Core 1: Tame the Flame in PANDAS and PANS

Foreign. Welcome. This is a little lunch and learn. We're going to be talking through the core four of my new book, A Light in the Dark for Pandas and Pans. And I just want to be helping you guys with understanding what in the world do I mean by some of these terms? Because they're a little bit. They're like Dr. Gel terms are not necessarily things you might be hearing other places. So of my core four, we're going to turn to the core four and go through. What are they? It is Tame the Flame, feed the bugs, regulate immunity and guard the gates. So today I'll be talking about Tame the Flame. And then each day this week I'll hit the next core four and then Friday we're going to go on for a lunch and learn at 12:00 Central and you can ask me any question about this stuff. So pick my brain because this is. These conditions are, you know, you don't have time as a parent when you're going through this, you have, especially if you have other normal kids or if you have two pants kids, there's just not time to sit down and read. And so I thought maybe it'd be easier to talk through the core four. I highly obviously recommend my book because you understand why some of these things work. But you know, if you are someone where you just don't even have time to sit down and read it here, maybe you can just listen while you're making dinner or something like that and get the gist. So here we are with the gist. So I'll talk through Tame the Flame and then you can ask me questions and then we'll wrap about 12:30. So it's a quick lunch and learn and hi, I love seeing some of my friends on here. Dr. John Pharma, I see you. Nice to see you guys. So let's. Thank you, John. Get the book, everyone. So let's go to Tame the Flame. What in the heck do I mean by tame the flame? That means once your child's brain has gone from into an autoimmune part of Pandas and Pans. So it's gone through the. This is sort of a continuum. The way that I see it that something has tweaked their immune system, something has tweaked the microbiome in the gut. The gut flora is so critical to this condition. It's so critical to why it tipped into autoimmune. But really what happens is that it starts with gut inflammation which begets brain inflammation and then that inflammation goes up and up and up and up and up and up and up over time and, and then there's something, there's a, something that clicks it in and usually it's an infection. Have I had cases where we really couldn't tie any kind of infection to the starting of this condition? Yeah, but it's more rare. So typically it's going to be if it's pandas, that was strep exposure. And that strep exposure could have been strep throat or it could have been strep in the bottom which is very common to have strep peri missed as the reason for starting this whole process. And the strep didn't have to be like yesterday. It can be one week, couple months after that. Strep infection. In the viral category we're seeing flu is one of the most common things to set off a pandas or pans. If you have a kid who has that gut inflammation where it's just on the rise, on the rise, on the rise, on the rise. And then the trigger, and the trigger being that infection, flu is a big one. Also Mycoplasma pneumonia, we see a lot. And then the whole herpes family, which includes Epstein Barr virus which is mono, that's a common one for teens and that includes even cold sore viruses. So something is the trigger that sets it off. Now once that trigger is set off, it traps that brain inflammation into the brain. And so the very first step is to tame the the flame. So we have these precursors. We have the immune system is working on low fuel. So a depleted immune system, we have a toxic kid, so maybe they have trouble clearing certain toxins. And then we have the microbiome disruption of the gut. And that all sets the stage for this condition to start. It makes it really challenging to treat and do the other stuff that we need to do that address those other things. If the kid's brain is on fire so we have this trapped inflammation, neuro inflammation or brain inflammation. And the tame the flame. The whole goal here is to calm everything down so that you don't trigger the kid while you're trying to take care of the problem. Sometimes once they start they're more susceptible to next infections and that's really challenging. Or even losing teeth, that's a big one. So they can flare from things like losing their teeth from an accident in sports. Something that's going to cause body inflammation will trigger the brain inflammation. I see a question. Does it go away? In many cases, yes. But sometimes these kids, the going statement Right now is that pandas, they grow out of it. The pans, they may not. In my experience. I've seen both get better and I've seen both cases where kids went into adulthood still with a little bit of fragility. But our bodies are wired to heal. So I have kids who were really like unable to go to school, who are graduating from college and doing adult jobs. And I have some that aren't, especially if there's a second like an autism or something like that. But taming the flame gives us the flexibility to then take care of bolstering their immune system, making them more resilient to future infections and future inflammation and injuries and things like that of the body, and also helps us detox them without flaring. So taming the flame. What's in tame the flame? I'm just going to read them off four categories of things and then each one has more detailed things inside. So the four categories are we're going to do flame tamers. And these are specifically things that reduce neuroinflammation, so inflammation of the brain and the nervous system. Now we have mast cell managers which are specifically targeted at either reducing the amount of mast cells that are recruited or reducing their spilling and dumping. Why does that matter? Mast cells are really commonly recruited in these conditions because it's both a toxin problem and an infection problem. And mast cells are recruited for both of those. Number three is non steroidal anti inflammatories if we need to use them. I'm a naturopathic doctor, I'm integrative. We use herbs and drugs, it doesn't matter. And then number four is steroids. Again, in some cases we need to use them. So I'm going to start talking about flame tamers. I'll give you the details on that and I'm just going to read which ones they are because I always forget like a core one. So those are resolvins or pro resolving mediators. Feverfew, the herb feverfew. Resveratrol, also super important in mold recovery. Rosemary. We have like the common things, a lot of the things that we use every day in the kitchen are really powerful medications. And particularly rosmarinic acid has been shown to shut down those pathways in the brain and the nervous system that, that are exactly the pathways that get recruited with pandas and pans. And the fifth would be pine extract. So that might be pine needle or pine bark. So all of those five things, I'm just checking to make sure to get them all. Yeah, all those five Things are things that help to chill out the inflammation. One of the most common things that I see when we have a toxin based, infection based autoimmune disease. There are others like Ms. Is kind of like that as well. Ms. Is be more like lime, heavy metals, mold, that combination where this is the toxins. My big four bad guy toxins in pandas and pans is weed killer, roundup or glyphosate. Horrible on the gut, horrible on the immune system. Mold, emfs and mercury. Mercury especially for putting it in the teeth. Kids can that will aerate or aspirate and then that can go right up through that blood brain barrier. So that mercury sets the stage for why the brain. Like why would this immune system go to the brain? Well those four all have roles in making the brain more permeable, less defense and more inflamed. Okay, so our five resolvins, feverfew, resveratrol, rosemary, pine and pine bark or pine needle. So one of the things I see is the big like oh, you know, my doctor didn't talk about that is fish oil. Fish oil is so important. The DHA component is what our brain is primarily the fat that primarily makes up the structure of our brain. So I think of it like the coding on electrical wiring that this is. It's kind of soothing by coating the nerves. We all know what it feels like to have fried nerves, right? When you're just like too much coffee, not enough sleep, you know, going too hard, all those things then you just like ugh, I just feel fried. Well what that is is inflammation building up in your nervous system and not having enough coating on those nerves to kind of soothe the nerve. So fish oil would be wonderful to just recommend. Oh, everybody should be on fish oil. However in pandas and pans because there are a lot of mast cell recruitments which means you're going to have more histamine, then we have to get a little more targeted and pull down to the most anti inflammatory aspect of the fish oil and that turns out to be pro resolving mediators or resolvents. You might see them out called resolvents. This is the most anti inflammatory part and it tends not to recruit histamine. And then your body doesn't have to be processing or not recruit histamine, contain histamine and then their body doesn't have to be working against the next section, which is mast cell managers, they use less mast cell managers. I think that that's a really big missed one. Especially if mold and mycotoxins are in the Picture because mold, mycotoxins will gum up the fats of the body. They're fat soluble. And so they will make the fats loaded with these toxins and then the fats aren't doing their job of coating the nerves. You can use feverfew as tea. You can use it in capsules. We've used it in powder form, in tincture form, as a glycerate. So if you have a kid who's not swallowing pills, fever fuglycerate is very palatable. It does have a little bit of a prickly sensation. A little bit. And that's totally normal. So if you're, if you're like super excited about trying fever pew with your kid and you go out and you get the glycerin, taste it yourself. So you know, and then there are things that you can mix it with. If they're really like sensitive to that prickly thing. We can add things like vanilla and chocolate. A little vanilla extract goes a long way in a, in a feverfew glycerate. So it's a really gentle way to get it into kids. And in my book I have exactly doses. What kind of cautions you want to look for to make sure that you are using this safely. Resveratrol. You if you know me from mold, then you'll know that I'm a big fan of resveratrol for mold. It's so amazing. Anti inflammatory for the lungs, the respiratory passages and for the brain. Resveratrol is one of those things that cleans up brain fog like you can't believe. It does have one of those things where it has a minimum required dose. So if you've tried resveratrol with your kid before and you're like, I didn't really notice anything, it does have to be kind of high for a little while to get that blood plasma concentration that we're looking for to get it into the brain, even if they have a leaky brain because there's just so much inflammation of a wave of inflammation that we have to push down to get that resveratrol where we want it to go in the brain. So often I am combining resveratrol with feverfew with resolvins. In my book I talk about how to choose one flame tamer, one mast cell manager and kind of, you know, start there and see and optimize vitamin D and you know, kind of take it very gently because we don't want to flare a kid. But most frequently in real life practice, I'm Using three flame tamers at a time just to get the flame down. And I might combine that with number three that we talked about, nsaids. So I might combine that with ibuprofen or naproxen sodium. There you can use like, don't throw the herbs away just because they weren't enough. Like keep them and then put the drug stuff on top of that. And you need less drugs. So if anybody is looking for how to safely combine these kinds of things, you can go to my website@drkrista.com Med- compatibility and it's free. It's the medication compatibility chart from my book. I want everyone to have it so that you're doing this safely and you're not harming your kid. Then if I've added those three, then I shift to a mast cell manager. And often I'm using the other three too. Like I'm, I'm, you know, trying to match it. And I have descriptions in the book of why you might choose pine bark over resveratrol or why you might choose it over feverfew. I mean, it's all kind of in there, like how you meet the personality of your kid or the symptoms that they have. Like, are they more ticks, are they more food issues, Is it more separation anxiety? Is it more anxiety or just anxiety in general? Whatever it is, that is the biggest block for your kid. You can kind of go and look for those kinds of problems in, in the explanations of each of these. And when I use them. All right, so let's talk about mast cell managers. I just want to make sure. I feel like I just gave everyone the impression that I don't use rosemary and pine bark. So I hope, I hope you're not getting that impression because sometimes it's just like resolvings pine mast cell managers. So every kid's different. Right? Someone is asking, does Parkinson's and Lewy Body fall under this category? I do believe Parkinson's is late stage adult version of pans. It's that we're seeing seeing changes in the basal ganglia and effects on dopamine. And when you're young and you're a kid, that's dopamine excess. And then eventually as you age and that poops out, that is dopamine deficiency. So, yeah, I do. I wonder how much of Parkinson's we could treat by using the same principles as treating pandas and pans. I think quite a bit. And I think there's a lot of people with Parkinson's who have low grade Lyme disease and that is one of the infections that I see start Pandas and pans, big time. Yeah, pans specifically if the child got Lyme from their mom in utero. And so I would love to have some study where we can do autopsies of brains and umbilical cord testing and kind of make that connection from life to. To death. Like where in there? What were all the impacts? You know, environmental and infection? All right, mast cell managers, I want to make sure you guys can ask questions. So please feel free to ask questions. Did I miss any? Because I could rattle all day. I do rattle all day. Just ask my dog. Okay, so mast cell managers, what are we talking about? We're talking about vitamin C, a mast cell stabilizer. We're talking pea or palmitoylethanolamide. John, are you proud of me? I got that one out. Quercetin and luteolin. Perilla dao. This is an enzyme that breaks down histamine antihistamines. And I forgot to put in my book. Wouldn't you love when you do that? Like, I was so down in the weeds, I forgot to put nettles. Nettle, the plant nettles is one of my favorite mast cell and antihistamine herbs. And I use it all the time. And it's kind of like in my mold book how I forgot to put phosphatidylcholine because I use it all the time. Like vitamin D, phosphatidylcholine mold. Boom. I use it so much that it becomes automatic. That's how I am with nettles. And on my website, I have lots of videos. You can go to the pearls page down at the bottom in the footer there and then. Or you could just search the word nettles. I show you how to harvest it. I show you how to cook them so that because they're called stinging nettles for a reason, they really do sting. So how to harvest it, how to cook it to make it so it doesn't sting. And then you can drink the water from boiled nettles. You can eat boiled nettles. You can make tea and just have that. You can use dried and make tea out of that. You can take it as a capsule. So I have one of my favorite ways to get it into kids, especially kids that have like picky eater kids, is to make nettles lemonade. So that's all on my website. You can just do a keyword search at the top, nettles. And that should pull up those videos so you can learn how to use nettles with your kid. Would you recommend an ionic foot bath if you haven't tested the kiddos glyphosate levels? I love to have baseline testing in a perfect world. And I do my glyphosate testing with Great Plains lab, which I have a whole lab section in my book. I have parents though that are just like we're just going to try anything and they don't want to swallow anything because maybe their swallowing mechanism is off because the brain inflammation. Swallowing is a really complicated thing to do. So I have parents who just go ahead and treat because their kids are willing to do a foot bath. Ideally we would have a baseline so that you can see if that modality is helping. I find it helpful in my practice in the majority of kids. But maybe it's not going to work for your kid. And so you're asking them to do something that may not be really doing anything, you know, to, to move the needle. What do you do if you don't tolerate quercetin? A lot of the kids don't tolerate quercetin because of the phenols. So you can use luteolin in a low phenol way. And I use Neuroprotect with a kitchen for that. I kind of talk about that on my website. If you go to my products page. This is not to push product, but it's just to hear my commentary. I get asked so often these kinds of questions that I just started putting commentary on all of the products. So you can go there and you can research like why I'm doing something. Is fasting okay while mold detoxing? Yeah, absolutely. As long as you are protecting your organs of detoxification. And I have that in my mold book under protect and repair. Protect primarily. All right, so mast cell helpers, let's list them again. Vitamin C, pea or palmitoyethanolamide. You can get this as a supplement. So it's pea, not pea the vegetable, but pea the supplement. Quercetin and luteolin. Like I just said, luteolin. People who don't tolerate quercetin tend to tolerate luteolin better. And if you don't tolerate quercetin, look for a low phenol quercetin. Neuroprotech has that. You can get it right from there. From the website algonaut.com A L G O N O T.com Perilla this is a plant that a lot of us use in our landscaping is just right there in a potted plant that we could be making tea for Our kid, you can look for things like paramin is a supplement that has perilla in it. Dao is an enzyme that digests histamine. And so once the histamine is already gone out there, then you can kind of try to knock it back with dao. But that works really well if you pre dose it before a meal. So if you have a kid who has histamine problems after eating or with eating, which can be immediately after eating or up to like 20 minutes after eating, if they're kind of a meltdown or fall asleep or agitate or aggravate or they stop eating before they're full, that's a sign they're having histamine problems. And that would be a time to use the dao a little bit before they're eating like 15 minutes before meals. That will keep the histamine level down. And then anti histamine medications. So those are my mast cell managers. So typically what I'm doing is I'm taking, I start with one of each and we just see how inflamed. I mean it depends on the kid. If they're really, really inflamed and they're a kid who's needing steroids, then obviously we're going to use like three of the flame tamers, three of the mast cell managers. And I know that sounds like a lot, but a lot of this can be done in liquid or it can be done in powdered form and you can mix it into stuff and then, you know, it's, it's a lot financially, but it's a lot cheaper than IVIG and it's a lot cheaper than the consequences of steroids. One of the problems with putting kids on steroids is it messes up their puberty and they may need to be on hormone replacement possibly for the rest of their lives, but for sure, to get them on the other side of puberty, sometimes we have to do that. You know, it's really, it's a tough decision when you're looking at a 20 year old kid who isn't making enough hormones. You know, it's like, are we putting this kid on the pill already? You know, and that can happen if you, if they're on steroids too young and too much steroid, it also can cause weight gain which no kid wants to have. When they're developing their sense of identity, it can lead to bone breaks and tendon ruptures. Because it does, they do impact the bone formation and the strength. So there are a bunch of other things that we can do before we have to turn to steroids. Do I use steroids? Yeah, in cases. Absolutely. There are some cases and specifically around using ivig, Some kids get such a severe headache with ivig we have to use the steroids just so that they can get the remedy that they need. So I'm sorry that I spoke so fast that you couldn't write all those down. They're in my book. What about vitamin C and oxalates? I highly encourage you to go read Dr. Russell Jaffe's information about vitamin C and oxalates. What we are, what I was trained in, naturopathic medicine, is that the people that are forming oxalates from calcium supplementation, typically number one, have mold. Mold is the number one fungal overgrowth. Candida overgrowth is the reason for the excess oxalates. Unless you have the genetic component to make more oxalates. But a lot of people are actually vitamin C deficient. So check out Russell Jaffe's website. He has information and articles on this. That's J A F F E. I love neuroprotect. Share it often with affected families. Awesome. Amazing support for mast cells, especially where hives and neuro symptoms are present. I agree. So neuro protect and nettles combined can be just an incredible thing for calming down the hives without having to use antihistamine medication. Not that I'm against that medication. Regarding heavy metal testing, which company is most accurate and do you need hair, urine and blood or just hair enough? In most cases I am using urine from doctors data labs and there is something called the nhanes. N H A N E S nhanes, which is what your doctor would normalize your results to. I use unprovoked to compare to nhanes and then we can provoke meaning we can give a chelator and do it again to see what if any of those metals that we saw in the first test might be responsive to that particular chelator. So it gives you an idea. Thoughts about immunotherapy for a child with allergies? Yeah. I think that what I would first do is make sure we're maximizing their nutrition. The flame tamers, the mast cell managers that I talked about, if you really dig into what the research is showing is they're renourishing these areas of the body that have been either they don't get it in their diet or they're plowing through it because of their environmental toxin load. So optimizing first because if you're going to use some of those like the Slit therapy, lda, ldi, those are wonderful, but they have a right time to come in and they don't work as well if you don't have the nourishment there to take the next step. What's the difference between pine bark and pycnogenol? Nothing. So pine bark Pycnogenol is the brand name Pine needle and Taga T A I G A Same, same. Thoughts on fmt? I have a lot of thoughts on it. I want to see a study. I have parents who we have, you know, they've begged me to help them do it and this is completely not legal to do. The only approved use of FMT is for C. Difficile, so Clostridium difficile infection. So are parents doing it anyway? Yes. I'm not recommending it, but I think it's a really smart idea. The thing is, you want to make sure you are the donor is clean, clean, clean, clear of parasites. Because these kids are very susceptible. They have immune deficiency as the precursor state. So I think that using, you know, the way that they use FMT for C. Difficile, where they're, you know, making sure they're testing everything and making sure it's safe. I think it's brilliant. And I write about this in my book that we are more microbe than man and having the microbes of our gut messed up is what set the stage for this to go autoimmune in the first place. So I think it's a wave of the future and I really, really, really hope that we get some studies so that we can get approved uses for this. So I'm going to wrap it's a lunch and learn. This is a light in the dark for pandas and Pans. If you're looking for more support, I am opening up a Pandas parents book club. So you can email me about that. We'll have more details later in the week, but tomorrow if you can't join me live, just look for the recording. Tomorrow we're going to talk about Core two, which is Beat the Bugs. All right, I love all you guys, you know, you parents, I've been there, done that. So hang in there. There is hope and help for your kid. Alright, bye guys.