Get the Right Treatment for Complex Conditions, with Dr. Nafysa Parpia

Foreign. Hello and welcome back to the Feel Freaking amazing podcast. I'm Dr. Wendy Trubo, this is Dr. Ed Levitan and our guest today is Nafisa Parpia. She is a board certified naturopathic doctor at Gordon Medical in San Rafael, California. And she spent over 10 years taking care of inspiring, empowering and really healing patients with complex, chronic, chronic illnesses. Which is essentially the where infections and chronic illness and exposures and toxins meet up together. So welcome Nafisa. We're so excited to have this conversation with you today.

Thank you for having me here. I'm so excited to be here with the two of you. It's going to be a lot of fun.

Yeah, and we, we don't, we don't get to talk about like really complex people very often because as I send.

Them to Ed, I'm not go see Ed.

That too. So I mean when we talk about complex, let's define what that means first. Like what are we talking about? Who are the people that this refers to?

Okay, so I'm talking about the mysterious cases where there are many different causes contributing to their illness. Many different causes contributing to inflammation in the body. So these are the diagnoses that just don't make sense to the medical establishment. Things like chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, long haul Covid autoimmune conditions or chronic Lyme or tick borne diseases. Any post infectious illness. Actually I'd say there are no true treatments typically given to these patients. There's great bandaids but no personalized medical investigation or treatment. The personalized pieces missing, I'd say.

So the people who are like I went to 10 doctors and they finally just told me I had chronic fatigue syndrome, which is just to me a wastebasket diagnosis of I don't know what's wrong with you. So I'm going to label you as this.

Right, exactly that. Yeah. In fact I'd say all of those, those illnesses I just listed would be waste basket diagnoses. We sort of, they get, they get that label hung on them. This is what you've got. And the patient's might come to me and say this is what I have, but I have to.

Isn't it like irritable bowel syndrome? Is that a great one?

Right. Well, let's find out why and let's heal you from there.

Yeah, I mean as a naturopath you start out really well trained. And like every naturopath I've ever met, I love to pieces because of the training that you get and the way your mind often Approaches problems. But did you start your career working with people with complex chronic illnesses? Was that where you just kind of went in or did you have something before that?

The interesting thing is that's where I went in when, right away. So when I graduated from Bastyr, I, I, I knew that I had a calling to work with people on, on many different levels, on the levels in their being, the physical, the biochemical, but also the, the spirit, the emotions. And, and I knew that if I was doing primary care, I wouldn't have such an intimate relationship in the healing journeys of these patients. And so I was drawn right away and had the good luck of studying under Dr. Dietrich Klinghardt. So I started his clinic as shadowing him and shadowing his top doctors there. At the time, Dr. Katie Dahlgren mentored me there at his clinic and working in his IV room. So just really learning, learning from him and his doctors and just sitting there with those patients. One day I remember just being covered in goosebumps and knowing this is who I'm going to be working with. This is my calling. This was 12 years ago and ever since then it's been working with this patient load. I was then in the office of Dr. Isaac Elias. He brought me on board to head the Lyme and mold complex chronic illness section of his clinic while he focused on cancer care and watching what he did with the cancer patients regarding detoxification. He mentored me actually. And I thought, let me try this with patients who have tick borne disease and other complex chronic illnesses. And let me add that with what I learned from Dr. Klinghardt and when I added those pieces together, I created my own. And it really has been wonderful and I feel so blessed to be in this space helping people this way.

I have a lot of questions for you. Do you want to say.

I'm going to say, I guess let's, let's, let's start untangling. So how does mold fit into the picture? Like where does mold come in and mold toxins?

I guess so this could be a whole podcast and stuff. I see. So I'm going to shorten it because we have, we do have so much to talk about, which I'm excited. But when I'm thinking about mold, I tell my patients I'm looking at from many different angles. I'm trying to understand, do you have an allergic response or a sensitivity response to the mold spores themselves? Do you have a high mycotoxin load? Those are the toxins that are created from the mold. Are you allergic to the Mycotoxins themselves. And do you have an exposure? Where is that exposure? Is it in your home? Is it in your work? Is it in your car? Or is it in your body?

So school.

Schools are super wet.

Yeah. How many patients I've had company saying this was in my dorm. Right.

Or.

Or people who. Who live in damp environments. Is it outside? But then also, could it be inside your body? Right. Very well. So right in the gut and the sinuses on the skin. We know mold can and be in those places.

So isn't it something like 50% of all buildings have had water damage at some point in time? And so it is basically the statistical odds of you never having been exposed in a building are almost zero. Because maybe it wasn't your house, but it was your friend's house or your school or your dorm or your college building or whatever. Like, the list is endless. I'm sorry for punching you in the face with the microphone before. I didn't even notice.

I wish I could see it. Do it again.

I know, right?

We'll do it on the replay. Loop it. Yeah.

And then I'd say it. Really?

By the way, I'm having so much fun. You're so right. We started off this talk with Wendy saying that I'm more buttoned up than she is. But, like, we can be less. This is fun. It should be fun. So it should be fun. Yeah. So. But different people will have different sensitivities. So, for example, maybe Ed, you could be in mold in a moldy building and you'll be just fine. No problem. Whereas maybe I'm strong like bull.

Actually, I always talk about it's all relative.

Well, relative to me, you're strong like bull. I'm strong like a mouse. Meaning you wave a piece of paper at me and I'm like, what?

Right. So I could put you in a. In the same building and you're not going to have a very good time at all. Probably sue to the genes or. And. Or other infections or structure integrity issues. Now, for you, I'm not going to say about diet or lifestyle. That can't be a contributor because I know you eat a clean diet and.

But I wouldn't always. Right. I mean, there's a reason I got diagnosed with celiac. I am a child of the 70s. We had sloppy joes. I. I used to love sloppy joes. Now if you asked me to eat a sloppy Joe, I'd be like, you're poisoning me. But I used to love. I mean, sloppy Joe is like bun. Mostly bun. Huge. And by the way, Wonder Bread, which I think went out of business. But Wonder Bread is from Framingham. They had the processing plant in Framingham. So you drove by it to go to the mall. We'd all unroll our windows to be like, like dog sniffing out the window. Oh, I smell the Wonder Bread. Right. But I didn't always eat the way I ate. And so certainly you look at the genetics suck. But then the layers of being a child of the 70s and the food and the constant unremitting antibiotics.

Don't forget residency.

I haven't even gotten there. And. And then the irritable bowel and then med school and then residency. And in there were mycotoxins exposures. So it's not a good combination. So really the healthy part starts.

And the amazing genes. Don't forget the amazing genes.

The worst genes. That's the foundation. The worst genes. But that's only 10%, you know, that's really only 10% of what happens. The rest was piled on experience.

Huh. And all of that caused the genes to express.

Yes. And bad epigenetics too. Let's just pile that on. Why not? So, yeah. So. Okay.

So.

So mold it. Does it seem like for you, you that mold is a inciting event for a lot of people?

I would say it is. I. I would say that a lot of people might have mold issues to begin with. They might have an allergy to mold, or they might have an allergy to the toxins from mold, or they might have a high load of the mycotoxins. A lot of, A lot of people will have funguses in their sinuses while the mycotoxins and inflammation from that can cross the blood brain barrier and cause issues there with sleep, with hormonal disturbances. So it can be an exciting event for many things, perhaps for the hormonal system, hormonal imbalance even. But what I find is most of my patients who have tick borne disease, it's not just Lyme. Mold is almost always at play there. So often I'll see that they've been treated for a long time. And Lyme has been chased for years, maybe with just an antibiotic or a few antibiotics over the years. And mold was never paid attention to. And what I've also found is that if we treat mold first, people are more likely to have a better recovery with Lyme faster.

Yeah. You really quiet the system down.

Right?

Like open the healing gates.

Yeah. But I want to really emphasize the one point that you made that I think I say every day because people can have Lyme, can have mold, whatever else. It's not necessarily first, it's the combination. And most people think, oh yeah, I have one thing most in Western society, most people want to say, I have one thing, I have celiac, or I have lime, or I have mold. But it, for patients that we see, it's never one thing. It's always three to 10 things going on at once. And it's really the straw that broke the camel's back when they, by the time they get to us, right, they got some exposure.

But, but we were trained that way. I don't know if you were trained that way. We were trained like there's one.

The good thing as naturopathic doctors, we weren't trained that way. We were trained to look at their whole system. But it's true that in the standard, in the medical establishment, we're expecting one symptom, one diagnosis, one lab and one treatment. But these things are really multifactorial. And so we can have many, many different genes at play in different individuals which can produce the same diagnostics in different people. And so no one gene is responsible for the same diagnosis by diagnosis in different people. And most, there's. Most of these people have many, many different causalities to their illness. And that's causing the genes to express same diagnosis, but different cause, different cellular response.

Sounds like they're sitting on 10 tax. Not just trained, right?

Exactly.

You really have to pull off a lot to notice a difference. So, okay, what other details. So what other toxins play a huge role in modulating the immune system?

Before we go there, what is your kind of your top three mold, favorite mold treatments?

Okay, so the, the first thing for me is I want to get the patient out of the exposure, whether it's an external exposure or whether it's internal exposure. Some doctors say I'm not going to treat you treat your mold or mycotoxins until you're out of there. I don't take that stance. I want to actually start, begin treating even if they can't get out of there for a little while, because at least I tell them I'm not, I'm not going to get you better, that's for sure. But at least I have a hope chasing after it a little bit. So as you keep getting insulted by the exposures, I can keep pulling them away, but you're going to keep getting insulted more by those exposures. Maybe we can at least keep you somewhat stable if I begin treatment. So getting them out and then I want to as with any complex chronic illness, I'm working on modulating their immune system first because I know that when I start to kill mold, just like when I start to kill any other infections, we're going to have a release of biotoxins, inflammatory cytokines for mold. It will be mycotoxins. And these people are already in a state of perpetual inflammation, inflammation that just didn't stop. It's inappropriate inflammation. So I want to modulate that inflammatory status first that they have, then I will come in and I might start to bind the mycotoxins if those are high. A lot of patients I find not a lot. I'm going to say 20% of my patients can't even handle binders yet. And I need to understand what their methylation status is. I need to understand what their mineral, what their amino status is because those are amino acid statuses, because those are cofactors for their detoxification. So before I begin any detox, whether it's mycotoxins, toxins from mold or any toxins, I want to bolster them as appropriate. So I'm going to see if they can get out of their environment soon. I'm going to bolster their immune system or modulate their immune system, bolster their detox pathways as needed. I'm testing on the labs, then if they're ready, I'm starting to pull mycotoxins out. Then I'm coming in with different treatments to kill funguses or mold that I've tested. The other thing is I might begin if they have an allergic response to mold or mycotoxins, I might. And they have mast cell activation syndrome. I might start treating mast cell activation syndrome first. So immune modulation, preparing them for detox, finally detox and then killing the infection. And then I'm layering all of them. It's interesting you asked me that question because you asked it specific to mold. But as I'm speaking, I also want you to know that this is how I approach most chronic infections with my patients, in that order. But typically I'm working on their mold before I'm working on tick borne disease. For example, if they have them both, which usually they do.

What do you mean when you talk about immune modulation? What are you referring to?

I'm referring to peptide therapies. So prior to the advent of peptides, I wanted to modulate their immune systems first. Boy, did I ever want to. But I found that if I tried to model their immune system and they still have the insults, it just didn't work. And so even though I wanted to, like, I would try things like maybe colostrum or quercetin, but these patients have raging infections, didn't work so well. But what I found that with peptides I can use things like BPC157 to bring inflammation down in the gut and in the rest of the body. PB4 frag to modulate the immune response. KPV to bring mast cells back into order. Same with Amloxinox. Usually when I start with those peptides, not for everybody and everybody will have different dosages, but this is an example of how I can use peptides to modulate the immune system actually sticks in a way that I would say the other things that I, I wished had worked a few years ago before peptides came into my life so deeply, these work so I can, I can then stabilize the immune system. I'm also using mast cell activation syndrome. I'm using medications before I use herbs because a lot of these highly sensitive patients can't even handle the herbs. They're going to reject those. So, so I might use keptotifen or cromolyn as well with the peptides or low dose naltrexone often, all of those things. And then I can keep, those are good band aids for the immune system while I'm coming in and treating the causes. Then once I've treated the causes, those peptides, they actually help to retrain the immune system. They're not band aids anymore.

I will say that I, I am in some ways a very early adopter. Right. I'm in functional medicine ahead of the, the majority. But in some ways I'm a very late adopter. And so I feel like I'm late to the game on peptides. I just got into it within the last six months and have found it to be game changing, which is absolutely shocking to watch. It's like, oh my God.

What? Wait, I have, I have goosebumps right now as we're talking about the peptides. I have never met any other medicine, whether it's herbal or pharmaceutical or supplement nutraceutical, nothing that can target the tissues like I want to and make things happen faster, make healing happen faster. For example, my patients, who could have been a patient for five years, maybe it takes two years. Now the ones who would have taken two years, it could take six months to a year.

Yeah. Instead of inching along. Right?

Yeah, it's, it's amazing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have. What happens when you don't honor that order? Nafisa, Because I Know you're very committed to going in an orderly and systematic fashion. What happens when you're like now just do everything or ignore it? What, what goes on?

Yeah.

So a lot of times people come to me and they say, just, please just kill the tick borne diseases first. And I say, okay, let's step back and look at what happens when we kill infections. When we kill infections, we get a release of biotoxins, inflammatory cytokines, there's byproducts of dying bugs, dying cells, and you're already in a state of perpetual inflammation. Inflammation is important in the healing response. That's stage one of the cell danger response, actually. So we should have inflammation as oxidative shielding, as protection when we encounter infections or toxins. That inflammation first step is important. But our patients have had so many insults to their system over time that now the inflammation that should have been transient has become perpetual. They're stuck in this cycle of inflammation. So now I tell them, okay, you're stuck in a cycle of inflammation. Do you agree? And they say, absolutely. I feel inflamed all the time. I can say, look, here are your labs. It shows on your labs. You're also stuck in a, in a state of inflammation. So, so if I start to kill the infections and I'm increasing inflammation, I'm increasing toxins, just like we talked about, that's going to make you feel worse. Okay, so then how about detox? I want to detox before I kill the infections because I want to bring the toxin lobe down by treating the infect.

Sorry.

By deep. I'm going to backtrack. Sorry. So when I'm detoxing, first I am modulating the immune system. These patients already toxic from the biotoxins and from the inflammation. So I'm lowering their toxin load, getting immune regulation back into order as well. Then I want to start treating infections. Really, it's immune modulation. Then detox, then killing the infections. But I don't want to forget balancing the rest of their systems as well. I've got to look at their genital urinary system, their GI system, their endocrine system, musculoskeletal system, because all of that comes into play as well. So typically, even before I begin detox, I'm balancing their hormones, or if they're constipated, we're working on that. Or if they have diarrhea, we're working on that, working on the root causes of that to stabilize those systems before I detox. Because imagine someone's constipated, we Have a rush of toxins coming through as we're flushing them out of their system. They're just going to recirculate. So there's so much that has to be taken care of and weaved very, very carefully for each patient. Now this isn't the case for people who are not sick, for people just coming in, they want some detox. They're not feeling well. They just need some balancing of hormones. There's. It's a lot easier. So I just want our audience to, if they're feeling overwhelmed, to really know. This is. This is for people who have complex chronic illness, the mysterious illnesses. You've been to 20 other doctors, or at least five, that. That's when we take a route like this.

Where does heavy metals fall into this? Because you didn't mention that heavy metals are.

They're. I think they're very important to address. I look at their acute metal status before I look at their provoked status. I see a lot of high mercury. I'm looking at the NHANES data from the CDC to compare it to see if they're around 75th or 90th percentile when it comes to acute metal exposure. Mercury, lead, arsenic, cadmium, these are in the top 20 of the CDC stand of what's considered high in the population. Sorry, I'm kind of losing my voice. And so I want to understand if they've gotten acute exposure. Most of my patients eat a lot of fish. They've got high mercury. I'm seeing lead very high in my patients, my female patients who are starting for perimenopausal, who might, might have bone loss because the lead is as they're losing some bone. The lead that was stored in the bone, that's normal. Lead gets stored in the bones. I want our audience to know that it can then it's then going to leach out into the rest of the system. So I'm finding these acute exposures, dealing with them first. And then if it's appropriate, I'm going to provoke them to get an understanding of what the burden is in their cells. Because the metals bioaccumulate in the cells of the tissues, like the cells of the thyroid or the kidneys, a lot, the liver.

Let's talk about this. Let's talk a little more about this. Because one thing you said that I want to call out, it's normal for lead to be stored in the bones, but it's not normal to have your body. It's simply the body's protective response is to go, where can I put this thing. Okay, Bones, you're up. So bones, brain, fat cells, organs. Oh, punched in the face again. But you saw that one. Whenever I move my feet, the microphone moves. Whenever I lift my foot, so I won't lift my foot. I'm trying to remember that. So it's just really important to remember that it's not normal to have lead. It's just your body's protective mechanism to make sure that you don't continue to have it in other places that could be worse, like your brain. But as you hit perimenopause and menopause and you recycle your bone and start to reform it, it gets released into your system. And that's when you're so vulnerable because you already have the hormone ridiculousness going either too high, too low, or too irregular, which makes us nuts. Speaking for personal. Personal experience. And this is where you don't chime in just for the right.

No.

And then. And then you have this added layer of your self exposing yourself to a talk. You're basically exposing yourself to a toxin.

Right. And I do tell my. My, My patients this. I almost said my parents. Maybe I need to tell my.

Tell my mom too. She's got my.

Yeah, it could have been. So I do tell my patients. Just by virtue of being on the planet, you do have metals in your system. Unfortunately, it is the new normal. And it's not what I want. It's not what I wish, but it's a sad new normal. And what I need to do is look and see if you are above what's considered a normal or not. Of course I want it to be zero in your life.

Young Frankensteiner Abby normal. Do you remember young frame where you had to go look for the Abby normal brain? So I think the thing is, it's really dating yourself. I'm totally dating myself. I was born in 1970. The EPA and I are the same age, so I know we're the same age. So I would have banned a lot more, though, if it were up to me. They've only banned nine substances in their life. So back to this stuff. Think about it. You came from people who came from people who had tremendous lead and mercury exposure as a way of life. Pipes were lead. There was lead in gasoline. There was lead and paint. There are leaded. There were leaded glass, you know, glass windows. There were just. The lead exposures were unending. And when you're pregnant or nursing, you're going to give 50% of that to your child. That's your legacy that you donate so we wind up with a portion of what our ancestors had.

Right.

Lots, lots of love. So. Right. So it's part of, part of it is that. But then you think about, do you know of any studies going on about whether food in California from the wildfires have more mercury? Because the forests are sequestering the mercury and when they burn, they release it. So is that winding up in our food chain, do you know?

I believe it is. I had a conversation with Dr. Lynn Patrick about that and she was talking specifically about that. I can't remember if she cited some research on it, but I'm sure that she did and I'll ask her for that research. Absolutely. What I am seeing in my patients who live here in California is way higher levels of mercury than ever before. So even, even people who are eating only salmon and they're saying, you know, I'm not eating tuna, I'm not eating swordfish, salmon that's supposed to be safe. Wild salmon, shouldn't that be safe? I say, well, take a look at your metals. It should be, but, but it's not anymore. I tell them it's like birthday cake now, you know, so it's way higher.

Since I mean, the challenge is always, if you look deep enough, we shouldn't be breathing. So the question is, what's better, the omega 3s or the toxins? And how do you, how do you account for everything?

I know, I, I, I tell them to get omega 3s from algae now. Because it's going to be smaller than the fish. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's true. I don't want this to some scary kind of is, but, but we have ways to deal with this, that's for sure. And yes, eat organic as much as we can and detox as much as we can. What does that mean? We have access to a sauna. Right. And there's so much we can do at home. Green products, green, green personal products, green cleaning products are really removing ourselves from the exposure as much as possible.

Yeah, totally. I mean, what I was saying the other day was we're essentially deluged. We're standing under a waterfall of toxins exposure. So it's never a conversation like, oh, I'm going to be perfect. You're never going to be perfect. What we're trying to do is decrease that waterfall to a level where your body isn't frozen with exposure where it can go, okay, I can deal with these specific smaller things. And to consistently work on moving your body, sleeping, exercising, doing these alternative extra things, IVs, saunas hyperbaric oxygen tanks, all of which we have in our new wellness center, Nafisa. I'm so excited, but it's so interesting.

To come visit your.

I know. You got to come to Boston.

Yes.

Springtime.

Yes.

We're like a John Denver song. So, again, dating myself. But the thing I was going to say is, what's so interesting? I am no longer chronically ill. Let's put it there. And I am now at the level of trying to get rid of these. Mercury is, for me, my Achilles heel. I just can't seem to get rid of it. But so I'm doing IVs. What's really interesting is I track all of my data very closely, and I wear the Whoop. And what I see consistently is that pretty much no matter where my recovery is, the day after I get an IV for metals, my recovery is in the green. I could be in the red. I could be in the yellow. The next day, I'm in the green no matter what. And I've had over a week.

Tell me what you mean when you say that, when you say your recovery is in the green. So.

Whoop. Looks at a number of measures. It looks at heart, heart rate, just heart rate, heart rate variability, oxygen saturation, stress levels, sleep, and it puts it all together. And the higher your heart rate variability, the higher your recovery. And so also, I'll share. For the last week, I've been in the yellow. You know, goes green, which is good. Red, yellow, which is mezza mezza, and then red, which you want to get out of. So I've been in the yellow for over a week, and I'm like, I don't know what's going on, but whatever, it'll. It'll. It'll shift, right? I'm not sick, but it is spring allergy season, so maybe that's having a role. And so yesterday, again, IV and today, my recovery is 83%. Heart rate variability is fantastic. Rest was good. O2, SAT, heart rate, all good. And so it's measuring my body's response to these treatments. So I said, dad, I'm gonna go every week. My body likes it.

Yeah, that's great.

It's cool. Because I'm into that kind of weird, random data.

No, it's not weird random. I think it's really important. A lot of my patients have all kinds of ways to measure what the treatments are doing, and they can watch. Watch themselves get better. I think that that is awesome.

And you can get that now. I think the OURA ring also checks for Heart rate variability. And I think there's another. Pretty sure there's another system. I think it does. Right. So it's really looking at how is your body responding to these stressors and movements. So it's very cool to watch. Okay, talk about individual's ecological system. What does that mean?

Yeah, so we already, I already touched upon it a bit, but I would love to go deeper into that. I tell my patients there are five issues that cause immune dysregulation which then contribute to inflammation in your system. Infections, toxins, diet and lifestyle. And structural integrity issues. When I talk about infections, I'm talking about acute and chronic. Could be maybe the herpes virus, the Epstein Barr virus, cytomegalovirus, HHV6 or tick borne infections for example. Toxins, the ones we talked about, metals. I look at glyphosate, different solvents, pesticides. Now we have inflammatory chemicals, meaning the genes. Then we get epigenetic expression. And so what I said before, but I want to say it again, is that I want to make sure it doesn't get lost. It's a really important point for our listeners that we can have many different genes at play and different individuals which can produce the same diagnosis in different people. So no one gene is responsible for the same diagnoses.

Many to say this again, many different diagnoses at play that lead to the same symptoms in people. Or is that right?

Many, many. They can. So many different genes at play in different genes in different individuals which can produce the same diagnosis in different people. I just had the blessing of meeting with Dr. Robert Navio, who is the scientist and researcher behind the cell Danger response. And Eric, Dr. Gordon and I were just visiting with him in San Diego last weekend. There's always great conversations around this topic. So I'm bringing some, some nuggets from, from him really around his research. And so no one gene is responsible for the same diagnosis in different people in almost all of these acquired complex chronic illnesses. So the exposures, glyphosate, metals, Agent Orange, plastics for example, and then the infections, like I said, the herpes viruses, Epstein Barr for example, Lyme and co infections. So these are the myriads of causes that then cause what Dr. Navia was calling an ultimate cause of illness, which is the diagnosis that they all have in common, which is the hundreds of biochemical and genetic variables that act in a coordinated way and it's individual for each patient. So then there's this impression, the medical establishment that these things are interdependent, but it's not true. That, oh, you have Epstein Barr virus. Oh, that's the only thing that's at play. Or you have mercury. That's the only thing these patients. To summarize that these patients have many, many different causes, and all those different causes are different for each patient. And then different patients will have different genes that express. There's hundreds of biochemical reactions going on through this. And then somehow they then arrive at the same diagnosis. And so I asked them, how do they arrive at the same diagnosis when the way to get there was so different. Right. And so he was saying that that is what is shared and what is shared that gives them similar symptoms, though everything was different getting there. It's the vulnerability of the end organization that the disease is named for.

Yeah, that's very cool.

What else should we ask that we haven't asked?

I was. We asked her.

What else have we asked?

Should we ask? I think we've asked. I think we've had a really well rounded conversation. I mean, with respect to treatment, I just. Yeah, I think we haven't talked much about that a little bit. But treatment needs to be well rounded. I think that's so important that people go chasing after Lyme or mold or just metals. I'm talking about for these patients with complex chronic illness. For a lot of people, it could just be toxins. For my patients, it's not. It's not just one metal. It's not just lime. So it needs to be well rounded. I need to really understand the whole picture. Every reason that I can, with my clinical history and with the labs, putting those together to really get the full picture of the patient. Understanding where they're inflamed in their system, working on the inflammation and working on just a well rounded treatment approach is a dance that's different with each patient. People get better. They get better.

They do get better. And I do want to emphasize the time frame you're talking about. They don't get better in the week or two.

No, absolutely.

I just want to kind of make sure we emphasize that to the audience because.

But there's more. Yeah, I can't finish.

Then I take months and sometimes years to really get better.

And then I want to pile on to that because we have. We share a patient who. She's kind of like me in the sense that she has terrible detox genes.

Terrible.

And had a bunch of exposures for her. I don't. I don't have Lyme. It was like something I don't have. But she had Lyme and Babesia and Hashimoto's which I also don't have. But she wound up in our practice with no hair, head to toe. And I was joking with her, like I stole her. I know, I just, I loved her. I was like, you have to be my patient. So I stole her from Ed after he had dealt with the Lyme and the Babesia to a major extent and he had started working on the medals and the Hashimoto. So I took her over and she was on this ramp up. Her hair was growing back. So remember, head to toe, no hair. And I was like, there's always an upside. So she didn't have to pay for any waxing south of the border. Not that she had to deal with. So that was an upside. However, she was like, I don't have any hair. So we started. She know she, her hair starts growing back and then she comes in like a year and a half ago and now it's falling out again. And I'm like, what's going on here? And what we got down to is that she had been eating more sushi, high mercury tuna sushi specifically. And I was like, kiki, you know you're not supposed to do that. Like once, once you have this issue, you're someone who's kind of primed to go back down that pump. So you, you can't. It's not just like you recover and go back to your old ways. You recover and then you build on the recovery and continue to detox and continue to be careful with yourself so that you don't wind up where you started.

Exactly.

You'll backslide.

Right. And so I tell my patients, so say you had a combination of mercury and a combination of Epstein Barr virus, those two things. It's usually more poor sleep, stress, all kinds of things. But say you had these two things that the doctor found and you could heal by, by, by fixing, by re. Recalibrating those things. But those two things together under many different biochemical pathways and genes expressing lit up a certain pathway of inflammation or immune dysregulation in your system. I tell them it's like putting Christmas lights along that pathways lights the way along that pathway. Now you can remove the trigger, but guess what? That pathway is now there. It's now lit up. So if you get another exposure, it's going to light up that same pathway, even though it could be a totally different exposure. Which is why these chronic illnesses start to mimic each other. Because you've got your neuro immunopathways prime.

It's the yellow brick Road. You're following the yellow brick road every time, right?

Each time. So they have to be under immune modulation constantly. And detox. I tell them detox is your best friend. Immune modulation is your best friend. Because now you've got this, you've got this tendency built in your body. And so in my experience, detox and immune modulation are the two things that are going to allow them to keep those pathways dim because there's going to be another exposure, there's going to be more stress, there could be another tick bite. That's life. And so we have to know who we are, where we stand and, and how to protect ourselves in that way.

You have the keys to the kingdom on this one, like this. Control is in your hands. It's not magical or mystical.

Yeah, I want to make sure to put a plug in.

Hold your microphone because my foot keeps moving.

I want to really make sure to put a plug in. We talk all about the biochemistry and how important it is in the ecosystem and all that is has to be done and one's view of oneself, if you've been sick for a very long time, is still a sick person. And I just want to make sure we plug that. Not only is it supplements, vitamins, detox, all this stuff that we need, it's also we need to change our minds and look at how we view ourselves, how we view the world, how we respond to stress, etc, and I'm so.

Glad you, you brought this up. This is, this is huge because I think I did. I just hear you use the word trauma, Wendy, because that's what I'm thinking of.

The trauma.

Yeah. Being sick is a trauma in itself. And you know, so we have to work a lot on that with our patients. And we know that stress, actually it amplifies immune dysregulation. That's seen in the papers and in the research. It's true. And. And so just working on stress, working on self love. So important. Totally.

All right, Nafisa, here's the magic question. What? Where we're going to put this on the show notes so you don't have to worry about spelling anything. But where can people find you? And do you have a gift for them? I heard a rumor you did.

Ah, okay. So they can find me at Gordon Medical in the San Francisco Bay area. We do have patients come from all over the country and a gift. I have a pre talks book. There's also a Cell Danger Response ebook which should be coming out soon. So.

Awesome. Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

So the first thing I want to say is thank you for being on this podcast. We love you personally, we love you professionally. We love working with you. So this has been great and a great opportunity to really dive in and untangle what's going on for people who are chronically ill. And then to the listeners, what I want to say is thanks for listening to another episode of the Feel Freaking Amazing podcast. Our guest today is Dr. Nafisa Parpia. Nafisa, thank you for being here and we will talk again soon.

Thank you so much for having me. And I want you to know, both of you, the love is mutual. I love you both as people and as professionals as well. Thank you for having me on the podcast. Thank you for doing this podcast.

Our pleasure.

Thank you.

Thank you.