world today are chronic inflammatory diseases. It's always inflammation.

Yeah.

So when you start becoming educated on this concept, when you hear the world leaders talking about this, I went to 7 countries and interviewed over 60 people on this topic. Of inflammation. And when you hear Professor Yehuda Shoenfeld of Tel Aviv University in Israel, his department of immunology, Tel Aviv University is world famous. 26 of the medical doctors who went back and got their PhD in immunology from Tel Aviv, and there are many, many more, but 26 of them chair departments of immunology in medical schools and hospitals around the world. They're his students. This is the godfather. And he said a couple of things. We shared the stage in Rome in December, and he said a couple of things, and I'll tell you two of the things that he said that were just captivating. Then I interviewed him afterwards for this docuseries that we're doing. He said, we are born 99% human, which means there's just a little bit of bacteria in the gut of the newborn. When they come into the world, they do get a little bit of inoculation of bacteria from mom in utero. Not much, but a little. And then the birth process coming down the canal is where they get inoculated with a lot of it. And then breast milk is the coup d'état, you know, the icing on the cake to really inoculate baby's gut with the good bacteria. But at birth, we have about 1% of the body, the number of cells are bacterial cells. And many of us have heard that there's 10 times more cells in the human adult of bacteria than human cells. The ratio's 10 to 1. So Schoenfeld said, we are born 99% human and we die 90% microbial. There's 10 times more cells of bacteria in the body than human cells. We are 90% microbial. And nobody thinks about that. So I asked him and I said, Professor, you made the comment, we're born 99% human and we die 90% microbial. Yes. Well then, does that mean that this is really the dance of life is how humans interact with bacteria to determine their joy of life, their function, their vitality? That it really is this dance between the bacteria in our gut and how our bodies function. He said precisely, and as an example, 36% of all the small molecules in the healthy bloodstream, 36% are the metabolites of the bacteria in your gut.

Mm-hmm.

Short-chain fatty acids, nucleic acids, DNA, So are they the exhaust of the bacteria? Can I use that term for our audience? They're the exhaust. And he looked at me and he said, well, yes. You know, for example, Professor, you know, if I exercise too hard and my muscles, the sore the next day, I mean, yeah, I exercise harder than I used to. And so I've got lactic acid accumulating in the muscles. That's the exhaust of a muscle cell. Yes. And I know I just need to drink some water in a day or two, the, the soreness will be gone. Yes. So are we talking about the exhaust of the bacteria in the gut that get into the bloodstream and make up 36% of the molecules? Well, yes, you could say it that way. You know, this is the godfather of autoimmunity. That's not the language he uses, right? Mm-hmm. It's the exhaust. But he said, yes, you could say it that way. And then, Professor, I have to ask the question, why? Why would nature or the creator, however you look at it, set us up to where over a third of the molecules, the small molecules in the bloodstream, are the exhaust of the bacteria in our gut? Why is that? They are the messengers sending direction to your entire body, how to function. Well, Professor, I had heard From Michael Gershon at Princeton. He wrote the book in 1999, The Second Brain, and he got a smile and said, yes, I know Michael well. And he said in that book that for every one message going from the brain telling the gut where to do, there are 9 messages from the gut going up telling the brain what to do. He said, yes, that's correct. And is this a primary mechanism by which that direction is coming? By the exhaust in the bloodstream. He said precisely that we, our life is a dance with our gut. And when you have a bad gut, when you've got too many bad guys, not enough good guys, the exhaust of the bad guys are inflammatory. So you're activating genes of inflammation. 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. So if you've got bloating once in a while, if you got gas, if you got constipation, if you've got diarrhea, you've got an imbalanced gut. And an imbalanced gut means most likely you're sending out more messages of inflammation from the bacteria in your gut than you are sending out messages activating genes of anti-inflammation. And it's this chronic low-grade inflammation that is the root cause mechanism for every disease.

Hey, this is Lindsey here, just letting you know that if you're tired of dealing with digestive issues like bloating, indigestion, soft stool, diarrhea, constipation, reflux, IBS, IBD, or the numerous health conditions that come about when your gut is off like brain fog, weight gain, UTIs, fatigue, mental health issues, or complex conditions like fibromyalgia and ME/CFS, that's my specialty. With my 3 or 5 session gut health coaching packages, we'll discuss different stool and functional medicine tests to find out the root cause of your symptoms. I'll interpret the results and provide clear explanations, empowering you to make informed choices for your gut and overall health. And together we'll develop a customized action plan based on your test results so you can find relief and regain your health and vitality. I come from a functional medicine perspective, trying to incorporate the latest peer-reviewed research and educating you on protocols used by functional medicine practitioners, but devoting lots of time and support to my clients the way a doctor simply can't. If you're interested in a 3 or 5 session coaching package, you can sign up for complimentary 30-minute breakthrough session. Or if you can only afford one appointment at a time, you can book an initial 60-minute consultation. Links for those are in the show notes. Now back to the show. So I know there are lab tests that measure inflammation like the hs-CRP or the sedimentation rate. Are there, are there good measures that people can look at to just get a gauge on their inflammation without having to do fancy expensive tests?

You bet. You bet. In a stool analysis, you can look at calprotectin. That's a very common one. Eosinophil X is another one. That you can look at. Elevated antibodies are by definition inflammatory.

Mm-hmm.

And so when you do a test looking at antibodies in your bloodstream, Mrs. Patient, your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It's there to protect you. There's an Army, a Navy, an Air Force, Marines, a Coast Guard. We call 'em IgA, IgG, IgE, IgM, cytokines. They're all different branches of the armed forces there to protect you. So when you test and you've got elevated antibodies or elevated markers of inflammation, then the million-dollar question is, what is my immune system trying to protect me from?

Mm-hmm.

What is activating this defense posture? And inflammation's not bad for you. It saves our life every day. Excessive inflammation is bad for you.

Mm-hmm.

So if you're making antibodies to wheat, gluten as an example, or dairy or eggs or soy or any food, if you're making antibodies and you're eating that food, you've got elevated antibodies. They are triggering inflammation in your body and that's pulling on the chain. And wherever the weak link is in your chain, eventually that's where you're gonna manifest your symptoms. Oh, I also said this to that parent. That mother about her son with the elevated antibody to lupus, I said, it will take years of these elevated antibodies killing off tissue before your son ever has a symptom. Here's the study on that. So don't worry, you're fine. You're fine. It's probably because of the mold, right? But understanding this mechanism that her son is not about to fall into an autoimmune disease, that's very serious. And we'll be monitoring this to make sure it comes down to the normal range. Although it's only 0.7 above the range. I mean, I get people that are 400, 600, and he was at 20.7 and the range is up to 20. You know, I say it's not worth allocating your time to right now. Mm-hmm. But the point is, it's always inflammation. And when you hear these scientists, when you hear David Fuhrman, from Stanford, who's also at the Buck Institute. David Fuhrman has the contract with NASA. Why are the astronauts aging so quickly in space? And they found out a couple of years ago why it was. There's no way astronauts can go to Mars ever, ever. It's only a 2.5-year flight, you know, and technology will get to where we can do that. But humans will die in space in 2.5 years of old age. They age so quickly. And his team had been tasked to figure this out, and they did. It's inflammation, excessive inflammation at levels they've never seen before, but that's what's causing it. And Fuhrman did this drawing. I know that we're not on visual right now, but if you imagine 3 gears that are interconnected, So when one gear turns, it turns the middle gear, which then turns the third gear. And if the gear on the left is lifestyle, and that means the food choices you have, your exposure to bacteria and viruses, your weight, are you obese? Are you thin? Your quality of sleep, the accumulation of toxic chemicals in your body. That's all different teeth on the gear on one side. And when one of 'em gets out of balance, it starts to turn the gear in the middle, which you could probably guess is systemic chronic inflammation. It's the activation of your immune system that's turning that gear to protect you from the excessive bacteria or the bad foods, eating too many french fries or whatever it should be, which then turns the gear on the right, which is neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular disease, metabolic diseases. And it's a beautiful drawing from Stanford of how all of this occurs. And the bottom line, the bottom is always without exception, as far as I know, without exception, except for unintentional injuries like an accident, everything else is a chronic inflammatory disease. So when you focus to learn more about is my body and my family's body, do we have excess inflammation right now, irrespective of how you you feel, because you won't feel anything for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years. You won't feel it when you're killing off tissue. So if you focus on learning how to ask that question and get the answers, you will not only extend the quality of life, you know, there's a difference between our biological age and our chronological age. And the average American today is somewhere around 76 years old. That's his expected lifespan, but the expected healthy life is 65. So the last 11 years of almost everyone's life are with disabilities on medications. And if you wanna reduce that number, so you're not in a wheelchair, you're not unable to walk up the stairs, you know, that you've got mobility, fully functional, then you want to address this inflammation that's killing off our cells now to maintain a healthier lifespan. Not just extending lifespan on 3 or 4 or 7 drugs, but a healthy lifespan on no drugs.

Of course. That's what we all want.

I hope so.

Yeah. If somebody does come to you already with an autoimmune disease diagnosed, what are the first steps in working with them to try and reverse that process?

It's always the same. First, we explain to them the science is really clear. You can arrest and reverse the development of autoimmune diseases. It's really clear. But to do that, you have to address lifestyle because it's lifestyle where those environmental triggers have activated the immune system trying to protect you. So you have to identify what is it in my lifestyle? So Well, you know, yeah, if we go on holiday for a week and we come home, we have to air the house out. Yeah, it kind of smells dusk in there. No, that's mold. And you have to have your house checked for mold, you know, or if you have a sensitivity to wheat, well, I only get a little bloating, you know, once in a while if I eat pasta, it's not too bad. I'm fine. No, you're not. You're just not so bad that it lays you up. So the key is to identify, are you inflamed right now? Unfortunately, most people won't even entertain the question until they're sick and they're immobilized and their symptoms have stopped them and they've gone to 2 or 3 doctors who gave meds that couldn't do it. Meds are great if you need 'em, you take 'em, but it's not a deficiency of the meds that cause the problem, right?

Right.

You take 'em if you need 'em, but then you find out, why do I need them? What's out of balance here? Mm-hmm.

So it sounds like just interviewing somebody and talking to them about their lifestyle is an important first step. Are there tests that you think are also important first steps?

Like, oh yes. The rule is test, don't guess. If I were to put a bumper sticker on my car, I guess I would put that one on there.

Yeah.

Test, don't guess. 'Cause it doesn't matter how you feel. I feel fine. It doesn't matter how you feel. And let me give you an example of this, which is undeniable. And people, it's so overwhelming to people, they just forget about it 'cause they, they don't know how to hold the information. Blue Cross Blue Shield published a study in February 2020. They got absolutely no press whatsoever because that's when the virus came out. Ah, and that took over everything. They said, we've got a problem here. We've got a real problem. In the previous 4-year period, there was a 407% increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's, 407% in 4 years in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's in 30 to 44-year-olds. Wow. I was like, what? I mean, that's game-changing, which means the inflammation started so much ear— earlier in life for these 30 to 44-year-olds killing off brain cells, killing off brain cells. Because we know it takes 20 years of that before you ever have a symptom. 20 to 25 years. A government commission came out in 2019, identified that because they said Alzheimer's is gonna bankrupt Medicare. What are we gonna do? And the report said, this is going on for 20, 25 years before there's ever a symptom. It's elevated antibodies and other markers of inflammation in the brain, killing off brain cells. Let me give you one example. A paper came out 5 weeks ago that looked at— we've heard of microplastics and how bad microplastics are, but now the technology's available for nanoplastics, which is a billionth of a gram. And this laser technology looked at 1 liter of bottled water, 3 different companies, 1 liter of bottled water. The average number of nanoplastics in those bottles was 2— over 240,000 in 1 liter of water. Well, what does that mean? It means when you drink the water, you're also drinking the plastic that gets into your bloodstream and goes right through the blood-brain barrier and accumulates in your brain. And your immune system trying to protect you fights this invader. In your brain. And here comes the inflammation, which is trying to kill off this invader and the collateral damage because the immune system in the brain, you have 4 different immune systems. The immune system in the brain is the big kahuna and it doesn't have a pistol. It doesn't have a laser-guided high-powered rifle like special forces. It has bazookas. They're called glial cells to kill anything that gets into the brain. But now you've got these nanoplastic particles of water that are accumulating in the brain, activating the glial cells, causing constant firing of glial cells and collateral damage from that, killing off brain tissue, killing off brain tissue, killing off brain tissue. And that's just one example of so many. So what people have to learn first, they have to understand this concept and then they have to learn What are the things in my life? What are the environmental triggers in my life where I can start reducing some of these threats that my immune system gets activated against? And, you know, we've all heard that women, adult women, by the time they leave the house in the morning, they've exposed themselves to over 120 chemicals between their shampoos and their makeups. And men, it's over 80 chemicals before they leave the house. Shaving cream, shampoo, underarm deodorants, and these chemicals, they don't have to prove they're safe. Now, somebody out there saying, yeah, yeah, right, doc, you just exaggerate. No, no, it's called the Toxic Substance Control Act. And your exposure to a chemical at the dose that you're exposed is toxic to humans in a 24-hour period. It's not. And that's how the chemical industry gets away with this. But it's accumulative in your body. So give me a 5-year-old girl that's painting her 10 little fingers and 10 little toes once a week for 25 years. And the phthalates for the chemicals used to mold plastic, the phthalates are in your bloodstream in 4 to 5 minutes after you apply nail polish. Well, there is no evidence that the amount of phthalates that leach out of nail polish into the bloodstream is toxic to humans. That's how they get away with this, but it accumulates in your body. Now give me that same girl when she's 25 to 30, gets pregnant, hopefully has a healthy pregnancy and a healthy delivery. Now she has a family and she's really excited. Chicago, 2016, they looked at 326 pregnant women in the 8th month of pregnancy, and they did urine analysis looking for Phthalates, chemicals used to mold plastic. And they looked at 5. There are many, but they just looked at 5, including BPA. And they categorized the results in fourths, the lowest amount, the next, the third, and the highest. And they followed the offspring of those pregnancies for 7 years. When the children turned 7 years old, they did Wechsler IQ tests on 'em. Not much in medicine is all or every, but this was every. Every child whose mother was in the highest category of phthalates in urine in pregnancy compared to the children whose mothers were in the lowest quartile of phthalates in urine in pregnancy. Every child in the highest quartile, their IQ was 7 points lower, 6.7 to 7.4 points lower. Every child. Now just go on Google and type in phthalates and neurogenesis. Here come the studies. The higher the level of phthalates, the more inhibition on brain cell growth and development. But there's no evidence that the amount of phthalates that leach into the bloodstream from nail polish is toxic to humans. That's how they get away with it. There's no evidence that the amount of phthalates that leach into food in leftover storage containers is toxic to humans. You put your leftover food in a plastic container in the refrigerator, the next day, The chicken's got phthalates in it, or there's no evidence that the amount of phthalates that leached out of the lid of a coffee cup from a coffee shop is toxic to humans. But they put that lid on a hot liquid. The steam comes up, condenses on the underside of the lid, drips that back down into the coffee with bisphenol A, BPA. You put the coffee cup up to your lips to take a drink, and the hot liquid hits the entire underside of the lid. Tapers down into the opening with bisphenol A. And it's all of these exposures. Your soft contacts are loaded with bisphenol A. Credit card receipts are loaded with bisphenol A. You grab a credit card receipt and within a couple of minutes, your blood levels of BPA is hundreds of times higher than before you touch that receipt. So you have to learn about all these things 'cause it's overwhelming. But you just keep learning one thing at a time, one thing at a, and you reduce your exposure. You create the environment in your home for you and your children and in the workplace as much as you can to be as low toxic as possible. Everybody can do that. You just have to learn what to do.

Yeah. So, you know, I'm someone who's aware of this stuff and I pay attention to, and I try and do my best on these kinds of things, But there are always people in your life who poo-poo it and who say, you know, my X, Y, and Z person lived to be 80 or 90 and they were healthy and they used that same shampoo and they used the same whatever. What would you say to those people?

Yeah, I don't have, I don't have time for those people anymore. You know, you, you can lead a horse to water, you can't force it to drink. Yeah.

But those people are using shampoo in your bathroom sometimes if you live with them and they're exposing you to their phthalates.

Well, that's a very good point. So then you, you have your own shampoo in the bathroom, right?

I know, but you walk in the bathroom after they go in and it's like the odors are like overwhelming.

That's really, that's really important. Yeah, you're absolutely right. And that's a difficult situation. You know, Dr. Jeff Bland's the founder of functional medicine, and in our interviews with him, he said, you know, Tom, a negative thought is just as potent a stimulant of your immune system producing inflammation as exposure to a virus. And so if you're living with negative people or negative thoughts, you might wanna reevaluate, or you're destined to spend the rest of your life in this stuck situation. You know, so if you can't have open conversations with these people, I mean, people grow and expand, you know, it's called the 7-year itch. We all grow, we all expand, and there's a new chapter to your life every 7 years. And the question is, are you willing to explore a new chapter with your partner? Or are you guys living the same way you were 30 years ago and you just, you know, the kids are gone now and you don't know what to do. You don't have anything to say. So you sit in front of the television. My father used to call it the idiot box, and you just sit in front of the television, you know, and you're off in your own world and you're not interacting with other humans. In your home. So excuse me for being direct, but this kills people and people don't know it. And I don't have time to try to convince someone. I will give you the information in the best analogies I can of what the world-class scientists are saying. And we're also putting the studies, we're making the studies available. I asked each speaker, send me 5 studies that you think are really important for clinicians and the general public who's interested to know, send me 5 studies. So we have something like 80 or 90 studies that are just cutting edge on all of these topics that we're talking about here today.

So I work with people with gut health issues.

Yes.

And, and, and autoimmune issues, of course, because those often follow. And sometimes you, you know, you do, you do the work on the gut And you clean that up and then I think, okay, if, if it's still not working, what's going on? Then I usually look at questions of mold. I mean, even if they've said I have no exposure or environmental toxins. So other than known exposures, are there tip-offs that you would recognize that maybe says maybe there's an environmental exposure here to some kind of an environmental toxin?

You bet. There are 4 tests that anyone that wants to see me, I don't wanna talk to 'em until I have some information to really help them. So those 4 tests are called the Wheat Zoomer because you zoom in on the problem, and it also, it's the most accurate test that I've ever seen for intestinal permeability, the leaky gut. And so the Wheat Zoomer, the NeuroZoomer Plus, that looks at 53 markers of inflammation in the brain. The Gut Zoomer that looks at what's in your gut, well, your microbiome, and do you have inflammation, how much inflammation and all that. And the Total Tox Burden. Have you accumulated heavy metals or glyphosate or toxic chemicals or mold metabolites? So those are the 4 introductory tests that people will do that we recommend. There's lots of testing out there you can do, but these 4, and they're highly accurate and highly sensitive.

Are those Vibrant or Cyrex or?

They're Vibrant. Vibrant. They're Vibrant. Mayo Clinic calls this technology a new era in laboratory medicine. You know that if I were to, and it's really worth taking a moment to talk about these lab tests. If I were to tell you in 1990, or 1995, you know, in about 30 years or so, I'm gonna hold a little black box in my hand the size of a wallet. And you know, if I push on the front of it and slide my thumb a couple of times, I'm talking about an iPhone, and I slide my thumb a couple of times, I can tell you within 5 seconds that the air particulate matter in San Diego today is 84. Do not exercise outside today. But in San Antonio, it's 21. It's a good day to be outside. In other words, I can tell you any information from anywhere in the world in seconds. I've got the Encyclopedia of the World in my hand, and it's our iPhones, right? If I had told you that in 1990, you would've thought I was watching too much Star Trek and that I was a bit of a nutcase. But we do that every day now and we take it for granted.

Mm-hmm.

The same thing has happened in laboratory medicine, but the technology that most of the laboratories are using, these, or the early 2000s, and the problem with that is that it's right 7 or 8 outta 10 times, but it's wrong 2 or 3 outta 10 times, completely wrong. But the new technology, it's called silicone chip technology. And, uh, Mayo Clinic refers to it as a new era. In laboratory medicine. And I have no association with the laboratory. I wish I had stock in the company, but I don't. Mm-hmm. 'Cause they're doing great work and they're growing so fast 'cause doctors saying, oh my God, look at these tests. These are fabulous. And they're very competitively priced. So all 4 tests that I just told you about are probably, and I don't really know, I don't pay attention to it, but they're probably somewhere around $1,400, $1,500. Something like that. But now, you know, now you know the majors. Now sure, somebody can be sensitive to egg and you should do the egg zoomer or the dairy zoomer or the lectin zoomer. Yeah, there's other tests, but these 4 give you such a comprehensive overview of the likely triggers for the majority of people of where their inflammation is coming from and where it's manifesting. Mm-hmm.

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Yes. Yes. It's really important. Yes. Here, dad, look at this study, mercury in the brain, and this study, mercury in the brain, and this one, mercury in the brain, that it makes your brain inflamed, which kills off your brain cells. Do you, do you have extra brain cells that you don't need anymore? Wake up. And I tell doctors all the time on stage, stop being nice. It's not your job to be nice. Be kind. Kind means authenticity with compassion. You have to speak the truth of what you know and say, well, they're, they're just resistant. Well, then they're gonna die sooner than later of brain deterioration and Alzheimer's, and at the expense of the caregivers spending their time and money and their wellbeing trying to take care of this person they've loved for 50 years who now is moving closer to being a vegetable. And you still are taking care of 'em. Yeah. Yeah. You say, wake up. You don't put up with it. Excuse me, but I had a patient, one of my staff, she worked with me for years and her husband was just a wonderful, wonderful man. Very kind man, friendly man. He was a janitor in a grade school and the kids just loved him all day, every day walking down. Hi, Ray. Hi, Ray. All day, you know, kids who sensed energy so much better than we do, they just loved him. And I'd see Ray at our Christmas party or something and I'd say, Ray, why don't you come in and let me do a blood test for you to check about your cardiovascular system? Oh, doc, my doc says I'm fine. You know, my cholesterol's not too bad. You know, I've just got one medication and it's not too bad. And he says it's good. It's good. But he had creases in his ears.. And those creases in the ears are suggestive, strongly suggestive of coronary artery disease in the lobe of the ear. Just Google ear creases and cardiovascular disease. You'll see the pictures. So I said, I know, Ray, but you know, just let me do a test for you. Oh, okay, doc. And he didn't come in. Then one day he comes in and he says, hey doc, could we do that test? Sure, Ray. I drew the blood. And Ray left. Thanks so much, Ray. I'll have the results tomorrow. Okay. Ray drove home. He pulled over on the way home and he died of a massive coronary on the freeway. So he probably came in because he felt something and didn't know how to say it or that, right? So I don't pull punches anymore. Not on my watch. If you're my patient, excuse me, and, but I will be kind. But I won't be nice. So stop being nice. And I say that to practitioners all the time. Stop being nice.

So the Total Tox Burden, is that a blood test?

It's a urine test.

Urine test. Okay. So is that the best way to test for environmental toxins then?

Well, there are many good tests for environmental toxins, many, but this one from Vibrant is the most comprehensive I've seen. And its sensitivity and specificity, meaning it's second to none. It's right on the money.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So are there gentle ways that people can slowly detoxify their bodies? Obviously removing the input of the toxins, of course, but in terms of pulling it out in terms of lifestyle or supplements?

Sure. Of course. Of course. First and most important thing is that Mrs. Patient, your bloodstream is like a major Interstate highway, 2 lanes in both directions doing 70 miles an hour. And when it gets close to the cities, it opens up to 4 lanes and sometimes 6 lanes. But your bloodstream right now looks like it's one lane. You know, you're backed up. Your bowel movements aren't great. You're backed up. You back a garbage truck or you back your car up into a snowbank. So the exhaust pipe is blocked, the exhaust comes into the car. So if you're not having excellent elimination, if you're not having excellent elimination, you need to hydrate. And it's a third of an ounce per pound body weight. And if you're sweating a lot because you're doing saunas or exercise with a lot of sweat, it goes up to a half ounce. Of water per pound body weight. But you need to do that first before we do anything else. Don't you dare take any nutrition to start detoxing until your highways are open so you can get this stuff outta you.

Mm-hmm.

And that's a first step. And patients often notice they just start feeling better right away. Just right away they start feeling better because they didn't know they were dehydrated. Look, you just pinch the back of your hand. And let go. It should fall flat immediately. If it doesn't and you see a little ridge, you're dehydrated. It's not rocket science. It's really easy to do. You're smiling.

I, I'm smiling because I have that and I drink water literally all day long. I mean, I'm taking sips of water constantly.

Then you've got electrolyte imbalances or some electrolytes outta balance for you. And the water is not being utilized properly. Your intracellular to extracellular water percentage is out of balance.

Okay.

And, and you know, I'm seeing you on the screen here and you have a little bit of a reddish tint to your face, and that may be common for you, or you may have been in the sun yesterday, but that's inflammation. For most people, that's, you're just inflamed. So the question is, why are you inflamed?

I also put blush on, so maybe that's— Oh, okay.

Okay. That, that, that could be that. Also, you have red sunglasses or red glasses on when the frames could be reflecting that a little bit. Yes.

Yeah.

So you start, you start with water. Always start with water. Next is movement. The magic number is 9,826 steps per day. You do 9,826 steps per day. The Journal of the American Medical Association tells us you reduce your risk of dementia by 51%. Just doing that doesn't matter what you eat. Now, I, I shouldn't say that. They didn't see any difference in diets that people were eating. It was the movement. So 10,000 steps a day. And those two basics usually change a person's metabolism. They start functioning better before you get to any detox of mold or heavy metals or anything else. And then you do your tests and you find out what do you specifically have to deal with.

Mm-hmm. Okay. So say, say we've got those, those steps underway, then, then are there, are there supplements or foods that are great for gentle detox?

Sure. There's quite a few. There's a whole category of the different phases of detoxification. There's phase 1 and phase 2 and breaking down the chemicals that we're exposed to. In our lives today. That's the first phase or the first step in a, for our livers break down these chemicals and they break 'em down into an intermediate compound. But if you can't break down those intermediate compounds and they accumulate, we used to call those pathological detoxifiers. Well, it's a healing crisis, Mrs. No, it's not. You just didn't support them properly, you know, but we didn't know that back in the 1980s or 1990s. The science wasn't out then the way it is now. But yeah, there's a whole world of things to do. Green leafy vegetables are always important, critically important. The cruciferous vegetables, critically important. I'm not so much into doing all these little things until you know what you're dealing with. You don't have time to waste anymore. Every autoimmune disease is going up 4 to 9% a year, every year, every autoimmune disease. And we're still talking about, well, what can I do to help break down my toxins a little bit? Dive in. Dive in. Those that aren't ready to dive in, that don't want to learn about the toxicity in their home, houseplants absorb 74% of the toxins in the air. If they're not ready for all that, all right, I'm sorry, I can't help everybody. Come back when you're ready. Right?

Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, I'm just thinking, like, when you have an acute toxicity and you go see a regular doctor, they know what to do with that. Like if you acutely were poisoned with, be it lead or be it some other environmental substance, but—

Well, that's, that's to get them out of crisis, but they don't get the toxins out of the body.

Right, right.

They just get them out of crisis.

Right. And then they, then they hide in the cells and then you've gotta pull 'em out of there. Yeah. So are there particular protocols or companies that, whose products you particularly like for detoxification stuff?

Yeah, it depends on your test results.

Mm-hmm.

I'm sorry, I, I can't give you what you're looking for. It depends on test. For people who are interested in reversing, arresting, or reversing the direction of their health, The Inflammation Equation has over 60 experts talking about what is this inflammation, where does it come from, and what do you do about it? I can't summarize it in 10 minutes. It's, it's a 9-day, 1-hour-a-day event. And every day we, we summarize it and we say, can you believe when Dr. Bland said that?

Wow.

Well, that would mean if I did dot, dot, dot, then that probably would help with this. Yes. Or when Professor Schoenfeld talked about 36%, wow, that, that really reinforces how critically important it is to build a healthy, diverse microbiome. Yes. Well, here's how you build a healthy, diverse microbiome, and that's a 15-minute discussion on how to do that. Right. So there's all of that.

No, I do recognize the longer, the longer I work in this field, the more complex things are and the more you realize the nuances of everything. So it's not, it's not cut and dry that you can just quickly summarize these things.

And everybody wants the quick fix answer. That's what got you into the shape you're in right now. Is going for the quick fix answer and it doesn't work.

Okay. So can you share a success story of how reducing toxin exposure improves someone's health?

Oh my goodness. Yes. A 14-year-old boy who had been to a number of celiac research centers, world famous ones, and was not getting better. He had a failure to thrive. He weighed, um, 92 pounds. His bone age was 3 years less than his chronological age. And parents came to me and they were squeaky clean in how they were addressing the celiac. And there was no error anywhere. They took their own silverware with them and pots and pans when they went on vacation. So there was no contamination. They doing everything right. And it turned out that he had a dysbiotic microbiome, meaning too many bad guys, not enough good guys in the microbiome. With severe intestinal permeability. And when you have a leaky gut, these exhaust of the bad bacteria get in really easily. They're called LPS, lipopolysaccharides. It is what causes sepsis. The number one killer of elders in hospitals is sepsis, and it's accumulated LPS over a lifetime. That's, that's what sepsis is. And your immune system just can't handle it anymore. But he had high levels of LPS. We identified that and we rebuilt the microbiome, detoxed him, got him doing gentle aerobic exercise to mobilize his highways to drain the toxins out of his system. And in a year and a half, he grew 8 inches and he went from just under 90 pounds to 128 pounds, I think it was, in a year and a half. And now he's 5'8.5" and married and happy. This was a few years ago, you know, and so it's a classic example of the best science, but when you're stuck looking at one thing and you don't see the big picture, then you can't see where the obstacle is. Mm-hmm.

So wrapping up, can you just tell us about your recent book and then where people can find you?

Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, the docuseries event, uh, will be coming up soon. It's called theinflammationequation.com/Parsons. And when you go there to theinflammationequation.com/Parsons and register, then a whole world opens up for you and we just start educating you right away, even before the event begins. And books, oh, there's a couple of books. I wrote The Autoimmune Fix, which won a National Book Award. Proud of that, which really explains where autoimmune disease comes from. And then I wrote the book, You Can Fix Your Brain. And that was number one in 7 categories on Amazon. For brain function. And there's 36 to-dos in there. So for those that want to know to-dos, what can I do on my own? You Can Fix Your Brain has 36 different to-dos. For example, here's 3 URLs for glass storage. Go to mileskimball.com and amazon.com and whatever the third one was. You order glass storage containers. And the secret to success to all of this, the, the theme of our event is Progress, not perfection. And the secret to our event was that the subtitle of the book says it all, Just One Hour a Week to the Best Memory, Productivity, and Sleep You've Ever Had. And that's the key to success. Everybody thinks we're going for home runs and you'll never win if you keep swinging for the fence, if you keep going for home runs. And you do this nutrition this month. Oh, the next month I'm gonna try that one. Oh, what about medium chain triglycerides? They help some people with Alzheimer's. And then we go do something else. Stop chasing your tail. There's no home run when you have a degenerative disease. Base hits. And I, I always sign books the same way. I ask them their name and then I write that name and I say, base hits win the ball game. And you keep going for the little things. So just 1 hour a week, You tell your family every Tuesday night after dinner, don't bother me for an hour. I'm gonna learn more how we can be healthy. And then you go back to your podcast and listen to an interview again that they remember that they really liked. Or, or you go to my book and you look at the 3 URLs for glass storage containers and you go to Amazon or Miles Kimball or whatever the third one was. And oh, I, I really like those. And you order 3 round ones and 2 square ones and one for the pie, and you pay with your credit card. It took you an hour, but you're done for the week. But never again will you poison your family with minute amounts of phthalates from plastic storage containers. Give the Tupperware to your husband to store nails in the garage. And then next week you look at organic nail polish companies, and then next week you look at the list of houseplants. You go to my website, thedr.com/plant, and get the handout from NASA on the houseplants. And you go buy houseplants. And then next week you do one more thing, and then next week you do one more thing. And in 6 months, you've completely changed your environment, completely changed the exposures you're getting. And you see somebody at church or somewhere and say, wow, what happened to you? You look fabulous. I said, well, you know, I got rid of my plastic storage containers. I changed my nail polish. I got houseplants in every room. I found out that I did the blood test and I'm sensitive to wheat and to dairy. So I lost 35 pounds when I went off wheat and dairy. And you just go, and your friend, their jaw drops. They said, what? 'Cause they're overwhelmed by just what you've said. But you did it 1 hour a week. And that's the secret to success. Progress, not perfection. That's the key. Progress, not perfection.

That's awesome. I think that's a great point to wrap up on. Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you so much. Pleasure to be with you.

It's nice to have a wake-up call from someone deep in the thick of the research and communication of science on how important all this stuff is and some basic steps we can all take to get our health back in line. The summit he mentioned has already happened, but will still be available online, so do check that out. And if you'd like to support the podcast in other ways, you can buy supplements at a discount from my FullScript Dispensary, order tests at a discount from my Rupa Health Lab store, or use my affiliate links to iHerb, Bulk Supplements, or Amazon. If you'd like to connect with me online, you can follow my High Desert Health Facebook page, join my Gut Healing Facebook group, or join my newsletter list at highdeserthealthcoaching.com, as well as follow me on X, Instagram, TikTok, and Pinterest. Links for those are in the show notes. Thanks for joining me today, and here's wishing you all the perfect stool.