Doctor Explains How Toxins Destroy the Gut Lining - Dr. Nikol Hopkins

How many toxins should be in your body right now? Zero. So why are so many people inflamed, foggy, and feeling bloated? Because your gut barrier is only one cell thick, and when it starts leaking, that means toxins can now slip into your bloodstream and trigger a full body immune response. So my guest today is Dr. Nicole Hopkins, and she's going to break down exactly what leaky gut actually is and how mycotoxins and everyday foods can make it worse. And the practical first steps you can use right now to reduce your exposure and start feeling better. All right, we are here. And I'm excited for this episode, personally, because it's something that I don't know much about. Yeah. So, Dr. Nicole Hopkins, you're here with us.

Got one. And everybody should be taking care of it.

Yeah. The gut. I know. Well, I'm going to learn why. We're all going to learn why. And I know you have some, you know, some personal stories as well, and you're so intertwined in the MD lifespan and what Dr. Savage has been doing for a long time, and you have really cool background, and I'm curious of that as well. You've worked with some big businesses, but, yeah, you're a doctor yourself. You know, Mark, I mean, it's like you have this whole interesting mix. So I guess when it comes to. Let's talk about the gut thing, like, why is this so important as it pertains to toxins and I guess just the world around us. Right. Right now?

Well, I think the biggest thing with toxins is that. Or actually with the gut, is that it is what keeps everything out of your body. Okay, Think of it this way. And many of the listeners are going to know this. The. The digestive tract starts in the mouth, goes down the esophagus. Small intestine, large stomach, small incest, enlarged intestine, and then out. It should never come into contact with the inside world, should never come into contact with the outside world. Okay? And there are these magnificent cells that are literally one cell thick, and that provides the barrier between the outside world and the inside world. The problem is when there is a breach in the system, when there's a breach in that. In those cells, and they start to separate. My favorite analogy with the GI tract is like Tuck pointing and brick. So when you're brick and the mortar starts to separate, and then all of a sudden you have the infiltration of water, and it gets into your. Into your. Your. Your walls or wherever, and it starts to create problems. It's very similar with the gut. When things start to slip through those cracks, it gets into the bloodstream and then it creates an immune response. All of the cells, the white blood cells, the immune defenses start to encircle it and they create an inflammatory process. And that is a 50,000 foot view.

Okay, that makes sense.

Where toxins play a role or where toxins really create a problem. And Paul and I had a little bit of a discussion about this is what comes first. Is it the toxins have just, you know, bombarded. Bombarded. Bombarded the cells until they separate or did the cells separate and allow the toxins to get in? I don't know if anybody can answer that. What I do know and what I do see is that when there is a significant amount of intestinal permeability, which is what we call it, or leaky gut, you have rise to all kinds of gastrointestinal disorders. There's something called sibo. There's something called sifo. Sibo is small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Okay? Yep.

Sifo, which is kind of where the mycotoxins come in, is small intestinal fungal overgrowth. And it just changes the entire milieu of the microbiome. Now what's the microbiome again? 50,000 foot view. It's basically the neighborhood in your gut. And you want to have more good neighbors than you have bad neighbors. The problem with mycotoxins is it literally. They literally can change how many good guys you have versus how many bad guys.

Like actually changing them, like modifying completely.

Yes, yes, because it actually destroys. It destroys those cells, for example. And this is where I have my little list. You ready?

Hit me.

So one of the questions was what toxins are most disruptive to the gut? Okay. The big ones I see are fumonisins, the okra toxins, and the aflatoxins and B1 especially. Now, why those? Those mostly are found not only in the environment, but they're also found in food.

Coffee. Right?

Coffee. Grains, like oats, corn, barley, wheat, a lot of them that are stored in the silos that are used for grain, for feed, for cattle feed and animal feed. So not only is it what we eat, but it's what we eat, eats.

So it can get passed down from a cow, let's say, and all the way through our food, through the cooking process, to our own guts.

And that's. That was something that was really upsetting to me. Not. Not that they eat, you know, what we eat eats them or they eat, whatever is that a lot of this stuff isn't neutralized by cooking.

That was actually an aha. Because I learned this about coffee recently, actually researching for one of our videos. And that was one of the things is like the roasting process does not take out what you just said. The, you know, the different type toxins that can come through from the mold growth. And you know, because the common misconception is like, oh, yeah, I get a local roasted coffee. I'm like, well, that doesn't matter. It's all the beans that, you know, it's where they got shipped from and all that.

Exactly. And whether it's shade grown or whether it's organic, was it on the right side of the mountain or the left side of the mountain? And you know, we'll talk more about this probably a little bit later, but it's the 80, 20 rule.

Yeah.

Which is basically, you know what, 80% of the time you need to implement strategies that are going to help you with avoidance. You have to, you have to everybody. But 20% of the time it's like you can't, you have to have some wiggle room. Maybe it's 70, 30 for other people, maybe it's 90, 10 for others. It depends individually on who you are and what your symptoms are or your illness is. But getting back to mycotoxins in your microbiome, so mycotoxins promote the growth of pathogenic bacteria. That's more bad guys than good guys. Mycotoxins interfere with the tight junctions which we talked about that line your GI tract, which are very important to keep that, your lining pristine. And the thing that's awesome about the lining of the GI tract is it does regenerate every seven to ten days.

Really? Okay.

You can eliminate stuff that's noxious to your gut. It can regenerate fairly quickly. Now, with that being said, there might be a spot here that's bad and then it gets healed and then there might be a spot over here. So it's a constant process. It's not. It's never one and done. Never.

Yeah. And I don't want to get away from your list, but to keep that lining pristine, my brain goes immediate to like, wait, how can I keep it pristine? Like, I'm sure it's taking. Keeping inflammation down, I'm assuming is probably the, the first or the biggest culprit. Right?

Yeah. The big one is, well, so it's what's causing inflammation. Is it the heavy metals? Is it something that you eat that your body has a sensitivity to?

So figuring out what those are. Yeah.

And that's where personalized medicine is amazing because we take the time to figure all that out, whether it's, you know, doing the, you know, the, the total toxin test or doing a comprehensive digestive stool test. Because then I can determine the, based on your results, what, you know, your zonulin levels are. And again, I'm getting into the weeds here, and maybe this is another, another conversation, but there are markers that we look at that give me a very good indication of what's actually going on. And then you don't have to necessarily do always do a food allergy or a food sensitivity test because there's probably five to 10 things that most people have difficulty with. We know what those are, but some people really want that objective data.

Could you tell me, share what those most common ones are just so we can at least have that in our mind? Yeah.

Dairy, corn, soy, sugar and wheat.

Basically everyone's going to have some kind of reaction. At least the percentage is very high that one of those things, those five things, exactly, is going to be a culprit. Interesting.

So we'll do an elimination program where you pull those things out and you basically do various supplements, some medical foods that are geared towards detoxification and also geared towards inflammation. And you get everything to kind of calm down. And then you start to reintroduce some of these allergy, more allergenic foods or problematic foods. And then you wait for some, you wait for the, the patient to give you a response like, oh man, when I ate xyz, I blew up. I had bloating, I had a headache. Because when you pull stuff out for like 20 days, 21 days or 28 days, the inflammation drops really quickly. And then in the meantime, as I said, the medical foods you're taking L, Glutamine, you're doing other nutrients, vitamin A. There's a whole list of things that you, that you take in order to support your GI tract and heal it. And then when you start to reintroduce things, you wait to see what the reaction is. I see that's good enough objective data for enough people to say, yeah, I'm staying away from that. Because if you're eating all these things, like if you're eating dairy and you're eating, you know, let's say you have a grilled cheese sandwich.

Sure.

And you get a headache or you get constipation or diarrhea, you don't know what it is. Is it the dairy, is it the cheese, is it the wheat, is it the butter?

That's a Good point.

And that's how you kind of have to parse it out.

I'm just thinking with all of these ingredients, like just wheat. Oh, I'm looking at sugar. I mean, that it's everywhere. You know, it's so prevalent in all the foods and stuff that you wouldn't ever even think of. I mean, corn as well. I mean, all this stuff, dairy. I'm sure there's this combo effect thing happening that people, I mean, you know, it's, it's kind of like when you hear, I don't know, maybe it's just like, that's just how I always feel. And so it's almost tough for people to.

This was my absolute favorite thing that I have ever, ever had as a doctor. And that was when I first started doing this work. I worked for an amazing do, and he had some kids in his practice. And I, I did one of these, one of these detoxification programs with him or an elimination program. He was 6, 6. And he comes into my office after we, after he was done and he said to me, and he was the most earnest child and he's like, Dr. Nicole, he goes, you don't know how bad you feel until you feel better. I was right on the verge of tears. I mean, he had done so well and he felt so much better. You know, he was always congested, he stomach aches, he was, you know, he had to stay home from school a lot. And he was a trooper and he did it.

That's crazy. Yeah. Six year old.

But let's get back to these mold things. Monocence, specifically increase of bacteria known as Bacteroides, which is associated with ibs, ibd and ibs. And IBD are so rampant. And it is one of the most. To me, it's a very complex disease. If you want to call it a disease. Well, it's termed a disease because there's so many arms and legs to it. But again, you know, we've never, or I have never really looked specifically at what's the role of mycotoxins, what is the role of toxins of any kind contributing to some of these syndromes. And you know, when I was doing, when I was getting ready to do this, I really did. You know, it wasn't a deep, deep dive into the literature, but I was just like, I didn't know that. I didn't know that. I didn't know that. And the thing that I love about this work is that I personally learn something new all the time.

Oh yeah.

And I love to research things it's.

The perfect position for you because you're seeing everybody's data too, right? You're helping people interpret their toxin tests and evaluate what the next best step is for them. Like, there's no better person than you to be that one.

The people that are coming to us now are sick. They are sick and they are smart about what's going on with them. And I would say probably 80% of them have been referred to to MD LifeSpan by their physicians. Whether it's a DO, an MD who's doing personalized medicine, a naturopath, a chiropractor, I don't care that have these people have hit the wall. They've done detoxes, they've done binders, they've done eboo, they've done every single kind of protocol that they possibly could do. Do tpe for a lot of these people. I don't mean to sound dramatic. Is a last resort. And that's why it's always the next best thing. Always the next best thing.

That's what I wanted to ask as well. And listen, did you get through your. The list of everything there?

Oh, this is a really important one. Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I don't want to skip it.

Okra toxin.

Tell me about this.

Yeah, it can wipe out a keystone bacteria known as El reuteri. Have you heard of that one yet?

I have, but I don't know what it is.

That's okay. This isn't a quiz.

Okay, thank you.

The only reason I know about El Reuteri is because I read this book which is called Super Gut. Do you know William Davis? Dr. William Davis?

I've heard the name. I do know the name. Let's see.

So he's written a couple of books. His big one was wheat Belly. I read his book because I was really trying to understand more of the ins and outs of Sibo and Sifo. And he has a tremendous amount of knowledge and information. Anyway, like story short, I read it. Never had heard of El Rudai. And he actually has this whole process where you can ferment dairy using the El Rudai capsule and you can basically ferment any probiotic and you ferment it for 36 hours and going from 20 billion colony forming units to 300 billion.

Wow. Okay.

I'd never heard of El root rye. And so I started doing it myself and I make that and I make some other whatever, yogurt. You can't really call them yogurt because it doesn't have the true yogurt things. Anyway, I'VE seen a marked difference in terms of my own digestion because, you know, I live in Mexico. I went through a period where I had E. Coli. Wow. You know, I knew basically the things to do, but it wasn't going away. It wasn't going away. It wasn't going away. So I finally had to. I, I did one round of antibiotics, which I try, I try never to do, and then I got better. But then, you know, living down here, you just are kind of at the mercy of, you know, of our vegetables and fruits and, you know, they use pesticides down here still and that sort of thing. And even though we. I try to do mostly organic, sometimes you just can't. So anyway, but I found out about that particular one because it's called a keystone, a keystone probiotic. And it's important because when L. Rooteri is gone, it's gone like out of the.

Yeah, the food or whatever it is. Okay.

So it takes a long time to repopulate the gut with it, which is why doing this fermentation of 36 hours and creating this massive amount, it helps to regenerate it over time.

So that kind of like overloading the gut really.

Exactly. And the reason it's important is because it helps to improve the intestinal barrier. Remember we talked about leaky gut and that's. It strengthens the gut.

I'm going to do some extra research and yeah, definitely, that's something new on my radar.

So when the gut is compromised, you know, circling back to that.

Yes.

And you've got heavy metals, you've got, you know, pfas, you've got whatever, any, any or all of the above slipping through the cracks.

Yep.

It's going to get into the bloodstream. When it gets into the bloodstream, it's going to go where it's going to go, whether it's to the brain, whether it's to, you know, other organs. It's just, it's, it's. That's how things go from point A to point B.

The outside just became inside now and it's all over.

Or actually the inside really got in. The outside came in and got into places where it's really not supposed to go.

There you go.

Because the role of. They're called microvilli. They're like these little finger like projections is when food or whatever drops onto these, it literally the digestion process, it goes down into these little microvilli and they further break it down. And that's when it gets into the bloodstream. When it gets into the bloodstream like that, when it's completely broken down, no problem. But if a piece of chicken slips through there, not completely digested, that's when it mounts an immune response.

Okay.

Yeah. Because it's viewed as a foreign invader. So all of these toxins, because they're small and they can get through, they create an immune response because it's not supposed to be there.

And that's where. Yeah, depending on what DNA and other factors, it basically flips on whatever thing that was maybe hiding inside of you from hereditary or whatever it might be.

Exactly. And if you can't, if you're not a good detoxifier, then everything backs up.

Is that all biological? Like, is that just hereditary? You know, the detox pathways or is that.

No, the detox pathways are actually called the cytochrome P450s and it's, it's a whole process. It goes to the liver. There's all different organs of detoxification. But where the problem comes into play is when you have, if you're a rapid metabolizer or a slow metabolizer. For example, people, like, for example, people might have very, might be a very rapid detoxifier of caffeine. So they can drink a lot of caffeine and it goes right through them. And then there's other people that are slow detoxifiers and they have a little bit of caffeine and they get a headache. It's the same with alcohol. I mean, there's a number of things. Drugs, same thing.

Yeah.

So it depends on what your detoxification pathways are.

How do you recommend people start? You mentioned the dairy, corn, soy, sugar, wheat, and like a 21 day kind of elimination diet. But like, where would you steer people.

Towards if they start with those five things? And that's asking a lot.

I know. That's what I was going to say. I'm like, that's like the keystone pieces.

Of you don't do it the week between Christmas and New Year's, or you don't do it, you don't do it in December, let me put it that way. Not if you want to eat chocolate chip cookies. Yeah, yeah. And I think most people know that sugar is toxic and then it's not good for you. And. Yeah, you know, and that's one of the hardest things to. Sugar and alcohol are two of the hardest things to kind of dial back on, especially during the holidays.

I feel like something sustainable because like you said, you mentioned 21 days. So it takes, it's not a long time. But at the same time, It's a long time if someone's cutting out a key. Sugar, for instance, or wheat. And I guess it's so tough when you don't have the numbers in front of you, right? Like a toxin test. And yeah, maybe, maybe you can speak on that because I know you're doing a lot on. You're interpreting a lot of data these days, but the importance of knowing your own data and then actually talking with someone like yourself that actually can interpret what that is, it's fascinating.

I love looking at those tests. And part of it is when I talk to somebody. And I'm going to be doing more of that next year because of what we're doing just with really promoting it, because I think it's an excellent tool. But again, you know, a lot of the people that come to us are already. Have already done one. Now, they might not be recent, but, you know, it's still very directional.

That's true.

So what I do when I get one, you know, I go through it before even, you know, I always like to go over them and I make notes to myself so that when I talk to somebody, they're going to ask questions like, what is this? What is this? How did I get this? You know, I don't. I don't look at all of them, but what I do is I look for patterns. And the big ones are this. You always look at the reds. So it's. It's organized in red, which is greater than 95% of the. You're greater than 95% of the population. Then the other one is. Is yellow, which is 75 to 95% of the population you have. And then the last one is green. Misconception is that green is good. No, green is not good. There's no toxin. That's good. And to paraphrase Dr. Savage, no toxin and no toxins in your body.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah. He quizzed me many times on how many toxins do you naturally should have in your body. Zero. Nothing.

We were laughing about that this morning, actually, in our staff meeting. Somebody brought that one up. And it's true. But I'm actually always. I'm actually always thrilled when I see someone's test that only has, like, I don't know, seven. Seven toxins total. And, like, maybe one. I had two reds.

That's it, huh?

I had two reds and I had, like, I don't know, 11 yellows. But the patterns I'm talking about is. Okay, I had two. Two reds. One was lead and the other one was the atrazine, which we talked about. Golf course. So I play golf two to three times a week, or I did until things got really busy here, and I'm like, okay, I know atrazine is a. Is an herbicide. There's no lawns in Mexico. And then I'm thinking it's a golf course.

It's a good point.

Yeah. So that was.

Narrowed it down pretty quick. Yeah.

Yeah, it did. And then the other one was lead. And even though we, you know, there's no leaded gas anymore, there's diesel fuel used here, and lead is. Is a component of diesel exhaust. So I had a high lead, and who knows if it's. If it's that in particular, but, you know, and then the other pattern that I look for right away is, okay, how many of your yellows are about to turn red? Like, how close are they to the line?

It's creeping up.

And the same with the green. And I always tell people, again, green doesn't mean good. It just means a mild exposure, and we need to see where you are and how many might go yellow and how many might. How many of you might go red.

Yeah.

And then we just kind of go from there. And, you know, most people, as I said, are aware of a lot of their symptoms, so I don't really have a lot of time to correlate those symptoms or those, you know, the findings to what their symptoms are. Other than that, we have a really good general idea of what causes. You know, what some of these causes are and what people are ailing. The big one, again, is mycotoxins, because they're everywhere.

Yeah. No, I started spotting my own, you know, excited. Grand total of. Was it 22 toxins, and I think it was either 5 or 7 in the red. It was up there. And, yeah, I. On the mold side of things, at least for me. Well, it was interesting. My wife and I both did a toxin test, and we compared, and the one that was in common between the two of us, because we had molds that I was surprised by, but it happened to be coffee. That's why I did more of a deep dive on coffee. Yeah. Yep, Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that. That was the one that we shared. And I was like, ooh, interesting. So now I've been all about getting the cleanest coffee and sort. You know, and that's a whole nother adventure in itself. That's why.

Absolutely. And not only that, it's like, okay, well, how many. How much, you know, how many BPAs did I have? Do I Have. I didn't have any. I was shocked. Well, I had some. But nothing, nothing. That was big because my husband and I got to this big fight because one of the things that I. That. That I also tell my patient or the people that I do is like, don't freak out, okay? Just don't freak out. This is a roadmap, okay? And now that we know what you've got, we gotta figure out what your avoidance techniques are gonna be. Because before you can get in for tpe, because not everybody can do it. They can't.

Right?

So we got to develop your avoidance plan. Okay? Clean air, clean water, clean food. Get us. Get rid of every single piece of plastic that you possibly can. And for me, what that was was coffee pot.

Oh, that was plastic.

Oh, yeah. You know, the. I had a ham. Whatever. A. Queuing her with the. With the plastic thing. The whatever.

Yep.

And I said, my husband, we can't use this anymore. Well, he was none too, none too pleased with that. So I looked around and I. We had talked about a. A percolator coffee pot. It's all stainless steel. Then we tried one and it didn't. We. It didn't turn out that great. And I can figure out most things. And it was just like I bought a French press. I was very reluctant to do it because I thought, this is going to be a pain in the butt. But you know what? It takes as long to make a pot of French press as it does for my Cuisinart.

Oh, really?

Yeah. We did a side by side one morning and it's. The coffee is fabulous. So now I concentrate on my organic coffee and we need to figure out. Somebody needs to figure out a little wand that. Like a UV wand or something that you can wave over your coffee to destroy all those toxins. But I don't know if that's a thing.

Someone's going to come up with it.

Yeah, they will, because I put it out in the universe.

Yeah, you did. What other. Before we wrap up here, because I do want to tease and say you're going to be back for more episodes if you like it or not. Nicole bringing you back because I know we're going to deep dive, at least I'm assuming, because from our previous chats, we're going to deep dive into all these little things that you just kind of mentioned. So, like, you know, in your house, what are the things that you could do for avoidance? You know, avoiding these toxins as best as you can, Your food, your air, water and all that. I think that's very fascinating. It's very practical. It's something that we can all do. And I think it's like one of those things. Once you know it, then you're just like, oh, dang it.

So there's a team of folks working on a book for the practice and also for, you know, for the TPE people that kind of goes through, you know, what are the. What are the next steps? You know, I researched the appropriate, you know, air filters and water filters and blah, blah, blah, and I scrubbed them against Consumer Reports versus this particular website here. Because, to be honest, you have to be really mindful and careful of who you're reading, who you're looking at and what the research actually means. For example, Consumer Reports is fabulous for electronics and those kinds of things, but they don't go as deep as we would in terms of, like, some of these different chemicals that are in things, if that makes sense. I went and looked at other websites like Made Safe or Environmental Working Group, and kind of scrubbed all those things against that. So the information that's there is going to be really usable stuff. But what I did when I got mine back, and this is what I tell everybody, is pick a room. And for me, it was the kitchen, because I'm in the kitchen a lot. So I literally took every piece of plastic Tupperware and got rid of it. I had some really. I mean, I had some really nice big Tupperware bowls that I'd had for 25, 30, 40 years. One of them was my mom's. That actually is still in cabinet because it was my mom's. I don't want to throw away.

Sure.

I got rid of all of my Teflon pants. Frying pants.

Oh, my God. That's the first thing that had to go for mine. Yeah, it's Teflon. Non non stick.

Yep, exactly. And it was like, oh, God. I knew. I knew it was going to be a challenge because there is an art to using a stainless steel fry pan. But once you. Once you figure out how to do it, and that's what we're going to do in a video. Cool how you do it, because it's pretty simple. Once you know what you're doing, and I will tell you, you can learn anything on YouTube, of course.

So the big thing is we wanted to make sure that this whole intestinal permeability concept, leaky gut, is understood because it sounds like that's. I didn't understand it, but the fact that we're. We're basically hanging on with this Whole one cell seal essentially around our gut. And if that thing is compromised, then all sorts of bad stuff can happen and it could trigger all these different things. Even if you're feeling pretty good right now. Right. Like, you have all these factors. So.

Well, and it's the same for the brain, too. It's like, you know, there's, there's, you know, you can have leaky brain, too, and that, you know, that that's kind of, you know, bringing this whole thing back is there's something called the gut brain axis. So what affects your gut's gonna affect your brain.

Wow. Yeah. It's a direct line to it, right? It's.

Yep, yep.

Maybe we go through that connection on a future episode, too. I think we're, we're creating a little breadcrumbs here, so.

Oh, definitely.

Where would you say their next step is? Like, where would you say, hey, go do this a practical thing and, and then, you know, you're going the right direction.

Well, definitely, you know, implement your avoidance techniques. You know, if you don't have a water filter, get one. Start somewhere. Whether it's, you know, a, A pitcher, you know, plastic pitcher. Just make sure that you are vigilant. Vigilant with changing your filters out. I had a. I had a patient who got really, really sick because she never changed her filter and it was full of mold.

Oh, yeah, for sure.

Yeah. So you water, you know, open your windows if you can get a good air filter. And there's recommendations in the book that's going to be, going to be available. You know, start to eliminate ultra processed foods. Do 80, 20 again. Just, you know, pick a room, get on it a little bit at a time. Don't overburden yourself. Don't drive your family crazy. My husband and I just bickered about stupid crap for weeks. Every time he went to find something. Where's my glass? I threw it away. Where's my. I. Where's my. I got rid of it.

I had the same thing with my wife, too. We did it years ago, too, and. But once you understand, I mean. But yeah, like, don't just start upheaving your house. You know, doing that without maybe communicating why it's.

And it's overwhelming. And it's overwhelming to the pocketbook. Pocketbook, too. You know, to the extent that you can put everything in glass, do it. So what we'll talk about next time, too, is because I worked for craft foods.

I know.

I used to go to the plants, the craft plants for things like when I worked in promotional Marketing and we like more seating contests or whatever. And I would, you know, you watch how stuff is made and when stuff is filled, like, whatever. If it's ketchup or mustard or mayonnaise or whatever. Hot food goes into plastic immediately. Exactly. So you. If you can buy something in glass over plastic, do it.

That's a reframe for me, actually, because, like, yeah, you don't think much about the mustard bottle that I know is in my fridge right now that says Craft on there. It's like, how did that get filled? Steaming hot.

Right into a bunch of molten hot. Whatever. So, you know, the grocery store that I shop at here in town, in Mexico, in San Miguel, I actually consciously looked for mustard, mayonnaise and ketchup in glass bottles, and I found them. And two of them were Heinz, which Heinz is a. Is. It's Heinz Craft.

Yeah. Yeah.

Not that. Not that I am particularly brand loyal, although I am. And there was a Heinz mayonnaise. So I thought, if I'm not going to make my own mayonnaise, people are like, how do you have all this time? Well, I was semi retired until I came back to work with Paul, with Dr. Savage. But it's a game for me at this point. It really is.

Well, again, it's almost like. And I think Dr. Savage sees it this way, or he's talked about it is like, you almost had to, because he came out of retirement as well, you know, and he saw him like, holy moly. There's like all this stuff now. I could do something about the data that, you know, the test is like the, you know, TPE as a treatment and all the different protocols, because we know more now and have the ability to actually help people. So I'm assuming, I'm just assuming over here that that's probably why you came out. And you're like, okay, we've got something bigger to do.

Well, it's interesting, and I'm not sure that Dr. Savage even is aware of this, but he has called me, he has conscripted me. This is the third time, the first time I was living in Seattle. I had already worked for Dr. Savage, and I left to move to Seattle to be with my husband. We had just gotten married, and it's always the week between Christmas and New Year's, what he calls me. And this last time, it was a week between Christmas and New Year's. And my phone, I still have his. His number on my phone, obviously. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, did I do something? Stop calling me. I'M doing this new thing. And he's like, he just expects us all to know what he knows, which is another thing. And it's hilarious because, like, I'm doing this. It's called. It's called aphoresis. And I'm writing it down.

I'm like, never heard of that word.

Just telling me. He's so excited. He goes, I need you to come back. I'm like, okay. You don't. You don't say no. You're just like, okay, it's exciting.

And, you know, it's actually, I mean, he's on it, obviously, you know, oh, my gosh.

And even, like at the staff meeting this morning, I mean, the, the stuff that is happening and how quickly it's happening. But there's two things. Number one, yes, we're growing quickly, but we're. We're growing intentionally and people are getting better. And one of the big things that I realize. And it. They said it this morning, too, was like, we are. We know toxins at MD lifespan. We know toxins. We know how to get rid of them. And we are the best at doing it. We are. And we are the industry leader. And I think that's only going to be proven the. More like next year is going to be, I think, a really amazing year for people, for patients, for people who are looking. Because people are looking for us. That's looking for therapeutic plasma exchange. And this is where they're coming, is they're coming to us because of all the stuff that we're doing. You know, our protocols, they're so incredibly well designed and thought out. And our nurses. Have you done it yet? Have you done TPE yet?

Done three sessions. I'm done. Yeah. I've done it all. I'm like, I, I. Exactly what you're saying. Yes, it's.

Did you go to Jeopardy? Go to Magnolia, Denver.

Okay, so Dr. Jill's place. And Angela. I got to give Angela a shout out. She's my nurse. She's been on the podcast here reluctantly, but she was on here.

Yeah, I mean, are phenomenal.

And I, and, and, and I will back you up and say, like, because I'm in a bunch of different spaces, this isn't the only thing I do. Like, I'm in the tech space. I do a lot of. With AI and, and stuff there. And I'll tell people and just my friend's circles, my parents golf circles where they're. I was telling. And I show my pictures of me holding the plasma bags and what I didn't immediately like, whoa, hold on, tell me more. What do you do? I've heard kind of about this. Or, you know, I'm just very curious about the topic. So I think this whole thing of toxins and plastics and all that is becoming more mainstream for the right reason. Yeah, we need to be aware of what we're putting in our bodies, even if we're not choosing to. But then now there's actually a mechanism to get it out.

Like, exactly, exactly when before it was like. And, and this is. I'm not throwing any shade on these processes, you know, but doing a detox and then, you know, doing binders and doing EDTA and doing chelators and doing EBOO and doing all these things, they all work to a point.

There's, there's someone that listened to this podcast Angela was telling me about a patient that said he's tried everything, EBOO included in all that stuff, and realized it just wasn't helping and actually chose to do TPE because of the crazy deep dive research, but also of what he listened to on this, on this show and ended up getting tb. And I think it's gone really well from what I heard.

Well, I'll tell you too, Dr. Mansour, that particular one was phenomenal. I learned so much from that. And then the other thing that I wanted to shout out to was your buddy from Aqua True, the water.

Yeah.

She nailed it when she said, you know, you got to be your own. You got to be your own epa.

That's right. She did say that.

You know what I'm going to add to that? You need to be your own usda. You have to be your own fda. You have to be your own cdc. Well, I don't want to be cdc because that's just about too much, but a lot.

Yeah.

And unfortunately. And I, you know, I don't want to get too political, but, you know, with all of these standards being rolled back and the government allowing more toxins because they're putting corporations over citizens is what's happening. You know, I get, I get notifications from Environmental Working Group, from this group, from that group, because part of it is I really needed to learn about toxins because I didn't know, I didn't know about, since the way that I do now, and I'm not a toxicologist at all. And thank God we've got toxicologists on, on our, on our board and, and whatnot. But, you know, you have to be aware of a lot of this stuff because the government, the government's not looking out for you anymore. You have to look out for you, your family and your other loved ones. And that's just kind of where it's at.

Let's wrap on that note, because you're absolutely right. And do your own research, everyone. I think hopefully this was a great start. If you're new to the conversation. If you're not, then thanks for hanging out. And, and yeah, there's so many great guidebooks and we have the AI, you know, digital twin of Dr. Savage. All these. There's so many resources where you can go deep dive and learn a lot more.

So I think so too. And I think people are getting a little bit more comfortable with that. But you know what? They still want to talk to the live person. And that one thing I do want to, I do want to say about Doc is, you know, I don't, I don't get the benefit of really spending a lot of time with people when they, you know, like, I do their 30 minute total toxin tests. And I was doing some information calls, but, man, I got to tell you, when he, when he does his evaluation for patients that are going to, that want to get the next step and like, really talk about tpe, he really spends the time to review all of the lab work, whether it's stuff that we did or, or from another doctor, so that when he talks to you, you know that he's got your best interest at heart.

Yep. I've seen some of the recordings and yeah, it blew me away of how deep he goes into these conferences. Wow. Okay. So, yeah, yeah, well, we'll, we'll, we'll give all the links and ways to. Yeah. If you want to jump in. Because definitely, you know, it's all about personalized medicine, knowing your data, but also what to do with it and.

Exactly, exactly.

Dr. Nicole, I appreciate you very much. And we went down all these different angles, but, you know, more to come.

I can't wait. The edited copy. So anyway.