PANDAS, PANS, and Environmental Toxins

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My name is Kendra Seymour and I want to welcome you back to another Change the Year foundation interview. I'm joined today by Dr. Jill Christa and we're going to be talking about her new book, A Light in the Dark for Pandas and Pans. Now this topic is very personal to me as I had a child who was diagnosed with pandas in 2016. And we're going to cover some really important information in this interview. So even if you don't have a child or a loved one with pandas or pans, you're going to want to watch this episode because we're going to cover how our environment can prime the body for many conditions and for the purposes of this talk, specifically, pandas and pans. Now it's estimated that one in 200 children will develop this condition and many of them will suffer for years without a preferred diagnosis and treatment. So thank you so much, Dr. Jill, for joining us today.

Thank you for having me. This is a huge honor. Thank you. Thank you.

For those who don't know Dr. Jill Christie yet, she's a pioneering naturopathic doctor, best selling author, devoted educator and a creative innovator. Her superpower is to make complex medical concepts simple and digestible for the average person. And I can personally attest to that fact. And her passion is to elevate the well being of the planet via the well being of her inhabitants. Now her books and memberships and online courses support those wanting concrete steps to conquer their health challenges. Dr. Jill focuses on conditions that cause injury to the brain and nervous system, including mold, pans and pandas, Lyme disease and concussion. Dr. Jill there's so much we want to cover today that I really struggle to limit the questions today because we could go on and on and on. And so that's why I'm grateful you have your book, which will be a great resource to get into details. But today I know our talk is going to really hopefully help people understand a little bit more about what might be going on with their child or loved one. So let's jump right in if that's okay.

Yeah, you bet. You betcha.

So let's kind of start at the beginning. What is pans and pandas? What causes it? What are some of the symptoms associated with it?

So they really, they're two different distinct conditions that look a lot alike and how they're different is what was the triggering infection. But they're both really underneath this umbrella of autoimmune encephalitis. So they, it might be other things under that umbrella is autoimmune encephalitis. That's an actual condition, NMDR receptor encephalitis. PANDAS is under there, pans is under there. And then one that I think is a, is going to, I mean we see it in practice all the time. Those of us that work with Lyme disease and co infections but they're trying to figure out what is the name of this condition. But it's basically encephalitis from exposure to Lyme and tick borne related co infections. They're all under this umbrella of autoimmune encephalitis. Which means that if we just broke that down into what is autoimmune means, means your body's attacking itself. Encephalitis means in the brain, the autoimmune disease is happening in the brain. So PANDAS is connected to strep and that's the inciting infection, which may have been a throat infection or an infection at the bottom that a lot of kids have perianal strep infections that go completely undetected because we're not checking our kids bottoms all the time. Once they learn how to kind of wipe themselves and get that taken care of. That's not something that gets looked at a lot. So they might have a sore throat of the bottom and it's just a sore bottom. And we can think of all kinds of things like well did you wipe right? Or there's lots of different things that can get missed. So pan does is strep. The complication was there were a lot of kids who had PANDAS type symptoms but strep wasn't involved in their diagnosis. So that's where pans was developed as a diagnostic. Because there are other things that can trigger these kinds of autoimmune encephalitis such as the flu. The flu is a really common triggering event. Mycoplasma, pneumonia and other tick borne related infections. So they're both pediatric, they're both acute onset, although we can talk about a little asterisk on the pan side of that. And they're both have neuropsychiatric symptoms. So that could be ocd, tics, regression, attachment, aggression, wanting to stay in their room, wanting to stay with one parent. And so they're different in their age of onset. So pan does has to be between three and puberty where pans can be a little more flexible. There can be kids that get mono and that's their inciting infection when they're in their teens and they never had a problem before that. So that's kind of how they're. That's why we could always talk like pandas. Pans, they're so much alike. They often also have generalized abdominal discomfort, urinary frequency and dilated pupils. So the kids are just on this like super amped neurological brain chemistry. And that's actually what's happening is that when the body starts to attack the brain, it's happening in an area that has to do with excitatory brain chemistry. So the kids are literally functioning on an excited brain constantly. So that's also. Then we'll see some sleep issues in both conditions.

Yeah, I mean, I think one of the challenging things that, you know, I found as a parent and it's. I think the awareness is spreading, is that some of these symptoms can be dismissed. For example, our first indicator, looking back now, this wasn't our first indicator, but it was the first one that clued us into maybe something wasn't right was urinary frequency. And our daughter, you know, she was going, felt like she had to go to the bathroom like 20 or 30 times a day to the point where, you know, we took her in and they ruled out UTI and oh, sometimes the bladder just needs to catch up and, and weeks and weeks went by and I mean, to the point where ultimately they thought she had a brain tumor. Luckily that wasn't the case. But when they called us to go over the results, he had come to the conclusion that there was nothing medically wrong with her, that it was all in her head. She was four.

Right, Right.

And you know, when we finally, luckily were able to connect with a doctor who specializes in pandas, much sooner than most families, she turned to me and one of the first things she says, how long have our pupils been dilated? I hadn't even noticed as a parent. And she'd been having tummy trouble on and off and, and all these other things. So, um, it really is one of those things where I understand how sometimes it can be dismissed, but when there aren't, you know, other answers. Right. You have to keep looking. So this is. You said something about tummy trouble. Now in, in your book, you have a chapter actually called Tummy trouble. Can you tell us a little bit about that connection between our gut microbes and our immune system?

Yeah, totally. I'd love to talk about this because I think that's the part that's getting missed in the conversation. It seems to be very focused on infection, Infection, infection and even the diagnostic criteria. It's all about what infection Triggered it. And we're missing that. There's an environmental part to this, there's a microbiome part to this. And that's the way you get out of it. That's why it's important is that that has to do with how you treat this and get your kid back. We are more microbe than man. So if we were to do a cell to cell count of how many microbes in our gut and how many cells are in our body, there's more of them than there are of us. They're driving the bus. If you do a DNA count, then that's the same thing, their DNA. They have more DNA than we have of our own tissue cells. If we start to think about that, it's like, okay, who's really in charge of me? There are amazing studies where they've taken obese mice and lean mice and they take the probiotic or the microbiome from the lean mice and change nothing else. No food, no movement, no nothing, no sleep. And they put those microbes in the obese mice and it turns them lean. There's a lot driving the bus of our gut microbes that has to do within our behavior. There are tons of conditions now that we're studying the microbiome that we're seeing microbiome alterations in many other neuropsychiatric conditions, autism, OCD in adults. So there are changes that are happening in our gut that drive how our brain functions. It's true when we say we have gut feelings, you know, that the gut microbes, they drive not only our feelings, but they drive our behavior and they drive our hunger. They drive all kinds of different things, hormones and that kind of thing. So the reason I'm focusing so much on the tummy trouble is that the microbiome, the bacteria, they help to heal or hurt the lining of the gut. And those cells on the lining of the gut are cousins to the immune.

System in our brain.

Our gut makes about 70 to 80% of our immune system. So that's where the majority of our gut of our immune system is. So when the gut isn't happy, its cousin in the brain is not going to be happy. And they can both get activated and act in a more inflammatory way. And that's how we start to see the damage. Why do we see damage in the places that we see it? We think it has to do with mimicry. That's happening that the body. Because strep is our most prevalent human pathogen, there's good strep and bad strep and that's the thing is some people are like, even so that there are good strep, we don't know what the proteins of the strep are that are triggering this. So I don't use strep probiotics, for instance, because until we have the data and we understand we have so many other options, why put that factor in there? You know, so we have really, really good strep that actually protects our respiratory flora. And then we have some bad guy strep, which is group A strep. Once a kid, even if they have pans and strep wasn't what triggered it, because strep is so prevalent, the body starts to go looking like, why don't I feel good? I don't understand. And I'm seeing this guy all the time, so I think this guy's the problem. And so strep can actually be the reason for flares in a kid with pans, even if strep didn't start it. So strep has these bacteria proteins that look a lot like certain things in our brain, like the basal ganglia, like cholinergic interneurons. These are just guys that communicate between the nerves. So we're thinking that there's some sort of mimicry that the body says, well, you look a lot like that guy, so I'm going to attack you. And here's where the gut comes in. The gut being more us than ourselves. You know, with autoimmune, it's self, it's attacking self. We have a really good idea of what other is. That's microbes, infections, germs, toxins, those kinds of things. We're starting to really understand now what really determines self. So when the body's trying to determine between self and other, it really knows what other is. But when you don't have a healthy microbiome, it doesn't know what self is. And so it loses that distinction to be able to say, oh no, no, no, you look like the other equaling strap, then I don't have to attack you. Because yourself, even though you look like the germ, I know that you're self. And so I don't, I won't go after you. In a pandas pans kid, their immune system has lost that distinction. It's overwhelmed, it's fatigued, and it needs boosting, it needs rehab. Long winded answer.

Yeah, no, I mean, the gut, if you look at the research, is really, they're starting to show connected to so many different things and, and it's a place to start, if nowhere else, start thinking about your gut health. Now. You kind of. I love that you. You talk about them that, like their cousins. Because you also talk about how infections and toxins can change your child's brain. Can you talk to us briefly about, like, how that happens?

Yeah. So respiratory infections of all sorts, not just strep, preferentially induce a certain kind of inflammatory marker. We're hearing a lot about cytokines with COVID So I can say cytokine, and people are kind of like, I know what that means. Means cell messenger. And they tend to be inflammatory. So there's one that's called TH17 that is highly linked and correlated to autoimmune diseases. Well, it turns out infections of all. All intranasal infections of all types generate that inflammatory cytokine. Okay, so what, so now we have an inflammatory cytokine that has a higher rate of causing autoimmune disease that is riding in the nose. Well, it turns out we have a bare nerve, a bare cranial nerve. So one of our core brain nerves, it's supposed to be all protected in our skull and everything is. It has this real circuitous root, and it reaches all the way up into our nose. And then bare nerve fibers come down into our nasal mucosa to smell stuff. And the way we smell something is that a molecule, a chemical, comes up and actually touches that nerve fiber. That's what smelling is. Smelling is a form of physical contact. So it makes you kind of creep out when you think about dirty diapers and dirty socks. Right? Like. But that's what's happening is these molecules are coming up touching the bare nerve fiber, and then that sends information to the smelling nerve that says, oh, we're smelling, you know, hopefully roses, but maybe dirty diaper. And we're supposed to have all this immune system here, and that's correlated to our gut microbiome. So if we have a weak gut microbiome, we have a weak nasal microbiome, and that's supposed to just dissolve all these chemicals. And snot is really important for that. It has. It's high in salts and enzymes. It's supposed to just dissolve that, and then you blow it out or you may swallow it down, but it's not a harmful molecule anymore. The problem with mold is that mold, mycotoxins are fat soluble. So when they come to that thing and they touch the molecule, they don't have a scent. So the body doesn't say, okay, dissolve that. It instead gets a free ride up and it takes an elevator Ride right up into the brain. So the more of those mold mycotoxins you inhale, the more get accumulated and into the brain tissue. And we're seeing that these mycotoxins can soak into the very same places where the autoimmune attack happens in pandas and pans. So we have to think about like the. Now you have a cytokine that can also get a free ride if there's enough of them. And the mycotoxin might bring it along. And now you have both the autoimmune creating inflammatory molecule and a toxin that's very inflammatory happening in the brain stem. And the body just then goes into like, this is not right. This is not what's supposed to be happening in here. And the immune system of the brain starts to go to work, but it doesn't. If it doesn't have a healthy gut, if it doesn't have strength, then it loses between self and other. And that's where you start to get activated microglia, which are the immune system in the brain. And they, they're, I call them monkeys of the mind. They can get kind of naughty up there. So that's where my whole thing is. Like, if we understand the mechanism, then we know how to reverse this. We know how to calm down the monkeys. We know how to boost the immune system of the child so that they can determine between self and other and shut down that reaction.

I love that in your book because obviously I don't have a medical background and you're describing like the connection and the elevator to the brain and monkeys flinging poo. And it makes it understandable, like, oh, I really, I get what's going on now. Because, you know, we tend to approach things in, in certain types of medicine where you look at everything individually, right? Just the gut, just the tummy trouble, just the headaches, just the whatever. Instead of realizing this all works together and once start approaching it from that angle, you can start putting together, I think, the missing pieces to the puzzle. Now there are many pans and pandas families, I think, out there who have come to understand how applicable that fable about the straw that broke the camel's back is to these children. Can you tell us why it's so relevant with this particular illness?

Yeah, and this goes back to what I was going to put an asterisk on, on the acute onset thing. It is so a straw camelback condition. Because there, there are so many straws that are stacked against this kid's immune system. And the kid can kind of limp along all right. But then the behaviors start, and they don't start necessarily in every kid, especially if they're a congenital Lyme exposed kid. They never had that robust, healthy immune system. So they've always been kind of stacked on. Or maybe they're a weaker camel, maybe it would be a smaller camel, but we're putting the same load on them. And the load is not only in the infections, like we're supposed to interact with infections when we're young, when we have our mother's antibodies to help us out so that we can start to make our own antibodies. And there's this really weird place where kids start to. The maternal antibodies start to drop, and if they have immune deficiency of any kind, either they were born with infections that you can get through mom can get passed on through mom and, or our lifestyles and our exposures and the chemicals and the EMFs and all of these things that humans just did not evolve with. If they don't meet that cross point in the middle as maternal antibodies are starting to drop, the kids antibodies are supposed to be being made and have memory and remember things and remember how to fight things, then you get this immune deficiency. And so these are not typically what I hear is, in retrospect, parents will say, I remember now. When we look back, there was a day where things, you know, she got sensitive or he couldn't make it to soccer, or, you know, there's a day. But it didn't seem big enough. It seemed like the normal regression of childhood. And then eventually, in a key with the clinical criteria for these diagnoses is that they become severe enough to disrupt daily life. They can't get to school, they can't, you know, whatever it was that they were able to do before. And I know every kid starts with a different baseline, but when we look back then parents are like. And we were all high five in ourselves because suddenly my son started to take showers like a crazy person. And he started to line up his clothes and he was really picky about everybody sitting in the right place at the table. And it just looked like he was bec. A good kid. And these were actually too much of adult behaviors for a child to actually be normal. And then it becomes pathological to where they can't leave their room or they have to hand wash or some of the compulsion. Compulsive behaviors come through. Yeah. Did I answer the question?

You did, yeah.

Yeah.

It's just to reiterate that sometimes people think they're going along and they're doing okay, and then it's, it takes that one thing that kind of tips them over. You know, I often wonder, in our case, it was strep and whatever. We had a sudden onset, but then it was also around the time we were dealing with our home. And so, you know, I always wonder, is it a chicken or an egg scenario? At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter because it's paying attention to, to what's going on and, and everything. But yeah, snow, that, that is right on track. And I, I kind of want to shift for a moment actually, because for the purposes of Change the air foundation and the straw that broke the camel's back, you know, you talk about how these children are hit with a double whammy when the immune system really wasn't up for the challenge. And one whammy is exposure to the infection, which we kind of talked about strep or microplasma Lyme co infections, that kind of thing. And the other is environmental toxins. So I would like to focus on that piece for a bit now. Can you provide some insight? You have your top four environmental burdens for pans and pandas. Because I want to dig deep into this. I feel like this is the one section that doesn't get enough light in this community.

Yeah, agreed. 100 agree. So top four. I'll rattle them off and it's going to surprise people because people will assume mold is my number one. It's really, really important. But what else is in our indoor air that is number one is, is weed killer. And change the air foundation like this is. It's all about the, the air. There are people using Roundup inside their homes. There are people that are using, you know, ant sprays and all of these things. These are all really harmful chemicals. Weed killer in particular. I could have put pesticides on there. Actually, number five is, is chemicals of all kinds. But so it's weed killers. Number one. Mold is number two, then emfs and then mercury. And those are all particularly specific to the area of the brain where this is happening and their impact on the immune system. That kind of builds the, the camel stacking, the straw stacking to have it become autoimmune. So weed killer is Roundup, otherwise known as, and also glyphosate. And this has a whole bunch of problems. It was tested to see if it would harm human tissue. Doesn't harm human tissue. We don't have this pathway, it's called the shikamate pathway in our systems. But guess what does the bacteria in our gut and we just talked about there's more of them than there are of us. They're driving the bus. So if we are spraying weed killer outside our home, of course it's going to come into the home, inside our home. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You know, don't put it in plants, don't, nothing like that. But the kids are also eating it. That's going to be affecting our gut flora and they then we lose our sense of self and that sets the stage for autoimmune. The other thing that glycine does, it's really sneaky, is that or glyphosate. It's built around a glycine amino acid. Glycine is one of our calming brain chemistries. So I talked about these kids are like all on the excitatory and not the calming brain chemistry. Well, if you have glyphosate, it's now bumping glycine out of the way and putting itself there. And the brain can't use that glycine the way that it would its normal brain chemistry. So just that sets the kid into an excitatory state because it's lacking the calming, it's lacking that part. Glycine also is a key amino acid for our detoxification. It makes up glutathione. So now if you have glyphosate bumping glycine off the bus, it. We can't make glutathione. Now we're going to raise and raise and raise the soup, the toxic soup that our cells are swimming in. So it's got lots and lots of problems. It's also got like, I, I'm a, I'm a boy mom. It can cause shrinking of testicles, reduce testosterone. I mean, it's got all kinds of problems that it just stuns me that this is, was able to be used. There's got to be a better way. And I have a lot of compassion for farmers because they're like, well then what else? You know? Well, let's get innovative. There's got to be something that's not as harmful. Yeah. So that's why weed killer is number one. Mold is number two. And in my clinical experience, the kids who have mold exposure have more of the urinary tract problems. So you ask chicken or egg. I would bet it was mold setting that off because mold is really hard on the bladder. It's really hard on our water balance. Mold affects an area of the brain that makes our hydration meter. It's called antidiuretic hormone. So that's really common for me. The kids who have more ticks that especially if they have a spirally look to them. These are kids that tend to have more of the borrelia based. So that's Lyme tick borne relapsing fever. Things that have a spiral H. Pylori, that's a spiral bacteria. So that's something that, you know, when we see this kind of thing where it's circular then I'm like, okay, I know what's going on there. So mold has all kinds of problems. So much so I wrote a whole book about it. And you can treat, you can get better. So that's a big one. I know that's a big, big thing for you too. Third being EMFs. One of the things we, we can adapt to this but it's going to take our bodies some time to get used to this. Higher frequencies, these disruptive frequencies. This is a new pollution of our time. And the thing is you can't smell it, you can't see it. You know, it's kind of like mold where if mold is hiding behind building material and if mycotoxins have no smell. So if all that's coming through the building material is mycotoxins, you don't smell it, you don't see it, you don't smell it. There's no, you don't hear it. Same thing with EMFs. These are all happening to us and we don't have any meter that says all of our normal stuff that would say this doesn't make me feel good. And so you just get someone who either a kid who either like becomes comatose and their teachers are like, they're such a good kid, they never speak. That's not normal for a kid. You know, that's a bad problem. Or they become the hyperactive kid. And that's going to be the more typical thing is attention deficit which may not have hyperactivity or ADHD where they have the hyperactivity from these exposures. And then mercury is fourth. Just because it is a nerve toxin, it is completely setting the stage for mercury. I'll just say all silver fillings are mercury fillings. So don't let your dentist tell you different. We just changed the name because people got sick from it and said, oh dear. Well we'll still use it, but we'll use it with a little more protection and we'll just call it something different. Same effects are happening. It's a nerve toxin. And if silver fillings are in your kid's mouth, that's off gassing into that nose elevator continuously. So. Yeah. And fifth is, you know, like I said, chemicals get a dishonorable mention.

I love that. Yeah. What I love about this is for anyone listening, it's for, okay, you can control a lot of these things. You can gaps to mitigate exposure to the, you know, the food that you eat, to any mold or water damage in your home, to emfs. There are things that you can do. So, so know that, that these are actionable things that you can do and, and reduce your exposure long term. Because I know it can seem overwhelming because it's everywhere. Oh, can we avoid it? And there are steps you can take.

Yeah, yeah. And like with, with. And it's not always something you have to put in your mouth. That's the nice thing too. Like the first rule of to illnesses is remove the toxin. Right. And a lot of people just get better, you know, and you're going to be helping yourself, you're going to be helping your healthy kids. It's, it's amazing how these things are impacting us that we don't even really know. We have, we have normalized illness, right? We've normalized people needing Ativan. We've normalized adults needing out of hand to get through their day. We've normalized people needing, you know, fill in the blank, acid blocking medication, blood pressure medication, diabetes medication. It's all become so normalized.

It's not normal.

That's a population looking for some help.

If you hear, oh, you're just getting older, well, maybe, well, you are, but maybe dig a little deeper because we want everyone to feel their best self.

Right.

And I don't think many of us are really feeling our best self and, and are at our potential in that area. Right.

To break that just so people know, I have seven year old patients who go on surfing vacations and are having a very wonderful sex life. So no, don't accept that you can.

Feel better than you, better than I think you realize we sometimes see that with people. If you want to talk about mold and water damage for a moment and they move out of a home and all of a sudden they start feeling better and they're like, oh, like why is that they didn't even realize that the home was, you know, impacting them in the way that it was. So one of the things I know people are going to ask is with the environmental exposures you say in your book, and I would love if you could elaborate a little bit more for anyone listening, that a mold allergy test cannot be used to rule out mold related illness. So can you talk to us about which tests can confirm that?

Yeah. So a mold allergy test may be positive, meaning positive, meaning there's something that we're finding, meaning your child might have an allergy to mold. Those are the kids who have still a pretty robust immune system. So they can complain, their immune system can complain about it. And they're being exposed to mold spores and spore fragments, possibly a lot of mold problems. The spores and spore fragments are trapped behind building material. They're trapped under the cabinet, they're trapped behind the walls, under the flooring, in the roof, in the attic, in the basement, in the crawl space. And these chemicals are moving into the indoor space every time there's a negative air pressure. So someone opens the door really fast. That can get sucked right through. You know, can lighting. It can get sucked right through there. It can get sucked right through any open space. If you have pictures on your wall, if you have outlets on your wall and light fix or, you know, fixtures to turn your lights on and off switches, those are open holes. And every time you get that negative air, those chemicals can be moving through. And not necessarily the spores, if the spores aren't aerated. So you can have mold related illness that is related to molds chemicals. And the mycotoxins, which are different. The chemicals are normally living, metabolizing mold. If the mold has died or dried, there can still be mycotoxins that have seeped into that building material that are still moving into the indoor air. And if there is enough water and you have a competitive environment where multiple molds are trying to survive, you're going to have more mycotoxins. Because mycotoxins are made as a competitive advantage over other microbes. None of that is going to show up on a mold allergy test. And a mold allergy test isn't necessarily. Even if the kid is exposed to spores, they may not have the immune system to complain enough to show an allergy. And that's really tricky. So before anyone runs any kind of antibody test, I run a total antibody of IgG, IgA, IgM, IgE, and then subclasses of IgG and IgA. Because we're dealing with a kid who doesn't have a normal immune system, we need to see if those are low. Any antibody test is not going to be super helpful for telling us anything. If they're normal, we can run a serum mycotoxin antibody test. That one is a really nice way. The ige on that Meaning immediate sensitivity, immediate reaction. The serum mycotoxin antibody test, IgE can tell us if that kid is being exposed to mycotoxins that are on the test right now. Right now. And then ideally we would run both IgE IgG serum mycotoxin antibody test with a serum allergy test. So we're getting the full picture and then a mycotoxin urine test to find out how much burden the kid is dealing with. Because if there's a lot of mycotoxins on board, they're gonna be more immune suppressive, they're gonna be more toxic to that microbiome. And then, you know, what are we dealing with? Are we dealing with a kid who's gonna have maybe more allergy problems, more toxicity problems, both. And then it really shapes how we, how we go forward.

That is incredibly helpful because I know, I've been told and I know other parents out there have. Well, I ran the allergy test and they're not allergic, so it can't be a problem. And it's not that simple. Now, is there a test, I'm curious for the, you know, glyphosate exposure, what does that look like? And what are people?

And what's great is you can do this with kids too. Like sometimes blood tests are a hard thing to do with kid, especially after pandas and pans has started and the anxiety is up and you know, so I use a lot of homeopathy before those blood draws. But if you have a kid that absolutely won't do a blood draw, then you can do the glyphosate is a urine test. So you can do urine mycotoxins, you can do urine glyphosate, the urine. Mycotoxins are a little tricky as you get older kids because they can get so toxic they can't excrete because it's an excretion test. But typically with younger kids, their excretion is working well enough that we can actually see what's what their body's dealing with. I have everyone go on a three day low mycotoxin diet before running that because you can get mycotoxin exposure through foods. So if they can get on a low mycotoxin diet, that reduces the challenge of that or the limitation of that test. I just want to make sure and say that. And if anyone wants my handout how to prep for a urine mycotoxin test, I think it's on my website. And if it's not, just email us@supportoctorchrista.com you can get that handout.

Lots of great handouts there. Now what about mercury? Is that something that they can test for mercury exposure?

Yes, absolutely. So we can run a whole blood mercury and that would be if the kid is being exposed now. So daily exposure. So maybe they do live in an environment where or their parent works in a high mercury exposure and they're bringing it home. That's, that is very real possibility, especially electronics and things like that. And then we can also run for body burden. We can run a urine mercury test, urine toxic metals and then we can compare that to nhanes, which is just basically a monitoring system. Then you can also run a provoked one to see what will work for them to get that mercury out of their body. Yeah. And so if you see a mercury level that's like equivocal on their spot urine test and then you challenge them and it goes up, you know that what you just challenge them with is going to be good for getting it out of their body.

This, this is incredibly helpful. I'm sure there are parents out there taking notes and I know I'm going to go back and listen to this and jot down some things that I want to follow up on with our practitioner too. So thank you. Yeah.

The lab for the, so the lab for the glyphosate is Great Plains lab and the lab for the urine toxic metals, I use doctor's data.

That's wonderful. Again, everyone listening. Like these things are steps you can take and you can get answers. So I know it's overwhelming. I know. Just a side tangent. You know, Dr. Chris, you mentioned in your book that these children really are at war and the whole family is involved like as a, you know, bystander, because it is a day in and day out battle sometimes. And so for those pans and pandas families out there listening, hang in there. I see you. There is a light at the end of the tunnel or a light in the dark. As Dr. Jill so. But I know we're getting a little lower on time so I want to talk just briefly. You. The real core of your book is you've talked about the four, four for treatment. Okay. And the book really lays out so beautifully this step by step, easy to understand approach. And can you kind of tell us what those four are like? High level teaser a little bit more. I know you could talk all day. And that's how you. The first four in particular is Tame the Flame. Because if you have a child with pans and pandas who is starting to Flare inflammation is where you're going to start. And my pans, pandas families know what I'm talking about there. So high level core four. What is it?

Yeah. And I joke in the book, I could have made it Core 10, but then people throw the book against the wall and they wouldn't pick it up again because you are in total overwhelm. I'm a mom of twins with pants, so that's. I come by this honestly and I have, I have. They're 23 now, so I have 19 years of experience in the trenches and then as a practitioner as well. So when I sat down, I was like, oh, and we did this and I do this and I do this with kids. And I thought, this is gonna be so overwhelming. There's no way. So I discipline myself to four. There are lots of tools within the core four. So the core four is first is tame the flame. Second is beat the bugs. Third is regulate immunity, which we've talked a lot about why that would be important. And fourth is guard the gates. And guarding the gates has to do with infectious prevention and environmental toxin prevention. Because if, you know, you get everything calmed down and you're working on the bugs and your immune system is starting to get built up, keep getting all of these exposures, you're just going to be in this definition of, you know, healing insanity. It's not going to work, you know, so guarding the gates. And that has to do with our nasal gate for obvious reasons that we just talked about, the dental gate, because tooth involvement, boy, losing a tooth, tooth infection, big time. Reasons for flares and then the throat gate, because if a kid does have strep on their bottom, they can continuously share that with their tonsils. And now you've got a kid who looks like they have chronic tonsillitis that you may be able to spare from a tonsillectomy by treating the bottom. And then the other gate is the environmental exposure gate. So, yeah, big, big picture, that's what we're talking about.

And in each of those steps in your book, you have really specific things that, that, you know, people can do. We won't get into them. For the scope of this interview. On a, on a personal note, I want to say something. You wrote something near the end of your book that changed how my husband and I approach our child with pandas. Now. Obsessive compulsive behaviors and thoughts are common among children with this diagnosis. And for us, one of the things that looked like early on was a lot of, like, repetitive hand washing and she was 4. And she would wash her hands and stop and walk a few steps away and then go back and she'd say things like, mommy, I'm sorry. I don't know why I have to keep washing my hands. And it's heartbreaking. And as she's gotten older, we've made huge progress. She's doing well. But we do, we do flare occasionally. And, you know, I love. In your book, you know, you offer some clarity. You write that obsessions are thoughts and compulsions are behaviors. And I want to highlight a quote from your book. I'm actually going to read it from your book. I want to do it justice because I think this resonate with parents out there because I had never heard this part framed this way before. And you said, quote, no matter how close your relationship, don't force your child to talk about the obsessive thoughts unless initiated by the child. Tame your own curiosity for the sake of your child. Talking will take it from thinking to being, from thought to reality. End quote. And you go on to say about how this child really is at war. And I made the mistake until I read this book of trying to get her to talk about it, thinking that will help. That will help her process and see, because for us, it didn't seem like a rational fear or thought, but it was very real to her.

Yeah.

And so I just want to say thank you for that and then to ask you if there's anything else you want to add on about that specifically.

I. I have. And this is not what you're going to hear from most psychologists, psychiatrists, you know, mental health specialists, social workers. I think that it's just because they're coming from training of helping with trauma. This is very traumatic. But they're still in the midst of the battle. You wouldn't put a. Pull a kid out of a battle scene where they've just seen a whole bunch of stuff and said, now tell me about that. How'd that make you feel? You know, I mean, like, we would just be like, hugging them and trying to feed them something and trying to, like, take their mind off it. And that's what they're dealing with 24, seven, seven days a week when they're in a flare. So I think just really understanding that this is not. There are kids who have traumas that witness traumas. You know, there's child abuse, there's parents fighting. There's all those things. When they get sick, they can get traumatic traumatized because the family goes into that, like, chaos mode. But it's different. What's happening is different. This is a physical body problem expressing as these behavior things. This is a physical body problem traumatizing the child. So asking them to talk about it just makes it so much more real. And there's this whole concept. I'm trained in shamanic and energy medicine and you know, saying, speaking an intention, speaking an affirmation that puts energy into something that helps it become something really tangible and very real. And if you have a kid who's trying to ignore this obsessive thought and is then just saying, okay, I can't really handle that thought, which might be go hurt your dog. That's scary for a kid. So they go whoop. And the brain does them a huge favor and says, why don't we just go wash our hands? And then it takes it out of trauma and it can become something they can just feel like they're acting on. So I think it's really important to understand when we've tripped that trigger to autoimmunity. This is not trauma based therapy. It's different. It's a physical body problem.

Yeah, yeah. You want to address what's going on first and then when they're ready, when.

They'Re ready and let them guide it. Yep. And then they're going to need to probably talk about it. But it may. Maybe not.

Maybe not. So if, if people wanted to learn more, how can they find you or get into contact with your resources?

Sure. So my book. And you can find that in both print book and ebook. And that's going to be anywhere that you know you can get books. So if you're in Canada, I hear this, a lot of people like, I can't get in Canada. You can get the ebook there. And we do have a distributor now for Canadians to be able to pick up the book there. So like Amazon, Barnes and Noble, those kinds of things. And then I have a membership. The membership is really geared toward the environmental medicine part, the mold. And, and we do, we venture into like Lyme and co infections and neuroinflammation, concussion. But I've found that parents need, when you're in the midst of it, you need a higher level of support. And I think that the most important thing you can have as a parent is accountability and confidence. You know, like accountability to like do the thing and confidence in some of these things. And if this is your first foray into natural medicine, it can feel very, very scary. So two things to build the confidence. First thing is I have a medication compatibility chart. You don't have to have a book to get it. And you can just go to my website, drkrista.com med-compatible and it will tell you what medications are safe to use, which natural therapies that we talk about in the book. And if there has to be a dose adjustment, then you take that to your doctor and say, hey, I've got this chart. It shows that this, I may need a dose adjustment if we're going to use this quercetin or something like that. So that gains confidence. The other thing is I have a book club. So we, it's an 11 week program. People can come, parents can come, you can bring grandparents, caregivers, like the whole team. And we go through the book. So you have chapters to read before the meeting and then it's a time to share and do Q and A. And I just really excited about this because I feel like that's the level of handholding I would have wanted when I was first doing this. I mean, it's great to have a book and everything and the steps. But then there's like knowing that other parents have kids that are like yours. It can get very, very lonely, you know. So this is a place to not only get community, but get some perspective and some, some guidance. So I'm there for the accountability piece.

And we'll link to your website for those. If you go to changetheirfoundation.org where we post the interviews and articles and we'll make sure people can link to that. I want to thank you so much for taking the time to speak with us. If anyone listening, if you love this interview in particular, Dr. Jill joined us back in December and we have a great interview and we talk all about mold related illness specifically in that episode. So you'll want to check it out. But thank you for coming back and talking to us today.

Happy to. Thanks for having me. And thanks for all that you're doing. I'm so excited about it.

Thank you. Yeah, we're all, we're going to, we're going to find some answers together and we're going to live, you know, happy, healthier lives and safer homes. So. And for everyone listening, if you found this interview helpful, I want you to do two things for me. I want you to share this interview in the MOLD groups in the pans, Pandas groups in the autoimmune groups, groups focused on children's medical conditions. Pandas and PANS is estimated to affect 1 in 200 children. And our environments play a huge role in keeping us healthy or making us sick and last, head on over to changetheirfoundation.org Sign up for our newsletter because it really is the best way to get great interviews like this one directly to your inbox. We'll see you next time. Thanks so much.