Collagen and Mushrooms to Heal Inflammation? Dr. Melissa Gallagher Breaks It Down

And the interesting part with the peptide, the polysaccharide peptides, we call it PSP, that actually we've identified research that shows that the PSP supports rejuvenating genetic material. So when we look at epigenetics, you know, our environment and our genes, if you're dealing with, you know, maybe not the healthiest genes or gene defects, and you've identified some areas within your genes that might have you be more likely to have X, Y, and Z illness, then we could utilize the PSP, these polysaccharide peptides, to support cell turnover, to minimize tumor growth if there's any, uh, precancerous cells.

You know, all these mushrooms seem to be very much like thymic peptides, and they're very immune modulatory. They'll increase that, that Th1 T-reg, lower that TH2, TH17, which we, you know, as we age or we have stress or chronic infections or inflammation, and all those mushrooms do all that.

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Let's get started. Hello, it's Dr. Kenton Holtorf. Today we have the pleasure to have Dr. Melissa Gallagher, and she's a naturopathic physician and She's trained as a lymphatic specialist practicing in Dallas-Fort Worth for the past 15 years, and she's been working with individuals addressing digestive disorders, hormone balance, detoxification therapies, and primary and secondary lymphedema, which I think is totally undertreated and really not many people know much about it. And also case of lymphatic de— uh, decongestive treatments. She believes the majority of disease is rooted in digestion, which I totally agree with— how we eat, what we eat, food preparations, and how the body reacts to food as it travels through the digestive system. A malfunctioning digestive system can cause imbalance in the body. And we all know about, you know, the gut-brain axis, the brain-gut axis, and how that just— everything's a vicious cycle. with hormone imbalances, allergies, arthritis, joint pain, autoimmune disorders, gout, eczema, uh, you name it, um, all these illnesses, the gut is, is part of it. And so we talk about a number of supplements today and also immune, immune modulatory supplements as well. And, uh, she has clients, uh, often come to her uh, after they've sought traditional resources and been very frustrated, overwhelmed, and unheard. I think that's kind of the story of so many so-called alternative practitioners that, uh, get people better when their standard doctors don't. So, uh, welcome. Thank you so much for being on the summit, Melissa.

Oh, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Great, great. So, um, Anoka, kind of about your background. How did you initially get involved with, uh, you know, basically, uh, this type of medicine, this crazy type of medicine, and, and also with Organixx, the supplement company, and, and that?

Sure, excellent. So I, like many of the viewers of the summit, had my own health crisis. Um, I was in my early 20s when it happened, and I was basically between my undergraduate, uh, degree. And then it propelled me— my own health crisis propelled me into getting a master's in nutrition and then a doctorate in naturopathic medicine. And really what, what drew me to this line of work was, um, finding my mentor who I sought out when I had a severe case of Epstein-Barr virus and just had, you know, completely wiped out been wiped out by the virus and overwhelmed with stress. And, you know, I was in my early 20s and starting a career and trying to prove myself and kind of burning the candle at both ends, as many 20-somethings do. And my mentor, um, I was recommended to see a doctor of Chinese medicine. And I remember leaving my office and going to her clinic, and it was just a totally change, just an energetic change, just a feeling of calm and peace. And there was just some draw to the line of work she was doing. But I was not interested in needles or doing acupuncture at that point. And I just remember saying out loud, I think the second or third visit saying, I want to do what you do. Like, I'm so inspired by this because I had really been been very responsive and receptive to the therapeutics she had put me on. And, you know, we did acupuncture and, um, she actually went out to, um, Bastyr to, uh, learn, um, now it's more popular, but she was training in PRP and was using PRP, um, my own PRP at that time and doing injection work.

Can you just say what PRP is?

I think most people know, but Yeah, so it's, um, uh, platelet-rich plasma, and it is a very powerful way to utilize your own body's natural healing capabilities, to tap into that. And so basically what she did, she did a small blood draw and then she centrifuged it, and the kind of middle point is when, when it's when the blood spun, you can actually identify the plasma, but there's this middle space between the plasma and where the serum is.

And she was using those in the acupuncture points?

She was. It was really unique. And it took me, I mean, I had, it was phenomenal, life-changing. Life-changing. And I told her I wanted to do what she did. And she's like, well, you're gonna have to get your master's. You know, I was a liberal arts major. And so I had thought I wanted to be an attorney. And so she—

Oh my gosh, what a difference, right? Oh.

Yeah, total change of course.

So we don't need any more attorneys.

No, no. So she, uh, she definitely inspired me and that work, you know, fast forward 20 years later, PRP is now a leading rejuvenative medical treatment and we're seeing it more in anti-aging and, and, uh, rejuvenative medicine. But I mean, I was, I was at her guinea pig and I was, I told her I'm committed. I have all sorts of money and just, Heal me. But in that journey of healing, I dove right on into everything I could read, any conferences, books. This is pre-webinars and digital courses and things like that.

Yeah, big different time in that. Now you're bombarded and you got to filter. Then you had to go to the damn medical library, find the damn journal, put it on the copier.

Yeah, absolutely. Oh yeah. I remember like my first visit from her office was to a GNC. And I think I spent like 2 hours there. I was reading like all, I had all their books. It was like a reference library, but that was really the turning point for me and, and really shifting my life's focus. And, um, so I was able to put myself through school and, and continue down my healing path. And then there was a point with my, my doctorate where I had to make the decision of actually entering this field on my own and, um, starting a practice and And that's where I really honed in on, um, you know, we are what we eat. So our nutrition, what we feed our body.

Wait, did you have a PhD at this point?

So with her I didn't, but, um, you know, 7 years later I had my master's and I had completed my doctorate work up in New England.

Wow.

That's impressive. Um, and I did clinical work in, uh, the associated with, um, Harvard's Harvard has a really unique program where they have public health and they have a lot of research happening at some of— all of the Massachusetts and Boston-based hospitals. But I was able to get into a very large alternative wellness clinic where I was exposed to lymphatic work and some of the trials that they were performing and, and studies for Dana-Farber, their cancer institute. And that just opened up like a whole new pathway.

So I was all about lymphatics and cancer. I usually don't think of those together. Yeah, no.

Yeah. So I, that was a huge, that was another turning point. You know, we can consume as much, we can limit, you know, toxins and, and try and really go as clean and, and nourish our bodies, but our detox pathways, how are we supporting our core immune and detox organ, our lymphatic system, um, was something I didn't hear about in school. And, you know, we had a little bit of it in anatomy and physiology, but when I go back to my books, it was like that much, it was maybe 2 little paragraphs of 10 sentences. Um, and so I just thought, okay, what's going on with the system? Why aren't we talking about this? I want to learn more about that. And so I kind of blended all of that together.

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Wow, that's, that's awesome. And, and so you got hooked up with Organixx, who, uh, they've been around, some, some great products. And, um, what are some of your favorite products with Organixx that really fit into your way of treatment?

Yeah. Well, first of all, I love all of their products. I— there, there are several, um, potent, uh, products that they have. So, you know, today I know we're going to talk a little bit about— oh, sorry, we're going to talk a little bit about— they have collagen. They have a clean source collagen, which is pretty amazing. So I'll show you what it looks like here. Um, and this is really unique because they have more than just type 1 and type 3. So you're going to get type 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10.

Explain all that. Like what is type 1?

Yeah. So there, there are different forms of collagen and they have different effects on certain parts of the body. And what I find in prescribing or recommending collagen to my patients is when we take an assortment of sources. So marine and bovine. So, um, animal, both are animal-based and we blend those together. You're able to pull in a multitude of the collagen sources. So a lot of collagens we're going to see on the market are just bovine only. And then others are just, um, focused on the, like eggshell. You might see, um, an eggshell kind of, um, membrane as listed. So that has a different type of collagen based on that inside membrane that's feeding a chick that might develop. And then we see Marine-Based Collagen adding another assortment of collagen that complements— when we put it all together, we're able to see the max benefit of rejuvenation of cell tissue we're able to see greater strengthening of our elastin fibers. And so those are the horizontal vertical structures of our skin. We see faster wound healing. I do a lot of post-surgical work, elective and required non-elective surgeries. So for, you know, patients that might be dealing with hip replacement or, you know, the Brazilian butt lifts or, you know, post-cancer mastectomies, Collagen has a broad scope in terms of helping heal the incision site. It helps the skin heal faster so we can get to a kind of white, clean, very minimal scar versus a keloided, kind of chunky, beefy—

So when you take this orally, you'll see effect on the skin?

Yes, yes. Generally what we see is within 2 weeks, you will notice a significant difference in wrinkles on your face. So the face tends to be where people get more of the compliments when they start taking collagen. Um, but we will see, you know, fine lines and wrinkles starting to fill in because there's a suppleness. And it is one of these accumulative type of benefits where, you know, you take it for 2 weeks, people are going to start saying, what are you doing? And then you keep taking it and you're taking it every day. It, you know, we're talking about peptides, there are peptides, an assortment of peptides in collagen. And we actually see the marine and the bovine sources be very plentiful in assortment of peptides that are going to help send signals for cell rejuvenation. And we will see a greater increase in antimicrobial peptides. So that's another kind of thing where we can look at, if we're look, if we're dealing with a patient that has an autoimmune dysfunction, or in many cases now with COVID cytokine reactivity, we can see peptide immunotherapy by way of food-based peptides really come into play because we're more open to the bioavailability of, of those peptides. So I always kind of go food first. How can we do it there?

I think that's totally true.

And more natural.

I think even, you know, it was thought that you take collagen, it's going to break it down to individual amino acids, right? But that's not true. It actually absorbs in different variable, you know, uh, lengths of amino acid chain. You know, actually the dipeptides, you know, would actually absorb faster than a single.

Yeah.

And there's some larger, you know, chains that absorb the whole, which which was thought wouldn't happen. Yes.

Yeah. But you can tell.

Yeah.

We see that the, the pentapeptides and the hexapeptides and yeah, that takes me back to, you know, the organic chemistry and all that good stuff, all those like chains and bonds and stuff like that. But yeah, our, our body, um, what I've witnessed, um, just clinically with, with patients, it's, it's been phenomenal. Um, the capacity for them to max their healing, But also I work with high-performance professionals. Um, I have several professional athletes that I work with and collagen's approved. And so that's really exciting because a lot of the associations, um, are very limiting. Uh, you know, the Olympics and, you know, a lot of the professional associations, they are very conscious of, um, any synthetics that might, um, lead to you know, doping or enhancing performance unnaturally. Well, with collagen, we can also see some of the repair and recovery. So if a patient who is semi-pro or is a fitness enthusiast that's doing the Ulta marathons and things like that, they have tears, labrum tears and things like that, we can actually use the collagen and those peptides to help send those signals and to help the healing process.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting. And you talk about the different forms of collagen. And when you look and it breaks it down, it actually has these other peptides in there. And so you think evolutionarily that makes sense because you're chowing on these animals or whatever it is, or, and you get it and you break it down to these peptides that are immune modulatory, they're healing, they're, you know, uh, basically, you know, in increasing growth and and, uh, you know, all these, uh, mitochondrial function, immune modulatory, um, and anti-inflammatory. It, it's interesting what this collagen strand has because they're pretty big and you chop them down, you get a ton of peptides.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And that's, you know, it's almost like, uh, you know, we're right now, it's, it's, we're kind of heading into the cooler months and it's the winter season. My son loves those, um, hot chocolate bombs It's kind of like the hot chocolate bomb. It's this beautiful, great chocolate on the outside, and then there's all sorts of goodness on the inside. And so you can tap into all of those really, really healing— the healing power of collagen. But what's really unique is with going back into the peptide world, every organism has peptides. And so we see it in the plant kingdom, we see it in the fungi kingdom, and we see it in the the human and the mammal kingdom. And I think it's very—

it's totally true. And you look at, you know, all these peptides we're using were, you know, basically you, you break down whatever organ it is and find the fundamental peptides and they really stimulate that, that organ and usually exclusively. It's very interesting. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it is. It's a, it's an exciting way to tap into rejuvenative medicine. For me, I feel like as a practitioner, it's more natural in its alignment with, you know, I'm food forward, food first, natural. And, you know, one of the things that I like with Organixx is that they ferment. For instance, they have their mushroom blend, it's called 7M+. And they not only have the potency of an assortment of mushrooms, which are in that fungi kingdom, they ferment it. And so there's kind of— when we look at how do we tap into the power of the peptide world, fermenting it is one of the multiple ways to harness the power, the bioavailable power.

Yes, that's key.

Yeah. So that's really, I think, where I align really well with Organixx because They are food first, very natural in the orientation, and bioavailability is at the forefront, which is critical because you can take a ton of things, but if they're not going to actually be potent and be able to be absorbed and utilized by your body, what's the point?

No, it's very true. And you look at the studies on, on these mushrooms and they're— I mean, there's tons of studies. Yeah. And if it were a med, it would— I mean, it's just weird to be handled so much differently, you know. It'd be the miracle med, you know, everyone would be on it.

And, and yeah, so this is really interesting. The, um, if we look at the pharmaceutical world, almost 50% of the pharmaceuticals that are manufactured, their base comes from a fungus. So you look at penicillin, that's a fungus.

Yeah, it's a, um, It is a dipeptide.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. So, you know, there, that's where we can really harness functional mushrooms and, uh, you know, medicinal mushrooms. That is definitely a big popular topic right now. Big. And obviously this has been ancient civilizations all across, um, all the continents have consumed mushrooms. It's nature's medicinal cabinet, um, if you will. And so What's exciting is we now have technology, we've got research, we can pair it up and look at how can— what can we eat that is out there in the natural medicine cabinet that is going to be formulated in the most bioavailable form to tap into the peptides that they contain. So for instance, 7M+, that's the one brand, the one product that I really love that has all of the mushrooms. That are highly potent and going to contain things like polysaccharide peptides. And turkey tail's the core, the number one ingredient. So it's very forward with the turkey tail. And turkey tail has a ton of research on the ability for it to be able to minimize cell damage. It's super antioxidant rich. It helps your liver health, your gut health, and the, Interesting part with the peptide, the polysaccharide peptides, we call it PSP, that actually we've identified research that shows that the PSP supports rejuvenating genetic material. So when we look at epigenetics, you know, our environment and our genes, if you're dealing with, you know, maybe not the healthiest genes or gene defects, and you've identified some areas within your genes that might have you be more likely to have X, Y, and Z illness, then we could utilize the PSP, these polysaccharide peptides, to support cell turnover, to minimize tumor growth if there's any, uh, precancer cells.

You know, all these mushrooms seem to be very much like thymic peptides, and they're very immune modulatory. They'll increase that, that Th1 T-reg, lower that TH2, TH17, which we, you know, as we age or we have stress or chronic infections or inflammation, and all those mushrooms do all that.

Yeah, yeah. And they, they do it obviously naturally. And, you know, there are folks in the labs that are trying to have that, uh, created, uh, trying to create that from a pharmaceutical perspective.

Yeah, they want to, they want to take it, make a pharmaceutical out of it.

Yeah.

And I mean, you look at the studies on everything from cancer, autoimmunity, all these diseases of chronic illness. Right. I mean, there's hundreds of studies on these things.

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, even I've done different functional mushroom training. And it's funny because a lot of my patients, I ask, do you consume mushrooms? And they're like, oh, yeah, I eat button mushrooms or magic mushrooms.

Yeah. But there's some good studies coming out on the microdosing of the magic mushrooms.

Yes, yes. Oh my gosh, absolutely. I think we're gonna see big shifts in that in the next 5 years.

Yeah, there's a big bet with big, even big pharma, you know, thinking that the hallucinogenic mushrooms are gonna be legalized, so.

Yes, yep. Yeah, I think it, The psychedelic mushrooms are on track where we saw THC. I feel like it's about 7 years behind, but yeah.

I'm surprised. I mean, that's a good surprise. The other surprise, I can't believe where we are as a country and the suppression of medical, you know, truth is so bad, but I won't get into that because I'll keep going. But yeah, no, I think, you know, These mushrooms have been so under promoted, I think, for what they really do.

Yeah.

Also the collagen with— and they actually in Europe, they call them collagen peptides.

Yeah. I find that the brands— I'm always looking at the label, so I always want to see where are the ingredients, where are they sourced, how are they labeling them? And I find it interesting in that I can distinguish a really good quality brand if they have it labeled as a collagen peptide. Um, and it tells me more about how is it processed. Yeah.

You want the info on the label. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. We want full disclosure. And if brands are not going to disclose that, we have to question why are they not being transparent.

Yeah. Let's pass them by. Yeah. Now, what is your typical patient you'd use these products on?

Sure. Well, they are applicable— functional mushrooms, collagen— it's applicable for individuals of all ages. But my kind of base of patient that I see generally has multiple diagnoses of autoimmune disease, Cardiovascular disease. And even I have a large practice of, of cancer thrivers and survivors. And so what we're looking at is mitochondrial impairment. We're looking at nutritional deficiencies. We're looking at a slowed aging or an accelerated aging process. Our goal is to slow that down. And ultimately What I'm trying to do with an assortment of my kind of cornucopia of natural resources for my patients is to really help them harness the youthfulness and the healing power of their body. And so we'll use labs like, you know, other providers and kind of figure out, okay, you know, what are we dealing with? Where are the stress levels at? Where are micronutrient levels? Where are we at vitamin D, vitamin K? And then really digging into even epigenetics, neurotransmitter levels to, to really look at the whole body. But it all comes back down to a few systems that are imbalanced. Gut health is always at the core of imbalance. The liver being a big organ that tends to be overwhelmed in their, their bodies. The lymphatic system is a huge, huge system that I really focus in on because of the dual capacity to support our immune system.

And what, what, what do you do about the lymphatics?

Sure. So I, with, within my practice, I, um, am very hands-on for my in-person patients. Um, so I'm trained to do manual lymphatic drainage, which is a motivation of primarily it's the superficial lymphatic system that we're moving. Um, but deeper I pull in my naturopathic training. And so I look at how overall cortisol, the stress hormone, has a negative influence on our lymphatic system. And all systems of the body are, are overwhelmed by stress. So that's one thing we have to harness is control, balance cortisol. And then the next thing I look at doing is drilling down on the systemic inflammation within their body to lower the inflammatory response system and to also help ease that lymphatic burden. When a patient is inflamed, it's not always going to register as, let's say you have a little wrist pain or carpal tunnel. You might not always see that kind of swelling, but we're going to see that be presented as a symptom, brain fog or hormonal imbalance or gallbladder imbalances. It really is trying to help offset the burden the lymphatic system has in trying to alleviate cellular junk and debris and really help the body turn from being the core garbage disposal system to more of that immune immunotherapy. So I created— actually, that is kind of how I got into video content. Um, I found that an hour, it's usually the amount of time I spend with all my patients, but especially with my lymphatic patients, it's not a lot of time if I'm really trying to get all of the motivation in their body. And generally I see them several times a week. They're really progressed. But what I was finding is, you know, it's an hour of a 24-hour day. And if I saw a patient once a week, it's still not enough. And so I started creating videos on, I think it was like my iPhone 3. I didn't, you know, I couldn't even see like myself. I just turned my phone And, and so, you know, they leave and I think, oh, I forgot to tell them something. I'd record a little video thinking, okay, there are probably other patients out there that could benefit. And so that kind of morphed into me creating my protocols of, okay, these are the things you can do when you're not seeing me, because my goal is not to see you all the time. My goal is for you to be independent, to take care and manage this lifelong disease, um, and to reduce its impact so that you're not coming to me when you're in a crisis or, you know, you had a wedding and you drank a little bit more alcohol and ate a whole bunch of salty foods. And now we have limb circumference that has expanded out beyond your compression garments. So that is really kind of where I've kind of shifted. I work with patients in person, but there's so much— so now so many more resources, especially with the advent of Amazon and, you know, rebounding catching wind. I can equip patients with with lymphatic pumps and compression and put them on food regimen, a very specific lymphatic promotive food protocol with specific herbs.

And someone has lymphedema, you know, really just bad. What— where would you start? Or just kind of overview of that?

Yeah. So one of the things with lymphedema, there are multiple— there's different staging with lymphedema. It is not one of the disorders that is going to happen overnight. So it tends to be a gradual progression. And unfortunately, um, it affects individuals in a way where it will appear that they're holding more excess of— a lot of times they get kind of recommended or referred to have gastric bypass surgery where they'll say, oh, you're overweight, you just need to, you know, eat clean and exercise. And, and it— that doesn't—

everything, right? Yeah.

Yeah. With lymphedema, I stage them. I do all my measurements and then I get a sense either palpating or through imagery, images and scans. Now we have ability to have a dye test where they can identify how functional is the lymphatic system. Some folks, not every lymphatic system in each body is the same. Your lymphatic system is different than mine. I might have 1,200 lymph nodes and you might have 500. That variance plays a big role if somebody, let's say a woman has had a mastectomy and now she's had 30 lymph nodes removed from the breast and underneath the arm and the axillary, and all those lymph nodes drain the arm and the head and neck. What happens is there's this pooling because basically lymph nodes, I describe them as highway exits. If you cut off 30 highway exits in your town, on your interstate, well, what's going to happen with all the traffic? It's going to back up. So with lymphedema, um, and this plays into both the collagen therapy and using functional mushrooms, we can utilize peptides to address fibrotic tissue. So with lymphedema, the fluid accumulates inside the lymphatic tissue. So we have lymph vessels, capillaries, and it's just kind of this vacuum, small little vacuum. And it's just motivated generally by muscle movement. Or external pressure. And when that's dysfunctional, because all these highway exits that are gone, the fluid doesn't have a good pathway. So sometimes we're going to train the body to create new pathways, what we call alternate routes for removal of the fluid. But then we have to look at just over time, if that fluid's in a stagnant state, the lymph fluid itself is just a, a comprised of all different types of proteins. And so where we look at peptide therapy with these, this protein-dense lymphatics, we can use the peptides to help break up some of the density. So for instance, NATOKINASE and SEROPEPTASE, these are higher metabolic enzymes, and we call them proteolytic enzymes. And those, along with functional mushrooms, We can use those to help the body literally help break up the protein and to help get that traffic flow moving better. Does it reverse lymphedema? No, not in all cases.

But is it to do with the osmotic pressure or— so it's just kind of too big to get through the vessels type thing?

Yeah. Well, basically I'll kind of give you a sense, the largest vessel, the largest duct is our thoracic duct, and it's no wider than a pen tip. And so that's not— I mean, you think about like if you have a drain, a clogged drain, and you know, we get frustrated and we put Draino or whatever, however you go snake your drains, it gets clogged. Well, there's no snaking process for the lymphatics other than enzymatic therapies. So we can use these enzymes and peptides to break up the density of the protein. But then most importantly is to have some sort of pumping mechanism. A lot of times when we're looking at helping the fluid move, you'll see people that have compression garments on. Really anything past stage 1 in lymphedema, those individuals should be wearing compression for about 22 hours a day. That doesn't happen all the time. For an assortment of reasons. Insurance doesn't cover it, they don't have a therapist locally, or they don't even know that they have lymphedema. So generally people kind of do searching and that's how they— a lot of times it's self-diagnosis. There aren't specialists in terms of like a core, just a lymphatic doctor that you go see. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's a huge gap. But, you know, so compression's big. Compression, manual motivation, like easy, easy to do is dry skin body brushing. And anybody, it's applicable for everybody. If you want to motivate your lymphatics, you can do a dry skin body brushing technique to move the lymphatic flow, to help detox cellular debris, get cellulite.

How does that work for the lymphatic?

Yeah, so, um, usually I have a brush where I demo, but, um, basically the brush itself will give us the, the effect of a manual treatment. And so manual treatment is this kind of pumping mechanism. Like we kind of have this type of technique where we're helping move through the channels of the lymphatics. But when we dry skin brush, people just basically take a natural bristle brush and put on their skin. And we start where we open up kind of— there's a whole process where we open up all the kind of channels and then move the fluid. But basically you just press, you just put the brush on your skin and without any pressure, you just do circle, circular pattern, and you can sweep up or you can do circles up the arm or up the leg, but the heart's the level plane. So the thoracic duct is right here, right near the heart. And so if we're moving lymphatics, let's say an individual wakes up puffy in the morning, I have a ton of video where you can do these like techniques on yourself, but there are ways for you to drain the lymphatics of the head and neck, but we're draining towards the heart and then everything below the heart, we're draining up towards the heart. And so there's that technique where you're just moving towards the heart.

Does the skin stimulate the lymphatics? That—

yes. So that, um, that pressure and, and You know, again, with dry skin brushing, it's so gentle. The roughness of the brush is enough to give us that pumping movement that we need. And so we just follow the channels of the lymphatics. And basically we have lymph nodes, um, all throughout our body. They, they kind of end at our, uh, lower, you know, the extremities. So your hands, you're going to have lymph nodes that are here in the wrist. We have lymph nodes down in the ankles. And then every organ has clustering of lymph nodes. So if you think about it, if individuals have any system that is imbalanced or not having— there's slow cell turnover or pain and it has inflammatory condition, motivating the lymphatic system is going to be very very beneficial to not just that core organ or area of the body, but it's going to benefit the overall lymphatic system. So the lymphatic system is less bogged down by garbage and more capable of being an immune responder to be able to send signals and to communicate the immune needs of those organs or tissue that might be plagued with inflammation.

Oh, cool. And I guess, yeah, we didn't think there was any lymphatics in the brain, but we found that there is, right?

Yes. Oh, it's, it's, um, it only works when you're sleeping, right? Yeah. Well, as lymphatic therapists, we all, we all knew that just where we know we have lymph nodes and the way the structure is, but the, it's amazing the advancements. Even just yesterday, there's new information about lymphedema and the genetic connectivity to the lymphatic system being not fully equipped to process. And so some people are living with this impairment, but it takes a cancer diagnosis or surgery to tip it off and to have them end up dealing with it.

They don't pay attention until it's really bad.

Yep.

Awesome. Awesome. Well, you're doing some, some great work, and thank you for sharing. And, um, uh, basically the website, if you could spell that out and tell everyone to get those— the two main ones that you like, uh, well, it's the mushroom, the 7M, right?

Yep. So 7M Plus. And so, um, Organixx is spelled O-R-G-A-N-I-X-X. So you just type in organixx.com and you can find that there. And then, um, this is the collagen. It comes in a packet. And what I tell my patients, like this packet is a scoop and you have about 20 scoops in a packet. We have 3 of us in our family that are consuming this. So we go through this in about 7 to 9 days.

And so how does it taste?

It, you know what it has, um, They, they have not added anything that makes it taste terrible, but it doesn't taste— it doesn't have a flavor.

Or do you put it in water or put it in something?

Yeah. So you can do— they actually have a recipe. They have a keto brownie recipe where you can put it in. These are the kind of recommendations I have. So I have a lot of folks that consume coffee. That's kind of like their staple. So I, if they're consuming coffee or keto coffee, You can add collagen and it's still a keto coffee. Um, I recommend you add it to coffee or tea in the morning. So you can add it to a hot liquid. Um, you can also add it to smoothies, so you can add it in just like you add your protein. Um, and then you can also bake with it. So we do a lot of home—

interesting—

gluten-free products. And, you know, like I have, um, you know, some of my raw protein balls where I'm using a cashew butter. I add collagen in. And so you can really fortify a lot of your foods with collagen in ways that you don't always think. Like, you can add it to soups. So for instance, you know, with holidays, you can add it to dressing, you can add it to gravy, you can add it to stuffing, you can add it to, you know, if you're using sweet potatoes.

I like that because I don't— they're taking that stuff every morning.

Yeah, yeah, it is. Um, you know, and that's That's the great thing about a lot of the products, especially with Organixx. It's so clean. Even the 7M+. I have folks that will open up the capsule and add that into their coffee, or like my son, he can't swallow capsule. He's 6, but I open it up and I put it in his nut yogurt that he consumes in the morning. So I'm sneaking in a lot of stuff and you can even do, you know, put the mushrooms in, you know, baked goods that you have as well.

Awesome. I think all that is great. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise, and I think it's some, some cool, cool things. And I really think, yeah, lymphatics is, is huge, and, um, you know, some good products that people can get on and start feeling better. Um, so I want to thank you.

Thank you.

Yes.

Uh, thank you for your time. It's been a pleasure. Great.

Thanks so much.

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