The 5 Episodes That Changed How We Think About Toxins, Health, and Healing

Most of us feel like we're living life in first gear, so we're revving the engine hard, but we're not going anywhere. We're feeling exhausted, we're feeling foggy, and we might be wondering why the biohacks aren't working for us. The truth is it's likely that your internal oil is dirty. So my name is Joe Fear, and today we're going to count down the top five most impactful conversations we had here on the show. In 2025, we're going to go deep into the science of the human oil Change with Dr. Paul Savage. And then we're heading over to talk about hidden mold and this pandemic that we're facing with Dr. Jill Carnahan. Then we're going to dive into why your mitochondria is stuck in this metabolic state, this bottleneck, with Dr. Paul Anderson. Then we're also joined by Dr. Janet Ng and Dr. Mohammed Mansour, where we're talking about recalibrating your nervous system and the truth about detoxing in a post pandemic world. So if you feel like your health is hitting the wall and you really want that breakthrough moment, this is the episode for you right now. Let's dive in and start counting down the top five. All right, we're back for another episode. Dr. Paul Savage. Glad to be here with you. How are you doing?

Doing good, doing good. What are we talking about today, Joe?

We're talking about plasma exchange. You know, this we've been talking about.

Favorite topic.

I know you live and breathe this stuff and you're doing so much, and that is why we started this podcast. Of course, we've been talking about toxins, the histories and the effects, and how that. How that really, you know, it lands with us as humans and the unborn. So let's talk about what plasma exchange is actually. Define it, you know, give a nice overview for everyone who is here and just wondering, what the heck is plasma exchange and how does it fit in?

You know, it's. It's a. It's not known. But you say, you go to the average person, say, therapeutic plasma change, and they're like, what's that? Is that something new? In fact, it's not new. It's very old. It's been around forever. Matter of fact, in ancient times, like in Greece and Greece and Italy and stuff, remember when they used to put leeches on you and the leeches would draw blood out or they'd actually cut you and let you bleed out for a certain period of time? That, that used to get people better. And now when modern medicine came along and they're like, that has no evidence. That's just hillbilly stuff. That's just hill medicine. It doesn't work. And it got poo pooed. You know, it's just basically we're throwing it up and not even looking at it again. Until around 1950, 1960, when some doctors were looking at some disease states and there was stuff in the blood, these, these type of antibodies that are bad for the kidney and they're like, wouldn't it be nice if we just get those antibodies out? Well, if we could just get the plasma out, we'd get the antibodies out. And that's how plasma change came about and that's how the machine, the machine came on about 20 years later. But that's why at that time, what we do is just take blood out, spin it, separate it, throw the plasma away, then we put the cells back in. It was a very long, laborious process because we'd only do little bags at a time. And the whole process of spinning them and separating them and adding up and then letting them infuse back in, it was very tedious and complicated. Just redundant, redundant, redundant. Fast forward to the 1970s. And it's funny, it's based upon separating milk from cream is how people get the idea of how to do this. And they're like, let's do that to blood. And sure enough, it separated the plasma from the cells and they were able to do it in the same kind of mechan mechanism that a cream separator does it on an industrial farm. And they just basically made a machine and made it a one unit thing so it could do it all at the same time, just like the cream separator did. I found that very interesting when we.

Got a good, good visual too, for.

Everybody community, because as we've talked about before, a plasma change is simply an oil change for the human. Now you may be too young to remember when you used to bring the cars in, put them up on skits, you'd undo the oil, the oil at the bottom, let the oil drop out, and then you'd put the screw back in and you go up to the top and you put new oil in the, in the car, and then you'd run it around the block for about a month and then you'd bring it in and drain out the dirty oil again and put new oil in, drain it and run it around the block for three, four months, three, four weeks and bring it back in and you keep doing it every time until the oil started running clean. And then you knew you got most of the gunk out of the car and you could go tear out the rest of the car, do what you wanted to do, but it was running much better. Because clean oil means a good car. Well, clean plasma means a good human. So the plasma change is very much the same thing. It's a process by which we take the blood out, we put it into a machine, it spins it, it separates the liquid, which is the plasma, from the cells, which is the solid, and then we throw the plasma away, we add the cells back to another liquid called albumin, and we infuse that back into your body. Now albumin itself is just a neutral solution that makes sure that your vascular space stays open because you need that to push the cells around. And then within 24 hours, you make brand new, non toxic, non inflamed, non oxidized, non cancer, perfectly baby fresh plasma all by yourself. And it's, it's a very safe procedure. It's, it's very effective at what it does. And so we just took that whole concept and we ended up doing it a series of them. So you do one and then we'd wait four weeks and do another one. And people are like, why would you wait four weeks in between? Because we studied the amount of toxins that occurred after you had one plasma change. And what we saw was at three weeks, but especially at four weeks, that's when all the toxins came back and equilibrated in your system. Because if I'm going to do multiple plasma changes, I want to make sure every time I do it, I want to get the toxins out.

Yeah.

So that, but this whole thing with serial plasma change has been around. We treated many different diseases, neurologic diseases like Alzheimer's, myasthenias, Gravis, Guillain Barre. We treated kidney disease. There's certain diseases of kidney from antibodies that we use plasma change for. We use it for autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid disease, rheumatoid arthritis, and other type of autoimmune disease. We use it on blood disorders because there's certain blood disorders where you're making coagulation factors you don't want. And we can they all in the plasma so we can take them out. It wasn't until two years ago myself is the one that figured out not only can we take all this other stuff out, we can take toxins out too.

I was telling you right before we started that I have a test. I had my whole toxin test, and I have. I showed a lot of mold. I don't have it pulled up right in front of me. But, you know, I was like. That shocked me because I'm in San Diego. I'm in a hotter part of San Diego too. I'm not right by the water. So I'm like, how is that possible? So, and that, you know, some of the stats that have come out and even some of the stuff that you publish is like, there's. There's a lot of people dealing with this that probably are just completely unknown. So, like, I guess what I wanted to assume is that we probably have mold in us at some sort. Like, so to acknowledge your point, okay, mold is probably an issue. So how do we deal with it?

So first of all, there is a genetic difference. So there are some people. You can have a building with a workplace with, you know, 200 employees, or you can have a family with six people in the family in the house. And people respond differently. So there is a genetic foundation of someone who has more trouble eliminating the mold toxins that tends to get really sick. It's about a quarter of the population. So an average building, workplace, home, one out of four, maybe one out of three, three people are going to have some symptoms. The most common is allergic respiratory congestion. That's actually something we're taught in medical school. Mold is an allergen to many people, but that doesn't totally trash your immune system and your nervous system and all these things we're talking about. So the other that quarter percent that's really susceptible tend to have much more systemic. And we call it multi system, multi symptom, meaning usually say the cardiovascular tachycardia or higher her low heart rate or irregular heart rate or things like that. You might also have respiratory issues or GI issues, increased permeability, increased food sensitivities, nervous system where you have anxiety, depression, insomnia. It can also disrupt our whole HPA axis. You can have really low cortisol where you can't get out of bed, or you can have really high cortisol where you gain weight and you have put on, you know, the typical cortisol types of symptoms. Or you can have hormonal disruptions. Both men and women will aromatize wonderful testosterone to make a strong and healthy, healthy bones and healthy muscles into estrogen. Or we have, you know, man boobs or belly fat or those things. And it can disrupt thyroid too. So it can really, really disrupt our whole entire system. It can disrupt the microbiome. So what we see often is this sequelae of this. And you kind of mentioned, alluded to the fact that. Do we all have this. I think a couple things are happening. First of all, if you look on the news, natural disasters, flooding, hurricanes, water intrusions of all sorts of places where we used to not see it are happening more and more and more frequently. Our weather is just getting more chaotic. Number two, our buildings are being poorly constructed, constructed quickly constructed without proper. I see all the time simple things like my contractor installed the kitchen. I'm not saying mine, but someone will tell me, my contractor installed kitchen cabinets and they drilled right through the pipes in the kitchen. We didn't know it till eight years later when that water was draining in the wall or they forgot to hook the water filter in the fridge to the line and it was just pouring into the wall, or someone didn't caulk or properly seal, put a barrier between the tiles in the bathroom. And that we think that grout is not water permeable. It is water permeable. So you must have a vapor barrier underneath your tile. And if someone forgot to put that in, it just goes right into that drywall. And any number of things where there is water intrusion into a building envelope. And even these wonderful LEED certified highly economic buildings that are very, very efficient, if they're not properly built, they could be a massive source because they're so airtight that there's no exchange of air properly, there could be condensation inside. And when you're talking San Diego or Arizona or places that are hot and dry, they can have just as many issues because if that air conditioner is way too running too high and there's condensation all the time, there's just. I could go on and on, as you can tell, but there's so many places where this can fail. And we just think our happy little box of a home is perfectly airtight and impermeable and it's just not. And part of that leads to what do you do? You have to be properly maintaining gutters and spouts and water lines and checking and putting. You know, there's just a lot of stuff to do. If you own a house or if you rent from a landlord, you got to make sure that that person is taking care of you.

I'd like to dive deeper into the cell mechanics and the mitochondria because I've been starting to see a lot more reports and things being talked about from other doctors talking about how that really is kind of the source of a lot of disease and of course, toxins. Play with that, but break that down, how that works, why it's important for us.

So if we, if we look at the way it's set up to work and how it's supposed to do business, most all of the cells in your body need energy that's produced, produced locally, meaning within the cell, usually, or neighboring. And that has to be done by the mitochondria, which are an organelle, a little piece of the cell that's made to make energy. It takes in nutrients and it does some manipulation with them. And it creates essentially electricity that runs a particular apparatus that makes ATP, which is energy units. Your cell then can take that ATP and break an energy bond off and run all of its energy, requiring processes, etc. So that's, that's why that's so important. And generally your cell has, you know, from hundreds to thousands of mitochondria. So it's a, it's a big business for yourself. The other thing is beyond energy and helping the cell actually do its best business. The people, usually somewhere in maybe grade school, high school, learn about cellular respiration, which is so human respiration is I breathe in and out and oxygen goes in, CO2 goes out, cell respiration, same thing, only there's no lungs involved, it's just oxygen goes in. It helps to run this energy production system. Carbon dioxide goes out the other side and leaves. Well, while that's going on, in addition to helping us make energy, which obviously people who have low energy states might have some mitochondrial issues because you feel your energy, you know, levels. But in addition to that, a lot of the mechanics of cell maintenance are based on the mitochondria doing their job. So good stuff goes in, energy is made, bad stuff stuff goes out. The issue, I think, in modern life is that we're still doing all of that and obviously we're still alive and moving along and all that. But the more stress we put on that system and all the basics, I just said, the slower we are, removing the bad things like toxins and just cell debris that builds up and all of that. And also we can get kind of metabolically confused in the cells instead of running, you know, I'll tell patients, you know, instead of running in top gear and, you know, like you're on the freeway, they're stuck in second gear or first gear or something to protect themselves, so they run more slowly.

But the engine is still revved up, right?

The engine is trying to go faster, but, but the, the cell mechanics are saying, you know, we can only do this today. This is all you're gonna get.

So it's a bottleneck of sorts.

Yeah, yeah.

So.

So a lot of the, you know, a lot of the troubles then come from, not so much we have bad equipment, but the equipment can only deal with so much going on. And, you know, people should know that, like, this is not a brand new concept. Even if you go back, you know, 50, 70 years ago, but certainly around half century ago, every medical pathology book in the very beginning has a summary section. And it essentially would say again, even 50 years ago, disease in many cases starts at the mitochondria. And then you get cells that don't work right. Then you have a tissue that doesn't work right, maybe an organ that doesn't work right. You build out. And if you have enough dysfunction at the mitochondrial level, it sort of brings everyone down with it.

I want you to break down this whole, like how you visualize it and see it and communicate it, this whole car analogy, because it's so. Yeah. Dr. Savage, he has said on this podcast numerous times, it's, you know, tpe therapeutic plasma exchange is like an oil change for your body. And the way he describes it makes perfect sense, but it goes even deeper than that.

Yeah, it does, because, you know, you can get the best premium gas out there. Right. But if your cells can't take it in, if you can't get rid of the toxins like in this at the cellular level, if you can't metabolize and, and use that gasoline, you know, it's like putting all that gasoline in a car. It's not going to go any anywhere.

Right.

So, and so, you know, I figured like the engine work that I do, I'm doing the old fashioned spark plugs and those types of things.

Well, mitochondria, right. Like, yeah, they have to.

Yeah.

They're being fed what, oxygen. Correct.

Right.

Yeah.

So I guess what's happening with a dirty engine or the engines that aren't being maintained like you would like to?

Well, if you don't have the engines maintained, you're going to have chronic fatigue, you're going to have increased aging, you have more inflammation, joint pain broken down, and that's going to lead to more diabetes, heart disease, strokes, those types of things. And it's just that vicious cycle. And people always go, well, what came first, the chicken or the egg? Sometimes we don't really know, but we got to break the cycle somewhere.

And when you describe this to folks, is it, I guess when is the moment when you. Is it when they're just asking about how this all works, or is it after a certain kind of test or just kind of curious how this fits in?

Well, when patients come to me, they go, well, I don't feel very well. And of course, I get the history and go, okay, why don't you feel well? And then so I start looking at the ways. And like, I start with some of the basic things I look at is body composition, because you don't know where you're going to go if you don't know where you're at. And looking at resting metabolic rate, which is what is your metabolism. And then I, you know, people, they want to be able to do things. And a lot of people think I just deal with athletes. And I said, well, I started with athletes because my kids were athletes. But really, if you think about everybody's an athlete, it doesn't matter what you want to do, whether you want to play hockey or lacrosse or do that, or if you just want to get up off the floor after playing with your kids on the ground, or here's one. If you want to put your suitcase in that overhead bin on the airplane, we're all athletes. We have to do that. And so I started looking at, you know, how can we function and what do we need to do, and what's our metabolism and what's our heart rate and how well can we adjust? And then the other thing, too, I'd like to look at is we're all in this fight or flight sympathetic overdrive. And part of healing is you need to be in what we call parasympathetics or their rest, digest, and heal. Well, in today's society, we don't get to do that. We're on our cell phones, we don't turn off. We drive in traffic, someone cuts you off, the phone's always blurry, something's always happening, and we're constantly in sympathetic overdrive. And so some of the things that I do looks at, how can I look and get people back into the parasympathetic mode so that they can start to rest, digest, and heal?

So definitely a multimodal approach is what I found to work best. I don't see silver bullets. Even though I'm a naturopathic doctor, I do love herbal medicine. It's not always enough to really get somebody over the hump. It can definitely help. It definitely can potentiate the effects of certain pharmaceuticals as well. But in and of itself, I haven't found a lot of silver bullets. In the post pandemic era, I guess.

Like walk me through how you define that and kind of what that can curtail.

You know, like, yeah, I mean, obviously you want blood work, you want basic understanding of a patient's physiology, you want to understand what their toxic load is, what their body burden is to. Mold is a big immunosuppressant. It can make it very difficult to fight infections like Covid or even have overlap in terms of symptomology with long Covid, even Bruce Patterson. And people who are developing long Covid blood work panels are realizing like, hey, there's a lot of overlap. We need to tease this apart. And so you definitely need a combination of blood work, environmental toxicity panels, urine analysis. Sometimes you need 24 hour urine because a lot of toxins don't get excreted right away. So it's not just about doing these direct to consumer kits. And you know you're going to have everything in a snapshot. It's not like that. Your body doesn't work that way. It doesn't eliminate toxins like that. And you need somebody who has a thorough understanding of half life, understanding how these toxins and potential triggers to infections, viral or mold, et cetera, are even activated and then sequestered in your body. They could be in your fat tissue. So they're not even going to show up in your blood. And they may not show up after a sauna just because you pee one time. So every one of these toxicants, you know, heavy metals, each one has a story, each one can tell you something. Perfluorinates can tell you something else. The forever toxins. So it's like you really have to have someone who knows where to test, how to test and then how long to test for, because you can't always get the answer just from a snapshot. So that's kind of like the short of my approach. The long of it is, well, what do they tolerate? What is the patient actually able to do? And so a lot of times if they're able to tolerate minuscule minerals, IVs, maybe they can't tolerate a lot of foods, they have a lot of sensitivities. Those are challenging cases. I might do more neurological based therapies that focus on their vagus nerve, that focus on recalibrating their vascular tone so that they can actually have good perfusion, they're actually awake, they can actually be alert enough to tolerate things and not react. And then you might think of things like laser therapy. So red light is a popular one, but there are many forms of laser therapy that could be effective in the realm of chronic infections. Covid toxins. Not just red light, but blue light, green light. Each one of these wavelengths have a myriad of effects on your mitochondria, the powerhouses of your cell. Different parts of your cell can get activated with different wavelengths. So it's a much more nuanced approach than just like, hey, I'm just going to get this red light pad, stick myself in a cryo chamber, and call it good. And I'm going to be optimized. I'm like, not necessarily. Not all the time. A lot of people who have a good vitality could get away with that. A lot of people, unfortunately, who are suffering, who have maybe subclinical issues, that doesn't work for them. So you have to have a more nuanced approach.