Mold & Mycotoxin: The Hidden Enemy of Flow and Peak Performance with Dr. Jill Carnahan

there's answers to be found if we have an open mind. And if we, again, I love my analytical mind and I think it's powerful, but when we go into that heart intuition, I think the, this, the mind is like an old, you know, computer that has maybe 1,000 pieces of data at the time. It's amazing. But when we go into heart intuitive space and into flow states, we can get answers with thousands and millions of pieces of subconscious information in the second and have a knowing that's so deep. And there's literally science that proves that that intuitive knowledge is actually more accurate than our analytical mind. And when we combine them, we're unstoppable.

What does it take to do the impossible? What does it take to level up your game like never before?

What does it take for individuals, organizations, for even institutions to achieve paradigm shifting?

Nothing is ever the same again. Breakthroughs. Our mission is to decode the neurobiology of flow and cognitive peak performance. Access the minds of maverick scientists groundbreaking innovators and world-leading experts to understand what it takes to achieve ultimate human performance so you can feel your best, perform your best, and accomplish your boldest goals. I'm your host, Rhian Dorris, and together with bestselling author Stephen Kotler, I present to you Flow Research Collective Radio. Dr. Jill Carnahan, welcome to Flow Research Collective Radio. Really, really great to have you here.

Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah, I've been, been really looking forward to this one, Jill. And the way we first connected, Michael Lovett from Baby Bathwater said, I know the greatest doctor on earth. Her name is Dr. Jill Carnahan. You got to speak with her. And he kind of connected us. And I just want to say, before I even read out your bio, it's just been a pleasure getting to know you personally, and you've just been incredibly, incredibly helpful. To me personally with some of the health challenges that I was dealing with over the last couple of years. So I want to say thanks for that before we even dive in.

And thank you, Brian. I feel like you give back just as much. And, you know, sometimes there's these connections that are just meant to be. And I feel like this— I always knew from our first conversation, this person is really special. And then when I found out what you were doing in this show and all the stuff you do, I have mutual respect. I really, really feel that way.

I appreciate that, Jill. And I'm going to take a moment here to read out your bio, which is, which is amazing. So bear with me for a second as we go through it. So Dr. Jill Carnahan is your functional medicine expert. Utilizing state-of-the-art lab testing and biochemical analysis, you help patients identify the root cause of their illness by identifying nutritional or metabolic imbalances that may be contributing to symptoms. And you're known for using nutritional protocols and supplements, lifestyle changes, along with medication to increase patients' level of function and always seeking the gentlest and least invasive way to restore health and optimize healing. And after completing your residency at the University of Illinois in family medicine at the Methodist Medical Center, you received your medical degree from Loyola University, uh, Stricht School of Medicine, Chicago. Hopefully I'm pronouncing that correctly. Um, and then received a Bachelor of Science in bioengineering at the University of Illinois, and you are dual board certified in family medicine, or were in 2006, and in integrative holistic medicine in 2005, and then founded the Methodist Center for Integrative Medicine in Illinois in 2009 and have worked as the medical director, um, there until moving to Colorado and then opening a functional medicine consulting practice in 2010. which is where you're currently running Flatiron Functional Medicine, which I recommend everyone check out. And that is and has become a widely sought after practice that incorporates a broad range of clinical services like nutritional consultations, chiropractic therapy, naturopathic medicine, acupuncture, and massage therapy. And we're almost there on the bio. And as a surpriser, as a survivor of breast cancer, Crohn's disease, and toxic mold illness, You really bring a unique perspective, which we're going to dive into in a moment, to treating a variety of complex and chronic illnesses. And you have also traveled the world educating physicians on the principles of personalized and functional medicine and been a celebrated inspirational speaker and prolific writer, which we'll also talk about today, and have shared a knowledge of hope, health, and healing through your newsletters, your articles, books, podcasts, and social media. I know you've got a huge, really, really popular following, Jill. Often I'll mention you to other doctors and their eyes will light up. And you've also been featured in Shape Magazine, Parade, Forbes, MindBodyGreen, First for Women, and a number of other publications as well. And you co-authored the Personalized and Precision Intuitive Cardiovascular Medicine textbook, which is going to be coming out, which we can touch on as well. And to kick us off, Jill, I would love if you could tell us a little bit— we alluded to it there— but a little bit about your personal experience with recovery recovery and going from a number of health challenges to a state of vitality and hopefully a state where flow comes easily to you. If you could give us that breakdown and we'll dive in from there.

You got it, Ryan. Thank you for your kind, generous introduction. And I was born to overcome. I didn't know that until I started hitting the obstacles of life that we all hit. But I realized very early in life that my route, my soul's journey, is to experience sometimes great suffering and illness. But through that, the depth and understanding of knowledge that I've gained is absolutely priceless because medical school does not teach you these things in that depth. And I've conventionally trained. I basically grew up with the heart of a naturopath, a healer. I grew up on a farm in Illinois and we had a large, like a half-acre garden. So we had lots of fresh fruits and vegetables. We grew a ton of our own food. My mother was a nurse. Who was retired to raise one of— I was one of 5 children, so 5 children growing up on the farm. But lots of hard work, lots of organic produce, lots of love and beautiful family life. But what unbeknownst to me was going on was there was probably pesticides in the well water. There was lots of organophosphate and toxic exposures. And at 25 years old, in my 3rd year of medical school, I found a lump in my breast. And I realized within 2 weeks I had a biopsy and got a call from the doctor and she said, Jill, I don't know how to tell you, but you've got aggressive life-threatening cancer. And most people don't know this, but when you get breast cancer, a lot of people know friends, family, aunts, uncles, mothers, sisters, grandmothers that have had it. It's very common. But when you get it at 55 or 60, it's much more slow-growing. It can be aggressive, but at 25, Brianne, it is like a death sentence. I was in a group of young women under 40, and I'm the only one still living in that group. So I'm a miracle. And I hit— yeah, this life-threatening cancer. But what happened was I took everything at my disposal. I had aggressive 3-drug chemotherapy. I had radiation. I had multiple surgeries. But I also at the same time said, as a healer, how do I heal my body from the toxic effects? And cancer was easy. The, the hard part was over the next 20 years since then was healing my gut, healing my body from the toxic effects of the drugs. Now I have no regrets because they saved my life. But the kinds of therapies we use nowadays in cancer are incredibly toxic. And they don't think about the 10 or 20-year outcomes of heart failure or immune system dysfunction. I today have immune dysfunction, immune deficiency, probably not from the cancer, but from the treatment of the cancer. And I'm still doing well. But it's interesting because there are those side effects. So I restored afterwards, within 6 months of basically completing my treatment and being considered cured of cancer, I started having weight loss and abdominal pain. And I was working through fevers in the ER, I would go into 12-hour shifts, and I'd have 102 temp, no one knew it because you You don't talk about that in med school. You're not— you don't show weakness. It's a very masculine, hard-driving culture. I was not about to say I was sick. I was there and I had to show up. But one day I was taking a patient's blood pressure in the ER and I passed out cold and I couldn't ignore it anymore. And I was taken into the hospital, found to have an abscess. And when I came out of surgery, the doctor said, Jill, you have Crohn's disease. It's life-threatening. It's going to be lifelong. There's no cure. You're going to be on steroids. You're going to likely be on immune-modulating drugs. And get used to this because this is your life. And I was like, whoa, like shocked. But I remember the question I asked the doctor who diagnosed me right before I left. I said, Doc, you know, I want to do whatever I can to help my body. Does diet have anything to do with this? And he didn't pause. He said, Jill, diet has nothing to do with Crohn's. And this was where I teach people now, you know, you can be in your head. I was a bioengineer. I'm very analytical. But the heart, the intuition can often have just as much profound truth. And if we combine them, and this is where flow happens too, there's magic. And at that time I had just enough intuition to be like, I don't think that's true. How can diet not have something to do with the gut in this condition? So I went on a, uh, I was a mystery solver, a detective. I went on to the library and I studied, and I came across a couple diets that said, hey, we've had good results with Crohn's. I went on the specific carbohydrate diet, and within 2 weeks my fevers were gone, my symptoms were gone. I wasn't cured from Crohn's, but I knew diet had a lot to do with it. And I had always gone into medicine knowing I had a much more natural heart of a healer, but I wanted to learn the conventional system because right now reimbursement and systems, it's still the main system in the US. So I did that, but I kind of feel like I infiltrated because I wanted to also bring in other things like natural therapies and nutrition and vitamin and mind-body things. And so in my own illness of breast cancer and then Crohn's in the middle of medical school, I had to put that to work and I had to figure out how do I still do— like, I had to have surgery for my abscess, but then afterwards I I changed my diet, I changed my lifestyle. And today, 21 years later, I am completely cured of Crohn's. I don't have it anymore. And that's one of those things where you're told in conventional medicine, autoimmunity is incurable. Well, I talk about reversible autoimmunity because it is curable. We know the roots. So I had that experience very early at 25, 26, and it kind of flavored my interaction with conventional medicine because I realized there's truth here that they don't tell us. And, and there's answers to be found if we have an open mind. And if we— again, I love my analytical mind I think it's powerful. But when we go into that heart intuition, I think the, this, the mind is like an old, you know, computer that has maybe 1,000 pieces of data at the time. It's amazing. But when we go into heart intuitive space and into flow states, we can get answers with thousands and millions of pieces of subconscious information in the second and have a knowing that's so deep. And there's literally science that proves that that intuitive knowledge is actually more accurate than our analytical mind. And when we combine them, We're unstoppable.

Oh my God, yeah, that's amazing backstory. I, I didn't realize the full extent of the breast cancer and the degree to which was life-threatening either. That's shocking about the group of women. Have you read— just out of curiosity, not to throw us on a side tangent, but I'm curious if you've read the book Grace and Grit by Ken Wilber?

Oh my goodness, yes, yes, he personally gave me a copy. And in my own book that I'm writing, there's piece in there that I literally quoted because it was so relevant to her journey. His wife's journey was like, it's— it could have been my journey. You're absolutely— I love that you brought that. It's on my nightstand.

Oh, that's, that's wild. I'm glad I asked. Yeah, that's amazing that he gave you a personal copy because the, the way in which he describes her, Treya's battle with breast cancer, and it includes all of her own diary notes the whole way up to her death, it's just incredibly poignant and really allowed me to empathize with the experience like that. So yeah, definitely recommend people check that out if they're interested. And to build on your experience, so I'm curious, for listeners who are trying to focus optimally or trying to use their cognition to solve big problems and accomplish big things and focus for prolonged periods and get into flow, but feel that something physiologically is not quite right, or that maybe they don't have the focus they used to. Are there a litany of sort of most common issues that may be causing decreased cognitive function, whether it's mold, whether it's, you know, gut issues like Crohn's? I'm curious what the sort of first bucket of common things that get skipped by, you know, a conventional physical are that may be decreasing cognitive performance.

And so I love this because I'm such a fan of your work in flow. And I really feel like we can all get into these superhuman states of just by harnessing the power of flow. But we talked briefly before we came on, and the difficulty is when there's something physiological that's affecting your brain or your nervous system, you can do all the right things, or you maybe have gotten into flow before and been very proficient at it. And then all of a sudden you come to a standstill, right? And what I didn't tell you, and I'll tell you very briefly, is I went after the breast cancer, Crohn's for 10, 12 years, really healthy. Doing great, moved to Boulder, started my practice. And then in 2013, there was a massive flood of epidemic proportions in Boulder called the Thousand-Year Flood. And a year later, I started having brain fog, trouble focusing, concentrating, memory issues, a little bit of— I'm not a depressed or anxious person by nature, but I had more like anxiety, feeling overwhelmed easily, maybe what you'd call borderline even depression. And I knew something was going on. And to make a long story short, I found mold in the base of my office, the nasty black stacky Bautry synchytomium. I took a fast-track course in mold and had to become a mold expert to heal myself again. It really, more than anything else I've ever experienced— cancer was a cakewalk compared to mold— because it's insidious. It takes away your insight, which means your ability to understand what's actually happening in real time. It affects your cognition. I don't think there's anything spiritual about it, but there's a real dark heaviness about it that makes you feel like lack of motivation, overwhelmed easily, like you And you don't really— even though now I know when I'm exposed to mold, there's still a weirdness about that insight. And as I studied to write my book, Rhiannon, I was amazed to see there's literally PubMed studies on the chemical inhalation of something like mycotoxins and the effect on the limbic system, which we'll talk about today. So there's literally not just a— because what I've always thought is there's this fear thing that happens when you've been exposed to mold, you know how sick it can make you, and that activates the limbic system. And so then all of a sudden, if you get a re-exposure, you get this trauma, like a PTSD effect. Effect on the brain and the body. That's real because you have this memory of what happened before. But it's actually beyond that. It's not just our psychology or if we haven't done our work around trauma. It's literally physiological. The inhalation receptors on the hypothalamic-pituitary axis directly related to limbic activation happens just purely from the chemical. And this one, I read this, was like, this is it. This is why. Because 100% of people who've had mold exposure have some piece of trauma and limbic overactivation. Even if, like you and I, we've done our work, we know our stuff, we know the we know this stuff so well, and yet there's a chemical trauma trigger. That's fascinating to me. Now, I've digressed, but I wanted to share that because I've been through mold and I had to figure it out. And now I have become a mold expert, but only by survival. I had to understand this, and it is the most nasty thing I've ever experienced. And if I had to pick one thing that is most likely to inhibit your flow, it is toxic mold. Without a doubt. There's no doubt.

Yeah, mold is the enemy of flow and vice versa. That's 100% for sure. I can say that from personal experience. And I just want to actually, before we touch on other things beyond mold, I'd love to just double-click on the point around the limbic system and trauma. One thing I've observed is that there are a lot of folks within the peak performance space and thought leadership space who've had challenges. Tim Ferriss, Stephen Cotler, of course, Dave Asprey, with mold, with Lyme disease, and with heavy metal poisoning, which sort of all seem to fall into this category. And I'm curious, is that because of potentially some predisposition to these issues due to trauma and limbic dysregulation or something like that?

Or why is it that you tend to see these sorts of conditions clustered around certain types So I love that we're talking about this because I have some ideas and you probably haven't heard anywhere else. First of all, functional medicine or personalized medicine, precision medicine, the kind of medicine where you really try to find a why or a root cause, and you can name it anything you want, you just go deeper. It's a medical detective work. I think of it as actually quite simple, and it's these two buckets. It's toxic load and infectious burden. And really almost everything in those two things contribute to inflammation and immune dysfunction and all the other things that we see. But if we think about inhibition or problems with peak performance and someone who has a mold or Lyme or any of these things, and I'll put them together, it's often this toxic load, which could include heavy metals, environmental toxins, pesticides. Like me growing up on the farm, which I didn't really correlate verbally, but they are endocrine disruptors, which means they have hormone-like effects on the body. So for me, that was probably— I had a poor detox system, was exposed to these endocrine disruptors as disruptors as a young child, maybe even in utero in my mother's womb. And then at 25, had a very early breast, which is a hormone-related cancer. So back to toxic load absolutely affects all of us and infectious burden and how they fit together and why you're seeing so many people clustered is especially mold. Mold will— the toxins. So mold itself is spores and stuff. They can't go into our bloodstream without transport. And we don't really inhale spores and get them into our blood. It just doesn't happen. They are in the environment. We could test them with air sampling and things. But the Molds protect themselves with something called mycotoxins. So they secrete. So they can be behind the wall here. Say there's something right here. I don't see it. I don't feel it. It's invisible to me, but it's excreting its protective mechanism of mycotoxins. And these mycotoxins, like trichosanthins, which are produced by the toxic black mold, are some of the most toxic chemicals in the world. They're used— they're being studied for chemical warfare. And they have immunotoxic, neurotoxic, kidney toxic, lung toxic. You name a system and it's probably going to be affected by those toxins. They are literally 2.5 or less microns in diameter, sometimes 0.1 or less. So they can go straight into our lungs and diffuse from alveoli right into our blood with no transport. They can go into our nose and diffuse right into our brain through the cribriform plate. They can go into our sinuses. So they can literally go very easily into our body with no transport. So if we're exposed for periods of time, we accumulate these mycotoxins in our tissue. And how that relates to things like Lyme and tick-borne infections, which are also very common, I believe if we test 10,000 people on the street with no symptoms, we'd probably find half of them had been bitten by a tick and have Borrelia, Bartonella, Babesia, or some form of tick-borne infection or multiple. But their immune system is robust. And so they're going from maybe they're 5 or 12 years old and they're going through their life with no symptoms. They're fine. But all of a sudden they get into a water damaged building or a home that has some hidden mold. I've had a fridge that leaked one time. You might have a dishwasher. You could have under a sink. It's tiny little things that don't seem like a big deal. But if that goes into porous material like particleboard or drywall, all of a sudden within a few months or a year, you have the mold growth because all they need is a water source. And then that mold will excrete these toxins that are toxic to your brain, nervous system, and immune system. It weakens our immune system. It's clearly in the literature as an immunosuppressive. There's one particular called mycophenolic acid. We measure it in people's urine all the time. That is used in a drug called called CellCept. That is the drug CellCept. CellCept is used for organ transplant. So like, this is used in medicine as an immunosuppressive. It's known. It's not surprising. So then that immune suppression happens and these people who are walking around fine, they had Lyme, but they weren't symptomatic because their immune system kept those infections in check. And then it pops up because their immune system can no longer keep it in check. And we see that with Lyme and co-infections, which are quite common, atypical bacteria like Mycoplasma, and even things like viral reactivation, Epstein-Barr, herpetic viruses. So these things do kind of you mentioned people, and they come together because we get into a weakened state from an exposure, and then all the infections start to come up. And then one more thing, like I said, I don't think anyone's probably talked about this before. This is just my theory, but I think it's backed by science. And this is, did you know that high histamine is associated with higher IQ, higher performance, higher motivation? CEOs, often highly successful people, are those that actually produce more histamine. Histamine is a good and bad thing, but too much histamine is going to cause allergies, reactions, leaky gut, brain issues, all kinds of things. So I think there might be these people who are high producers, some of the ones you mentioned, high performers that naturally are high performance because they were born with more histamine production for some reason.

Wow.

And then it goes bad for them, right? And then it goes to the other extreme because all of a sudden when you produce too— and mold is the number one trigger. Trigger of mast cell activation, which mast cells are the producers of histamine. So I believe, again, this is just my theory as I've read about it, that some of those high histamine people from birth, high performers, highly motivated, highly successful, high IQ, are also more prone to histamine. And the mold is a trigger for that, and that makes everything go haywire as well.

Thank you for tuning in to Flow Research Collective Radio, and please pardon the brief Interruption. Got a question for you: do you have great ideas and big goals? My assumption is you have more skills than most knowledge workers. You're paid well to use your brain, and you've reached this level in your career by being uncommonly effective at what you do. But maybe something's changed. You're typically relentless, but fatigue has started to slow you down. You used to be crystal clear on your priorities, but mounting responsibilities have started to blur your vision. Now, on your best days, you can focus for hours on end on the most critical tasks and blaze through a massive workload with ease. But perhaps you're inconsistent. Some days you can barely focus for more than a few minutes before your attention gets yanked elsewhere. People rely on you, so you're constantly reeled into conversations, task switching, and multitasking. Or perhaps you've got no trouble keeping focus. You can consistently execute on your highest priorities, and you're fully able to manage your time wisely. But you know that something is missing. You're looking for a way to perform at your absolute best. Absolute best, and not just some of the time, all the time. On your best days, you can get 10 times more work done in half the time, and it feels nearly effortless, and it's enjoyable, and it's energizing. At the end of a 10 out of 10 day, you hit the pillow that night feeling unstoppable. Now, this level of extreme accomplishment is its own reward, but you get the external rewards too by excelling in your profession and your craft. Now, with 10 out of 10 days, you exceed your own expectations and surprise yourself with what you're capable of. And if you've ever suspected there's a way to operate at a 10 out of 10 level every day, you're right, there is. And we're going to show you exactly how to access apex performance like this at will, without fail. To train with us at the Flow Research Collective, go to getmoreflow.com. That's getmoreflow.com. All the best.

Oh, that's really, really interesting, Joe. Yeah, I've always wondered about those car correlations. I've also, and this is very, very anecdotal, end-to-one observer, uh, an end-to-one anecdotal observation, but I've noticed that there is, or seems to be, a correlation between people who are in these sort of spiritual communities and people who have challenges with complex illnesses. And I don't know if that could be for similar reasons, or maybe it's due to the trauma piece, which ends up provoking an interest in spirituality and then also predisposes one to complex illnesses. But yeah, I've definitely noticed that. And may that be for the first reason that you mentioned potentially?

Yeah, no, that certainly could be the biochemicals. And really, as we know with flow states, it's all the neurotransmitters, right? And I think some people, like typically high performers, are higher dopamine, higher histamine, like these things they make more naturally. But I also think on a spiritual, emotional trauma perspective that those of us that, like, I saw— I talk about my soul's journey or the hero's journey or any of that. When our souls are called to be healers or teachers, I don't know anyone who's in that space that hasn't had some difficulties because that's where we learn the lessons that we can have the passion to bring to others and to share. Like, there's no amount of schooling anywhere that takes the place of our own trauma and our own suffering to transform us into the kind of teacher and inspirational person that we're meant to become.

Right. And that's another interesting point. Is it causation? In other words, is it the challenges physically that result in the predisposition or interest in things like spirituality or psychology? So that's really interesting. And then just to zoom us back to the first question, so we touched on mold. What do you see as some of the other big categories of, you know, significant but difficult to identify health issues being that decrease cognitive performance?

Yeah, so the elephant in the room is environmental toxic load, which is my specialty. Love to talk about this. And this includes metals, organophosphates, phthalates, parabens, pesticides, Agent Orange, glyphosate, you name it, all these chemicals in our environment including heavy metals, including the new wildfires which burn metals and cause air problems, including mold. But that environmental toxic load is exponentially increasing every year because literally tens of thousands, maybe even hundreds, are getting approved without really researching not only each individual chemical and the toxicity and the variability between humans, but also their synergistic effect. Because we know now that even 2 or 3 or 4 or 10 chemicals together have a whole different toxicity profile than one alone. And no one doing safety studies, not the FDA, not the EPA, on the synergy of these chemicals. And it's in our food supply, it's in our water supply, it's in the air that we breathe. The statistic I've quoted is 80% of our environmental toxic load is actually from the air that we breathe. So that's profound. Like, we don't think about everything, but maybe clean water, clean food, but clean air. And they're all important. And all that toxic load, I think, was like a perfect example as we just went through this pandemic. And part of that was because we were weakened immune systems because of this toxic load. I say we're all swimming in toxic soup. So there's this toxicity issue that's weakening our systems even regardless of mold, and that will create more autoimmunity, which is one of the things you ask about. So autoimmunity is one of them. Proweness to cancer, proneness to neurodegeneration, so Alzheimer's, ALS, Parkinson's, or just neuro, just brain inflammation. And these are the things that are underlying the lack of ability to get to flow states. So autoimmunity, proneness to cancer, poor methylation, and neurodegenerative diseases, or even you may not have full-blown Parkinson's dementia, but you might have cognitive, I call it subjective cognitive decline where you're just not as clear, not as sharp, your words aren't there, or you're having trouble with focus. And all of those things massively impact flow because we can't really do what we need to do to get there.

Subjective cognitive decline is a very nice way to put it. I think a lot of people who are listening can probably relate to that specific phrase. And then do we want to touch a little bit on, on Lyme? Because I imagine a lot of people who are struggling may have undiagnosed Lyme or heavy metals. I'm curious how they, how they can play into this picture as well.

Big one. And like I said, that's why I mentioned before, because it's not, uh, when you get— say you go to a doctor who knows what they're doing and they test you and they check and they find that you have Borrelia— is classic Lyme, Borrelia burgdorferi. There's a lot of other strains now from soft ticks. So the classical Western blot from lab Quest or any hospital lab uses one kind of Connecticut strain of Lyme, which is why if you test negative, you just maybe haven't been to Connecticut to get bit, but you were in Utah or Arizona or California, and there's ticks in every state in the United States and all over the world. So you might just have a different strain and it causes different forms of Lyme. And there's one in particular in my area, Colorado, Texas, Utah, Arizona, called tick-borne relapsing fever. And it's not tested on any standard lab, But the labs that we use, they do test it and it's very common. It looks just like Lyme. And then we have something called Babesia, which is a— it's a malarial type. It's just like malaria, only it's a bloodborne parasite. And this will cause air hunger, night sweats, anxiety, insomnia, disequilibrium, and often issues with blood cells like either high platelets, low platelets, or blood issues or hypercoagulation. So thicker blood where you're not getting oxygen to the tissues. Then there's another big one called Bartonella. Bartonella is also called cat scratch disease, so it can come from things other than ticks. Cats are a big carrier of spiders. I've seen tons of people who get Bartonella after a spider bite. Bartonella is a weird one because it can really affect the brain and nervous system more than any of the others. It can cause severe anxiety. It can even— there's been books written about Lyme rage, and that Lyme rage is not really Lyme, it's Bartonella. So it can cause almost personality disorders with the kind of emotional Either severe anxiety, severe depression, severe rage, anger, and Bartonella can do that. It can also cause unilateral weakness or pain where someone has all kinds of symptoms on one side of their body. It can cause pancreatitis, carditis, so heart or pancreas inflammation. Tendon and joint ligament issues are real common. Injuries are just not healing well. And there's many other things like stretch marks are real common. So if you men or women have stretch marks and maybe didn't have a big weight change, those can be Bartonella related. Those are just a few of the things. And these are super common because weakened immune system, these pop up and they masquerade as autoimmunity because they can drive out. So they might masquerade as lupus or Crohn's or arthritis is real common, any of the itises. And then they can also masquerade as just inflammation, pain, brain fog, cognition. So those are really common and they also weaken the immune system.

Hmm. It's, there's something sort of spooky about Lyme, the way it comes from a tick and has just this profound array of effects. So thanks for giving the breakdown on that. And then let's say someone, you know, does not necessarily have any of these issues, but wants to take their health from ticking along just about fine, up a few notches. With the purpose again being to increase cognitive performance and flow, what tends to be your set of recommendations to go from sort of zero to above zero?

So I still, from 20 years ago, we were always taught start with the gut. So I still start with the gut because the gut and the immune is where, so our tube from mouth to anus is where we interface with our immune system. So there's one cell layer barrier from the lining of the gut to our bloodstream. And that's the only barrier between our external and internal environment. So whether it's the food that we eat and we're not eating clean— and often I'll have people on a gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free diet because most often if someone doesn't know their food sensitivities or issues, those are, are kryptonites. Those are the most common foods that can cause inflammation, joint pain, or brain fog. So if people don't know or don't want to test, you can just go on a gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free diet. And maybe limit alcohol, at least for the short term. And it really does make a difference. But this cell layer that interfaces between the external environment and the bloodstream, if you have particulate that's in the bowel from bacteria or fungi or parasites or inflammatory molecules or food that you don't tolerate, and that goes into the bloodstream, that can create immune inflammation and be the start of autoimmunity. So back to what would you do if you had someone pretty healthy without these big issues? Almost everyone can do some improvements on their gut. And whether it's doing that elimination diet— and if you want to know the top 7, it's gluten, dairy, egg, soy, corn, sugar, alcohol. Those are the big ones. That's a big list, but it's amazing because that's something free and easy. You don't even need a doctor. You could try 30 days off that and see how much clearer you might feel. And if you don't notice, that's fine. You go back to eating those foods. But it's a great little test and trick that you can see. And then what I see nowadays, again, because of our toxic load and our poor our food supply, often contaminated or artificial. There's very commonly dysbiosis. That just means dys— like abnormal— bios is life. So you have abnormal organisms in the gut. And so when I treat, I can use herbs or medications or probiotics, and I can shift the microbiome, which shifts the brain, shifts the nervous system, shifts the ability to think, shifts the concentration. So often I'm working on— no matter who you are, what you're dealing We start with the gut and we want to get that in shape and make sure things are going well because the gut-brain connection is probably the biggest part of all of this.

I love that breakdown of 7. It'd be really, really interesting to run a study where a population removed those 7 and then you see what impact that has on dispositional flow or flow proneness or hours spent in flow. I think, I bet there'd be a positive correlation there. So I really like that. That's a really great Right.

And let me make one really quick thing because of Flo and gluten specifically. So gluten's so different. It's like this long pearl necklace and it's so large. And many of us genetically, I'm German Swiss. I think you got some Irish, right? And those—

Oh, all Irish.

All Irish. Yeah. So all of our ancestors have a very high predisposition, especially Irish has a high predisposition to having that. What we do is we don't have the scissors that snips that up into little 2 and 3 pearl strains. So we can't snip up the gluten. Gluten. So even if we don't have celiac, when we can't break down that gluten peptide into little tiny bits, we, um, get an inflammatory reaction. And the reason I want to mention this is there's 50% of people that have diarrhea or abdominal pain or gut symptoms, but the other half of them, guess what, it's all brain symptoms. So they might have a perfectly healthy feeling gut, and yet gluten is causing brain fog, insomnia, subjective cognitive decline. And it's literally half the people with a gluten intolerance patients have brain symptoms, not gut symptoms.

That's really interesting. So use the brain also as a monitoring device for whether or not you've got a healthy gut, even if digestion feels fine subjectively. That's a really—

that's another great tip.

That's fantastic. And then let's go back again to the trauma piece. We've spoken before about limbic retraining, and I'd love if you could break that down for folks and then provide some resources or steps that people can take to do limbic retraining?

You got it. So what we realized as we were treating mold-related illness was, just like we talked about before, there's this trauma piece— mold in particular, but really many, many patients who've had an illness. And if we don't address the limbic system— is the fight or flight. Of course, you've talked about this in depth, and your listeners I'm sure know, but just for reiteration— and when that part— that's the part that senses a danger in our environment, and it's protective But what happens in our current environment where we're all 24/7, we've all got dopamine hits from our iPhones every day, all the time. We've got workloads that are excessive or whatever pieces are hitting that system all the time. We have a lot more stimulation than 50 or 100 years ago than we used to. And then we add in chemicals and infections and everything. I find to get people well, no matter what they have of any of the things we talked about, starting with limbic retraining or addressing that limbic activation is is crucial because if you're in a fight or flight state and you're fearing for your life at a subconscious cellular level, you can't heal. You just can't. You can do all the right supplements, you can sleep or try to sleep, or all these things that are right. But if your limbic system thinks that there's a bear outside and you're running for your life, even if it's all just your cells, um, you will not be able to heal. So I love that you mentioned this because it's crucial. So the first thing is, and I always think about, there's a lot of programs out there that are great. DNRS is one. Gupta has a Stephen Porges has a program who's the guy who wrote polyvagal theory, and there's many great programs out there. But for some people who are Type A and they're like, you know, do it by the book and let's put the time in, it's one more stress to have a 2-hour-a-day program. So I kind of like to check in with people and say, where are you? And if you're driven, Type A, and you have tons on your plate, you want to have more receptive therapy. So the books are great, the programs are great for the right people who need motivation. I highly recommend some of those. Again, Porges DNRS from Annie Hopper. Gupta does a Gupta protocol, and there's others. And there's books like Accessing the Power of the Vagus Nerve, The Brain That Changes Itself, Safe and Sound by Stephen Porges, and there's others. And even some of the flow books and stuff you guys have worked on are, I think, part of this. But all that to say, those are very protocolized, driven. You have an hour a day or whatever. And for people who are already overwhelmed and already have a very high-intensity life The passive things I think are maybe even more powerful. This would be neurolinguistic programming, things like craniosacral therapy. So receiving kind of this relaxation, even massage or lymphatic massage. It could be binaural beats, really, really good. Integrative manual physical therapy, frequency-specific microcurrent, even like hydrotherapy, hot and cold therapy for the right person can be a healthy stress is a good thing for limbic. Breathwork, any type of breathwork. And this I like because there's so many different variations, or everything from holotropic psychedelic breathwork to Buteyko breathing and everything in between. And it, for me, I feel like you find the patient and where they're at and what they need. Do they need motivation? Then they might need a program. Do they need to calm their system down? Then they might need one of those receptive things. But those are just some of the things you can do for limbic retraining.

That's great, Jill. Thanks for that breakdown. I'm curious actually to ask you a little more about NLP. We, I feel like I hear a lot of people being very, very critical of NLP, and I'm curious if you, irrespective of the how solid the scientific foundation is, have you seen anecdotal, you know, evidence just firsthand of NLP being helpful for folks?

I have, and personally, it's literally where I started with a very well-known NLP therapist in San Diego Chicago. Uh, no, sorry, San Francisco. And I flew out for a 2-day session, and it was the first shift, my first— I would say I had an awakening. It was after the mold and the divorce and the things I went through. And, um, that first shift into going from my— I always say I used to live from my head up, which is all analytical, all in my head, and it served me really well as a bioengineer and then a medical doctor that solves mysteries. But my biggest profound shift in healing and in understanding and helping others has been shifting down into the heart, um, subconscious and the intuitive sense. So kind of combining the best of right and left brains. And for me, the shift started with NLP therapy, and I went way further than that. I kind of felt like I kind of grew out of some of that, if I can say it that way. Like, after I got done with a certain amount of sessions, I went on to something else like somatic behavioral therapy or trauma therapy or other things. But it started off for me to be a really big shift, and it was my intro into this world of limbic retraining and doing the work on myself.

Good gateway drug.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

Nice. And then one other health question I'd love to ask you, and then I'll go to the final question in a moment, is on metrics. A lot of our clients love tracking things. I mean, obviously you are are sort of broadly speaking within the world of biohacking and things like that. What do you see as the most helpful metrics to keep an eye on for health? And that may include blood markers, but I'm curious what some of those are.

Yeah, that's a great question. I don't know if I've ever been asked that cuz it's hard to narrow down, but I think heart rate is such a core and whether it's heart rate heart rate variability, or your lowest heart rate at night and whatever tracking device that you have. I think heart rate is a really good indicator because we see with mold or Lyme, often you have irregularities. You have some things that will change with that. In fact, for me, one of the biggest objective markers if I've had a mold exposure is my heart rate will be anywhere from 5 to 10 beats higher at night. So I get a little bit of— not tachycardic, but it's not a low resting, and my heart rate variability will go to trash, you know. So, um, to me, those are markers of an exposure objectively, even if I know, you know, subjectively that I've been exposed. Um, being conscious of our breath is another one, and we can measure that obviously by breath rate or type of breathing. Um, for me, that one, I like to track the heart rate and track the temperature and track the sleep hours and the REM and the deep and all those. But breath is more of an intuitive sensing. Because what we can do is if we're not really embodied, we can check in with our breath and we can control our physiology with the breath. Whereas heart rate, it's hard. If you're really good, you can control your heart rate, but breath is easy, right? We can choose even if we're not, you know, Wim Hof, right? If we're not Wim Hof, we can still choose to change the breath. And the breath gives us control over a lot of our physiology, right?

The breath can help us control heart rate and HRV. Obviously as well. Are there any, um, blood markers that you look at, you know, for foundational things like inflammation or methylation or things like that?

I love this. So, um, windows into potential mold or Lyme: C3a and C4a. They're not commonly drawn, and they're complements. C3 and C4 are different, so you need a little a at the end of it. And C3a can be more associated with Lyme acutely, and C4a can be more associated with mold They're not diagnostic, but they often give me a direction to go if I'm confused between those two. Other markers that can, as a triad, have been studied for risk of cancer, so I often check, is CRP, ESR, and LDH. Those are all inflammatory markers and none of them are specific, but of all three, C-reactive protein is CRP, ESR is erythrocyte sed rate, and then LDH is lactate dehydrogenase, I believe. And those are all together a risk for cancer. If you have that metabolically, I like to look at A1C, homocysteine, and insulin. I like to see the insulin below 5, the homocysteine below 9, and if you have cognition issues, below 7. And I like to see the A1C below 5.5. And those are great markers just for like blood sugar metabolically. One thing that it's a little harder to check, but it's probably the number one thing that influences our risk of cardiovascular obesity, diabetes, like most of the westernized diseases, is lipopolysaccharide. So this is the coating of bacteria in our gut, and there's something called lipopolysaccharide endotoxemia where that coating can sneak into the bloodstream. That's the underlying cause of heart disease, diabetes, obesity, cancer. So if you have LPS endotoxemia, which means a leaky gut, and the ways you can check antibodies to this, you can see if you have a lot of food reactivities. There's ways to check. But that LPS is a big player as well for just generalized inflammation.

Amazing. That's really, really helpful, Jill. And then the second last question that I have for you is, what are you most excited about for the future of functional medicine and performance medicine breakthroughs that may be on the horizon, or new supplements or interventions or technologies? Really curious about that.

Love this question because I feel like I could in my sleep— I love the nutrition, the supplements, even NAD and IVs and all these cool fun peptides. I use all that, love it, and it's amazing, and we get amazing results. But what's happening in this next, uh, I think it's happened in the last 6 months, is continuing. And I love we've touched on these things, is the consciousness, the work and the trauma, the consciousness of our mind and body together, the embodiment, living in our body and actually having a sense of what's right and wrong for our bodies versus just cognitively. So going from here from head to heart and combining those two. And so I feel like the future of functional medicine is really getting into this, um, and we can call it spiritual. Everybody has their own view of what does that mean, and I'm not trying to put anything on anyone, but whatever it is, it's a, it's a higher consciousness, and there's many ways to go there. And I think some of the work we just talked about with limbic retraining can start the journey, NLP, plant medicine, but getting to that higher level of consciousness because is at that higher level, we can change matter just with our thought, right? And we know this, it's quantum. But we haven't really, as a standard, gotten to quantum in medicine yet. And that level is amazing. Like, I've seen a little in my own life, I've seen it in my patients' lives. And as we touch on that level, I think we're all going to experience that more if we're awake and aware and interested in learning more. But that quantum level of energetic healing of consciousness is really where things are headed, I think, in medicine.

That's really interesting. Stephen's doing some really interesting work on embodied cognition, actually, on that note. He was telling me recently some reading he was doing that was talking about how our physiology isn't subject to cognitive biases and in that sense is more rational actually than our own cognition, which makes sense when you think about it. It's kind of interesting. A reflex that you would have, let's say if you bang your elbow, it is always going to be reflexive in a certain way. It's not going to be altered by some sort of a glitch in the system like a cognitive bias. So it's interesting how the body can be more rational even as well in that sense. And the final question, Jill, is our— we call our research genie question. So if you could If you could have any question answered and have all the research immediately done to conclusively answer that question, what would the question be?

Yeah, so this is going to play into what I just said because this is where I— where my soul resides the deepest. I would like to see— I don't need proof, but I would like to see the power of unconditional love and healing whether it's for ourselves first or for those around us. And creating— and really unconditional love is creating a space for optimal transformation and optimal performance. Like, we could say it that simply. And so, like, for me to you, or for you to someone you care about, or friend or family or whatever, or me to another patient, um, it's— I feel like the true secret to even in my clinic, and I, I'm not always perfect at this, but if my intention is truly just creating a space of unconditional love and acceptance where that person can come and be exactly who they are with no expectations, and creating a space for them to transform into highest— their highest version of themselves. That is what I get excited about. And I don't know how we map that or how we study that, but I think that is the most powerful energy in the world for healing on every level. Like personal, social, you know, spiritual, every level, and even our country and our world. That level is where we can see. And if we could become conscious in that way and really meet people and truly show them unconditional love, we would see true miracles in all levels.

Love that. That's a lovely note to wrap on. And before we fully wrap, I would love if you could take a moment to mention your upcoming book how people can learn more about that and about you in general and even work with you if, if that's of interest.

Thank you, Rhiannon. It's always so fun to talk to you. I think we could talk for a long time. I love talking about this stuff. So my regular website for my practice is just jillkarnian.com. I've got literally hundreds, thousands of articles, free resources there. You can find me on YouTube under my name at my YouTube channel as well. I've got a new book coming out March 2023. You can get all the information and get your copy at readunexpected.com. So readunexpected.com. And I'm in the middle of doing a documentary. Literally this week we're recording, is going to be submitted to Sundance. So by the time this comes out, who knows? Um, that's called Doctor Patient, and the information there will be available on doctorpatient.com. So we'll stay tuned.

Amazing, amazing. That's really exciting on the new book as well, Dylan. We'll make sure to, um, link all of those pieces below. And thanks again so much for the time. It's really, really great to have on. And just as you said, I could talk for hours and enjoy chatting. So thanks, Emmanuelle.

Thank you so much.

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