The Inflammation Equation: Decoding the Steps to Optimal Well-Being with Dr. Tom O'Bryan

Foreign. And welcome to Perfect Practice. Today we have none other than Dr. Tom O' Brien who's joining us today. We're going to talk about one of the most important topics that impacts virtually every cell, every system, every organ in your body. Something that Time magazine has called a silent killer, and that is inflammation. Dr. Tom, if you know him at all from the work that he's done in the past, is not only a brilliant clinician, super kind hearted, but also very, very detail and scientifically oriented. So he's done a lot of research on this new project that he's working on and I know it's going to blow your mind when we start talking about this. Before I started recording, we've had a brief conversation and I'm thinking to myself we need to be recording everything that he's saying right now. So I'm super excited for what you're going to share today. Dr. Tom, as always, welcome and thank you for spending this time with me today.

Thank you so much. It's always a pleasure to be with you. I wish we saw more of each other. We're in separate parts of the world, you know, but it would be great to be in the same town. We'd have coffee maybe once a week, once every two weeks, just to hang out and compare notes.

I know, I can totally see that happening. I'm visualizing myself on a beach with you, sitting, enjoying a nice Costa Rican coffee.

Yes, that would be great. Although, you know, we import our coffee from Reno, Nevada. We live in Costa Rica, but I bring the coffee from Reno because I found that to be the best coffee I could find anywhere. So.

Wow. I'm curious, do you mind sharing what kind of coffee it is? Not at all.

It's Brain Bean Nutrition, which is a very high quality company on nutrition for the brain. And Michael Nelson, Dr. Michael Nelson is the owner and founder and he is meticulous about every ingredient. And his beans are sustainably grown coffee organic. Each bean is hand picked and then it goes through a screening process to make sure they're all the right size and they look the right things. And he has one of his products is called Zen Blend which he adds three nin and a couple of other ingredients to it and it's a very mellow coffee that just all of our friends when they come and say, well, that was really good. What's that? And I said it's from Nevada.

Well, I'm going to buy it right now. I'm on the website and I'm going to buy it. I'm Sold. Thank you. Thanks for this. Of course.

Of course. So good that I'm coming to your house for coffee.

Okay. You're always. You're always welcome. You're always welcome. So let's talk inflammation. And why inflammation? You know, this is a big project for you, and obviously it's an important topic, but why inflammation? Why now?

Really? Good question. Thank you. And it's a. It's a word. It's a term that scares most people. But first, to understand inflammation's not bad for you. We wouldn't be here if we didn't have an immune system that was active, protecting us every single day. Literally. We would not be alive for a day if we didn't have an immune system that was always protecting us. Mrs. Patient, your immune system is the armed forces in your body. It's there to protect you. There's an Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard. We call them IgA, IgG, IgE, IgM, Cytokines. The. All branches of the armed forces there to protect you. So when they get called up and they're active, it's not an immune system that's gone crazy. It's an immune system that's trying to protect you. So the question is, what's it trying to protect you from? That's the billion dooll question. And a separate line of thinking, but parallel. Like two lines on a railroad track. Two rails on the railroad track. So first, an immune system is trying to protect us. That's one line of thinking. The other line of thinking that we have to include is that the center for Disease Control tells us that 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. It's always excessive inflammation that causes disease. Always. And I've got a slide if I could share with you, if I can share my screen to show you, because this comes from David Furman at Stanford, and when he put this in one of his papers, I knew right away, I have to talk about this to the world. This actually was the slide that got me to. That motivated me to put a year of my life into putting this together. And so for those that are listening but not watching on a screen, the slide that's up here has three gears that are connected so that when you turn one gear, it turns the second gear, and then the second gear that's in the middle turns the gear on the other side. And on the left side, the gear. Each tooth of the gear is for chronic infections like viruses or bacteria, bugs, physical inactivity, obesity, too many bad guys, not enough good guys in the Gut, we call that dysbiosis. Food selections, that's another tooth on the gear. Chronic stress. So the accumulation of stress hormones is another tooth on the gear. Not getting regenerative sleep, which is critically important to heal, always. You only regenerate when you sleep. And then xenobiotics, the accumulation of chemicals in our body like lead or mercury or phthalates, the chemicals used to mold plastic, all of that are the teeth on one gear. And when one of those gets out of balance, when there's too much of that or it's out of balance, it turns that gear, which turns the gear in the middle, which is systemic chronic inflammation. Your immune system is responding to this perceived threat, whatever it is, whether it's excess stress hormones, you create more inflammation. When you have excess stress hormones, of course, bugs or bacteria or viruses you're exposed to, you create more immune response and inflammation from bug exposure. You know, back to the chronic stress. It was Dr. Jeff Bland, the founder of Functional Medicine, who said in the interview that I had with him, you know, Tom, a negative thought is just as powerful at activating your immune system, creating inflammation as exposure to the SARS CoV2 virus. And that's from Jeff Bland, who does not exaggerate ever. He's always pure science. And we don't, you know, we think that we can handle the stress of our lives. Well, I'll give you an example. One of our interviewees, another expert that I interviewed, Dr. Patrick Hanaway, who is with the Institute for Functional Medicine and co founded the Functional Medicine center at Cleveland Clinic. When I interviewed Patrick, he was just over a year and a half out of and or in remission from a diagnosis of stage four throat cancer. And so, you know, I looked at him, we sat down. Patrick, we've been friends for many, many years, so I'm gonna point blank. And he said, okay. And I said, you live a great life. You know, you eat organic, you, you exercise, you have a good body composition. What did you miss? And he just looked at me. What did you miss that you got stage four cancer. You didn't get stage one cancer or stage two or stage, you got stage four, what did you miss? And he got a little teary eyed for a moment and he said, I thought I was bigger than the stress of my life. And you know, quite honestly, if it had been stage one cancer, I would have continued my lifestyle and just taken some nutrients to deal with it. But, you know, stage four, I knew I'd be dead within the year. And I mean, it just grabs your heart when you hear this. And then he started talking about how he's learned to handle the stress of life so much better, which reduces activating the immune system. So he gives us some pearls on that. So the gear on the left side is our environment, I call it the environment, which includes inside the body, you know, bad guy, too many bad guys in the gut. That's the internal environment. But that turns the wheel in the center, which is your immune system responding, trying to protect you, which then turns the wheel on the right. And then depending on your genetics and your antecedents, which is just a geek word that means how you live your life, you know. You know, for example, if you eat tuna fish two, three times a week, you likely have mercury toxicity because almost all the tuna has mercury in it. So that's an antecedent. So depending on your genetics and the antecedents determines where the link, weak link is, you pull it a chain, it always breaks at the weakest link at one end, the middle, the other end, your heart, your brain, your liver tissue, it doesn't matter. Wherever the weak link is, the pull on the chain, which I so much want people to understand, because you'll hear it time and time again from our experts, the pull on the chain is inflammation. Inflammation is not bad for you. Excessive inflammation is bad for you. And so we have to identify, look, the World Health Organization tells us for the last four years now, the average life expectancy for newborn children is less than the average life expectancy of their parents, meaning kids are expected to live shorter lives than their parents are expected to live. We're going in the wrong direction. And the reason, if there, there, there are many reasons, but the primary, the one where you're going to get the most bang for your buck, the primary is the amount of inflammation from your immune system trying to protect you from something. So we have to identify what is your immune system trying to protect you from. It's the dishwashing detergent that you're using. You put it in the dishwasher, you close the door, you hit the lock and you hit wash. You can't be in the kitchen when that dishwashing action is going. Those chemicals are highly toxic when you breathe them in. You only turn the dishwasher on at night when everybody's gone to bed or you get non toxic dishwashing detergent, right? But you have to learn these little things that accumulatively, your immune system is constantly trying to protect you from that you're being exposed to. We can't eliminate all of them, that's not rational to try, you know, but our theory and our recommendation is progress, not perfection. Just keep working at it a little bit at a time. But that's the basic tenet. You know, there's two roads or two tracks of a railroad. And if you want to go forward with a healthy life, one track is, okay, there is this inflammation that's there. And 14 of the 15 top causes of death are chronic inflammatory diseases. And the other track is, where's the inflammation coming from? Can I reduce my immune system's need to protect me? And so it's commonly foods, it's environmental toxins, nothing that's really new. But we haven't put it together this way and. Well, there are some new things. There are also some new things. You know, I, I had the privilege of interviewing Fran Drescher, the nanny, and what a beautiful human being she is. You know, she's a 23 year survivor of uterine cancer. And she said, you know, my oncologist saved my life and now she's a very good friend and you know, we see each other regularly. But I asked her, why did this happen to me? And in that New York accent of hers, you know, why did this happen to me? And she laughed that, ah, laugh. And she said, the oncologists don't know. They don't know. So she started researching and she wrote a New York Times bestselling book, Cancer Schmancer. And then she started the organization Cancer Schmancer to educate people on everything that we're talking about in this event. So Fran was so happy to be interviewed for this event. And she looks in the camera, you know, and she says, look, the first thing you have to do is to treat yourself as your best friend. You know, you're not going to learn this in a day. It's going to take you months and months to learn. What about the dishwashing soap? What about the shampoo, you know, what about the deodorant? I have a deodorant I've used now for eight years. And she's really happy. You know, she goes on and on, but she's talking about it's the baby steps that you do on a regular basis to reduce the load on your immune system trying to protect you. That will give you longevity and quality of life.

Yeah, I think that, you know, it's, it's so interesting because, you know, we've been talking and hearing about inflammation for many, many years and, and I feel like it, it almost got swept under the rug by what we might describe as like sexier things. You know, it's like as we, we kind of, we kind of talk about an idea and then we're on to the next thing and then we're on to the next thing and then we're on to the next thing and we forget the foundation. Right. And I love the analogy that you use that inflammation pulls on the chain and the chain breaks at the weakest link. You're, you're so good at creating that visual, you know, description. So thank you for, thank you for sharing that. How do people know what that weakest link is? Is it just like a crapshoot or is there, are there telltale signs that. Okay, that my weakest link is blank organ or blank system?

Right. That's really good question. Thank you. And there are a number of ways to check what we normally recommend to a new patient. I see like one new patient every three weeks or so, always by zoom. But I won't see them until they will do a certain number of tests that tell give me such a big picture view, then my time I can really give them useful information. So they fill out our questionnaires, then they'll do these tests and then we'll talk. And the one test that is included in there is called the Neural Zoomer Plus. And the Neural Zoomer plus is a test that looks at 53 markers of inflammation in your brain, excess inflammation in your brain. Now why is that important? Blue Cross Blue Shield came out with a paper in February of 2020. No one talked about it, not one news article, nothing. Because that's when the virus came out and really scared everybody. Right? But Blue Cross Blue Shield said we've got a real problem here. In the previous four year period, there was a 407% increase in the diagnosis of Alzheimer's in 30 to 44 year olds in four years, a 407% increase. Right now there is such an explosion going on of cognitive decline, diagnosed depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, brain dysfunction, autism, attention deficit. That because the brain is such sensitive tissue, you know, and it's got almost 20, 25% of all the blood in the bodies, in the brain at one time. Right. That it's, it's a very active organ in our body and the inflammation that we're carrying around is killing off brain tissue. Killing off brain tissue, killing off brain tissue. So when we do the Neural Zoomer plus, and quite honestly, I've never had a normal comeback ever. And the technology of this test was written up by Mayo Clinic and Mayo Clinic calls it a New era in laboratory medicine. Highly accurate, highly sensitive, 97 to 100% sensitivity and specificity. And so what we're seeing is that people's brains are on fire. And that's, that scares people. Good, good. Wake up, wake up. Because this low grade inflammation is not inflammation that makes you sick. Eventually when the link starts to break, you get some symptoms. We call that dis ease. And then you get diagnosed with the disease. But it's been going on for decades. With Alzheimer's, the government did a, they brought in a, a commission, a blue ribbon commission whose report was published in 2019. And because they said, yeah, Alzheimer's will bankrupt Medicare within 25 years, it'll completely bankrupt the country because so many more people are getting so. And they said, so what is Alzheimer's? So they laid it out and what they showed really clearly is that there is 20 to 25 years of excess inflammation in the brain before you ever have a symptom. You can't tell, you feel fine, but your brain's on fire. And as you said from the Time magazine article, the silent killer. It is a silent killer. And by the time the symptoms come, you're pretty far down the path, right? So looking for antibodies being elevated. You know, we have four different immune systems in our body. The one in our gut, it's the main immune system because that's where most of the insult comes in, that our body has to respond to. I think of them like the sheriff in town. He's got a couple of six shooters on his hip. You know, back on the Wild west days, Sheriff's walking around trying to keep the peace. Then in your bloodstream you've got the Marshall. And the Marshall has a whole territory to cover. More than just one town. He's special forces, he's got high powered rifles, laser scope rifles. These antibodies in the bloodstream, they're going after very specific targets. The one in the brain called the glial cells, they fire bazookas. They don't mess around. If anything gets through the blood brain barrier that's not supposed to, the glial cells fire this explosive inflammatory cascade to get rid of that thing right away. And that's a really good thing. But when you have this chronic inflammation in your bloodstream because of some environmental exposure. You got mold in your house. Well, it's not too bad. I don't, I don't feel sick. You know, our mind, we try to rationalize it. You're breathing mold 247 every day, you and your kids, you're breathing mold. But your immune system's trying to fight this. So that inflammation in the bloodstream causes a breach of of the blood brain barrier. So now these molecules get into the brain that aren't supposed to be there, and now these bazookas get fired. Boom, boom. Like fireworks going off. And because you breathe the mold all day, you keep eating the tuna fish or you keep eating the gluten or whatever it is, the inflammation's there all the time. And the leaking is going through the brain. The bazooka response of the brain trying to protect you, causing these fireworks going off in the brain cause collateral damage. Now you get these elevated antibodies to get rid of the damaged brain cells. That's the neural Zoomer plus test. And when you identify that you've got these antibodies. Oh, my God. Well, what do I do? Well, first let's find out where the inflammation's coming from. Is it food, is it mold, is it toxins that have accumulated in your body already? I mean, there's so many places that it can be coming from. But now we know where we have to look. What's the avenue that we're looking down?

Yeah, you know, you mentioned the neural zoomer test. Which neural Zoomer plus plus plus okay. And is that looking at the brain only or is that looking at other potential sources of or areas of inflammation?

It's looking at pathogens like herpes and cytomegalovirus and some bacteria, streptococcus. But so it. And those, those pathogens can be in other parts of the body also. So the antibodies can be fighting a infection of a bacteria that's in your gums, you know, for example. But those antibodies get through the blood brain barrier and they'll cause trigger bazooka firing in the brain.

So it gives you a clear sense of where the source of this potential problem is coming from.

It does.

You want to get to the source versus just trying to patch things up because the underlying mechanism is still there.

Exactly. You know, for example, the cerebellum is a part of your brain. And antibodies to the cerebellum are unfortunately pretty common to see. Well, what do we know about cerebellum antibodies? We know that every single person, let me say it differently. Celiac patients, 23% of celiac patients will have elevated antibodies to their cerebellum. And when they go on a gluten free diet, every single one of them, the antibodies go down to the cerebellum because. And it's called molecular mimicry. That's some geeky term that you know Just why it happens that way. But it's a gluten sensitivity that often contributes to the immune system fighting that tissue in your brain.

What would some of the symptoms. For somebody who may not know who's listening to this, if it's not a clinician, what are some of the symptoms of the cerebellum being attacked?

Oh, you lose your balance, you know, or you just feel a little awkward. You're walking in. In your house and you bump against the corner of the room you're walking into. Your shoulder hits the corner. You know, you just misjudged a little bit, you know, if you. Well, the best test is just take your shoes off and stand straight. Now lift your right knee up in the air, count to five, let it down. Lift the left knee up in the air, count to five. Everybody should be able to do that easily. Then close your eyes and do it again. And that's a really simple desk for cerebellar balance.

Simple, simple, simple, simple.

Yes, yes.

Now.

And. And by the way, if it comes back and you can't keep your balance. Good to know, you know. Oh, good. Okay, then, you know, and people. Oh, my God, my cerebellum. My brain. What am I going to do? No, no, no, no. We now know where we have to look, and let's measure and see. Do you have antibodies to your cerebellum? Oh, look, you do. I mean, I love it when people come back with test results that are positive. Why else would you do the test? You have to suspect, you know, you don't go fishing. You've got to. As a clinician, you've got a sense that. Let's look down this path. This is a very common path for the presentation that you're making right now. And when they come back in for their test results, patients have always come in and they're concerned, you know, and you've got this paper in front of you. I often would say, well, your test results are back. It's really good news. You're a mess. You're a mess. And then they look at me. I say, look, because this we can correct. This will take three months. This might take six months. This will just a couple weeks, you know, that we now have a path to follow to reduce that inflammation that's circulating through their system.

You know, there's some pretty, like, well known sources of inflammation. What are some of the less commonly known sources of inflammation?

Oh. Oh, my gosh. Let me give you a shocker, if I may. The Journal of the American Medical association, arguably the Most prestigious journal in the English language, certainly one of the top couple. They published a paper a couple of years ago on couples going to assisted fertility centers. And the editors of the. And as you know, couples that are doing that, they're spending tens of thousands of dollars, really stressful, praying know for a successful pregnancy and healthy baby and start a family. It was a beautiful thing, but it's very stressful for people. And the editors of the journal said this is an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to demonstrate their point. Now, the editors of the journal, the American Medical association, don't say that very often. They don't give a stamp of approval to an article like that. So I knew that. Okay, okay, I better pay attention to this one, whether I like it or not. Seems like, you know, it's getting the stamp of approval that they did their due diligence and wrote a great paper. So they ruled out all of the known features contributing to success or failure with implantation and pregnancy. Cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption, socioeconomic class, exercise, race, all of these different features. They ruled them out in an elegant way to look at one thing and one thing only. How many servings of fruits and vegetables was the woman eating per week? Okay, well, everybody knows the answer to that. The more the better. No, no. They divided the women into fourths. The lowest amount of consumption of servings per day, the next, the third, and the highest. Those women in the highest category of consumption of fruits and vegetables compared to those in the lowest category of consumption of fruits and vegetables. Those in the highest category had an 18% less likelihood of successful implantation. 18%. And if they did get pregnant, they had a 26% less likelihood of a live birth. They lost the baby 26% more often if they ate a lot of fruits and vegetables. What? You know, that's like, what, What? I mean, how do you fathom that one? Except there was a subcategory of women. Now, once again, this was an elegant study using sophisticated biomarkers to demonstrate their point. There was a subcategory of women who were eating organic. And in that category, the results were the complete opposite. The more organic fruits and vegetables you were eating, the better the outcome. And this is the good news. In that study, women were put in the category of organic fruit and vegetable consumption if they ate three servings per week. Not 21 servings per week, just three. Now, it's like what anyone can do. Three servings a week of organic vegetables. You know, that's not hard to do. The idea of being completely organic is Overwhelming, right. But three a week. And we think. And you know, the researchers didn't address that at all, but we think it's because if you're eating organic once in a while, you're trying to be healthier. You probably bought organic shampoo in your bathroom, and you've got organic soap in your kitchen. You know, you're doing some other things because you're trying. You're eating organic whenever you can. So probably there were a number of areas where there was less insult, activating the immune system, trying to protect you from all these toxic chemicals that we're exposed to. Because conventional vegetables, fruits and vegetables, are loaded with pesticides, insecticides, rodenticides, fungicides, antibiotics, glyphosate. That's your cucumbers and tomatoes and lettuce and all of what purple cabbage, all of what looks like healthy food for you. And this is the other explanation that I think is accurate. I can't find any evidence of this, but this is my suspicion. I know I'm. I know I'm correct in my assumption. I don't know if this is why it happened. But the most sensitive tissue in the human body is a fertilized egg. It has no defense whatsoever. None is completely dependent on mom's environment. And if mom has a toxic environment from a lifetime of accumulating toxic chemicals, that was enough. When they're eating fruit, conventional fruits and vegetables, more conventional fruits and vegetables, more pesticides, more fungicides, more insecticides, more. They're eating more of these every day than the women that weren't eating as much. That took them over the edge that much more often. And the implantation didn't work 18% of the time more often, or the pregnancy was lost 26% of the time. I mean, that is powerful, powerful information because anyone can eat three servings a week while you're working in the direction of reducing the toxins in your life. You know, you buy organic shampoo next time you're in the health food store. It's not a big deal to do that, you know, and then you'll check it out. It doesn't smell as good as my other stuff. Well, just find out what that smell came from in the other stuff, and you'll never want to try that stuff again. All of the. All of the potential complications of that stuff. Right.

And.

Or toothpaste. I mean, I mentioned to you before we started recording, how can, you know, parents don't. Don't think. They don't think. How can you give your children a toothpaste and on the label of the toothpaste, it says, warning, do not swallow if swallowed. Call the National Poison Control Center. And we're giving that to our kids every day. Really. We just don't think. And what we want to do with the inflammation equation is give people the tools to think, you know, to ask some questions and not blindly accept what we're being given. Because what we're being given is reducing the life expectancy of newborns today compared to their parents, increasing the incidence of auto. Every autoimmune disease is going up 4 to 9% a year. Every year, more people are getting sicker because there's more and more of these chemicals that are accumulating in your body. May I give you one more study?

Yes.

Chicago, 2016. 326 pregnant women in the eighth month of pregnancy. They collected urine and they measured five different phemicals used to mold plastic. And there are many more, but they measured five. The one most people have heard of is bpa, bisphenol aids and water bottles and contact lenses, credit card receipts and all that. You know, if you hold a credit card receipt within three to four minutes, your BPA level in the blood has gone up over 200% just by holding a credit card receipt in your hand. I never touch those credit card receipts. After I read that study, I take a picture of it with my phone and I leave it there. But I've got a record, you know, for all that. But don't touch those things. So they. They measured five. And we teach you all of this stuff in the inflammation equation. You know, that's part of our goal, is to tell you the simple things that you can do and encourage you to have more conversations with your healthcare practitioner on these topics. So they measured the amount of five phalates in these pregnant women in the eighth month of pregnancy, and they put them into fourths. And then they followed the offspring of those pregnancies for seven years. When the children turned seven years old, the researchers reached back out and said, hi, it's time now we'll do some more testing of your child. And they did. Wechsler IQ test, the official IQ test. And you know, as you know, Dr. Patel, there's very little in medicine that's all or every. This was every. Every child whose mother was in the highest category of phthalates in urine in pregnancy compared to the women who were in the lowest category of phthalates in urine in pregnancy. Every child in the Highest category, their IQ was 7 points lower, 6.7 to 7.4 points lower every single one of them. Now that doesn't mean anything to anyone until you understand a one point difference in IQ is noticeable. A seven point difference in IQ is the difference between a child working really hard getting straight A's in school and a child working really hard, really focused getting straight Cs. This child doesn't have a chance in hell of ever excelling with brain power. Now just go to Google and type in phthalates and neurogenesis. Nerve cell growth, brain cell growth. Here come the studies. The higher the phalates, the more inhibition. Baby's brain doesn't develop in utero to its full potential. When mom is high in phalates, this is like, what? Well, I don't have phthalates. Really. What makes nail polish hard within four or five minutes is phthalates in the nail polish and then they're in your bloodstream within four to five minutes. But there's no evidence that the amount of phthalates to get into your bloodstream is toxic to humans. Absolutely no evidence. I agree, no evidence whatsoever. That's how they get away with this. But these chemicals accumulate in your body. So give me a 5 year old girl that's painting her 10 little fingers and 10 little toes once a week for 25 years. Now she's 30, she's pregnant, married, pregnant, hopefully good pregnant, healthy pregnancy. And baby's developing in there. But if she's in the highest category of phates and urine in the eighth month of pregnancy, that baby's brain is not developing well to its full potential. And you'll never know. You'll never know. And it's seven years out. You know, the kid's doing okay in school, not doing great. And you see he's really trying. He's sitting at his desk doing his homework, working really hard, but he's not like excelling ever because his brain never developed properly. So part of our goal here is to reach women of childbearing age to attend the inflammation equation and listen to the experts. I went to seven countries interviewing these people. For a year I've been doing this. Just listen to what they say because it makes perfect sense. Oh, I don't want any of that stuff in my body. Well, where's, where's that stuff come in? It's in your toothpaste, right? It's in your dishwashing detergent, you know, wherever. And we'll, we'll give you all of that kind of information. But the goal here is, is to reduce the exposures to all of these Things that activate your immune system trying to protect you. It's just trying to. You don't shut your immune system down. Absolutely not. Now when you have a severe autoimmune disease, you may, you may need to get some symptom relief for a short period of time with the drugs that are used to shut the immune system down to reduce it. Maybe you might need that for a little bit so you can function, but you need to get the insult out of there so that the immune system calms down on its own because it's just trying to protect you. Right. And we just don't know this information and we think we'll have to take an anti inflammatory. Well, turmeric's a really good natural anti inflammatory. Yes, it is. And it's good to take. But it's not a deficiency of turmeric or curcumin that's caused your problem. It'll help reduce some of the inflammation. But if you have one hose putting gasoline on the fire and another hose is trying to put it out, you can't win. You can't win. So we want to reduce our exposures. That's the goal here.

Yeah, so true. And it just seems like the sources can be so ubiquitous. So I love what you said. Take baby steps as, as Fran Drescher indicated and you know, start where you're at and you know, every day you could, you know, when it's time to replace the items that are problematic, we don't buy the other stuff. Right. And I kind of jokingly say give it to someone you don't like.

Right.

If you're trying to get rid of it.

Right. You know, and you know, to eat organic a couple times a week. Well, what about the other? Should not eat fruits and vegetables. No, no. They're good for you for many other reasons. But you go to Truly free and you get their veggie wash, you know, and you just take out the broccoli, you, you squirt it with the spray, then you dip it into the tub of water and you see, oh, it looks different. It looks brighter color because you just took off over 90% of the chemicals that were on the broccoli. Right. So there's little things you can do to protect yourself and your family.

I love that. So tell us a little bit more about the inflammation equation. When is it coming out? How can we access it?

Oh, thank you.

And how can we also, as practitioners who are listening, share this with others?

You bet. You bet. The website is the inflammation equation.com/forward/patel so that we know that it's from your group and you can register there. And when you register, we're giving you the entire interview. Because, you know, in a docu series, it's not in one hour of this guy and then one hour of that woman and another hour of this guy. It's not like that. It's six minutes of Dr. Bland, 12 minutes of Dr. Furman, 19 minutes of Fran, you know, whatever. But it's a theme every day how every scientist contributes to that particular theme. But we're giving you the full interview with Fran Drescher when you register. And you're just going to laugh your head off and then sometimes you're going to have tears because she really touches home. I said to her, I said, fran, when we went into her house, her team met us and invited us in and, and I said, fran, you are the only other person in the world I've ever met besides me that does this in our home. And she looks at, well, what's that? And I said, we had to put blue booties on when we came in. And she starts laughing. She said, because, you know those little surgical blue booties on your shoes. And I said, fran, it's beautiful because your home is so, it feels so peaceful and it feels so fresh and clean. And you must protect your environment. Always protect your home environment. I mean, that's why the Japanese leave their shoes outside, is because, you know, you walk on the sidewalk to come up to the house and the neighbor sprayed their lawn yesterday with weed killer. And you know, they water the lawn, so some of the water's on the sidewalk and it dries. But now you're walking on the sidewalk, now you got weed killer in the bottom of your shoes and now they walk into your house and now the shoes are on the carpet. You're walking on the carpet. Now the weed killer is on the carpet and your seven month olds crawling on the carpet. Now your seven month old gets weed killer. And so you leave your shoes outside. In our home we have little disposable booties, you know, little slippers that people can wear or they've got the blue booties, either one, their choice, you know, whatever they're more comfortable with. But you're not coming into my house with your shoes because we walk around barefoot in our home or with socks on because it's a pure environment and you learn all these little things about a pure environment, right? So we're giving you the full interview with Fran. So that's@theinflammationequation.com Patel and for our healthcare practitioners, I really hope that our healthcare practitioners will register as an affiliate. And that's@theinflammationequation.com affiliate. And when you register as an affiliate, then we give you all the information to send to your patient base so they will attend. And because every day we're saying, please go back to the healthcare practitioner that recommended you to this event and ask them, how do I detox my home? And or how do I tell if I need to detox my home? Or how do I do a detox program for myself? Or what, what is a healthy toothpaste? You know that we want you to be able to ask more engaging questions because you understand a little bit you don't have to be a scientist to know that you want less chemicals around your family. You know, and David Furman published the article, you know, he's got the contract with NASA. NASA wrote the book and in a paper on house plants, because the astronauts were going a little loopy in space and they don't talk about that, but they were and they found out it's the phthalates in the air and the chemicals in the air of the space shuttle that was making them not quite coherent in what they were saying. So NASA funded the studies on house plants and we've got the handout for you. Two 6 inch house plants in a 10 by 10 room absorb 74% of the toxins in the air. Well, there's no toxins in the air in my home. Really? What about the flame retardant chemicals on your sofa or the flame retardant chemicals on your bed sheets and your blankets or the clothing that you wear. They're all soaked in flame retardant chemicals. Unless you're buying organic cotton and well, I've washed them, doesn't matter. They still leach out minute amounts of these chemicals after 100 washings. They still have minute amounts of these chemicals that accumulate in your body. So you get house plants, if you can afford it, you get air filtration system in your house. But certainly at least houseplants because they suck up so much of that. And they put green, they, they put oxygen in the air.

Yeah.

So in your bedrooms, in every room of your house, houseplants are huge.

I mean, it's a symbiotic partnership that we have with plants that improves our quality of life and improves their quality of life as well. And not only that, they're beautiful and I know that they have that effect of cleansing the air. Did they? Did they say, what particular plants do you recall?

Yes, yes. And I've got the pictures of them and all that. And you say, oh, I've seen those plants before. They're really simple, like mother in law's tongue. You know, those ones that just grow straight up. They're huge absorbers of trichloroethylene and formaldehyde. So. And by the way, your kitchen cabinets, if they're not solid wood, they're pressboard and pressboard is soaked in formaldehyde. The nightstand next to your bed, if it's not solid wood, it's press board soaked in formaldehyde that outgasses into the air. Get the alarm clock away from, from your bed at night. Put it on the dresser on the other side of the room. Well, then I'll have to get up and get out of bed. Well, that's the idea. You set your alarm to get up. Right. So it's all kinds of. Fran, I, I asked Fran, so what's one thing that you were really happy you did for yourself in your home? I had a switch installed right next to my bed. When I go to sleep at night, I turn the switch and the wireless goes off in the house. And it was just such a convenient thing because sometimes she goes, she lay down in bed and she forgot to turn the wireless off. And she said, but I must protect my environment, you know, so she had the switch installed. And so I mean, just the little things that you learn that make a difference in your life.

Yeah, they sure do. I love this. I'm really enjoying our conversation and I want to thank you for always sharing what you learn. Paying it forward to us practitioners, but then also paying it forward to everyone who's seeking better health. I'm excited. I've already registered for the event. I'm super pumped about it, Excited to always learn more, Keep pushing the envelope forward, keep doing what you're doing. We have your back. And thank you for always leading the way and doing it with so much love and enthusiasm and always making it simple for us to learn it, but then also share it with others.

Thank you so much. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, we'll share all these show notes with you, we'll share the links that Dr. Tom O' Brien mentioned. And here's to not an inflammation free life because we need inflammation, but here's to having the right amount of inflammation so that your body can heal, repair and regenerate itself and you can live a long, healthy life. I think there's, there's never been an easier time to be sick, but there's also never been an easier time to be healthy with all the awareness that we now have. So thank you again, Dr. Tom, and best of luck with this amazing new docu series. And again, we appreciate your time today.

Thank you.